As the truck pulled up the driveway to her mom’s house, Lily sensed that something was different about the place. The harvest workers were just leaving for the day but her mom’s truck was not there. She waved at the men in their dirty coveralls as they pulled the big orange harvester to the side of the barn for the night and covered it with the old tarp. They waved back exhausted, polite waves. Lily and Max went to the front door and she was almost surprised to find that her key still worked. Calling for her mom she ducked in the library, the kitchen, and the bathroom on the main floor, but they were all empty. Dishes sat on the table with what looked like at least two-day-old food crusted to them. Gross, Mom, she muttered to herself as she climbed the stairs. All the bedrooms were empty, so she ducked into the upstairs bathroom because the light was on. No one was in the room, but she glanced around at the disarray. Clothes lay strewn pell-mell like someone packing for a trip in ten minutes. Shorn leg hair clung to the sink in little clumps, her mom’s toiletries basket upturned and rifled through. Sitting on the edge of the counter was a used pregnancy test. Lily picked it up and in a state of disbelief saw two pink lines running parallel like train tracks into the unknown. She checked the box to confirm the pink lines meant exactly what she thought they did.
Lily pocketed the pregnancy test on instinct, like an investigator, or judge. It was proof. But who, exactly, besides her mother, linked to the proof was still in question. She went back downstairs and found Max on tiptoe in the library reaching for an old tin half hidden behind some books. He took it down and handed it over to Lily when he saw her in the doorway.
“I’ve always been good at snooping,” he said, a little embarrassed.
Lily opened the tin and laid out the contents on the coffee table. A little notebook caught her eye, a small, worn blue-leather bound thing with an elastic closure. She flipped through the pages. It was some sort of calendar of days, lots of things scratched out beyond recognition or legibility. She flipped back and forth until she started to make some sense of what was inside. There were a few entries on days that hadn’t been scratched out. No drinking today was underlined on February 3 and then again on March 20 through 25. Only one drink today was crossed out several times on March 26. Smoked a little green today was written on April 1. And under that, thought a lot about the significance of rain. The little notebook struck her as funny at first, all the details laid out about drinking or abstaining. She looked up at Max with a laugh and then as quickly as it had made her laugh the smile drained off her face.
“It’s a vice notebook,” she said. “Like a diary of all the drinking and smoking my mom did.”
“Well,” Max said, letting his full weight flop down on the old couch beside Lily, “at least she’s aware of her vices. That’s a lot more than I could say for a lot of people.”
“Don’t defend her, please,” Lily said. “Not right now.” She put her hand on the outside of her pocket, the secret evidence of the pregnancy test inside.
“Hey, look,” Max said as he sifted through the other items in the tin. “There’s a letter for you here.”
The envelope had been folded several times and the penned Lily on the front had a stained mark where a drop of water, or perhaps a tear, had fallen on the ink. Lily turned the envelope over several times in her hand before opening it up and unfolding the one-page letter inside.
Dear Lily,
My dear, inquisitive daughter. Let me just start by saying I am so incredibly proud of who you are—a bright, funny, independent spirit. I know you get frustrated by not knowing about your father, and I wish more than anything that I could answer all the questions you have. But the truth is that he was simply a blip on your timeline. He was not a nice man, and his contribution to your genetic self is probably the best thing he ever did in his life. Life is full of these kind of quandaries, and some of the answers we seek are truly better left undiscovered. You left me two months ago to live with Boomer and Max, and I don’t blame you for the decision. But all I can ask is that you accept me for who I am—your flawed, fiery mother who loves you unconditionally, forever. Please consider coming back to me my fawn, my deer, dear.
I love you,
Momma
Lily folded the letter back up in its envelope, stood up, and walked over to the mantle where the egg collection sat, patiently waiting, as always. She peered in through one of the portals and for the first time thought about how each of those eggs had been the promise of life at some point. They were the baby birds that never were, and they were beautiful and still and perfect in their frozen state. Their life had been drained leaving behind only the specter of possibility. She opened the lid and felt a trembling in the house, her fingers shaking like she had drunk too much coffee. She thought for a moment she might faint, and then as quickly as it began, it stopped.
“Did you feel that?” she whirled around and asked Max.
“Feel what?” he said, looking up from the contents of the box.
Just then a loud thwack rattled the old, wavy glass of the library’s picture window. The two looked up and saw a flash as if something had been thrown at the window.
“Now that, I heard,” Max said, getting up.
Outside they looked around and saw no one. Then Lily noticed a brightly colored form lying still below the window. She ran outside to get a better look. It was a robin-sized, orange and slate-blue bird lying motionless on the ground. Lily put her hand on its chest to see if she could feel its heartbeat, but felt nothing but the soft, warm feathers under her hand. Stillness. She admired the orange of its breast feathers with the black band like a broad necklace around its neck. The bird had broken its neck on impact, so when she picked up its form the head rolled to the side as though no longer connected. It occurred to Lily in that moment, as she held the still warm body of the bird, that life was here and gone as quickly as that. She or anyone she loved could be gone tomorrow and there was nothing she could do about it. She set the bird down and started digging a hole over at the base of the white oak across the driveway. As she dug, the dirt under her nails filling in under the paint, she decided that she would give her mother another chance. There were just too many uncertainties in life to not accept the imperfect, flawed love she was offered. The pregnancy test shifted in her pocket and she felt suddenly protective of her mother. Across the field she saw the blind harrier flying low along the fences, dropping into the grass for a successful kill. If that creature could make it work for so long, it seemed to Lily that both she and her mother could find their way in this new darkness of uncertainty. She wiped the dirt off on her pants and brushed the rest from her palms. The next order of business was to find out where Alice, pregnant with a stranger’s child yet again, had found herself flung off to.
Road Women
Tucson, Arizona, 1994
Sal woke to the layered sounds of alarms and beeps. Her eyes focused slowly on the hanging tubes and machines littering the hospital room. There was the sound of a robot breathing nearby her head, the strange, even, compression of air in and out in a plastic bladder. She tried to move but her body was tethered in many places—her ankles were cuffed by inflating and deflating sock-like things, her arms tacked down by multiple tubes attached to the arteries in her upper arms. She felt no pain, but in a way that made her think that she had been delivered so many drugs there had to be a walloping amount of pain underneath the numbness. She looked down and noted all her arms and legs were intact.
A nurse came in and gave her a weak, tired smile. She looked at Sal as a specimen, making eye contact but at the same time checking the movement and size of her pupils in both eyes.
“Welcome back,” she said. “You took quite a ride down that canyon, I heard.”
Sal tried to make an affirmative noise, but the sound got caught up in a gravely sludge in her throat. She tried clearing her throat to say, “I feel so stupid,” but all that came out was a little “ugh.”
“No need to answer me,” the nurse said, patting the side of the bed but not actually touching Sal, as though she might damage her if she were to make contact. “We’re used to one-sided conversations here in the ICU.”
Sal moved her head a little to the side and blinked slowly. Lines of green, red, and blue lights lit up switchboards like a Lite-Brite, an echo of light trailing off each in a blur. She remembered Alice writing her and telling her about the Lite-Brite she’d purchased for Lily when she was five and how Lily immediately made a series of glowing insects. Alice had been so proud of her little naturalist, she’d said in the letter. She was in awe of what magic resided in her daughter’s brain. She wondered where they were, if someone had miraculously been able to contact them about her accident. How long had she been in the ICU? Was Alice listed as an emergency contact? She doubted it, but the idea that Alice and Lily might be outside in the lobby waiting for her made her feel better. The thought lingered and she pictured them sitting side by side, reading books, as the lights faded on the machines and the sounds of the constant little alarms faded back into dark silence.
A hallway of fading souls away, Alice stood before the vending machine, wiping at tired, sore eyes. None of the brightly colored packages appealed to her. She put her hands on her hips, letting her palms slide forward onto her belly in secret acknowledgement over her uterus. Don’t get attached, she told herself. The smells of stringent cleaners mingling with any and all odors produced by hundreds of sick bodies in the hospital were not helping to assuage her nausea.
“Alice Treeble?” A nurse asked in front of the front counter.
“Yes, that’s me.”
“You can come see your friend, now. She’s been transferred up from the ICU and is resting.”
“Great, thanks.” Alice wiped her hands nervously on the front of her dress as though she’d been caught doing something bad.
“Let’s keep this visit brief, as she’s had a rough twenty-four hours, okay?”
“Of course.”
Alice walked into the room and Sal raised an arm a few inches as though to wave. Her tanned skin looked jaundiced under the lights, drained of the vibrant pink that buoyed the color in her cheeks when she was well. She looked a lot older than Alice remembered. The immensity of sickness incited her flight instinct. Pausing just past the threshold of the door, she felt the urge to back out slowly from the room, to run back to the airport, board, and be gone. Instead, she took a deep breath, paused, and took a few careful steps into the room.
“I saw you on the news,” Alice said. “You’re a local legend. The ‘storm rider,’ they called you.”
“My fifteen minutes,” Sal eeked out the words. “Always wondered when I’d get them. Too bad I’m famous for being an idiot.”
“But the thing is,” Alice stopped, unsure how to proceed, “by the time I heard about you on the news I was already here in Tucson.”
“You were?” Sal’s eyebrows rose.
“I got your letter and came straight here.”
“Well, don’t we just have perfect timing,” Sal said.
“A regular Larry and Moe,” Alice said, taking a step forward.
Alice put her hand on Sal’s arm and her sallow skin felt cold to the touch. She looked into her eyes and tried to keep the tears from welling up, but couldn’t stem the flood. All the tears she’d never cried for her parents, for her runaway daughter, they came out one by one and formed a front line, brimming on her lower lids before falling all at once onto the sheets, splashing onto Sal’s cold skin.
“Well, we should be celebrating, not crying,” Sal said. “I’m told I’m not dead.”
“You lost a lot of blood from the head trauma,” Alice said. “They gave you a transfusion.”
“They gave me the extra good blood, I hear.” The gravel in her voice was smoothing out. “It’s gotta be from a triathlete, or something. I’m gearing up for a bike ride, right now.”
“I’m sorry,” Alice said, wiping her tears. “You’re the one recovering, and here I am crying. I’m just really emotional right now.”
“Why?” Sal said, doing her best to wink, “Are you mysteriously pregnant again or something?”
The silence after the joking question hung for a long time in the air, interrupted only by the door of the room whooshing open on its oiled hinges.
“Time to go, Alice,” the nurse smiled. “Our patient needs her rest.”
“Come home with me to Oregon and I’ll take care of you,” Alice said. “I’ll do all the driving, I promise.”
◆
It took another five days before Sal could be released from the hospital. The doctors commended her recovery, said she healed faster after a full transfusion than anyone they’d ever had through their doors. She left with presents from the nurses themselves, people happy to celebrate a recovery from a floor where many people left under a sheet. When Alice helped her out to the car and the front sliding doors opened, the rush of the late summer heat blasted her face, the familiar sensation welcoming her return to the living.
After a full day of driving, the two women stopped in Lake Havasu City for the night, dropped their bags off at a cheap motel room, and took a short stroll over the London Bridge before dinner.
“Too fast?” Alice asked, slowing her already slow pace.
“No, just fine.”
“So, this is the real deal London Bridge, right?”
“That’s what they say. Brought over brick by brick by some chainsaw magnate who just had to have it.” Sal ran her fingers along the stone blocks.
“It’s so strange how Americans long for the castoffs—the antiquity and realness of artifacts from more ancient cultures—but then we turn them into some sort of carnival.”
“You know what they say. You can take the American out of the carnival—”
“—But you can’t take the carnie out of the American.”
The two women stood surrounded by things interfered with by man—the dammed waters of the Colorado, the banished bridge, and the neon promenade lights twinkling on the water. Everything was incongruous and disconnected, out of time, yet when they put their hands together and strolled along watching the water and the stars, it felt like something had finally settled into place. Amongst the rubble and flooded banks, the tourists in fluorescent bikinis and backward baseball hats, the two women took slow steps in synch as counterweight to the bizarre. Their union felt ancient and real.
Back at the motel room, Sal remarked that it never even occurred to her to stay in a motel room the night of the flood.
“You know,” she said, “I think I may have lost my mind a little that night.”
“Well, you had just sent something very brave and frightening,” Alice said.
“You have no idea how many letters I didn’t send,” Sal said. “Before you go giving me too many bravery points.”
“Huh,” Alice cocked her head and laughed. “Me too.”
“But with all that wind I knew there was a storm brewing. I should have known better.” Sal said, rifling through her luggage for answers. “It’s my job to be smarter than the weather.”
“Every storm rider needs a storm, I guess.” Alice slipped out of her dress, pausing naked for a brief moment before stepping into some cotton pajama pants as Sal watched her.
“I’m not sure I’m strong enough for that just yet.” Sal sat down slowly on the bed and raised her eyebrows. “Hot stuff, woman.”
“Well, thank you.” Alice blushed and spread out in the starched sheets reeking of bleach to her pregnant, superhuman nose. She arched her back toward the ceiling, reveling in the silent torture she so clearly inflicted on Sal. Breathing deep, she was able to smell the ink on wallpaper, the old milk curdled on the neck of a baby that had stayed in the room a week ago. As Sal snorted and covered her eyes in mock terror at her naked supine form she wan
ted nothing more than to bring up the pregnancy to Sal, but didn’t know how. And so she just lay with her hands behind her head waiting for an answer to fall from the popcorn ceiling.
The trip northwest back to Oregon over the next few days was a series of gas station snacks, frequent rest stops, and singing along to a series of seventies and eighties mixtapes stashed in Sal’s truck. As promised, Alice did most of the driving, which allowed her the freedom to stop and pee whenever she felt the need. Sal had asked at the beginning of the trip about Lily, and when the answer was a curt, “She doesn’t want to see me right now,” she let the matter lie. There was plenty of time to uncover the details of the situation.
“Let’s stop in Needles for a minute,” Sal said. “I want to see if this one shop is still there.”
“Sure,” Alice said. “I have to find a bathroom anyway.”
“Do you still have that antique glass case I sent you when you were pregnant with Lily?” Sal said as they pulled up the main street in town.
“Of course. It’s my most prized possession.”
The road had been paved since Sal had last been through and looked less like an old ghost town than it once had. Freshly painted signs hung over shops, swaying slightly with the breeze. Sal scanned them for NAKED ANTIQUES, but couldn’t find the sign. In the location she thought she remembered the shop being, a pediatric dentist’s sign with a toothy, grinning teddy bear swayed in the breeze. She decided to go inside and inquire.
When she came out Alice was scribbling on the back of a postcard. She looked up, a little manic.
“I forgot to tell Lily I was leaving town,” she said. “I need to send this as soon as possible.”
“Needles, Arizona,” Sal laughed. “Where urgent communiqués from women to their loved ones happen all the time.”
“Needles!” Alice looked up. “I had forgotten. I remember that postmark. You know how much I have treasured that gift over the years, right?”
“I’m glad to hear it.” Sal looked sad. “I was going to introduce you to the man whom I got it from, but it sounds like he passed away last year. He was a real character. Owned a shop called NAKED ANTIQUES. Went around naked except for a little modesty cloth.” She cupped where her balls would be. “Interesting guy. Kept a rooster as a pet in the store.”
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