by Abe Moss
“I’ve been in my pajamas since I got home from school.”
Maria scoffed. “You should tell mom to buy you another pair. Your bottoms are turning into floods.”
“Floods?”
“Yeah, I can almost see your shins. Kind of embarrassing. I feel sorry for you, honestly.”
Michael flung the cat socks at Maria and, making no attempt to avoid them, they missed her head by more than a foot.
Just then their mother leaned through the door. Her eyes darted between them.
“Michael, finish getting ready for bed.”
“I am ready for bed.”
“Then go to bed.”
“It’s not even time yet!” he said, demonstrating his point with dramatic hand flourishes.
“It’s after nine, and I want us to get an early start in the morning. Go, please.”
Maria mock-laughed as he stomped out from her bedroom. Her mother stood in the doorway, eyes wide as she marveled at the cluttered floor.
“I know, I know,” Maria said. “I’ll pick it up as soon as we get back.”
“I would tell you to do it now, but I did just say I wanted to leave at a good time in the morning…”
“Hilarious.”
“Make sure you pack three days’ worth. And remember, too, it’s going to be warm. I mean, not real warm this time of year, but… it is the desert…”
Maria groaned, drooping her head until her chin bobbed against her chest
“Thanks for reminding me…”
✽ ✽ ✽
To her mother’s credit, they were loaded up and pulling out of the driveway one minute past eight the following morning.
“Ooh,” Maria said, leaning into the front of the car between her parents, eyeing the clock on the dash. “One minute late. Not a good start to the day.”
“We’ll still make it with plenty of time,” her mother answered humorlessly.
“How’s the back of my head looking back there?” her father asked, turning his shiny head side to side. “I asked your mother this morning as I was shaving it, but there wasn’t time for that, she said…”
“I did too look,” her mother retorted. “Your head is fine.”
“Looks like a perfect cue ball from here, dad,” Maria said.
“Perfectly bald from here, dad,” Michael added.
Their mother burst out laughing at that.
“Thanks, bud,” their father said, and gave their mother a vengeful, tickling pinch on her waist.
✽ ✽ ✽
They weren’t on the interstate an hour before Michael began complaining of boredom. He watched out the window, the other cars, their drivers, going from one city to the next, commenting on every trivial and imagined thing he could just to fill the quiet.
“How long does it take to get there?” he asked.
“It’s a ten-hour drive altogether,” their father said. “We’re ten percent of the way there.”
“Ten percent?” Michael lamented.
“Out of one hundred percent,” Maria said. “If it makes you feel any better, most of it’s driving through the desert with absolutely nothing to look at. Just tumbleweeds and sagebrush. Maybe some cactuses, if we’re lucky.”
“Why would that make me feel better?”
Maria lay her head back against her seat, satisfied.
“Why does grandma live in the middle of nowhere?” Michael asked, voice on the edge of hysteria.
“It’s not that bad,” their mother said. “It’s where I grew up. You’ll get to see where I lived when I was your age.”
✽ ✽ ✽
It was a little after ten o’ clock when they stopped off at a small-town service station for a bathroom break. Maria stretched her legs beside the car, taking in the view, feeling the heat off the gravel.
She followed her family into the convenience store, where the air was almost cold. It was practically empty inside, if not for them. The cashier—an older woman leaning against the counter, her face bent toward her phone held in both hands—hardly noticed them enter.
“You should go to the bathroom,” Maria’s mother told Michael. “Even if you think you don’t need to.”
Maria paced along the refrigerated beverages as she watched her brother enter the men’s restroom. She paused. She glanced from one side of the store to the other, spotting her parents. With an impish smile, she stood beside the men’s restroom door and waited.
“Maria,” her mother said, leaning out from an aisle to see her. “You want anything? A snack for the road?”
“I’m looking,” Maria said, standing in place.
Her mother watched her a moment, skeptically wondering what she was up to.
“All right… well, hurry up.”
Her mother turned away. Shortly after Maria heard a toilet flush from beyond the restroom door. Grinning, she grabbed the door handle and pulled it shut tight. She waited, biting her lip in anticipation.
A tug on the door. Slight, unsuspecting. Maria snorted, tried to keep quiet. Another tug. And another.
“Password?” she said, and couldn’t hold back a shrill giggle as her brother pulled harder still. “What’s the pass—”
“Open the fucking door,” came a deep, old voice.
Maria gasped. She released the door so immediately that she stumbled back. A towering, weathered old gentleman stepped through, the wrinkles in his face suggesting he’d experienced very little humor in his life, and wasn’t about to any time soon. Maria apologized—a squeaking under her horrified breath—and watched as the old man continued on, giving her not a single second of acknowledgment. Her heart pounded.
Michael stepped out soon after, in time only to see her still rooted in shame.
“What are you doing?”
“Nothing.”
She turned away, pretending to look at the items on the shelf behind her there. She started to feel the slow trickle of blood flowing back into her face.
He can never know, she thought.
✽ ✽ ✽
“Brown?” Michael asked, scanning the landscape passing them by. “Everything’s brown…”
They were six hours into their drive. Their father made sure to announce when they’d crossed the halfway point, much to Michael’s disappointment, having thought they must almost be there by now. To help pass the time, Maria agreed to play games as a family, including the classic road-trip activity of I-spy.
“You got it!” Maria exclaimed.
“Wait… what?”
“You guessed ‘everything’. That was it.”
Michael glared at his sister, though his amusement was undeniable. “That’s lame…”
“You’re lame,” Maria said.
Maria pulled out her phone to check her messages and was saddened to find she was still without service. Somehow, her mind habitually forgot this fact every twenty minutes.
“Dad, what animals live in the desert?” Michael asked.
Their father thought for a moment. “Snakes. Scorpions. Coyotes. Rabbits… Bats, I think?”
“Bats?”
“Cannibals,” Maria replied casually.
“Cannibals?” Michael repeated. “What?”
“People who eat other people,” Maria said.
“Okay, none of that,” their father groaned.
“But it’s true.”
“No,” her father said. “Michael, don’t—”
“It’s totally true,” she said again, meeting her brother’s wide, darkly fascinated eyes. A little afraid, maybe? “They wait for people’s cars to break down. Like, families on vacation, for instance. That sort of thing. Then they creep out of the desert and kidnap them right off the side of the road. Then they eat them.”
“You’re making that up,” Michael said.
“No,” she insisted, maintaining her casual tone. “They tie people up and eat them right there, alive.”
“Dad—”
“Maria,” her father said, locking eyes in the rearview. “Cut it
out.”
“Yeah, Maria,” Michael said, rolling his eyes.
“Your sister’s just watched a few too many horror movies.”
“All right,” she said, folding her arms. “Just don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
After a minute, she turned to see her brother watching the horizon in the distance, passing slowly, mysteriously, bright and stark under the midday sun. She saw his expression as he watched, his little brain processing, imagining, daydreaming.
Stewing.
Feeling that her work was done, she lay her head back and closed her eyes for a while.
✽ ✽ ✽
The remaining few hours of their drive went by without incident—good, bad, or otherwise. Michael settled into his boredom. Accepted it. He took a page from their mother’s book and did his best to nap for a while. For Maria, this was the highlight of the drive. She listened to music on her phone without interruption, without the need to pull one of her earbuds out at the sound of her brother’s whining or endless questions. Her father likewise turned up the volume on his music in the front—his favorite Black Sabbath CD—just loud enough to enjoy but quiet enough not to impede anyone’s nap.
It wasn’t much longer until their father announced their destination was in sight. Michael and their mother roused. Their father pointed toward it in the distance, and what Maria saw—even so far away as to hardly see it at all—caused her heart to sink.
“That’s it?” Michael said frettingly, sharing her sentiment.
Across the dry wasteland, cooking beneath the relentlessly beating sun, a modest smattering of tiny buildings lay in a row. On the outskirts there appeared to be sparse patches of residential living—a trailer park, a handful of larger houses spread all around, isolated and drab with only the dead land surrounding them.
“Home sweet home,” her mother remarked dully.
“Grandma lives here?” Michael asked.
At the sight of it, Maria couldn’t blame her mother for not visiting more often. It was nothing like she remembered as a girl when they’d last come as a family. Though, to be fair, she remembered so little…
“I don’t remember it being so small,” Maria said.
“You haven’t seen anything,” her mother said. “Wellwyn isn’t even close to being the smallest town in this county.”
“Why would anyone want to live here?” Michael asked.
The town came into greater focus as the two-lane road brought them nearer, turning toward it, into it, until Maria realized the majority of the town rested along the road itself.
“To be fair,” their mother said, “there are bigger places close by. Anything you can’t get here, it’s just a hop, skip, and a jump to Fallon.”
“Can we stay there instead?”
Maria watched as they passed the handful of quaint, red-brick shops and businesses. The town was plenty clean, at the very least. Must have been easy to keep that way, Maria thought, seeing as there was only the one street to worry about. The sidewalks were bare of litter and pedestrians.
“How old was I when we were here last?” Maria asked.
“I want to say seven?” her mother said.
“You weren’t even born yet,” Maria told Michael. She leaned back in her seat, watching through the window, deep in thought. “Those were the days.”
They passed the singular grocery. Its parking lot allowed for perhaps ten cars total. There were currently two parked there. One working, one shopping, Maria thought.
Remembering, she pulled out her phone. She grimaced. Two bars. It wasn’t great, but it was service. As she looked pitifully at the signal, her phone buzzed with a message. Then another. And another. Catching up with the last few hours she hadn’t existed.
“Here we are,” her father said.
They pulled into the motel parking lot—bigger than the grocery store’s—and parked beside the only other car there. The motel itself was tiny. Dingy. Painted what was probably once a bright, summery yellow but was now the color of a dusty sticky-note. By Maria’s count, there were six rooms in all.
“We booked ahead, right?” she joked. “Hope there’s vacancy.”
“You guys stretch your legs while I get us our room key,” her father said, shutting off the engine. “Should only be a minute…”
Everyone climbed out. Maria paced around their car, scuffing her feet against the asphalt as she walked her sore legs back and forth. Beyond the humble motel property, she saw, was immediate desert. Sagebrush and other desert weeds grew right up to the edge of the asphalt. The town itself seemed nothing more than a series of structures propped up from the wild, dead ground. There were no borders between civilization and wilderness, no line drawn between the town and the desert surrounding it. The town was the desert.
Beyond the motel, the sun was sunken behind the horizon, the sky a darkening blue. Maria paused, peering at the hills in the distance, the daylight bleeding toward dusk. That was something, she thought.
“The sky’s pretty here,” she said, as Michael came to stand with her. “So… there’s that, at least.”
“Pretty?” Michael asked, looking at those same hills. “Everything just looks boring.”
Their father joined them a minute later, room key in hand. Of the six vacant rooms, they were given Room #4. Carrying their bags, they waited around the door as their father figured out the quirky lock.
“Screwy thing,” he muttered, trying to get the key to turn.
“Did he give you the right key?” their mother said.
Just then it clicked. Maria’s father pushed the door inward, black and quiet within. He stepped into the stuffy gloom, flipped the light switch. The ceiling light blinked to life, revealing a perfectly, appropriately bland motel room. Double beds, their covers the same light brown as the carpet and walls. Two dressers opposite the beds, a television from the eighties sitting atop one of them.
“Oh, nice,” Maria said enthusiastically, following her brother inside. “Can’t wait to share one of these sweet beds with my bedwetting little brother.”
“I don’t wet the bed…”
“Which bed do you want?” Maria’s mother asked. “Michael, you get to pick.”
“Pick the one with the least number of bedbugs,” Maria added.
Michael picked the second bed, furthest from the entrance, nearest the bathroom. Maria agreed with his choice. She dumped her bag on one side. For the next few minutes, they took their time unpacking some of their things. Bathroom necessities. Phone chargers. Maria glanced at her mother who unpacked most of her clothes, and watched as she pulled a necklace from her bag—one Maria had never seen before. Her mother examined it aversely for a moment, face pinched, before draping it over her head and around her neck.
“What’s that?” Maria asked.
Her mother straightened. “Hmm?”
“That necklace…”
“Oh, this…” Her mother pinched it in her fingers, extending it out to see beneath her chin. “It’s something your grandma gave me years ago. I thought she’d like to see me wearing it…”
Maria came closer to see for herself. Her mother held it out for her to examine.
“What is it?” Maria said, holding it in her hand. A leathery emblem of some kind. Oval. Definitely home-made. Old. She could understand why she’d never seen her mother wear it before now.
“I guess you could say it’s an heirloom, sort of? Your grandmother is into some… interesting things. You know she can be very… spiritual.” Her mother made air-quotes around the word. “One of the many ways she and I are completely different…”
“It’s… sorta cute…” Maria said, attempting some rare optimism. She let it go against her mother’s chest. “I’m sure there’s lots of… sentimental value.”
Her mother smiled fondly at that. “It’s definitely something.”
“I’ll wear it if you don’t want to,” Maria suggested. “I bet she’ll like that even better. Passed down through generations…”
Maria nodded, and her mother removed the necklace and placed it over her daughter’s head instead. She stood back, admiring.
“Looks much better on you, I have to say.”
“Well, I’m not a cute seven-year-old little girl anymore,” Maria said. “Have to earn those grandma brownie points where I can.”
“Everyone about ready?” Her father stood at the door, car keys dangling from his finger. “Let’s get moving before they think we didn’t make it.”
✽ ✽ ✽
Once the sun was down, night swallowed Wellwyn up in a hurry. By the time they pulled into the quaint little trailer park, the only light left in the sky was a thin, dim lacing along the distant hilltops. To Maria’s surprise, there were several groups of people out and about, sitting in lawn chairs under the welcoming porch lights from one mobile home to the next. Lots of smoking, lots of drinking.
“I imagine that’s all anyone does around here,” Maria remarked, craning her neck to see them as they drove past. “Smoke and drink.”
“Pretty accurate,” her mother said.
“This one, right?” their father asked, as they pulled up to a friendly little green mobile home. The porch light was on there as well. As they parked the car, a silhouette appeared at one of the lit windows and peered out at them.
“This is the place.” Maria’s mother sighed—took a deep, dramatic breath.
Maria was beginning to notice her mother’s reluctance—being here seemed increasingly painful to her. Odd…
The porch door swung open and someone stepped out. Under the porch light, their head shined smooth as a bowling ball.
“Is that what’s his name?” Maria asked, leaning between the front seats to peer through the windshield. “Grandma’s new… boyfriend…”
But it wasn’t a man standing on the porch.
“Wait, is that… grandma?”
Their grandmother, sporting the same hairdo as their father, waved enthusiastically to them from the top of the porch steps—beautifully frail and tragically altered by her battle with cancer.
Everyone climbed out of the car. Maria stood behind a moment, caught off guard by her grandmother’s appearance as the others went to meet her. Her grandmother came down the steps, meeting her mother halfway where they embraced. Tense, feeling a little awkward, Maria shut her door and finally made her way toward them as well.
