The Shimmering Road

by Hester Young

  In the photograph, Pam and Donna stand on a beach, arms wrapped around each other, grinning broadly. Hair blows in their eyes. For years I’ve envisioned Donna DeRossi toothless on a street corner, but this smiling woman with shoulder-length auburn hair is an altogether different story. Pam’s right about one thing: I don’t look like my mother. Her round, pink face lacks all my sharp angles and her friendly blue eyes are a far cry from my jaded green. She wears a demure two-piece purple swimsuit with a skirt that hides her upper thighs, and I can see her toenails half buried in the sand, crescents of fluorescent pink. Yes, she could stand some orthodontia, but there’s nothing glaringly wrong with her, no glassy, drugged-out gaze or apathetic stare to warn you off. She doesn’t look like the kind of woman who would abandon her toddler.

  Don’t think of her as your mom, I tell myself. This is Micky’s grandmother. That’s the only reason she matters.

  “She has such a great smile, doesn’t she?” Pam says from behind me, and Noah nods politely.

  “How did you guys meet?” he asks.

  “A church thing.” Pam’s face lightens, the pleasure of her memories undercutting, for a moment, the intensity of her grief. “I noticed Donna right away. She was so nervous, like this little animal you might scare away if you talked too loud. We were just friends for a while. She had a boyfriend back then, some asshole. I never thought we’d turn into anything.”

  I turn away from the photo. “A boyfriend?”

  “Yeah. Before me, Donna was always with men.”

  “Was she bi?” I ask. “Or it just took her a while to figure out who she was?”

  Pam smiles as if my attempt to neatly categorize human sexuality is misguided. “She loved who she loved.” She takes off for the living room, temporarily reanimated, and grabs a stack of photo albums off the shelf. “Here. I’ll show you some more pictures.”

  What initially sounds like a tedious excuse for Pam to reminisce proves revealing—touching even—in ways I did not anticipate. Because, if the photos are any indication, something happened to Donna DeRossi once she sobered up, ditched the asshole boyfriend, and fell in love with Pam.

  She came alive.

  I look at photos of my mother waterskiing on Lake Havasu, pitching a tent amongst the red rocks of Oak Creek Canyon, and standing by a waterfall in the middle of the desert, hands on hips, her smile one of goofy affection.

  “Seven Falls,” Pam says. “That’s just a few miles away. You guys will have to hike it.”

  I don’t remind her that it’s over a hundred degrees out and I’m knocked up. In another six months, I might be game. I move to another album, an older one, where the image of a pouty but beautiful girl on the first page captures my attention.

  “Is that Jasmine?”

  Pam nods. “Yeah. That’s Donna’s album. You can have it, if you want.”

  As I flip through the opening pages, it’s apparent why Pam doesn’t want this book. Every photograph is of Donna’s daughter. With her cat eyes, ever-changing hair colors, and less-than-subtle makeup choices, Jasmine doesn’t resemble me any more than her mother does. We have similar figures, perhaps—narrow shoulders and a tendency to carry weight in our thighs—but I can’t imagine ever dressing mine as she does. I spent years working at Sophisticate, a women’s fashion and lifestyle magazine, so I’m hardly opposed to showing skin, but Jasmine’s outfits are two sizes too small, inappropriate for anyone not trolling the Vegas strip. Some perverse form of sibling rivalry bubbles up within me. Really, Donna? I think. That’s the one you stuck around for?

  Beside me, Pam stares down at Jasmine’s image with an expression of antipathy that is oddly gratifying. I remember her less-than-flattering description of her stepdaughter yesterday and can’t quite argue with the word “trashy.”

  “I guess you and Jasmine weren’t close,” I say.

  “Jazz was thirteen when Donna and I got together.” Pam moves across the living room to the window. “That kid hated me from day one. Said I made her mom gay.” She peers out the blinds, watching as a landscaper rakes the gravel. “Her real beef with me was that I wouldn’t put up with her shit. The kid never had rules until I came along.”

  “Donna wasn’t big on discipline?” Noah asks, and I know he’s mentally filing away whatever he can learn about Micky’s early influences.

  “Donna was a good person but a lousy mom,” Pam says. “She’d spent so many years checked out, wasted, high or whatever, she felt like she owed Jazz. She tried to be her friend, and that’s no way to parent.” She turns away from the window. “Worst arguments Donna and I ever had were about that girl. Four years we dealt with her crap. When Jasmine moved out, it was the happiest day of my life.”

  I do some quick math. “She was seventeen when she left? That’s pretty young.”

  Pam shrugs, and I doubt she ever devoted much time to worrying about her stepdaughter’s well-being. “There was a boyfriend. He was older.”

  “Was that Micky’s dad?” Noah asks.

  “No, no. Micky’s dad was later. There was a long line of boyfriends, believe me.”

  “Which one was the father?” Noah seems anxious to establish Micky’s paternity, and I wonder if he’s planning to Google the man later to make sure he’s not a serial killer. I hope so.

  “Ruben Ramos.” Pam supplies the name without emotion. “Vargas from Homicide has been asking about him, too. I don’t know if he’s a suspect or if they think he might want custody, but they’re trying to hunt him down. Good luck, I told them. Ruben was just some Mexican guy here on a student visa.”

  “I’d like to talk to him,” Noah says. “Before we adopt Micky, I’d like to meet him. You have no idea where he is?”

  “His visa expired, and far as I know, he went back home a few months into Jazz’s pregnancy. Could be anywhere.”

  I say nothing, but it occurs to me that there could be more going on here. If Pam and Jasmine despised each other so passionately, Donna may not have shared all the details of her daughter’s love life.

  I continue flipping through Donna’s photo album. She’s not nearly as exhaustive in her documentation as Pam, just scattered snapshots of Jasmine’s prom and graduation, a swim party, someone’s birthday. Once Micky is born, however, everything changes. Suddenly the pages are filled with this drooling, dark-haired baby. Micky sleeping. Micky staring solemnly. Micky sucking on a pacifier. Micky sucking on a bottle. Micky crying. Micky smiling. Micky examining a toy. Micky bundled up in Donna’s arms, asleep, as Donna beams down at her. They go on and on, as loving and as thorough as any doting grandmother’s photos.

  I feel a strange mixture of gratitude and resentment, happy that Micky had at least one adult in her life who appears to have loved her without reservation, and bitter that this same woman failed her own two daughters so completely.

  Noah squeezes my hand. “It looks like Donna and Micky were pretty close,” he murmurs, and turns to Pam. “Did you spend a lot of time with Micky, too?”

  She closes her eyes for a moment and touches her forehead. “Jasmine didn’t want me anywhere near her daughter. I saw Micky every now and then if Jazz brought her over here. But she usually made Donna come to her place. It was disgusting, the way she used that kid to manipulate her mom.”

  I don’t doubt there’s some truth to Pam’s depiction of Jasmine as narcissistic and demanding, but I can’t imagine Jasmine was the only controlling force in Donna’s life. I’m beginning to get a picture of Donna as a pliant peacemaker who catered to the needs of those stronger than she was—a list of people that almost certainly included Pam. Yet somewhere inside her, Donna must have possessed her own hidden reservoir of strength, or else how could she have successfully fought addiction for so many years?

  Enough. I put the photo album back on its shelf. I don’t want to care about these people.

  Noah points to a splashy ceramic plate th
at’s mounted on the wall, trying to shift the conversation to something less fraught. “That’s nice. Is it from Mexico?”

  Pam nods. “One of the women Donna worked with made that for her.”

  “Donna worked in Mexico?” Noah raises his eyebrows.

  “Sometimes,” Pam confirms. “She worked at a nonprofit that helped women living in Sonoran border towns become financially independent. She spent a lot of time in Nogales.”

  Inwardly, I groan. A nonprofit to help impoverished women? Is Pam kidding? Why couldn’t my long-lost mother be a junkie, a self-involved bitch, some cheap and stupid floozy I’d never miss? Did she really have to Do Good Things? To have been a positive influence in the life of a child? If my mother had value as a human being, if she could demonstrate kindness and compassion in her life, where does that leave me, the daughter she discarded and forgot?

  I am thirty-nine years old, and still, the sense of rejection is acute when I realize that for the last thirteen years, Donna DeRossi ignored my existence not because she was ruled by addiction, not because she was a worthless scumbag, not because she was injured or dead or suffering from memory loss, but because . . . she chose to.

  I wasn’t worth her time.

  I swallow back the lump in my throat and tune suddenly back in to Pam and Noah, who have moved on from a discussion of Donna’s inspiring international work and are now comparing firearms. I don’t love that Noah carries a handgun, but at this point I’m resigned to it. He’s had a concealed-weapon permit as long as I’ve known him, and these days, my bad dreams have left us both feeling vulnerable.

  “That can’t be standard issue,” Noah says as he admires Pam’s piece. “What’s that, a 1911 subcompact?”

  “Yep. Smith and Wesson Pro Series,” Pam replies, her head bobbing up and down. “The power of a forty-five, but the smaller barrel leaves you with more options for deep concealment. I can jog five miles wearing this baby, no problem.”

  Even though Noah is impressed, I’m disturbed that she still has possession of any firearms, period. “Nobody took your gun?” I ask. Her romantic partner just died in a violent shooting. Has the TPD neglected to properly investigate one of its own?

  Pam knows what I’m getting at. “I spent the last two weeks answering questions at the station while the team combed this place for evidence,” she says evenly, and I realize for the first time that she is dealing with more than just her own grief. “The guys on the unit looked at both guns I own, believe me. If there was any way one of my weapons killed Donna and Jasmine, they would’ve confiscated it and run ballistics.”

  “So they have some idea of the type of weapon they’re looking for,” I muse.

  “They must,” Pam agrees. “I’m guessing they found casings at the scene. Or it was a shotgun.”

  Noah watches our exchange with a frown, and I can see he does not want me pursuing this further, especially not with Pam. “Well,” he says, “now that you’ve been cleared, Pam, hopefully Homicide can do their job and find the actual bad guys.”

  “Cleared?” Pam casts him a half smile. “Oh, I’m still on their radar. Vargas was pretty disappointed when five people confirmed my whereabouts that night. He probably hasn’t given up on a murder-for-hire angle, the little fuck.” She bites her lip. “It doesn’t matter. They’ll follow the drugs. They have to. Fifty tablets of Rohypnol need some explaining.”

  “Good thing you had a solid alibi, huh?” I watch her closely. “Where were you that night, anyway?”

  “Charlie.” Noah covers his face with his hands, embarrassed, but Pam waves him off.

  “No, no. That’s the way you gotta be. Cautious.” She turns to me. “I was at a poker game with some gals. Donna was going to come, but Jazz asked her to babysit, so . . .” She falls silent, and I can only imagine how this final act of Donna’s—choosing her daughter over her partner—has added to Pam’s feelings toward her stepdaughter.

  Noah slides her weapon back across the table to her, signaling the end of our conversation, and secures his own Glock in its holster. “We better get goin’. I guess we’ll see you tomorrow at the memorial, though.”

  Pam turns to me. “I hope . . . you learned a little more about your mom today.”

  I nod. More than I wanted to, actually.

  She’s still holding her gun as she walks us to the door. Noticing my uneasy expression, she slips the weapon into a nearby drawer. “I take it you don’t carry?”

  “No.”

  “Neither did Donna.” Her dark eyes glitter. “Be careful. The world’s not as safe as you want to think it is.”

  I consider telling her that firearms are more likely to kill a household member than to be used in self-defense, but I’d be the wrong woman making this argument to the wrong woman. Pam and I are already part of a statistically anomalous group. Just five months ago, I was held at gunpoint in Louisiana. Donna and Jasmine are dead, and my unborn daughter is in danger. If carrying a lethal metal object at their sides offers Pam and Noah some peace of mind, however false and illusory that peace may be—well, maybe they’re onto something.

  “I know what the world is like,” I tell Pam, feeling some small part of my identity crumble as these unnatural words form in my mouth. “You’re probably right. I should learn to shoot.”

  • • •

  THERE ARE SEVERAL SHOOTING RANGES around Tucson, but Pam sends us to the Bullseye Gun Club. “It’s where cops go,” she explains, and that’s all the recommendation Noah needs. He’s thrilled at the prospect of arming me, having pushed for this moment ever since the Louisiana incident. To me, it feels like failure, the surrender of my beliefs to a more depressing pragmatism.

  No one can blame you for wanting to protect yourself, I think, but I still have a sense that I’m losing something, a purer version of myself, when I enter a place that rents machine guns by the hour and sells human-shaped targets.

  From the outside, Bullseye Gun Club looks like a long, rectangular warehouse, innocuous against a mostly empty parking lot. The front of the building has been devoted to a retail and rental store, with weaponry displayed so casually, it feels artificial, like a Hollywood prop room. On the walls, I spot bumper stickers with slogans like GUN CONTROL IS BEING ABLE TO HIT YOUR TARGET and PUT LOCKS ON CRIMINALS NOT GUNS.

  If I’m expecting Hick Central, the man at the counter doesn’t quite look ready for a Deliverance casting call. In fact, his reddish beard and gold-rimmed glasses call to mind my old friend Dirk, a gay bartender in the West Village. Redbeard has busied himself with a pair of young male customers, clean-cut twentysomethings who also fail to match the Woolly Mountain Man image I somehow have of gun owners. One is a short Latino with an easy smile; his companion is a good-looking white boy with steely blue eyes.

  As we wait, Noah and I entertain ourselves by looking over the various paper targets for sale. Beyond your basic dartboard-style target, there are pictures of zombies, werewolves, and other creatures that gun aficionados apparently enjoy spraying with lead.

  “Good to know we can prepare for a gnome attack,” I say. “Classy joint.”

  “Yeah, well. Things might have turned out different for Donna and Jasmine if they’d paid this place a visit,” Noah says.

  One of the young men at the counter, the guy with the piercing blue eyes, glances sharply back in our direction. I don’t know if it’s my pregnant belly or flippant remark, but I get the feeling we rub him the wrong way. I stare at the floor and keep my mouth shut.

  “All righty.” Redbeard slaps a box of bullets down on the counter. “That’ll be thirty with the officer discount. You guys are in lane six.”

  Off-duty cops. Pam was right about this place. I watch as they slip on their protective eye and ear equipment and make their way through a large metal door covered with safety reminders.

  “Now, what can I do for you folks?” Redbeard does not seem scandaliz
ed by a pregnant woman in a shooting range, but I feel self-conscious nevertheless. “You looking to purchase a weapon today?”

  “Actually,” Noah says, “I was gonna teach my lady here how to shoot.”

  “I’ve got some twenty-twos if you want to start her off easy.” The man reaches into the display case and emerges with a dainty little handgun.

  Noah’s lip curls in disgust. “Aw, come on. Shoot someone with a twenty-two and all you do is make ’em mad. She’s gonna use my piece. Nine-millimeter semiauto. Might actually do some damage should it come to that.”

  Frankly, I’m not sure I want the ability to inflict damage. “Is it safe out there in the shooting area?” I ask, hand pressed to stomach.

  Redbeard laughs, and I catch a flash of a shiny gold filling. “Nobody’s gonna shoot your baby,” he reassures me. “Except maybe you, if you don’t follow the rules. Just keep your gun pointed in a safe direction, and don’t put your finger on the trigger ’til you’re ready to fire. Got that?”

  “I got it.”

  • • •

  SHOOTING IS EASIER than I anticipated, but it’s also louder. From ten yards, I can set my sights on the target and more or less hit my intended zone, and after fumbling the first few tries, I eventually get a knack for loading a cartridge. The noise, however, I can’t adjust to. I recoil every time, flinch whenever a bullet casing is expelled from the chamber, and our daughter seems equally jumpy. I wish I could apologize, explain that I’m doing it for her.

  “You’re doin’ great,” Noah says. “Relax.”

  But I can’t relax. Even with ear protection, every bang is a reminder that the object I’m holding could kill someone. Could kill me, kill my baby, if my dream is right.

  Adding to my apprehension, the blue-eyed officer a few lanes over keeps staring at us. His friend tries to distract him, nudging him and cracking jokes, but the man’s icy demeanor never changes.

  “What’s his problem?” I hiss to Noah in between rounds of gunfire.