American Elsewhere (15 page)

She looks ahead and sees a small knoll that is half covered with bobbing wildflowers. It’s a curiously uneven sight—the flowers are
restricted to the sunward side, so the knoll looks a little like someone with a half-shaved head. The flowers are so dense and so brightly colored that Mona immediately thinks that were she a little girl, she’d love to go rolling down the hillside among them, petals of bright yellow streaking by as the blue sky whirled around her.

Since Mona is not a little girl, she opts to go walking in them instead, rounding the hill and looking up at the sight above her. On the other side of the hill is a little trickling brook that has carved a small green scar in the landscape. It seems a bit out of place—Mona saw no sign of a brook on the other side of the hill—but, curious, she follows the brook down to where it winds through the trees.

She keeps following the brook, ducking under branches when they’re too big to push aside, and suddenly there is the flutter of sunlight…

Mona looks out, and gasps. She’s standing on the lip of a rocky cliff, and below her is a fifty-foot drop into the valley. Vertigo beats on her senses, telling her she’ll step forward anytime, and go plummeting down…

“Maryanne, hon, I told you I wanted to be
alone
today,” drawls a voice nearby.

Mona wrestles her eyes away from the drop and looks right along the cliff. There is a little clearing not more than twenty feet away, grassy and shaded by a tall spruce, and in the middle of the clearing is a woman sunning herself on a deck chair. There’s a second unoccupied deck chair beside it, along with a small table, on top of which is an aluminum shaker sweating with condensation.

Mona relaxes, steps away from the edge, and walks to the woman. She is tall and lean, and she wears very short white shorts and a blue halter top, and a pair of pink cat’s-eye sunglasses with rhinestones. In between her thighs is a half-empty martini glass.

“Sorry?” says Mona.

The woman raises a finger to tug down one lens of her sunglasses. An eye of lapis lazuli peeks from behind it. “You are not Maryanne.”

“Nope,” says Mona.

“Who are you? I don’t know you. Wait. Wait, are you the…”

“Yes,” says Mona. “I am. Didn’t mean to disturb you, I was just following the creek down here.”

“Ah. Well, you’ve stumbled onto my secret hiding spot. So. You’re the new girl in town. You certainly are making yourself known. Not that that’s a bad thing. What’s your name?”

“Mona.”

“Mona. That’s a good name. Not used very often anymore. Suppose people think it’s too… gloomy.” She licks her lips. Mona gets the impression that the martini between her legs is not her first. “Mona. Moan. See?”

“I see.”

The woman sits up. She’s definitely of A Certain Age—her tan is interrupted by liver spots flowering on her wrists and the backs of her hands, and her cat’s-eye sunglasses can’t conceal the wrinkles at the corners of her eyes. “I’m Carmen, Mona. It’s a pleasure to meet you. How are you doing on this fine morning?”

“Good enough, I guess.”

“I’m going to have to guess that no one here’s exactly thrown you a welcome party yet?”

“A welcome party?”

“Sure. Welcoming you to the town.”

“Well. I wouldn’t want to bad-mouth anyone, but… kind of.”

“You’re not bad-mouthing anyone.” She sighs and sits back. “I’m not surprised.”

“I imagine the funeral sort of put a damper on that.”

“Oh, I suppose it did. But even more so, though we like fun here, we just don’t like to make a show of it. Hence the, ehm.” She slurps noisily at her martini and waves at the surrounding trees. “Why don’t you sit down?”

“I didn’t really want to intrude.”

“Oh, you’re not intruding. I’m just being neighborly.”

“But I thought you said you wanted to be alone?”

“That was because I thought you were my daughter. I’ve been helping her and her kids—she’s married with her own kids, you see—and I
insisted on having a few moments of my own. I mean, they can take care of their own shit for a few hours, can’t they?”

“I guess?”

“Of course they can. And Hector—Hector, that’s my husband—he could weigh in and actually
do
something occasionally, too. It’s good to let them be on their own. Sink-or-swim kind of thing. Now sit. You look like you’ve been working yourself half to death. Here.” Carmen fetches a martini glass from underneath her chair and pours something cool and clear. “I would like to state that this
isn’t
something I do often. I don’t just hang out here in the woods drinkin’ all morning. Life does not permit. But, you know, I sure would if I could. I can’t think of a better use for a morning.” She hands the drink out to Mona.

“Uh, I’m not really a gin person.”

“You’ll be this kind of gin person. I promise.”

Mona sips, not wishing to be impolite. But the drink is cool and biting and refreshing, like a dash of cold rain on a hot afternoon. “Huh,” says Mona.

“I told you it was good,” says Carmen. “Where you from, Mona?”

“Texas.”

“Where in Texas?”

“All over.”

“All over? That’s a big all over.”

“I didn’t quite have a permanent address, I guess you could say.”

“I see,” says Carmen. “Then what brings you to Wink?”

Mona recites her usual explanation.

“Goodness,” says Carmen. She appears honestly affected by Mona’s story. “It sounds like you’ve had quite a time.”

“You could say that.”

“Well. Why don’t you lie back and enjoy the morning with me? Sounds like you’ve earned it.”

“Oh, I couldn’t possibly—”

“I’m willing to bet you possibly could. Do you have anything else to do today?”

Actually, Mona does. She’d meant to ask Mr. Parson more about
Coburn today, and to see if she could get him to make a damn bit of sense. But she says, “Nothing that couldn’t happen later, I suppose.”

“That’s the spirit. Relax. We get to relax so rarely. Give it a shot.”

Mona lies back. Relaxing isn’t something she does easily, but she finds it easy here: the sun is warm but tempered by the overhanging tree, and the chuckle of the nearby brook makes her worries melt away.

“So what do you think so far, Mona?” asks Carmen. There’s a soft
slurp
as she sucks at her own drink.

“I think I could get used to this shit.”

Carmen laughs. “I believe you, but I meant about Wink.”

“Oh. Well. It’s… it’s damn nice.”

“Yes, it is, isn’t it. I guess we get too used to it. Acclimated. Take it for granted. But then a morning like this happens, and you remember.”

“It feels… a little different at night.”

“Hm,” says Carmen, but she does not comment further.

“New Mexico is a damn pretty state. I wish I’d come here sooner.”

“You know, I’ve been here all my life, but I can’t imagine any place more pleasant than this. Well. I’d be lying if I said you didn’t have to
look
. Like this place here. Sometimes you have to work for your bit of peace. But it’s there. And I know what you’re thinking—you’re thinking, what the hell would a housewife know about work?”

“I actually wouldn’t think that at all, ma’am,” says Mona.

“Oh, really? Pardon my forwardness, but I didn’t quite see you as the family type.”

“Tried it once.”

“Didn’t take?”

“Something like that.”

“Ah,” says Carmen. She turns her black-glassed eyes to the sky. “Well, if anyone gives you any shit about that, you can tell them to go to hell for me. If they haven’t been there, they can’t talk.”

Mona tries to smile gratefully at this bracing advice. “So is this part of your property?”

“Kinda,” says Carmen. “Our house is back toward downtown
more. This is just mine, really. I asked Hector for it. For my little bit of sun I could lay out in—though I did ask for a little bit of shade, occasionally—and he went and got all that arranged. That’s kind of how things work for us. A lot of favor-corralling, I guess you could say. I’ve no doubt you’ll figure it all out, if you hang around long enough.”

Mona looks around at the glen. Maybe it’s the gin, but it’s hard to have a troubling thought here. Yet there’s also something vaguely hermetic about this place, as if the trees have sealed them in and this tiny glen and its stunning vista are totally detached from Wink.

“Will you be hanging around?” asks Carmen.

“Sorry?”

“Around Wink. You’ve got a house, you said, but are you thinking to stay?”

“I don’t know,” says Mona. “Maybe. I guess the real estate market might not be exactly hopping here, if I want to sell the house.”

Carmen gives a husky laugh and finishes her drink. “You’d be surprised, m’dear.”

“I have to ask—you wouldn’t happen to have known my mother, would you?”

“Sorry, hon. I didn’t. Or if I did, I don’t remember, which ain’t out of the question. My memory isn’t what it used to be. But if you ever need anything—advice, or a drink—I’m always available. Or I’ll make myself available, even if I’m not.”

“I appreciate that.”

“Well, you seem like someone who’s seen a lot. It’s like I said, peace flourishes here, if you ask for it. I hope you’ll find some here.”

Mona considers it as she finishes her martini. As she does, there’s a snort from Carmen, followed by a second one that never quite stops until it’s a snore. Mona sits up and looks in the shaker, and is not surprised to see it is totally empty.

She gets up and follows the brook back up to the street, walking until she emerges in a greenbelt where three small girls play hide-and-seek, giggling and shrieking as they dash among the trees, and she turns toward home, thinking of peace.

So far Mona hasn’t had a single good night in Wink. She tries to sleep, but it does not come easily. Often she awakens to roam the house’s empty hallways. The windows cast queer shapes on the faded wooden floor, and in some places the air takes on a hot, electrical scent, like the smell in a room with too many copiers and printers going at once.

Mona thinks herself a practical person, so she knows the world abounds in coincidences that can really fuck with your head if you invest too much in them, and she tries to tell herself the shared date—of her mother’s suicide and the lightning storm—is one of them. Tragedies happen every day, and it doesn’t mean anything if two coincide. Yet each time she remembers that black, lacquered shard of wood leaning crookedly in the park, she is troubled.

When sleep finally takes her it is blessed and hard, a dreamless black slumber that will leave her covered in pink wrinkles from the sheets when she wakes. Yet eventually—it is hard to say when—she begins hearing voices in her sleep.

“… And she just came in the other night, she says,” says one voice. It sounds like it belongs to a very old woman who is standing just nearby.

“She says so because she did. I was there,” says another. This voice is masculine, firm and deep. “I was the first she came to.”

“To you? Was this your doing?”

“Her coming to me was purely coincidental. I had no hand in it. I had no idea she was coming at all.”

Mona does not open her eyes. She is sure she is dreaming, but she does not want to open her eyes in the dream, because then she might do the same in real life and wake up and ruin her sleep. So she lies on the mattress with her face in the sheets and her eyes tightly shut, listening to the two voices talk.

“And do you think it is all coincidence?” says the old woman’s voice. “I would like to believe so, I must say. Then we could rest easy.”

“Something this important… I cannot help but think otherwise.”

“Why do you think her arrival is important?”

“She comes right after a death. A new face, after an old one is lost. It is too soon for me to feel comfortable about it.”

“Ah,” says the old woman’s voice. “So you think…”

“Exactly. She is not here by accident. She was brought here. This is someone’s doing, but I am not yet sure whose.”

Mona has no idea what they’re talking about, but she’s slowly becoming aware that the air on the back of her neck is nothing like that of the air-conditioning in the house. It is far too cold and dry. It feels like a wind out of a barren desert, one that has never known moisture in all its life. And she feels she has heard those voices before…

She begins to lift her head a little. She is not going to
look
, she is certain of that, because this is still just a dream. She’s just going to crack her eyes a little, and maybe something will just trickle in.

She cracks her eyelids. And something does indeed trickle in.

Mona is on her mattress, but she is not in her house: the mattress lies on a field of black stone, like volcanic basalt, its surface cracked into nearly perfect little hexagons. There is a red light shining down on the black stone field, and Mona keeps lifting her head until she spies a familiar sight: the red-pink moon, as fat as a happy tick, and just below it is the blue flicker of cloud lightning.

This is some dream
, she thinks.

“Do you believe she has any involvement?” asks the voice of the old woman.

“I do not think she knows a thing,” says the man’s voice. “She is mostly confused, and sad. She is a broken thing.”

“So she poses no threat.”

“I did not say
that
. With so much recent madness, how are we to be sure what is a threat and what is not?”

“Hm. I believe I may wish to confirm for myself,” says the woman’s voice.

“I do not think it’d be wise to attempt anything dangerous now.”

“Oh, it wouldn’t be dangerous. At least, not for us…”

Mona is now sure these voices are familiar. Did she not once hear one of them offer her breakfast, and the other one offer her tea? Confused, she lifts her head higher and begins to roll over.

She sees there are two statues, one standing directly on either side of her, enormous ones done in odd shapes: one looks like a single queerly organic column, the other resembles a mammoth, headless bull with many limbs. They seem taller than the Statue of Liberty and the Sphinx, respectively, and appear to be made of the same black stone as the sunless wasteland. Both statues tower just above her, as if they were strolling by (if such things could stroll) and found her lying here and are investigating together. Yet the moon is just behind them, so she cannot see more of them as they look down on her…