The Best of Me(10)
For spring break we decided to visit my family in Raleigh. Being invisible has its merits when you’re shoplifting but tends to hold a person back while hitchhiking. We parked ourselves beside the interstate, Peg’s thumb twitching at odd intervals. The five-hundred-mile trip took us close to three days. It was our story that we were newly married, and were heading south to start a new life for ourselves. Churchy couples would pull over, apologizing that their car was too small to accommodate a wheelchair. They couldn’t give us a ride, but would we accept twenty dollars and a bucket of fried chicken?
You bet we would. “There’s a hospital in Durham we’re hoping might do some good,” I’d say, patting Peg on the shoulder. “Here we are, a couple of newlyweds, and then this had to happen.”
CB radios were activated and station wagons appeared. Waitresses in roadside restaurants would approach our table whispering, “YOUR BILL HAS BEEN TAKEN CARE OF,” and pointing to some teary-eyed couple standing beside the cash register. We found it amusing and pictured these Samaritans notifying their pastor to boast, “We saw this crippled girl and her husband and, well, we didn’t have much but we did what we could.”
Someone would check us into a motel and give us cash for bus fare, making us promise to never hitchhike again. I’d take Peg out of her chair, lay her on the bed, and sprinkle the money down upon her. It was a pale imitation of a movie scene in which crafty con artists shower themselves with hundred-dollar bills. Our version involved smaller denominations and handfuls of change, but still, it made us feel alive.
We were in West Virginia when one of the wheels fell off Peg’s chair. It was dusk on a rural state highway without a building in sight when an elderly man in a pickup truck swooped in and carried us all the way to my parents’ front door, a trip that was surely out of his way. “Five-four-oh-six North Hills Drive? I’m headed right that way, no trouble at all. Which state did you say that was in?”
We arrived unannounced, surprising the startled members of my family. I’d hoped my parents might feel relaxed in Peg’s company, but when they reacted with nervous discomfort, I realized that this was even better. I wanted them to see that I had changed. Far from average, I had become responsible in ways they could never dream of. Peg was my charge, my toy, and I was the only one who knew how to turn her off and on. “Well,” I said, wiping her mouth with a dinner napkin, “I think it’s time for somebody’s bath.”
My brother and sisters reacted as though I had brought home a sea lion. They invited their friends to stare from the deck as I laid Peg on a picnic blanket in the backyard. My father repaired the wheelchair, and when Peg thanked him, he left the dinner table and returned handing her a second fork.
“She didn’t ask for a fork,” I said. “She asked for your watch.”
“My watch?” he said. “The one I’m wearing?” He tapped his fingers against the face for a moment or two. “Well, golly, I guess if it means that much to her, sure, she can have my watch.” He handed it over. “And your belt,” I said. “She’ll need that, too. Hurry up, man, the girl is crippled.”
My mother visited her hiding place and returned with a wad of cash for our bus fare back to Ohio. She called me into the kitchen and shoved the money into my hand, whispering, “I don’t know what kind of a game you’re playing, mister, but you ought to be ashamed of yourself.” It was an actual whisper, designed to be heard only by me.
The bus ride back to Ohio was long and cheerless. The second time Peg asked to use the bathroom, I snapped. “You just went three hours ago,” I shouted. “Jesus, what’s your problem, do I have to take care of everything?” It got on my nerves, the way she depended on me. We’d gone on this trip, she’d had a good time, what more did she want? How was it that by the time we left my parents’ house, I was considered the cripple, not her but me, me who had to do everything while she just sat there spilling ashes down the front of her shirt?
My mood deteriorated. We returned to school, where Peg related our adventures to a crowd of friends. I listened in, silently substituting every we for an I “We” didn’t talk a truck driver out of thirty dollars and a brand-new curling wand, I did that, ME, how dare she take half the credit? “She is some kind of brave,” our classmates would say. “I wouldn’t have the courage to do half the things that she does—and I can walk!”
The spring quarter began but by the second week, I’d stopped attending class, deciding instead to bone up on my drugs and become my own private adventurer. I signed up for sky-diving lessons at the local airfield. The training sessions were deceptively simple, but when the time came for the actual jump, they had to pry my white knuckles off the wing of the plane. I begged and pleaded and all the way down I pictured myself in a wheelchair, hoping that the person assigned to care for me would have none of my qualities.
At the end of the school year I hitchhiked to San Francisco, enchanted with the idea of leading an adult life surrounded by people who could wash their own hair. My friend Veronica got me a room at a residence hotel, and I found work as a bicycle messenger. The streets of my neighborhood were fragrant with eucalyptus trees, and every passing stranger offered the hope that tomorrow just might be the day I was offered a comfortable job or a twelve-room apartment. I was far from my family and often pictured them suffering their vacations without me. They had treated me poorly, but I had come out on top because that was the kind of person I was, headstrong and independent. Me, the winner.