Mirage

by Tracy Clark

  “I wanted to show​—”

  “All you did, young lady, was prove to me how reckless and irresponsible you are!”

  I fling my chute on the ground between us. “I showed I have the skill!”

  “Bullshit. You showed you don’t belong on my DZ. I don’t need the job of shoveling your foolish ass off the dirt.”

  “Girl’s got balls, man!” someone yells out.

  “More balls than you,” I say through clenched teeth. I know it’s a low blow. “You’re a coward, Dad. You’re too scared to give me a chance to prove myself. I’m invisible to you. What in the hell do I have to do?” I shove him in the chest, and even I’m surprised at the rage I feel toward him. The detached observer in me wonders if it’s the adrenaline.

  Dad steps back, catching himself from falling. He rakes his hands over his buzzed hair like he’s got to do something with his hands in order not to strangle me. His voice switches to a low growl, which is scarier than his barking lecture. “Get off this airport right now.” He throws himself into the golf cart and peels out, spitting dust at me in its wake.

  Dom and I walk back to the hangar in silence. I’m numb; I don’t even flinch when a snake slithers out of the sagebrush in front of us, crosses our path, and slips into the dry weeds. He puts his arm around my shoulder and stops me. “You gotta understand, your dad, he​—”

  “Don’t tell me about my dad!” I yell, shrugging out from under his arm. “Piss off.”

  “Don’t be a bitch to me. I didn’t make you do it, Ry. You managed to fuck up all on your own.”

  “Oh my God! Hop aboard the Ryan-will-slap-you express!” I shove him, too. Not once, but twice, hard in his chest. His black hair covers one eye. The other narrows with anger. Whatever. If people don’t want to be attacked, why do they rattle my cage?

  Mom is standing in front of the hangar as I walk up. Dad’s hastily parked golf cart bakes in the sun next to her. She wrings her hands, waiting for me to approach. Her face doesn’t look reprimanding; it’s sad.

  “You’re not going to lecture me too, are you?”

  “Go home, poppet. Check on your grandmother. I’ll speak to you later. In the meantime, why don’t you ponder the treasure that is this life, ’cause, baby girl, you spend it like it’s cash burning a hole in your pocket.”

  On a normal day our house is cornea-stabbing white, but after I cry in the car for ten minutes as I drive home, it’s like staring into the face of the sun. I squint as I walk toward it: a study in straight lines and right angles. Modern rectangular boxes of gleaming stucco contrast with black beams and walls of glass. Mom often hoses off the sides of the house, trying to beat back the desert that surrounds us. I think she’s afraid she’ll wake up one day and everything in her world will have turned to beige.

  We’ve managed to create an oasis out of the three things that tolerate the heat of the Mojave Desert: palm trees, a flowering shrub called pride of Barbados (Mom loves that), and cacti.

  Cacti are creepy. Joe and I joke that they are aliens waiting for a command from the mother ship. If this happens, my family is toast. We’re completely surrounded.

  I admit a few are strangely beautiful, with improbable flowers that seep out of them like colorful dew. But most are otherworldly petri-dish experiments magnified by a million. Some are tall and arty, while others look like pissed-off cucumbers.

  Mom is obsessed with these beautiful, strange, and prickly creatures. Maybe that’s why she’s attracted to my father. She doesn’t say it, but I think she resents that we have to live in this barren wasteland because Dad can’t take the high stimulus of cities and people.

  The thought of him and our fight makes me feel like my heart tripped and fell on a cactus.

  The sound of Gran’s piano welcomes me on the steps. I walk in, quiet enough not to distract her but loud enough not to startle. She’s bent reverently over the keys. Her eyes are closed, hiding the clouds of her blindness. She’s intent, her head cocked to the side like she’s listening to someone else play. Her fingers are the most youthful thing about her, still nimble and straight, and I wonder if the rest of her body would be if she used it as much as she does her hands.

  The music is a strange, mesmeric tune I’ve never heard before. “What is that you’re playing?” I ask, gently placing my car keys on the glass kitchen table and walking over.

  “My song. I want to give you my song.”

  My grandmother can be all kinds of perplexing sometimes. “Your song?”

  “Of course,” she says, not bothering to mask her impatience. Gran’s moods have become pretty unpredictable as her dementia amps up. “Every person has a secret song only they can hear,” she explains, digging deeper into the keys so that I hear the light tap of her too-long nails on the ivory. I’ll need to cut them for her soon. “I’m playing my soul’s song. Mine alone. But if I don’t share it with you, then when I die, it’ll die with me.”

  I sit down on the bench next to her warm body and hope that blind people can’t smell tears. “Why does it have to die with you?” I ask softly.

  “Because you are a stubborn cur who won’t learn to play the piano.”

  I smile. “Mean old lady.”

  She starts her song over. I have to admit, it sounds like her. This is the only time I’ve ever felt bad for having no inclination to play. “Can it be sung?” I ask, wanting her to know I’d keep her song alive if I could, even if I had to hum it.

  “No. You don’t get to say how it comes through,” she scolds. “You get your song the way you get it,” she adds in that you’ll eat it and like it tone, as if we’re talking roast chicken.

  No song has ever come through for me. “Maybe not everyone gets a song, Gran. I don’t have one.”

  “Nonsense. You aren’t listening, child. The blazing wildfire can’t hear the soft wings of birds. Quiet yourself and you’ll hear it. I warn you, don’t die without sharing your song.”

  Gran and her voodoo warnings.

  I don’t like this topic. It strums the spooked chords I’ve already felt vibrate twice today. I glance behind me, daring myself to scan the long, straight shadows of the house. A quiver starts at my feet and hands and rises up my body. I wonder if a person freezing to death or dying does so from the outside in, like an ice cube. Is the middle​—​the house of your heart​—​the last to freeze? I shake my head to clear the random, strange thought. What the hell’s the matter with me?

  I concentrate on the piano and its lilting music. My eyes slowly find focus, and then I see a rippling movement within the polished veneer of the piano. Looking harder, I could swear the whites of eyes stare at me from the shiny black surface. I spin around again to check if someone’s behind me. When I turn back, the eyes are gone.

  Gran stops playing abruptly. She cocks her head and says, “Oh! Who have you brought home with you?”

  The shiver reaches my neck and lies there like a cold hand. “No one, Gran. I’m alone.”

  Gran and her talk of death has made me edgier than I already was. I take her hand, grateful for its warmth. “C’mon, time for your bath.”

  It’s not that my grandma needs everything done for her, but she’s a little rickety lately. The first time I had to help her bathe, I apologized all over myself. “Nonsense.” She laughed. “I had to pick boogers out of your nose and wipe the filth out of your little brown biscuits. This is payback.”

  Bath time has become our new normal. I love the waves of her hair when it’s wet and I scrub her scalp gently with the pads of my fingers. I’m less shocked by the glimpse into my body’s future than I was the first time I saw her naked. She can’t see my eyes on her, and I try not to take advantage of that, but still I look. I make myself do it because I can’t stand to let a mongrel like fear back me down. I’m not afraid of much, but I am afraid of getting old. I fear my back crooking like a bent finger. I fear clouds covering my sight. I fear my mind will start to slip in puddles of thoughts like hers does.

  I fear
I’m seeing things.

  After I’m done with her hair, Grandma washes her girl bits, and then I help her out of the tub to dry off, wrapping a huge white towel over her skin. She reminds me of an overripe banana: soft, brown, and spotted. Grandma shrugs me off and says, “Go on. That’ll be Joe on the phone.”

  “The phone hasn’t rung, Gran​—” Phone rings. Of course it does. “Witchy! You creep me out when you do that!”

  “Embrace the mysteries of life, child. I skipped ahead in time and came back to tell you.”

  I run to pick up the phone and smile through my hello when I hear Joe’s voice.

  “I have to come hang with you tonight. I’ve caught wind that among this evening’s dinner guests, my mom has invited the son of a coworker as a potential blind date.”

  “Why don’t you want to meet him?”

  “He’s too clean-cut,” Joe answers. “Looks like a banker.”

  “So? You’re all prep on the outside.”

  “Yeah, but I’m all freak underneath.”

  I laugh. Joe always makes me laugh. And he’s right. He’s Polo over pierced nipples. “Okay, JoeLo, come on over. I’ll protect you from the scary gay banker.”

  I hang up and go to my room. I’m thrashed, bonking​—​probably adrenaline from the jump. I crawl atop my bed, flop back against the heaps of pillows, and stare at the galaxy of twinkle lights that reflect off the strings of small round mirrors hanging above me like stars. Undulating circles shimmer on the ceiling and the walls. My room of stars is the only place I can relax.

  Usually I would turn on some music, but this time I don’t. I lie on the bed and listen to the silence ringing in my ears and try really hard to hear my song, wondering what will happen if I die without hearing it.

  Five

  “WAKE UP, SUNSHINE. You’re supposed to be my party tonight.”

  I’m bouncing. Why am I bouncing? My eyes flutter open to see Joe’s face and his multitone, spiky hair. “For someone so paranoid about cacti overtaking the world, I wonder why you make your hair look like one.”

  Joe is hovering inches above me, staring down with his gap-toothed grin. Except for the twinkle lights, the room is dim with blue dusk. I clamp my hands on Joe’s cheeks and slowly pull his face to mine, reveling in the terrified look in his eyes right before I bite his bottom lip hard. Laughing, I roll out from under him.

  “Ow! Rawr,” he says, with his fingers on his lips.

  “I made you nervous. Don’t lie,” I say, still giggling.

  Joe sits pretzel-style on my bed. “Noooo.” His face admits defeat. “Okay, yes. You have just enough man energy about you to tempt me.”

  “That’s because I’m in touch with my masculine side.” I cross my legs opposite him, knee to knee, like we used to do when we were in our “summoning the spirits” phase of life. “Was your mom mad at you for ditching her dinner party?”

  “Marginally. It’s a five Hershey’s Kisses infraction.”

  “You should own stock. I wish I could buy my parents off with chocolate. Do they sell Kisses the size of a Buick?”

  “What’d you do now?”

  I wave him off. “Why don’t you want to at least meet the guy?”

  “Because I’m pretty certain that my mother’s taste in men is not my taste in men. Exhibit A: my dad.”

  “Most gay kids are worried their parents won’t even accept them being gay, and she’s trying to hook you up? That’s pretty cool. It could be way worse.”

  He throws up his hands. “Yeah, well there are different kinds of narrow-mindedness. She’s been psycho lately. She even signed me up for a Jewish LGBT mixer. My mom wants me to go because, as she puts it, ‘I don’t care if you date boys. But you’d better date a nice Jewish boy.’”

  My phone buzzes next to the bed. A picture of Dom pops up. I ignore it. I also try to ignore Joe’s raised eyebrow. “Blowing off his call? Might I hope that you and Testosterone Tom​—”

  “Dom.”

  “Whatever. Are you fighting?” he asks with too hopeful a tone.

  “Don’t be a Dom-o-phobe. He just pissed me off earlier.”

  Joe’s not one for evasions or half stories. His blue eyes fix me with that look that means I have to tell him the story of my big crap-ass day. Except for the part about wigging out in the motor home. How can I explain that someone else’s haunted eyes were looking into mine from the mirror? Bumps erupt on my arms, because just thinking of the eyes makes me feel like they’re watching me now.

  After I tell Joe about my dad, the business failing, my risky jump, and the subsequent fight, Joe picks at his nails with a grave expression.

  “What?”

  “I don’t get the things you do sometimes. When we were younger, you were my hero. It was you who showed me how to be unapologetically me. Full disclosure​—​I totally thought you were nuts, but your bravery made me want to be more brave. You’re the reason I had the guts to come out. I wanted to live as out loud as you did.”

  “Thanks?” My jaw clenches.

  “You used to thrill me, Ryan. Now . . . now you scare me.”

  I swallow hard. “Stop being overdramatic. So I did something risky. Everyone takes risks now and then, especially when they want something.”

  “Your idea of risk is very different from most people’s. Why do you have to up the ante all the time? I’d hate for you to find out the hard way that there’s a limit.”

  Do I have an answer to this? I’m not sure I’ve ever thought about it. “I need extra stimulus, Joe​—”

  “There’s a joke in there.”

  I ignore that. “I need it or I feel numb. Like there’s an on/off switch in me, and adrenaline flips that switch. It’s how I was made. How can that be wrong? You say I scare you, and the truth is, I like your fear. It tells me I’m different from the rest. Special.” That last word falls as a whisper.

  Joe twirls his finger in the air around his ear. “Maybe crazy is another word for special.”

  “Crazy is something flatliners call people like me,” I say. “It makes them feel better about being boring.”

  “I’ll ignore the fact that you just insinuated that I’m a boring flatliner. So, it’s not about getting attention?”

  Ouch. The way he asks this, I know he thinks it is. I crawl into his chest. Through his T-shirt, his nipple ring pushes against my cheek as his arms wrap around me. It’s easier to talk real when I don’t have to look in his eyes. “Sometimes, with my dad especially, I feel invisible. I think the worst thing in life is to be invisible,” I admit.

  He doesn’t give an answer just to give one. And he never judges. I love that about him. It’s how he gets me to confess things to him I’d hardly admit to myself.

  I sigh. “When you knock and no one seems to hear, you knock louder.”

  Joe starts to touch my hair and then stops himself like a good and proper best friend. My hair does not like being touched. “Honey, you could never be invisible. Not you. You’re trumpets and neon and hot sauce.”

  “You say the sweetest things,” I tell him, rolling up to primp in the mirror, trying to smooth down my wild mane of ringlets. Dizziness overtakes me as if I’ve stood too quickly. I grasp the edge of my dresser, bow my head, and take a deep breath until it passes. Once it does, I inhale at my image in the mirror. A ghostly hand appears to be touching my hair. I look down at my own hands, still clenched on the wood in front of me.

  When I look up again, the hazy outline of a face presses forward at me like ice rising from the bottom of a glass. Spectral eyes bore into mine, staring with the curious but grim expression of someone watching a nature show, knowing they’re going to see the death of the brave animal whose panicked run for its life is about to end.

  Six

  JOE REGARDS ME with narrowed eyes and his head cocked to one side. It’s me he’s watching, not the mirror. Why? Because he can’t see what I’m seeing. I’m seeing things that aren’t there, right?

  “I’m buggin’ in th
is room.” My voice is breathy, struggling to restrain a scream. “I need to get out of here. Let’s go to the hill.”

  Mom doesn’t bat an eye when she sees me grab some cranberry juice from the fridge. It’ll go good with the vodka I have stashed in my bag.

  “Ah, ah, ah,” she says as I try to slip out the front door with Joe. “Not so speedy, young lady. What you did today,” she says, raising herself from her favorite chair, “was dangerous and reckless. You mustn’t cause undue stress for your father. You know the concerns on his shoulders. You know what he struggles with.”

  Eyes say more than words do. For most of my childhood, Mom’s eyes were weighted with worry. The pinched look faded for a while, but it’s back with a vengeance. She’s worried that he’ll start being explosive again, or worse, retreat from us into that dark inner place​—​the shadowy cave of his heart​—​and that there might come a time when he’ll crawl so far in we can’t reach him. The way her eyes narrow at me, I think she’s worried I’ll be the one to push him over his edge.

  Funny how she forgets that my father’s not the only one with shadows inside.

  At the crest of the hill is a narrow dirt road where Joe parks his car and cuts the engine. California City​—​“the Land of the Sun,” as the sign aptly proclaims​—​glimmers below us to our left. Every other direction is dark but for the string of headlights snaking north and south on Highway 395.

  The hill can’t be called a secret place. Too many desert people crave a scenic overlook, and this scrubby dot is the only one for miles. Luckily, it’s rare for anyone to be up here on a weeknight. When you have the hill all to yourself, it feels like you own the world. Harsh, flat wilderness stretches out in every direction. Out here, I’m the center of a compass. When a strong gust of wind kicks up, I feel like I can be lifted off the hill and blown anywhere. I like the randomness of that. The adventure.

  I gulp some juice out of the plastic bottle to make room for vodka, add the booze, then replace the cap and give it a good shake. All the while, Joe watches me, chewing on his thick thumb. “You have sausage fingers.” I hold the bottle out to him. “Want some?”