“His name is Lee, Susan.”
Susan doesn’t pay attention. She lunges forward, grabs Lourdes’ cheeks in both hands, and gives her another slobbery kiss, this time on the mouth.
She’s out the door before Lourdes can recover her composure. By the time she wipes her mouth and steps outside, Susan has weaved halfway to the rest area.
Lourdes gets a cigarillo, lights it, takes her key, turns off the lights, and steps outside. She dashes around the corner of the motel and lurks unseen in the shadows, watching Susan lean against one of the picnic tables. It’s the same one Lee sat on a year ago.
She watches Susan plop down on the bench and look up at the stars, in feigned nonchalance; her anxiety is obvious.
Moments later, a large SUV — maybe a Chevrolet Suburban or Tahoe, it’s hard to make out the exact model in the glare of headlights on high-beam — skids to a stop, spraying gravel. Susan jumps up, runs to the vehicle and tries to open the passenger door. The SUV lurches forward and stretches Susan’s arm before she can let go. She stumbles forward and tries the door twice more. The dimming of the headlights indicates the driver has finally unlocked the doors. Susan jumps in and slams her door. The SUV accelerates hard, making a 180-degree turn, leaving a shower of gravel in its wake.
Lourdes saunters toward the picnic tables and slowly finishes her cigarillo. The image of the snaking seedpod is long gone, but she remembers the dream where Lee erected the white wall blocking her way to the hollow. True, she hasn’t been to the hollow in while. She doesn’t need to go anymore, does she?
Reaching the skid marks, she pokes at the little gravel ridges with the toe of her runner. “Shit,” she says out loud. Her shoes glare white in the quartz wash of the parking lot lights. These are the runners meant only to be used on the treadmill. Little stones and fragments of gravel will now be caught in the shoes’ treads.
She throws her cigarillo into the valley of a skid mark. Little sparkles of red flash from the butt. She’s about to turn and leave but instead reaches down and picks up the remainder of the cigarillo. Dropping it in the disposal bin, she turns toward her room, intending to finish on the treadmill. A breeze lightly blows her hair out behind her. She brushes the strands where the crow buzzed her. She smells the creek and the purpling flax.
Treadmill be damned. She jogs out of the parking lot and follows her old route toward the mine. She’ll complete tomorrow morning’s run now and have more time to write before she starts another day of cleaning up other people’s crap. She has missed the feel of the cool air blowing her hair, blowing through her clothes, and chilling her skin. The smell of the fields and the stagnant water. She hasn’t looked at the stars in a while. Even the mine’s plume, as hateful as she sometimes feels it is, is a reminder of normalcy.
Breathing and heart-rate in time with her stride, she runs almost four kilometres toward the mine before turning back. The plume reflects bright moonlight in the dark sky and Lourdes again remembers the plunge underground. But she’s running, her breathing is under control and she does not feel the oppression of the earth pressing down on her.
When she returns to her room, comfortably numb from near exhaustion, she’s too wired to sleep. And instead of showering, she stays up with Hagar, finishing the novel sometime after the morning’s light frames the closed drapes. She then lies on the bed on top of the blankets and falls into a short sleep.
The four-year-old girl in the brown field is her Mary. The seedpod slithers up beside the young girl and she reaches for it. Lourdes lunges. She must stop Mary from picking up the hideous thing but she doesn’t get there in time and awakens with a start at the usual time.
She wants desperately to hold her baby. A pressure builds in her chest. Breathe. Calm. She visualizes the hollow in last night’s darkness. The purple thistle flowers are partially closed, drooping in the night’s cool. One thistle, near the shore, hangs its flowers in mourning . . . I’m not the only one suffering.
As much as she feels she should at this moment, she does not cry. Reason takes over and she accepts what is.
Getting up, she plugs her phone into the wall outlet but still doesn’t call Lee. Instead, she sends an email to his work address, where it will be downloaded to his cellphone. She apologizes for not calling and briefly mentions Susan’s unexpected visit. The story is too long for an email and she’ll explain when they next meet.
Utterly fatigued, she cruises through her unusually hectic day on autopilot. She is thankful for the busyness and doesn’t even try to write in her notepad. Instead, she sits in the kitchen with her eyes closed whenever work allows.
And, although her server performance is excellent, not even one mistake the whole day, she finds herself growing tense as evening approaches. Back in her room after her shift ends, she discovers an email from Lee telling her things are going well at the dam site and he should be in town later in the evening. He ends by saying, “Helena said you have Saturday off so let’s take the day to ourselves. Maybe go for a drive.”
She writes a short reply saying that plan works for her. Maybe he’ll send another message saying he can’t make it after all, so she does not close her email session and opens another tab in her browser. She clicks on the U of S bookmark.
Opening a third tab, she searches for The Human League music and watches a video for the song “Don’t You Want Me”, followed by “Fascination”. From there, she follows various threads until she stares vacantly at Electro House videos and finally a rave from Ibiza.
It is near midnight when she hears a car pull up outside her door.
Cracking the curtains, she sees Lee close his trunk and walk towards her door with his suitcase. She flings it open before he knocks and embraces him at the threshold.
The heat is back as soon as Lee drops his suitcase and returns the embrace. They kiss and she closes her eyes.
After a moment, they separate and he steps inside. “Sorry I’m so late. I had to stop a few times to exchange text messages with the support desk.” He pulls his phone from its belt holder and reads the screen.
Lourdes watches him thumb-click. She waits a long moment and eventually says, “I didn’t realize Bland Electronics has a support desk.”
“Not Bland,” he says, still clicking. “Liverwood mine’s technical support desk at their head office.” He finishes clicking but continues to watch his screen.
She continues to watch him in silence until the cell chimes.
Lee clicks once and reads something else. He smiles and a dreamy expression briefly sweeps over his face. He clicks frantically, focused on the screen.
“Must be very, very important, communicating this late on a Friday night,” she says.
Still clicking, he replies in that absent tone, “Just Deirdre from the help desk.” He presses one final button and quickly replaces the cell in its holder. “Just closing the log for that system board I installed.”
“You said ‘support desk.’”
“What?”
“First you said you’re messaging the support desk and you just now called it the help desk. Which is it?” She is not going to ask why he is in contact with Liverwood’s technical support when he supposedly was installing a system board at a power generation dam. Perhaps Long-shanks got the information wrong. Or maybe he’s dealing with a Liverwood mine service call at the same time.
“The full name is Systems and Technical Support Centre. Help desk, help centre. They’re both shorter and easier to say.”
“As is support centre,” Lourdes replies and turns around. Over her shoulder she says, “It’s been a long day for both of us, probably. I think we should get some sleep.” With that, she strips naked and crawls under the bed covers. Lee slowly does the same, neither of them saying another word. She turns out the bedside lamp.
After a few moments in the dark, he reaches over and gathers a handful of her hair. She hears him breathing deeply and succumbs to her body’s call. She climbs on top of him.
When they’ve
finished, they kiss briefly and she says, “Good night then.” She rolls over on her side of the bed. She hears him fiddle with his phone again but there is no annoying clicking. He sets the phone on the bedside table and is breathing rhythmically in minutes.
The sleep of a guiltless child, she thinks. She recalls him saying, on the day the treadmill arrived, that kids would love to play in the hollow. He has only brought up children one other time since. Once, shortly after sex, he abruptly asked, “So after Mary and all, would you ever want children? I think you’d make a great mom.”
She said calmly, “I can’t have children. I think you know that. We’ve had so much unprotected sex.”
Lee stiffened at her response and didn’t say anything.
“Why do you ask?” she said after a moment’s silence.
“No real reason.” He just lay there and stared at the ceiling, one hand behind his head, the other on his chest with thumb and index finger rubbing. “I was just thinking about children. I was an only child, which was okay, but all of my friends had big families. When I have a family, ideally I’d like four kids. And I’d better get on with it, considering how old I’m getting to be.”
“You’re not that old.”
“I’m thirty-four, you know. I’m reaching the far end of fatherhood.”
Thirty-four? I pegged you at twenty-five. And four children with me? Something prickled at her feet and she left for the bathroom, that conversation never finished.
Now, that prickling returns and she shifts to scratch. Lee only rolls over, his breathing still deep and rhythmic. She finishes scratching and pulls her hair behind her head. I feel fourteen years older than he is and he wants four children?
She is not sure if Lee believes she is unable to have children. This annoys her. If that irksome dream seedpod was real, using it like a blackjack on him might be in order, might feel really good.
Her fatigue finally pulls her into darkness and sleep.
There is an image of that completed wall of white blocking her way to the hollow so she retreats to her room where, in the brown field of thorns, she watches Lee in the distance with his cigar, the smoke flying upward and merging with the plume. The seedpod is outside her window, tapping on the glass. The clicking sound, harder and harder . . .
Lourdes opens her eyes to Lee sitting upright against the headboard, knees drawn up, hands and phone resting on his legs, clicking away.
“Hey you,” he says, fixated on his cell. “Just messaging mom and dad. Give me a second.” A minute later, he presses a final button and, smiling, sets the phone on the bedside table. Shunting to face her, he says, “How did you sleep?”
Lourdes sits up beside him and sees that the phone lies display down. “Not bad,” she replies, “You?”
“Great. That fresh northern lake air up at the dam always induces fantastic sleeps.”
She says, “You mentioned a drive in your last email. What did you have in mind?”
“Dunno. We’ll figure it out. Tell me about Susan’s visit first, though. You said it was a long story yesterday and I’m intrigued.”
She relates the story but omits the locked SUV scene in the parking lot.
“How did you feel about that blast from the past?” he asks.
“What could I feel? I haven’t been friends with Susan since the Treadwells brought me home from the hospital. She was obviously too drunk to know what she was doing. I doubt if she’ll even remember the visit today.”
“Were you at all concerned about Barton making an appearance?”
Lourdes can’t help herself. She grins an evil grin. She feels her face burn with sadistic glee. Helena is right about her being a fire-haired she-devil. “Not in the slightest. I suspect the horn-dog has had more dalliances than with me. All it would take is one comment and it would be all over town. Simple as a whisper. Then the innuendo takes over and there’s suddenly corroborating witnesses. I’d love to see all of his little adventures come to the surface. I’d love to lord it over Barton and he knows it. And I hope he suffers from worry every single day at the thought of losing his trophy wife. He deserves it. I didn’t tell you what else he did when he picked Susan up.”
She goes on to describe the door-lock antics in the parking lot.
Lee is studying his hand while he rubs his thumb and forefinger. His action is a deliberate and calculated pause but she is in a wicked mood. She will wait him out.
Eventually he asks, “What else haven’t you told me, Lourdes? That door story is a prime example of details omitted until you feel like telling them. I think there’s other things in your life you haven’t told me. That lack of trust hurts me. A healthy relationship isn’t one with untold stories. How much more is there about you that remains secret?”
She says, “There’s nothing more about me you don’t already know. Why would you even ask a question like that? What could you possibly think that I’m hiding?”
“Well.” He pauses. “You’ve never told me everything about Mary. Like maybe how you feel about her.”
“I’ve already told you how I feel about her. Every time you’ve asked. Are you going to keep picking at me until you hear something you want to hear? That doesn’t make for a healthy relationship either.”
Lee looks directly at her. She meets his stare directly.
He says, “You told me the story about Mary. But you never told me how you feel. Just a minute ago, when you were talking about your lost friendship with Susan, you said ‘since the Treadwell’s brought me home from the hospital.’ You didn’t say ‘after Mary died.’ I think there’s so, so much you’re not telling me.”
After this, she doesn’t want a seedpod blackjack, she wants him deep down in the mine. In the lowest crosscut with a single, sputtering candle so he can see the earth give way just before the flood from the water-bearing strata reaches him, drowning the last of the light and him. She says, “All that was buried long before you came along with your amateur, internet-based psychoanalysis. Why are you digging in mineshafts sealed up ages ago?”
“Because they may be sealed but things haven’t been dealt with,” he says. “If you’ve dealt with it, why do you never talk about it? Why have you never taken me to see Mary’s grave?”
“I don’t need to see Mary’s grave. Ever.” Lourdes suddenly wants to leave her body, the first time in a long time she’s felt that, but she stays rooted.
And for the first time Lee does not back off with his passive, “Okay” response. He says, “If it’s all buried and dealt with, prove it. Take me out to Mary’s grave. If you even know where it is.”
His face is without its neutral, yet smug expression. It is strangely shadowed, with eyes narrowed and forehead furrowed.
Lourdes folds her arms across her breasts. She studies the way her cleavage forms as she presses her arms against herself. She studies the freckles on her upper chest and then those on her arms. The light red hairs on her arms are like fine, prairie weeds. She says, “I just told you. I don’t need to go out there.”
She also feels suddenly guilty about wishing Lee drowned in a mineshaft. She knows that terror of the deep. Why would she wish that on anyone?
He says quietly, “But what if I need to see the grave?”
“Go ahead.”
“And what if I need you to go with me?”
“Won’t happen.” She twists around and swings her legs off the bed. She stands, covers herself with her housecoat, and strides to the bathroom. After closing and locking the door, she steps into the shower and turns the water on cold. She entices The Human League’s “Fascination” into her head and recalls the lyrics. She lets them play in her mind over and over while concentrating on the feel of the cool water on her skin.
When she emerges from the bathroom, Lee is still sitting in the bed, that damn phone back in his hands. He quickly sets it, display down, on the table, and folds his hands on his knees. His face is back to its normal, passive expression.
“I thought you were going
to the graveyard?” she asks, in an attempt to sound harsh.
“Not without you. I see clearly now that there’s more to the Lourdes’ story. You have unresolved issues. I’d like to help you with them so we can get on with our lives together.”
“I have ‘unresolved issues,’ do I, Doctor Markham?” She is so frustrated with these machinations. He is trying to prove something. If she goes with him, he wins; if she doesn’t go with him, he wins. He could say that he talked her into it or that she couldn’t face the grave; either way he could lord it over her forever.
Lourdes pauses in mid stride. But, she thinks, if they do go, she can prove these supposed unresolved issues are a fallacy. Her so-called secrets are nothing more than a confabulation of an immature mind, an attempt to gain some kind of control over her. The way Barton controls Susan with his constant messaging and phone calls and locking and unlocking of car doors.
She will poison any such plan. She says, “Let’s go then. Right now.”
Dropping her housecoat to the floor, she flounces naked to the fridge and makes her buttocks sway and breasts bounce with each contrived and focused model-like step. She takes out a bottle of Boost, downs it, and flounces back to dress. “I’m not waiting for you in the car. Keep up, if you want to go out there.”
Lee throws the blankets back, gets up and quickly dresses. They are ready at the same time. He is even quick enough to grab his cellphone.
Damn him again and again, she thinks, stepping onto the gravel parking lot.
The day is already hot and humid. The early morning sun hits hard. Crows caw in the pine windbreak and distantly from the hollow behind the motel. Marching directly to the passenger door, she waits until she hears the locks clunk before she tries the handle. Opening the door she sits and buckles in one fluid motion.
Lee gets in leisurely. He puts the key in the ignition. He adjusts his inside mirror. He slowly reaches forward to start the car. Leaning back, he adjusts the driver side mirror, then the passenger side mirror. Eventually he clicks the seat belt in place and jiggles his shoulders, like he’s settling into a chaise lounge. He adjusts the inside mirror once more, puts the car into gear, checks over both shoulders and then slowly backs up.
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