The United States of Us

by Kate Sundara

  Mia slips on a pair of chemistry goggles she found in the mess. She reckons she must look like Ruth’s friend Wil with his great goggly specs. ‘The band are excellent. They’re super talented.’

  ‘Oh yaaah,’ agrees April. ‘Those guys live like students but someday they’ll be big. When they close this distribution deal’ – alliteration and alcohol don’t mix – ‘Ryan’ll think he’s way too good for me and go and live in some giant penthouse in California. But Zak! He’s the worst! Women practically throw themselves at Zak. He has no shortage of female fans, if only he’d let anyone near him.’

  Another sting. And another. Mia looks to Ruth.

  ‘Take no notice, Mia, she’s drunk.’

  April doesn’t seem to hear or to care. She passes out in the bathtub.

  Mia takes a breath. ‘Are you with anyone, Ruth? Is that guy you were with at the gig your boyfriend?’

  ‘Wil?’

  Mia nods.

  Ruth sighs heavily. ‘Wil Jansen. No. He’s not my boyfriend.’

  ‘You wish he were?’

  Ruth looks startled, ‘Is it obvious?’

  ‘No. Don’t worry. I probably see it because I’m new around here – fresh eyes and all.’

  ‘I’ve been in love with the guy for three yeeeears,’ wails Ruth.

  ‘Three years?’

  ‘We lived in the same block in freshman year.’ Ruth leans forward, peering across at April, now dribbling on Mia’s shoulder.

  ‘It’s okay…’ says Mia, jiggling her arm. April doesn’t stir. ‘She’s out of it. Go on.’

  Ruth speaks just above a whisper. ‘When Wil and Zak set up the soup-kitchen I started helping out there. Wil also does counselling alongside his studies. I started booking sessions with him just so I could be around him more. Can’t believe I’m admitting this.’ Ruth’s big huff makes her fringe float.

  ‘Wait – go back: Zak helped set up a soup-kitchen?’

  ‘Oh sure. He and Wil – both of ’em. It’s how they wound up being such good friends. Before the band they were like brothers.’

  ‘Seriously? That’s weird, Zak never mentioned him.’

  ‘That’s probably because Zak left Wil to deal with it all when he quit to set up the band.’

  ‘Oh… so you never…’

  Ruth’s quick – Mia doesn’t have to say it: ‘Had the hots for Zak?’ Both their intuitions are running high tonight.

  ‘He’s appealing,’ says Mia, trying to sound objective.

  ‘Initially, of course, but…’

  ‘But what?’ She’s all too intrigued.

  ‘I dunno. I gelled more with Wil. He was so great to hang out with. Such a good listener. My feelings just kept getting stronger.’

  ‘So…?’

  ‘So we’re ‘just friends’,’ Ruth rolls her eyes. ‘Nothing’s ever happened. If he were interested, something would’ve happened by now – right? I just wish I knew for sure. Sometimes I feel like in holding out hope I’m letting life pass me by.’

  ‘There must be a way to find out.’

  ‘You won’t tell a soul…’

  ‘No, of course not. Besides, apart from you two and Zak, who else out here do I know?’

  Mia feels blessed that her love is reciprocated. Not everyone is so lucky…

  ‘How’s it going between you and Zak?’ enquires Ruth.

  ‘I’d like to have something of my own to get involved in. He’s so busy. I don’t want to get under his feet. I’m my own person, you know?’

  ‘So come help out at the shelter with me tomorrow night.’

  ‘The soup-kitchen? What do you do there?’

  ‘Serve food – not just soup – chat to people. And didn’t you say Zak’s with the band tomorrow night?

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘So it’ll give you something to do.’

  Seeing another chance to prove her independence, to demonstrate that she’s nothing like Needy Neve, Mia agrees. ‘Perfect!’ Besides, she wants to be of service and the shelter sounds like a good place to start. How great it is to be filling up an empty tub with new plans and new friends.

  * * *

  She makes her way back to Zak’s place at dawn. Dozing in Ruth’s bathtub was less than luxurious. With just a couple of cars rolling down Main Street, Mia passes the only other pedestrian on the other side of the road, a woman she vaguely recognises but can’t think where from, mind hindered by hangover and lack of sleep. Zak will probably be sleeping, she figures, she’ll creep in and slip under the covers with him, he’s likely exhausted after the concert last night. Only when she pushes open the front door she finds Wonderland turned warped: three semi-clad women in Zak’s bed, him reclined in the chair, smoking pot as languid as the Caterpillar with the hookah: Who are yoooooou?

  ‘Is this what you call a quiet night in?’ she confronts him.

  Zak’s too stoned to put up any kind of fight, ‘Mia… C’mon.’

  In the living room strangers strewn on the settee, beer cans and spliff-butts, pictures crooked on walls.

  ‘Yesterday you practically proposed to me and the same day you’re throwing an orgy?’

  Zak has no defence, just shrugs apathetically. ‘That’s rock ’n’ roll,’ he drones, ‘I’m sorry you got the wrong idea. Guess I say things in the heat of the moment.’

  Mia charges to the bedroom, two girls ruffled in blankets and most amused, one still sleeping. Mia stuffs her things into her backpack, flies out the door.

  Down at the homeless shelter, she tries to reason with the guy on reception after spending two hours sat in a park trying again to make sense of Zak’s behaviour.

  Ruth walks into the building. ‘Mia! You’re a little early for your shift!’

  ‘I’ve come to check-in.’

  ‘What? Why?’

  ‘Zak had company.’ Her curt tone combined with the look on her face makes it clear to Ruth what she means.

  ‘What! No!… Well you can’t stay here.’

  ‘I’ve nowhere else to go. I didn’t account for accommodation costs, Zak told me I wouldn’t need to. And it’s not like you have space at yours. You’re still waiting for your friend to clear out. I can’t sleep another night in your bath-tub.’

  ‘Mia, you’ve gotta be careful.’

  ‘I’ll be fine. I’ve slept in bus depots in Thailand. I can handle the local homeless shelter.’

  ‘But there’s some crazy guy on the loose. We still don’t know who or where he is.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘There’ve been some assaults in the valley these past couple weeks. Everyone’s got to be vigilant until they catch the guy.’

  This news comes as another shock to Mia, who’d so far felt safe in these streets. Is this whole fairytale town a façade? Illusions are starting to disintegrate all around her.

  ‘What about April? Maybe you can stay with her,’ Ruth suggests.

  Mia ruminates. ‘I could ask…’

  * * *

  It’s a warm day, stormflies swarm above the dust. Mia’s been staring off at distant mountaintops, chewing her nails, waiting for things to make sense. Yesterday’s blow is starting to ache like a bruise after a punch, like a burn starting to throb after a scald. She’s sitting on the sofa outside April’s caravan. Mia moved in yesterday.

  She’s been writing in her journal. Not about Zak. Rather a list of positive activities she could do to make herself feel better. Going back to England isn’t one of them. Mia considered the idea for all of a second before deciding that she’d spent far too long building herself up for this adventure to crumble in the face of adversity. She’ll stand strong. Somehow. Survival mode has become her default setting. Keep moving forward, keep going. She’s already ticked off one positive activity: volunteering at the shelter – Mia worked her first shift last night. Some of those big guys are intimidating, could crush a person with one hand. A lot of hard faces and jaded eyes. She wouldn’t have bargained on River Valley having so many homeless people, a lot o
f them looked Native American. Mia even recognised one of them as the woman from Zak’s online album: that lady with the broad cheek-bones and raven hair standing near the gas-station – that photograph she used to try to climb into before she knew this place – now knowing she’s the same woman she passed in the street at dawn yesterday, on her way back to Zak’s, before being shocked senseless by that scene in his apartment. Mia didn’t say anything to her about the photo. She spent most of the shift wordlessly serving up slop. I don’t like seeing her so sad, but what can I do? Through the thick air in that canteen – curdled with the smells of boiled food, alcohol, smoke, stale sweat and dirty clothes, the sounds of clanging and chatter and noise – she worked, observing all sadnesses before her. Through the billowing vapour from the vats, the broken shoes, flaky skin, dirty beards, blotches, scars, sores, toothless mouths, mental and physical afflictions of every kind. One woman shuffled forward with what looked like cigarette burns all the way up her arms, another woman copied – down to the tiniest detail – every action of the beefcake she came in with. One man flinched dramatically at the sound of every clattering tray. Another girl jabbed at food with her finger and spoke only in grunts, while a fraught looking guy picked up twenty forks, one at a time, putting each one down, muttering, twitching, picking up, putting down, muttering, twitching. Some people were sweating alcohol, others still drunk. April’s caravan is cramped, but she was right, Mia’s better off here than at the shelter. Mia thinks that everything she saw there should have put her own pain into perspective, but somehow it didn’t.

  A screech of brakes and April returns, flying around the corner, leaping off her bicycle, throwing it into the bushes beside the van.

  ‘Done for the day?’ asks Mia.

  ‘Sure am!’ April ducks into the caravan, re-emerges with her guitar and perches on the arm of the couch. ‘Two voicemails,’ she says. ‘Let me guess – Zak? You didn’t pick up?’

  ‘How does he know I’m here?’

  ‘I ran into him this morning. I mentioned you’d be staying with me awhile.’

  Mia wants to ask how he seemed but pride won’t let her. She takes it from his answerphone messages that he’s remorseful. His first message started with a greeting in a very proper British accent, and went on to say that he was sorry she’d walked into that mess yesterday morning, that it was a little gathering that had got out of hand, that nothing had happened, that he’d been high and had acted like an idiot and most importantly that she’d misinterpreted the whole thing. His second said if either she or April needed a shower then they should come over any time.

  ‘He misses you,’ says April. ‘Zak never calls me, that’s all for you, girl!’

  ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t plan on this. I won’t stay long. I’ll find somewhere else soon, I can help with rent in the meantime.’

  ‘No way!’ contests April. ‘You’re my guest, you don’t pay! Besides, it’s awesome having you here! Are you gonna tell me what happened? Zak was cagey about it all as ever.’

  ‘I don’t know what happened. One minute Zak’s all loved-up, saying he wants to marry me atop a mountain, then the next day he’s got naked women in his bed and doesn’t care about me at all. I’ve been trying to think if there was something I did or said, something I didn’t do – we haven’t slept together yet – surely someone deep as Zak wouldn’t dump me because I hadn’t put out after barely a week!’

  ‘You know he’s testing you, right?’

  ‘Testing me?’

  ‘Some people need that kind of reassurance. He’s testing to see how much you love him, y’know. How much do you love me? How far can I push you…?’

  Mia looks doubtful.

  ‘He’s afraid,’ claims April.

  ‘Afraid? Afraid of what? Surely I’m the one out on a limb here, away from everyone and everything I know! Why should Zak feel insecure here on his home turf?’

  ‘He’s not grounded on it, he’s all up in the air, scared of letting himself fall too far, too fast. You’ve been here, what, a week? He’s probably feeling so much already, he’s freaked himself out, that’s all. Zak was talking so much about you before you got out here. He was really excited, fizzing over, and that’s sayin’ somethin.’ The guy’s so private, you know Zak!’

  ‘Do I? It’s starting to sound like nobody does. And if Zak was talking so much about me, what was he saying? What does he even know about me? He never asks me a thing about myself.’

  ‘Those other girls didn’t mean anything to him. When you really like someone, sometimes you’re mean to ’em, that’s what Zak’s doing. Take me and Ryan – he can be a total jerk, but he only acts that way because he likes me.’ I was never that way with Mia. We didn’t play mind-games, we were friends.

  She looks up at April feeling a little more hopeful.

  Then April tuts and tells her. ‘Zak smokes too much weed. Makes him weird. I’ve known him a year but I still don’t know the guy. I’ve no clue what goes on in his life. He’s my step-brother ‘n’ all, but I don’t see him from one month to the next and when I do he’s not upfront, he doesn’t respect honesty. He comes up with these great elaborate stories of why he doesn’t show up when he’s s’posed to meet you. It’s like he believes his own lies even if no one else does.’ April’s disdainful tone and eye-narrowing suggest that her loyalties didn’t lie where Mia had thought. Shocked by April’s outburst, she sits in silence as April gives a breezy sunshine smile and takes up her guitar to strum pretty chords, looking like a folk singer from the Sixties.

  Two Janis Joplin songs later, Mia decides to at least try to be cheerful and to avoid talking any more about Zak. It’s only now, amidst her distraction, seeing April’s eyes like red-blue marbles, glazed and blood-shot, Mia realises April herself is stoned.

  ‘C’mon!’ she cries, tugging Mia’s hand, pulling her off the couch and into her daytime dance. ‘He’s not even worth it!’ April spins around on the dust-track, a mini cyclone at her feet. Mia breathes a laugh at her simple joy, at the freeness of her movement and through the fluid motion of her tie-dye dress, through the trail of incense she burns on the table, Mia starts to remember fun and freedom – all the better parts of herself that have settled inside her, until the last thing she feels like doing becomes exactly what she needs, and she starts to sway with April in the dust of her tattered yard. They dance like white witches at a summer solstice, dance around April’s old pink Mustang and up on the bonnet. They dance into evening and into downtown bars; jol- lying up lonesome cowboys, dominating the juke-box, the pool-table, the disco-floor, swapping accents to fraternize with strangers, drinking till April accidentally knocks her glass of beer down Mia.

  On the way home, the girls eat peaches and pumpkin seeds and reckon they can see Jupiter. Mia looks up at the galaxy and thanks her lucky stars for April, her Rocky Mountain friend in a rocky time, who helps her gain clearer perspective.

  Head pounding, Mia’s awoken the next morning by a rustling on the floor too small to be Cat. It could be a mouse, or rat, or rattlesnake, or baby raccoon – she doesn’t particularly want to investigate. Another rustle and it scurries away.

  With one eye still open, Mia watches the message-button on the answer machine still flashing with Zak’s messages from yesterday. Just then the phone rings. She gets up, grabs it, heart in mouth.

  Wil Jansen – Ruth’s Wil. Mia’s heart sinks. She sits back down on the bed, drawing her bare feet well up off the floor.

  ‘I’m just calling to remind you about the party.’

  ‘Wil…’ she pauses, composing herself whilst dealing with the disappointment of it not being Zak on the line. ‘How did you know to call me here?’

  ‘I called in at Zak’s. He gave me this number.’

  ‘You saw Zak? How was he?’

  ‘He seemed pretty caught up with things.’

  ‘Too caught up to come to your party?’

  ‘I want him to come. It’s too bad he and I don’t get to hang out anymore. I think chi
lling with us would do him good, help him wind-down, y’know?’

  ‘You don’t think he’ll show up?’

  ‘The offer stands. He said he’ll see how it goes. He’s… I guess he’s just real busy.’

  ‘Right.’ Mia sighs. ‘When is it?’ she asks.

  ‘Tomorrow. Remember I told you about it at the concert?’

  ‘Tomorrow… on a Wednesday?’

  ‘Graduation season, Mia – every night’s party night! We live in Dale Drive. Ruth’s invited. April’s welcome too.’

  Silence.

  ‘Mia…? Think you’ll make it?’

  She feels like bursting into tears, only she can’t; she holds them all inside, even her inborn optimism is faltering.

  ‘I’m working at the shelter,’ she croaks over the lump in her throat. She’d so hoped it was Zak. Has he already given up on her? Why hasn’t he come by to apologise in person? She’d come across the world for him, doesn’t he think she’s worth it? She’s starting to feel like the protagonist in the fairytale that he promised, if that’s what this still could be; she’s starting to doubt it.

  ‘Yeah, Ruth mentioned you’d started helping out there. That’s great! But that finishes pretty early on, why don’t you come on over after?’

  If only she could muster one tenth of Wil’s good cheer.

  ‘I’ll see you tomorrow night?’ he asks hopefully.

  She hesitates. ‘See you then, Wil.’

  * * *

  Later, she’s out walking the blossom-scattered outskirts of River Valley when she chances upon the Native American lady from the shelter again. Mia’s walked for hours, for miles, thinking. It’s all she can do to stop herself going mad.

  Recognising one another from the shelter, the woman from Zak’s photo greets her with a dreamy smile, an ethereal calm. Treasuring the sweet scent of cherry-blossoms in the air, Mia looks at the plaque they’ve paused by.

  ‘Sacajawea,’ she reads from the embossment. ‘Is that how you pronounce it?’