The Art of Holding On and Letting Go (30 page)

“Did it work?”

“In a crazy way, it did. It was like being on a rollercoaster, and you're going up, up, up, and you get to the top and you're dreading going over the edge, and then you go flying down, your teeth are rattling and your stomach is in your throat, and aaaaaahhhhh! Then you get off, and you stumble around, and you're like, yeah, let's do it again!”

I was laughing now. “You crack me up.”

“Good times.”

“It's good that you pushed yourself to get through it,” I said. “My grandma started off being afraid of driving and flying, and now she's afraid of everything, to go anywhere.”

“I guess it sneaks up on you, when you cut yourself off from everything, huh?”

“I guess. It's just easier for her to stay home, where she feels safe. I understand it a little.”

“I had been thinking about you, and how you're so far away from home. After the car crash, Adam was in a coma, and we set up sort of a memorial at the scene of the accident, you know, flowers and stuffed animals, pictures. There's a tree at the corner of that intersection, and people kept coming and leaving stuff there. It's been almost four years now, so nothing is left anymore, but there's still a part of me that's drawn there. I just go sit under that tree sometimes.”

“Yeah, I know that feeling.”

I curled up on my side, tugging the covers up over the phone pressed to my ear, Tom's voice captured in the warm, quiet space.

“Do you think you'll ever go back to Ecuador?”

“That's what my dad wants me to do. But I'm not feeling like I need to go there. I just feel like I need to go home. Sitting under that tree probably helps you remember Adam and feel connected to him. All of my connections are in California, back in the mountains at our cabin.”

“Please tell me you're coming back,” he said.

I wanted to get lost in his dreamy voice, swept up in this romance, but I couldn't, not yet. My longing for Tom was all mixed up and twisted together with my longing for home. I was tied to California, like a bungee cord that was stretched to its limit.

“I don't know where I'll end up. I just know I need to go back to California right now.” I paused. Tom inhaled but didn't say anything. “I'm sorry.”

“Don't be sorry. Just don't forget about me. I'll be thinking about you every day.”

His words made my heart skip and spark. “Me too,” I said.

“I don't want to say good-bye.”

“Me neither.”

“Sweet dreams, Cara. My dad used to say, ‘Que sueñes con los angelitos.' ”

“Sleep with the angels? Much nicer than my dad saying, ‘Don't let the bed bugs bite.' ”

“Yeah, that's what my mom says.”

“My Uncle Max would chime in: ‘Don't let the mosquitoes bite. Don't let the mice nibble. Don't let the ticks burrow.' ”

Tom chuckled. “And then you were wide awake itching for hours.”

“Exactly.”

Don't let the scorpions sting
. Uncle Max's last words to me, the night before he left with my parents to climb Mount Chimborazo, his laugh echoing down the hall.

Tom yawned, and I yawned back, my eyes watering.

“Que sueñes con los angelitos, Cara.”

I smiled and sighed. “You too. G'night, Tom.”

I slid my phone onto my nightstand, switched off the lamp, and snuggled back under my covers. The heat from Tom's voice slipped away into the darkness. He'd wait a week for me. Would he wait a year? What exactly was I searching for? I wanted to go home, but was it still my home?

The green numbers on my clock glowed 12:01 a.m. My phone chimed with a mini burst of light. Tom. I smiled. He knew my old crappy phone didn't have emojis, so he'd typed out the words instead. Smiley face with angel halo. Sleepy face with zzz's. Kissy face. Heart. Heart. Heart.

Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

—Mary Oliver, “The Summer Day”

All aboard! Kaitlyn, Nick, and I were giddy with the hilarity of traveling in the RV. Little stuffed Tahoe took turns sitting next to everyone. Grandpa concentrated on maneuvering the monstrosity through the local streets and onto I-94 toward Chicago. I thought Grandma would sit tucked away in the back somewhere, pretending she was in a house rather than on the road. But she was sitting up front as copilot. I wouldn't say that she looked relaxed, but she looked better than on any other car trip we'd taken before. Maybe sitting up so high, looking down on all the other cars, made her feel a little more in control, a little safer.

Kaitlyn and Nick looked a little less goth than usual, but it was still enough to make Grandma
tut, tut
under her breath. I was pretty sure Nick wasn't wearing any eyeliner; Kaitlyn still wore her thick line of black curved up at the corners of her eyelids, but no purple black lipstick. Her hair was pulled back into a ponytail. She looked cute, and you could tell Nick thought so too. He twirled his fingers through Kaitlyn's ponytail until she finally swatted his hand away.

We sat on the benches around the table, catching our bags of chips and popcorn as they slid with the bumps and swaying of the RV.

Nick and Grandpa debated the environmental impact of the gasguzzling RV versus cross-country jet fuel if we had flown instead.

“It's just one trip. Let it go already!” Kaitlyn said.

Grandma had packed a ton of food, filling the fridge and freezer, so we didn't need to stop to eat. Grandpa pulled over a few times to stretch, and we offered to share the driving duty.

“Yeah, right,” he said.

Indiana, Illinois, and Iowa, were a blur of sleep, music, reading, and card games. We crossed into Nebraska and camped overnight in an RV park, one of those family places with hot showers, an indoor pool, and miniature golf with windmills.

Kaitlyn, Nick, and I roved around the park, the path lit by campfires and party lights strung up outside the RVs. We passed by a neon six-foot-tall palm tree on one site. How did people even call this camping? The sky was clear, but the stars were drowned out in the wash of electricity.

We strolled through humming generators, country music, and crying kids. At the miniature golf place, Nick shook the closed gate, rattling the fence.

“Closed! Aw, come on, it's only ten o'clock.

“Maybe we'll have time in the morning.” Kaitlyn pulled him away.

No time for golf the next morning. No sleeping in, either, with all of us crammed into the RV. We'd brought two tents but decided they weren't worth setting up for the quick stopover. We'd wait until California. Kaitlyn and I had slept on the bunk above the cab, Nick on the fold-down benches, and Grandma and Grandpa got the real bed in the back.

Grandma was up early frying bacon, and the smoky grease hung in the air through Nebraska. When I saw the first car with a Colorado license plate—forest green stamped with a snowy mountain range—I pulled out
Walden
and flipped through the pages. The cover held on tight with the tape, but the spine was broken, threads visible, and a yellowed page slipped out, a passage highlighted and underlined.

I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there. Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live.

Mom and Dad were living their life, the one they felt passionately about. They weren't afraid. Maybe they were still trying to learn what the mountains had to teach. They had separated me from that life. Like Thoreau, I left the woods, but he went deliberately while I was forced to leave. Because I had several more lives to live?

Nick and Kaitlyn leaned against each other on one of the benches, shoulder to shoulder, sharing Nick's earbuds, heads nodding to the beat. Nick noticed my book. “Hello? This is spring break. Aren't you supposed to be reading some sappy romance novel?”

“Shut up.” Kaitlyn swatted him.

“Yeah, you should read Thoreau,” I said. “You'd relate to his ‘simplify, simplify, simplify' motto. He's a big environmentalist. Individualism, autonomy …”

Nick raised one eyebrow, his dimples flashing. “Fork it over.”

I handed him the book. He carefully weighed it in his palms. “What did you do to this thing, kick it around in the dirt?”

I smiled. “It's been through a lot.”

Nick's cell phone rang, startling Kaitlyn. She tugged the earbud out and passed the phone to Nick.

“RV express,” he answered.

A man's deep voice barked through the phone loud enough for the rest of us to hear, but the words were an angry jumble.

“I'm on the retirement train heading through prairie-ville, where do you think I am?”

Nick held the phone away from his ear. The barking continued.

“We've barely crossed the Colorado line,” Nick responded.

He listened for a moment, then stood up and huffed to the front of the RV. “For fuck's sake,” he muttered.

He handed the phone to my grandpa. “My dad wants to talk to you.”

Grandpa took the phone and assured Nick's dad that Nick was indeed still with us and would remain in our sight the entire time.

“Another charge showed up on my dad's credit card,” Nick explained. “Looks like Mike just bought a mountain bike.”

“Guess he's getting ready for ski season to end,” Kaitlyn said. “You think your dad's gonna go after him this time?”

Nick shrugged. “He canceled the credit card, anyway.”

We were all quiet, gazing out the windows, the clouds darkening. The windshield wipers squeaked, clearing the first mist of rain. Water droplets ran along the side windows, the scenery a passing blur of rock-strewn fields.

Soon we reached the forested mountains of the Colorado Rockies. We pulled over for scenic views, and I wanted to take off hiking, get lost in the mountains. Nick stood at the edge of an overlook, gazing out at the snow-covered peaks in the distance.

“See those dead trees?” he said.

The mountainside was covered with evergreens, but large swaths of brown stood among the green.

“I wonder what happened?” I said. “It doesn't look like a fire.”

“Pine beetle,” Nick answered. “Global warming. It only takes the tiniest rise in temperature for them to survive the winter instead of dying off like they used to. They're feasting on the trees and killing them. This entire landscape is going to be completely transformed.”

I stood next to him, quiet, gazing out at the destroyed pine trees. Soon these evergreen slopes would be bare and eroded, like the mudslide-prone cliffs on California's coast.

“Maybe a different kind of tree can grow here instead? Aspens?”

Nick shrugged and continued to stare out at the mountain slopes.

We had aspen trees in our yard when we lived in Colorado years ago. Mom and Dad taught me to rub my hand along the tree bark. White powder coated my palm. A natural sunscreen, we rubbed it on our nose and cheeks.

Nick didn't say any more about the trees, and he didn't suggest a detour near any ski resorts, but I'm sure his brother was on his mind.

I slept through most of Utah, but awoke to the rust-orange, wide-open vistas in Nevada. We pulled over for another scenic view in the dwindling daylight. I breathed in the fresh, dry air, and felt my lungs and heart expand. I had forgotten how good it tasted. I could smell California, we were so close!

“Grandma's not doing so good.” Grandpa stood next to me at the overlook.

I peered over at Grandma, slumped on a wooden bench with her eyes closed.

“Is she carsick?”

“Not exactly.”

“Maybe it's just the mountains, you know, fear of heights, a little vertigo.”

Grandpa didn't look so sure. “I'm going to ask her to lie down in the back for a bit, see if that helps.”

I couldn't believe it. She had seemed fine. I really thought she was going to get through this. We were so close!

Grandpa helped Grandma lie down on their bed in the back of the RV. She clutched his arm and trembled, looking much worse than that day at the cider mill. The color had drained from her face, leaving her skin as gray as her hair.

“She looks really sick,” Kaitlyn whispered.

“We need to let her rest for a few minutes,” Grandpa said. “Come on, back outside.”

We piled off the RV and stood around, shuffling our feet.

“What can we do?” Kaitlyn asked.

“I've been trying to figure that out for years,” Grandpa answered.

“Doesn't she have any pills? You know, Valium, or something?” Nick suggested.

Kaitlyn gave him a warning look.

“What? People take medicine for this kind of thing,” Nick said.

“You're right,” Grandpa said. “But she's proud of being healthy as a horse. She's never taken any medications; she's one of those people who never get sick. Every spring, I'm sneezing my head off, but she's never even had hay fever. To have to take a drug for her mental health … she just hasn't been able to accept that.”

I knew it was mean, but I didn't care if Valium knocked her out cold for the rest of the trip. I just had to get to California.

“We have to do something,” I said. “She seemed fine before, what happened? When did she start feeling sick?”

“She did seem fine, a little nervous, but not too bad. We were listening to the radio, and she even hummed along. Then we hit the mountains, and I shut off the radio when it turned to static. I was enjoying the views and the quiet, and next thing I knew, she wasn't looking so good.”

Grandpa boarded the RV while the rest of us stood around, waiting. I had no idea how to help Grandma. I didn't understand how she was feeling, how it paralyzed her. I should have asked Tom about it, his mom was a psychologist, she might have recommended something. What if Grandma couldn't continue with the trip? No way could we turn around and go back.