Red Lightning

by Laura Pritchett

  The eyes of Tess are so darkbrown liquid shiny and still they are there.

  Tess remembers her eighteen-year-old self,

  fine dark hair whipping around her face

  as she leans out the truck’s window and sing-songs goodbye, Libby, goodbye, take care of that baby, I’m driving off with mine,

  smiling at herself in the rearview mirror,

  smile with a dimple, beautiful teeth, dark alive eyes, gorgeous hope,

  as if that man and that truck were going to take her great places,

  as if she herself were special

  and was called into this world for great glory.

  Gut-punched with a memory? I didn’t think it could punch so hard. But it can. I hold my stomach, cradling the hipbones with my palms, as if inside were a baby. Hold steady, kid. Three days to make it right.

  *

  The wheat flour is in a large glass container. Eggs, butter, baking soda, cinnamon, but no such thing as sugar. Only honey. I drink water and eat crackers and murmur to myself:

  Of course there is no sugar in this house,

  of course I will have to guess how much honey,

  of course that will ruin whatever it is I’m making,

  of course there’s no alcohol,

  of course.

  I stir the liquid gold into the batter and think: The people who make it in the world are those who can of course it.

  Of course life is harder than you thought. Of course babies die, unbirthed in their mother’s pelvic bones. Of course pirates come, of course people get lost at sea. Of course Libby’s house is clean and clutter free, Libby who was always tempering the mess as a kid, the catshit and black widows and flies and toilet smell and overflowing trash and cigarettes and Kay’s empty beer bottles everywhere and even Kay’s vomit. Of course I let Libby do all that because even though I noticed it all too, and I hated it, I let Libby be the one who kept trying to bring back order and beauty.

  I stir until my arm aches. How come people never speak of this? How much the body can hurt? The mindwhir? How much work it takes to make this life of clean countertops, mail stacked neatly in one pile? The effort of love?

  From here, stirring, I can turn and see the main room of the house. One soft green couch in a living room, one tidy computer station, one dining room table covered in a bright Mexican tablecloth. Fossils and rocks lined up on the windowsills. Walls occasionally adorned with what must be Amber’s earlier-kid artwork. A lemon tree growing in the corner. Plastic boxes stacked in the pantry: LIP BALM SUPPLIES, HONEY EQUIPMENT, SOAP SUPPLIES. There are sprigs of lavender about, bunches of dried wildflowers. Near my feet on the gray smooth floor are metal dogfood bowls that are clean, lined up side-by-side, and if ever there was a sign of you-have-your-shit-together, it’s the state of the dogbowls.

  I put the batter into a pan, put the pan into the heated oven, find a broom, and gather up the bits of flour and cracker that have scattered. Heartsweeper. Sweeping up my own heart, sweeping up my own body, sweeping up the dusty corners and irregularities. May I audition for the part, some song goes. Of sweeping up your dusty heart? I know your darkest corners fairly well. I find the trash and let the fine bits of bonewhite fall into the bin.

  With the broom, I go to the bathroom and sweep up my tangles of cut hair. They look like long grapevines, twisted into various formations. With dustpan in one hand and broom in the other, I stand and look in the mirror again, startled by my short haircut and how it hangs now that it is dry, the bit of color that has come into my cheeks. I lift my mouth in a small smile just to give it a try. Feral gone domestic. I cross my arms to hug myself, fingers touching shirt but stroking curved bone, and regard, gingerly, this person in front of me.

  *

  The breeze shifts my hair back and forth across my face, making it lift and dance. I’ve never had hair short enough to be flung about in such a way. The sensation is new. Small, yes, but new, and all any of us has ever hoped for, I think, is to be amazed.

  The cake is baking, the kitchen has been tidied, so I close my eyes and lean back against the house. I tilt my head to the sun, the red coloring the back of my eyelids. It smells of dried grasses, like rotting apples, like yellow leaves on the cottonwoods, and, somewhere in the far distance, the sultry sting of a fire. Someone burning out a ditch, no doubt, or getting rid of trash in the burn barrel. My tongue feels out the gap of missing tooth, and the gap feels like wet tissue with bone underneath, which I guess is exactly what it is, a hole that seems to go forever—my tongue can’t even find the end of it. The teeth to either side seem surprised, suddenly, to find themselves alone, without their companion; the sides feel new and unexposed, not yet hardened to life. The pus pocket feels the size of an eraser, tough enough to resist the push of my tongue. I assume it will open, the infection will clear. I stab it with a fingernail to see if I can pop it open, but the sting is too great. I scan the rest of my body. My crotch itches: yeast infection for sure. Blood that won’t quite stop on top of that. I cough my old cough, and my ribs ache in response. The skin on my cheekbone tightens and dries. The bump on my forehead throbs. My skin is starting to feel sunburned. And my heart keeps beating. Ouch-ouch-ouch drumbeat. But also a here-you-are. Here-you-are.

  I open my eyes and pick up a pebble and throw it across the yard, and this makes me look at my silver thumb ring. Slade gave it to me, his version of a wedding band, since that’s all I would accept. The sun catches it and sends a sharp slice of light into my eye, so I look the other way, toward the donkeys who are standing nose-to-nose. Blink away the tears. I opened my heart exactly twice. To Slade and to Alejandra. This sense of my heart squeezing itself is the emotion called regret.

  Next to me is a bike leaning up against the house. Amber’s, must be. I wish I missed her. I wish I had missed her in the last ten years, and I wish I missed her now. But I don’t know her, and there’s nothing to miss. I have none of that knowledge. How, for instance, Libby must have got her to this almost-big-bike stage. How years ago, Libby must have run alongside a smaller bike, yelling encouragement, judging the moment of that release, and how some smaller version of Amber, thin-straight-hair-ponytail flying, gained momentum, wobbling, wobbling, then holding steady and smiling. It’s only when you’ve seen something like that that you can feel a hearttwist.

  But that is what I am here for. To tell Amber that my departure was never her fault. Thank Libby and Ed. Say goodbye to Kay, I suppose. Write a note to Slade. And to Alejandra. To witness some details, and let them witness a few of mine. Also, I wouldn’t mind sleeping out under the stars one last time. I wouldn’t mind trying to share a few things about myself. I twist a bit of my hair and gaze off into the distance at the mountains. I wouldn’t mind trying to be brave for a few days and trying to sweep up a bit of the mess.

  *

  Ed drives up in the green Harvester, leans out his window, and regards me. “You doing okay?”

  I nod.

  “I’m having a bit of trouble with some farm work, actually. I wanted to pull in and double-check on you, but if you’re fine, I gotta go.”

  I nod again, but because he is waiting for more, and deserves it, I say, “I showered and I slept and I ate some and I’m resting. I threw away my clothes in the burn barrel and cleaned up my mess. I was hoping to see Amber when she’s off school. In your presence, of course. I’ll be polite and kind. I’ll leave if she wants me to.”

  Something soft crosses his face. “You look better,” he says. “A lot better. I’ll be back in a half hour when Amber gets off the bus. Okay? I’ll call Libby and tell her you’re still around.” He puts the truck into drive and pulls slowly out, glancing in his rearview mirror at me as he goes.

  I remember one of the last times I saw him, when my stomach was huge and the baby was hooking her little toes under my lower rib and pushing, right before she’d turned, and right before I gave birth, and I’d gone into Ideal Foods to get some licorice and he was in there too, buying fruit, and we chatted for a m
oment. I barely knew him, only that he was the newly arrived hippie guy with the orange VW bus who was always talking philosophy in strange loopy sentences, the guy who sometimes walked with a strange gait, like he was skipping, and his hands dancing like a bird having some fun in the sky. He was more fragile then, somehow. Not firmed up. Not yet a man. But maybe on the verge, because I remember that day at the grocery store, he stood with me in the checkout line and told me that he wanted a Wordsworthian life, plain living and high thinking. I told him I wanted High Living and Plain Dying. He had chuckled and said, “Well, Tess, I hope that works out for you.”

  LISTEN (says one part of Tess’s mind): Quit with this. Chin up.

  LISTEN (says another): Dying is part of living. High Living and Plain Dying is what you wanted.

  LISTEN (says another): Stop shaking, Tess. Bear up. For three days, do this thing.

  Tess cries. She doesn’t exactly want to go but also sees no other way out, and at least she has the sense to do it right.

  No moldering corpse or bloody mess.

  Alone. Plain bones.

  East of here.

  The universe doesn’t care about us,

  but we care about each other

  and ourselves

  and the whole enterprise of life,

  especially at the moment of death.

  When Death approaches,

  it clarifies that need for a burst of caring at

  the very end.

  I take a big breath, dig my fingernails into my wrist, hard enough to streak pain, the pain strong enough to bring me back to my body. Good girl. It’s just this: I never asked to suffer. I never meant to make other people suffer either. It wasn’t my fault that I was born. So, no, god. You don’t get to judge me for this. I don’t forgive you.

  Chapter Five

  The heat is squawking now, an infant’s wail demanding that the clouds boiling up in the west sweep themselves across the sky. I look to the white blooms above the mountains to see their response. The clouds are reluctant, tired. They refuse. They want the earth to parch. Close up, though, a fluff of milkweed releases from its pod, over by the fence. The smooth white silk of it rises up, rests, and then is picked up in a gust of wind and sent into the pasture.

  I am thirsty and hazy and sunsoaked and sunburned and dozing off when Ed pulls up again. He gets out of his truck and regards me silently while Ringo jumps from the truck, runs to nose me, and then runs back to him. Ed is not like the clouds. He is sure of himself. Direct. Here with a purpose. And sure enough, he walks over to a faucet hooked to a green hose and turns it on. I see the green hose jerk up, filled with water. He walks alongside it until he finds the end, which is at the base of a young apple tree, and now that I’m looking for them, I can see the pattern of newly planted fruit trees, too young to bear fruit but awaiting the possibility.

  Ed stares at the hose, then picks it up, the water cascading down near his feet. He drags the hose to another nearby tree, drops it, and walks back up the dirt driveway, away from me. Ringo darts in front of him, tail sweeping bits of sunlight, and lets out a single woof as a yellow bus pulls up, blinking its back-and-forth lights, and the stop sign swings out at the same time my throat constricts. Hilarious, that. A stop sign in the middle of nowhere. A grown heart terrified of a child.

  I get to my hands and knees and stand up, slowly, to make sure the world is steady. The shower and cakebaking and sunsleeping have fragiled me—somehow I am less sturdy than I was this morning—and yet I must and will stand for this moment.

  I watch Amber get off the bus, cross the dirt road, walk up to Ed. Turquoise T-shirt with a turquoise sweatshirt tied around her waist, bright red backpack, cascade of fine brown hair. Ringo circles her with joy, jabs her with his nose for a pet, circles again. Above her, I see the contrail of an airplane coming toward us, and I wish I’d been in one at least once, how wonderful to fly over strange moments like this.

  Ed embraces Amber, waves to the bus driver, points to me, says something. As the bus pulls away, Amber starts walking. Looks up at Ed, asks a question. Stops again. Looks at me. Starts. Reaches down to pet Ringo, who is still circling her legs. The contrail starts to dissipate in the sky as she nears.

  She stops to regard me fully for the first time. Her body sways back with surprise—I see her do it—and I’m doing it too. Heartcrunch. We’ve never seen how much we look alike. It is a new fact for the both of us. I feel my mouth open, hear my intake of a sharp breath.

  “You’re Tess.” She walks straight up to me but stops before she gets too close. Ed stops behind her, clears his throat, puts his hand on her shoulder. I can tell he’s looking at me hard, but I keep my eyes on hers.

  “You’re Tess,” she says again.

  “Yes.” I make a small arc with my hand. “You’re Amber.”

  She looks me up and down, fingers her silver stud earring. She’s got a round kid face with those adult teeth like ten-year-olds have, but she’s pretty, with paler skin than me, but darker than her father, Simon, who in certain ways was so light and blond that he was like straw. She’s tall for her age, with a little round tummy and no sign of hips or breasts yet, although, yes, she’s wearing a thick shirt, which means the start of the coverup. Her eyes are beautiful. Almond shaped and dark liquid brown, and the glow of them will be her defining feature, the one that every boyfriend she’s ever with will comment on, the one that will cause guys at bars to say, Wow, you got some eyes there. She’s got my hair, which is a shade darker and a grade finer than Libby’s. We stare at each other, and bygod, surely this similarity is in appearances only. She is not me. She will be the opposite of me.

  “You were standing outside of school this morning.”

  “Yes.”

  “I saw my mom look at you.”

  “Yes.”

  “My dad says she knows you’re here. That it’s okay with her that I talk to you.” Her face is open and yet solid, matter-of-fact.

  “Yes.”

  “You look like the photos. Except skinnier and with short hair. We really do look a lot like each other, don’t we?”

  I make my eyes hold hers, but hers shift above my head, and I turn to see what she’s looking at, which is a hawk circling on a current. I clear my throat. “We do, don’t we? I didn’t realize. You don’t look like your father.”

  “Simon?”

  “Yes, Simon.”

  “Who you had a one-night stand with?”

  “It was a brief relationship. Don’t you do that.”

  “He died in a rodeo accident, you know.”

  “I heard.”

  “I wasn’t sad. I barely knew him.”

  “I hardly knew him either.” It’s a rapid-fire exchange, no space in between the words, and finally there is a pause long enough that we can regard each other once again. She’s biting her top lip in, and furrowing her brow, which makes her nose crunch. Her eyelashes are crazy-ass long, and she has peach-fuzz hair along her hairline and at the bend of her jaw, just like I do, and I wonder if I’m still a little bit high somehow because all these details sing out at me and my eyes can’t unfocus from her face.

  She inhales to start the next fast barrage. “Libby’s my real mom, you know. You’re not.”

  “Oh boy, I know it.” My hands want to reach out, but instead I hold one wrist with one hand and place them against my belly. “I’m not here to argue that fact.”

  “I’m not going to pretend to know you.” Her face grows a little harder. “I’ve seen pictures of you, but you’ve never seen me. That’s a big difference between us.”

  “True enough.”

  “My dad warned me about your cheek. That it’s puffy.”

  “I got a tooth pulled the other day.”

  “That’s what he said. But otherwise, you don’t look as bad as he said you did. The way he described you, I thought you might look like a zombie.” She shifts the backpack on her shoulder. “Well, that means something, you know. The fact that I know what you look like. But
you didn’t know about me. You didn’t care enough to send an address so we could send you a picture of me. I did keep an extra of all my school pictures, in case you want them.”

  I rub my hands over my arms, feel the prickles on my skin. “I do want the photos. Thank you.”

  “You must be pretty mean.” She bites her lip and scrunches up her nose again. “I guess I’m glad you’re here, though.”

  “You are?”

  “I’m not saying I like you. But I’m glad you’re here, if only because I’ve wondered. Of course I am curious. Anyone would be curious. Anyway, why?”

  “Why what?”

  “Why are you here?” But with that, she walks past me, into the house. I open the screen door, and I follow her in after glancing at Ed and seeing him shrug and nod. She stops, lets her backpack slide on the floor with a thump. Ringo sniffs it and runs to his bowl to lap up water. Ed follows us in but stays at the threshold of the door.

  “I need to take something out of the oven,” I say. “I think it’s a cake, but it might not be. Maybe it will be more like a large cookie.”

  She eyes the golden circle as I take it out with mitts and upside-down it on a plate. She looks at it, worried, and then up at me. “It looks like a very fat pancake. It looks like some geographical formation you might find in Australia or something.”

  I bark out a little laugh. She gets out the milk and a glass, pours herself some, considers, pours me a glass too. It’s only then, while she’s holding the heavy jug, I see that her hands are shaking. She’s as scared as I am.

  At the door, Ed clears his throat. “You want me to come in, honey? Or else I can go unload the bee boxes.”

  “Do you want some milk, Dad? Some . . . cake?”

  “No, but thank you. Later. I’ll be right outside. You okay? Just tell me if you want me to make her leave. Or I can come in. You get to pick.”

  She hesitates. “I’m okay. Take care of the bees.” She cuts herself a slice of the flat cake, feeds a crumb of it to Ringo, smiles at Ed. Then she squares her shoulders, turns to face me, and we stare at each other until we hear the slam of the screen door as Ed leaves. He looks back at us, and I can see that he’ll be within earshot and plans on keeping it that way.