Truly Like Lightning

by David Duchovny

  That evening, still rattled by the steam, Mary was besieged by old thoughts and memories—she wondered how her adoptive parents, the Castigliones, were. She had dropped them a line now and then when she ran away to California, along with a couple tortured calls from pay phones, but the old working-class Catholic couple had expressed only confusion, anger, and censure at their daughter’s life, her hair, her sexual choices, and soon Mary had cut them off completely, cut the whole family off. It was easier that way, all or nothing. Once her new roots were planted firmly in the desert, she had resigned herself to never seeing her parents again, or her siblings, or—and this was a new thought—her biological parents, whom she knew nothing about, and had never cared to investigate for fear of wounding or betraying the Castigliones. In her mind, Mary had arrived on this planet sui generis, self-made, a true orphan.

  But this computer in her hand, this phone that was new to her, inspired all the questions; indeed, like an ancient oracle, it had all the questions and all the answers, and all the answers led to more questions. She tentatively googled “Francis and Maria Castiglione Elizabeth New Jersey” and two obits popped up. Just like that, in a blink, with a wave of a fingertip, her parents, who had been alive in her mind moments before, were dead now, long dead. There was even a picture of her father. She cried for them. Three of her eight siblings were dead. Dizzy, she had to sit down, then she had to lie down. She was overwhelming herself, the electronic revelations, the sudden reckoning of the passage of time suffocating her, but she couldn’t stop—easy information at her fingertips was like a drug. She was about to try to figure out how to investigate her birth parents when she told herself to turn off the phone, and that she might soon reach out to one of her siblings, maybe one day find out who her real parents were, and if they were even alive, but not now. She jammed the phone away in her pocket.

  The rest of the evening, as she made dinner for the kids, she was alternately in a sleepwalking type of trance or overcome with deep sobs, rising up from her gut. She ran to the bathroom to hide the convulsions from the children. Deuce noticed that Mary didn’t eat a thing. After the dishes were done, with Pearl in bed, Deuce doing homework, and Hyrum deep in a Fortnite marathon, Mary stared at the vial of pills on the sink as she brushed her teeth. The vial of pills stared back. She swallowed one down. Almost immediately, the feeling was similar to that of meeting an old, dear friend. As the warmth settled deeper, penetrating her bones, and her head got fuzzy, she recalled vaguely that this particular old friend had broken her heart, and that he had also stolen from her, crashed her car, and owed her money, and that he should not, under any circumstances, be trusted. But by then it was too late. She was not a person who could give herself structure, and away from Bronson, she had felt the old chaos encroaching again. She couldn’t stand that quotidian mess, the duration of a day stretching out ahead with nothing but worry and projection. The little pills made her feel okay in the chaos.

  But what was the big problem anyway? she asked herself. She was alone with three kids and no help. She had no friends and nothing to do, and besides, this was only a temp fix—the summer would roll around soon enough, and this test would be over, and they would win and get back to their lives as they were, more or less. She just needed to survive and this would enable her to. Sure, there’d be no way to get pills once back out in the desert, but out there she wouldn’t need them. Problem solved. Uncomfortable maybe, but solved. No harm, no foul. Her major concern was where to get more when Frankie’s vial ran out.

  One night in late October, sleeping and sleeping off a high, Mary was awakened in her bed by a dark stranger kissing her lips. For a moment, she thought she was about to be raped. She tensed to push the stranger to the floor and scream, but these kisses were so gentle, and the feel familiar, and as her eyes adjusted from sleep to darkness, she could make out Yalulah smiling above her, moaning, “Baby, baby, baby, baby…”

  17.

  AFTER MAKING LOVE with an intensity they hadn’t reached in years, Mary and Yalulah held on to each other. They were both so hungry for reconnection, and the time apart had lent a newness and shine to the easy routine of longtime lovers. “I’m in love again.” Yalulah sighed.

  “Aw, baby…” Mary sighed back.

  “With your mattress.”

  “Oh my god, right? Me too.” They laughed and cuddled some more; just feeling the weight of body on body was good to the both of them. “We’ll always have Rancho Cucamonga,” Mary joked.

  Yaya stroked Mary’s hair and looked toward the windows. “I forgot how it never really gets dark out here.”

  “Or quiet.”

  “I’m sorry, baby. I just missed you so. I had to disobey the prime directive.”

  “I’m happy you did. I didn’t know how horny I was.”

  Yaya laughed again. “I gotta get back soon or Bro’ is gonna be suspicious.”

  “Bro’ don’t know?”

  “No, baby, he’s not in great shape; he’s spending the night out in the desert with his peep stones looking for answers. I put the kids to bed and snuck out. Hope no one wakes up. He’s getting headaches again. He’s going through something deep and very, very—male.”

  “Shit. Sometimes I dream that he comes to kidnap us and take us back to the desert.”

  Yalulah nodded like that was a real possibility. Distance had given, at best, an illusion of separateness and independence. A hundred miles and three months was nothing in the face of Bronson Powers and twenty years of enmeshment.

  “Tell me about Agadda da Vida,” Mary said. She didn’t want to say, but she missed her biological daughter above all else. Yalulah knew her woman.

  “Beautiful is about to get her period, I think, and she’s writing some amazing apocalyptic poetry, she writes so well.”

  “Apocalyptic? Jesus. But she’s okay?”

  “Misses you, but she’s okay. Alvin thinks you’re all dead like Jackie, and Joseph wets the bed three or four times a week. Lovina Love thinks you’ve been abducted by aliens who like to do things with your assholes. Other than that, we’re aces.”

  Mary laughed a little and nodded. “Oh, Lovina. Did we screw up her toilet training?”

  Yalulah laughed too. “You know, it’s like one of those mobiles with lots of different parts, if you hit one part, all the other parts move, too. We are all still joined in the same mobile.”

  “Yes, we are.”

  “Forever.” They held on to each other. They’d closed a lot of the distance by making love, but there was some stubborn terrain between them still.

  “Uh, what did you do to your pussy?” Yalulah asked.

  Mary shot up to sitting. “Whaddya mean ‘do’? Is there something wrong with it?”

  “It’s … how can I put it … streamlined?”

  Mary looked at her quizzically. “Huh?”

  “Uh, economical … aerodynamic?”

  “Oh, yeah.” Mary laughed. “Bald. I shaved it!”

  “No shit. With a razor?”

  “No, with a lawn mower; yes, with a razor.”

  “Are you a porn star now?” Yalulah teased.

  “No, it’s what all the women do now. Not just the porn stars. What do you think?”

  “It’s … interesting. It’s just right there—like, ‘Hi, nice to meet you.’ Unencumbered.”

  “That’s not a sexy word.”

  “Well, I like you the way God made you.”

  “God made me fucked up.”

  “God made you perfectly … fucked up.”

  “That’s the nicest thing.”

  “Tell me about Rancho Cucamonga,” Yalulah said.

  “Haven’t lost any of the kids, so pat on the back for me. I mean, it’s hard to say. Deuce is lonely, I think. His skin is a mess.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, acne, and it’s made him a little withdrawn.”

  “Understandable. Poor thing.”

  “But he’s such a good guy. His heart is pure. It’s like he got Jac
kie’s heart and Pearl got her soul.”

  “How is Miss Pearl?”

  “She hasn’t really made any friends either.”

  “That’s okay, nobody is putting down roots.”

  “Yeah, it’s okay for Pearl. Pearl is cold-blooded, you know, she’s a survivor. She scares me sometimes, she’s twice as tough as I am. Which is good, ’cause … well, as beautiful as she is…” Mary trailed off.

  Yalulah nodded. “I wouldn’t know.”

  Mary kissed Yalulah’s creased forehead and thought about telling her of the woman in the steam room, but the whole thing was so odd that she didn’t want to share it, as if sharing it with Yaya would make it more real, and then maybe Yaya would think she was losing her shit. Maybe she was. She’d rather forget about it, if that were a possibility.

  “And Hyrum? How is that little Neanderthal?”

  “Honestly, Hyrum is just okay. He misses the desert and the hunting and the arrows and guns and all that.”

  “Who wouldn’t miss being Mowgli?”

  “Exactly. He’s come home with a couple bruises, so he’s probably scrapping with other kids a little, but he’s really the only one of the three that’s brought a friend home, which is good, right? He talks about joining the wrestling team. I can’t get him to crack a book.”

  “Nothing new there.”

  “I guess that’s okay for now, though. Don’t mind him not learning anything here—good for us for the end-of-the-year test, I guess.”

  “Yup. No girls yet for Hy?”

  “Oh God, no, I don’t think he has any pubes.”

  “Just like you.”

  “Ha, yeah, I guess it’s a trend.”

  Yalulah brushed Mary’s hair from her face. “Wow,” she said, “your hair is so soft.”

  “It’s called shampoo.”

  “Shampoo! I remember shampoo.” She inhaled the sweet chemical fragrance off Mary’s scalp. “I gotta get going,” Yalulah said, getting up, then pausing and adding, “Do you wanna come back with me, baby? All of you. You know, call this whole thing off? I did some research and we could get loans on the worth of the land and hire lawyers and fight this thing in perpetuity. We can be the same as we were. It’ll be a hassle, but our lives will go back to the way they were.”

  Mary still tasted Yalulah on her lips, but her mouth was dry and she wanted a Percocet. She got out of bed and said, “We can never be the way we were.” She saw Yalulah’s face fall. “But it won’t be long now, Yaya. We can make it.”

  “Five long months.”

  “It’ll go by quick.” Mary disappeared into the bathroom to drink some water from the faucet. And stealthily pop a Percocet. She called out, “Water doesn’t taste like water here.”

  “What does it taste like?”

  “Almost water.”

  “Aw. I miss that.”

  “What?”

  Yalulah popped her head into the bathroom. “The sound of your piss.”

  Mary farted, loudly echoing in the bowl. “How ’bout that? Miss that?”

  “Not as much. But kinda. I saw coffee in the fridge, you rebel,” Yalulah sang.

  “Guilty.”

  “Can I have some?”

  “Be my guest.”

  “‘A friend of the devil is a friend of mine.’”

  “Uh-huh. I thought you were a Starbucks gal.”

  “Very funny. I mean, it’s just ’cause I don’t want to fall asleep on the drive back.”

  Mary came back in from the bathroom. “Of course. You should probably put a couple gallons in the tank so Bronson doesn’t notice.”

  Yalulah picked her shirt up off the floor, sniffed it, and grimaced.

  “Can I borrow a shirt, too? I wanna wear my baby’s shirt,” Yalulah said as she opened the closet door and about ten Ugg boots came tumbling out like a soft wall had crumbled, a wall of Uggs that Mary had constructed against the chaos of her mind.

  “What the hell?” Yalulah said. “These are all brand new.” She dug deeper in the closet. It was filled with never-worn Uggs in all the available styles and colors, boots piled upon unopened boxes. She stared in amazement at Mary.

  Mary shrugged. “You don’t even have to go to the store anymore, you get on your phone and order, and pay electronically. It’s like you get it for free.”

  “But you don’t, you know.”

  “I know. It’s somehow wonderful and diabolical at the same time. I guess I got carried away, lost track. I love me some Uggs.” Truth was, she’d shop while high and then forget that she’d bought anything until a package arrived, and the surprise, though embarrassing, was also pleasant—a gift. Somebody up there likes me. Like a prayer answered within three business days.

  “I guess.” Something in Yalulah sensed there was more here, a thread that should be pulled, that this mountain of brushed suede might be covering something more significant, and should be analyzed psychologically. But it was late and she had to go. Instead, she just asked, “Should I worry?”

  Mary pouted. “I don’t know why I’m the one here for this year. You were always the way more practical one. Jackie was the hard-ass boss and you were always the voice of reason, and I was somewhere in the middle—nothing. You should be here, not me.”

  “I need to teach them English and history back home. They need to test off the charts at the end of the year. And you’re not ‘nothing,’ my baby.”

  “Right. I forgot. The fucking test.”

  “Unfortunately, they’re gonna have to do without painting and music for the year, though Solomona, you’ll be happy to hear, is filling in quite nicely.”

  “Solomona can draw a line.”

  “Oh, and Little Joe tried to use his poop as paint last week, though. We didn’t quite know what to say.”

  “Multimedia genius.” They laughed. “Yeah, yeah, I get it now.” Mary continued, “I keep asking myself—what would Jackie do? I’ve been thinking a lot about her these days. Every time I pass a hospital, I think … maybe, you know?”

  “You can’t think that.”

  “I can’t help it, and I don’t think Bronson can help it either; I don’t think he’s been the same since she died. Something in him broke watching her suffer for so long, something broke in him about his God, why did God make her suffer so fucking long? I just know it. He lost something when she got cancer and didn’t get treatment. He lost more than a wife.”

  “You shouldn’t think about that.”

  “It ripped something out of him, the fullness of his belief. And it’s like he’s trying to replace it, but he doesn’t really know what he’s trying to replace. Like he’s trying to fill the Jackie-shaped hole, the God-shaped hole.”

  “If his faith could be broken by adversity, then it was no real faith.”

  That sounded so hollow to Mary, she didn’t even respond. Her tongue was starting to feel thick from the drug. She didn’t want to give it away. But the drug also made her less guarded, vulnerable. Mary began to cry. “How can we live with a man for so long and not know him? We failed him.”

  Yalulah wrapped Mary in a hug. She was the larger woman, and Mary melted and folded into her like a puzzle piece.

  “That’s why we have each other.”

  “You know I was afraid,” Mary sniffed, “with me gone, that you and Bronson would fall in love again, and I’d be left out in the cold, this old spinster. I thought you came here to tell me that.”

  “Seriously? That is so adorable.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “And wrong. No … baby, baby, baby … ssssh.” Yalulah stroked Mary’s fragrant hair. “I want you, and only you.”

  “Yeah, yeah, Yaya.”

  “Yeah.”

  Mary reached for a tissue to blow her nose. She needed fresh air, so she went to open a window. Her legs were wobbly. It had begun to rain a bit. Big fat splashes on the hot cement street below. She shook her hands out and put on a light purple pair of slippers and began prancing around the room like a Ukrainian folk dancer, y
et another skill she’d forgotten she had from a childhood suddenly reappearing out of some unconscious store of muscle memory. She was naked but for her furry slippers, singing. This had the desired effect—to break the spell with comic relief—and Yalulah laughed, disarmed.

  Mary hugged her sister-wife, saw the concern in her eyes. “We are good here. That’s what the kids say—You good? I’m good. All good.” Mary made some faux gang hand signals while she spoke.

  “What are you doing?” Yalulah seemed irritated.

  “I don’t know, that’s what the kids do when they talk now.”

  “Stop it.” She took Mary’s hands in hers a little more aggressively than she’d intended. She so often fed on and delighted in Mary’s exuberance, but right now she felt annoyed by it. Mary looked hurt, so Yaya apologized in her way.

  “But I do like that—‘All good,’” Yalulah repeated. “All is good. Thank Thee, Heavenly Father God, Thou hast made all and all is good. Pray with me, Mother Mary.”

  Mary didn’t want to pray. Last time she tried to pray was in the steam room and look what happened there. But with her drug coming on and covering her in slow carelessness, she felt her will leave her. She was nothing but compliance.

  The two women knelt among the Uggs and prayed. They prayed for guidance, they prayed for forgiveness, and they prayed for Bronson and their children. When they had finished, Yalulah kissed her goodbye and whispered, “Look, baby, listen to me, Bronson says he’ll stop.”