Clara at the Edge

by Maryl Jo Fox

  Perching on Clara’s night table, the purple wasp casts a cold eye on her as she sleeps. The wasp, her swollen head aching, knows Clara is stalling like mad—so hung up about Frank that she can’t even approach the cesspool surrounding Samantha’s death. Clara has to come to peace with both her kids before she dies—has she forgotten? And what about a chance at personal happiness? Would that be so awful? The wasp’s job is to heal Clara, but Clara has to be an active partner. The purple wasp has to act fast.

  20 days left.

  After leaving Stella’s, Frank drives the trailer cab a few miles down the highway to the Salmon Falls Creek picnic area. It’s deserted and unlit this time of night—a few picnic tables on concrete slabs, trash cans chained to the cement, rest rooms portable. High grasses grow beside the lazy stream. Tonight a cigarette doesn’t even sound good. He gets out of the cab, goes around to the passenger side, gets in, slams the door hard, locks both doors, and gets out the adjustable headlamp he always carries in case of car trouble. He places it around his head and turns it on. He gets the wooden slab he uses as a work surface from behind the passenger seat and puts it on his lap. He puts his tool case and the half-finished burl on the work surface.

  He picks up the burl. In the headlamp’s glare, the half head looks eerie, crazed, like some totem from a savage society. He readies his tools and digs viciously into the unfinished places around the eyes, nose, and mouth. In a previous session, he gave it a mouth because he couldn’t stand that it lacked one. Now he wishes he’d left it mouthless. The features are cramped and distorted, dwarfed by the oversized forehead. The expression on the face is one of torture or terror, as if the enlarged brain causes the personage great agony. He makes the mouth an empty tunnel going all the way through to the back. He digs at the eyes, making a deep hole for the retinas. One eye is squinting, the other one swollen. The brows are beetled, hanging with a few straggly roots that had taken hold in the crevices.

  He works for almost an hour, scarcely aware of time. Finally he runs out of things to do to it. He lifts it up and examines it in the glow of the headlamp, sets it down again, rolls down the window. It’s gotten stuffy in the cab. He lights a cigarette, takes a deep drag, lets his arm hang out the window, tapping ashes off, realizes he doesn’t want it. When the flame is nearly down to his fingers, he stubs out the cigarette in the crammed ashtray on the dash. Outside it’s quiet, nothing but a lone cricket and the sound of nearby sluggish water. He scoots down in the seat, leans his head back. He’s tired to the bone. At least Scotty gave him a key. He looks at the completed head again, once more shines the headlamp on it.

  It looks like trash. It looks like nothing he would want. He digs a hammer from under the seat, gets out of the cab, sets the work surface with the burl head on the ground, and brings the hammer down hard on the head. It cracks in two. He bashes and bashes until it’s in small pieces. He feels better. He picks up the work surface and slides the shattered burl pieces onto the ground. The pieces hitting the ground sound dry and rustling, like tinder. He walks around to the driver’s side, gets in, slams the door, puts his tools back in the leather case, puts the case and the work surface under the passenger seat. He revs the engine and heads over to Scotty’s.

  chapter 13

  Sprawled on the motel bed, Edie pulls on her zirconium navel ring as she stares at the cottage cheese ceiling and the rusty water stains above the dresser. She’s just wolfed down a Hi-C, some Corn Nuts, and a Baby Ruth from the vending machines near their room and feels a little better, but not much. She pours the rest of her nickels into the little green purse, now bulging with them, and throws the plastic coin cup away. She doesn’t want to think about anything until Dawson gets back from work. Hands resting on her flat belly, she dozes off a few minutes, wakes, and stares again at the ceiling. Listlessly she hums a song from “Grease”. She parks an ankle onto the opposite knee and rocks back and forth, wishing she knew the rest of it. But she can hum it, and repeats it over and over, until she almost dozes off again.

  Like everyone else, she’d laughed at the words from Grease over the years. Now, having seen where the words come from, she knows it would be fatal to tell anyone she secretly envies Gidget. Gidget had all those people protecting her—parents, the surfer guys, everyone bending themselves into pretzels to keep her safe, the innocent virgin. The thought of all this is too painful for Edie. Lighting a cigarette, she thinks, Don’t be stupid, bozo. Gidget’s dead; Gidget never was. Good riddance to fairy tales. She massages her stomach and examines her glittering fingernails. It’s too quiet. A car door slams somewhere. It’s 11:25 on Saturday night. Everyone is still out.

  She stares at the generic motel room painting that hangs opposite the bed—a horse-drawn covered wagon commandeered by a bedraggled man under a pale desert sky. Two skinny kids and a bonneted mother peer from the wagon opening. Edie has no idea how these people could stand to come all this way west, but then again, history was never her strong suit. She yawns, turns on the late local news, finds it boring, and promptly falls asleep.

  When Dawson gets back at 12:20, she’s limp and twitching in her sleep. Disappointed, he takes off his clothes and flops down beside her. Soon he’s snoring. In the morning around ten, he slowly opens his eyes and looks over at her, the dry roar of the air conditioning already numbing his mind.

  She’s facing him, chewing viciously on a piece of beef jerky he brought back. She starts right in. “This place is such a sorry ass dump, Dawson. I mean it. Let’s get out of here. I can’t stand it another minute.”

  He gets a cigarette from the bed table, lazily lights it, and flops back down, staring first at the stained ceiling and then at her. “What’re you so steamed about, baby?”

  “Me? Nothing a little food wouldn’t help,” she fumes, her lips tight.

  “Come on now, you know we’ll eat.” He looks at her. “I know something’s bothering you.”

  She burrows on top of him and mumbles into his neck. “These stupid guys at Desert Dan’s were carrying on last night about how gambling is a sin and we need rules instead of freedom and I need guidance. Can you beat that? One guy had a little hat and this beige outfit, a tunic. He looked like a Hare Krishna. The other guy was this ripped bodybuilder. He was the worst. He thought I was dressed like a slut and all.”

  “What? What guys? You dress beautiful, baby, you know that. Those guys are asshole losers.” He tries to lift her chin to look at him. “What were you doing at Desert Dan’s anyway? I told you we don’t have any money.”

  She keeps mumbling into his neck. “Keep your shirt on. I didn’t gamble. Those guys were so obnoxious, Dawson. Preaching like they knew better than anybody else. The guy in the tunic said we should shut down the casino, only he didn’t really mean it. It was so stupid.” She rolls off him, lights a cigarette, inhales deeply, faces him again. “So the bodybuilder gets the owner in a hammerlock, other guys pile on, and it starts to look bad.”

  “Serious? Come on now, don’t fool with me, baby. Where was security?” His cigarette ash is almost ready to fall onto the bed. She offers her ashtray; he taps it in. She snuggles against him.

  “Good question. I left. It was too crazy for me.” She buries her face on his chest.

  He slowly counts all the rust stains on the ceiling: five. “Baby, don’t ever listen to guys like that. They don’t know nothing. How beautiful you are. How smart.” He squeezes her hand. She turns onto her back. Lazily he blows a perfect smoke ring. They both watch it float higher and higher, until it expands and disappears. The air conditioner roars. He turns his head and speaks softly in her ear.

  “Smoke rings are one of the prettiest things in the world, don’t you think, baby?” He blows in her ear. She giggles and rubs her ear. “Smoke rings don’t hurt anyone; they don’t ask you to do anything or be anything. They just float and get all cloudy and soft and then they disappear, but not really. You know the smoke’s still around somewhere, but you can’t see it, and it’s fine not to see it. First it
’s in your lungs and you blow it out, and it gets all invisible and nice in the air. And if you open the door, all this invisible stuff that was in your lungs goes up into the sky. So part of yourself ends up in the sky, and you didn’t even know it. Ain’t that nice?” He doesn’t say anything for a minute. He nibbles soft kisses around her eyes and forehead until he’s surprised to see tears running down the side of her face into her black roots and hacked-off blonde hair. “What’s wrong, baby?”

  She turns and buries her face in his shoulder. “I never felt as close to anyone as you, Dawson. You’re like a miracle to me. I always feel better when I’m with you.”

  “Aw, baby.” He wraps his body around her.

  She’s full-on crying now, but trying not to. “The only way to be in life is mean. Even when you don’t feel mean. I know that as much as you do. I’m no fool. Everybody’s out to get you one way or another. But I get tired of it all, good and tired.”

  “You gotta be mean, baby. It’s curtains if they get you.”

  She looks at him for a long minute, tears glistening. A cloud passes over her face. “Just don’t leave me, Dawson. At least not for a while. I’ll look back and remember you, every minute of it, and be happy.” She cries some more.

  “Aw, baby, I’ll never leave you, you should know that. You and me, we make a team. I never had a team before.” Choking up himself, he holds her and lets her cry. He swallows hard, trying to control himself, clear his mind so he can figure out what to do. He needs a plan.

  They lay there entwined as her tears subside. He thinks he loves her, but the idea of it frightens him. Love rips you up. He knows that for a fact. His stomach still tightens when he thinks of his mother leaving him at the Safeway in Reno. Finally he musters himself, as if waking from a dream. “You’re right, baby, we need to clear out. Time’s up for this dump.”

  She knew he’d buck her up. He always does. He’s the idea man. He already showed her how to shoplift at the mini-mart. And how to meditate, sitting on the stained motel carpet with his legs crossed, palms up on his knees, making her chant “Om” one night when she was bummed because she thought she’d never see her brother Neil or her uncle Jim ever again. It wasn’t that she got along so well with Neil and her uncle. On the contrary, she and her brother were always fighting. And Uncle Jim, the Idaho farmer with his sugar beets and tractors and his white forehead, was really boring. But she sensed her life with Dawson would take dramatic turns she couldn’t quite make out yet, and there would be no going back to studying art in L.A. or seeing what was left of her family.

  Dawson said she could see her relatives any time she wanted. He wouldn’t stop her; he’d go with her and she could introduce him to the family. “Family. That might be interesting.” His voice was harsh. A few nights later, he told her how his mother dumped him at Safeway. He said he wanted to see his mother just one more time and that would be enough. After all, he’s been without her for twenty-one years. Edie had looked at him gravely, her eyes blazing, and said he should do it, go look for his mom. He said he had an aunt in Reno and maybe they could start there.

  Her tears over, they lie on their backs and stare at the ceiling. “Let’s do it,” she says firmly. “Let’s go find your mom.” They solemnly shake hands. Dawson feels exalted. He’s got a real partner now for the first time in his life.

  In Edie’s mind, she’s already gone from this place. She sees herself sitting beside him pushing ninety in the stolen black Camaro, windows rolled down, the straight ribbon of highway like a ruler on the desert floor, hurtling toward Reno. She’s already got her homemade souvenirs from this motel—their first motel—stuffed in her little chartreuse shoulder purse. Dawson copped a pencil from Sam’s Steakhouse the other day, so she used the three measly sheets of Sagebrush Motel stationary to draw three pictures: of him, her self-portrait, and a sketch of their room.

  The drawing of Dawson shows him sleeping on his back with his mouth open, thin patrician nose, drool creeping tenderly across his cheek, black stringy hair in his eyes, arms folded across his skinny chest. He looks eighteen, new to the world, unmarked by pain or sadness. Her self-portrait is half her face looking in the mirror. She looks suspicious and sad. Facial hardware pierces her eyebrow, nose, and tongue; her mascara is smeared, an angry zit on her left cheek, her butch haircut sticking up every which way, puffy lips a sensual smirk. Her expression surprised her, because when she drew it she was really happy. She and Dawson had just made love and she felt like a female lion protecting her pride as he lay there making small snoring sounds like little hiccups and gasps and his breath hit his teeth and made a little whistle. Sometimes his teeth would click together as if he were snapping at something. She always likes it when he dreams and snores and has all these contortions.

  Now he’s wide awake staring at the ceiling. His eyes move back and forth as if he’s reading, but she knows his eyes being jittery like that means he’s thinking.

  He’s thinking he never got through all the rooms in the old lady’s house, just the kitchen and living room and then she appeared like a ghost at the end of the hallway. The way she looked scared him off. He thought she’d be cowering in her bed, but no, she told him to clear out in this strong voice. He gets mad all over again thinking how he got scared off. He should’ve tied her up, kept looking for the money. He won’t let that happen again. Adrenalin surges in him. He’ll show Edie how he operates. She’ll be impressed. He turns to face her.

  “Those guys telling you how to dress, baby; everybody’s on your case, right? I got people on my case too. Must be something in the air here. Remember that old lady you told me about when you first got off the bus? Well, she plopped herself down in the booth where I was waiting for you the other day. She wanted to know all my business. Acted like she had some rights over me, like she was going to set me straight. She wanted me to pay for some window that got broken, but she can’t prove I broke it. She even had the gall to give me advice about my allergies.” He snorts. “Bunch of nosy people around here, doll. Old lady’s been on my case ever since I landed here, sticking her nose in where it don’t belong. What I’m telling you, baby, is you’re not the only one with people butting in your business. I got the old lady telling me how to clear up my snotty nose and you got assholes telling you how to dress.”

  Edie’s been listening intently. “Yeah, now I remember. That old lady was in the casino last night. She was listening to the bodybuilder and the tunic man preaching about rules and regulations. She looked all stern, waving her hands at them to stop bugging me. That’s what it was. The bodybuilder was mouthing off at what I was wearing and the old lady was waving her hands at the bodybuilder so the beige guy would lay off of me—like I couldn’t take care of myself—like I’m a baby.”

  Helplessly, she flashes on Gidget’s parents squirming because those horny beach boys might take advantage of their untouched daughter. Her laugh is bitter. Dawson looks quizzically at her.

  She never had any parents saying who she could see or how she should act. No, what she had was a front row seat to her mom getting killed, and then she and Neil had their junkie aunt Betty to take care of them. Well, she won’t fall for that Gidget crap and get her feelings all hurt because she never had any parents like Gidget’s. Parents aren’t like that anyway. It’s all in the movies. No old lady’s gonna step in and help her now. Besides, she never tells anybody what happened to her real mom. Nobody.

  They trade glances, checking to see if the other one is only pretending to be brave. Edie’s probably a robbery virgin, he thinks, but she won’t chicken out with him around. And Edie knows Dawson’s a pro. Falling silent at last, they furiously smoke and watch militant smoke rings fill the room.

  “What the fuck,” he says, sitting up. “An old lady like that probably has a lot of money socked away. Her whole life, she’s got nothing to do but hide her money. I bet it’s all in jars lined up in the back of her closet. Or where she keeps her towels.” Energized by this fantasy, he says, “Let’s s
ee what she’s got. Let’s go right now.” He gets a wide, leering grin on his face. “Nobody can tell us what to do. We set our own rules. Right, baby?”

  “Fuck yeah.” She’s barely blinking. She likes this idea, likes all his ideas. The other day over at Rodman’s Hide-Away he picked a lady’s purse. The lady was busy gabbing with her friend, and he sidled up to her purse next to the slot machine and aced out a twenty from it. His eyes just glowed right before he did it, like they’re glowing now. She stubs out her cigarette. The hairs on her arms stand up. “Now you’re talking, dude. I like your style.” She’s never done a robbery before. She’s scared and wants to hide her fear. She rips out a yell, sounds like a banshee.

  He has a quarter bottle of Jack Daniels he copped from a liquor store in Cheyenne. While getting dressed, they trade chug-a-lugs and throw the empty bottle in the waste basket. She’s wearing Dawson’s navy-blue boxer shorts and his black T-shirt, which she cut up with her nail scissors, giving herself a bare midriff and a hint of the bottom part of her breasts if she stands up straight.

  Dawson grins. “Here we go, baby. It’s Reno or nothing.” Witchy drunk, they’re ready to light out for the territory, as they say. He tosses the paper sack with his toiletries, underwear, and an extra T-shirt into the back seat of the Camaro. Edie dabs on dark purple lipstick from her little shoulder purse that bulges with nickels. Her stomach is tense.