It was well into the night. Essex handed Cheyenne Kirsten’s keys, which was another strange thing, an action like always, an action as proof it will never be like always, everything ringing in two worlds.
They stopped in the University District at a twenty-four-hour doughnut shop and bought apple fritters. The people at the tables were young and high, white but yellow-skinned from the light bouncing off the lemon walls. Neither Essex nor Cheyenne had slept much for days and the sound of sudden laughter was like cannon-shot.
It was after 2:00 a.m. when they arrived. The rain had stopped earlier in the evening but everything was wet. Moonlight turned the fishing boats to carved bone in their docks, swaying and clicking together like vertebrae. The rust-colored structure of the gasworks, backlit and black to the eye, guardrails ringing silos, huge pipes joined boiler to empty bell and thin ladders scaled the sides of barrels and peeked up over the top, scratching the sky like a woodcut.
The clouds were breaking up overhead and the temperature dropped slightly. Windless now, the lake was still, reflecting the city in bright spectrometer lines. Metropolis, Cheyenne proclaimed, opening her arms wide in mock stagecraft, Kirsten’s electric blanket around her neck and shoulders, the cord trailing behind, ticking on the concrete path. They walked along low concrete walls in the shadow. A day-old moon was caught between the graffiti-covered welded steel tanks.
“I saw an Egyptian temple in a museum in New York,” said Cheyenne, pointing at the tag on one tower. “It had graffiti on it from Romans and Napoleon.”
“What did it say?”
“Same thing it always says: ‘We were here.’ ”
He laughed and she smiled.
“Otherwise you might not know,” she added.
“I don’t know,” he said, “I see us everywhere. The great buildings, the pyramids, the bridges—we built them. They’re ours more than anybody else’s.”
“Except for the money, the building materials, and the zoning permits.”
“I will not concede the greatness of our people to you.”
“Sometimes it feels like all the big decisions of the world get made without us,” she said.
The lake water lapped once against the shore. A car pulled into the parking lot with its high beams shearing and techno beat and bass rattling its fenders. The driver rolled down his window. A vocoder descant in round tones elbowed angel-ward, so sure of its place in the world.
“We can look for a spot by the sundial,” said Essex.
They abandoned the lower park for the hill. Climbing the spiral path, the sound faded. The vista changed as they wound around the hill: downtown and the lake, the ship canal and the bridge, the parking lot, the gasworks again.
“You know what kills me is that all those women, Margaret and the coven, had a chance to talk her out of it.”
“I don’t think she wanted to be talked out of it,” said Essex.
“They had time to get right with her and say goodbye.”
“We did say goodbye, sort of.”
“I didn’t. Not at all.”
They stopped just before the summit, breathing harder from lack of sleep.
“We should be able to get decent reception here,” he said. “Where do you want to sit?”
Cheyenne pointed to a flat patch a few yards from the bronze sundial. “I want to see the lake. I want to see light.”
The grass was slick from the rain. She ran her shoe back and forth, checking for rocks, needles, and broken bottles. Essex tore open one of the ponchos they’d bought at a gas station along the way and, shaking it into a circle, laid it down. She spread the electric blanket on top and sat.
“Open the other poncho. We can put the bags on it.”
He opened it and handed it to her. She doubled it up then set the three bags down, positioning them carefully on the thickest part of the plastic.
“Wouldn’t want our inheritance to get wet,” she said.
Clouds thinned over the hills and more stars came through.
“Did Livy say when she’d be back?”
“Her last text said she was sailing,” he said.
“She’s already sailing.”
“Farther out. I tried the number. No one picked up. It went right to voice mail.”
Cheyenne stretched her legs out and zipped up her hoodie. A boat powered through the water on the other side of the lake. Seconds later ripples reached the shore, lapping then going quiet.
“I don’t understand,” said Cheyenne. “How can there be no one to tell?”
Essex drummed his hands on his thigh for a minute then changed position to sit cross-legged, forcing her to move over.
“Did you ever meet Kirsten’s parents?” he asked.
“We never met anybody. When we asked about them she told us we were immigrants. She said we’d left the cultural old world in search of a better life.”
Essex snorted hard then covered his mouth. His eyes shone. Cheyenne laughed.
“I know! Livy and I totally believed it too. Until like third grade we told everyone that we were first-generation Americans— What’s with you? Why do you have your hand over your mouth?” she said.
He breathed out sharply through his nose and took his hand away from his face. “Every time I start to laugh, I cry.”
Cheyenne nodded and looked over the tended wet hill.
“Sometimes I feel like everything she ever taught us was wrong,” she said.
The damp from the ground seeped up through the cheap poncho and blanket and she shifted. Essex opened her backpack and got out the candles and the bag of apple fritters. After several attempts with the matches, he got the candles to stay lit. Scratching little burrows in the grass, he placed them into the cold mud beneath.
“I forgot how much it rains here.”
“You’ll like climate change then,” she said.
Cheyenne broke a fritter in half.
“We should have eaten these when they were warm,” she said.
“Do you remember when we were here last?” he asked.
Cheyenne thought. “I was here with Livy months ago. Seems like ages. But I don’t remember ever coming here with you.”
“We did too. The year you were married. You, me, and Jackson came up here.”
“I remember being here with Jackson but not you.”
“I can’t remember why I was here,” said Essex.
“Because you’re a hopeless tagalong.”
She handed him a fritter. Chewing, she looked at his profile. Little lines in new places.
A light gust brushed the south slope of the hill, blowing out the candles on Cheyenne’s side. Essex leaned over and relit them.
“You know what my favorite wedding was?” he said. “You and Jackson. You were spectacular.”
“Yup, and I’m going to feel bad about it my whole life. What I remember best from the wedding, though, is seeing you drag that heavy old mattress across the field by yourself. The one for the honeymoon tent.”
“I don’t remember that,” he said.
“It’s so vivid in my mind.” She stared over the hill. “Our wedding was great in its own way too,” she said.
The air was getting colder and the sky clearer. Essex checked the time again. The program was about to start. When he got the live stream from the station going he set the phone between them and turned it up. The earlier show was signing off. They were going out on a dub song about sexual orientation written and recorded by local high schoolers. After it finished, a woman’s voice came on.
“Tonight, for the first time in two decades, you will hear male singers on The Third Spiral Galaxy,” she said.
“Self-identified male,” corrected another voice.
“Yes, thank you. Self-identified male.”
“Don’t be alarmed!�
�� said a third voice in the background, pitched in a comic falsetto.
“God, the whole coven is there,” said Cheyenne.
The sound fell away and the voice of the host returned.
“Is that Alice?” asked Essex.
“I think so. I can’t keep their voices straight. They sound like geese to me.”
“We lost our dear friend Kirsten this week,” said the host. “This show is dedicated to her. We’ll be back in a moment. Please stay with us.”
They cut to a station ID recorded during a previous pledge drive, a musician nobody knew reading out call letters that nobody cared about. Cheyenne put her head down. She crinkled up the white paper fritter bag and jammed it under her pack.
“I am definitely not ready for this,” she said.
The host returned.
“We are asking listeners to please hold all calls until the end of the show tonight.”
There was scuffling. Someone dropped something. Another person asked if it rolled under the chair. Someone inaudible, interrupted by a cough. The host said something off-mic then returned. Cheyenne could hear her unfold a piece of paper, and the edge of that paper brush the table as the host took a sip of water and cleared her throat.
“To my children I leave clarity in emergency. The skills to calm a parasympathetic nervous system. The determination to fill out pages and pages of DSHS paperwork as well as the imagination to entertain themselves in the offices of Social and Health Services for as long as necessary. Most importantly, how to petition without begging and…hold on. I can’t quite make it out.” The host conferred with another person. “Yes, okay. I see.” She cleared her throat again. “And an understanding of myth and the power of stories, a narrative other than the one assigned. The manners to negotiate with landlords. The cunning to open new bank accounts so you always have starter checks and free checking. The wherewithal to rotate through introductory offers at yoga studios so that you never pay more than five dollars a class. The skills to do medical research on the Internet. The ability to make kefir and kombucha at home for nothing. Proficiency in multiple methods of divination. Enough American Sign Language to be polite to the deaf and a working knowledge of the women’s movement from 1865 to the present.” The host took another sip of water. “The willingness to leave everything behind in pursuit of something more important and walk out with nothing. The determination to withstand the opinions of others and all my love forever. My good Le Creuset saucepan goes to Essex. My yoga mat goes to Cheyenne. Whatever’s left of my herbs and medicine goes to Livy except for the Vicodin from my car accident. It’s past-date but I don’t think it goes bad. Just divide it between yourselves on an as-needed basis. It’s in the bathroom cabinet.”
There was more rustling of paper as the host flipped the page to see if there was anything on the back. A second later they could hear her refolding the will and sliding it into its envelope.
“That’s it?” said Cheyenne. “That’s her life?” She stared at the phone.
The host’s chair creaked as she bumped the mic. “Please join us in a moment of silence.”
“That can’t be it,” said Cheyenne.
She turned to Essex. He put his finger to his lips.
She looked down. Essex put his hand on her leg. It was trembling so she started to shiver…The grass is alive in me and I can’t make it stop vibrating. The mad garden’s gone wild with seed; it winds through everything—leaking batteries, strewn clothes, sofas missing cushions, the people you love—knitting itself into something new and you say: I will not move forward. I will not leave you alone in this moment and let you slip into the past, but yet you are dragged away.
“Thank you.” The host exhaled. “She walks with her ancestors.”
“Oh she’d love that,” snapped Cheyenne. “Because we all know what a big fan of our ancestors she was.” Rage was like a blight on the heart.
The music started. A baritone voice singing songs about weeping and mercy and ships.
Cheyenne tucked into herself like a pill bug, her face on her knees. She cried for herself and her sister and felt Essex’s hand between her shoulder blades.
“Turn it down,” she said.
“You should listen,” he said softly. He moved the phone closer. “Shh. It’s the sound of the home we came from.”
In a cross-fade the baritone was gone and a young woman sang in his place. About another side, about another light that shines, about belonging to no one else. Cheyenne sat up and blew the air out of her lungs, shaking her head like a dog.
She stretched and was silent. The moon was over the gasworks. The singers on the radio were changing. The reverb and tambourine had died out and an overdriven guitar arced up and dipped under a single note. A drum machine kicked in. Soon it was drowned in layers and loops.
“I still can’t believe you might go to jail,” she said quietly.
He drew a long breath, stuttering on the exhale. “There’s a chance I won’t. If I do, you can hold my ashes for me.”
He gave her a sad wink.
She put her hand among the green blades and twisted a thin root around her finger.
“You know I feel fine and then I don’t. It’s transcendent then it’s not. The laughter feels right and then all of sudden it’s worse than anything,” she said.
His eyes moved when the seagulls by the lake moved but his expression didn’t change. He tracked gulls as they took flight.
“Do you think they’d let me see her body again?” she asked. “I can’t make it real.” She wiped her face. “I’m sick of the taste of my own tears. Let’s open the bags.”
She put his on his lap.
“Wake up,” she said and grabbed her own and Livy’s.
“Shouldn’t Livy be the first to open hers?” he asked.
“No way. I want to see what she got.”
She reached into her sister’s bag and pulled out a paperback. It was Kirsten’s copy of the I Ching. The coins were in a little bag tied around it with a ribbon. She set it aside and kept going.
“I got her tarot deck,” said Essex, holding up the worn box. “What did you get?”
“I’m still on Livy’s bag.”
There was a pair of dice made out of bones, a shark-tooth necklace, a scarf with silver threads that Livy used to tease her about wearing, a miniature statue of Kali, a honey jar full of barrettes and hair ties, and a journal with an astrolabe embossed on it that had the first two pages torn out but was otherwise blank.
In her own bag was a Toyota manual; a rune pouch; Kirsten’s pearl-handle pocketknife; a fake antique necklace, shiny because the patina was gone; a painted candleholder; a box of playing cards with famous mountains of the world; and a Kennedy half-dollar.
“Oh score. Look at what I got,” said Essex.
He held a lavender T-shirt against his body with one hand drawing the other across the shirt’s faded script. “Ain’t No Lovin’ Like Something from the Coven,” he said. Said it like it was a fact, said it like testimony.
“That’s not fair,” said Cheyenne.
“I was her favorite.”
He placed the shirt on the blanket with everything else. Then it was all there, a T-shirt, a scarf, some divinatory tools, a car manual, and fifty cents. Cheyenne looked at the blanket.
“I can’t tell if this is great or pathetic,” she said. “I honestly can’t tell.”
She picked up the Kennedy half-dollar. “Behold! The riches of the tomb.”
She dropped it onto a paper bag.
She picked up the candleholder. “Potsherds,” she said. “This is what we’ll leave behind.”
She set the candleholder back where it had been. Pushing her hood back, she ran her fingers through her hair. Her eyes were glassy and she was missing an earring. There were dirt streaks by her ear from crying while lying down.
“Did they make you go on field trips to Mount St. Helens in school?” he asked.
“At least once a year. We used to call it the field trip to a bus ride.”
“Remember how you had to stay on the path so you wouldn’t step on anything?”
“Yeah. They’d freak out if you so much as put a toe off the path. God, I hated those trips. You’d drive forever. Walk for an hour while they tell you about all the stupid people who died because they wouldn’t leave, then they’d make you stop and ogle some sad half-inch sprig: Look! The glory of life. All hail, it returns. Then you get to pile back into the bus and drive forever then spend all night writing a report.”
“Was the mountain all rocks when you saw it?” he asked.
“Like a moonscape.”
“It was green when I saw it.”
A cold breeze pressed briefly against the short winter grass and he shivered.
“I wish we could bury her on a mountainside,” said Cheyenne. “Or here. Dig up the sundial and put her under it, like a secret tomb.” She threw a fritter crumb down the hill. “I mean she tried really hard.” Cheyenne choked and her voice broke; breathing, she got it back. “She made up all these myths and stories just so we would think someone was watching us and it mattered if we failed or succeeded.”
She picked up the shark-tooth necklace and tossed it back onto the poncho. “But it only takes a look around to know that we don’t count. All the decisions we make don’t matter because the story isn’t about us.” She hung her head and laughed then looked up and gave him a rare and undefended smile.
“You’re wrong,” he said. “We’re Valley of the Kings. Everything that’s made and beautiful in the world, it’s ours. They just get to name the stuff. We get to sign it.”
“We Were Here.”
“Right. We are. You know how they said nothing could live in Chernobyl after the meltdown, then they went back and it was full of wolves. That’s what we’re like,” he said. “We come back first. We can live anywhere.”
“Even in jail?” she asked.
He became less certain. “Even in jail,” he said.
The Great Offshore Grounds Page 38