Bright Angel Time

by Martha McPhee

  When just enough time was left to get us to school before the bell, she would release us. Before leaving, we’d tell her a dozen times that we loved her, drilling the words into her to reassure her that going to school with Dad didn’t mean we loved him more. We marched out the door, all alike and clean in our yellow slickers or our red duffle coats. We moved cautiously, as if on a tightrope, feeling Mom’s eyes on our backs and Dad’s on our fronts, pulling us taut. ‘Thirty dollars a week’ tumbled through our heads. In the car my cheek would recoil gently from Dad’s warm lips. His soft curls would tickle unpleasantly. “So your mother’s finally let you go.” I was stiff at first, and quiet, with a pout, as if Mom could see or somehow feel the pout and know that I wasn’t betraying her. No matter how hard I tried, after a few miles I’d warm up and by the time I got to school I didn’t want to leave.

  “I’m not going,” I said. The seat belt strapped me into the backseat. Jane had already been left at another school. Julia sat in the front, looking over at me, thinking of ways to tempt me. Outside, other kids spilled off the yellow buses, bright and cheery, their knapsacks dangling over their shoulders. Station wagons driven by mothers with curlers in their hair dropped off children. Quickly. The kids eager to go, slamming the doors without looking back.

  “You can come to homeroom with me and we’ll sing the national anthem together,” Julia said, her eyes hopeful. I ignored her. I hated the national anthem even more than I hated the Pledge of Allegiance. I always got the words wrong and the one time I had gone to Julia’s class the kids had looked at me as if I were queer. “What’s your big problem,” I’d wanted to say, but didn’t.

  My fingers rolled my lunch bag into a scroll. Rolling and unrolling. It was a plastic bag from a loaf of bread, transparent, revealing what was inside.

  “Katy,” Dad said. “I love you, Katy.” He hugged me, a big hug, and he pressed his lips to my forehead. I wanted to stay in his arms, in his car, forever. My toes pinched in my boots. My socks had fallen down and bunched under my feet. Kids swarmed near the entrances to the flat green school like bees buzzing around a hive. It was a lime-green school of concrete the color of which reminded me of the skirt my teacher Mrs. Jackson wore. She liked to take me into her office and ask me how I felt, and she’d stare at me while I said nothing, as if she liked watching me bleed.

  “I’ll be back Friday. We’ll go to the Chocolate Shoppe. I promise,” Dad said, releasing me. Then he offered me a dollar because he knew how much I liked the hot lunches in the caféteria. They cost thirty-five cents, with milk forty. A dollar would be enough to last until Friday. It did something for me, buying those lunches in line with other kids.

  “Can I have two dollars?” I asked. I thought I’d give the other to Julia because I knew she’d never ask. She never asked Dad for anything. He gave me two.

  ♦

  Then Jane stopped coming. She marched down the driveway past us and onto the bus, without even looking or nodding at Dad. The fat driver – so fat he’d have to be buried in a piano case, Julia would say – sucked shut the door, sucking Jane inside, where she sat upright, staring straight ahead. “He abandoned us,” she would say to me and Julia, sounding like Mom. “He asked for it,” she would say. To him she would say nothing. Dad stood in the driveway, dappled dark and light in the shadow of trees, watching her go, having pleaded with her until he cried.

  Sometimes he’d break in half at the steering wheel. He’d pull over by the side of the road, bend his head into the wheel and cry. “Dear God, just let me have my girls, just let me love my girls.” I’d be in the backseat watching Julia kiss him and pat him, listen to her tell him how much she loved him. Her head of blond curls would blend with his dark ones as she kissed him, bowed over him like a parent, soothing him. But I’d be thinking about the time, looking at the second hand on the dashboard clock as it spun around and around, thinking about the Chocolate Shoppe and the woman who served us, her funny thick accent filled with Vs and her checkered apron with the clean white bib of lace. She always drooled an extra dollop of whipped cream over our hot chocolates. I wanted to get to the Chocolate Shoppe in time to have two. As Dad cried, I thought about the comic books and the candies I’d have him buy me. I rocked myself, my weight resting on my palms.

  I wanted to get. Get, get, get. Anything get. When he won weekend visitation rights I had him take me shopping for an extra dress, a pair of shoes, rocks and minerals for my collection. I had him give me extra quarters for the Magic Fingers box that vibrated the beds in the hotel rooms we’d stay in when he took us on surprise trips. Hershey, Pennsylvania. Atlantic City. At first I wanted to share with Julia, who didn’t ask, and then I didn’t want to share at all. At the chocolate factory I insisted we tour the place twice to watch the Olympic-sized pools of undulating chocolate and the silver machines that spit kisses. At the Arcade in Atlantic City we went on every single ride and played every single game. I marched around like a brat, dizzied by my determination and that creepy arcade music and the spinning of wheels, rubber flipping over nails. The clapping of waves and a cold, lonely boardwalk. Sunny skies with fast-moving clouds. Never enough. “Thirty dollars a week.” A dress, a shoe, a rock, a stuffed animal. He gave. He lost Jane. He wasn’t going to lose me. More. I wanted to be worth more.

  ∨ Bright Angel Time ∧

  The Promise of Anton

  We slept in gas stations all across America to get to Anton. It was early July and we were running away from Dad, who was about to move back to town. We drove fast in our green station wagon, toward Big Sur. Anton was giving a workshop at Esalen on ‘Romantic Love and Sexual Equality’.

  We felt we had won. Even Jane felt we’d won. The nun had gone to India to join the ashram and Anton had promised he’d marry Mom.

  All over the car were maps: maps of each state we would pass; one map of the entire country. I had collected them before we left. I loved maps. I was afraid of getting lost. I knew where everything was – the Grand Canyon, Monument Valley, Yellowstone. For months I had wanted to go to the Grand Canyon, simply because the Thanksgiving after Dad left, he had planned a trip to take us there. He had bought tickets, even for Jane, but at the last minute we didn’t go because Mom said we’d do badly in school if we missed any. She said we wouldn’t learn our multiplication tables and if we didn’t know them, then we’d never get into college.

  It seemed impossible that one road could connect all that land, but it did. On the map of the country, I drew one solid red line from my town in New Jersey to California. It went straight across Interstate 70, one bend up at Denver to 80.1 imagined us on that red line and felt safe: that red line like the string through the sleeves of my winter jacket attaching the two mittens.

  At midnight Mom would pull into a land lit by neon and the bright orange and red lights of trucks. She never stopped earlier. It was a waste of time, she said, her body leaning forward, eyes hard on the road.

  The stations were always the same, glowing islands in black fields of grain. The starry sky became lost in the milky haze of lights. It was darkest near the bathrooms, so we parked there. Mom fixed our beds, unrolling the sleeping bags over the front and back seats. Her hands smoothed the fabric down as gently as she did our bedspreads at home. The four of us curled into each other and tried to fall asleep: Mom and Jane in the front, Julia and I in the back. All night long truckers came and went. Night belonged to the trucks: the sighing and revving of their engines was a comfort, a lullaby.

  ♦

  That first night in Ohio, I told Mom that I didn’t like to stay in gas stations. They were dirty. We couldn’t change into our nightgowns, brush our teeth or wash our hands. The bathrooms smelled so bad it was hard to breathe.

  I was asleep when we arrived and woke up to the gears grinding. The car filled with light, turning our skin red. Wind still blew in my ears. Then the engine died and the fan whirred off. Julia was asleep next to me, a heap against the door. Through the windows came air, alive, thick with gas and
warmed tar.

  Outside, trucks crowded the station. I counted eighteen lined up at the edge of black space. One cab light was on and I could see the naked chest of a man getting ready for bed. Big and white. I was sorry for him, sleeping in the station. Pumps stood dull in gray silhouette. In the darkened window of the convenience store Coors and Coke signs flickered.

  “What do you think?” Mom asked. She opened her door and the overhead light shot on. Sounds from outside became distinct: the steady drone of electricity; the ice machine churning; trucks thundering past on the highway.

  Suddenly I was alert. “We’re not sleeping here,” I said. I really didn’t think we would. Across the road a sign blinked HOTEL, unfolding one bright red letter at a time, H.O.T.E.L. When we traveled with Dad we always slept in hotels. In hotels I collected things: pens, folders filled with writing paper and postcards, menus, chamois for polishing shoes, bags for laundry. I liked the miniature bars of Ivory and also the keys: ordinary keys attached to big plastic plates with the hotel’s address printed in gold. I stole keys just to mail them back. I loved the idea of mailing the key, of it traveling naked without an envelope or a package to conceal it.

  “Just keep sleeping, Kate,” Julia said without opening her eyes. Her hair was messy but her pink ribbon was still tied in a perfect bow. The car swarmed with junk, maps over us, bags at our feet. The ceiling was close and the vinyl sticky.

  “Shut up, Julia.” I spat.

  “Don’t start, Kate,” Mom said, glaring back at me. I noticed little wrinkles were appearing beneath her eyes.

  “I’m not starting anything.”

  “I’m tired. Don’t nag,” Mom said.

  “Don’t be selfish, Kate. Grow up,” Jane said, turning to glare at me. That was her new thing, don’t be selfish. Grow up. She was perched in the front, cheek pressed close to Mom’s, as if she and Mom were one, acting like mothers together. It made me mad.

  “Why can’t we stay in the hotel?” I said. “We always used to stay in hotels. Normal people stay in hotels. Dad stays in hotels.”

  “You’re being a child,” Jane said.

  “I am not being a child,” I yelled.

  “Oh come off it,” Julia said to both of us.

  But then Mom’s voice turned as sharp as a slap. “If you think he’s so normal, then go home. It’s his fault, Kate. He didn’t give me a chance, Kate. He’s cheated us, Kate.” She got out of the car and slammed the door. The light went out and the sound of the door smashed into my ear. Julia gave me a protective look.

  In a second Mom was back, heaving the sleeping bags in on us. “I’ll send you home if you love him so much. I’m trying my hardest to plan fun things for you. But I’ll send you home. This isn’t easy, you know. What has your father done for you, Kate? What? Tell me! What has he goddamn done for you?” At first I was afraid she’d wake the truckers. But then I didn’t care.

  When Mom finished yelling, she gave me the silent treatment. I shriveled in the cold. I was alone, leaning against the door. Jane and Julia pretended to be asleep. Outside, the trucks swarmed at the exit coming off the highway for the night. Bright polished trucks: orange trucks; green trucks; white and sparkling; smooth like an ice-skating-rink trucks. All the lights of the semitrailers twinkled. They were majestic, almost beautiful. A carousel, a caravan of twinkling lights.

  I thought about my father trying to call us and how the phone would ring in our empty house. I was mad that we’d left. I was mad that we hadn’t said good-bye.

  In my suitcase I had the gold rock he’d given me for my collection, and I wanted it now. It was deep down in my suitcase with my prospector’s pick and my chisel. I’d brought my tools, all but the rock tumbler, because Dad had always said that the West was where geology was happening. He had always said it was so active you could see it out there, see the world being made, unlike in the East, where the activity had happened millions of years before. Dad had wanted to take us to the Grand Canyon so that we could contrast East and West, so that we could see layers of time and a cross section of the earth’s history – read it in the canyon walls. He had spent hours lecturing us about the geochronology of the Grand Canyon, preparing us. He said that the story of rocks could be read there like words in a book. He loved those words, those names, and he’d repeat them to us over and over just to hear the sounds of them – Vishnu Schist, Coconino Sandstone, Muav Limestone, the Toroweap Formation and Bright Angel Shale. He’d sing them to us like a song, his face radiant and thrilled and we in turn came to love them. Bright Angel – that name was wonderful, though it didn’t sound as if it could be the name of a rock, a shale from the Cambrian period that represented seventeen million years of time, or a creek named by John Wesley Powell, the one-handed geologist who first explored the Colorado, as my father had explained to us. Rather, the name sounded like something spiritual, that seemed to hold a promise, something named by God.

  I dug blindly through our luggage in the back, making noise. I had to have my rock. The gray, ugly rock that was a nugget of the rock that gold comes from. I thought about Dad in South Africa traveling the 6,800 feet down into the ground to get it for me himself. It always seemed peculiar to me that gold was the ugliest rock in my collection. The rock was there in my suitcase and when I found it I held it tightly in my hand until my palm hurt.

  Julia’s warm body snuck next to mine. I felt her hands on my arm and her lips coming close to my ear. “You’re my best sister,” she whispered. Double load, thirty-six wheeler trucks. Tubular trucks. Ice trucks. Oil trucks. Milk trucks. Tiny trucks without their eighteen-wheeler load. So tiny they looked muted and malformed. Powerless midgets. And I think I almost fell asleep.

  ♦

  “Kate,” Mom said. A long time had passed.

  I didn’t answer.

  “Oh, Kate, I’m sorry. I’m sorry for yelling.” Her voice came from the front seat. I couldn’t see her head. “Katy, speak to me.” Just voice. Soft voice. “You still love your mother, sweetheart?” A car raced up to the pumps and screeched to a halt. Music blared from the radio. The first car all night, except for ours. It cheered me for a second. The driver went to the closed convenience store and banged his fists on the door. In a flash he was back in his car, screeching away. Vanishing into highway. I hoped he would run out of gas.

  “Can we go to the Grand Canyon?” I finally asked. At first I wanted to make her mad again. I knew that she’d know why I wanted to go to the Grand Canyon. But she didn’t get mad. She sighed, relieved that I’d spoken, happy to have me back on her side again.

  “Oh, Kate. When we get to Anton we can do anything. When we get to Anton everything will be different. You’ll see, honey. He has a beautiful family. It will be fun. I promise.”

  That’s what she said all across America. And there was so much hope in her voice and smile that we believed it. Even Jane believed it. I remembered poker. I still had some of that money; I had twenty dollars; I’d turned it into a traveler’s check. When we got to Anton there would be money and beds and kids and we’d travel to exciting places. First to Esalen – a camp by the ocean, Mom said, with fun things to do for kids: horseback riding and swimming. There would be naturally heated pools, endless gardens and flat lawns for croquet. Then on to Disneyland, Hollywood, and Sea World – anywhere we wanted, the Grand Canyon, anywhere. Anton had five children – Nicholas, Caroline, Sofia, Timothy and Finny. “There’s a boy for each of you,” Mom would say, smiling and happy, looking young again. She really wanted it to work. There was nothing more in the world she wanted. “A boy for each of you and you’ll all fall in love. I promise.”

  ♦

  We slept in two Essos, a Jenney, a Chevron, and a Gulf. Five stations, that’s how long it took. I wrote the names down on a pad. I wrote everything down: the states we passed through; the towns we stopped in, even if it was just to have a sandwich – Buckeye, Terre Haute, Junction City, Denver, Laramie, Elko, Winnemucca. I wanted to remember. There was so much I had already forgott
en.

  ♦

  During the day the road became ours again. Dark endless space turned into fields of sunflowers and corn, wide and open like the ocean or the sky. And the trucks turned suddenly dull, all their polish and majesty replaced by stains of exhaust and black trails of fumes. By day the trucks were something to flirt with. We stuck our hands out the window and pulled on imaginary chains so they’d blow their air horns as we sailed past.

  We woke early. Mom would get a cup of coffee from the convenience store and the key to the bathroom. A heavy sleeplessness lingered on our eyelids, but we were young and it soon washed away.

  During the days, Jane sat in the front doing needlepoint. She was making a pillow with yellow finches and apple trees. Julia and I, in the back, licked S&cH Green Stamps into their little books, making the paper crinkly and substantial. We would only let Mom go to gas stations that gave stamps. The signs hung alone on their own pole like a flag, red letters surrounded by a green that was a prettier shade than the green of money. “We’re gonna get something for nothing,” Julia said. We were saving for a lawn mower – 279 books. We had six and a whole lot of time.

  On an old cassette player we listened to ‘Ob la di, ob la da’ over and over to learn the words by heart. Julia fell in love with Ringo Starr and none of us cared. We let her have him.

  I grew used to being in the car with the window open and the wind against my face and the steady rhythm of the wheels rolling over all that highway. I thought a lot about Anton. I wondered if he were waiting for us to get to him.