In forty-five minutes, I am pressing the pedal of my Jeep.
Long after Lydia and I broke apart, I had returned to this place. Again and again. Maybe hoping a little bit that she would, too.
Until I stopped.
It is different, and the same. The ducks sail on the shivering glass. Aimless. Waiting for the day’s first crust of bread to hit the pond.
My car is slung, alone, by the side of the road. Lydia and I had usually ridden the bus here, from Hemphill to West Seventh.
My feet are soundless on the earth. About here is when they used to pick up speed, ready for takeoff.
Lydia was always talking, laughing, talking while we traveled this path. Telling me what library book she’d dragged along with her dad’s soft old green hunting blanket and an already lukewarm can of Diet Dr Pepper.
The Unbearable Lightness of Being.
Diana: Her True Story.
There’s a slight breeze rustling things. Half of the leaves on the hackberries and pecans are still trying to make up their minds. Is it winter or not? When Lydia and I walked here, the trees were leafy and thick. They blocked the blazing sun like a tight football huddle, casting a dark, intimate comfort that I wonder if only a Southerner can understand.
Anybody watching would think I was up to no good. If it were two hours later, when bread crusts were flying through the air, parents would tug their children away from the strange lady walking around with the rusty shovel. They might even press the non-emergency police number tucked in their contacts that they’d never used before.
On days like these, I wondered if they’d be right. Whether just two or three brain cells were deciding if I was eligible to join the woman by the tracks who lived in a tent crafted of black garbage bags and old broom handles.
This is why I brought no one with me. Not Jo, who would make no mistakes as she sealed the evidence. Not Bill, who would be worried we should have brought Jo. I am sane, and I am not, and I don’t want anyone to know.
What was that Poe quote that Lydia liked so much? I became insane with long intervals of horrible sanity.
The ducks and the pond are well behind me now. I hear the rush of the ocean. Of course, it is not the ocean. It’s just what Lydia and I closed our eyes and pretended. The only nearby route to the ocean is the Trinity River, which threads by the park on the other side and flows on for hundreds of miles, all the way to Galveston. La Santisima Trinidad-The Most Holy Trinity. Christened by Alonso de León in 1690.
Sense of place, Effie says.
I begin to count the pillars. One, two, three, four. Five. The ocean is above me now. I keep striding, toward a red cow in a purple dunce hat. He’s new.
It takes a second to realize that he’s a unicorn, not a stupid cow. The mermaid who keeps him company a few feet away has red hair that flows like mine and Charlie’s. Her bright green tail floats in a sea of fish with upturned mouths that wouldn’t think of biting. Peace, love, understanding.
None of this hopeful art was here all those years ago, when Lydia laid out her blanket under pillar No. 5 of the Lancaster Bridge. Now childlike graffiti covers every single concrete pier of the bridge as far as I can see. The pillars used to be splotched with ugly green paint and strangled with the kind of weedy vines that seem to need nothing to live.
The rush and rumble of traffic overhead.
The knowledge of a secret underground world.
The thrilling fear that all that throbbing chaos could crash down on you at any second, but probably wouldn’t.
The worry about what might lurch out of the big thicket of woods nearby.
The same, the same, the same. The same.
I survey the parched dirt floor beneath the behemoth steel and concrete structure. Still unforgiving. Hard and bare. But he didn’t plant the black-eyed Susans under the bridge at pillar No. 5, where I used to meet up with Lydia after my runs on the twisty running trails. He planted them here-a few feet away, under a large cedar elm at the edge of the woods. They appeared at a time of year when black-eyed Susans flourish, so I couldn’t be sure. I just never came back after I found them. I was twenty-four, and Lydia and I had been estranged for seven years.
A slight rustle behind me. I jerk around. A man has emerged from behind the pillar. I grip the shovel, suddenly a weapon.
But he is not a man. He is tall and lanky, but no more than fourteen. Pale skin, slouchy jeans, faded Jack Johnson T-shirt. A black mini-backpack slung over his shoulder. There’s a phone with a desert camouflage case clipped at his waist and what I’m pretty sure is a metal detector in his right hand.
“Shouldn’t you be in school?” I blurt out.
“I’m home-schooled. What are you doing? You can’t take plants out of here. It’s still the park. You can only clip their leaves.”
“Shouldn’t you be home, then? Being schooled? I’m not sure your mother would like you along this side of the park.” My nerves, no longer on high alert.
“I’m on a scavenger hunt. It’s National Botany Celebration Day. Or something. My mom is over at the pond with my sister. Teaching her the wonders of duck vision. They see, like, four times farther than us or something.”
His mother is close by. A home-schooling mother who probably has used the non-emergency police number in her phone many, many times. I have no desire to attract her attention.
There is no evidence of gathered botany anywhere on his person. “I didn’t realize that botanists use metal detectors these days,” I say.
“Funny.” He surveys me while chewing a nail. “That’s a really old shovel.”
He isn’t going away.
“What are you doing?” he repeats.
“I’m looking for something that… somebody might have left for me when I was younger. I would never steal plants on National Botany Day.”
A mistake. Too friendly. Too truthful. The first light of curiosity in his eyes. He has pushed aside a brown tail of hair so I can see them. He is a nice-looking kid. Cute, even, if he adjusted the angle of his mouth a little more.
“Want me to help? Is there metal in it? A ring or something? I can run my wand. You wouldn’t believe the stuff I’ve found in this park.” He is already at my side, practically stepping on my feet, eager, the red light on his device blinking. Before I realize it, he is casually running the detector along my leg. Then the other one. Now he is roving up, toward my waist.
“Hey. Stop that.” I jump backward.
“Sorry. Just wanted to be sure you weren’t carrying. Knife, gun. You’d be surprised who I’ve met up with around here.”
“What’s your name?” I ask. My heart is beating hard, but I’m pretty sure his gadget did not roam high enough to disturb the metal device in my chest.
I’m beginning to wonder about the mother story. About the home-schooling.
“My name’s Carl,” he says lazily. “What’s yours?”
“Sue,” I lie.
He takes this brief exchange of names as a sign of collusion. With a professional air, he runs the detector over the area where there is the evidence of my feet trampling the weeds.
“Here?” he asks.
“About. I was going to dig in a two-foot area.” How do I get out of this? If I leave, he is sure to search on his own.
“Whatever you’re looking for… did an old boyfriend leave it?”
I shiver. “No. Not a boyfriend.”
“The alarm ain’t firing. There’s nothing here.” He sounds disappointed. “You want me to dig for you anyway?”
Great. I have become the highlight of National Botany Celebration Day.
“No. I need the exercise. But thank you.”
He leans against a tree, texting. I can only hope it is not about me. In a few minutes, he wanders off without saying goodbye.