Pisgah Road Read online

  In the early years, Jane was merely there, neither bad nor good, but just another adult. She would bake delicious cakes and pastries and make me wooden toys with her Bowie knife. She was fearless, which balanced my mother’s constant fright that someone might get hurt or drown in our shallow part of the Okanogan River. Jane was the one who cajoled me to get the kids out of the orchard and lead them to do what kids our age are best suited to do.

  That was Jane’s role in my life. And until the summer of eighty-one, the year I turned fourteen, that’s all she was. That summer though, I noticed her rather differently. It was a scorching hot July and I had just come back from swimming in the river with a few of my friends. They were called back as my Auntie had declared the day too hot to work. I had wandered to the tomato fields and noticed Jane working on her hands and knees. She was wearing her John Deere cap and her faded old jeans. The sun was high in the sky and the beads of sweat were running down her face and chest, making her skin slick and her brown tank top sticky.

  She didn’t notice me as she was focused on tending to each plant and cutting the unwanted growth. But after a while, she felt the weight of my stare and looked up. She said, “Hey kiddo, do you want to help?” She must have noticed something because she didn’t wait for an answer and just went back to work, nodding and smiling. I looked down and saw what she had seen and ran back to the house as fast as my wobbly legs allowed. Two days later, I found a book on puberty on my bed.

  V

  My mother told me that Jane loved me like a son, but I didn’t get the irony.

  “Jane was very sweet, Mom,” I said, and then added, “She was very kind.”

  “She was the sweetest and the kindest,” my mother replied, her voice soaring with cadence.

  There was a purpose to this conversation and I knew what it was going to be. I had tried to suppress them, but the memories had returned back solidly. I knew exactly where my mother was trying to take the discussion and I wasn’t ready for it. I don’t think I’d ever be ready for such a conversation.

  “I loved Jane,” said my mother, raising her head high and staring at me intently.

  “We all loved her, Mom. Who wouldn’t? She made summers fun.”

  “You don’t understand, son. I loved Jane and she loved me. We were in love.”

  That, I did not know.

  It took my mother four years to die. The cancer wasn’t merciful. It played and teased her — it showed its head, inviting attention then disappearing for a while giving us hope. She had captured those hopes — and more, as I learned at her deathbed — in her little book of poems but at the end, neither poetry nor medicine exiled the disease long enough. It came back and finally the game was over.

  The cancer wasn’t merciful, but the insurance company was vicious. They call themselves Care Medical Group or CMG — second largest medical insurance company in the nation. CMG denied her appropriate treatment, and by the time they agreed to consider her appeal, my father was living in a house that he no longer owned and carried a bankbook that no longer had any funds. My parents were forced to borrow against the house while fighting CMG, until there was no equity left to borrow against. My mother’s battle with her cancer is now just a blur, like an intense but fleeting early morning dream. One where the emotions stay resilient but the actual events fade as rapidly as you open your eyes. She was fine one day and then we were at her funeral the next, gripped with a deep unhinging sadness. I have an opportunity and the ability to punish CMG — that’s the power of my profession. And I’m very tempted to do just that, if I could only get my mother’s voice out of my head.

  The bank was more lenient. They gave my father a few months before forcing him to vacate. They even sent words of condolence along with the notice of eviction. My father didn’t want their charity and had me pack up the house and rent an apartment for him. His employer was even more merciful; they had given him an extended leave. His boss even came to the funeral and told him to take as much time he needed. Everything was set for him — his old job and a new apartment, but it seemed my father resolved to move in with my mother. He was not a single-bedroom-apartment type of person. He had paid first and last month’s rent and had a one-year lease. I’m sure the landlord will keep the deposit.

  I have a business class ticket to London in my pocket — half of my inheritance that my father had managed to hide from the hospital and the doctors. I don’t know why and I don’t know how he managed to hide the cash. I should have put the money in the bank, but he didn’t want it to be spent on something rational. In his world, in the world that he had lived in the past four years, nothing good came from rational decisions. He’d worked all his life and had paid his taxes and was never late on his insurance payments. He’d expected rational decisions by everyone else when it came to my mother’s well-being, but doctors made the wrong diagnosis and Care Medical Group offered no indemnity. My father was tired of rational behavior. It would have been sensible for him to move to his new apartment and continue his life, but he decided to be irrational. The world around him had gone insane and he saw no reason for him to go against the new reality. He was no rebel. He was a simple accountant who was finally defeated by the medical system. He gave the money to me and then willed himself to die in his sleep. I had two options: follow his footsteps and be irrational, or follow my mother’s and act sensible. I did both. I had no right to do any less. I chose to go back to London per her wishes, but I’m going on an exuberantly priced ticket. What’s more irrational than a five thousand dollar ticket to London for a two-day visit?

  CHAPTER TWO

  I

  A year ago, Gabrielle Desidéria and I reconnected after almost ten years. It was through the Internet, the greatest invention for linking lost friends. We now email each other every few weeks.

  But it’s not real. The conversation is just a black and white ghost on a computer screen, a disembodied soulless connection. I used to look at her pictures in my photo album and dream about a life that could have been. Even those late nights with my album and the one-way conversation had more vivacity than the text that appears in my inbox once every few weeks.

  I stopped looking at the photo album a year after my return from London. I sequestered her memories and my feelings far away from myself and for so long that I made myself believe that I had closed that chapter of my life forever. My mother was right — she has always been right. We’re good at keeping our emotions in check, and keeping the voices muzzled. I made myself believe that everything started with Daniel and Gabrielle and then ended with them as well. Therefore I was done with them, and all that was in London, as soon as our flight took off from Heathrow.

  But it’s not true no matter how much I tried to make it true. They stayed with me long after my departure, whispering to me in my dreams. My parents never told me to go back. We never talked about them, except in passing. They assumed the love I had for Gabrielle was just an adolescent infatuation and not a lifelong bond. I never gave them any hint to think otherwise. I had a job offer even before I finished my degree and had new girlfriends, though none lasted more than a few months. My parents didn’t question that either. I told them I was fine and they were fine with that.

  When Gabrielle found me after a long silence, my mother had been ill for several years and I was still with no one. She sent me a Christmas card with a photo of her husband, John Ashford. I knew John from high school. In the picture, he looks fit but he is still short. His hair is much darker and thinner than before, but perhaps it was just the way he was standing. I don’t want to disparage him by a single photo. He used to wear his hair long around his ears, blond and shaggy, but in the picture it was cut like a businessman. Gabrielle hadn’t aged — her bright brown eyes shone even in the static image. She used to have straight brown hair, but in the photo it’s long and layered with jets of burgundy peppered through it. In the photo, he is wearing a suit and tie and she’s wearing a black dress. They were posing for the picture. She is holding her
son. I sent her a card back but didn’t include any pictures; I know I have changed — I’m older.

  A few weeks after sending the Christmas card, she followed it with a small box full of photos from our trip to South Wiltshire, a few months before I left London. The photos were in separate stacks, each meticulously tied with a purple ribbon. They were not numbered but I could tell there was a sequence to each stack. There was a small envelope with a little note at the bottom of the box. I took the photos out and put them on the kitchen table with the envelope at the end of the train.

  I unraveled the first stack and took the top photo. It was a picture of Gabrielle and me, standing next to the black and yellow train car. She was leaning against me and I had my arm around her shoulders. She was staring at me and not looking at the camera. I look young and happy, smiling broadly for a stranger who we had asked to take the picture. My hair is thick and shoulder length, as opposed to what I sport now.

  We were on our way to a three-day holiday at Warminster in Wiltshire. There were a few other pictures of us on the train taken by other passengers. We had booked a room in a cozy inn, planning to go on daily hikes on the Bluebells Trail. Most of the photos were taken on the trail on our third day, when we actually managed to leave our room for the first time. Gabrielle had bought a fancy camera and several rolls of film and she was eager to take pictures at every turn. I had not seen any of these until she mailed them to me, because that trip was the last of our good days together.

  I’m the only one in more than half of the photos, looking straight at the camera or posing for her on top of a rock or stump of a tree. But the rest is about us. We’re holding hands or holding each other, as we pose for the camera, each eagerly waiting for the moment when the auto capture engaged. In one, we had moved too quickly as we tried to take a picture while kissing, but the camera only captured the aftermath, showing us facing each other surprised. We are both smiling, our mouths partly open but separated.

  Gabrielle was wearing a blue summer dress with a large sunflower print. The stem of the flower had started from the bottom of her dress, wrapping itself along her body and coming back in front with a large sunflower perching on her torso. Gabrielle’s face was smudged from an earlier fall and the front of her dress muddy. She had tried to make herself presentable by putting on lipstick and pulling her long hair in a ponytail. However, her heavy hiking boots, shown prominently in the photo, and the dirt on her face and dress made her look more like a farm girl — a beautiful farm girl with her glowing face and eyes that danced like two ballerinas.

  I remember that day. I remember the kiss, a makeup kiss. We had left the trail to explore other parts of the ancient forest, but we lost our way quickly and had to spend hours searching for the right path back. The place was beautiful and perhaps it was due to the serenity of the earthy woodlands and colors of wild spring flowers and indigo colored Bluebells spread underneath a canopy of thick forest, that we did not pay attention to signs and markers until we were too deep in the forest.

  Gabrielle had taken pictures of me from behind as we tried to find our way back and in a couple of pictures I have turned around a bit, angry with her for not taking our situation seriously. That had not deterred her and she had taken a few more pictures with the beautiful colors of flowers as the foreground and my body as the constant background.

  One of the photos, the only one with her in it alone, was taken during breakfast earlier that day. We had sat outside, enjoying the sun but the conversation had turned to Daniel and his recent row with us. I couldn’t help but defend him, playing the contrarian, but Gabrielle was genuinely upset and wanted me to find a solution. I was playing with the camera as she was talking and when she turned around to urge me to stop, I took a picture of her. She had cupped her neck with her hands as though massaging the back of her head, but her fingers were hidden underneath her long hair. She was partially facing me so her eyes were focused on the camera and I know they were trying to pierce through the lens to reach me. Her eyes were sad and had turned to deeper blue under the bright sun. Her mouth was partially open as the camera captured a moment right before she spoke.

  “I’m serious. I’m really concerned about Daniel,” said Gabrielle, as I put the camera down.

  “I know.”

  “I’ve never seen him this way. It was such a row.”

  “We’re all friends. We’ll be fine, Gabrielle.”

  She shook her head and replied, “That’s not the point.”

  She then took a long sip from her teacup. She was very meticulous about her tea and its preparation. This place had struck a chord with her because they prepared the tea the old fashioned way, in a bone china teapot, and served it with Devonshire cream. And when she asked for more, they took the whole pot away and brought her a brand new one, rather than just adding hot water to used tealeaves. In the photo, I could see the white teapot with its Royal Albert rosehips sitting in front of her.

  She put the cup down and added, “It’s not about the row. It’s about Daniel. He’s going to hurt himself. He’s going to lose Alice if he pushes her too much.”

  “You’re being overly dramatic. It’s nothing. Daniel is just being Daniel. He’s good at what he does and he had the right to be angry with us for screaming at him when he was driving. He handled the cops well and all was fine.”

  “No. No. You don’t know him as well as I do. This isn’t normal.”

  “That’s not fair. I’ve known him for five years now. I think I know him rather well.”

  She shook her head knowing that I could take the conversation on the wrong path and replied quickly, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it that way. I’m just upset and I’m ruining our lovely vacation. I just can’t help it though.”

  We both fell silent and time passed, marked with the chatter of the other guests around us. I felt bad and her tea was cold. I didn’t mean to have a pissing contest with Gabrielle over Daniel. Of course, she knew him better than me and that was not the point anyway. She was right and we needed to do something to help him. But I really wanted to have the three days just with Gabrielle and not think about solving other people’s problems. We had spent two blissful days and I didn’t want the last day to be consumed by problems.

  “I’m sorry too,” I offered hoping she understood. I leaned over and kissed her before she could respond. Her lips were warm and tasted sweet from the milky tea she had just drunk.

  Gabrielle said, “He needs me.”

  “If he needs anybody, it’s you for sure,” I replied sincerely. It was true. No one else could calm Daniel like her. A silly thought came to my mind and part jest, part real curiosity, I asked, “How come you and Daniel never hooked up?”

  She did a double take and grabbed a piece of her hair and started twisting it between her fingers. “What makes you think we haven’t?”

  “Really? You have?”

  She gave a cheerful laugh and then cried out, “Yuck! Are you mad? You know he’s like a brother to me.”

  “Wow! That was strong.”

  “Sorry. Sort of a sore subject because people used to assume things about us and there was never anything. He’s really like a brother and he doesn’t believe in friends dating.”

  “What about Daniel and Fionna then?”

  “What about them?”

  “Nothing.”

  She shook her head again and rolled her hair in her fingers. “Well, I’m sure Fionna wants him. And they may have done some snugging here and there but nothing serious. He was just being polite.”

  “Polite? That’s an interesting choice of words.”

  “You know what I mean. She wants him but he doesn’t want to get involved with my best friend, but Fionna can be a bit pushy. So they kissed and stuff but nothing major.”

  “Good to know.”

  “You’re really good at this, man.”

  “What?”

  She pushed me lightly with her hand, and then pulled me back and kissed me. “You’re good at getting
us off track. Weren’t we just talking about Daniel and his problems and then within minutes you managed to get me all twisted up about Daniel’s little trysts.”

  “I was just curious.”

  “I bet you were, mister. He has Alice now and she’s the best thing that could have happened to him.”

  “That’s for sure.”

  “I really like Alice. I hope they get married. Wouldn’t that be nice?”

  “They’re kind of young.”

  “I don’t mean now. I love Daniel and Alice is so sweet. I don’t want her to be just another girlfriend, forgotten after a few months. Don’t you like her?”

  “I think she’s great. And she’s really good for Daniel. But they just met.”

  “So what? Love isn’t measured by time. I think she is his soulmate. You can laugh if you want, but when you find your soulmate you don’t let it go. Your mom told me that.”

  “She did?” I was flabbergasted then, as I didn’t know my mother like I learned to know her later in her life. I dismissed it as something silly a mother would tell her son’s girlfriend, even though that didn’t make sense even then. “So if Daniel doesn’t approve of friends dating why is he okay with us?”

  “I guess he’s making an exception for us. Maybe that’s why it took us so long to hook up, no?” She said it flippantly as if it was a joke, but perhaps she thought there was more to it. I didn’t want to have that conversation either. It wasn’t true anyway. Daniel has always been encouraging me, and Gabrielle was probably being generous about the reason for the long delay. “He is fine with it now. He loves me and he really likes you,” she added quickly as an assurance.

  “Only ‘likes’ me?”

  “Oh…I love you,” she replied tenderly but then realizing what she had said, she coughed and then laughed a few times and added, “Daniel really needs our help.”