The Goddesses

by Swan Huntley

  I put the pot down. Because the pot was dry. It didn’t need me to keep drying it. “They’re on the key rack by the door.”

  “A key rack. You would have a key rack, Nan.” She went over and took them off what I had mentally designated as her hook. “Okay, I’ll be back later. Don’t get too lonely without me.” She blew me a kiss and then she was gone.

  •

  I spent the day waiting for her to come back. Hours passed. Should I be worried? But no, Ana was an adult and Ana could take care of herself, and I would not be worried and I would not call her and I would stop checking my phone to see if she had called me. She would come back. She would have to. She lived here now.

  I googled “pancreatic cancer symptoms” and they were brutal, and I felt helpless. Suddenly cleaning the house seemed very urgent. I put on the same jazz music we had listened to at dinner, and swept and scrubbed and it felt good. Her words echoed in my head: “Neat people fear death more than messy people. It’s about control.” And when I had dropped the gecko tail: “You’re scared of death, man!” I knew she had meant to say Nan.

  I organized the bedroom for a person who would be convalescing here. Or I tried. I stood at the end of the bed and imagined her dying in it. I imagined her withered to skin and bone by anorexia-cachexia, which affected 80 percent of PC victims. She would probably want to sleep most of the time. So I fluffed the pillows. I put a box of tissues on the nightstand. I sprayed some Febreze. And then I ran off to mop the floors before the feeling of helplessness immobilized me.

  At 3:32 she called. I picked up on the first ring. “OhmyGod I’vebeensoworried. Are you okay?”

  “Nan.” The way she said my name told me this was serious.

  “What?” Was she in the hospital? Could I hear the drip of her IV in the background? But no, a car honked in the background.

  “You need to come down here right now. Patricio’s. I’m parked in front. Do not go inside. Meet me at the car.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “You’re going to want to see for yourself. Trust me. And hurry. Seriously. Chop chop!”

  •

  The sight of the purple Jeep in a parking lot made me sad for the old days. I pulled in next to her and got out of my car and into hers quickly because whatever we were doing had a time limit.

  “Ana, what is going oooooh—”

  What was wrong with Ana’s lips? She’d either gotten them stuck in a pool drain or she’d been stung by eight hundred bees. They were puffy and white-pink and filmed in a shiny layer of Vaseline.

  She pressed her buggy sunglasses up her nose. When she spoke, her voice was there, but her lips didn’t move. “I know,” her voice said, “I got my lips done. They look bad today, but tomorrow they’ll look fabulous.”

  “So that was your doctor’s appointment today,” I said slowly, figuring it out on the way.

  “Nan, whatever makes me happy right now is a good thing, right? Restylane makes me happy right now. Don’t judge.” Some words were obviously harder for her to pronounce. Like “Restylane.” She grabbed my wrist. “But that’s not why we’re here. Look inside Patricio’s.”

  I squinted. We were pretty far away. All I could see was the Patricio’s decal, and behind that the shadowy shapes of tables and bodies.

  “Here,” she said, handing me a pair of binoculars from her lap. I hadn’t noticed them there because I hadn’t noticed anything after her lips. Since when did Ana keep binoculars in her car?

  I laughed, taking them. “Why do you have these?”

  “Bird-watching. Whatever. Will you look inside freaking Patricio’s please?”

  I pressed the binoculars to my eyes. It was hard to hold them steady. There were people’s feet, and people eating, and a salsa bar with lots of bins that looked empty except for the orange one piled high with pickled carrots because those were gross and no one liked them.

  “What am I looking for?”

  “To the left. Look to the left.”

  To the left, there was a family and a policeman and someone I recognized from somewhere, but I couldn’t place it right now, and there was a blond woman at a table sipping a fountain soda and—“No.”

  “You see him?”

  “This can’t be happening.”

  “It’s happening.”

  “No.”

  “Chuck,” Ana said, like his name was something dirty.

  I couldn’t believe it. Chuck with a woman, and of course she was a fucking blonde. Chuck at a bad Mexican restaurant with a fucking blond woman at 4:00 p.m.? I kept looking, trying to make it go away. But no, there he was. My Chuck, nodding along as the blond woman spoke. She was animated. She used her hands to accentuate her point. And Chuck was smiling that particular smile he used when he wanted to impress people, the one where he stuck his chin forward extra far. He was making that extra effort for her. And his body language, how attentive he was. His whole being was trying to impress her. And he was wearing his Hawaiian Walmart shirt, not his work shirt. Which meant that he had changed his clothes for this date. I felt dizzy and frozen and hot in the sun, and I wanted it to stop but I couldn’t look away. Things were bad between us, but now they were irreparably bad. Cheating on me again? This could not be repaired. This was the last straw, this was the avalanche, this was divorce court.

  The chips at the center of the table. Chuck and the blond woman reached for them at the same time. Did their hands touch? It was too fast to see. Chuck ate his chip with his mouth closed, which was so deferential. And then they were standing up and walking to the door. Chuck opened the door for her. How rarely he did that for me. Smiling as he held it open, gesturing for her to go. Smiling so incessantly that it must have been hurting his face. They emerged and took a few steps down the corridor of the strip mall and—no! They disappeared behind a big white van.

  “Fuck. I can’t see.”

  “Fuck that van,” Ana said.

  They were probably kissing good-bye behind that van. I had to go see for myself. I reached for the door handle.

  “Don’t do it, Nan,” Ana said. “Think about this.”

  “I’m going to fucking kill him.” I opened the door.

  “Nan, no.” Ana grabbed my wrist.

  I shook her off me. I was ready to break something.

  “Nan,” Ana said. “Screaming at Chuck in a parking lot isn’t going to accomplish anything.”

  My eyes were still fixed on the spot where they’d gone missing.

  “Don’t get out of this car, Nan. There is a better way to go here. Screaming in parking lots is not the Karma Factory way.” And then in a lower voice, she added, “We are women of grace and fucking dignity.”

  I thought I saw Chuck’s leg and flinched. “Oh!” And then yes, there he was, walking to his car, and that stupid grin was still on his face. I put the binoculars down and I could still see that grin. He opened the door and took a paranoid look around him. It was then that I decided to leave it up to the universe. If Chuck saw me, I would jump out of the car and run at him and throw these heavy binoculars at his head. If he didn’t see me, I would trust that Ana was right to wait and I would stay in the car. I had one foot in the car and one foot on the pavement. It was so ridiculous how I never knew what to do.

  Chuck set his keys on top of his car and then he stood there in the sun, unbuttoning the top two buttons of his shirt. He really needed to start working out. That paunch. And that skeezy car. And that ridiculous tropical shirt. He looked like a retired mobster who’d moved to Florida to avoid indictment.

  I waited for him to see me, or, if not me, then at least my conspicuous car, which would count too, or if not my conspicuous car then Ana’s even more conspicuous car. That would also count as his having seen me. But—what an idiot. He saw nothing. He was off in his dream world, dreaming about what the blond woman looked like naked. Fucking asshole. And then the blond woman was driving by, driving slower past him. A red Mazda. Shelly Two—I was already calling her that. Shelly Two waved an
d Chuck waved back. Then Chuck got into his decrepit car and drove away. Where, I didn’t know. Because I didn’t know what Chuck did anymore.

  “Nan honey, breathe,” Ana said.

  I tried to breathe. I closed my eyes so I wouldn’t have to look at her lips. It was too disturbing to see yet another person I loved looking like a stranger.

  I brought my foot back into the car.

  With Shelly, it had just been that one time, that one drunk night. “It’s like someone else did this, not me,” he’d said. I’d imagined a dark dark room and their drunk clashing bodies and it happening so fast that neither of them could really remember the details. But this. This was so much worse. It was daylight, it was conversations, it was fucking Mexican food. It was a real connection. And Shelly Two looked like a real person. Possibly with substance. She was clean. She wore stylish shorts. She had no humpback or the limp I’d been hoping to discover when they’d walked to the door together. Shelly Two had nothing I could easily make fun of. And her calves were more toned than mine. And she was blonder than me. Obviously, because I wasn’t blond at all. Shelly Two was really blond. Charlize Theron blond. Or blonder. And she had made him smile like that.

  “Nan?” Ana touched my shoulder. “Come here, my darling,” she said, and pressed my still-shocked body into hers. She smelled like me because she was wearing my dress. I was too shocked to cry. I felt the angry energy wearing off and I knew that when it did, I would be very tired.

  “I was just going into the coffee shop to get some iced tea,” Ana said, “and I looked in the window of Patricio’s and I was like: Is that Chuck? He didn’t see me, don’t worry.” She patted my back. “Kind of crazy, right? Since I only met Chuck last night. If this had happened yesterday, I wouldn’t have even known who he was.”

  I wasn’t really listening to her because a new daunting thought had taken over. “I’m getting a divorce,” I said. I didn’t say this angrily, but with the wonder of a person who has been walking on a road for a very long time and then suddenly the road ends. And the person says, Oh. Oh? Oh, the road has ended. So suddenly? There must have been a sign on this road. Or many signs. Didn’t you see them? Why didn’t you see them?

  “If it makes you feel any better,” Ana said, “my divorces have all been pretty positive experiences. It might not feel that way to you now, but you’ll get through it. The only way out is through, Nan. It just takes time.”

  Time. Over time, I would get used to the idea of a divorce.

  But what about the meantime? What about the rest of today? And tonight, at home? What would I say to him? Would he continue to live in the ohana until he found his own place? A divorce could drag on forever. What about right now?

  I said all of this to Ana. “I mean like tonight, what am I going to do?” Instinctively, I had looked at her, the person I was talking to. Those lips. I would have to get used to them. But for now, I looked away, looked back at the parking space where Chuck’s shit Honda had been and a new car was parked there already, a shockingly yellow car, and the world was moving on too fast without me.

  Ana reached behind my seat and pulled out the Costco tub of Red Vines. “You want one?”

  “No thanks.”

  She was inspecting the tub from the bottom now. “Good, because it looks like they melted.”

  “I’m melting.”

  “May I make a suggestion?”

  “Yes.” Again I accidentally looked at her and again, I looked away and again my eyes fell on the yellow car. Circles. I was spinning. I closed my eyes. That was the only thing to do. Go through your life blind, Nancy. Go through your life like a blind fool.

  “Okay, here’s what we’re going to do.”

  The we made me like this plan already.

  “We’re going to go home. You’re going to take a nice long bath. I brought some bath crystals you can use. They will invigorate you. I will make dinner for the boys. We will lock all the doors. I will explain to the boys what is going on.”

  “No,” I said, “We can’t tell them about this.”

  “Fine. I will tell the boys the PG version of what is going on. I’ll just say something happened and we have to lock Dad out tonight. Okay? This will give you time to think about what you want to do. You will go to bed early and you will sleep—I have some pills that will help you sleep—and you will feel better in the morning. And as far as karma, I think it’s clear that Chuck deserves some right now. Be-yond deserves. I don’t have a plan yet, but do I have your permission to carry out my plan when it comes to me?”

  This might have been a place to take pause, but I didn’t. Not a split second of dead air passed before I said, “Yes.”

  •

  LAVENDER DEAD SEA SALT, RELAXING THE WORLD ONE BATH AT A TIME. What a dumb slogan. But it did smell good. And I wanted to believe it was relaxing me.

  Ana had drawn my bath. She’d sat on the edge of the tub, feeling the water with one hand and her lips with the other—“I can’t stop touching them”—and then she’d lit candles and turned the lights off. I’d looked at the filled bathtub and said in a drained voice, “No one takes care of me but you.”

  “I’m here for you,” she’d said. She told me she loved me and that she would make pasta for dinner again and bring me some when it was ready. She’d also left me with an orange bottle of hydrocodone for the pain. “Take two. They’ll knock you into heaven.”

  I committed to stillness and tried to relax. It didn’t work. I tried to feel invigorated instead, which didn’t work either. This was too much to expect right now. I was in pain. Pain pain pain, and there were the orange pills on the sink that would make it go away.

  But, Nan, you will not take those. You will not take a medication that has not been prescribed for you. Because you are not your mother. You will go through the pain. The only way out is through.

  I heard the boys get home. The slamming of their car doors—one, two—and then their long-legged steps into the house and then Ana greeting them with energy, so much more energy than I had right now. I felt tired just listening to the ups and downs of her voice. I couldn’t hear the words, but I knew they were kind and loving and wise, and I knew the boys were hanging on to every one of them. How she was here tonight, filling in for me, picking up the pieces when I couldn’t, and especially now, now at a time when most people would have checked into a hospital and waited passively to die, Ana was here, being the most selfless woman I had ever met.

  When the water had gone tepid, she cracked the door open and whispered, “I brought you pasta. Can I come in?”

  She would see me naked but who cared right now. “Sure,” I said. My voice sounded weird to me.

  The first thing she did was look at my body. “You have a great bod, Nan. You should really own it more.”

  I imagined covering myself with my hands, but I didn’t move. It felt good not to care about her seeing me naked. When disaster hit, you stopped caring about everything that didn’t matter. It pared you down. Clarity. This must have been how Ana felt all the time.

  “I put the pasta by the bed, okay?” Her puffy lips seemed to be moving more now when she talked. She was wearing one of my tank tops and sweatpants that might have been Chuck’s, and good for her for making herself comfortable.

  She held up my phone. “Chuck called. He left a message. Do you want to listen to it together?”

  I gave her a look that meant yes. She pressed the button.

  “Hello, Nancy, I’m just calling to let you know I have a work event tonight, so I won’t be home until late. Don’t wait up. Okay, thanks, bye.”

  “Sounds like a business call,” Ana said, touching her lips again. “But right in this moment, you are okay. When you get out of this bath, you’re going to have some dinner if you want it and then you’re going to take some pills and say good-bye to this day, okay?”

  I loved her for telling me what to do. “Okay.”

  “I love you, good night.”

  “I love you, good night.
”

  “I love you, good night,” she said last, and closed the door.

  •

  In bed, I twirled the pasta and listened to the muffled sound of things exploding on the TV and thought about how Chuck had always been such a Chuck and never a Charles. I couldn’t believe I’d ever dyed my hair blonder for him. I’d done that after Shelly, and then dyed it back. I couldn’t believe I had believed he would never cheat on me again. It was so infuriatingly textbook.

  The pasta smelled good, but when I took a bite it wasn’t. Very undercooked. Which made sense. Ana hated cooking. I spat it into a Kleenex and turned off the lights and went to sleep.

  But twenty minutes later I was still going to sleep and I hadn’t gotten there yet. I had too many thoughts in my head. An event, he had said. What event? With whom?

  I rolled into a new position. Again. And again.

  I counted sheep up to three.

  One: Why?

  Two: Work event, my ass.

  Three: Counting sheep has never worked for you.

  And then I was thirsty.

  I rolled off the bed, dragged my feet down the hall. I noticed the smell only one split second before I saw her.

  “Nan.” When she said my name, smoke poured out of her mouth.

  Cam and Jed were on either side of her, eyes bloodshot and looking paranoid.

  Ana blew the rest of the smoke into her armpit and smiled at me, but only a little because her lips were still paralyzed. “Hey,” she said, “how are you doing?”

  I stood there, trying to comprehend. My arms hung limp at my sides. I felt like a ghost, but a heavy one. “Are you smoking pot with my sons?”

  Ana looked at the boys, who looked at their laps. “Is that bad?” she asked me.

  I was too tired to sugarcoat it. “Yes.”

  She passed Jed the pipe, but then she realized she shouldn’t do that in front of me so she put it on the table instead and got off the couch. Her hands on my arms and her innocent face and those lips, those lips. “Sorry, Nan, they just had some and pot’s really good for cancer, you know?”