“First of the season,” Ronnie said to me. “I know you can get it now at the grocery store any time of the year, but I never buy it until the hot weather really hits. It just tastes so much better in the heat.”
She told the children to go outside to the picnic bench, and she would bring them their snack when it was ready. The kids filed out the door.
Ronnie placed the watermelon on a large wooden cutting board on the kitchen counter, took an enormous knife from a drawer and plunged it into the center of the melon. It made a satisfying thwack. Ronnie pulled the knife down through the wet fruit, cutting it in half and in half again. Then she began to slice each quarter as if she were slicing a dense loaf of bread. When she had cut up the first quarter, she picked up a middle slice and held it out to me.
I couldn’t remember the last time I had watermelon, but when I bit into the cool, sweet flesh I felt a rush of memory sweep over me. Another backyard, so many decades ago. My mother, her hair tied back in a bright scarf, a tray proffered in her outstretched arms.
This was the kind of thing Gao Li had been talking about. Here, at Ronnie’s house, the first watermelon of the season was still an event, a cause for celebration.
After Ronnie had taken a huge plate outside and then made a second trip to gather up the rinds and wipe a few faces, she returned and finally took a long pull from her iced tea.
“Hope you don’t mind,” she said, “but now I’ve got to start dinner.”
I sat in Ronnie’s air-conditioned kitchen as she set about preparing the family meal. Her daughter Rose would probably stay with the kids, she said. Ronnie’s husband, José, would be home soon. He might bring his sister with him. They worked together.
“My house is never empty,” said Ronnie. “It can be exhausting, but I like it this way.”
She went to the fridge and pulled out a large bag of red peppers. As she washed them, she looked back over her shoulder at me.
“But I have something to give you, and it would be nice to have someplace quiet to talk. I thought that after supper we could drive out to the Red Rocks so you can see the sunset. You can’t come all this way without seeing it.”
SEVERAL HOURS LATER Ronnie and I were sitting on the edge of a massive boulder, staring at the striking red sandstone pillars that rose majestically out of the desert. As the sun dipped, the rocks seemed to take on its fading fire. They were glowing bright orange like embers. The scene reminded me a bit of the Temple of the Magician in the morning sun.
“I feel like I’ve seen this before,” I said.
“The movies,” said Ronnie. “Westerns.”
Yeah, I thought, that was probably it. But it felt special here somehow. As if I had a more personal connection to the place. I wondered if that had anything to do with what I had seen in the pamphlets.
“I was reading a little bit about those vortices,” I said to Ronnie. She winced.
“We call them ‘vortexes’ around here,” she said.
“Vortexes. Right. Are we close to them? Are any around here?” I asked.
“There’s one a couple of miles that way.” Ronnie waved her hand to the right, but didn’t offer any other details.
“You don’t sound as if you put much stock in that stuff,” I said to her.
Ronnie smiled and dug at the hard-packed earth with the toe of her shoe.
“Well,” she said slowly, “Native people in these parts never considered those spots particularly sacred—or at least they don’t think of them as any more sacred than the rest of the land.”
Ronnie bent down to brush the dirt from her shoe. “But that’s not to say this place isn’t special. My people have always had a connection to the land, and I believe in the healing powers of the earth. Of being one with nature.”
“But…” I said. There was clearly a “but” on its way.
“But,” said Ronnie. She was gazing back at the rocks now. The light was getting a little weaker. The rocks were glowing softly. “I really believe that the most powerful healing is anywhere people are. It isn’t confined to a place or a time or a circumstance.”
A small gray lizard scurried across the ground in front of us. I watched it disappear behind some brush.
“Did Julian ever tell you how we met?” Ronnie asked.
“No,” I said, “but I bet there’s a story.”
And there was. Ronnie told me that she had met Julian many years ago, when he was a high-flying lawyer. “Well, I didn’t know what he did then,” she admitted. “He told me later.”
Julian was driving down the highway one late afternoon, on his way to see these very rocks that Ronnie and I were gazing at now. He was on a golfing junket in Phoenix, and he had rented a sleek sports car for his stay. He and a beautiful female friend had headed out with a loaf of bread, some cheese and an enormous thermos of martinis. They were going to have a picnic by the rocks as the sun went down. But before they had even reached the town of Sedona, their car broke down. Ronnie saw the bright yellow sports car parked at the side of the road, steam pouring out from under its hood. She pulled over and offered to give Julian and his companion a ride. Ronnie drove the two of them back to her place, where they called the rental company. It would send a tow truck and try to deliver another vehicle to her house.
“That, I don’t mind telling you, was a long afternoon,” said Ronnie.
“My house was full as usual—my teenage children, my nieces and nephews. It was noisy. José was playing his guitar; the kids were laughing and shouting—jumping on the trampoline we had out back.”
Julian and his friend had chatted a little with Ronnie and her husband, but they were clearly annoyed that their plans had been so thoroughly derailed. And the busyness of the household, Ronnie could tell, was wearing on their nerves.
“The young woman, whose name I can’t remember, couldn’t stop tapping her foot. And Julian kept sneaking gulps from the thermos while he peered out the front window every two seconds. Since the two of them didn’t really want to talk, José, the kids and I just continued on with our day.”
When the new rental car showed up several hours later, Ronnie had to insist that Julian’s friend drive it back to the city since Julian was in no condition.
“And that was the last I thought of either of them for a long, long while,” said Ronnie.
Then, several years later, she received a call from Julian. He had to remind her who he was. He took her by surprise by asking if he could come for a visit. He said he wanted to see the Red Rocks finally. Mostly, however, he wanted to talk with Ronnie.
“When he got here, well, I tell you, I wouldn’t have recognized him,” Ronnie said. “He looked younger, somehow. Even taller, too, if that’s possible. And he seemed peaceful. So peaceful and happy. That wasn’t the man I remembered.”
Julian told Ronnie that he had just come back from the Himalayas, where he had spent time with a group of monks. The lessons they shared had turned his life around. But what he learned also made him look at people differently. And he came to realize that many people he crossed paths with over the years had much to teach him, much to share.
Ronnie and Julian had gone to see the Red Rocks in the setting sun, just as she and I had done. The two of them had walked for a while, the rocks glowing in the distance. The quiet and tranquillity seemed such a stark contrast to the noise and energy of Ronnie’s household. To her, this contrast only made both places seem more special.
As they took one last look at the rocks and the sun slipped from the sky, Julian turned to Ronnie.
“You,” he said, “I think you know the secret of life. If I asked you, what is the purpose of it all, what would you say?”
Ronnie stopped telling her story for a moment. I looked over at her.
“Do you know the secret of life?” I asked in wonder.
“It was so odd that Julian asked me that question,” said Ronnie, shaking her head. “You know my mother belonged to the Hopi tribe, my father was a Navajo. Their peoples share
many beliefs, but there are differences. I was raised with those traditional Native beliefs. But my husband is Catholic. We have friends who are Jewish, Buddhist, Muslim. I have tried to learn a little about all these faiths. In my youth, I spent a lot of time studying, talking to people.”
The sky was getting dark now; the rocks that loomed on the horizon had darkened to a deep red. Ronnie looked out in the distance, but she seemed lost in thought. I waited for her to start talking again.
“I spent a lot of time looking for answers. But in the end I decided that, while there were many truths, it all came down to one simple thing.”
I looked at Ronnie expectantly. I realized that I was holding my breath.
“The purpose of life, Jonathan, is love. It’s that simple.”
I was quiet a moment, letting that sink in.
“If you’re not loved, nothing else matters?” I asked.
“Not quite,” said Ronnie. “The purpose of life is to love. Love is a verb. And it has to be at the center of your universe. It should drive everything you do. I don’t think you can be truly alive if you do not love.”
That is what Ronnie had told Julian. Julian had replied that the monks agreed with her.
“In fact,” Julian told her, “they said pretty much the same thing to me, but I traveled all the way to the Himalayas to hear that message, when I could have just heard it from you all those years ago.”
“You weren’t ready to hear,” Ronnie told Julian. “I could have said it a thousand ways, and you wouldn’t have heard it.”
Ronnie had finished her story. She was digging in her pocket now, pulling out a small woven bag.
“The talisman,” she said, handing it to me.
I opened the small braided drawstring and tipped the contents into my hand. The talisman was a tiny silver heart. It looked handmade, its polished surfaces round and smooth. I rolled the heart in my fingers. I had been holding the little bag upside down, and now a small slip of paper I hadn’t seen fell from it. Ronnie bent down and picked it up.
She handed it to me.
The Purpose of Life Is to Love
How well you live comes down to how much you love. The heart is wiser than the head. Honor it. Trust it. Follow it.
Ronnie and I walked slowly back to where we’d parked. There was a crispness in the air now, and a fragrant desert wind blew softly. We climbed into Ronnie’s truck without saying a word and began moving down the road, the sound of the tires echoing around us.
Ronnie and I were silent on the drive back to her house. She seemed to recognize that I needed some time to reflect. I was realizing that I had been focusing most of my thoughts about my “authentic life” on my job. I was in the wrong job. That had been clear almost since the beginning of the trip. But Ayame, Mary, and now Ronnie had helped me to see that I’d betrayed myself within my personal life as well. I had not been true to myself in my friendships, with my family, or in my love life. If I had been the kind of friend I valued, I wouldn’t have turned my back on Juan. If I had focused on being the parent I wanted to be, I wouldn’t have skimped on time with Adam. And if I had been true to my heart, I wouldn’t have been thinking about Tessa for a second. I didn’t love Tessa. But I did love Annisha. Desperately.
I stayed at Ronnie’s house that night. Before I crawled into bed, I sent three messages. One to Annisha and Adam. One to Annisha alone. And a final one to Tessa: Sorry, it said.
I WOKE UP THE NEXT MORNING, just as the sun peeked through the bedroom curtains. The house was quiet, so I pulled on my clothes, grabbed my journal and tiptoed down the hall, out the door, into the backyard. Like their neighbors, Ronnie and her husband had planted a perimeter of grass around the yard. But it had gone dormant in the heat, and the dry wide blades felt rough against my bare feet. I sat down at the picnic table and gazed across the desert that stretched for miles in front of me. I could see sagebrush and boulders dotting the dry, hard earth; and here and there, a dusty juniper tree or a clump of grass.
I had one last, long leg of the trip in front of me. Julian had sent me a message saying that I would leave the Phoenix airport later that morning and head to Delhi, India. India. I wondered if he was going to send me to visit the monks of Sivana myself, but he had written back: No, Jonathan, you have been on the road long enough. Just a couple of days more and you will be home.
I opened my notebook and began to write. This journey had been to collect some mystical artifacts for my cousin. That part of it wasn’t over, I knew. I had one more to pick up. But for me, the personal journey that I realized I’d undertaken felt done. I knew what I had to do. To be true to myself, I had to face my fears and ask for a transfer back to the lab or find another position. I would have to get back to the place where I could do my very best, my “genius level” work. But that was only one small aspect of the change I needed to make. I had to rebuild my world with Annisha, find a way to make up for my past neglect and renew our relationship. I had to devote myself to being the best parent I could be to Adam, and I had to stop robbing myself of the joys of spending time with my son. In fact, I had to stop robbing myself of the happiness and the positive influences of all the people dear to me—my mother, my sister, my old friends, my new ones. Ayame’s talisman letter was so right—the way I had been treating others was the way I had been treating myself. By neglecting them, I had turned my back on my own happiness. I had not been kind to anyone. I would have to choose my influences better in the future. I would have to celebrate all the simple pleasures available to me. None of this would happen overnight. But I would work on it each day, live each day as if it were my whole life in miniature. Small daily improvements. No excuses.
I felt as if I had all the tools I needed to move into the future. The talisman letters had given these to me. What could be left, I wondered? What other wisdom could that last talisman impart?
CHAPTER ELEVEN
I WAS STANDING OUTSIDE the most magnificent building I had ever seen—the Taj Mahal. It was dusk, and the visitors and tourists were emptying from the place. It seemed like an odd time to meet someone here, but nothing about this trip had been expected.
Before I had left the Phoenix airport, Julian had sent me a message with detailed instructions. I would stay overnight in Delhi, checking into a hotel. The next day, I would take a flight to Agra, where I would meet the final safekeeper outside the Taj Mahal at seven-thirty p.m. The thought of navigating around Delhi and Agra on my own, on such short notice, would have unnerved me just a few weeks ago. But I had been to so many places, experienced so many different things lately, that I felt a new confidence in facing the challenges that came my way. And now, all thoughts of the past and the future were being swept away as I stood on the Taj Mahal plaza looking up at the mausoleum.
I had come here a little early, thinking I might go inside and look around on my own before the Taj Mahal closed for the day. But once I arrived, I realized how foolish I was to think I could properly see anything so spectacular in such a short period of time. Julian had not yet told me when I would be leaving Agra. I was hoping there would be time to come back to explore this breathtaking architectural masterwork more fully. In the meantime I wandered around the exterior of the monument, my head back and my mouth agape.
I was simply overwhelmed by the size of the place. Nothing in any of the photos I had seen had managed to convey the enormity of the building, the sinuous dome, the elegant symmetry, the extraordinary expanses. Now I could see why Julian had set up this meeting for the evening. The setting sun made the color of these luminescent walls of marble and sandstone shift and dance. As I moved closer I could see that the outside surfaces were covered in intricate stone carvings and delicate calligraphy that reached a hundred feet skyward. Precious gems and stones embroidered the lacy stone: I could see bits of turquoise, lapis lazuli, emerald, red coral. I walked back and forth in front the building, moving close to examine the exquisite details and then stepping back to take in the incredible grandeur.
I had been walking around the Taj Mahal, deeply immersed in the moment, completely forgetting why I was there, when a flash of crimson caught my eye. I turned around. In front of me was a tall figure. Even though the person was facing away from me, I could tell it was a man. He stood motionless, the robe that adorned his slender frame flapping slightly in the breeze. He then spun around. And flashed a smile. It was Julian.
“What?” I sputtered. None of this made sense. What was Julian doing here? Why hadn’t he told me that he was coming to India? And if he was here to pick up the talismans himself, why did he have me fly all this way?
“I’m here to take those talismans off your hands,” Julian said with a wink.
My jaw was working, trying to form the words to all the questions that were racing through my head.
“I know,” said Julian. “This is a long way for you to come when I am already here. But I’m on my way to the Himalayas for a while. This was really the best place to meet.”
I nodded, still in a fog of shock and confusion.
“Let’s head down there,” said Julian, pointing to the long flower-and-tree-lined avenues that banked the reflecting pool. “Find a place to sit, perhaps … in the evening air.”
We left the archways of the Taj Mahal and headed down the stone steps. The water in the pools was getting dark, the sun dipping below the horizon, the sky a soft shade of indigo.
As we walked, Julian slipped his hand into a pocket of his robe.
“Would you like to see the last talisman?” he asked.
“You have it with you?” I said.
Julian nodded and then pulled out a small brown bag. I held out my hand, and he emptied the bag into my palm. I was holding a tiny marble replica of the Taj Mahal. There was no parchment or note of any sort. I cocked my head.