Even when we lived on Jeanette Drive in the other rented houses before the houseboat, I always liked winter on the river better than summer. Winter’s sharper. The river opens up. You can see the way it threads through the land. You know without seeing them that there are otters and cranes and herons moving through the reeds. The east wind talks loudly, more about the future than the present.
Mom hates the moan of it. Dad only tilts his head without comment. He never acknowledges it. Nick pretends it’s a giant who hibernated in the muddy bottom of the river, turning over and passing gas in his sleep.
But the scudding winter clouds that barge in on that east wind catch me up and carry me away. Away from Nick and Joe, away from Mom and Dad, from everything I know. As a kid flying on that wind I was grown-up. Just like that. I could do anything. Riding on that wind I would pass myself in the future like a holograph at Disney World. Once years back before The Disease I saw myself as the father of a long-haired daughter, her hair red like Dad’s. I carried my wife’s photo in my wallet and showed it to everyone. Another time I sang songs, not like a rock star but like a farmer throwing the songs out like seeds or parade candy. People scooped them up as fast as they could as if they were valuable. And I had to back up to keep from being mobbed I was so popular. The east wind carried me to rooms within rooms, like an M.C. Escher drawing. Black and white, but tons of the most minuscule details, and always another room and another beyond that. So clear in my mind I could have sketched them out on paper in seconds. Only when I tried, the drawings were lame and I tossed them.
With the leukemia battling under my skin, playing hide-and-seek between bones and muscle, this winter I stay awake on the nights when the temperature drops below freezing. I listen and wait and hope for that east wind to come again and carry me off. I need to see that future. I want to know if I’m remembering it right, if it’s still there because I’m having trouble remembering the details now.
After Christmas, after Mom insists we leave the houseboat until spring, several times I slide out the window of the sublet apartment and walk to the defunct marina or to the bridge because I’m afraid the road noise on Route 17 is blocking the wind. A blanket wrapped over my jacket, I stand under the winter sky on the edge of the riverbank like some lonely Afghan mountain man and listen for that east wind, for a hint of my future. When it doesn’t come, I begin to think it was all my imagination.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
One night, long after all the lights are out, I’m huddled in the bunk, not quite asleep, groggy with the memory of an afternoon making out with Meredith in her basement. The muffled gurgle of an idling car engine outside the apartment comes to me in my cocoon. It separates from the night like an oboe solo rising out of the long muted strokes of distant French horns. My bedroom door opens—Nick’s at a sleepover and Dad’s gone to a publisher’s conference to drum up more textbook business to pay Walker’s legal bills—and it’s Mom’s voice that whistles in the shadows.
“Daniel, wake up. I have the tickets. Let’s go.”
My knees draw up and I pull my head under the covers as if the world of my dream with all its mystery is safer. Her hand claws at the blanket to find my shoulder.
“I’ve packed clothes for you from the clean laundry. Just put your books and CD player in your backpack and get dressed.”
In the stiff shuffle of a hypnotized volunteer from a magic show audience, I climb out of bed, pull jeans from the pile on the chair and a sweatshirt from the bottom drawer. She hands me clean socks.
“Is this a Santa Claus thing?” I’m not fully awake.
She sniffles and croaks out a halfhearted laugh, “It’s March, sweetie. Keep moving. I can’t remember what they said about airport security and baggage check.”
As I lace the boots, I repeat her words in mumbles and wonder what Dad thinks of whatever this is. Or if he knows. Bent over in the dark, with the doorway blotted by her dark intractable shape, I realize that she has done this—whatever this is—without telling him. How else could it happen?
“Hurry,” she says in that voice that brooks no dissension.
We drive forever. I sleep and wake only partway at the whiz-whir of signs that shoot past us, lightning letters on green felt, unreadable languages, like subliminal messages in a dream. Before I can mouth the words to help my fuzzy brain interpret, black tunnels of trees replace those rapid-fire reminders of civilization. I feel woozy big-time. Mom is driving with such intensity her shoulders hunch forward and her head juts out over the steering wheel like a turtle’s. In a weird kind of symbiosis I peer over the dashboard and concentrate on the neon taillights of the car in front of us. It’s the only thing in this upside-down world steady enough to keep my stomach from spinning. The next thing I know Mom’s slowing for the ticket booth at the airport parking lot and I’m awake.
DULLES, GOLD LOT, I read, LONG-TERM PARKING. PLEASE TAKE NOTE OF YOUR ROW AND SECTION NUMBER.
Although line after line of cars spins past in a mind-boggling parade despite it not being daytime yet, the terminal is deserted. Mom streams ahead of me onto the escalator, assured somehow I will follow. Ten steps below her, I’m awed at how confidently she moves in this unfamiliar, futuristic place. On the upper level she stops before a computer screen and presses her fingers against it like a piano player who’s memorized the keys. My mom, an accomplished traveler; how have I missed that? When a paper emerges from the machine, she takes it, pokes the two-dimensional button in front of her, and grabs the second paper when it spools toward her. With sideways glances at airline people at the counter, she waves the two pieces of paper at me and strides off toward a glass wall and a line of passengers who look as directed and intent as she is.
Security: the signs dictate having your passport at the ready. I’ve seen this in the movies, otherwise I’d be nervous about lining up to be screened and admitted, the way the Holocaust victims did what they were told with such trust. Mom hands me my passport—I didn’t even know I had one—and we pass through the metal doorways one after the other as if we did this all the time.
“Shouldn’t we call Dad and tell him we arrived safely?”
“No.” Her answer is sharp and efficient.
“He won’t be worried?”
“No.” Ten to one, she hasn’t told him.
My poor father has spent his adult lifetime keeping himself on the straight and narrow. Here’s his wife stealing away in the dark, breaking every law in the county and state according to Henry “Do Nothing” Walker. No wonder she didn’t tell Dad. He can’t be considered an accomplice to something he knew nothing about.
It will drive him crazy that she did the opposite of what they spent hours and weeks deciding together. That she’s willing to risk his anger and the jail time Walker says is guaranteed if she can’t produce me for the next hearing tells you how much she loves me. And how confident she is that the Mexican treatment will work.
I should have listened to Meredith and explored the website when I had the chance. It would be nice to know what’s coming. Already I’m exhausted and I haven’t even gotten on the plane yet. Still, Mom would not have gone to all this trouble if she wasn’t convinced. Waiting in the line of sight of uniformed officials with guns and X-ray machines, who stand between me and living past my next birthday, I’m willing to buy her version of the argument.
When they announce last call, we’re already on board, our bags stowed. My first flight. I’m amazed at how like the comedy club skits the whole flight attendant routine is. By the time the plane rolls away from the gate, the blue ink of the horizon to the east has already leaked pink to signal a new day. The captain announces a slight delay on the runway, but we’re buckled in and rolling.