The End of Eve (16 page)

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