Edna in the Desert

by Maddy Lederman

  8

  THE LIFE THAT GRANDMA AND GRANDPA LED

  Grandma always woke up before sunrise and brewed coffee. The luscious smell would seep into the pantry. Edna loved the smell of coffee, but she hated the taste of it. She listened to Grandma move around her strangely improvised home. At least Edna thought it was strange. A washer/dryer and an electric stove stood outside the cabin, on a cement slab under a lean-to of green, corrugated plastic. It was enclosed by stacked driftwood. It was just a little too funky to be nice. There wasn’t much space in the cabin, Edna guessed, and maybe Grandma cooked outside in the summer, when it was too hot to have the stove on inside. Observing the Grandma and Grandpa situation more closely, Edna realized that the pantry was the most private place Grandma could have offered her to sleep and might not have been the additional punishment it seemed when she’d first arrived.

  Edna could never fall back to sleep once she woke up in the morning, so she turned on her little lamp and read before Grandma knocked on the door and said, “breakfast.” Books about pioneer women were Edna’s only entertainment, and her parents’ hint was not so subtle: these women struggled on a level that should shame Edna into being grateful for her life of relative ease. Edna was grateful, but at the moment it was mainly for the distraction of these incredible stories. Many of the pioneer women left privileged lives to trek across mountains, rivers and deserts, in horse-driven carriages or on foot, to help their husbands look for gold and homestead. After her own brief drama in the wilderness, Edna was awed by the strength it took to survive this. These women, some not much older than she was, had passions and abilities she didn’t fully understand. She might possess a shadow of their fortitude by sacrificing her entire summer in the hopes of getting to see a boy again, but that was just crazy more than anything else.

  After coffee was made, Grandma would bring a mug to Grandpa, who presumably drank it in bed. Edna never saw this happen. She was revolted by the thought of her grandparents in bed, and she kept completely clear of their bedroom. Grandma said that Grandpa liked his eggs “just so,” and she was very attentive while she boiled them so they would be perfect every time. It was something that Grandpa must have told her years ago, but Edna doubted that he noticed now. She couldn’t imagine her grandparents as a young couple that did things together and spoke to each other. Grandma brought Grandpa’s breakfast, two eggs and toast, into the bedroom on a tray every morning, and he also had that in bed. Grandma didn’t eat breakfast, but she made scrambled egg whites and toast for Edna. Grandma was stingy with her attention, but she was not stingy about feeding people.

  About two hours after breakfast, Grandpa would emerge from the bedroom, silent as always. It was one of the few times he moved. He wore a T-shirt and flannel pajama pants. Edna was happy to never see too much of his old body. He went directly into the bathroom and didn’t come out for at least an hour, when Grandma brought him his clothes. Grandpa came out dressed, walked to the porch and sat in the old wooden office chair with a formerly orange cushion on it. He spent the majority of each day there while Grandma went about maintaining their food, clothing and shelter.

  Grandpa’s lunch was leftovers from yesterday’s dinner, or if nothing was left over, it was Spam or canned hash. Grandma brought it to him on a rusted TV tray with purple flowers that leaned against the railing. Grandpa didn’t express anything, ever, except he did seem to love hash. Edna believed this was love because he ate it fast, with an uncivilized snorting sound. Watching Grandpa eat was not unlike watching an animal in a zoo, and like zoo animals, he could get annoyed. Edna got a little too curious for him one day, which he indicated by becoming conscious, raising his eyebrow and peering right at her. Edna shrieked and almost bounced out of her chair.

  When Grandma rushed out, Edna thought this must have been the concerned look that Johnny and Sheriff Wegman saw the day she was lost. Grandpa was already back in his catatonic state as if nothing had happened.

  “Grandpa looked at me.”

  “Oh.”

  Grandma peered at Grandpa for a moment and then went back to whatever she was doing. Edna thought she’d be more interested in a lucid appearance by Grandpa. The world became inactive again, too quiet. It was moments like that, when it was quiet after something happened, that felt frighteningly still in the desert.

  Edna started to observe things in this place where almost nothing happened, and she attributed her heightened awareness to the media blackout she lived in. Her mind thirsted for new facts. Sometimes a certain cactus would bend over one way and then be in a different position a few hours later. Edna tried, but she could never see it move. A scrub brush looked different degrees of dead from morning to afternoon, or was the color changing with the movement of the sun? An old wildlife guide she found in the garage offered no explanation. Spotting quail or a jackrabbit was entertainment, as Edna looked after the animals and wondered where they lived, what they ate and what in the world they drank. The guide had pictures, a few sentences and practically no information. She wished she knew what had happened to that little bunny she saw when she was lost, but there were some things that were impossible to know, even if your phone had service.

  Edna moved a chair next to Grandpa on the porch one afternoon as something new to try. She was a little afraid of him even though he seemed harmless. Grandma had explicitly written don’t bother Grandpa on that list Edna had ripped up. Was sitting next to him bothering him? He didn’t seem to notice her. Grandpa’s eyes were dull. His only movement was the gentle rising and falling of his chest under his flannel shirt. Some gray hairs stuck out of the top of it, where the button was open. It was too hot for flannel, but Grandpa was so still all the time, maybe he didn’t get hot. Or maybe he was boiling but unable to say so. He didn’t seem to be sweating. The breeze lifted little hairs on his arms. His face looked like Edna’s father’s would if a sculptor chiseled deeper definition into it and a painter grayed his hair and roughed his skin. As far as Edna could tell, Grandpa’s head was an empty shell.

  She challenged herself to empty her own head, but she sighed and fidgeted. Her thoughts drifted to Johnny and things like the sweat that came through his T-shirt. For some reason his sweat wasn’t gross. She wondered if he ever thought about her. She wondered what he was having for dinner and then what Grandma would make for dinner and if Grandpa ever cared what she made. She didn’t understand how Grandpa was able to do some things, like put food on a fork and put it in his mouth, but not others, like help Grandma do anything, or talk. She didn’t even know if Grandpa saw the expansive landscape in front of them the same way she did.

  There was no homework, no French or piano to practice, no gymnastics or yoga or debate team. Why was being good at all these things so important anyway? Edna had no parties to go to and no gifts to buy. She was missing some birthdays. She didn’t have a million texts to return, and she didn’t have to load a bunch of photos and write captions. Or tweet something or retweet something. She had no way to pin. Her Tumblr hadn’t been updated. In the real world, Edna was always doing something or on her way somewhere. Her rhythm of changing activities every hour, every day, was slowly unraveling here in the desert, with no next activity. She painted the porch for four hours one day, which she only estimated because of the cramp in her shoulder and the changed position of the sun.

  Because of their rocky start, Edna kept a polite distance from Grandma most of the time. This was easy, as Grandma spent chunks of her days crocheting or absorbed in her complex cactus garden. Once, Edna asked if she could help her in there, but Grandma only shrugged and seemed confused.

  “I make it up as I go along.”

  Somehow Edna understood that the garden was Grandma’s creative project, and there was not a lot to do out here in the middle of nowhere. Edna started her own projects, like painting the porch and making a stone path from the cabin to the eucalyptus trees. Looking for flat rocks was a great way to waste time. If anything was a sin in the real world, it was wasting time, bu
t at the cabin that was all she did. Maybe the real world was too hectic. She’d become much more likely to snap than she used to be. Her therapist should have thought of this. It was decided: the first thing Edna would cut out of her routine when she got home would be those futile therapy sessions. Talking about everything did not always help. Sometimes Edna was sure that not talking about things would be better, but then she was accused of “avoiding” and told she needed more therapy.

  The sun was getting low, and Edna had done tons of chores to keep from being bored. Doing nothing felt like falling—out of what and into what she didn’t know, but every afternoon it took a while before she stopped trying to think of things to do. All the laundry was folded. There was no point in sweeping any more. There were no more dishes until after dinner. She’d already been a Tibetan monk three times that day, and even though that literally meant doing nothing, she just couldn’t do it anymore.

  Grandma would make dinner soon. She was tired of checking on Edna by that point, so sitting with Grandpa in the late afternoon was the best part of Edna’s day. The wind picked up by then and became an invisible beach ball tumbling across the sea of creosote bushes and wafting over their smoky smell. The long afternoon shadows swayed in a rhythm that calmed Edna, and the breeze cooled her. If she’d had been told a week ago that the best part of her day would be sitting next to Grandpa on the porch staring into the desert, she definitely would not have believed it.

  Edna also wouldn’t have guessed that she’d miss the nightly dinnertime interrogations from her mother and the constantly fidgeting mess of Brandon. Dinner was terrible here, offering unfamiliar foods that were high in sodium. It created an interaction with Grandma unbuffered by chores or logistics. Edna was discovering new things about herself in exile, and one of them was that she didn’t like being alone with a person who never had anything to say, if that person was capable of talking. Grandpa had an excuse, though Edna wasn’t sure what it was, and she liked being around him better. She hated being around Grandma. Grandma’s silence felt like rejection, and Edna’s comments that “it was a beautiful day,” “I saw a jackrabbit” or “I might paint the porch” were given a word or two back and then, instead of being nurtured into a conversation, left to wither. Edna thought about making up a tray and eating outside with Grandpa, but by the time dinner rolled around, sitting with Grandpa was not exactly something worth fighting for. It was hard to eat with such a big lump in her throat, but soon Edna got used to it, and then it went away. Her mother’s incessant questioning would be forever less irritating. It had only been six days, but watching her family drive away in the Audi felt like a hundred years ago.

  9

  DELIVERY

  Edna decided to acquire a taste for coffee as another thing to do for the summer. She found it bitter and absolutely hideous, but celebrities were always pictured with a coffee in their hands, and she wanted to know why. It was tolerable if she put enough sugar in it. She couldn’t believe this was what adults craved every morning, and it gave her all the more reason to question authority in the future. Edna stepped onto the porch with her mug for the first time of the day. She would probably step onto the porch fifty more times throughout the day before her late-afternoon sitting session with Grandpa. The only thing that ever changed much was the angle of the sun and the occasional lean of a cactus.

  But this morning a line of dust rose in the distance, which meant a vehicle was coming. The dust moved north along the ridge until it turned and made its way east. It was coming toward the cabin. Edna guessed it was her parents. Maybe this was still a trick! Instead of the whole summer, it was only going to be a week. As the vehicle got closer, Edna could see it was a little red pick-up truck with a cap on the back. Did her parents buy a truck? On the side it said Bishop’s General. She didn’t know what that was, and she wasn’t even sure it was coming to the cabin, though she couldn’t think of where else it could be going.

  Edna wished it could be Johnny driving the truck. She tried to convince herself that it was too ridiculous a thing to hope for, but her heart beat rapidly as if it knew otherwise. Because it did. It was him. Johnny was driving the truck. He was coming to the cabin. Edna got dizzy for a moment as this sunk in. Her hand forgot about the mug of coffee it was holding and spilled it. The coffee wasn’t hot enough to burn her, but it left her chest covered in an ugly splotch. Emergency. She dashed into the pantry. She emptied her drawers until she found her cutest pink T-shirt at the bottom of one of them. It was tapered and made her look like she had curves. She brushed back her strawberry hair, a horrible, unwashed mess. There was no time to do anything about it, so she threw it in a ponytail.

  When Edna’s friends had started liking boys a year or two before, she had been determined not to allow it to happen to her. Girls acted like idiots when they liked boys. How to say “hi” to a boy in school became a stupid preoccupation, considering which hallway to walk down and how many seconds after the bell. It was always a waste of time. Even if Brit liked a boy and got to kiss him, they broke up in a few weeks and each started on the next, most popular person they had a chance with. Edna didn’t want to like boys, or girls, which would have been fine, or so the adults around her went to great lengths to make clear. Edna didn’t want to like anyone, but it was already well underway. She’d just spilled coffee and thrown her clothes all over the place in less than a minute.

  When she got back to the porch, the red truck was parked. Johnny approached the cabin with bags of groceries in his arms. It was magical, impossible: he was even cuter than she remembered. He wasn’t dusty this time. There was something energetic and graceful about the way he moved. His hair was wild. Boys at Edna’s school put tons of gel in their hair to get it to look like that, and they never succeeded. He said, “Hi Edna,” as if it was the most natural thing in the world.

  “Hi,” Edna eked out.

  “Staying out of trouble, I hope.”

  Before she could respond, he went inside. Edna felt somehow special because Johnny knew her name and because he hoped she was not in trouble. She was lightheaded again. She watched as he helped Grandma unpack the bags. He seemed to know his way around Grandma’s kitchen. Edna couldn’t believe it was all happening. When he took some cans to the pantry, she was so hypnotized she forgot she’d left her clothes, including her underwear, scattered all over the place.

  “I was doing laundry,” she yelped as she dashed ahead of him, gathering the more humiliating items first.

  “Sorry, Edna, I didn’t know this is your room now.”

  There was no irony, sarcasm or anything in his voice that would indicate an opinion of the fact that Edna was sleeping in the pantry or hanging her laundry all over it. He put down the cans. Edna dropped her clothes and followed him out. She could smell his T-shirt again, this one navy blue. In the big room Johnny gave Grandma some mail, and Grandma gave Johnny some bills. He told her he’d check the car.

  It hadn’t occurred to Edna that Grandma might know Johnny, but apparently he delivered her groceries and mail, and he maintained her car. Anyone else might have mentioned it.

  Edna peered around the side of the cabin and watched Johnny open the garage door. He lifted the hood of Grandma and Grandpa’s Bronco, took something out, a stick, and wiped it off with a rag. Edna guessed he was checking the oil. She was impressed; she didn’t know men who knew anything about cars. Men she knew brought them in for repairs and had expensive tool sets at home that were unused.

  Johnny started the Bronco and drove away, leaving Edna in one of those desert quiets that came after something big happened. If the red truck wasn’t right in front of her, Edna might doubt that Johnny had been there at all. She could have easily hallucinated the whole scene out of boredom.

  She regretted going into the garage to wait for him. She was awkward and inauthentic among the rusty tools and ancient engine parts that lay exactly where they had hit the ground however many years ago. The remains of her grandparents’ lives, their dusty furnitur
e and memories, were neglected here and dominated the space, except for where the Bronco parked. Edna couldn’t imagine a good reason to be standing here, weirdly in wait for Johnny. She was about to leave, but the Bronco was coming back. Walking away would seem cold. This boy just saved her life; she couldn’t exactly ignore him. She did her best to start organizing Grandpa’s old tools with a sense of purpose.

  “Where did you go off to?”

  Off too? That sounded forced.

  “Down the road. You have to move a car once in a while if you want to keep it running.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Edna couldn’t think of a thing to add to this.

  “See you next week,” he said, and he went back to the truck.

  Edna froze, then followed him. She’d lost any ability to monitor herself and stared after him like a puppy left behind. He got into the truck and waved as he drove off. She waved back. Her heart sank as the truck sped away, but it buoyed again when the brake lights went on. Johnny backed the truck up and got out.

  “I forgot to give you this. You’re famous.”

  He handed her a copy of The Desert Weekly with a picture of the two of them on Johnny’s dirt bike. It was on the front page.

  “Oh. Thank you.”

  “No problem.”

  He smiled and went back to the truck. Edna loved to watch him walk. She didn’t look down at the newspaper or even blink until the red truck was out of sight.

  The newspaper’s headline read Girl Found Safely in Dream Valley, confirming that absolutely nothing went on around here if this was a top story. The picture was of two helmeted and therefore expressionless people. Edna reflected that if Johnny were not wearing a helmet, she might have a nice picture of him, but she thanked God she was wearing one. She had been shocked at how awful she looked when she finally saw a mirror that night. The flash blew out any detail in Johnny’s white T-shirt, so the shape of his body was indiscernible. It was a terrible photo by any standard, but it was of the two of them, and Edna would keep it forever. She wondered if Johnny would keep one. Probably not. She learned that his last name was Bishop, which was the same as the store he’d delivered the groceries from. He lived in Desert Palms, and he was on the Dirt Bike Response Crew for Search and Rescue, confirming that he was a good person who cared about his community. He was seventeen.