by Cheryl Klein
Anna Lisa reaches Lilac Mines in the purple pre-morning, seven hours after leaving Fresno. The buildings are soft-edged against a slow burning sky. The streetlights are off, and her headlights sweep the gray road lazily. Here’s a bit of boardwalk, a flash of sleeping department store, a low-flying Steller’s Jay. She cracks her window and inhales the Sugar Pines: that old, thin, hopeful scent. Her eyes sting, she’s home. How could she ever have left?
Her car climbs Calla Boulevard. Hills are an act of faith, pinning her lungs against the back of her ribcage. But as she grows accustomed to the angle, she slowly becomes aware of a sleepiness around her, something that can’t be entirely attributed to the early morning hour. Maybe it’s the broken window of Lilac Mines Green Grocer, yawning like a geode. Maybe it’s the deep, severe quiet: no cars, no factories, no spring wind. It’s a town painted in absence. She passes Redwood Road, the turn-off for Meg’s house. What used to be Meg’s house. She can’t go there yet. She drives past the main mine entrance. The road turns to dirt, still dark and damp at this time of year. When she reaches the smaller mine entrance, she stops. An old car rots in front of the boarded-up entrance. Four flat tires and pale green paint spotted with rust.
Anna Lisa climbs out of her own car and stretches her stiff legs. She has no idea what she’ll do here. Find a job, she supposes, that’s what she always does. But Jody and Imogen are gone. Meg is gone. Shallan and Edith are in Chicago, Caleb is in Vietnam. Maybe he’s back now, or maybe he’s dead. There are the new women that Jody mentioned, but Anna Lisa is only connected to them indirectly.
The mine is still halfheartedly boarded up. Anna Lisa gives one of the planks a wiggle, and the weight of it falls into her hands. She lifts her feet and enters the tunnel, where the air is chilly and hushed, so intimate it makes her shiver. She runs her fingers along the ragged rock wall. She holds her breath until she finds it: A + M Forever. She was worried it wouldn’t be there anymore. The only proof that there ever was a forever. Weather and, perhaps, other fingers have smoothed the letters. She craves roughness.
Removing her car key from her back pocket, she poises her shaking hand in front of the support beam. The key glints in the half-light. What is there to say, now, about A + M? She adds the first phrase that comes to mind, the one Meg finger-spelled on her thigh that night:
LET’S GeT OUt oF Here.
Anna Lisa fights a knot in her throat. She will need to do this in pieces. This is how she’s survived, even if it hasn’t always felt like surviving. She leaves the mine and looks down the dawn-hazy mountain to the sprawl of Lilac Mines. The concentration of buildings is shaped like a cross, or maybe a starfish. Cut a leg off and a new one will grow.
When the sun is up, Anna Lisa stops at the Blue Corn Diner for breakfast. She has money this time, enough to support her for a couple of months if she’s careful. She withdrew it from the joint checking account, a modest, non-vengeful amount.
The diner looks like an Airstream trailer that has grown roots. A sign in the window says YES, WE’RE OPEN, but everything else about the place says No, we’re closed. Anna Lisa wrestles the door open, and finds two employees inside, an older man and a girl in a pink waitress dress. They’re wrapping white dishes in newspaper and putting them in boxes. Both look startled to see her.
“Your sign says you’re open,” Anna Lisa says apologetically.
“Oh. Yeah, we haven’t taken that down yet,” says the man. A curl of greasy gray hair has escaped his comb-over and begun a journey across his forehead.
“Are you closing for good?” Anna Lisa asks. It seems clear that they are, but she’s craving a blueberry muffin.
“Who isn’t?” says the man. “Gold rush is over.”
“Everyone’s leaving,” says the girl in the same tone she might say, Everyone’s going to the David Cassidy concert. “This place is spooky. It’s like, without all the people here, there’s only ghosts left and they outnumber us. My pop here doesn’t believe me, but a couple nights ago I heard the door to the old barn behind our house rattling, and you know how there’s been no wind lately.” As if Anna Lisa has been here the whole time, observing nuances in the weather.
Her presence finally hits the girl’s father. “What’re you doing here?”
“Passing through,” Anna Lisa says. “On my way…” Her voice trails off. The girl stares at her like she’s a ghost.
“You’re not one of them hippie hitchhiker types, are you?” he says, eyes narrowed. “ ’Cause even they’re hightailing it out of here. They say they like wilderness and all that, but as soon as they’ve driven the real, hardworking folks out of town—the folks who kept the town going—they’re done with this place. And they accuse us of environmental whatchamacallit.”
“Destruction,” his daughter says triumphantly.
The man grunts. Anna Lisa isn’t sure exactly what he’s talking about, but she’s heard this general lament dozens of times from people in Fresno. From her parents and friends, even Terry. Damn hippies. Anna Lisa can never quite chime in. She can never condemn what she’s too afraid to be.
“I guess I’m not one of them,” she says, and backs toward the door.
Anna Lisa makes her way down the hill, clouds peeling away to reveal a yellow-pink day, full of wildflowers and buildings in near-ruin. The windows of the Washoe Street shoe store are covered with fresh plywood, imitating the post office next door which was boarded up even when Anna Lisa lived here, boards now dark brown and splintered. The drugstore is closed, a laundromat is closed, Lou’s and Lilac’s are closed. The things she knew and the things she never got a chance to know. While she is sad to see Lilac’s shut-eyed and dusty, it’s more disturbing that businesses have been born and thrived and died in her absence, that entire lives have happened without her. She finds an open gas station, but the lone attendant working there tells her they’ll be closing next week.
“There’s a pattern,” he says. He is maybe 23, a thin but muscular boy in a Calaveras Petrol shirt. He has large brown calf eyes. A dimple hides in the stubble on his cheeks. “First the expensive restaurants close, then the stores that sell anything but groceries. The bars stay open a little while, ’cause people like to drown their sorrows. The places like this one, close to the highway, selling stuff that people can use even if they’re just passing through… we stay open the longest.”
“How do you know?” Anna Lisa asks. “You’re awfully young for an old-timer.”
“I’ve lived in Calsun and Dynamite City. The highway was diverted away from Calsun, and they paved right over Dynamite City. I’m starting to wonder if it’s me,” he adds with a weary laugh. He tops off Anna Lisa’s tank and screws her gas cap back on.
“What can you do, though?” she says.
“This time I’m going to college,” he says. “Somewhere big and solid like New York City. Some place that won’t just blow away.”
At one point, Anna Lisa thinks she’s on Calla Boulevard, but she finds herself looking up at a metal sign that says North Main Street. Has she forgotten so much? But she locates a few landmarks—Lilac’s, a burger joint where she and Jody and Imogen once split a cheeseburger three ways after Imogen burned dinner—and decides that the street has been renamed. North Main Street sounds soulless. She had assumed she would stay at the Lilac Mines Hotel. Not only is it closed, but most of the upper half is charred black and sinking in. Only now does she remember what Jody said. Fragments of their conversation replay in Anna Lisa’s head almost hourly, but others are lost completely.
In spite of the evidence, Anna Lisa tries the door of the hotel. This time she’s not trapped. She has a car and money. She could turn around right now, or head on to Reno or Salt Lake City. But she wants to be inside the Lilac Mines Hotel. The door opens easily, as if the building is saying, What can you take from me that hasn’t been taken? The lobby has a wet, moldy smell. Water stains map out mythical lands on the light green walls. She makes her way to the restaurant and bar, where Jody once sat looking like
a man. Toppled bottles litter the counter like bowling pins. A warped yellow newspaper says it’s less than six months old, but it looks bad for its age. The carpet on the stairs leading to the rooms is dirty and matted. The air here is thick with mildew. It feels slightly poisonous in her nostrils. She wills more of it into her lungs. She would never do what Meg did—she couldn’t—but she can let this dank, spiked thing into her, let it change her and eat her.
She wades deeper into the burnt part of the hotel, stopping in room 312. Layers of damp wallpaper sag away from the walls, but only the outside of the door is charred. The fire must have stopped here, found the room shut, and moved down the hall. The bed is molding but neatly made.
And on the bed lies a dress. It is old-fashioned, cream-colored, and it looks brand new. Set out as if some high femme were showering in the next room, prettying up for the ball. It is a gorgeous mess of strings and buttons and lace, shaped like a woman on top and an umbrella on the bottom. Beauty created by extremes: tiny waist, giant skirt; garlic bulb shoulders, skinny arms; pearl buttons the size of baby teeth, high lacy collar.
When Anna Lisa touches the crunchy fabric—satin? taffeta?—something overtakes her. She unbuttons her plaid cotton shirt and drops it to the floor, a melted witch. She doesn’t even shiver. The dress fits perfectly. She looks down at the milky folds of cloth. Yards and yards—the dress announces its extravagance, the money spent in the name of feminine beauty. She looks across to the splotched mirror and expects to see an impostor: a short, frumpy woman in a princess dress.
But she is a princess. A bride, a heroine. It is as if her body was water and she has slowly, compliantly filled this dress, this self. In the splotchy mirror is a pale-cheeked maiden, curls falling across a slightly stricken face. The sort of heroine who has formidable adversaries: wicked stepmothers and cruel spells. She is a heroine not from a Disney movie, but from the original tale, recounted to children after the candle was blown out, scaring them into staying in their beds and out of trouble.
She can imagine herself running through the woods in such a dress, and suddenly that’s what she wants to do: run. And so she takes off down the dim hallway, fabric swishing around her legs and brushing the floor. She tries to remember the last time she wore a real dress. Her wedding? It was a small ceremony, she didn’t even want one, but all the parents insisted, their smiling teeth nibbling her identity into a new hourglass shape. This dress doesn’t restrict her movements as much as she would have expected. If anything, it holds her up, even as it threatens to trip her. Is this what Meg felt like, a woman in a dress, running? She travels the length of the third floor, scampers up to the fourth.
“Lilac!”
She stops. It’s a girl’s voice. Somehow it sounds far away, although it’s not quiet. Anna Lisa stands as still as she can in the hallway, her lungs pushing against the stiff bodice. Who would call out “Lilac” as if it should be followed by “Wait!”? So Anna Lisa waits, as the hotel transforms around her into something sinister. The drapes might smother her. The charred furniture might re-ignite. But the hotel is determinedly still. As she catches her breath, she tries to think. She realizes that she’s already assigned the voice an owner. It is Meg, back from the dead to help that other unfortunate dead girl, Lilac Ambrose. Meg would do that.
It could be someone else, of course. Some kid, or even some other ghost. She looks around for petticoat-thin vapors. She promises to be a capable messenger, to translate what is written in the ether. But there is nothing that holds up to a second glance, and there is certainly no one on the floor or nearby. Aren’t ghosts supposed to smell like something? Sulfur? But only mold and mildew tickles her nostrils. Is it possible that this ghost—Meg or other—is only sound? A ghost made of words?
Maybe she made it up. Maybe her desire for a girl to call out to her is so thick that it has become tangible, like moist air condensing into rain. Her ears await clarification. But the one word never becomes more. Anna Lisa turns it over in her head—“Lilac!”—applying different punctuation and nuance each time until only her own internal voice remains. It’s too late. She only had one chance
The dress and the ghost embolden her to visit the parts of town that she had been avoiding. It’s late afternoon now. The days have just started to lengthen, and the pale yellow sun seems noncommittal.
From the outside, the church looks roughly the same: the same brown boards that have been struggling to stay upright for a hundred years, the same steeple and rusty bell, the same purpled tin roof. There are a few shriveled plants arranged in rows. She recognizes this space as a vegetable garden and wonders, with a pang, if this is what her garden will look like in a few months. Will her former husband Terry let the plants die to spite her?
Inside she’s surprised to find the drafty openness of the church she knew replaced by small rooms, populated by church pews painted yellow, lavender, bright pink, and joined by the occasional sagging mattress or writing desk. In the largest room there’s a beanbag chair bleeding beans and a wooden sign as long as her body. It’s propped on the raised platform that used to hold the wood-burning stove that was once, she supposes, the spot from which a preacher delineated heaven and hell. The sign says LILAC WOMYN’S COLONY in hand-carved letters. The space it occupies, central as an altar, makes Anna Lisa think that someone took it down from the outside of the building and placed it here, sadly, gently. A body on display for mourners.
Anna Lisa touches its splintery letters reverently. This was the colony that was born and died while she was elsewhere. This is the cousin she never knew, whose waxy face she examines in search of a family resemblance.
She drives down Silver and Washoe and Gemini Streets. They’re all the same: boarded-up buildings that won’t quite look at her, plus a business still open every four or five blocks, like gravediggers in a plague-town. Anna Lisa marvels that the residents have left so quickly and cleanly. The mill closed just a few months before Jody called her. There’s something cruel about their efficiency.
She reaches Meg’s house at two miles an hour. The small brown house is nothing like Meg. It is compact and unassuming. There are faded blue-and-white curtains in the living room window, off-white ones in the kitchen. The feeling that grew inside her—that sprouted small white buds when she put on the dress in the hotel—curls up, dehydrated. Meg’s house looks like all the other boarded-up houses. Anyone could live here.
Anna Lisa sits in her car and wonders if she should go home now. To Fresno. To Terry. Suzy and Martin won’t even have left on their honeymoon yet. Except she’s already done that. She’s already turned around when Meg and Lilac Mines failed to eclipse the rest of her universe. So, for the sake of difference, she steps out of the car, climbs the porch, and tries the door. It’s locked, as if Meg is standing on the other side, keeping her out. Anna Lisa feels a rush of red anger. She remembers how Meg did that—got mad or weepy and wouldn’t tell Anna Lisa why. She was like a wild animal smelling something on the wind that humans couldn’t sense. Anna Lisa becomes more determined to get inside.
She tries all of the windows, but they’re either locked or stuck. At the back of the house, she finds an old shoe. One of Meg’s? It’s a silver lamé heel; the outside toe is scuffed black. She feels like a silver miner: Eureka! She could use a rock, of course. It might be more effective, but she feels stronger, more womanly, smashing the silver heel against the back bedroom window. The glass smashes easily, like it was waiting for her. She pulls the sleeve of her brown leather coat over her fist and clears the wreckage. Glass falls inside and outside the window.
When she hoists herself over the ledge, she finds herself on Meg’s bed. It’s facing west now. She and Meg used to watch the sun rise through the eastern window. And instead of the pale quilt Anna Lisa remembers, there’s a bright red comforter. Did she really think Meg wouldn’t have gotten a new blanket in twelve years?
Nevertheless, she searches the house for pieces of Meg, of herself. Her record collection is fatter. A paper
back called Sappho Was a Right-On Woman lies atop a pile of laundry. Anna Lisa vaguely recalls that Sappho is a poet. Did Meg like poetry? There are a few dishes and a painting of a mermaid that has fallen from the wall. It’s signed Essie Brenner. A flowerpot the size of Anna Lisa’s fist holds spare buttons. Why does it grab her attention? It take a few minutes, but Anna Lisa finally recognizes the little terracotta pot as the party favor from her bridal shower years ago. Why didn’t Jody and Imogen claim any of these things? What about Meg’s father? Were they all too heartbroken to go through the house? Too busy? Then again, the rooms are fairly sparse. Maybe they already took what they wanted.
The dark, hulking wardrobe where Meg kept her clothes has been pulled away from the wall. It looks like a lunging beast, as if it attacked Meg rather than stood stoically as she looped rope over its doors. If that’s what she did. Anna Lisa doesn’t know the mechanics of hanging. The act belongs to another era, one of high-noon shoot-outs and executioners in black hoods. It makes sense, in a way. Meg was the most Wild West girl Anna Lisa ever knew. She left snowy Kerhonkson, New York for a mining town so dry and impatient it nearly crackled. Did she feel like it was her last chance? When Lilac Mines started to crumble for the second time in its history, did she see no choice but to crumble with it? Maybe she felt like the town abandoned her, or maybe she felt like the town was her.
Holding her breath, Anna Lisa opens one of the wardrobe’s creaky doors. The smell of Meg engulfs her like roused bats. Soap and sweat and the vanilla that Meg put behind her ears. It’s not like I’m going to bake a cake, she would laugh before they went out. It’s the smell that summons Anna Lisa’s tears. She is surprised by them. She’s been waiting a week, and she’d almost given up, decided that real tears must be reserved for real relationships. But here they are, salt in the vanilla cake. And here is sound: deep belly-sobs that climb her esophagus and jab at every corner of her body. She sobs as she sifts through Meg’s clothes: a dress in bedspread-red, blouses in wild prints, pink slacks, orange slacks, a lime green skirt that kisses the floor of the wardrobe.
