Random Acts of Kindness (12 page)

Nicole pressed a button under the dashboard and popped the hood. “Check the trunk for a tool kit and flares. I’ll see what’s going on.”

Claire settled Lucky in his doggie bed in the backseat and then rounded to the trunk. She pushed aside their luggage and Jenna’s crate of mementos while trucks rumbled past. The breeze tossed the hem of her skirt and caused skittering bits of gravel to clink against the car. She pushed aside a first aid kit until she found the yellow tool kit.

Nicole stood cock-hipped in front of the car with the hood up, frowning at the guts of the Chevy. Heat blasted off the metal parts. “Too hot to touch,” she said, flicking open the toolbox. “I don’t see anything obviously wrong.”

“Maybe it doesn’t run without Jenna’s mojo.”

Her attempt at humor sailed right over Nicole’s head. Nicole put her face close to the engine to get a better look. She pulled a folded cloth out of the tool kit and shook it out. “Grab the flares,” she said, holding the open kit out to Claire. “Place them right on the rumble strips, a good twenty feet apart. The sun’s going down and this isn’t the best place to stop.”

When she returned, Nicole was getting the cloth good and greasy with all the tugging and checking. She told Claire to try to turn on the car. Claire settled into the seat, put down the window, and turned the key.

Nothing happened.

Nicole’s voice, muffled by the hood. “Try again.”

Still nothing.

“We’ve got gas, right? A good half tank?”

“Almost three-quarters,” Claire said. “We filled it about twenty miles south of the airport, remember?”

Claire followed Nicole’s orders, trying to restart the car a few more times, until Nicole closed the hood and leaned gingerly against it. Then Nicole pulled her phone out of her pocket and dialed.

Claire heard her giving mile-marker directions over the phone as she joined her. When she hung up, Claire said, “We busted Jenna’s car, I guess.”

“I don’t think it’s an ignition coil. It hasn’t been running rough. And if it were a faulty fuel pump, we should be able to turn it on after a rest, unless it’s completely broken.”

“I know Thai and a little Pali, but this language is unfamiliar to me.”

“Considering the noise we heard before it stalled, I suspect it’s the timing belt.”

“A little thing like that? And you can’t fix it?”

“I could, if I had a car lift and the right parts. For now, we have to wait on a tow truck to bring us to the nearest garage.” She slipped the phone back into her pocket. “Looks like we’re becalmed, Claire, right smack in the middle of Iowa. Karmic, wouldn’t you say?”

Claire twitched. She didn’t want to believe Karma had anything to do with it. So far, the universe had been supporting this crazy road trip, drawing Jenna and Nicole together, putting Maya and Jin in her path. But she couldn’t deny that there had been disappointments. Not being able to connect with Sydney. Yesterday, for not finding Theresa. Today, Paulina’s arrival. And now she leaned up against a disabled car. She glanced to the skies, which were threatening rain, and wondered why the universe would turn its sunny face away.

“Nicole,” she said, “you just don’t understand the concept of Karma.”

“Maybe I’m confusing it with divine intervention. I just know I didn’t break the timing belt only about fifty miles outside an international airport while aiding and abetting a woman evading chemo.”

“I wouldn’t put it past Paulina—or you—to have engineered this.”

“Do you know how long it takes to change a timing belt?”

“Just long enough for you to convince me to go back to Oregon?”

“At least a day. If the dealer has the parts on hand.”

“So we’ll have plenty of time in some little Iowa town to discuss the true nature of Karma.”

“Yup.”

Claire said, “While we’re at it, we’ll discuss free will, too.”

“Aren’t you afraid of dying?”

Claire didn’t answer right away. She kept her eye on the overpass a mile or so down the road. Slowly, she felt Nicole shift against the car, uncomfortable with the stretching silence. Claire suspected she wouldn’t be able to explain what happened that day on the tree bench outside her
guti
. She’d begun her sitting meditation as she had so many times before. She’d closed her eyes, and the space behind them became dark. She’d focused on the rise and fall of her abdomen, heard the buzzing of a fly nearby and the gurgle of the stream that wandered through the merit fields down to the eggplant garden. She breathed in the perfume of jasmine in the glade.

And then she’d stepped into a deeper concentration, so deep that she experienced vivid images of friends buying chickens in the market and a flash of a conversation between two monks. She heard the laugh of her younger brother diving into the waters at Coley’s Point. It was as if the past and the future had slipped their bonds, and the universe was showing them to her like frames of an old movie flickering.

That was when she’d seen a figure running toward her, her arms wide. Young, plump, vibrant, healthy Melana.

Claire startled as another truck zoomed by, spewing a rain of little stone chips. “We’re all dying, Nicole. Right now, little by little, we’re dying.”

“Thanks for that reminder.”

“It’s a truth that can be liberating when you believe there’s something beyond this life.”

“I’m Roman Catholic, remember? But I’m in no hurry to find out what’s beyond the clouds.” Nicole shifted uncomfortably against the hood. “The fact is, rational people just don’t light out across the country when they should be at home getting necessary medical treatments meant to save—”

“—
extend
their lives,” Claire corrected. “Chemo extends life for some unknown amount of days, sometimes months, occasionally years. I know I’ve got a disease that I’m unlikely to beat. I’m giving up treatment not because I want to die.” Claire lifted her face to the first drops of rain, closing her eyes so she could feel them, cold and sharp, needling her cheeks. “I’m giving up treatment because I want to
live
.”

The tendons in Nicole’s throat stood taut. “I’m not going to do this.”

“You can go on back to California if you want. I can finish this trip alone.”

Nicole pressed the heels of her hands against the cooling hood of the car. “Tell me this isn’t some sick death wish.”

Claire took in the strain on her friend’s lovely face, suddenly understanding that there was another reason why this situation was upsetting her so much. Nicole had left out one important detail in her confession last night in the pool hall. A detail she didn’t seem capable of speaking. But Claire had read between the lines. A boy who lights a smoky fire in a closed garage wasn’t just “experimenting.”

Claire reached for Nicole’s hand.

Nicole gripped that hand and whispered, “What kind of friend would I be if I help you escape the medical treatment you need?”

Claire rubbed her thumb against a streak of grease. “Right now, that makes you the very best friend I have.”

Nevada, Iowa

R
ule number eleven for organizational efficiency was to take care of the toughest business of the day first. So when a reminder beeped on Nicole’s phone—a reminder she’d entered several weeks ago—it jerked her out of the ritual of sorting her dirty laundry, a task she’d retreated to after multiple rounds of verbal sparring with Claire. Now she remembered she had something tougher to do than come up with a way to compel Claire to head back to Oregon for treatment.

Claire sat in a lotus position on the Laundromat bench, her face raised to the gray light siphoning through the plate-glass window. Her friend had been meditating for a good half hour. Nicole assumed this was Claire’s way of retreating from their pointed discussions, and she was hesitant to interrupt it. Claire sat so still that Lucky slept in her lap. Claire’s T-shirt was printed with the picture of two people in long robes running under the caption,
Pilgrims: The First Illegal Aliens.

Nicole approached on soft feet. “I’ve got to make a call,” she whispered. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

She pushed through the doors to the little town of Nevada, whose welcome sign advertised it as
The 26th best small town in America!
This had been the nearest town from where the car had broken down, not much more than a nexus of two major roads among cornfields. Fortunately, the town had Bo’s Auto Repair, where last night a mechanic with a seed-cap tan promised a twenty-four-hour layover on fixing the Chevy. The tow-truck driver, a cousin of the mechanic, had given her and Claire a lift to the budget hotel ten minutes down the road.

Now she strode down the town’s main drag passing Ben Franklin’s General Store, Miss Julia’s Bakery, and C. J.’s Soda Pop Shoppe. The whole display of flat-front, two-story umber-brick buildings reminded her of the straight-backed toy soldiers on Noah’s shelf, lined up and well dusted. Nicole put her head into the gusty winds, smelling of rain, and headed to a small park that they’d rolled their luggage past earlier.

Raising her phone, she checked the strength of the cell-phone signal. If the call dropped in the middle of the conversation, she’d be forced to rerun the gauntlet of administrators for a chance to connect with Noah again. Her heart skittered as if she’d drank one too many cups of the diner coffee.

She scrolled through her contacts until she found the one for the Hope Recovery Center. Before she could hesitate, she hit Call.

The receptionist answered on the first ring.

“This is Nicole Eriksen calling for the third-floor desk. I’m scheduled to speak to my son Noah today.”

As she waited to be transferred, she dragged an image to her mind of young Noah sliding down the hall on his socks. She remembered his high-pitched voice as he thrust a drawing at her, pointing out the boles of the trees and the branches with their ribbed leaves curled like welcoming hands. Then his voice deepened in her mind, and the image on the paper morphed into something inky and sepulchral, the smiles lipless and toothy.

Odd spasms twitched in her back. Maybe she’d overdone it on the hotel treadmill this morning.

The floor nurse came on the line. Nicole spoke briefly to her and waited again. She exchanged words with the station nurse, and then she waited again. Every transfer felt like a click of the treadmill to an increased slope.

Click.

“Mom?”

Mom, I’ll be late for school! Mom, I found a bird’s nest in the cherry tree! Mom, can I have ice cream?

She tilted her head back to stare at the canopy of leaves. “Noah, you’ll never guess what I’m looking at.”

“Tell me it’s the front door of the Hope Recovery Center.”

Pain shot through her, like the tear of a tendon in the space between scapula and spine. “Sorry, Noah. Not this time.”

She waited through the pause. She listened to the ambient noises of the room through the connection. She envisioned him shuffling to the farthest stretch of the corded phone and then turning his shoulder to the nurses.

“Hey, a guy can dream.” He puffed air into the receiver. “So is it tall or small?”

She let her eyes flutter closed. At least he was trying. “It’s tall, but not as tall as most.”

“Broad or narrow leaves?”

“Broad and many-lobed.”

“Fruit, nut, or seed?”

“I’ve
neigh-
ver seen such spiny seeds.”

“
Neigh
-ver? Really, Mom? What, am I six?”

“You’ve got an answer, smarty?”

“It’s a horse chestnut tree. Obviously.”

“You’ve only seen these in a book.” Several books, borrowed from the library when he was in his tree-drawing stage, tomes of classification guides with full-color illustrations. “Right now I’m sitting in the shade of a horse-chestnut tree in Nevada, Iowa.”

“Dad told me you cut out of town. Iowa?”

“I was on a road trip until the car died. Now I’m stuck in a small town with an incontinent dog and a Buddhist with a junk-food habit.”

“Want to trade places?”

Guilt burbled the stew in her stomach. She clamped her throat to hold it down. Through the connection, she could almost smell the pine antiseptic of the place, see the concrete-block walls behind cheap framed prints. She could hear the silence from the long, deep hallways, the boom of heavy doors opening and closing, the rubber squeak of orderlies’ shoes on tiles. She could see the pale blue paint and the dark blue carpet and the rounded corners of the scarred coffee table and the nubby brown-orange upholstery of the sofas, and the TV bolted high in a corner droning endlessly. She could see her son pressed up against the concrete-block wall near the communal phone, his jeans sagging halfway down his hips, his dark hair growing long over his eyes.

Someday, technology would be invented that would allow a mother to reach long arms through the line and draw a son into a hug. “Fifteen days. Then you’ll be back home, eating dinner with Dad and me and Julia and Christian.”

“Don’t make meat loaf. That’s all they serve here.”

“Don’t try to con me, kiddo. I know the food is good.”

“Yeah, if you’re comparing it to a closed-down psychiatric ward.”

Positive. Keep positive.
“At least at Hope you can get out in the sun once in a while—”

“To walk in circles with all the other inmates.”

“Patients.”

“Whatever. I suppose it keeps me from getting bloated again.”

Change the subject.
“You’ve got your sketch pad?”

“I can’t draw. I’m on clonazepam.”

“Clonazepam?” Mentally she riffled through the list of meds they’d sampled over the past eighteen months. “Didn’t they give you that in”—
lockdown
—“the last time you were in the hospital?”

“I don’t remember. I can barely
think
on this stuff. All I want to do is watch the fucking TV.”

The curse was like a slap. She pulled the phone away a fraction as a gust rustled the leaves of the horse chestnut tree. She’d tried to become immune to the language when he first started up. She wasn’t sure where he’d picked it up. She and Lars never spoke that way, at least not in front of the kids. TV, she supposed. Video games. His high school friends.

“Sorry,” he muttered. “Last week on the meds, I was a zombie. Now they’ve lowered the dose, and I’m swearing like a rapper. Dr. Kleinberg tells me that this is maladaptive behavior, and I have to work on it.”

Nicole took a breath. There was so much to be pleased with in what he’d just said. First, the fact that he’d spoken several full sentences, even if one sounded like a direct quote from his therapist. Second, that the therapist was concentrating on his social skills. Third, that he acknowledged an awareness of the issue. But still, she couldn’t pretend that this pained self-awareness didn’t also break her heart. “Part of the reason why you’re at Hope is to get those darn dosages right.”

“They’re never going to get the dosages right. Strike that,” he said. “The
dosages
aren’t the problem. I’m taking too many stupid medicines.”

Nicole let her eyes drift closed. This was an old argument, a familiar one, a manic merry-go-round they’d ridden endlessly over the last eighteen months. “Fifteen days, Noah. Two more weeks to follow the program.”

“I’m such a
vegetable
on the drugs. My whole brain turns into mush. I can’t think, and what’s worse is that I can’t draw.”

Nicole braced her hand on the lathe of the wooden bench. She squeezed until a chip of old paint bit into her palm. She kept her grip tight, because if she thought of pain and only of this pain then she wouldn’t let herself remember the sweet promise of the young boy who once showed such lively potential.

With a huff Noah said, “I’m getting mad.”

“Yes, you are, hon.”

“I’m supposed to notice when I get angry or upset.”

“I’m proud that you’re growing more aware of how you’re feeling.”

“I’m supposed to find something that calms me down. Drawing used to do that, and I don’t have that now.”

“The drawing will come back.” She eased her grip on the bench and then lifted the tone of her voice as if it would lift both their spirits. “How about you tell me something good that happened this week?”

His breathing was muffled as if he’d pressed the phone receiver against the wall. “Dr. Kleinberg says I had a breakthrough.”

She banked the urge to hold her breath. “Can you talk about it?”

“I suppose. He makes me keep diary cards, you know, to write down stuff. He’s tough but at least he doesn’t bullshit me.”

Nicole lifted a bit off the seat. Noah rarely spoke of any of his therapists with anything but contempt.

“So he read one of my cards. He talked about all the people who are trying to help me. You know, you and Dad. How you basically give a shit—sorry.”

“Well,” she conceded with a forgiving laugh, “we definitely do give a shit.”

“He said that you and Dad just want me to get better.”

“Everybody does.”

“But that’s just it. That’s what makes me angry. Everyone wants me to get
better
. As if I’m infected with a disease.”

He’s a good kid
, the psychotherapist had told her after Noah’s first lockdown.
He’s smarter than me, smarter than most of our staff. He comes up with such creative ways to avoid his meds.
She heard the rising tension in her son’s voice, and Nicole’s old suspicions needled her. She wondered if the nurses had been monitoring him well enough.

He rushed ahead. “So I asked Dr. Kleinberg what these pills do. He told me that the drugs aren’t meant to cure me. They just take away the highs and the lows.”

“Those lows are pretty dark, Noah.”

“But they suffocate everything. Feeling strongly is better than feeling nothing at all, right?”

“Noah, the way you sink into—”

“I know. I
know
. I need to figure out a way to handle that.
Off
the meds. But the drugs just mask who I am.”

Nicole rubbed the spot between her brows. On the other side of the street, two men in John Deere caps stepped out of a pickup truck and headed over to the soda pop shop. Not far from her, a flock of sparrows swept down to the sidewalk to pick between the cracks. A car that needed work on its muffler rumbled down the street.

Someday she would call her son and they’d talk about the weather. Someday, she hoped she’d call her teenage son and he’d hurry her off the phone because he had a date with a new girl in school. Someday she hoped she’d call her son and they’d laugh about these days when he tried to convince her he could live without pharmaceuticals.

Noah suddenly said, “I’m
always
going to be like this, Mom. I’m always going to feel things more than other people.”

She relived the image of an energized, maniac Noah moving the furniture at 3:30 in the morning so he could paint an oak on the wall of his bedroom; the image of Noah sprawled on his bed, banging his head against the pillow to the beat of Metallica screaming from his headphones; the image of Noah furious over his sketch pad, swinging an elbow that struck her so hard she didn’t feel her head bounce until minutes after she landed on the hardwood floor.

A pulse throbbed just over her eye socket. “If I could wave a wand, I’d make you better. But until—”

Crack.

She jumped at the noise. It sounded as if he’d banged the phone hard against the hospital’s concrete-block wall. She pulled her cell phone away from her ear as she heard another crack, and then another. He stopped, and she heard him make a strangling noise. She heard a nurse’s voice in the background, a level, concerned query.

“I’m fine. I’m fine!” His voice was hoarse as he pressed his mouth close against the receiver. “This is
exactly
what I told Dr. Kleinberg.”

Her whole spine stiffened. “Breathe, Noah.”

“Do you know what I hear when you say that?”

“Say what?”

“You want to make me better.”

“Of course I want to—”

“What I hear is that you wish I were
someone else
.”

Nicole sat stunned. That wasn’t true. She didn’t wish Noah were someone else. No, she just wanted her active, off-center, curious, and intellectual son back. The little boy she used to read to every night. The young man who looked so much like Lars.

Noah said, “I’m never going to stop being who I am, Mom. So you and Dad need to stop hoping that some stranger is going to move in behind my eyes.”

Nicole wandered back to the Laundromat to find Claire pulling a T-shirt from a heaping pile.

“Holy Buddha.” Claire froze midfold. “Did you at least get the license number of the truck that hit you?”

Nicole dropped down onto the bench where she’d left Claire meditating only a short while earlier. She pulled onto her lap a half-eaten bag of Doritos.

She bit into a chip. “I just got off the phone with Noah.”

“Ahh.”

“He had a breakthrough.” She chewed but tasted nothing. “Apparently, the last year and a half of outpatient therapy with four different therapists, the six different drug regimens, and this four-week stint in a mental health recovery center are just my extreme efforts to change him into a son whom Lars and I can finally love.”