Clara at the Edge

by Maryl Jo Fox

  She shrugs. “My gallery is home. Museums. Photography shows anywhere.”

  “No settled place? You don’t mind?”

  “The idea of an actual home bores me. A house and a picket fence sounds like prison. My home is work. It consumes me.”

  Haskell rummages unsuccessfully in his pockets for a cigarette. “I’m trying to quit smoking again.” His tone is rueful. “As for me, I’ve lived my whole life in New York. I don’t know if I could ever leave it. I’m like Woody Allen, wedded to the place. Isn’t that right, Arianna?”

  She smiles. “You’re nothing like Woody Allen.”

  Clara is quiet. This talk of home highlights something that’s been roiling in her head longer than she might care to admit. “Sometimes I wonder if the whole idea of home is overrated. I’ve staked my whole life on it. Maybe I’ve been a fool.” She gets up and begins to stack the dishes.

  After considerable discussion, Haskell sleeps outside on a cot with an air mattress and the women sleep in the RV, Clara on the couch, Arianna in the bed. Clara had wanted to get a room at the Rancher’s Hotel, but they convinced her that was unnecessary and it was too late to drive these mountain roads anyway.

  In the morning, Haskell whips up wickedly good scrambled eggs, and finally they’re ready for another hike. As they pull up to a promising trailhead, Clara’s cell phone rings. Frank, she thinks, opening it to much static.

  “Hey, Clara. Me and Edie made it. Cops can’t get us now.”

  The familiar adenoidal voice makes her stomach clench in anger and shock. “Dawson! Where are you?” She covers her eyes with her free hand, as if fending off a blow.

  “Guess. Fresh fish, good tequila, cheap living.”

  She swallows. “For heaven’s sake. Are you in Mexico?”

  “Bingo. Eight cars later.”

  Haskell grimly studies her face. Arianna touches her shoulder. Clara gestures for them to leave her in privacy. They get out and stand beside the vehicle, looking at Clara hunched over her cell phone in the passenger seat.

  Hearing Dawson’s voice fills her with rage at the damage they did, the things they took, the irreplaceable photos burned. Her tone is sharp. “I’m surprised you called, after what you two did.”

  He takes his time answering. “Sixty-four-thousand-dollar question, why’d I call.” He clears his throat. “Only thing I can think of is, you do a crazy thing, I do a crazy thing. The world is crazy.”

  “For God’s sake, Dawson, talk sense. What crazy thing?”

  “You stuck your nose in. Nobody else did. Ever.” He clears his throat, tries to joke. “You’re a nosy broad, you know that?”

  Anger mixes with wonder. She can’t imagine what he’s encountered to make him call like this. Her voice softens. “So maybe it’s not so bad to be a nosy broad. Because then you do a crazy thing, and call.” Bounding into her mind’s eye, Edie, wild Edie, against all reason, is now a full-grown Samantha.

  My wayward babies, she thinks in despair.

  Silence, then his final rush of words. “Look, this is a bad connection. We’re sorry we took your stuff, Clara. We had to. And we didn’t mean to light up your house. I don’t know what made us do it. It was a rotten thing. There, I’ve said it. Hasta la vista, baby. Gotta go.”

  As the line goes dead, she looks at the phone in wonder before snapping it shut. “He said my name,” she whispers. “He said they were sorry. I can’t believe it.” She bounds from the vehicle to join Haskell and Arianna. They are full of questions. She tells them everything Dawson said.

  Arianna says, “Who knows, maybe they’ll forget the rough stuff now.”

  “I wouldn’t count on it.” Clara’s look is sober.

  “I agree. Let’s not be foolish here,” Haskell says grimly. “They didn’t have to take your stuff. Or manhandle you. Or wreck your house.”

  Clara meets his gaze. “True. He apologized, though. He apologized.” Her eyes are bright.

  Haskell considers this. “Yes, he did.”

  She persists. “He has some good in him, or he wouldn’t have called, and he wouldn’t have apologized.”

  He frowns. “Forget the Misunderstood-Kid-Turning-Over-aNew-Leaf thing, Clara. This guy’s been around. He might be setting you up for something else.”

  “Maybe.” She looks away. Suddenly light at heart, she says, “Can such a thing as grace exist in the world?”

  He looks at her, his voice neutral. “It would be nice.”

  “OK, boys and girls, let’s hike.” Arianna has started down the trailhead. Clara sprints after her; Haskell follows right behind.

  Lenore, snug in her bag on Clara’s shoulder, murmurs, “Careful, this guy is complicated.”

  “So am I,” Clara whispers, smiling.

  “I know,” Lenore says, falling silent.

  Arianna’s camera whirs and clicks as she disappears down the trail. Clara and Haskell walk more slowly on the irregular rises and dips. Clara is silently reliving the attack on her house again and doesn’t see the scenery. After a while, she sighs: It’s just too amazing that Dawson called.

  In the dense growth, they take in the sounds of distant water, snakes and gophers rustling in dry undergrowth, aspen leaves clattering in a slight wind, the cawing of hawks cutting the sky like a knife, bighorn sheep motionless on the canyon rim.

  By now they’ve absorbed each other’s distinctive gait—Clara’s upright posture and brisk stride with little wasted motion, honed from many jogging years; Haskell’s sturdy gait (except for a slight limp—bad motorcycle accident in his twenties, he said). He holds his arms slightly away from his body as if claiming territory or preparing to defend against lurking enemies, a posture that makes Clara smile. Her faded red Keds aren’t adequate for this terrain, but of course she had no idea her quest for the photos would lead to a hike in Lamoille Canyon with unexpected companions. His firm hiking boots are more appropriate. On an uneven surface, she stumbles.

  “Oh!”

  “Gotcha!” He catches her before she can fall. With his arm around her, he looks at her wide forehead, her warm coffee eyes, her face glowing in early light. She absorbs his skin crisscrossed with not-unattractive lines and scars, his knowing hazel eyes. She looks away.

  Haskell has met many women since his wife died a year ago. None made him feel as he does just now—shy.

  They find a boulder to sit on. “I won’t let you down,” he blunders out.

  Amused, she looks at him in surprise. “But I’m not expecting anything.”

  He grins. “Then I take it back.”

  She laughs. “So you will let me down?”

  “Don’t try to confuse me.”

  Laughing, they hear Arianna coming back. “Great shots, the trail is beautiful,” she exclaims. She is loose, happy, doing what she loves most in the world. Seeing their moment, she circles them, camera clicking, as they sit on the rock. They barely notice. She wanders off again.

  Deep in thought, Clara wonders if she’s been making her aloneness into a shrine all these years. Our lady of sorrows, is that it? Then this man comes along, distracting her with the ragged scar above his left eyebrow. I just need a friend, she thinks once more, trying to calm her nervousness. A real friend.

  As for him, none of his encounters with women this past year had lessened his loneliness and grief until he saw this pint-sized woman sitting quietly at the Rancher’s Hotel, drinking iced tea. She calms him in some profound way.

  They sit on the rock, thinking fleeting confused thoughts. This is just a brief adventure, she thinks. Or not even that. This man is simply a respite from talking wasps and her burning house. Maybe the natural setting makes her sentimental. Trees always were her soft spot.

  For him, this cross-country trip after a year of mind-boggling grief has opened his mind to the possibility of a new turn to his life. His whole life has been chaotic. Surely this calm woman sitting beside him on this rock doesn’t trade in chaos.

  For both, the thought of dying makes them mome
ntarily headlong on this beautiful summer day. He grips her hand. She pulls away. “We’re acting like teenagers!” she exclaims.

  “More power to us!” He plants a single kiss on her hand just as Arianna reappears. Her busy clicking makes them laugh uproariously. It’s a cosmic joke of some kind.

  The next day, Arianna diplomatically gets a plane ticket to Los Angeles to confer with her gallery at Bergamot Station in Santa Monica. They stand inside the entrance to the small Elko airport. Arianna is beaming. “The curator called last night. He’s going to feature your photos, Clara. So what do you think of that?” The three of them exchange high fives.

  Lenore twitches in her bag so much that Haskell wonders if Clara’s having a bad shoulder spasm. “Are you all right?” he asks.

  She smiles ironically. “I’m just ducky.”

  Arianna’s all business, looks at both of them. “So call me when you get to New York. End of June. OK?”

  They watch her walk to check-in.

  15 days left.

  chapter 20

  Frank has worked in the change booth at Desert Dan’s ever since he and his mother came to Jackpot. It’s boring to just sit around and exchange lunch sacks full of coins and bills for chips. But it’s only for a few hours each day in the late afternoon, and he has to earn something. The money from Aunt Lillian isn’t quite enough, and Scotty offered him the job. He sees Stella in all their off hours. They talk about moving in together. Their lives are wonderfully full, except for their gnawing worries about Scotty’s health. He still won’t see a doctor.

  Scotty has introduced Frank to a retired sculptor from the University of Nevada in Reno who said Frank could have the alabaster, limestone, and marble that he wouldn’t be using any more. Frank couldn’t believe his good fortune. Immediately he set to work on a translucent piece of alabaster. The color, light orange, is like a living person, the mineral veins like human veins coursing through it.

  At first, he carved in Scotty’s fenced backyard because Stella’s property is open to anyone who wants to walk off with the stones. Since the fire, he does his carving on Clara’s Formica table in the burned-out house. He couldn’t have explained why—some protective instinct maybe. Keeping watch over her damaged property until she returns. He stores the unused stones in Scotty’s shed. Each morning he gets in the trailer cab and brings the alabaster, his tools, and the dust mask over to Clara’s burned-out house. When he’s done sculpting for the day, he takes his materials back to Scotty’s shed. For his open-air work place, he made a sandbag by tying off an old sheet of Stella’s and filling it with sand. The sandbag protects Clara’s kitchen table when he bangs the alabaster with his chisel and mallet to rough out the shape he wants.

  He loves this primitive setup, the silence of the burned-out house, the mild wind, the dry air all around him. The four Formica chairs are still there. One chair remains toppled where Clara lunged from it after she got free of Dawson’s rope and ran outside to confront him. For some reason, Frank doesn’t want to move this chair. He moves another chair aside when he works at the table.

  He brings a lantern for the few times he works in the dark. Sometimes at night he thinks he hears rustling sounds coming closer from the direction of the Sage Motel. Then the sound stops. He doesn’t bother about it, and the sound goes away. He occasionally carves at night for this very reason—to show mischief-makers they might face some consequences if they mess around this place. He’s got a pipe wrench on the counter.

  Now he chisels with panache into the alabaster. The work goes quickly. Even the rough outline conveys passion and speed and delight. Gone are the tortured burls of screaming human heads. He made a second burl head soon after he smashed the first one. He smashed that one too. He’s done with burls.

  Working with real stone is a revelation for him. He shows his first effort—the light-orange beautifully veined piece—to Scotty. It’s a languidly sprawling male nude lying on its side, ready to leap up and—what?—claim the world. He laughs. Scotty, on his way to Salt Lake City, says he’s crazy about the piece and will try to sell it for him. Scotty shows it to a friend, who promptly offers a thousand bucks for it. Scotty counters with fifteen hundred. Sold at twelve fifty. Ecstatic, Frank insists on giving Scotty a good commission before Scotty mysteriously flies off to Salt Lake in his private plane.

  Frank calls his mother to share the good news. The connection is staticky. They usually can’t get through to each other at all—the mountains, they both assume. But they both keep trying. His call comes in when Clara and Haskell are leaving the Elko airport and are heading back to Lamoille Canyon.

  “Frank, how wonderfu!—your first sale! All those wood carvings you made with your father in the back shed—I always knew you could be a sculptor. Do you have a picture of it? And I have a new friend to introduce you to: Haskell Roberts. We’ll be seeing you soon. I’m so happy for you, Frank.”

  “Terrific. That’s great news, Mom—about your friend.”

  To celebrate the sale and his mother’s “new friend,” Frank and Stella drive to Twin Falls to feast on fresh Idaho trout and a primo bottle of white wine at a good restaurant Scotty recommended. They put the rest of the money in savings, and Frank sets off on another piece of alabaster. Every day he carves for several hours, cleans up meticulously, stows everything back in Scotty’s shed, does his stint at the change booth and goes back to Stella, who is usually done with her shift by then. Frank has never been happier.

  The fire totally destroyed Clara’s house except for two adjoining walls still standing in the kitchen. One wall was all cabinets and counter. The other wall had the sink and more cabinets. A few days ago, the wall with the sink burned down and the sink vanished, leaving only the wall with cabinets and counter. So now the gutted house looks even more bizarre and precarious.

  Just once, Frank wishes he could get his hands on the bastards who burn down houses just for kicks. He can’t get the city to remove the whole sorry mess until Clara comes back. Who knows if she’ll even give permission?

  The house has other visitors too. Late at night after most of Jackpot is asleep, three or four people wearing dark hoodies come sauntering down to the flatbed from the Sage Motel. They sit on the ground near tires not visible from the highway and take out their drug paraphernalia. They talk briefly and then light up, shoot up, or snort, leaning against the tires or lying on the ground, shielding themselves as much as possible from prying eyes. They usually come around two in the morning and leave by four, before the wasps come to drive them away. They snicker and curse the stupid wasps when they hear them coming.

  One night, soon after Frank sold his first sculpture, a group of six or eight people follows Stella across the highway to the vacant lot and the burned-out house. It’s eleven o’clock. They’ve brought blankets and/or pillows. They sit on the ground near the house and get themselves comfortable. They sit in silence, not knowing what to expect. “What are you aware of in this unusual setting?” Stella asks. “The smell of burned wood,” says one. “The hum of passing cars,” says another. An occasional distant shout. A tireless cricket. Sounds of shifting bodies looking for a comfortable position. A thermos being opened. Sounds of swallowing, throats clearing. Sighs. Breathing. A few coughs. The thermos being screwed shut again.

  They focus on the toppled chair after their eyes adjust to the dark. Someone asks, “Why hasn’t anyone picked up that chair?” No one answers. Long silence.

  A low-pitched hum gets louder and louder above them, filling the night sky with fury. Several people stand up, ready to move fast. The angry hum creates a torrent of air around the pilgrims. They realize—or recall from childhood—that the humming dark ache of the sound is a cloud of wasps invisible in the dark, circling dizzy and angry overhead, grazing people’s heads as the visitors shout at them.

  Grimly, the people run from the battered house and jog to the safety of Desert Dan’s in tight silence. The wasps stop hounding them only at the boundary of the highway, refusing to
cross it, then fly back to the gutted house, where they buzz darkly on the lone kitchen counter, according to someone who used night goggles. Don’t screw with the house or us, the wasps seem to say. The expelled humans huddle outside Desert Dan’s before going to their respective rooms for the night.

  chapter 21

  Looking out the window of the RV, Clara falls silent as Haskell drives further from the airport and gets closer to the canyon. Finally she says, “So we’re just getting acquainted here, right?” She looks at him, this unpredictable stranger from Mars. She wishes Arianna were still with them.

  He glances at her, sees her somber face.

  Nervously she fiddles with Scotty’s keychain. “The idea of a friendship. Is that what we’re working on here?”

  Mildly surprised, he glances at her again and tries to get into the spirit of the thing. “Well, we could go to San Francisco before I take the Winnebago back to my sister. How about that?”

  She nods quickly. “We can try a cooking schedule. I’ll take Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. You could take Tuesday, Thursday, and Sunday. Saturdays we’ll drive to Elko and eat at a restaurant. We’ll sleep separately,” she says with studied casualness.

  He looks at her, nods. “Sure. You take the bed; I’ll take the couch. It’s a comfortable bed, a comfortable couch.”

  “I might like the couch instead,” she says mildly, then continues, “You’re a better cook than I am. But we both like poached salmon, turkey meatballs, sliced avocados with lemon juice, and dark chocolate anything.”

  “For starters,” he says, smiling.

  “We’ll stay in the canyon only as long as we’re enjoying ourselves.” Of this she is positive.

  He nods easily. “We need to be in New York in ten days at the latest.”

  He can see she’s all wound up. She’s probably been alone for years. He reaches over and squeezes her shoulder. “Don’t worry,” he says. “Everything will be fine.”