Night at the Fiestas: Stories (19 page)

“Yes,” Morgan insisted, “we do need to talk about it.”

Patsy bit her lip. “This isn’t really dinnertime conversation.”

Morgan whipped around and looked at her mother. “Why shouldn’t we talk about the teachings of the Prophet? Revelation is important. You
know
that.” She stood. Claire could feel her rage vibrating around them. Morgan pointed at her mother. “You’d
better
know that!” she shouted, then ran down the hall. At the far end, a door slammed.

Outer Darkness. There was no such thing, thought Claire. She was an atheist, so there couldn’t be.

If Claire were away from her family when the end came—say, if it happened tonight while she was in Nephi City—she would be cast out alone, with no one to hold her as she drifted around in the vast, airless blackness. Her mom and Will and Emma might be destined for Outer Darkness, too, but they’d have each other.

She pictured the three of them as they were now, probably reading books on the couch at home, the lamplight warm and yellow. They’d be reading
The Mammoth Hunt
, Emma’s favorite book, laughing at the antics of Fern and little Sam, the Ice Age siblings. Emma, with her dimpled hands and silky honey-brown curls, surrounded by her mother and father, all their heads touching. They were perfect, the three of them: related, joined. A triangle, the strongest shape there is.

L
ATER THAT NIGHT
, Claire found Patsy and Morgan lying together on Morgan’s bed. Morgan’s face was pressed into her mother’s chest, and Patsy’s fingers were twined in her hair. Claire stood in the doorway, watching them. Four more days. She missed her mother with an intense, full-body longing that hit her so hard, so squarely in the chest, she couldn’t breathe. She knew she’d begged to be allowed to come here with Morgan; why then did she feel she’d been sent away?

Much later, when Claire woke in the night, Patsy was gone and Morgan was sleeping. Claire opened the bedroom door. At the end of the long hall, a light was on.

In the sanctuary, Patsy was in a long rose-printed nightgown, hunched over the phone. Claire stood in the dark of the hall, watching.

“It has been a while!” Patsy laughed gaily in the way Claire loved. “Three kids, yeah. I’ve been thinking about you a lot lately. A lot.” Her voice dropped, and then Claire realized that something was wrong. Patsy was drinking Fruit Coolers. She had a box of them, and there were four empties, the one in her hand half-f. Her voice rose and tightened. “Anything you wanted. I’d do it now.” She listened for a long time. “I know it’s late. I’m sorry. I know.”

Patsy hung up, then threw the bottle against the wall. It hit with a crack but didn’t break. Claire watched the bottle empty itself into the carpet, and thought again of Outer Darkness. She could feel it gusting inside her, cold and vast, as if she’d swallowed a bite of it at dinner and it had swelled to fill her.

Patsy dropped her head into her hands. “Oh my gosh.” She hit the floor with her fist. “Fuck,” she wailed softly. Then: “Jesus. Jesus. Jesus
Christ
.”

When she lifted her head, she looked directly at Claire, as if she’d known she was there all along. Patsy’s mascara was smeared, her eyes dark and red.

“I’m sorry,” Claire croaked and backed down the hall.

Patsy caught up with her and put an arm around Claire’s shoulder. “You poor thing. You’re sad. I’ve made you sad. Are you sad?”

Claire shook her head.

Patsy kneeled before her, dragging on Claire’s hands. “I was just talking to an old friend, but I’m okay now. Everything’s okay.”

“Is it true about Outer Darkness?” And as if responding to its name, the emptiness inside Claire dilated. “Is it true I can’t be with my family in the Celestial Kingdom?”

“Oh, gosh.” Patsy looked stricken, and her eyes welled with tears again. “It is true,” she said. “I’m so sorry, honey. I don’t know what to tell you.” She dropped her head, then looked up suddenly. “But it will be okay!” She jumped to her feet and steered Claire down the hall with both arms.

She pushed open a swinging door. The dark room was empty but for a pool sunken in the floor, a huge square expanse of tiny bathroom tiles. Four steps and a metal handrail led down.

“This is the baptismal, Claire.”

“Wow,” said Claire. She thought baptismals were supposed to look like birdbaths, or grander, more sacred-looking, like the marble-edged pools in the book of Maxfield Parrish paintings her parents had. This was so ordinary, like a drained swimming pool, except smaller and cubic.

Patsy descended the steps, put the stopper in, and turned the faucet.

While the baptismal filled, the two of them stood at the edge. Patsy held Claire’s hand so hard it hurt. Outside the pebbled glass windows a phosphorous streetlight shone. The water was black, the pool too deep for its proportions.

Patsy shut off the faucet. “Do you know what this means?”

Claire listened to the quiet of the church and the sounds of water dripping and a gurgle in the pipes. This was it, the moment her life would change. Claire’s chest was tight, her mouth dry. What surprised her is how accidental this all felt: imagine if she hadn’t woken up, imagine if she’d slept through her chance. She nodded.

Patsy led her by the hand into the warm water. Claire had never been submerged in her clothes; her pajamas dragged around her legs as she took each step. When they were in the center of the pool, they stood facing each other until the black water stilled around them. The water was high on Claire’s chest. The line of wet climbed Patsy’s nightgown, and where the thin fabric clung to her breasts, the rosebuds looked like welts.

Claire breathed in the steam and the scent of Patsy’s lotion. Her mind was quiet, waiting.

“It’s okay, honey,” said Patsy. “Deep breath.”

Patsy cupped one hand behind Claire’s head and held both Claire’s hands in her other, then tipped her back into the water.

Claire’s eyes flew open. She couldn’t see anything in the warm dark, except, somewhere, a shifting haze of orange light. For a moment she felt bodiless, as though she’d become the water, but then the weight of it pressed around her, squeezing her lungs and throat. Claire opened her mouth to scream, but before she could, she had surfaced. She sputtered and coughed and blinked the stinging water from her eyes.

“Now do me,” said Patsy, and she settled herself in Claire’s arms.

Claire cradled her awkwardly, aware of the slippery warm skin at Pasty’s neck and of the sucking of her own t-shirt against her belly. Patsy’s gown drifted beneath the water as graceful as mermaid hair. Claire gazed down at Patsy’s calm face and her closed, waiting eyes.

“Do it
now,
Claire.
”

When Patsy came up, water streamed from her face. She was smiling. “That’s what we needed,” Patsy said softly, the ends of her red hair dripping. “A new start.”

Claire smiled back. For a long time, it seemed, they stood smiling at each other, like people in a movie in love. Then Claire remembered the strange phone call.

“Are you okay?” she asked. “Why were you so sad?”

Patsy pulled her close. “You could be my daughter,” she said. “I feel like you are.” Patsy kissed her on the mouth.

Warmth and happiness flooded Claire. “I know,” she said. “Me, too.”

Patsy pushed Claire’s hair back, and shivers went down Claire’s spine in wave after wave. It was almost too much, this happiness.

Patsy cocked her head, coy. “Can I tell you a secret? Promise not to tell?”

The sense of her loyalty brought tears to Claire’s eyes. She wanted to do something for Patsy, to sacrifice, to obliterate herself for this woman. “I promise.”

Patsy put her face close, and Claire could feel her breath on her lips when she whispered. “No one knows where we are. Not Mr. Swanson. Not your mother. No one.”

Claire realized she’d already known this, but as soon as Patsy spoke the words, she was afraid.

Patsy put her wet forehead against Claire’s, and though she wanted to, Claire didn’t step back. It seemed only the pressure of the water surrounding her kept her on her feet. “You and I have a bond here that is really special, Claire. You may not recognize it now, but you will.”

In Patsy’s lopsided smile, her misty eyes, her affection, there was a ripple of something dangerous that Claire hadn’t noticed before.

The Fruit Coolers.

“Patsy,” she said. “I need to tell you something.” Claire took a deep breath. “My father is an alcoholic. My real father. He screams and breaks things. Once when he was drunk he kicked the dog and she threw up blood.” In Claire’s mind her voice was strong and clear, but when they came out, the words were small and whimpered in the dripping vastness of the baptismal. “I need to tell you that the Word of Wisdom is right.”

A shadow passed over Patsy’s face. For a long moment she regarded Claire. Then she drew away and set the current swirling. She rose grandly up the steps, water flowing from her nightgown, and wrapped herself in a towel. “Of course it is.” Her shape loomed black against the orange glow from the windows. “I know that.” Patsy held open the door. “Get out,” she said sharply. “It’s bedtime.”

Suddenly, Claire didn’t want to leave the pool. “I want to go home.”

Patsy laughed harshly. “Oh, you’re going home. Tomorrow first thing.”

In the dark bedroom Claire peeled off her soaking pajamas, hunching to hide herself while Patsy watched. She didn’t have another pair, so she pulled on a t-shirt and shorts, shivering.

In ten days, Claire was scheduled to fly to San Diego. Six weeks would stretch on as if forever. She would have to relearn how to be careful, how to call him Papa, how to smile when he was in a good mood and make herself small when he wasn’t. She would have to gauge how much he’d had to drink, to pretend not to notice when he raged. And all the while she would carry the vast darkness inside her. Meanwhile, life at home would go on. Emma would continue her Little Guppy swimming lessons at the Y, her friends would become more and more adult, more and more the ladies Claire would never be. Her mother and Will would do puzzles with Emma, their three heads bent together. Safe in their ignorance, her family would close around the space she left, and when Claire came back in August, she’d be a stranger to them.

Patsy patted Morgan’s bed. Morgan breathed open-mouthed, her neck angled so that it looked almost broken. “Lie down.”

Claire looked uncertainly at her own bed, but obeyed. She tried to read Patsy’s expression, but the moon had shifted and her face was in shadow. Morgan rolled in her sleep, her body hot and soft against Claire’s own, and Claire felt ill.

“You needed this time with us, Claire. A child drinking wine. Disgusting.” Patsy tucked the blanket under her chin and pushed it hard into her throat, then lifted Morgan’s heavy arm so it lay across Claire’s chest. “Sleep tight.”

Patsy crossed the dark room, stood for a minute at the threshold, and then shut the door.

JUBILEE

W
HEN
A
NDREA PULLED INTO THE DIRT LOT BY THE ORCHARDS
that adjoined the blueberry fields, she saw she’d timed their arrival just right. Where the farmworkers normally parked their beat-up sedans and rusting pickups, the Volvos and Mercedes and Audis were lined up, a faint scrim of dust from the dirt drive on their hoods. Usually, Andrea was embarrassed by her mother’s old Chrysler with its missing wood panel, but today she parked it among the luxury vehicles with a sense of vindication.

“Nice rides,” said Matty, nodding appreciatively.

“I told you, they own everything. Like three hundred acres.” She gestured at the trees and at the sky, too, as if the Lowells actually did own the whole wide world. “Not just blueberries, either. They grow practically every stone fruit ever invented. Even the dumb ones, like nectarcots.”

For several years, the blueberry industry in California had been expanding, and the Lowells had been early adopters. In honor of their eleventh annual blueberry party, the field-workers—a few of whom Andrea had known her whole life—had been given this Saturday off, paid. “Wouldn’t want the precious guests to have to pick alongside Mexicans.” She snorted, picturing the Lowells’ friends in their Brooks Brothers chinos and silk skirts and strappy heeled sandals making their way down the rows.

Matty shrugged. “I wouldn’t mind a paid day off.”

“You’d have to have a job first,” said Andrea, then glanced at him, worried she’d offended him. But it wasn’t even clear he’d heard; he was looking, as usual, at something that wasn’t her. Andrea wished he’d shaved that wormy black mustache or had at least put on a button-down. He looked so good in a button-down. But whatever, she reminded herself; she didn’t actually care what the Lowells thought.

Andrea had dawdled in a gas station off the highway so they wouldn’t be on time. She’d bought Matty a forty—rather, he bought it with his fake ID and her cash—then lingered, trying to distract him. She flicked a plastic bottle of pheromones near the checkout. “Imagine the kind of guy who thinks Sexxx Juice is going to improve his prospects,” she said. Andrea was always bringing up sex around Matty so she could demonstrate how cool she was with it. At the magazine rack, she dragged on his arm, trying to look game and easygoing as she pointed out details in men’s magazines. (“Guys really think that’s hot?” “Yes,” Matty said.) Finally, though, Matty had pitched his bottle—still half-f—and asked if they were going to this party or not.