Read A Private State: Stories Online

Authors: Charlotte Bacon

Tags: #Fiction, #Short Stories (Single Author), #test

A Private State: Stories (5 page)

 
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splotches. She'd forgotten to give Julia towels. Her nails were lined with soy-based ink from the type she used to set the headlines at Flagstaff's ecoweekly.
An unmet deadline had kept Hannah from greeting her sister at the Phoenix airport, so Julia spent the night at a hotel called the Caravanserai. The room key was attached to a tiny plastic scimitar. Julia was looking forward to telling Hannah about this, but she arrived with the newish boyfriend, Stephen. He raised his hand from the front seat in a spare way that suited his mustache. A reporter on the desert beat, he wore impressive boots.
Hannah said, "Let's get out of this cesspool," and they sped north toward Flagstaff. Julia had rather liked Phoenix, its neat streets and tired fluorescent glow. There was no air conditioning in the carfreon, Hannah explainedthough that concern was a bit at odds with an old Jeep and its sizable appetite for gas. All the windows were open, which made it difficult for Julia to catch what the two in front were talking about, unless they leaned back to include her in the conversation. "Dad says hi," Julia called. He had actually said to send his love, but Julia felt uncomfortable saying "love" in such a spiky, yellow place.
Neither of them had asked her much yet, not even about the flight or if she was tired. Hannah was thinner than ever, as if all the protective layers on her body had dried out. Stephen seemed silent as a matter of policy. Maybe it helped him observe sand more closely. "When are we going to see dunes and skulls?" Julia called. "The O'Keeffe stuff?"
"She's New Mexico," Stephen said. Hannah tried to laugh. Julia sat back. She had known that. She could even spell Abiquiu. When they got to the house, Hannah said, "Now, where are you going to sleep?" and swept the books on the sofa in the study to the floor. Stephen was over every night. Julia was starting to adapt to mute breakfasts of kasha with goat's milk.
Hannah was working, so Julia tried to occupy herself in the
 
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backyard. But the stiff tangles of sagebrush didn't need a lot of ministration. Julia was used to delicate nets of roots, but plants out here were more like weapons than ornaments. She ventured into Flagstaff instead, where she could sharpen her spurs or buy a crystal to purge grief. Mormon missionaries prowled about on sleek, thick-tired bikes. Several approached her as she sat over iced tea.
Henry would have enjoyed talking to the Mormons. Julia had met him at the nursery, where he came to purchase hyacinth for the beds in front of his church. He was a Lutheran vestryman. A number of Christians bought their gardening supplies there, but Henry was the only one who said thank you instead of God Bless, which was the first thing she'd noticed. Then she'd seen the band of gold on the usual finger. But the ring hadn't kept him from asking, a week later, struggling to keep his grip on a bag of peat moss, if he could buy her coffee. The whole thingHenry's car parked blocks away, shades pulled mid-afternoonmade Julia feel soiled and adult in a dark, impractical way.
She'd never have gotten wound into something like this if her mother were alive. Her parents, still at ease in marriage after thirty years, without saying a word rejected anything but calm and thoughtful union. Soon after the coffee, Julia lost her shears in the roses, misplaced her license, bounced a large check. Her boss peered at her and said, "You're happy, I think." That night Julia asked Hannah if she could come see her.
But the most personal topic Hannah had broached was asking if Julia knew an organic way to keep slugs off basil. Julia told her to pour beer into yogurt lids and put them around the plants. "Do they die?" Hannah said. "Isn't there something less drastic?" Julia said testily beer was hardly malathion. You choose, Hannah, she said, slugs or basil. That hadn't gone over well. Julia went off and wrote a letter to Henry in which she tried to sound enthusiastic about the lack of humidity out here in the True West.
 
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But she ended up shredding the whole thing and flushing it down the toilet, which promptly clogged.
"A good purge, that's what I need," Julia thought that night as she poked a tortilla shard in the bean dip. She went to sit on the arm of Hannah's sofa and glanced around the crowded living room. Why hadn't she brought brighter clothes? Her black sundress, chic and understated in Boston, looked all wrong out here. Everyone else had on shirts and pants in sunset reds and yellows. Even the piñata, a stocky burro swaying from the ceiling, wore a purple saddle.
The smell of grilling vegetables wafted through screens. The sangria had been popular. Julia's glass had been filled and emptied several times, which kept her from conversation with the hawk-lonely teetotalers studying to be shamans. Others had tried to make more contact. Several members of the women's group had taken both of Julia's hands in theirs and squeezed. "Julia," they said. "Welcome." Other guests exclaimed how much she and Hannah looked alike then drifted off, in the way of all parties, no matter how evolved the guests.
Hannah was talking to a man about a school-board election. Others were arguing about how to block zoning for a Wal-Mart. Local, insular talk. Julia, if anyone had asked, might have mentioned that she encouraged the sale of native plants. That she was living in the same town she grew up in, unlike any of these people drying out from too much toxic time in L.A. or New York. Someone put mariachi music on the stereo. The piñata began to jiggle. Couples whooped and started to dance.
Julia went to the study, taking with her a pitcher of sangria and a tall yellow candle. Its rim had melted into a scalloped edge that made it look like one of the nursery's fanciest tulips. She held it close to Hannah's desk and looked at photos. Hannah on a pinto, holding the pommel with a casual hand. Hannah linking arms
 
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with women gleeful at their conquest of a bald peak. Not a single picture of her sister in any phase but Arizonan. Waxy drops rolled to the desk. The door swung wide and Julia turned to see Stephen. "Having fun?"
Julia looked at him and said, "Oh yes. Tons."
He closed the door and stretched out on the sofa, rumpled with Julia's sheets, and said, "What did you think of the canyon?"
"Impressive." She gestured vaguely, hoping she'd lit on the right word.
He wandered over to the wine and poured himself some more. "You never get used to it," he said. "You just feel sort of small out here all the time." It was the only thing he'd said yet that made her like him.
"But Hannah loves it," Julia said and sat down at the desk.
Stephen sat nearby and said nothing, which felt fine, not awkward. The whole-grain breakfasts had accustomed them to pauses. The floor rang with music. "Hold on," he said, and went to the living room. He came back with chips and guacamole. "I like this stuff."
"Me, too," said Julia. She thought avocados were beautiful, their flesh sliding quietly from green to white at the pit. Even more, she liked mashing them for Henry, whose wife thought they were too fattening to have in the house. She had realized instantly, as the fork met the soft slices, that this was competition. "Henry likes it, too."
"Is he your boyfriend?"
"I think so," she said.
"New?"
"Married."
"Complicated," said Stephen tranquilly.
So Julia started to talk to Stephen, and it tumbled from her like gardener's twine unraveling from a badly wound ball. But listening to the story out loud for the first time, she was sad to hear how common it seemed, and she stopped. Partly it was how brittle
 
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Henry's name sounded in the dry air. But mostly, it was realizing she was telling the wrong story. What she really wanted to say was that she was having dreams about her mother so real she woke up sometimes thinking she could smell her skin. Stephen poured more wine and said, ''You ever cut your hair?"
Julia shook her head no. The three longhaired women. My Rapunzels, her father called them.
"Can I do it?" he asked. "Short?"
"OK," she heard herself say.
Stephen wet a comb in the bathroom, shifted his chair closer to hers, and wrapped a towel around her neck. Then he eased out the scissors on his Swiss Army knife. "You're going to use those?" Julia asked.
"Don't worry. I got the best haircut of my life with them." He turned on a small lamp. The comb slid across her scalp. He went straight to the base of her skull and a skein of hair fell to the ground.
"Stop!" Julia said, clutching her head. "Just a minute." She remembered how Henry loved to braid her hair. She remembered even better her mother brushing it smooth for school. But these were things that couldn't be allowed to make a difference anymore. He might as well go on. "OK," she said. He snipped slowly, his breath steady. A damp mass of brown slid into her lap. They were quiet for a minute. The candle guttered out. Julia asked him, "Do you love Hannah?" She'd given him permission to cut her hair and felt entitled to some large, abrupt questions.
Stephen stopped. "Love. Wow. Big word." The scissors started again. "Do you?"
"Of course," Julia protested.
"Just because she's your sister, you don't have to."
"Everyone's so groovy out here," Julia heard herself saying. "If you don't feel like being nice, that's OK, you're just in a bad space. What's bad space, anyway," Julia said, a little louder. "Some cave where you put the meat eaters?"
 
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"Sit still," said Stephen. "I'm going to mess up the line."
"How come losing your temper out here is a federal crime?" Julia said, sitting up straight. "How come Hannah makes me feel like a serial killer when I tell her how to get rid of slugs? She's murdered plenty of insects. Mosquitoes eat her alive."
Stephen laughed and said, "Not many of those in Flagstaff. Too dry."
"Do you know what Hannah did when she lived back East? She wrote corporate newsletters," Julia said, smacking the desk.
"No wonder she wanted to come out here," Stephen sighed.
Julia really wanted to ask him if he knew about their cat, their mother and her garden. Did he know that Hannah got the book-shaped scar in her arm from the old Persian? That their mother told Hannah it was her own fault: Hannah knew how grumpy the cat was. Did he know stories like that? Then Julia let it cross her mind that Henry wasn't all that comfortable either with talk of surly pets or parents.
"She's happy here," Stephen said. "For the most part." Julia listened for more, but he didn't go on.
"Does she ever talk about me? About when we were little?"
"Not really." He took the plant mister from the windowsill. Spray settled on Julia's cheeks in a fine net.
"Not ever?" What caught Julia by surprise was that learning this was the most painful news of all.
"Settle down," he said and straightened the towel on her shoulders. "Talk to Hannah. She's the one making you mad." He started cutting again.
"Hannah doesn't want to talk to me." Julia's throat felt tight. She picked up a foot-long piece of hair. "I don't want to see," she said. ''Get some tape. Put it back." She put her head between her legs.
"Come on, close your eyes." He led her to the bathroom. Air tickled her neck. Stephen squared her shoulders and said, "Look." She saw two dark eyes framed by chin-length hair. A new face.
 
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Half of Stephen's smile reflected in a corner of the mirror. ''Hold on," he said and clipped a few strands. "Well?" His hand was warm on her nape.
Then Hannah was there, the noise of the hot, winey room rushing in behind her. Her hair had slipped from its chignon and tendrilled down her back. "Come on, they're doing the piñata," she called. "My God. You let him cut your hair. It looks great," she said, coming into the bathroom. Julia watched her sister's face and saw that Hannah was struggling not to be jealous.
When the guests saw Julia, a collective hoot went up. "All
right
," they cried. "Baby!" someone shouted. A pair of hands pulled her and Hannah to the center of the circle below the piñata, spinning from the last blow. Paper shingles of the burro's skin floated down on the sisters. Hannah went back to Stephen and wound herself onto his arm. But Julia stood there while someone took another whack. A hollow leg fell off. "Harder," someone yelled. The burro's side caved in and a thin spill of foil-wrapped candy trickled out. Julia stood below, hands spread wide, because it seemed important to try to hold some of the slippery treasure.
Waking the next morning with the sun slanting across her bed, Julia felt for the first time the West might have possibilities. She unwrapped one of the piñata candies and lay in bed, letting the bitter chocolate melt on her tongue. The day was shatteringly clear. At breakfast, Stephen said, "It was great how everyone liked your haircut." Julia poured more goat's milk on her cereal. She was starting not to mind its sour edge.
Hannah was busy with pots at the sink. "Stephen, I want to leave for the swimming hole at ten."
"I'm not going, I don't think," he said, stretching his long arms.
"You're not? Why?" Her hair today was pinned in a severe bun.
He had work to do, he said. Hannah frowned until he kissed the top of her head. "Adios," he waved to the sisters.

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