Last Things

by Jenny Offill

  When we got back to the apartment, she fell asleep right away for once. I knelt beside her and watched her eyes fluttering beneath her lids. Once, at church, she had knelt before the minister for a blessing and he had placed his hand on her head and said, For all the world we are wreathed in splendor, high and low. When my mother passed out on the couch, I touched her hands and face and blessed her like this.

  But the next morning it seemed that she had forgotten everything. She told me she was in love with a man she had never met who’d written the inscription in a book she’d found. “Where did you find the book? What was it called?” I asked her. “It was called Thrum,” my mother said. “It had a green cover with a Ferris wheel on the front. How do you think I can find this man?”

  Later, when I consulted the book of dreams, it said:

  LOVE

  To dream of loving one person above any other denotes a secretive and greedy nature. The love of animals indicates contentment and the love of children joy. For a time, fortune will crown you.

  My mother said, “Why don’t you look at me when you talk to me? You never look at me.” We were in the bar with the pickled eggs. The bartender stopped smiling when he saw her, and walked away. My mother got up and went outside. I followed her. It was raining. Tree branches blew across the street. We held newspapers over our heads and ran. When we got home, there was a note on the door that said: Final Notice. My mother went out on the balcony and watched the rain tear through the trees. Balloon animals bobbed across the dark pool. In the back room, the wind slammed a window shut. My mother came and stood in the doorway. With wet hands, she held the hair back from my face. In the corner, the miraculous corn shone like a light. Someone was getting in a car somewhere, I thought, and driving toward us in the dark. “I want to see you,” my mother said. “Look at me.”

  It wasn’t quite light out when we left. Under the slow falling moon everything looked blue. The blue hour, my father used to call it, but he had meant another time, the time just after the sun went out. I closed the door behind us. “So this is it,” my mother said. “The day has dawned.” Before I woke up, she had packed everything in the car. She carried the last bag to the door and let herself out. The cool air smelled of the river. The sidewalk was wet. It must have rained in the night, I thought, while we slept. But I hadn’t slept at all, only watched the hands of the clock tick their way around.

  I got in the car. The night before, my mother had tied the corn on top of the car again. “For luck,” she said. I had thought someone might take it while we slept, but it was still there, shining in the dark. The white dog my mother called Ghost was picking through garbage in the abandoned lot. My mother called to him as she passed, but the dog didn’t look up. He had a bag of bread in his mouth and was shaking it from side to side like a rat. Ghost, she called again. Ghost. A paper boy appeared and got on a bike made for a girl. I watched him as we waited for the light; he had a thin wisp of a mustache and handlebars that curved like swans. He saw us and smiled shyly. The basket of his bike was covered with flowers, red and green. The light changed. The boy sped past us, pedaling furiously. My mother roared ahead. In the rear-view mirror, I could see the boy waving to us. It was like a dream, the way he got smaller and smaller, then disappeared.

  That night, my mother drove through a tunnel and I was terrified that I would lose the voice of the man on the radio who had been speaking to me quietly and secretively through two states. The voice was like my father’s, coming from every direction at once, the vents, the windows, the crack in the door. He had always believed himself to be an honorable man, the voice said, but on the day of the piano player’s trial, his honor let itself out like a cat. When we entered the tunnel, the man’s voice dimmed, but did not go out. Instead, it seemed he was speaking through snow.

  We drove and drove. The Purple Pig smelled like a dead thing. The mildew grew secretly at night while we slept, I knew. Hold your nose, my mother said each morning when we got in.

  My mother never tired of driving. She liked to listen to the radio and watch the towns go by. Sometimes cars honked at us as they passed. Whenever this happened, my mother sped up to see who was inside, but it was never anyone she knew.

  In a motel gift shop, my mother bought a map of America and spread it out for me to see. Where were we going, I asked her. To Disneyland, she said. She told me that we would visit the last dusky seaside sparrow and stay in the castle where Snow White lived. But wasn’t that bird at Disney World, not Disneyland, I asked. It flies back and forth between the two, my mother explained. She took my hand and smiled at me. Soon we’ll be there. Very, very soon, she said. She mapped out our route with a yellow marker. Anaheim, she circled at the end.

  But that night before bed, my mother pushed the Disneyland brochures away. Come with me to Thailand, she said. We’ll ride elephants through the shining streets. We’ll earn our keep plumping pillows in an opium den. We’ll dance on stage in costumes made of hundred-dollar bills. We’ll call ourselves the Beautiful Twins.

  In the morning, we stopped at a restaurant and one of our credit cards was refused for the first time. My mother said that this was a sign we should eat less and drive more. In supermarkets, we listened for the voices of the dead animals calling to us. We drank only rainwater that she collected in a can by the side of the road. The hungrier we got, the more superstitious. We ate only bread that came in the package with the star. “We’re evolving,” my mother said. “Soon we’ll need nothing but air to live.”

  We were halfway to California when my mother explained about her luck. “It used to come so easily,” she said. “Then I lost my lucky shoes.” She’d found the shoes in a junk shop in New Orleans. Her initials were carved into the sole of one of them. “AW,” it said, just like that. She bought the shoes and that night she fell in love. His name was Michael and she knew he was the one the minute he walked in the room.

  “How could you tell?” I asked. I looked out the window. Outside, the desert was completely dark. We could be on the moon, I thought.

  “I just knew,” my mother said. “Before I even talked to him, I knew.”

  That night in the desert, we stayed in a motel called the Cactus Chateau where my mother said she and Michael had stayed. In the morning, when we came out to the car, my mother said that everything had changed. Someone had taken our sleeping bags and replaced them with identical ones which were older and more soiled, she told me. Also, one of her favorite dresses had a tiny tear in it that had never been there before. She showed me her lacquered jewelry box and the small chip on the side that had happened while we slept. Only the corn on top of the car still looked new. It’s because it’s one of a kind, she said. They must have had trouble with that.

  I stood next to the car and looked at all the things my mother said had been changed, but I couldn’t remember how they’d been before. I threw my bag into the car. Inside was a toothbrush, my detective kit, and the book of dreams.

  All the next day, my mother talked about Michael. She had an idea that we should go to Joshua Tree and look for clues where he’d disappeared. She said if his car was still there it might have melted into the sand by now. Something that was hidden before could be glinting in the sun. You’re my private eye, Grace, she told me, but I didn’t want to go. I got out the map and showed her how far it was from Disneyland. Don’t worry, I know a shortcut, my mother said.

  We were a hundred miles outside of Joshua Tree when she suddenly stopped talking about him. It was as if the marker we’d passed had been a sign. Before, she had said Michael always liked the desert at night, or Michael found a coyote skull over there, or Michael kept two lizards, but after the sign she was silent. In the distance, I could see lights. There were no other cars on the road. My mother drove so fast the car began to shake.

  “Charles Manson’s ranch was around here somewhere,” she said. “Remember him, he was the one who killed the pregnant movie star.” She waved her hand in the air.

  “He thought
he was the devil.”

  My mother frowned. “No, that’s not true. Who told you that?” She fiddled with the radio, but there was only static.

  “No one,” I said. “I read it in a book.” I had seen a photograph of one of the Manson girls, grown up and a housewife now. The girl had a faint scar on her forehead where she had once carved a cross like Charlie’s. When the interviewer asked what she told her children about the scar, she said, I tell them Mommy fell on a cookie cutter.

  My mother sighed. “What was smart about Manson was the way he broke up all the families. The kids belonged to everybody and the mothers were only allowed to talk to them in gibberish so they wouldn’t get attached.”

  “What did they say?” I asked.

  “Nonsense words, I guess, elterhay, elterskay, who knows?” She found a station on the radio that played scratchy Mexican music.

  She told me how when she was little her father had taught her the opposite names for everything as an experiment. “Dog,” she said when she saw a cat. “Too light out,” she said when he took her camping under a starless sky. On her first day of school, her teacher told her to take a chair and she sat on the table, instead. She ended up being held back a year and her father had to reteach her everything.

  “Why is a table the opposite of a chair?” I asked. We passed a sign for the park. “They’re approximate opposites,” my mother said.

  We passed a restaurant shaped like a castle. I begged to stop, until finally my mother gave in and turned around. Inside, people were wearing paper crowns and eating steak with their hands. There was a sword stuck in a stone outside this restaurant and beneath it a thousand-dollar bill in a glass case. My mother stopped and tried it, but it wouldn’t budge. “This place is a rip-off,” she said. She paid for the meal with our last hundred-dollar bill.

  It was late afternoon by the time we made it onto the highway. 101 degrees, the bank sign said. We drove without talking. I felt a little sick. After a while, my mother rolled down the window and stuck out her head. The car swerved across the empty road and I gripped the seat until my mother put her head back inside the car. The engine made a faint sputtering noise. My mother turned on the radio and sped up until the dunes outside passed in a blur. I thought that she was like a dog in that she loved to ride in the car.

  Outside, there was nothing to see but sand. I peeled my legs off the sticky seat. The heat felt like a hand pressing against me. “How long until Disneyland?” I asked.

  My mother didn’t answer. When I asked again, she waved my question away. We passed a billboard that said “Joshua Tree, 10 miles.” “We never should have come here,” my mother told me. “I should have known.”

  In the distance, there was a patch of water shimmering on the road. As we drove toward it, it disappeared.

  “Did you see that?” my mother said. “Over by the sign?” Down the road, it appeared again, a ghost of blue water.

  My mother pulled over. She took a picture, then got back in the car. “Michael would have loved this,” she said. “He always wanted to see one.” I knew that we had passed into Michael’s desert again, where every rock and cactus was named for him. My mother seemed happy for the first time since we’d left the Cactus Chateau. I imagined a woman walking down a street somewhere, wearing her lucky shoes.

  We were two hours from Disneyland when my mother saw a poster at a gas station that made her change her mind. She ripped it off the bulletin board and showed it to me. “Look, Grace,” she said excitedly. “It’s the festival Edgar told us about. It’s happening just a little ways from here.” She took out a piece of paper she kept folded up in her wallet. “The Burning Man!” the flyer said. My mother got out a map and retraced our route. We had missed it by just a little bit, she said. I looked at the place she’d circled and at the star I’d made on the map for Anaheim. I cried and banged on the door to be let out, but she ignored me. Even when I stopped crying, I refused to talk to her. “Fine,” my mother said. “I’ve had just about enough of you.”

  We rode for hours in silence, but when we reached the spot in the desert filled with lights and cars and strange machines, I forgot for a moment that I hadn’t wanted to come. It looked like a carnival without any rides. We drove past a huge stick man made of scaffolding. It rose forty feet into the air, tethered to the ground by thin wire cables. At its feet, hundreds of people were gathered around. “It’s the Burning Man,” my mother said. “Tonight they’ll light it on fire.” We parked behind a line of cars and began to walk. My mother insisted on bringing the corn, so we walked slowly, dragging it along. Everywhere, there was the sound of drumming. A woman ran by covered in white body paint, a tattoo of a vine on her back. My mother pointed to a man whose lips and ears were pierced with heavy silver rings. He was carrying a small boy in his arms and handing out flyers. My mother took one and put it in her purse. “Nice corn,” the man said. I noticed we were the only ones wearing shoes. We made our way through the crowd toward the Burning Man. At its base were flowers and bones and offerings of food. We dragged the corn through the crowd of people and left it at the Burning Man’s feet. As we approached, it lit up in blue and spread its arms like wings. I counted its neon ribs, ten in all. “It’s pretty,” my mother said. I expected it to walk toward us, but it stood still, a pale blue skeleton in the light.

  In the afternoon, my mother took me to watch two machines fight. One machine had a live rabbit running in a wheel, and the other one shot flames and blue sparks into the air. My mother and I stood a little apart from the crowd. Everyone was quiet while the machines fought. They made a loud sound whenever they touched. I was a little afraid of the one with the sparks. It was taller than a house, but not as big. The rabbit was scared too. It seemed to run faster and faster in its wheel. I watched the machines clank and spark. After a long time, they stopped. Little pieces of paper fell from the sky. My mother picked up a scrap and read it. I could see people above on the scaffolding and then the white paper floating down. Some people caught the paper in their hands. It was almost the end of dusk. A man with a silver hand went over to the machines and covered them with a tarp. After a moment, he lifted the tarp and took the rabbit out of its cage. He petted the rabbit and held it to his face. My mother said that the man had lost his hand in an explosion. She said that he stole all the parts he needed for his machines because he didn’t believe in work. Something in my mother’s voice made me afraid she would leave and go with him. Her hand was cold. I thought it had turned to metal in the dark.

  That night, we walked a long ways into the desert because my mother wanted to find a place to sleep where no people were. “I think I saw Michael tonight,” she told me. “He left a flower for the Burning Man.” The moon appeared suddenly over the dunes. My mother took my hand. “Here,” she said, pointing to a place at the bottom of one of the dunes. We spread out our sleeping bags and lay down on the sand.

  In the middle of the night, my mother got up and put on her unlucky shoes. “Go back to sleep,” she whispered. She took her keys, but left the water and chocolate behind. Even with the full moon, it was dark where we’d camped. I could see my mother’s footprints, leading up to the top of the dune, then disappearing.

  She was gone a long time. I was suddenly afraid that she had left me there. I remembered the story she had told me about the spirit houses and the children who waited alone inside them.

  There were flyers scattered across the sand where my mother had emptied out her pockets. Earlier we had gone from booth to booth, collecting them. The moonlight made everything look as if it had a line drawn around it. I thought of astronauts walking on the moon. How far away the Earth must have seemed. Blue for the oceans, green where people were.

  I picked up the flyers. The Time Has Come for Voluntary Human Extinction! the first one said. I opened it and inside was a test you could take to see how much you loved the Earth.

  ECO DEPTH GAUGE

  HOW DEEP IS YOUR COMMITMENT TO OUR PLANET?

  1. Superfici
al: We should take good care of our planet as we would any valuable tool.

  2. Shallow: We have a responsibility to protect the Earth for future generations.

  3. Knee-deep: The planet would be better off if there were fewer people on it.

  4. Deep: Wilderness has a right to exist for its own sake.

  5. Deeper: Wildlife has more right to exist than humans do.

  6. Profoundly deep: We are too great a threat to other forms of life. Our species should be phased out.

  7. Radically deep: Human extinction now, in order to give Earth a chance. A painless extermination is needed.

  8. Abysmally deep: Humans are a plague to the Earth and deserve to die an immediate and painful death. A horrible disease from outer space would be the most fitting end.

  Someone had circled number 7 in red pen. I folded up the flyer into a tiny square and buried it in the sand. I thought of how my mother had said that scientists should create a superpredator to hunt humans and give the rest of the animals a chance. I shone my flashlight over the sand and into the dark night, but there was no sign of her. In the distance, I heard a strange crackling sound like something running through underbrush. I took out the book of dreams to calm myself. Dreams beginning with L, my finger landed on.

  LOVELY

  If through the vista of dreams, you see your own fair loveliness, Fate bids you with a gleaming light, awake to happiness.