by Lee Lynch
She stayed at the window several minutes, the sound of the clinic too loud and irritating, surprised at her unaccustomed anger. R’s words, like a dentist’s probe exploring decay around a raw nerve, wouldn’t go away. Her head was as bad, refusing to abandon R without setting up another ride. She couldn’t storm off and send Abeo back for her in Patsy now that Abeo seemed to be in permanent party mode at Harold and Joe’s, another bad scene. Abeo had even quit coming to help out at the store.
When she went back and sat next to R she said, “I still feel best when I’m taking care of the world, but now my world is smaller and I get to pick who’s in it. I like being an earth-mother type. I wish, if it’s going to be my karma, that I could be better at it.”
“Stop belittling yourself, Chick.” R’s brow was furrowed, her look cross. “You give enormously of yourself. It’s no wonder you’re depressed, the way you tear yourself down while the rest of us thank the Goddess you’re here for us. You’ve made up for not curing your brother a thousand times over. We know that Chick equals love, but is it love or is it some kind of insurance so you won’t ever fail your impossible tasks again? Martin’s not stalking you any more. Let it go.”
“You think my brother stalked me?”
“Emotionally, yes, that’s obvious.”
“You think my depression comes of feeling like I failed to cure my brother?”
“And everyone else in your world. As my mother used to say, that’s as plain as the nose on your face. Look at Donny’s temper. I’d find living with that much anger depressing.”
“She never turns her anger on me. It used to be hard to watch because I was afraid it was hurting her.”
“Used to be?”
“The things she might have blown up about a year ago don’t set her off any more. I can see her forcing herself to shrug and moving on to something else. Later she’ll work on whatever it is, but sometimes she won’t even bother. It’s like she found some common sense lying out on Stage Street where somebody dropped it, and she picked it up and put it in her pocket.”
R gave her a funny little smile, then turned away and was soon picking at her sleeve again. Now Chick’s head fought what R had said. Had she set herself impossible tasks in early childhood? Had caretaking become some kind of survival technique for her? It was true; anyone would feel depressed in the face of all that futile nurturing.
A woman in white emerged from an open door. “Rosemary Harris?” she called. Chick was startled when R rose. She said nothing, but to hear R of all people called by such an ordinary name?
R stood, leaned on her stick, and looked down. Chick had a vision of a tree after an ice storm, R’s powerful aura falling from her with the crackle of icicles melting.
“Do you want me to go in with you?” Chick asked.
R’s eyes were huge in her thin face; she looked like a person in shock.
“Ms. Harris?” encouraged the woman in white.
R closed her eyes for a long few seconds, then lifted her chin and slowly shook her head. The look on her face was of pure affection. “No. You don’t need to go through this. See if you can take care of my friend Chick for me, will you?” R turned to the woman in white and followed her through the door.
The baby sputtered to silence, the daughter crisply turned another magazine page, the clothes in the backyards rose with the breeze. Chick didn’t want to think about R in the examining room, resisting medical help or, even worse for R, surrendering to it. With an older partner, she had to think how it would be to watch Donny go through this. She looked out at the clotheslines again. Greenhill had its white sheets hanging too. She was thinking how nice it would be if she could remove the clothespins from her sadness, such an old useless feeling, let it fly off like a sheet of surrender over the town, out beyond the mountains where it could disintegrate into the sea.
Could it be that easy? Would she fall apart without the fabric of depression shaping her, or would she plummet into schizophrenia? She’d been dressing up in tie-dyes, bright colors, soft, protective flesh, and cheerful words all her adult life, but had never been able to give up this under layer of gray. Now she was more together than she’d ever been, practically a crone, and she had Donny, the store, a good community, even a fairly stable income. What was she waiting for?
A little girl of four or five sat next to her mother, head bowed over a Golden book. She seemed to sense Chick looking at her and raised her eyes. Chick smiled. She was a sturdy-looking freckle-faced kid, with big glasses, short unruly hair, and an earnest expression. Would her mom expect her to care for a sick little brother? What about Luke? The thought made her angry. She’d cream anyone who ever again tried to burden her grandson with adult problems.
“Take care of my friend Chick for me,” R had said.
She went to the little girl and told her and her mother, “I have a grandson your age who likes me to read to him.”
The child offered up her book almost before Chick finished talking.
“She’s greedy for stories,” said the mother. “I have to ration them or I’d never get anything done.”
“Would you rather I didn’t?”
“Be my guest.”
“Once upon a time,” she began when they’d made room on the couch for her. The little girl stuck her thumb in her mouth and wiggled in close.
Chick felt a laugh surfacing. While it might not look like it to R, she couldn’t be more content than she was right now. This was taking care of herself. But, oh, what about her Donny, Jeep and Katie, Abeo, and poor, poor R?
Chapter Thirty-one
City Girl / Lesbian Woods
The longer she stared at the candle, the wider and more colorful the halo around it grew. Katie found herself wondering if this weird phenomenon was related to rainbows, and she tried to remember exactly what refraction of light was about. Then, bored out of her skull, she dowsed the candle. Meditation sucked even with a vanilla-scented candle, and it was, after all, fire season. These woods were so dry it wouldn’t take much to get a fire going that would burn for weeks. She switched on her headset, but the only music without static was country-western. She was not in the mood for suicide music.
“Okay,” she said aloud, “it doesn’t suck, I can’t do it.” She lay back in the dark on the used mat she’d bought that morning at Jethro’s Jumble. “Secondhand. As if. Try thirty-second hand.”
She was probably one of a long line of women who’d attempted the impossible art of meditation on this thing. R had led her down the very last garden path. Impressing a woven pattern on her buns was not Katie’s idea of time well spent. She was going to have to find her own way of getting in touch with her spiritual side. If her feebly Catholic childhood hadn’t ruined her for life. Crapola! She’d led Jeep to her new life, but had lost her own way. Sometimes she felt as empty as film with no image.
What was that rustling sound she kept hearing? She held her breath and listened to the night outside the dark cabin. This was M.C.’s land. After crashing here and there at Spirit Ridge, she’d turned down all the sympathetic offers to split housing costs—and beds—on a more permanent basis. She wasn’t about to stay where she had to watch R and Abeo together. She was no crunchy-granola, open-relationship martyr type. It was too weird and painful for her taste. She’d heard talk that Abeo had moved in with some guys far out of town, but found that hard to believe. Even if Abeo had left, R felt wrong to her now, sullied and clay-footed.
She’d gone to ground here to concentrate on interviewing the non-gay population. Minus M.C., who’d gotten himself on the wanted list not long after she’d taped him the first time—she still considered the tape where Chick attacked him out of bounds. So she was lonesome, but she’d been lonesome even living with a lover, so no big deal. Staying here meant her money would last a lot longer.
Leaving Tanya in San Francisco had been a piece of cake compared to getting eased out of R’s heart by a trans party girl. She felt like she hadn’t made the grade with R. She was ashamed of her spirit
ual failure. Back in the Bay Area she and Tanya had agreed that there was nothing left after they’d both worked sixteen/seven the whole time they’d been together. She wondered if Tanya’s IPO had gone well. She was so out of touch up here, she wouldn’t even know if the whole high-tech bubble all of a sudden burst one day. Natural Woman Foods was on line, so she’d taken her laptop down a couple of times at first. But Jeep hung there, and Jeep didn’t exactly act overjoyed to see her. She’d stopped going to the store where she’d at least gotten news of R from Chick. It felt better editing out the news which only tormented her. R was obviously not giving her a second thought.
Jeep and Cat. She’d seen them together, and still couldn’t imagine the combination. There was no chemistry there, she was sure of it. Yet she’d heard from Clara and Hector that they were legally adopting the kid together? That was quick. The land women were on their oh-so self-righteous high horses about that. Like Jeep didn’t have the sense to keep a boy-child off the land where he wasn’t wanted. She’d be more of an older brother to him than a mom. Jeep had been the most playful lover she’d been with since her teens, her and her word play and sudden bursts of music. She’d sing, she’d drum on anything, she’d make whistles of willow leaves and start doing the samba in the middle of a Wal-Mart, marking time to the Musak with baby rattles. She missed that, but Jeep didn’t have much of an attention span for anything other than music. Even making love kept her focused only so long, while she liked to linger and find her way deeper inside the spirit of a woman.
Could it be that this was her own kind of meditation, this flitting from thought to thought, this taking time to think, to dream up the scripts of her life through flashbacks and a long lens? God, lying here, too warm to get a fire going, no distractions, she felt like she could really breathe for the first time in years. She filled her lungs and smelled musty earth, wood, fire—mushrooms grew in wooden boxes under the shack, waiting for a harvester. The lousy radio reception out here—was this a good thing?
Tanya had been three years of occasional fun while their thing lasted and what she’d needed after Una. What was it with her and these older spiritual types? Una had been an Irish witch. Seven buoyant, breathtaking months of love and then Una had jumped on her heart with both feet. In spiked heels. She’d thought Una was it, the love of her life, her soul mate. Wrong.
Maybe she wanted to be these women, not be their lovers. Maybe getting her heart shattered a few times was like some kind of lesbian spirituality apprenticeship. What was next? Journeyman level? If she wasn’t at the journey stage out here in these isolated, isolating woods, where was she supposed to be?
A fragmented thought buzzed her brain. She should be back in the city doing her career hooked up with a solid butchy woman like Jeep, only more simpatico and definitely not younger. She remembered R’s words, “Women mate with many things, Aster. The land, for example.” Was it her fate to have a camera as her only mate? “Intensity and passion don’t equal love, do they?” Chick had said. That was the difference she was looking for? R was all about a cold intensity and passion, both for the land and for her lovers, that came from the mind and had nothing to do with love. Katie wanted Chick’s all-heart passions, but was she capable of them or was she like R?
Whatever, she wouldn’t give up. She’d felt led to these mountains, and she wasn’t leaving until she finished whatever it was she needed to do, just as she’d felt led to choose a camera back in her teens and hadn’t stopped probing life with it since. One of the old women in the trailer park had hired her to clean her place. Then she’d needed someone to drive her to cancer treatments and arranged to teach Katie to drive in exchange for the rides. Finally, when the woman had to go to a nursing home, she’d given Katie her husband’s old Argus C3. By that time Katie had two other regular cleaning jobs and with the money she earned bought film. Her high school had a darkroom. She started selling photos to the local paper. In college she got use of a video camera by volunteering at one of the TV stations. They hired her after she covered a big deal sports and drugs scandal. Working for a San Francisco station had been her big goal, but by the time she’d gotten there, the challenges were getting old. Ambition didn’t rev her up any more.
She felt like she’d learned here that she could use the camera to move into another realm, to do more than record images of people. She could search people’s souls, film their worlds through their own eyes, and splice it all together to make—what? More than a documentary, something as alive as her subjects that could take on a life of its own and even move these mountains. She wanted to find her own power, nothing like R’s; she didn’t need that draining, controlling power. She wanted to use it to be a mirror. Only if she were clear enough could she reflect others’ light. The work she was doing now was her spirit in action, and the camera fed her spirit. She’d needed to get out of R’s sphere. R’s treachery had been draining her. She’d known M.C.’s land and its buildings lay abandoned, so she’d decided to squat.
She’d been in this one-room shed over a month now. The police had confiscated most of M.C.’s equipment, but there were still cases of plastic bags stacked against one wall. She’d helped herself to the preserved foods she’d found in a shed smaller than hers and learned to operate—and cook on—the diminutivo propane stove. The woman at the hardware store had taught her how to pump up the gas lantern she’d bought. There was already a cot with more blankets than she could use in this hot weather.
The hardest part was going without a bathroom. Presumably there was one in the big complex down the hill, but that was padlocked. It might as well be as far as the next rest stop on a desert interstate. She rolled over and pushed herself to her feet, achy from lying on the flat floor. The door creaked as she opened it onto the dark stillness of the forest. At least San Francisco had lights.
In her head, perhaps to distract herself from the chilly little toilet excursions, she’d been playing with writing a humorous short video she’d been calling “City Girl/Lesbian Woods.” It would begin with the sound of pine needles falling—a peaceful silence—in the dark. Then the fears would intrude on her character’s peace. She would take a distant flashlight approaching along the forest floor and turn it into a majorly petrifying scene. She would play with sounds: the catch of raccoon claws on tree trunks, deer brushing against wet branches, the primeval screech of a startled night heron in the wetlands.
As she grabbed the roll of t.p. she kept in a closed coffee can outside the door, she contemplated a Scrooge-like character, a lesbian with ghosts. All the women she’d abandoned would drift through the mist to terrorize her. The character would feel haunted and vulnerable as giant trees dripped loudly around her, but she’d face her ghosts, yell back at their taunts, prod the empty shadows with a sharpened stick. Donna Quixote, she’d call her, a victim of her own loving.
So involved was she in her script that when the hand clamped over her mouth it seemed part of the story line. She tried to move out of its grip, but an arm came across her collarbone. Oh my God, she thought. We’re not taping in a studio! Her bladder let go. She was dragged backwards by someone strong, someone wearing a heavy denim jacket, someone who thought Katie was Fay Wray. If she could get purchase on the heel of his hand with her teeth...
She caught some flesh and bit down hard. The flesh tasted like a chemical. What was this, an alien invasion?
“Shit!” he cried out, letting go.
She scrambled away on hands and knees until she hit a wall of bare, scratchy bushes. Despite her terror she thought, story of the century—if I live through it.
He grabbed at her. She kicked the fucker, but her clog flew off and her foot sunk into something creepily soft. He was heavily bearded, long-haired, and wore a layer of flesh like a cushion around himself. She rose to a crouch, then lunged toward the cabin. He tackled her. She squirmed and kicked and bit and butted, and then she saw his face.
“Madre de diosa! M.C.!” He’d blown up from the wiry guy who’d run from the police.<
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He squinted toward her. “It’s the little dyke moviemaker! What the fuck are you doing on my property?”
Gross. He had old garlic breath. “House-sitting, you dumb gringo. Is this the thanks I get?”
“Who asked you to? You’re causing me big trouble, woman.”
“Let me go, dude.” She was amazed when he did. She talked fast. This is what she did best, this thinking on her feet, riding an adrenaline spike. “I can leave. I was never here. You were never here.”
“Right, and let you rat me out to your cop sister?”
“Sheriff Sweet? I’ve never even met the woman.”
“She’s still a sister of yours.” M.C. played the flashlight over his property. “Maybe you did do some good here. Everything looks okay.”
The man’s clothes reeked—she had it now—of meth-making chemicals. “Where did you go? I never got to interview your family.”
“That’s all you care about, your interview?”
“No,” she said and saw it all at once.
She wasn’t here for the stories in Waterfall Falls; she was here for her story. R had not rescued the women at Spirit Ridge; they had never needed rescuing any more than she needed it right now. They wanted a mommy to take care of them and she, thinking they had found one in R, wanted her too. But R was no mommy, she was a power glutton. Katie was here to learn that she needed neither.
M.C. wrapped a bandanna around his bloody hand. “You have teeth like a fox, you little bitch,” he said with a wimpy grimace.
Yes, she thought. I have good strong teeth and can take care of myself, can protect myself even against you.
But M.C. wasn’t witness to her revelation. “What about us?” he asked. “We’re busted. The pigs get me again and it’s sayonara, baby, because this isn’t the first time they’ve shut down Mission Control.”
“What are you, brain-dead? You came back here for what bonehead reason?”