Becoming Chloe (23 page)
Authors: Catherine Ryan Hyde
This goes deeper.
“Want to go fast, Chlo?”
“Ask Cisco how he feels about it.”
I drum on his sides gently with my heels and he breaks into a few beats of bumpy trot and then a smooth canter. A wave comes high up onto the beach and his hooves splash droplets up into the air, and they land on the legs of our jeans. Then I pull him up to a stop and we stand there, Cisco’s hooves planted in the wet, shiny, pebbly sand at the edge of the country. The exact opposite edge of the country from everything we knew before.
“Jordy,” Chloe says. Her voice is strained and quiet with wonder. “We did it, Jordy. We made it.” We look off to the horizon awhile longer while I let the truth of that simple statement fill me up. Then Chloe says, “Jordy, let me down now.”
It gives me an uneasy feeling.
“Why?”
“Just let me down. Please.”
I swing down off the horse and lift Chloe down. I set her gently on the sand. “What are you going to do, Chlo?”
“I’m going to go for a swim,” she says. “Just like we did in Trent’s swimming hole. Only this time it’s the real ocean.”
“But, Chloe,” I say. “It’s so cold.”
“I know,” she says. “But maybe I’ll never get to swim in the ocean again.”
“I’m going in with you,” I say. So I can’t possibly lose her.
I expect Cisco to ditch us and run back to the barn. He doesn’t. He waits patiently on the sand. Shaking his mane now and again. He must think we’re crazy. Probably we are.
I sit with her by the edge of the water, Cisco standing close beside us. Chloe holds his reins. We’re soaking wet. We couldn’t dry off before getting dressed again, so we got our clothes all wet and sandy, and now we’re sitting wet in a stiff breeze, and our teeth are chattering. But damn it, we swam in the ocean.
Together.
“Thank you for taking me to see everything,” she says.
I open my mouth to speak, but unfortunately I’m not about to say “you’re welcome.” I’m about to have this out, here and now. “Chloe,” I say. “I have to tell you something. I’m not letting you go. I lied about that just to get you to go on the trip, because I was so sure it would help you. Or I wanted to be sure. I lied when I said I promised. I’m breaking my promise. No matter what you decide, I’m not letting you go.”
“You’re breaking your promise, Jordy?”
“Yes. I am. I’m sorry.”
“How can you just break a promise like that?”
“You’ve broken promises to me. You promised to take your pills. You promised you wouldn’t hurt yourself.”
“Yeah, but I didn’t know I was going to. I tried to keep them.
I didn’t just lie.”
“I’m sorry, Chlo. I just think some promises don’t deserve to be kept. I just think this is one of those.”
We sit quietly for a while. We watch the whitecaps roll in, set after set. Watch them hit the rocks and throw foam into the air. Chloe is rolling Cisco’s reins around in her hand.
“Well, I guess that’s okay,” she says. “Because I really wanted to stay now anyway.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, I was thinking we haven’t seen everything yet, and now I don’t want to miss anything.”
“That’s great, Chlo. That’s really good.” But then I say, “Well, then why were you arguing with me about it?”
“Because it’s a promise,” she says. “You can’t just break a promise.”
“Okay. Sorry, Chlo. I promise it won’t happen again.”
One by one, we put our wet, sandy feet in the stirrups and swing onto Cisco’s back.
I rein Cisco around and he takes us up the bluff, steadily, calmly, without hesitation. We lean forward over the saddle horn to make his job easier.
Chloe says, “What did Maximilian mean about the tip of the iceberg?”
“Oh. It’s just an expression. He wasn’t talking about a real iceberg.”
“Yeah. It didn’t sound like he was.”
“The way icebergs float, about ninety or ninety-five percent of them is floating under the water where you can’t see. So when someone says it’s only the tip of the iceberg, it means that however much you see, there’s like ten times more that you don’t see.”
“Oh. You would think ninety years would be enough to see everything.”
“Nobody can see everything. It’s infinite. There’s no end to it.”
“Oh. That’s good, I guess. That makes it really hard for anybody to get bored.”
We walk on the shoulder of the highway, a nice comfortable downhill slope.
We walk through giant redwood trees, past campgrounds and rental cabins.
We walk until the ocean is stretched out at our feet again.
We can see miles down the coast. The coastline itself sits in fingers, in folds, with scatterings of rock strewn at its fingertips.
We can see all the way down to a bridge with high, curved supports rising up from the water to the road.
I realize we only have twenty-two dollars to our name, but it doesn’t really matter. One way or the other we’re starting all over from scratch. We have twenty-two dollars in my pocket and the future is open in front of us like a calendar with no dates written in yet. It’s a blank book. It can be anything we make it.
It can be anything. It can start right now.
I look out toward the horizon and I think I see a spout—a chute of water—fly up into the air. Just as I’m convincing myself it’s only my hopeful imagination, the fluke rises out of the ocean, then slaps down with a splash and disappears again.
Chloe sees it, too. She raises her hand and points to it, in case I don’t see.
“There, Jordy,” she says. “Right there.”
April 14
Dear Dr. Reynoso,
Chloe and I were going to write you a letter together.
One letter between us, answering your question.
Telling you what we decided about the world. Then I started thinking it would be better if we did it separately.
After all, we each have a brain and a pair of eyes, and even though we saw the same things, we couldn’t possibly have seen them the same way or drawn the same conclusions.
I hope you even remember that you asked me to do this. I’m figuring you wouldn’t have said it if you didn’t really want to know. At first I thought you would write back and say if I was right or not, like a test. Now I wonder if you asked because you weren’t entirely sure yourself.
Well, here goes.
We met a lot of people all over the country. We found out that people all over the country are pretty much the same. Most of them are helpful and sweet.
Some of them are crazy and thoughtless and careless and mean. More of them were helpful and sweet, though. In fact, so many people went out of their way to treat us like family that it was really hard when we got run off the road and I got beaten for no particular reason.
I was thinking at first that it would’ve been a lot easier to believe in the beauty of things if that hadn’t happened. But now I feel like anybody can think the world is beautiful when it’s all going their way.
That’s just like untested faith. But when you’ve got one eye swollen shut and you still know it’s better than it is bad, then you’re onto something.
I hope I’m making any sense here at all.
My conclusion is this: It’s a beautiful world, but also a scary one. I used to think something couldn’t be both. But then I remembered the point of no return on the Niagara River, and how much it fascinated me as a kid. Because it was just that: beautiful and scary. It’s like once you get that sense that there’s no real security, that anything at all can happen to you, then every minute you’re okay is a joy. Part of the joy is feeling like you can make your way in a world that isn’t always easy.
Anyway, that’s what I decided. Chloe can speak for herself.
I think she’s a little bit afraid to write to you, because she thinks you’ll be mad that she told me all the stuff that happened to her before we met. She thinks you’ll be upset because she finally told me, but she would never tell you. I wanted to tell her that no one would be that small. I wanted that to be one of Chloe’s misunderstandings about the world. But the world is full of small people. I just don’t believe you’re one of them. So I told her you’re not like that.
Don’t make a liar out of me, okay?
By the way, I thought about what you said about me having a life of my own. I’d like to say I’ve been dating, but the truth is, it’s hard to find a guy who doesn’t mind getting Chloe in the package. Now I know how single mothers feel. But it’s okay, and I’ll tell you why. Because when I find the right guy, that’s how I’ll know. Chloe will be my litmus test.
What do you think? I like it.
Yours sincerely,
Jordan
❃ ❃ ❃
April 14
Dear Dr. Reynoso,
Jordy says you want to know what we think about the world. I didn’t know you wanted to know that.
You never told me you did. Jordy says you said it while I was sleeping. But sometimes I wonder if maybe you said a lot of things that didn’t quite go through to me at the time. Sorry.
Anyway, if you want to know, I’ll tell you.
Jordy thinks the world is more beautiful than it is ugly. I’ve decided he can think that if he wants. After all, he always lets me think what I want. Here’s what I think. I think the world is just as terrible as beautiful and just as beautiful as terrible. I think things can only be as good as they can be bad. Maybe I’m not saying it right.
Like rain. Take rain. It grows trees. But then you can’t even sleep if you don’t have a house. Or fire. It’s real warm when you’re in the snow, but then it burns your house down.
Now do you see what I mean?
Maybe you don’t because you didn’t see everything we saw. You can’t believe everything we saw. I would tell you, but it would take so much writing.
I’d be writing for most of the rest of my life, and while I was writing, I’d be missing more stuff.
Even though you want me to, I’m not going to say how I made up my mind. Because I haven’t seen everything yet. How can I make up my mind when I haven’t seen everything yet? Maximilian is ninety and he hasn’t even seen the tip of the iceberg. So what I’ve seen is maybe not even the tip of the tip.
Maybe when I’m ninety I’ll write again.
Are you mad because I told Jordy all that stuff I never told you? He says you won’t be. He really likes you, you know. He trusts you. And Jordy doesn’t trust just everybody. Now I wish I’d been paying better attention back then. I bet I would’ve trusted you, too, if I’d been paying attention. I always liked you. But now I get that I missed a chance to have somebody I could trust. Besides Jordy, I mean.
Here’s why I told Jordy and not you. Because I know him better. And because I sort of felt like he earned it. I hope you understand. Do you understand?
Thanks for trying to help me even though I would hardly talk to you or anything. That must be hard for you when people do that to you. If you didn’t like me back then, that’s okay. I understand. I bet you would like me now.
Oh, and guess what? I think Jordy is going to get me a dog. He doesn’t think he is. But I think he is. I think I’m wearing him down.
Love,
Chloe