The Outside of August

by Joanna Hershon

  Alice looked at her brother in this, his personal squalor. She wanted to not be here, not here at all, but ten years old and out in the poolhouse—unrenovated and unburned. She wanted to be holding the big heavy flashlight and watching his hands make shadow puppets. Do the bunny. Do it again. Do the bird.

  “No,” she said, standing, “I’ll go back.”

  “Where?” He grinned, looking up at her. “There aren’t many options here. Let me guess: with the Canadian backpackers in a hostel? So you can play backgammon in the common space}”

  “Where I’m going, there are no nice Canadian backpackers,” she said gravely. “There is no common space.”

  “Don’t go. I have a sleeping bag you can use. It’s soft and warm. Just don’t go right now. It’s really late and you don’t know the roads well. Please don’t.”

  “Give me the sleeping bag,” she said. “Give me a sip of your water.”

  She curled up in the opposite corner. She blew the candles out as he hummed a made-up song. In his sister’s mind there were lyrics about phosphorescence, fireflies, long-limbed selfish children. She wondered if he knew how grateful she was to him each time he helped indulge the small part of her that truly loved not making sense. She waited for him to apologize or to explain; there was a physical space inside her that stayed open and waiting, but as he kept humming those low and infuriatingly relaxing melodies, the space simply faded away.

  In the shack that had become the poolhouse where they’d camped out years ago, Alice had remained quiet for hours, and what Gus had done was talk. He’d told her all of his secrets, all of his many plans. Now he was silent, and soon, she heard, he was asleep. She watched the moon, barely a sliver, in the collapsing sky. The stars up above were brutal gossips: Make a wish, they said, giggling, so ravishing and mean, so many in number, Alice didn’t stand a chance.

  12

  If she was going to understand just what had happened to Cady and what Gus was very clearly not inclined to share, Alice knew she had to accept, at least for a while, the wide-open blankness of being here. She could do anything with her time right now, and this was completely foreign to her nature. She had never been particularly idle. Besides which, it was certainly not here that she would have chosen to start. The very word, Baja—it had always conjured a dusty car mirror, driving forever through endless heat, and the vision, as it happened, was basically correct. It had always been words like Aix-en-Provence that, for Alice, inspired lolling around. It was words like Amalfi, Sienna. But she’d long been far away from all that she’d considered hers before she moved back home with her father—everything from that life was suspended in time. And her parents’ house wouldn’t lose its value anytime soon; besides, she liked the idea of it sitting there in the cold, so clean and vacant, waiting.

  Idleness as a child had been nonexistent because she was always either pining for her mother or trying to entertain her. She had worked each summer as a teenager, all through college, in between college and grad school in various and thankless administrative positions, and then when friends took time off from research or writing dissertations, Alice never did— although she never finished her dissertation either, supposedly because she was needed at home, but even Alice couldn’t maintain that reasoning anymore. She feared being unoccupied or—more to the point—unnecessary. And what could be less necessary than another investigation of the melancholy if perfect Anton Chekhov? How did I ever let myself start on such an indulgent and depressing road? she had said to her father, to Eleanor, and it was true.

  But what she really feared was this: spending days unaccounted for, living in her threadbare fake silk shmata of a robe and turning off the phone and having people believe she was consumed with thought when she was really consumed with the freedom—of what everyone she knew and loved coveted most: choices, an abundance of choices.

  Her father got sicker. He saved her.

  And now here she was, hot on the trail of not much more than an answer to a question she couldn’t exactly name. She needed a response, a definitive one, and Alice knew she couldn’t leave this place until Gus gave something up. Alice knew he had something; she was sure of it. She’d spent years reconstructing her last conversations with her mother and feeling perfectly sane in doing so with the aim of possessing some kind of understanding—as if profound thought were all that would be required to comprehend Charlotte’s death. Alice, perhaps unfairly, had also wanted nothing more than for her brother to take on some of the burden of proof and insist that she stop. In the last few years she’d achieved a sense of control, an easing away from needing to know why Charlotte met such an untimely end, but this self-imposed grace had fallen straight away with Cady’s desperate call. Her innumerable attempts at letting go had ultimately led her here—to this kind of dusty nowhere.

  Although she had to admit that in certain lights this town was a reluctant charmer. It wasn’t Amalfi, but still … There were a disproportionate number of candy stands. Two were right next to each other, carrying the very same products, and they were both placed precariously on the mostly crumbled sidewalk—Muy Rico! was painted boldly on both in the same hand-painted font. Alice handed over a few pesos at each stand, receiving in exchange a few caramels, what she could best ascertain as pudding-in-a-bag, and a cherry-red lollipop shaped like a heart and which was somehow vaguely obscene. Alice knew, like her mother before her, that she would eat them all.

  She stopped in front of a locked gate, a caramel melting in her mouth. Beyond the gate was an empty pastel blue-bottomed swimming pool. On the wall inside the gate there was a hand-painted cheerful sign—Club Aqua Baja—there were palm trees surrounding it, but the pool was filthy with litter and dead leaves that had most likely fallen during the last hurricane season. It was such a sad sight it seemed as if someone should have thought to cover it up like a corpse, out of respect, protecting its stunted possibilities.

  Moving in from the periphery, teeth stinging from sugar, Alice passed men in cowboy hats, men whose bellies hung way over their belt buckles as they smoked Boots cigarettes. There were packs of Boots lying in the street, on abandoned outdoor tables, sticking out of back pockets. The church, painted mustard and crimson, loomed high above the town, creating a beacon for the open plaza, which Alice imagined filled with people and music on occasion but was now as empty as a schoolyard in summer. On the plaza there was an old locked theater, a municipal building of some kind, and an arch that said in black script above it, Cafe. In the arch there was a huge padlocked castlelike door, with its hours of operation on a small tasteful sign. A few signs said Gallery, but in two cases the door was locked, and the third was open but clearly not in business, for there was nothing in the empty space whatsoever. It was cold and dark with speckled linoleum floors—not a welcoming venue.

  As she walked down streets lined with old brick haciendas, fish taco carts (Tres Hermanos!, Dos Juans, Pescado Bueno), mango stands, frozen coconuts, and a clinic painted bright yellow with an illustration of a huge and blood-filled syringe, each door (even, perversely, the clinic) made Alice want to walk inside. At the onset of a burgeoning compulsion to peer inside people’s homes, Alice started to alternate between feeling furious with Gus and also the slightest bit grateful to be out of that big wintry house—forced to focus on objects with eyes that saw beyond their links to irrefutable history and how such objects would ultimately meet the fate of box or garbage.

  She missed her father, how he put things in context, how he remembered exactly everything he read. If he were at her side he’d be able to explain just what kinds of marine life were evolving in the nearby ocean, what existed here even before the art deco and adobe. She missed her mother, too, no more than usual but more acutely, as Charlotte still reigned over all foreign places.

  On entering a dank dark cement shack (Feliz Camaron—the fagade depicted a smiling, dancing shrimp), Alice smelled the universally powerful scent of something frying. Lard was in the air and it was intoxicating. She saw that the p
roprietor was shirtless and sweating, with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth, but amidst the frying smell she didn’t care. She would have, she imagined, eaten just about anything at that moment as long as it was fried. The shirtless man was shaking his head at a woman who spoke right on through his attitude, who could have said nothing and still it would have seemed as if she was not only fighting but winning. She had jet-black hair tied in a pink scarf, dangling silver earrings, and her eyes were dark with enormous pupils, which gave her a wild, protesting look. She didn’t look like a tourist, but from what Alice had seen, she certainly didn’t seem like a local either. Her blouse was loose and possibly from the forties, a dusty-rose short-sleeved fabric that had seen better days. She wore it effectively, over a black bra, paired with faded jeans, and she wore no makeup besides kohl-black eyeliner that Alice didn’t even notice at first because her eyes were so dark to begin with. There was something about her carriage that broadcast urban roots. Her Spanish seemed perfect, but what did Alice know? She could have been from Barcelona, Mexico City, Bogota—anywhere but here.

  Alice watched as the woman plunged her hand deep in the icebox, where blue-black shrimp lay in a heap. There were two neon-red snappers with eyes stunned wide open, and layers of green-glinting whitefish lying heavy until the woman reached her small fingers around the top one and separated it from the rest. “No,” she said, with a single shake of her head. Then she pursed her lips in dismissal.

  The fish man spoke excitedly, throwing the cigarette out back, into the small lot, where what appeared to be a mess of old car parts, fish heads, and tails lay scattered before a stooped lady sitting in the shade, looking not a day older than 110. “Si.“ He nodded, countering the striking woman’s shaking of her head. “Si, si—”

  “You must insist until he lifts the top ones away,” she said softly, apparently to Alice, for there was no one else around. Her voice was eerily high and hazy, the effect of which was that of a twelve-year-old girl who’d been a career smoker since the second grade.

  Alice found herself nodding a few beats too long, surprised somehow at the woman’s perfect English. She had felt somehow sealed off from everyone else, as if nobody could actually see her.

  “The best are at the bottom,” she continued, taking a cigarette from her purse and lighting up. “The best are always hidden away.” She blew smoke in the man’s direction as they stood in some manner of a face-off.

  The man begrudgingly extracted two bottom pieces from the icebox after she’d maintained her position, and he wrapped them up for her. As the woman raised her hand to her hair, Alice noticed that she wore, oddly enough, the exact bracelet that encircled Alice’s own wrist—a thin silver coil she’d had for years. The silver glinted in the shadows, and Alice tried to remember where she’d bought it, as she heard the woman say something else to him, something that sounded like a friendly threat. “I told him not to be a mean bastard and to give you something fresh.”

  “Thank you,” Alice said. “Look, we have the same bracelet.” She held out her wrist and the woman came close to Alice, extending her own tanner, thinner arm.

  A birthmark in the shape of a crescent covered the woman’s forearm, one shade darker than her skin. She remained silent, staring.

  “Why did you assume he’d try to rip me off?”

  “You look like an easy target,” she said without a smile. “Be careful,” she warned, and with a bag offish swinging from her hand, the woman walked out the door into the light. It took a moment for Alice to realize that this curious woman hadn’t paid for her food.

  It was afternoon, the hottest part of the day had passed, and she could bet that her brother was surfing. Fenced-in goats lay still, in a pale herd. The nearby ocean, the fragrant banana bushes and mango trees all tempered the smell of manure and also the faint smell of fried shrimp coming from her. She’d tucked into nearly a kilo, pouring on hot sauce, squeezing limes, and sopping up the grease with buttery tortillas. Alice was now savoring the memory, toying with the idea of seeking out ice cream or maybe a strong cold coffee. A brown and wrinkled farmworker whistled as she walked faster and faster, enjoying—no, loving—the dry heat and wind on her already sunburned face. On the surfing beach, trucks were in the distance; they were pulled up nearly to the lip of the sand ledge, and Alice knew that Gus was out there. As she walked toward the ocean, the hot sun scrambled her thoughts that were spilling at random (Her own silver bracelet, where had it come from? What was the actual fat content of lard?); nothing could be contained in this wide-open space, in this searing Pacific light. Those pale-fire eyes of the girl at the airport, the burned-charcoal stare of the woman from the fish shack—these were female eyes and somehow were seeing right through her, straight into her tenuous hold on just where she was and why.

  Alice believed Cady She believed in Cady DeForrest, in everything she had said, and not her own brother.

  The task of prying out information from Gus about their mother, the kind of information they’d always no matter what agreed to share, was not only depressing but also daunting.

  Charlotte had left a good deal of blank spots in her messy wake—vacant lots of questions where her father never wished to venture. Most adults have a secret or two, as their father was wont to say, but Alice and August had always agreed on how their mother had more. She had more of everything and she still seemed to feel slighted, missing out on something vital. She was always hungry, literally hungry, eager to name her cravings, and she was full of secrets; they were stitched into her being, like diamonds sewn into the silk skirt linings of wealthy refugees.

  Her children knew this, and it was therefore implicit that there would be no secrets between them; there would never be a reason for it. Alice had grown to feel that, if anything, she had to tell Gus when she didn’t want to hear his secrets—the extent of the gambling he’d done in Bangkok, the way Cady smelled like sour milk when she had a cold, his postulations of why that turned him on— Enough, she’d say, grinning, stretching the phone cord and sitting on her fire escape in warmer weather, picking dead leaves off her plants.

  What are you doing, Alice?

  How do you know I’m doing anything?

  Because you ‘d never talk this long and not get something done in the meanwhile.

  What are you doing?

  Since we’ve been on the phone, I’ve smoked a joint and been lying completely still, but now I’m clipping my toenails.

  There was no detail he’d refuse her if she asked him for it. That was something she used to know.

  There was nobody in any of the trucks but an amber mutt passed out in one of the flatbeds, obviously dreaming. His chest heaved up and down, he made sweet whimpering sounds, and his paw reached out and scratched the air. Out in the thick gray ocean, however, in the far-off hills of water, there were surfers. There were about ten of them, all in dark wet suits. Alice sat in the sand near the truck and watched. A young couple with matching mullet hairstyles sat a few yards away in low beach chairs. A few older long boarders were suited up, stretching and taking their time. Pelicans swooped low against the cloud-banded sky, as gulls congregated in darting packs. How small the waves looked from here, how completely misleading. While appearing as rising slopes gently falling away into whitecaps—Alice knew from Gus’s years of talk—these particular waves were fast-breaking, and the graceful rides these guys were taking were not about length but speed. Gus had always liked narrating his surf sessions to her, especially when he was first learning, and as far as Alice could tell, the telephone pole was invented so surfers could use it as a measuring stick (You see that pole?) when bragging about their latest ride.

  Of course she tried to tell if he was one of the surfers, but it was, as always, impossible. She made her way over the mass of rocks in the surprisingly cold water and waded up to her shins, fighting for balance against the powerful undertow. The waves were so tempting, and even as Alice knew she could never make it out beyond the rocks without some type of board, she
found herself inching farther and farther until she bashed her toe against one and eventually hobbled back up the sand ledge. She nearly fell asleep, soothed by the sound of the ocean, but there he was, gingerly stepping on the rocks, board tucked under his arm. By the time August made it up to where she was sitting, Alice had made the petty decision to not call out his name. He was out of breath when he said hello, which he said as if she were simply on time for a preexisting plan.

  Alice asked, “Aren’t you cold?” which came out sounding like an insult.

  “Yes,” he replied tightly. He took his wet suit off, dried himself with the dirty blanket, and changed in the open air. Standing naked for a moment, he gave the dog in the truck a rough tousle. Gus was one of those rare people on this earth who was truly and completely immodest. He yelled good-naturedly enough, as if he’d jumped into a freezing quarry. The dog did some halfhearted barking. “Cold, cold, cold,” he said, imitating the urgent style of little Alice, testing out the bathwater. What an elaborate affair it had been to get her submerged. Gus simply resisted bathing altogether and had to be bribed, but Alice had—weirdly enough for a child—loved taking baths, but they had to be perfect. Hot, hot, hot. Cold, cold, cold. The adjustments could take a good thirty minutes.

  She smiled at his reference as he pulled a sweatshirt over his head and looked out at the water, where the others were perched on their boards. “So, urn, you slept okay last night?” he asked.

  “Yes, thanks for letting me stay,” she said. “You looked good out there.”

  “Thanks,” he said impatiently, “but you can’t tell from this far out who’s who.”

  “I can,” she said. “I could tell it was you right away.”

  The silence that ensued was diminished, boring. There was far too much to say. She couldn’t yet believe the other possibility, that they’d simply grown apart and whatever urges he’d possessed to confide in her had not only disappeared, but had been all that had kept them so close for so long.