Unknown Legend
She wanted to work in a diner because Neil Young sang about it in “Unknown Legend.” That romance. That wistful, dusty harmonica. Her hair wasn’t blond, it was black. She changed the words whenever she sang the song. Turned blond to black with her voice, like a witch casting a spell. But no, she wouldn’t like to ride a Harley-Davidson because motorcycles scared her. Her ex had a motorcycle and she used to ride on the back of his, but that was different because he made her feel safe. He’d turn around a lot at stop signs and red lights and say, you’re okay. And she liked how he said it without the question mark. He told her she was okay and she believed him. She believed him as much as she believed in the very air she breathed.
She’d moved to the desert towns seeking magic—Joshua Tree, the Mojave, Taos. She loved all of them. Deserts sparked her heart. She didn’t like to stay in one place too long. How could she be an unknown legend if she were known? She got a tiny cactus tattoo on the inside of her wrist, a small crescent moon above it. She’d told the tattoo artist it was her fortieth birthday and that she had promised herself she’d get a tattoo on her fortieth birthday. She never broke her own promises. When she walked out of the tattoo parlor—her smarting, tender wrist in the sun—she went to the drugstore to buy an expensive matte nude lipstick, a cheap glossy one too, so she could compare. She also bought two bottles of white wine. She was forty and it felt like a very forty thing to do. So did going back to her apartment with her new tattoo and putting on her pajamas and watching Law & Order: SVU with Thai takeout and her wine.
The diner wasn’t far from her apartment. She could walk there in the morning, but she didn’t like walking home alone at night. She drove herself to the night shifts, drove herself back home with the tall yellow-white lamps strobe-lighting up the inside of her truck. Flashing, flashing. Sometimes she’d think of her motorcycle ex and wonder if he was still married. Where did they go wrong? How could love silently fall away like a petal, without them noticing?
There was one new cook at the diner she liked enough. He was quiet and gentle, so unlike the other men she’d known and been with. She didn’t want a boyfriend for the same reasons she didn’t want a pet, but the idea of a husband was nice. Someone who smelled good, someone who would cut their grass once she saved up enough to move out of the apartment, once she decided to stay put for long enough to buy a house. She would be a known legend then. Known by her husband, a man. A man who would lie underneath her truck with only his legs sticking out and push himself up with black grease-dirty hands and wink when he told her he’d taken care of things. He’d fixed it. Whatever it was. Fixed. A man with a spirit as kind and calm as Neil Young’s ghostly, barely-there voice. A man whose spirit made her feel the same way Neil Young’s songs made her feel. Autumnal. Dreamy.
There were two diner customers she liked well enough. One was a trucker, always passing through. And he’d say it as she put his coffee on the counter, his eggs and toast. Passing through. He’d told her he liked to sit at the counter for company. He’d told her the road was lonesome. He was divorced and bearded. His kids were in college. One morning after her shift, they’d gotten a booth and had some coffee together, but she didn’t tell him anything deep about herself. Unknown. She remained a mystery. She promised herself if he came back three more times that month, she’d tell him something that third time. So far it’d been only two.
The other diner customer was the man who owned the hardware store across the street. A cozy little spot that smelled so good, sometimes she’d go over there on her breaks and wander around. He was definitely married and deliciously off-limits, but he was so nice and tender-hearted, she couldn’t help but be drawn to him. When he came in the diner, he didn’t sit at the counter. He sat at a booth by the window. He wasn’t lonely. He didn’t need the company.
One day, she saw him crying in the booth. Not sobbing, but wiping his eyes, looking at his phone. And when it was time for his refill, she approached him carefully. Poured. Asked if he was okay. And he told her he was fine. He’d be fine. It was just that he and his wife had thought their young son was sick, really sick, and his wife had texted him from the hospital and told him the tests finally came back clear. He was crying from relief. He’d been at the hospital with them early that morning and only left to open the hardware store, to keep it open. And he’d given himself ten minutes to take a break, to come over and have a cup of coffee. He hadn’t had a day off in months, he said. He said his wife couldn’t call him yet, but she would soon. He said his wife and son would be going home. He couldn’t stop talking to her in that booth and she loved it. She sat across from him for a little bit, took her break right there with him and listened to him talk about his son, show her pictures. She’d miss him most of all when she left. She had to leave. It was how she’d stay unknown.
But she told herself she wouldn’t leave until the trucker stopped back in for the third time that month. And when he stopped back in for the third time, she’d tell him something she hadn’t ever told anyone else and then she’d leave. On the last day of the month with the clock almost running out, he stopped in. Passing through. She asked if he would mind if she took her break with him. Asked him if he’d like to get a booth with her. He said yes.
He was surprised she knew how to drive a stick shift. He liked that she was from Kentucky. He asked if she’d grown up riding horses. They talked about Neil Young and how she always listened to Harvest Moon when the harvest moon was full. A superstition. He said he’d start doing it too and think of her. For good luck. She asked him to show her his truck and when they went outside to stand next to it, she put her hand on his stomach. Touched him, gently. Told him she loved the desert towns, that she was still waiting for that magic kiss. And she cupped her hand around his ear and like she promised herself, she told him a secret. Something she’d never told anyone else. His beard was brushing against her face—soft soft soft—when he was squeezing and hugging her, so sweet and tight.
Low, Small
We were a dying wasp. The only thing I still liked about him was the shape of his nose when he was looking down. Not enough. He would get his words twisted around when he was upset. He’d say gold bright instead of bright gold. Light the turn on instead of turn the light on. Tiny things, which kept his anger small. Small. In bed I curled into a catlike C, tightened myself to the edge. I was on a boat lost at sea—there was fog, there was rain. I made a C, I was lost at sea, I couldn’t see. He was careful not to touch me, afraid I would scream. There were nights when I would’ve screamed and other nights when I would’ve let out an ocean-water sigh, a beckon, a beacon of sound. Low, small. When he came inside from cutting the grass, my husband wove a thick ribbon of good-stinky animal musk from the back door to the bedroom, from the bedroom to the shower. It was leathery, whiskey and wood. Beard and muscle, it was breath and sweat; it was a swallowing shadow of man and men. A darkening cloud, a cup emptying and filling up. His hulking enormity, made slight. It brought me back to him—a smoky, creepy, long, sharp-nailed cartoon finger. I met him in the hallway and told him our love was decoration. We wore it like jewelry, slipped the thin posts into the holes in our ears, slid slim goldbright bands over our wrinkly knuckles. We were deep-green parsley on a runny-yellow dinner plate. Garnish. I took his rough hand. Led him to the teeming backyard gardens where the bees hung and swung. Hovered low, small. “Our love is sad. We need to grow it,” I said, stretching my arms wide, wider. Widest. Titchy fireflies winked neon light around us, the grass was summer-soft beneath our bare feet. I approached the blinding goldbright throne of a God I’d made low, small; I prayed for efflorescence.
A Tennis Court
Down there, they always peed outside. Hush-slipped their dress hems from their knees to their waists and squatted. Alabama girls. Alabama roses. What a pretty name: Alabama Rose, Leigh thought. The words swung down behind her eyes as she pulled her underwear back up where it belonged. Georgia Rose. That name was in the song they were just dan
cing to. The song playing in the reception tent. It was a song by one of those foreign boy bands, their mouths and faces lemony and light. One of the boys had hair the color of the inside of an apple, all lit up and glowy. She liked the curly-haired one best because he looked like a little prince.
Michael looked like a little prince too. The girls walked back to the tent and saw him. The groom. He had his wedding suit coat hooked on one finger over his shoulder. He was dancing to another song now, something she’d never heard. The girls resembled an outrageous, drooping hydrangea bush standing there bunched up together, smelling like sweet cocktails and fruit; they’d had peach cranberry lime strawberry cherry pineapple with vodka gin bourbon ice and sticky lipglosses to match. Michael had a brother named Wolfgang and their parents had a tennis court because anytime you named your kid Wolfgang, the baby came with a tennis court. Wolfgang looked more like a Daniel or a John. Michael looked like the Wolfgang and because of it, the entire family was upside down. None of them made sense. The mother wore too much yellow, the father talked way too loud, the brothers didn’t look enough alike and they also had a sister who was far too young, like she’d taken a crooked turn, wandered into the wrong family. But she was decent enough so they kept her, not knowing what else to do. They had so much money, nothing mattered anyway.
Michael and Jill were the newlyweds. Leigh and Jill worked together at the courthouse. Of course Jill had invited the courthouse girls and there they were, standing and sitting and drinking and eating and dancing when they weren’t peeing. Alabama girls. Alabama Roses.
Wolfgang’s brown-sugar eyes stuck to Leigh’s and he asked her to dance. She said okay and he said not here…on the tennis court. She said okay again and finished her champagne, motioned to the courthouse girls. They were supposed to keep an eye on one another. Fine. Done. Okay. She was keeping an eye on herself.
She followed Wolfgang’s stalwart body. He’d been a college quarterback. Or maybe it was baseball. Leigh couldn’t remember, didn’t care. They were kissing on the dark tennis court, the smooth pleasant warmth of it heating up the backs of her thighs, her calves. She slipped off her shoes, little honey-colored heels covered in flowers. Everything was flowers. Midsummer in the South was an explosion of flowers. Bonanza!
“You didn’t come with anyone?” he asked.
“I came with my girlfriends,” she said.
“I meant, a man,” he said, moderately annoyed. It made her like him more. It was a treat to annoy a man so easily.
He kissed her earlobe, the milky pearl stuck in it.
“Do you play tennis?” she asked.
“Sometimes.”
“You played in college?”
He nodded against her neck. It wasn’t football. It wasn’t baseball. It was tennis. She thought of her old crush on Pete Sampras, her current crush on Roger Federer—his wristbands, his responsible eyebrows, his celebratory hands in the air. She’d always had an affinity for tennis players. Notoriously and gorgeously tall, preppy and competitive.
“What’s that bush called?” she asked him, pointing.
“Are you serious?”
She pushed him away, gently. Like peeling off a sticker.
“That one. It’s so pretty,” she said.
“Crape myrtle,” he said easily, turning.
“I know those are gardenias,” she said, pointing to the other side where the creamy blooms spread lustily, almost inappropriately wide. Insolent. Forget Alabama Roses. Alabama Gardenias were her new heroes.
“Wow. You’re something else,” Wolfgang said.
“Your name is Wolfgang,” Leigh said. The bubbly champagne laugh had snuck up on her. A bright poppy hiccup leapt from her mouth.
“You’re drunk,” he said, rolling off her. He sat with his hands clasped, his knees resting against the inside of his elbows. She liked it when a boy sat like that. A man, a boy, a dude, a guy.
“You look more like a John. Or a Michael. You should be Michael, Michael should be Wolfgang. Your family is kind of fucked up,” she said, smoothing her hair. Her breath: his hoppy beer and Italian cream cake.
“That one is called abelia. The hummingbirds and butterflies like it a lot,” he said, pointing at a bush of white star-shaped flowers. “And bottlebrush buckeye,” he said, nodding to the bushes beyond the fence. It was too dark to see but Leigh could feel the rough shrubby beasts slouch in the gloaming.
Leigh closed her eyes and pictured every flower every bush every vine every tree every root every green or brown or white or yellow or red or pink or purple or orange thing snapping and whipping loose and wrapping itself around her, around both of them, suffocating them as they gave their ghosts to the petal-scents and thorns. It’s not that she wanted to die but sometimes she would think, Can’t we just get it over with? It, meaning everything. Everything happening all of the time. She could invent a new cocktail and call it This Exhausting Life.
Two vodka cranberries
Two glasses of champagne
Incalculable humidity
The moon—full, new, or waxing crescent
Wolfgang, cake kisses
The same flippy melon-colored dress, three different summer weddings
ATTN: HEART
Don’t shake
Don’t stir
Just, stop
The wedding DJ was repeating songs now. Back to Van Morrison. She could hear the bass, the occasional birdlike drunken whoop. She didn’t miss the courthouse girls. She and Jill weren’t that close. She hated weddings. Ceremonies, in general. And don’t get her started on funerals.
“I think I saw winged sumac back there where I went to pee,” Leigh said.
“Yep, there’s a bunch back there,” he said, nodding.
Nope. No, she didn’t come with a man. She wondered if he came with someone. She remembered seeing him with a woman, but maybe she was making that up. Everything before was on the other side of the champagne curtain. She brazenly lifted one of her arms to smell underneath. It still smelled like her flowery deodorant. Calendulas. Even in this humidity, even in this heat. Wolfgang was on this side of the curtain and he was looking at her, smiling. Surprisingly agog. He was delightfully half-annoying, half-cute. Thorny enough.
Outstanding—a boy called Wolfgang, a boy on a tennis court.
Irresistible—a boy smart enough to surprise her, a boy who knew the names of the bushes.
Tim Riggins Would’ve Smoked
If we were snowed in at an antlers-on-the-wall bar somewhere. If the colored lights were low, dancing and swooping at our feet. And something like “Mammas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys” was playing, the sound swimming around us like swirly cartoon smoke, would you stand up and sway with me? Tell me I’m the prettiest girl you’ve ever seen? Hold my hand real close, tucked in between us like a little animal we wanted to keep warm? I can get real quiet and hardly say anything, but when I got a little buzzed I’d talk to you about my shows. About my crush on Raylan Givens in that cowboy hat. And about how Tim Riggins would’ve smoked, damn straight. No way would he not smoke. He’d put that unlit cigarette between his teeth, his hair hanging down in his face; his plaid-flanneled arm would reach out for his brown bottle of Texas-brewed beer and he’d talk about touching God. He’d light the cigarette, fire-orange-sparkle-crackle and hush. You know what I’m talking about. How I can’t stand lies. How if something is even the tiniest bit wrong, I feel like it’s my job to do all I can to fix it. Make it right.
Your mama let you grow up to be a cowboy, I’d tell you, keeping true.
If the rest of the world disappeared in some melty, apocalyptic flash. If we had to live in that bar with those taxidermic timber wolves and red foxes watching us drink and move through candlelight. And after making hot ham and cheese sandwiches over fire in the kitchen and me, standing on the table singing Patsy Cline, would you call me woman and promise not to leave? Tell me you’re not like other men? Hold my chin, kiss my honey mouth, lay me down on the pool table? I can get c
hatty and anxious after cold coffee, and I’d ask you where you thought everyone else went. Heaven? Hell? No way would they all make it into heaven. No way would they all burn in hell.
What a relief to not be scared to death of you, here alone, I’d tell you. That’s why the only men I give my heart to live in my TV.
Woman, I’d never hurt you. I’d die first, you’d say.
And if we were the last two people on Earth, I’d go cold knowing you were a liar, but I would have to love you anyway. Like all the women who came before me—back to Eve caught in the cool copse. It’s sick, I promise.
Surreptitious, Canary, Chamomile
We’d moved to Arizona because of my allergies. It wasn’t working so far, but I lied to Luke when he asked. And I lied to myself when I turned the air filter knob from three to one.
Luke’s morning breath smelled like rust. I didn’t mind it in my face.
“You should start to feel better. It’s drier here,” he said from his side of the bed, as if he were discovering gold—holding out a crinkled, thin pan of nubby nuggets. “It’s the desert air.”
I didn’t have any friends yet. I got so bored while he was at work painting houses, while the twins were at school—before the three of them came home in the afternoons smelling like their days.
So We Can Glow Page 3