He shrugs and then gets up and throws his suitcase into the trunk. Danny and I are traveling light. All we have left is his wallet full of ice cream money and my big black sleeping-bag jacket that doesn’t breathe and is now coated with a thin film of my sweat. Love does conquer all if Danny can love me while I’m wearing this thing.
Danny slides in first, I get in next to him, and the Peruvian man sits and closes the door. “In trouble?” he asks.
“A friend is. She’s out there, and she’s sort of losing her mind. She thinks that aliens are going to travel through this storm to visit her.”
“Not is crazy,” he says.
“Yes, is crazy,” I say.
“Good friend no think friend is crazy. Machu Picchu? Easter Island? The pyramids? They have been here before. Left evidence. Maybe come again.”
“Through the lightning?”
The man just shrugs and then takes a little nap, leaning his head against the window.
“Is crazy,” I whisper to Danny. He smiles, and we try to fall asleep on top of each other. I can smell what’s left of his worn-off deodorant, hear the little puffs of his breath. His fingertips dangle limply into the seat well, and I can’t stop myself from touching the fleshy pads of his fingers and tracing the swirling prints. I love feeling the weight of his arm on top of me.
The cab climbs up and up and up to the village, where we drop off Alejandro, which we finally learn is what he is called. We watch him wander through the streets to the entrance of the campground. Then we continue on, and finally we reach the forest.
It’s very woodsy around the rim, and dark except for the moon. There is a closed gate at the entrance to the park. Just a big metal pole swung horizontally across our path next to a booth where a ranger would normally collect our entrance fee. “This is as far as I can take you,” the cabdriver says. “You better scoot quick before a ranger starts getting nosy.”
We start to run then. The air is thin compared to what we’re used to, and it smells like sage and piñon—a musky scent from the trees that smells faintly like something burning. When the path gets steep, we start to walk, until we finally make it to the Powell monument, the little turnout where buses pull over and visitors get their first good glimpse of the canyon.
When I see it in the distance, I start to sprint toward it. I can’t wait to look over the edge. I walk past the plaque honoring this Powell guy who made maps—a long time ago, when it was difficult to make maps—and I stop at a flimsy post fence, the only thing between me and plummeting to my death. It’s a miracle you don’t hear reports of toddlers plummeting to their deaths every day in the Grand Canyon. They really do nothing to prevent it, I think.
And then I look.
It is huge. Even at night I can see the vastness of it. Your brain can’t possibly take it all in, so your eyes do this thing where they make a poster out of it. They put it all into 2-D, so it looks like you’re seeing a flat mural of the thing rather than the thing itself. A streetlamp and the moon provide enough light so that I can see the contrasting shadows of the layers upon layers of earth that have been worn away and chiseled into sharp earth art. It’s the only place left on the planet where you cannot physically see a Starbucks in any direction for as far as you look.
Danny holds me around my waist, and we have a moment to breathe before the first clap of thunder sounds and echoes below us so that it feels like an earthquake. It’s hard to recognize where the vibrations are coming from because the echo is so powerful.
“They’re here,” Danny jokes.
It’s not funny, though. I run back to the parking lot so I can get a better vantage point of the canyon edges. I scan the perimeter for Zoe. For any traces of movement. “Zoe!” I yell. Danny joins me between the cracks of thunder, his deep voice booming and echoing across the forest.
Big forceful drops of rain start to pelt the dry earth and move tiny clouds of dirt around themselves. It’s cold in the desert at night, and soon I am shivering—my calls to Zoe visible in clouds of icy white mist. Off to our left in the woods, I see a fire tower. A wooden structure built for the rangers to get a good look around. It’s like an enormous lifeguard chair for the landlocked.
I climb it, the adrenaline lifting me higher and higher, until I can see above the trees. I see some leaves moving near Hopi Point. And then I find her crawling on her hands and knees through the brush.
“That way!” I yell to Danny, pointing to the south. “Hopi Point! And call 911!”
He gets a head start while I climb down the tower and then follow after him.
• • •
Danny is talking to her in a calm voice as I approach.
Except for her underpants and the beaded corn-pollen pouch around her neck, Zoe is naked. Her skin is splotched with dirt and scratched from the brambles, but she looks smooth and otherworldly. She is backing up toward the edge of the rock and looking toward the sky. A mile below, the Colorado River shoots directly toward us in a deep, dark, and jagged scar.
“Zoe!” I say, trying to catch my breath. “Where are your clothes?”
“I won’t need them,” she says, backing her feet closer to the edge and looking again toward the sky. It’s just drizzling now, the rain creating a soft veil between us.
“Aren’t you cold, Zo? Let’s go down to the village and get some hot chocolate.” I take a step toward her, and she holds up her hand. Her lips and the tint of her skin beneath the dirt are a pale slate blue.
“Don’t come any closer.” She reaches into the pouch and pulls something out of it.
“But Zoe.”
“Stay there . . . Catch!” she says, and she throws me a small book that lands at my feet. I snatch it up before it gets too wet. It’s a photo album. With a beaded cover that Zoe made herself. I don’t have time to take a good look because I don’t want to take my eyes off her. I think it is a photo catalog for my museum of intangible things. Audacity (Kermit), Gluttony (Squirrely, a man’s triceps in my face, and me eating a mayonnaise sandwich), God (the tornado), Knowing what you want/Saying yes to life (Rosemarie), Destiny (me on the white buffalo), Betrayal (Old Faithful), Love (Danny and me at our slot machine), Luck (my tattooed hip).
“So you can remember when I’m gone. I think you can make it without me now. We didn’t have a picture of the first one. What was it?”
“Insouciance,” I say.
“Yeah. Insouciance. Stop giving a shit,” she says. “You care too much.” She inches even closer to the edge. A few pebbles start falling away and rolling down the face of the canyon.
“You don’t have to go anywhere, Zoe. Come with us. It’s time to go home. We need to see Noah.”
“You have to take care of him for me, Hannah. You know what he needs, okay? You need to make sure he understands people.” Her voice catches for a second. “People can be cruel. He needs to be able to read them.” This is when she cries a little, a tear forging a track through the dirt on her face. “Take care of him, Hannah.”
“Who’s going to take care of me, Zoe? You can’t just leave me with this,” I say, holding up the photo album. “It’s not enough.”
“You have him,” she says, pointing to Danny. “That’s enough.”
“No, Zoe, it’s not enough,” I say, and I think how my love for Danny, at the outer limits, might last until he goes to college. My love for Zoe is supposed to last through graduations and weddings and baby showers and games of bridge. Forever. “Come on, Zo,” I say.
I take a step toward her. And she jumps.
“Zoe!” I scream, and I rush to the edge.
She’s standing on a ledge five feet below.
“Just practicing,” she says.
“Zoe. Really. This isn’t funny.” My heart is thudding in my chest.
A thin streak of lightning flashes on the other side of the canyon. Where are the police? I wonder. Da
nny called them.
“Come on, Zoe,” Danny says. “Don’t give up. We’re going to go home and start over. Try harder. We can get out of that town. It’s up to us to create our own lives.”
“Exactly,” Zoe says. “And mine is with them.”
“Fine,” I say.
“Fine what?” Zoe asks, getting a little shifty.
“If this is true, then let me come with you. Remember that story I read to you by Astrid Lindgren? The one about the two brothers? And how they jumped off the cliff together rather than be left forever apart? I’ll jump with you.”
“It doesn’t work that way.”
“Why? If you won’t come with me, then I will go with you,” I say.
“That’s courageous of you, Hannah, but I will go alone,” she says.
A huge streak of lightning in the exact shape of the Colorado River crackles and lights up the sky behind us.
“Do we go now?” I ask her. I jump down to her ledge and grab her hand.
“Let go, Hannah,” she says. “Stop bullshitting me.”
Thunder claps and echoes, and an orange streak of lightning, again in the same tree-branch shape of the river, darts down and ignites the brush below us. Smoke from the tiny fire rises. I do not let go of her hand.
“Let go, Hannah,” Zoe says again. Her eyes look at me desperately. Wildly. Sadly.
“No,” I say.
I think of a terrorist attack or a natural disaster. One that happens in our town. One where we have to escape. Who would I rescue first? My mom? My Dad? Danny? For a second I try to fool myself into thinking it would be Danny. But it’s not true. The first person I would look for is Zoe. I would find her first and dig her out from the rubble before I even thought of anyone else. I am bound to her in a way no one else would understand. “I’m going with you,” I say calmly, boldly, resolutely.
She tries to squirm out of my grip. One last bolt of lightning, a more powerful one this time, sizzles past my ear as it slices through the sky directly at us. It’s as if it were thrown at us by Thor. It makes a direct hit onto the ledge we are standing on. I feel it shock and reverberate through my feet. Electricity moves through my veins. I’m shocked just enough to let go of Zoe’s hand for a second. But when I try to grab it back, she dives.
A perfect swan dive. Into the sky. I try to reach for her when another blinding bolt shoots into the rock, and I fall. I tumble through the brush, sliding down the side of the canyon, feeling hot pebbles and rocks lodging themselves deep beneath my skin. I tumble literally head over heels until somehow I grab onto a branch and stop my descent. I am huddled in the fetal position on a little ledge.
There is no sound left in my voice as I silently scream, “Zoe!” one more time into the canyon.
FORGIVENESS
They found nothing but the corn-pollen pouch. It was scorched and charred around the edges, some of the beads melted into flat colorful snail trails along the leather. Inside was a photo of Noah, his mouth twisted into an awkward sideways smile. On the back he had scribbled joy with a red crayon.
In a hospital somewhere near Flagstaff, doctors remove shards of ancient canyon rock from my torso and stitch up a gash in my thigh. I lie in the bed bandaged and sore, but with a beautiful view of the San Francisco Mountains that I can see through the slits of my half-open eyes.
It was not an accident. I really wanted to go with her. It was no elaborate ruse. When forced to make a choice, I chose her.
I look at sweet Danny sleeping next to me in a chair, and I remind myself that he doesn’t need to know that. He could never understand. There are different versions of the truth.
He doesn’t have to know all your secrets, I hear Zoe saying to me from wherever she ended up. It’s called discretion. See also: Mystery. Be mysterious, Hannah.
Discretion, mystery, allure. Not my strong suits, I say back to her. Even though she is gone. Forever. And I have no idea what to do with my grief about that. I feel a leaden line of grief straight through my center: from my throat to my heart and down through my stomach. My body curls around it, protecting it. I can’t imagine ever standing up straight again.
I look at Danny, his black wispy eyelashes interlaced against the daylight like a Venus flytrap. Our future is uncertain. This experience could either bond us or drive us apart. I don’t know what I have left to give him in this moment. I can only fall into his arms.
I go to sleep in a painkiller-induced fog. They are trying to pump the life back into me with an IV filled with replacement tears. I will just cry them out again, I think. What’s the use? I think that I hear my parents descending upon us. Their sharp footsteps in the hall. But it could be a dream. They don’t say much, but in my dream I can see my mother’s seething rage coming off her in gray waves. She will blame this on my father. As if he drove me across the country and pushed me off the edge.
He will dismiss her with a simple cruel glance. It’s so easy for him to write her off.
They battle inside of me. His hatred for her. Her hatred for him. It all adds up to some subtle hatred for me. I can’t help but remind them of each other.
But they showed up, right? That’s something. To take me home and help me start over. “Hi, Mom,” I manage. She hugs me with her soft arms. And it feels good.
When I wake up again, Susan is here. She has Zoe’s black hair, but it is thicker and rippled with streaks of long wavy grays. The rims of her eyes are red. The bags under them look black-and-blue.
“Hi,” I mumble.
“I want to die,” Susan says to me, holding her forehead in her hands.
“I know,” I say back.
“Can you hear me right now, because there’s something I need to say to you,” she says.
I nod.
“This is not your fault.”
“Okay,” I whisper, and a tear squeezes out of the corner of my eye.
“I am her mother. And if there’s one thing I know about Zoe, it’s that there is no changing her mind once she has it made up.” She breathes in, cries, and continues. “I would never blame you for this, okay, Hannah? I trust that you did your best.”
“Okay,” I say.
“If you couldn’t help her, no one could.”
My mother is standing in the doorway, leaning against the doorjamb, probably biting her tongue. I know somewhere in the back of her mind she is dying to ream into me. “What were you thinking?!” I can hear her say. “You think you’re a psychologist now, hotshot?”
“I’m sorry,” I say.
“It’s not your fault,” Susan says again.
It will be a long time before I can truly forgive myself, though, and stop having dreams about falling from the sky. And waking
up just before
I hit
the ground.
LIFE
We got off easy for “accomplice to Tasering and grand theft auto.” I don’t know how we got the judge to give us the same community service assignment, but she did, and now Danny and I have a built-in date, early Saturday mornings, where we prepare the day’s meals for a women’s homeless shelter. We have to wear hairnets.
On the menu today: fruit salad. We’re learning to cut the meat of the grapefruit—the pink, pulpy part—from its membranes. It’s called “supreming.” We do a little “Stop in the Name of Love” choreography before we start. After we’re finished, we meet in the walk-in and engage in some grapefruit-flavored kissing. Luckily the grapefruit smell drowns out the oniony sour milk–pickle odor that is a perpetual fixture inside the refrigerator.
“You are so hot in this,” he jokes, tucking his rubber-gloved finger beneath the elastic of my hairnet and lifting it off.
I wrap one leg around his waist, and he grabs my athletic rear end, pulls me closer, and then cruelly breaks away, coming to his senses.
“Margaret wants her cottage cheese,”
he says.
“And you are the biggest tease.”
He’s sweet with the ladies, who drew a terrible lot in this life. When I see them, lining up for their coffee and cheese and cheap white-bread toast, I think, There, but for the grace of God, go I. Another thing I learned from AA.
On Sundays, I work with Ms. Brennan at Operation Save Our School. I share with her what I’ve learned from my attic days at the private school, and we try to figure out a way to fix Johnson High’s curriculum. We’re planning a walkout after Christmas, demanding to be educated.
Sunday evenings, I see my dad.
I’m helping him finally take the boat out of the water, on a balmy sixty-degree Christmas Eve in New Jersey, and I’ve decided to forgive him, because resentment can lead to health problems.
And it’s Christmas. And Zoe’s not here to fuel my anger and keep me strong and resistant to him. To stop me from being an enabler. “How many chances does he get?” I can hear her say from somewhere in outer space.
“So you lost the job for good, huh?” I ask him.
It’s the cardinal rule of weathermanning. You cannot speak of global warming, ever. It’s not reporting the weather drunk that bothered the execs. Weatherpeople, like game-show hosts, are drunk all the time on the air. It’s the only way they can survive their meaningless existence. But you cannot ever “acknowledge the existence of a large-scale climatological issue with its roots in the use of fossil fuels by humans.” This is in every weatherman contract. It pisses off the advertisers. So I don’t know how my father will find another job. He needs a Plan B.
“You’re not supposed to acknowledge the existence of a large-scale . . .”
“I know, Hannah,” he says.
“You can’t go back to the weather center. The technology has surpassed you,” I say to my father. We’ve hooked the boat to the trailer and have pulled it up the boat launch. We’re waxing the bottom because that’s what you’re supposed to do before you put it in dry dock. We are doing a very cursory job, however. The boat is a piece of shit. “You don’t even know how to use e-mail . . . Maybe you can come up with a schtick, like rapping the weather. I think I saw that on YouTube.”