The Goddesses

by Swan Huntley

  •

  While I cleaned the cake dish and then the other dishes piled in the sink and then the rest of the kitchen, Ana sat back down on the couch with a yellow legal pad. She seemed peppier now, humming as she wrote. She’d even lit a stick of incense. Smoke rose in one thin, unperturbed line. When the ashes crumbled onto the Buddha’s head, I usefully went to wipe him down.

  “You don’t have to do that.”

  “But you like things tidy,” I said, sponging the rest.

  “I don’t care anymore.”

  “Well, I care for you.” One more wipe of the sponge and I looked at her. She was back in the black kimono, writing with a huge pencil, the kind children buy at Disneyland that’s almost too fat for them to grip. It said I HAWAII in the pattern of a circular staircase.

  “What are you writing?”

  “My bucket list.”

  “Oh, Ana, that’s wonderful,” I said, picking one of her afghans up off the floor. “I’m happy to go with you wherever you want to go. Maybe not skydiving, but I’ll do anything else.”

  “Good,” she said, “because I might need you when I get weaker.”

  “Good,” I said, “because I’m good at being needed.”

  And then the overwhelming feeling of wanting to be near her. Near her now, just in case, and I went and put my arms around her. “No peeking,” she said, and covered the legal pad with her hand. But I had already seen a little. BUCKET at the top, and #1: Gregory.

  I didn’t want to invade her privacy but I also did so badly. “Who’s Gregory?”

  “Peeker!” Ana hit my hand with her pencil.

  “Sorry.”

  “Gregory’s an old lover.”

  “You want to see him before you die?”

  “Yes,” she said, writing something else.

  “You’re not going to do anything bad to him, are you?”

  “Nothing he doesn’t deserve.”

  This was not what I wanted to hear. “Ana.”

  “Nan,” she said, “I already explained this to you. It’s for the greater good. If you’re going to judge me, I will go on without you.”

  The thought of her going on without me was unbearable. “I’m trying not to judge you, Ana. I’m just—this is very hard for me to understand.”

  Ana sighed. She was annoyed with me. “Nothing has changed, Nan. This is like the sandwiches. And the tarot stand. And the ‘You are loved.’ It’s good. It’s all good. It’s all part of the same Karma Factory, don’t you see?”

  I added the afghan to the ordered stack I was now making, and asked the question I really didn’t want to know the answer to. “What are you planning to do to Gregory?”

  Ana groaned. “Nan, what you should be asking is what Gregory did to me.”

  “What did he do to you?”

  “He cheated on me.”

  “Ugh,” I said, thinking of Chuck. Chuck at Costco right now in his polyester work slacks. I wondered if he was back to drinking at lunch already.

  And then it hit me. How had it taken this long?

  “What?” Ana asked, sensing I had had an important thought.

  “If Chuck is drinking again, he’s going to cheat on me again. It’s inevitable.” I must have looked horrified, because that’s how I felt.

  “Totally inevitable.” Ana yawned. “It’s a trip when you can see the future, isn’t it?”

  Did Chuck work with any blondes at this new Costco? How did I not know the answer to that? I was so naïve.

  “Men are disappointing,” I said.

  “All people, sooner or later, will disappoint you,” Ana said, looking at the space above my head.

  I hoped Ana didn’t think I was one of those people. For good measure, I reassured her. “I won’t disappoint you, Ana.”

  Her sly smile, her black eyes on me, and then the slow knowing blink that marked her understanding. Every time it felt like being laid bare.

  “Who else has disappointed you, Nan? And what would you do to them if you had the balls to do it?”

  I forced a laugh. “Everyone’s disappointing me lately. Chuck, the boys. The boys,” I rolled my eyes, “lit a shed on fire.” It was a relief to tell her this, and it was even more of a relief when she said, “Oh, Nan, you’ve been experiencing pain.”

  “Yes,” I said, as though just realizing it myself, “I have been in pain.”

  Ana put her legal pad facedown on the table and nestled her head in my lap and petted my knee, and I put my hand on her shoulder because touching her head felt too intrusive and it also scared me a little. “I’ve been in pain, too,” she whispered. And then, “Do you think it’s fair?”

  Right as I said, “Life isn’t fair,” I realized this was something my mother used to tell me all the time.

  “Exactly.” Ana sighed. Her breath hot on my knee. “And why should we accept that? Doesn’t it seem kind of passive and wrong?”

  Did it seem passive and wrong? “Maybe.”

  She turned her head so she was looking up at me. She touched my necklace with one hand and her necklace with the other hand, and I felt so close to her and it was closer than I felt to my family or any friend I’d ever had, and when she said, “I need you,” my first thought was, I need you more. Slowly I placed my hand on Ana’s scary bald head. And when I did that, it wasn’t scary anymore. It was warm.

  “We have to make things right,” Ana whispered. “We are the Karma Factory.”

  Flashback to us making sandwiches. “The factory of two.”

  “Goddesses.” She smiled. Her inviting eyes. “We are goddesses.”

  I’m not sure why, but it felt necessary to repeat her. “We are goddesses.”

  21

  I woke up in a perfect nest of white sheets. Rays of yellow sun spilled through Ana’s window. The smell of the ocean came before the sound. The waves were big today. They crashed and crashed against the rock wall, crashing sometimes with a slap, and they were so close that it could have been frightening, but it wasn’t. The waves would not rise over the wall. The birds would never stop singing. The peace in this nest of sheets was real. We were safe and we were calm.

  •

  We ate mangoes for breakfast and got in the car. The sun, the sky, the ocean. Snow-capped Mauna Kea and tourists spelling out their names with white coral in the lava. I looked for our MURPHY, but it was gone. Our letters had been taken by new families to make new letters. The wind was loud and rushing. We sipped our Vitamin Waters and didn’t listen to music.

  Gregory lived in Hawi. Yes, he was the guy Ana had lived with for two years. The two longest years of her life, she said, and they’d even adopted a Siamese fighting fish together and named it Paco. “Because he said if we were going to adopt a real kid, we should prepare with a pet.”

  “You wanted children?” I asked. “I didn’t know that.”

  And she said, “Oh yeah, of course I did,” as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

  Like all men, Gregory was great until he wasn’t. He owned an Italian restaurant, which was fun in the beginning—free wine, really good pesto—but then he started to work more, and more and more and more and then he was at this restaurant twenty hours a day. He was neurotic and very type A, which was what had attracted Ana to him at first—she thought he had his shit together. So she assumed he was at the restaurant obsessing over details, like the size of the ramekins and the little tear in one of the chair cushions and the salmon—should it come out with two almond slivers or three almond slivers? Those were the types of things that Gregory cared about. Their home together was spotless. Anyway, fast-forward, it turned out his real obsession was with the anorexic chef. Whom he impregnated. And during the breakup, when Ana had called the chef anorexic, Gregory had called Ana “fatty.”

  “If yoga hadn’t reformed me,” she said, “I would have chopped his balls off right there.”

  Ana was wearing the black wig with the pink streak that framed her face. “This is my least conspicuous one,” she’d
said when she put it on that morning, “even though it’s still pretty conspicuous.”

  I felt bad for thinking I preferred her in a wig. Seeing her bald was uncomfortable. It made her look so weak.

  I checked my phone again. The night before, I’d called Chuck to let him know I wasn’t coming home. He hadn’t responded. This was unlike him. It meant things were bad in a new way now, worse than they’d been before. The boys were fine. I’d texted each of them to explain. Not coming home tonight. My friend needs me. Cam had responded with emojis I’d never seen before, and Jed had responded, Whatever.

  •

  The restaurant was called, simply, Pasta, and the letters on the sign were written in a loopy font that looked like linguine. “I don’t see his car,” Ana said, pulling into a spot behind the bank like she had done this many times before. She turned the engine off. The prickling sensation in my armpits told me I was nervous.

  “Has the plan come to you yet?”

  “No,” she said, not worried. She tugged at her bangs, puckered her lips in the rearview mirror. “Ugh, these lips are like flat tires,” she said. “I want to look hot in case he’s in there.” She pushed her breasts closer together for more cleavage. “Isn’t that sad?”

  “You look great,” I assured her.

  “Thanks, Nan. You’re the most supportive person I know. You are my cement-poured foundation.”

  Before I could tell Ana that she was my attic, or my chimney, or my roof deck (I was still working it out), she set her hand on mine. “Let’s take pause, okay?”

  We sat there for two minutes. Or five minutes; it was hard to tell. The sound of cars. Of footsteps walking up the stairs to the bank, of the ATM beeping, of footsteps going back down the stairs. There was the constant chirping of birds, birds, birds, and Hawaii really was the most magical place on earth, and I should be grateful, grateful, grateful but Chuck was such an asshole and I was angry, angry, angry and I would focus my angry energy on Gregory now, who was the same type of asshole, or worse.

  Ana marked the end of our pause with an om and I joined her. Then she said, “Okay, let’s go. I still don’t have a solid plan. We’ll eat lunch at the restaurant and figure it out from there.”

  It was three in the afternoon and the restaurant was nearly empty. Only two tables were occupied. A pretty waitress with unfortunate cystic acne on her neck scurried past us in a frenzied state, and then a hostess popped up from behind her podium to say, “Ciao.”

  Ana elbowed me. “G makes them say that,” she whispered.

  Okay, so we were calling him G now.

  “Two?” The hostess took two menus off the stand.

  “Yes,” we said at the same time.

  “Follow me.”

  Everything was spotless, but it wasn’t the sleek, modern look I had expected. It was a lot tackier than that. On the walls was a random mix of pasta art. A highly detailed pencil drawing of a single piece of penne (some cursive words underneath—maybe its Latin name?) hung next to an almost indistinguishable face made from actual pieces of dry penne. The furniture looked old and it didn’t match. Even two chairs at the same table weren’t the same chairs. But it was set up in an orderly way, with the silverware very straight on each napkin and a vase of flowers perfectly centered on each table.

  The hostess was taking us to the window when Ana gasped. “No,” she said, her hand going to her throat. Her eyes were on the fish tank, where a red fish with fins like tattered rags was completely still in the water. “We want to sit there.” Ana pointed to the table under the tank.

  “No problem,” said the hostess, who tilted herself comically in the new direction like she was steering an imaginary car.

  Ana chose the chair that looked like a throne, which left me with the little wicker chair.

  “Your waitress will be right with you,” the hostess said.

  “Is Gregory here?” Ana asked.

  “No.” The hostess seemed relieved. “It’s his son’s birthday today.”

  Ana’s face darkened. Before she could say anything she might regret, I said, “Thank you!” and the hostess walked away.

  Then Ana held her chin up with one pointer finger and looked around the room. She shook her head. “I can’t believe he had a son.”

  I scrunched my face for her. “I’m sorry, Ana.”

  “And Paco’s basically dead. Look at him.”

  I looked at Paco. He did look basically dead.

  “And this table.” She ran her hand over the wood. “I remember when he bought this. Three hundred bucks. I told him, ‘It looks like it costs five bucks!’ All these tables are antiques.” When she looked at me then, I knew before she spoke that the plan had come to her. “Stay here. I’m going across the street.” She draped her napkin on the back of her throne. “And G is comping us lunch. So order tons of food while I’m gone. Seriously, order everything, okay?”

  “Oh—”

  And then she was gone.

  By the time Ana reappeared with two small paper bags, I had ordered two appetizers and two entrees. “I didn’t know if you wanted pasta or fish, so I—”

  “I’m not hungry. I don’t care what you got,” she said, dropping one of the paper bags into my lap and then sitting back down. “But we should order more than that.”

  I opened the bag. Gorilla Glue. Ana unscrewed the cap on hers. She took the salt off our table, squirted a dollop of glue on the bottom, and then returned the salt back to its spot. Then she did the same to the salt on the table beside us. She sensed the waitress approaching before I did and returned the glue to her lap. I was amazed by her swift movements and her still hands. She was crafty, intuitive. How she’d harnessed that intuition for good rather than evil—besides this silly prank of gluing salt and pepper shakers to the tables at her ex’s restaurant, which was too silly to qualify as evil—was inspiring, and something to be proud of. Because in this moment, I could see what Ana had meant when she’d told me that she was a natural-born hustler.

  “Beets and minestrone,” the waitress said, placing the dishes in front of us.

  “We’d also like the lamb and the scampi and the penne with pesto, please,” Ana said.

  The waitress blinked twice before taking her pen and paper out of her apron to write it down. “Your friend already ordered the scampi. Do you want another one?”

  Ana flashed a smile. “We’re very hungry.”

  It was obvious the waitress hated her job. She sounded like she’d just been run over when she said, “Another scampi, coming up.”

  The second she turned her back, Ana got up to do two salts on nearby tables. When the woman sitting by the window looked over, Ana calmly returned to her throne.

  “Nan, are you going to glue any?”

  “Yes,” I said, but I didn’t move. The minestrone smelled good, and even though I was too anxious to be hungry, I was thinking about the other type of lunch this could be: the one where we just sat and ate the food we had ordered.

  Ana chuckled. “Don’t do it if it makes you uncomfortable.”

  And right when she said that I stood up and tiptoed to the table by the wall. My shaky hands fumbled inarticulately with the salt shaker and then I pressed too hard, releasing too much glue. One gooey dollop hit the floor. I returned the salt shaker to its place on the table. The yellow glue bubbled out around the bottom when I pressed it down. And then the waitress was coming! I tried to look innocent as I tiptoed back to my seat.

  Ana was laughing. “Oh, Nan,” she said. “You’re a wreck.”

  “I am not,” I said, which was what a child would say.

  “I’m going to have to do most of this,” she said. “You’re going to get us caught.”

  “No, I want to help.”

  Ana put her hands up as if to say: Fine, you win. “Okay, Nan, whatever you want.”

  I did four more tables and Ana did the rest. She became more daring along the way, and started gluing the flower vases, too. I moved the food around on each dish to make
it look like we had sort of eaten it, and the waitress kept bringing out more food. At one point, she said, “Is something wrong with your meal? Meals?”

  And Ana said, “Nope. And we’ll also take five slices of cheesecake, three raspberry tarts, and a crème brûlée.”

  When the desserts arrived, I moved them around on the plates while watching Ana move stealthily around the restaurant, becoming even more daring still when she glued two legs of a heavy chair to the floor. Watching her was exhilarating. My heart was beating out of my chest the whole time.

  When she returned again, she said, “This was the perfect time to come. No one’s here. Our waitress is outside smoking.”

  Before I could respond, our waitress was walking toward us. “How was everything, ladies?” she asked, massaging a mint in her mouth.

  Ana cocked her head. “It was divine.”

  “Good,” the waitress said, and began stacking the plates. “I’ll be back with the check.”

  “Don’t bother,” Ana said, and stood up. “Gregory is comping this meal. You can tell him Ana says hi.”

  “Okay,” the waitress said, her arms full of plates. She didn’t seem to care that much about who was paying for the meal.

  And then in slow motion a plate with a piece of mashed-up cheesecake on it fell to the floor and crashed in a sticky mess of mosaic pieces.

  Instinctively, I bent to clean it up.

  Ana said, “Let’s go. Nan, don’t do that,” and I put the single piece of broken plate I had salvaged on the table.

  Ana took my hand and led me out of the restaurant, swinging our one locked hand back and forth like we were small children in a field in a movie. On the way out, she said, “Gregory is an asshole!” but the way it happened—with the first part of the sentence in a lower voice and the “asshole” much louder—the hostess thought she’d been called an asshole, and promptly yelled “Fuck you!”

  I turned back with an apologetic look on my face and said, “No, no,” but before I could explain further, the hostess was flicking me off, and then I, somehow, was flicking her off right back.