The Map of Longing

Chapter 34

An End and a Beginning

They let me out of the hospital at the end of summer, once they were certain they wouldn’t need to operate on my leg again.

I lost my license and had to pay a fine and do community service.

Honestly, I didn’t think I got off too bad, given what I’d done.

The other part was more complicated. My parents and their lawyers decided it was best to settle with Josh out of court to avoid a scandal.

I saw him at the hearing. He was wearing a blue shirt buttoned up to the top, and his hair was cut short.

He wouldn’t look me in the eyes. I wanted to ask him if we were ever really friends or if it had always been a competition for him.

But I didn’t bother. There was no point.

Not anymore. We would be taking different roads from then on out.

I started going to outpatient rehab, and when it was over and night fell, I’d take the bus to the hospital to see Lucy.

After going home for a few weeks, she’d decided, with her family’s encouragement, to try the new treatment.

We always met at the same time, and her mother would leave her alone just before I arrived, going home for a shower or grabbing dinner in the cafeteria.

We would play our games by the coffee machine or listen to music on her phone, sharing a set of earbuds.

She never officially introduced me to anyone, but the nurses seemed to want to know more about our odd friendship, and I sometimes saw Mrs. Peterson walking down the hall.

It was as though she were keeping me to herself. I wondered why.

“I like nobody knowing what’s up with us, you know? Like I’ve never really had any privacy. I did tell my mother we were friends, but I asked her to leave me alone at this time of the day. Hanging out with you is like cutting class with the bad boy from school.”

We both smiled.

“Fine by me.”

“Great.”

“Great.”

We carried on with our game.

Lucy might have thought I kept going to the hospital out of pity, but the truth is that those calm moments of friendship were the best part of my day.

There were months when I hated waking up in my old room, and I’d stay in bed for hours, and Mom would come in and fluff my pillows and make me soup, like I deserved all that just for being her son, when all I’d done for years was disappoint her.

I hated feeling so useless, so empty, so paralyzed.

And I hated having Josh’s house so close, knowing we had spent so many hours there together.

Lucy and I talked a great deal, but she never said anything else about the Map of Longing, and I never thought about it again. I had no idea what she had in mind.

One morning, early, I heard the phone ring at home.

I stumbled downstairs and heard my mother’s voice turn to a sob. I caught her just as she was falling to the floor. All she could say was, “It’s Grandma… She’s gone.”

I didn’t need to hear anything more. And all I could think about was my grandmother’s last memory of me: the Will who she thought she knew, her favorite grandson, wrecking his car, losing his job, canceling his wedding, screwing everything up.

We flew to Canada for the funeral. It was a simple, private affair. When we got back a week later, there was a postcard in our mailbox.

It was from my grandmother.

She had sent it a few days before dying.

I looked at it for a long time. It was weird, getting a message from her when her body was still and her spirit was no longer in this world.

I was scared to read it because I would never feel that expectation again.

Anything could be there: a request, the key to human existence.

Finally I decided I needed to find out.

The image on the front was of a bear in the woods. Peaceful.

Remember when we used to play hide-and-seek in the cornfields? It began. How fun that was… My legs were still strong then, and I could run. I miss running. I miss the farm. I was happy there.

That was all. And that was everything.

I reread it many times, trying to find some hidden secret, but those words concealed nothing; they were sincere, just a memory of a special moment in our lives when we still lived in Ink Lake and I was still real.

When I returned to the hospital, Lucy wasn’t at our rendezvous point by the coffee machine. I thought maybe something had come up or she’d forgotten I was already back from Canada. I went back the next day, which was Halloween, and she still wasn’t there, so I went to the nurses’ station.

“Hi, I’m looking for Lucy Peterson.”

“Are you a family member?”

“No, but…”

“I’m sorry, I can’t help you then.”

She walked away, but another woman who had been watching smiled at me. “You’re the guy who plays games with her in the afternoons, right?”

I nodded.

“She’s had a rough couple of days, but if you’ll wait, I’ll tell her you’re here.”

“I appreciate it.”

She disappeared.

I walked up and down the hall until Lucy’s door opened and she came out. She was pale and had deep black rings under her eyes. I could tell she was tired.

“What happened?” I asked.

“I had a cold. Or something. Anything I get does me in.” She shrugged, and I followed her, holding on to her IV stand and walking her to our usual spot, where we settled down in our chairs. “How was the funeral?” she asked.

“Like any funeral, you know. Sad.”

“I hope mine’s not like that.”

“Lucy…”

We’d talked about death so many times, but it still made me uncomfortable.

Not because of the gravity of the subject, but because we looked at it so differently.

Lucy thought there was something nice about how my grandmother left us, in her sleep, it was beautiful—that was the word she used.

It took me a long time to grasp how you could use that word to talk about death.

I guess it’s all a matter of perspective.

“I’m serious, Will. It’s terrible being the cause of other people’s sadness.

Especially when you’re still alive. It may sound like a commonplace, but I’ll bet your grandmother wouldn’t have wanted anyone to cry at her funeral.

” She coughed and took a tissue from the pocket of her gown.

“I worry a lot about what will happen to my family if I die. What will my mother do? She’s spent half her life taking care of me.

Or Dad? Will he just throw himself into work and try to forget it all?

Grandpa I’ve at least been able to talk about all this with. But Greta…”

“What about her?”

“I just want to know she’ll be okay.”

I pulled up the hood of my sweatshirt. I was cold, even if the heat was on. I looked at the lights of the city. Autumn had come and dead leaves were all over and everything smelled of pumpkins.

“When I was little, I used to love Halloween,” she whispered. “The masks, the candy, the mystery, the decorations…”

“Did you usually dress up?”

“Yeah. I had a thing for witches.”

“I dressed up one time like a bloody ear of corn.”

“Shut up!” She laughed and then started coughing.

“I’m serious.” I smiled. “My mom sewed the costume. I could barely walk because the hole for my legs was so narrow. I must have been six or seven, I don’t remember. Now that I think about it… You and I could have run into each other that night.”

“It’s possible. Maybe we passed each other trick-or-treating. From five to eight, I was a trick-or-treat machine. That was the best. That, and the summer when I turned sixteen. I felt great then. So strong. I even went to prom.”

“Did you like it?”

“Yeah. They covered the whole gym with lights. A few weeks before, my dad brought home this catalog of dresses and said, Lucy, pick the one you like best. Don’t look at the price, either—it’s not a factor.

My sister said I had to go in red because she was obsessed with assigning everybody a color, and I found this burgundy one with lots of tulle that I loved.

Mom braided my hair and my friend Marge showed up at my house at seven on the dot.

We decided to go together instead of trying to find a date.

They took our photo on the steps and outside our front door. ”

“I’d like to see the pictures sometime,” I said.

“Sure. Did you go to your prom?”

“Yeah, but it was nothing to write home about.”

I went with Josh and the guys. We spiked the punch, I was prom king, Jenna was queen, and after midnight, we did it in the back seat of my car.

“When can you drive again?”

“It’ll be six more months.”

“Did you start your community service?”

“Next month.”

“And…?”

“And what?”

“What are you going to do after that?” Lucy looked at me in that straightforward way she had.

“No idea.”

“Go back to New York, maybe?”

“Yeah. But I don’t know. If I’m honest with you, the thought makes my stomach turn,” I said.

“That’s not a good sign.”

“You’re right, it’s not.” I sighed.

“So, then?”

“I don’t know, Lucy.”

“Are you thinking about it, though, or are you running away from thinking?”

“You know the answer. I get a headache when I try to face it all,” I confessed.

“Take an aspirin, then.”

“Very funny.”

“I’m serious.”

“Right…” I scratched my chin. “So a few days ago I got a postcard from my grandmother. It arrived after she died. It was so weird, reading something from her and knowing there was no point in responding. She was talking about the farm and Ink Lake and our lives there.”

“How sweet. That’s a gift.”

“I guess. And it made me think about where I come from, and how maybe I could find answers if I returned to my roots, to where everything started. Maybe some of the person I was before everything I changed is still there.”

“You want to go back to Ink Lake?” Lucy looked surprised.

“Yeah. That’s the plan anyway.”

“To do what?”

“I suppose I’ll just look for a job. Try to pull myself together. Start over from zero. Plus you’ll go back there when your treatment’s over. I realize you’re like the one true friend I’ve ever had, so…”

“Will.”

“Yeah?”

“I need to ask you for something, and you’re not going to like it.” She sucked in a breath and looked down at her hands, full of scars on withered skin. “I’d like you to stop coming to the hospital.”

I was confused. Stunned.

“Why?”

“I want you to remember me how I was months ago, not like this, dragging around an IV. The doctors say I’m not responding well to treatment, so… That’s where things stand.”

“You can’t ask me to do this.”

“I’m going home soon, I’ll enjoy my family, and I’ll wait for the next complication. I promise I’ll write you. But you coming here every day, it’s too much. I know you want to hide somewhere. But this isn’t the place.”

I wanted to change her mind. I wasn’t hiding, I told myself.

Maybe. But even if I was, what did she care?

We both enjoyed it, our moment of peace at the end of the day, our oasis in the middle of the city.

We were different, but we understood each other.

Lucy was the only person who would tell me things to my face, but she didn’t judge me.

Not harshly, anyway. My parents couldn’t; they’d chosen silence, a deafening silence that filled every space between us and made communication impossible.

For a minute, I said nothing, then I began, “If that’s what you want—”

“Thanks, Will.” She didn’t let me finish.

We played a last game of chess. I won. She let me, I’m sure of it. She smiled as I said checkmate and told me she was so tired, her brain wasn’t working. I know that was a lie.

It was late. We stood up and hugged. Her tiny body reminded me of a bird as I pulled her close. She didn’t look her age; if you saw her for the first time, you’d say she was sixteen, maybe, the same age she was when she went to prom in a red dress with her best friend on her arm.

“You promised to write,” I reminded her.

“Yeah.” I walked her to her door, and she looked at me and smiled one last time before opening it. “You’ve been one hell of a friend, Will. Thanks.”

Lucy died thirteen months later. I never saw her again.

I spent Christmas in Canada with my family.

Even though Grandma wasn’t there, it was comforting.

The year that followed, I finished my rehab and community service and got my license back.

I decided to stick to the plan, the only plan I could really come up with, and go home to Ink Lake.

I guess I had the idea that I’d walk those forgotten streets and bump into myself there, that the Will I’d up and left behind would still be hanging around somewhere.

It didn’t happen. The emptiness was still with me, the black hole I didn’t know how to get out of. So I waited. And waited.

I rented a RV. I started working at Paul’s bar.

It was the very opposite of my old life in my Upper East Side apartment with my girlfriend and the parties for VIPs only and the office job on the twenty-second floor of a sleek glass skyscraper.

If I got rid of all my material possessions, I thought it would be easier to find what I was looking for in myself.

Without distractions. Blurry days turned to blurry months until time eventually stopped mattering and I just let it run its course.

I was isolated, I talked to my parents sometimes, I got a message or two from Lucy, but that was it.

I read a lot. I ate canned food. Paul was the person I interacted with most. From the beginning, there was a camaraderie there.

Whatever. Life can be pleasant and simple when you don’t think about the future, when you just focus on making it from one day to the next. And that’s what I did.

Until an ordinary night when I went to work.

I got in late, that was typical for me. What wasn’t was that someone was there asking for me.

Someone with a stare that could cut through your flesh and bones and reach right to your soul.

Someone wearing purple shoes. Someone with a box in her hands, and inside it was something that would bring our lives together, even if I didn’t know it yet. Someone different. Someone special.

Someone like you, Greta.