Lilac Mines (17 page)

The store is like her father: neat, quiet, complete. A monument to diligent work. Some people might think it was the epitome of ordinary, but Al appreciates that Terry is not one of them. She sees the satisfaction in his dark eyes, as if life is just a matter of stocking the shelves, can by can. She wonders what else she hasn't seen.

Felix's brain bounces around in her newly shorn head as Anna Lisa's truck bumps down Washoe Street. Cal, the post office, the Hogans, Tawn, Matty, whether she'll be expected to leave her 12-hole Docs at home now, her depressing hair.

They drive in silence until Anna Lisa makes a sudden left. They're in the parking lot of a dingy strip mall. Gold Nugget Pizza is on one end, the Goldrush Tavern is on the other.

“What are we doing?”

“Want a drink?” Anna Lisa asks. “I haven't been to this place in years.”

“Um… okay.”

The smell hits her the minute they walk in. Stale beer, sticky floors. This is the first bar she's been in since Sourpuss.

She feels like a neon sign with her pink wool pants, yellow-striped sweater, and terrible haircut. The confusion of the night on Cynthia Street comes rushing back, the sense that she should apologize for something or fight back, and that she's unprepared to do either. She puts a hand on the coat tree near the door to steady herself.

“Um, Anna Lisa?” Her voice is a whisper. “I'm in more of a coffee mood, I think. There's a cappuccino place at the other end of this strip mall, isn't there?”

“Well, I could use a beer, honestly,” Anna Lisa says. “I could meet you down there.”

“No! I'll be fine here.” Her aunt's solution is always to go their separate ways. Suddenly, as much as Felix doesn't want to be in the bar, she doesn't want to be alone.

The bar has a low tin ceiling and several ornate ceiling fans that suggest the building is older than its dirty white stucco facade. There's a balding pool table, some beat-up furniture, and a wall poster of a girl in a high-cut yellow bikini.

Anna Lisa orders a Bud. Felix asks for a Diet Coke. The bartender is a vaguely pear-shaped man in a fringed vest that Felix supposes is meant to be Western, not Village People. When he hands Felix her soda, she holds it close and lets the fizz pop in her face. She takes a long sip, hoping the faux sugar will overpower the alcohol in the room.

“It'll grow out,” Anna Lisa says, half concerned, half annoyed.

“It's not the fucking haircut,” Felix says too loudly. The only other people in the bar—a man and a woman in their late 60s—look up. The woman pulls a large straw bag from the back of her chair to her lap, as if Felix had just announced plans to rob this joint.

“Tawn thinks we shouldn't be girlfriends at work,” Felix says more quietly. “I don't even know if we're girlfriends
outside
of work, but it's like, as soon as she said that, I wanted to be super-out at work.” She sighs, “I guess I'm just contrary.”

“Maybe you just
like
her,” Anna Lisa says. “I bet you'd do things for her you never thought you'd be capable of. Just don't wait too long to do them. Don't be so hung up on whoever you think you are that she's long gone by the time you come to your senses.”

“Um, okay….” Felix says. She's not sure what her aunt is talking about, exactly, but her words are warm and sad. Anna Lisa hasn't removed the hood of her blue all-weather jacket, even though she presumably likes her haircut. She looks like a turtle, slow and wise.

As they drink and talk, Felix's stomach begins to settle down. The heating system pings a comforting rhythm, and the smell of rain outside overpowers the manmade residue of the bar.

“Why do you think it's called the Goldrush Tavern?” Felix muses. “This is silver country, right?”

“I guess because there was never a silver rush,” Anna Lisa says. “Silver just sort of plodded along next to gold. They're often found in the same mine, you know.”

“Silver's the boring sister.”

“This place used to be called Lilac's. I came here with Meg.” Anna Lisa caresses the handle of her beer mug.

Felix sits up straight on her stool. “Really? Was it a gay bar? I can't believe there was a gay bar in Lilac Mines.”

She looks around again. The details of the bar take on a new tint. Now she sees the ghosts of butches and femmes (that's how they did it then, right?) twirling the pool sticks that lean against the wall.

Anna Lisa nods. “There was. There was a jukebox over there—my friend Jody used to always play “Fun, Fun, Fun” and Meg would say, 'Doesn't she know that there were thousands of songs written before the Beach Boys were even born?' You'd think she was 50 years old.” She pauses. “It's so strange to say that. I mean, I'm almost 60 now.”

“What happened?” Felix asks. “Why did you break up?” Her aunt seems sadder about Meg than Felix is about Eva. Her skin looks so delicate.

“We broke up because I gave up,” Anna Lisa says. She picks up her mug and it shakes in her hand. Felix hopes she doesn't start crying. She wouldn't know what to do. But she sees that Anna Lisa wouldn't know what to do either—that being weak and femme and gushing about her problems is the scariest thing in the world to her. Whatever happened between Anna Lisa and Meg, it's clear Felix's aunt blames herself.

“One time,” Anna Lisa continues, “we spent the whole night in one of the caves, one of the entrances to the mine.”

“The one I visited? With the mountain lion?”

“No, no, that's the one all the kids go to.” This makes Felix feel small and ordinary. “A smaller one. Farther up the same dirt road. Maybe seven or eight miles. Last time I was there, there was an old rusted-out Chevy up there, so I guess someone else was there, at some point.

“Meg and I stayed there all night,” she says again. “And I thought we were so brave. I thought I could stop anyone who hurt her or me. or anyone.”

Maybe Felix went searching in the wrong place. Maybe Lilac disappeared near this other mine entrance. Felix wants to drive there right now.

Anna Lisa gulps a mouthful of beer and air. Her eyes trace the edge of the tin ceiling. It's like she's looking for a rope to grab a hold of and climb out of the past. “And this street, it used to be called Calla Boulevard. I don't know why they changed it.”

“They?”

“I guess I don't know who 'they' are,” Anna Lisa laughs. Her face has recovered, but her eyes stay behind.

Felix thinks,
Cal, Calla, California,
the words bubbly as her drink inside her. “I wish that was my job. Wouldn't that be a great job, to be the person who figures out who 'they' are? All the theys in the world. Like, somewhere out there, there's a
they
who knows what happened to Lilac Ambrose.”

“Meg always thought she killed herself,” Anna Lisa says. “That seemed like the most logical explanation to her.”

Felix hasn't thought of this. The bartender refills Anna Lisa's glass and asks Felix, “ ‘Nother Diet Coke?”

Felix nods at the bartender, then turns to her aunt, “I guess we'll never know.”

“You could find out
more,
though,” Anna Lisa says. “More is better than nothing, better than just-a-little. You work part time, you've got a car. The world is yours, kiddo.”

“I know it is,” Felix replies. She stares into her brown soda sea.

“You make it sound like that's a bad thing,” Anna Lisa says.

The world is Felix's with a morning that's cold but sunny. The mailbox at the end of Juliet Street opens its blue mouth and swallows her F.I.T. application. Simple as that. Color copies of her sketches—a bondagesque ball gown, some punk pants, a pair of gravity-defying shoes—are now on their way to New York. The mailbox clangs shut and Felix feels satisfied. Her fate is now in the hands of smart, well-dressed city dwellers.

In her car, she flips through the local radio channels. There is a lot of static, but she surprisingly finds a station she likes. A mix of lonely folk music and blues and pared-down country. Who knew?

The woman's voice is deep and scratchy and mournful. Driving toward Columbia, Felix feels like she's following the music, like if she keeps listening she'll make it through the trees to a small warm place that produces these sad, perfect sounds.

Felix thinks of Lilac and Cal. It wouldn't have been a frosty morning, but maybe Cal left. Maybe Cal was a good man, and maybe he wasn't. She hopes the answer awaits her at the Columbia library, and that Anna Lisa will notice that she's trying.
You said the world was mine, and I listened,
Felix thinks.

The DJ breaks in, “That was Bessie Smith with 'Frosty Mornin' Blues,' a nice song for a frosty morning, I think. Up next, Dar Will—” The station fades out, leaving Felix with the hum of her engine.

Columbia looks much like Lilac Mines—turn-of-the-century buildings with false fronts, Victorian aspirations modified to meet boomtown necessities—but it's busier, and the kitsch is stifling. One block has
three
stores selling bonnets, the kind that streamed behind tomboy Laura Ingalls as she ran across the prairie. Felix went through a
Little House
phase, too. She wouldn't wear anything but dresses, with three or four skirts as “petticoats” underneath.

As she drives down Main Street—another Main Street—signs urge her to PAN FOR REAL GOLD! A man in a cowboy hat and holster passes out flyers in front of a restaurant advertising bison burgers. Felix is pretty sure that the buffalo roam in Wyoming, not California.

The library, a small brick building with a weed-plagued parking lot, is on Jackson Street, a less spectacular avenue, one meant for townies. Felix approaches the circulation desk, but a woman and a little girl barge through the door and shove in front of her.

“Excuse me,” the woman demands. Her expertly highlighted red hair makes a gentle nest for her Gucci sunglasses. “Do you have a restroom?”

“I have to peeeee!” whines the girl at her side. She is maybe six or seven, with naturally mousy hair.

The librarian rolls her eyes. “Over there.” She gestures with her head.

The woman and her daughter charge toward the back of the library. The girl starts to grab a book off one of the lower shelves and the woman snaps, “Carly! I thought you had to potty! Besides, these books are covered with germs.”

“Thanks for your interest in Columbia's thriving literary scene, please come again,” the librarian mutters to her keyboard.

She appears to be a few years older than Felix. The sign on her desk says Henrietta Keyes. She has shiny, blue-black hair that falls at a perfect slant below her chin. She wears black cat-eye glasses with rhinestones in the corners of the frames, and a little black cardigan sweater. She looks exactly like a Silver Lake fashion designer (or writer or musician or neo-burlesque dancer) who is trying to look like a librarian.

The image confuses Felix for a minute. Then it makes her grin.

Henrietta looks up. “Can I help you?” she asks wearily. She takes in Felix's tight red T-shirt and elbow-high knit gloves, her furiously gelled hair.
She thinks I'm a tourist,
Felix thinks,
and that I'm going to ask about the bathroom, too.
The thought repels her. Does that mean she's a townie now?

“I wanted to look up some old issues of the
East Beedleborough Examiner,”
Felix says.

“Seriously? Wow. It's all here, on microfiche. Do you know how to use a microfiche machine?”

“It's been a while,” Felix admits. College research paper assignments always required at least one newspaper source. Felix would jot down a fact or two, just enough so that she could cite the paper in a footnote, and then escape to airier parts of campus.

Henrietta blows dust off the lone microfiche machine and switches it on. It emits an eerie green glow. She removes what looks like a shoebox from a tall brown file cabinet, extracts a smaller box. “All this stuff used to be at the Calaveras County branch in San Andreas,” Henrietta explains. “But because of budget cuts, they had to give half their space over to adult day care. None of the other Calaveras branches had any spare room, so now it's here, in Tuolumne County, and who's going to find it? Well, I guess you did. Anyway…” She thrusts the box at Felix. “All the secrets of the past, at your fingertips,” she says, somehow sarcastic and excited at the same time.

She bites one of her burgundy lips and says, “Mind if I ask what you're looking up? We're not supposed to be nosy, but… well, it's pretty much my nature.”

Felix is slowly learning that it pays to be nosy.

“Some stuff about Lilac Ambrose.”

“Who's that?”

“Oh, I thought everyone out here had heard of her. The girl who got lost in Lilac Mines, who they named the town after?” Maybe Gary Schipp is right—no one cares about something that happened a century ago.

“Sure, right,” nods Henrietta. “The girl who babysat me when I was little, Marisol, used to tell me stories, scared the shit out of me. She always just called her 'The Ghost of Lilac Mines.' She said she roamed the town, crying out for her lost children. When I went to college and took a folklore class, I realized that Marisol had just ripped off La Llorona.”

“Well, the real Lilac Ambrose was only 16 when she disappeared,” Felix says. “I doubt she had any children.”

Henrietta shrugs. “Maybe she got knocked up.”

“I'll let you know what I find out,” Felix says as Henrietta heads back toward the circulation desk. She's wearing fishnets and thick-heeled mary janes. “Thanks, Henrietta.”

Henrietta stops and laughs. “Oh—no, Henrietta's the other librarian I'm subbing for today. I'm Brittany.”

The name “Brittany” doesn't collapse the divide between hip and lame, retro and kitsch, quite so well as “Henrietta” but Felix will take it.