And after all that time of being sick over Amanda, he didn’t care about her anymore. He didn’t even think about her because there was this lovely blonde who laughed as she dipped her nacho into the sour cream. She was so open to tell him this. Maybe he thought then that she would make him more open, too.
He thinks now he fell in love with her the second he met her. But why has he been so guarded? Why couldn’t he confess his stuff to her that night, or even months later? He trusts her. He does. If he doesn’t tell her everything he is, isn’t he no better than Amanda, who kept all that inside, who stayed when she didn’t want to, until he asked her that question? He needs to tell Suzette: he has his own Finland. She will listen. She will touch his face. He doesn’t want her to feel sorry for him though. He has been afraid of that part of himself, the part that couldn’t get over what Amanda did. That part that walked and walked. He wants Suzette to know this was worth it. She was worth the difficult wait. “I’m just whiny, right?” he says as they slip on their hats and gloves and clomp over the frozen grass to Red and Blue.
“Nah,” Ahmed says. “I’m lonely, too.” He hands Damon a beat-up helmet.
“Yeah?”
Ahmed nods. “But I’ll find my queen. I’m not even playing around with princesses anymore. Going right for a queen.”
“She’s out there, man.”
“We’ll see.” Ahmed looks over at him. “Did that bridesmaid, the vet, did she, uh, ever visit or anything?”
“Ginger?” Damon remembers seeing them take a walk together at the wedding. Then she got word her ex-boyfriend died and had to leave. Leave it to Ahmed to fall for her: the best of the best. Smart, sensitive, beautiful. “Good pick, buddy… but I think she’s, um, otherwise engaged.”
“Yeah, she seemed it.” Ahmed looks straight ahead and starts up Red. The engine is loud and confident. “Let’s do this!” he shouts over the noise.
“Right behind you.” Damon turns the key. The green light appears. He puts it in neutral and hits the start button. The engine growls. Ahmed gives him the thumbs-up and rumbles ahead of him, past the house, past the barn.
They zigzag through the grass, crouching over their seats. He feels the energy of the quad, the good wind, the tires as they bounce over the uneven land, and his friend is there, like a fellow soldier on a horse, like they’re in the Crusades or something, riding toward destiny.
“Hell yeah,” Ahmed shouts at the same time Damon hollers, “Yes! Yes!” and they drive and yell like this, their lungs burning, the engines roaring. Small flurries of wet snow start to fall. They stick to Damon’s boots. They glisten on the sides of the vehicle, and he and Ahmed drive and drive, over all this land that is somehow his. Damon wonders how he found himself here, how his train stopped at this good station.
13. The Winter Puzzle
Greg Tyler doesn’t look at himself anymore when he brushes his teeth.
He notices this. He notices a lot of things. That a man’s face needs eyebrows and even eyelashes to look right. That he probably can’t do a pull-up these days （he hasn’t tried）。 That the day drags by so slowly when you don’t have budget meetings to attend, or board reports to write. That the taste of metal from chemo, even chemo that’s been finished for weeks, ruins everything.
He looks at his wife as she steps into the shower, her blondish hair touching her shoulders, and he envies her healthy skin, the way she can stand so straight, the way the water doesn’t wilt her at all. He squirts out a blob of Colgate original and closes his eyes while he tastes more metal and runs the toothbrush over his molars.
He wonders if he can survive this.
Of course he would have raised his hand and volunteered to take cancer so no one else would have to, and he’s glad Freddie and Addie are spared. That means something somehow, that because he has this, they are spared. Aren’t they? Yes, he thinks so. He always felt the world doled things out this way, like a game of duck, duck, goose. He is glad they won’t feel sick, lose their hair, see the shock on people’s faces. But even still he wishes someone could feel the way he feels for a second, to slip it on like a smock in art class in elementary school, so they’d know what he knows: that there is no God at a time like this, that there is nothing really. That you can’t come this close to seeing darkness without it altering you. He realizes how ineffective it is when someone says, “You’re in my prayers,” or, “Let me know if I can do anything.” You should regard someone who has cancer with silence because it is so heavy, so burdensome, that even when the patient is tough like Greg is, silence is the only thing you should offer. He wishes someone could feel how heavy and cruel this is. Then they could slip it off and shake their heads and say, Oh, Greg. I had no idea.