Page 38 of Fractured (Not Quite a Billionaire)
He hung up and asked me, “D’you mind coming outside with me once we finish this, so we can take this call? It’s Walter.” And my heart skipped a couple beats.
Karen sighed and said, “This is the last time I go on vacation with you guys. I’m just saying.”
Hemi said, “Oh, really? Thought you were enjoying the skiing.” He was acting normal, so I did my best, too, even though I needed to hear what Walter said. No, I wasdyingto hear what Walter said. Hemi had wanted me to talk to his attorneywithhim, though, and was going out of his way to make that happen? That was what you’d call “major progress.”
Karen said, “The skiing part’s great. The New Zealand part rocks, too. It’s just all the…” She waved a hand. “Secret talks. Drama. Heartburn. I’m thinking about becoming a Buddhist, so you know.”
Hemi stopped cutting his slice of thick, meaty bacon and said, “A Buddhist, eh. Better eat your sausage while you can, I reckon.”
Karen said, “You don’thaveto be a vegetarian to be a Buddhist,” and took another defiant bite of her own bacon.
“Good thing, too,” Hemi said. “As I expect we’d find you hiding in the toilets sneaking a hamburger.”
Karen said with dignity, “That’s thesuperficialexplanation. It’s a lot more than that. A guy I know at school has been telling me about it. Noah Halliday. It’s not about eating meat, it’s about not getting attached, so everything isn’t such a huge deal. I mean, love’s great and all, I’m sure, having some kind of grand passion like you guys do, but wouldn’t it be better if you could justgowith things? Noah says that if you’re Buddhist, you learn to accept change as the turn of the wheel, remember that other things will come along in your life, and serenely let it go and move on. Hope’s always soworried.Wouldn’t it be better not to be worried, or not to get mad like you do? I just want to behappyand take life as it comes.Can you really not see that that’s better?”
I was groping for an answer to that. I wasn’t supposed to have been worried? That was a character flaw? When I’d been nineteen and telling the funeral director, “No plot, and no casket, just the cremation” for my mother, because we’d needed that money for the rent? When I’d known I was the only thing between my eleven-year-old sister and foster care, so I’d better get over my fear and pain and sorrow in one big hurry and figure out how to take care of her, or she’d be lost?
All right, I wasn’t just “groping for an answer.” We’ll go ahead and call it “furious.”
I started to say something and bit it back, but Hemi said it for me. Still calmly, of course. I wouldn’t say he was great at not getting attached, but nobody did “controlled” like Hemi.
“I don’t think attachment means what you think it means,” he said. “Or Buddhism, either, though I can see why a sixteen-year-old boy might think the ‘accepting and moving-on’ bit sounded good. I’d have been all for that idea, myself, if I’d thought of it. I’d have talked it up to a girl or two, too, I’m sure.”
He shot a glance at me, and I said, “Or maybe you could go on and tell her that youdidtalk it up to a girl or two.”
He suppressed a smile and went on. “And as for Hope—maybe she’s been worried because she’s had to think about survival—for both of you, which is heaps harder than thinking about it for yourself, and scarier, too—when she wasn’t one bit ready for that. And she did it anyway, didn’t she? If she was worried, that just tells you how hard it was. That’s not weakness, and it’s not wrong. Who’s Noah Halliday when he’s at home? I’m taking a stab that his dad isn’t on the dole.”
You see why I loved this man?
Karen, of course, sighed. “I should have known you guys would react like this. He’s not sixteen. He’s seventeen, all right? He’s in the Gifted and Talented program with me, too, so he’s not exactly stupid. And so he’s not poor. Why does that matter?Youaren’t poor, andyouunderstand life.”
Hemi might have had a sardonic glint in his eye now. “Yeh, well, now isn’t then. Let’s say that my dad wasn’t paying school fees when I was seventeen. Let’s go on and say, in fact, that my dad wasn’taroundwhen I was seventeen, and neither was my mum. Most of the people I know who don’t think about what’s going to come next, the ones who assume that the wheel will turn to something better? They’ve got somebody in mind they’re thinking will be handing them that something better. I’ve known a fair few people like that. Hope isn’t one of them.”
“All right, then,” Karen continued doggedly. “So you’re not spiritual, and Noah is. Not in some voodoo way, but in ausefulway. I mean, why do people kill other people, and steal, and start wars? Because they get attached, right? And how come you and Hope fight? Because you’re so attached, which means everything matters so much and is this big drama. Just imagine if instead, you could accept things more. If you could go through life and have experiences, and not have drama. Noah says, if you’re not worried somebody will take your good thing away, then you can just enjoy it in the moment. So if you’re with somebody, and then it doesn’t work out? You just think, ‘The wheel has turned, and I probably needed that experience,’ and accept what happens next.”
Hemi said, “I think you’d better do a bit more research on Buddhism, because I reckon Noah’s version’s got more to do with being a teenage boy with hormones to spare than it does with religion. Ask yourself why he’d be telling you that. And tellmeexactlywhenhe told you that, and why you’re bringing it up now. Your school’s been out for two weeks.”
Karen flushed. “That’s not fair. Hedoescare about what Buddhism really is. And so we email. I email with lots of people.”
“Not many of them telling you to hook up and move on, I’m guessing,” Hemi said. “That it’s more spiritual that way.”
“That’s not—” Karen was looking mulish now. She adored Hemi. What was going on?
“Anyway,” I hurried to say, “all I know is, I couldn’t do it, not the moving-on serene part. You’re right about that. It sounds like a pretty good way not to get to your golden anniversary, too, if you ask me.”
“Well, obviouslyyoucan’t,” Karen said. “Which is why you have to cry about Hemi and get worked up. Why couldn’t there be a better way? Noah says human beings were made to do things in phases. Like—serial monogamy. It’s natural, which is why so many people get divorced, or don’t get married at all, just love somebody and stop loving them and then move on. Noah’s dad has been divorced three times, and his mom has been divorced twice, and my parents weren’t even married, and they fought all thetime. It’s more realistic if you accept that most of the time, it’ll end, and when you start fighting like that, you just leave. And then if itdoeslast forever, you can just be really grateful, because you didn’t take it for granted. But most times, a relationship is good, and then it isn’t, so you let it go. You know—‘If you love something, let it go. If it’s meant to be yours, it will come back to you. If it doesn’t, it was never yours to begin with.’”
She said it like she’d invented it. Or, more likely, that Noah had.
“No,” Hemi said. “If you love something, hold it hard.” He took my hand, the one with his ring on it. He kissed my fingers, looked into my eyes, and smiled with the sweetness he rarely showed in public. “If you start deciding your good thing doesn’t matter to you one way or the other? Youwillbe letting it go, because your good thing will find somebody else who knows how special she is. My good thing’s going to know I mean it, and that I mean to keep it.”
That was nice. That wasbeautiful.But I was still getting mad, and about more than Noah. “How about when you got sick?” I asked Karen. “If you’d died, should I have said, ‘Ah, well, the wheel has turned,’ and thought about how much I’d save in health insurance?”
“Now, see, Hope,” she said, “that’s just an example of how you don’t get it. It doesn’t mean you aren’tsad.It just means youaccept,and you can move on.”
“Well, I don’t accept,” Hemi said. “Not the important things, I don’t, and I never will. And Hope isn’t going to accept, either. Some things you roll with, and some things you fight for. Noah doesn’t know the difference, because he’s seventeen.”
“Fine,” Karen said with a sigh. “I was just trying to tell you about an alternate spiritual path. I thought you might find it interesting.”
