The Probability of Miracles (24 page)

“Maybe we should get you to that shrink.” The doctors had given Alicia the number of a shrink after the panic attack incident. She shook her head. “You just don't seem to be giving anything a chance.”

“Me, see a shrink?” Cam said. “You guys are the ones who, just a second ago, believed in unicorns and magic tomato plants.”

“You did the tomatoes, too?” said Alicia.

“I thought you'd already caught on to that,” Cam said sheepishly. She pulled the towel tighter around herself. The sun sank toward the horizon. It was getting colder, and the tide kept coming in. The foamy edges of the waves slid their way beneath her soaking sneakers.

“Cam . . .”

“What?”

“I was hoping . . . Never mind.”

“What?” asked Cam.

“I was hoping that, if nothing else, this trip could teach you to surrender control. To trust how the universe unfolds.”

“People keep talking about this unfolding. I can't
trust the unfolding
, okay? If there is some higher power making origami out of the universe, it hates my guts. I was a fat kid whose parents got divorced, whose father died, and then who got cancer herself. So no. I don't trust how things are going to unfold.”

“That's too bad,” said Alicia. She threw a final look at James Madison, who was pawing the rocky beach, still soaked through from his swim. “You better get that donkey home before he freezes to death.”

“I was just trying to help,” said Cam.

“Some kind of help . . .” Alicia began. It was a line from Cam's favorite kids' song on the album
Free to Be You and Me
. “Some kind of help is the kind of help that you can do without,” it went.

Alicia wrapped her arm around Perry's shoulder. They hiked slowly together back up the steep path to the lawn, leaving Cam alone, shivering, on the beach.

In spite of being covered with three blankets, an Oriental rug, earmuffs, and a scarf, James Madison was still shaking when Cam got him to Elaine's. Cam debated leaving him in his corral and taking off. But her conscience got the better of her, and she walked inside.

“Um, Elaine?” she said. The wood-paneled mudroom was cluttered with boots and lumberjack flannels hanging on hooks.

“Hey, Campbell.” Elaine was reading in her big chair in the living room. She put down her romance novel and removed her glasses, letting them hang from their cord and drop onto her bosom. That word always cracked Cam up, but it was the perfect way to describe Elaine's matronly chest.

“That's the last thing I'd expect to see you reading.”

“Yeah, well, we all have our vices,” Elaine said.

“Speaking of vices . . . ” Cam began.

“Yes.”

“I sort of borrowed something from you today.”

“That's okay, as long as you return it. What was it?”

“James Madison,” Cam admitted.

“The donkey?”

“Yeah. And he's, um, had a rough day.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, he ended up going for a little swim, and he seems pretty cold.”

“Why did you take my donkey for a . . . Never mind. Where is he?”

Cam retrieved the donkey and brought him into the exam room.

“We need to get him warm,” Elaine said, rushing to change his blankets. “There are some space heaters in the garage, Campbell. Run and get me some of those.”

“Should we blow-dry him?”

“That might work, too. There's a blow-dryer under the sink in the bathroom.”

They set up the space heaters, and Cam held the blow-dryer over the donkey's mane, sweeping it back and forth along his neck, while Elaine took his temperature and checked his eyes. She was trying to determine whether James Madison was suffering from hypothermia, which donkeys are more susceptible to than horses.

“I'm disappointed in you, Campbell.”

“I'm sorry,” Cam said loudly, so that Elaine could hear her over the blow-dryer.

“You know, veterinarians take the same oath as doctors.”

“
Primum non nocere
. First do no harm.” Cam knew all about it. When treating cancer, it's the first thing they throw out the window. They go after the tumor with bold disregard for the rest of your cells that are humming along innocently, minding their own business, trying to keep you alive. Often it's the treatment that kills you before the disease would. If nothing else came out of this trip, Cam was at least glad she wasn't spending her summer being poisoned by well-meaning oncologists.

“It's a simple rule,” said Elaine as she parted James Madison's lips so she could look at his gums.

“I didn't know I'd be harming him. Things just got out of hand,” Cam said. She turned off the blow-dryer and covered the donkey's back with a dry wool blanket.

“Well, it showed some pretty poor judgment. I should fire you.”

James Madison nudged Elaine with his nose and rubbed his face against her side, leaning in for a hug.

“It's okay, boy. You're going to be okay. What is this sticky paste all over his fur?” Elaine asked.

“Flour,” Cam blurted. There was no sense beating around the bush.

“Flour,” Elaine stated, as if nothing could surprise her anymore.

“Yeah.”

“You dredged my donkey in
flour
? You know what? I don't even want to know.”

“I was going to use spray paint,” Cam said, “but I thought this would be more organic.”

Elaine sighed and then leaned back on one foot. She held the blow-dryer toward the sky. “I think I've got it from here.”

Cam slunk back to her car, wondering if she'd been fired. She was not accustomed to such colossal failure.
I'm Harvard material, after all
, she thought, trying to cheer herself up. But she still felt humiliated.

She knew she shouldn't because she'd be gone soon enough, but she imagined herself disappearing. First her feet, then her legs, her torso, shoulders, arms, neck, and head. She imagined everything was gone, except for her clothes, which magically backed out of the parking lot by themselves.

CAM BROUGHT THE U-HAUL TO AVALON BY THE SEA AND UNHITCHED IT from Cumulus. Then she climbed back in her car and breathed in the sweet heaviness of the plumeria oil that reminded her of home. She didn't dare go back into the house. She was welcome nowhere. Talk about backfire. She had tried to make people happy for once, and instead everyone hated her.

She took out her phone and dialed her father's phone number. He was the one she called when she felt lonely.

“Aloha,” she heard her father's showbiz voice boom. “I'm not here, but feel free to leave . . .”

Cam had secretly continued to pay the bill on her father's cell phone, so she could call it occasionally and hear his voice. She only called it when she knew she needed to cry. And she cried now, wishing he had never died and wondering if this was happening to her, if the cancer was happening to her, because her father couldn't bear to see her living on Earth without him. He could be very possessive.

When her tears had stopped and she could see again through the windshield, she drove north toward the town elementary school. She hadn't heard much about the flamingos since the Fourth of July, and she wondered if they were still there. She wanted to check on Buddy, the baby, to see if he'd gotten any pink feathers yet or if his legs had begun to grow.

Buddy was there, perched on the muddy stump his mom had made for him so he wouldn't wallow in the acidic mud that would burn his skin.

Cam watched from the old broken-down wooden fence. “Hi, Buddy,” she said. She thought he actually acknowledged her with a little flap of his oven-stuffer wings.

She watched the flock for a while. A lot of them slept on one leg with their heads tucked all the way into their tail feathers, their legs invisible in the dark. Dormant pink clouds that seemed to hang suspended in midair. Maybe that's what Cam needed. Sleep. She would go home, and everything would be fine in the morning.

When she rounded the corner to the side parking lot, a Jeep sat there idling, the bass of the stereo vibrating the steel sides of the car. Inside, a thirty-year-old woman with a highlighted bob and bloodred fingernails stared at a man as she ran the fingers of her left hand through his hair. Familiar, golden-from-the-sun hair. Her skinny, Pilates-toned arm was draped between the seats, and her right hand was somewhere in his lap.

Oh, Asher
, thought Cam. Why did she always have to be right? Why were people so predictable?

Asher turned his head and looked at Cam through the window. Their eyes met for a second before he closed his eyelids in slow motion, pretending she didn't exist. It was as if Cam were already dead.

Back in her car, Cam held her iPhone, willing her fingers to dial Lily. She needed someone to acknowledge her existence. The call went straight to voice mail. She texted and waited ten minutes for a response. Finally, she decided to call the house phone. That was really admitting defeat, if Cam was willing to go through Lily's parents to get to her.

Kathy answered on the sixth ring.

“Hello,” she said hazily.

“Hi, um, I'm sorry to call so late.”

“Cayum?”

“Yeah. It's me. I was wondering if I could speak to Lily.” Cam closed her eyes and leaned her forehead into her hand. She was trying to permanently erase the image of Asher and that woman from her memory. She brought a photo of it into her mind and then imagined making it disappear using broad swipes of some Photoshop eraser tool.

“Oh, God.” Kathy's voice caught for a moment, and then she heard her suck in a deep breath.

“Hello?” Cam asked. When she opened her eyes, she could see the dark bay to her left. The yellow beam of the lighthouse made intermittent sweeps out over the ocean as if searching for fugitives. To her right, most of the flamingos still slept, pink powder puffs suspended in midair, like long-legged marionettes waiting for someone to pull the strings.

“Campbell, baby.”

“Yes.”

“Hon, we meant to call you.”

“Why?”

“Lily passed, baby. Three days ago.”

Cam was silent. A ghostly moth fluttered in the accusing beam of her headlights. A flamingo talked in his sleep.

“Campbell? Hon?” said Kathy. Cam had forgotten she was on the phone. “I'm sorry I didn't call you. It's just that it's so hard. It's like you relive it every time you have to tell another person.”

Cam said nothing.

“Where are you, honey? Are you at home? Is your mother with you?”

“I think it's a transitive verb,
pass
,” Cam finally said. “It requires an object. You can pass a test. Pass a football. Pass gas. You yourself cannot just pass.”

“Campbell, can I talk to your mom?”

“She's not here, I don't think.” Cam dropped the phone onto the passenger seat. She was drifting. Shutting off. She felt her body float away, and she became ether. She was nothing. Just an idea.

She was through. With all of it.

CAM HAD ENOUGH RIPTIDE RUSH GATORADE LEFT IN THE CAR TO SWALlow the seventeen tiny pills in two big gulps. Just for insurance, and because she needed to take her car with her into oblivion, she was going to drive off a cliff.

The only cliff she remembered was the one they zip-lined from to get to the lighthouse. It would be perfect. Cinematic. Like
Thelma and Louise
. There was even a full moon. She just had to start driving before the drugs set in and she lost all control.

Already her arms felt heavy as she lifted her seemingly enormous hands onto the steering wheel. The ends of her fingers were tingling, and her teeth were numb. She somehow managed to coordinate her movements enough to back out of the parking lot and swerve down the coastal road toward Archibald Light.

She fought to stay awake by focusing on the lighthouse's rotating beam, straightening up a bit every time it swung back into her face. The ambient light from the full moon illuminated the roads, and she rolled down the window, allowing a cool breeze in through the windows. If only the two headlights—was she imagining those?—following close behind would turn off their high beams. She tried to shake them by making a quick left turn without signaling, but the bright, blinding lights trailed her still. “Sssilly headlights,” she slurred, feeling tired. So tired. She sped up.

The road dead-ended in the playground parking lot. She drove onto the grass, crushing the stupid purple dandelions beneath her tires as she passed the swings and traversed the lawn to the top of the hill, where she stopped, several yards from the cliff's edge.