The Goddesses

by Swan Huntley

  I needed more information. “Whose house would you want to send it to?”

  “You know who I keep thinking about?”

  “Who?”

  “That guy who beats his horse.”

  “Peter,” I said. I remembered him exactly. His scrawny arms hanging out the sides of the flannel shirt with the arms scissored off, his jittery leg. How he’d left before Ana could tell him his future was so, so bright.

  “Peter,” Ana said. “Peter deserves justice for sure.” She puckered her lips, thinking. “But I don’t have his address.” She tapped her chin. “I’m sure I can get it though.”

  “How?”

  But Ana had already moved on. “Ooh, I know who we’re sending this soil to. My old boss Stan. He was the worst. He offered to let me live in his garage, and when I said I wanted to, he said, ‘You are a grifter and an opportunist!’ ” Ana sliced her finger back and forth in the air, making a face like a snarling dog. “Waving his finger at me just like that.”

  “No!”

  “Yes!”

  I was already looking up the number for Lowe’s. And then I was calling. And then the phone was ringing and then I was placed on hold with music that reminded me of music the water polo moms would listen to—soft old hits—and I thought—why?—of my mother walking in on me and a friend making prank calls when I was fourteen and her saying, “You’re not fooling anyone, Nancy.”

  When the Lowe’s person said, “Lowe’s,” I snapped back into the plan, which was somehow now removed from what we were actually doing. All I could concentrate on was my beating heart and the need to be totally believable.

  “Heya there, sir,” I said. “I’d like to order some soil.” I was first impressed by how quickly I had gotten good at this, and then I was a little scared by how quickly I’d gotten good at this. The man said the minimum for soil delivery was thirty-five pounds, and I heard myself say, “Exactly what I’m lookin’ for.” My ears burned hot, and when he told me the total was three hundred something dollars, they burned hotter and went numb. A voice inside me said, Say never mind, that’s too much money, but then there was Ana’s expectant face and my heart pounding for a decision and you only live once but people only tell themselves that when they want to be reckless but it’s still true that you only live once, and fuck you, Mom, and fuck you, Chuck, and fuck it all, and then I heard myself say, “Perfecto!”

  When I hung up, I noticed my trembling hands weren’t actually trembling at all.

  “Wow,” Ana said, rolling around on the afghan like a happy puppy, “Nan, that was so good. You’re good at being bad.” She was belly laughing. She couldn’t catch her breath. Waves crashed. And then she said, “How do you feel right now?”

  My heart still pounding. I was wide awake. I felt good and I felt bad and I felt caught between the mother at the water polo game and this woman lying on the ground ordering soil to a stranger’s house because he deserved it. And then there was also the woman who was just trying to eat a little better and get her shoulders more defined. Nance and Nan and I was obviously Nancy and I was all these people and none of them, and I didn’t know anything except for exactly what I said, which was “I feel powerful.”

  •

  We dragged the couch outside and watched the sun lower in the sky. My head on Ana’s shoulder and Ana playing with my hair because she still missed hers so much. “I wish I were going to die with hair,” she said. We watched a mother whale teach her baby to breach in near silence.

  “Do you think those are Sylvia’s whales?” I asked her.

  Ana chuckled. “All the whales on this island are Sylvia’s.”

  It made me sad to think that Chuck didn’t know who Sylvia was. It made me sad to think he was at the bar right now, making things worse. His confusion was exhausting. As was his jealousy. In a stripped and grainy voice, I told her, “My husband is jealous of you.”

  “Me? Li’l old me?” she asked in my Southern accent.

  “He can’t stand not being the center of my world.”

  Ana’s hand paused in my hair. “The way the Beloved can fit in my heart, two thousand lives could fit in this body of mine. One kernel could contain a thousand bushels, and a hundred worlds pass through the eye of the needle.” She began stroking my hair again. “That’s Rumi,” she said.

  I repeated the only part I’d really heard. “Two thousand lives could fit in this body of mine.” That made complete sense to me right now. Well, or it didn’t. Okay, it either made complete sense or it didn’t make sense at all.

  “Who’s at the center of your world, Nan?”

  Again, only a question Ana would ask. And it was the question lurking in my head. How had she heard it before I had?

  “Who’s at the center of my world?” I repeated, buying myself time. The obvious answer was the boys.

  “I’ll tell you the answer,” Ana said. “Who’s at the center of your world is you. You are the center of your world.”

  “But isn’t that kind of self-centered?”

  Ana shook her head. “No, my darling, that is reality.”

  I watched the swelling waves without really watching them. They rose and fell and rose and fell. The ocean looked like it was breathing. And then there were our small chests expanding with air and emptying out. When I sighed, I wondered if a wave could sigh. Like that one. The way it flopped too early. The way it didn’t fully crest.

  •

  We ate peanut butter sandwiches as the sun got bigger and more orange in the sky, and Ana said, “Will you stay here tonight?”

  I didn’t even think about it. “Of course.”

  As the horizon line swallowed the last piece of orange, I held my eyes open for the green flash. “Did you see it?” I asked her.

  “What?”

  “The green flash.”

  “Oh,” she said, “I don’t believe in the green flash. I think somebody just made that up and everyone else believed them.”

  •

  She gave me her red silk pajamas to wear and we got in bed early. She said, “Normally, this is when I would thank Celia for her guidance today.”

  I took her toothbrush out of my mouth and through the foam, I asked, “What do you see when you look at the sky now?”

  “A void.”

  I was glad my mouth was full of toothpaste because I didn’t know what to say to that. I went into the bathroom to spit.

  Then my phone rang.

  I wiped my mouth and walked into the living room, hurrying but not hurrying toward the phone, and then there was Portico on the ground, and I howled like a maniac—“Aaah!”—as I watched my foot step just barely past her slithering body.

  “I almost killed Portico!” My heart was beating in my temples.

  Ana chuckled. “You can’t kill her. She’s too smart.”

  I grabbed my phone off the couch. I’d missed the call. Cam. Why would he be calling? But it was probably nothing. I walked back over Portico and into the bedroom, where Ana was lying halfway off the bed with her head touching the floor.

  “Why isn’t Portico in her cage?” I asked, still flustered.

  “I want to see what she does with freedom,” Ana said. “Who called?”

  “Cam.”

  “Are you going to call him back?” Something was happening to Ana’s windpipe in that position. She sounded like a robot. She laughed, but only a little. It was too much strain to really laugh with her windpipe like that. She was in her funny, giddy mood and I loved her like this. But then—it happened so fast—her hand on her stomach and her face cringed in pain and she rolled over.

  I rushed to her, put my hand on her back. “Are you okay?”

  She made a little squeaking sound.

  “Are you sure I shouldn’t call a doctor?”

  She shook her head just barely. And then like the other times, the pain seemed to pass but maybe only sort of, and she curled her legs into her body and asked me softly, “Can you make me peppermint tea, please?”

 
; “Of course,” I said, and kissed her bald head, which surprised me. I knew I wouldn’t have done that if she weren’t dying. I did it because after she died, I would think back to this moment and wish I had kissed her bald head. But the reality of it was nothing like the misty picture I’d imagined. My lips touching her scalp—we were just fumbling body parts colliding in space and it was awkward. Both the intimacy of it—I had kissed the side, not the top of her head—and the position of my body, pretzeled between the bed and the floor with my foot strangled beneath me.

  I went to the kitchen. Peppermint, peppermint. I couldn’t find it anywhere. I went back to the bedroom. She was still curled in a ball. “You don’t have peppermint tea. Do you want something else?”

  “No,” she groaned. “It has to be peppermint.”

  “I’ll run to the store then,” I decided. “I’ll be right back, okay?”

  •

  I drove fast. I was still wearing the red silk pajamas. Before I got out of the car, I threw Chuck’s sweatshirt on. He’d left it in the backseat. LIFE IS GOOD, it said. I remembered the day he’d bought it. It was right after Shelly. When he came home wearing it, I had rolled my eyes at how delusional he was and walked out of the room.

  When I turned into the tea aisle, who was there? Mana. Mana who spent his days at the bus stop never taking the bus. Mana who had made up the name Sandwich Sistahs. I was so happy to see him. “Hey!” I said. He was holding a box of Smooth Move. He looked at me like he didn’t know me. Because he didn’t, not really. He only knew me in the context of being one half of the Sandwich Sistahs. I wasn’t recognizable without Ana. Still, he was very polite. He had understood that my effusive “Hey!” meant that he should know me, and he said, “Nice to see you again, ma fren.” And then he read Chuck’s sweatshirt. “Life is good, yeah? Yeah, life is good.” He smiled. He had maybe four teeth. “Well,” he patted my arm, “see ya, sistah,” he said, and walked toward the registers. I stood there thinking, Wait. Does Mana call everyone sistah? That makes it less special.

  I grabbed three kinds of peppermint tea and paid. In the car on the way back, Cam called again. “Honey?” I answered.

  “Mom! Where are you?”

  I’m in the red silk pajamas of a woman you haven’t met. She’s like a sister to me and she’s dying. “With a friend. What’s wrong?”

  “Dad is being insane. He made us work on the shed for five hours. And it got dark so he parked his car in front for lights. He just sat in there and blasted Journey and got wasted.”

  To a stranger, this would have sounded like borderline child abuse, but I knew the boys were being dramatic. They were teenagers who didn’t want to build a shed. Or I was raised on dysfunction and had no conception of “normal.” But in this moment, I needed to believe it was no big deal.

  “Did you guys sing together?” I asked. I was trying to look for evidence that it had been fun in some way.

  “At first, but then Dad got wasted.” Cam sighed. “I hate this.”

  “Is that Mom?” Jed said in the background.

  One second passed and then Jed was on the phone, saying, “Dad’s passed out in the car and all the doors are locked. Are you coming home?”

  “No,” I said sternly, in a voice that reminded me of my mother’s. “Your father has done this many times before. Just leave him there and go to bed. In the morning you will go to school.”

  “Seriously?” Jed said. “Where are you?”

  I’m almost back to Ana’s, and when I get there I will rip off this stupid sweatshirt and I will make us tea and I will try to forget that you called me, and aren’t you almost eighteen years old? You’re not a baby anymore and you can deal with this, and your childhood has been so much easier than mine. Maybe it’s been too easy. This is not a big deal. Compared to my life at your age, it’s nothing. Compared to cancer, it’s nothing. It’s an eye drop in the ocean.

  After I get back to Ana’s, I will make the tea. I will tell Ana everything is okay even though it’s not. And when she falls asleep, I will wonder what I’ll be doing after she’s gone. I will still be trying to forget this phone call. I will still be trying to forget you and your brother and your father and that house and the way I feel when I walk inside it.

  When Ana falls asleep, I will look at her face and tell myself to remember it well. Since we look the same, this won’t be hard. In the bathroom mirror, I will see the necklace first. It will glint in the low light. I will dab coconut oil on my wrists. I will look at my reflection in the mirror and then there will be a flash, and in this flash it won’t be my face. It will be Ana’s face, and I will try not to blink.

  23

  But at 7:00 a.m. I felt guilty, and by 7:30, when the block of morning sun had crept to the edge of the floor, I was silently folding the red silk pajamas and fixing my eyes on the rise and fall of sheets to make sure again that yes, she was breathing. And then I was in the car on the way to Denny’s, where I would buy to-go breakfasts for Jed and Cam and not Chuck.

  School started at 8:15. The boys usually left at 8:00, which really meant 8:05. I put on Chuck’s stupid sweatshirt again while I waited for the food. I was cold. It was the only thing I had.

  By 7:55 I was speeding up the mountain, imagining that I would just catch them on their way out. I would hand them this food and they would happily eat in the car on the way to school, and with every bite of French toast, they would forgive me a little bit more.

  But the blue Honda wasn’t in the driveway. They had left already. Only Chuck’s car was there, parked at the end of the drive in front of what would be the shed. So far it was exactly half a shed—two walls waiting for two more. The boys had done a lot of work.

  I grabbed the Denny’s bag, walked to Chuck’s car. The driver’s seat was reclined and empty. Sometimes on his car nights, he liked to spread out in the backseat, but he wasn’t there.

  I found him in the kitchen popping Advil in his mouth—probably four pills; he always took too many—and swallowing them with coffee. How many times had I told him you weren’t supposed to do that?

  I knew that he’d heard me come in, but he took the time to wash his cup in the sink (which he normally didn’t do—he was proving something by doing that) before he spoke.

  “You’re back,” he said, and turned toward me. His bloodshot eyes fell on the Denny’s bag. “Is that for me?”

  “Sure,” I said, and set the bag on the counter. “Take it.”

  “Thank you,” Chuck said. “I’ll take it to work.”

  I sighed as loudly as possible. “What happened last night?”

  “If you were here, you would know.” He looked straight at me, his bright blue eyes and all the red veins around them.

  I tried and failed to say it nicely. “Do you remember that you passed out in your car?”

  The look on his face: he did not remember. He scratched his neck just for something to do. He looked below me, at my chest. I saw him reading the words. Life is good. “Is that my sweatshirt?”

  I didn’t answer his question. “You’re ruining everything, Chuck.”

  “No,” he said. “We’re both ruining everything.” He took the Denny’s bag, and I listened to his familiar footsteps walk away. The car door slammed, the engine turned on, and after Chuck drove away, all the birds were quiet except for the laughing bird, and it was laughing hard.

  •

  I opened the fridge. We needed eggs. I didn’t feel like getting eggs. I didn’t feel like cleaning the pizza debris from the living room. Greasy plates on the arms of the couch and the box on the table, and when I opened it, there were still three slices inside that no one had bothered to refrigerate.

  I told myself to relax as I yanked my spandex up my legs. I would do some stretching and feel better. I laid out my purple mat. I inhaled the foggy morning air. And then I just stood there like a stranger, looking at this life. Through the windows of the ohana I could see piles of Chuck’s clothes. And a lamp—he’d put a lamp in there. Where had
he gotten a lamp?

  There was my car, my I-am-not-having-a-midlife-crisis white convertible car, parked askew in the wet dirt. There was the half-built shed, badly placed between the house and the ohana on what I could see now was uneven ground. It seemed to be leaning. There was the lush jungle that surrounded the property and the green grass rolling softly up the hill, and there in the grass was my garden where nothing grew.

  I made myself stretch anyway. Because this was who I was now. I was a woman who did yoga in the morning on her porch in Hawaii, and I was a woman who cooked oatmeal the old-fashioned way in a pot on the stove and who ate it while really savoring the taste, or really trying to. I was a woman who owned her solitude in this empty house that smelled like pizza while googling inspirational quotes as though frantically searching for something she had lost.

  When the bird started laughing again, I went outside and picked up a rock. But no, Nancy, Nan, whatever your name is, you are not a woman who hurls rocks at living things.

  So I got into the car and drove instead. Down the mountain, out of the fog. To the ocean where life was clear and sunny and at least I had a purpose.

  •

  I didn’t knock. I just opened the door. “Ana?” I said quietly, in case she was still sleeping.

  “Nan.” She was standing in the kitchen squashing a ripe banana in her fist. The peel broke and the yellow meat spurted out, and then she threw it in the sink behind her. “Guess what?” she asked, picking up a new banana.

  “What?” I said, walking closer.

  The pocket of her black kimono was moving, and then Portico’s head slithered out. Ana pushed Portico back inside her pocket without looking. She squeezed the banana. More yellow meat spurting out. It looked like baby food all over her hands. “Guess who called me?”

  Gregory telling you you owe him around two hundred dollars for all that Italian food?

  “Who?”

  She threw the banana into the sink, picked up another. She was almost out of bananas, but the rest of the fruit from the fruit stand was still on the counter. I wondered if she planned to squeeze the mangoes next.