And Leo? She knew he’d escaped the brawl, knew he was fine—like the Fool card she had drawn, the Fool of which he was so fond, who could walk right along the edge of a cliff and not fall because the little white dog at his side would pull at his pant legs or nip at his heels to keep him from stepping over the edge.
Of course, she’d taken the little white dog. Maybe she was the Fool tonight. She felt like a fool, buoyant and hopeful, ready for the next escapade. Nevertheless, Fifi was his. If she left him, he’d get the dog. How could he be Zero without his little white dog?
Zero with his quick-lived schemes. “Quixotic” was the word she’d use to describe him, were she ever to write it all down. “Quixotic,” from “Quixote.” Wild, imaginary, and so beguiling, his gold-flecked eyes wide open, dreaming, his smile, infectious. He took her with him, or used to—his body a lean urgency, his words spinning an intricate tale. He would dance her to his newest utopia, an island frothed and floating, name her both queen and treasure. Il mio tesoro, he’d croon. And then the music would end, and she’d find herself in a smoggy city, in an apartment with piss-stained carpet and roaches, rent to pay and groceries to buy. The practical one, the drudge, she was, along with Fifi, the anchor to his boat, the anchor he managed still to pull up here and there to sail the pirate-ridden seas. But how long could she be that for him? The bottom of the ocean was a lightless place. She shrugged off the thought. It was bringing her down fast and she wanted to stay off the ground awhile.
Maybe from here she could see where it was she needed to go, and see, too, how to let go—how to let them go—Carlotta and her mother—how to send them each off into the abyss she couldn’t think about just now, couldn’t fathom anyhow, even if she tried, send them off with a kiss and a hug, the way a mother waves to a daughter leaving home, driving off into the world.
Vaya con Dios, the psychic said. One must trust.
She turned a corner and there he was, in his knickers and the T-shirt, pacing in front of the hotel. In the stutter of the streetlamp he was slow motion. When he saw her, he ran to her and flung his arms around her and held her tight.
“Jesus Christ, you’re all right.”
“I’m fine,” she said, feeling her jaw tighten.
“You left. I turned and you weren’t there. I ran after you. I yelled. Didn’t you hear?”
“No, I didn’t.” She pushed him away. Her hands curled into fists and her feet planted themselves in a firm stance. Her body was ready. And the rush of blood was really something. She wasn’t shouting. Her tone was low, and meant to connect, the way her fists wanted to. She wasn’t thinking anymore, or rather, her body was thinking for her. And she knew why they called anger seeing red. Knew it in a way she hadn’t before. Leo was bathed in a red glow, like the strip joint tonight, like the psychic’s sign. And she was the bull, drawn.
She stood there, staring at him for what felt like a long time.
“What’s wrong,” he said at last.
“Nothing,” she said between clenched teeth, as if it were a struggle not to reach out and bite him. “I’m fine.”
“Stop saying you’re fine.”
“Fine then, Leo.” His name felt odd in her mouth. She sounded like a mother scolding her son. “Here it is. You might have worried sooner, before you jumped in between them. You might have thought before you got in a fight.”
“You mean broke up a fight.”
“Is there a difference?”
“You wanted me to let them kill each other?”
“What two random men do to each other is none of my business. And with your pregnant girlfriend beside you, it shouldn’t be your business, either. Who do you care about more?”
His face fell and she thought he might sob, but his eyes were blank, as if he were busy. Busy figuring. His lips pursed to a sneer. He spat his words. “How can you be so selfish?”
She stared at him. Selfish. The word was like a sucker punch to the gut, taking all the air out of her. She walked past him into the hotel, pulling Fifi down the hall toward their room. He grabbed her arm.
“Gwen, look.” The sleeve of his white T-shirt was darkened with blood and he pulled it up over his shoulder. “I was cut. See? It hurts. You have to help me.”
She studied the cut, touched the skin around it. It was a slash, rather than a puncture wound. It was curved and the clotted blood made it look like a mean, close-lipped smile. It could’ve used some hydrogen peroxide, or antiseptic ointment, but he was going to be fine.
“I thought I was selfish.” She slung the words back at him. “Not so much the type to help.”
“I could get hep B, or tetanus. I don’t know when I had my shots. You think I should go to a hospital?”
The old Gwen would have broken down; she’d have driven him wherever he wanted to go. But this Gwen only looked at him. In the yellow light of the putrid hall with blood on his arm, he was someone she didn’t know. Not anymore.
“What do you think, Gwen? Does it look infected?”
“I think you should have thought of that before you jumped in and left your pregnant girlfriend on the sidewalk,” she said. And then she laughed. Not the high, nervous laugh, but a low grounded rumble she hoped would shake him. She couldn’t push the thought from her mind. What if. What if he’d been killed. Or what if the men had turned on her. But in his mind, the risk had been worth it. She meant next to nothing to him, in the scheme of things. She turned the deadbolt to their room and walked in. “You’re an asshole, Leo. You can go to hell,” she said, and she closed the door.
“Bitch! You have a black hole for a heart,” he yelled. The words stung.
There wasn’t much to pack—her hairbrush and the notebook she carried everywhere and never seemed to write in. But where would she go? She wouldn’t leave him, him and Valiant, here in Tijuana. So what was she doing?
It didn’t matter. The act of packing was enough. She refolded her sundress, shut the suitcase. She stared at the wall, at its peeling white paint, the old shit-brown showing through. Why had she agreed to come here? What had she been hoping for? An all-day, all-night fiesta? Something to bring them together again, lighthearted and hopeful?
He pounded on the door. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” he cried.
She opened it to stop the noise. He was on his knees, his face a blotchy red. He wiped his nose with the back of his hand and stood.
“You’re right. I’m an asshole,” he said, and noticed the suitcase on the bed. The corners of his mouth were low and his eyes were bright. He didn’t turn from her. He didn’t yell. He just sat on the edge of the bed and flicked his shoes off. “You can leave me, you know. But no one will love you as much as I do.”
“Is that some kind of a curse?”
“If that’s what you think my love is. A curse.” A tear spilled down his cheek and he wiped it away with the back of his hand.
“Christ, Gwen, can’t we just sleep?” he said. He moved her suitcase onto the floor, clasped her arm and pulled her down with him onto the sheet. “Tink, you need to sleep. Remember how we used to sleep? We were so good at it.”
She was exhausted. As if all the late nights were heaped like quilts on top of each other and she were under them already. She couldn’t keep her eyes open. “I want to get to the ocean. It’s been too long,” she said, and even as she spoke she felt herself drifting. He was right. She needed to sleep. His arm was around her shoulders, his stomach to her back.
“You’re not just you anymore,” he said, hugging her closer. She could feel his heart lulling her. His breath like the tide, like waves on the shore, he was Morpheus taking her out and under, taking her elsewhere. He unlaced her boots and pulled them off along with her socks.
“Tink,” he said. “Dream of flying.”
Twenty-six
THE ROOM WAS overexposed. The thin, flowered sheet hanging in the window did little to block the sun, and there was the Count, backlit, a vision in silhouette, standing over them, singing in falsetto.
And the dreams that you dare to dream really do come true.
Had it come to this—to Judy Garland so early in the morning? This was serious. Too serious. She couldn’t fathom it just yet.
She closed her eyes, tried to focus on the buzzing in her ears. She could almost feel it—the dream he’d woken her from. The power in her chest, in her heart, filling her body and lifting her into the sky. It was her over the rainbow dream, only she wasn’t stuck at a farm but in a city, the crowds moving in on her, so close and thick she couldn’t breathe—that part was recurring. She’d had the dream since she’d been a kid. But the rising above the throng, the flying, that was different.
Two flying dreams in two days, ever since she’d found out.
The bed dipped as the Count sat beside her as though she were the sick one.
If happy little bluebirds fly
beyond the rainbow,
why oh why can’t I?
This time he hit the high note with ease. She opened one eye. He was still wearing his bandanna on his head, but now he had some makeup on, eyeliner, mascara that was running. Where had he gotten it? He hadn’t packed a bag. Had he been rummaging in her purse? She noticed it was open on the chair. How long had he been awake? She’d never seen him this worked up in the morning. She could smell tequila on his breath.
The song over, he sat looking at the lit window. She heard the squeaking of brakes outside, brakes on what had to be a large truck; she could hear a crane lift a trash can, hear rubbish clatter into the truck’s open bin. She thought of the roaches she’d freed and wondered how they were getting on.
Leo grunted and pulled a pillow over his head.
Stumbling out of bed, she tugged her T-shirt down, buttoned up the jeans she must have loosened—but not bothered to take off—in the night. They were snug, snugger even than yesterday, if she wasn’t mistaken. Not wanting her bare feet to touch the floor, she took her flip-flops from her suitcase and slid them on. She was so parched she could barely swallow. She found one of the gallon jugs of water, took it into the bathroom and chugged while she peed. She brought the water with her back to the bed, where she sat beside Valiant.
“Did I ever tell you how she died?” he said.
It took her a minute. “Judy?”
“Ms. Garland, yes.”
“It was an overdose, right? Suicide.”
“Accidental, the coroner’s report said.”
“That’s what they said about my mother.” She heard herself say it, heard the words slip into the bald morning light. So easy. And then they were there—the truth they stood for was there, hanging in the air between them. And it was all right. Somehow it was all right. This was Mexico. What did she have to hide?
He looked at her, searching, she thought, for that part of her capable of lying. She could tell it was something he’d never thought to look for. “What about the cement truck? How she died and you lived?” he said, still doubting.
“The second part’s true. And we’d been in the car together the day she died. It was almost Christmas. All that’s true. The cement truck was something I made up. It explained things somehow.”
They sat for a while in the quiet. Even the street outside seemed to still, waiting.
“It was pills?”
“A whole lot of Xanax washed down with vodka. My dad was out of town. I found her the next morning.” She stopped herself. She’d never said it out loud, never told anyone, not even Leo. She looked at him. He was breathing deeply, steadily, and had the pillow over his head.
“Go on, dear.” Valiant put a hand on her back; its weight was warm and calm and encouraging.
She shook her head. If she let it out, she might not stop. The chasm would open and she’d tumble into it. Like being on a high-dive, closing your eyes and going headfirst—not a sleek, toes-pointed dive, but more of a tumble, head over heels, like love.
She leaned forward and that was all it took. She was falling.
“The light—it was like this. Too bright through those flimsy white drapes. Vindictive.
“It was late morning and she wasn’t up. The house was too still, too cold. I had goose bumps on my arms and this pit-of-my-stomach hollow feeling. I knocked on her door. Nothing. I put my hand on the cold metal knob and let it stay there awhile. I didn’t want to open that door.
“I saw her in the mirror first. There was a full-length mirror. It was where she’d do her makeup, where she’d sit on the awful lime-green shag carpet and make herself pretty. I used to be in such awe of her, when I was little.” Gwen wanted to remember her mother’s face as it had been when she was alive, when she’d sat watching her work her magic, but she found she couldn’t. The face she was seeing now was the face the photographs had captured and not her real face at all.
Valiant took her hand in his and squeezed it. “You don’t have to go on,” he said.
But she drew a breath and kept telling the story, trusting it would lead her where she needed to go. “She was facedown in a black slip, her hair spread out, like she’d fallen. She looked so small. Even then. Like a doll. And all around her was her makeup. Open eye shadows and blush and brushes. And the weird thing was, she hadn’t worn makeup in weeks, months. Maybe in years. She’d stopped going out and hadn’t cared what she looked like. And this was like in the old days, when getting ready had been her own private party.
“When I saw she wasn’t moving, wasn’t breathing, I screamed. And still she didn’t move. I thought she’d move. Thought maybe she was just hungover. I shook her and she was icy. I turned her over. Her eyes were open. Her eyes.” Gwen could see them, not like in any photo. She tried to push the image away. She looked at Valiant, into his dark, wet eyes, so filled with life, but all she could see were her mother’s lifeless eyes. “I couldn’t look away. They’d gone flat, but I stared, like maybe she’d come back. And then I closed her eyelids, with two fingers, like they do in the movies. And I ran and called 911.”
Gwen listened to herself talking, spilling what had been bottled inside her for almost half her life. The facts. What it was she’d seen and done. She was outside herself, watching and listening from a distance, on the other side of a tunnel, or through the lens of a movie camera. And she wondered why she wasn’t crying. She should be able to cry, she thought. If she were directing she’d make sure the actress playing Gwendolyn Griffin let a tear or two slip down her cheek. Silent, stoic tears, tears of relief and recognition. The scene required them.
Valiant’s cheeks were shining with his tears. He was right there with her. Or, rather, he was there, standing in that place of grief she should have stood in, going where she couldn’t. He gave her hand another squeeze.
“I felt ashamed. Or guilty. Or something. I should have been able to save her. And I didn’t. I didn’t save her.” It felt strange to say it out loud.
“I’d always thought”—she swallowed—“I’d always thought I could. When she’d cry when I was little, cry so long I thought she might never stop, I’d cry along with her. And when that didn’t work, I’d try to make her laugh. I’d stand on my head and make faces. Sometimes it worked, and she’d laugh and hug me like she’d never let me go. But that day, in the car, I don’t know why, but it was like I took a huge step back and watched her, and I hated her.” That did it. The ice inside her had cracked. Falling into her own watery depths, she went on.
“I hated her weakness. I hated that she looked on my life like it was her second chance or something, and at that moment I didn’t care. I wanted her to be happy, but I wanted to be happy, too. I wanted her to be happy for me, not because of me or something I did. So I just let her cry. I watched her cry and I didn’t try to stop her. I didn’t say the things she wanted me to say.
“And then.” She paused. This was the part she’d forgotten. The part she most didn’t want to remember. “She swerved into traffic, into the oncoming cars. I caught the wheel and jerked us back. It was a miracle
we didn’t crash. She’d have killed me and herself and God knows how many other people.”
Valiant hugged Gwen. He pressed her to his chest and held her, and she let go of all she’d been clasping so tightly. “It’s okay, it’s okay.” He said it over and over, and he smoothed her hair back from her forehead, and she sobbed, messy, choking, snuffling sobs.
When she caught her breath, as if it were a fish she’d hooked at last, this portion of the air belonging to just her, she pulled away from him, wiped her tears and snot on her T-shirt. She saw that Leo had turned onto his side and had his back to them.
“You’re the big brother I never had,” she said to Valiant.
“Big sister, darling.” He smiled, and then the smile was gone. His eyes were placid, flat with distance. Like the mountain lion, he seemed to be looking through her to the other side, to that place where he was going. “I’m tired. Really tired. I want to go home.”
“Okay, we can leave now. I’m ready.”
“Not to the Cornell. I want to go home-home. My parents’ place.”
“San Clemente?”
He nodded. “I want to stay there awhile. My mother’s there, just by herself most days. I miss her chicken and rice. I miss her cool hands and her voice. God, I miss her voice. I’ve been away so long.”
“Okay,” she said. “It’s okay. We’ll leave right now. You’ll see her in a few hours.”
She excused herself and went into the bathroom, where she splashed water on her splotchy face. In the room she gathered her things into the suitcase. And then she pulled the pillow from Leo’s face and sang the little song her mother had liked to sing to her mornings before school.
Further Out Than You Thought Page 21
