She slept in Dart’s bed with Lady curled alongside and stars blazing outside. It was the chill that woke her but it was the word blazing that was the first to enter her mind. I am freezing under burning, blazing stars, she thought, which is when she remembered Kit. Her nose was cold and her breath came in mist but she kicked off her sleeping bag and pulled her jacket on so she could stand and look out the window at the lump of him barely visible in the dark. There he was, sleeping on a camping pad on the picnic table, which is what he had proposed; surely he had to be far colder than her, given that he had no shelter. She wished he’d slept in her car, as she’d suggested. Or on the other couch-bed. Or, in her bed? Was that crazy? What was wrong about two bodies curled beside each other? People in other cultures shared beds, out of necessity and comfort, did they not? Why did Americans insist on being so alone? Or was it just her?
Lady raised her head and sighed happily as Ammalie snuggled back in. It was still very early, the sky gray and full of night, so Ammalie sat up and reached above her to pick up the lantern and a book on local history or stars, but her eyes landed on a spiral notebook that said Guest Book. She flipped it open to the first page. It dated back to 1990, which made her snort—there had not been many guests, or they had not been very verbose. There were a few faded signatures early on, one person left a Rumi poem about lions and tender stars, and there were some notes from people who’d come to see the dark sky. Then, near the end, she saw…Vincent’s handwriting…no…but yes, it was Vincent’s handwriting.
“Oh!” Her hand went to her heart, to buffer the Sea Creature’s sting. “Oh, jeez, oh, oh.”
A note from a ghost. Lady nosed her as if to comfort her, but tears rose without warning. A bad cramp echoed through her insides at the same time, as if in response. She swiped at the tears so she could see. The entry was short:
Here with the Chicago group of Dark Sky-ers. Missing wife and son—but not missing cold and snow. Thanks for Dart’s magic. I’ve connected with a part of my past here, shrugged off some deep sorrows. Trying to reset. Cygnus is my favorite. Albireo.
What part of his past? What sorrows? She scanned her brain. Were they going through a tough patch then? Had his self-induced isolation been depression? Besides the normal Chicago winter depression, which they joked about every year? Besides staring at stars, had he come to process some old injuries, done some introspection? What had he said about this place? Why had he never let her in, never really spoken, never had any zest for real connection? She could remember that he had connected with some friends—friends whom, despite living in Chicago, he rarely saw. Ammalie remembered feeling vaguely grateful at the time that he was a man who had friends, who made some attempt to cultivate and keep friendships, since it seemed so few men did. Sure, she’d felt abandoned at being left alone with Powell, but mainly because she was tired. Always, she was tired. Why did people live lives that made them so tired? Or was it just parenting? Or was it just her?
Cygnus. Albireo. She didn’t even know those words! She looked on the shelf and pulled down a book on stars. Its thickness was intimidating, and she nearly put it back, but she cajoled herself into action. One key to the universe at a time.
Cygnus, it turned out, was a constellation lying on the plane of the Milky Way, deriving its name from the Latin word for swan, and contained the Northern Cross—a celestial waterfowl swimming through the river of the Milky Way. The swan’s tail was composed of a variable star, meaning its brightness changed over time as its surface expanded and contracted, and the swan’s head was a star called Albireo, a favorite among astronomers because when seen through a telescope, it revealed itself to be two stars together.
She put the guest book on her chest and stared at the soft waking sky through the window. Vincent had perhaps done the same. Two stars, connected.
She felt nearly as naked as she had been last night. She hadn’t had sex with a man other than Vincent in decades. There was no doubt in her mind that she wanted to—she’d occasionally wanted to even while married; who didn’t?—and now, with the hardest waves of grief and confusion and guilt gone, she could clearly identify the desire. She could admit the deepest truth, if only to herself: Two stars were better than one, and she wanted a man. Her body flat-out burned with the ache of desire, though it’s true that had turned more into an echo of desire, as if that part of her remembered what orgasm and satisfaction felt like.
As she drifted back to sleep, she wondered vaguely, and without any seriousness, about Kit. Too young and too injured and too occupied with other priorities. And yet. Two humans. In need of comfort, of touch, of humanity. When had sentiment become a bad thing? When had basic human desires become so taboo? She wished she weren’t bleeding; she was so tired of that part of her body. But the other part flickered and burned, steady as a star—that was one thing she knew for sure.
CHAPTER 9
Mother. Lover. Crone. She felt the tug of all three simultaneously in different chambers of her heart, causing the Sea Creature to fling itself around in a pinball-game flurry of confusion. As Kit cooked eggs and warmed tortillas and offered small talk and deflected questions with flashes of a shy smile, she found herself worrying about his skinny body and bare feet, like a mother would. But also, zip-zapping lust—she was, after all, sitting on the bed beside the kitchen, and he could take three steps, lean her back, and be on top of her. Oh to feel that again. And yet, what a disaster that would be—her puffy-stomached, menstruating self did not feel like a good match for him. Perhaps she should be mentoring or assisting him, be wise counsel, be wise elder, but that did not feel like a good match, either.
What a stupid, contradictory time of life this was. And yet, no. Not stupid. Lucky.
Meanwhile, she did what all humans have done when confused—she chatted. They shared small talk as they shared breakfast. The raccoon monkeys could have been ringtails or coatimundis, different but both bizarre. The wild pigs were javelinas. Yes, the weather was mild, the sunsets beautiful. He’d been here for about a month, though he wouldn’t answer more on that subject. One of his favorite places was the Colorado sand dunes, near the town of Salida, which, did she know, meant exit? She shared that she was from Chicago, a husband dead of stroke, a son growing pot, a lifelong job waitressing gone. The restaurant had burned in a fire, and there were enormous delays in getting it reopened, which it had just done. But she was finished with all that. Without husband, son, or job, her life felt as empty as this big landscape, so she was looking to fill it up with Things That Were Real before her time on the planet was up.
She didn’t share her real name, or that this was her Second Squatting. She didn’t share that she knew Kit could track her down later by license plate, or that knowing that made her feel un-invisible and therefore fragile. But also, she hadn’t done anything that wrong. In fact, it was all laughable. A small series of small crimes. Compared to what he had done—and he only shrugged at all her suggestions—she was not even a potato in the bag of small potatoes.
As they cleared the dishes, she threw out some words, just to see if he’d flinch.
“Oil and gas? Construction? Billboards? Did you do it alone? Or with a group?”
But he only shook his head no, though he finally added in a kind voice, “For your own good, and for the safety of others, I shall remain quiet on the matter. But I will say this: The world is full of cowards. Because of that, the poor suffer, animals suffer, the planet suffers, and we need a revolution.”
To which she said, “I’m in agreement. But first I’m starting with a revolution of my soul. The personal is political, after all.”
After breakfast he bundled up, including shoes, and lifted his arm to raise a red tool kit, as if that explained something, and walked off into the desert, toward the first rise of a rocky outcrop back near the road. Well, that was weird, she thought, squinting after him. She stood hands-on-hips for a moment, unsure, and then wandered the property, making sure to stay away from the direction he’d gone, so as to give him privacy. She didn’t want to seem like a squatter and a stalker. Whatever he was doing—making a food cache? making a bomb to blow up a dam? carving toy animals out of sticks?—she wanted to leave him alone.
Lady galloped around her; clearly, her natural instinct was to get as much exploring done while still sticking by her human, which was perhaps surprising, given her history. But Lady evidently trusted her, and vice versa. Ammalie followed Lady’s cue and did some mindless wandering herself. She saw a lot of scrub, cactus, an elf owl that she could identify only because she’d flipped through the bird book over coffee.
She bent over to pick up bits of broken beer bottles, the green and clear glass glittering in the sun on the cold earth. Humans were slobs; what kind of idiot smashed beer bottles on purpose? Or shot at them? Her favorite items in the Colorado bead kit had been a few pieces of tumbled glass, and she’d tried doing some wire wrapping, which was the easiest way to incorporate glass into jewelry. She put these shards into an old lunch baggie in her backpack. She didn’t know what for—they were too jaggedy to use for jewelry—but she felt the need to get them off the soil.
When she got back to Dart, there was no sign of Kit. His backpack and cooler were still inside, and she resisted the urge to snoop. Instead, once she was sure she was alone, she swapped the plate on her car. She found the envelope with new tags on the floor of her car, buried under other mail and wrappers and banana peels—and then put the tags on the New Mexico plate. She didn’t want any more calls from sheriffs, or Lady’s owner, or even that mayor. She didn’t want to be associated with Illinois and her old boring life.
No more wasting! She left a GONE EXPLORING, WILL BE BACK, SECRETS ARE SAFE WITH ME note and drove toward Cave Valley Regional Park. Her plan was to go for a hike and see this famous landscape, and on the way home find some store with gas and ice and food to gift to Kit, as well as scope out potential places for future water and ice needs. When she got home, well, perhaps he’d even…move into Dart with her, sleep on the thin couch that could serve as a bed, or, yes, even better, lie down beside her. Oh, god, to rest her cheek on naked chest. She wondered if skin itself could be lonely.
As she turned onto the highway, an official-looking car appeared behind her. Border patrol? Sheriff? Go away, she thought, glancing in the rearview mirror. She glanced back, then at her speedometer. Nothing would actually happen. If she didn’t speed, there would be no reason an officer would run her plate. It reminded her of a game she and Apricot used to play, pretending bad guys were after them, hiding one place and then another, darting around their backyard, and it occurred to her that Apricot’s diagnosis and Vincent’s death had caused her to revert to childhood. Perhaps playfulness could solve her adult problems. Lady seemed to agree, putting her head out the window with what appeared to be a smile on her face.
She wondered with a pang about how Apricot’s cancer was really doing. Her sister, at some point, would die.
And Mari’s divorce—how that was really going, in the secret recesses of Mari’s heart?
And Powell, who seemed the most distant of all. That was her true sorrow. How was he, really? But she’d been overbearing; his yelled request that she please leave him the fuck alone for a while was clear.
The car behind her turned off, and soon the scrub of the Chihuahuan Desert gave way to the green life of Cave Valley. She chomped a pear, this one overripe and juicy, so she had to slurp it down fast. She thought about tossing the pear carcass toward the edge of the road, which banked down to an arroyo, but then worried that perhaps it would land on the road, and a bird would eat it, and the bird would get hit, and that kind of rule-breaking seemed off-limits. She did have a moral compass, after all. Instead she plonked it into her coffee cup holder.
Once she was actually in the park, the traffic increased, and she wound up a mountain with a surprising diversity of trees—plenty she didn’t know but some she did; she had been making an effort, after all. Sumacs, walnut, willow, pine. And sycamores, with their golden bark, still dropping yellow leaves. Towering rocks jutted out of the mountainsides and caves; patches of lichen on rocks glowed in startling colors.
A shady trailhead caught her attention; there was only one car parked there, an old Subaru, older than hers even. She was disconcerted to see a man standing by it, but breathed easier when she saw he was with a blond curly-haired kid, maybe around eight, which, as everyone knew, was the Most Perfect Age.
“Hi, New Mexico,” the kid said as soon as she got out of the car. “I’m Lulu from Seattle and we just got done hiking.”
“I’m Ammalie,” she said, glancing at her license plate, cursing herself for giving her real name.
“Emily?”
“No…uh…Ammalie.” Still, she couldn’t stop herself! What an idiot she was! “It was the most interesting thing my parents did.”
“Ammalie. What’s it mean?” Lulu bounced from foot to foot, her blond curls bobbing with each bounce.
Ammalie slung her day pack onto her back, an indication that she needed to go. She didn’t want to converse with anyone, and if she did, she wanted to encourage low-hanging conversational fruit, which meant not revealing anything. “In German, Ammalie means work, which yes, is what I’ve done my whole life. But in Scots Gaelic, it means water. Which is what I’m doing now. Moving like water.” She said it happily and offhandedly, but as soon as the words were out of her mouth, she felt a sting in her heart, which was followed by a cramp in her side. Water. She’d brought him water.
“Do you have kids? Do you have a husband?” Lulu was blurting out questions nonstop while the man was loading the car. “What’s your dog’s name?”
“One son. Powell. He’s in college. Well, he’ll soon be back in college. Maybe. Lady Shackleton, that’s the dog’s name.”
