Chip
“Next stop, ladies and gentlemen, Bradley Falls.”
The bus lets him off at a tavern, and he steps inside where it’s dim and comforting, a cigarette machine in the vestibule, a room full of red tablecloths with candles in the center. He shows the waitress the brochure for Red Maple. “Any idea how far this is?”
“Couple miles or so down the road,” she says, wiping off the menus. She holds his stare for a second longer, and he smiles.
“Appreciate it.”
He picks up his duffel bag and starts to leave. “How about a beer before you go?” she calls after him.
He takes a breath, and feels the pain he gets in his chest when he inhales too deeply (sternal pain, Dr. Palmer calls it); he has gotten used to ignoring the fairly consistent ache in his arm and leg bones. He’s eighteen, three years away from drinking age. He turns around. “Sounds good to me.”
A while later, he walks and walks, the sun on him, the beer pleasant inside his body.
Did he pass for twenty-one, or didn’t she care?
She had pretty brown eyes, and she propped her elbows on the bar and talked to him the whole time and told him he should stop by again sometime.
“Yeah, I should,” he said, and casually dropped some bills on the bar like he was Clint Eastwood.
On his way out, he figured what the hell, and placed two quarters in the cigarette machine. He yanked the red knob for Camels and grabbed a pack of matches from the tin on top.
He is more out of breath than usual. He notices that lately. Notices the skin under his fingernails is so pale. Notices his tongue feels swollen sometimes. He wonders for the thousandth time if there is any chance this can just be fixed.
He remembers a music box at their grandparents’ house that Maggie loved as a kid.
She’d wind it up and it would play “Over the Rainbow.” One day it slipped from her hands and fell to the floor with a crash.
She picked it up and tried to wind it, but only one tinny note played.
She brought it to him with huge tears in her eyes.
Chip tried to fiddle with it for a minute, but when he couldn’t get it to play he just put it back on the shelf and didn’t tell Mimi or Gramps, shrugging to Maggie that she shouldn’t worry.
But all during the rest of their visit, she was quiet.
When their parents came to pick them up, chatting in the kitchen, he walked over to the corner shelf, curious, and picked it up again.
Maggie watched him with hope in her eyes.
He silently willed it to work, and when he wound it, it played the song perfectly, the notes simple and lovely.
Mimi stood in the doorway. “You two sure love that thing, don’t you? ” she said and blew them a kiss.
Maybe if they all left him alone for a bit, no one poking or prodding him, this thing could fix itself, and his music would once again tumble out.
He thinks of what Dr. Palmer told him, his solemn eyes brimming with sadness, a caring judge sentencing him, and he dismisses those hopes.
The soybean field to his left is lush and planted in orderly rows, and the sky is so vivid on this late-June day he feels like he’s floating in a pool.
He thinks of his family finding his note on the table, and his heart does that flutter the way it did each time it was his turn to present in debate class.
Eight or nine months ago, he thought he would go to Penn State. Lafayette if his mom had her way. Or, if a scholarship came through, University of Pennsylvania. He imagined taking the train and walking the neighborhoods of Philadelphia, spending hours at the library lost in a pile of books.
“You’re really on the precipice,” his baseball coach, Mr. Grakowski, said to him at the end of his junior year. “I envy you.” He whistled. “All that life ahead.”
And Chip had believed that too, with all his heart. He felt his future buzzing before him, a fish flopping on a line as he reeled it in.
Back then Chip thought life was a big buffet, and his college years and his twenties would take him into cities, onto planes of his choosing.
He’d finally get a good haircut, his sandy hair tamed for once, and he’d wear expensive dress shirts and silk ties for business, and spend weekends in rolled-up jeans and an old fisherman’s sweater, walking along the edge of the ocean.
Most importantly, he’d meet people. He’d have more friends than ever, and one day in one place, he’d meet the love of his life.
But his mom’s family was Italian, and they believed in malocchio, that someone could hurt you with the evil eye, intentionally or unintentionally.
Chip had always laughed off that idea, but maybe Mr. Grakowski had cursed him in a way; by advertising his blessings he’d summoned bad luck.
Of course that was ridiculous, and he used to roll his eyes when his mom lit candles or said the rosary to keep them protected, but what else could have happened?
When the acceptance letters started coming in that spring, he began to feel strange, his body failing him for the first time ever, not going as fast as he wanted it to, his mother saying he looked tired, his dad putting his big hand on his forehead and cocking his head to the side.
His throat hurt worse than it ever had; he didn’t want to get out of bed.
He walks and walks, past a house with a dog chained to a doghouse, past a white fence with a sign saying STRAWBERRIES FOR SALE.
He sees another house with a dad propping lumber against a tree, two boys jubilant and asking him about the treehouse they’ll soon have, and he grins as they wave to him.
He misses his parents and Maggie. But he knew what was next if he didn’t leave—more appointments and treatments, treatments that didn’t work.
He wasn’t dumb. He could hear what the doctors were and weren’t saying, especially Dr. Palmer, who seemed to encourage him to say he’d had enough.
They talked about making him comfortable, they talked about months, not years.
And Jesus, the side effects. Total hair loss, fatigue, diarrhea, headaches, nausea.
What on God’s green earth was the point of spending his last days so unwisely?
No damn way, he thought in late spring. Despite his hopes for a miracle, everything in him told him it was futile, and as he got ready for high school graduation, which he knew was important to his parents, he made a deal with himself that he would do something just for him.
Although setting out for Red Maple isn’t hitchhiking across the country or hopping a flight to Italy or Greece, it’s something, and he needs something.
A week before graduation, he had been downtown with his best friend, Vicky.
Her family had moved to Easton from New York City when she was in fourth grade, and in that part of Pennsylvania, it’s hard to be from somewhere else.
He remembers how no one would make eye contact with her when she stepped onto the bus her first day, and he couldn’t imagine how lonely that felt.
So he waved to her like he knew her and said he’d saved her a seat.
Every day after that he saw her look for him whenever she stepped on the bus, and the relief on her face when she spotted him!
He never wanted to miss the bus because he imagined the panic in Vicky’s eyes if he wasn’t there.
He usually sat in the aisle seat, feeling in some small way he was protecting her from some of the stares she’d get.
They used to open their metal lunchboxes, his a Bonanza and hers The Jetsons, and compare what they’d brought for the day.
“I’ll take your orange,” Vicky would say, as she handed him her box of raisins.
Once she had a giant snickerdoodle cookie that she carefully broke in half for them.
When kids in their class started to warm up to Vicky, laughing at her jokes and being impressed by her fashion sense, Chip could finally rest easy.
But they still sat together on the bus until he got his driver’s license in high school.
That day downtown they had cut class because it had been a goal of theirs to cut at least once before they graduated, and because their English teacher, Mrs. Lemon, never took attendance.
Vicky looked at him uncertainly after they finished splitting a chocolate milkshake at Soda Palace. “So you feeling okay?”
He didn’t meet her gaze. “Fit as a fiddle,” he said.
They paid the check and walked past Caruso’s Gifts and Lehigh Valley Daily News.
Then Chip surprised her by walking into a travel agency.
The woman at the desk was showing a couple a binder and telling them Puerto Rico was the best place for honeymoons.
Chip and Vicky stood in front of a giant rack of destination brochures, and Vicky grabbed one from the Poconos section.
“Ahhh, this place doesn’t have those heart-shaped tubs. Darn.”
“Let me see,” Chip said. The cover said The Red Maple Inn: Your Memories Await.
He unfolded it and saw a couple dressed in tennis outfits holding hands and walking the lush grounds.
Another couple was seated in the shallow end of a pool, sipping drinks with the sun behind them, and then there was a picture of a grand dining room.
As soon as he saw the brochure, he felt a spark, an idea present itself.
He remembered a guy on the baseball team who was a year or two older than he was and had worked at a resort one summer.
“Man,” the guy said. “What a time. Good food, fun girls, crazy parties.” He bit his lip.
“I’d go back in a second. Sure beats staying here and mowing lawns.
” The idea had stuck with Chip. He looked at the brochure again.
Yes, it was a vacation spot, but to him it felt like an escape.
He needed something. Just once, something.
He pictured himself there—card games with the other employees late at night, pockets full of tips from rich old people, standing in the back of an amphitheater in his uniform watching a string quartet or stand-up comic, waking up mornings and breathing in the cool mountain air.
He had never thought much about the Poconos before, but this brochure felt like a portal.
Vicky watched as he slipped it in his back pocket. “What a world,” he said as they walked outside.
He noticed dead flowers in a planter, an empty newspaper dispenser, a splintered bench by an overflowing trash can. The sky was bright with a few threads of clouds, but he couldn’t see the sun.
“Vic?” he said.
“Yeah.”
“I just…” His throat. That lump in his throat. He couldn’t swallow. Two ducks flew overhead, and a woman he recognized who worked at the bank walked by and smiled.
Vicky put her hand on his shoulder. “You’re not alone,” she said. “I’m always going to be here.”
He sat down on the bench, and she sat next to him. “You know I don’t pray, Chip, but I’m praying now,” she said. He looked at her, and could see how hard she was fighting not to cry.
He nodded, and he felt her leg against his, warm and certain. He could almost feel the brochure in his back pocket, and at least, at least, he had something to look forward to.
Now he can hear a few crows, and the sun warms the back of his head. After a while, there are just woods, and he keeps walking, feeling slightly uneasy that he’s missed a turn, but after a few more minutes, the big sign seems to pop out of nowhere: THE RED MAPLE INN AND COTTAGES.
On either side of the entrance are stone pillars topped with lanterns. His heart flutters again, and he thinks of his family and how worried they must be. He shudders and takes his first step on the driveway.
He will have to forget them for a while. He needs to not be the sick son and brother. Right at this second, he feels fine.