by Julia Stoops
Nelson’s skin smarts in the sun. His nails are dirty, and he’s sticky with sweat. The trees hang still. The front garden weeds are the color of straw. On days like this he can close his eyes and imagine he’s walking across a pale Pacific island, or standing in a desert in Nevada ringed with distant mountains. Somewhere scoured clean by heat and light, where mold and mildew can’t grow, and neither can regret or fear. But today his eyes don’t close on a desert vision because he’s heading for the diner. Squint-bright light, and the smell of dry grass and hot pavement.
A truck backs into the tiny parking lot of the bindery on Twelfth. Fumes and dust and the driver watching his mirrors so he doesn’t clip the sign. A dime shines from the gutter, and Nelson smiles back. He thought he’d be fixing up Deirdre’s place alone, but the others have been great.
“Can’t wait to see IT,” she says, and she leans across the counter for a kiss.
“The water heater’s ready,” he says, “and Franky and Jen found some furniture, which they’re repainting as I speak. You’re getting a brown chair with red rungs and a red chair with brown rungs. Because that’s the paint we have.”
“Grand. And a sofa?”
“Found one. It’s kind of a pistachio green color. But a bed’s going to be harder to find.”
She says, “Can’t we use yours?” and he explains it won’t fit down the basement stairs. And Jen refuses to unseal the front door. The camp cot will still have to do.
He adds, “It’s a great place, but boy it’s hot in the afternoon.”
“It’ll be good practice,” she says, and points to their favorite booth, “for when I’m burning in hell. Can you stay a bit?”
She sets the juices down, and they slide into the seats.
There’s more color in her skin than three months ago.
She says, “What?” to his gaze.
He sips his juice. He gets grapefruit every time now. “What went wrong, sweetheart?”
She frowns. “When?”
“You were so thin when you arrived. So down and out.”
She flips back her hair. “Told you. I was hitchhiking. Lost me money. But look how far I’ve come. And I’m getting a darkroom soon! I can’t wait to print photos of you.”
He says, “Why didn’t you just find an Irish consulate?”
She laughs, then pauses. “It didn’t occur to me. Anyway, if I’d done that, I wouldn’t have met you, right? It was fate.”
“Fate?” The word sounds nonsensical. “But weren’t you afraid?”
“Sometimes. But that’s to be expected, isn’t it? What are you most afraid of, John?”
“Like, a phobia?”
“No, not like that. An existential fear.”
His thighs are stuck sweaty to the vinyl. “Fear. Um. Well, I suppose I’m always afraid of what’s happening to the planet.”
Her eyes wait.
“That we’ll reach a point of no return. Environmental collapse. Disasters, starvations, enormous suffering.”
Her eyes wait more.
“Not that there isn’t enormous suffering already,” he adds. “But what a tragic waste it would be. When we have the freedom and ability to make things better, and instead we destroy everything that’s so beautiful.”
She plays with her straw. “Maybe it’s inevitable.”
“Excuse me?”
“Perhaps,” she says, “it’s our fate. To destroy ourselves and take everything down with us. Except for the cockroaches, of course.”
She’s been replaced with a strange twin. “You’re joking, right?”
She drops her eyes to her glass, brings them back up. “No.”
“Kind of an outdated concept, don’t you think? Fate?”
“It’s timeless.”
He smiles, shakes his head, and crosses his arms on the table. Leans forward. “Deirdre,” he says, trying to keep the condescension out of his voice. He peels one thigh off the vinyl seat. “Scientific revolution? Past couple of hundred years? It’s liberated us from ideas like that, right?” He gestures around. “Look at what we’ve achieved now that we’ve gotten out from under the idea that we have no control over our future.”
“This diner?” she says.
“You know what I mean. Communications. Medicine. Travel. The social freedoms that come from being emancipated from superstition.”
She shakes her head and smiles. “Ah, it’s all temporary. And control is just an illusion.”
“An illusion?” He says it too loud and he brings his voice down. “And what about responsibility? If you believe in fate, you can’t take responsibility.”
She drops her chin into her hand. “Maybe it’s not like that. Perhaps we’re a monstrosity. Perhaps nature will let us destroy ourselves, so it can start over.”
“No.” He shakes his head. Across the room the cappuccino machine hisses steam into Mr. Nguyen’s stainless-steel jug. Three girls are at the counter, midriffs showing, the flares on their jeans printed to look like sixties embroidery. The exuberant self-expression of a generation ago co-opted, mass-produced, and fed back to today’s willing consumers.
Nelson’s eyes are gritty. “No.” He turns back to Deirdre. She’s staring at him.
“Oedipus,” she says.
“What about him?”
She takes her chin off her hand, sits up straight. “He was wise, right?”
He jiggles his foot under the table. “Uh, I guess so.”
“He used his wisdom to defeat the Sphinx and save Thebes.”
“Okay. Yeah.”
“Well, his wisdom’s a crime.”
“A crime?”
“It’s his undoing. That’s the whole point of the story. It disrupts the natural order. Then comes patricide and incest. Nature won’t tolerate it, and the time comes when his fate is revealed, and he is plunged into a living hell.”
“What? What’s that got to do with—”
She says, “We think we’ve gotten the upper hand, you see, that we’ve subdued nature and fate. But nature and fate bide their time, then they bite back.”
The sore place is awakening in Nelson’s chest. He peels his arm off the tabletop.
Deirdre shrugs. “Too much knowledge is a crime, see? Better to stay ignorant.” She taps a finger on the table, then points. “In fact, as Silenus said, best not to be born at all.”
“Christ. How can you even say that?”
Diner patrons look up, stare for a moment, look away.
Tender Deirdre, who makes Garden of Eden love, makes him cups of tea, takes pastries to the homeless guys—it’s like a fissure has opened and strange goo is oozing out of her head.
“Sorry,” he says, quieter. “I’m just surprised, that’s all. You’re being so—so nihilistic.”
“Hmm,” she says, and looks out the window. Squints in the sun. “More of a pessimist, really.”
“Whatever. It’s—it seems too cavalier. Too carefree.”
Her laugh is sour. “Hardly carefree.” She glances back at him. “Death’s the big thing, isn’t it. The one place we’re all heading.”
“So this is your big fear?” he says.
Her eyes follow cars along Division Street. “Don’t want it to be.”
“But it’s normal to be afraid of death,” he says.
She leans toward him and her face goes wide and bright. “Hey, you know that part in Peter Pan where Peter is marooned on a rock, and the tide is rising and he knows he’s going to drown?”
The table’s pink Formica swims with overlapping swirls. How does she make him feel like he’s never read a thing? “No.”
“Ah. It was probably left out of the Disney version. So he’s standing there and his heart is pounding and the water is lapping at his toes. And it suddenly occurs to him, ‘To die would be an awfully big adventure.’”
The points of her smile are like blades. The sore place swells in his chest.
“Isn’t that brilliant?” she says. Her face is full of reflected pink. “What
if you could live like it were true?”
Burning damp stings his eyes. She takes his floppy, confused hands in hers. “You all right, love?” She passes him a paper napkin. It’s dry and comfortable against his face. “Forget it, okay?” she says. “It’s just silly talk.”
The screwed-up napkin is damp in his hand. Out the window an afternoon breeze shudders the elm leaves. Her face has gone soft with concern. He breathes in deep, and the sore place cools like a coal dropped on snow. “It’s okay,” he says.
As long as he can hold her hand. As long as they love each other, it’s all going to be okay.
They’d set up fans in two of the windows, but it’s still ninety outside and an oven inside. Everyone’s being a trouper, trying not to complain. Nelson is grateful.
The fans thrum the air, and the tiny fridge Fetzer picked up outside a house on Belmont whines as it tries to keep on top of its task. It makes it hard to hear the music, a John Coltrane CD they’d bought her, along with the boombox, as a housewarming present. And Jen had made Deirdre some business cards and handed them to her in an envelope with a shrug. “Since, you know, you’re having that show.”
Just her name, address, phone number. Black on white. A simple design, but it looks good. Deirdre had laughed at the cards like they were quaintly absurd. Then she put a hand over her mouth and mumbled, “Jaysus. I’m really staying, aren’t I?”
“That’s good of you,” Nelson had said to Jen.
Deirdre’s phone rings and she sits down on the red chair with brown rungs. “Sylvia! Come over! We’re having a housewarming. Me new place.”
Of course. He should have thought to invite Sylvia himself.
Jen splits a bag of ice and tumbles it into the cooler.
Fetzer brings in another fan, an old standing rotary. “Bathroom door,” he says to Nelson. “To pull cooler air from the shaded side.”
Nelson helps him set up the fan. “Thanks,” he says to Fetzer. “Really. I appreciate it.”
Four beers, and Nelson has to hold on to the back of the sofa. “Must be the heat,” he says, and he starts laughing.
“Whoa!” says Franky, and he catches the rotary fan before it hits the floor.
Christ. Tripping over the cord already. Now that he’s up, his bladder is urgently full. “Back in a minute,” he says.
The sound of heels clangs up the metal stairs. Must be Sylvia, finally.
“Least no one can get up here unnoticed,” says Fetzer.
Nelson closes the bathroom door and unzips. Fetzer’s always worrying about ambushes.
He lifts the toilet seat. “PUT ME DOWN!” is lettered in sharpie underneath, and he laughs.
It’s quieter in here, and not as hot. The air smells of bleach, and a cool light glows off the new aqua-blue shower curtain.
When he comes out there’s a new microwave perched on top of the salvaged fridge, and Sylvia’s sitting in his place on the pale pistachio sofa. Franky’s taking a phone photo of her and Deirdre, arms around each other, lifting their beers in a toast.
“Oooh, let’s see,” says Dee, and Franky hands her the phone.
Jen’s lying on the floor, her head on a cushion, a beer balanced on her stomach, chatting with Fetzer. Fetzer’s on the brown chair, his feet up on the red one. The music’s easier to hear now that they’ve turned off one of the window fans. Franky takes a bite of his raspberry popsicle, sits back down on the cot, and it squeaks like crazy. Gotta oil the thing. Sometimes it squeaks so much when they make love, they burst out laughing.
Things are so much better. When Nelson joined them six years ago, it wasn’t like this. There was no resting. No sweet times. It was anger and fear and sleepless nights crawling around with black on his face. It was striving to prove himself. It was arguing about tactics. And sometimes it was pure, simple panic. And things coming out of himself that made him wonder what sort of person he’d be if he was pushed to the edge.
Like the last time they were helping build tree-sit platforms. Getting ready to send two comrades up into hemlocks as wide as upturned buses. Nelson was carrying heavy coils of rope down a gully. Jen was fifty feet in front, and Fetz was uphill on the other side of the gully with the others. Jen had reached the stream at the bottom when the guy appeared from behind a giant root ball. Suspenders, no belt, frayed pant legs. A logger. The guy grabbed Jen’s pack, pulled it off. Then the second guy appeared. With a rifle. They turned her pack upside down. Tools fell out. “Fucking greenies fucking everything up” echoed through the forest. The coils of rope tumbled from Nelson’s arms. He knew this was how it was going to end. This was what Lise would read in the papers. What they’d tell his dad when they broke the news. What they’d tell Craig.
Jen was running, but the rifle was already balanced on a shoulder, an eye to the scope, and the futility of it all was pulling at Nelson’s knees, sucking him down.
The forest filled with the sound of the others crashing through the undergrowth, and the loggers roaring “. . . fucking idiots need to be taught whose forest this is . . .” Then someone shrieked, “John!” and next thing he knew he was moving. The wrecking sense of futility was gone, and he only knew a pounding need to get between Jen and that rifle. The bang was so loud he almost fell over, but he wasn’t hit, and when he looked up she was still ahead, panting and grunting. Roots tripped him, the stream’s bank slid away under his feet, branches whipped his face, but he gained on her till she wheeled around and lifted a broken branch over her head. She threw the branch sideways. “Fuck! Dude! I thought you were one of them.” She grabbed his hand and together they stumbled all the way to the road.
Everyone made it to the van alive. “They were just trying to scare us,” Fetzer had said. He was the only one not shaking too much to drive, so he drove, even though it was Ralph’s van.
Nelson still wonders if Fetzer wasn’t just saying that to calm them down.
And later that night when they huddled together and drank soup and gave each other backrubs, Nelson said he couldn’t understand why the sorest place was between his shoulder blades. Everything else hurt, but his back felt like someone had stood on him in heavy boots.
Corynn dug her thumbs around his scapula. He had a huge crush on her, but she hadn’t entered his mind when he was running. Strange what the body does when the brain can’t think.
“You were bracing for a bullet,” said Fetzer. And everyone went quiet. Having a vet on board with jungle experience wasn’t just sorta interesting anymore.
“Nelson!” says Deirdre, and she’s patting the space that’s opened up between her and Sylvia on the sofa. “You dreamy ninny, come sit down!”
“And congratulations,” says Sylvia. She also pats the sofa.
Nelson just smiles and pulls another beer from the sloshy ice in the cooler. He pops the cap on his way over to Dee and Sylvia and their welcoming faces.
There’s a lot to be grateful for.
31: JEN
The bald dude holds open the basement door and gives me that look.
“Forget it,” I say, “I’ve got to finish this blog post.”
“We need the extra pair of hands,” he says.
“Building her stupid darkroom is not on my to-do list.”
Fetzer’s outline is portly against the light. “The sooner this gets done, the sooner I’m back on the newsletter.”
He has a point. I grab my coffee and a paper and follow him out the door.
But—no one’s at the car. “So where are they?” I ask.
Fetzer stomps up the metal stairs. He bangs on Deirdre’s door, yells, “We said nine a.m.,” and stomps back down so hard the stairs wobble.
“I told him we’d give them an hour to get this lumber.” He holds up a forefinger. “One hour.”
Mug of coffee in my right, Seattle Times upside down in my left. “I’m sick of him sleeping in. We’re not getting through the papers.”
Fetzer leans his butt against the Toro, folds his arms. “I noticed.”
Use
d to be if we got behind on shit Nelson would start nagging. Now it’s like he doesn’t even care.
Deirdre’s door opens, and I hate the way Fetz and I look up like a couple of baby birds, so I flip the Times in the air and catch it right way up. BUSH VOWS VICTORY IN WAR ON TERROR.
Two pairs of feet on the stairs, syncopated and light and hollow, and Nelson says, “Sorry,” in a breathy voice. But he isn’t. He doesn’t give a rip ’cause he gets to flatten her into the mattress whenever he wants. Squeak squeak squeak through my bedroom wall. Aie.
Nelson spins his keys on his finger and says, “I’ll drive.” Breezy, like he’s James fucking Bond. Dee flips the seat forward and climbs in the back.
Great, and I’m in the middle. Could go in the back with Dee, but—crap. She’s brought that fucking camera, too. The thing’s as heavy as a brick, and almost as big. Some obsolete analog piece of junk she found on eBay.
“Leave it at home some time, Deirdre.”
“Now why would I want to do that?” she says, and smiles like I made a joke. She murmurs near my ear. “No need to be shy.” That mint on her breath again.
The camera shutter clicks then the springs squeak from her bouncing back on the seat. No, don’t remind me, please.
“I know you love it,” she says, all soft and flirty, and my heart lurches and my coffee almost tips over.
“Know how I can tell?” she says, and I’m about to say I’m a heavy sleeper and I have no idea what you’re talking about, but she says, “You’re brushing your hair more.”
“Am not,” I say, and swat her hand off my damn hair.
Ugh. I so should have banged on the wall the first time I heard them.
Fetzer sinks into the seat next to me, slams the door and says, “Did you notice I’ve been brushing my hair more?” He slides his hand over his shiny dome and Deirdre giggles.
“We all in?” says Nelson. He switches on the GPS, turns the car around with one hand lazy on the wheel, and heads for Twelfth.
Used to be if he was late for anything he’d at least apologize.
Newspaper on my knee. “Listen up, people.” I say. “‘President Bush vowed victory in the ‘first great struggle of the new century’ today as he led the nation in marking the shattering terrorist attacks of one year ago.’”