Bright Angel Time

by Martha McPhee

  “Stop it,” I said. I worried about what would happen to her with those maggots and mushrooms inside her, worried she hadn’t gotten them all out. I thought about a dog we once had named Bark. A stupid name, but we loved it then. Bark ate two of her puppies that had died during birth and Mom had to make Bark throw up so that she didn’t get sick. Mom explained that dogs did that. It was just what they did. They ate their dead puppies.

  Mom’s hands felt awkward and uncomfortable, massaging me. “You’re drunk,” I said, sounding like Jane. I wanted to get away from her. I thought about my letters in the pits of all those mailboxes. When Dad came I thought he probably wouldn’t want to take Mom and that made me sad. And then that thought kept stabbing me like when you do something horrible and embarrassing and keep remembering it. I’d make him take her. He’d have to take her. He loved her. I knew he loved her.

  “What are the mushrooms going to do to you?”

  “Don’t be like Jane,” Mom said. Then she was quiet for a moment. I thought about a long time ago when I’d come home from the hospital and Dad had come back to our house. I wondered what would have happened if I’d have opened the door. I moved her hand from my chest. Sometimes I thought they’d be together if I had done that; Mom could have told him how much she loved him.

  “But Katy, I created you. You’re my Katy.” She held my hand and stretched our arms out toward the sky. Her skin was dry. “Such a silly-billy girl. Why in the world are you wearing two dresses?” Then she laughed uncontrollably, and nibbled on my ear. She felt the holster around my waist. “You like the gun?” she said, as if my wearing it meant so much more than it actually did.

  “When are we going home?” I asked. But she wouldn’t answer. She just held me there, rocking me. It seemed like a long time. Our ears pressed into the sand. I could hear things in the sand: Mom’s unsteady heartbeat, pulsing in my ear as if the earth were breathing. After a while I thought she almost fell asleep.

  “Go get Anton, Kate,” she said suddenly, jerking up. “He was supposed to come right out here. I think he’s gotten himself lost. Come on, honey, go find him. Maybe he’s in the tent.” I thought about Katherine. I thought about Dina. Mom’s nails bit my arm gently and she nudged me in the direction of the house. “Ask him for your twenty dollars. He’ll give it to you, sweetheart. I spoke to him about it. Go get your twenty dollars.”

  ♦

  Anton was alone in the tent. Its zipper peeled open with a loud metallic sound. He lay on top of the sleeping bag, illuminated by a dim flashlight suspended on a cord above him. His skin was an awful jaundice yellow and his face pasty and pale. His lips were white and a smile spread over them.

  “Who is it,” he asked.

  “Kate,” I said. “Kate.”

  “Not so loud, babe,” he said. “Shsh. I’m listening.”

  “To what,” I whispered. A thin line of red ribbed his eyes and his lashes were wet. He didn’t speak. I wanted my sisters. His breathing slowed. The tent was close inside. My dresses felt tight from being wet. A jar of Vaseline glistened next to his head. Mom’s underpants and bras were folded into neat piles in a corner. I thought about our laundry back at home. How it smelled of lemony soap, folded perfectly and you couldn’t tell whose pile was whose. Outside, wind chimes chimed.

  “For gila monsters, babe. Shsh.” His accent was slick and sticky. He put his hand on my thigh and I noticed his wallet bulging out of his pocket, on the verge of falling. It was a fat wallet. I thought about the hundred-dollar bill he had paid the gypsy with. I could tell the wallet held a lot of money.

  “There aren’t any out here,” I said, adjusting myself close to the wallet, gently touching it so it would fall. I lay down on my side next to him and opened it. Many hundred-dollar bills lay between the leather. Crisp and glorious, new money. My eyes widened and I swallowed.

  “The tent’s breathing, babe. Can you see it? Looky there.” His voice startled me but his eyes were still closed. His finger pointed to the canvas. I wondered if Julia had ever been alone with Anton. “Can you see that?” I couldn’t see anything. Then he faded again. My fingers touched the money and I watched his shut eyes. I thought if I just had a little bit of that money, it could be useful. I could buy things, get us away if we had to. I would have taken less if there’d been a smaller bill, but there were only hundreds.

  “I had a dream about a baby,” Anton said. Gently I moved my hands and laid them by my side. I was getting impatient. My blood rippled and I felt high, eager. I wanted to get that money. “I was being chased through a house. Running, and all the rooms kept opening up on more rooms like a Chinese box until I got to a bathroom.” His words came slowly, spaced by long pauses. “And you know what I saw? A baby, a little pink bald baby, sitting on the toilet seat. As I approached it the toilet flushed and sucked the baby down with one big whooossh.” He made a long-drawn-out whooshing sound. His lips curled out into a wet, red ‘o’, but still his eyes stayed shut. My fingers slid back to the wallet. “All that was left was one pudgy leg, poking from the bowl.” I lifted the bill, quickly, noiselessly, and tucked it into the pocket of my dress. My cheeks flushed. The soles of my feet turned hot. My ankles stung, chafed from the wet sand.

  “Did you try and save it?” I asked. “I mean did you try to pull its leg out?” I sat up and kissed him on the forehead and he kissed me back, a dry sticky kiss. My heart pounded against my ribs.

  “Lie here with me a minute, babe.” His arm straddled my belly, pulling me to his chest, against his hairy stomach. “You’re wearing your gun, babe. You’re a smart girl, babe.” He was quiet. Then, “We’re going to the fantastic.”

  “Right,” I teased.

  “Shsh.” He put his index finger to his lip. “You’ll see in a minute.” His stomach pushed into my back with each deep breath. One of my hands rested on my pocket, protecting my hundred-dollar bill. I was tiny in his arms. I thought about a picture of me with my cat, the cat that Dad had shaved. The picture hung in our study back at home. A black-and-white snapshot. The cat was folded over my arm, limp, as I crushed it against my chest.

  “How’s your bruise, babe?”

  ∨ Bright Angel Time ∧

  Powdered Milk and Margarine

  I had stolen before, back at home, before California.

  I stole chicken from Camille Cain, my father’s lover. She made the best chicken – all white meat, with a peach glaze – and she made lots of it, a whole cookie sheet, so that they could have it for leftovers. One meal for three days.

  Camille was a practical woman. She had ledgers with her budgets written in them, and all her food she got for free by collecting coupons. It was a science, with entire notebooks divided into categories and filled with colorful coupons. She knew which supermarkets were having double-coupon days and would drive fifty miles to those offering triple-coupon days. Her cellar contained a small market of food, shelves for canned goods and an extra freezer for meat and frozen vegetables and breads. Everything alphabetical. A whole world of food that was dictated by special values and not by taste or desire. She used powdered milk and margarine instead of whole milk and butter simply because there were coupons. Cheaper. For free. Money saved. My father loved her. She devoted hours to teaching Julia and me about coupons, showing us her ledger and her calculations. She liked mothering us; she had no children of her own. Sometimes Julia and I worried she’d want to have children with Dad.

  “More children?” Mom would say to us. “Don’t kid yourselves. Children take time. He doesn’t have time.”

  We tried hard to learn about the coupons. We wanted to save coupons at home and get all our food free too. But Mom thought it was cheap to collect coupons and do all that saving and work for food you wouldn’t ordinarily eat.

  Sometimes, on weekends, Dad took Julia and me to Camille’s house, a small place in the woods two towns away from ours. Jane refused to come. The house smelled of pine, and a little brook rippled outside the window. I always loved going to Camille’s
. There were rules. You knew what to expect: dinner at six sharp served with a meat, a starch, a vegetable, a salad, rolls – always rolls – and dessert. You didn’t get dessert if you didn’t eat all your vegetables and meat. If there was a vegetable that you hated you had to try at least three bites to make sure. But she rarely cooked something that we hated. Hamburger Helper and baby green peas; the baked chicken with a sweet golden crust and string beans. I always ate a lot when I visited them and sometimes I’d catch her watching me, but then she’d turn her head quickly as if she hadn’t been staring at all.

  The chicken was nestled in foil at the bottom of my overnight bag when she found it, four pieces, one for each of us. Camille’s long ginger hair curled down her shoulders. She had beautiful shiny hair, which sometimes she let me braid. I was trying to grow mine to be just like hers. Her brown eyes sparkled with understanding and pity, holding me. I bowed my head watching the floor, smelling the chicken. She wore loose white cotton underwear and a T-shirt of Dad’s. No bra. Her nipples pegged through the thin cotton. Her thighs jiggled, jellylike and large, but she wasn’t self-conscious like Mom, who was always wrapped in a robe.

  “Did you like the chicken, ducky?” she asked. I nodded. “Let’s give you some more to take home.” She held the nest of chicken in her hand. The pieces were beautiful in the tinfoil, with the peach glaze glistening on the crust. Pubic hair crept from her underwear, scaring me. I scratched my ankle with my other foot. She plucked more chicken from the refrigerator with tongs, lots of it, and wrapped it in tinfoil and repacked it neatly, first in plastic, then in paper, so grease wouldn’t leak into my bag. “Would you like to take anything else home?” I thought of the basement filled with food, but said nothing.

  ♦

  “Throw it away, Kate,” Mom said, standing in our kitchen in her nightgown. Her eyes were tired, her hair messy. She’d been sleeping. “I won’t take chicken from Camille Cain.” I dropped the chicken in the wastebasket and listened to it thunk through all the lighter garbage to the bottom.

  The next time we went to Camille’s, Mom sent us with a gallon of whole milk and a pound of sweet butter. She had clipped articles about margarine and powdered milk stunting the growth of growing children. We were to tell Camille to use the whole milk and butter in her cooking. Camille looked down on us with her hands on her hips, her hair pulled back in a net. “Now, duckies, that’s ridiculous.” She shook her head and rolled her eyes and continued to stir the new batch of powdered milk with a long wooden spoon. “Your mother really is something else.” I liked the powdered milk, actually, although without the water. I liked spooning it into the palm of my hand and licking it off like Pixie Stick dust.

  I noticed Dad using the whole milk on his cereal in the morning. We were up first. The house was quiet. Before, we always got up early together, at six, when the light was muted and you couldn’t tell what kind of day it would be. I loved watching him use the milk and butter as if it were somehow a gesture toward our mother, a bond connecting them still.

  “Do you like the milk?” I asked. My legs dangled from the chair, the tips of my toes barely touching the floor. The kitchen was chilly. Camille kept the heat low.

  He looked at me with quizzical eyes, then looked at the spoonful of cereal and milk he was about to put in his mouth and smiled and said, “I love the milk.” I smiled back at him.

  In bed that night I nudged Julia awake. My lips pressed into her curls and my arms wrapped around her stomach. She rolled around to me, her body twisting in her nightgown, warm and a little sticky, though it was cold.

  “What, Kitty?” she whispered. Our noses touched and she stared at me. Her eyes glowed like a cat’s in the dark. She smelled sweet, of vanilla.

  “Julia,” I said. I wanted to tell her about the milk, but was afraid she wouldn’t understand.

  “I wanted you to be awake with me,” I said.

  “I’m awake with you,” she said. She pressed her lips into mine and we touched tongues. She loved touching my tongue and I loved doing what she told me. It tasted warm and of nothing. She gave me nickels when I let her touch my tongue.

  “Julia,” I said again, “did you know that Dad likes the whole milk? Did you know that?”

  “And the butter,” Julia said and my eyes opened wide. “Did you see him glob it on his toast?” Inside me raced. I knew I’d have a hard time sleeping.

  Outside it was a thick black night and through the trees you could see the universe, all lit up bright and hopeful. Anything seemed possible.

  In the room down the hall, footsteps and then the gentle creaking of bedsprings could be heard.

  “They’re fucking,” Julia said. “Mom didn’t like to fuck.”

  ∨ Bright Angel Time ∧

  Dwayne: Our Second Stranger

  Finny quit speaking and we picked up Dwayne. It was no big deal, Finny’s silence. In fact, since he never really spoke a lot anyway, no one seemed to notice much but me, and I only noticed because I spoke for him. I was tired of giving Finny the silent treatment. He needed me now and I liked to be needed. I liked speaking for him. It made me feel older.

  Dwayne was our next stranger and he led us to the Desert Princess, where we stayed for many days because Julia got sick. He wore saffron robes, and was standing at a telephone booth. His hair was platinum and so were his eyebrows and eyelashes, making him look ethereal and religious. He wore cowboy boots with dust caught in the thin designs of the leather. He said he was a messenger from a mystical god, sent to lead people back to their selves. Dangling from his neck was the picture of a hairy-faced man in an amulet of nuts. We picked him up at a filling station on one of those junk-food strips, just as we left Los Angeles.

  All it took was a dime. Anton loaned this man a dime and within minutes we were offering him a ride because his girlfriend had abandoned him. Plastic banners fluttered above car dealerships and dry cleaners, drive-thru restaurants and pool &c patio stores. Palm trees shot high, their heads polka-dotting the sky. Garbage spilled from Dumpsters and an afternoon heat settled down on us like a thick wool shawl. The camper and Mark Bitar’s beautiful silver Eldorado filled up with gas. Music blasted on the car radio and Sofia smoked a cigarette. Nicholas popped open beers. The others milled about, giving each other piggyback rides, fighting over who’d get to sit in the front. The convertible top was down. The smell of fried food made me hungry.

  “My parents are at a spa. The Desert Princess. I suppose I could go there,” Dwayne said, looking out at the road, his head jerking around nervously as if he feared something. He had fast eyes. He stared back at us, contemplating us, then out to the road again. His sharp Adam’s apple poked through his pale, freckled neck. He began to cry. “She just dropped me and took off in the car.” He had a southern accent.

  I studied him along with Finny, who clung to my dress. He was glad I’d taken him back and that too made me feel good. The robes shivered over Dwayne’s long, thin body and it didn’t look as if he were wearing underwear or as if the robes had pockets, and I wondered where he kept his money.

  “Don’t do anything,” Mom said earnestly to Dwayne, with her thumbnail pressing against her lip. “Don’t call or write or anything. That’ll bring her back. I know the type, dramatic, but don’t play into it. Just you wait and see. She’ll come back.” Mom talked like a fortune-teller and Dwayne’s eyes stuck on her. They were big and blue and he believed in her and Mom could tell and she could tell too that Anton was listening to her and he was proud of her, offering advice and generosity to a stranger as he so often did. “No one wants a burden. A burden’s just a trap.” Pink lipstick brightened her lips and a matching bandeau pushed her hair away from her face. She wore blue-jean cutoffs and the STAMP OUT SEXISM T-shirt.

  Anton took off his cowboy hat and wiped his head with a handkerchief, made a phlegmy sound and spit. He offered Dwayne the ride. Thousands of tiny bits of glass and metal sparkled up from the pavement. It was easier for Anton to add a stranger than to cope with the
problem at hand – Finny’s silence – the way it was easier for Mom to believe more in other people’s dreams than in her own.

  “That’d be mighty nice of you, sir, but are you goin’ that way?” He jittered some more, looking over his shoulder, then he reached down and lifted a small canvas bag from beneath his robes, swung it over his shoulder and started to cry again. “Is that all your family?” he asked, pointing at me and Finny and beyond us to the others at the Eldorado. “It’s a beautiful family.”

  Mom wrapped her arm around him and that annoyed me. “Of course we’ll take you,” Mom said and raised her eyes to Anton for approval. Within a few days he’d be adopted.

  “It’s out of our way,” I blurted. I knew because I had bought a map. “We’re going to the Grand Canyon,” I said. I’d scavenged money off the camper floor to buy the map. I wasn’t going to break my hundred. It was my first map since the drive across the country and just holding it made me feel safe. I knew in which towns we could get a bus at any time. I knew how much the ride would cost for the four of us. I had been resourceful. I didn’t need much more money. I held the map wide and it flapped in the breeze. Finny tugged on my dress, trying to quiet me, but we’d been headed to the Grand Canyon for weeks and now I just wanted to get there. Sometimes I still imagined Dad waiting for us, and if he weren’t I knew that we could definitely get our bus from the canyon, and it’d be cheaper from there than from here.

  “Kate, babe,” Anton reprimanded. But I didn’t care about him anymore. I was grown-up. With the hundred dollars burning through the pocket of my lower dress to my thigh, I was strong. Money made me strong, tough, tucked there in the fabric of my dress like a passport. I knew what it could do, what it could buy. I had cut the sleeves off the shoulders of my dresses and had torn away the white eyelet pinafore. My hair blew in the light north wind and I was beautiful. I could feel it, my cheeks slightly sunburned. My toes glittered a bright red polish of Sofia’s. I glared at Dwayne and fingered my gun.