Oola

by Brittany Newell

  I smiled. “Metaphors were never your strong suit.”

  She had depleted the range of expressions her face would allow; she could only stare now, tongue hanging slightly out of her mouth. It was the color of an old apple core. I tried to remember the times it had moved in and on me, a tongue that had been metonymic for her, her essence or soul, at least when we were hammered, still living at the Orbitsons’, our limbs sandy, having eaten too many oysters, full bellies bumping together like we were children after a birthday party, dabbling in the excess that would one day define our grown-up lives, but all I saw was trash, for an organ stripped of its function to kiss, taste, and tease is rendered detritus, one more piece of miscellanea to clutter the distance between people looking for love.

  “Leif,” she whispered. “Do you know that I’m dying?”

  I nodded.

  “Will you come back to see me?”

  She looked, in all senses, spent. I knew what she wanted. She wanted me to lie down beside her, to assume the positions we had once thought novel or, somehow, profound. She wanted to feel the satin of her younger self rubbing up against her skin, what was left of her skin, whatever plastic wrap had been scienced in its place. By classical standards, the two things that made her so museworthy (the long blond hair, the long soft bod) had combusted—thus, she suffered. “Please,” she said. “It’s eating me up. Nobody comes anymore. No one believes me.”

  “I believe you,” I said.

  She exhaled noisily, with what seemed like relief. “Leif,” she said. Her eyes rolled over my face, loose marbles. “Maybe, someday, I could read what you wrote about me.”

  I didn’t answer. I’d turned toward the window. I still held the stocking in one hand and found myself squeezing it into a ball.

  “Leif?” she said, voice breaking. “Would that be OK?”

  I squeezed harder.

  “Leif?”

  I closed my eyes. “Did you ever even love me?”

  Her voice was barely audible. “I don’t know.” She swallowed. “You tell me.”

  In a moment of blistering clarity, I pitched forward, pulled her lips apart, and jammed the stocking in her mouth. She accepted her gag like a Eucharist, blinking obediently up at me. When I felt the tears well in my eyes, I grabbed the bouquet off the bed and beat her. I held the wrapped end with both hands and struck her in the face until the petals started peeling. They made a pleasant whacking sound, flower against flesh, exactly how it sounds: whack, whack, whack. At one point I wasn’t sure what I was hitting; she’d disappeared behind the scarlet blur, the bouquet like blood in water, a soft mauve cloud. True to form, I would kill her with kindness, cattle-prod her with my hot love. A more benevolent person might’ve held her nose, used a pillow, restrained her as she thrashed, put an end to this sad spectacle. But I stopped myself; my arms got tired, the flowers were falling to pieces.

  I straightened up, slipped my shoe back on. I fluffed up the bouquet and put it in a waiting vase, on the empty other side of the room. It had molted all across the spotless floor. I didn’t turn to say goodbye, though I could feel her eyes on me. She breathed messily. I tugged the back of my dress down as I walked out the door.

  Homeward Bound

  I drove through the night. I knew it wasn’t advisable—I’d gotten almost no sleep with Le Roy—but I was hopping, bright-eyed. In fact, I felt fine. Better than fine. I felt massive. I bought an XL coffee from a 7-Eleven, plus two of those shining red wieners that rotate on a spit in the window. I smothered them with sauerkraut and spicy mustard and ate them while sitting on the hood of my pickup. It was a balmy night, June-esque despite the rumors of Christmas, evident in the tinsel affixed to semitruck grills and advertisements for eggnog at every gas station snack shop. A man in a passing truck whistled at me; in the darkness all I could make out was the bill of his hat. I leered back, messy-mouthed: “Come and get it!” A chunk of hot dog hit his window with a satisfying splat. “Gag, bitch,” he howled before speeding off. I licked my lips and saluted.

  “As you wish it,” I told his taillights.

  I made it to that lonesome stretch of 101 where the road stays flat and straight for miles on end, walnut orchards on one side, almond and orange on the other, before the first of the doomsday gurgles hit. “Fuck!” I clapped a hand to my belly. A hair-raising fart escaped me. I struggled to visualize my sphincter, to send praise and thanks down to it. But it was too late. After months of Oola’s vegan diet, the meat shits were well on their way.

  Desperation mounting, I scanned the horizon. If California was a neck, to overuse my metaphors, then this tract was a tendon, shaved plain, inching me toward the Adam’s apple, bull’s-eye, home. Amid corporate-owned nothingness and the hunched ghosts of trees, dented road signs (HARRIS RANCH, LAST EXIT), and neon curlicues—more 7-Elevens, more Super 8s with rooms nearly identical to the one I’d just vacated, perhaps the drapes a touch more taupe, with similar liaisons fizzling within, the same commercials from the same TVs splashing similarly angled bodies with the same blots of lights, the rainbow eczema that afflicts all turned faces—what should I see in the distance but a lit Denny’s sign? It was an omen. My bowels nearly opened at the sight of it. “I’m coming!” I shrieked, and hit the gas.

  I was lucky the parking lot was empty. I hurtled over white lines, yanking down my underwear with one hand, pulling at the door handle with the other before I’d even parked. I screeched to a halt near the dumpsters on the restaurant’s backside. I couldn’t make it any farther. I tumbled out of the truck, the hem of my dress raised to eye level, and assumed a squatting position, impartially shielded by the open door. Every muscle released. With a lurch, my ribs liquefied. The shit blossomed out of me, a hot, savage stream. I was vaguely aware of my mouth hanging open, head tilted back. Everything left me: It was a paradigm-shifter, this shit, an explosion-on-a-summer-day that lets you know how made-of-meat you really are. Even my finger muscles cramped from this torrential expulsion. “Goddammit,” I panted on repeat. “Goddammit.”

  It was then, gasping for air, that I saw it. What at first looked like a crashing airplane, spiraling across the sky, a fireball against the blackness, that suddenly just stopped. It froze, mid-descent, and seemed to consider its options. I watched in horror as it hovered above the horizon. It had the white-hot glow of numbers on a digital clock, spelling out 11:11 to a dark empty room, and pulsed like them too. It watched me and I watched it. It floated a tiny step lower, nearly grazing the top of a gas-station sign; then, as quietly and inconsequentially as a match being blown out, it was gone. “No!” I gargled. I didn’t want to be alone. I could hear Le Roy’s reverent murmur: That makes four in a week. Shit was running down my legs, pooling at my heels. All my valves opened. I’d lost control; I was weeping too. It was a low so low as to almost be glorious. Ass bare, knock-kneed, nylons clotted, I was effectively splayed out by fate. I was nasty, 100 percent: I’d become something new, something unstoppable. My dress, my lovely yellow dress, so subtle and so flattering, was never to be salvaged. I had to take it off right then and there, dab at my legs with it, and throw it in the dumpster. After a moment’s deliberation, I threw in my shoes, nylons, and panties too.

  Emboldened by rock-bottom status, I walked slowly back toward the pickup. I felt the cool night air against my chest and raised my arms above my head. My odor mingled beautifully with the distant stink of cattle farms and Denny’s ice-cream glow and the pure smell of an open road in a California valley that is difficult to put into words but always brings to mind, for me and now for you, the clear-cut angle between neck and shoulders of a very young girl in a white cotton halter top, baring her impossibly level unfucked musculature, a plane waiting to be scrambled, the smell of something bare and fine, neither innocent nor evil. The landscape as a lover before she’d even learned to love. I catwalked past her, through her, to the truck. I sat for one moment with the door hanging open, striated legs slanting out, enjoying a last rush of air that made the sticky streaks ha
rden. Then I started the engine. I had to get going. I had work to do. I had to hang up my laundry, air the Orangery out. I had to tend to my garden. I had to go over my notes.

  I didn’t make this easy on myself.

  By now this much is certain. She was never the ideal subject. Some might say, with good reason, that I should have picked a different lover, someone sturdy, more responsible, as cool as they were firm—a turnip. Hair that didn’t glow in the dark. Eyes that didn’t thaw at the sight of something beautiful. She wore men’s T-shirts, XXXL, hell-bent on erasure, yet chic. My boo, in the spectral sense; my flame, in that she spluttered. Maybe I’d needed a teen queen with her height and weight on a placard or a slit-skirted exec who’d support me, rise early. A straight shooter, not a chute—but we had so much fun, didn’t we, going headfirst? I could have at least picked a girl with a body more flesh than supposition, someone who it wouldn’t be a corn maze to undress. I rooted around in her muumuus, punch-drunk, duty-bound. I suppose a more obviously lost soul would’ve worked too, a runaway eager to unload his woes, a battered babe looking for love. I had love. I had buckets of it, never doubt that. I’d needed somebody who showed their bones proudly, who presented their nakedness like a driver’s ID. Someone who leaked less, I guess; someone whose glass was full. I liked the wild-goose chase. But I got tired. I got lost. And look what a mess we made.

  I would be the first to admit that this book will have flaws, just as Oola herself did. Just as she petered out, less than a woman or even a girl in her self-prophesied super-white hospital bed, I’d imagine that this manuscript, as an excruciatingly accurate historical document, must follow suit. I did what I set out to do: I loved like no one else did, I went where no one dared to go. I planted my flag in the moon—then I swallowed it whole. So sweet and so cold: a skinned plum. I went into a certain wild and things got wild indeed. Still, you can’t say it was for naught, a battle waged in vain. You and I also had fun, my dear reader, panty-raiding the past. Oola lives on forever now, in text and in flesh. I take care to moisturize daily, with the same regularity as one brushing leaves off a plaque. What can I say? Some girls are destined for greatness. Others look better as ghosts. Which are you?

  Don’t feel bad about what happened, to Oola or to me. In case you need to be reminded, you never saw her. You never laid eyes on my wild child, her legs or her hair, so don’t worry—you’re blameless. Unless they want to make a movie adaptation of this book, in which case I would hope they know that there is only one person in the whole wide world who is fit to play the part. I’ll be waiting by the telephone, air-drying my hair. I ordered a new robe, lavender silk; it makes me look like a bored starlet, killing time in between takes.

  Which leads me to another point. Pardon my presumptions, but lest you start to get the night sweats, feel your heart engorge at the sight of Dijon, take a deep breath and snap out of it. You didn’t fall in love with O. Never, no, not even close. That’s right. You fell in love with me, and I’ll thank you to leave a sad man to his dirty little deeds. I’m still here, in the cabin. The crow still brings me presents, mostly costume jewelry. I leave scraps for him in the fairy ring, room service on a tray. The garden’s doing splendidly; it’s nearly time to harvest. The avocados are the size of breasts, and the orange blossoms are narcotic. The honeybees make zigzags in the heavied purple air. It’s a wonder I can concentrate with the smell of life just-burst, obscene and sweet, creeping under all the doorways, coming out in my sweat, even sticking to the bottom of cast-iron pans and adulterating breakfast.

  It was on one such luscious morning that I received my last visitor.

  I was having coffee on the porch—it’s always warm enough these days—when an unfamiliar car wormed its way up the driveway, going slow, as if the driver was afraid of the road. I’d been so long divorced from the thrush, thrum, and fuck of things that any deviation felt godsent. I rose quickly, re-knotting the sash of my robe, and met the intruder halfway over the lawn. She was a tall woman I had never seen before, roughly my mom’s age. She wore a Hard Rock Cafe T-shirt with a leather vest over it, the kind that bikers wear, tight-fitting jeans, fur-trimmed mules. She had peroxide hair, held back with a clip. She’d been beautiful once; you could tell by her cheekbones. Now, more than anything, she looked tired. The bags under her eyes were opalescent, the tips of her over-bleached hair like pipe cleaner. Sunspots flecked her forearms. She was holding a big plastic carrier with holes in the top and a metal grate on one side, which she presented to me rather abruptly.

  “Are you Leif?” She spoke quickly and softly, with a barely detectable Scandinavian accent.

  I nodded, thinking of ABBA. She gave the carrier a shake. Through the bars I could make out a familiar pair of eyes, demon-yellow, which coolly looked back at me.

  “It’s for you,” she said, and set the carrier down. She seemed in a hurry, reluctant to make eye contact. She dug her hands into the pockets of her vest, mirroring how I hid my hands in my robe. “She belongs to you now,” she informed a dandelion at her feet.

  “He,” I corrected. “Thanks.” There was a throttled pause. “Would you like a glass of water?”

  She shrugged, so I ran inside and poured a glass from the tap. From the little window above the sink, I watched her light a cigarette and glance around warily, as if she’d found herself in uncharted territory. When I bounded back across the lawn, she forced a smile. Her teeth were fucked.

  “Do you mind?” she said, waving the cigarette.

  “Not at all,” I said. “Here.” She took one sip and made a face. I held back a laugh. “Don’t worry,” I said of the saltiness. “You’ll get used to it.”

  But she handed back the glass, careful not to make skin-to-skin contact. She took a drag and looked at a point just over my head. “So,” she said. “You’re Oola’s guy?”

  I grimaced. “More or less.”

  She nodded gravely, as if this made perfect sense. I could see that was she deliberating. She had only one shot; we both knew it. Once she left, she would never come back here. I noticed a faded tattoo of a moon on her wrist.

  Her voice was barely a whisper. “Was she happy?”

  I tried to speak consolingly. “That was never really Oola’s style.” There was a crackly silence, in which she considered this fact and Theo rustled in his cage. “But I loved her,” I said, feeling my pulse jump. “I made sure she never forgot it.”

  “You did?”

  “Yes, I did.” I placed my hands on my heart and spoke slowly. “Oola was and is my only.”

  “Oh.” Her voice was even quieter as she addressed my bare knees. “And do you miss her?”

  “No.” I ran a hand through my hair. “I don’t have to.”

  “I see.” She took a final drag, her shoulders slumping. Her face registered failure. She was no closer to understanding O after all, nor the freaks she spent her days with. “Well,” she said softly, “I’ve got a long drive.”

  “You could stay here, if you wanted.” I gestured to the cabin. “I’ve got lots of room.”

  For the first time, she looked straight at me. Her eyes were unnaturally blue, like swimming pools seen from a plane; rimmed with black, they threatened to undo you. “No,” she said. “No, I don’t think so.” She squinted at my robe, then at my face. Her expression slackened, and her voice was tender and tired. “That’s a nice color on you.”

  I smiled. “Thank you.”

  “Have a good one, honey.” She ground out her cigarette under her foot, then turned and walked back to her car. I didn’t bother to watch her go.

  Instead, I set the glass down, squashing a dandelion. I knelt so that Theo and I were level. I ran my nails, freshly done, over the metal bars of the grate. “Hello there,” I said.

  He stayed curled inside, erratically purring. We regarded each other with little emotion. We stayed this way for ages, until the heat wave wore off, until the day broke down, the sun digested by the sea, until the opal fog eked through the leaves. Ashes to ash
es. The fog fell down around us. First one to blink lost it all.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  My heart is dangerously full. One lone tatty girl can’t possibly deserve so much kindness, and yet I find myself deluged with it, blasted by the beauty and wild wisdom of the people around me. When life seems dreamlike (and I know this has to be a dream, of the long-light California kind), the only constant can be love—and believe me, I’m leaking it. I’m freaking out with love. I’ll write quickly, before I’m rendered mute with gratitude (by now, a daily occurrence).

  Thank you to my mentors: Shimon Tanaka, for your critical support in the early stages; to Monika Greenleaf, for your rare honesty; to Tobias Wolff, for your openness and kindness; and especially to Harriet Clark, for your staggering insight and frightful brilliance. It has been my unbelievable privilege to be surrounded and supported by such glorious minds.

  Thank you to Lara Hughes-Young, for making it all happen. Thank you to Zoe, for your life-changing generosity and preposterously kind words throughout. I will try not to question the absurd faith you’ve put in me. Thank you to Sarah and Jim and Charlotte, for taking me on with such enthusiasm and believing in Oola. You were all so patient with me. And a BIG thank you to Kerry, for your around-the-clock fabulosity. I know I hit the jackpot.

  Thank you to my parents, the bravest and brightest of rats. We did it our way, didn’t we? I learned my scrappiness from you. Baby Rat is skittering toward the light; tug my whiskers and I’ll come running. Daddy Rat, the Mountain Man, thank you for the thrice daily hugs and Big Sur blood; I see Jesus Flats in your big grin. Mama Rat, for all the queens in my life, you are the ultimate. If I am an artist, it’s because of you, and the strange beauty you taught me to seek. Never doubt, Miss Rat: it’s all for you.