Lone Star

by Paullina Simons

  “Mom!”

  “Do you want me to tell you why?”

  “Chloe, get up.” Johnny throws his guitar into the black case, tries to zip it up. His hands are shaking. “We have to get going. Sorry, Mom. We can’t stay. Have to be at Trieste airport at six in the morning. Come on, Chloe.”

  Chloe rises. “It was really nice to meet you, Ingrid.”

  Ingrid languishes in her chaise, zen-calm. “Do you see the temper?” she says to Chloe. “He pretends it’s not there, but do you see? He’s just like his father. That’s why they’re kindling and matches when they’re together. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. Don’t waste your time, dear. He’ll promise you all the heavenly glories. But he’ll be catching a ride from someone other than you as soon as he says goodbye.”

  Johnny staggers back from his mother. No one knows what to do. Ingrid isn’t put off, isn’t ashamed. She sits serenely, almost gleefully, staring at Chloe.

  “He’s not opening every door for you and pushing your rolling pedestal in front of him. He’s not the one. He’s got another master, baby girl. And you know what they say about masters. You can serve only one.”

  “Mom!”

  “And he serves the devil.”

  Johnny grabs Chloe’s hand. Trembling, nearly convulsing, he bends to kiss his mother’s cheek, misses and catches the air instead. Ingrid remains unfettered. She squeezes Johnny’s arm.

  “I should know, son, right?” she says. “I serve him too.”

  35

  Jimmy Eat World Pain

  JOHNNY WALKS SO QUICKLY, CHLOE CAN BARELY KEEP UP. SHE hurries after him, through the house, not stopping to wave goodbye to the clucking nurses. They’re down the path, out the gate and a mile on the winding road before he speaks.

  “I don’t know what I was thinking,” he says. “I thought she might be happy I found someone. I’m sorry about that.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Chloe says. “She was disappointed you couldn’t stay. She wasn’t herself.”

  “Oh no.” Johnny shakes his head. “She was herself. Never happy until everybody around her is wretched.”

  They wait for the train in silence. They are on the train in silence. He closes his eyes for the half-hour it takes them to get into Gemona. Resting her head against his arm, she looks out the window. She’ll have plenty of time to sleep when he’s gone from her life starting tomorrow. The long leg between Gemona and Ronchi is dark. They get food on the train, chit-chat about nonsense. They get off at Ronchi instead of Trieste because it’s closer to the airport and find a brown bed and breakfast next to the station. Dog Inn or something. The barely one-star room is a closet with a twin bed and white wooden shutters. She is grateful for the private shower, but the showerhead points right at the toilet seat, and there is no curtain. Not ideal. Nothing is ideal. Not like it was. Before Tarcento.

  Naked in bed they speak. Rather, he speaks and she listens. She finds herself losing her power of speech the closer it gets to the implacable time it all ends. The sorrow of it is tearing up her throat.

  “Don’t worry about the things my mother said. She goes off on these rants. That’s why she’s convalescing. That’s why she’s on meds.”

  “Did they forget to give her the meds today or something?” Chloe asks.

  “Oh no, that was her medicated up to the eyeballs.”

  “Which things should I not be worried about?” Ingrid said so many things. None of which Chloe wants to remember. Was it when the mother told the young girl to look elsewhere for true love, as if the glimpse of what Johnny had offered Chloe wasn’t paradise? Or was it when she said that both mother and son served a dark master stronger than love. And there was Chloe, thinking nothing was stronger than love.

  “About me being away for a year,” Johnny replies.

  Ah. That’s what he is worried about? What Chloe thinks about a place called Kurosta? Doesn’t he know that Chloe is too swept up thinking about Miramare and tomorrow after 8:01?

  “You know how parents tend to exaggerate,” he says. “It was a small infraction. Last year I got caught with some stuff when I was in Latvia. I want to say it was a bum beef but … I was moving some product for Emil from Warsaw to Riga and wasn’t careful enough. Mouthed off to a cop, got stopped, searched, and well, you know the rest.”

  “I really don’t.” She hears her own voice as if through broken headphones. It doesn’t sound like her. It’s distant and rough and adult.

  “I had to do a little time. When they searched me, they took my shit.”

  “What shit?”

  He holds her close. “Just shit I was moving for Emil. I had weed on me, some meth, some molly, some coke. A little H. The whole package. But when they took it, obviously I couldn’t deliver it to its destination, or bring the money back to Emil since there was no money. Hence my problem. I held my mud, no one else got snagged, and I was under eighteen at the time, which is one of the reasons Emil had used me. He knew if I got caught they’d slap me on the wrist with a few months and a juvy sentence. But Mom and Dad majorly overreacted. Which is why Afghanistan.”

  “Johnny,” Chloe draws out, trying not to sound too alarmed. “You spent a year of your precious life in jail! That’s not a slap on the wrist.”

  “Could’ve been worse.”

  “Yeah. Could’ve been better too.” Chloe thinks back to other words he has spoken. “But didn’t you say you got kicked out of the School of Performing Arts for similar trouble?”

  “That was child’s play, just some weed I was holding. I wasn’t even really selling, not full price, it was just for spending money.”

  “What about Juilliard? Wasn’t that also …”

  “Look, yes, I’ve had one or two run-ins with the law.” He is still holding her, but his arms are tense and stiff. Any minute he might fling her away from him.

  “I’m just saying,” she says softly, “that maybe that’s why your mom and dad …”

  “I know what you’re saying, but these are unrelated events! It wasn’t like a pattern.”

  “Okay.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Nothing. I’m agreeing with you. That’s what okay means.”

  Here it comes. The flinging away. He sits up on the bed. She does too. “I was a wild kid doing stupid things. That’s all. The kinds of things everybody does. Come on, you didn’t have troublemakers in your high school?”

  “Well, sure …”

  “There you go.”

  They weren’t the one I love, she wants to say.

  “And you’re telling me your folks don’t overreact?”

  “Three times before brunch,” says Chloe. “But getting arrested for drug possession and drug dealing, I don’t know if you can overreact to that.” Just react.

  “Yes, you can. It’s idiotic. Anyway, it’s in the past. I’m going into the army. They don’t allow that shit there. It’s over with. That’s why I don’t want you to worry about it.”

  “I’m not worried,” says Chloe.

  “Really?” Still huddled around his knees he turns his face to her, his searching bottomless eyes scrutinizing her pallid expression. “Truth.”

  “Truth.” She pauses. She recalls his jerky unhinged motions, his flask, his weed, his bloodshot eyes, his constant jittery wakefulness, the large geometric tattoos on the insides of his forearms, almost as if the blue ink is a decoy for needle marks. Her hands shake. “Should I be worried?”

  “One hundred percent no.”

  They kiss. Fall back on the bed. Is the kiss the only thing that’s true?

  Thank you, she whispers.

  You’re welcome. For what?

  For showing me everything.

  He makes a twist with his mouth. This isn’t everything, he says, playing with the tassels that circle the red lamp. The whole tiny place is like a dirty brothel with electric blue walls. This is blindness. This is fire. It’s not everything.

  And then he says no more. As if the castle an
d the beaches and the promise of an Adriatic moonlit swim speak for themselves. She’d cry if she only knew what he’s talking about, but he gazes at her with such tenderness, such yearning.

  I’ve seen everything, he says.

  What did you see? Shark teeth? Tornadoes? Palm trees bending in the tropical wind?

  He lies on his back, tattooed forearms behind his head, drifting off. No, don’t go to sleep, Johnny! Stay with me. Talk to me.

  Someday you’ll understand, he says, opening his eyes.

  Tell me now. Tell what you mean.

  Dear Chloe, beautiful girl among the sequoias, look at where we were. You and Mason could have had bliss in a hotel by the moon and the castle. Don’t shake your head. Yes. You and he could have had reckless nights with no protection and no defenses when he said he loved you forever.

  Vehemently she shakes her head.

  Look at us. We’re just kids. What are we prepared to do? Do you know what love is? Being willing to change your life. What are you willing to give up for me? More important, what are you not willing to give up for me?

  She wants to say, everything. I will give up everything for you.

  You’re going to lie on your back, he says, and you’re going to whisper to me that I’m your boy.

  You are. You are my boy.

  And then you’re going to rise from our shameless bed, walk through the door and bounce forth into the rest of your life. You’ve got so much to live for. But I’ll still be here, flat on my back, in another cheap hotel, watching my life flicker out on the ceiling. So when you ask what we could do differently, you already know the answer. Nothing. You know how I know? Because we are doing nothing.

  Chloe turns away.

  What can I do, she says finally. She croaks it. Tell me. I’ll do it.

  But he is just like his mother. He replies to her in riddles.

  Do you know what my grandmother gave up? Her child. My dad. She had to choose between a dream so faint it was barely a memory and her own flesh-and-blood boy. Would you do that?

  Would that I had a boy to give up, whispers Chloe. I don’t. I have only you.

  One day others will pine for you, Chloe. They’ll hand you flowers and wail at your door. Like me, they’ll show you beaches, moons, castles. One day you’ll have to choose for real between what you think you want and what you truly want. That’s when you will know what love is.

  What about you and me, Johnny?

  Is there a you and me?

  What are you saying? That we’re not real?

  That’s not it at all, he says. That’s not what I mean at all. We are all that’s real. We’ve already had so much.

  Not enough, she says. Not enough by a life.

  He shakes his head. But if this is all the life you’ve been allotted, then we had enough, didn’t we? One day to live all the things that we must live, to soften our hearts, to bring us joy. One day to swim, to eat, to drink, to laugh. One day to kiss the one you love.

  He kisses her.

  She hides her fallen face from him.

  One day is enough for us to know all happiness, Chloe Divine, he whispers into her shoulder blades, caressing her hair. She stares at the stone wall outside their white shutters. He turns her around to him, straddles her, kisses the space between her breasts as he speaks, his soft warm lips kissing her between each small word, like the aching pulse of a love song. One day is enough to celebrate, to bless this life, Johnny murmurs into Chloe’s soul. That’s about all that my grandparents had before they were separated, they both thought forever. And then they split apart mountains to find each other again. That’s what I’m saying to you. Even if death takes me—he waves to the nebulous beyond—as it takes us all, I won’t let it destroy the significance of our present days. I read that when I was in prison. Ask yourself: what single thing gives your life meaning that grisly death will not destroy? Chloe, I promise you this, I swear to you, one way or another, I will find a way to make what I do today have infinite meaning tomorrow.

  These nocturnal torments are carving up her heart.

  He tells her that sometimes he fears the gray February mornings. She misunderstands. She thinks he said great.

  He tells her it’s true, at times he can’t find his way, and becomes afflicted, and the blight of it makes him do stupid things.

  There’s clearly so much she doesn’t know.

  In Trieste under the rain and the red umbrella he had played a song she had never heard and so it barely registered, and it wasn’t the most popular with the soaked crowds, who thinned out during it, but it was a shame because he sang it with such intensity as if it was something private and deeply personal. When she asked him about it in Miramare, he said it was from a new album by a British band called Jimmy Eat World, and the song was called “Pain.”

  The song was about tragic flaws, and a false sense of pride in your own so-called accomplishments (“like singing,” he told her), but mostly it was about how the little white pill took your pain away.

  That’s the part she scratched out on the wailing wall inside her. Johnny soaked with rain, shouting furiously in perfect pitch at the indifferent crowd. How the little white pill took his pain away.

  Is your mother right? Are you lost in the woods? Can you find the road? Do you care?

  My mother is wrong about everything. He says it with no conviction.

  Is the forest your mother’s version of the dragon and the honey, Chloe wants to know. Except without the honey?

  He doesn’t say no. He doesn’t say anything.

  Johnny, what plagues you, she whispers, what black agonies?

  Not a blemish upon my soul when I’m with you, he replies, enfolding her in his arms. Hold open for your own splendor, Chloe, and be helpless.

  Stolen heart, o stolen everything.

  Taken heart, o taken everything.

  As if she isn’t helpless and wretched and open already.

  As if he doesn’t carry the taste of her enslaved flesh on his lyric mouth.

  As if the luxuries in front of which he falls to his knees do not already belong to him.

  Prairies, plains, deserts, swarming amorous flowering fields, not woods is where I want to walk with you.

  Except for when he kisses her, her eyes remain open at night.

  It’s barely dawn when they leave the Dog Inn.

  A final ride, a short cab to Trieste International Airport.

  They’re silent as Italy passes them by.

  I’ll come back, he says. Are you listening? Can you hear my voice?

  I hear.

  I promise I’ll come back.

  I promise I’ll be waiting.

  His arm is around her. He holds her hand. This is for my dad, too. Not just me. He staked his reputation on me going to Afghanistan. He’s waiting for me. He said, don’t let me down. I promised him I wouldn’t. Johnny Rainbow keeps his promises. I know I mouth off and everything. But deep down, I really do want to make him proud. Like he made his father proud.

  Of course, Chloe says. That’s what we all want. To make our parents proud.

  He presses his mouth into the palms of her hands. She prays not to break down. It takes them so long to separate. His plane leaves at eight, and here it is seven-thirty, and he’s not on it. Last call. Like in a bar. His back is to the boarding gate. Chloe stands as straight as she can, watching him stride backwards, his face to her, the way he strode backwards, his face to her, when they were in the forest on the way to the killing field.

  In a song he calls out to her from across the crowded airport lounge, his crazy tenor vibrating, other travelers stopping to gape, to listen. This one goes out to the one I love. If he would stop walking, they’d throw money at his feet. Her eyes pooling up, she shakes her head. Don’t do that, Johnny, please.

  A tall man in an oversized military coat stands like an official at the gate. The man watches Johnny, doesn’t move, doesn’t blink, doesn’t speak. Johnny walks past, half-nods to the man, and brings up his
hand in a salute. Ironic? From a distance, Chloe can’t tell.

  Right before he disappears from her view, he turns around one last time. She stands watching until the last drop of him dries up before her eyes. The only thing left for him to do is make a grand exit. He turns completely around, not just a jaunty glance back. His whole lanky body faces her, guitar on his back, army duffel dropped to his side on the floor. He stands motionless for a moment as other passengers file past him down the gray chute, and then he bends at the waist as if doubling over, one arm flying up for balance, and takes the deepest bow Chloe has ever seen anyone take. In tribute and farewell he leans so far forward that his black ponytail flips over and his guitar case slides, nearly hitting the floor.

  Johnny remains that way for a few moments and then straightens up. All his teeth on display, his coal eyes shining, he blows her a kiss, nods to the official, yanks up his duffel, spins around, and marches on.

  The man in the military coat follows him down the accordion highway.

  Part Three

  The Blue Suitcase

  Give me the waters of Lethe that numb the heart, if they exist,

  I will still not have the power to forget you.

  Ovid, The Poems of Exile: Tristia and the Black Sea Letters

  36

  Freshman Summer

  San Diego University Freshman Course Load

  FALL SEMESTER:

  Intro to Mixed Martial Arts

  Jewish Faith and Practice

  Class Voice I

  World War II

  Studies in European Literature

  SPRING SEMESTER:

  Women’s Self-defense

  Modern Middle East

  Class Voice II

  Social Ethics

  Bootcamp

  Nursery Management

  Mission Florist

  Dear Mom,

  I was offered two internships, one during the week, one on the weekends. During the week, a paralegal at a prestigious law firm. Tell Dad so he’ll be pleased. On the weekends, a job at Mission Florist, the most well-known florist in San Diego. It supplies all the hotels, country clubs and wedding venues. I took a course in nursery management to satisfy a core requirement and the professor suggested I apply at Mission. He thinks I have a natural talent. If it’s okay with you and Dad, I was thinking of taking two additional classes in the summer: landscape design and plant biology. I’d have to stay here. I’d get paid at the jobs, and the university will let me have summer housing—for an additional fee. I can pay for that, but not for the extra course work. If I want to have two majors, philosophy and plant science, I really need to take the extra classes. Please, can you and Dad help? Talk it over and let me know. Maybe you can come and visit again, if Dad can get another break from work. I’ll show you an awesome beach I found. It’s definitely for families, so don’t worry.