“So you brought me here because you knew I’m gonna die?”
“Stacia,” he said trying to hold onto me, “I would have brought you anyway.”
I pushed him away and began to cry. How naïve could I have been?
Every negative thought and emotion I had been avoiding so skillfully came swarming back into my gut. The firewall between my fantasy life and my sad truth had been breached. A sudden pain spread across my chest as though I could feel my heart actually breaking. It was the first time I had cried since my appointment with Jerry, maybe because, for the first time, I actually had something to lose. It made my fate seem infinitely more real.
“Stacia, you are an incredibly beautiful woman who has so much to offer this world. I hate to see you just give up.”
“You don’t understand!” I protested. “I know exactly what’s in store for me, and the outcome will be the same whether I get treatment or not. The only difference is that I can go out on
my
terms.”
“I’ll help you,” Wilbur said sincerely, placing the palm of his hand on my cheek and pushing up his thumb to wipe a tear from my
eye.
Part of me wanted to run as fast as I could to get away from him, but there was nowhere to go. The other part wanted to fall into his arms and let him take care of me, but that was not an option either. If I did that, it would mean I had learned nothing from my mistakes and I would die with more regret than I’d started with.
“Wilbur,” I said, pulling his hand away from my face, “I have to be someone different than I’ve been.”
Part 2
Anger
Anger will make you do crazy things. People yell and scream, punch, even kill. I had spent
so many years being silently resentful, but suddenly I was enraged. I had nothing to logically channel my anger toward. Usually, I would figure out a way to let off enough steam to forestall the inevitable explosion. Until now. Instead, I stewed internally, almost to the point of boiling over.
I stormed into my tent, stripped off the borrowed regalia, and cast it aside. Make-believe time was over. I violently unbraided my hair, slammed my head down on the pillow, and wrapped
the pillow around my head in a childish and vain attempt to block any more thoughts from entering. There I was again, alone with my sad, infuriating truth. There was no need to worry about what crazy dreams might be awaiting me that night, because I didn’t sleep a wink.
I kept thinking about Wilbur, who was sleeping in the adjacent tent, and yearning to return to that blissful realm of denial. I imagined what the night may have been like if he hadn’t said those words—how we could have made love under the stars. It was just like one of my ridiculous romance novels: pure fiction.
I felt the fury rise through my chest, thinking about how a bastard like Evan would get to live, and I wouldn’t. Karma is supposed to take care of these things. The universe is supposed to right these wrongs. Why did the universe decide that
I
was the wrong that needed righting?
However
, even though Evan was a bastard to me, he did contribute to the world at large. He showed up at his law practice every day and did something that mattered. I couldn’t say the same. Maybe I was arrogant to think that the cosmic universe was after me when the simple truth was that the universe didn’t even notice me. Why would my death matter? And to whom?
I thought about the old man and how he stared through me with those coal-black eyes. My insomnia was derived partially out of fear that he would infect my dreams again. And my mother. Why
had I envisioned her there? I realized I must have been closer than I thought to joining her.
When I emerged from the tent at
dawn, I found Wilbur meditating by the water. I’d intended to wait patiently for him to finish, but he must have sensed my angry presence and turned toward me.
“
I need to leave,” I demanded.
“Where will you go?”
“I’m not sure, but I’ll figure it out.”
I waited, expecting an argument, but I didn’t get one. Arguing is what Evan did, not Wilbur.
“All right. I understand. I’ll fly you back up.”
I couldn’t stay there anymore. Something in Havasupai was making me feel as though I was going crazy—sick in mind
and
body.
We were silent as we packed up our gear and returned to the lodge what we had borrowed. After that, I knocked on Irma’s door with her regalia in hand. I considered just leaving it at the lodge and asking someone to return it for me; my fight-or-flight instinct was dominating all my actions by that point. But I didn’t want to be rude since she had been unusually generous with me. She opened the door with a clearly uncharacteristic smile.
“Good morning, Irma,” I managed a faked smile in return. “Thank you so much for loaning this to me.”
“You are welcome. Will I being seeing you again?”
“I honestly don’t know. But I have to leave right now.”
She winked and smiled before slowly closing the door. Her smug expression told me she knew something she wasn’t willing to share. I walked away from her house feeling even more agitated than when I’d arrived.
After a helicopter flight and car ride, it seemed like it had been an eternity before we arrived at the train station in Grand Canyon National Park. After our silent and awkward journey, the cashier informed me that I could buy a train ticket with cash and without any identification. This would allow me to keep Evan in the dark as to my whereabouts. It was more important to me than ever that I remain elusive.
“Can I call you?” Wilbur asked.
“I don’t have a phone, remember?”
“What if I got you one of those pay-as-you-go phones that aren’t as easy to trace?”
“Like drug dealers use?”
“At least then, in case of an emergency...”
I agreed it would be sensible to get another phone, but I didn’t want to
be
sensible. A part of me wanted to keep in touch with Wilbur, the part that wished I’d met him in another fantasy existence. One’s end-of-life agenda should not include falling for someone new, even if that someone would have been perfect when I was uncomplicated and healthy.
After we traded strained goodbyes, I approached the ticket window with no particular destination in mind. As it turned out, the train only traveled to one place anyway: Williams, Arizona. Williams’ claim to fame was that it was situated along Historic Route 66, and that it was nicknamed “The Gateway to the Grand Canyon.” Only, I was looking for the gateway
out
.
I spent the short train ride racking my brain to formulate a plan—consciously refusing to think about Wilbur, but subconsciously, failing miserably. I needed a computer. Jerry had always insisted that Google provides the answer to everything. When I exited the train in Williams, I asked a young woman where I might be able to get onto a computer. She aimed me in the direction of an Internet café, at which I arrived after a ten-minute walk.
All that the Internet café had to offer, besides online access, was coffee and pretentious coffee-related products, tea, and pastries. I had been a coffee drinker at one time, but since my illness had taken over, I found even the smell of it revolting. Then there was tea: Even the thought of it made me cringe. Every time I looked a little green or under the weather at work, the annoying office manager, Margaret, would try to shove tea at me. I hated tea almost as much as I hated her. Drinking raw sewage sounded more appealing. I settled for a doughnut and a bottle of water.
I stared blankly at the computer, hoping some Divine inspiration would hijack my mind and create a plan of action. I knew with reasonable certainty that I didn’t wish to live out my
days in Williams, Arizona. I began to Google things like “bucket-list destinations” and “100 places to see before you die,” but nothing illuminated that imaginary light bulb in my head.
I thought about what Misty had told on the way to Sedona: If she were in my shoes, she would visit all the people she had ever loved. I had loved only two people in my life, and I wasn’t ready to reunite with my mother just yet. That left only Michael.
My initial online search for Michael Pendergast brought up dozens of results. Since I didn’t know where he lived, it could have been any of them—except for the one listed as a porn star, I hoped. Next, I searched for Zulema Pendergast, his mother, for which there was only one result. I even recognized the phone number and address when I saw it; she hadn’t moved. Reaching for my phone, I remembered that it was left in pieces under the tire of Paul’s truck and that I had declined Wilbur’s offer to buy me a new one. After a thorough search, I finally located a pay phone. My nerves tingled as I punched in her number. After all, I had broken her son’s heart.
“Hello?” she answered in a cheerful voice.
“Hello, Mrs. Pendergast. This is Stacia Altman—I mean, Uqualla.”
“Oh my goodness! How are you,
dear?”
She sounded to be the same sweet woman I’d known in my youth, but I wasn’t sure how to answer
her question.
I’m coming completely unglued because I’m dying
was the first thing that came to mind.
I opted for a more socially correct reply.
“I’m fine, thank you. And you?”
“I’m good,
dear. Getting old!”
Lucky you,
I thought to myself, but instead I responded, “I’m sure you still look great.”
After a few minutes of listening to her prattle on about the physical limitations that come with old age, I changed the focus of the conversation.
“So listen, I’d like to get in touch with Michael. Is he still in Nevada?”
“Oh no,
dear, he moved years ago. He’s living in Italy now,” she said so matter-of-factly that she could never have known about the dagger she was plunging into my heart. He had gone. He had actually gone. He’d gone and lived
my
dream, while I was having the life sucked out of me by a ruthless parasite.
“Do you have a number where I could reach him?” I asked, wondering if I was really just going to ring him up after
seventeen long years? What on Earth would I say?
“Mrs. Pendergast, can I have his address as well?”
“His e-mail address?”
“No. His street address. I’m the old-fashioned, letter-writing type,” I lied.
She set the phone down for a moment. When she picked it back up, she rattled off a phone number and an address in Florence. I thanked her, and after exchanging a few more pleasantries, I hung up. I knew it was crazy to just go there, and that was exactly why I wanted to do it.
I thought about how I would get to Florence and when; after all, I didn’t know how long I would remain able-bodied enough to travel. It would be difficult to find a hotel in Arizona that wouldn’t require a credit card, so I decided that
departing right then and there would be my best and only option.
What I needed was an airport. I approached a teenaged counter clerk of a deli across the street from the pay phone.
“What can I get for you, Ma’am?” he asked with an overly exaggerated, toothy smile.
“An airport.”
For a moment, it looked as if I’d short-circuited his brain; his smile faded and he cocked his head to one side.
“I don’t think we…”
I didn’t have the patience for stupid, so I elaborated, “An international one. Whichever one is closest.”
“Uh…I think the closest would be in Phoenix,” he finally offered.
“Great. Thank you,” I replied as I dropped some change into his tip jar before making my exit.
I hustled back to the train station. Luckily, I hadn’t ventured off very far. I caught the next train to Flagstaff, then a bus to Phoenix. I figured I would sleep a little in transit but I was too excited. I was going to Italy! No one could stop me, though the only one who would
have wanted to was Evan.
The bus dropped me off right at the airport. The international terminal had so many airline options that I didn’t know where to start. I’d had my passport for years, even renewed it once after the Christmas incident, but I had never actually left the country. I’d never even been on an airplane.
Then I spotted a sign for Alitalia. The logo was green, white, and red—the colors of the Italian flag. I waited my turn in line.
When I arrived at the window, I asked “Do you have a flight to Florence for to
day?”
After typing what seemed like a novel into her computer, the ticket agent replied, “Yes, we have a 7:05 flight this evening via JFK airport in New York, then another stop in Rome, landing in Florence at 8:13 p.m., local time.”
“Great! I’ll take it.”
She looked a little surprised when I handed her in cash the $2,347 that it cost to buy a last-minute ticket to Italy. But that was nothing compared to the look she gave me when I said I had no bags to check. I grabbed my boarding pass, threw my backpack over my shoulder, and made my way to the gate as if I knew what I was doing. It was still several hours before my flight so I pulled out my mindless romance novel.
Not only did I need to get my mind off of my failing body, but I also wanted to forget about kissing Wilbur. The incredible experience I’d shared with him had come undone in a split second when I’d discovered that his reality of the situation and mine were vastly different. It wasn’t his fault. He couldn’t help what he knew. But nonetheless, it had changed everything.