“So do I,” a familiar voice said from behind me. It was Carolina. I had no idea how long she’d been there. She was looking straight at Willie. “Are you the father by any chance?”
“No,” Willie said. “I’m the husband.”
Sometimes life takes longer to explain than it does to live and the adventure coming home delays the tale until eventually it becomes the tale itself. Zeru-Meq takes all his visitors through potholes on his way to the palaces and shrines. It is the way and it is mostly unmarked. He says we are all strangers, unasked and unannounced, and we must greet each other along the way with humor and patience because we are always, each and every one with each and every step, a little late.
As Willie stood staring at Carolina and before she could respond, there was a loud crash outside coming from the direction of the garage. My first mental image was a milk truck slamming into the stone foundation. I saw the same fear in Willie’s eyes. He bolted past me and out of the door. I glanced at Carolina for a split second, then we were right behind him. We ran through the living room and Carolina shouted, “Wait!” Willie ran on ahead, but I stopped and watched her put on the big boots she’d worn earlier. She was having trouble tying them and I said, “Come on, hurry.” She said, “I’m trying, I’m trying.” I looked down at the boots and they resembled some sort of military wear. “Where did you get those?” I asked. “From a Canadian,” she said. “I bought everything he had, including his car.” We glanced at each other and thought the same thing at once. That was the sound. Someone had crashed into the car that Carolina had driven and parked in the driveway in the dark. We raced through the kitchen and down the path, toward the garage. The rain obscured our vision and muffled the sounds, but I could definitely hear voices ahead of us, female voices, and they were laughing.
Suddenly Carolina stopped and let out a sound, a yelp, and I thought she might have slipped on the wet path, but when I turned to look she was standing perfectly still with her hand over her mouth. “My God, Z,” she said, then lowered her hand and she was smiling. “That’s her.” “That’s who?” I said. “That’s Star, that’s her laugh,” Carolina said, then started laughing herself. I looked at her and told her she was crazy, there was no way to know that. “Come on,” I said. “Someone might be hurt.” “Wait here,” she said. “Please, just wait for me. It won’t take thirty seconds. Please, Z, don’t go yet.” She turned and ran back in the house and I looked toward the sound of the crash and the laughter, but stayed where I was. In thirty seconds, she was back and out of breath, beaming, grinning ear to ear, and soaking wet. “Come on!” she shouted and grabbed my arm.
We ran through the rain down the twisting path toward the laughter and finally out on the wide gravel drive in front of the garage. Then we heard Willie laugh somewhere to our left. We turned and the first thing I saw was Carolina’s car. It was a black coupe with one headlight missing, but not from a crash, and parked at an odd angle where the drive split from the garage to the house. And just beyond the coupe, flat against the gravel without any wheels or frame underneath, was the cab of the old milk truck. All around it shards of broken glass from the windshield lay on the gravel and flashed in the rain. Inside the cab, unharmed but in a kind of shock, as if they’d just been dropped from outer space, were Daphne, Nova, and Star with Caine tight against her chest, laughing themselves silly.
It took a moment to figure it out. Daphne must have braked hard when she saw the parked car and the jolt, along with inertia, had broken the rusted cab loose from the body and sent them flying. They were more than lucky. Willie was laughing with them, probably to keep from crying. He was trying to help Daphne out and she finally stopped laughing long enough to let him. I ran to help Star, whose jacket and hair were covered with glass. Nova hopped out in front where the windshield had been and was the first to see Carolina. She said not a word.
“Well, there is no quarantine,” Daphne said as she got to her feet. “But, my goodness, there is no more milk truck either.” Then she saw Carolina and smiled. Once again, her blue eyes shone bright right through the rain. “Welcome,” she said casually. “You must certainly be Carolina.”
Wishes may or may not come true, I’ve never been sure about wishes, and I’ve never been certain about anything in doubt coming true simply because we “trust” it will. Reality does not work that way. There is a truth, however, a place, a feeling, a moment, who knows what to call it? It does not go by names. It travels though, and stops occasionally in the middle of our lives, if we’re lucky. It happens when the longest-standing hope finds the most distant dream. and it lights the world.
At the mention of Carolina’s name, Star raised her head and looked into her mother’s eyes for the first time since she was a child. Carolina stared back and for an instant I felt something pass through me I had not felt since my papa found my mama’s eyes in the moment before the moment that killed them. I felt the weight of their lives. But it didn’t frighten or overwhelm me as it had before. The feeling that passed between Star and Carolina, and somehow through me, was only surrender. surrender to something in time and yet out of time. something in the center of life realized at the moment it is being lived. It is the most peaceful and powerful feeling on earth.
“Mama?” Star asked.
“Yes,” Carolina said and knelt down next to Star. She was crying, but her tears were drowned in the rain. She put her hands on her daughter’s face and ran her fingers over her lips, then she saw Caine peeping out of Star’s jacket and bent to kiss his dark curls. She turned and looked at me.
“It’s a miracle, Z.”
“No, Carolina. It’s your family.”
She was laughing, crying, trying to wipe her nose and hug Star all at once.
“Are you all right?” I asked.
She reached under her soaking sweater and pulled out what she’d run back into the house to get. “I guess I won’t need this,” she said.
I took it from her and put my hand inside and pounded the pocket.
“What on earth is that?” Daphne asked. She stood straight and tall and the rain seemed not to bother her.
“It’s called a baseball glove, Daphne. I’ll have to teach you how to play.”
“My goodness, yes,” she said. “I love American games, but let’s do it on a slightly nicer day, shall we, Z?”
“For God’s sake, Z, she’s right,” Willie broke in. “Let’s get everyone inside. I’ll take care of this mess later.”
“Quite right, Willie,” I said and with everyone helping everyone else through the broken glass, we all made our way back to the path that led to the house.
I hung back at one point and let the rest walk on ahead. I don’t know why, I suppose I just wanted to watch them all walk together and listen to the small talk and, of course, the laughter. It was a wonderful feeling, a kind of nudge in the ribs, a wink from somewhere that suggested life was working. That’s when I knew Nova really could “see things.” She turned around at that very moment and gave me a real wink, a wink as clever and knowing as any Cleopatra ever gave.
I laughed and started to catch up, but I only took a step or two before I heard another laugh, a laugh I knew as well as my own. I turned and found Opari walking right behind me and Geaxi right behind her. I had never heard them approach.
“It is seeming you are always in the rain, my love, while others always take shelter. I hope the desert has not touched you permanently.”
“Me?” I asked. “Where have you two been all night and day? And how long have you been back?”