Fourth Comings_ A Jessica Darling Novel - Megan McCafferty [12]
1. A medical eye chart
2. A starry sky
3. A globe with the words nuestro mundo
4. Brassaï’s Couple d’amoureux dans un petit café (Paris, c. 1932)
5. Sands slipping through an hourglass
6. ©
7. The National Organization of Women logo
The underside of each postcard is hidden from view. If you were to remove one card from the wall and turn it over, it would reveal one word in your feminine cursive. If you pulled out all the pushpins from all the cards, flipped them over and lined them up in the order in which they were received, it would reveal the message that eluded me during your silent years, a message you built one word and one postcard at a time:
I WISH OUR LOVE WAS RIGHT NOW
The eighth card is not with the others up on the wall because it’s not mine. It’s yours, the only postcard written to you from me, with the significant word in my own sloppy scrawl.
AND
“AND” represented my faith that there would be more to come for you and me, even if I didn’t know what it was. I mailed you that cheapo promo postcard from an A&P supermarket outside Virginville, Pennsylvania, the first (and final) stop on Hope’s and my cross-country tour of creatively named cities. I sent it not knowing if you would even be waiting for me in Pineville when I returned at the end of the month, or if you would be off meditating on a mountaintop halfway around the world. Either outcome seemed both probable and even preferable in their own way.
I remember sprinting to the mailbox as Hope honked impatiently in the parking lot, her ninety-nine-cent Ambervision sunglasses slipping down the bridge of her nose, a strawberry Twizzler dangling out of her mouth. Hope and I had a lot of highway to cover in Pennsylvania, having already set our sights on its cities named Blue Ball, Muff, Dick, and finally, at long last, Intercourse. Of course, we never made it to any of these sexually suggestive destinations, because less than twelve hours after you handed me this notebook, and only a half hour after I stuck the stamp on that postcard, our car got jacked and our trip came to its infamous end.
You were there when I got back, thirty days ahead of schedule. That’s when you finally told me about your dad, and explained why you couldn’t stay with me in the city for more than a weekend at a time. And for the next eight months, I tried (oh, I tried) to make good on my postcard promise, to let our relationship evolve in the open-ended spirit of AND.
Is it any surprise that you would want the final word?
FOREVER.
A rabble of butterflies swarmed inside my stomach.
FOREVER.
How could I possibly follow up FOREVER?
BUT
HOWEVER
UNFORTUNATELY
?
ten
I stalled.
“Aren’t Buddhists against forming attachments?” I was flailing. “Because…uh…attachments lead to longing…which is…uh…the cause of all human suffering?” I smiled weakly.
“Yes; samsara, or suffering, is caused by clinging to something that should be free,” you explained patiently. “But I’m not a Buddhist.”
“I know!” I retorted. “You’re a deist who practices Vipassana meditation.”
“Right.”
“What about the Four Abodes?”
“What about them?”
“I thought you were totally into the Four Abodes….”
(I said it exactly like that, too. I thought you were totally into the Four Abodes. As if you had suddenly switched allegiances from teenybopper pop to hardcore hip-hop. But wait! I thought you were totally into Ashlee Simpson!)
“Well, I think we could all learn from them. They’re guidelines for living that anyone can follow. Buddhism is very humanist in that regard.”
As much as this kind of talk usually irked me, it was a relief to see you having so much fun. Not even the Beard could mask the childlike exuberance of your smile, one I hadn’t seen in a very long time. I could see what you looked like when you were Marin’s age, a daredevilish four-year-old sprinting away from your poor mother in the most crowded shopping malls, or clambering up the tallest trees to limb-dance on the highest branches.
Before we could commence our psycho-theological discussion, there was a knock at the door.
“Hey,