Twisted Tree

by Kent Meyers

  Her hand rises to her mouth. Her eyes stare at him over her knuckles, wide as the eyes of plastic dolls that open, flicking, when you pick them up, that ingenious weight that closes the eyes when the doll lies down for its plastic sleep and opens them, such gravity, to its plastic waking, eyes perennially surprised like ever-budding flowers clicking open, clicking shut. When he was young he ripped the head off one of those dolls once. He was trying to hold it at an angle where the eyes would be half-open, he wanted to see that sleepy look, but the balance was too fine, the mere trembling of his hands enough to throw the eyes all the way open or shut. He tore the head off the doll and flung it at the wall, twirling, eyes opening and shutting, ceiling wall floor ceiling strobing until the head hit the Sheetrock with a thwack. She’s staring at him with those eyes, her hand covering her mouth.

  Hello, Hayley Jo, he says. He lets his voice rise into a high and tender female register. It’s so good to finally meet you.

  She shakes her head, her hand still lifted.

  But Mary is—Mary is—

  He knows what she’s going to say: Mary is a woman.

  Mary is my friend.

  He’s a spinning top batted by a cat. He gapes, paralyzed by the anticipated answer, now meaningless. A single word, and everything veers and skews. He wanted to hear her say it: a woman. It’s ridiculous—my friend—as if friendship can’t be faked. Why can’t anything ever be the way he wants it? He wants to pound the dashboard, stomp his feet, and breathes deeply to gain control.

  Ana is your strength, he drones. Your true self. You ran with Ana, miles and miles. Did Laura stay with you? She didn’t. She couldn’t keep up. If Laura wants you to end your relationship with Ana, it’s because she’s jealous, she’s not your friend. Remember?

  He’s quoting Mary, the long, persistent arguments over Laura. He’d come away from the keyboard exhausted, as if emerging from an overdose of drugs. Dazed, enraged, hardly able to see, he’d go to a Dairy Queen and eat ice cream on a stick, peeling off the chocolate layer with his teeth, sucking the soft interior, conjuring Laura in his mind, inventing arguments. A snapping sound would rouse him, and he’d see that he’d broken the stick, a serrated piece in each of his hands. He’d peer at the other diners, hoping he hadn’t been cursing aloud his Ana’s pathetic loyalty and that little witch who inspired it.

  Mary’s words get through to her. He sees it in her eyes. He shifts in the seat.

  And you finally dumped Laura, he goes on. For Ana.

  He doesn’t want to put her down—she is his Ana after all—but he swells a little. Is it too much to ask that she recognize his victory?

  When she says nothing, he continues, a little sulky: You are Ana. Ana is you. You even sold your rodeo buckle for Ana.

  He expects her to be awestruck with recognition. Instead she says: But your daughter.

  He crumbles. The Continental drifts over the centerline. Her words are hammer blows shattering the world he’s been creating, pulverizing Mary, and he feels himself exposed and writhing. How does she know? He raises his right elbow as if to fend her off.

  Then he realizes what she means: the daughter he mentioned in the store, not his daughter, but the-man-he-made-up’s daughter, the man he’s already abandoned.

  You dumb bitch! he cries.

  He can’t help himself and pounds the steering wheel, forgetting his hand is bruised, and then rubs it on his thigh to ease the hurt. Finally he’s OK again. Everything’s OK.

  I’m sorry, he says. I don’t want us to be fighting. I don’t have a daughter. I made her up.

  Saying it, he thinks maybe she’ll be impressed, but she says: You were lying? About it all? The triceratops? The tree? You just lied about it all?

  Later he will realize he should have laughed. But the accusation is so deep, so intended, that he recoils, pressing against the door.

  I wasn’t lying. I was pretending. It’s OK to pretend.

  She doesn’t respond. He pulls himself erect, but her silence bothers him. Their relationship shouldn’t be like this.

  Just like a woman, Mary, huh? he says. Betrays you the first chance she gets.

  He barks harshly. But she doesn’t even smile.

  Why? she asks.

  He relaxes. They all ask that question. He stares at the faint teapot shape of the oil light, like a genie’s lantern, barely visible under the dashboard’s glass. Then he says:

  Because you want it, Hayjay. Because you need my help.

  I don’t want—

  He’s patient. He says nothing.

  You won’t, she says. Why do you think that?

  He could show her the clippings in the trunk, the rodeo buckle. But that’s for later.

  We’re friends, she says.

  And I’m helping you. Like a friend should.

  She shakes her head.

  No, she says. No. You’ve got a soul.

  Every time he thinks he has the conversation on track, she comes up with something that derails him. He lifts his hand from the steering wheel, and for just a moment they’re both convinced he’s going to backhand her across the face. She shrinks against the door, so small she looks like she’s folding into herself, like some magic origami bird that, just when it achieves its birdness, with one more fold will disappear entirely.

  He gets control of his hand, forces it to grip the steering wheel.

  Godgodgodgodgod, he chants. I knew a woman prayed all the time and never saw God. And then she died.

  He snaps his fingers, but the effect isn’t as dramatic as he wants, barely audible, absorbed by road noises and moving air. And because it isn’t dramatic enough to snap the memory into cynical show, he remembers his mother in her coffin, how small she looked, swallowed by taffeta, a doll-like thing sinking away from him forever. If he holds on to the memory, he knows the face will sink further and further into the whiteness, smaller and smaller: a dot, a period, a point, a nothing.

  Terrified, he shouts at the girl: If God wanted to save you, He’d zap the person starving you! But that’d be you! Don’t you get it? Ana plays the God game better than God does.

  It chases the memory away, leaves him blank and exhausted, but when he looks back at the road again, there’s a highway patrol car parked in a turnout ahead. He almost commands her to duck down. But the patrolman might notice. No one even knows she’s gone, there’s nothing unusual about them, he growls at her not to wave or make a show, and they go by. Cops are so stupid. All the postings he’s left on the Net, all the clues he’s dropped, and they don’t put it together. And here he is, the most wanted man on the freeway, and the idiot in that car only cares about his speed. And she—that was her chance to save herself, and she didn’t take it. She just sat there. She obeyed.

  They drop down the long hill to the Cheyenne River—thin, slow water, the land crumpling into it, creased and broken. He drives, he doesn’t know how far, sunk in gloom, then sees an exit. He takes it, alert again, checking for police and making sure all the doors are locked before running the stop sign at the end of the ramp and swaying onto the crossroad, looking at the girl triumphantly. But she doesn’t seem to have even thought of jumping from the car, she’s just staring into her lap, unimpressed. Sullen again, he checks his gas gauge. He’d filled up in Rapid City, and there’s enough. He drives until he finds a gravel road, and as the car sways over it, he imagines piloting a boat. When he was young, he built model ships and wanted to sail around the world, wanted to see the ocean phosphoresce at night, and glowing fish rise out of it.

  He forces himself back to reality and reaches across the Ana and opens the glove compartment. Candy bars are neatly stacked inside it. He takes one out and removes the wrapper, holding the steering wheel with his knees. He nods.

  Help yourself, he says.

  She shakes her head. Exactly! She clings to Ana. Her little, superior, condescending shake. Actions speak louder than words.

  He crumples the candy wrapper, rolls down his window, throws it out. It disappe
ars in the dust behind him. He rolls the window up.

  Do you think I’m fat? he asks.

  She won’t turn to him. What do you mean? she asks.

  It’s not a hard question, Hayjay. Look at me. Do you think I’m fat?

  That skeletal face looking at him, the bones so clear beneath the skin. He knows she’s going to lie, he feels vulnerable and powerful, excited and debased. She grasps her bony elbows with her thin fingers and hugs herself. He reaches over to turn the air conditioner down.

  No, she says in a timid voice.

  I’m not fat? he asks again.

  You’re OK.

  How about you, Hayley Jo? Are you fat?

  When she doesn’t answer, he nods.

  You sure you don’t want a candy bar? I got Mars. Snickers. Milky Ways?

  She’s turned away from him again. He sees the back of her head shake, her narrow shoulders hunched, the blades sharp under her blouse. He reaches over, shuts the glove compartment, returns both hands to the wheel.

  So, he says. That’s it, then.

  They never deny Ana and take the food. He always gives them the chance—to be unfaithful. To save themselves. But they never do. They’re more faithful than Peter ever was.

  You remember when you used to fish? he asks. You and that boy, Clay?

  She shivers, hugs herself tighter, refuses to acknowledge him. And only a few weeks ago she wanted to tell Mary everything.

  You never said why you stopped. Why did you stop fishing, Hayjay?

  The effect of the question startles him. It’s as if she enters a new realm of silence, some reserve. She scrunches against the door, her head shaking. She’s protecting something.

  He grips the wheel, delighted. What has she hidden, even from Mary? What is he about to discover? What happened—between her and that boy?—that she hasn’t ever told?

  Why did you stop fishing, Hayjay?

  Her hair is so short and thin he can see her scalp beneath it.

  Hayjay? he says gently. You can tell me.

  The road ahead and dust behind, and a single bird of some sort hanging in the air in the distance, and my God, what desolate land. Road and dust and miles, stones spitting up from the tires, he’s probably putting nicks in the car’s paint, the world just chips away and chips away.

  He feels her going further and further into herself. If he presses too hard right now he may never bring her back. Nevertheless, he can’t resist. He opens his mouth to tell her there’s no reason they shouldn’t talk, but she suddenly speaks:

  Don’t use my name.

  You prefer Hayley Jo? he asks.

  Don’t call me anything.

  He wants to chant Hayjay, Hayley Jo, Hayjay, Hayley Jo a dozen times. But he can’t. Her command somehow somehow somehow tamps it down. He lapses finally into silence, the cloud of sullenness he’s been fighting overwhelming him.

  When he’s a woman the Anas talk so freely, they trust him with their secrets, all their dreams and fears, even the littlest ones, the fragments and shards that, put together, make up the puzzle of their lives. On top of the televisions in the motel rooms where he stays, next to the framed pictures of Karen Carpenter and his mother, he arranges the framed collages for each Ana—photographs, and the obituaries that talk of how much they’ll be missed, and news accounts that refer to the I-90 Killer and statements from the cops who claim they’ll catch him. In the stories contained in those clippings he and the Anas will be together forever. It’s something he’s creating. A legacy. He sleeps with Karen and his mother and the Anas gazing at him, and when he wakes in the middle of the night, with the faint light of anonymous towns leaking through the windows, he sees them, without his glasses on, like watchful monuments.

  He has all these worlds, and all of them so partial and so full. It’s up to him to decide when a world is finished. He contains and holds them, and he has so many, it’s a precious thing, a charge. This Ana’s world isn’t full yet, there is some thing she hasn’t said, to Mary or to anyone. She’ll tell him. He wants her to know he’ll remember everything, he’ll carry it inside him so it will never fade. He has in his mind the whole town of Twisted Tree with its streets and windows and eyes, and its people passing each other, bearing lives that no one else knows. Everyone has a life that no one else knows. He’s just better at it, that’s why he was chosen, a dozen tongues of flame on him alone. He’d like to ask her to draw a map for him, to help him remember, a memento mori from her hand. But she wouldn’t do it. He doesn’t need a map, of course. He has it all laid out. With the Internet he could go to Twisted Tree and find her house, it’s on Red Medicine Creek Road, and the Mattinglys just south, and Shane Valen just south of there, and the Morrisons, Laura’s parents, are a few miles north. He could identify the patterns, he’s sure he could, he loves the thought of details clicking into place, turning into revelation as he locates their geography.

  He has it all. All the little pieces. Except, he thinks, for one. He doesn’t know what it is, but he felt it almost emerging that moment ago—a thing she hasn’t told anyone. When she tells him, he’ll make her life whole and faultless. She’s so withdrawn, so curled up. Why can’t they understand? It’s not the living of their lives that matters but what he makes of them.

  He gathers those lives and holds them, then he scatters them back out: little pieces on the Web, fragments that someone scrupulous and sensitive and smart enough could put together. Not just art, but lives, whole and eternal, unfading as the Web itself. Alexander Stoughton is doing something no one has ever done.

  His mirrors are filled with dust. He’d be afraid to brake, if there were a truck barreling along inside that cloud, it would run right over them. In front of them, as the sun sets behind, darkness is rising. It will overtake them, and eventually he’ll stop. But not just yet. He needs to enjoy the moment, that’s what he needs to do, stay in the moment, they’re together after all these months, this Ana and him and Mary, all three of them.

  When he stops and the car goes quiet as a confessional and the red light of the evening shines through the dust cloud around them and they’re completely alone together, she’ll tell him more, the final things he needs, until he knows her life is complete: perhaps the name of her horse or the number of sequins on her blouse when she rode in the high lights of the rodeo, or the reason she stopped fishing, little things and littler, or maybe bigger, until he knows her better and more intimately than anyone ever has. Ana Glorious, rising.

  She would have looked so perfect in that sundress—those big eyes in that taut and birdlike face. It’s too bad he has to be so careful. But people don’t like the truth. They like Ana glossy, full of light. Bones are the truth. Bones are as thin as it’s possible to go. As final. The bony, stretched arms of Christ. The soldiers broke His bones. They counted them.

  Running Errands

  I’ve been a checker at Donaldson’s Foods over ten years now. I talk with customers about the weather while passing groceries through the scanner: Cheerios or Toasted Os, Salems or Marlboros, Coke or Pepsi, fish or meat, margarine or butter. I can name the preferences of every family in Twisted Tree—who chooses vanilla over chocolate ice cream, who’s daring enough for butter brickle. I can read resignation in the mac and cheese, desperation in the spices. When Lorraine Lipking first complained that she had to drive to Rapid City, to an oriental foods store there, to find star anise, I almost told her, Well, Lorraine, there’s an air base there. Those airmen marry Korean women. It makes sense. But you live in Twisted Tree. But I looked up and saw her eyes, like damp brown stone, and kept my comments to myself. Rumors soon confirmed my premonition—Bill was having an affair with a woman he’d met at a golf tournament. Chinese cooking can’t compete with that. Even in grade school Bill Lipking was too good for anyone but himself, so no one but Lorraine was much surprised. But you have to feel bad for her.

  It should have been a routine checkout: Marge Germaine with her Oreos and chocolate chip ice cream, her SnoBalls for midnights when
she can’t sleep. Orville died a few years ago of a coronary I knew was coming, all that pork sausage and butter she bought while complaining constantly about him. Now she misses what she never had—wakes alone at night, sees herself in the dark light of the mirror, longs to be thinner, consoles herself with Hostess, and in the mornings, resolved, stirs NutraSweet into her coffee.

  I was sweeping her second pack of Oreos through the scanner when she said: Well, Elise, I suppose you’re going back to Central America now they’ve had elections.

  My fingers twitched. The package crinkled audibly. The red scanning lights for a moment stayed wrapped around my hand. Then I moved the cookies through, and the scanner beeped its confirmation.

  What are you talking about? I asked.

  The last thing I wanted to do was bring up the past, especially with Marge. She’d made sure to offer me advice back then—stopped me on the church steps, drew me aside, simpering. I recalled too easily her false concern, her pursed lips, her pseudo-anxious look.

  Elise? she had asked. What you’re doing? Do you think it’s wise?

  I feel God is calling me, I told her.

  God’s call? Marge had laughed, raucous as a crow. People in their little after-church groups looked at us.

  In Twisted Tree? Marge went on. Now that’s long distance, Elise.

  Now here she was again.

  You sell the paper, she said. Don’t you read it? Where you were’s a democracy now. You could visit again. See the results of your work down there.

  I beeped her SnoBalls through the lights.

  Right, I said. I’ll take the next plane out of Twisted Tree.

  The second evening I was there I heard a soft, intermittent tap on the door of my adobe hut. I thought it was one of the big insects I’d seen, fluttering its wings against the wood. But when I opened the door, prepared to bat it away, a dark-skinned man stood there. He held his hat down near his side, and he said, You are Elise.

  It was as if he were telling me my secret name. Then he said: Welcome, Elise. I am Roberto. Is there anything you need?