Eight
Zoe’s car jostles on the loose gravel road as she drives out to the aqueduct. With no tennis practice, no homework, and no shift to work, she has time to fill. She doesn’t want to go home yet, and she won’t let herself go see the room again. The only landmarks to mark her passage are occasional oil pumps. They dot Ruby like little anchors to hold down the paper-flat landscape. Enclosed by chain-link fence, a lot of the pumps in the heart of town are painted to make them more attractive, most often to resemble a katydid. With their angled arms of steel, they do look like an insect poised to hop, but Zoe has always thought of them as wild horses rounded up from the plains and forced to work in tiny chain-link corrals. Their brown coats are streaked with rust and grime. Their blunt heads raise and lower, straining against iron reins for freedom. As a child she thought if she could just pull away the fence they would turn back into the beautiful horses they really were and escape to the open plains. She had had hope in that power. She grunts now at the childish notion.
She pulls off the gravel road and parks beneath a huge stand of mesquite. She was hoping to see other people. The twins, maybe, or Carly or Reid. Or anyone. She can usually count on someone to come out after school and unwind with a six-pack on the hoods of cars in the shade of the mesquite. And then where the aqueduct travels over the wash and is supported by beams, they walk down to cool their feet in the trickling pond below it, always fresh with water leaking from above. Or, if it’s one of those days that weighs on her, she walks on the crossbeams lying on top of the aqueduct. She doesn’t know what compels her to do it, but she thinks today is one of those days. She gets out of her car and looks back toward Ruby. No dust trail churns up the dirt road yet. She wonders if she missed everyone because she wasted so much time at the utility office.
She walks up the small incline to the aqueduct, the sandy red soil rasping under her shoes, whispering, Not today. Not today. But she can already hear the low rumble of the water, her blood is thin, rushing, and she is pulled to the first crossbeam. She kicks off her sandals and places her left foot on the six-inch metal beam, one foot…one foot…one step at a time she tells herself. That’s all it is.
She looks down at the black-blue water, deceptively calm on the surface, a few ripples and nothing more. But she knows the danger, the bodies that have been found miles downstream where the aqueduct widens again. No one who falls in ever survives; the current is too strong, the pull to the bottom unforgiving. She spreads her arms out for balance, and her right foot steps ahead of the left. Another step. And another. The water rumbles, vibrates, her heart beats madly, and a breeze lifts up from the rush below, tossing her hair across her face. She smooths the wisps back so slowly…so gently…and extends her arm again. Another step, and another. Eleven steps across to the other side and then she follows the next zigzag back. And now across again. She stops midway. Lowers her arms. Listens. Feels the frightening power of the water below her…and she closes her eyes.
Just for a second—or a few. She isn’t sure.
Closed just long enough that up melts with down and light mixes with dark. Closed just long enough to know how totally alive and frightened she is. So she can feel her breaths, fast, her heartbeat, the sweat trickling at her temple, her shirt clinging to her back, the tingling of her fingertips, her muscles trembling, tensing, the adrenaline pulsing, so she feels with stark clarity the wild rush that she is alive. Alive. And it could all end with the slip of a foot, the rush to become blackness, the chaos, calm, just with the passing of a few seconds. Her lungs filling with a pint of liquid and it is over.
That’s how fast it could change.
She opens her eyes, steadies her arms, and continues across, two more beams, measuring, concentrating—
“Zoe.” The voice comes hushed, careful and pleading. She can’t turn around.
“Zoe,” it calls again. “Come off.”
She takes two more steps. “I’m fine, Reid,” she calls. “I’m fine.” She reaches the end of the beam and turns around. There is Reid standing on the dirt near the edge of the aqueduct, frozen, as though a sudden movement, even from his eyes, could push her from the beam. “Besides, I’m a good swimmer,” she says. She sees Reid isn’t amused. His face is pale against his coal-black hair. He says nothing else, like there is no breath left to carry his words. She pauses for a moment thinner than a wisp, sorry she has made his brows pinch together and his pupils turn to pinpoints, but at the same time it makes her feel giddy with power.
She completes the eight-beam zigzag walk, and when she steps back onto the soil on the other side of the wash, she screams with her hands over her head in triumph. “Zoe! Queen of the beams! Queen over water! Queen over death!” The power intoxicates her. Five minutes of control seems like a lifetime. She runs down the wash to the other side and to Reid.
Reid walks to his truck with her sandals in his hand and opens the back gate. “You’re crazy, you know.”
She scoots back on the gate and hugs her knees to her chest. “Not really. People do crazier things than that every day.”
“I’m not talking about the stuff in the papers.”
“Neither am I.”
Reid pulls a beer from a grocery sack and flips the tab. He doesn’t offer one to Zoe. He knows she doesn’t drink. She’s tried it. The taste isn’t bad, but she can’t get past the smell. It is always beer and vomit. That is all she smells.
She lights a cigarette, inhales deeply, and forcefully blows the smoke back out. “Where’s Carly?” she asks.
Reid makes the sweeping gestures that Zoe expects. He is part of the drama crowd at school. “Am I my sister’s keeper?” he asks.
“Usually.”
Reid grunts. “Not today. She’s in deep shit, and I’m keeping my distance. Don’t want peripheral grounding.”
Zoe smiles and shakes her head. Grounding. So foreign to her. It sounds so young. “Very gallant of you,” she says. “What happened?”
“Speeding ticket. Her second one. No keys for Carly for a long time.”
“Shit. Where did it happen?”
“The usual. The stretch between Gorman and the refineries. They were right behind the last row of trailers at Sunset Gardens. She asked for it. They’re always there.”
Zoe shakes her head. That’s where they got Carly the last time. Why didn’t she learn? But who is she to judge Carly on faulty memory. It seems to be a Ruby staple.
She lies back in the truck, and Reid erupts with a long dramatic belch, then smiles and bows. Zoe tweaks her head to the side and feigns disgust but can’t restrain a smile. She loves him like a brother, but she can’t forget he was the last one. Carly doesn’t know. It still shames her when she thinks of it, and it continues to hang between her and Reid, thin, like a ghost, barely seen in fleeting glimpses, in the shadows, but always there in awkward pauses, brief moments of remembrance—how it was, the intimacy that is now a hazy dream.
“I’ll give her a call later,” she says.
“Nope. A hundred-and-fifty-dollar ticket means no phone either.” Reid lies down beside her on the gate. Together they stare into the weave of color over them, a shifting canopy of white-blue sky and quaking leaves of mesquite as the afternoon wind picks up.
“Well, I’ll see her tomorrow at school, then,” Zoe says.
“You’ll be there? Knew you were suspended today. You were the talk of the school. Everyone’s saying they would put up with Garrett all year long if they could have just been in that class yesterday. They’re saying they love you in one breath and that you’re fucking crazy in the next.”
Zoe sighs. “How many times are you going to call me crazy in one day, Reid?”
“You tell me. The day’s not over.”
She doesn’t answer. She wonders herself.
An awkward silence comes between them, and she is aware of his jeans brushing the side of her bare thigh, his head just inches from hers. She sits up and throws her cigarette down on the dirt, then stands to mash out
the fading embers. Reid changes the subject, and they talk about trivial things neither one cares about until finally Zoe looks at her watch and says she has to go home.
But she doesn’t go straight home. She can’t stop herself. She takes a brief detour—a detour down Lorelei Street—a detour that takes only fifteen minutes, fifteen minutes of dreaming and imagining, a detour that is really, now, her only route home.
Nine
The house is silent. She checks Mama’s room, and the bed is empty.
She went to work. Like she said. She really went to work.
Zoe goes to the kitchen and puts away the half gallon of milk and Chinese express she picked up on the way home. She clears the table of dishes, newspapers, bottles of antacids and washes away the crumbs, coffee rings, and dabs of grape jelly with a dishcloth that is gray and smells of mildew. The worn but clean Formica tabletop glistens with the dampness of the rag, and that glimmer somehow lifts her spirits. She turns on the radio on top of the refrigerator. Mama has it tuned to an oldies-but-goodies station, and Zoe leaves it there. She listens to Roy Orbison croon “it’s over” as she runs hot water to wash a few dishes.
She glances at the clock. Six-fifteen. Mama should be home soon. Sally’s closes at seven; the last shampoos are done by six-thirty. It’s only three blocks away, which Mama walks now that she can’t drive. Zoe pictures Mama’s withering legs. But the exercise is good for her, she thinks. She finishes the dishes and looks at the empty sink. It is stained and yellowed, but still somehow fresh-looking on this particular evening. She decides she will make sure it is empty every evening and begins drying the dishes. She looks at the clock. Five after seven. She wonders if she should have picked up Mama. She sets her towel on the counter and picks up the phone. She hesitates, then dials. Sally answers on the first ring.
“Sally? Has Mama left yet?”
“Zoe? That you, sweetheart?”
“Yeah. It’s me.”
“Your Mama ain’t here, honey.”
“How long ago did she leave? I was just wondering if I should have picked her up.”
Zoe notes the pause.
“Your Mama hasn’t been here at all today. She hasn’t been in the shop for close to a month. Did she say she was coming in?”
Zoe stumbles, not fixing on Sally’s voice anymore. “No. I mean, I think I misunderstood her. That’s all. Thanks, Sally.” She says good-bye and hangs up.
Not there? Where…
A familiar fear grips her, then explodes out of her.
“Mama?” she calls as she runs to the bathroom. Damn! She didn’t check the bathroom. “Mama!” she calls again. She stops at the dark doorway, her hand whipping around to switch on the light. The curtain is drawn at the tub, and she jumps forward to tear it away. It’s empty.
Only a white tub and nothing more.
Her knees are weak, and she holds on to the towel rack, closing her eyes, taking a breath, and another, feeling her heart beating against her throat.
She hears laughing, talking, good-byes, and then the front door opening. She loosens her grip on the rack and walks to the front room, just in time to see Mama closing the door behind her and then leaning back against it. She sees Mama’s mouth moving but Zoe can’t put the words together. It is a background jumble, as if she and Mama are moving on two different planes of time. As if her run to the bathroom has jolted her into another dimension. Has it? She feels nothing. She looks at Mama’s eyes. They’re unfocused, her pupils large, black, watery pools circled with a thin line of blue. Her dress is twisted and hanging off one shoulder, her dingy bra strap exposed. It tugs across her bloated middle, and Zoe sees the lines that have folded into her face since yesterday. Mama lifts her hand to brush her hair from her forehead, her beautiful forehead that Zoe has kissed so many times, but now its soft milkiness is a remembered dream. The planes she and Mama move on converge once again, and she hears Mama’s words.
“What the hell you staring at?”
“Nothing, Mama,” Zoe answers. “I’m staring at nothing.”
Mama pushes past her, and Zoe hears her stumbling in her room, drawers slamming too loudly, closet doors swinging too wide. Mama returns in only her slip and settles on the couch with a half-filled glass in her hand. “Hand me the controls, will you, sugar?” There is no talk about Zoe’s day, school, or her suspension. No questions.
She hands Mama the control and goes to her bedroom, not bothering to shut the door. She hears the click of the TV and chopped-up conversations as Mama flips through the channels. Chopped-up conversations that sound so familiar to her, like it is the only way people talk, talking but never finishing, finishing where there is no beginning.
She pulls the duffel from under her bed. She fills it. This time the decisions about what to put in seem easy. Her hands move methodically. She does the same with one pillowcase and then another. She hears Mama laugh and then soft whimpering, like an animal that has been wounded. Pauses, coughs, sobs, and the clink of the glass punctuate Mama’s pleas.
“Sugar…,” she moans.
“Come here…,” she calls.
“I need to talk to you…,” she sobs.
Chopped-up conversations whose only beginning is Mama.
Zoe takes a piece of blue-lined paper from her notebook and begins writing. By the time she is finished and returns to the living room, Mama is asleep. She tapes the note to the TV screen.
There is Chinese in the refrigerator. The dishes are done. The utility bill is paid. I don’t live here anymore. I live at 373 Lorelei Street.
I love you.
Zoe
She loads the duffel and pillowcases into her car, and when she drives away, she leaves the chain-link gate swinging open wide.
Ten
Zoe paces the porch.
Walks in small circles.
Pulls in careful breaths.
Jiggles her hands to shake out trembling fingers.
It’s 8:20, dark, much too late to be knocking on an old woman’s door to take a room. She might scare the hell out of her if she rings the bell now. And after paying the electric bill today, she only has a hundred and thirty-six dollars left. Not even enough for a full month’s rent. But tomorrow night she works, and she can usually count on her Thursday shift to bring in fifteen or sixteen in tips. She’ll be extra nice to the customers. Her words will be all sugar—Yes, ma’am and No problem, sir—even if they ask for a thousand fucking substitutions. She’ll squeeze twenty bucks out of tomorrow night. Will Opal wait until then?
The bulb to the right of the door glows a soft yellow, washing the gray-blue slats of the porch in a warm golden haze, blotting out the rest of Ruby, the world, in a safe circle of light that holds Zoe in. There is nowhere else to go. The room is already hers in her heart. She puts her finger to the bell, and with a jerky movement she forces it forward before she can change her mind. She hears a muted buzz, soft humming, and then the door swings open wide. Opal is smiling, her hair wrapped in a jeweled orange turban, a few stray curls spinning out near her ears, and a flowing purple caftan lapping near her ankles. She pushes open the screen door, waving Zoe in. “Ah, yes, yes,” she warbles in her birdlike voice. “You made it. I was wondering when you’d get here.”
Zoe steps inside. She tries to think back to her conversation with Opal. She is sure she never said anything about coming. “You knew I was coming?”
“Oh, not tonight. But I knew. I can read people’s eyes. I read yours. They said today or tomorrow. Friday afternoon at the latest.” Opal winks, and Zoe isn’t sure if Opal is teasing or if she’s a brick short of a load, but she likes the idea that someone could know what lives behind her eyes. She’s not sure anyone has ever done that before. Opal guides her along by her elbow to a small table in the entryway, still humming her tuneless song. She opens its single shallow drawer and shuffles some papers aside. “Here we go.” She places a small silver key in Zoe’s palm, tweaks her head to the side, and says, “Welcome, Zoe Beth Buckman, to Opal’s Lorelei
Oasis.” Opal looks up at the ceiling, squints her eyes, and then nods her head. “Yes. Yes. I like that. Though I did consider Opal’s Lorelei Hideout, too. Sounds dangerous and exciting. What do you think?”
“I—” Zoe is drawn to Opal’s eyes. Can she read what lies behind them, too? For this moment, it seems she can. Wrinkled flesh gathers in folds around the old woman’s eyes, circling the amber pools, the black pupils, the flecks of faded green, and Zoe sees…she is not sure she can put a name to it yet, but she recognizes it. It stirs up images…searching beneath a pillow for a quarter that has replaced a tooth…sitting frozen for half an hour with a few bread crumbs in her cupped palm, barely breathing as a mourning dove steps closer and closer…driving home from Wal-Mart in the front seat of a jostling truck, stroking a brand new tennis racket laid across her lap…a word something like hope…or maybe possibility is the better choice…possibility…the word she reads in Opal’s eyes. “I like them both,” she says.
Opal claps her hands and cackles. “Well, we’ll stick with oasis—for today. Who knows about tomorrow!”
Yes, Zoe thinks. Possibility is the word. She reaches into her purse and takes out all her cash—one hundred and thirty-six dollars, most of it in bulky singles from her tips. Opal wrinkles up her nose and, still smiling, waves Zoe’s fistful of money away.
“Oh, no, no. Let’s not spoil our celebration by counting out that tonight. You can pay me tomorrow, and since we are already a week into September, let’s make it an even hundred, shall we?” Before she has finished her last sentence, she is floating up the stairs, her caftan billowing behind her like a purple cloud, calling back to Zoe, “Might as well go in this way tonight. I’ll show you where the bathroom is and then we can get your things. You did bring things, didn’t you? Can’t nest without your own things. Hurry, dear, the moon is almost up. You won’t want to miss it! And you still have to meet the Count.”