The Desert Sky Before Us

by Anne Valente

  An oval. Almost rectangular in shape. She hears Rhiannon set down her mug. And beside the drawn oval: another coordinate scrawled in the corner of the page.

  Fuck, Rhiannon whispers.

  What do you think this is?

  It looks like a racetrack. It better not be. Dacono is the nearest one. We better not be heading there with Dad.

  Billie thinks of the locket meant for both of them. The laser pointer and the tail bone for both of them. But not the hawk feather. Just for Billie. This oval, if it’s a raceway, just for Rhiannon. Billie watches her sister but Rhiannon’s face is impassive.

  Well, we have time, Billie says. Mom must have known we’d budget our time well.

  Flip the page. Come on, Billie. Just look ahead. The funeral’s over. I want to know if that’s it. If this is the last coordinate we have to find.

  We can’t do that. I promised. She wanted us to not know where we’re heading. She knew how much time we’d have. She knew we’d have to get back. This has to be the last one.

  You’re not the one driving, Billie. I’m fucking tired. I’m ready to go home.

  It’s Sunday. We’ve only been out a little more than a week. We have time. Come on, Rhee. What do you have to rush back home for? Isn’t this better than your job?

  Beth wants to meet up when we get back. She wants to talk.

  I’m sure she’ll still be willing to talk on Saturday.

  Rhiannon grips her fingers around the perimeter of her mug and Billie can see them clench, the only outward flinching Rhiannon reveals.

  Fine, she finally says. Fine, we can go. But I mean it, Billie. This has to be it.

  BILLIE SHOWERS FIRST and packs her bag. Strips the bed, cleans the kitchen sink, places their washed dishes in the drying rack. While Rhiannon showers Billie steps outside to stretch her legs before another day in the car. Not even eight o’clock and the sun pulses down in thin waves of heat. June in Utah. The first official day of summer, Billie realizes.

  The picnic table is deserted, each trailer in the cluster quiet and closed. In the bright morning sun Billie can’t tell if there are lights on inside any of them. Their father. Dacono. A racetrack she’s heard Rhiannon talk about before, a speedway she’s never seen. On impulse Billie crosses the gravel clearing and knocks softly on her father’s door.

  She expects to wake him but he pulls open the door fully dressed. Blue-faded jeans and a plain white T-shirt. The scent of coffee. The trailer’s space immaculate and clean behind him, ready for leaving.

  What time do you have to be in Dacono?

  Midafternoon. Races begin tomorrow. Come on in.

  She slides past him through the trailer door and sits on a thinly upholstered loveseat beside the kitchen sink. He offers her coffee and the cobwebbed dehydration in her throat has diminished just enough that she accepts.

  He sits on a folding chair across from her. When are you two taking off?

  This morning. As soon as Rhiannon’s ready. I just wanted to let you know.

  You heading back home?

  She thinks to mention their mother’s drawn oval, the possibility of a racetrack, the slim chance that they’re headed to Colorado too. But she says nothing. Wants this trip to stay between her and her sister.

  Eventually. I guess Mom has at least one more plot point for us to visit.

  Her father looks up. Where you headed?

  We don’t know. I’ll map the coordinate once we get in the car. We have to be back regardless by this coming Sunday.

  Probation?

  Mandatory therapy starts as soon as I return.

  You heading through St. Louis on your way back?

  Billie reclines into the loveseat. Rhiannon told you about the ring.

  I don’t need it anymore. It’s yours. Clearly your mother left it for you both. I just want to make sure someone keeps it safe.

  We will. I promise, we’ll take care of it.

  Rhiannon said you’re picking it up from Tim’s brother.

  Billie hears the caution in his voice. Dad, we’ll be fine.

  Just want to be sure it’s all right for you to see him.

  Billie stops herself from spewing something smart. Meaning what?

  Her father hesitates. Meaning I was up all night. I couldn’t sleep. I was wondering why in hell your mother never wanted me to come visit you, since you clearly didn’t know she told me not to. And all I can think is that she thought it’d hurt you to be around me. Around anyone who could’ve done better by you. Maybe around men at all.

  Billie doesn’t look at him. Holds her coffee mug, its temperature matching the rising heat in her chest. Birds and trees. The Illinois woods. Her father maddening but also perceptive, able to hear the chatter of chickadee calls high in the trees. She sits still. Imagines her mother telling her father not to come, the possibility that she meant protection instead of pain, a mother bear instinct. What she never told her mother. What she never told anyone. What her mother must have intuited anyway, trained to dowse fossils from the earth and the worst of secrets from her own daughter. Billie closes her eyes against what she knows her father is readying to say.

  Billie, did he hurt you?

  She keeps her eyes closed. Nice of you to care about this now.

  I mean it, Billie. Did he hurt you?

  She opens her eyes and her father is leaning forward in his chair.

  Tim, he says. Is he the reason you did what you did?

  Billie says nothing, her silence the only admission her father needs. He sits back and exhales hard and Billie hears the wind of his breath pushed from his lungs.

  What did he do to you?

  It was a long time ago. There’s nothing anyone could’ve done.

  Bullshit, Billie. What did he do?

  You want me to talk about this now? Now and not six years ago? It doesn’t matter anymore. All that matters is that I had a reason. That should be good enough for you. Since nothing else is.

  What’s that supposed to mean?

  It means I know you didn’t visit because you were ashamed of me. You and Mom both, you’ve always been ashamed of me.

  How can you say that?

  Billie doesn’t stop herself, this flood of words. I can’t do what you do, she says. I can’t do what Mom did. I’ll never do what Rhiannon did.

  You think we care about that? That we care at all about what you do or don’t achieve? God, Billie, we just want you to be happy. And being in prison sure isn’t a way to make yourself happy.

  Like I planned it that way. Like anyone does. Things happen. You meet terrible people. You let them tell you what you are.

  Just tell me what he did, Billie.

  Why? So you can find him and beat him up? Jesus, Dad. This isn’t about him. This is about me. This is about me and what he did to me.

  Why didn’t you tell us?

  Billie meets his eyes. Why didn’t you come for six fucking years?

  For the first time since his arrival at the quarry, despite everything, her father’s eyes rim red.

  I’m so sorry, Billie.

  I needed you.

  The shock of these words falling from her tongue. She lets herself say them.

  Her father places his head in his hands, and despite everything, Billie wants to apologize. For the ceremony. For the rock-strewn urn. That she still carries a rage that makes her want to destroy everything around her to avoid feeling destroyed. Her father imperfect, head bent, the sheen of his scalp visible through so many thin strands of gray hair. Billie watches him and something falls away in the pit of her stomach, how easy it is to aim her anger at him so she won’t have to think about anything else. Despite his shortcomings. Despite never visiting, a lack that might always ache. She watches him and knows that her anger with him is nothing compared to the heavy weight of what she’s dragged around a prison cell for six years and across so many highways to this place, this moment: that in the end she is most disappointed in herself, no one else.

  You did the best
you could, she says.

  I can do better. If you’ll let me.

  He glances up and Billie knows he means when they’re back home, Chicago and Urbana only hours apart, a clouded future Billie can’t imagine from the quarry’s heat. She knows he means a spool of years unraveling before them and Billie doesn’t know what they hold, doesn’t even know where the afternoon will take them from a scrawled coordinate on a notebook page. But she looks at him and nods and it feels like something, the same something of Utah’s light breaking across the desert rock.

  RHIANNON IS WAITING at the picnic table when Billie steps from their father’s trailer. Showered. Her hair nearly dry, their suitcases gone. Already situated in the Mustang’s trunk, Billie guesses. Her daypack the only remaining piece of luggage at Rhiannon’s feet, what holds the journal and the GPS and the afternoon’s coordinates.

  Their father emerges and embraces Rhiannon. Sleep all right?

  Rhiannon nods. You heading out too?

  It’s a seven-hour drive to Dacono. I better get on the road.

  The door to Angela’s trailer squeaks open and she treads down the small set of steps fully dressed. She approaches the picnic table and hugs Rhiannon and a flood of gratitude washes through Billie for everything this woman has done for them.

  Heading out? Angela asks.

  Rhiannon nods. Our mother left us one last coordinate.

  Angela glances at Billie and pulls her into a hug. I told you she was full of surprises.

  Thank you, Billie whispers into Angela’s shirt. Thank you for everything.

  Billie pulls back and lets herself glance at the valley beyond the picnic table, a view her mother once awoke to every day she was here. Trails and precipices. A view Billie’s grown accustomed to across only a span of two days. One she wonders if she’ll ever see again once she and Rhiannon drive away.

  Marcus descends from his trailer’s steps and stands off to the side of the picnic table, his hands in the pockets of his cargo shorts. It was a pleasure to meet all of you, he says. And truly, it was an honor to know your mother.

  You take care of yourself, Rhiannon says. And thanks again for everything.

  Billie seconds her sister’s words, these two responsible for every detail of the ceremony and reception. Billie feels her heart pooling, a wave of sadness for what two strangers have done to soften their grief.

  You all drive safe, Marcus says. And please do keep in touch.

  Agreed, Angela says. You’re welcome back here anytime.

  They walk together along the gravel path to the visitor center where Marcus heads to reopen the doors for the earliest nine o’clock patrons. Once they reach the visitor center, Billie watches her father throw his backpack into the trunk of an old-model Dodge Charger, less flashy than Rhiannon’s Mustang but still capable of speed. Angela and Marcus wave their final farewells and disappear into the visitor center, Billie assumes to leave the three of them alone for their own goodbyes. Rhiannon embraces her father one last time and disappears into the driver’s side of the Mustang where Billie can see her situating her smartphone and its digital map. Her goodbye casual. The nonchalance of knowing she’ll see their father again: so many years of regular visits between them. He stands beside his driver’s-side door and reaches out his hand.

  I’ll see you soon.

  His voice firm to let Billie know he means it this time.

  Billie lets herself take his hand and he draws her into a hug. She doesn’t pull away until she hears the rev of the Mustang’s engine behind her, Rhiannon telling her it’s time. Billie climbs into the car and glances toward the ridgeline behind the visitor center. A place of heartbreak. Multiple disasters, her mother believed. Tim. Prison. Losing her father for six years. Losing her mother forever. Rhiannon steers the car away from the quarry and down the long gravel drive and Billie sinks into the passenger seat, their father’s car following behind them.

  Looks like you two made up, Rhiannon says.

  Billie watches the visitor center recede in the side mirror.

  Could you map the coordinate on the GPS? Rhiannon asks. I can recalibrate the map on my phone when we’re back in range on the highway.

  Billie pulls the GPS from her daypack. Opens the journal again. Plugs in the coordinates. Eyes the oval drawn across the center of its page.

  North, Billie says. Looks like we’re heading north this time instead of south.

  How far? And where?

  Not sure yet, but looks like it’s about a three-hour drive.

  Salt Lake City.

  How do you know?

  Rhiannon smiles. Come on, Billie.

  Her sister has memorized America’s highways and every one of its racetracks and they are headed to Salt Lake City, not Dacono as they thought. When they reach the end of the quarry’s gravel road for the beginning of a paved two-lane highway, Rhiannon steers the car north and Billie watches their father’s car turn south, his hand waving in the Mustang’s side mirror.

  He’s taking I-70, Rhiannon says. South and straight across Utah to Colorado.

  And what are we taking?

  You tell me. What does the GPS say?

  Billie squints at the console. Highway 191 then I-15 all the way north.

  Salt Lake City. I told you.

  Is there a racetrack there?

  Rocky Mountain Raceways. A smaller track. I’ve done minor circuits there before. They have a drag strip, but also an oval series.

  An oval series. Billie barely knows what this means but it’s a clear match for the drawing in the journal. Salt Lake a city she’s barely thought about from the flatlands of the Midwest. A city far bigger than Carlsbad or Cañon City or any other destination their mother has led them beyond St. Louis, a city Billie maps as their father disappears in the rearview mirror, the dim taillights of his Charger fading south.

  RHIANNON KEEPS THE radio on as they travel north, ranges of mountains rising along both sides of the highway. Peaks Billie remembers as still snowcapped in mid-March when she flew into Salt Lake City in high school, now razored and burnt brown beneath a diffuse June sky. Summer solstice. Talk news cuts in and out across waves of static as the highway winds through mountain passes, roller-coaster curves and sloped switchbacks that carry them through the ranges. A local NPR host intones what they’ve missed while at the quarry: the FAA has officially designated the Frontier airline crash between Los Angeles and Houston as weather related, the black box indicating no pilot error and no storm but only clear-air turbulence, the worst and most unexpected kind. The same as four of the other crashes. The investigation nearly complete in Arizona, a scale of funerals Billie can’t begin to imagine. One hundred twenty-six passengers. Incomprehensible beyond the single funeral she and Rhiannon have attended. The weather calm in Utah except for occasional gusts of wind across the morning, nothing like the wildfire in Colorado or the thunderstorm in Missouri or the onset of monsoons the radio’s now reporting across central India, far earlier and heavier than any other year, and the beginning of hurricane season across the eastern seaboard expected to be the most intense on record. Billie watches the mountains rise in the distance beyond the car and listens to the broadcaster announce that every U.S. airport has reopened.

  That seems unwise, Billie says.

  What do you expect them to do, suspend all flights forever?

  If it’s dangerous, no one needs to fly. We all made it out here in cars.

  We did. But Dad and I are used to highways. And you and I have two full weeks.

  Rhiannon turns off the radio and Billie presses her hand against the window, already sun-warmed before noon.

  I’m starving, Billie says. We forgot to eat breakfast.

  We can stop for lunch as soon as we arrive in Salt Lake City. It isn’t far. Your choice. Anything you want before we find this coordinate.

  The two-lane highway widens as they approach and pass through Provo, more lanes and cars than Billie has seen since they wound through Albuquerque. Midmorning traffic, a
flow of sedans and semis that only grows as Provo blends into the sprawl of southern Salt Lake suburbs, a flattened valley gridded with streets and surrounded on all sides by mountains. When the rising buildings of Salt Lake City’s downtown appear against the foothills of the Wasatch, a range Billie remembers, she notices the sheen dome of the Capitol building and the arched spires of the Salt Lake Temple, what looked like an ice castle from the plane when she flew in at fifteen. Rhiannon decelerates and pulls off the highway and glides into the city’s central corridor, the GPS inching closer and closer to their coordinate and destination.

  What kind of food do you feel like? Rhiannon says.

  Not bar food. No hot dogs or burgers.

  Billie eyes the buildings beyond the windows as they travel down the widest road she’s ever seen. She spots a sign for a restaurant called Himalayan Kitchen.

  There, Billie says. God, I haven’t had Indian food in years.

  Inside the restaurant, Billie expects a thin crowd, near noon on a Sunday in one of the most devout cities in the country. But the tables are packed with fine linens and tablecloths and people dressed in skirts and khakis and Billie feels out of place in her hiking shorts and T-shirt. Rhiannon follows the host to a window booth and Billie situates herself across the table from her sister.

  I forgot how massive the streets here are, Billie mumbles. To turn oxcarts, right? When Brigham Young first settled the city.

  Rhiannon peruses the menu. You’d know better than me. What are you ordering?

  Billie scans the menu and wants everything on it. Chana masala, she finally says. And the Himalayan vegetable platter to start, if you’re game. And a mango lassi.

  Rhiannon rolls her eyes but when the server comes, she orders everything Billie wants, plus coconut curry for herself. Billie watches her sister unfurl her napkin and feels the air still stiff between them despite the morning’s drive.

  How’s Beth? Did it feel good to talk to her yesterday?

  It did. Not that I have to tell you. I think you heard everything.

  I wasn’t eavesdropping. I barely heard what you were talking about.