of relief. I no longer had to pretend to be better than I was. At the next opportunity I left the interstate and wound down the exit ramp onto Pennsylvania 611. While I was doing this, I was pondering Rinpoche’s comment about getting off the fast road, wondering if he’d had a premonition. It was the kind of thing Cecelia would have pounced upon as evidence that the future is known to us, that crystals heal and high-tension wires sicken, that when we suffer it must be in payment for the sins of previous lives. My wondering caused me to take 611 South, when I should have taken 611 North.
Not a big problem, I thought, when, two miles down the road I realized my mistake: 611 South would no doubt lead us to an east-west highway soon enough. And it was a pretty road, gliding near the upper reaches of the Delaware River, then down through small villages of hundred-year-old,peeling-paint homes with columned front porches. I could have turned around, but 611 South was narrow, a lumber truck was riding my bumper, and, frankly, I did not want to admit my mistake in front of my companion.
The landscape on this side road was gentler, and, gradually, it worked a soothing effect on my mood. Instead of the high, jagged, stony hills that marked the New Jersey–Pennsylvania border, we were now cruising through sloping farmland planted in corn and presided over by neat white barns. The “Slatebelt” it seemed this stretch of terrain was called, judging at least by signs we passed. Slatebelt Auto Repair. Slatebelt Sewing. I found myself thinking of my parents again, my father’s fits of temper, his work ethic, my mother’s understanding and stoicism, the way, as a pair, they had roughed up and smoothed over the edges of each other’s personalities. Was it mere chance that had brought those two personalities together for fifty years, blended their genes to make my sister and me, then sent the blue pickup crashing into them on that cold February morning? Was everything just a random coagulation of cells, of lives? What about Anthony and Natasha, then: Could those souls just as easily have been born in the Slatebelt? On the banks of the Nile? In an Argentine village? Or had they somehow been destined for a life with Jeannie and me, as part of a greater plan?
At some point, mind still spinning with such things, I stopped in at a roadside store called Ahearn’s Country Café, where I bought a bottle of green tea—in memory of my dad, perhaps, though he’d never drunk green tea in his life—and checked the glass cases in vain for German biscuits. Rinpoche seemed to require nothing in the way of nourishment. I asked him, twice, if I might treat him to acup of coffee or a pastry, but he only shook his head and wandered contemplatively around the store, casting his calm eye upon a predictable Americana of slushies, an out-of-order ATM machine, and the refrigerated glass cases that held plastic bottles of juice and chocolate milk.
Not long after leaving Ahearn’s, as I’d hoped we would, we came upon a major highway heading west. Route 22. Same number as the route on which my parents had been killed. Rinpoche’s premonition—if that’s what it was—about leaving the interstate, now this odd coincidence. It seemed to me for a few seconds that there might, after all, be some hidden design to the world’s complex workings, some merit to the types of things my sister was always talking about: synchronicity, psychic wavelengths, auras, healing energies, all the frizz-frazz of people who couldn’t deal with solid reality. A few seconds, however, and the notion passed. I took Route 22, which soon led us into I-78, which was choked with construction sites and one-lane work zones and spotted with billboards advertising homemade Dutch food at the upcoming exit. In my experience, this tasty cuisine consisted of meat with a side order of meat—pork, smoked beef sausage, scrapple—all the delicious fat left in, everything smothered in gravy.
Not a big problem, I thought, when, two miles down the road I realized my mistake: 611 South would no doubt lead us to an east-west highway soon enough. And it was a pretty road, gliding near the upper reaches of the Delaware River, then down through small villages of hundred-year-old,peeling-paint homes with columned front porches. I could have turned around, but 611 South was narrow, a lumber truck was riding my bumper, and, frankly, I did not want to admit my mistake in front of my companion.
The landscape on this side road was gentler, and, gradually, it worked a soothing effect on my mood. Instead of the high, jagged, stony hills that marked the New Jersey–Pennsylvania border, we were now cruising through sloping farmland planted in corn and presided over by neat white barns. The “Slatebelt” it seemed this stretch of terrain was called, judging at least by signs we passed. Slatebelt Auto Repair. Slatebelt Sewing. I found myself thinking of my parents again, my father’s fits of temper, his work ethic, my mother’s understanding and stoicism, the way, as a pair, they had roughed up and smoothed over the edges of each other’s personalities. Was it mere chance that had brought those two personalities together for fifty years, blended their genes to make my sister and me, then sent the blue pickup crashing into them on that cold February morning? Was everything just a random coagulation of cells, of lives? What about Anthony and Natasha, then: Could those souls just as easily have been born in the Slatebelt? On the banks of the Nile? In an Argentine village? Or had they somehow been destined for a life with Jeannie and me, as part of a greater plan?
At some point, mind still spinning with such things, I stopped in at a roadside store called Ahearn’s Country Café, where I bought a bottle of green tea—in memory of my dad, perhaps, though he’d never drunk green tea in his life—and checked the glass cases in vain for German biscuits. Rinpoche seemed to require nothing in the way of nourishment. I asked him, twice, if I might treat him to acup of coffee or a pastry, but he only shook his head and wandered contemplatively around the store, casting his calm eye upon a predictable Americana of slushies, an out-of-order ATM machine, and the refrigerated glass cases that held plastic bottles of juice and chocolate milk.
Not long after leaving Ahearn’s, as I’d hoped we would, we came upon a major highway heading west. Route 22. Same number as the route on which my parents had been killed. Rinpoche’s premonition—if that’s what it was—about leaving the interstate, now this odd coincidence. It seemed to me for a few seconds that there might, after all, be some hidden design to the world’s complex workings, some merit to the types of things my sister was always talking about: synchronicity, psychic wavelengths, auras, healing energies, all the frizz-frazz of people who couldn’t deal with solid reality. A few seconds, however, and the notion passed. I took Route 22, which soon led us into I-78, which was choked with construction sites and one-lane work zones and spotted with billboards advertising homemade Dutch food at the upcoming exit. In my experience, this tasty cuisine consisted of meat with a side order of meat—pork, smoked beef sausage, scrapple—all the delicious fat left in, everything smothered in gravy.
Similar Books
