by Sands Hall
She unfolded the aerogram. . . . so amazed to hear of Maud’s decision. It all seems so sudden. Your father muses that she waited until we were out of the country to “make her move,” but I tell him he’s making things, as usual, overly significant. (And he wonders where Maud gets her tendency to ascribe deeper meanings to absolutely everything.) Do keep us posted on how she’s doing. We’ve been so worried about her, in spite of our initial disapproval wanting her to be happy with Miles, but hearing so often that she’s not. . . .
Lizzie shoved the letter into her coat pocket. She’d read it later. She stared for a long time at the piles of newspaper in the back of Sara’s car and then headed slowly up the hill. Just how much Sara’s presence at Sam’s encouraged her to put in her own appearance was a thought she pushed from her mind. The last time she’d seen Sam was the day Maud had arrived, weeks and weeks ago. She’d spent the day trying to paint, keeping the door to her studio open, and had begun to seriously think about calling the highway patrol when, late in the afternoon, Maud had driven up, looking tired and terribly thin. She’d spent the two nights on the road, she said, and hearing that Miles had phoned at least six times, she’d walked, slouch-shouldered, into the house to call him. Sam and Luna had come down to welcome her. Maud got off the phone from Miles, crying. Her long black hair fell about her face. “You don’t want to see me like this,” she told Sam. And Sam had said, gravely, in the way that made Lizzie love him so much, “I would always want to see you.”
Lizzie knocked on the trailer’s screen door. Sara opened the door. “Hey,” Lizzie said. “How is he?”
“See for yourself.” Sara stood back to let her in.
During the brief time Lizzie and Sam had been lovers she’d often visited the caboose. She was amazed how much, fifteen-odd years later, the place looked the same, if a good deal messier. The piles of books, National Geographic, and other magazines had grown so high that actual aisles threaded through them. His collection of stones now completely covered the broad windowsill. Beading projects, along with strips and rounds of cut leather, still consumed the card table.
Lizzie made her way to the back, where the bed was, and where she could hear Summer chattering away. Summer was lying across the bottom of Sam’s mattress, her arm around Luna. “Ma!” she said, startled. “You never come here.”
“Lizard!” The way Sam shifted showed it hurt him to move. “How’s my girl?” His voice was slurred. Lizzie noticed, aghast, that one side of his mouth hung a little lower than the other.
“She’s not your girl,” Summer said, “I am. And Luna is.”
As if to emphasize this point, Luna put her muzzle on Summer’s knee, peering up at her through rheumy eyes.
Sam nodded. “You’re right, Summer, as you often are.”
Summer relaxed against the back wall of the trailer. Lizzie waited in the doorway. Sara’s presence behind her made her feel flimsy. “How are you, Sam?”
Sam waved a hand. “And Maud? How’s she doing?”
“I think she’s fine, Sam.”
“She came to watch my soccer game,” Summer said. “She has a really loud voice. When she cheers you can hear her in Timbuktu.”
“She phones in the middle of the night sometimes, when she can’t sleep.” Lizzie’s mind was whirring, wondering if and when Sam had had another stroke. “We found her a little house in town. Next we’ll get her a kitten.”
“She has a job!” Summer bounced on the bed. “She’s playing the piano. But we can’t go see her cuz it’s a bar.”
“You tell her I’m glad for her.” Sam’s face was the proverbial road map. Some of the roads became highways when he smiled. He fingered the piece of thin leather around his throat, which had on it, Lizzie knew, a single turquoise bead. It emphasized how scrawny his neck had become. He looked as if he was having trouble breathing. “And how are you doing, Lizard?”
“Doing?”
“Well, it’s a little unexpected, I don’t doubt.”
“What’s unexpected?” Summer asked.
“Maud coming,” Lizzie said. “But it’s fine.” If Sara and Summer were not there she would sink to her knees and press her forehead into the mattress. She sat on the bed. “It brings up stuff. I won’t say it doesn’t.”
“ ‘Mom and Dad always liked her better,’ ” Sam said.
“That was a long time ago, Sam.”
“Whose dad?” Summer said. “Mine or Hannah’s?”
Sam pushed with a shaking hand at one of the pillows beneath his head, keeping his face turned towards Lizzie.
“Sometimes I do feel like I want my life back.”
She heard Sara sigh. Sam kept his eyes on her.
“That sounds silly.” There was another long pause and Lizzie added, “She’s so sad.”
“Maybe you have a lot of things she doesn’t.” Again the words were slurred, the meaning sometimes jumbled, and Lizzie had to concentrate to understand what Sam was saying. “And maybe she has some things you don’t. But you’ve caught a little heaven for some time now. Maybe it’s time to give some.”
“I could give her something,” Summer said.
Sara’s brown eyes reminded Lizzie of Jake’s.
“And we loaned her some furniture,” Summer added.
“I’m not sure that’s what Sam means.” Lizzie stood. “But you’re the one that maybe we should worry about. What do you need? What does he need, Sara?”
Sara shook her head. “He won’t say. He’d be in terrible pain and never say.”
“It’s just a cold. Sara’s feeding me bark tea and corn pudding, saying the Indian ways will put me right again.”
“Sure. Bark tea.” Sara laughed. “Try Lipton’s finest.”
“Don’t be such a stranger,” Lizzie said. “We eat dinner every night, and we love to have you.” Which sounded too formal and barely scraped the surface of what she meant.
Sam lifted his hand in goodbye. His wrist was thin as a twig.
“Come along,” she said to Summer, who moaned and fussed but came along. Luna, following her, fell rather than jumped off the bed. Summer squatted beside her.
“Stupid old dog,” she said, smooching Luna. “You want to walk us home?”
Luna followed them to the door. “What’s happened?” Lizzie said, low-voiced, to Sara.
“It’s another BIA, TIA, whatever they’re called. I just happened to drop by, he was on the floor.” She sounded faintly reproachful. “He won’t fuss. You know how he is.”
When Sam had his first stroke, two years ago, Lizzie had been with Jake. It was Jake’s sister who’d told them about TIAs, short for some impossible string of words. “He’ll look bad and his speech will be impaired right after,” Sue told her, “and then in a few hours or a day he’ll look better. Over time, though, they’ll run him down.”
“As always, it’s ‘No doctor, no hospital,’ ” Sara was saying. “I told him I’d get a medicine man up here, but he’s resisting that. He’s between the old ways and his own ways and your world’s ways. I’m afraid he’ll fall between the cracks. No care, no comfort from anywhere in the circle. So here we are. Bark tea.” She shook her head.
Summer tugged Lizzie’s hand. “You said we were going.”
“I’ll see you Tuesday in class,” Lizzie said to Sara, who nodded, benign and solid.
The dog’s curve of white tail acted like a beacon, zigzagging ahead of them down the slope in the dusk. Summer skipped up the porch stairs, turning at the door to yell, “Go home, Luna.” The dog stared, panting, then headed back up the hill.
Jeep sat at the kitchen table, an open book and a notebook in front of her. Theo had hold of her calf and was bouncing up and down, crooning. Lizzie got herself a beer. “How on earth can you study with him hanging on you?”
“Remember that class I told you I might sign up for?”
“How long has Sara been here? Did you hear her drive up?”
“Couple of hours.” Jeep packed up her books. “I’m lear
ning all these things about plants. You have no idea what we’ve forgotten, or what doctors have replaced with really icky drugs. Tomorrow we’re going on a field trip.”
She gave Theo a kiss. “Maud called and said thanks for the invite to the game, she loved it, and can she take a rain check for dinner. She wondered if you might want to bring the kids to trick-or-treat in her neighborhood next week.”
“Good idea. How’s she liking the Garter?”
“She doesn’t seem to hate me for hauling her in there. And Barney seems happy.” Jeep shrugged into her jacket, an ornate leather belted affair that always struck Lizzie as being too big, and too much, for Jeep’s girlishness. “I keep asking her to stay after, have a shift drink with the rest of us, but she’s always too tired. She says she doesn’t sleep.”
“No use asking you if you want dinner.” With Theo crooning on her hip, Lizzie took hamburger out of the fridge. “But no, you’ve got AA.”
“I’ve got AA.”
Lizzie walked her out to the porch. Jeep paused, hugging her backpack. “I know you’ll think this is corny, but I’m happy.” She turned her face to the sky, as if she could feel some radiance aimed specifically towards her. “Thank God.”
Lizzie moved restlessly. Forwhatweareabouttoreceive, her father, asked by her mother to say grace, would mutter. LettheLordmakeustruly thankful. AaaMen. Once, twice a year—Thanksgiving, Christmas. Guests often kept their heads bowed, expecting more than this hurried benediction. She remembered the lowered eyelids, the feeling that there was something surreptitious, even ridiculous, about bringing up God at the dinner table. It was at their mother’s insistence, she was certain, that God was invoked at all.
She waved Jeep off and gave in to Summer’s pleading to let them watch a video while they ate dinner. She nursed Theo, read the newspaper, kept half an eye on The Secret Garden. She supposed this was what she meant when she told Sam she wanted her life back. Evenings such as these had been interrupted by Maud’s month-long stay, and by the emotions her sister seemed to swim through on a fairly continual basis.
She brought the girls fruitsicles, put Theo to bed, and started in on the dishes, though it was Hannah’s turn. Yes, she told herself, it was nice to have her house to herself again. Although it reminded her of times with Jake. He’d told her once how much he loved these evenings. Respite, he said, from the frenetic activities of rehearsal and performance.
She stuck her head into the den. “Bedtime,” she said, but was drawn for a moment by the bright images chasing each other around the screen. She wished she could head out to the Billy Goat Saloon, challenge some bony cowboy to a game of pool. She’d beat him, as she almost always did, or at least used to. And then she would follow up on the promise the game would have offered: provocative leans across the pool table, long haunches, tight rear ends, taunting smiles. She’d go home with him, whoever he was. It had been years, long before Theo, since she’d done that. Before AIDS had made it hard to be spontaneous. Years since she’d gone to bed with someone else so drunk they didn’t really remember or care whose lips and body they found some comfort in.
She could smell the bar: the smoke, the beer, the sweat of men who would have come straight from work. The jukebox booked for hours at a time, the speakers blasting, making everybody yell. Smoke swirling above the green felt of the three pool tables, lit by those low overhead lamps where a Coors stained-glass river moved but never went anywhere. She’d bum a cigarette from Cody, behind the bar, and look for a cowboy with legs she could crawl like a ladder from the side, when she got him back to his bed, which would not be made, in a house where there would be a pile of empty beer cans next to the fridge. They’d get it on fast and easy and then she could come home and forget how different Jake had been in every regard. No, she almost laughed, Jake had been no lean cowboy. She never would have dreamed she’d have taken to his muscle and brawn and darkness, liking her men wiry, ropy, concave, and blond. Jake was the opposite of almost all those things. He even made the bed most mornings. He had made her aware of the mess in her own house so that now she could hardly bear it any way but neat. He’d taught Hannah something about table manners and picking up after her-self. He’d taught Lizzie a different way of looking at the world. And maybe he’d made it impossible, ever since, for her to want what she’d always thought she’d wanted. But riding her cowboy, making him ride her, maybe she would stop thinking that there was something she could be doing differently than she was, or than she had, or than she should.
“What are you looking at, Ma? You look scary.”
Lizzie dropped her eyes away from the TV and found Hannah and Summer staring at her. She looked around at the messy den, at the empty basket for the toys and the toys themselves scattered throughout the room, at the piles of books and scattered leaves of newspaper and videos and blankets and diapers and dishes; you picked things up and there they were, waiting to be picked up again.
“I was just thinking.”
“Well, you looked scary,” Summer said. “You looked mad.”
“Not mad,” Hannah said. “Sad, maybe.”
The girls discussed the expression on her face. Lizzie pondered asking Maud to baby-sit some night while she hit the Billy Goat. She wanted to feel that power again. Something like her idea of riding a horse bareback through wind, something purple-black and immense and stormy. When this mood came upon her she wished she could be the one to do the prodding and the thrusting. The urge was something that wanted out, the way that men could pump into something, pump and thrust and twist until they exploded and were spent.
“Mad!” Summer said, sticking her tongue out at Hannah.
“Bedtime, girls.” Lizzie herded them ahead of her, trundled them upstairs to accomplish the nighttime rituals, checked on Theo.
Later she transferred leftover potatoes and a hamburger to a pie tin, covered it with cellophane wrap, and stored it in the refrigerator. Summer could take it to Sam in the morning, before school. She sponged down the counter and started the dishwasher. The sound of its motor filled the kitchen, penetrating even into the den, where she began to pick up toys and straighten the mess. Soon she would be grateful for its homemaking drone. Any moment now she would appreciate the dishwasher’s hum, that nighttime, cozy, shut-in, terribly safe sound.
CHAPTER 16
JAKE
the moon’s a pale sliver in the dark night sky
a sickle’s edge that gleams against the stars
it’s a rustler’s moon
and he gallops towards the border
someone’s going to lose something tonight
Fable Mountain sang its siren song. Took Jake weeks to succumb. Got caught up in solving a software problem. Had to find two days in a row where he didn’t have a gig or rehearsal in the evening, arrange to take those days off. Rich Pack called to say something was weird with the propane heater out at the trailer. After a wasted day Jake discovered a faulty thermocouple. Three days later he’d finally tracked down his pack, stored with his sleeping bag, patched with silver gaffer’s tape, in Sue’s basement. His Ensolite pad, stiff from disuse, was rolled up under their stairs. Finally he was in his Volvo, driving through the brilliant yellow aspens that lined Fable Mountain Pass.
He parked his car at the base of the trail. The path, in his memory a faint marking through rocks and manzanita, appeared ominously worn. Trees nearby seemed faded, jaded, as if people and footsteps and exhaust and admiration had sucked something vital from their leaves. He sighed, heaved his pack up onto his back.
Four hours later, halfway up the trail, he stopped for the tenth, fifteenth time to rest. He was out of shape. He couldn’t believe how much. On the steeper bits he had to bend over every hundred yards to ease the stitch in his side. Of course he’d stayed away from the mountain: Memories lurked everywhere. Smells, sounds, blue sky, pines, reminders of his last hike here. Their hike.
He concentrated on the pain of the pack’s straps pressing into his shoulders, already wondering how
on earth he’d get through the night without a gig, rehearsal, at least his guitar and a beer, TV, to distract him. Off to his right and far below a highway snaked down the mountain. Pale gray ribbon. Colored beads of cars.
In two, out two, in two. He forced himself to breathe in time to his steps. If only the world could be composed of binary systems. Everything would be simpler. Air hit the back of his throat, cool and thin. The sun pressed, warm hands against his face. He stopped again. Far beneath him, gray weather-beaten fences and collapsed roofs of ancient cabins looked like moldering Tinkertoys. Aspens flashed an occasional silver underside, but other than the green of pines most of the trees were canopied in gold. A leaf in autumn is sunlight you could hold in your hand, he thought. It was a spectacular, glorious sight, and he was sick at heart that all the beauty could not make him glad.
In spite of a chill wind, he’d long ago shed shirt and T-shirt. Which led him again to the hike with Lizzie. She’d pulled off her tank top and hiked bare-chested too. Breasts pulled up and out by the straps of her backpack. He’d stepped up to kiss them. Sucked salt sweat off her nipples. Packs off, they found a niche yards from the trail, behind a large rock. Arranging his shorts and shirt beneath her knees, his back against the dirt and granite. Afterward she hiked ahead of him, wearing nothing but her gray socks and hiking boots. They glimpsed a couple a good way off, heading down. Lizzie marched on. He followed, proud of her good looks and her boldness. The woman smiled cheerfully and waved. The man, passing, had examined his beautiful Lizzie in a series of furtive looks.
A strange groan thrummed the back of his throat. With no one around to hear, he let it grow: hum, cry, moan of a cat in heat. But this made him run out of breath again. He stopped, stared down at his boots. Good solid boots. Dependable track in the compact disc player of his mind to skip to. Lots of associations with these boots. Bought them when he was thirty-something, living with Minerva in Nashville—
But there it was: he’d also worn them when he was with Lizzie. Where could he ever live, where could he ever go, that wouldn’t have a thousand reminders. What he had done. Had not done. Could have, should have done differently. All those pictures in his head. Pictographs, petroglyphs, painted and pecked into the stone of his memory. A chisel, a hammer, a maul couldn’t bang them away.