by Amy Reed
“Looks like it,” I say. “Looked like she wanted to murder me in my sleep.”
Lark gives me a surprised look. For a second, I wonder if I said something offensive, but then she breaks into a big laugh. “You’re funny,” she says. “I like you.”
“I like you, too,” I say, both confused and touched.
“Get a room,” you joke, and we all laugh, and I can’t help but imagine that I’m part of the family too, that Lark is our mom and you and I share the secret language of twins, and maybe we’re not the orphans we always joke about being.
We get to a part of the path that seems to have been forgotten, as if no one ever walks this far. Weeds have broken through and nearly hide the gravel. Grass grows on either side as tall as our waists, with who knows what creatures hiding inside it. “Remember to check yourself for ticks on a regular basis,” Lark says. I wait for her to add Just kidding, but she doesn’t. We turn the corner past a little grove of trees, and the buzzing of insects gets louder.
Around the corner sits a rusty old trailer, the kind of giant tin can people attach to the back of a truck. It looks like it’s been sitting here since before we were born. As we approach and Lark moves to open the door, I fully expect squirrels or birds to fly out, rabid raccoons and rats. The joy I felt only minutes before suddenly begins to sour. I reach over and lightly touch your wrist. You touch mine back, and I know you are thinking the same thing.
This is the end of the road. The overgrown path stops at a pile of bricks that have been stacked to make a step to the trailer’s front door. The trees cast the scene in shade, the tall grass rustling its creepy soundtrack. The yurts are starting to look nice.
“You girls should see the looks on your faces,” Lark says with a chuckle. “Don’t freak out. We didn’t get a chance to mow around it. That can be your first job tomorrow. But the inside is lovely, trust me.”
Lark opens the door and I hold my breath as we peer inside. I don’t know what I expect—torn velvet paintings on the walls, stained linoleum, a meth lab?—but that is not what I see. The inside is indeed lovely—it is painted a cheerful peach with little framed paintings dotting the walls and Christmas lights hanging from the ceiling. Two twin beds are snug at one end, covered by homemade quilts and nests of mismatched pillows, a soft blue curtain tied to the side to separate the sleeping area from the other half of the space. Old Oriental rugs line the floor past a closet and dresser to the other end of the trailer, where bookshelves have been built on top of the nonfunctioning sink and stove, and a love seat and beanbag chair make a cozy nook.
Lark takes one look at us and says, “Now, that’s the reaction I was looking for.”
“Oh, Mom,” you say breathlessly. “It’s beautiful.”
“I’m so glad you like it, sweetie.”
“It’s like the best clubhouse ever,” I add.
Lark’s eyes are all smile lines and warmth. “I’m so glad you’re here.”
“Me too,” we say at the same time, and it feels like I’ve never meant anything more in my life. This is so the opposite of back home. Lark is so the opposite of the ghost my mother has become. This place is nothing like anything I wanted to get away from.
Νηρηίς
NEREIDS
They were goddesses and women and rivers and lakes. They were maybe even a little bit fish, a little bit water bug or otter, or some other live, swimming thing. It was impossible to tell where their bodies stopped and the water started, where warm flesh gave way to cool liquid. It was in their blood, this water, all the particles and bubbles and memories, pulsing inside them and giving them breath.
A wave could be her hip, her breast, the curve of her shoulder. And on a hot day, you might think she’s salvation. You’re delirious with thirst, almost blind, but you can make out her lips and their promise of wetness; her long thin fingers weaving you like pond grass, making a basket of your desire. So you follow her in, led underwater by this creature who is always out of reach—part water, part woman—translucent, glimmering. And she takes you down deep, to the place where only mud and shadow live, where she is only darkness, only a hand holding you under.
As soon as we set our bags down in the trailer, you break into tears and throw yourself at your mother. I wonder if she knows this about you, that you do this kind of thing. I wonder if she knows how overcome you get. There is no consoling you when you’re like this, but Lark seems like an expert, patiently patting you on the back until the storm subsides. After a few minutes of wailing, your tiny earthquake is over. You lift your head, your face puffed red and slimy with snot and tears, your hair like a punk rock Medusa’s, and you sniffle. “Sorry, guys, I just needed to get that out.” You get up and take your boots off, wiggle your toes a little, walk calmly out the door, and proceed to undress while walking the ten or so yards to the lake. A trail of socks, leggings, and sundress marks your path. You stand at the edge of the lake in your underwear and bra and lift your arms high in the air, your body elongating into a beautiful taut thing, the ripples of your ribs like piano keys.
It is times like these when I’m struck dumb by your beauty and simultaneously surprised that I have never once felt the slightest attraction to you. I have wanted to kiss lots of girls, and you are by far the most beautiful girl I’ve ever known, but I have never wanted to kiss you. Maybe it’s because you’re less a girl and more like something else, something that straddles the worlds of light and dark, something only half here, something half untouchable.
Lark and I stand side by side in the doorway of the trailer. As I look out from the shade, the sun seems extra golden, like a giant spotlight for this world that is your stage, as if this lake is the source of all your power. You turn around and wave at us, smile, then dive into the water.
“Oh my God!” you yell when you surface. “This feels amazing.”
“Go,” Lark says, poking me in the ribs. “Looks like you need a splash after your travels.”
I strip down to my underwear and bra and join you in the water. It is the perfect temperature—cold enough to be refreshing, but warm enough so a person could stay in it all day if they wanted. I grab you by the waist and pull you under. We wrestle, taking turns dunking each other and surfacing to laugh and breathe.
When we get back to the trailer, we are breathless and dripping wet. Lark is gone.
I peel off my bra and underwear as a pool of water forms at my feet. “Guess we’ll have to drip dry,” I say. You don’t hear me. You are busy peering out each of the trailer’s three small windows. You even open the tiny closet. You are looking for her.
“She probably had to do something to get ready for dinner,” I say.
You don’t say anything, just open your backpack and start putting your things in the dresser. “We have to remember to ask someone for towels,” I say. You nod and continue unpacking.
“Talk to me, Sadie,” I say. Finally, you look up, give me a weak smile.
“It’s been a long day,” you say.
“Yes, it has.”
“I think I’m about to start my period.”
“Oh.” And I understand that this is going to be the extent of your explanation for shutting me out. I let it go like I always do.
We manage to air dry and put on clothes. We unpack all our stuff. You get the top two drawers, and I get the bottom; you get the left side of the closet, I get the right. We bravely venture out back to the toilet, which is a wooden shed with a toilet seat on top of bench over a hole in the ground. There’s a bucket of sawdust and one with some sort of white powder. And toilet paper. Thank God, at least there’s toilet paper.
“I guess you’re supposed to put those in there?” you say, pointing from the buckets to the toilet.
I nod in agreement. “To cover up your business.” We are already becoming experts in off-the-grid living.
We open all the drawers and cabinets in the trailer, read the spines of the books in the little library. Most of them are old yellowed paperbacks of title
s I don’t recognize, but there are some familiar names like Tom Robbins, Jack Kerouac, and Ken Kesey, a couple of books about Buddhism, Sufism, environmentalism, feminism, and 1960s history. “It’s like the suggested reading list for Hippies 101,” you say, and that cracks us up for a while. I find an old glass jar in one of the cabinets, and we pick wildflowers to put on the little coffee table between the love seat and beanbag chair. I already know that the love seat will be your official spot for the summer, that you will claim it with your long body draped across it—one side under your calves and the other propping up the pillow to cushion your head—and I will be relegated to the beanbag chair on the floor. It is only natural—I am the more compact and self-contained of us, and you are the one who needs to spread out.
Just when I am starting to feel my stomach growling, we hear a little knock on the side of the trailer, then see Skyler peering through the screen door.
“Hello?” she squeaks.
“Hi,” you say, lifting yourself up to stretch and yawn. “Come on in.”
Skyler opens the screen door a crack. “I’m supposed to tell you it’s almost time for dinner.” Just then, we hear a bell ring a few times from the direction of the main house. “That’s what that bell means.”
“I’m starving!” you say, jumping off the couch. I pull myself up from the beanbag and feel my body ache in unfamiliar places. I feel creaky already, and we haven’t even started working.
We follow Skyler up the path to the main house. The other side of the lake is like a reflection of ours, a waterfront row of yurts and cabins and trailers with people spilling out on the way to dinner.
“Your place is nice,” Skyler says. “I helped paint it.”
“Thank you,” you say. “I love the color.”
“I picked it out,” Skyler says proudly.
We’re the last ones to get to the house. Everyone’s lining up with plates and making their way through the kitchen where Doff and a few others serve food. I notice your eyes darting around, no doubt searching for Lark. Skyler hands us plates from a pile by the door, and we stand there, inching our way forward as the line advances. I know there are only a little more than thirty people living here, but it seems like a million faces with a million different smiles, so many people my parents’ age who look and act nothing like my parents. Most of the men have some form of facial hair and none of the women wear makeup; everyone is tan and bright-eyed, and apparently hugging is big here. My body tenses as another stranger throws her arms around me, but you act like a natural, melting into each one of them like they’re family, even as you roll your eyes behind their backs. Little kids run around between people’s legs, and no one yells at them to calm down. The room is so full of life it makes me dizzy.
I think I was expecting everyone to be younger, like in photos of sexy, half-naked twenty-year-olds during the Summer of Love, with Lark and Doff just being the old-people exceptions. But I’d say most of the adults here are in their forties, some even older. They’re actual grown-ups, but they live in tents and poop in holes and eat food they grow with their own hands, and maybe this is as grown-up as they ever want to get.
My mind is totally blown.
We wait our turns to be served, and I’m not sure what much of it is, but all of it is colorful. There’s some green leafy thing and some brown rice with various-colored vegetables mixed in and some kind of very tender meat. Doff tops it all off with a deep red sauce and asks us how we like the trailer. We tell him it’s beautiful, the lake is beautiful, the trees are beautiful, the food is beautiful, everything is so freaking beautiful.
Everyone is sitting at the outdoor picnic tables. Marshall calls Skyler over, and she sulks off to sit with her family. You look around for Lark but she’s still missing. We take the last empty bench across from the pretty woman with leaking breasts and her black-bearded husband, whose names we learn are Maria and Joseph.
“No way!” you say. “Is your baby named Jesus?”
“Nothing that interesting,” Maria laughs. “Just Patrick. But we call him Bean.” Little Bean is attached to Maria’s uncovered boob, and it takes all my strength not to stare.
An old man stands up at the front edge of the courtyard, with the sunlit lake and houses and fields glowing behind him. The sun catches the wisps of his gray hair and forms a halo around him. “That’s Old Glen,” Joseph says. “He likes to make speeches.”
Old Glen clears his throat, and everyone quiets. “Let us thank Geraldine, Doff, Sarah, Ben, and Ezra for tonight’s delicious food.” Everyone says “Thank you” in unison, and my inner is this a cult? alarm goes off a little. Old Glen continues, “Let us thank the plants and grains and especially Jimbo, who gave his life so that we could eat meat on this special night.” Everyone says “Thank you” again, and I look down at the piece of meat lying on my plate. I turn my head to see you doing the same thing. Our eyes meet and you mouth Jimbo? I giggle, but you look horrified.
“But the biggest news of the evening, as everyone knows,” Old Glen says, “is the arrival of our special summer guests who are joining our big family.” Every single face, all sixty-plus eyes, turn in our direction. “Let us all say ‘Welcome.’ ”
And they all say “Welcome” in unison, and they clap, and I don’t think I’ve ever had this many people looking at me at once in my entire life. Maria reaches over and squeezes my hand. I shrink and shrivel with the attention, while you seem to absorb it and get even bigger and brighter than you already were.
“We are so happy to welcome Lark’s daughter, Sadie, and her friend Max to our community, and I know you will all do your best to make them feel welcome.” You give a little wave like you’re accepting an award. I know my face is beet red as I try to smile in your shadow.
Old Glen says a little more, listing off everyone’s work duties for tomorrow—jobs like planting, weeding and harvesting specific vegetables, building fences, turning compost, milking cows, and other farm duties. There are also tasks like child care, meal prep and cleanup, driving to town for supplies, and cleaning the main house and showers. Everyone nods when their name is called; no one seems surprised or disappointed by their assignment. A few people have days off, including us.
I had no idea a commune would be so organized. I had imagined a world without rules, an anarchic paradise where people would run around doing whatever they wanted and somehow the work would magically get done. But I guess it makes sense that a working farm needs some kind of leadership, and I guess it makes sense that their leader would be the guy who founded it. I wonder if Old Glen is the one who decides all the job assignments, or if people have a say in what they do. Does everyone have to do everything equally, regardless of whether or not they like it or are any good at it? Maybe part of the freedom here is not having to make any decisions. Maybe everything is randomly assigned, or maybe Old Glen decides everything for everyone. I wonder which freedom is more free—freedom to make any decision you want, or freedom from having to make any at all.
Lark appears at the other end of the patio, talking to Marshall. You wave frantically in her direction until you catch her eye, and she comes over, wraps her arms around us.
“I saved you a seat,” you say, but Lark just hovers, says she’s on cleanup duty tonight and has to get to work soon. You say, “Okay,” cheerfully, and I’m the only one trained to notice the almost imperceptible disappointment on your face.
Everyone is eating and talking, and I’m watching birds fishing in the lake, diving down and disappearing for a few moments, then rising again, sometimes with food, sometimes not. I don’t know what it is that affects their chances, why some dives are successful and others not. I wonder if they even know, if they can reflect on their attempts and learn from mistakes, adjust and do better next time. Or maybe they’re not that smart. Maybe they think it’s all based on luck—some birds have it, some don’t—and it’s not up to them whether or not they succeed, not up to their talent or hard work or dedication to the task; maybe it’s just
an arbitrary decision made by some mysterious gods. And they keep going through the motions imprinted in their blood, waiting for the gods to smile on them.
I am suddenly very tired, and I don’t think I will be able to wait for the sun to go down to sleep. I notice you picking at the food around Jimbo as you chat with the man with the shoulder tattoo we met earlier.
“Nice peacock,” you tell him.
“It’s not a peacock,” he says with a mouth full of food. “It’s a phoenix. You must know about phoenixes.”
“Like in Harry Potter?” you say.
“Harry who?” the man says. We look at each other in disbelief. Has this guy been living under a rock?
“A phoenix is a very powerful mythical creature,” he says earnestly. “It symbolizes rebirth. A phoenix burns, then rebuilds itself from its ashes. It’s very poetic,” he says, taking another large bite of food. A few crumbs fall out of his mouth. I notice he has a slight twitch in his left eye. Up close, maybe not everyone here is as beautiful as they seemed at first.
Lark has disappeared again, and Skyler is staring at you from across the patio like a psychopath, and despite the giant boom of “Welcome,” despite all these people’s friendly smiles and conversation, I suddenly feel as lonely as I do at home with the silence, with the specter of my mother lost inside herself.
I look around and watch the families here, the mothers and fathers eating with their children, the other couples leaning into each other. I spot Lark wrapping her arms around Doff from behind, see him rest his cheek on her arm and close his eyes, see her kiss the top of his head. I feel an ache inside, and I can’t distinguish its point of view, if I’m yearning for parents like these, or yearning to be one of the couples, yearning to be someone in love. Maybe both, maybe neither, but I am doing that thing I always do—the obsessing about what I don’t have, the ignoring where I am right now.
So I do the exercise you taught me, one you learned from the therapist you’ve been seeing since you were seven. I close my eyes, count from one to five as I breathe in slowly, count backward from five to one as I breathe out. I do this a few times until my heart stops aching so sharply and I forget what I was thinking about. Maybe relaxation is just forgetting what you’re supposed to be worried about.
