The Goddesses

by Swan Huntley

  This hollow version of Nancy no longer interested her. Her eyes wandered to the TV. She took a sip of her tea. And then she said, “Look.”

  On the screen was Peter’s face. Peter smiling on a sunny day with a toothpick in his teeth. Over his chest his name appeared: PETER TACKMAN. I fumbled for the remote. I pressed the mute button right in time for the newscaster to say, “If you have any information, please call this number.”

  “That means they have nothing,” Ana said.

  “Oh my God,” I said. “Oh my God, Ana. Oh my God!”

  “Oh my free will,” she corrected.

  I was defiant. “Oh my God.”

  She rolled onto her back like a lazy dog. “The boys want to cook with us tonight. Isn’t that adorable?”

  “I’m going to say no. They can go out tonight.”

  She bit her finger. “I already told them yes.”

  “You already told them yes?”

  “You were sleeping,” she said. She winked at me. “I like playing Mom. It’s fun.”

  “Oh my God,” I said, just to piss her off.

  “Plus, we should act normal right now. We shouldn’t do anything out of the ordinary.”

  I knew she was right. This was when we put on our costumes. This was when the charade began. This part was even worse than the crime itself, because it would have to go on forever.

  “Nan,” she cooed. “Are you mad? Don’t waste your time being mad. Plus, you can’t be mad at me.” Her sad puppy eyes. Her overdone frown. Like she was taunting me. “I’m dying.”

  •

  The storm didn’t stop. A tree fell straight across the driveway so we couldn’t leave. I called the tree service. No one picked up. Ana was fine and then she wasn’t fine and then she was fine again. “I’m weakening,” she said, “but it’s not over yet.” She kept asking me to get her things. She was trying to keep me close because she could feel me wanting to get away. Can I have more tea, please? Can I have more Red Vines, please? Nan, can you make me a peanut butter sandwich? You make the best peanut butter sandwiches. Pleeease?

  She didn’t eat the sandwich. She barely looked at it.

  I said, “You’re not eating.”

  She pouted. “Because I can tell you didn’t make that sandwich with love.”

  She was dying so I had to be nice. She was dying so I had to refill her tea again and again and again. So many times I began to wonder if she was just pushing me to see how far I would go. She would take three sips and say, “Can you put in a little more hot water, please?” She finally got off the floor and moved to the couch. Her used tea bags—she tossed them into Portico’s tank.

  I said, “We should put that outside soon. It’s starting to smell.”

  She said, “That would be disrespectful. This is a memorial, Nan, a mem-o-rial.”

  The wind, violent. Every planter crashed off the lanai. I went outside to pick up the pieces, and really so I could spend ten minutes away from her. The wind whipped my hair. Mud on my feet. I cut my finger on one of the pieces and felt more awake. The blood on his head. His teal shirt. His family. How Ana had told him to name the horse Mom.

  She’d turned the volume up so high that it drowned out the pounding rain. “Look what I found on TV!” she yelled. “It’s the cancer documentary! About the women who go to the hair salon to feel beautiful before they die! Come watch with me!”

  “I’m cleaning!”

  I looked at the screen. The woman being interviewed was crying. She was bald, but not completely bald like Ana. On the top and on the sides of her head were clumps of baby fine hair. Then Ana turned the volume up even more. So loud that the blasting sound of this woman crying erased all the thoughts in my brain.

  “Can you turn that down, please!”

  Ana pretended not to hear me.

  “Ana!”

  “Come watch with me, Nan!” She patted the cushion beside her.

  I walked around the couch and stood in front of her, the trash bag of broken pieces in my hand. “Turn it down, please!”

  Her toes twinkled happily on the coffee table. “Fine, Mom,” she said.

  The woman on the TV behind me said, “I can’t believe this is happening to me. You never think it’s going to be you.”

  “Ana,” I said, “what happened to the horse?”

  Ana laughed. “You look like a swamp monster, Nan.”

  I waited.

  She sighed. “The horse wasn’t in the barn.”

  “Oh my God,” I said. “Oh my God!”

  “Ugh, stop saying that,” she said. “You’re killing me!”

  I looked at her. She looked at me. There was nothing in her dark eyes. Who was this woman on my couch, and how did she get here? I wanted to go back in time.

  “I love you, Nan,” she said. She blinked several times. “Don’t you love me?”

  I couldn’t look at her anymore. “I have to take a shower,” I said.

  I took the trash bag back outside. Why had I brought it in? Because I thought I deserved to carry heavy loads. No, Nancy, you just weren’t thinking. You just weren’t thinking! I opened the door and tossed the bag out, and as I walked past her on the couch, she repeated what I had just said in a wee voice: “I have to take a shower.”

  I screamed it. “Oh my God!”

  •

  Jed and Cam were drenched. “A tree fell,” Cam said.

  “So we couldn’t drive up,” Jed finished.

  “I know,” I called from the kitchen, “I called the tree service but they—”

  “Hi, booooys,” Ana cut me off. She was still on the couch in her robe. My robe. She had recorded that depressing documentary about fighting breast cancer with hairstyling, and now she was watching it again. Over the course of the day, she had put on a pair of Chuck’s socks and the big white beach hat with the pink bow.

  “Nice hat,” Jed said, flicking the brim.

  “I know you love it, Jedi,” she said.

  “Wait right there,” I said to the boys, who were dripping water and mud all over my floor. I brought them dish towels to wipe themselves off. As if the floors mattered right now. But I knew it was best to act normal. Nothing out of the ordinary.

  “What are we cooking?” Jed asked.

  “Frozen Costco pizza, it’s already in the oven,” I said. “I couldn’t go grocery shopping because of the tree, so this is all we got.” This was a lie. There were plenty of things we could have cooked together, but I wanted dinner to be over as soon as possible.

  Cam shrugged. “Cool.”

  The boys sat on the couch with Ana while I did everything. Only ten minutes until the pizza would be done. I set the table haphazardly. I ripped paper towels in half instead of looking for the napkins. I didn’t light any candles.

  I heard Jed boasting to Ana, “Yeah, we put some Rice Krispies in this morning,” and Ana said, “I love it, Jedi.”

  Every time she spoke, I cringed.

  I took the pizza out five minutes early. Done enough.

  “Dinner!” I shouted.

  Back in San Diego, every time I shouted “Dinner!” Chuck would shout “Dinner!” right after me like an echo. Had we ever done that in this house? Why had I forgotten about it until now?

  Chuck and Brenda. I couldn’t go there right now. Keep it together, Nancy. Keep it together for your children.

  The three of them shuffled to the table. Ana held the crook of Jed’s arm. They sat. “Wait, we need candles,” Ana said, and scooted her chair in, which meant she did not plan on getting up to light these candles herself. She looked at me. I looked away. My eyes fell on the dead branch she had hung on our wall. “Jedi, will you do it?” she requested.

  “Totally,” he obliged. He whipped a lighter from his pocket—don’t say anything, Nancy, don’t say anything—and expertly lit the candles. Silently I sighed.

  The boys, without being asked, held out their hands. Ana smiled. “We are here,” she said, “at the dinner table. This is the biggest storm in the
last ten years. I learned that on TV today. Monsoon rains, they said. Let these monsoon rains wash over you and through you. Let them wash away your sins. We have nothing. Nothing, nothing, no-thing, except for this moment, right now, right here.”

  “Thank you, Ana.” I gave her a tight smile.

  “Wait, I wasn’t done yet,” she whined.

  I tightened my smile while trying to hold Jed and Cam’s hands gently.

  “We all make decisions,” she boomed. “No one decides for us. We are in control. We decide to play water polo, we decide to eat pizza, we decide when to step out in the rain. We decide to be happy. We decide to give up. We decide.” She inhaled and exhaled with force. “We decide, we decide, we decide. There is no one to blame for your life but you.”

  A long pause. A very long pause. I rolled my lips together to stop myself from speaking, and then Jed said, “Dayum!” He squeezed my hand. He looked so rejuvenated by her.

  I ate half a slice of undercooked pizza and asked the boys how they were doing. Fine, they said, fine. I asked them to please do their homework. They swore it was already done. Then I excused myself. “My stomach hurts, I’m going to lie down.”

  “Your stomach hurts?” Ana said.

  “It does,” I said, not bothering to feign any symptoms.

  She was searing a hole through my head with her eyes. I didn’t look at her. I washed my plate. I went to the bedroom. I flopped onto the bed. Ten minutes later, I flushed the pills before I had any more time to think.

  I turned off the lights and tried to sleep. The teal shirt, the blood, the flashlight rolling, rolling. How he had landed like that, so peacefully. A bad man, she had said. He deserved it, she had said.

  The smell of marijuana wafted in. I didn’t get up to scold them. It seemed unimportant now. The windows shook in their frames, the rain would not stop pounding. There were no more planters on the lanai to be broken.

  When my mother died, my brother had said the same thing. She deserved it. And then he had said, “This isn’t our fault.”

  Sky

  32

  It was too beautiful. A clear pink morning sky like the storm had never happened, and it didn’t seem honest. If you took a picture of this morning, there would be nothing ugly in it.

  She was snoring. She was parked in the middle of the bed, her arms and legs splayed in all directions. Her sleeping face looked different somehow. It was not the serene face she usually wore. Her breath got shorter, and the muscles around her eyes and mouth constricted—she seemed to want to speak—and then she relaxed again, but even relaxed, she looked worried.

  Sounds in the driveway. I peeled back the covers quietly, went to the window. Chuck’s folding chair had been whipped across the lawn and he was walking toward it. Already in his work clothes. Wet hair, he’d just showered. When he got to the chair, he paused. He took a step back, took his hands out of his pockets. I waited for him to kick the chair. But then he bent to pick it up. He tried to fold it. It wouldn’t fold. It was broken. He carried it back with him anyway and set it by the ohana door.

  After taking a moment to survey the damage, Chuck made his way down the driveway to his car, which was parked next to the boys’ car behind the fallen tree. Hands in his pockets again. His feet were slow and heavy. He stopped to throw fallen branches out of the driveway and into the grass. Where was he going so early? Work? Breakfast somewhere before work? Breakfast with Brenda? He hadn’t come in to get coffee. Was he making it in the ohana or going out for it now?

  He got into his car but didn’t leave. He just sat there, looking at the house.

  Footsteps on the lanai, and then the boys walking down to their car in matching strides. Board shorts, flip-flops. Jed’s shirt was too big for him. Cam’s was the same orange as her Wynonna wig.

  Chuck got out of his car.

  The boys stopped.

  Chuck waved. He said something I couldn’t hear. The boys looked at each other, then walked faster to their car. Chuck said something else. He was standing in front of their car now. And then it was the three of them, standing together. Chuck reached for Jed. Jed stepped back. Then—this surprised me—Cam stepped forward and hugged his father. And then—more surprising—Jed put his arms around the both of them. Only for a second, but still.

  After that they were talking again. I love you, I’m sorry, I love you. That’s what I imagined they were saying.

  The boys drove away first. Chuck stood there and watched them, and then he got back into his car. He started the engine. At the end of the driveway, he turned on his blinker. No one saw this but me. The road was empty.

  I showered in the boys’ bathroom so I wouldn’t wake her up. I scrubbed as if I were covered in his blood. My skin was red and raw by the end and I deserved that. When I reached for the towel, I remembered how I’d switched the towels when we first moved in. These were the yellow ones Chuck and I had used in San Diego. It felt like I hadn’t seen them in years.

  Spandex crops and a tunic I hadn’t worn in a while because that was what I found in the laundry room.

  And then a car. In the driveway. Doors slamming. The police. The police, the police and blinking lights and questions and I don’t know why I ran to the little mirror in the hallway first. To see if I looked like an innocent person, maybe.

  The necklace—my black side of the yin and yang—was perfectly framed by the dip in the tunic. I couldn’t be wearing this; this tied me to her. She would confess and this would tie me to her. My hands were trembling. I tried to unclasp it, but I couldn’t. I tried to yank it off. I couldn’t. Breathe, Nancy. I tried again. The clasp opened. The necklace fell to the floor. I left it there.

  I ran through the living room. Something rancid—Portico’s tank with new colors in it. I didn’t stop to see what they had added. I opened the door. Too beautiful again. No spinning lights, no police. It was a giant truck. Big Island Tree Service printed on the side. Had I made this appointment and forgotten? But they hadn’t answered the phone. Had they? I was going crazy.

  I walked down the driveway. Act normal. Nothing out of the ordinary.

  A man in a hard hat revved a chainsaw. They would cut the tree before moving it.

  “Hey!” I called, walking closer. “Did I call you?”

  “You Chuck?” The man laughed.

  “No,” I said seriously. I stared at my feet for too long. What if this man had known Peter. What if the other man, who was still in the truck, had known Peter. A small town.

  And then I realized the man was waiting for me to speak. “Thank you for coming,” I said, and turned—too abruptly, that was awkward, don’t be awkward—and walked away. Should I turn back around? No, that’s worse. Keep walking. But oh God, that was so awkward. They would tell the police later that I had seemed off. Keep walking. Keep walking. You’re fine. You’re fine.

  •

  Yes, Chuck had a coffeemaker in the ohana now. I hated that. And I hated that his clothes were in a laundry bag from Tyke’s and I didn’t even know where Tyke’s was. He’d found an extra pillow somewhere. He had two pillows now. His futon bed looked uncomfortable and depressing, and good because he deserved that, but it also looked like a prison bed, and that’s what I deserved.

  Standing there in Chuck’s new life, I heard her words: We are born alone and we die alone. And I wanted to tell her this. I wanted to tell her everything. “He has a coffeemaker now, and I was thinking about what you said, how we are born alone and die alone.” I wanted to go into the house and wake her up and say this to her.

  But I couldn’t go to Ana now. She had swerved the car and she had done it on purpose. She had known exactly what she was doing when she swerved the car. Hadn’t she?

  For now, I thought, as I opened the door, be kind. She’s dying, Nancy. It’s only a little while longer.

  •

  Things I hadn’t noticed in my rush out of the house: Ana’s tarot cards spread out over the dining room table. All those antique ovals and all of her faces insid
e of them. Her cheesy TV psychic expression and Portico threaded through her fingers like rope. Portico’s tank had pasta in it now, heaped like hair. On top of the pasta was Ana’s blue Buddha. And then, movement. I held my breath and looked in from the side.

  “No.”

  Maggots.

  Anger. Adrenaline. The tank was heavy but felt light. I wanted to throw it off the lanai. I set it by the doormat instead.

  Sound of the chainsaw. The tree service had removed a good chunk of the tree—just enough room to pass. I could leave now. I could be free.

  “Naaaaaaaan?”

  The sound of her voice. I froze. A cool tingling up my spine and up my neck and up the sides of my ears. I thought of something she’d told me once: Your body is smarter than you are.

  “Naaa-aaaan?”

  If she needed something, I would get it. And then I would leave. Errands. That’s what I would say.

  I paused outside the bedroom door. “I can see your feet,” she said. I opened the door. Her face looked calm. The peaceful face she wore when she was awake, the face of a yogi, of a healer, of a wise woman who knew things you might not know. Alabaster skin and her bare shoulders, and she might have been naked under the sheets.

  “Hey.” She looked me up and down. Slowly she lifted her index finger. Slowly she pointed to the center of her neck. “Where’s your necklace?”

  “It fell off.”

  “Interesting,” she said, and touched her lips.

  I made myself ask. “Can I get you anything?”

  She tapped her lips. She didn’t take her eyes off me. “Did I ever tell you how my dad used to make me French toast?”

  I shifted my weight. “No, you didn’t.”

  “After he beat me, he would make me French toast.” She shook her head and smiled. “It was his way of apologizing.” Her fake lips, her fake teeth, her wig. The fact that these things still made her beautiful annoyed me. “I think you owe me an apology, Nan.”

  “Oh?” Be calm. “For what?”

  She pointed her finger at me. She drew circles around me with that finger. “Your energy toward me has changed.”