by Maryl Jo Fox
She runs her fingers over the hat’s wide, sweeping brim swathed in layers of lavender net, sheer as spun glass, the brim dipping and peaking at rakish angles. It was Lillian’s hat. So was the matching dress in lavender chiffon with an empire waist, the hemline dipping long in back, a lovely dress of World War I vintage. Lillian let Clara keep the dress and hat because she met Darrell in it. There’s the dress at the end of her closet, covered in plastic. Clara, her eyes stormed with tears, can hardly see the dress.
In 1946, after their bold Greyhound escape from North Dakota, Clara and Lillian got full scholarships at the University of Oregon: Lillian in art, Clara in English and education. Their easy-going cousin Loretta gave them a deal on a low-rent apartment and often had them over for dinner. Clara worked part-time at the university library, Lillian at a vintage clothing store. They got by.
In her junior year, Lillian met Jan van Beek, an extravagant Dutch exchange student, who convinced her he would be the next international art star, so Lillian abandoned everything to go back to Amsterdam with him. It was a fiery romance.
Clara was furious. She couldn’t believe her twin sister would sacrifice her own considerable talent to serve a really disagreeable man. She and Lillian had huge fights about it. Clara said van Beek was a soul-sapping egotist who would suck Lillian dry and leave her with nothing. Lillian said he was going to introduce her to major galleries in Amsterdam. But Clara was right. Van Beek proved to be an abuser and a lazy liar with a succession of mistresses. Lillian was unable to break away. She squandered her own talents to promote his.
Eventually van Beek did become a minor success with a series of art exhibits in Europe before he drowned in a boating accident in 1995 on Lake Como, along with his latest mistress. Then in early 2000, Lillian had a heart attack outside a West End theater in London as her new lover Patrick Chalmers looked on aghast, a man who was everything van Beek was not—considerate, supportive, gentle. Chalmers shipped most of Lillian’s oil paintings to Clara. They’re packed away in her closets.
Lillian had extraordinary talent, and nothing came of it. Clara blames van Beek to this day. From the first, Clara disliked his preening ways, his way of captivating a room, rendering Lillian colorless and silent, muzzling her wry humor so he could pontificate at will. Lillian never wanted to return to the U.S. She felt European, loved its old buildings, gray streets, superb food and wine, outdoor cafés, her friends who loved to discuss philosophy and art. America was too real for her, too brusque and unresolved. It reminded her of their painful childhood, years both sisters wanted to bury.
Despite their huge fights over van Beek, Clara and Lillian came together as dedicated sisters for Lillian’s engagement party. At the last minute, Clara suddenly realized she had nothing appropriate to wear.
“I have just the outfit for you,” Lillian said with a smile. Clara was too practical to own a romantic outfit like this. It was Lillian’s style—dazzling, not of this world, the dipping hemline, the glass beads on the bodice and the wafting sleeves. Clara felt like an imposter queen trailing around their cousin Loretta’s wonderful rose garden on River Road, not far from the small apartment they rented from her.
And then a tall man named Darrell walked up to Clara, where she stood next to the Charlotte Armstrong rose bushes. The top of her head reached his armpits. After pleasantries, he looked around awkwardly and began to speak gravely of Roosevelt and Truman. She couldn’t stifle a laugh at his serious topic.
“Sorry!” she blurted. “I’ve never met anyone who started talking about Roosevelt and Truman the moment I met him.”
He blushed and laughed too. “Sorry. I’m not good at small talk. Maybe you can teach me.” Then he asked if she liked to dance. She laughed and they danced right there on the grass by the roses. He was a wonderful dancer, and he hummed the tune of “Mona Lisa,” saying he didn’t know the words. Afterward, he plucked a rose petal, yellow and fragrant, and gave it to her. Smiling, she tucked it into her small purse. After the party they walked the streets of Eugene, talking, talking, still in their finery, until they arrived at Clara and Lillian’s apartment and Clara fed him cold roast chicken and sliced tomatoes. She still has the shriveled yellow rose petal in her jewelry box. She remembers his lopsided smile, his hair standing straight up in cowlicks on the right side of his head, one shoulder riding higher than the other, his tie on crooked. He hated appearance-mongering and folderol of all kinds. His gray eyes clear and straightforward, his absolute integrity: How could there ever be anyone else? She sits on the bed, tears welling.
They had one of those intense love affairs that exclude everyone else. To Frank, his parents lived inside a magic circle. Samantha at an early age retreated to books and ballet lessons, while Frank ran after girls. Clara knew something had changed with Frank when he was almost nine, but she wasn’t sure what or why. Had he caught his parents in a private moment? He watched the way she and Darrell lightly touched each other while talking, the way their eyes sought each other in a silent language. The boy seemed lonely, despite all his girlfriends and many friends. Clara watched him, and he watched her back.
In the evenings, Clara played the piano. It helped her relax. Darrell was refreshed by Clara, her piano playing, and his two children. Growing up in the Great Depression, too young to serve in World War II, he was grateful to have a steady job as a linotype operator at the Eugene Register-Guard. He had only two years of college. The incessant roar of the linotypes (like giant typewriters) and printing presses, the repetitive selection of iron letters from long trays, loading them onto the linotype, carefully cleaning each letter—all this wore him down. But he had the woman he wanted, and they had a family to raise. He would never disrupt the steady money. So he stayed at the Register-Guard, his supply of Tums and Phillips’ Milk of Magnesia never enough to quiet his fiery belly full of ulcers they didn’t discover until the year before he died.
Every weekday afternoon, Frank and Samantha listened for his key in the door at four fifteen. He was the first parent home, fresh from riding his bike to and from work. Clara drove the Chevy. She stayed at school correcting papers until five thirty while Darrell made dinner. Once home, she marched around telling detailed stories about her students. After dinner, she did the dishes and played Schubert and Bach on the piano for a half hour before the children finished their homework. This was the time of day when Frank and Samantha gained admission to the exclusive world of their parents, a world in which Clara was the star and no one talked. At least they all belonged together then.
The Parenting Room in her head creaks open as she sits on the bed with the hats. I paid more attention to my students than to my own kids. Her heart constricts at the welter of memory and insight coming at her: She was too strict, too indulgent, too self-absorbed, too complacent. Millions of examples come alive in her head. A parent’s regret lacerates to the death.
She can’t go on nattering this way. She can’t hallow the past anymore. She has to deal with the present, and that’s that. She gets out her scissors and makes a decisive cut through the layers of net on the lavender garden hat. She must have a way to protect Frank in an emergency. She’s got to train the wasps. She wants no more stinging in her house. So she cuts a lavender net circle to protect the neck opening. She sticks the circle to the neck opening with Velcro, so the opening can be free or closed, depending on the threat level of the wasps. She cuts up a few more of her T-shirts and makes a net face mask for each one, in case her social calendar fills up. She tries on one of the altered T-shirts and laughs with delight. She looks like a veiled woman from the Middle East. Nobody will get stung now, especially not Frank. Relieved, she keeps working. The wasps, bunched together on top of her head, see she’s happier. They set to bickering and jostling among themselves like playful puppies. The purple wasp cartwheels around her as she works.
In the morning, Clara’s out walking. She likes the plain desert, the absence of shadow, the early silver light. Missing Frank, she lopes onto the short street
s just to be around people. To see others going about their business, watering a potted plant or walking hand in hand, gives her hope that maybe she too might live a normal life around normal people before she dies, that she and Frank might finally talk about painful matters.
On Royal, a younger woman exits her ramshackle trailer, talking to herself. Twice she trips as the curb ends at a cross street and as she blindly steps on a Raggedy Ann doll lying on the sidewalk. Recovering her balance, the woman takes in great whiffs of caffeinated steam rising from her travel mug. A hot pink shoulder purse slaps her thigh. Absently she smooths her Desert Dan’s uniform with her free hand, still talking to herself.
Clara grins. She used to start her teaching days like this, talking to herself in the car, inventing teaching tricks as she drove to school. She knows this is Stella from seeing her with Frank, just as Stella knows this is Frank’s mother.
“Hi there.” Clara catches up to her.
Startled from thought, Stella spills coffee on her skirt. “Oh!” she cries.
“Sorry! I thought you heard me coming.”
Stella’s laugh is easy. “I’m in a deeper trance than usual this morning.”
They introduce themselves. “Scotty told me about your shows,” says Clara. “I’ve been hoping to meet you.” They’re heading toward Desert Dan’s.
Stella’s tone is conspiratorial. “You like political theater? Performance art?”
“I’m interested that you’re trying to do something different in this god-forsaken place.”
Stella laughs. “It’s not so god-forsaken after you get used to it. I’m a city girl—L.A. and San Francisco. I like it here. No one puts on airs; people have a lot of heart. I like that.”
You haven’t met Dawson, Clara thinks morosely.
Stella blows on her coffee. “I’m trying to come up with a new performance idea. It’s got to be short. Scotty sticks to the bottom line. Three minutes max.”
“So, what’s your project?”
Stella tells her about Mr. Hamdi’s hatred of Western ways, his anger at his Westernized daughter, his intent to take Aisha back to Saudi Arabia to make her a proper Muslim woman, Aisha’s acceptance into pre-med at Boston University that she’ll have to abandon.
Clara nods. “You see that a lot, young immigrants clashing with their parents over American ways. When I taught high school, I had several bright Latinos give up on college plans because their parents wanted them to go to work right away.”
“Well, Aisha’s father thinks Western ways will make her a prostitute. Wearing jeans and a tank top means she’s already lost her way. Culture shock is part of it, of course, but I’m blown away by the man’s complete distrust of his daughter. She was accepted to a top pre-med program, for Pete’s sake.”
Clara frowns. “Well, but in our own culture wars, we sometimes kill people—homosexuals, abortion doctors.”
“True, we go tribal. So, what do you think—would people side with Mr. Hamdi or his daughter? Jackpot’s pretty conservative, you know—mostly redneck, but a surprising number of liberals, more than you might think.”
“Might be a hung jury.”
“Might be interesting. The traditional patriarch versus the rebellious daughter. Some kind of moral tradition that must not be breached. Trouble is, my kind of theater has a lot of improvisation. Things can go off the rails. My players involve the locals, and the locals often don’t know it’s a performance. They think it’s real. Might cause trouble.”
“I can see you’re a born troublemaker.”
Stella winks. “That’s my job.”
chapter 12
Dawson and Edie laugh and grapple and shed their clothes inside the door of the motel room and collapse onto the bed. It was supposed to be a quickie, but it turns into another marathon. Edie’s mock-pouting because Dawson’s got to work the swing shift at his new temporary job, washing dishes at Sam’s Steakhouse, another grab at small change before they hit the road. Laughing, they roll over and over, almost fall off the bed. She’s biting his cheek, neck, arms. For the first tireless days, they would have sex and eat and sleep and have sex and eat and sleep. They’ve had sex on the bed, in the shower, on the floor, on the dresser (they almost broke it), in various inventive positions. They have sex, they eat Ding Dongs and Fig Newtons and beef jerky and Hershey’s with Almonds and they drink Snapple and Coke. Dawson has an old padded vest from army surplus, convenient for shoplifting at the mini-mart.
She could drain a man, he thinks, though he loves her wildness. She’s a lot younger and nicer than Beth, his last girlfriend. He broke up with Beth in Cheyenne three weeks ago and vowed never again to hook up with an older woman (Beth was thirty-six to his twenty-seven). Beth kept tabs on where he went, how he spent his money, the kind of shaving cream he bought, even the state of his digestion, which could be better. He finally nixed Beth after he saw her at a sports bar flirting with a guy who had enormous pecs and biceps and a muscle T-shirt that said WHITE POWER on front and back. Dawson didn’t want to mess with any of that, so he just stole a car and ended up in Jackpot.
Edie’s not like Beth, thank God. She’s only twenty-one, and all she wants is sex. He certainly doesn’t mind that. In the last week he’s sleeping better than he’s slept in months. But Edie’s a strange one, mysterious. Whenever he tries to turn the talking to a personal vein, she clams up. Usually he clams up when a woman asks personal questions.
He dozes off for a minute, then wakes with a start. She’s lying there naked, smoking and watching him in his postcoital nap. “What the fuck time is it,” he mumbles, turning onto his stomach again.
“Four thirty.” She draws deep on her cigarette and grinds it out in the clear glass ashtray on the nightstand.
“Christ, I was supposed to be at work a half hour ago. Why didn’t you wake me up?”
She climbs on top of him, blowing smoke in his face. “Let’s do it again before you go,” she says with a sleepy smile. For a minute he weakens, then stops himself.
“Doll, we got no money. I don’t wanna get fired on my fourth night. We got fifteen bucks between us. Lemme go.” He gets the clothes they dropped by the door. He’s hungry. Even the Ding Dongs are gone. He’ll snag something at the restaurant.
He had to get a job after Aw Shucks ran off with their gambling money. He’s still pissed about that. Edie’s tired of hearing about it. The kitchen at Sam’s Steakhouse, not far from Desert Dan’s, is steamy and loud with rattling dishes. He likes it that way, to be surrounded by a cloud of steam. Nobody sees him. He’s just a pair of wrinkled white hands at the sink because the rubber gloves he has to wear have holes in them. He rinses crud off plates, plops the dishes into the big dishwasher, runs it, empties it, the cycle begins again, over and over, for eight hours, four p.m. to midnight. It’s disgusting to see plates of half-eaten food—fat from bloody steaks, half-gnawed bones, wilted lettuce, curdled sauce, lipstick stains on cups and glasses, imagining people’s spit on the silverware. He’s only working there a week or two, just to get exit money to L.A., after wasting time in Reno to look for his mom.
Edie lies on the bed watching him shimmy into his smelly clothes. Every night when he comes back to the motel, he smells of detergent, bleach, and sweat. In the steamy restaurant kitchen, his clothes stick to him. They need to find a Laundromat pronto. She’s had to wear Dawson’s clothes: boxers, T-shirts, a couple of bandanas she found in his old duffel bag, not knowing she’d be staying in Jackpot.
“I got a job at the drugstore,” she lied to Neil and her Uncle Jim the other day when she saw them waiting to board the bus heading back to Twin Falls. “I’m staying awhile.” She was surly, as if fixing for a fight, but her uncle just looked down at the ground.
“I was afraid of that,” he said softly.
Neil fiddled with his camera.
“No pictures, dammit,” she said, embarrassed by the feelings rising in her. Ignoring her, Neil corralled a passing woman to take the picture as he and their uncle quickly g
athered around Edie. They scurried into the bus as she walked away, her head held high. She took a deep breath. Her life was really starting now. She might be famous someday. She sees her flushed face in somebody’s big truck mirror.
Now, in the motel room, she looks up at the rust-stained ceiling, wishes she’d brought some colored pencils and a drawing pad with her. At least then she could get some decent sketches of this god-awful place. As it is, all she does is watch TV while Dawson’s at work, because let’s hear it again, they have no money, not even for a little gambling. Cranky, she clicks onto a rerun of Gidget.
“How long we gonna stay here?” she calls out. He’s trying to untangle his long black hair at the bathroom mirror with a half-toothless pink comb he snagged from her little green purse. Edie barely looks at him when he comes into the room. She’s involved in the movie.
“Well, we can leave any time, doll, long as we get some money. They’ll pay me tonight. But a hundred bucks ain’t going very far.” She doesn’t say anything. He gives her a quick glance. “Don’t go gambling tonight.”
“Jesus Christ, I know that.” Her eyes are glued to the small screen.
He winks at her as he waltzes out the door. “Maybe we can get some money fast, doll.”
“I’m all ears.”
The door clicks shut. Alone now and sullen, she lights another cigarette. As soon as Gidget is over, she’s going over to Desert Dan’s. Maybe she’ll win big.
