I got used to the goodbyes.
I don’t like them, but I got used to them.
And anyway, there’s almost always a chance that goodbye leads to another hello.
And I live for the hellos.
THE CURE, PART 2
Birthday #18
It always comes back to the cure.
Up until I was nine, I didn’t think much about who I was. Or, more accurately, what I was. And so I wasn’t thinking about what I wasn’t, either.
When I was nine, I heard the word ‘cure’ for the first time. Well, not the very first time. Obviously, I had heard the word ‘cure’ somewhere else. A school workbook, maybe. Chek insisted that I learn to read the very first month he brought me home. I didn’t go to school like other kids, but I always had two or three school books in my backpack at any given time. I’m sure the word ‘cure’ was in one of those workbooks. ‘Circle all the words that rhyme with ‘sure,’’ or something like that.
But it wasn’t until Chek took me to the doctor that I really had a reason to pay attention to the word ‘cure.’ There was just so much going on back then. The Company was bad. As in, everywhere. And we were still part of it. Chek and me, we worked for them. This was after Santa Barbara but before Kansas. I wouldn’t say I was dwelling on myself or having any kind of existential crisis, but I was beginning to notice that things about me weren’t quite right.
I have always had opinions of people. Random people on the street like kids waiting in line for a bus outside a school, men on their way to work, housewives pushing strollers on their way to get coffee. Mostly I felt sorry for them in their predefined lives. The way they had to follow a schedule and were forced to take part in ordinary affairs.
Chek and I were extraordinary in every way. I mean, me for sure. My quiet, introspective nature, that’s what Chek called it. He was the same way. He didn’t talk much. If we were on a job, we could go a whole day without saying a single word to each other. He could point, or shake his head, or sigh and I would know what he was saying. It’s like being psychic, except it’s nothing like being psychic because we were just reading each other’s unspoken words. And there’s nothing magic about that.
Anyway, the first time I heard of the cure I was in the doctor’s office getting a psych eval. But it didn’t become important until I heard Johnny Boston and his girlfriend, Megan, talk about it many years later. She was the one who was making the cure and this was to save kids, not grown-ups.
“Chek,” I said. “What does she mean?”
Chek put up his hand, palm facing me. A gesture he used a lot. It didn’t mean stop, either. It meant… Careful. Be careful, Wendy. Take your time, Wendy. See before you act. And then he said, “It’s not about you. That has nothing to do with you.”
Obviously, things were tense at the time. This was right before we took those Untouchables down for good and Megan, Johnny, Chek and me—we were all part of the plan. So I couldn’t ask any more questions.
And then Chek died and all the answers to all the questions went with him.
Today is my eighteenth birthday and Chek has been dead for three hundred and eighty-two days.
I stop my truck at the end of the lane.
Three hundred and eighty-two days.
How am I still functioning?
How do I get up every day?
How do I bathe, and eat, and exist?
How am I still alive?
I get out of the truck, keys in hand, and walk over to the mailbox.
Don’t do it, Wendy. Get back in the truck, drive away, and never come back.
But I did that already. Twice, actually. The first time was the day after birthday #17 with Nick. I had this urge to hurt someone, and he was the only one there, so I left before I did something stupid. Then I came back for Christmas. Nick wasn’t there that time. He didn’t know about Christmas, so I was alone. I stayed about… four days? When I first arrived, I really thought I would stay forever. This was it. The open road was over now. I was coming home. I would be normal.
It had potential, that day. And it started out OK. But as per usual, nothing in my world lasts very long. So I got in my truck, drove away, and didn’t come back until now.
I’m not driving away today. I’ve been living on the road for eight months and I’m tired of it. When Nick and I did it together, it was always so fun. But alone?
No.
Living on the road alone is just lonely.