I went through all this with the other officer. I pulled up at the airstrip just before noon that day and stood next to the vehicle, holding a sign with the man’s name wrote big. He came in on one of them Cessna Mustangs, you know like a lot of the high-rollers from out Flagstaff. Earl and I get a lot of those, wanting a ride up to the Indian casino or sometimes the safari park up off Route 260. This one was different, though; you could tell from his fine suit he had money, not our kind of money but you know, the real thing. Soon as he stepped off the plane, he was blinking at the sunlight, and panting from the altitude. From Back East, I’d have bet, not used to the high desert, no sir — an old coot, out of his element. Had New York all over him, from his haircut to his shoes. He was all pinkish and wrinkled, like something that’d just been born.
And no, I didn’t know him. My husband, Earl, had taken the call and ran the credit card. If he’d have recognized the name, he’d have told me. To us he was just another customer.
But sure, there was a whole lot I thought was strange about the guy. No luggage, not even a briefcase. And dressed up like for a wake or a court date. But you boys know better than most that Camp Verde draws all kinds of strange. And them hot springs, well, you talk about a circus, they attract the nut jobs like flies to feces, as Earl likes to say. My daughter up in Sedona, she’s always giving us grief about driving people out there, account of the road being so difficult — dangerous, even — and it being so isolated. But money’s money is what I say.
Anyway, after he climbed in the back seat, I told him my name. But he insisted on calling me ma’am the whole trip through, which was odd since he was so much older than me. It being midday, I asked him do you want to pick up some food first; it’s a long ride and nothing once you get there. He didn’t even have water, see. But he said no, let’s get this done, and so off we went.
Once we turned onto the Forest Service Road, we had to slow down, of course, even with the Cherokee’s high clearance, the surface being just boulders and potholes. Most of the city folks I drive out there get antsy around that point, and after twenty miles of it, they’re just trembling. But not this one: even bouncing around the cab like it were a mechanical bull, he just sat there, his hands folded on his lap prayerful-like.
Here’s another strange thing: he just stared straight ahead, as if he was in a doctor’s office waiting his turn for bad news. I’m no tree-hugger but everyone knows that area’s some of the prettiest country around. But I don’t think he saw a thing. Not a glance for the purple mesas or that long bank of prickly pear out along Hackberry Canyon all blooming blood-red. He had this far-away gaze that made him seem even older than he was.
Anyway, I started up giving him some of the history of the hot springs: about the fancy-shmancy resort that operated out there till it got burned down, how the concrete steps and platforms they’d put in so guests could sit in the springs were the only things left. Then about the power plant along the Verde River where I’d be dropping him off, the closest spot to the springs. None of this drew a peep out of him, even that old story people tell about Al Capone hiding out there way back when.
It was only when I mentioned the campground nearby that he got interested. I could tell by the way he tilted his head toward the rear-view mirror. “Who stays at the campground?” he asked.
I know some of what goes on up there because Earl keeps the police scanner on almost 24/7, which I don’t mind saying is an issue between us. So whenever it gets particularly crazy, Earl gives me the blow-by-blow whether I want it or not. I told this fella some of the basics: how most of the time it’s just the nudists and the hippies who live in the campground, and that they mostly get along. But, as you know, when the yahoos from Phoenix or god knows where else pull in with their pickups stacked high with six-packs, that’s when the problems start.
So by this time we’re about twelve miles or so in, and the driving gets especially tricky. You know that narrow section that hugs the mesa; if you’re not careful you can drop off maybe a hundred feet down into the wash. Those cars that do, they never come back up, and there’s a couple I can still see down there, the sage and cliff rose poking through the rusty fenders. Usually passengers start to feel their courage fail right there, with the vehicle lurching and the drop-off yawning beneath their elbow, but this guy, he hardly noticed it.
Right then comes this pickup, a bat out of hell around the bend, kicking up the dust and some lunatic standing up in the flatbed, beer in one hand and hat in the other, howling like a coyote. Like to give you a heart attack. See, that’s what I’m talking about, I said to my city slicker. Imagine a campground full of that nonsense.
He nodded a bit — just to be polite, I’m guessing — but right off he wants to get back to the subject. “What about the commune?” he asked.
I told him I’d never heard of no commune, but nothing about the hot springs would surprise me. There’s a whole lot of empty out there that attracts folks. Living off the grid, as Earl likes to say.
We were both quiet the rest of the way. When I got near the Verde River, I parked under the power station lines and pointed out the path to the campground. Funny, from the minute he stepped off the plane, he’d seemed all kinds of impatient to get there, but now he stared at the trailhead and he looked, I don’t know, terrified. Or sad. Or both. Finally he shook himself and hopped out.
He opened his wallet and, leaning across the seat, he handed me a pair of hundred-dollar bills. Damned near took my breath away. I thanked him and said sure you don’t want me to wait a while and drive you back to town. But he said no, that wouldn’t be necessary, and started off. He got as far as that big cottonwood where the path starts before I yelled at him to wait up, and I took my own lunch sack and a gallon of water from the trunk over to the trail and made him take them. Edging sideways down the path, he caught his suit coat on a branch of crucifix thorn but only for a moment. I watched him till he slipped out of view.
And that was it. All I can say is he was fine when he left me. Everyone’s saying he was a frail old man and how could this happen in this day and age and blah, blah, blah. I want you to write it down that I gave him that water and those sandwiches. I have to live in this town and you know how some people can be.
***
The sign at the bottom of the hill had once read “Nudity Prohibited,” the letters punched through the silvery metal, but some wisenheimer had magic-markered a “Not” in between the other words. Beyond the stunted trees the Verde River rippled softly a few feet away. The afternoon sun glanced off the pebbly shallows invitingly, and for a brief moment Richard thought of taking off his wingtips and cooling his toes. But he remembered that he really had no idea exactly where to find her and how long that might take, so he walked on toward the bright-hued tents and towels he spied through the undergrowth ahead.
The first three or four campsites seemed unoccupied, but further along he heard voices coming from behind a pair of SUVS. Remembering the taxi driver’s cautions, he cleared his throat loudly before edging alongside the vehicles, and though back home Richard had always been contemptuous of the modern custom of inserting question marks at the end of declarative sentences, he decided it might be well-advised, in a place like this, to put aside his fastidiousness.
“Hello? Excuse me?”
Sitting in a circle of lawn chairs around a small rock-lined campfire were four young men and a young woman. None were hippies or nudists, he judged: the men all well-groomed, almost military in appearance despite their threadbare shorts and T-shirts, and the woman in a halter top, all lacy like the blouses the tourists on 42nd Street seemed to favor these days. One of the men, lobster-faced from alcohol or sunburn or both, pulled a fat, sloppily rolled cigarette from his lips. “The fuck?” he coughed, hiding the joint hastily behind his back.
Decked out as he was in his Italian-made wool poplin suit, Richard understood how ridiculous he must look. “I’m sorry to bother you folks, but I’m…. I’m looking for a young woman.”
This brought a chorus of jeers and howls. One of the men stood up and tried to pull their female companion to her feet. “Amy, your three-o’clock is here!” She swatted wildly at him. “Sid, you’re such a douche.”
Pretending to be chastened, the man walked over and put his arm around Richard.
“Dude, you are a vision. Look at you, all done up for jury duty. Come sit with us.” He led Richard to an empty chair and, twisting a beer from a fresh six-pack, handed the can to him. He kept his hand on the visitor’s elbow.
“Wait. Before you sit down” — Sid pulled his cellphone from his pants pocket — “Amy, get one of me and the dude.” As he drew close, his odor, pungent and sweet, assaulted Richard, recalling to him the smoky scent he’d often picked up off of Isaaca all those years ago when his daughter would come home in the wee early hours after carousing with her friends from Horace Mann. His gaze now, as he stood next to Sid, must have been as severe as the one he’d tried to project throughout Isaaca’s teenage years, he felt sure.
He lowered the bag of sandwiches and jug of water onto the chair’s nylon webbing. Amy passed the cellphone around for the group’s appreciation, then walked it over to Richard, who held it at arm’s length, distastefully, like one might study a particularly distressing third-quarter sales report. His eyes, fatigued beyond measure, gazed back at him stonily, the grief unabated. He had headed to JFK directly from the funeral home, his driver tinting the limousine windows to the max to allow Richard slumber that he could have predicted would not come. Nor was there rest on the long flight to Phoenix and the connecting flight to this godforsaken place. Not to mention, for that matter, the last month and a half: his long vigil with Serena as she slogged through the cancer’s brutal, humiliating final siege.
Watching, Amy seemed to see some of this now, and she touched Richard’s shoulder gently. “Mister, take a load off, OK?” She cleared the sandwiches and water from the chair, and pressed him into it.
“So what can we do you for?” she asked, returning to her own seat. As she did, Sid belched, grimaced a perfunctory apology, and then wandered off into the salt cedar past Amy’s shoulders.
Richard took a deep breath and glanced doubtfully around the circle. Whatever it is, you just have to go through it, Serena would always say. Not around it. Not over it. Through it.
“So she’s twenty-six, tall — like her mother — same red hair too.” He caught his tone of voice, the one that always made Isaaca cringe, and stopped himself, feeling pathetic. This was one of the things that had driven their girl away: Richard’s impersonal manner, his way of talking about people like they were some prospectus for a risky stock fund. She’d said as much during that last lacerating confrontation as she waited by the front gazebo for her idiot boyfriend to come fetch her.
“Hold on.” He reached into his suit’s breast pocket and pulled out a photo, creased and sweaty from his journey, the one he’d taken from the desk in his study the morning of the service.
“This is her. I’m sorry, it’s an old picture, but you get the idea.” He held out the photo of Isaaca, Serena, and himself that her roommate had taken outside the dorm her freshman year at Stanford.
His hosts leaned forward to look more closely. Amy reached out to tilt the photo so as to see it better.
“So, she’s your daughter?”
Before Richard could answer, the guy to Amy’s right said, “Hey, wait a minute! I think…” He paused, his mind searching, and then yelled toward the bushes behind them.
“Siddhartha! Get over here!”
Sid edged past the bushes, zipping up his fly just as he came back into view.
“What up?”
“Didn’t you see some Hare Krishna chick up at the springs, red hair, long robe?”
Sid picked up his beer. “Hell yeah. Long red hair, tits out to here. Tell you, I would so hit that.”
From her seat Amy punched him in the thigh. “Don’t be fucking rude!”
One of them took the photo from Richard and held it up. “Look like this?”
Sid squinted toward the photo. “Could be. Sure, why not?” He took a long drink from his beer. “She was with this other guy. Both of them barefoot, the guy carrying this long pole all curved at the top. Looked like a Bible scene: Joseph and Mary or some shit.”
Richard stood up. He had never been known to suffer fools, but that reputation, so widely held in the boardroom, was laughably wide of the mark: in truth, he’d suffered them all his life. He’d had to. But these here, thankfully, he could now leave.
“And the hot springs… could you direct me to them, please?”
The campers looked at each other, reluctant or unable to offer him directions. At last Amy reached under her seat for her wide-brimmed hat and stood up.
“It’s a bit of a hike. I’ll come with you.”
Richard tried to persuade her not to bother, but she waved him off. “It’s okay. I need a break from these bozos, anyway.”
They walked in silence back out past the “Nudity Not Prohibited” sign till they reached the river and followed a sandy path at its edge past a mix of reeds and cattails. The late-day sun was glaring, and he tried to walk in what little shade lingered along the Verde’s east bank.
“Watch for rattlers,” Amy cautioned.
But his eyes were instead alert for Isaaca. Her riotous red hair, he knew, would be a beacon amidst the dull browns and greens of the mud-colored river and its tawny corridor. But when he did find her, what then? How could Serena think he could possibly do this?
He felt his pace slow. He was sweating like a boilerman, and felt weak and, oddly, chilled despite the heat. He should have eaten something on the Cessna, he knew, something to go with the coffee, and he realized now that he’d left behind at the campsite the water and food the taxi driver had pressed upon him. He cursed his foolish haste and asked Amy to pause a moment while he knelt awkwardly at the river’s edge and cupped handfuls of the frigid water over his head and face.
Walking again, he resumed his lookout for Isaaca. Why here? What had led his daughter and her crackpot cultists to this bleak desert? The investigator he’d hired had traced her from Taos to Seattle to, let’s see, where else? Richard had lost track. For some reason, this hellhole had proved particularly attractive to her current tribe. The investigator said she’d been working at the Indian casino outside Camp Verde until a few months ago. As he walked, Richard thought ruefully how much he would have preferred having this encounter in some air-conditioned blackjack hall instead of this backwater cauldron. But no, she’d quit her job there, so here he was.
After a half-hour’s walk, Amy pulled a narrow branch from the riverbed and turned back toward him.
“So, you’re almost there. You have to cross here, but you’ll be alright: it’s shallow and the current’s not too strong. You’ll get your fancy threads wet, but too bad.’’
She handed the stick to him. “Take this for balance. On the far side, look for a path to the left, and from there it’s a hundred feet or so. Okay?”
“Yes. Thank you.”
“Good luck, I guess.” When Richard turned toward the river, she stopped him, taking off her hat and putting it on his head. Again, she waved off his objections.
“You’re already three shades redder than when we left. So, go on now.”
The river was like the ice plunge at his club down in Tribeca, but he was grateful at least that the water didn’t reach his groin. When he reached the other side, he looked back, but Amy was already picking her way back toward the campground.
He walked on, scouring the underbrush ahead of him, and soon spied what must be the path Amy had mentioned. At first it led steeply uphill, and he had to scramble, delicately grabbing the thorny bushes to pull himself forward and pausing every few feet to regain his breath. Finally the incline eased. He heard voices ahead.
Crouching over a cooler at the edge of a concrete platform was a naked man, muscular and hairy to an extreme: thick black brows, beard, hair climbing mosslike down his back, hair seemingly everywhere, almost like a form of attire itself — except, oddly, on his head, which glistened like polished stoneware. Hearing Richard’s steps, he turned and stood, lifting to his lips an oversized martini glass filled with a frosty amber nectar and watching the approaching visitor quizzically. To Richard’s left, the Verde River flowed smoothly. On the far bank, he could make out the faint trail he’d followed with Amy.
The path before him met the platform at an awkward height and Richard paused, unsure how to scramble up. The nudist bent forward, his genitals at Richard’s eye level, and held out his hand.
“Allow me.”
He effortlessly hauled Richard up, then walked off to join two other men who sat in a steam-shrouded pool set into the concrete. Identical beverages rested at the pool’s edge, water beads glistening from the rims. They all eyed their visitor coolly.
“Nice suit,’’ one of them said.
“But the hat,” said another. “I don’t know, sweetie. Not so much.” They laughed and clinked their glasses together.
Behind them was what looked like a hut lined with stones the size of bocce balls, each colorfully painted. Other voices came from within, and Richard could see through a narrow door frame that the walls inside were ornate with graffiti.
A row of thigh-high stone columns ran along the edge of the concrete, like bar stools at some all-inclusive resort, and he lowered himself onto one. Earlier he’d loosened his tie, but now he removed it altogether and stretched his damp collar away from his neck.
He could not seem to catch his breath, and his head throbbed painfully.
“Have you seen… a young lady with… long red hair… maybe wearing a robe?” He folded his tie carefully and tucked it in his lapel pocket. “Anyone… please?”
The three men looked at each other and shrugged. “Can’t help you, dearie,” one said. His friends, however, whispered to each other, their eyes on the panting old geezer. Richard could tell they would figure it out eventually. He was used to those looks of dawning recognition, especially after the hearings back in January.
From inside the rock-lined hut came the sound of water stirring and then a woman’s voice, disembodied but clear.
“No, she were here.” The voice seemed to come from within a deep well. “Not too long ago, either. We seen her head off, let’s see, maybe an hour ago, would you say, Hank?”
Whatever Hank said in response was indistinct.
Richard, still breathing heavily, eyed the three nudists in the open pool dourly as he addressed the hidden voice. “Could you say… which way she went, please?”
“Sure. Right back of us here there’s another trail. Pretty faint, and I couldn’t say where it leads, but that’s where I’d look. Ain’t come back, either.”
“Thank you.”
Richard stood again. The men in the pool observed his unsteadiness. “Mister, you’re not looking too good there.”
Behind the platform he found a faint path leading away from the river. It apparently headed west, he decided, because the sun, even lower in the sky now, was directly ahead of him, and he held out his hand to ward off its glare. His pants, still wet from crossing the river, binded his thighs with each step.
Was he close now? He hoped so. What was that Bible verse: “The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.” Well, he felt his weakness with every step in this furnace, and his spirit… That had been failing for years, Serena, you knew that, and still you wrestled this promise from me. You could accept so much — the long, slow decline, all the indignities of a world shrinking to the size of a small room, then just a bed — but there was one thing you could not accept, and now that falls to me.
Isaaca. Child of our old age, mine especially. We had long since given up hope when at last you came to us, squirming fiercely in the doctor’s hands like some captured animal. Of course we named you for that Old Testament miracle, feeling ourselves a modern-day Abraham and Sarah. The world saw you as a trophy child, born of a trophy wife, but not us: we honored you, cherished you, protected you from that world — at least we told ourselves so. You were a gift. Even I saw that, though I know I gave you good reason to doubt it. I don’t know how. I don’t know why.
Was he even following a path now? he wondered. The terrain in each direction looked barren, harsh. Ahead of him rose another incline, a hill steep enough to block the sun’s angry light for a moment, and he stumbled forward a few steps before he needed to lean on his thighs for support. His mouth felt starchy and thick but he kept in his head his daughter’s glorious, fiery hair. Two paces more, and the sun flared fiercely again, and this time he fell on his side into the spiky paddles of a prickly pear cactus.
His head still throbbed painfully but it was better not to try to stand just yet and face that pitiless light. He would stay where he lay, just to catch his breath. In a few minutes, he’d be able to continue.
Near his head a yellow-breasted bird seemed to materialize amid stunted brambles. Too heavy for its perch, the bird crept with a ragged fluttering toward the inner, stronger branch. Watching it, Richard recalled a long-ago nature walk where he and Isaaca, just a child then, had found a small starling, its wing apparently injured. Predictably, the girl wanted to take the bird home and nurse it back to health but Richard had forbidden this: “Wild needs wild.” It was a foolish truth never meant for children, he knew even then. Her eyes, injured, unaccepting, had told him as much as he tugged her down the trail. Was that the first time I disappointed you, daughter? Where did you go then? Where are you now?
After a minute he closed his eyes — for just a second, he told himself.
***
Parvati feels her thighs melt into the Kurmasana pose, the last lingering tightness falling away as her chest lowers full against the mat. This is all we do, Swami teaches: let the body return to earth. Our whole practice is the acceptance of gravity. Gravity and the primacy of breath.
The westering sun warms every part of her, the heat still rising from the hardpan. But the desert quickly moves from kiln to cooler, and she knows the temperatures will plummet soon. The smell of corn fritters sizzling on flat stones over at the Settlement reminds her that she must check the progress of the novice’s meal prep. She pulls herself erect into lotus and with each breath lets the world back in, thought by thought, care by care.
The first of these to return is, of course, Lakshmi. She tries to imagine her friend’s thoughts as she renounced their life together, just two days ago. Why had her closest friend in the Family — no, be honest, in the world — left their ranks? What had it been like to leave so abruptly, having kept them all in the dark about her increasing… what, exactly? This morning Swami spoke dismissively of Lakshmi’s “weakness,” but Parvati, in the quiet of her heart, cannot bring herself to view Lakshmi’s act so harshly. She tries to picture her friend hitching a ride from one of the drunken campers, tries to imagine her feelings as the Verde retreated in the rear-view mirror.
Parvati knows from experience what it is to leave home: excruciating and exhilarating at the same time. And the Settlement has been home now for nearly six months. Sedona may have been dizzyingly beautiful, but Swami was right: it had become a sullied gem, overrun with tourists and avarice. Relocating here, thirty miles to the south, was an inspired choice. This still-wild desert hums with spiritual energy, and the small plot the Family leases from the Forest Service has made a perfect home for their steadily expanding flock.
There is a footfall off to her left and Parvati opens her eyes to see Alana.
“Blessings, Mother.” Parvati is instantly alert to a note of panic in the girl’s voice. “I’m sorry to interrupt, but there’s been a… I guess an accident. On the approach.”
Tucking her yoga mat under her arm, Parvati takes Alana’s hand and walks quickly back toward the Settlement. “Tell me.”
“Spencer was taking his cousin back to the campground and they found someone collapsed on the path. A man, Spencer said, in very bad shape.”
“Exactly where on the approach?”
“Just before the turn.” To avoid prying outsiders, Swami had camouflaged the route to the Settlement, ordering several stones to be strategically placed so that Family members could diverge from the main trail without leaving footprints.
They pass the solar water stills and enter the circle of cabin tents, all in various shades of brown to aid concealment from any outsiders who might wander far from the springs.
“Okay, I need blankets and water — two gallons. Is there chapati?”
“Yes, Mother.”
“That too, then. And where is Spencer now?”
“He’s getting the first-aid pack.”
“Bring him to me. Quickly, Alana!” She watches the girl run off, then calls sharply: “And flashlights!”
Two minutes later, she strikes out with Spencer.
“So what happened?” Parvati notes her own imperious tone, turns it over in her mind as she regulates her breath to match her quickened pace.
“Weird thing. We found this old guy, all dressed up — in a three-piece suit, if you can believe it — sprawled on the trail. Like a time traveler, you know, plunked down from some other world. You remember those two-minute mystery books you get when you’re a kid? It felt like that.’’
Parvati allows herself a faint smile. Before joining the Family, Spencer had spent months living on the streets of Seattle scrounging dope and sex, and yet he still had the well-scrubbed naiveté of a Trekkie. He’d been a favorite of Lakshmi’s.
“Anyway, his breath is real faint and he’s got a cut above his eye. My cousin’s got a water bottle, and she stayed there, trying to get him to drink, but he’s barely conscious.”
None of this makes any sense to Parvati, but the part about the three-piece suit gnaws at her. It’s been years since she’s been anyplace where such formalities are observed. Even at the casino, where she’d led yoga sessions for the bored wives of degenerate gamblers, even there what passed for wealthy wore their hair down. God, she’d despised that snake pit more than any place she’d been since leaving home, the stink of money there almost tangible. Still, the startup costs for the Settlement were formidable for a bunch of hobos like themselves, and Swami was right in insisting everyone do their part. But then came that morning last January, when every TV screen in the casino seemed to be tuned to CNN, spewing that smug face, that bullying voice back into her life. She remembers the punch in the gut, her stomach tilting, sickened.
And then, right there in the middle of the trail, she feels it again. Immediately she knows.
Parvati stops suddenly and Spencer, struggling to keep up, collides with her, nearly dropping the water jugs. Thank God he can’t see my face, she thinks, because she knows it has just collapsed. She can feel panic radiating in a flush of blood to her temples. She needs to run, to flee back to the Settlement, but instead she bolts forward, fighting a thickness deep in her throat.
As she whips past the chaparral, thoughts fire through her skull in rapid succession with the frenzied energy of a slots parlor. If it is indeed him, why now, after so many years? What can that mean? It can’t be that he has changed, repented. His face on the TV screen that day at the casino was as smug, as superior, as lost to her as ever.
She glances behind her to see the boy lagging, burdened as he is with the water, the blankets, the first aid. “Quickly, Spencer,” she yells.
She reaches the turn, vaults over the crucifix thorn, and sees the pile of crumpled, soiled formal wear. Spencer’s cousin cradles her father’s pink head in her lap.
Parvati kneels down and touches Richard’s forehead with one hand and checks his neck for a pulse with the other. It’s there, strong but too rapid, she thinks. Without looking at Spencer’s cousin, she says, “Has he spoken to you?”
“No. Hasn’t opened his eyes, even.” The girl keeps her own eyes on Richard’s face. “I tried giving him water but I was afraid he might choke on it.”
“Okay, I need that, please.” Parvati points to the bandanna that Spencer’s cousin is wearing. She folds it and drenches it with water from the girl’s bottle, then lays it across her father’s forehead. “Now keep blowing across it, gentle, every five seconds or so.”
Spencer finally arrives, panting heavily. He drops his gear, and Parvati turns to him.
“Help me get these wet pants off him. It’s going to get cold real quick and he’ll need to be under the blankets.”
They wrestle the clinging poplin material off Richard’s hips, then from his legs. Prickly pear quills dot the pin-striped cloth. Spencer rolls the man to one side while Parvati tucks a blanket under him.
“The two of you: Get to the power station ASAP, and have them call Camp Verde for a rescue. A high-clearance vehicle, stretcher, four strong men. Wait there, so you can guide them back. Tell them heat stroke, heart attack maybe….”
She takes a wallet from Richard’s trousers and passes the New York driver’s license to Spencer. “Make sure they know who he is, okay?” She watches them sprint off toward the river.
Parvati pours a fresh stream of water across the bandanna on Richard’s head. A few drops trickle down onto his lips, and wetting her fingers, she gently rubs more there, the parched surface revealing his severe dehydration. After a few minutes, she feels the desert slide into evening, and she layers the remaining blankets on top of Richard, covering him from toe to chin, as if tucking in a child for bed.
It will be hours — at least three — before the EMTs come, she guesses, so she folds herself into lotus to wait, her eyes on her father’s face. Even unconscious, his aspect to her is reptilian. Who knew such predators were even able to close their eyes? she wonders ruefully. She can feel the poison he inspires reasserting itself, even after her years of self-work. No, you won’t do that to me again, she thinks. I’m not you. To prove it to herself, she takes his hand and kneads it gently, forcing herself to watch her own ministrations.
She feels she cannot remember a time when she did not despise him, but she knows that is only another of the illusions Swami warns against. There were pictures on the mantel that her mother always made much of — “You two, Isaaca, always cats and dogs, but when you were little….” — and then Serena would be off on some sentimental journey about the father-daughter bond and “Your father this, your father that.’’
Yes, well, maybe before the greed took over, before the asset-backed securities and the credit default swaps and the other cons his kind worked, before the lobbyists, the month-long trips to Geneva, the piece of ass he kept up on the sixth floor of the Dakota, the patronizing lectures in front of her friends about the professionally indigent and the 47%, before the 101 other steps her father took away from them during that long, chaotic wind tunnel of her adolescence.
She works her thumb pads slowly into Richard’s palms, then on his inner wrists the way Lakshmi showed her. When she glances at her father, she sees he is staring back at her — at her hands, to be exact.
“Its wing is hurt,’’ he says, his voice faint, gasping. “Did you find it here?… maybe fallen from that nest up there… just a baby.”
Is he hallucinating? Parvati places his hand on his chest and tries again with the water on his lips. He doesn’t seem to notice her. What is he looking at?
She feels his forehead. It’s cold.
“Why did you come here, Richard?”
His eyes are moving, unfocused but directed somewhere off behind her.
“This is my life. Go fuck up your own life.” Still, no response, and she jostles him roughly. “Richard!”
Her tone draws him back, and he shakes his head, smiling weakly. “Her idea…. What are you going to do, right?” He gives a bare gesture of a shrug.
“What are you saying?” In her stomach she feels a slight stab of panic, and she shakes him again. “Are you talking about Mom?”
For the first time, he looks her in the eyes, as if afraid of her. Just as quickly, he looks away.
“What about her?” She pulls his head back toward her. “Richard!”
Her father moves his hand, tugs at the blanket covering his chest, frustrated. “In here.”
Parvati feels his chest and detects a muffled crinkling. She pulls open his suit coat and takes from it an envelope, with her birth name on it written in her mother’s hand. She tears it open, reads frenziedly in the failing twilight. Even before she turns the first page, a moan, almost a cough, spills from her, then a retching, then a full-blown wail, and another, and another. She can’t read anymore, her body seizing up and shuddering as the pages fall from her hand and her head pitches forward onto her father’s stomach.
A half hour later she has grown quiet, and opening her eyes, she sees to the east the first of the evening’s stars. Resting on the back of her head is what she knows must be her father’s hand. She grabs it with her own, but it is cold, as she knew it would be.
She turns toward him and, to make sure, she touches her hand to the side of his neck. His eyes are still wide open, looking eastward toward the same star she’d just marked. She closes them and lays his hand back on his chest as gently as her own trembling hand can manage.
I have no tears for you, Parvati thinks. All my grief is for her. She feels the injustice of this: that her father in death can still work his thievery, stealing from her the natural mourning any child owes a father. Her mother’s plea that she and Richard be reconciled — scribbled on her deathbed upon the lavender-scented pages now caught on the surrounding sagebrush, wavering there in the night breeze like prayer flags — strikes her as a cruel joke. All the meditation, all the spiritual practice of the past four years of her life with the Family, have prepared her not a whit for the awful, brutal fact of her sudden orphaning.
The last cottony patches of orange leave the western sky. All she can think to do is fold her legs into lotus and cup her hands into mudra position. She wants to empty her mind of this pain, but instead she remembers a scene from her childhood: Her mother has taken Richard and Isaaca to visit the house of a Jewish friend whose father has just died. “It’s a mitzvah, a good deed, to visit a family sitting shiva,” Serena had said, herding them into the car. Odd, that word shiva, identical to the Hindu deity who was husband to her own adopted namesake. She feels a convergence of the facts of her existence. Lakshmi, couldn’t you have stayed just long enough to sit this shiva with me? Glancing at the dark form of her father’s body, she sighs and rests her hand on his shoulder.
Parvati sits that way for hours, interrupting her vigil only to pull the last blanket tight around her as the night grows colder. When the EMTs’ jogging feet and darting flashlights finally disturb the stillness, she turns on one of the headlamps Spencer left behind, to honor the mitzvah of their night journey.
Image: photo by Melody Zimmerman on Unsplash, licensed under CC 2.0.
- A Desert Passage - July 23, 2024