Lost in America: A Dead-End Journey (3 page)

After assessing the situation, the doctor came to the decision that it was time for my mother to be in hospice. In Korean, my aunts explained to my mother what that would mean; seated in a wheelchair, sobbing, she bobbed her head up and down, indicating that she understood. That image, and the sounds I heard in that room, is permanently engraved in my memory. Aside from the doctor, I was the only one in that room not crying. I once again wondered what in the hell was wrong with me. I wasn’t emotionless, but just stood there grimacing.

B
oth my sister and brother dropped everything to take the first available flight home. Now that hospice was involved, the entire family was to be home. My brother and I assigned ourselves to the rooms we’d grown up in, my sister slept next to my mother on her hospital bed there in the living room, my father on the sofa beside them.

After a short night of sleep, my sister woke me up. I could tell by the low look on her face and her tone that she didn’t have good news. Solemnly, she told me, “Mom’s not going to wake up. She went into a coma last night.”

Walking downstairs, I entered the living room, where my mother lay, softly breathing. We all pulled up chairs from the dining table around her as my father contacted the hospice nurse and my Korean aunts.

Aunt Annie arrived first, the hospice nurse arriving soon after. She began to check my mother’s vitals, lifting her eyelids, appraising her breathing pattern. With years of experience, she got to the point and told us all that whatever we had to say, we should say it now.

Looking at my mother lying peacefully in a coma, we asked how much time we had. She hesitated, as though she was withholding information, and just said, “Minutes,” adding, “Maybe even less.” Great.

The hospice nurse told us that despite being in a coma, my mother could hear us. She mentioned that she didn’t think Aunt Suki and Halmoni—our Korean grandmother, who we lovingly referred to as “Harmony” while growing up—would make it in time, as they were coming from San Mateo. My father pulled out his cell phone, called them quickly to communicate the status, and then put the cell phone up to my mother’s ear. From my seat there, I could hear a bunch of crying and Korean coming loudly through the cell phone, and since I don’t speak a word of Korean, asked Aunt Annie what was being said. She told me that Halmoni was telling my mother to hold on for her, and not to go until she got here. They were a good forty-five minutes away. We again asked the nurse if they’d make it in time, and she told us probably not.

Defiantly, Aunt Annie told her, “She’ll still be here. You don’t know my sister, she’ll hold on for her mother, she will.”

One by one we started talking to my mother, who at this point was just barely breathing, like a fish out of water, each breath looking as if it would be her last. We all started telling stories, sharing memories that we had of her, and out of nowhere my aunt brought up how she remembered that when my mother was pregnant with me, all she wanted was miso soup. I stood up in my seat. I never knew that, nobody had ever mentioned it. I could barely believe it.

My father leaned over the woman he had married some thirty years earlier, put his hand on hers, and with tears slowly making their way down his face, dropping, absorbing into the fabric of the blanket covering her, said, “Honey, I love you, it’s okay to let go. I love you so much, almost too much. You put up a good fight. It’s okay to let go.”

I was off in my own world, taking this all in, when suddenly my sister exclaimed, “Oh, my God, Mom can hear us! Look!”

There was a single tear welling beneath her eye, which slowly rolled down her cheek. At that moment, the front door opened, and my mother’s sister, mother, and brother, who had flown all the way from South Korea, burst into the house. My mother had held on for her mother. A few minutes later, right there in the living room, in the house we had grown up in, her entire family around her, she quietly stopped breathing.

M
any times early on at the hospital, when my mother was first diagnosed, she would simply say, “Talk to me.” And I’d always be at a loss for words, never knew what to say other than, “Hi, Mom,” which would break her heart. Tears would pour from her eyes when she’d tell me that I needed to communicate with her more often, open up to her. As she became more ill, I tried my hardest to force myself to talk as much as I could, but there will forever be a part of me that hates myself for not doing so sooner.

One of the many things I learned about my mother during this time spent with her was that her father killed himself. I arrived at the hospital one evening wearing a scarf around my neck, since it was a bit chilly. A scarf around my neck was a bit out of character for me, which caused her to take suspicious note of it and inquire as to my reason. Not thinking anything of it, I told her I had come across it in some shop, put it on, liked it, liked the price, liked the color (it was gray), and so went ahead and purchased it.

She nodded, called me strange, which was normal, and then told me a story about her father, whom I knew next to nothing about. All I knew about him was that he was dead. Period.

The story began with her reminding me that they were poor, and needed money for food. One day, her father came home wearing a brand-new scarf around his neck. Upon seeing this, a battle ensued between him and my grandmother, Halmoni, who exploded, cursing him over his stupid scarf, since what they needed was money for feeding the family, not for scarves.

He tried to explain to her that it was fashion, and that he liked the scarf. I would imagine she didn’t care for that at all, since men’s fashion had very little to do with food. While listening to the story, I laughed at the thought of my Halmoni, all five feet of her, unloading on her husband like a caged pit bull at the mere mention of the word
fashion
.

I was taken aback by all this. When we were kids, she would tell us her father was up in heaven, or “happy mountain,” whenever we’d asked about him. By the way she wouldn’t say anything further, it was understood that we were never to bring him up.

But on this occasion, late at night in her room at the hospital, just the two of us, my mother told me more about her father. She told me he liked to drink, a lot, especially loved whiskey, and how he also loved to gamble and chase women. So far, he sounded pretty cool to me. When she sensed this, she tried to extinguish that thought by explaining that due to his behavior, she and her family grew up poor, very poor, and that her mother, who had grown up rather well off, had to raise the entire family by herself while her husband blew all his money on booze and gambling, leaving nothing for the family he had abandoned.

To emphasize this point, she told me that in her village in Korea, the kids would have to bring money to their teachers every now and then to pay for school. If you didn’t have any money for the teacher, the teacher would beat you in front of the entire class. The ruler smacked hard on her hands, and the worst part of it all, she told me, was that the other kids would tease her for not having money for school. My mother also had stories of being very young and her mother sending her out into their village many times to find her father and to tell him that the family had no food, and needed money. Many times he’d be drunk or with another woman when my mother would find him. She’d yell at him for money, and every time he would claim to not have any, sending her home empty-handed.

Learning all this explained a lot to me; why my mother always hated my drinking, and why she always made sure we had everything that we needed. She always made sure we had nice clothes, food on the table, and everything that we could possibly need for school. It also explained why, while growing up, my mother had always had a special place in her heart for my friends being raised by single mothers. She’d always ask me about them more than about anyone else—how they were doing, how their mothers were doing, always a bit of sorrow for them in her voice.

Now I knew why.

Decades after abandoning my mother’s family, my grandfather wrote each member a letter indicating that he was getting older, and had no family, and no one to help take care of him. He was all alone, and planned to kill himself.

He had determined how he was going to kill himself, where he was going to kill himself, and where he was to be buried. He even planned the exact date on which he was going to do it. When that date arrived, sure enough, he did it.

My mother leveled her steady gaze toward me, and told me that when she went back to Korea several years ago, her first visit since leaving shortly after I was born, she left a bottle of whisky and a deck of cards on her father’s grave.

The writer must learn how to handle the problem of loneliness. For writing is a lonely profession. It is one road a man must walk by himself.

ISABELLE ZIEGLER,

Creative Writing

Much had changed since I first attempted to set off on my mission. The Obama administration was well under way, my mother had passed, I was now remarried and preparing for the birth of my son. Determined to pick up where I had left off, I reread
Travels with Charley
in addition to
On the Road
. When I first read
Travels with Charley
years back, I thought it was about an old guy wanting to reacquaint himself with the country that he had written about so much throughout his career. This second time reading it I’m thinking the book was just an excuse for Steinbeck to get away from his wife for a bit. All he had pretty much written prior were novels and works of fiction; then, all of a sudden, he decides one day to go off and write nonfiction, a first-person narrative about traveling across America? Yeah, right. Sounds suspicious. What I could see happening is Steinbeck in his quiet room, door shut, surrounded by dusty woodwork, smoking another cigarette in front of his typewriter, trying to bang away on his
East of Eden
manuscript or something, constantly interrupted by his wife. “John, we need to run to the market. You think we could do that?” Or, “John, could you pick up some dog food for the poodle later on today, we’re getting low. [
Sniff, sniff
. ] Are you smoking again? You promised me you were going to quit after
Our Winter of Discontent
!” I could see John just losing it one day. I love her, but I need a fucking break! By golly, I know, my next book will be about me traveling. I’m going to tell her, “Sorry, babe, but I gotta hit the road for this one, the publisher wants me to discover America. Sorry. It’s a publishing trend right now.
On the Road
did well, and they want me to do the same thing.” Only a writer could get away with doing such a thing. John figured it out. “Now that she’s bought that crap, I’m going to buy a camper, where I can totally drink and smoke all day and night without any interruptions at all, and I’ll take the fucking poodle with me so that whenever I call her for the I-love-you phone call, I won’t have to hear some long boring story that starts with, ‘Guess what Charley did today?’ This will be amazing.”

It was heartbreaking to say good-bye to my wife whom I love dearly and my week-old son, tears were shed, but I’m not going to lie—there was this deep dark secret which I was keeping to myself, the one where I couldn’t wait for this adventure to begin. The story gets worse. I’m leaving my wife and son to travel across the country for an uncertain duration of time, and what’s more fucked up than that is that I’m secretly feeling in no rush to get back home again. And, by the way, I’m not making any of this up. As much as I wish it was, this book is not a novel.

Go ahead and write me off as an unlikable character. Trust me, I’ve been called far worse, and since I’m on a roll right now, truth be told, for me, experiencing life with a pregnant woman was no honeymoon (I don’t care what anybody tells you, no trimester is any easier than another) in a tiny overpriced downtown San Francisco studio apartment in some crack-infested neighborhood, all while my mother was dying, has been one of the most challenging experiences of my life. Ever. Worse than war. I’m amazed I didn’t blow my head off at some point. Really, I swear to God I am. Fuck what you see on television on channels like
TLC
, pregnancy is absolutely nothing like that. Those shows they air make pregnancy look fun. Pure joy. Sadly, it’s not. Perhaps it was just my situation, but it was bloody hell. The fights, the feeling that I could do nothing right, the long lectures about not drinking and smoking, her saying, “I did it, why can’t you?” The arguments, the wars about virtually everything and anything, the countless nights spent sleeping on the sofa, hearing those terrifying words, “I’m hungry,” followed by a long monologue on weight gain, like it’s the end of the world. And the Lamaze classes. How she wanted a doula, me asking, “What the fuck is a doula?” (Note: spell-check doesn’t acknowledge what the fuck a doula is, either, but it’s basically a companion offering support through pregnancy and birth.) How, after hearing her explanation, and why she felt she needed one, me telling her that we didn’t need a doula, particularly not for FIFTEEN HUNDRED DOLLARS, and that I was the fucking doula. The yelling because I wasn’t reading all of the pregnancy books she wanted me to read, and her blowing up when I made the mistake of casually telling her, “If you’ve read one, you’ve read them all.”

I needed a break, and for my sins I finally got one.

One of the few promises I asked my wife to make to me prior to embarking on this journey of mine was that she never asked when I’d be coming back home, or “How much longer?” as I wasn’t going to even attempt to answer those unanswerable questions while on the road.

“I’ll be done when I’m done.”

Nothing further.

Chapter Three

The Path to Hell

“Who is the happier man, he who has braved the storm of life and lived or he who has stayed securely on shore and merely existed?”

HUNTER S. THOMPSON

T
hey say you can never go home again, and leaving San Francisco, I was reminded of a story I once heard about a year and a half ago, told to me by a good friend, John, back when I was single, back when I was living the dream, living by myself, doing my thing, waiting for my most eligible bachelor nomination to arrive. John, who I have known since the second or third grade, was having his bachelor party out near Tahoe. I’m not a misogynist but at the time, I had no idea why in the world anybody in their right mind would want to be married, but whatever, I was going to the party.

We all pitched in and rented one of those cabins out in the woods, not too far from all of the casinos. Since I didn’t own a vehicle at the time, I got a ride out there from another friend with whom I had also gone to elementary, junior, and high school, and who was also invited to the party. Though I’ve run into him over the years, the last time we really hung out together was back in high school, well over a decade ago. Since Tahoe was several hours away, we had plenty of time to catch up, and I could see that he was doing well. He owned a later-model pickup truck, had sporty sunglasses, looked well fed, and I could see his wedding ring glistening in the sun as he held both hands confidently on the steering wheel.

I came to find out he had purchased a house out in the suburbs, in the same town where we had both grown up, not too far from our old high school, and that he and his wife now had several kids. He was now a family man, and to keep the conversation going, I asked him what it was like being a father. I was curious; not because I wanted to start a family and move to the ’burbs or anything remotely psychotic like that, but because I lived in the city and none of my friends had any idea how to start a family. Gross, that’s like,
so
suburban. He of course told me that being a father was great, the best thing to ever happen to him. “Yeah, it’s a lot of work, but it’s also rewarding to see them grow up,” he said, and went on and on telling me how cool his three kids were, that what he was most looking forward to now was coaching his sons’ baseball teams.

Safely arriving at our destination, hours before the strippers would arrive, the groom-to-be dropped by while I was at the keg refilling my red plastic Solo cup with yet another beer. He asked me how the drive had been, and said, “What’d you guys talk about?” So I told him that all we talked about was fatherhood. John shot me a look and asked what he had said about that. I took a sip, thought about it for a second, and told him that pretty much all he said was that it was cool.

“That’s it?”

“Well, he told me that it was the best thing that had ever happened to him, and how wonderful it is; that he can’t wait to coach baseball, shit like that. Why?”

John then told me a story that one day, not long before this, the wife of the guy who had driven me to Tahoe had called him, asking for a favor. This guy’s birthday was coming up, and his wife had planned a huge surprise birthday party for him at the house. Everybody was going to be there, the whole family, kids, friends, all that. Since it was a surprise party, she asked John to take him out for a couple hours of golf beforehand, get him out of the house to make sure he wouldn’t be around to spoil the surprise.

So they go out for a round of golf, and afterward they have a drink at the clubhouse. One drink turns into two drinks, two into three, and it’s getting closer and closer to the time John has promised to return the birthday boy home. Each time he tells him that it’s time to go, the guy doesn’t want to leave. He keeps on saying, “No, let’s just have one more drink, just one more, please? It’s my birthday, and all I want is a drink at a bar.” So they stick around for a couple more, and I guess his tolerance for alcohol isn’t what it once was—being married with kids, he doesn’t drink as much or as often as he’d like to thanks to the ball and chain—and the next thing he knows, birthday boy is totally ripped and begging him not to take him back home. “Please, let’s just stay here and drink, seriously, you have no idea what hell my life is!
I hate it!
” And starts talking about how easy all “you single guys” have it, how they can go out and do whatever the hell they want to, how he’s fucking phobic of the thought of going back to his own house—
terrified
. John listens to him ramble on for a while about how difficult his life is now, married with kids, bills, mortgage, no time to himself, etc., finally telling him that he has things to do that day, that it’s time to go. On the drive back to the house, the car is quiet. Once they get really close, the guy recognizes some of the cars parked on his street.

Drearily, he says, “Looks like my in-laws are here.”

When John says, “That’s great, they all probably came to see you on your birthday,” he answers, “Not really. They’re always over, and I’m
sick
of being around them. Don’t get me wrong, I like them, they’re good people but,
Jesus fucking Christ
, they are always
here
!”

Parked in front of his house, he refuses to get out of the car—“Let’s go back and just have one more drink?
Please?
I don’t want to go home, just one more, I
swear
.” John tells him that he can’t, and all forlorn, our old friend mopes back to his house. Of course when he opens the door, there waits the surprise birthday party that his wife has so meticulously planned, thoughtfully assembling all the people most important to him, and a few who are not so important. He quickly sobers up, puts on a smile, and enters the party.

A
week after I left San Francisco, tore up and hung over, I find myself slowly coming to in a dive motel somewhere in downtown Reno. Empty bottles littered the room. I got up, suit and tie still on from the night before, and made my way to the bathroom. Urinated, flushed, and turned to the sink. After splashing some cold water on my face, I filled my hands and drank. I stared at my reflection.

“You’re not a loser. You’re smart. People like you. You’re not a failure. You’re not as ugly as you look. Women find you attractive. Life gets better, it does. It really, really does. It can’t get any worse, right?”

When I got done lying to myself, a guy who said he was from India checked me out. I threw on my ultra-dark sunglasses, exited the lobby, and with the heat pressing down upon me, made my way over to my mistress, patiently waiting for me a block away. I picked her up right before I left San Francisco. She’s hot. Drop-dead gorgeous, beyond sexy in my eyes, and so far she’s been pretty good to me. Wouldn’t go so far as to say she’s the love of my life, but I like her a lot. She’s got style, old-school even, and as far as age goes, I guess she’d be considered a MILF—a 1964 Mercury Comet Caliente. She’s desert tan, four-door, V-8, and, of course, American-made.

I got inside, inserted the key, and fired up the engine, somewhat relieved that she started. I let her run for a bit, lit up another smoke, put her in drive, and headed toward I-80, continuing to live the dream.

I had stopped by downtown Sacramento on my way east to Reno, but found that scene to be a bore, even though the uphill drive through the night across the Donner Pass, up and over the Sierra Nevada, is somewhat exciting, in a
Please, car
,
don’t break down
kind of way. Shortly after leaving the Reno city limits, thanks to the Hot August Nights car show, I seemed to pass a broken-down classic every couple miles, so I was thankful for having made it this far.

The first casualty I passed was a ’57 Chevy, hood up, looking like it was having engine problems. The second was a 1950s-era pickup with steam coming from its engine due to a blown radiator. Minutes later the third looked to be a Chevy Nova with a blown tire, which reminded me that I didn’t have a spare. I didn’t have one because I like to travel light, and it’s not like I know how to change a tire anyway, so why have one? Not only can I not change a tire, but I can’t change the oil filter, nor can I tell you where the spark plugs are located. I know next to nothing about cars beyond turning them on, refueling them, and whether they look cool or not. That’s it. I should have brought some Xanax. I couldn’t stop thinking that maybe people were right; maybe this was a bad idea.

T
o help get my mind off these thoughts, I found myself thinking about Amelia. The more I thought about her, the more I wanted to pull off the road. Who’s Amelia? I’ll get to that later. Finally, when I got to Fernley, Nevada, I said fuck it, lit another cigarette, pulled off I-80, not so that I could jerk off in a gas station stall thinking about Amelia but to take a side road. I had a different route in mind and needed to double-check that I was taking the correct exit. The young girl working behind the counter informed me that I was on the right path, that this was it, the exit to U.S. 50, the “Loneliest Highway in America.” I thanked her.

“It’s totally empty,” says an AAA counselor. “There are no points of interest. We don’t recommend it.” The 287-mile stretch of U.S. 50 running from Ely to Fernley, Nev., passes nine towns, two abandoned mining camps, a few gas pumps and the occasional coyote. “We warn all motorists not to drive there,” says the AAA rep, “unless they’re confident of their survival skills.”

LIFE
MAGAZINE, DESCRIBING NEVADA’S U.S. 50 AS THE LONELIEST ROAD IN AMERICA,

July 1986

Having, or pretending to have, a death wish can at times be quite fun. If nothing else, it sure does make life a bit more entertaining. Putting my foot in my mouth by supporting another country overseas that, in turn, supports terrorist organizations, I fill the Caliente’s tank with some premium 92 octane. For whatever reason, when I started her up, the fuel gauge read empty. That’s odd, I thought. Ignoring the minor inconvenience of a busted fuel gauge, I continued on my mission. Giddy with anticipation of the unknown, I drove for a bit on 50, maybe thirty miles, arriving in a small town called Fallon, where I pulled in to a Walmart parking lot to purchase some goodies for the road, including one of those red five-gallon gas cans. When I got back to my car, I placed the key in the ignition and turned it. Nothing. I turned it again while pumping on the gas. Nothing. Did this a couple more times, then finally pulled the key out of the ignition, kind of sitting there for a moment thinking about what the hell I was going to do now. I decided to insert and turn the key one last time, and the engine started up.

I lit another cigarette. While still parked, I let the engine run and thought long and hard about what to do next. Do I attempt this? Or do I turn around and get back on I-80 so that when she does break down, I’ll be a little closer to civilization? I watched people go about their everyday lives, parking their cars, entering Walmart, exiting, putting their bags into their trunks, driving off. I’m assuming that for many of them, this is the highlight of their day. There has to be more to life than that.
Don’t be like them. Be a traveler
,
a man on the go!

The sun was minutes from setting. I put the car in drive, exited the Walmart parking lot, made a right turn back onto U.S. 50, and headed east with the light fading behind me.

Within minutes, more or less immediately upon passing the city limits, I found myself alone in the middle of absolutely nowhere with nothing but brown land spread around me. I saw that I had no cell phone reception, which at first made me feel as if I had stupidly cast myself out to sea on some tiny boat, mistakenly having forgotten cigarettes and booze.

The drive was both peaceful, and terrifying. No sign of human life, nothing man-made. I enjoyed that immensely; it was like driving across a vacant planet. Then, like an acid flashback, that image sets my imagination off. Just like that, all the land around me turned ocean blue, and I once again started to think about Amelia.

My car stereo doesn’t work, and with only the rumbling of the V-8 engine to keep me company, my thoughts were copiloting. I imagined myself wearing an aviator’s cap, since this is what it must have been like for Amelia Earhart out over the Pacific. If she could do it, I could do it. My logic was, if my car broke down out here in the middle of nowhere, I could still survive, providing a pack of starved wild coyotes didn’t find me first, or the person driving by to pick me up wasn’t a serial killer. If Amelia’s plane had suddenly stopped working, had her propellers just stopped, she was fucked. It’s not like she could land the plane on the ocean, flip the hood, fix the radiator, and be on her way or wait for help. I could at least do that, minus the fixing part.

With the engine rumbling beautifully, I drove along for a bit. Once the sun finally set, there was absolutely no light at all inside my vehicle. Pitch-dark. I guess a fuse or something had blown, and right now, I couldn’t see any of the meters on my dashboard. I had no idea how fast I was going, how low the oil pressure was, how high the engine temperature—not that either of those last two gauges worked to begin with—but more importantly, I could not see how much fuel I had in the tank, which I suspected was also broken.

I kicked myself for not purchasing a couple extra gallons of water and food provisions back at Walmart. I might wither from dehydration out in this vast nothingness, but it’s a good thing I’d thought ahead so that I could do so with a cigarette hanging from my lip.

I sped by a lone deer on the side of the road that seemed tempted to jump out in front of me, and finally on the approaching horizon I saw signs of civilization. When I finally rolled into the small town of Austin, Nevada, I pulled into a lonely gas station and parked. Cramped from sitting so long, I limped inside. The lady working behind the counter had a huge smile on her face, her eyes fixed on my car.

“Did you drive that thing all the way here?” she asked with what I thought might have been a southwestern accent. I smiled back and told her that I had, and a bigger smile appeared on her face. She commented that the back fins of the car looked like wings, motioning with her hands that it looked like it could fly. If only she knew.