North of Nowhere, South of Loss (20 page)

“You're out of your mind.”

“Ever dream you've turned into your father?”

“Look,” Solana says. “You make a decision. You decide it's either drown in his cesspool or climb out. You decide you will not be your mother. You decide you will not throw lifelines to idiots who can hardly wait to dive back in.”

“So how come you're here and not in some glass tower doing corporate law?”

“I told you. Rage. I'm not here to pull losers out. I'm here to punish them.”

“That's an interesting angle.” I can feel the mellowness coming in, a lovely slow tide. I close my eyes. “When I was a kid, we used to spend summers at this nowhere beach in South Carolina. Helen, that's my sister –”

“The hot-shot lawyer.”

“Right. She's two years older than I am. Funny thing is, I was the daring one. I was the leader then. She was always getting sick and missing school, she was a very timid child.”

“So she got more attention.”

“I guess. I don't think I minded. I think I adored her really. I mean, the whole family did. She was much prettier than me and much much smarter, and my mom and dad always said:
Helen's going to put her mark on the world.
She won a scholarship to a private school and after that the family embarrassed her. At school, she'd say Dad was in business, in real estate,
a developer,
she said. At home, she was a bundle of nerves. I
worried
about her.”

“Got it,” Solana says. “It makes sense now. You're mama's type. Branded as caretaker for life.”

“We were out in a row boat. We weren't out very far.” Helen's so close I could touch her. I'm ten, she's twelve. There is one oar in the bottom of the boat and Helen still has her sandals on. I dive in and tread water. I dare Helen to jump in too. I tell her it's shallow. I tell her I'm touching bottom, but I'm not.

I try to explain for Solana. “I don't know why I did it. I think I thought that if she
had
to swim, she would. She'd learn how. She'd learn to protect herself.” I light up again. My hands are sweating now. I remember the blue around Helen's lips when they pumped her lungs. I remember getting her hair in my mouth.

“Can I borrow your cell phone?” I ask Solana.

I dial a number. “Hi,” I say brightly to an answering machine. “Just wanted to know how you're doing. It's been a while.” I nearly don't say it, then I do. “I miss you, Helen. Give us a call when you've got a minute, okay?”

“There's no comparison between you and losers like my father,” Solana says. “You
did
save her. And you
do
fend for yourself. Hell, I've watched you for three months. You're a fake loser. You could be superwoman if you want.”

“She used to make the most elaborate sandcastles you've ever seen.” I remember the cat's eyes for windows, the mussel shells for doors. “When she was eight and I was six, she used to read me stories at night. She used to hide a flashlight under her pillow and we'd wait till Mom and Dad had gone downstairs and then I'd crawl into bed with her.”

“Will she call you back?”

“The Little Mermaid
was my favourite.”

“Will she call you?”

“She might,” I say. “Eventually.” I inhale slowly. “She'll tell me I'm my own worst enemy. I make her feel the way you feel about your father.”

And then I tell her: “I didn't actually call her. I dialled my own number and left a message on my answering machine.”

There is a long orange electrical cord snaking across the hallway and disappearing under Tirana's door. Solana trips on it.

“God,” she says. “I thought
your
building was the pits. What's that stench?”

“Sewer back-up. A lot of the toilets don't work.” I look at her curiously. “You must have lived in projects somewhere. Back before college and Yale law school. Where're you from?”

“Atlanta,” she says. “This is my home town. We
never
lived in housing projects. My mother would rather have died.”

“Well now you know. For Eden Gardens, my block is upper middle class. Block C's pretty bad,” I acknowledge, eyeing the squalor. “But it's not the worst.”

I knock on Tirana's door.

“What's this frigging cord for?” Solana says.

“A neighbour's feeding her power.” I bang on the door again. “That's the way people manage. Losers look out for one another, that's why I like them.”

“Don't make me puke.”

I put my ear against the door and hear the TV Cartoons. I thump with my fist. Everything's quiet except for Spiderman's voice. “Tirana,” I call. “It's me. It's just me and Solana.”

There's a fumble of sound and the door opens a crack. The chain is on, and Evie's sweet and dirty little face peeps through. She's standing on a chair.

“Hi, Evie,” I say.

She puts a finger to her lips. “Mama says don't wake the baby,” she whispers.

“Okay,” I whisper back. “Can we come in?”

“Okay,” Evie says. She unchains the door and climbs down off her chair and lets us in. The TV set is running off the orange extension cord. There's not much else in the room: a formica table, two plastic chairs, a carpet remnant on the floor and a yellow vinyl beanbag on top of it. There is no air-conditioning. The windows are open and the children are wearing nothing but underpants, but it doesn't help. The room feels like a furnace and stinks of body sweat.

“Jesus,” Solana says under her breath.

Everyone is snuggled in the beanbag. I think of bees clustering on pollen. Tirana's the sunflower, and on her stomach, curled like a petal, Jamika's baby sleeps. Jimmy the Pyro and Jo-Jo and Evie and CJ and Dessie all seem attached. You can hear all those baby bees purr. In the background the TV drones, but no one pays it any mind.

“Mama's telling us a story,” CJ says.

“If you want lemonade,” Tirana offers, “it's in Denise's across the hall. Or there's beer. Evie can get it for you. My fridge don't work.”

“Don't worry,” I say. “Just came by to see if you needed help.”

“Mama,” Dessie says, pulling at her sleeve. “Don't stop. Tell what the mirror said.”

“Mirror, mirror, on the wall,” Tirana begins.

No, they all clamour. You told that already. Tell what the mirror said, tell what the white queenlady did.

Tirana's eyes glitter. “You want to know what that ol' mirror said?”

Yes, yes, they breathe, eyes shining.

“You gonna be very quiet and listen up?”

Shhh,
they all chorus, fingers to lips.

“'Cause that mirror got a voice as soft as cream,” Tirana warns.

Shhh,
the children say.

“Listen up then,” Tirana whispers, and they squirm in close.

“The mirror say: you got a big shock coming, white queenlady. Yes, ma'am. 'Cause I got news for you, I got a announcement to make. You not the hottest babe in Block C. Not no more.”

Mirror, mirror, you tell ME,
the children chant on a rising curve of excitement.
Who the hottest lady in Block C?

“If you wake the baby,” Tirana warns, “the mirror won't tell.”

Mirror, mirror, you tell ME
, the children repeat, whispering but insistent.
Who the hottest lady in Block C?

“Now here is what the mirror found,” Tirana says. “Black Velvet be the hottest chick around.”

The children scream with laughter and clap their hands.
Jazz be nimble, Jazz be quick, Black Velvet be the hottest chick,
they chant. They tumble together, licking pollen and rubbing legs. Jimmy the Pyro tickles CJ and CJ shrieks with pleasure. The baby cries.

“Now look what you gone and done,” Tirana says.

The children smother the baby with kisses.
Tell what the white queenlady did to Black Velvet,
they beg. But the baby is fretful now.

“If someone take the baby,” Tirana says. “If someone get the baby's bottle from Denise's.”

“I'll do it,” Solana says.

“Denise will show you.”

Solana holds the baby against her shoulder and rubs her cheek against the peach fuzz of its head. She won't catch my eye.

Tell about Black Velvet
, the children beg.

Solana closes the door.

“The white queenlady, she call takeout,” Tirana says. “Express home delivery. And what she ask for? What she order now?”

A poisonapple!
the children respond.

“And why she do that?” Tirana wants to know.

Because she want Black Velvet to die!

I wait, half listening, for Solana to come back but she doesn't. Ten minutes, fifteen. Tirana doesn't seem worried, but I am.

In the hallway, I find her. She's sitting on the floor with her back against the wall. She has the baby in her arms. The baby sucks furiously on the bottle, her eyes wide, her gaze on the face above hers. Solana doesn't even notice me. She's looking into the baby's eyes, singing softly.

“Your daddy's rich”
she croons,
“and your mama's good-looking. So hush little ba-by
–”

Then she sees me and stops dead.

We stare at each other.

“Don't you say one fucking word,” she warns.

SOUTH OF LOSS

In July, the auto shop is hot as a furnace.
Zach's Oven
is what we should put on the sign, Billy says.
Get your car baked here.
Heat billows out and down from the sheet-iron roof. Fumes of gasoline rise. The shop, a made-over barn, slumps beside rural route 6, halfway between the South Carolina coast and nowhere. It is not exactly on the antebellum heritage list, but it does do oil-change-and-lubes for the carriage trade.
(For the gentlemen farmers,
Billy says.) Several grand neo-plantations are close by – all bed-and-breakfast listings with verandahs and white wicker rockers – and they keep Zach's Auto Repair in business, but only just.

Billy spits on the blacktop in front of the shop and his spit sizzles and disappears before his eyes. “How come we don't move to the off-ramp by I-77?” he wants to know. “How come, Zach? Like that Exxon place. Get the Interstate breakdowns. Get the weekend traffic. Get rich.”

“Get air-conditioning,” Joshua says.

“Get to Charleston every night.”

“Get any place different from nowhere.”

“Nowhere is exactly what my great-great-greats were looking for,” Zach tells his boys, unruffled. Boys. He thinks of them all that way, black and white, young and old, the ones whose fathers worked for his father and the ones whose grandfathers did: Joshua, Quintus, Robert E. Lee McGonigal, age seventy-two, known to the wide world as Robbity or Robbity Reb, and Billy, nephew of Robbity Reb.

Billy rolls his eyes. “Nowhere is surely what they found.”

“Secret is,” Zach says, “that you start with where you're at. Take Izzy Rubenstein, my don't-know-how-many-greats grandfather. He started out fixing carriage wheels and wooden axles.”

“Bullshee-ee-it,” Quintus says. He raises his eyebrows at Josh. “We know how Mister Izzy started out.”

“Started out giving orders,” Josh says.

“Started out ordering
my
great-grandaddy and
your'n,”
Quintus says, “to work up a sweat.”

Zach holds a dipstick up to the light. “So
Rubinstein and Sons, Wheelwrights
still owes you, Quintus,” he says. “You got that new alternator in or are you waiting for me to kick your ass?”

“It's not the alternator,” Quintus says. “It's the battery.”

“Can't be the battery. Miz Annabelle's car? I put that one in just six months ago.”

“Reconditioned, Mister Zach, sah,” Quintus reminds him, with an exquisite edge to his tone. “Terminals corroded something wicked.”

“You got some baking soda?”

“I got baking soda. I'm already cleaning them, Mister Zach.”

“If it's the alternator,” Robbity calls from under a Chevy, “we got no spares for that model. Have to send to Columbia or Charleston.”

Billy cannot resist. “An auto shop in the boonies makes as much sense as a shop in the desert selling bait.”

“Maybe so,” Zach says. “Maybe so. I'm not twisting anyone's arm. You're all free to leave, and no hard feelings. But this is where Izzy pitched his tent around 1690, and this is where Zach's Auto Repair is going to stay.”

“Until bankruptcy doth come,” calls Robbity from deep under the Chevy.

“The promised land was what Izzy thought,” Zach says, “and I'm not messing with family tradition. Of course,” he adds, “I don't claim Izzy was greeted with open arms, but nobody drove him out either, and here we still are.”

On the high and holy days Izzy had to go down to the synagogue in Charleston as every Rubenstein since has had to do. The Rubensteins have also had to go to Charleston for their wives, and this custom, like the family business, has been less than an unqualified success. A decade ago, Zach's own wife went to New York for a wedding and has never come back. Zach's son has moved to Israel, and his daughter to who knows where, but Zach does not budge. “The place whereon I fix your Ford pickup or your tractor,” he says, “is holy ground. At least to me.”

Quintus, born and raised in St Jude, is inclined to agree, “even though,” he likes to remind, “your great-grandaddy owned mine, Mister Zach.”

“I can feel it coming, Quintus. You want another Friday off.”

“Mister Zach,” Quintus says, offended. “I ain't asked you for a thing, but I do got the wedding of a cousin coming up.”

“The wedding of a cousin.”

“Down on the coast,” Quintus says.

“Ten degrees cooler than here,” Josh points out.

“I know that, Josh, but I'm stubborn.”

“You are stubborn, Mister Zach,” Josh agrees, because not only is Zach's shop five miles too far from the Interstate for collision action, it is also one hour too far from the ocean for even a stray cool breeze.

Each year Zach makes promises.

“Next year, boys,” he says. “I'll get air-conditioning put in.” “That drums I'm hearin'?” asks Robbity, head against the concrete floor, hand cupped to ear. Sweat courses down the grease-lined ravines of his face. “Do I hear General Electric marchin' in, as long foretold by the prophet Zachariah?”

“Judgment Day gonna get here first,” Joshua says.

“Definitely by next summer, boys,” Zach promises. “No question. If all our customers pay their bills.”

“And pigs might fly,” Billy says.

“Shee-ee-it,” Robbity says, “I would settle for a ceiling fan with one more speed than slow.” Robbity, who is a mean hand with mufflers and brake lines, is grandson on both sides to men who fought with General Lee.

“The whole shop floor,” Zach promises. “Not just the front office. I've had estimates. I've had the Carrier people out.”

No one believes him.

He leans in over the engine of a red Toyota: dirty spark plugs, leaking radiator cells, frayed fan belt, everything held together with string and cussedness. Zach cleans the plugs with a chamois cloth. Heat buffets him, coming off the blackened innards of the car like sharp punches between his eyes. He could do with lubrication and an oil change himself. He can't take July in the shop the way he used to. He mops at his face with the carbon-smeared grease-streaked rag.

Robbity laughs. “Look like a nigger,” he says. “Hey Josh, hey Quint, look at Zach. Don't he look like a nigger to you?”

“Look like a nigger yourself, Robbity.”

“You insinuatin', Joshua boy? You insinuatin' something?”

“You seen yourself ? Ever' time you go down under that Chevy?”

“You got any idea how hot it is under this baby?”

“Got himself all steamed up,” Josh says.

“Got a souped-up muffler, it looks like.”

“You keep your dirty mind off my muffler, Quintus boy.”

“Hush your mouths!” Billy calls in sharp warning. “There's a lady.”

Zach looks up, they all look up, and there she is in the wide opening where the street gapes in, outlined in the garish yellow-white of mid-afternoon. The sun is so fierce that Zach can see right through her, he can see right through to her bones. Her hair is on fire.

Zach holds his breath because she is not quite so thin as last time. “Miriam,” he says, walking blindly into the street, arms outstretched, but it is not his daughter transfigured.

This woman is older. Much older.

This woman is old.

“Alma Nicholson,” she says warily, made uneasy by Zach's extended arms. She looks dishevelled and gestures over her shoulder. “My car broke down … about six miles back, I think. I had to walk.”

And then she faints, and Zach catches her as she falls.
“Mon fils, mon fils
,” he hears her murmuring.

Perhaps it is Alma's foreignness that makes his heart flip over twice like a well-oiled gear shift. Perhaps it is the exotic scent of grief.

“It should be near here, I think,” Alma tells Zach. They are out in his tow truck, looking for her car. Puzzled, she adds: “But I didn't pass that gas station. I didn't pass
anything.”

“We must have missed it,” Zach says. “Or else someone has already towed you in.”

“I thought I was on 601, but I might have taken a wrong turn. I know the last town I came through was Fort Motte.”

“Fort Motte! You must have been on 419.” Zach does a U-turn and heads back toward the junction with a rural route so narrow, so closely hugged by pines, that it could easily be mistaken for the driveway to a farm. “Fort Motte,” Zach says, shaking his head in amazement. “You walked more than ten miles.”

“It did seem a long way,” she says.

“And ninety in the shade.”

“At first, it seemed a long way. Then I didn't notice. I sort of floated. Your shop was under a rainbow.”

“You were dehydrated. Hallucinating. No one should be walking in this heat.”

“It was rather pleasant,” she says. “After a while. I saw people I haven't seen for a long time.”

Zach studies her, frowning. “I shouldn't have let you leave the doctor's office. You should still be lying down.”

“No, no,” she says. “I have to find my car. I have to be back at work on Monday morning. Look, there it is.” But as they get closer, she says: “Oh. No. It isn't mine. I don't know why I thought it was mine, it isn't even the same colour.” A mile later they pass an old Ford Fairlane on the side of the road. The car is empty and bears an orange sticker on the window. Its hubcaps, tyres and exterior mirrors have been removed. “There seem to be a lot of abandoned cars,” Alma says.

“Pretty typical for Calhoun County,” he tells her. “Keeps me in business.”

“I passed two when I walked into town, but I don't think those were the ones.”

“Where were you headed?”

“Charleston. It's my weekend off.”

“Where'd you start out from?”

“Columbia. That's where I live.”

Zach raises his eyebrows. “You were certainly going the long way round to Charleston,” he says.

“I know. I don't like the interstate. I try to avoid it. I love the little back roads. They remind me of France.”

“France. So that's where you're from.”

“Since so long ago,” she says, “that France is like an hallucination. In France, I was a young girl.”

“Your name isn't French.”

“No. Well. I married an American name.”

“That's a funny way to put it,” Zach says.

“I married an American soldier a long time ago. I didn't keep the soldier, I just kept the name.”

“You still have family over there?”

“My son is there. There's my car!”

“The blue Peugeot?”

“It's very old,” she says, “but it never gives trouble.”

“My son is in Israel,” he says.

“Will you be able to fix it very quickly?” she wants to know. “First I have to tow it in and find out what's wrong. If it needs parts, you're out of luck. I don't have Peugeot parts lying around.”

“I hope it won't need parts,” she says.

“What went wrong?”

“I don't know. It wasn't giving any trouble. I stopped because I wanted to walk in the pine forest, and when I came back, it wouldn't start. It was completely dead.”

“Battery.”

“But I got a new battery last year.”

“Then it's probably the alternator. Or maybe you just need a jump-start,” he says. “Maybe you drained it with too much air-conditioning, radio, you know, too much at once for too long in this hot weather.”

“I did have the radio on.”

“Let's see what happens.”

He pulls the tow truck up to her car, nose to nose, and gets the jumper cables out. He clamps the metal jaws to the battery terminals, positive to positive, negative to ground. He tells her when to turn the ignition, when to accelerate. Her Peugeot hiccups into life.

“So simple,” she says, smiling with relief.

“You'd better follow me back to the shop” he says, “where I can look the engine over. Don't want you breaking down between here and Charleston in the dark.”

“Oh,” she says. “I suppose you're right.” She frowns a little. “But I really want to be in Charleston in time for dinner.”

“You're meeting someone?” he asks.

“No.”

“You'd better follow me.”

Back at the shop, only Robbity is still poking about in the privates of the Chevy Cavalier. “When you didn't come back from the doctor's,” he tells Zach, “Quint and Josh and Billy figured you'd closed down for the day, especially it being Friday. On their way to shoot pool in Orangeburg by now.”

“You sticking around a while?” Zach asks. “Might need your help on this car.”

“What else would I be doing?” Robbity says.

Zach asks to see Alma Nicholson's driver's licence. “Have to keep records,” he says, “of every time I take the truck out.”

“Yes, of course. I understand.”

From her licence, he learns that she is sixty-three years old. She looks about fifty. He memorises her Columbia address. He casts about for a reason to lift her into the cabin of his truck again. She has hair like faded copper that she wears in a loose knot on her neck. Against the late afternoon light, it wisps about her face like marsh lightning. Her bones are thin and frail as bird bones.

“St Jude,” he says stupidly, staring at her, “is the purple martin capital of the world. It's one of those freakish things. Every summer at dusk. No one knows why.”

“Yes,” she says, a little puzzled. “I know. I saw them once, driving back from Charleston. It was amazing. Like leaves in a tornado.”

“Hundreds of thousands of them,” he says.

“Yes. Their wings made a noise like paper rustling.”

“I'm fifty-eight,” he tells her.

“Oh,” she says, pushing her eyebrows together. She tries to translate.

Zach bends his head under the hood of the blue Peugeot. A host of martins twitters and twists down inside there somewhere. He feels disoriented and deafened. The martins bank and turn in his mind like a purple squadron. They make him giddy. “You have the potential for major trouble here,” he says, speaking into the intestines of the car. His voice reverberates and booms in his ears. “I wouldn't recommend driving on to Charleston in this.”