“My grandfather invented the football helmet, but he didn’t think it was a gimmick because he didn’t even patent it,” I said to Dwayne. That’s what my grandmother had said to explain why we hadn’t made any money off the invention. Granpy had not actually invented the football helmet, but a safer version of it. He was a sports doctor and wanted to come up with something that would better protect his players. But he could have patented his invention anyway and we’d all always wished he had, because then we’d be millionaires.
“How about you do me a favor?” Dwayne asked. He didn’t care about the football helmet. “I’ll pay you. It’ll be our little G. You see, K, I need a car to run an S M, a secret mission, for a G I’ve got going. I’ll pay you a fee and all you have to do is get the keys to the E and keep Dr. A busy while I’m on my M.”
“Why don’t you just ask Dr. A yourself?” I said. That’s what all the big kids called him behind his back, Doctor Anton.
“Now Dr. As a trip. You know that, don’t you? He’s a real character with all that Jesuit shit and sex stuff and his book on love. All the same, he’s also a cool dude. A real generous man. Saved me, he did. A real G M. But you see, K, I’m trying to give you an opportunity to earn a little dough, bread, moola.”
“What’d he save you from?” I asked. I suspected something. I suspected Dwayne had done something terrible. “Did you murder somebody?”
“Yeah, I murdered somebody. Now how about this little G?”
“Ask Dr. A,” I said.
“You’re not too smart, are you, K?” I hated it when people said I wasn’t smart.
“How much are you going to pay me?” I asked.
“How about if I give you fifteen a mission?” he said. He had a wiry energy and he moved a lot, as if he’d been switched on, and he had a laugh that would have scared me if I didn’t think he was pathetic and if he hadn’t had that white, white hair and those blue eyes that looked red.
“Twenty,” I said.
“Fifteen.”
“Ask Anton.”
I rented Dwayne the Eldorado. He took the keys and drove off to the desert for an hour or so in the afternoons and while he was gone I kept Anton busy. Or rather made sure he didn’t need the car. Once he asked for Dwayne and I had to come up with a lie. I said he’d met a waitress and was flirting with her. He actually had met a waitress and sometimes he took her with him. He said they went to the desert to meditate. I didn’t care what they did out there as long as I got my twenty dollars. I stole the keys from Anton, a massive set with at least thirty keys and a miniature ivory cobra poised to strike. I wondered what all those keys opened as I searched for the one to the Eldorado, why he had to carry them about when we only had a few locks to open. The hot air blew. Dwayne stood on the asphalt, dressed in black. His white eyelashes and lids made his face shine. His skin so pale, albinolike. All around the chrome of the cars danced and glittered in the sun. Dwayne’s waitress was young-seeming, wearing a red-checked bikini top and hip-huggers. Her flesh was pinkish and soft. She was shy around me, not saying anything. I liked that she hid her face in Dwayne’s arm, away from my eyes, so I kept staring at her.
I snatched the keys for four days, eighty dollars, and Dwayne and the girl would drive off on their mission while I went to the pool and splashed around with Finny and kept an eye on Anton.
I’d sneak back as they’d return. They’d be red and sweaty from the drive and the heat. Little beads of sweat dripped from Dwayne’s nose and his shirt had patterns of wetness on the back like plastic does when you wrap it over a hot pie. Their eyes were big and glistening, scary, as if sizzling.
I thought that girl was stupid to buy his gimmick, but Dwayne said people were stupid for the most part.
That’s how we passed our days and I felt grand. I was making a lot of money in this new life of mine.
♦
It turned out that Julia was sicker than we had thought, which made me happy because it meant we’d be staying longer. She had a Mexican disease you pick up from drinking bad water and it seemed strange to me, since we hadn’t been to Mexico. But the English doctor said the disease was carried in by those strong southern winds that blow in each day at four. A thick hot wind that came with the precision of a clock and blew us all to sleep, no matter where we were.
“You’ve got to take antibiotics,” Sofia said to Timothy, Finny and me. “The doctor said. It’s preventative so the disease doesn’t jump onto you.” She looked hard at us, chomping on her gum. She chewed gum all the time now instead of eating. It was a diet and she was losing weight. I liked the idea, but all that chewing made my jaw sore and I got hungry from the sugar and started eating even more.
In her hand she had a teaspoon filled with white powder from a capsule. She shoved the spoon in each of our mouths. The powder tasted bitter and made us cough and we wanted water to wash it down, but she said no. “It’s like cough syrup. It’s got to stay on your throat in order to work.”
It was just the same with the White Blotter, the little triangle that Dwayne stuck on our tongues. It had to dissolve in your mouth. It was just like a tiny piece of paper, coming apart thread by thread on our tongues. The ten of us kids walked out to the dunes beyond the hotel and the sun disappeared in the west, coloring the sky with purples and oranges, turning the mountains and mesas white like glaciers and then black and James sang rugby songs, trying to teach us the words.
The Mayor of Bayswater
He had a pretty daughter
And the hairs on her dicky-di-do
Hung down to her knees…
The sand sifted between my toes and I could feel each grain on my skin. The sky so sprinkled over with stars now. “More stars,” I yelled. I stood up and spun around and fell back into the sand. I itched. I thought about the Joshua trees and getting lost in the field of Joshua trees that afternoon, which seemed so long ago. Sofia had hated the landscape and that had made Mom mad because Mom had loved it and we all needed to believe in the same thing in order to be strong and united. All the while that storm blew in from the west, getting us soaked, and Anton loved being lost, preaching to us out there beneath the Joshua trees, about the beauty of faith – of being able to appreciate uncertainty. Now I worried about the buffet being picked through and wanted to get back before all the shrimp had been eaten. Then I forgot about that. “We’re gonna figure everything out, man,” Dwayne said, coming up with a new theory. “And when we do, when we figure out how the whole goddamn universe came together, they’ll be no room left for God and God’ll laugh and step in with that big old hand of his and wipe us out.”
“One black one, one white
And one with a bit of shite on
And one with a little light on
To show us the way…”
“Is that your fucking poetry, man?” Nicholas said to James.
“It took a coal miner
To find her vagina…”
“Yeah, it’s my fucking poetry.” James mimicked an American accent and flashed a smile.
“Where’d you get this shit?” Nicholas asked Dwayne. Dwayne shot me a look that said, “Don’t speak.” I had no idea where he got it and then I did. I thought about him in the Eldorado with the girl and then that left my head and I forgot what I’d been thinking and momentarily that scared me. Then came an image of Mom saying we were blessed to be in the desert in a rainstorm in a field of Joshua trees and I believed her. “Are you having fun? Are you having fun? Are you having fun?” Her voice pecked at me. I was glad Mom wasn’t here. “I hate the rain,” Sofia had said, practically spitting it at Mom. “G’s gonna come down and extinguish us, obliterate us,” Dwayne shouted, trying to act like Jesus, standing tall. “And the whole evolutionary thing’ll have to start all over again, from microcosm to man, and he’ll laugh at how the next group evolves and dies.”
“Are you having fun? Are you having fun? Are you having fun?”
James played the harmonica and Nicholas told Dwayne to shut up. Then so d
id James and so did Caroline, who sat quietly off by herself, looking at the stars. I looked at them again to be like her and felt scared again. It scared me to look at the universe.
“And the hairs on her dicky-di-do
Hung down to her knees
She married an Eye-talian
With balls like a fucking stallion…”
“Stop,” Jane screeched. “Make it stop.” She clutched her head and stood up, shaking. Caroline drifted over to her and held her.
“I warned you,” Dwayne said, doing magic tricks now. Quarters came from his nose and his ears. His face was big and awful-looking with those shiny white lashes. Sticks of incense poked from the sand and the big moon made the night glow. And then his face became Cynthia’s and then Anton’s. Finny clung to my side, passive, staring at the sky. Sand pricked my scalp.
“I do believe there’re more stars than grains of sand,” I whispered. Jane yelled. Caroline held her. I couldn’t listen to Jane or look at her. Her hair was long and wild, out of braids. She frightened me. I cupped my ears with the palms of my hands and squinted my eyes. Dwayne told her again that he’d warned her. She’d eaten more than he’d recommended. Jane had said she’d wanted to disappear. I was afraid she would. We’ll disintegrate, but everything else will remain the same, Julia had said on that long stretch of road. I thought of the postcard with the nuclear bomb mushrooming into the sky, and laughed. Finny nudged me and I fell to the sand. Nicholas strummed the guitar and sang a song about water. Water over and over. I only ate a quarter. That little tiny triangle. Jane had taken a whole square to be like the boys. She wanted to disappear. Everyone talked at once and their voices clogged my ears. It was as if I were beneath water. “Paralyzed from the waist down,” Sofia said with delight. “Because she passed out in a bathtub with those tight, tight jeans on. You know, the kind you have to lie down to put on. And the water made them shrink on her and that cut off her circulation. Paralyzed.”
“I have another theory,” Dwayne said. I couldn’t keep the sounds straight. “About black holes and God.” I sang the rugby song and laughed and drizzled sand on Finny’s stomach and then I kissed him on the mouth with my tongue. It was awful. His tongue was hard like wood.
“Make it stop. It’s so weird.” Jane was crying. “Protect me. Somebody. Help.” She slapped her face, breaking away from Caroline. James went to her and held her, brushing her hair down. He told her to breathe slowly, to concentrate. “It’ll be all right,” he said. “We’re here. No one will leave you alone.” Jane was shaking, clinging to him. “We won’t go away.” Now I wanted Mom, but she and Anton and Cynthia were away at a friend of Cynthia’s – an artist who had a studio in the desert and Cynthia wanted Anton to see his work. I stuck my arms out, reaching in front for something I couldn’t see. Finny tried to follow but I knocked him down. “Scram,” I said. Something made me mean and it felt good. GRAND. The hotel was far away, lit up like Oz. I kept walking, feeling like I’d never get there. The more I walked the more it receded.
And though there had been thousands of Joshua trees in that field they seemed isolated, standing in their own space. Alone. I had wondered if their roots touched underground.
♦
I called collect from the lobby in a private booth with a Princess phone. It took a long time for the operator to come on. She was on the moon and when she finally came down she didn’t understand me. I kept explaining myself until she said, “Miss, I have understood that your name is Katherine and I have understood which number it is that you are trying to dial. It’s busy now.” Her voice was a machine, shooting out words – each word a distinct hard block that crumbled after it had been spoken.
“Can’t you make an emergency breakthrough?” Sofia had told me about those so I knew how to make them. She’d tried an emergency breakthrough to Poona, India, to her mother. But they had no phones at the ashram. I thought about the nun. The nun should be with her children and husband. Dad should be with his children and wife. My head spun. I started to laugh.
“Well, is this an emergency?”
“Yes!” Currents ran through my body in waves. I sweated.
“You should have said so first, Miss.”
I waited, tangling the cord around my head. It was a short, straight cord. Green velvet upholstered the walls. The light buzzed overhead in a small chandelier dripping crystals, loud, distracting me. In that buzz I could hear Jane screaming still, her voice echoing in my ear, begging for us to make it stop.
“Ducky?” I heard Camille’s voice and I got a jolt. I had never heard her answer the telephone before. I didn’t say anything. “Ducky, are you there? Your father wants to know where you are, Ducky.” I thought about ducks. Mom and Dad had given us ducks for Easter once. One for each of us. They had done that kind of thing. One year they gave us lambs. For a little while we’d had a real farm at our house. We ate the lambs the next Easter. Thinking of that made me want to laugh. But I held it in. I saw those ducks and wondered why she called me Ducky. But her voice was warm and friendly and she didn’t know for sure if I were on the line. “Operator? Operator?” Camille asked. I was hoping Dad would take the phone away from her. “Well, Kate. I know you’re there and I wish that you would speak. We’re concerned about you girls.” We, that we of Camille’s slapped me. “School has started. When are you coming home? Your father’s very upset.” She spoke fast. I saw my father in his little white VW, his head bent over the steering wheel. Part of me wanted to speak out to her, thought she could be warm like her voice, envelop me, feed me chicken and rice. I thought of Mom in bed and of the messy room we’d left behind. I wanted to go back and open the door to that room and let my father in. The air was close in the booth. “What about school? What about school?” I heard it over and over in my head. Erehwon backward…I’d wanted to say.
Camille’s voice became Mrs. Jackson’s, my new teacher in my new school. When my father left I switched from private to public. Mrs. Jackson took me into the teacher’s office and sat me down in a chair that stood very high and my feet couldn’t touch the ground and she asked if I were all right and I thought she meant would I adjust to the school. I nodded. She looked at me with those big warm eyes of hers, but there was something in them that I didn’t trust. The way they held me, taking me in, as if my nodding weren’t enough for her, as if she wanted me to break open so she could see what was inside. On my feet I wore Julia’s Jack Purcells and they were too big and I was embarrassed because Mrs. Jackson kept looking at them and I knew that she could tell they weren’t mine.
But I hadn’t been able to find my shoes so I had had to wear Julia’s. I was relieved that I was at a new school where nobody knew me. Mrs. Jackson’s voice turned back to Camille’s and I heard the operator on the line telling Camille that we were at the Desert Princess.
“Ducky, your father’s away on business but he very much wants to know where you’ll be in the next week. He very much wants to speak to you.” She paused and sighed. I hated that she was in his apartment. “He misses you, Kate. He wants to help you, Kate.” Then again she repeated that he missed me. “He has your letters. I don’t know if he’ll be able to come and get you but he…” she stuttered. A knot clogged the back of my throat and my eyes started to water and then to burn. “Well…” That ‘well’, came quick and sharp like a bullet. I saw her as a soldier standing in front of Dad. “He certainly wants you to come home, with school having started, and he could wire you the…” Very gently and quietly, as she was saying something else that I couldn’t make out because she was a million miles away from me, on another planet, I put my finger on the lever that disconnected the line and pushed it down, cutting her off. I held it down for what seemed a long time, as if I were stomping on a fly extra long to make sure it was dead.
♦
“Nope. Na. Na,” Anton stuttered. “Na. Na.” His lips were dry, the way they got after smoking too much. He needed a drink. One was in his hand. An umbrella blossomed over the table, shading his face
. A waterfall thrummed into the pool. Beneath the waterfall was a bar and a band of Spanish musicians played on a platform that hung suspended over the pool. Cynthia sat to his right. Mom to his left. We were having a family meeting so that Anton could speak to Dwayne and Nicholas and James about the night before. Jane was all right now, in bed with Julia. Anton couldn’t get the words out, it was as if he weren’t convinced by them. “Iiii just…” Pause. “DDDDon’t think it’s a good idea giving stuff to the little kids. Iiit might be too much to handle.” He cleared his throat and spit. He thought good and hard. “If you’re gonna do that stuff with the little kids, an adult should be there.” Experience was at the root of enlightenment and travel was the most important form of education, this was what he taught us, to be here now, to live in the moment. He ate an hors d’oeuvre and licked his fingers. The world was a treasure box and the more we opened it up, the more we would open up. All around were old people, slowly slipping into the water, cutting it first with their hands.
Mom was mad. None of that eager enthusiasm lit her pretty face. She was mad at everybody for what had happened. Mad at Nicholas and James, but especially at Dwayne. There was something in Mom’s eyes, a strength, there for a moment, then gone. “You’ve gone too far, Dwayne,” she said. Dwayne’s head was bowed. I thought he’d try to cry, but he didn’t. Without lifting his head, he shot me a look that said, If you breathe a word you’re dead.
Mom wore her bathing suit with the enormous daisies and for a second I remembered the day the men landed on the moon and that made me sad so I stopped thinking about it. Her skin was tanned. Eyes rested. There were too many people. “I want Dwayne to leave,” she said, staring Dwayne in the eye, but speaking to Anton. “I want at least some rules,” she said. Then she asked Anton for his support in asking Dwayne to leave. She asked him to give extra work to Nicholas and James for allowing this to happen. “They should know better,” she said.
Bright Angel Time Page 17
