by Swan Huntley
“Be patient,” she said, looking up at him under her heavy mascara. Despite her hand on her stomach, there were no signs that she wasn’t a healthy, thriving person. I didn’t think Jed or Cam knew she wore a wig.
I hugged Cam for longer than usual and then I hugged Jed for just as long. “I am so proud of both of you,” I told them.
Ana put her arms around the three of us. “I just want to feel what this is like,” she said.
We stood there for a long time. Ana started humming something. I thought it was “Lean on Me,” but it wasn’t. And then she stopped. “Family,” she said, her cantaloupe breath hot on my cheek. I knew she would repeat it, and she did. “Family.”
•
I washed my face in the bathroom. Wash off that guilt, Nan. I splashed the water on my skin again and again and again and again. The towel felt scratchy but good. The scratchiness of a cheap towel. I rubbed hard and then harder. When I took the towel off my face and looked in the mirror, there was Ana, standing behind me. She set her chin on my shoulder. The plastic smell of her wig. How our faces could be easily confused. But no, no they couldn’t be. There were differences. She had higher cheekbones, I had a pointier nose. I had real lips, hers were fake. The line of her hot-pink chunk of hair fell between us. It separated us. Or it confused us further. From this angle, it wasn’t clear who the pink hair belonged to. It could have been mine.
“Nan?”
“Ana?”
“It has to be tonight.” I saw in her eyes that she meant it. There would be no negotiation. I would try anyway.
“It’s been such a long day, I—”
“Nan, you’re not listening.” She winced. Hand on her stomach. She whispered, “It has to be tonight.”
29
By the time we were searching the closet for black hats to match our black spandex outfits, I was giddy, too.
“How about this one?” Ana held up my giant white beach hat with the pink bow around it and buckled over, muffling her laughter in her palm.
“Or”—I was laughing so hard I could barely breathe—“we could just put stockings on our heads!”
“Yes!” She doubled over. “Yes!”
Having to suppress the laughter made it funnier. I laughed so hard my head pounded. I was delirious.
When she caught her breath, she said, “Wait, do you have stockings?” And that started the laughter all over again.
“Ssshh,” Ana said. “Sshh.” She put a finger to her lips. She looked at the door. She whispered, “Should we check again?”
I tiptoed down the hall. Finally, the boys had turned their lights off. When I got back to Ana, I gave her a thumbs-up. She was wearing the giant white hat and shooting fake pistols with her fingers. We held each other’s eyes for a second and then buckled over again. Ana crumpled to the floor and I crumpled to the bed. When we couldn’t laugh anymore, there was only the silence of crickets, chirping in unison like the string section of an orchestra, and then Ana said, “It’s go time.”
From that moment on, we were serious. We tiptoed down the hallway. We froze at any sound. Ana had placed our shoes by the staircase so we wouldn’t have to search for them in the pile now. She had parked her car near the street so the engine wouldn’t wake them. In the driveway, I looked for Chuck in the center of the half-built shed, but he was gone. The ohana lights were off. He must have made it back inside.
•
Peter lived higher up Kaloko, just like Ana had predicted. We drove slowly up the winding road. The steepness at certain parts pushed us firmly back into our seats. I’d never taken the road this far up. Ana had. She had gone to see the place earlier so we wouldn’t get lost now.
“Don’t worry, Nan,” she said, “this isn’t going to be a hard one. All we have to do is open the barn door.”
She’d taken her wig off. When I looked over, all I could see was the shape of her bald white head and her pale hand on her stomach.
“We will open the door and the horse will be free,” she said, slowing down, which meant that we were close.
We will open the door and the horse will be free, I repeated to myself. But wait. “Wait,” I said, “where’s it going to go?”
“Into the wild,” Ana said, like that was very obvious. “To join the wild horses. There are tons of wild horses on this mountain. Or, not tons. But there are a few.” She slowed the car even more, and then she stopped. “This is it.”
It was a big property. Big and completely stripped of jungle and surrounded by a fence. A high fence that followed the long curving driveway up to two structures. A house and a barn. I could see the outline of the barn, and in the house a light was on. Only one light. Maybe his bedroom.
“Shit, he’s awake,” Ana said, and sped up. Once we’d passed the house, she turned the car around, parked it behind a tree at the top of the property, and killed the engine. Then she buckled over and I thought she might be laughing again, but no, it was the pain.
I inhaled and exhaled deeply, showing her what she had shown me. My hand on the back of her neck, but only for a second. Ana took my hand and squeezed it.
“Are you sure you want to do this right now?”
“Yes,” she said softly. She made herself sit up. “Yes.”
We sat there for a full minute, or a full three minutes, holding hands. We didn’t need to say out loud that we were taking pause now. The crickets were even louder this high up the mountain. The mountain, the mountain, I kept thinking. The mountain that wasn’t a mountain like in other places. In Hawaii, a mountain was a dead volcano.
When Ana squeezed my hand again, I knew the pause was over. I opened my eyes. There was her white face in the dark and there were her dark eyes and they were spinning. “Okay,” she said, “I’m ready. You ready?”
“Yes.”
Her smile. Her veneers. How the wet saliva caught the red light of the buttons inside the car and shone red. “Here’s what we’re going to do,” she said. “I’m going to run up the driveway, open the barn door, and run back. When you see me at the mailbox, you drive down and get me and we’ll leave. Easy-peasy.”
“Okay,” I said. Then we could go home and shower, or I could take another bath and maybe take some more of those pills and sleep.
She brought her feet up so she was crouching on the seat. She was going to jump out of the car instead of using the door. “I’ll be right back,” she said. And then her lips were pressed into mine hard for a full thirty seconds, or maybe two very long seconds. When she pulled her face away, she whispered, “Thelma and Louise!” Then she jumped out of the car.
The symphony of crickets pulsed and pulsed, and then I could hear her feet on the gravel. That wasn’t good. That meant Peter could hear it, too. But she was going fast. It wouldn’t take long. And maybe he was asleep already. Maybe he slept with the lights on. The sound of her sprinting feet receded and receded. Was I supposed to turn the car on now or wait until I saw her at the mailbox? I decided not to turn it on. It would be too noisy.
I crawled into the driver’s seat and waited. I realized I had never driven this car. The driver’s seat had a different feel to it.
I tried to sit completely still so I could hear everything.
Do you think we should tell your wife?
I can’t tell her yet. Sorry.
I fixed my eyes straight ahead and blinked at the dark.
She was taking too long. Why wasn’t she running back yet? Maybe a problem with the barn door. Maybe it was taking a while to open. A padlock, maybe. I hoped she wasn’t trying to break open a padlock.
And then the gravelly sound. Closer and closer. Good. She was sprinting. I put my hand on the key, ready to turn it, and then there she was! Waving madly, her hands two fast white splotches in the dark. I turned the key. I pressed the accelerator. Too hard. The car jerked forward. Breathe, Nan. I pressed again more lightly. Her hands were telling me to hurry up. I’m coming!
When I got to her, I hit the brakes hard, too hard. She flung the
door open and jumped in and before she’d slammed it shut she was already saying, “Go, go! I think he saw me!” She wasn’t laughing at all.
I went numb. “Hurry!” she said. I pressed the gas hard, too hard. We flew. And then a light. At the bottom of the huge property, a light. A figure and a light? What was that light? I wanted to slow down, but we had to go fast, we had to hurry. The light was moving into the road so I veered left and I wasn’t breathing, and just when I thought, okay, yes, we have enough room to pass, Ana pulled the steering wheel right so hard and so fast I thought we might flip, and I jammed my foot into the brake but not fast enough and then there was a thud, not a smack or a pop but a thud, and it was alarmingly soft. Please oh please please let that be a coyote, please please, but that doesn’t make sense—there are no coyotes in Hawaii—and I was paralyzed and then there was the sound of plastic, yes, plastic, and it was rolling, rolling, and it was a flashlight rolling down the hill.
I pressed both hands hard into my chest. My heart was beating fast. A thin layer of sweat all over my body. The still night, the crickets, and then an unexpected gust of wind. “Stay here,” Ana said. She opened the door.
My hands shaking. Violently shaking. Ana walked closer, closer, closer to the thing we had hit and then she stopped. Her eyes on the ground. She lifted her hand to cover her mouth. She kept her hand there. She stayed for one, two, three, and then she walked back to the car and got in. She took her hand off her mouth. She said, “We need to leave.”
I couldn’t move.
“Now,” she said. She put us in reverse. My hands trembling. I looked over my shoulder. I backed up fast, too fast again, and I winced. She put us in drive.
What I saw then. Jeans, a sleeveless teal shirt, blood on the back of his head.
My breath losing control and my eyes seeing double, triple, and I blinked and blinked and my hands were on my chest, pressing hard into my heart.
Ana inhaled and exhaled deeply. “Drive.”
A second gust of wind.
I drove.
30
I took three pills and stayed on the farthest side of the bed. Ana moved closer. And closer. And closer.
“Do you want to talk?”
“Do you want to talk?”
“Are you sure you don’t want to talk about this, Nan?”
I didn’t answer. She put her arm around me. It felt heavy. I didn’t move. Outside, the sound of rain, drowning the crickets.
“It was an accident,” she whispered.
“You swerved the car,” I said.
“You were running us off the road,” she said.
“But you hit him. Why did you hit him?”
“I hit him? You were driving.”
“But you swerved the car, Ana.”
“And you didn’t stop me, Nan. You could have stopped me and you didn’t.”
“I couldn’t have stopped you. You pulled the wheel so hard.”
“I didn’t pull it that hard.”
“This is not my fault,” I said.
“We were confused.”
“This is your fault.”
“We did this together.”
“You did this.”
“We did this.”
“That poor man.”
“He was a bad man.”
“You don’t know that. How could you know that?”
“He beat his horse, Nan. And probably his wife if he had one. He was a bad man. Trust me. I know bad men.”
“What if we get caught?”
“If we get caught,” she sighed, “I will take the fall for us.” She placed her hand on my hair. “I’m dying anyway. We can say I did it.”
“You did do it,” I pleaded.
Ana stroked her fingers through my hair. “Oh, sister.”
31
In the morning, rain, hard and pounding. The wind shook the windows, shook the house. I watched the trees be whipped by the wind and the windows be drowned by the rain. A planter fell off the lanai and crashed. I turned to face Ana, but she wasn’t there.
Sandpaper mouth, groggy. I still hadn’t cried. I reached for my water glass. As I drank I thought: I don’t deserve this comfort, a man is dead. The car, the swerve. How tightly I had held the wheel. But how tightly had I held the wheel? Could I have pulled us back? Could I have stopped her? Us? It?
The thud, the flashlight rolling, rolling. How Peter’s body had landed. Like he was sleeping. The teal shirt, the blood. The memory of him at the tarot stand. “When I feel the jitters, I take a stick to my horse.” His jittery leg. His scrawny arms. “After the horse, I take the stick to myself.” The bruises he must have had somewhere on his body. What his last name was. If he had a wife, children. A job where people expected him to show up. Other places he went.
There were many things on the nightstand, but all I saw was my phone. You should call the police, Nan. Nancy. Nancy, you should call the police. But what would I say? It didn’t make sense. “It was her fault, it was not my fault.” But I had been driving. That’s what they would say. They would say, “How was it her fault when you were driving?” And how would I respond? “We were sort of both driving. It might be hard to understand.” And they would say, “That is correct, we do not understand.” And then what? Sirens, handcuffs, rooms with two-way mirrors. Orange jumpsuit, courtrooms, prison. The boys in pieces, Chuck in pieces, all of us in pieces.
Another planter crashed on the lanai. I went to the window. The glass was shaking. Chuck’s car was gone. The boys’ car was gone. The half-built shed shuddered in the wind. A branch fell to the ground. Another. Time was passing. Too much time had passed. They would say, “If it wasn’t your fault, then why did you wait so long to call?”
•
Ana in the fetal position on the living room floor. She was wearing my robe.
“Are you okay?” I asked because I had to.
“Storm,” she groaned. She was shivering.
“Do you want a blanket?” I was already taking one off the couch and spreading it over her. A mother’s instinct. I couldn’t help it. She needed me. She was dying.
“Celia’s pissed.” The sides of her lips curling up. Her eyelids fluttering closed. She was wearing the black wig with the pink streak again. “This storm is for us.”
For you, I wanted to say. It’s for you.
“But what she doesn’t realize is that she’s washing any evidence away.” Ana pulled the blanket tighter around her shoulders. “Stupid bitch.”
“They’re going to find him, Ana.”
“I know,” she said.
Portico’s shrine tank on the coffee table. With Rice Krispies in it now. Next to the tank the remote. “Don’t do it,” she said.
But I had to. I turned the TV on. I flipped through the channels. First slow, then fast. I went through all of them. Nothing. I went through again. “Mute, please,” she said, and I muted it for her.
“Tea, please. Can you make me tea? And Red Vines. Two standing up in a jar.”
“A jar?”
“Pleeease.”
I made the tea. I found a jar for her Red Vines. On the counter a note from the boys. Mom and Ana, Have a GREAT day doing yoga. Can we make dinner tonight?
They had never left me a note like this before. But now, on this day of all days, a note? I didn’t deserve this. How happy they were, how happily unaware—I wanted to cry, but I was too numb to cry. The cold metal feeling of shock, the fuzzy hangover of the pills. How would we make dinner together? How would I possibly get through that? How would I get through anything now? It seemed impossible.
“I don’t think I can do this,” I told her. My best friend, my soul sister, my support system, curled up on the ground like a baby. I set the tea and the jar of Red Vines on the carpet next to her hands.
“You can,” she whispered.
“I can’t,” I said. “I can’t.” I scrunched my hair and tugged it. It felt good to feel something. “But there’s no way out. I don’t see a way out.”
&
nbsp; “The only way out is death,” Ana said, more voice in her now.
“What am I going to do?” I tugged my hair harder. I paced faster. “I can’t kill myself.”
“No,” she said. Did she chuckle? “Then you would be your mother.”
I stopped. “What did you say?”
Ana rolled her eyes like I was being dramatic. “Didn’t your mother kill herself ?”
Fuck you! I wanted to kick her. But she was dying. And she was right.
My mother. Dead in her smelly chair. Wine spills on the carpet. They looked like birthmarks. How it reeked. How her hair had frozen around her face. The organization of her table. How she handled the things she loved with such care. Wine cups in a stack. The pack of red straws. Trash can by her feet. Orange bottles in a row.
Ana, propped on her elbow, was studying me. The feeling of being laid bare. What was it that she understood about me? And why the hell did I care? I wanted her to look away.
“Tell me again,” she said, “what happened to your mother.”
“I told you already,” I said.
“Can you tell me again, please?” Her eyes like a doe.
I tried to calm down. “Overdose,” I said evenly.
“In her chair,” Ana said slowly.
“Yes, in her chair. She died in her chair watching soaps and drinking red wine from a box, and she took too many pills and fucking overdosed and died, okay?” And then I lost it. “Fuck! Why are you asking me about this right now?”
Ana stretched her neck. She was making me wait. She stretched to the right and then she stretched to the left. Then her eyes settled back on me. A flash passed across them. “Last time, you said it was white wine.”
My shoulders locked. I wanted to scream. I wanted to run. “White, red, who fucking cares! Fuck, Ana!”
She blinked. “Interesting” was all she said.
My whole body was vibrating. I was going to explode. Calm down, Nancy. Breathe.
Ana stirred her tea with her finger. It was still steaming. “I’ve never seen you so emotional,” she said.
I made my voice toneless, vacant. “Of course I’m emotional,” I said.