So Long, Chester Wheeler(54)

“Where would we have to go?”

“Venice Beach.”

“Where the hell is that? Italy?”

“Not that Venice. Greater Los Angeles area.”

“How long does it take to drive there?”

“Maybe seven hours with a stop for food and gas.”

After that brief discussion of logistics he fell silent again.

I opened my mouth to encourage some mode of action on his part, but he beat me to it.

“I’m guessing you have some kind of ulterior motive for suggesting this.”

“What possible kind of ulterior motive could I have?”

“You know.”

“I don’t know.”

“Encourage me to explore my feelings so you can tell me they’re just like yours.”

“Chester,” I said. “Listen up. I couldn’t care less how you feel about what person. I’m offering to drive you there. Nothing more. You don’t have to tell me what happens or how you feel about what happens. I won’t make any comment. I’m just asking if you want me to take you there. Yes or no. It wasn’t even my idea.”

“What do you mean it wasn’t your idea? Then whose idea was it?”

“Sue suggested it. She said she thought you needed closure with him more than with her.”

“Why would she say that? Did she say why she said that?”

“She said a little bit about it, yeah. She said she thought you blamed him more than you blamed her. She said you figured everybody would love Mike, so you hardly blamed her for it, but that you blamed him for taking her up on the offer.”

“That’s . . . actually true,” he said. “But I can’t go there. I can’t see him. I can’t talk to him. I wouldn’t know what to say. And it’s wrong of you to push me to do it.”

I popped my cap over that. I raised my voice at him.

“I’m not pushing you to do anything, Chester! If you say you want me to take you there, I will. If you say you want me to take you home, I will. The only thing I’m pushing you to do is make a decision while we still have a functioning engine!”

In the silences, including the one that followed my tirade, we could hear the cars rushing by on the freeway, reminding us it was where we needed to be. Whether the I-10 westbound or back the way we’d come, we needed to get on the road.

“What would you say to him if you were me?” he asked.

Which of course was a serious departure from the whole Mike situation being none of my business and something I was not permitted to talk about. I didn’t point that out, because it felt like he was making progress.

“I guess I would handle it the way you did with Sue. But, you know. More levelheaded. Less yelling. Ask him why things happened the way they did. Try to be honest about how it felt to you.”

“I can’t tell him how I felt.”

“Actually I meant how you felt about his taking your wife away from you.”

“Oh. That kind of feelings. Well. I’m not sure. Maybe I could do that. But I don’t know. It sounds hard.”

“Most of the best things in life are,” I said.

I was hoping that would wake him up. Why did I still hope? I had no idea.

“I still don’t know.”

I remembered Anna exploding at me in that Italian restaurant because I couldn’t make a decision. I finally understood how frustrating that can be.

Instead of responding in words I shifted into drive, made an awkward three-point turn on that side street, and headed for the freeway. Chester watched in shocked silence.

I followed the signs for the I-10 West.

“What are you doing, Lewis?”

“I’m driving.”

“So now you’re forcing me to go?”

“I’m not forcing you to do anything. Tell me to turn around at any point, I’ll turn around. But somebody had to do something, and it didn’t feel like it was going to be you.”

Chester apparently had nothing to say in reply.

I watched the mile markers, because I was curious to see how far we’d get.

A little past the eleven-mile mark, he piped up.

“Turn around.”

I was disappointed, but I did nothing to express that.

There was an exit coming up in just a couple of hundred feet. I moved right and kept my right-hand turn signal on.

Just before I was about to actually swing right to follow the exit, more words burst out of him. They were loud words, hovering just at the edge of panic.

“No, don’t turn around! Keep going.”

I switched off my turn signal, and we kept going.



We didn’t talk at all until we reached the Colorado River, which marked the transition from Arizona to California. The state line was actually in the middle of the river.

I think that’s when I was finally willing to believe that he wasn’t going to tell me to turn back.

“I think you made a good decision,” I said.

Chester only grunted in reply.

“I’m glad if I said anything that helped.”

“You didn’t,” he said.

It was pure Chester 1.0, and I shouldn’t have been disappointed. I should have been used to it by then. But it’s hard to usher in a little progress and then watch it fly away again.