Disposition of Remains (4 page)

I couldn’t remember the last time I was actually hungry, but it felt good to be a part of something, even if that something was sitting by a river with three strangers in the middle of a vortex.

After we ate the sandwiches that Misty had packed, we devoted a few hours to setting up camp next to the river. I ducked into my designated tent and changed into some of the clothes that Misty had brought for me. Wilbur and Paul embarked upon a strenuous hike to the peak of Cathedral Rock while Misty explained to me the entire vortex phenomenon. Though I didn’t fully grasp the content, I began to realize that she wasn’t just some spiritual loony-toon. She was just very in touch with herself as well as everything and everyone around her. I felt deeply grateful to have met her.

By the time night fell, Misty and Paul had arranged a bunch of flashlights as a makeshift “
campfire” around which campfire stories could be told. It turned out that actual fires were prohibited in the area. It was as if the Vortex Authorities, somewhere, worried that perhaps the vortex would convert a fire into some sort of nuclear explosion. The idea didn’t seem inconceivable to me, seeing as my reality was shifting so fast.

While sitting around the relatively tepid “fire,” we chatted lightly about the events of the
day. Since nature was our toilet, and was also calling, I grabbed a piece of the “kindling” and walked off a bit to make my mark. I wasn’t fond of the idea, but I was trying to embrace the whole camping experience. Just as I’d located an appropriate tree, I smelled a horrible scent flowing downwind. I had waited too long to go and was verging on desperation, so I ignored the ghastly odor. I pulled my pants down, squatted, and finished my business as quickly as possible. It was then that I spotted some type of porcine creature peering curiously at me from the brush nearby. Upon shining my flashlight in his direction, I could make out that he had some friends. There were at least four sets of eyes watching me. I dared not move.

I tried not to chuckle at the absurdity of it all. I’d never dreamed as I lounged on my couch less than
thirty-six hours earlier, that I would soon be in the company of total strangers in the middle of nowhere where I’d be stalked by Porky Pig while peeing on a tree.

“Guys!…Hey, guys!” I whispered as loudly as I could.

One of the creatures charged in my direction. I tried to move, but my pants were still around my ankles. Suddenly, I was knocked over by something else entirely. The furry, tusked critter missed me by an inch and rammed headfirst into the tree. Apparently bewildered, he and his companions then scampered off.

“That was a herd of javelina,” Wilbur said from above me.

At that moment I was more disturbed by the fact that Wilbur was lying prone on top of me with my pants down than interested in the weird pig creature’s name.

“Oh, really? You don’t say,” I spat sarcastically, trying to squirm my way back into Misty’s pants under the weight of Wilbur’s robust physique.

“They can’t really see well, but they will charge blindly at an odor.”

“Mmmm…great.”

“After you left, I could smell them by the camp. I’ve always heard you can smell javelina before you see them, but I haven’t really encountered them before,” Said Wilbur, chuckling.

“That’s all very interesting, and I don’t want to seem unappreciative or anything, but do you think you could get off me now, so I can pull my pants up?”

“Oh…uh…sure,” Wilbur mumbled as he dismounted me.

Scuttling away from our awkward encounter, I couldn’t help but fixate on the fact that Wilbur thought I had an odor that might have attracted the javelinas. I had no idea where I was going and despite the flashlight, I really couldn’t see. Wilbur called out from behind me.

“Stacia! This way!”

He grabbed my hand and guided me back to camp. I was surprised by how pleasant it was to be touched by a man who wasn’t just trying to get his jollies before zonking out for the night. It had been a long time since Evan had shown me any genuine affection.

When we got back to the camp Misty and Paul were hiding in their tent. They poked their heads out and grinned.

“Are they gone?” Paul asked.

“No, I brought them back with me. Would you like to pet one?” Wilbur joked.

“We’re gonna stay in here…just in case,” Paul laughed, as they retreated back into their tent. Wilbur examined me with a look of curiosity. I didn’t know how to interpret it, so I just said, “I think I’ll go to bed as well.”

As I ducked into my one-man tent, Wilbur offered, “I’m right over here if you need anything.”

“Thanks. And thanks for saving me from the jave-wa-whosits.”

“Anytime.”

I realized that Wilbur was a tremendously kind person in addition to being a chiseled masterpiece, so I began to suspect that he must be married or gay. I was also well aware that people were not always as great as they seem at first. Nonetheless, I was almost afraid to go to sleep that night for fear of what my crazy dreams had in store for me.

I dreamed of Michael. We were sitting in a little outdoor café in Florence, sipping coffee while delighting in the Italian jazz music resonating through the streets. We were living the life we had planned. I felt happy in my dream, content. I almost didn’t recognize the feeling, as I hadn’t experienced it in full consciousness for quite some time.

The contentedness carried over into the next hour of wakefulness. It wasn’t the sort of feeling that makes you want to skip for joy through a m
eadow like a nymph in a tampon commercial; it was just a feeling that made me smile silently to myself. I arose earlier than everyone, and my reward was an incredibly beautiful sunrise. The streaks of maize-and-tangerine sunlight burst through the twisted juniper trees and reflected off the rippling river. I took a few moments to absorb the beauty in its entirety. I began to suspect that the magic of the vortex might be real. I was seeing the world through different, more enlightened eyes—like the fractured pieces from a kaleidoscope had all suddenly come together to form a perfect image.

It suddenly occurred to me that mine had been a wasted life. I had spent so many years feeling overwhelmed and busy, trudging through mun
dane tasks that seemed so monumentally important at the time: delivering some indecipherable document for Evan or creating the perfect dinner, which I knew Evan would hate anyway. I never really stopped to realize the world had so much to offer, and there would be so little time to even nibble at the crust of it. I felt liberated to do anything I wanted without fear of ruining a future I no longer possessed.

For weeks, mornings hadn’t been a good time for me. My eyes would open, my stomach would turn, and the reality of my sad truth would overwhelm me. But on that particular
day, I felt good—and I was hungry. In my ravenous state, I rifled through Misty’s hippie hemp bag and finally located the tasty treats Misty had packed at the bottom. I sliced up some fruit and what looked like homemade banana bread. I felt a certain juvenile pride as I put together four plates of food and poured some orange juice, like I was waiting for my mother to give me a quarter for my efforts. I arranged the plates delicately around the portable table Paul had brought and picked some wildflowers for a centerpiece.

Wilbur woke up next,
followed by Misty and Paul shortly after.

“Wow, look at you! Maybe camping is your thing after all!” Wilbur exclaimed.

“Maybe it is,” I returned with a crafty smile.

Everyone sat and ate, quietly enjoying the crisp air of the beautiful morning. I leaned back in my folding chair and noticed that even the ants seemed to be courteously leaving to us to enjoy the moment.

As our breakfast experience came to an end, and a fresh breeze grazed my cheek, I realized that my hair was stuck to my head. After my roll in the dirt the night before, I was feeling pretty grungy.

“I don’t suppose there would be anywhere to shower around here?” I asked. It was a doltish question, considering there was no bathroom, much less running water—heated or otherwise.

Misty laughed and gestured toward the river a few feet from where we sat.

“There’s some biodegra
dable soap in my satchel.”

“I’m guessing Stacia probably hasn’t bathed nude in a river before,” Paul said in a tone that suggested I was a princess or a prudish schoolgirl. He was clearly egging me on
. I was going to have none of that.

I stood up from the table, defiantly stripped off my clothes, and
dashed into the river before I heard Misty shout, “We usually go in a little later, after it warms up!”

…Splash…

“And with bathing suits!”

“Oh! Holy shit! Mother of vortex! It’s FREEZING!” I screamed, grabbing whatever parts of my body I could cover with my two hands. The frigid water had chilled me to the core, yet I found it strangely invigorating.

Misty slapped Paul hard on the shoulder in disapproval.

“I guess it’s my turn after that performance!” Paul
announced as he stripped and waded out to join me.

“Yeeeee-haw!” Misty shouted as she did a naked cannonball, her buoyant breasts bouncing in the air.

Wilbur hadn’t moved. He was still sitting there, dumbfounded by our behavior. We all stared at him, and I gave him a sly splash. Never had I imagined myself jumping naked into anything, and somehow, I had unwittingly become the instigator. Wilbur appeared to be a little embarrassed, but he stripped down and hurried in with his hands covering his family jewels. 

After we’d splashed around for a bit, Misty emerged from the water, uninhibitedly. She slinked over to the satchel and extracted the soap. Both Paul and I caught Wilbur giving her elevator eyes—sizing her up from the lobby to the penthouse. Paul looked more amused than annoyed. Misty was totally secure with her body and Paul was totally secure with their relationship—something so glaringly opposite of me and my relationship with Evan. I suddenly felt the need to have
someone
look at me in that manner, before it was too late. I even thought that someone should be Wilbur.

Shivering from the cold, Misty sprinted back to the edge of the water, soap in hand, and jumped in sending a ti
dal wave in Paul’s direction. She approached him, and as she pushed his wet hair from his face, she gave him a gentle, loving kiss. Then Misty turned him around, pressed her body against his, and began to lovingly wash his back.

Wilbur and I exchanged an awkward look—both embarrassed by our voyeurism but at the same time, intrigued by the display.

“I have to admit, I’m a little surprised by you,” Wilbur remarked.

“You shouldn’t be surprised. I do it all the time. I’m quite the free spirit, you know,” I jested.

“Your husband doesn’t mind you bathing naked with strange men?”

I looked at him, bewildered. I hadn’t breathed a word about Evan.

Wilbur extended his hand through the water, grabbed mine, and pulled it to the surface.

“I noticed this big rock on your finger.”

“Let me get this straight: I’m standing completely naked in a river, and all you notice is my ring?” I asked, ignoring the fact that all of our naughty parts were tucked safely underwater.

“Well, maybe because it’s the only thing you’re wearing, and I didn’t think it would be appropriate to comment on the rest…but…I definitely
noticed
the rest.”

“Over the last few
days, I think I’ve lost touch with what is ‘appropriate.’ I am married, but my husband and I are having a somewhat substantial difference of opinion right now.”

“About?”

“Life…and death, and all the messy stuff in between.”

“Well…that’s a helluva lot,” Wilbur said, appearing slightly confused.

“Are
you
married?” I inquired, attempting to divert the topic away from my presumably boring marriage woes.

He flipped his hands back and forth to prove the absence of a ring.

“Nope.”

“Care to elaborate?” I
dared. “Ever been married? Close to being married? Gay?”

Wilbur laughed.

“Um…
not
gay! I travel a lot. I’ve had relationships, but—”

“Commitment-phobe?”

“No, no, not at all. I have no problem with commitment, but I do have a problem with marriage. To me, it implies ownership, and from what I’ve seen, it changes the dynamic of the relationship,” Wilbur explained. “Look at Paul and Misty. They have a completely committed relationship, but they both realize that if they changed things, it might not work as well.”

“What about children?”

“That’s a tough question, which I’ve actually thought a lot about. I would like children if I were in the right situation. I don’t necessarily think that you need to be married to have children, but I
do
think you need a committed relationship. I think you would need a complete understanding of your partner’s views on just about everything before going down that path. I guess that’s where I fall short.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, when it comes time to discuss one another’s views in a relationship, I find that I’m often misunderstood or considered a bit radical. In society, if you don’t want to marry someone, it means you don’t love her enough, you’re selfish, or…maybe you’re gay,” he said with a grin.

“None of that sounds radical,” I offered.

“Unless you’re the one not getting the ring.”

Suddenly I felt I understood this creature called Wilbur. Somewhere out there was the love of his life who’d left him because he hadn’t forked over the diamonds. She’d failed the test. Maybe he wanted her soul and she just wanted some gold-plated imprisonment, which had confirmed his worst fears about women and love.

It took incredible restraint for me to resist hugging the naked teddy bear in front of me and telling him that everything would be all right—that love would conquer all. But the cynical bitch inside me knew that love was a myth. After all, neither love nor radiation was going conquer my cancerous lesion. But it wasn’t in me to punch Wilbur in the gut with my jaded perspective.

This time, I flipped my own hands over.

“No, I
got
the ring, and I do feel owned instead of wanted. I really don’t know what our relationship would have been otherwise—we got married so fast. My mother had just passed away and I think I was desperate to replace her. I know how awful that sounds. I wanted to replace her, not so much with him, but with a child. When that didn’t happen, I just complacently accepted that Evan was my fate. I had chosen him as my path and I needed to live with it.”

“Are you unable to have children?” Wilbur asked brazenly.

“We tried for about ten years. My doctor told me that everything
appeared
to be fine, but without conducting invasive tests on both Evan and me, there was no way to tell what the problem was. Evan refused all of it; he said it made him look weak. At some point I began to question what kind of father he would be anyway.”

“Is that why you left?”

“No, not really. It’s a little more complicated than that,” I replied softly, realizing what a painful subject my infertility continued to be for me.

I was glad Wilbur didn’t reply, and I decided to change the subject before he could delve any deeper.

“I was in a relationship before Evan, and in hindsight, it was really great. It had a lot of the qualities you described. We wanted the same things, and we were great friends, but, my mother never liked him—Michael. I think it was the fact that he’d always wanted to take me away. But when she got sick, it changed me. I felt like I was betraying my mother by staying with him. I married Evan instead and I don’t know what became of Michael. I’ve thought about contacting him over the years, but never knew what to say.”

“Maybe you should do it now.”

I considered Wilbur’s suggestion for a moment before I noticed that Misty and Paul were gone and had left the soap and two towels on the bank next to us. I had been so engrossed in my soul-and-body-baring conversation with Wilbur, I hadn’t realized how much time had gone by.

“I think this is the most I’ve ever shared with a naked man,” I
said as I grabbed the soap and started washing.

“You mean besides your husband?”

“No, I mean
period,
” I admitted.

I jumped out and quickly wrapped the towel around my water-wrinkled skin before Wilbur had an extra chance to gander. When I glanced back at him, however, he was purposely looking the other way.

I dried off as I headed inside my tent where Misty had left me shorts and a T-shirt that read “Leave me alone, I have a lot of nothing to do.” I dressed, grabbed my mindless romance novel, planted myself in one of the collapsible chairs, and did nothing but read; it was great. Wilbur followed suit, although his reading material consisted of some giant, dauntingly metaphysical tome. We sat quietly reading for hours before Paul and Misty arrived back at camp and interrupted the silence. I was jolted back to reality and out of the mystical land of my romance novel, where I’d cast myself in the title role, and Wilbur as my Fabio.

After a quick lunch, everyone decided it was a good time to meditate. Everyone but me, that is.
I had no idea how to properly meditate, so I’d never attempted to do so before. I guess I’d always been too embarrassed to try. Should I sit cross-legged with thumb and forefinger together while chanting, “ommmmm”? I wasn’t sure. And frankly, I didn’t see the point. I was having a perfectly relaxing time with Wilbur and my book before the other two decided to freak me out with their meditation mumbo-jumbo. I found their version of relaxation to be extremely stressful.

Misty pulled one of the folding chairs over and instructed me
just to sit.

“I think this will be especially good for you, Stacia. You know, mind over
body, and all that.”

Paul and Wilbur exchanged questioning looks, then Paul winked at me.

“Her body looked perfectly fine this morning.”