by Amy Harmon
“Goodnight, Stewy Stinker!” she said, nuzzling the curve between his shoulder and his neck.
“Goodnight, Buzzard Bates!” he responded gleefully.
“Goodnight Skunk Skeeter!” she immediately shot back.
“Goodnight, Butch Bones!” Eli chortled.
I didn’t understand the nicknames, but they made me smile. The affection dripped from the memory like water spilling from a downspout. But I still pushed it back, slamming the black doors down on the touching display.
“No, Eli. No. I can’t give you that. I know you want your mother. But I can’t give you that. I can’t give her that. But I can give her this. You help me find her, and I’ll give her this.” I pointed at the drying picture I’d created for the persistent child. “I can give her your picture. You helped me make this. This is from you. I can give her this. You can give her this.”
Eli stared at my offering for several long heartbeats. And without warning, he was gone.
Moses
“IT’S BEAUTIFUL.” Tag lifted his chin toward the canvas on my easel. “Different from what you usually do.”
“Yeah. That’s because it didn’t come from his head. It came from mine.”
“The kid?”
“Yeah.” I rubbed my hands over the stubble on my head, anxious, and not sure why. Eli hadn’t come back. Maybe painting had worked after all.
Tag had wandered up, unannounced, uninvited, just like in the early days, and I was grateful for the intrusion. He would come up when he needed a sparring partner or something from my fridge or a piece of art to temporarily place in a prominent position to impress whichever female he had over for the evening.
But he’d already worked out, apparently, and I wouldn’t be taking any pent-up frustration out on him today. His hair was wet around the edges, curling and clinging to his neck and forehead, and sweat from his workout had soaked through his shirt and made it stick to his chest. Tag cleaned up well enough, slicking back his hair and donning an expensive suit when he was doing business, but he’d always been a little shaggy and rough-looking with a nose that had been broken a few too many times and hair that was always too long. I don’t know how he could stand the heat of having hair on his head. I never could, it suffocated me. Maybe it was the fact that every encounter with the dead scorched my neck and made my head swim, and my body burned energy like a furnace.
Tag pulled off his shirt and mopped at his face while helping himself to a bowl of my cereal and a huge glass of my orange juice. He sat down at my kitchen table like we were an old married couple and dug in without further comment on the picture I’d spent half the night creating.
Tag was better at friendship than I was. I rarely went downstairs to his place. I never ate his food or threw my sweaty clothes on his floor. But I was grateful that he did. I was grateful he came to me, and I never complained about the missing food or paintings or the random dirty sock that wasn’t mine. If it wasn’t for Tag making himself at home in my life, we wouldn’t be friends. I just didn’t know how, and he seemed to understand.
I finished my own bowl of cereal and pushed it away, my gaze wandering back to the easel.
“Why is she blonde?” Tag asked.
I felt my brow furrow and I shrugged at Tag. “Why not?”
“Well, the boy . . . he’s dark. I just wondered why you made her blonde,” Tag said reasonably, shoving another huge spoonful into his mouth.
“I’m dark . . . and my mother was blonde,” I responded matter-of-factly.
Tag stopped, his spoon paused in mid-air. I watched as a Cheerio made a desperate dive for freedom, plopping back in the bowl, safe for another few seconds.
“You never told me that.”
“I didn’t?”
“No. I know your mom left you in the laundromat. I know your life was shit growing up. I know you went and lived with your grandma before she died. I know her death messed you up pretty good, which is where I come in.” He winked. “I know you’ve always been able to see stuff other people can’t. And I know you can paint.”
My life in a nutshell.
Tag continued. “But I didn’t know your mom was blonde. Not that it matters. But you’re so dark, so I just assumed . . .”
“Yeah.”
“So . . . is the picture of you and your mom? Wasn’t she a small-town girl?”
“No. I mean . . . yeah. She was a small-town girl. A small-town white girl.” I emphasized white this time, just so we were clear. “But no. The picture is of Eli and his mother. But I don’t think it’s what he wanted.”
“The hills. The sunset. It kind of reminds me of Sanpete. Sanpete was beautiful when I wasn’t hung-over.”
“Levan too.”
I stared at the painting, the child and his mother on a horse named Calico, the woman tall and lean in the saddle, her blonde hair just a pale suggestion against the more vivid pinks and reds of the setting sun.
“She looks like Georgia,” I mused. The woman in my painting looked like Georgia from the back. I felt a sudden sinking in my chest and I stood, walking toward the picture, a picture I’d created in desperation, setting a stage and filling it with characters from my own head. Not from Eli’s head. It had nothing to do with Georgia. But my heart pounded and my breaths grew shallow.
“She looks like Georgia, Tag.” I said it again, louder, and I heard the panic in my voice.
“Georgia. The girl you never got over?”
“What?”
“Oh, come on, man!” Tag groaned, half-laughing. “I’ve known you for a long time. And in that time you’ve never been interested in a single woman. Not one. If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were in love with me.”
“I saw her last Friday. I saw her at the hospital.” I couldn’t even argue with him. I felt sick, and my hands were shaking so much that I interlocked my fingers and hung them around my neck to hide the tremors.
Tag seemed as stunned as I had been. “Why didn’t you say something?”
“I saw her. And she saw me. And . . . and now, I’m seeing this little kid.” I took off running for my bedroom with Tag on my heels and terror thrumming through my veins like I’d just been injected with something toxic.
I pulled my old backpack down off my closet shelf and started ripping things out of it. My passport, a grease pencil, a stray peanut, a coin purse with random currencies that had never been cashed in.
“Where is it?” I raged, unzipping pockets and rifling through every compartment of the old bag, like an addict searching for a pill.
“What are you looking for?” Tag stood back and watched me tear my closet apart with equal parts fascination and concern.
“The letter. The letter! Georgia wrote me a letter when I was at Montlake. And I never opened it. But I kept it! It was here!”
“You put it in one of those tubes in Venice,” Tag answered easily, and sat down on my bed, his elbows braced on his knees, watching me come unglued.
“How the hell do you know that?”
“Because you dragged that envelope around forever. You’ll be lucky if it’s still in one piece.”
I was already digging deeper in my closet, pulling out tubes of rolled art that I’d picked up in my travels and then never took the time to frame or display. We’d sent stuff to Tag’s father from all over the world, and he stuck it in a spare room. When we’d settled in, he’d brought it to us. Four years of travels and purchases, and the loot had filled the back of his horse trailer. We’d promptly deposited it all in a storage unit, not especially interested in going through it all. Fortunately, the tube Tag was referring to should still be somewhere in my closet, because he was right. I’d kept it with me, dragging it around like a prized locket that I never even opened. Maybe because it had never been opened, it never seemed right to set it aside.
“It was in a small—” Tag started.
“Did you read it?” I shouted, digging frantically.
“No. I didn’t. But I wanted to. I thought about i
t.”
I found the tube I was sure it was in and pulled off the lid with my teeth, sinking to my knees as I shook out the contents like a kid on Christmas. I had put the letter back in an envelope when I left Montlake to protect it, and it slid out agreeably and landed in my lap. And like that kid on Christmas, who has just opened something he can’t decide if he likes, I just stared at it.
“It looks the same as it always has, every other time you’ve sat and stared at it,” Tag drawled.
I nodded.
“Do you need me to read it?” he said, a little more kindly.
“I’m an asshole, Tag. You know that right? I was an asshole then, with Georgia, and I haven’t changed a whole lot.”
“You worried I won’t love you anymore, after I read it?” There was a smile in his voice and it helped me breathe.
“Okay. Yeah. You read it. Because I can’t.”
I handed him the letter and fought the urge to stick my fingers in my ears.
He tore open the envelope, unfolded the sheet of paper filled with Georgia’s words, and looked at it silently for a moment. Then he started to read.
Dear Moses,
I don’t know what to say. I don’t know how to feel. The only thing I know is that you’re there and I’m here and I’ve never been so afraid in my life. I keep coming to visit, and I keep leaving without seeing you. I’m worried about you. I’m worried about me.
Will I ever see you again?
I’m afraid the answer’s no. And if it’s no, then you need to know how I feel. Maybe someday, you’ll be able to do the same. I would really, really like to know how you feel, Moses.
So here goes. I love you. I do. You scare me and fascinate me and make me want to hurt you and heal you all at the same time. Is it weird that I want to hurt you? I want to hurt you like you’ve hurt me. Yet the thought of you being hurt makes me ache. Doesn’t make much sense, does it?
Second, I miss you. I miss seeing you. I could watch you all day. Not just because you’re beautiful to look at—which you are—not just because you can create beautiful things—which you do—but because there’s something in you that pulls at me and convinces me that if you would just let me in, if you would just love me back, we could have a beautiful life. And I would really love for you to have a beautiful life. More than anything, I want that for you.
I don’t know if you’ll read this. And if you do, I don’t know if you’ll respond. But I needed you to know how I feel, even if it’s in a crummy letter that smells like Myrtle because it’s been in my jockey box for a month.
Even if you just listen and then you leave, I hope you’ll let me tell you in person when you get out.
Please.
Georgia
P.S. My five greats? They haven’t changed. Even with everything that has happened, I’m still grateful. Just thought you should know.
We sat in silence for several long seconds. I couldn’t speak at all. The letter didn’t tell me anything, not really. But Georgia was in the room with us now, her presence as real and warm as her brown eyes and the hot pink of her kiss. Her words practically leapt from the page, and they took me back like I’d been sucked through a worm hole and she was standing before me, waiting for me to give her a response. Amazingly enough, after all these years, I still didn’t have one.
“Man,” Tag whistled. “You really are an asshole.”
“I’m going to Levan,” I stated, surprising myself and making Tag rear back in amazement.
“Why? What’s going on, man? Am I missing something?”
“It’s nothing. I mean. I thought maybe . . .” I stopped. I didn’t know what I was thinking. “Forget it.” I shrugged it off. I took the letter from Tag’s hand and folded it up. I kept folding it, tighter and tighter, until it was a fat little square. And then I held it in my palm and wrapped my fingers around it as if I could just toss it away, just toss away all the things that were bothering me. I could count them off on my fingers, just like Georgia’s mom used to do with her foster kids, and I could toss them away.
“I may not be thinking clearly. I haven’t slept very well in the last couple of days. And seeing Georgia . . .” My voice trailed off.
“So you’re going to Levan. And I’m coming with you.” Tag stood as if it was already decided.
“Tag . . .”
“Mo.”
“I don’t want you to come.”
“This is the town you terrorized. Right?”
“I didn’t terrorize anyone,” I argued.
“When they talk about painting the town, I don’t think you were quite what they had in mind, Moses.”
I laughed, in spite of myself.
“I have to go with you to make sure they don’t run you out with pitchforks.”
“What if she won’t talk to me?”
“Then you might have to settle in there for a while. Follow her around until she does. She was pretty persistent with you, it seems like. How many times did you turn her away? How many times did she keep coming back?”
“I still have my grandmother’s house. It’s not like I don’t have anywhere to go or any reason to be there. I’ve paid the property taxes on it all these years.”
“You need some moral support. I’ll pull a Rocky Balboa and train with tractor tires and chickens for a couple of days. If Levan is anything like Sanpete, they have plenty of both.”
Moses
WE PULLED OFF THE INTERSTATE just outside of Nephi and exited onto the old highway that connected Nephi to Levan. The Ridge is what it was called. Just a two lane stretch of nothing with fields stretching out on either side. We passed the Circle A with its big red sign sticking up high enough to be seen above the overpass and a mile down the freeway, telling truckers and weary drivers that there was relief in sight.
“Go back, Moses.”
I shot him a questioning look.
“I want to see it. It was there, wasn’t it?”
“Molly?”
“Yeah. Molly. I want to see the overpass.”
I didn’t argue, though I didn’t know what there was to see. My picture was long gone, covered and forgotten. So was Molly. Long gone. Covered and forgotten. But Tag hadn’t forgotten.
I turned around and found the dirt road that shimmied through the field, came out behind the overpass, and continued up into the hills. There were still broken beer bottles and fast food wrappers. A broken CD player that had probably been there for a while, considering the make and model, lay abandoned on its side, wires protruding from the missing speaker. I didn’t want glass in my tires and pulled off in the barrow pit a little ways off, just like I’d done that night so long ago. It was the same time of year and everything. It was the same kind of October—unseasonably warm, but predictably beautiful. The leaves were a hot riot on the lower hills and the sky was so blue I wanted to reach up and capture the color with my paint brush. But that night it had been dark. That night Georgia had followed me. That night I’d lost my head and maybe something else too.
Tag picked his way through the debris and just kept walking out into the field where the dogs must have canvased, noses to the ground. He stopped once and looked around, eyeing the hills, judging the distance to the freeway, measuring the length between the overpass and the back of the businesses that crowded the on and off ramps, trying to make sense of something that made no sense at all.
I turned away and walked to the cement walls that held the freeway on her shoulders. There were two sides, one slanting right, one slanting left, and I leaned back against the side still exposed to the sun, closed my eyes, and felt the warmth seep into my skin.
Wait! Please, please, please don’t keep walking away from me!” she cried in frustration. I could hear the tears in her voice and the fear too. She was afraid of me, but she still came after me. She still came after me. The thought made me stumble, it made me stop. And I turned, letting her catch me. And I caught her too, wrapping my arms around her so tight that the space between us became space arou
nd us, space above us, but not space inside us. I felt the drumming, the pounding beneath the softness of her breasts, and my heart raced to match it. I opened her mouth under mine, needing to see the colors, to feel them lick and climb up my throat and behind my eyes like flames from a signal flare. I kissed her lips over and over, until there were no secrets. Not hers, not mine. Not Molly’s. There was just heat and light and color. And I couldn’t stop. I didn’t want to stop. Her skin was like silk and her sighs like satin, and I couldn’t look away from the pleasure on her face or the pleas in her hands that urged me onward.
Georgia’s hair, Georgia’s mouth, Georgia’s skin, Georgia’s eyes, Georgia’s long, long legs.
Georgia’s love, Georgia’s trust, Georgia’s faith, Georgia’s cries, Georgia’s long, long wait.
And then the cries of passion became something else. There was sorrow in the sound. And there were tears. Georgia was bent over with them, doubled over. And her hair streamed around her like the water falling from her eyes and wailing from her mouth, and her long, long legs were no longer around me but beneath her, kneeling, supplicating, and she cried, and cried, and cried…
I opened my eyes and sat upright, unsure of what had been my own memory or something else entirely. I felt sick and disoriented, almost like I’d dozed too long and gotten a touch of heat stroke. I rubbed at my neck with clammy hands. But it couldn’t have been that long. Tag still wandered around in the field, looking for a sign that led to absolution or a road to reasons why. I winced at the setting sun and turned back toward the concrete wall to give him time to discover there was no such thing as either one.
Eli sat against the opposite wall, his stubby legs in Batman pajamas pulled up into his chest as if he too had settled in for a long, long wait. His hood covered his dark curls, and the small fabric points crafted to resemble bat ears gave him a devilish air totally at odds with his angel boy face.
I cursed loudly, louder than I’d intended, the sound echoing off the concrete walls and beckoning Tag to turn around. He did and raised his arms in question.