The Eden Express_ A Memoir of Insanity - Mark Vonnegut [53]
I got it into my head that everything would be OK if I could just see Virginia, that the problem was this indefinite waiting and not knowing. They seemed to agree, maybe it was their suggestion in the first place. I also thought that maybe all the strange things that were happening to me were her cries for help. She needed me desperately and we didn’t have a phone. Simon and I would head out in search of Virginia.
Everything was trembling and glowing with an eerie light. One foot in front of the other, step two follows step one. Somehow I got dressed. “See, I can still function,” I said to myself as I made it down the trembling ladder and into the trembling kitchen. “Everything’s going to be just fine,” I managed to say to Jack and Kathy. As we left I tried a reassuring smile.
One foot in front of the other down to the lake in my Day-Glo boots that seemed to be walking without me—gush gush. Just put my body on automatic, everything will be fine.
“Whose popsicle stand is this anyway?” Who said that? Did I say that? I didn’t say that. “Simon, whose popsicle stand is this anyway? Did you say that? Zeke?”
“Whose popsicle stand is this anyway, Virginia?” Can she hear me? Where is she? Did she say it?
It was perfect. It was just right for our reunion. That’s what I would say. “Virginia, whose popsicle stand is this anyway? Do you think it could be the sort of place we might be able to talk?”
CUT OFF. Sometimes when people ask me what happened I just say, “Cabin fever.”
Twelve miles from nowhere by boat, and such a laughable boat on such a laughable lake over thirty miles long, one of the world’s deepest, over fifteen hundred feet in places, with monster winds funneling down that monster valley stretching back up into those monster mountains, monster logs floating around like icebergs, fogs, rain, sleet, snow, hail, monster electrical displays. It had it all.
If we disappeared without a trace it wouldn’t be very remarkable. The remarkable thing would be that it hadn’t happened sooner.
And even before we got to our laughable Blue Marcel there was that mile and a half on our cute little trail tenuously wending its way through the impenetrable undergrowth and monster trees with which the winds casually cluttered our way on a fairly regular basis.
And even if we managed to make it to the marina, where were we? In a parking lot with an odd-lot assortment of vehicles if ever there was one. We were constantly losing keys, and as if our cars weren’t in lousy enough mechanical shape, the local version of juvenile delinquents used them as a spare parts department.
And even if we managed to get one of the cars started, the roads weren’t much of a match for coastal storms, let alone the stray earthquake. And then there were the ferries, which didn’t run in bad weather, were hard to get a place on in good weather, and had been known to sink.
And even after all that, and then more driving unreliable cars on mountain roads and still another ferry and more mountain roads, you ended up in Vancouver. Besides the fact that you could get more places more easily from Vancouver than from Powell River, it’s hard to say exactly what’s been gained.
One reason the whole thing seemed suddenly so difficult was the “me” factor. A few weeks earlier I could have counted somewhat on myself to work my way around whatever problems might come up. I could tinker a bit with engines, knew my way around a boat. But now all that was shot to hell. There were times when I was having enough trouble walking and remembering to breathe.
But just what was it I was all of a sudden so worried about being cut off from? At times it was very specific, like that I would never see Virginia or my family again. At other times that was the least of my worries; I wanted only that something somewhere had an inkling of my existence.
“Some day, Simon, we’ll be able to