Our Town (29 page)

“Please don’t ever smoke,” she said to him again, this time blanketing him in her gray, chardonnay-flavored breath, soft and wet and comforting, like the dew that built when she left her wine glasses on her porch overnight. And overnights. “Worst things in the world for ya. That’s about the only thing I’m damn sure,” and this was, in fact, true. Certainty wasn’t in her character. Being certain, in her eyes, disallowed spontaneity. It disallowed what she referred to as “real living.” It disallowed allowing yourself to make mistakes. It disallowed no consequence.

Jack Jr., though, had heard all this before—I mean not only just earlier that day, but a few times—but he still stared at her, not because her
telling him the risks of smoking, using herself as the example—Exhibit A—had captured him, and not because her large, blonde wig had, as the heat grew upward of 115 degrees, and her scalp began to sweat, become parallel to her ajarred, black-framed glasses—Gary’s, but she’d finally had her prescription switched in—that sat lazily upon her reddening nose, but instead because recently she’d been in an accident—an “accident”—severing both the ring and index fingers of her left hand, luckily not her smoking hand, and that nonsmoking hand now stared at him, swishing white wine on ice, its fingers perpetually trapped in a pose that he knew to be, from all his schooling and all his friends, dirty.

“It was in my blind spot, baby, I hope you know that. Baby, it was a dark tunnel, and I don’t know. I don’t know. I was trying as best as I could.”

Waking him from his daze, Nana spoke at him, still nervous, as she put out her cigarette atop an anthill of butts in the ceramic ashtray—shaped like the state of California, and with its motto,
Eureka
, inscripted beneath a mountain of accordioned filters—that sat at the center of the white tin table.

“What? Nana, I wasn’t staring at you, Nana. I swear I wasn’t.”

“The streets here are so bright, baby! I couldn’t see at all! I musta just got in some sort of spell, and just sorta lost it, I mean, baby, Tinky didn’t even make it,” she cried out now, nearing tears, because while she loved Tinky, she was still acting. She couldn’t really cry anymore. She couldn’t much feel anymore. She’d forgotten how. Her trade allowed her the ability, though, to conjure up faces of embarrassment and guilt when she felt they could be beneficial. Casts she thought might look empathetic. The different masks she wore. Of all different types. Like her wigs, her face had become malleable, and she’d become able to choose the proper expression for the proper occasion beforehand. A bob and a wry smile for a party, say. Bangs and a teary scowl at a funeral. A Farrah and a smirk on a date. That last one, though, stood out as more of a fantasy, or perhaps a memory, than the others. It had sadly been a while since her last date, but maybe she was better off? Earlier that morning she stood before her mirror and chose a
sandy-blonde updo—her Dolly, one of her favorites—and the face of somebody empathetic. Today she’d be likeable. Today she’d be somebody about whom we are supposed to care.

“Nana, I wasn’t staring at your hand. I wasn’t. I swear.” He looked around the garden sheepishly, boyishly, playing up his refined youth. Acting. He looked for an excuse in the shrubbery. Nope. Then he scanned the walls of the house. Nothing. Then the roof, and up at the chimney. Still no. Dammit. He looked back down at the ground. “I was just. Well, it’s so hot. And I just, well. I’m thirsty,” he said, reaching for a way out of the conversation as he reached his arm toward her. “Can I have some of that?”

He understood her answer from her stare and pulled his hand back and clasped it to his other and looked back down. He knew his Nana had seen him leering at her most newly acquired insecurity—she had many he knew, but what she now referred to as her “mongoloid side” had become her most readily available, in that she hadn’t yet found a way to cover it up. She’d looked into a glove with false fingers, but she didn’t want to always wear a glove. I mean, she would—she could make it elegant—but at this point she hoped she could be brave enough not to bother. Jack Jr. didn’t like to see his Nana sad, so he couldn’t quite, yet, look at her. He saw a snail was under his chair. A big snail, the kind you only find in the desert. He watched carefully its lasting trail as it crawled away. Tinky used to nest under the lawn chairs, with the snails. A big, happy family. Amigos. But Tinky died in the accident, so now the snails went back to being alone.

“Well, baby, this drink is no drink for little boys. This drink’s just for me. But let me run in and make you some lemonade. I think I have some concentrate in the freezer. I’ll make some up right now. Won’t take me more than a minute. Easy as pie.”

She spoke softer now, feeling her drink more, and thus more secure. She got up, whipped her neck back, and snapped her wig into place.

“And remember, it’s hot up north for a reason. That’s why our lord, Jesus Christ, our savior, lived in the North,” she preached as she walked
away. But after a moment, she stopped and looked back and cocked her head. She stared at him, paused, and smiled, exposing her newly finished pearl-white veneers.

“You know what I mean?” she whispered, nearly. “Now don’t you go anywhere, beautiful. You just look too beautiful in this house. As handsome as anything. Pretty as a picture,” she said, before trailing her way back inside. As she stepped her first step her knee buckled between her shoe and the sun-soaked brick. She remembered that about fifteen minutes before she’d enjoyed a Vicodin. From then on she took more care in stepping, though her carriage was still slightly unsure.

She was so convincing, as she stepped through her AstroTurfed garden and toward her wood-paneled condo, that he was compelled to believe her. He didn’t quite, in his heart, but he wanted to, and he appreciated how much she tried. She stopped once more, before the glass doors, and looked back at him, and winked somewhat sloppily, but so cute. I mean, no less than precious. Then she turned around and slid inside and pushed the translucent glass door to a rubbery close. This shut him off from the oscillating fan that spun off cool air by the cactus.

Sweating, now—again, Palm Springs is the hottest, third-hottest place in America, they say—through his loosely buttoned, short-sleeved, “hunter’s green” shirt—as he’d heard his mother dub it once before—and onto his red velvet vest, he got up from his seat, brushed his sun-dyed blond hair to the side, and followed the path of the slippery snail he’d seen under his chair. His feet followed close behind his eyes. His stare was sharp. He was on a mission. It had only crawled about six feet since he’d last seen it. But, as it reached the end of the oval plywood deck, before dropping out of sight into the imported garden—the greenery was mostly purchased at an artificial plant shop called African Queen, as Dorothy didn’t care for watering—it popped its three-pronged head out and snapped its shell back into place.

“Oh, she’s just putting her face on,” he imagined his Nana saying, while she, in fact, admired her reflection in the steel-shiny tin of the
toaster oven while the lemonade thawed. She filled her wine glass to the top and cheersed her smiling likeness—proud that she felt she was doing a good job. Proud to be a nana—but as she pushed her wine glass forward triumphantly it slipped from her hand and fell to the floor, so now she’d spend the next few minutes cleaning. And so back to the snail, who eventually returned her head to her shell and climbed over the edge of the deck and dropped out of sight, into the thickets of bamboo, and then onto the mossy edges of the chlorine-soaked pond water. The snails, too, had become immune to the dangerous chemicals. “She’s the hare,” he thought to himself. He’d be the turtle. He followed her off the deck, into the garden, and stepped out onto the dirt, praying not to lose her. He strode silently from the tall ledge—he’d removed his sneakers, so as not to make a sound—but she was gone. He couldn’t find her. She wasn’t anywhere, anymore. She was lost. All is lost. But no, not yet. He was determined. He wasn’t ready to give up. The tropical grass tickled his nose and ears, but he walked into the bushes confidently—a predator aware of his prey. This wasn’t his first time at the rodeo.

He stepped two steps but then backed up quickly and pressed his palms flat against the wall behind him. He’d crunched something under his toes; he thought it was her—he thought he’d killed her—and he was frightened. He closed his eyes, then lifted up his bare foot, held it in his hands, then opened them. The remains of a stale pretzel—pieces of rock salt and knotted bread—stuck to his heel. Thank goodness. He brushed it off and breathed and breathed and wiped the sweat from his brow with his shirtsleeve. He didn’t want to be a predator anymore. He lost it as quick as it came. He retreated again against the wall, but was put at ease by the mossy rocks on the back of his neck. In the shade and the brush—cultivated tall enough to protect them from the ogling neighbors, who weren’t particularly fond of Dorothy’s brand of fun—the wall seemed the only cool thing in the desert. It certainly was the only cool thing outside. He’d scared himself, but he’d gathered, and now he was ready. Again he was ready. He paced forward, and moved slowly, and wearily, and he watched his steps as he made an inroad on
her territory. He saw three plastic birds—cranes—spinning around on their white, plastic axes. He came upon a rock—one of the many rocks of the same color and size mined strategically throughout the artificial greenery, and lifted it, to see if that’s where she was hiding. She wasn’t there, but
Serenity
—he sounded out—was etched into the bottom of the stone with a small ™ logo beside it, and
MADE IN CHINA
printed beside that. His taste, even at this age, was evolved enough to find this off-putting, so he placed the rock
Serenity
-side down and continued on pretending.

“Baby. Baby boy. Gorgeous. The lemonade’s ready. Ready for you to drink. Come and get it! Come on here!”

He sat low in the bushes and listened to her muddled voice address him.

“Come on, baby. Baby. Little one. Where are you? Where you hidin’?”

Then he stood up, the snail—well, don’t worry about the snail—and he watched his Nana smile—a big smile, pushing a cigarette past her teeth. She struck a kitchen match on her clog and lit it. And he smiled too.

“There he is,” she said as he hurried to her, still wishing he was drinking what she was, but happy all the same. “Were you prayin’ in there again, angel?” she asked him, holding out her arms. He ran and jumped into her and only they—together—mattered. She held him tightly and whispered, “Like an angel. Prayin’ for Nana’s little hand,” her voice even grayer than before.