Hot Springs

by Geoffrey Becker

  The doctor was now thoroughly confused. “But you are white.”

  “I know, I know.” How to explain it to this person? It was impossible. He was a member of it, that other world they wouldn’t let her be a part of. Or was it just that she’d chosen not to be? “Listen, I’m sorry. Thanks for these.” She put the samples into her purse.

  “Would she like a lollipop?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” said Bernice. “Maybe we should ask her.”

  He bent down in front of Emily. “Would you like a lollipop?”

  “Yes, please,” she said, and Bernice was filled with pride at how polite her child was, even if this had nothing to do with her at all.

  The doctor stood back up. “They have a jar of them out by the desk,” he said. He tore off a sheet of paper from his clipboard and held it out. “Give this to them, too. And remember, plenty of fluids!”

  The bill came to an even one hundred dollars. She paid with her credit card. When she got herself situated, she’d have to contact Visa, let them know she’d moved. All those things she’d done to establish herself—cable, phone, her Pikes Peak district library card—all those things that made her her, she’d simply walked away from. Again. She wanted to be someplace. To be there, and to belong there. She signed the slip, handed it back to the receptionist.

  “Thank you,” she said to Emily as they exited the building into the hot sunlight. “You were really good with all that.”

  “You’re welcome,” said Emily, taking her hand. “Do you feel better now?”

  The next day they all piled into Gillian’s Neon and drove to Nogales. They parked on the U.S. side in a big lot for five dollars and then walked to the border. As they were waiting to go through the gate, a Mexican boy of about twelve came sprinting past them, pursued energetically by a border-patrol guard who managed to catch him halfway up the block. The guard picked the kid up under one arm and hauled him, laughing, back to the other side. It was clear this was a game for the kid, and Bernice found it reassuring that the patrols weren’t under a shoot-to-kill order. Not yet.

  “What are they doing?” asked Emily.

  “Well, we’re here, in the United States. Over there, where we’re going, that’s another country. It’s a lot poorer in Mexico, so those folks want to be over here.” They were moving along toward the entrance, shuffling with the crowd.

  “Why?”

  “Why, what?”

  “Why is it poorer?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Because life isn’t fair. Some people, like us, get all kinds of nice stuff. Other people have to live on tortillas and work for fifty cents an hour.”

  “Mexico used to be part of Spain,” Gillian explained. “And Spain is a very poor country. I’ve been there. The people who settled Mexico brought their way of life with them.”

  “Where are you getting your information?” said Bernice. She wondered if the Paxil Gillian was on—she’d seen a huge vial of it in the medicine cabinet—was making her stupid.

  “I did a Eurail pass the summer after my junior year.”

  “I don’t think Mexico is poor because of Spain. Jesus Christ.”

  “Don’t,” said Emily.

  “Don’t what?”

  “Say that.”

  “Isn’t she—you know?” Gillian gave her the kind of look that Bernice associated with sex talk, or perhaps money.

  “I have no idea what you are trying to say.”

  “Technically, I mean. If your mother is, then isn’t it sort of automatic?”

  “Are you trying to say ‘Jewish?’” Emily sucked more water from the bottle Bernice had given her. Her skin still looked ashy—almost green—but now that Bernice knew the problem, she felt far more in control about everything. An ear infection! Kids got them all the time! “Sure,” said Bernice. “Absolutely. She’s exactly as Jewish as I am.”

  “Jesus loves me,” said Emily, brightly.

  “Antibiotics love you,” said Bernice.

  “It’s pronounced differently over here,” said Gillian, brightly. “It’s hay-zoose.”

  “Gesundheit,” said Bernice.

  They emerged into a very different scene from the one on the U.S. side. The streets were strewn with trash, and there were dogs everywhere, those yellow, lowest-common-denominator ones that were the product of mixing and mixing breeds until you had more or less reinvented the Ur-dog, the one that had first hung around some Stone Age campfire whining for bones and begun the long process of training mankind to take care of it.

  They did what they were supposed to do in a border town choking with hand-painted pottery and cheap leather goods and wrought-iron knick knacks. Gillian wanted to go into all the shops, while Bernice was mostly interested in finding a bottle of tequila—the thing she’d agreed to in the first place—and going back. She didn’t like being away from the apartment in case Landis might call. But on the other hand, if he did call, it occurred to her that she shouldn’t answer anyway. This had been her advice to Gillian about Kirk, and another reason for the trip to Nogales—a way to get her mind off him and not to be there in case he called, which Bernice had assured Gillian he would.

  Finally, they headed to a restaurant Gillian knew about and recommended. It was on the second story, above a courtyard, and one wall was built right into the rock of the adjacent hillside. Men with guitars wandered from table to table singing the “Ay yi yi yi” song and asking for tips, and Bernice wondered at what point it was that her life had turned into a bad play with no director.

  They ordered off the English menu, a blackboard that the waiter brought over and held up for them. There was no pasta, but Emily liked corn chips and Bernice had discovered that she’d also eat guacamole, so they got some. When it came, Emily lowered her head.

  “Stop doing that,” said Bernice.

  Emily’s eyes were closed, her small face scrunched up with intensity.

  “What do you pray for?” asked Gillian.

  “That the cook washed his hands,” said Bernice. “That the avocados were picked by union labor.”

  “No, seriously.” Emily had finished and now picked a chip out of the bowl. “What?”

  “I prayed for Mommy.”

  “Which Mommy is that?” asked Bernice. “Because this one doesn’t need praying for, as I think I’ve mentioned to you before. I can’t speak for that other lady you used to live with, though. She might be in all kinds of trouble.”

  Emily looked at her the same way Mrs. Charno had back in seventh-grade French class when Bernice had pretended not to be able to read the passage called “Dimanche en Famille,” even though they both knew she was just doing it to be difficult and make points with her classmates.

  “Both of you.” She smiled. “In heaven, it’s always sunny, and you don’t have to eat asparagus.”

  “You don’t like asparagus?”

  “I like Archibald Asparagus. Do you know Archibald Asparagus?”

  “Do you know what she’s talking about?” asked Bernice. “Because I sure don’t.”

  “I think it’s something from a kids’ show,” said Gillian. “Is that right?”

  “Emily,” said Bernice. “Or Pearl. Listen to me. That could be Tucson you’re describing. Do you understand? You don’t have a demon in you, you have an ear infection. You don’t have to eat anything you don’t want to, ever. And sunny days—well, you’ll have a lot of them. And then sometimes it will rain, but then that will just make you appreciate the sunny days even more when they come back. But most important of all is this: You are not a Christian. I know they told you Jesus wants you for a sunbeam, or whatever, but it isn’t true. Say it after me, OK? I am not a Christian.”

  “Bernie?” said Gillian. “Maybe you’re being a little hard on her.”

  “Later on, if she has to be something, she can go ahead and decide for herself, but this has to be stopped right now.”

  “I can’t,” said Emily.

  “Can’t what?”

 
; “Can’t say that.”

  “Sure you can. Just open your mouth and repeat after me: I am not a Christian.” She pronounced each syllable individually. “See?”

  Suddenly, Emily exploded. It was remarkable, really—zero to sixty in less than a second. A sound came out of her so anguished and high pitched, that for a moment Bernice thought the child must have been bitten by a snake. It repeated a few times, blasts on a factory whistle, before she moved on to something more recognizably like crying, her entire body heaving, wracked with sobs. Her nose had started to run, her face was red, and her little hands were clenched into frustrated fists, which she pounded against her own chest. It was as if for the past week the child had held on to every bit of her frustrations and emotions and was now letting them out in one great torrent.

  Everyone in the restaurant turned to look at them. “Oh, boy,” said Gillian. “You really pushed her button.”

  Bernice was alarmed. “Do you think she’s OK?” She put an arm around Emily, who didn’t acknowledge her and just continued crying, though now her wailing had turned to something almost like a whisper, in between short gasps. “Baby, are you OK?”

  Gillian drank some of her water. “You know, in a way, this is the most normal I’ve seen her be. I mean, this I recognize. That other stuff, the junior Pat Robertson act, that’s strange.”

  She was right. These were losing-your-favorite-doll hysterics, these were staying-up-way-past-your-bedtime hysterics.

  “You can be anything you want,” said Bernice. “I’m sorry. Mommy’s sorry. Mommy’s got her own problems, but they have nothing to do with you.” She thought how, in fact, they had everything to do with her, but she didn’t elaborate. Right now, the thing was to get the child back to her former, mini-adult state. “What about ice cream?” she said. “I’ll bet they have ice cream here.”

  That seemed to help. Emily’s sobs stopped, except for an occasional one that shook her like a hiccup.

  “Perfectly normal little girl,” said Gillian.

  But what Bernice was thinking was that if normal meant this, she was going to need some help. “You ever go home anymore?” she asked.

  “Christmas, usually,” said Gillian. “And then back when my mom was getting chemo. But I don’t like it there.” Gillian was originally from Binghamton, New York, and both her parents were psychologists. “The place is horrible—no sun, ever. I want to blow it up.”

  “Shhh,” said Bernice. “They’ll hear you.”

  “Who?” asked Emily. “Who’ll hear?”

  “Them,” said Bernice. “The government.” She pointed her eyes upward, as if an FBI spy camera might be embedded in the stucco ceiling.

  “Anyway,” said Gillian, “you can’t ever go home. Home isn’t a real place. I mean, it is, but only partly. It’s also connected to time and people and just the way the world was back when you were younger, and who you are inside, or who you were. There’s nothing sadder than walking along a street that used to mean something to you and finding out it doesn’t at all anymore, that you’ve moved on and it’s just a street.”

  Bernice thought about a patch of sidewalk she’d always loved near the Walters Gallery, where there were two long, dark stains that looked like the stretched-out legs of a pair of pantyhose. Her mother had pointed them out to her.

  “Anyone for dessert?” asked Gillian.

  Bernice nodded. She noticed that Emily was still looking upward, trying to figure out who it was besides God keeping an eye on them.

  FIVE

  The address turned out to be a small house about a half mile up from the center of Manitou. Landis went there a little before ten, after treating himself to Vietnamese food at a place he liked out on Academy, then going to the mall and pumping quarters into the ski machine. He’d skied a few times growing up, but never really got the hang of it, and skiing in New Jersey was sort of a joke, anyway. The first time, his dad had taken him, back in the days of lace-up leather boots. In high school he’d gone on some midweek excursions to Vernon Valley, but those had been more about smoking dope than anything else. When he’d first come to Colorado, he’d had a vision of himself, a solo figure gliding expertly down vast fields of white, past half-buried aspen and spruce, but money had been an issue, and then he’d hurt his back. The machines they had at the mall made you feel as if you were in the Alps on a beautiful day. He liked how the image on the screen responded to the way he moved his feet, angling and carving through the imaginary powder. This was his secret, that he liked to do this. A virtual Franz Klammer.

  The house smelled like must and fried fish, and there were people standing around in little clusters not saying much to each other, some who looked up briefly when he entered. It was a young crowd, and maybe an educated one—there were women with academic-looking eyeglasses, guys with beards. He sensed a certain desperation in the studied nonchalance around him. He searched the refrigerator, took the cheapest beer he could find, and headed out the back door to the yard.

  Robin was standing looking at the fire, which seemed to have part of an old desk in it, along with a pair of skis and a bowling ball. “I told him it wouldn’t do anything,” she said.

  “It might melt.”

  “You think so?”

  “Seems a good bet.”

  “I figure it will just sit there. I don’t even predict a glow. What’s it made of?”

  “Plastic,” said Landis. “Or rubber, maybe.”

  “You came,” she said. “I didn’t think you would.”

  “I like parties.”

  They stood together in silence watching the bowling ball.

  “We don’t have to stay,” said Robin. “We could go someplace. To tell you the truth, I hate these people. They’re Magic Bussers. Street theater crap. Some of them are, anyhow. It’s a cult. They plan public performances, and they all write the scripts together. Art isn’t democracy, you know. Only nonartists—only people without the vaguest notion of what art is—would ever think it is. Art is the opposite. If anything, it’s fascism. One person decides everything, and fuck you if you don’t like it. That’s art. What do you think?”

  “Are you an artist?”

  “Ha!” she said. “You’re pretty funny.”

  Landis wondered what Bernice would think about any of this, or if she knew any of these people. She kept to herself. The time he’d suggested they could go to the museum up in Denver, she’d just shrugged and said, “Why?” But in the park one day, there had been a group of kids making a wall of paintings together—each of them worked his or her individual square, and then they were all assembled together into one huge canvas—and she’d wanted to join in, and had even made Landis paint a square, too. He’d tried doing his own work boot, but it hadn’t ended up looking like much. Bernice had painted a pair of squinting eyes.

  “I once knew this guy who worked for Bob Dylan,” he said. “The guy would ask Dylan after a show if everything was OK. Dylan said things to him like, ‘More green, man. Put in a little more green on the guitar.’ Or he’d say, ‘The drums are too red, man.’ That’s the kind of stuff you get to say if you’re a genius.”

  “You married or something?” asked Robin.

  “Oh, it’s not like that.”

  “So what is it like?”

  He took a sip from his beer. The bowling ball split in half with a sound like a popgun. “I really don’t know much about art,” said Landis.

  “Here’s what I’d like,” said Robin. “The guy whose place this is, Leroy? We used to go out. Only now we don’t, and he sees some Magic Bus skank. So what would be great is if you and I looked like we were together, and maybe even left together.” She grabbed his arm and gave it a squeeze. “You wouldn’t be required to put out, although we could see what developed. Mostly, this would be about making an asshole feel bad.”

  “I don’t know,” said Landis. “I’m supposed to make a phone call.”

  “You can make a phone call. I’ve got my cell—you want to use it?”

/>   “No, that’s OK.” Telling Bernice he was at a party didn’t seem wise.

  “I hate my cell,” she said. “It’s a leash. It’s like being on house arrest. When we were dating, he called all the time to check on me. ‘What are you doing?’ he’d say, all innocent. And I’d be, like, ‘I’m taking a crap, if you want to know.’ He was crazy jealous—it drove me nuts. But now, now he’s got his skank. Of course, he invited me to his party, because we’re still friends. Friends. Do you think you can be friends with someone you used to fuck but now don’t anymore?”

  “Never tried,” said Landis. Robin wore a motorcycle jacket with the sleeves cut off, so you could still see the elaborate etchings on her arms. There was a dragon on one. He couldn’t see the other.

  “You have any tats?” she asked, noticing him noticing.

  He shook his head. “Never got my ear pierced, either. All that started a couple years after me.”

  “So you weren’t allowed?” She stepped right in front of him, close. Her jacket was open, and she pushed up against him, smashing her mouth against his, moving her tongue around. He could feel her ample breasts against his chest, and without really thinking about it, he put both hands behind her and squeezed her ass.

  “Hey,” she said, stepping back. “I didn’t say you could do that.”

  “You didn’t say I couldn’t.”

  “Do you think he saw?”

  “I don’t even know who he is.”

  She gestured with her head toward a short guy with spiky hair and a Che Guevara T-shirt a few yards away, by the fence, backlit by a tiki torch. He had glasses and was laughing in a very fake way while holding forth on something to a group of three other people who seemed to hang on his words.

  “He doesn’t look like he saw.”

  “Hell, then. I’ll just go tell him we’re leaving.”

  She walked off, and Landis did not watch her. He felt embarrassed by this, and wasn’t sure how exactly he’d agreed to whatever it was he’d agreed to.

  They left his truck where it was and took her car, an old red Subaru. She wouldn’t tell him where they were going. She had a six-pack on the floor of the passenger side, and he opened one for her, which she held between her thighs as she drove them down into Old Colorado City. She drove a little too fast, he thought, and he didn’t care much for the death-metal tape she put in, but he tried to just relax.