Chapter 19 - Heather

Chapter 19

Heather

Cusco, Peru

"But Jimmy wasn't dead," Bon said, her voice ashy with old pain. "He rammed his grandfather's stolen Caddy into a tree at almost ninety miles an hour, and the damn thing was totaled. But Jimmy didn't die. Not then."

Heather and her mother were spellbound, shocked into utter stillness.

"He'd taken the car and was driving north to Minnesota. He'd left a note for his grandparents, explaining why he'd stolen their Caddy. He was going to his parents, to beg for money. He wanted to get me a place of my own; he wanted to get us out of Pa's trailer, to give us back some dignity. Or so his grandfather told me." Bon cleared her throat. "But who knows. Jimmy wasn't there to tell me if that was true or not. He'd gone and crashed himself into a tree and couldn't tell me anything. He wasn't dead, but he might as well have been."

Heather felt a cold wave. Bon's grief was fresh, as though it had just happened.

"Any trace of the Jimmy Keays I knew," Bon said, clearing her throat painfully, "Jimmy with the silvery quick eyes, the sass, the tenderness . . . any trace of him was gone. In the hospital they kept him stable and waited for his brain swelling to go down, and I prayed like I'd goddamn never prayed before, holding that Gideon's Bible he'd stolen from the motel like it were a life preserver. But God wasn't listening to Bonnie Keays from Shitsville, because when everything settled the doctor told me Jimmy was brain dead. There was nothing to heal, and he was only alive because of the machines.

"His parents came from Minnesota, and they had insurance, while I didn't have jackshit. And his mother was a screaming wreck, refusing any talk about turning off his life support. About three weeks after the accident, Jimmy's parents took him home to Minnesota, and his mother visited every single day and read to him from the Bible—which he would have hated. But Jimmy couldn't hear anything, and Jimmy couldn't hate anything. There was nothing left of Jimmy Keays but his body. No brain activity. Just a machine making him breathe." Bon wasn't crying. She was staring at the ground, seeing things they couldn't. "I was his wife, I could have stopped it. But they had money and lawyers and I . . ."

"Didn't have jackshit," Heather finished softly.

Bon swallowed and looked up at Mom, who seemed frozen.

"He was alive?" Mom managed to say, her voice strangled and strange. "He didn't run off?"

"He wasn't really alive, honey." Bon looked unwell. "It's just that his mother couldn't let go. She believed in miracles."

"How long?" Mom's voice broke. "How long was he like that for?"

"Until 1989," Bon said flatly.

"My senior year . . . when you went back to Minnesota."

Bon nodded.

"But you said it was Granma who died. You said you went back for her funeral."

"It was." The muscles in Bon's throat were clenching. Like she was choking. "Louise died about three years after Jimmy's dad. And left Jimmy to me."

"Oh God," Heather breathed. "That's awful."

Bon nodded. "It was. By then Jimmy was thirty-six or -seven, and he'd been stuck in that bed for almost as long as he'd been alive before the accident. He was doughy and soft, with a baby face. He had all these tubes in him." Her lips shook. "And I sat there for two hours before I could do it."

Heather was breathless with horror.

"But I did it because I loved him. And because he'd been gone all this time, and it wasn't him there in that bed. And he would have hated it. According to his death certificate, Jimmy Keays died on the seventh of May 1989, but I knew better. Jimmy Keays died in 1970, on a road somewhere south of Holbrook, Arizona."

Mom was shivering like she was caught in an ice storm. Heather carefully reached out and put a hand on her arm, feeling like her mother might shatter if she pressed too hard.

"Did he know about me?" Mom whispered.

"No, honey," Bon sighed. "Your dad was gone by the time I knew I was pregnant. I mean, I told him—told the person in that bed, with all the tubes—I told him. And your Grandma Louise used to tell him all about you. She'd read him your letters and show him pictures of you."

Mom started crying, big, ugly sobs. Heather had seen her mother cry before, but this was different. Heather scrambled closer and wrapped her arms around her, feeling Mom's sorrow in her bones.

"But Jimmy wasn't there to hear her." Bon's eyes were glassy, but she still didn't cry. "I told him I loved him every day that we were together. And I told him I loved him at the end, when they took him off life support. I loved him every second of every day he was on this earth, and I have loved him every second of every day since. And I know he knew it. Jimmy died knowing he was loved, and that was what I could do for him," Bon said fiercely. "And you were what I could do for him."

"Why didn't you tell me?" Mom wailed. She buried her head in Heather's neck and cried like she was quaking off her axis.

"I couldn't," Bon said, and Heather could see the effort it was taking to hold herself together. She looked thin as glass, and just as breakable. "He never would have wanted you to see him like that, to know him like that."

"But to tell me he ran off . . ." Mom made a low, guttural sound.

"It wasn't untrue. He did run off. And maybe he was trying to make things right, by driving to his folks and begging for money, or maybe he fell into a pit of despair and drove himself straight into a tree . . . I won't ever know, because he was gone and couldn't ever tell me." Bon's hands were clenched together, like claws.

"And you never told Grandpa?" Heather asked, as she held tight to her mother. "Dale never knew any of this?"

Bon shook her head. "If Sandra didn't know, no one could know. It wasn't fair."

Heather marveled at how tight Bon had kept the secret.

"Poor Dale," Bon said. "It ate him up. He knew there were secrets, he just didn't know what they were. And he was a straightforward man who went to a straightforward answer."

"That you were having an affair?" Heather stroked her mom's hair.

Bon nodded. "And I was such a mess after Minnesota. It was like something shorted out. I just stopped feeling for a while, because feeling was too much. And Dale took it as rejection . . ."

"And cheated to get back at you." Heather felt a wave of sadness for Grandpa and Bon, so isolated from one another, even in love.

"That's why you forgave him," Mom hiccupped.

"There was nothing to forgive." Bon seemed smaller, deflated. "He was in pain. And I didn't . . . I couldn't . . . I had nothing to give."

"And Junior?" Mom asked, bright jealousy in her voice. "Did he know?"

Bon shook her head. "No, honey. If you didn't know, no one could know."

Heather felt like she was looking at a stranger as she stared at her grandmother. Who knew Bon had been hiding so much inside of her? So many stories, so much pain. Perhaps, Heather thought, feeling like a veil was being drawn back, everyone had secret doors they kept closed, no matter how you battered at them. She didn't think she'd ever look at people the same way again, now that she knew the unmapped terrain that lay within her grandmother.

* * *

The last thing any of them felt like doing after their emotionally grueling morning was heading off to trek the Andes, but the tour guide turned up to collect them on schedule, nevertheless. Bon and Mom were hidden behind their sunglasses, both drained, their faces swollen from crying.

Their guide, Pidru Humala, was a Quechua man; he wore a red baseball cap low over his eyes and had a gentle smile that never flagged, even in the face of their dull misery; he was accompanied by his niece, Hulya, whom he'd brought along because he was nervous about being on a trek with three women.

"The rest of the team will meet us in Ollantaytambo," Hulya said cheerfully in heavily accented English. She spoke English more fluently than Pidru and chattered away to Heather during the hour and a half drive to Ollantaytambo. Mom and Bon sat silently in the back, pretending to be absorbed by the views flashing by, but actually lost in their own thoughts. Mom had retreated deep into herself, while Bon seemed shattered.

"You will be very spoiled," Hulya told Heather. "Everything will be carried ahead for you on the trail by our porters, you will have a campsite and a dining tent all to yourselves, and we have a very good cook to look after your meals." Hulya was around Heather's age, and she had a ruddy-cheeked oval face and a wide grin. She wore hiking gear with a bright red patterned poncho thrown over one shoulder and a traditional brown bowler hat perched on her head. She told Heather that the porters were mountain farmers who were earning a healthy addition to their yearly income by dragging tourist packs up to Machu Picchu during hiking season; none of them spoke English or Spanish, so Hulya had given Heather a few Quechua phrases she could use, so she could politely say please and thank you, yes and no. Heather was glad of Hulya's distraction because Bon's revelations had thrown her. There had been too much conflict and too many emotional shocks in the past few days. She needed a moment of calm.

When they reached Ollantaytambo, Heather searched for a glimpse of Owen's bus, but she couldn't see it. His tour had a head start and were probably already at the trailhead. She took in the town, remembering Owen's historical facts. She wished he was here to tell her more, because it was like stepping into another world; the steep terraces cut into the mountainside were awe inspiring, and the stone buildings were pitted with the ages of history. Heather would have liked to go for a wander, but they didn't linger long in Ollantaytambo. It was just a pause to get them equipped for the trail. Hulya sprayed them with bug spray and gave them light rucksacks, which held water, super-light rain ponchos, sunscreen, and a candy bar or two in case of low blood sugar. Bon slid Junior into her rucksack with the candy bars.

Pidru also handed out walking poles, giving them quick instruction for how to use them. "This will take up to a third of your weight. Makes things easier. Especially downhill."

Mom and Bon stood there like zombies throughout his demonstration.

"Hey," Heather murmured, turning in her seat to talk to them as Pidru drove them the short distance from Ollantaytambo to the trailhead. "Earth to Mom and Bon . . ." She clicked her fingers in front of their faces. "Are you going to be joining me on this trek?"

They both nodded and gave her wan smiles, but neither spoke.

The trailhead where they entered the Inca Trail was at the kilometer 82 checkpoint by the Urubamba River. A line of trekkers in their bright weatherproof jackets wound through the checkpoint, which was on the other side of the fast-flowing muddy river. Hulya had them pose for a photo under the red sign, which read "Camino Inka-Inka Trail." "Say cheese," she called.

Mom and Bon barely managed a grimace.

As they stood by the rushing river, waiting to cross, Mom seemed to finally surface from her state of shock. "How hard is this hike going to be?" she asked nervously, examining the trekkers up ahead.

"Not hard." Pidru sounded sure. "Well, a bit hard today. Tomorrow is easier."

"But what's his definition of hard?" Mom whispered after he'd moved off.

"It's only twenty-four miles," Hulya said, completely undaunted.

"Of mountain," Mom whispered to Heather. "Twenty-four miles up a mountain isn't the same as twenty-four miles along the street."

"There are old people going through that checkpoint," Heather told her, pointing to the people shuffling through the checkpoint with their passports out. "If they can do it, I'm sure we can do it."

"I really thought we'd be having fun by now," Bon sighed, bringing up the rear. It was disconcerting seeing Bon limp. She was usually a force of nature.

"That's called delusion," Mom said under her breath.

As they hiked, Heather realized how little she knew of the history of this place. The Incan Empire was mind blowing. For some reason, Heather hadn't been expecting an actual road. She'd been imagining hiking tracks, like back in Arizona, but the Incan road was an astonishing feat of engineering; steep cobbled stairs climbed the slopes, each one hundreds of years old. It was like the old Roman roads in Europe, but somehow starker and more impressive, because the Incans had networked the Andes. The scale of it all was hard to grasp. Especially when Pidru told them that the Incas had co-opted existing roads. Civilization stretched back through the centuries up here.

They trekked along the river, the white-tipped Andes looming over them. The air smelled like sap and flowers and flowing water, and Heather breathed deeply, gradually feeling herself settle into her body, dropping out of her buzzing thoughts about Bon and Jimmy Keays, and landing solidly on the trail. Her boots made a crunching, scraping sound on the cobbled stone path, and the river tumbled and swooshed down the steep bank on her right.

Her quads burned from all the stairs and inclines.

"Llaqtapata," Hulya told them, pausing at the trail side and pointing to a ruin emerging like a dream from the green valley below. "This was an Incan rest stop, or maybe a holy place. Maybe both. Maybe something else as well. It is an important place, so close to Machu Picchu."

At the top of the ruined terraces was a maze of walls, and Heather could clearly see the footprints of the buildings. The thought of people living here, centuries ago, made her feel vertiginous. Like time was sliding away and the past was looming toward her.

"We'll go down and walk around now," Hulya said, inviting them to follow her down to the ancient place in the green valley.

Llaqtapata was huge—not a village so much as a significant outpost. Heather paused at the lip of the top terrace and craned her neck to look up at the steep mountain rising behind the ruins, spiny gray rocks showing through the green. Now that she was standing down in the valley, everything seemed bigger; gargantuan. She felt insignificant as she looked down the steeply raked terraces. From the trail above, the terraces had seemed wide and gracious, but now she was here, she saw they fell away dramatically.

"It makes me feel a bit ill," Mom breathed, joining Heather on the edge of the terrace. She took Heather's arm as her fear of heights kicked in. "But I can't look away."

Along the terrace, Heather saw Bon sit herself down and open her rucksack. She eased Junior's box out. Then she sat the box on her lap so Junior could enjoy the view with her.

"She really misses him," Heather sighed, nudging her mother to get her to look.

"Yeah." Mom's expression clouded. She was still shocked by Bon's confession and not ready to forgive her for the years of secrecy.

"He actually reminded me a bit of Grandpa," Heather confessed, "but cheekier."

They fell into their separate memories.

"Mom?" Heather spoke abruptly, breaking her mother's reverie. "You said you knew Grandpa cheated on Bon? That when you met Dad you weren't talking to Grandpa, I mean Dale, or using his surname?"

That was part of the story that Mom had slid over as she told it, so focused on Dad that she hadn't dwelled on Dale.

Mom blanched.

"How did you find out that he had an affair?"

Mom gave a short bark of a laugh. "He told us. Can you believe? It was so Dad. I told you, he was straight down the line. He sat us all down and confessed. And I was so mad at him." She made a small noise. "Poor Dad. Thinking she was off cheating on him with Jimmy Keays. And I guess," she said in a small voice, "she kind of was."

Heather watched Bon, sitting on the terrace step, with Junior's box in her lap. How lonely she must have felt, all these years, unable to tell the people she loved the truth. Heather could see why Mom was angry, but Heather felt a pang for her grandmother. "I don't think she was cheating, so much as hurting and not able to be comforted."

Heather felt her mom staring at her, not unlike the way she was staring at Bon.

"I mean, can you imagine the grief she must have been feeling all those years? Imagine when you were born . . . doing it all alone, without Jimmy, but with him not gone, just . . . gone." Heather felt tears rising for her grandmother, and for her mother. And for Jimmy Keays, who had been hurting in ways even he didn't fully understand. "Imagine how isolated she must have felt from Dale . . . and from you."

Mom made a wordless noise, part rage and part pain, and went back to staring at the crumbled citadel at the foot of the steep terraces. Abruptly, she changed the topic. "I know you don't believe me, but I was trying to help with the whole Shawn thing."

Heather startled. "I know you don't believe me, but I don't need help."

"You'd be the first of us," Mom said ruefully. "The thing is, Heaths, you've got a chance at something there. Something good."

"I know." Heather thought of Owen, who she'd half hoped to see poking around these terraces. But he was already ahead on the trail, adding to his encyclopedia of knowledge as he went.

"Not him." Mom gave her the side-eye, following her thoughts without needing to be told. "You've known him for all five minutes, and sure, he's good looking and charming and . . ." Mom threw her hands up. "But he's not the kind of man who stays. He's the kind who'll leave you, over and over again, off on his adventures, without you. Just like your dad."

But Owen wasn't Dad. And Heather wasn't going to spend this precious lifetime atoning for her mother's mistakes.

"You said you didn't regret Dad," she reminded her mother. "That you'd do it all again."

"I feel panic at the thought of doing it again, but not doing it over again makes me feel like dying," Mom confessed. "But I want to regret it. I just don't. I know how messed up I am, Heather." Mom was flushing pink. "You can stand there, all superior, but you're twenty-hardly-anything years old! It's easy to judge when you haven't made all the mistakes."

"You judged Dale, didn't you? Before you'd made all the mistakes."

"Yeah, I judged Dale. Dad. I was a snotty little teen who thought she knew better. And then I acted out all my worst fears, all my life. I know about Freud, and about emotional scripts, and narcissism and abandonment and goddamn sex addiction. I've studied it. I've lived it. And now I find out I wasn't even acting out the right scripts . . ." For once Mom wasn't bursting into ugly sobs. She was just staring down at the citadel, her hands shoved deep into the pockets of her down vest. "Because my dad . . . Jimmy . . . never left me."

"Yeah, well," Heather said tightly, "I'm acting out my own stupid scripts, and you don't get to try and rewrite them now. You wrote them the first time round; this time it's my turn. Shawn is a needy, self-focused, manipulative dude who is using me to fill some hole. And I don't want to be a hole-stopper."

Mom snorted. And then the snort became a giggle. "Hole-stopper would be a good name for a band."

"A Courtney Love/Hole cover act," Heather couldn't resist adding.

Mom laughed.

Heather wasn't quite ready to laugh yet. "I'm sorry Dad was such a dick. Is such a dick."

Mom groaned. "Don't be. You're not responsible for him. And I love him. It's insane. But I do. However screwed up it is, it feels real. I love the way he made me feel."

"Not when you were sobbing on the stairs, you didn't."

"No, but when he came back . . ." Mom's voice cracked. "Because he always came back. In the end, he always chose me."

"Unlike Jimmy Keays," Heather said softly. "Or so you thought."

"I know, I'm such a cliché," Mom sighed.

"I don't think you're a cliché. I just think you're really angry, and you've been really angry for a very long time."

Mom nodded.

"I guess maybe I am too," Heather confessed.

Mom nodded. "You have every right to be," she sighed.

They stared at the ruins of Llaqtapata, where people had once lived and died.

"I just wanted to be important to someone," Mom said. "To be needed, you know? So needed that I wouldn't be forgotten." She pulled a face.

Heather could have pushed her off the mountain. "You are needed. By me. And by Chris. We need you. You're the only mom we have. You're not just important, you're essential."

Mom blinked, shocked. Her eyes grew shiny. She made a small helpless noise.

Heather didn't look away.

Mom roughly rubbed at her tears and nodded, taking the criticism on the chin for once. "Okay," she said softly. "Okay."

"I need you, Mom."

Mom met her gaze, and the naked gratitude in her blue eyes made Heather want to cry.

"I'm sorry," Mom whispered.

"For what?"

"For all of it. For not . . . for always . . ." Mom shrugged. "I love you."

"I know. But you don't know how much it hurts when you forget me. It's like Dad is your only source of love. But doesn't the fact I love you matter? Why can't it be enough? Or at least be important enough to . . . I don't know . . ." Heather shrugged, not sure what she was trying to say. "To know how worthy you are. You're not replaceable to me. Even if sometimes I wish you were."

"Funny." Mom gave her a gentle elbow bump, but she was listening.

They stared at each other, and Heather could see her words sinking in.

"I thought we were here to climb a mountain, not to go to psychotherapy," Mom said mildly.

"Yeah, well, that's what comes of traveling with family," Heather sighed, as they turned their backs on the silent ruins and trudged back up the path.