by Nick Lake
For the first time he smiles. Figures, he says. Well, it’s a free country. I mean, you wanna stand in a climbing store looking at some stuff, that’s cool with me.
Good, I say.
You don’t want it, though? he says. He has cute dimples, actually. Faint marks where I guess an eyebrow stud used to be.
I frown at him. Sorry?
The stuff—the rope, the cams, whatever. I mean, you just stood there holding it and then you put it all back on the shelves. So you don’t want the climbing gear?
I look down at my hands. I did? I have literally no recollection of putting the stuff back on the shelves.
Oh, I say. No. I pause. I don’t climb, I say, enunciating as clearly as I can.
He looks at me like I’m mental. That was a mistake, I think. A rookie mistake.
Sorry for being weird, I say. I’ll get out of here, you don’t have to worry about me.
He is still looking at me oddly and I curse the weird way my speech sounds, to someone else it probably does sound like something has gone wrong in my brain, a stroke or concussion or something. But I hold his gaze and eventually he shrugs. Whatever, he says. You got your thing, I got mine.
I nod.
You’re sure you’re okay, though? You don’t want me to, like, call someone?
What does he figure? That it’s the head injury thing? That I’m mentally ill and had a breakdown? That I’m in recovery and need to call my sponsor? I don’t know, but at least he’s not adding me up with the whole child abduction story that I know is playing big on the news.
No, I say.
I smile at him, a little unconvincingly, I think, and make for the door. I am conscious of the phone in my backpack, the burner my fake mom gave me, and I have an idea of what to do with it. Then I think of something. I was going to use my cell, that was why I asked Carla for it, but now it occurs to me that the FBI has probably scanned my SIM, or whatever, they’ll pick up a trace if I use it, and that’s no good.
I turn.
Wait, I say. Borrow your cell? I’m trying to use as few words as I can.
He spreads his hands. Sure. He hands me an old Motorola, a flip phone; I didn’t know people still had these things.
Now.
Now.
Now I want you to think about something, before I tell you what I do next.
This is what I want you to think about: one of those women whose husbands beat them, over and over, and every time, they end up forgiving them, they take them back, because they love them, because they think, I don’t know, that this time things are going to change. The ones who actually get angry if their friends try to help. We’ve all seen the ads on TV.
Picture her: dirty hair, a bruise on her cheek, an expression of anger, hurt, sadness, but also forgiveness, complicating her face. She is basically looking bummed but like it’s her own fault she’s bummed. She is a victim, but she loves the man who hurts her, she truly loves him.
Yes?
Are you holding the image in your mind, looking at her?
Okay.
So I take the phone the dude in the climbing store has given me, I open the clamshell of it, and I pull up the text message menu.
I type:
@ climbing store nr the cowboy hats. Come get me.
Then I type my (mom’s) number from memory (I have a very good memory for things I have seen written down), and I press Send.
You see, my love for my (mother) is as endless as the stars, as lonely and incomprehensible as the stars, as unutterably sad. And the stars? They are scattered across the sky, Coyote did that, they are in chaos, a mess of bright lights in the darkness, but it is the chaos that makes them beautiful, the disorder.
And the stars?
Yes, a lot of them are cold, a lot of them are dead—but a lot of them are not.
Chapter 73
I hand the phone back and nod my thanks.
’Course, he says. Good luck.
Yeah, I think. I’m going to need that. Though he probably thinks I’m doing the twelve steps, thinks I just texted my sponsor.
I turn and start heading out of the store. I see him frown, out of the corner of my eye. I am limping, of course—maybe there’s a description out for a girl with a massive cast on her leg—a what do they call it, an APB.
Shit.
I feel his eyes on my back as I leave him behind. I have no idea if my text is going to work, if my fake-mom is even anywhere near Flagstaff now, or if she’s split for Mexico.
I open the door and smell the pine on the outside air. I feel a sense of sick rightness. All the time that she, Shaylene, has been gone, she’s had this pull on me anyway, a gravity that she exerts on my mind. Like the moon—you don’t see it, most of the time, but it’s there, and it’s pulling the sea, drawing the fringed tides of the great waters toward the sand, yanking moths around like a magnet. And who can fight gravity? I’ve fallen off a cliff and I’m spinning down through the air, and I can’t stop myself hitting the ground, eventually, but I can tense my muscles and make the impact harder, or I can relax and let the fall take me.
I hobble a little down the street till I find a deep doorway—it’s a metal door, maybe to a storeroom or a back entrance to a night club or something; anyway it’s padlocked and it doesn’t look like people use it much. There’s a ghost shape of dog piss against it. Peeling flyers for local bands.
I lower my head, wishing I had a cap, and wait.
Maybe a half hour goes by.
Then I see an old Buick station wagon pull up just down the street, a green one. I watch it for a second, wondering. Then the lights flash, once, and I limp over to it. (Mom) reaches over and pops the passenger door. I notice that she has black hair now and is wearing different clothes. She looks nervous, like she’s afraid that I’m angry with her.
Spoiler alert: I am.
I open the door, hold the coat hook, and swing myself into the front seat.
Oh honey, she says with her hands. Oh honey, I’m so—
Drive, I say.
Tell me about you, she says. What’s been happening—
Drive, I say again.
She nods and pulls out, then turns right at the next intersection. At least she’s not wearing pajama jeans, I think. I look out the window. I am expecting to see flashing blues at any moment, but the road seems quiet. There’s some kind of jiggling hula girl on the dash, and the ashtray is full of butts, so I figure this car is stolen—maybe only recently, though. Or she got it from a long-term parking lot at a bus station or a train station or an airport—that’s what I’d do.
(Mom) passes the tourist motels that used to put up people doing Route 66, and I realize she’s heading back to the woods between Flagstaff and Phoenix, the canyons and deep pine forest off I-17. Flagstaff, as we leave it behind, looks like a theater in the rearview, backed by mountains like tiers of seats, a stage, where something terrible happened, but something that can be forgotten, can be left there, a story.
This is my plan, if you can call it that: forget what happened. Forget what I know. And just go back to my old life. There’s a part of me that wants (Mom) to drive back to Phoenix, to our old apartment on Via Linda, but I know that can’t happen.
On either side of the wide black highway, pine trees stretch into darkness.
Where are we going? I ask.
She shrugs. I don’t know. Mexico? Or Scotland, maybe. We can go to the highlands, like in the pictures, and find a little cottage, just the two of us, it’ll—
I whirl in my seat. Are you INSANE? I say.
Abruptly, she hits the brakes and turns the wheel, and we pull over into a dirt track leading deeper into the forest. The car behind us flashes his lights as he passes, pissed off.
She turns to me. There are tears on her face. It’s cool in the shadow of the trees.
Shelby …, she says.
That’s not my name. My real name.
She sighs. I know. I just … I never meant to hurt you. All I wanted was you.
I don’t want to talk about this, I say. I want things to go back to what they used to be. I want to pretend this never happened. I want to have ice cream for dinner on Fridays, and read books, and go to the baseball cages. Can you understand that?
Yes.
I close my eyes. Then open them again. You STOLE me, I shout, the movements of my hands vicious. You didn’t mean to hurt me? Well, guess what, you hurt my parents. I saw them. They’re a mess.
She is really crying now. She just nods.
Why? I say. I mean, I know you. You don’t seem so crazy. Why would you take someone’s child?
I can’t explain it, she says. I have had to live with it for fifteen years. Every night I’ve prayed for forgiveness. Every night I’ve thought about those parents—
The Watsons, I say.
She visibly tenses, like she’s been hit. Right.
For a while we sit there—the normal word in English would be silent, but we’re ALWAYS silent, I can’t fricking hear, so maybe a better word would be still.
I had six miscarriages, says (Mom). I’ve never seen the sign for that word before, but it’s pretty clear, when she makes it. You can’t imagine that. Carrying something dead in your body.
An image flickers in my mind: the heart, sitting on the plate.
I was married, she continues. We kept it up for the longest time. Hormone treatments, so I could get pregnant in the first place. Then the ones that didn’t … didn’t make it. But he … we … it was too much for both of us. Like funerals, over and over again, where you don’t even have a body to bury.
So, what, because you couldn’t have a child, you had the right to take someone else’s?
No, of course not. But they had three already. You were the fourth. I met them, you know? At the hospital. I was pretending to be a nurse. I was going to take a baby, that was the plan. I know, I know, it was crazy. I think something had broken inside me.
They didn’t even know you were deaf, she says. That’s how come you burned yourself. They called, to stop you pulling the pan. But you didn’t hear. You see what I’m saying? You were two years old and they didn’t even realize you were deaf. Why you were in the kitchen, I don’t even know. Something about one of the other kids crying.
So now you’re saying that, what, negligent parents deserve to lose their children? The anger in me has been building up, like a pot coming up to the boil, and now it’s bubbling, spilling over.
No … But the doctors were going to call social services anyway, I heard them talking about it. THEY knew you were deaf, of course. They knew your parents had screwed up. I mean, you should have been talking in sentences by then, singing nursery rhymes. For all I know, social services would have taken you away, just like I did.
So you figured you’d take me first?
Yes. It was so easy. I had a uniform—and your burns were bad, but they weren’t third degree. It was just dressings and bandages, I mean, I can do that. I actually was a nurse once. So when the doctors took you back to your room, I walked in and told your parents you were needed for tests, and I wheeled you out of there.
And drove south.
Well, not right away, but yes.
I sink back into the seat. I want to wave my hand and make all of this go away. For the first time, I want to be magic—I get why people would want spells, potions, wands. Not to fight people, like in Harry Potter, but to undo bad things, to make everything okay again.
You planned it, I say. Whatever you say about me being deaf, you had the uniform. You deliberately inflicted on someone else the same thing you had suffered. You’re sick.
Yes, says (Mom). Almost certainly. But I love you too. My little princess.
I’m not your little princess, I say. I’m not anyone’s little princess.
Then why did you text me? she says.
Because I’m not eighteen yet. I need someone to look after me. And I want it to be someone I know. I don’t want to live with strangers. Strangers I can’t talk to because I’m DEAF and they can’t SIGN. Which is my only legal option. Do you understand that? Do you understand what you’ve done to me? You didn’t just steal me from my parents. You stole me from myself. You stole my life. Everything I thought was me … everything I thought was real … it’s all gone. Now I’m living in a dream instead. A nightmare.
This is the longest thing I’ve said in like a thousand years.
She puts her face in her hands.
Stop crying, says the new me, me 2.0, badass me. Get a grip. And drive.
Where to? she says.
The Grand Canyon.
The Grand Canyon? Are you kidding? There’ll be a million—
I hit the dashboard. I don’t care. I want to see it. Then we can go wherever you like. Mexico. Whatever.
She looks at me for a while in a sort of fixed, thinking way. The Grand Canyon is in the opposite direction from Mexico, she says.
I know, I say.
It’ll be sunset by the time we get there, she says.
Fine, I say. All the better.
She sighs. Okay, she says. You’re the boss. And she drives.
Chapter 74
I think both of us are picturing Thelma and Louise but we don’t say it because it’s so obvious and doesn’t really mean anything. It’s not like we’re going to drive the car off the side of the canyon.
Is it?
We take 180 for a couple of hours and then swing on to 68, heading north toward the canyon. We’re in the desert now, houses and streetlights and trees and even gas stations falling away behind us, civilization dwindling in our rearview. Rocks blur past, and more cacti, and little shrub-like trees. Everything is dust and stone; we are quite literally OUT OF THE WOODS. The greens and blues of Flagstaff give way to red.
And you know what? I am ecstatic about it. I am sick of fairy tales.
We pass a sign that says DO YOU HAVE ENOUGH GAS? NO PUMPS FOR 50 MILES.
Do we? I ask.
(Mom) glances at the dash. Should, she says.
I’m tempted to say something sarcastic, like, well as long as you’re sure, or whatever, but I don’t actually care. I mean, if we break down in the middle of the desert, what difference does it make to me? I don’t have a future that I can imagine anyway.
The sun is low in the sky now—it’s mid-afternoon. Sharp shadows angle from posts and shrubs, slashing the desert. The car brims with red light. My eyes unfocus and I just let the sand and dust blur past.
Then something moves, and my head snaps around—I catch a glimpse of fur, of swift low legs, a canine nose.
What? says (Mom). What is it?
Nothing, I say. I thought I saw a coyote, that’s all.
Could be, says (Mom). It’s the desert.
Yeah, I say.
After another hour or so we pull into Grand Canyon Village. It’s a weird little place, a whole little town that just exists for tourism. There are parked cars and RVs everywhere. We meander around a bit till we find a parking spot opposite something called Yavapai Lodge. (Mom) gets out and helps me to stand.
Come on, she says. This way.
You’ve been here before? I ask, incredulous.
Yes. A long time ago.
No wonder you didn’t care about coming here with me.
She stares at me. Well, you’re here now, she says.
I shrug. It’s an incontestable fact.
We buy passes and follow signs to Mather Point. At first I’m nervous, that there might be some sort of description of us out there, that APB I was worrying about before. Girl with bionic cast; older woman. But as I look around I see that we just blend in as if we were meant to be here. An overweight mother in unfashionable clothes, and her daughter, who broke her leg cheerleading or something. We’re ordinary. We’re everybody.
So gradually I relax as we approach the canyon.
Coming up to it, I have this sense that the land is about to drop away—like, I know the rim is coming up even before I see it. Some ancient survival insti
nct, from the beginning of man, I guess. Dizziness creeps up on me, stealing its way up my spine and into my head. Then I see the other side of the canyon, looming up above the rim, and suddenly we’re AT the rim, and I’m looking over. The sun is low to our left, casting its deep dark shadows through the canyon, illuminating other rocks like they’re stage-lit.
The whole thing is a light show, just for me.
I stand for a moment, just drinking it in.
You know how sometimes you’ve imagined something so many times, waited for it for so long, that it’s somehow about two thousand times more incredible than you ever thought; and at the same time it’s just like, oh, okay, that’s what it’s like?
Well, that.
Beautiful, isn’t it? says (Mom).
Yes, I say, which is true.
At the same time, it isn’t true. I mean, it’s so much bigger and more all-encompassing than the word “beautiful” can possibly convey. Right where we’re standing, the land basically disappears, it literally takes the earth from beneath our feet, and then it doesn’t rise up again until the fricking HORIZON—there’s just this gap in the world, so monumentally big that it’s not even comprehensible as a canyon or a valley or whatever, or even really possible to take in with the eyes, without just dwelling on little bits of it.
I look down.
Just past our feet, the rock drops away, striped and striated with red, and below is a thin ribbon of blue river. Trees are growing down there. And then for miles and miles it’s these little sort of cones and towers of red rock, rippling, shaded dark and light, until you get to the sheer red walls of the other side, which is very literally as far as the eye can see. In other words: all I can see is the canyon, and the sky, and so it’s filling the world, filling my vision. Everything is enormity and redness, of varying hues and shades, the whole thing like a painting by a madman with only a couple of colors in his paint set.
I mean, I’ve seen it before, on TV and in pictures. I knew roughly what it would be like. But I just had no idea how BIG it was, and it’s real, I mean, it’s not in the Dreaming or anything. When it’s on TV, it’s usually people talking about the forces that created it, the power of water and time to carry out such demolition, on such a colossal scale—which is kind of interesting, I guess, if it wasn’t already obvious from, I don’t know, the ocean that water can be intensely powerful. For me, though, looking at it—for me it’s not the way that it was made that’s interesting. It’s how it looks now—and what it means.