The fields were lined with rows of bright green shoots, corn or soybeans or whatever, just starting to emerge. A sign by the highway said Dubuque, 14 miles—my birthplace, supposedly. I remember passing the same sign when I was eleven and on my way to summer camp. It was my first time away from home, and I was excited about that. I was leaving the boring town of Lost Nation and moving on to bigger, better things. To my kid brain, a city like Dubuque qualified as bigger and better. But the camp turned out to be a disappointment, except for one day, when they loaded us onto a bus pulling a trailer full of bikes. They took us to a trail that had been converted from an old railbed, and they gave each of us a bicycle and a helmet. We rode the gravel trail through pastures and wooded hills, past limestone bluffs. It was exhilarating to zip along under the trees, the wind on my face. I sped up and started passing the other kids. I pulled ahead of everyone, and the counselor called out to slow down, to stay with the group, but I kept going, pumping my legs faster and harder, possessed by what, I don’t know. Then everything opened up to a river valley, with a tall bridge crossing a creek, and to either side of that bridge, was a slope covered in boulders, descending to the water. A bicyclist approached from the other direction, coming across the bridge, and I panicked, thinking there wasn’t enough room for both of us. I swerved, and my front wheel got caught on something, which stopped the bike and pitched me over the handlebars. I sailed through the air, straight toward boulders, and I remember thinking, “This is it, and I’m only eleven.” Eleven years, the sum total of my existence. But I landed just short of the boulders, falling deep into a thicket of nettles, which ripped into my arms and legs, making it burn and itch. I stumbled out of the nettles and the counselors swarmed around me in a panic, none of them sure what to do, all of them saying different things: Breathe! Lie down! No, don’t lie down! Is anything broken? Don’t scratch, you’re making it worse, buddy!
But I couldn’t stop scratching, my skin itched and burned so badly. Then one of the counselors appeared holding up a long plant, its roots clinging to clods of dirt. Jewelweed, she said. She slit the fat stem with her nail and opened it, and she rubbed the cool, slimy interior all over my arms and legs, and she kept doing this until the itching and burning stopped. She was supremely gentle, and she was beautiful, with her dark braids swinging down, her breasts half-visible as she bent over me. I loved her, and I spent the rest of the week at camp angling for opportunities to sit next to her, to join whatever activity she was doing, whether it was archery or needlepoint, I didn’t care. I just wanted to be near her. Whenever she saw me she called me the stunt guy, or Evel Knievel, and she slow-motion punched my shoulder. This convinced me, in my eleven-year-old brain, that she secretly returned my love.
I had no idea what happened to her—that camp was the last I saw of her. But I decided I would visit that trail in honor of her memory. If nothing else, there was this one thing in my life, this longing for something good. Otherwise, I had no idea what to make of my existence. There was this new reality: Yukiko, my mother. Lyle, my father. My father, dead. I couldn’t process it, couldn’t think rationally, and my face and head were throbbing like they were going to explode. All I could think to do was to visit that trail, the place where I had flown over the handlebars and fallen in love.
I found my way north of the city and pulled into a gravel parking lot. An old rail bridge crossed a creek, and not far from it stood a little brown shack, a place for concessions. I killed the engine and got out. My face was still leathery and swollen, and I knew it would attract attention, but I desperately wanted something cold to drink.
Three kids weref standing in line ahead of me. One of them, a girl with a long straight ponytail, whipped around and stared at me. She whispered to the boy next to her, who also turned and looked, and soon all three of them were gawking at me. But then they seemed to remember their manners, and they turned back around, occasionally stealing glances over their shoulders. They loaded up with drinks and ice cream bars and candy, and they left, whispering to each other as they went. I stepped up to the window. The girl working there pulled back a little, her eyes shadowed by her visor.
“Can I have a slushie?” I said.
“What kind?”
“Blue.”
“Blue fandango?”
“Sure.”
“We’re out.”
“So, red then.”
“Cherry blitz, okay.”
She disappeared and came back a minute later with a very red slushie. I took it to a picnic table on the creek bank, where the grass gave way to sandy dirt, warmed in the sun. The water threw off a reflection of flickering gold light that hit my eyes and made me squint. For a minute I could imagine I was at a beach somewhere, in Florida or Mexico or on an island off the coast of Italy, and that seemed hopeful somehow, a way forward. Maybe I needed to just go to a beach, get a job selling whatever, figure my shit out. Try to forget about my life up to that point, forget who my parents were, where I had come from. Forget everything. Pill would be fine with Yukiko. She would be better. And that would save me from having to tell Yukiko that she was my mother. Which I didn’t want to do. How would I even begin? Just show her the photo?
I couldn’t possibly.
The kids who had been in front of me in line were sitting at a table nearby, and they were laughing. At me, maybe. Which made me feel shitty. Because who loved me, really? Not Frankie. She had wanted me because she valued my smarts, my Ivy League potential. She cared about me in the way you care for a flashy new car. But that wasn’t love. And Yukiko? Was she really my mom just because she had donated an egg? It didn’t feel that way, and I doubted it would feel that way to her either. And my father was dead. Which was the worst part of all.
I drank some of the chemical-tasting slushie, but I pulled it in too fast it gave me a powerful brain freeze. I leaned over and held my throbbing head and closed my eyes. I heard someone approach and when I opened my eyes, I saw a pair of dirty red tennies. One of the kids was standing before me, licking a popsicle, his lips and tongue bright blue.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
I shrugged. He took another lick, contemplating my face. “Maybe you need a bandaid,” he said.
I tried to imagine a bandaid that would cover such a wound. The girl ran up to him, whispered in his ear. She put something in his hand and he offered it to me: two red Jolly Ranchers.
“I thought I was getting watermelon,” the girl said. “Because I love watermelon, but I didn’t look at them enough and it turns out they’re cinnamon, and I hate cinnamon. So you can have them.”
I took the candies, which I didn’t want, but whatever, it was kind of her. They both just stared at me for a moment. Then the girl extended her arm slowly, not sure about this, and she offered me a green Jolly Rancher.
“That’s okay,” I said. “I don’t want to take your candy.”
“It’s green apple. It’s the best.”
I didn’t move, so she placed it on my knee, and then she and the boy ran back to their table. I took all three candies in my hand. They flashed in the sunlight, brilliant gemstones, and it felt like I had been given some precious gems by complete strangers. And not just these candies, but my whole mess of a life. It was this priceless thing, offered by the invisible hands of an invisible stranger, and I didn’t know if that stranger was still here, involved in this world, but I suddenly felt sure I was loved beyond measure by something bigger than world, something that had spawned these kids and the jewelweed and the counselor and Pill, bringing them out of nothingness and infusing them with life.
And suddenly I wanted to talk to Yukiko—I wanted her to know the truth. And I wanted to take Pill in my arms and hold her, even if she only said ‘yip.’ So I drove back to Chicago, but when I got there, I lost my courage. The sun had almost set and Yukiko’s house was dark in the front, though I could see that lights were on in the back. The windows were open. I could hear Yukiko’s voice coming out of them. She was saying something in a scolding tone, and Pill was answering: “But Sophie likes glitter polish on her nails!”
Words. A sentence. Argument that did not involve growling or biting. She was talking. Which made me think that Yukiko and Pill didn’t need me. Maybe they were better now that I was out of their way. If I went inside, I would only complicate things, especially with the new knowledge I contained. But then I realized this whole problem wasn’t my fault. I’d had no say in the nature of my conception. That was all on them, the three in the Polaroid. I was not, afterall, Oedipus. I hadn’t slept with my mother. Hadn’t killed my father with my bare hands. It was tragic, what happened to him, but it was an accident. However unlikely and bizarre my life, it was still my life, and I wasn’t going to walk away from it just because it made other people uncomfortable. So I climbed the porch steps and went through the front door, and as I did, I pulled the gemstone candies out of my pocket, knowing Pill would gasp when she saw them.
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