“Like an arrowhead,” he said.
I reached for the phone. This was a call I really didn’t want to make. Tomás was right. My parents were probably freaked. But Tomás held it back, punched a number, and brought the phone up to his ear. “I got her,” I heard him say. “Yes, she’s all right. It’s my fault. I promised her we’d bank-comb. I should’ve told you. We’ll be back in a while.”
As he hung up the phone and handed it to me, I felt as though I reached one watery finger through the pane of glass that was still separating us. There were still a lot of things about Tomás that I didn’t know, and until I knew them, I wouldn’t be his sister or even his friend.
He reached into another pocket, pulled out a flashlight, and pointed it at the banks.
“So what are we looking for?” he said. And that was it. We both had a job to do. But I thanked some unknown deity (in the sky again rather than just around the bend), that Tomás was the one to come get me. I moved over to accommodate, and the two of us had an anti-race, trying to see how slow we could go, and what might be revealed.
It is a chilly fall evening. Karen and Tomás are hanging out, whispering in the kitchen over martini glasses of ceviche—a seafood cocktail in a tangy tomato base. It’s Spanish night so there are tapas, salty dishes with olives and Jamón Serrano, and if those don’t fill you up, pans of paella to be washed down with pitchers of bloodred sangria.
Mom has hired an acoustic guitarist, a ponytailed guy in a gray vest who is out on the floor right now, his fingers tripping over strings at light speed in a lively but melancholy sound. In a surprise move, Gretchen is doing a table dance, flamenco style. She’s had no formal training but she’s donned a flouncy skirt and removed the Snoopy bandage over her nose ring. She oscillates like the bread attachment on Mom’s food processor. A gang has gathered around her, clapping and shouting E-pa! and trilling their tongues. Ai-yai-yai!
Back here in the kitchen, which smells of saffron and capers, Mom has complicated our lives by insisting on serving ceviche in martini glasses. I’ve already broken three, they’re so top-heavy, they tilt at the vibration of a guitar string. But Mom says the stemware is necessary because it makes the shrimp and squid ring look classier, and she’s right.
Karen and Tomás are leaning against a butcher block. Karen is forking calamari from her top-heavy glass with a plastic cocktail sword. She is a third of Tomás’ height, even when he’s slouching. She nudges him in the thigh and nods at me.
Hey, guys, I say, unloading dirty dishes in the sink.
Order up, Mom says. I reload for table seven.
Hey, Ronnie, Tomás says, straightening to his full, lurching height. Do I notice him? Or do I notice Karen stamping hard on his foot? Hard to tell. It’s just a rustling in the corner of my eye as I pile plates on my tray, trying not to tip the ceviche glasses.
Are you coming to the game on Friday? Tomás says.
Of course.
I go to all his basketball games and sit on the bleachers between Esperanza, his little sister, and my dad. Dad jumps up every so often to get us nachos with Squeez Cheez and stale donuts and root beer from the marching band concession stand. He always looks guilty as he does it but I don’t care. In our lives, stale, processed food is a rare treasure—an elaborate quartz in the middle of a brown thunderegg.
Now, in the kitchen, Tomás looks to Karen, who gives him a “go ahead” motion. She even kicks him in the shins.
Great, he grunts to me. Maybe…
Veronica? Mom calls, shaking a curl out of her eyes. Her face is flushed with heat and stress. We have paying customers. I’ve got to get this food to table seven.
Gimme a sec, I say to Tomás, and balance my tray carefully out the kitchen doors. No ceviche spillage this trip. Score one for me.
When I come back in, I am ready to hear what he wants to tell me. I’m about to tell him okay, I’m here for you, at least until I have to jump up again, which is going to be instantly. I know I’m technically an only child but I’ll be Marcia Brady to your Greg. Together we’ll put the blend into blended family.
But when I back through the swinging doors, I see something that unsettles me. Karen is reaching up to poke Tomás in the chest.
You may look like the Hulk, she says, but you’re just a giant sissy. She spits with accusation. Tomás shrinks where he stands. At that moment Karen is taller than he is.
When I ask him later about what he wanted to say, Tomás tells me it was nothing. When I question her separately, Karen also says it was nothing. But I can’t shake the feeling that, had the joint not been so busy at that particular moment, the two of them would have outflanked me in some way.
11
Tomás and I got back from our bank-combing at twilight, what should have been the beginning of the dinner rush, but no one was rushing. As we stood on the sun porch shaking ourselves off, I took in the changes. Mom had set up warmers of food along the café windows. Odd. Mom didn’t believe in buffet-style meals. She said they were salmonella in the making, a sign of a lazy chef serving egg substitutes and near-bacon on Sunday mornings.
And then, next to the sun porch door, was a stockpile of things—chanterelle mushrooms in paper Safeway Foods bags; jars of blackberry preserves and spiced peaches, pickles with a label that said “Aunt Irma’s Private Select” on them. And it wasn’t just food in the stockpile. There were hand-knit caps, mohair blankets, ancient videos of Babar and Dora the Explorer—all collected in a giant wicker basket, beneath a sign-up sheet that said “Armstrong Babysitting Rotation” at the top.
The list was completely filled with names.
“What’s this?” I asked Tomás, tapping the paper, which was only beginning to curl upward, like a scroll.
He shrugged and stomped the river water from his boots. “Just what it looks like,” he said. I couldn’t tell if he was being sarcastic and didn’t get to ask him before he tromped off into the kitchen.
I studied the list again, then peered through the sun porch window. The whole first floor was completely full. I don’t know what Mom had in the warmers but people were eating it—some of them off paper plates balanced in their laps while they sat on sofas. Mom didn’t believe in paper plates, either. Kum Ba Yah guy was still there, but he had progressed to “The Long and Winding Road.” No one was singing along, but no one was gossiping, either. The mood—at least what I could see from the sun porch—was somber but respectful.
“It was smart, really, bringing everything here.” Dad was leaning against the doorjamb, two fingers loosely gripping the neck of a Pyramid Hefeweizen. “They all said the same thing. They wanted to bring tuna casseroles to the Armstrongs but thought your mom would be a better person to coordinate help.”
Looking at those people through the window made me feel the way I had shoveling that bunny carcass while everyone was warm and inside: I was circling something, looking for a way in. So I rallied the best way I knew how.
“I’m ready to work,” I said.
“You don’t have to if you don’t want to,” he said. “Gretchen and Tomás and Gloria Inez can cover, if you need some time to yourself.”
I tried smiling at him. “If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather keep moving.”
Dad smiled back at me, and it seemed the smile even reached his eyes, as though to say he knew exactly what I was talking about. Then he reached into his pocket and pulled out a green plastic pill bottle. When he shook it, the contents rattled. “Before I forget, have you been in my medicine cabinet?”
“No.” I stayed away from Dad’s pharmaceuticals, convinced they were the only things keeping him from mildewing and curling up on himself. I had Advils for the days I worked out too hard. That was as serious as I wanted to get.
“ ’Cause I thought I had twenty of these but now there are only fifteen.”
“Fifteen of what?”
“Lorazepam,” he said, twisted the cap off, shook out two, and handed them to me. Since my hands were still wet they left li
ttle chalky circles in my palm.
“I’m not sure I want these,” I said. The way he hoarded them made me deeply suspicious.
“Nothing to be afraid of, Ronnie,” Dad said. “I take them sometimes to help me sleep. If I’ve had a really rough day. You know. Like you have.”
I doubted he’d ever had a day like mine in his life, but maybe he had. Maybe that was his problem. Maybe at his old job, he had them five times a week, fifty-two weeks a year.
“Take them one at a time. They’re addictive. And any analyst will tell you that what you’re feeling now—eventually you have to let yourself feel it. That’s when your mother’s talents come in handy. Pain is a lot easier to take with a meal.”
Like asprin, I thought, looking at the teeny pills in my hand.
Dad smiled sadly at me and walked away, skulking back down to the Astro Lounge. I assumed that was full of informal mourners, too.
Even though he told me I didn’t have to pitch in, I spent the evening circulating among customers, helped bus paper plates, all the while listening to snippets of conversation. People were sharing memories of Karen, as if sharing was a way to hang on to her. They all smiled warmly at me and some even gave my hand a squeeze, but no one questioned me—not even to ask how I was doing. It was as though they’d all resolved to let me be. And I felt a kinship for all the generous souls in that room, with their woven memories and crocheted hats and their soft but firm grasps.
“I had her in Sunday school, you know,” I heard one blue-haired woman say to another. “She couldn’t have been more than five. She asked me if elk could get into heaven. I tried to tell her that they didn’t have souls but that didn’t seem to help. Poor thing. She must’ve seen one strapped to the hood of someone’s pickup.”
The other blue hair clucked sympathetically. “That’s a toughie, all right.” They themselves seemed perfectly at home with the soul/no soul delineation. I envied them their sureness. Me? I didn’t know what I believed. If elk didn’t have souls, what about well-loved household pets? Dogs who wore bandannas and caught Frisbees; cats who purred and kneaded your lap when you watched Gilligan’s Island reruns; and maybe even goldfish who swam up to you and smiled when you walked toward them with fish flakes. Didn’t they deserve souls if we loved them enough?
I ghosted around until the end of my shift, my gestures practiced and fluid. I didn’t work so much as drift along, contemplating the big questions. I didn’t make any progress. At the end of the evening I’d circled around the afterlife more than the buffet. Finally, around 11:00, after the joint had emptied out, I went upstairs and collapsed on my bed. Gretchen had neatly tucked the hide-a-bed back underneath so there was no evidence she’d been here at all. She was a really good bunkmate.
I remembered Dad’s pills and pulled them from my apron. They were so teeny. Could something so small really pack a big wallop?
I put them on my nightstand. Maybe as a last resort, I thought. Besides: Dad had said that eventually I’d have to feel the pain. Why not now? No sense putting it off. Maybe I didn’t need them to get to sleep. Maybe all I needed was a soundtrack.
I know it’s weird, but nothing relaxes me so much as a band with really loud, really driving guitars, like the Clash or the Ramones. Or sometimes, if I’m feeling really low and deep, like I was tonight, I would reach even further back into the history of pop and go for the Who. Not just any Who. It had to be Quadrophenia, one of Pete Townshend’s concept albums, like his rock opera Tommy. I didn’t know what “concept” meant, other than the whole thing was supposed to stand as a whole instead of separate tracks plunked together. There were common melodies running throughout—some of them so subtle they sounded like echoes. Like: “Is it me, for a moment?” Moment moment moment… There’s a movie Quadrophenia, too. It’s about this kid who does too many drugs and feels like there’s a separate him for every occasion. Major identity crisis but since he’s English, he may feel divided but looks super spiffy with his rain parka, tooling around on his Vespa. At the end of the movie he stands on the seat of his scooter, kicks it into gear, and drives it off a cliff. You see it crash onto the rocks of a shoreline a hundred feet below, but you don’t see his body falling with it. And that’s the end of the movie. As the credits roll, you’re left to wonder: did he really do it? Or did he chicken out at the last moment and decide to live?
That last part was certainly morbid. But suddenly nothing else would do. I had to listen to Quadrophenia. I couldn’t go to sleep without it. Luckily, I had the whole thing in my iTunes.
I pulled open the drawer to my nightstand to fish out my iPod, but it wasn’t there. I foraged for it under bookmarks, a diary I never wrote in anymore, and several highlighters which, before they’d dried up, were pink and yellow. No luck. Then I thought: maybe I left it in my backpack. It wasn’t there either. Nor was it in my desk or on my bookshelf or hidden beneath the pillows on the window seat. It wasn’t in the bathroom. (I didn’t think it would be, but I was so desperate I checked anyway.) Finally I decided that there was nothing I could do. I’d look in the kitchen tomorrow, and then my school locker on Monday. Quadrophenia would have to wait.
I put on my jammies and crawled under the five layers of quilts. I thought about reading for a while, but then took another look at the two tiny pills on the nightstand and thought, do I dare?
There were more ways to be brave than crossing a swift current. So I scooped one of the pills up in my hand, stood on my Vespa, and jumped off a cliff.
Lost lost lost…
I am back on the Santiam River Road with all its twists and turns. The sky is overcast. Around me giant fir trees weep moss; the river wails as it rushes past. I am running toward the inn, but not gaining any ground. It is like running on a treadmill made of quicksand.
Then I round a bend and see Karen alive, wearing her blue whale slicker. Her light brown hair falls in perfect ringlets, but when she turns to me I see that the scar on her forehead is bleeding. Bright red blood and gravel are dripping into her eyes the way they had the first day I met her.
Karen! I call. I have to get to her. Something terrible is going to happen and only I can stop it.
She runs away giggling.
I run after. If I can catch her, I can save her. But no matter how fast I run I get nowhere.
Wait! I call as she disappears around yet another bend. Come back!
She pushes open the iron Patchworks gate and my heart leaps. Patchworks is not her destination. She is going beyond, and if I don’t get her back now, she will always be out of reach.
I sprint as hard as I can. I have to stop her.
She pauses on the back lawn, where gray river rock meets lush green grass. She kicks off her boots.
No! I lunge for her feet, raking at her with my fingernails, trying to drag her back.
But I am too late. The river floods the banks, its crying now a raw wail.
Lost! Lost! Lost!
12
When I awoke after what felt like only five minutes of sleep, it was still dark. A little girl with brown hair was leaning over me.
“Ronnie? Are you awake?”
My first thought was: Of course she’s still alive. Yesterday was the nightmare. Then I floated completely to the surface of my mind and remembered that that was impossible, and I jumped upright and crabwalked as far away from the apparition as I could. I could feel my fingernails oozing blood as I gripped the sheets. I’d clawed them raw, trying to drag Karen back in my nightmare.
The apparition before me now didn’t say anything, but neither did she disappear. After a few minutes, when my heart stopped sprinting, I reached over and switched on my bedside lamp.
“Jesus, Esperanza. You scared the pants off me. I thought you were a ghost.”
Esperanza’s lip wavered and made a kind of cedilla shape under her mouth. That was one thing she had in common with Tomás—both their expressions looked like punctuation marks. I wasn’t concerned about the cedilla shape though, because it almost al
ways looked like that. She was sensitive to the point of an anxiety disorder. Which meant that other than the passing physical resemblance between the two girls (brown shoulder-length hair, rounded belly of puppy fat), she was in fact the anti-Karen. Besides, Karen was ten and Esperanza was seven, which didn’t seem like that big a gap, until you factored in that while Karen knew how to identify every species of plant and rock this side of Dufur, Esperanza’s lone talent seemed to be sucking her thumb. It was a habit no one tried to break her of, everyone’s attitude about it being: why not if it gives her comfort? She’s had enough upheaval in her life.
“What happened?” I said.
“I couldn’t sleep.”
“Where’s your mom? Where’s Tomás?”
“Asleep.”
“Ah,” I said. And really, it made a strange kind of sense. But still. “Why wake me?” I asked her.
“Because I’m afraid,” she mumbled, her eyes flicking around the room.
“Of what?” I said.
“La llorona,” she whispered, as though even saying the name gave it power.
As I may have mentioned before, my Spanish is limited to what I heard Tomás and his mother say, which, in Tomás’ case, was mainly swear words.
But when Esperanza said la llorona, I suddenly felt cold, as though a freezing wind had whistled through the eaves and entered my bones. I didn’t even know what it was and I was afraid, too.
“What’s a llorona?”
“The river spirit,” she said. “The crying woman who drowned her own kids and lives in the water, waiting to lure more kids to their deaths.”
Lost lost lost… The crying woman. A water spirit. Was that what I had heard wailing to me this morning, before I knew anything was wrong?
I took a deep breath. “Who told you about that?”
“Mamá,” she said.
The River Page 7
