How Lucky: A Novel Page 14

  When I got back to Athens, I looked up Scottie’s obituary. It was the usual boilerplate obit that understands that it’s so difficult to capture a person’s soul in prose that it’s a mistake to even try. He was a member of some church. He enjoyed playing cards. He is survived by his mother and his grandfather, of Des Moines.

  At the bottom: Online condolences may be expressed at, etc. etc. I clicked on the link, and then the header that said “Obituaries.” I scrolled down past some elderly people and found Scottie. I clicked there too.

  There was a picture of Scottie, in that hat. Below his photo was a box that read “Share” with the logos of Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus and an envelope representing email. There was a red button that read “Send Flowers,” which sent the grieving to a national flower consortium, and a blue button that read “Share a Memory,” which, strangely, sent you right back to Facebook. Next to Scottie’s picture was the “Tribute Wall.” Here you could type your thoughts about Scottie for . . . someone.

  On this page there were four entries. One was from the American Cancer Fund, which said it was “sorry to hear of Scottie’s passing. We have received a memorial donation in his name from his former employer Aldi’s and our sincere condolences go out to his family.” One was from someone who clearly thought they were posting on Facebook, which simply said “Sad to hear about Scottie he was in my homeroom in junior high nice guy .” The other two were virtual flowers that anonymous web users had cross-posted to Scottie’s page from their own Facebook pages. One was called “Enchanted Cottage.” One was “Sweet Tenderness.” Each of them had GIFs of flowers waving left to right, slowly, mournfully, a mournful GIF, it was definitely a mournful GIF. The page is sponsored by the local grocery store, and there was a banner ad promoting a special on sliced ham.

  And that was it. When I closed the window, a pop-up ad asked me if was sure I wanted to leave. I X’d out of the windows and turned my computer off.

  Someday, maybe soon, I’ll have a Tribute Wall page of my own, full of pop-up ads and spam. That’ll be all that’s left of me. Scottie’s life was one fully lived, one lived for others more than himself, and his lasting monument is a grocery corporation making an empty gesture of charity, two dumbly blinking virtual flowers, and an idiot who doesn’t know how to use Facebook. This is probably all of our legacies. That’s what’s coming next.

  I need to get some sleep.

  35.

  Daniel—

  Thank you for your honesty about your name. That will make all this easier. I had a sense that Tom wasn’t your real name, Daniel. It didn’t sound right. That’s strange, isn’t it? We know nothing about each other, we’ve never met, and still, somehow, the name “Tom” sounded wrong. Huh. Anyway, it’s good to know the real you. Considering this thing that we now share, this thing that only you and I know, we should absolutely be honest with each other. If we cannot be honest with each other, there is no one we can be honest with. In a way, Daniel, you know me better than anyone ever has.

  Here’s the thing about girls: They watch all these movies, all the time, about how wonderful everything’s going to turn out, how it’s all a fairy tale where they just have to meet their perfect long-haired boyfriend who cares about them and listens to them. That love is the only thing that matters in the world, that everybody lives happily ever after. And then when they see some tall handsome guy they immediately just drop all of that and do whatever he tells them to do. They ignore all the terrible parts of his personality and excuse all the bad shit he does. Or they blame themselves for it. Or they just give up.

  They act like they want this beautiful life. But they don’t, not really.

  And it’s frustrating, because it’s just getting harder. Look around, Daniel: I feel like every girl I see on the street keeps looking at me like I’m going to try to rape her or something. It almost doesn’t matter if you’re a nice guy because now women think all guys are assholes. I’ve spent my whole life being sweet and nice and trying to make these girls realize how great they’d have it if they were with me, and it turns out now they’ve just decided that you go in the trash just because you’re a guy. If that’s how this was all going to turn out, maybe I should have just been a shitheel in the first place.

  Do you know how that feels? I bet that you do. You are nice. We are nice. And yet we are alone. There is something fundamentally wrong with that.

  This is what’s different about Ai-Chin, Daniel. You saw it. The way she looked walking down the street was so free of . . . anger. She wasn’t walking around with some chip on her shoulder, blaming guys for all her problems. She’s not upset with the world. She didn’t want to burn it all down. She just walked down the street living her life, open to the world, open to meeting someone nice, open to being loved. You see how it is out there, Tom. Girls aren’t like that anymore. But she was. I saw it. I saw it every day.

  She’s still a little bewildered by everything that’s happened over the last few days, and if I’m being honest, I can’t really blame her. It’s been a lot! And her English is pretty rough. It’s a wonder she even made it through vet class. Did you know she wants to be a vet? She’ll be such an incredible vet. We’re working on the English. She’s starting to get it a little more. It won’t be long until she understands what’s going on. I am slowly getting her to understand. She will soon understand. And she won’t be so scared then.

  It feels strange to be typing to you about this. But can I say again that it feels good to talk to you about it? This whole thing has happened very quickly. I’m glad you’re here to listen. It makes me feel a little less alone. Let us enjoy this fleeting time together.

  Best,

  Jonathan

  Jonathan’s fantasies are vivid and detailed, in a way that’s disorienting and a little bit overwhelming. But when you allow for the Ai-Chin delusion—and boy, that is awfully detailed for a delusion—there are . . . things I understand about him? I understand how hard it can be to be alone. I understand how feeling like you are a part of what you are seeing on the news every night can make you feel important and needed. I understand needing someone to talk to. And I understand needing someone who’s willing to listen.

  I shut off my computer. Later, orderly Charles, not the other one (Larry, Jimmy maybe?), pulls the curtains tighter while doing his nightly checking in, slightly disturbed that I’m still awake. “Storms comin’,” he says as he rolls me back over. I feel sad for Jonathan and where he is in his life. I am also grateful for him in a strange way. I sleep in fits and starts, deeply but abrupt. I see her wave in my dreams. I thought she was saying good morning. Maybe she was saying goodbye.

  Saturday

  36.

  There was a girl once.

  Don’t look so surprised. I’ve used a wheelchair most of my life, but I wasn’t always mute and drooly. I was a sixteen-year-old boy just like everybody else. I stared at boobs, I made out with my pillow, I started sweating when I thought about the college girls Mom worked with, I got boners. I didn’t really start deteriorating physically, to the point that someone had to physically place me into my chair, until I was about to graduate from Eastern Illinois, which was one of the reasons I wanted to move to Athens, where Travis lived, as urgently as I did. I could feel myself starting to get a little weaker, to have more difficulty impersonating a regular person, and I knew if I didn’t get out of there soon, I never would. If you’re lucky enough to have a window of independence with SMA, it’s a small one, and I wanted to take advantage of it before it was too late. Had I stayed, Mom would have seen me start to slow down, and she would have put her life aside to help me in the exact way I didn’t want her to. There would be no tennis or whatever that was in Jamaica for her if I had stayed. I had some strength left. That strength got me to Athens. I’d rather be weakening here than there.

  So. The girl. The girl’s name was Kim. She was from Sullivan, about a half hour drive northwest of Mattoon, another of those Central Illinois towns slowly dying, no indus
try, no jobs, no future, a downtown that once served as the social hub, with diners and drugstores and doctors and clothing shops, now boarded up and abandoned, left in the dust by Walmart and freeways and all the factory jobs being done by robots.

  Kim was a counselor at Camp New Hope, which is a summer camp for the developmentally disabled in Neoga. Every summer, kids from all across Central Illinois, kids with Down syndrome, mostly, come to Camp New Hope to have an experience that’s specifically catered to them and their caregivers. There’s a playground, a mini golf course, a cute little train track that circles the place, and, most important, little cabins for the kids to stay and sleep in that are theirs and theirs alone. Kids with Down syndrome spend their entire lives having someone holding their hand to do anything, and the best thing about Camp New Hope is that it gives them a place that is theirs. It is a place just for them.

  When you grow up disabled like me, you end up spending a lot of time with kids with Down syndrome. The public schools in Illinois have limited funding, and the teachers are overworked as is. As much as my mom wanted me to have a normal kid’s life, there is no time or energy to make sure a kid in a wheelchair who needs to be fed and could theoretically stop breathing at any second has a “normal life.” You get thrown in there with the other “special needs” kids from a very early age. That they are developmentally disabled is, to your average rural school administrator, essentially indistinguishable from someone like me, who would be in the gifted program if he could use his arms and legs and lungs but instead is still trying to explain to his fifth-grade teacher that he doesn’t need to watch the goddamned Letter People again . . . well, it’s frustrating.

  But god, those kids are the best. I don’t know if it’s because it’s more difficult for them to grasp some of the more horrible aspects of being a human being—death, pain, white nationalism, lawyers—and therefore can’t get bogged down in cynicism and despair. Maybe I’m bringing my own limitations and misconceptions to the table here. But I cannot deny that I wanted to be around them as much as I could.

  I spent my summers at Camp New Hope. The people at the camp knew who I was and knew the kids loved me, so they always let me go out there and help the counselors during the day. It made me feel useful, but it wasn’t just that. I enjoyed getting to be on the side of the assisting rather than the assisted. It was nice having the counselors see you as one of their own. It was nice to be needed.

  Kim was a year younger than me, which is a lot more than a year when you are sixteen. She leaped out to me because she never stopped being a counselor. Most of the kids who come to Camp New Hope as counselors have a ceiling on their volunteerism. They do what they can, because they want to help, and because they want to put on their college applications that they spent their summers assisting kids with Down syndrome, but after about four hours with the kids, they’re generally spent. The empathy meter nears zero. They wander away, they start fiddling with their phones, a few sneak away to smoke weed or make out. I don’t blame them. They’re teenagers. That they spend any time at all with those kids, even if they’re just doing it to try to get into Northwestern, is a net positive for everyone involved, as far as I’m concerned. Expecting them all to be driven wholly by the spirit of volunteerism to cheer the souls of the developmentally disabled is to ask far too much. They’re there, and while they’re there, they’re trying to help.

  But Kim wanted to be there, because she had lived it. Her older brother Ryan had Down syndrome, and she had grown up with it, with everyone thinking she was the older sister, with her parents only having so much time for her, with responsibilities asked of her that no one else her age could have ever fathomed. She didn’t treat the kids like they were disabled, or even like they were kids at all. She even dealt with the older boys with Down syndrome. I once saw a boy—no, a man—in his twenties grab her left breast and try to lick her, a dangerous, scary situation for a fifteen-year-old girl out at a camp in the woods. She moved swiftly and compassionately. She elbowed him in the stomach, tapped his left cheek, and barked “No, Thomas, NO,” right in his face. “I am sorry, Kim,” he said, and he hugged her and cried. Kim was patience and courage and strength.

  We used to take walks together, back when I was in my older, cheaper chair, after the kids were in bed and all the other counselors had left for their parties. I don’t remember the first time we spoke, but it was obvious immediately that she had spent enough time with the disabled to understand that while I used a wheelchair and occasionally had to have my lungs compressed, I was just as much of a confused and hopeful teenager as she was. My speech had just started to degrade a little then, but just a little, and we would walk and wheel and talk all around the campground. She wanted to join the Peace Corps, but she was scared she’d never leave Sullivan and she hated the boys at her school and she thought people are inherently good though she was starting to worry and she smelled like cinnamon and every time she smiled, I wanted to leap out of my chair and crawl in her lap.

  She didn’t talk to me like there was anything wrong with me. The opposite—most of our conversations ended with me reassuring her that she was wonderful, that what she was doing was right, that there was no one like her. There really wasn’t. There wasn’t anyone like her. I told her how being at this camp made me feel like I was finally doing something for someone else after having people do things for me my entire life, like it was a chance to pay the world back, but she stopped me.

  “You don’t owe anyone anything. They help you because they love you. Why else does anyone help anyone? Letting someone help you is the nicest thing you can do for anyone.”

  I told her she was probably right, and she laughed and said, “I’m always right, Daniel, don’t you know that by now?” She had dark brown hair to her shoulders and a tiny scar on her nose. I think she floated above the ground.

  One night, toward the end of the summer, we stopped by the pond to watch the sun go down. There is nothing like a midwestern sunset. The land is so flat that you can see forever. She bent down on one knee so she’d be at my eye level, and she turned to me.

  “I just wanted you to know that I think you are wonderful,” she said. I’d had this said to me before. But not like this.

  “I think you are too,” I said.

  “Can I come visit you at EIU sometime? Maybe we can walk around campus. My mom wants me to go to school there, and even though I don’t really want to, it would be an excuse to come see you.”

  “I’d like that.”

  She looked out onto the water. “Do you sometimes wish things could be different, Daniel? Do you think things don’t work out the way you want them to for a reason?”

  I hoped she was talking about me, but I didn’t know for sure. “Yes,” I hedged. “But I like things how they are sometimes too.”

  She turned to me.

  “You have to email me when you get home. I want us to always be friends.”

  Friends. “Yes. Please.”

  She took my wrist in her right hand and my face in her left. She looked at me for a long time, either three seconds or forty years, I can’t be sure. She smiled, moved closer, and gave me the lightest kiss on the lips. She then gave me another one. Then: I will leave it there. That’s all I’m going to give you. The rest belongs only to us.

  Later, she stood up and took my left hand. We walked together back to the camp. She hugged me and went back to her cabin. She left a week later. Last time I checked on Facebook she was living in Philadelphia, working on some political campaign. She has a boyfriend and a dog and likes the Eagles. I am glad she is happy. She messaged me a couple of years ago, saying she heard I moved to Georgia and how awesome she thought that was. I told her thank you and that I was glad she was happy. I think about her every day, and I suspect I always will.

  37.

  I hear Travis bound through my front door. He pauses to do something it is extremely difficult to get men to do: he takes his shoes off and holds them in his hands before walking across the c
arpet.

  “Dude, there is new shit everywhere on your porch again, see?” he says. “Did that cop stomp mud all over your front porch again yesterday? He must have stomped his boots when he came in, or came out, or something. It’s a mess out there, see.”

  I wheel to the door, and Travis is right. There’s stomped mud and boot prints and gunk up and down the steps, and next to the rocking chair my mom bought for decoration last year, and a whole pile of filth right under my living room window. Had it rained before Officer Anderson came in? I know it rained last night.

  “Gross,” Travis says, extracting chunks of dirt from the bottom of his shoe with one of Marjani’s finest carving knives. “People are just so rude.” He puts the shoe, which isn’t much cleaner now than it was when he took it off, right in the middle of my kitchen floor.

  “So . . . game day!!!!”

  It is game day. Before Travis came in, I’d put the finishing touches on a response to Jonathan before our day commences. You’ve gotta be kind, after all. I think I can help Jonathan. Letting someone help you is the nicest thing you can do for anyone.

  jon—

  man your dark. it aint so bad man! people can be nice. people here are very different than where im from. in a good way. half these kids are from china or india or japan. i never met anybody like that where i grew up. just boring ass white people like me hahahahaha. its good to be in a place where there are different people. i just sit and watch them. they never notice me just like you didn’t. you can learn a lot by watching.