The Goddesses

by Swan Huntley

  Ana—I wanted to tell her the truth. She was so easy to talk to, and maybe her being a near-stranger made it easier somehow. “To save our marriage,” I said. “Chuck cheated on me.”

  I braced myself for her reaction, but there wasn’t one, not really. “Ah,” she said, her face totally calm. She was completely unaffected, completely unsurprised, and she said none of the I’m-so-sorry things I expected her to say. And then she winked at me. “Well,” she said, “I would say we should punish him, but I’m being good now so that’s not an option.”

  “Yeah,” I said, and then I went on. I needed so badly to talk about it. “He’s taking me on dates,” I told her. “He’s trying to undo his mistake.” It felt great to share this with another human being, especially one who was actually listening.

  “Oh, honey, that sounds exhausting,” Ana said. “You must be exhausted.”

  That made me laugh. Because it was exhausting, but more because she had said this out loud. It wasn’t part of the script. Most people would have said, “Well, that’s nice he’s taking you on dates.” And then they would have tried to fix it. With Ana, there was no concerned babying tone, no trying to make me feel better with platitudes. (“Marriage is hard.” “It’s a phase.”) She was just honest. And clear. Clarity, like she had said. I wondered in what other ways surviving breast cancer could make a person into a better version of themselves.

  After I had told her all about Shelly—“Of course her name would be Shelly,” she said—there was a long moment with me looking at Ana and then Ana looking up at the clouds and then me looking up at the clouds, trying to see if I could find any obvious symbols up there (besides that piece of Swiss cheese?), and then finally I asked her. “What are the bigger things you’re planning on doing?”

  The look on her face told me she was happy I wanted to know. “My good deeds, you mean?”

  I shrugged, maybe to show her I was still a little skeptical of her plan to manipulate destiny. “I’m curious,” I said.

  “Are you?” She beamed. “That delights me.” Her perfect white veneers. “Because yours is the first feedback I’m getting.”

  And after hearing that—I was the first?—I was more enthusiastic. “Really, I’m very curious. What are you going to do?”

  “Well,” she began, and then she blew some cool air up into her bangs, which is when I realized it must have been hot in there under her wig. I felt terrible for not having thought of this earlier. “I was going to do this thing tomorrow…”

  A wave crashed. Another wave crashed. Why had she stopped talking? Was she worried about her plan? Did she think it was stupid? Or that it wouldn’t work?

  I wanted to make her feel better. If we were going to be friends, I should be supportive. I made sure to sound extra interested when I asked, “What thing?”

  Ana looked at me and smiled. And then she waited. And waited. And the pause grew into a pause that was just too long. I couldn’t take it. Tick-tock, another wave crashed, and it was enough time to make up a whole story in my head about how Ana was embarrassed to tell me and how the best way to change that was to involve myself directly by offering something, and offering something seemed right because I’d been so selfish before, going on about myself and not noticing how hot she was under that wig, and that’s when I heard myself say, “Do you need help? Do you want me to come with you?”

  8

  I made quinoa with cranberries and roasted a chicken for dinner that night, and Chuck said, “You’re in a good mood.”

  “Am I?” I delicately added a few sprigs of parsley to the quinoa. My new favorite health food blogger had written that color was important. We eat with our eyes first.

  “It sounds like a good mood.” Chuck took off his red Costco hat. His hair was all matted. “You’re humming.”

  He was right, I was humming. I hadn’t even noticed. And I didn’t know what I was humming either. Probably the last song I’d heard on the radio.

  Chuck took a step closer to me. He wanted to kiss me on the cheek again because he had done this yesterday and I had let him. With so much hesitation, he leaned in. An inch from my face, he left a full second-long pause—my exit door if I wanted it. I didn’t want it. I wanted to say: If you’re going to kiss me, then kiss me, you idiot.

  Finally, he did. The smell of his aftershave, the scratch of his stubble. Oh, Chuck.

  I hadn’t noticed the boys standing there at the end of the table. Behind them on the wall was the nail I had abandoned.

  “I’m glad you guys made up,” Cam said. His childlike face and his strong body—it was a man’s body now.

  “Thank God,” Jed said, and rolled his eyes, which was so very Jed. He liked to pretend he didn’t care about things.

  We sat down, passed the food around. Cam complimented my use of cranberries and Chuck noted how moist the chicken was and I gave myself a pat on the back for taking it out of the oven at just the right time.

  Jed was stoked because he and Cam were obviously the best ones on the new team, and Cam, too modest to agree, said he liked their new coach, who was super chill.

  “How are your classes?” I asked.

  “Fine.”

  “Fine.”

  This was always a dead-end conversation.

  “Any love interests?” Chuck asked. “Either of you have a girlfriend yet?”

  I looked at Chuck: Are you serious? He didn’t notice. We had talked about this. I had told him that no, I wasn’t sure, of course I wasn’t sure. Who knew what kids did these days. But if Cam was gay, we should make room for that. We should let him know it was okay. Chuck and I had had a whole conversation about how we would keep our questions general—we had specifically agreed to avoid using the words girlfriend and boyfriend.

  “Not yet, Dad!” Jed said. “School just started. Jeez, give us a second.”

  Cam took a big bite of quinoa, looked at the nail in the wall.

  “Or any kind of love interest,” I said. “It doesn’t have to be a girl.” I glared at Chuck. His face changed when he understood what had just happened. He grimaced, tightened his worried eyes. I could see exactly what he would say to me later: I’m sorry, girlfriend just slipped out!

  “Mom, why do you always say that? We’re not gay!” Jed laughed, looked at Cam. Cam kept his eyes on his food.

  “Well, I just want you to know you can be whatever you want,” I said, and then, for Cam, I moved on to a new topic. “I have a new friend,” I said. I was a little embarrassed by how excited I sounded.

  “Marcy?” Chuck said. “Brad mentioned she came over.”

  “She did. Unannounced. She brought a pie.”

  “Sweet,” Jed said.

  I could see Cam taking a deep breath. I could see him saying to himself: You’re okay, you’re okay. He looked up at me finally. I smiled and gave him a little nod. You’re okay, baby.

  Chuck was talking about mulberry trees now. “They are native to the island, surprisingly.”

  “So Marcy’s your new friend, Mom?” Cam asked.

  “No. Well, yes, sure. Okay, I have two new friends. Marcy and Ana.”

  “Ana,” Chuck said.

  “It’s On-a, actually,” I said.

  “What’s Ana like?” Cam asked.

  “She’s nice,” I said. “Kind of a free spirit.” I almost told them more. I almost said, “And tomorrow we’re meeting up to do good deeds because Ana had breast cancer and—” but it would have been too much to explain. And when the moment passed and I still hadn’t told them, I felt good. You’re allowed to have your own life, Nancy. Chuck has Costco and the boys have school and this—Ana and yoga—this can just be for you.

  After dinner, I gave Cam a long hug and then I gave Jed a hug for the same amount of time to make it equal. Doing everything twice was second nature to me.

  When it was time for bed, Chuck pulled back the new hibiscus bedspread like it was something fragile. He whispered, “I’m sorry! Girlfriend just slipped out!”

  �
��I know, Chuck,” I said, “I know.” I know everything about you. There are no surprises.

  9

  We’d agreed on 3:00 p.m. I pulled into her driveway at 3:05 because I wanted to show her I was more relaxed than she thought. I parked next to her purple Jeep. The fabric of my baby-blue tunic was sticking to my stomach in the heat. I tugged it away. Flow, don’t stick. Flow, don’t be tense.

  I noted the vines again—crazy, but beautiful—and walked toward the door.

  “Naaaaancy,” she called. Her voice was creepy but joking, and it was behind me. I turned. Saw just her feet on the ledge of the driver’s-side window. She sat up. I almost thought it was someone else, but no, it was Ana, with long orange hair. She looked like Wynonna Judd.

  “What do you think?”

  “You look like Wynonna Judd!”

  “Wynonna? I don’t want to be Wynonna. I want to be Ashley!” She looked at herself in the little side mirror, tousled her bangs. “Fine, I’ll be Wynonna. Ashley’s boring.”

  The top of the Jeep was off. I’d never seen it on. In the backseat was a cardboard box full of sandwiches in Ziploc bags. “Who are those for?” I asked.

  “The homeless. Or half homeless, a lot of them are only half homeless. But it doesn’t matter how homeless they are. It still counts as a good deed. I was going to do something more complicated, but then I thought, No, keep it simple. Giving hungry people food. Obvious!”

  “It’s perfect,” I said. And I was relieved. Handing out sandwiches? I could do that. Easy.

  “And Nancy,” Ana said, pressing both hands into her heart, “I have to tell you, I don’t know if I’d be doing this without you. I mean, just in terms of the mechanics, it would be hard. Driving and passing out sandwiches at the same time. Although I guess I could walk. But what I really mean is that with you as my partner, I feel like this thing has expanded. The two of us—it’s so much better than just me. And your presence—it’s giving me courage. Really. I feel validated.” She made prayer hands and bowed her head. “Thank you, partner.”

  “Of course,” I chirped. “I’m happy to help.” And when I said that, I thought: Pattern! Of course you’d be doing this, Nancy. Helping people who need help—I was always doing that. It was my thing. The PTA at Clairemont had named me “Most Involved Parent” two semesters in a row, which apparently was a record, and which pissed off a lot of the other mothers.

  “Get in, partner,” Ana said, reaching to open the door for me.

  “Okay, partner.” I felt exhilarated. I pulled my tunic off my stomach with a buzzy hand and leaped into the car.

  Ana flipped her orange hair back over her shoulders, getting ready.

  I thought this would be a good time to review: “We’re handing out sandwiches today.”

  “To create space for better destinies,” she finished. She took her hands off the wheel. We still hadn’t left the driveway. “I would like to avoid disaster if possible. Death. Cancer. And I would hate it if Eunice sold this house.” She frowned. “And you, Nancy! Things for you!” She grabbed my knee. “I would hate it if Chuck cheated on you again.”

  Flash to Shelly’s cascading blond hair. “I would hate it, too,” I said.

  I still thought it was dangerous to want such specific things from the world. If it really were that easy to create destiny, wouldn’t everyone be doing it?

  And yet something about it seemed very right. Of course good created good. Wasn’t that what the Dalai Lama thought? And even if doing this good thing wouldn’t create the good we wanted, it definitely wouldn’t create any bad either.

  “I think it’s great we’re doing this good thing,” I said. “But we shouldn’t”—oh, it was so hard to say this looking at her hopeful face—“we shouldn’t expect anything though, you know? Because what if it doesn’t work?”

  “Oh, it’s going to work.” She covered her eyes with her sunglasses. “It has to.”

  •

  Our first target was a skinny guy weaving green fronds into baskets on the rock wall by Huggo’s. “Target!” Ana yelled. She pulled over. “Hey!” she called to him. “C’mere!”

  She grabbed one of the sandwiches from the backseat. They were very simple sandwiches—white bread with peanut butter. When the guy got to the car, she said, “Here, man, eat something.”

  The guy said, “Sweet,” and took the bag. His fingers were long and elegant and dirty. In my imagination, he’d been a piano player once. “Mahalos,” he said.

  “Aloha.” Ana flashed a smile. With her smile and the sunglasses and the sun glinting off her wig, making it even more orange, she looked younger, I thought, and kind of like a movie star.

  We made our way slowly down Ali’i, giving sandwiches to anyone who looked even a little bit homeless. The big Hawaiian guy with the tiny mustache sitting at the bus stop drinking beer out of a brown paper bag yelled, “Toss it ova!” So I did. It was a bad throw and I was impressed when he caught it. “Mana thanks you!” he bellowed.

  The girl in shredded clothes lying on the sidewalk next to her cardboard sign—it simply said HELP—probably didn’t want to get up either, so I tossed a sandwich by her feet.

  We gave sandwiches to the group of teenagers under the banyan tree who were very friendly and obviously up to no good. None of them wore shirts but they all wore backpacks. “They’re selling pot,” Ana told me. I instinctively looked for Cam and Jed around the tree and was glad when I didn’t find them.

  After Ali’i, we did the parking lots behind Ali’i, where there were even more half-homeless people. “The tweakers like the shade back here,” Ana told me. We found two gaunt girls in a boxy patch of shade behind the Lava Java dumpster who introduced themselves as Marigold and Petunia in low, just-woke-up voices. Their matching eyes were huge and black and their faces were like skulls. I gave them two sandwiches each and then—I couldn’t help it; I was such a mom—I said, “You girls are too skinny!” Which they took as a compliment. “Thank you,” they said, looking at each other like they were looking into a mirror, their ghost bodies floating like jellyfish.

  Hitting our hungry targets with sandwiches became surprisingly normal surprisingly fast. It felt like we’d been doing this for much longer than only thirty minutes of our lives. And it was fun. I liked being in a car with no top. I liked seeing people be grateful for our food. I liked that we were eating Red Vines from the Costco tub Ana kept in her car. I had wanted change, and here change was and it was palpable. Maybe there was a greater force. Or maybe there wasn’t. Either way, I liked how I felt in this car, doing these good deeds. In the moment a hungry person would take a sandwich from my hands, I could forget about the questionable things I had done in my life. All the reasons to hate myself seemed further away, and I felt almost free.

  As we drove on, looking for more targets, the sun dipping lower in the sky and our sandwich stockpile dwindling, Ana told me more about her past. Well, because I asked her to. Her mysterious youth when she hadn’t been an upstanding (or “outstanding,” as she had said) citizen. I wanted to know what she’d meant by that. I couldn’t ask directly, of course, so I kept it vague. “Tell me more about yoooou,” I said.

  Ana bit her Red Vine. “Do you want my whole life story or just the highlights?”

  “Whatever you want to tell me.” I took a Red Vine for myself because hers looked good.

  She took a deep breath. “Welllllllll…”

  And this was what she told me:

  Ana was born in the “armpit of the world,” also known as Trenton, New Jersey. Her parents never married. Her dad worked in a factory assembling guns? She wasn’t sure. Her mother may have said that once, but her mother said a lot of things. She was insane. “She was the kind of mother they arrest on Cops.” They moved around a lot. Couch-surfing. Welfare. Poor as shit. In photos of Ana as a kid, she wears Goodwill scraps and looks tenement-dirty. When her mother’s in the photos, she’s drinking a canned lite beer she probably begged off some horny guy in a trailer park. Some of those
guys she married. “Long trail of abusive stepfathers,” she said. “They all knew to hit below the face so no one would see my bruises at school.”

  Her mom died when she was seventeen. “Cirrhosis. It was better that she left this world. Her time here was done.” And after that, Ana got her GED. “For both of us,” she said. “My mom only made it to seventh grade.” She went to community college. Still in New Jersey at this point. But then she had a thing with her biology teacher. She was pretty; he was thirty-six. She was failing the class. She didn’t understand biology, but she did understand men. Yes, she’d used her charm to get the things she wanted in life more than once. And sometimes—but rarely—she’d used her body. Growing up the way she did, it only made sense for her to be this way. “And if you’re judging me for that, Nancy, well…that’s okay. I spent a lot of time judging myself. Years and years of self-loathing.”

  Anyway, fast-forward. Biology teacher gets fired, Ana drops out, gets a job at a bank. (“I cannot believe they let me work there.”) It was a new chapter. JCPenney skirts to the knee, alarm clock set at six. New boyfriend with a job who also shopped at JCPenney. They move in together, he proposes, she says yes but means no. The second after she says yes, she looks at his dumb young face and thinks, Shit, what did I just do?

  Meanwhile at the bank job, Ana had been skimming money. It wasn’t worth explaining how. “I’m a natural-born hustler,” she said. “I saw an opportunity and I took it.” By the time her boyfriend became her fiancé, she had fifteen grand in cash hidden in the AC vent, which she would open and close with the screwdriver she kept in her nightstand. (“The vent thing—I saw it on TV. But I didn’t know if real people did that. I was always worried. What if the AC broke and my cash got wet? Or blew deeper into the vent?”)