Lilac Mines

by Cheryl Klein

  “I’m not Edith,” Meg says suddenly.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Before Shallan worked at the mill, she drove a truck for her uncle’s company in Nevada City. She had to drive up over the mountains just to get to the place she was supposed to start driving from. Then she headed up into Oregon, back east as far as Ohio. Edith saw her once every two months, maybe. And she waited and waited. She was such a good little femme.” Meg’s voice is tight, bordering on a hiss. “She stitched her a pillow, for God’s sake.”

  Al opens her mouth, but only a puff of steam comes out. A little ghost that hovers in front of her face and disappears.

  “I’m not Edith,” Meg says.

  Al goes to Hill Food & Supply the next morning puffy-eyed, her limbs big and clumsy. She stayed awake most of the night listening to the blood rushing past her ears. She has to get back to Lilac Mines. Today I’ll tell them, she promises herself. Initially, she assured her family that her boss had granted her an unlimited leave of absence, and they bought it without question. Maybe she can say that Luke needs her help with a special research project. Will they buy that she has a unique skill of some sort? The burden of proof will undoubtedly be higher when explaining why she needs to leave than why she’s able to stay.

  She’s glad to see Terry Kristalovich behind the counter when she enters the store, the bell dinging behind her. Usually, he comes in the evenings and Al nods at him as the guard changes. He’s a skinny man who always wears pressed slacks and a tie. Such a strong work ethic, her mother says, and handsome, too. He has dark curly hair, and black stubble peeks from his pale chin when he arrives at the store each night.

  But on this bright, cold morning, Terry’s face is smooth. Al sees it for the first time, angular and almost feminine in its white translucence.

  “Hello, Anna Lisa,” he says. He takes his time with her name, making in two separate words, as far from Al as one can get.

  “Hi, Terry,” she croaks.

  “Late night?” he asks, concerned, not teasing.

  “I didn’t sleep so well.”

  “Oh, I thought maybe you were out on a date.”

  “Oh, no.”

  “Do you—if you’re not too tired—do you want to give me a hand with this?” He holds up a flat cardboard box.

  “Sure, what is it?” Al flings her house keys under the counter. She’s wearing a light yellow blouse with a round Peter Pan collar, but she will not carry a purse.

  “It’s the new promotion from Miller Brewing Company.” He slides a box cutter along the edge of the box with expert grace and extracts a pair of cardboard legs. They are nearly bare, except for a sliver of red skirt at the top and a pair of tall black pumps at the bottom. Two round white thighs above muscular calves. With a pang, Al thinks that they look like Meg. Half of Meg.

  Terry reaches into the box and pulls out the top half of the woman, who (to Al’s relief and disappointment) looks nothing like Meg. She is yellow-haired, smiling too big, holding a glistening mug as if it’s an exotic but dangerous animal. The way Johnny Carson holds beady-eyed falcons.

  Terry blushes. “Do you think it’s too risqué? I wouldn’t want to upset your father. I ordered it out of the catalog, but, well, it didn’t say her dress would be so short.”

  “My father won’t mind. Anything that will bring more customers. But I don’t know about my mother. She thinks girls today get themselves in trouble.”

  “Maybe we shouldn’t put it up then. It’s her store, too.”

  “No,” Al says. She’s not sure what she thinks—whether girls get themselves in trouble or trouble finds girls, whether she likes the legs or hates the beer girl’s phony smile—but she knows she wants to erect the flat statue. “The store could use a boost. My mother will understand, eventually.”

  Terry holds the halves together while Anna Lisa fumbles with the cardboard tabs. She secures the girl with masking tape. Terry watches her over his arching nose. He smells like erasers.

  “What about your office supply store?” Al asks. “Who’s running it?”

  “Nancy-Jane Sammartino, my shop girl. I try to be there as much as I can, but there was so much to do here this…”

  “Nancy-Jane?” Al interrupts. “Nancy-Jane Keeler? I went to high school with her. If she married… ”

  “Walter Sammartino,” Terry finishes. “That’s her husband.”

  “Wally, right.” Al doesn’t know why this should feel like a betrayal. She knows most of the girls from school are married by now. She only had one class with Nancy-Jane. But she’s one more person who has led a real life while Al was off in the mountains, accumulating nothing that she can utter a word of.

  “They’re a great couple, really nice people,” Terry says wholeheartedly. He positions the Miller girl in the window, so that they can only see her brown silhouette. It’s as if she’s walking away from them, off toward Oktoberfest. “Hey, I know! We should all have dinner. Since you know them.”

  “Well, not really. Just barely… ”

  “They invite me over quite frequently. Sometimes I go, but, you know, I always imagine I’m imposing a little, a lonely bachelor in need of a home-cooked meal. But this way it would be more like—a gathering of friends.”

  Al changes the subject. “Why do you work so hard? If you don’t mind my asking. I mean, those are long hours. Your store and then our store.”

  “Planning for the future,” Terry says, smoothing his paisley tie. For a moment he looks like a bright young politician; then he slumps a little. “I hope I’ll have a wife one day, children, all those things that everyone wants. But they’re not easy—not for everybody.”

  Al holds her breath. What does he know? What does he feel?

  “When I was a baby, during the Depression, my mother used to bathe me in the sink with soap chips she’d saved,” he says. “She said I chased them all around, tried to eat them like they were candy. She said, ’You loved order. You loved things to be clean even back then.’ Of course, I don’t remember it. Parents always save that one symbolic story about you.”

  Al wonders what story her parents would tell about her, whether it would giver her a clue as to who she’s supposed to be now.

  “She said I’d have to work extra hard. That, being Jewish, people would try to find things to hold against me. I don’t know if that’s completely true—maybe things were harder for her when she came over from Russia—but I do work hard. Just in case. And that’s why I admire your father, Anna Lisa. He works so hard, and keeps things orderly. Look around, you can see how much pride he takes in this store.” Terry pauses. “I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that.”

  Gerald Hill has always been inseparable from the store: Daddy weeding green beans, Daddy mopping up broken eggs, Daddy calling gentle instructions to the man backing his truck of frozen dinners up to the rear door. It’s been strange seeing him pad around the house in slippers. Al looks around. She tries to see the store the way a stranger might, not broken down into details. It’s small but thorough, with a one-door freezer case, a colorful produce section, aisles of dried and canned goods, an aisle of what Al supposes are the “supplies”: pencils, rubber balls, aspirin, instant coffee, sanitary napkins. The selection has grown over the years. Al remembers when her father installed the freezer case. It was the first time she heard swear words. The walls are clean and cream-colored. The store sponsors its share of Little League teams, but Gerald doesn’t put their pictures up. He says it’s bragging, it’s clutter. A wooden ceiling fan ensures that there is always a gentle, rhythmic breeze blowing.

  The store is like her father: neat, quiet, complete. A monument to diligent work. Some people might think it was the epitome of ordinary, but Al appreciates that Terry is not one of them. She sees the satisfaction in his dark eyes, as if life is just a matter of stocking the shelves, can by can. She wonders what else she hasn’t seen.

  COLUMBIA’S THRIVING LITERARY SCENE

  Felix: Lilac Mines, 2002

>   Felix’s brain bounces around in her newly shorn head as Anna Lisa’s truck bumps down Washoe Street. Cal, the post office, the Hogans, Tawn, Matty, whether she’ll be expected to leave her 12-hole Docs at home now, her depressing hair.

  They drive in silence until Anna Lisa makes a sudden left. They’re in the parking lot of a dingy strip mall. Gold Nugget Pizza is on one end, the Goldrush Tavern is on the other.

  “What are we doing?”

  “Want a drink?” Anna Lisa asks. “I haven’t been to this place in years.”

  “Um… okay.”

  The smell hits her the minute they walk in. Stale beer, sticky floors. This is the first bar she’s been in since Sourpuss.

  She feels like a neon sign with her pink wool pants, yellow-striped sweater, and terrible haircut. The confusion of the night on Cynthia Street comes rushing back, the sense that she should apologize for something or fight back, and that she’s unprepared to do either. She puts a hand on the coat tree near the door to steady herself.

  “Um, Anna Lisa?” Her voice is a whisper. “I’m in more of a coffee mood, I think. There’s a cappuccino place at the other end of this strip mall, isn’t there?”

  “Well, I could use a beer, honestly,” Anna Lisa says. “I could meet you down there.”

  “No! I’ll be fine here.” Her aunt’s solution is always to go their separate ways. Suddenly, as much as Felix doesn’t want to be in the bar, she doesn’t want to be alone.

  The bar has a low tin ceiling and several ornate ceiling fans that suggest the building is older than its dirty white stucco facade. There’s a balding pool table, some beat-up furniture, and a wall poster of a girl in a high-cut yellow bikini.

  Anna Lisa orders a Bud. Felix asks for a Diet Coke. The bartender is a vaguely pear-shaped man in a fringed vest that Felix supposes is meant to be Western, not Village People. When he hands Felix her soda, she holds it close and lets the fizz pop in her face. She takes a long sip, hoping the faux sugar will overpower the alcohol in the room.

  “It’ll grow out,” Anna Lisa says, half concerned, half annoyed.

  “It’s not the fucking haircut,” Felix says too loudly. The only other people in the bar—a man and a woman in their late 60s—look up. The woman pulls a large straw bag from the back of her chair to her lap, as if Felix had just announced plans to rob this joint.

  “Tawn thinks we shouldn’t be girlfriends at work,” Felix says more quietly. “I don’t even know if we’re girlfriends outside of work, but it’s like, as soon as she said that, I wanted to be super-out at work.” She sighs, “I guess I’m just contrary.”

  “Maybe you just like her,” Anna Lisa says. “I bet you’d do things for her you never thought you’d be capable of. Just don’t wait too long to do them. Don’t be so hung up on whoever you think you are that she’s long gone by the time you come to your senses.”

  “Um, okay….” Felix says. She’s not sure what her aunt is talking about, exactly, but her words are warm and sad. Anna Lisa hasn’t removed the hood of her blue all-weather jacket, even though she presumably likes her haircut. She looks like a turtle, slow and wise.

  As they drink and talk, Felix’s stomach begins to settle down. The heating system pings a comforting rhythm, and the smell of rain outside overpowers the manmade residue of the bar.

  “Why do you think it’s called the Goldrush Tavern?” Felix muses. “This is silver country, right?”

  “I guess because there was never a silver rush,” Anna Lisa says. “Silver just sort of plodded along next to gold. They’re often found in the same mine, you know.”

  “Silver’s the boring sister.”

  “This place used to be called Lilac’s. I came here with Meg.” Anna Lisa caresses the handle of her beer mug.

  Felix sits up straight on her stool. “Really? Was it a gay bar? I can’t believe there was a gay bar in Lilac Mines.”

  She looks around again. The details of the bar take on a new tint. Now she sees the ghosts of butches and femmes (that’s how they did it then, right?) twirling the pool sticks that lean against the wall.

  Anna Lisa nods. “There was. There was a jukebox over there—my friend Jody used to always play “Fun, Fun, Fun” and Meg would say, ’Doesn’t she know that there were thousands of songs written before the Beach Boys were even born?’ You’d think she was 50 years old.” She pauses. “It’s so strange to say that. I mean, I’m almost 60 now.”

  “What happened?” Felix asks. “Why did you break up?” Her aunt seems sadder about Meg than Felix is about Eva. Her skin looks so delicate.

  “We broke up because I gave up,” Anna Lisa says. She picks up her mug and it shakes in her hand. Felix hopes she doesn’t start crying. She wouldn’t know what to do. But she sees that Anna Lisa wouldn’t know what to do either—that being weak and femme and gushing about her problems is the scariest thing in the world to her. Whatever happened between Anna Lisa and Meg, it’s clear Felix’s aunt blames herself.

  “One time,” Anna Lisa continues, “we spent the whole night in one of the caves, one of the entrances to the mine.”

  “The one I visited? With the mountain lion?”

  “No, no, that’s the one all the kids go to.” This makes Felix feel small and ordinary. “A smaller one. Farther up the same dirt road. Maybe seven or eight miles. Last time I was there, there was an old rusted-out Chevy up there, so I guess someone else was there, at some point.

  “Meg and I stayed there all night,” she says again. “And I thought we were so brave. I thought I could stop anyone who hurt her or me. or anyone.”

  Maybe Felix went searching in the wrong place. Maybe Lilac disappeared near this other mine entrance. Felix wants to drive there right now.

  Anna Lisa gulps a mouthful of beer and air. Her eyes trace the edge of the tin ceiling. It’s like she’s looking for a rope to grab a hold of and climb out of the past. “And this street, it used to be called Calla Boulevard. I don’t know why they changed it.”

  “They?”

  “I guess I don’t know who ’they’ are,” Anna Lisa laughs. Her face has recovered, but her eyes stay behind.

  Felix thinks, Cal, Calla, California, the words bubbly as her drink inside her. “I wish that was my job. Wouldn’t that be a great job, to be the person who figures out who ’they’ are? All the theys in the world. Like, somewhere out there, there’s a they who knows what happened to Lilac Ambrose.”

  “Meg always thought she killed herself,” Anna Lisa says. “That seemed like the most logical explanation to her.”

  Felix hasn’t thought of this. The bartender refills Anna Lisa’s glass and asks Felix, “ ‘Nother Diet Coke?”

  Felix nods at the bartender, then turns to her aunt, “I guess we’ll never know.”

  “You could find out more, though,” Anna Lisa says. “More is better than nothing, better than just-a-little. You work part time, you’ve got a car. The world is yours, kiddo.”

  “I know it is,” Felix replies. She stares into her brown soda sea.

  “You make it sound like that’s a bad thing,” Anna Lisa says.

  The world is Felix’s with a morning that’s cold but sunny. The mailbox at the end of Juliet Street opens its blue mouth and swallows her F.I.T. application. Simple as that. Color copies of her sketches—a bondagesque ball gown, some punk pants, a pair of gravity-defying shoes—are now on their way to New York. The mailbox clangs shut and Felix feels satisfied. Her fate is now in the hands of smart, well-dressed city dwellers.

  In her car, she flips through the local radio channels. There is a lot of static, but she surprisingly finds a station she likes. A mix of lonely folk music and blues and pared-down country. Who knew?

  How come I’m blue as can be?

  How come I need sympathy?

  The woman’s voice is deep and scratchy and mournful. Driving toward Columbia, Felix feels like she’s following the music, like if she keeps listening she’ll make it through the trees to a small warm place that produces
these sad, perfect sounds.

  Did you ever wake up on a frosty morning

  and discover a good man gone?

  Felix thinks of Lilac and Cal. It wouldn’t have been a frosty morning, but maybe Cal left. Maybe Cal was a good man, and maybe he wasn’t. She hopes the answer awaits her at the Columbia library, and that Anna Lisa will notice that she’s trying. You said the world was mine, and I listened, Felix thinks.

  Whenyou lose a manyou love,

  a gal is good as dead.

  The DJ breaks in, “That was Bessie Smith with ’Frosty Mornin’ Blues,’ a nice song for a frosty morning, I think. Up next, Dar Will—” The station fades out, leaving Felix with the hum of her engine.

  Columbia looks much like Lilac Mines—turn-of-the-century buildings with false fronts, Victorian aspirations modified to meet boomtown necessities—but it’s busier, and the kitsch is stifling. One block has three stores selling bonnets, the kind that streamed behind tomboy Laura Ingalls as she ran across the prairie. Felix went through a Little House phase, too. She wouldn’t wear anything but dresses, with three or four skirts as “petticoats” underneath.

  As she drives down Main Street—another Main Street—signs urge her to PAN FOR REAL GOLD! A man in a cowboy hat and holster passes out flyers in front of a restaurant advertising bison burgers. Felix is pretty sure that the buffalo roam in Wyoming, not California.

  The library, a small brick building with a weed-plagued parking lot, is on Jackson Street, a less spectacular avenue, one meant for townies. Felix approaches the circulation desk, but a woman and a little girl barge through the door and shove in front of her.

  “Excuse me,” the woman demands. Her expertly highlighted red hair makes a gentle nest for her Gucci sunglasses. “Do you have a restroom?”

  “I have to peeeee!” whines the girl at her side. She is maybe six or seven, with naturally mousy hair.

  The librarian rolls her eyes. “Over there.” She gestures with her head.