Arizona Allspice

by Lewin, Renee

  I squint up at the ceiling. It was around three when Elaine and I had our fight.

  “You were at her house this afternoon?”

  “Yes and I just came from there,” she says with a funny smile. She keeps playing with a strand of her curly red hair, too.

  I stare at her for a minute and then I hoist myself upright with my elbows. I think I know what she’s about to saybut that’s impossible. We look at each other and her smile gets wider and tears form in her eyes. “Mom, what’s going on?” I ask concerned. She takes my hand in hers and exhales deeply.

  “Baby, I’m in love.”

  “What?” I say, shocked even though I knew deep inside what was coming.

  “I’m in love with Frank Merjoy.”

  I pull my hand away from her. “No you’re not.”

  “I know I am.” She wipes at her wet eyes.

  “You’ve known this dude for two weeks! You’ve gotta be kidding me, Mom! Come on!”

  “I know what I’m feeling, Kangy. I know what I’m doing. Why do you think I can give you and Elaine such good advice? It’s ‘cause I’ve been doing some observational research for six long years and I would like to put some of that knowledge to use now,” she chuckles.

  I stand up from the bed. “This isn’t funny, Mom.” I pace the floor and rub at my neck. My skin there keeps getting hotter and hotter. “I don’t trust him.”

  “You don’t know him.”

  “And you do?”

  “I knew this would be hard for you to take. Joey, I need to be loved, too. I want someone to be with me, to stick around when you leave.”

  “What are you talking about? I’m not,” I clear my throat, “I’m not leaving.”

  “You don’t have to stay, Joey. Do you know that? I know you are more than this dusty trailer park town can hold. I never wanted you to feel like you couldn’t have your freedom.”

  “Look, I don’t think you fully comprehend what you’re doing and I can’t listen to any more of this.” I leave the house and go back out into the night air buzzing with insects in flight. I don’t have a destination in mind. I just keep going.

  ******

  I hear the doorbell sound from my bedroom. It must be a friend of Uncle Frank’s or maybe Miss Amelia. My uncle has a more active social life than I do.

  “Elaine!”

  It’s for me? I pop up from my bed. What if it’s Joey? I straighten out my wrinkled t-shirt and pajama shorts.

  “I think you might have a friend again,” Uncle Frank smiles as he walks away from the front door which he left ajar. I can’t contain my smile. There is so much I want to tell him. I walk carefully to the front door and open it to see Marisol standing on my front porch. I have to stick my foot inside the doorway so that I don’t immediately slam the door in her face. She is the very last person I want to see, but I’m trying to be more open-minded. No more making my negative expectations come true. Any other day, I would expect Marisol to narrow her hazel eyes at me in that feline way that is her trademark. I force my mind to anticipate having a lovely conversation with an old friend. It seems to work. She gives me a tentative smile. “Can I come in? The Kissing Bugs are crazy out here,” she says.

  Wordlessly, I open the door for her. A flashback of my front door plastered with those “Save Joey” flyers hits me. You’ve gotta move on, Elaine.

  Marisol is a mexicana with a strong nose, beautiful skin, jet black hair with perfect curls and soulful eyes. I’ve always been slightly jealous of her appearance. Her beauty is much more subtle than Denise’s, much more appreciated. I wonder if Marisol knows that. I take a deep breath.

  “Is something wrong?”

  She clears her throat. “I found out today that Raul took his brother and left town last night.” She glances down at the floor.

  “Yeah.”

  “Raul had been making little plans with me about moving away, but I didn’t take him seriously. I didn’t know how serious it was in his house.”

  I chew on my bottom lip nervously. “Are there rumors going around?” I don’t want the whole neighborhood to know Raul’s secret.

  “No, no. I talked to his idiot mother and figured it out. Once she told me Joey helped them run away I knew something wasn’t right in that house. Um, Raul never told me he was leaving.”

  “Oh.” The sadness in her eyes surprises me. “I’m sorry.”

  “I’m sorry about the way he and I…You know? It was stupid of us.”

  I shake my head not knowing what to say. She is a self-claimed tough broad, but she’s standing in front of me vulnerable, trying to apologize for having slept with my ex-boyfriend.

  “I didn’t know it before he left, but I really liked him,” her voice breaks. “He needed someone and I didn’t even realize it. I want to thank you and Joey for lookin’ out for him. That’s all.” Marisol turns to leave.

  “Wait,” I stop her. “Can I get you something to drink?”

  “Um…sure.” Her eyes sparkle with appreciation and nervousness. I get us settled in the dining room and we talk for a long time. Though it was awkward at times when our conversation brushed against old wounds, she leaves my house and I felt hopeful that things might turn around. Not long after she leaves, my cell phone starts ringing. I follow the sound to the bathroom where I’d left it on the counter. I pick it up and see Joey’s name on the screen. Immediately, my heart starts racing. I’m not sure I’ll know the right thing to say, but if I don’t pick up he might think I’m ignoring him. I have to answer.

  “Hello?”

  “You knew about my mom and your uncle, didn’t you?”

  My stomach does a flip. I plop down onto the toilet seat because I feel light headed. I wasn’t expecting there to be yet another issue I needed to work out with him. My knee bounces up and down. “Yes. I’m sorry. I didn’t want you to be upset.”

  ******

  “I have every right to be upset!” I say loudly into my cell phone that is now held together with Scotch tape. “I don’t need some washed up, gray-haired bachelor dragging my mother into his midlife crisis!”

  “My uncle isn’t that kind of man. Why do you think you’re eating out of a brand new, stainless steel refrigerator these days? He is extremely giving and he really cares about her. I promise.”

  Hearing Elaine’s soft voice makes me calmer, but I started off exceptionally agitated to begin with so… “My mom will not be bought, okay? She does not have time to stroke his ego by being his possession.”

  “He’s not going to ‘own’ your mother. They will have each other.”

  “She doesn’t need him.”

  “My brother and my father love me, but I still want and need that romantic love someday when the time is right.”

  “So, what you had with Raul, you’d call that romantic love?”

  “Honestly, I’m not really sure anymore.”

  “Well, if that was romantic love, I don’t want my mom anywhere near it because the last time I checked Raul cheated on you every damned chance he got.”

  “Uh huh,” she replies numbly. Raul is a tired subject for her now. I calm down a little more.

  “Laney,” I tug at my hair with my free hand. “If he hurts her, if he puts his hands on her”

  “She’ll leave him before that could ever happen. I think you’ve forgotten that your mother is smarter than you.”

  “Ha ha,” I reply mildly.

  “Your mom is so sweet. Don’t be selfish, Joey. Let other people enjoy your mom, too. I shared my mom with you.”

  She did. Her words seem to hang in the air all the way up there in the stars I’m gazing up at: I shared my mom with you. Elaine told me once that my freckles reminded her of constellations. My eyes connect the points of light. I guess I was quiet for too long.

  “Joey?”

  My voice comes to me slow. “I didn’t want you to know.”

  “I know, but it’s okay now. I didn’t have to read your journal. I could have pretended to read it but…I wanted
to know more about you. I know you don’t remember the day you fought Manny. I know it makes you uncomfortable to think about having hit me. It was an accident. When you realized what you did, you reached your hand out to me. You held your fingers to my mouth and you didn’t care that you were touching my blood. You just cared about me being okay. I’ll never forget that. I learned so many things about my family, about myself and about you from your journal. That’s why I would be honored if you’d forgive me and we were friends again. Please. I don’t want to lose you. My uncle says we’re braided together. Getting rid of each other is futile,” she jokes in her shaky voice.

  I gather my thoughts and steady my own voice. “Yeah. That sounds about right.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes.” I guess she didn’t hear the uncertainty in my own voice because she let out a big sigh of relief. I know I don’t want her to drop out of my life for good. We’ll be together. It just sucks that there’s no happily-ever-after.

  Maybe if I waited, gave her time to allow the revival of that fervent energy between us to find her again…

  “There’s something else I have to tell you. For every day you were my midfielder, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you…”

  I close my eyes and hold my breath at her sincere voice. She keeps saying it again and again. My eyes are watering. “Elaine,” I murmur to urge her to stop.

  “No, I’m not done. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you and I’m sure I’ll owe you more.”

  “You’re welcome,” I manage to say. “Uh, Laney?”

  “What?”

  “Now that we’re friends again,” I look around at my surroundings, “could you maybe come pick me up from the soccer field? I barged all the way out here and now I don’t think I can walk all the way”

  She laughs. “No worries. I’m on my way,” I hear her smile. Strangely, neither of us puts down our cell phones. We stay on the line with each other as she gets her boots on and drives and we breathe and sigh and laugh about nothing.

  TWELVE

  The next morning, after sleeping no more than four hours because I was talking to Joey all night, I receive an unrequested wake-up call. My cell phone starts to ring at 9:19 AM.

  “Hello?” I answer, my voice rough with annoyance and fatigue.

  “Hey buddy! Good morning.”

  “Joey? What in the world?”

  “Sorry to wake you, but I was hoping you could give me a ride.”

  “To?”

  “The grocery store.”

  “Now?!”

  “Please?” He begs. I could see his pleading blue-eyed expression in my mind’s eye. That’s all it took for me to say yes.

  Joey insisted that we needed to drive into Duncan, our neighboring city, to go to a bigger store that sold some items in bulk. I sigh as I steer the truck up the entrance ramp to the highway. “Why don’t you have a car of your own yet?” I glance at Joey as he shrugs. “I know you have the money to buy one,” I add.

  “I have a bike,” he says simply. “I like to save my money for a rainy day.”

  I chuckle. He’s waiting for a rainy day? I study the view outside my windshield. In the last few days, clouds with full gray bellies slowly swept across the sky and off to another place without giving our town a sprinkle. Hopefully some clouds will stick around a little longer and the plants and animals will get some well needed hydration. “But a bicycle can only get you from one end of Cadence to the other. Don’t you want to check out other places?”

  “What about you? You have a truck and you don’t leave town either,” he counters.

  “For your info, I went to Phoenix two weeks ago, to the Phoenix Museum.”

  “Oh. Never been there. Sounds cool. Did you go by yourself?”

  “I went with Uncle Frank.”

  “So it was his idea?” Joey smirks.

  “Shut up,” I joke, but I can hear a tinge of irritation in my own voice. I can tell Joey is agitated as well, but neither of us makes a fuss about it. Our conversation continues easily in another direction, even though I am still thinking about why we’re both so prickly about our limited experiences outside of Cadence. Taking care of Daddy came first this year and that kept me in town. I suppose my soreness to the subject comes from my memories of enjoying myself in Tucson with the friends I used to have. Joey has never mentioned any trips to Tucson. I find that strange. All of the friends he’s got, he never got invited out to Tucson? Had Joey turned his friends down when they’d asked? Why? Going to Tucson was a rite of passage. Why didn’t Joey want to experience that rush of freedom that came from being in a new place, a big city, and feeling young and untouchable? I start to wonder what Joey’s plans are beyond our town borders. “Do you ever dream about leaving Cadence for someplace new?”

  “No. Why would I want to leave? The love of my life is here.”

  My eyes almost fall out of my head, they go so wide.

  “Soccer,” he adds.

  We walk into the store and I am still heated over what he said. I’m sure he knew he would freak me out with that “love of my life” talk. As we peruse the aisles I question why I ever thought he and I could be friends, and then I become distracted by the things, or rather the quantity of things, Joey tosses into the shopping cart. I walk silently alongside him as he wheels the cart’s increasing load: toilet paper towers, gallons of vegetable cooking oil, sacks of potatoes, frozen chicken and ground beef stacked like bricks, can after can of peas and corn, bags of flour and cornmeal, family-sized breakfast cereal boxes, jugs of milk and drinking water. I don’t even comment when he makes a stop in the baby aisle.

  The man at the register eyes us and our cart, grimaces, and then mumbles something under his breath. I don’t know if he hated the thought of swiping all of the groceries or the thought of Joey and I being together. The total came to $322.63. “Today is what I call a rainy day,” Joey says, glancing at me before he pulls some hundred dollar bills from his wallet and hands it to the cashier.

  The ride back to Cadence is quiet except for my occasional yawns. I plan to get a nap when I reach home. Joey stares out the window, until five minutes from home he sits up straight and tells me, “Turn right up there.” He was directing me into The Tumbleweeds. I knew then who the groceries were for.

  I’d never been anywhere near the area only a mile from my house. It was not somewhere anyone would wish to go. These abandoned trailers have been here since before Uncle Frank built the trailer park, before Cadence Village Homes were developed, before Cadence was big enough to have a name. Neither electricity nor water ran inside the rusting structures anymore. Home to drifters, the place was nicknamed The Tumbleweeds after those individuals and families that were uprooted by frightful circumstances, blown here by the blistering winds of misfortune, soon to be carried off to another place. I’ve heard rumors of people evicted from Merjoy Trailer Park finding themselves here.

  As my truck nears the first trailer I see a little girl with long jet black hair and cheeks smeared with her own dirty fingerprints peek through a window with no curtains. Then a smaller boy with the same wide brown eyes comes to the window but he has to prop himself up on the sill with his elbows to see out. The two stare curiously at my truck but bounce around excitedly when they notice Joey sitting in the passenger seat. I continue to drive past three more run down trailers. “You can stop there,” he says pointing to a mobile home on the left side. I park and cut the engine. I follow Joey’s lead and walk to the truck bed for the groceries.

  “Joey, this is an incredible thing you’re doing.” There’s a lump in my throat.

  He shrugs. “Thanks for driving me around.”

  “Did you ever learn how to drive?”

  “Never got around to it.”

  I drum my fingers nervously on the open tailgate. “Maybe I could teach you how to drive. Then you could take your mom’s car and help these people out whenever you want to.”

  He smiles a
nd nods. “That would be cool.”

  I grab two bags filled with frozen whole chickens and match Joey’s steps to the door: a rectangular sheet of corroded zinc leaning up against the door frame. Joey knocks on the zinc covering as if it were a normal door.

  “How will they keep the meat from spoiling,” I whisper. “They don’t have any electricity, right?”

  “Miss D. has a refrigerator hooked up to a generator,” he replies.

  I have no doubt in my heart that both the refrigerator and the electricity generator were purchases made with Joey’s help. My heart swells with admiration. Miss D., an older lady with a kind cragged smile, slides open the metal door and welcomes us in. As Joey and I bring her all the food that needs to be kept cool, the children run over to Joey as fast as they can with their little bare feet. They are followed by their mother and the folks that live in the other trailers. Joey greets them and introduces me and then I help him divvy the groceries amongst them. I observe as they talk to each other as you would with old friends and Joey’s smile is warm and genuine. Even though they have little, they find plenty of reasons to laugh together. They are a family tied together by fellowship rather than blood.