Catching Heaven

by Sands Hall

  “He has us,” Lizzie said, stung.

  “Sure. He has me, too. But when does he actually come over for a meal? He sure don’t with me. You seen him lately?”

  “Just today. He’s coming to dinner.” Lizzie slapped hard at a nonexistent fly. “Probably. Your taillights are broken.”

  Sara shrugged. “At some point one of us’ll get stopped and get a citation and then we’ll fix ’em. You seen Jake since he’s been back?”

  Lizzie shook her head.

  “He looks good. Sad, though. Eyes like one big bruise he’s so sad. That place weren’t good for him.” She began to back out again and called, “Powwow’s down in Chinle. Saturday. Sam won’t come. But tell him anyway.”

  Lizzie used the pay phone at the edge of the parking lot to call Jeep. “Wow,” Jeep told her. “Theo’s like definitely teething. You having fun with your ‘colleague’?”

  “Decided not to. Listen, stay for dinner. I’m asking Sam down.”

  “I have AA.”

  Lizzie watched Aaron and Yvette emerge from the Art Building and lope their way down the outside stairs, carefully, too carefully, not touching. “Shit,” she said.

  “What?”

  “One day at a time,” she said, her voice pinched, snide.

  Unexpectedly, Jeep laughed. “Don’t knock it till you’ve tried it. Oh, and Miles called.”

  “Miles?”

  “Something to do with Maud, he said. He left a number.”

  “It’s probably about the other night. They’re always fighting. Why she just doesn’t leave I can’t figure.”

  “It’s not always so easy.” Jeep sounded as if she were crouched in a cave—distant, sad and alone.

  “They’ve turned into people who are bad for each other. I know all the signs, believe me.”

  Lizzie kept an eye on Aaron and Yvette making their way through the rows of cars. They seemed almost drunk, wavering towards and away from each other, weak magnets beginning to find true north. Young love. She sniffed, and as she crossed the parking lot, she went out of her way to walk by them. They stood talking next to a beat-up Honda. “Hey, you two.”

  Aaron raised his eyebrows. “I’m choosing my words with care, Ms. Maxwell,” he said, riding hard on the s of Ms. His brown eyes managed to both admire and mock her.

  “You do that.”

  She wished Sara had not told her that Jake was sad. “His fault,” she said, starting her car. After dinner she would turn on the lights out in her studio, rework the painting of the bare-breasted, long-haired woman in a swirly gypsy skirt. Arms out, almost frantic, the woman rushed towards the cleancut man dressed in a white linen suit.

  His eye’s one big bruise he’s so sad.

  She turned on the radio. Turned up the volume. The marching martial music that introduced All Things Considered filled the vacant interior of her car.

  CHAPTER 5

  MAUD

  When to the sessions of sweet, silent thought

  I summon up remembrance of things past,

  I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,

  And with old woes new wail my dear time’s waste

  —SONNET 30

  Even as she sped along the narrow road that cut across the desert, Maud imagined herself snaillike. She traveled with her house on her back: the small table, boxes of tablecloths and plates and glasses, books, clothes, two lamps, even a chair. She couldn’t see out the back window. The seat beside her was crammed with bags, her purse, a small basket with food, a box of cassette tapes.

  She slowed as she approached a pickup truck dawdling ahead of her, broom handle stuck into one side of its tailgate, shovel in the other. Two young girls riding in the back sat up to peer at her. Maud waved. Giggling, they ducked out of sight, then popped up again and waved. When Maud waved back, they collapsed behind the tailgate again.

  Sucking salt from a sunflower seed, she tangled with another wince of memory. Cheesios. “It’s a new snack product, hon.” The voice of her commercial agent, Danielle, coming through the answering machine. Maud was still in bed. On the other side of the bed Miles dozed, curled away from her. “I know it’s early, but hustle your little butt on down there. You’re a mom, kids in school, housewifing away.”

  Maud moved her shoulders, blew the shells of sunflower seeds out the car window, sang along with Bonnie Raitt about finding love in the nick of time. Changed the tape.

  “They want slacks, sweater knotted over your shoulders,” Danielle’s cheerful, high voice continued. “You know the look. Call me to confirm.”

  “I do not ‘know the look,’ ” Maud said.

  Miles slid an arm across the expanse of mattress that separated them and patted her. “Mom, eh?”

  “Is that supposed to be funny?” Maud flung the covers back. She showered, pulled on jeans, knotted a sweater over her shoulders, did not wake Miles, who had fallen back asleep, before she left the apartment. She put her makeup on in the car. No script waited at the casting office. Instead, the clients had provided a cartoon: Large set of lips. Tongue curling out at one corner. Nose designated by two dots. Barbie-doll eyes. Arching eyebrows registering astonishment and appreciation. The copy was easy: “Mmmm, good!!!” Five women, wearing jeans, sweaters knotted over their shoulders, sat on folding chairs. They slid and curled their tongues into the corners of their lips. “Mmmm, good!” they whispered. “Mmmm, good!” “Mmmm, good!”

  Maud groaned and snapped a sunflower seed between her teeth. Waving wildly, the girls in the pickup popped up in unison from behind the tailgate, as if they’d counted down before sitting up. Maud waved wildly back. Mouths wide in laughter, they dove out of sight.

  The cameraman wore a baseball cap turned sideways. “Hiya!” he said. “I’m Billy. Have a seat on that stool.”

  An assortment of cracker boxes and bags littered a table beside the stool: Triscuits, Wheat Thins, saltines, Goldfish. Billy plied the bill of his cap up and down. “Okay, honeybunch, we got to drop that sweater. The clients decided a little more homey, a little less sporty.”

  Maud unknotted the sweater, lowered it to the floor.

  “Okay,” Billy said. “You’re lounging on your couch. I know you can’t really lounge on a stool, but anyway. You’ve got all these crackers to choose from, boxes and boxes. You nibble this one, that one, you finally try a Cheesio. Your face lights up. This is the snack cracker.”

  “Enlightenment in a cracker.”

  Billy’s eyes widened. “Whoa! Right. Ha! All your life you’ve been searching and finally, wow! You say—”

  “Mmmm, good?”

  “Ha! That’s it exactly. Use Goldfish for the Cheesios—they aren’t on the market yet. We have to imagine, you have to do some acting.” He chuckled. His head disappeared as he checked Maud through the camera’s viewfinder. “Just one more thing. After you say, ‘Mmmm, good,’ the clients want this little peep of tongue. Sex sells, I don’t have to tell you. Just slide it over to the corner of your mouth—”

  Maud attempted this.

  “A little more curl? A little more? A little more? Yeah! That’s about it.” He wiped a hand beneath his nose and hummed as he adjusted a light, took off his cap, scratched at his hair, put the cap back, sniffed. “We just want a slate, usual thing, and we’ll just take it from there.”

  Maud slanted her legs to one side, so her thighs wouldn’t look squat, foreshortened, to the men who would view this tape in a boardroom somewhere in America.

  “Slate.”

  “Hello!” Maud spoke into the round eye of the camera. “My name is Maud Maxwell? I’m represented by the Cromwell Agency?” She smiled as punctuation.

  “Good!” Billy whispered. “Now, you’re lounging, yearning for that perfect cracker. Lounge and yearn, that’s it.”

  Triscuit in hand, Maud leaned back, hooking the arches of her feet beneath the rungs of the stool. She nibbled the cracker’s salty edge, imagining her home in suburbia, the housecoat and slippers she’d put on that morning to get th
e children off to school. Surrounded by crackers, she could relax now, in her recliner—bought on credit—as she watched her favorite soap opera on the not-yet-paid-for TV. She wondered what it would be like to have a life where part of what you did with your day was evaluate your snack food.

  “Such a boring cracker!” Billy prompted, whispering.

  She made a face, put down the Triscuit, picked up a saltine, nibbled, sighed, looked dissatisfied. She raised her eyes, shook her head: would the heavens answer her prayer?

  “Yes, yes!” The camera whirred.

  She picked up the Goldfish bag, looked at it with interest. Eyebrows raised, she drew out one of the orange fish and examined it. She put it in her mouth. It stuck to her tongue, then glued itself to her hard palate. She was reminded, forcibly, of the time she’d attended a Catholic service and been inspired to follow the others kneeling before a stern-faced priest, who’d placed a Communion wafer on her tongue. Should she suck? Was it all right to chew? She tried to smile, to convey the wonder attached to this amazing cracker, but the Goldfish seemed to have used all available saliva. Her lips stuck to her teeth. “Mmmm, good,” she said, through the cud of dampened gauze. She tried again. Orange flakes sprayed on the word good. She giggled. The rest of the cracker whooshed out of her mouth.

  “Cut, cut.” Billy switched the camera off. “Goddamn. I keep asking Cora to get some water in here. You okay?”

  Maud held up a hand, unable to stop laughing.

  “Let’s try it again. It was pretty good up to there.”

  Still giggling, Maud worked her tongue around her gums. She pulled her lips back, placing her front top teeth against her bottom teeth. “Anything show?”

  Uneasy, Billy leaned back, peered, pointed. “A little orange, there.”

  Eyes seeping tears, Maud scraped a fingernail across the tooth he indicated. She might have to spew laughter until she died, but was afraid that in fact she was about to cry, and once she started she’d never stop. “I have to leave.” Her voice sounded as if it came from the other side of the room.

  Billy stared, one hand on the camera. The silence stretched. Maud felt very serious. Dreadfully, awfully serious. In the context—this was about crackers—this struck her as hilarious. She began to laugh again.

  “You’re leaving?” Billy dragged the back of his wrist beneath his nose.

  She picked up her sweater. “I have to leave.” Leave, she thought. Leaf. Leave. Leaves. That time of year thou mayst in me behold, when yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang upon those boughs.

  “L.A.,” the man with the pockmarked face had said.

  “Well, you sound foreign,” the woman had remarked.

  “This thou perceiv’st, which makes thy love more strong,” she lectured the girls, who were waving at her again. She emphasized her points with her forefinger. “In this case, Sonnet 73, Shakespeare begins with ‘yellow leaves,’ a reference to the autumn of his life. The sonnet ends with the instruction ‘to love that well, which thou must leave ere long.’ Pretty clever, don’t you think?”

  But the pickup’s turn signal was blinking. The truck slowed almost to a stop before lurching onto a rutted road. The girls waved. Maud felt bereft. She wanted to follow, wanted to see where the road might lead: a trailer and its hogan, the smell of lard, of rice and beans, the clang of a bell around the neck of the pet goat, the warmth of lamplight that would soon begin to glow out of small windows.

  CHAPTER 6

  LIZZIE

  NOTES FROM BENEATH THE MAGNETS ON LIZZIE’S FRIDGE

  MARENGO STATE COLLEGE

  Faculty Senate Meeting

  Wednesday, October 3

  THE VOTE YOU’VE BEEN WAITING FOR

  Adjunct Faculty representation!

  All staff urged to attend. Let your voice be heard!

  Lizzie parked behind Sam’s battered Galaxy pickup. He never drove it anymore, always walked the mile to Artie’s general store. Hannah sat on the top step of the porch stairs, bent over a book—since starting sixth grade she’d rarely had her nose out of one. Summer used her belly to balance on the railing. When Lizzie yelled at her to get down, Summer gave her a baleful look and took off up the path towards Sam’s. “Homework first!” Lizzie called.

  Jeep came out onto the porch, carrying Theo on a hip. “Miles phoned again.”

  “Summer!” Lizzie called more loudly. “Tell Sam to come for dinner. I’ve got a message for him from Sara.”

  “Mami!” Theo put out his hands.

  Jeep allowed him to spill from her arms into Lizzie’s. “He said if you don’t reach him at home, try him at the studio.”

  Hannah followed them indoors, carrying her gymnastics bag. “I always like it when you’re here, Jeep,” she said as she opened the door to the basement. “It’s the only time the house gets clean.”

  “Hannah!” Jeep said.

  “Cleanliness has recently become an issue.” Lizzie got herself a beer. “God knows whose genes those are.”

  “They’re Blair’s,” Hannah called from the basement. Lizzie heard her set the water to running into the washer. “He’s tidy, same as me. Can I go up to Sam’s too?”

  “Go, go, go. Just get your homework done. And make sure Summer does hers.”

  Jeep pointed to the notepad next to the phone. “Those are his numbers. This time he said it’s kind of urgent.” She kissed Theo on the head. “Goodbye, pumpkin.”

  Lizzie walked her out to the porch. Jeep stopped at the top of the steps, looked out across the driveway and the field beyond. “I’ve thought about what you said. About school. I’m saving. I’m waitressing at three places now. If any of the waiters at Harmony House ever leave, I’ve been promised their shifts, and then I can quit the Red Garter. I hate that place, but it’s good money.” She started down the stairs. “Sometimes I think I’ll never make it. I see a new backpack in a catalogue, a pair of skis on sale, a six-pack. But so far so good. One day at a time.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah.” Lizzie waved her off, dumped Theo in front of the TV with a video, and tried Miles at home. His number was different from Maud’s. He answered on the first ring.

  “Miles?”

  “Maud!” Miles said, an exasperated at long last!

  “This is Lizzie.”

  “You sound just like her. Have you seen her? Has she called?”

  A pause flickered. “What’s up?”

  “This is so weird. I get home this morning—I had a late night in the studio—and I sack out. Wake up midafternoon. I’m trying to get this demo tape done? Anyway.”

  There was the sound of a match being lit, a quick inhale and exhale. “A lot of times she’s not here—out on an audition, rehearsing a scene for acting class. But I’m having some coffee and it dawns on me—the house looks different. Pillows missing from the couch. Rug gone from the wall. And my answering machine’s on the floor! This little table she lets me use, she says you have one too? Anyway, it’s gone.”

  Their mother, always careful about fairness, had given each of them one of a set of three nesting tables. Lizzie wondered why she’d busted up the set, since the point was they were supposed to nest. Maud offered that maybe it was so that each of the Maxwell households—“such as they are,” she’d said with that high, forced laugh—would have one.

  “Maybe you’ll think I’m a little dense here.” Miles cleared his throat. “I was thinking she was just using all this stuff as props—she does that, for scenes she does for that acting class of hers. Then I listen to my messages.” Another long exhale of smoke at the other end. “She says she ‘had to go.’ Doesn’t say where she’s calling from. I look around. Manoman. What it looks like, is that she’s, like, left. Or something.”

  Lizzie sat down, took a long pull at her beer.

  “She’s taken a lot of things out of the closet. Some couch pillows. Photographs. Manoman. Those candlesticks your mom gave her. At least she didn’t take her piano. It looks like she’s left the house, but she’s taken the home away
.”

  Lizzie was touched by this.

  “Yeah,” Miles said, “she left the house, but she took our home away.”

  Maud had told her once, in the early days with Miles, that she thrilled to hear their love transmuted into lyrics and music. Those were her words. Thrilled. Transmuted. Lizzie, still with Jake then, had said, “Jake ever tries such a thing, he’ll be out on his ear.”

  “Lizzie?”

  “You guys have a fight or something?”

  “We’ve had far worse fights than the one we had last night, night before last. I mean, it wasn’t even a fight.”

  “The night Tucker’s Larks was on?”

  “Or maybe it was that audition. Her agent sent her out for some commercial that was a bust. And she was pissed about the size of her role on Tucker’s Larks. I tell her she should be glad she’s working, but she keeps talking about how it used to be. She took the plates! No, here are the white ones.” Lizzie heard the sounds of cupboard doors opening and shutting, drawers yanked open and closed. “Left glasses. Took the wooden spoons. She headed your way, you think?”

  Since moving to Los Angeles Maud had come to visit Lizzie often. But never before had she arrived with candlesticks, a Navajo wall hanging, wooden spoons.

  “I’ll let you know if I hear from her, Miles.”

  She wandered out onto the porch and stared up at Sam’s trailer. She’d relied on Sam a lot, in the early days. He was the steady father her girls had otherwise never had. She used to talk to him about everything, and she was tempted, now, to climb the hill, ask him what she should do if Maud was indeed heading her way. But she couldn’t face what that trailer would look like after all these years of neglect, that bed where she’d had some happy times with Sam, years ago, before she’d met Blair, and had Hannah. It all went so fast. Life is what happens while you’re busy making other plans, John Lennon crooned in her ear. She sighed. Everyone had assumed she would live in Paris, wear black, paint huge canvases, become famous. But instead of fame she had children. Instead of Paris she had Southwest Ink, whose prestige and marketing savvy turned her paintings into lucrative greeting cards.