by Anne Valente
Billie, sit down.
Fuck you.
Billie pushes herself away from the table and disappears into the restaurant’s interior. Her sandwich sits untouched across the table, her pint glass half drained. The bluegrass swells above the rooftop, across clusters of tables pretending not to notice. Rhiannon closes her eyes and breathes in and tries not to think of Billie’s temper taking her far from the rooftop and from the restaurant, untraceable. No cell phone. No way of finding her at all in her rage, what Rhiannon thought she wouldn’t have to expect. A can of gasoline. A library. Rhiannon watches the sun drag light behind the jagged peaks of the mountains and drinks her beer, her burger going cold.
BILLIE IS NOWHERE inside the restaurant when Rhiannon pays their bill. Nowhere near the upstairs bar, where she half expects to find her sister drinking a pint alone. Nowhere downstairs among the tables of tourists and nowhere upon the park benches dotting downtown Colorado Springs just outside the restaurant. Rhiannon checks the digital map of her phone: Cañon City, an hour away. Dusk’s last light still phantoming the sky, still enough time to make it to the campsite and set up their tent if she can find Billie and soon. She glances up the street then back toward the car, no sign of her sister in either direction. She sits on a bench outside the brewery and waits for Billie to retrace her own steps and come back.
Rhiannon watches families pass along the downtown sidewalks and tries to imagine Billie lying in her prison bed, a bunk she never saw. The showers, the cafeteria, the stale food. The visiting quarters the only corner of Billie’s world Rhiannon ever witnessed. She wonders what Billie imagined beyond the prison walls, what gave her hope. If Rhiannon kept up the lie out of shame or to keep her sister dreaming.
A couple walks by holding hands and Rhiannon thinks of Billie’s hesitation to call Tim’s brother. Rhiannon tries to remember the last time she saw Tim, his absence strange when she and her parents cleared Billie’s things from his house. Billie kept herself tight-lipped about their relationship well before her sentence but changed the subject every time Rhiannon asked about him during monthly visits.
Her phone buzzes in her hands and for a moment she believes it’s Billie.
You girls doing okay? her father says when she answers.
We’re fine. Just stopped in Colorado Springs for dinner.
That’s a bit south, isn’t it? Why didn’t you just go straight through Denver?
Billie wanted to see Pikes Peak, Rhiannon hears herself say. She hasn’t been out on the road in so long. We’re taking a short detour.
How’s your sister doing? Everything going okay?
She’s fine, Rhiannon lies. We’re making good time.
How’s the weather out there?
Dry. We drove through one thunderstorm in Missouri, but it’s been all sun since.
Enjoy it while you can. There’s nothing but rain here in Illinois.
How’s Chicago?
Nothing new to report. We’re going out on a new racing circuit next week.
How’s Bryson doing this year?
Like you don’t already know.
Rhiannon leans back on the bench. Her father knows she wouldn’t ignore the season’s races and point tallies. Bryson Townes: the new NASCAR phenom her father’s been working with for the past two years from rookie to midrange racer to top-seeded pole placer. Only twenty-three. An African American racer, still as rare in NASCAR as women. A history of racing in his family, the same as Rhiannon. She knows how good Bryson is. Solid finishes the past two years. And this summer, top-three placements in Daytona and Martinsville and Talladega. She watches the first stars begin to pepper the sky above the downtown streetlights and wonders for a moment if Bryson’s spring and summer racing routes took her father anywhere near Smoky Hill River.
Dad, did Mom ever make you take things for her on your trips?
What kinds of things?
Rhiannon sighs. Mom gave Billie this journal. A journal full of coordinates. Places we’re supposed to see on our way out here.
What do you mean, coordinates? What kind of journal?
I don’t know. But it’s why we’re in Colorado Springs. We’re taking a different route out to Utah, one Mom clearly designed for us a few months ago. I thought you might know something about it.
How different of a route could there be?
She’s outlined coordinates for us. All across the west. She’s mapping us on her own route out to Utah.
I don’t know anything about it. But I wouldn’t be your mom’s first choice for keeping some kind of secret.
That makes two of us, Rhiannon says.
Your mom told Billie but not you?
She gave Billie the journal sometime this spring.
What Rhiannon doesn’t say: on her last visit to Decatur.
Her father is quiet for a moment. What are you finding at these coordinates?
We found a locket in Kansas.
A locket? There are things left at all these places?
We’ve only found one thing so far. Look, do you know anything about this? Just tell me. We can’t figure out how she got these things out here. If you did it, just tell me.
I told you, I don’t know anything about this.
We went to St. Louis first. Yesterday afternoon. We didn’t know then that we were supposed to find some kind of hidden object at each place.
Where in St. Louis?
The T. rex statue outside the Science Center, Rhiannon says and hears her father fall silent on the other end.
The one by the pond?
I guess there was a pond. What, Dad? What do you know?
Her father sighs. That lake. That’s where I proposed.
Rhiannon sits in the dark of downtown, the streets silent beyond the bench, surprised by the hard lump thickening in her throat.
You never told us that. How did we not know that?
You never asked, her father says. It was well into her doctoral degree, almost near her graduation. We spent a lot of time at that park.
And the T. rex?
Must be a coincidence. Honestly, I didn’t know it was there. I only realized later when we took you girls down to the Science Center when you were kids.
Rhiannon wants to scream. A coincidence, the last thing this is. The dinosaur what her mother drew in the journal and not a wedding ring, not a pond.
You didn’t find anything in St. Louis? her father says.
We didn’t even think to look. It was our first stop. She left just coordinates and drawings. There’s no indication at all in this journal that anything was left or hidden.
I didn’t help her. Your mother always had her own ideas and plans.
It’s getting late, Rhiannon says. I should go. I’ll keep you posted on everything.
Let me know where you are. I’ll be on the road this week, but I’ll have my phone. Don’t hesitate to call if you need anything.
Rhiannon hangs up and watches the Big Dipper slowly appear in the night sky above Colorado Springs’s deserted streets. The only constellation she knows without Billie here to identify them. No sign of Billie anywhere, no sense of where to even begin looking for her. Rhiannon looks down at her phone, the inability to reach her sister maddening, the locket surely coiled inside one of Billie’s pockets. She flips through her contacts, past Beth, the first in her list of favorites. Continues scrolling until she finds Aunt Sue.
The phone rings seven times, so long that Rhiannon readies herself to hang up when she hears her aunt’s voice.
Rhiannon?
Hi, Sue. It’s me.
It’s so good to hear from you.
Am I calling at a bad time? Rhiannon says. She rethinks the time: already past dark in Colorado. One hour ahead in Dallas, nearing ten o’clock.
No, not at all. Your uncle and I were just watching TV.
Uncle John. The only reason Sue moved to Texas. Sue born and bred in Illinois, an accountant, her husband a pharmaceutical representative whose work took him to Dallas. Rhiannon a
lways liked him but her mother labeled him a workaholic. He didn’t make it to the funeral, an Oakland business trip he couldn’t reschedule. Aunt Sue always made several trips back to Champaign when they were growing up because of an impermeable relationship with their mother, older by two years, a sisterhood Rhiannon watched as a child wondering if she and Billie would have the same.
This is going to sound crazy, Rhiannon says. I have to ask you something about Mom.
The noise of the television falls silent in the background. What about her?
Did she say anything to you about a trip? Us going out to Utah?
I knew she was planning a second funeral for Billie and for you, Sue says. The sound of the word funeral catching on her tongue. Nearly imperceptible.
She told you that?
She’d been planning it for a few months.
Did she tell you anything else about the trip?
Like what? Where are you calling from?
We’re in Colorado Springs, Rhiannon says. Look, we found a locket. In Kansas. Billie says it belonged to Mom. It has your picture in it and hers.
Where did you find it?
That’s what I’m calling to ask. Does the Smoky Hill River mean anything to you?
I’ve never heard of it. That’s where you found the locket?
She planned an entire route out here, Rhiannon says. She gave us a journal of coordinates with objects hidden at each location. We just realized it today. We found the locket at Smoky Hill River, not far from the Colorado border.
Your mother and I got those lockets when she was in graduate school, Sue says softly. It was the first time we ever lived in different states from each other.
Rhiannon closes her eyes, the pain in her aunt’s voice still raw and burning. She knows both of them went to Illinois State before her mother moved to St. Louis right after graduation on a full scholarship to begin her doctoral work. Rhiannon imagines Sue left behind, the start of her junior year in college: the first year without her sister.
Is there anything special about the locket? Rhiannon asks.
Rhiannon hears Sue smile by the tone of her voice. What isn’t special about it?
Do you know why she would’ve left it in Kansas?
What’s the Smoky Hill River? Why did she send you there?
Marine fossils. It’s a river and trail, but she drew some kind of amphibian in the journal. It’s apparently a hotbed of ancient reptiles.
But she studied stegosaurs.
I know. That’s exactly what we said.
Aunt Sue is silent. Rhiannon can hear the sound of cabinets opening and closing in the background.
Wait a minute, Sue says. Marine reptiles.
The moon begins to climb over the buildings of downtown and Rhiannon feels her blood spike. Hope. That Sue might remember something.
What’s the name of the town? Where Smoky Hill River is?
Russell Springs.
That’s it, Sue says. I wouldn’t have even thought it until you said it. I remember the name. It’s where I mailed the package to your mother to send her the locket. Some P.O. box in the middle of nowhere. I remember imagining a truck having to drive all the way from Illinois to find it.
You mailed it from Bloomington?
It was her first year of graduate school. Before she specialized. I was still in Bloomington. A junior. It was our first year apart. I got her the locket and had to mail it to some dig site so she’d get it on her birthday. It had to have been Kansas.
Rhiannon imagines her mother walking into a desolate post office in the middle of the plains. Hair messy, skin caked with dirt. Barely hiding the glow of her youth. Spring winds rattling outside, her birthday in the center of April, what a March funeral made her miss by three weeks. Tan pants. Hiking boots. Hands pulling open the envelope and finding the locket.
So it was a gift, Rhiannon whispers.
I bought one for myself, too. I still have it.
Billie’s hanging on to Mom’s half for now.
How is Billie? I’d love to talk to her.
She went to bed early, Rhiannon lies. Otherwise I’d put her on the phone.
She’s adjusting okay?
She’s doing great.
Your mother would’ve wanted you both to have that locket. Sue laughs. You’ll just have to decide which one of you gets to keep it. The weather okay up there? We’ve had only clouds and dust in Texas.
No rain. Just a storm in Missouri. And a lot of dry heat up here, too.
You girls be careful, Sue says. You take care of each other out there.
Rhiannon hangs up the phone and watches the rising moon to blink away her aunt’s voice. Taking care. What Rhiannon hasn’t done, barely a day into their trip and Billie already nowhere she can find her. The locket tucked somewhere in her sister’s pocket, a totem of love. What she realizes she lacked by not telling Billie she quit and by hearing nothing of Billie’s life in prison, if her sister made friends or had anyone at all to rely on. Barb. The only name Billie mentioned among surely other work relationships in the prison’s library. The moon throws light down upon the Colorado streets where Rhiannon hears all at once a commotion and looks down the block and Billie is there, Billie is a mirage beneath speckled stars, Billie is outside a bar shoving a bouncer in the chest and unleashing a scream that verges on breaking into tears.
SHAH, SAMARA. A BACKYARD GUIDE TO CONSTELLATIONS. HAUPPAUGE, NY: BARRON’S, 2010. PRINT.
CALL NUMBER: QB806 .B12 2010
SUMMER CONSTELLATIONS IN THE NORTHERN HEMISPHERE
LYRA
A four-star constellation directly overhead, shaped almost like a parallelogram.
CYGNUS
Known as the Northern Cross; Deneb, its brightest star, forms the “Summer Triangle” with nearby stars Vega and Altair.
BOÖTES
A ten-star constellation shaped like a herdsman; pursues the two bears, Ursa Major and Ursa Minor, two other constellations in the summer night sky.
THE MILKY WAY
Not technically a constellation but a light-filled band shimmering with star clusters and nebulae; visible on the southern horizon away from city lights.
38.8673° N, 104.7607° W:
Colorado Springs, CO
Billie notices his mouth first. Something she never used to notice on men. She remembers only Tim’s broad shoulders, marine-blue eyes, a jawline hidden in the half shadow of stubble. She remembers nothing of his mouth and how it once moved across her body but she notices the slight curl of this man’s lips, the way they pull back across his teeth. A grin of cockiness, accustomed to getting what it wants. Billie wouldn’t have fallen for it in college but it’s been nearly a decade since a man looked at her like this. Tim first noticing her on the University of Illinois’s campus quad. Autumn sun winking down. Her back to an oak tree’s trunk. Her invertebrate biology textbook sprawled on her lap between classes and a Frisbee thrown against the nylon of her backpack and the pages of her book darkening with a form standing over her. But here in Colorado Springs, just some bar called Cowboys. The first place Billie sees when she leaves the brewery.
A shitkicker dive. Country music. Billiards and darts and line dancing.
Billie sits at the bar alone drinking a Bulleit on the rocks, the whiskey’s sweetness doing nothing to temper her rage. A sisterhood slimmed down to monthly visits that pushed distance between her and Rhiannon, but not like this. Billie feels her hands tighten around her glass recalling the number of times Rhiannon sat across from her at the visiting room’s tables and said nothing. Billie explicitly asking about her racing circuit each summer. Rhiannon overtly lying. Billie lets the whiskey swill beneath her tongue and tries to focus on the taste and texture, an imagined luxury from her prison dorm, until the man with the grin sidles up to the barstool beside her.
You lost, little girl? he says. Billie looks up and rolls her eyes. A tired line. One she’d have ignored under any other circumstance but there is his mouth. Scuffed boots. Black-suede cowbo
y hat. He asks if he can buy her another whiskey and she lets him, for nothing else than the sound of ice cubes swirling against glass.
You come here often? he says.
Did you really just ask me that?
You don’t look like you’re from here.
Just drove in from Kansas.
A Midwestern girl. Legs as long as those fields of corn.
Billie stifles the impulse to laugh, these dumb lines. But she can’t stop herself from glancing down at her legs, from making sure she’s wearing jeans that conceal her scars. Her tank top baring her arms though she’s sure the bar’s lights are dim enough to hide their puckered skin.
What’s your name?
Betsy, she lies. You?
You can call me Jesse, he says.
As in Jesse James.
If you want it that way. He grins again. A grin that despite its heavy smugness still draws Billie in, the whiskey doing its work.
How long are you in town? Jesse asks.
Just for the night. A quick in and out.
I like it that way. He smiles and Billie stops, thinks for the first time to get up and leave. But keeping Rhiannon waiting somewhere out on a rooftop patio makes Billie play along. The music swells around them and couples pair off beneath the disco ball hanging above the dance floor and Jesse holds out his hand.
You dance?
Billie glances at the dance floor. I could be persuaded.
She drains the last of her whiskey and Jesse takes a single shot of tequila, licking lime and salt from his knuckles. His tongue skirts the back of his hand and Billie is at once repulsed and drawn to him. She imagines a bathroom stall in the back, his weight pressed against her, something quick, something anonymous. Enough to forget her sister and remember what it was to be wanted and to forget the scars and a prison dorm and the small window of light above a bunk’s bed. She lets him lead her to the center of the dance floor, winking bulbs raining light down upon them. The heat of other couples pressed around them. Billie’s hair slicks against her forehead. Jesse takes her hands and drapes them around his neck and lets his palms lock on the waist of her jeans.
You know how to line dance? he says against her ear.