Desert Crossing

by Elise Broach

  Beth sat back on her heels and balanced the paintbrush between her thumb and forefinger. She looked from Kit to Jamie. “That’s all right. People are entitled to their opinions. This isn’t for everyone.”

  “What is it?” I asked. “What’s it called?”

  “Joshua Tree. I do natural forms. That’s the point. Nature out of machines.”

  I could see it then. The twist of the trunk, the way the pieces of metal gave it a texture, roots, bark.

  Jamie leaned forward, smiling at her. “I like it. It’s different.”

  Beth shrugged. “This is just the base. I do it in pieces.”

  Kit cocked his head to the side. “It doesn’t look like a tree.”

  “When I put the whole thing together, it will.”

  “But I still don’t get it. Why do you use junk?”

  Beth considered him for a minute. I knew she was trying to decide whether it was worth having this conversation. I felt like warning her that it wasn’t.

  She went back to painting. It was hypnotizing to watch. Her hand was so steady, so sure of what it was doing. I leaned my head against the sofa.

  “It’s pretty abstract,” she said. “A way of seeing things.” She hesitated. “There’s so much ugliness around, you know? What you see on the highways, on city sidewalks, shoved behind people’s garages. All the junk. Nothing in nature is like that. Nothing is ugly like that.”

  Kit looked at Jamie. “She hasn’t seen Lisa Becker,” he said.

  I hit his leg with my fist. “Shut up, Kit.”

  He turned on me, annoyed. “What? She’s not a friend of yours.”

  Beth just shook her head, giving up. But Jamie was still watching her. “Go on,” he said. “Finish what you were saying.”

  She sighed. “I don’t know. It’s hard to explain. Since I started doing this, it’s changed the way I look at things. Now, when I notice a smashed can on the side of the road, I don’t see somebody’s trash, I see the potential for…” she paused.

  “A sculpture?” Jamie asked.

  “Well, yes. Art.” Beth smiled at him, a widening smile that lit up her whole face. “If you look at the most ordinary thing long enough, it can seem beautiful.”

  “Huh,” Kit said. He seemed unimpressed. “And people pay you for this stuff? You make a living doing this?”

  “Well, sort of. I teach art classes for half the year.”

  “Yeah?” Jamie leaned forward. “You teach? I bet you’re good at that.”

  Beth looked at him. “Why?”

  I watched him, thinking how goofy it was. He was using his same old moves on this middle-aged woman who couldn’t care less.

  “I just mean, you’re so good at painting and all, I think you’d be good at explaining it to people.”

  She shrugged. “They’re two different skills. I’m not as good at the teaching as I am at the painting. I don’t really like having to deal with people.”

  Jamie and Kit and I looked at each other. That shut us up.

  11

  After a while, Jamie said, “Could I take a shower? I feel pretty gross from last night.”

  “Of course. There are fresh towels in the bathroom closet.”

  Kit and I stayed there in silence, watching the sculpture change with the paint. Finally, the distant whine of the shower stopped and Jamie called, “Did you guys get my bag from the car last night?”

  “Yeah, it’s in the study,” Kit said. He got up and wandered down the hall. After a minute, I followed him.

  Jamie came out of the study toweling off his hair. “Is Beth still painting?” he asked.

  The expression on his face was completely familiar, a kind of eager alertness, exactly how he looked when he and Kit were talking about some girl he liked.

  “Jamie, she’s got to be in her thirties,” I whispered, appalled.

  He looked annoyed. “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about you hitting on Beth, you moron. What are you doing, talking and talking to her? And you tried to put your arm around her in the truck.”

  “I did not!”

  Kit laughed. “So what if he did? She’s sort of hot. She’s got the older-woman thing going.”

  They were incredible. It was one thing at the diners and the gas stops. We were never going to see those people again. But we were in this woman’s house. “She’s got gray hair,” I said, gasping.

  Kit considered that for a minute, then shrugged at Jamie. “Yeah,” he said. “She could be kind of saggy. And she was a bitch about the beer.”

  Jamie balled the damp towel in his fist. “Back off, Luce. What’s it to you, anyway? I’m not hitting on her. I just like her, that’s all.”

  I turned away. “When have you ever liked somebody and not hit on them?”

  “Oh, give me a break.”

  Kit laughed again, grabbing my shoulder and shoving me down the hallway. “Yeah, give him a break. You’re too young to understand.”

  That made me so mad I stopped talking to them. But they didn’t seem to notice. They headed into the kitchen and Jamie called to Beth, “Hey, can you take a break? Want some coffee?”

  “Does that mean you want me to make you coffee?” Beth called back.

  Jamie laughed. “Yeah. Do you mind?”

  And amazingly, she didn’t. She rinsed her hands at the kitchen sink, and Jamie and Kit immediately went into high gear, both of them. They were grinning and chatting, complimenting her on the sculpture, the house, the coffee. It was crazy. How could they do this when we were in so much trouble? How could they turn that part of themselves back on, like a switch, when a girl had died?

  Beth seemed to wonder the same thing, because as she poured their coffee, she said, “The police are going to call later. Did Lucy tell you? When they’re finished with the car.”

  Jamie winced, nodding. Kit looked at the table.

  “That girl,” she continued, “she wasn’t much older than you. But there’s something really strange about it. She was miles from anywhere, and nobody walks along the highway out here. I wonder where she came from.”

  “She wasn’t banged up, either,” Kit said. “Like, wouldn’t you expect that, from the car?”

  Jamie frowned at him, starting to say something, but Beth answered first. “I don’t know. If she were struck and thrown, the injuries could be mostly internal.”

  We were quiet, thinking about her. Where had she come from? Maybe somebody woke up this morning, missing her, worried about her. They didn’t realize she wasn’t coming back.

  “Sit down,” Jamie said to Beth, pulling a chair away from the table.

  Beth shook her head. “I’m going back to work.”

  “Come on. Sit with us.” He called the brown dog, Toronto, over to him, ruffling her ears while she leaned against his leg.

  Beth hesitated, but Kit refilled her mug, saying, “Oh, come on, what are you going to do, stick another hubcap on that thing?”

  Shouldn’t she be offended by that? I mean, he was talking about her work, her art. But for some reason it made her laugh. And when she laughed, she seemed even prettier.

  Beth looked from Kit to Jamie and asked, “Have you been friends a long time?”

  Jamie took her arm, smiling at her, and tugged her down to the chair, so she was crowded between them. Then they began telling their stories. Their you’ll-never-believe-what-we-did stories. I’d heard them all: the practical jokes and close calls and times when they said the perfect, hilarious thing at exactly the right moment. It was too intense suddenly. Like they usually were, but more of it. This was a performance.

  I could feel myself disappearing, bit by bit, fading into the room. So I left. I went back to the bedroom and got my sketchbook. Then I sat in the hallway near the door, listening to them talk. I didn’t know what to sketch, but I drew quick lines on the page, and after a minute, I realized I was drawing her face. The girl.

  In the kitchen, Jamie was saying, “Digger—he’s the principal, Mr. D
iGennaro—is a total hard-ass. He canceled the senior chorus trip to Chicago last December because three guys on the chorus council were caught drinking—”

  Kit snorted. “Yeah, after school, and in their own cars. That was totally bogus.”

  Beth looked confused. “Wait, you two are in chorus?”

  They both laughed. “No way,” Kit said. “They’re all losers. But we can’t stand Digger.”

  “Yeah,” said Jamie, leaning forward. “So, listen, Digger’d just gotten this new car, an Acura, nice car, he was totally into it—”

  Kit interrupted, “And there was a faculty meeting before school, so we got there early, and we brought, like, four bags of Oreos—”

  Jamie started laughing. “And right there in the parking lot, we Oreo-ed his entire car. You know, pulled the Oreos apart and stuck them all over his windows. It was so great. The whole top half of his car was black.”

  I heard Beth’s voice lift in amazement. “The principal’s car? And you didn’t get caught?”

  “That was nothing,” Kit said.

  I glanced through the doorway and watched them, that weird choreography they had, feeding each other lines, finishing each other’s sentences, playing to Beth as if she were the only person in the world. She was laughing, but I couldn’t tell whether it was at the stories or at Jamie and Kit.

  Jamie grinned at Kit. “Remember the toilets in the teachers’ lounge?”

  Kit tilted back his chair and whistled. “Oh my God, that was so great. That was magnificent.”

  “What?” Beth asked, still laughing. “What did you do?”

  Jamie leaned closer to her. “You’re going to love this. We snuck into the teachers’ lounge before school and put Saran Wrap under the toilet seats, between the seat and the bowl. We stretched it so tight it was completely clear.”

  “No,” Beth protested, her hand over her mouth.

  Jamie was cracking up. “You couldn’t see it at all. Remember, Kit? Mrs. Bottner got so pissed.”

  “Yeah, pissed on,” Kit said.

  I couldn’t believe they were telling her this, or that she was finding it funny.

  I’d always thought flirting was something obvious, like those things people said in movies, with raised eyebrows and long sexy stares. But with Kit and Jamie, it was different, a way of paying attention to someone, turning a normal conversation into a private spark of connection.

  Toronto scrambled to her feet, ears pricked. I stood up and looked out the kitchen window. “Hey,” I said.

  They all stopped talking and turned toward me. I pointed. A police car was rolling toward the house, its hood flashing in the sunlight.

  12

  The sudden silence in the kitchen was strange after their noisy stream of conversation. Jamie’s face lost all expression. He stared at the floor.

  Beth stood up. “I wonder what they want.”

  The dogs started barking and bounded past us toward the entryway. Beth hauled them back by their collars. She swore at them, herding them into the room where I’d slept.

  Sheriff Durrell stood on the porch. His metallic sunglasses hid his eyes. All I could see when I looked at him was my own distorted reflection: a wide, wavy face over a tiny, diminishing body.

  “Hello, folks,” he said. “Can I talk to you for a few minutes?”

  Jamie nodded, quiet now, and we stepped blinking, barefoot, into the yard. The sun was high and the red sand glared back at us, brassy and unforgiving.

  “We took samples from your car,” the sheriff said. “We should have results in a couple of hours. The rain washed it down pretty good, but we got something off the bumper.”

  What was it? What did he find? I could feel a shift in the air, a friction that hadn’t been there before.

  He was looking at Jamie. “I want you to tell me again what you saw. Where the impact was.”

  He led Jamie away from us. All I could hear was a muffled exchange, no words. Beth stood next to me, fiddling with the pen in her hair.

  When they came back, Jamie’s face looked pinched.

  “You won’t be going anywhere. Understand?” the sheriff said. He turned to Beth. “They’ll need to make other arrangements for a place to stay.”

  Beth was watching Jamie. “It’s okay,” she said finally. “They can stay here for another night or two. It doesn’t matter.”

  “Thanks,” Jamie said softly.

  The sheriff frowned. I wondered what he was thinking. That we’d try to take off? Nobody knew us here.

  “All right,” he said. “I’ll be in touch later this afternoon.”

  As the sheriff drove away, Kit shielded his eyes with his hand and watched. I thought of the beer cans scattered in the brush somewhere. I wondered if you could see them from the road.

  “Man, it’s hot,” Kit said. “Jamie, you want to go out for a while? Get some lunch?”

  Jamie nodded. “Sure, but we don’t have a car.”

  Beth glanced at him, then shrugged. “You can take the truck, I guess.”

  Jamie grinned. “Really? Thanks. Is there a restaurant around here?”

  “Yeah, about ten miles west, on the left.”

  I climbed the porch stairs, brushing off the soles of my feet. “I have to get my sandals.”

  Kit looked at Jamie, making a face that he thought I couldn’t see, but of course I could. “Uh … why don’t you just hang out here,” he said to me. “We’ll bring you something.”

  My cheeks were hot. I felt stupid. “Okay,” I said quickly. “Get me a turkey sandwich.”

  Jamie seemed not to notice. “Beth? You want anything?”

  She shook her head, tossing Jamie the keys. “Drive carefully.”

  * * *

  Inside, Beth went back to painting and I rested my chin on the back of the couch, watching them leave. I could see the two of them laughing in the cab of the truck.

  “Do you want a soda?” Beth asked.

  She was trying to be nice. But I was embarrassed that she’d seen how they treated me. “No, I’m okay,” I said.

  I got my sketch pad from the hallway and propped it against my knees, looking at the drawing of the girl. I’d finished her hair and her neck, the shape of her face. I started to work on her eyes.

  “You like to draw?” Beth asked, after a while.

  I nodded.

  “What kinds of things?”

  I shrugged. “Animals, people. Sometimes places.”

  “What’s your favorite thing to draw?”

  I thought for a minute. “Faces, I guess.”

  “Yeah?” Beth set down her brush, wiping her hands on a towel. “Show me something you’ve done.”

  She came toward the couch and I flipped the pages backward, quickly. I didn’t want her to see the girl. I found a picture I’d drawn of my mom reading. “Here,” I said, turning it for her to see.

  She took it from me. I felt nervous suddenly. Everybody always said I was good at drawing: my parents, my art teachers, everybody. It didn’t matter what Beth thought. But it did somehow. I waited.

  “It’s good,” she said. “Technically very good. The shadows, the proportions.”

  I relaxed. “Thanks.”

  “Who is it?”

  “My mom.”

  “Hmmm.” She tilted her head, still looking at the sketch.

  “What?” I started to take it back.

  “Nothing. It’s good, but I wouldn’t have known it was your mom.”

  “Well, how could you?” I said, settling it back on my knees. “You’ve never met her.”

  Beth picked up her brush and knelt by the sculpture again. “No. But that’s the next step. Drawing what you feel, not just what you see.”

  I didn’t say anything. I didn’t know what she meant, but it sounded like she didn’t think I was that great at drawing after all.

  Beth started painting again. “If you draw what you feel,” she said, “anyone who sees that sketch should be able to tell it’s your mom. You know?”

/>   I stared at the paper. “I guess.”

  I flipped the pages back to the drawing of the girl and started sketching her lips, slightly open, glistening the way they did in the rain. The room was quiet again. The late-afternoon sun warmed my shoulders.

  Jamie and Kit were taking forever. “How far is that restaurant?” I asked.

  Beth pursed her lips, shooting a quick glance out the window. “They’ve been gone awhile, haven’t they?”

  I wondered if she was worried about her truck. She dipped the paintbrush and wiped it deftly on the edge of the can. “Your brother and Kit don’t seem very much alike. How long have they been friends?”

  “A long time. Since third grade.”

  Too long, I wanted to say. I thought about the two of them having lunch. I knew exactly what they were doing. Those hours in the car, listening to them talk about girls, then sitting by myself at the restaurants. I was mad at them all over again. I thought about Kit making fun of me, making me stay here while they went out to lunch. Then I remembered the look on Jamie’s face: that intense, eager look whenever he caught Beth’s attention or made her smile.

  Suddenly, I knew exactly what to say next.

  “Yeah, they’ve been friends for a long time, but they’ve only been, you know, a couple, since last year.”

  13

  Beth stopped painting. “What?”

  I couldn’t look at her. I kept my eyes on my sketch pad. “You know,” I said again. “They’re, like, together.”

  I could feel her staring at me. “They’re together? You mean they’re gay?”

  I looked at her quickly. She was standing in front of the sculpture, dangling the paintbrush, her face full of surprise. “Wow. I didn’t get that from them at all.”

  I ran one finger along the windowsill, leaving a thin streak through the dust. “Well, they’re pretty private about it.”

  “Is that why they wanted to go to lunch by themselves?” she asked.

  I hadn’t even thought of that, but now I nodded firmly. “I guess they wanted a little time alone.” It was almost hard not to laugh.

  “Huh,” Beth said. She swirled the paintbrush in the can at her feet. “I’m just … I’m really surprised. I’m usually pretty good at picking up the signals. Jamie—actually, both of them—well, whatever.” She went back to painting, but then stopped again. “That must be hard for them, being in high school. And in Kansas, too.”