The End of Eve Page 11

  Bipa held up her gloved hands theatrically, like maybe this was a stick up.

  Sol sat up straight. “Ariel!” she tried, as if they’d been waiting for me to join them and where was my makeup? Where was my beret?

  I took another step back. Rewind everything and I’d be in my car again and on my way to pick up Maxito from preschool and I’d have changed my mind about cake and wildflowers and New Orleans and everything would go back to the normal silent irritation and resigned tolerance.

  As I backed out of the place, I thought I heard Sol say, “Don’t be dramatic, Ariel,” but then the glass door was shut and I was in my car, engine on, and I was driving fast, gagging on pride.

  I called in a pizza order. Half pepperoni with cheese and half green chile with spinach, no cheese.

  I picked Maxito up from preschool.

  “I’m great at puzzles,” he announced as I buckled him into his car seat.

  I WAS STILL shaking when we got home to our little adobe, didn’t understand why I was shaking. What was I so upset about? Hadn’t I just texted Vivian: Jealous?

  “I love pizza with meat,” Maxito beamed as I opened the box.

  And the two of us sat on our big red couch, eating pizza and watching Joan Crawford in Mildred Pierce and laughing at the shadowy scenes and drinking sparkling water and pretty soon I wasn’t shaking anymore and Maxito fell asleep in the crook of my arm and I carried him to bed and put a Lucinda Williams CD on in the living room and wished I had a beer and it wasn’t too long before I heard the car tires in the driveway and the front door slam and Sol stomped in, still in full mime-face and wearing that black beret. She went right for boom box, pressed eject, put on Steely Dan. She turned to me, gloved hands on her hips. “What?” she demanded. “People aren’t allowed to mime now?”

  I sighed.

  “You’ve always been jealous and paranoid,” she said. “You embarrassed everyone, backing out of there like some pariah.”

  “Go to hell,” I whispered, maybe too quiet.

  “You know.” Sol cleared her throat. “You didn’t grow up with either of your parents loving you. Maybe you’re just not capable of receiving love. Hmm?”

  That unspeakable thing: If you’ve ever been mistreated, you’re not worthy of care.

  Steely Dan sang “Reeling in the Years” and “Rikki Don’t Lose That Number.” I’d never thought much either way about Steely Dan but now I felt with my whole body how much I hated Steely Dan, how much I had always hated Steely Dan. I thought, Seriously? I’m Ariel Gore. I have 3,000 friends on Facebook and a closet full of really sexy boots. What am I doing with this miming jerk?

  Live with me for a year? Then you may ask questions?

  I felt like I had gravel in my throat, but I opened my mouth anyway. I had a question. “Did we move to Santa Fe for that mime?” I wanted to know the answer. “Do Maxito and my dying mother and I all live in Santa Fe because we stalked a mime with you?”

  Sol looked scared. Or maybe people in that white-and-black makeup always looked scared. Kind of startled and confused at the same time. “You think I’m stalking Bipa?” The flecks in her eyes weren’t magic. They just looked mean. “Jesus, Ariel, you’re just as crazy as both your parents.”

  Maybe I was, but not the kind of crazy she was talking about. I felt free and lonely. I wanted to run barefoot out the door and into the night, up the dirt road to Tex’s place. I wanted to find him in his underground bunker and we’d drink Silver Coyote whiskey from a liter bottle and we’d yell at the moon about everyone who was out to get us. No, I had no problem with crazy right then.

  Sol stared at me.

  I knew I could still fix this if I wanted to. I could say: Oh, I’m so sorry, I’ve been under so much stress and you’re right I’m crazy and thank you for putting up with me all these years – I’m jealous and paranoid and of course people are allowed to mime – and then I could lean into her warmth and she’d pat me on the back and kiss me on the head and say Don’t worry, it’s all right.

  I thought about saying it. But then I remembered missing the 5:34 train and the girl in Albuquerque and those cold bricks on my back and now anything that started with Oh, I’m so sorry sounded like thanking someone for not kicking me in the ribs as I slept.

  I’d promised not to do that.

  So I just said, “Go to hell,” louder this time, “and take the fucking Steely Dan with you.”

  Sol in her black and white face paint. She took her phone out of her pocket, texted somebody something, shook her head. “You’re paranoid, Ariel.”

  I said, “And you’re a mime stalker.” Because I’m mature like that.

  She said, “You’re completely paranoid.” But she didn’t hold her ground. She stepped up to the boom box and pressed eject. She checked her phone. “Well,” she said, finally taking off that beret. “Can I stay in the trailer for a couple of nights at least? Abra probably won’t mind moving into the living room.”

  I shrugged. “Whatever.”

  Sol kind of bowed her head. “It’s just that I can’t move into Bipa’s earthship until Tuesday.”

  And I had to laugh at that.

  Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean your girlfriend’s not stalking a mime.

  I WANTED WINGS and tattoos, whiskey and the girl in Albuquerque. I craved so many things right then. But mostly I breathed relief. I needed to focus. All I had to do was keep my mouth shut for ten more minutes and I’d be free. Don’t say you’re sorry. Ariel.

  I crawled into bed with my phone, left Sol and Abra to work out the sleeping arrangements. Don’t say you’re sorry. Ariel. By morning not even the Chocolate Maven and wild flowers and New Orleans could fix this. Don’t say you’re sorry. I didn’t bother to change out of my jeans and sweatshirt, just wrapped my quilt around me, stared up at the vigas and the dark skylight. A place to mend.

  I hoped the snake really had slithered out the way it came in.

  The ruin of everything. But I felt something like happiness.

  I texted Maia: Broke up with Sol.

  She texted right back: I know. She already updated her Facebook profile. Then she texted again: Can I say congratulations, Mama? I love you this much. (Picture my little kid arms open wide).

  And for the first time in a long time, I fell into easy undrunk sleep.

  21.

  You Can’t Afford to Look Cheap

  “NEVER SETTLE FOR ANYTHING BUT FIRST CLASS,” GAMMIE told me as we sped down the Pacific Coast Highway in that 1970s Cadillac she called Big Red. She wore a red silk blouse and a red silk scarf and smelled like Coco Chanel.

  I smiled and nodded and said, “Okay” because I loved my Gammie like a tomato.

  “You’re not common,” she said. “You can’t afford to look cheap.”

  And I smiled more and nodded more and I still loved my Gammie in a way that tasted raw and whole, but truth told, I just thought she was a classist bitch when she said shit like that.

  I was a teenage squatter with a fading black eye, my boyfriend in jail, and I’d just come to visit for a week because the squat was cold without him and maybe I wanted to feel like a little girl again just visiting her Gammie off the Pacific Coast Highway and here all my Gammie could think to say was, “Never settle for anything but first class.”

  MORE THAN 20 years later, maybe I knew what she meant. About settling. About not being common. About the way she was a classist, sure, but she was more than that.

  GAMMIE HAD BRIGHT Picasso posters on her walls, leopard-print sheets on her bed.

  In her walk-in closet, Gammie had a giant mirror with lights all around it, and she’d sit there applying makeup like she was some kind of a movie star. Or maybe a stripper.

  She wore Max Factor foundation. Dior lipstick. She brushed her long gray hair, then tied it into a bun. She poured herself her morning vodka and sipped it slow, then headed out for an early lunch with the ladies.

  I stayed home, sat there in front of Gammie’s big movie-star
mirror applying Max Factor foundation and Clinique concealer, trying to cover up the fading bruise of my common black eye.

  22.

  The Winged House

  AFTER SOL LEFT, I WOKE TOO EARLY IN THE MORNINGS, drank black coffee on my porch alone, watched the sun rise muted orange over a dead vineyard.

  I didn’t want to talk to friends. It was hard enough explaining why I didn’t live with my mother anymore. Had she finally died? Not exactly. Was she healing? Probably not.

  I had no better language for talking about divorce beyond failure or a victim-fest. What could I say? Was Sol having an affair? Not exactly. Had I done something wrong? I didn’t think so.

  The few people I did talk to got a shrug and, “It was a long time coming.”

  How could I explain about the mime and Steely Dan? About not really knowing what kind of music I liked anymore? About the reasons we’d moved to New Mexico? About trusting a stranger in an alley more than I trusted this woman who might have been my wife had the good voters of Oregon not gotten together and amended their constitution to keep me from making that mistake?

  How could I explain that everything seemed a part of the self-same ugliness: All the death urges, the legacies of abuse and conquest, the poisoned lakes and rivers, the waving knife in the night between a mother and her child, and all the lies I had to tell myself daily to make all this violence seem necessary and inevitable.

  I felt more comfortable with people I hardly knew, with Abra and her friends from the Native Arts College, with the queers who’d brought the summer rain, with the nervous single mom and a few of our other righteously paranoid neighbors.

  I invited them over evenings to drink and eat and play new music for me so I could start to think about what I liked.

  Mornings when Maxito was home with me, he wiggled out of bed, excited to check on his chickens and collect the eggs.

  He adjusted the pirate scarf around his head. “I love my chickens.”

  He stayed with Sol three days a week now. He came home miming sometimes, but otherwise he seemed to adjust.

  I hadn’t lived without a partner since I was 30; hadn’t lived without a kid at home since I was a teenager. Now I was nobody’s daughter and half the time nobody’s keeper. Some days I felt high with the limitlessness of it all. I could sleep until midmorning if I wanted to, or drive to Mexico. But most days with Maxito gone, I just had the mild panicked feeling that I’d misplaced him.

  I TOOK AN old painting out from the back of a closet: A wooden house with feathered wings taking flight against a blood-red sky. I’d been dragging that painting around since my first apartment with Maia.

  Her kindergarten school counselor cornered me in the hallway once, holding up a crayon drawing of a flying house. “This image,” she warned me, “it can be a sign of wanting to run away.” The counselor was my age – maybe 24 by then – with a freshly pierced eyebrow.

  I nodded, wanted the counselor to know I took warning signs seriously. “It might also be a sign that Maia’s had a painting of a winged house hanging over her mantle all her life.”

  The counselor laughed at that, kind of embarrassed. “Well, yes. I’m sorry. I just learned about the flying house last week. I’m in grad school at the Alternative University.”

  The painting sat crooked in its frame now, but I nailed a hook into the adobe wall and hung it up.

  ABRA ATE HER diabetic-friendly omelet, glanced up at that painting. “Is that Baba Yaga’s house?” She peered around the living room with new eyes. “Is this Baba Yaga’s house?”

  I didn’t think about it, just said “yes.” And then, “Wait. Does that make me Baba Yaga?” I didn’t mind being the old witch.

  But Abra laughed. “ You’re too young to be Baba Yaga. We will call you Lady Yaga.”

  IN THE FAIRY tale, Baba Yaga’s house walks around on chicken legs, doesn’t fly with feathered wings, but somehow it made sense. This was Baba Yaga’s house out here on the road no one would drive if they didn’t live here. Maybe we’d come here just like the lost young souls in the stories – like Vasilisa – come seeking some light other than death, come to serve the irrational, to sort the poppy seeds from the dirt, to gather strength, to figure out how to trust ourselves.

  “Look,” Abra pointed with her chin toward the living room window. The first snow of winter’s return.

  I looked up. “Beautiful.”

  23.

  If My Lungs Were Wings

  I DROVE OUT AN UNNUMBERED COUNTRY ROAD, SWERVED to avoid a rattlesnake, almost crashed my car into a cottonwood. I caught my breath and checked the rearview, realized the snake was already dead. Focus, Ariel.

  I drove the 20 minutes into town, The Shins on the CD player, and I did the things I did in town – picked up my mail from the post office, picked up apples and green chile from the southside farmer’s market, picked up Maxito from preschool.

  Back home, he played with his Hot Wheels and said “look, Mama, look, Mama,” and I looked and I absently checked my email. Coupons from Urban Outfitters and Country Outfitter, a warning about a full moon in Taurus from Leslie, recommended readings from Amazon.com, an overdue bill from my car insurance company, and this: A subjectless message from evedebona@yahoo.com.

  My first thought was that my mother died and someone was using her email account to send me the news. It had been more than a year since the original death date she’d written on her calendar in red ink. It had been some ten months since I’d last seen her – staring at me through the screen of her bedroom window. I took a deep breath, like breath might prepare me, but when I clicked the email open, I knew she’d written it herself.

  From: evedebona@yahoo.com

  Subject:

  Date: November 2,2011 9:56:47 AM MDT

  To: arielgore@earthlink.net

  Hi Tiniest,

  I wrote a poem and it’s getting published. What do you think?

  SANGRE DE CRISTO

  I live alone now

  in the long shadow

  of these mountains.

  Tumors

  fill my lungs

  and I am growing thin.

  By day the dead

  visit me and we talk,

  sometimes for hours.

  At night the puma

  leaves his cold cave

  to pace outside my door.

  I dream that my lungs

  are the wings of a great butterfly,

  my spine its body.

  On waking

  I recall everyone

  whom I have loved,

  and my heart,

  touched by the sacred one,

  begins to burn.

  I read the poem a couple of times, didn’t know exactly what to make of it, what my mother was trying to communicate. Maybe she was just reaching out, writer to writer, the way strangers sometimes did if they’d read my work and wanted to share their own. Maybe it was more than that. To reply felt like a risk, but I took it.

  From: arielgore@earthlinh.net

  Subject: Re:

  Date: November 2,2011 2:37:11 PM MDT

  To: evedebona@yahoo.com

  Hi Mom,

  Your poem is good.

  Are you just sharing or would you like me to come and see you?

  Ariel

  From: evedebona@yahoo.com

  Subject: Re:

  Date: November 2,2011 2:41:16 PM MDT

  To: arielgore@earthlink.net

  Hi Tiniest,

  Sweet of you to write back. I hear you left Sol and moved back to Portland? Care to fill me in?

  If you’re in Santa Fe you could come by the house. I would like that. I have an appointment tomorrow, but I’ll be back by noon.

  Will you bring Maxito?

  From: arielgore@earthlink.net

  Subject: Re:

  Date: November 2,2011 3:58:49 PM MDT

  To: evedebona@yahoo.com

  I think I’ll come alone.

  Between noon and one?

  From: eve
debona@yahoo.com

  Subject: Re:

  Date: November2,2011 4:00:07PM MDT

  To: arielgore@earthlink.net

  Wonderful.

  “LOOK, MAMA!” MAXITO squealed. He let go of an orange Hot Wheels car and laughed as it loop-de-looped around the plastic track. “I love my Hot Wheels,” he sighed. “Should we go see if my chickens made eggs?”

  “Of course.”

  We barreled outside and around the house. Four chickens huddled together under their heat lamp, one balled up on the ground just outside the coop, but still inside the chicken-wire and bamboo fence.

  Maxito’s face fell. “Is Ping hurt?”

  “Don’t touch her, baby,” I said, and I pulled on a pair of gardening gloves as I went to touch her.

  Maxito’s lip quivered as he watched.

  “I don’t know what happened,” I told him. “Ping died.” It wasn’t particularly cold out. No blood or misplaced feathers evidenced attack.

  We dug a grave for the chicken.

  “Why did Ping die, Mama?’

  “I don’t know,” I admitted. “Maybe she was sick.”

  Maxito wrinkled his nose. “That’s sad.”

  MAXITO FELL ASLEEP early. Sol had come when I wasn’t home and taken the bed we’d shared for ten years, so I curled up on the cowboy bedroll I’d patched together from cushions and blankets and I closed my eyes.

  I dreamed I took a train to my mother’s old house in southern Mexico, but when I got there she had this thick file of medical bills all in my name and said I had to pay them. She was showing me the bills, paging through them, thousands of dollars worth of alternative cancer treatments and old Kaiser X-rays. She was licking her index finger – those red manicured nails. “I know you don’t have any money,” she was saying, all calm and matter-of-fact. “I’m going to help you,” she said. “You’ll just have to sell me your liver and we’ll be even.”

  I was screaming, horrified, “You can’t just put bills in other people’s names! You can’t demand to buy somebody’s liver!”