She drank a glass of water and took out her favorite mug. There was coffee in the pot. There was always coffee; Leviticus made sure of it. A pink pastry box on the kitchen table propped up a piece of Hello Kitty stationery. Xochi picked it up, squinting at Pallas’s loopy fountain pen cursive.
Hi, Xochi,
Kiki wanted a road trip, so we’re driving Leviticus to LA. Be back in a few days!
XOXO
Pallas
P.S. Here are some cream puffs to tide you over, since you can never find the place without me. Have fun & don’t do anything I wouldn’t do. —P.
LA? Leviticus must have decided to help out Rabbit Hole after all. Xochi recalled Andi’s voice, sexy and low, when she’d answered Leviticus’s invitation to sit in. Ugh. And the thing with her hat? Who acted like that in real life?
Xochi added cream to her coffee and read the note again. Boots pounded up the basement steps. The door opened. Leviticus.
“I thought you were gone.” Xochi looked down at her thin slip and bare toes with their chipped black polish.
“We thought you were asleep.” Leviticus set a half-full duffel on the kitchen table. “Where’d you end up last night?”
“Bubbles and Aaron took me to The Stud. Now I have a hangover and possibly whiplash.”
“Hold on.” Leviticus rummaged in a cabinet above the sink.
“Where are Pallas and Kiki?”
“Getting the car washed. I’m waiting for my laundry.” He pulled a small brown bottle from the shelf. “Dandelion root. Tastes like death, but it’ll save you from that hangover. It cleanses your liver. You can dilute it in some water if you want.”
“My grandma made her own medicines,” Xochi said. “This can’t be worse than her goldenseal and eyebright. Give it to me straight.”
Xochi dropped the green-brown liquid onto her tongue. Plant blood. That’s what Loretta called her tinctures. This one was intense, with a spicy bitter tang that vibrated against Xochi’s piercing like an electric toothbrush.
“Your grandma sounds interesting.” Leviticus poured himself a cup of coffee and sat across from Xochi.
“She died in September. I miss her a lot.”
“They say the veil thins on Solstice and Equinox.”
“Yeah,” Xochi said. “I don’t know if I’ll ever get used to her being gone.”
“I’m sorry,” Leviticus said. “Was she sick?”
Xochi nodded. “I’m just glad we got to keep her at home. She died where she lived.” She closed her eyes against a swell of tears. Behind her lids, the children from her dreams waited. The green girl and her brother were always with Xochi now, awake or asleep. She wasn’t sure what was causing the dreams, but they felt like a story she needed to tell herself. If she could just close her eyes for long enough, she’d get to the end.
“You okay?” Leviticus leaned in toward her. His expression was kind, his eyes a little sad.
Xochi imagined going to him, settling into his lap, but she couldn’t even fantasize without seeing what came next: Pallas walking in, the look on her face. She shivered. Just thinking about it was a betrayal.
“So when you say we,” Leviticus said, “we kept her home—who are you talking about?”
“Me, mostly. Me and her grandson—my mom’s ex. The neighbors brought food and everybody pitched in, but she was sickest coming up on harvest, so it was tough.”
“Harvest?”
“I’m from Humboldt, remember?”
“So you were raised by pot growers?”
“I didn’t tell you that?”
He smiled. “No, you didn’t. You haven’t told us much, actually.”
“Oh, well, I was. We all lived in cabins on this big property. I lived with Loretta. She wasn’t my real grandma, she was Evan’s—my mom’s boyfriend. She kind of adopted me when my mom left.”
Xochi thought of the day Loretta signed a school paper and wrote “grandmother” underneath. It must have been pretty soon after Xochi’s mother bailed. With one hastily written word, Loretta had let Xochi know she still had someone to belong to. Later, people forgot they weren’t blood related.
“How long was she sick?” Leviticus asked.
Xochi blinked. “Not quite a year.”
“So all of—what? Your junior year?”
High school. It hovered in the air between them. But the truth was, if Loretta hadn’t died and everything hadn’t gone to shit, Xochi would be in high school right now.
“Yeah. They let me study from home for the most part. I just went in for tests.”
He nodded. The dryer buzzed from the basement. “Can you hold on a minute? I have something for you.”
Xochi rested her head on the table, the wood cool against her cheek. She closed her eyes, eager to see the forest children, but there was just the old version of her, a girl who no longer existed. A girl slogging through the hardest day of her life.
It was hot for September the day Loretta died. The fans were whirring. Xochi stood in the sweet spot between two of them, savoring the cool wind on her face and neck.
Suddenly, the fans stopped. A humming started—not the fans, but from the garden. Bees.
The light shimmered, turned gold. The breeze through the open window smelled like rain. Something made Xochi turn to Loretta’s bed. She’d been unconscious for two days now, her face tight with pain even though they were medicating her every three hours. But now, her body was relaxed, her face unlined and smiling. Her fingers curled in the air as if there were someone on either side of the bed holding her hands. Xochi blinked once, twice, three times. The stone on the necklace at Loretta’s throat glowed from within, a tiny sun. She sighed, all the remaining pain draining from her face.
Xochi opened her eyes.
A memory, not a dream. Seconds later, the girl she used to be had bolted from Loretta’s room to cry in the garden. Evan had found her there. What happened next left her with less than nothing.
A hand brushed Xochi’s back, there and gone. “Were you sleeping?” Leviticus asked.
“Just resting,” she said.
“Here’s your shirt.” He produced Coll’s Zeppelin tee, warm from the dryer. Xochi stopped herself from putting it against her face. “And this.” Leviticus handed her a cassette case. “I wanted to get you a new one, but Rasputin’s didn’t have it. I duped mine downstairs on the good deck, so the sound should be okay.”
A title was written on the spine of the case in spidery black: Wings of Desire. Xochi pressed the tape to her heart. “Does it have the Nick Cave carny song?” She scanned the track list. “And that other band, the song about the bells when she’s dancing in the club—”
“Crime and the City Solution. It’s all there.” Leviticus grinned. Xochi grinned back.
A horn blared. He shoved clothes into his duffel.
Xochi looked out the kitchen window. “Is that Kiki honking? I don’t see her.”
“She’s out front. She won’t come around back to get me because her precious car will get dusty. She has rules for road trips that she’s trained us to obey.”
The front door opened and slammed shut.
“Leviticus? For fuck’s sake!” Kiki was a perfect fifties movie star with her trench coat, headscarf, and big white sunglasses.
“Sorry,” he said. “I’m ready.”
“Is Pal in the car?” Xochi asked.
“She’s nesting. She likes things just so in the back seat.”
“I’d go down and say goodbye, but I’m not exactly dressed,” Xochi said. “Bubbles wrecked me last night. Will you tell her I’m going to miss her?”
“I will. Come on, then,” Kiki said. “Hugs!” She opened her arms to Xochi. She was an expert hugger, firm and unrushed.
“You smell . . . glamorous,” Xochi said.
“Chanel No. 5, al
ways and forever.” Kiki turned to Leviticus. “Go on.” She gestured. “Hug Xochi goodbye and let’s get a move on!”
Xochi stepped into Leviticus’s arms. “Thanks for the tape,” she said.
He held her lightly, hand on the back of her head, a quick squeeze to her neck right where it hurt from dancing. “Take it easy,” he said, and followed Kiki out the door.
23
California Dreamin’
Pallas yawned. The back seat of Kiki’s convertible was as comfortable as a bed and wide enough for her to sprawl out. She kicked off her cowgirl boots and pulled the blanket over her shoulders.
When they’d decided to take a road trip at breakfast that morning, all she’d thought to bring was a change of clothes and her cat hat, but when Pallas climbed into the back seat, she found pillows, her favorite quilt, and her train case packed with a toothbrush, pajamas, knitting needles and yarn. Leviticus had also grabbed the book from her nightstand, The Fellowship of the Ring, but she and Xochi were reading it together and had made a pact: no reading ahead.
“Is she asleep already?” Kiki asked. “I guess Eve still has the power.”
Eve was Kiki’s shiny white car. She was big, old and curvy, with a red interior and leopard floor mats. On road trips, Kiki always wore a scarf over her hair and white cat-eye sunglasses so she and Eve would match.
“Remember the fascist fours?” Leviticus was referring to a time where the family had compared Pallas to various world dictators. “I wonder how many miles we clocked getting her to sleep.”
Cool air tickled Pallas’s nose as Kiki opened the window a few inches and lit a cigarette. They had a rule about never smoking in front of her, but most of them smoked marijuana or cigarettes behind her back.
“So?” Kiki said, like it meant something.
“So?” Leviticus said back. The car lighter popped again, followed by a deep inhale. Her dad was smoking, too. Hypocrite!
“All of a sudden, we’re off to LA.”
“Dylan asked me.”
“He asked six months ago, and you said no.”
“Andi’s in town.”
Pallas knew Andi. She played the fiddle and had great hair. She and Leviticus used to date when Pallas was little and Andi lived in San Francisco. It was the year Pallas had gone to first grade before deciding to homeschool. Most of her classmates had small families and parents who didn’t date other people unless they were divorced. When she discovered divorced people usually didn’t get along and lived in separate houses, she took the matter up with Io.
“Your dad and I aren’t divorced, Pallina,” Io said. “You have to be married to get a divorce.”
“Why aren’t you married?” Pallas stopped walking so she could focus on Io’s answer.
“Some people want to be part of a pair.” Io crouched down so the hem of her long skirt billowed around her clunky boots and Pallas’s shiny Mary Janes. “They feel best when they give their love to one other person, like a husband or a wife. Some people want to be singular, but love many people in lots of different ways. Some people don’t want a lover at all and like being alone. There’s no one right way to do love.”
Pallas flashed back to her mother in the mirror the night of Equinox, a memory she’d been avoiding. Io had been more fun recently, laughing a lot, wearing yellow. What if whatever she’d been doing with James was another way to love? A strange way. Completely gross. But still.
“Andi?” Kiki sounded surprised. “I thought that ship sailed.”
“I don’t know,” Leviticus said. “It just feels like a good time to get out of town. Isn’t that why you jumped at the chance to drive me?”
“It was that or murder Pad. He sabotaged my date last night, the shit.”
Pallas was there when Pad had messed up Kiki’s date with the Rabbit Hole drummer. He’d called to arrange things with Kiki, but Pad had answered the phone. “Right,” Pad had said, sounding sincere, “I’ll make sure she gets the message.” Of course, he’d done nothing of the kind.
“I think you like that drummer about as much as I like Andi,” Leviticus said.
“Yeah. But what am I supposed to do? Pad and I don’t want the same things. We’re not getting any younger, you know. Unlike some people.”
What did that mean? Pallas rolled over again. She hoped Kiki and Pad would figure things out soon. Part of the problem was that Kiki wanted to have a baby and thought Pad would be a terrible father. Still, Pallas could picture their kids perfectly: two boys and a girl with Pad’s Siamese-cat eyes and Kiki’s doe-brown skin, too cute to remain unborn.
“Did you actually make her a mix?” Kiki said it like it was a joke.
“No,” Leviticus said in a tone that invited no further questions. They were quiet again, puffing on their cigarettes like a pair of old men. “It was a soundtrack,” he said.
Kiki giggled. Pallas almost giggled herself, the sound was so contagious. Her dad joined in. Pallas closed her eyes, listening to the familiar sound of their laughter as California slid by under Eve’s wide wheels.
The front seat was silent for several minutes. Pallas was almost asleep when her dad spoke again. “I’m not sure why I’m freaking out.”
“Did you talk to Io?”
“Nothing to discuss.” Leviticus took a drag from his cigarette. Had he never heard of lung cancer? “This is about me, not anyone else.”
“Love isn’t always about the beloved?”
“And my knight-in-shining-armor complex is never really about the fair maiden. I know that. I do. I thought I’d learned my lesson.”
“But sometimes the maiden is exceptionally fair . . .”
“It’s not that. I can handle fair. It’s more this visceral . . . identification. It’s the only word I can think of that comes close. But then I’m just romanticizing, making things all cosmic and fated to excuse a lame transgression.”
“One person’s transgression is another’s transcendence,” Kiki said. “I mean, I agree it’s a bad idea. Mostly for the innocent maiden. You are a handful. But you shouldn’t be so hard on yourself. You’re almost twenty-nine. It’s your Saturn return, right on schedule. Unfinished business coming back to haunt you. I’m sure that’s part of it for Pad and me, too.” Kiki paused to take a long drag. “I wouldn’t be young again for anything, but when I think about Bubbles wallowing in her early twenties decadence, I’m so jealous. I don’t know if I’m ready to grow up.”
They were quiet again. Pallas turned over, her back to the front seat.
Someone turned on the radio. An old song played, something from the sixties that Lady Frieda used to cover. Pallas started to drift off with the high harmony. Kiki and Leviticus were talking again up front, but she couldn’t hear what they were saying.
The song changed, another oldie. It lulled her to sleep and became part of her dream.
It was the children again, the odd fairy mer-things she’d been dreaming about all week. This time they were swimming, their wonderful hair spreading through the water like octopus ink. The high, clear voice on the radio sang about bridges and water and silver girls, and Pallas was swimming and then she was flying, her hair a silver sail through a moonlit sky.
24
Wade in the Water
Xochi sat at the window seat, curled under an afghan. The attic echoed without Pallas. She tried to feel the wings Bubbles had made on her shoulder blades, but her back was the same as always—hunched and tight. Loretta used to rub her shoulders while she studied. Damn, girl, she’d say. Somebody needs to lighten up.
Xochi had always been good at school. Honors in everything. But after Loretta had died, she couldn’t bear getting up in the morning, couldn’t move her body from class to class. Finally, she just stopped trying.
“Divinity in, crazy out.” She said the words out loud, a prescription she wasn’t sure how to fill.
She opened the cassette from Leviticus. He’d copied all the song titles and artists carefully on the liner. Next to the cassette was a folded piece of paper. It was brittle and thin, like the stuff she’d used in elementary school to trace maps. A translation of the German poem that ran through Wings of Desire was written in the same slanting black mixture of cursive and print on the cassette case. A few lines down, a verse caught her eye.
When the child was a child
it didn’t know it was a child,
everything was soulful
and all souls were one.
“Everything was soulful,” she repeated. “All souls were one.”
Evan shoved his sleeping bag aside. The cabin was already boiling. He pictured the seedlings frying in the greenhouse. They’d need a deep watering to deal with this bizarre spring heat. Hangover or no, there was no one to do it but him.
Back in the day, tents and buses had filled the meadow every year at harvest. Even off-season, there was always someone around looking to work. Evan’s dad was famous for his hospitality and his Badger Creek green, but those days ended when his stepmother, Vangie, died. His dad lost his green thumb, and for the last ten years, he’d been holed up in the big house by the creek, head in a bottle. Even Evan’s half brothers stayed away, too busy at Stanford and UCLA to bother coming home, too good to call Evan their brother. And now his grandma was gone, too, killed by the same cancer that had gotten her daughter, his stepmom.
Evan downed a few aspirin and a big glass of water. He yanked on filthy jeans and shoved his feet into socks and hiking boots. He found a T-shirt over a kitchen chair and didn’t bother to eat. He did two bong hits—breakfast of champions—stashed three cans of Dr Pepper in his day pack, and he was out the door. A farmer ready to tend his crop.
Outside, music drifted down from his dad’s place. Bob Marley. Vangie’s favorite. It had played at the wedding and then, sixteen years later, at her funeral—and again in September for Loretta. Evan revved his four-wheeler and headed for the creek. No Woman, No Cry. The engine drowned out the soundtrack of his father’s sadness, but the music kept on playing in his head.
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