How very…forward! How very…insane! How long it had been for her!
Out of habit, she looked down at herself. The button-down blue shirt was hiding some of the pudgy middle—she’d actually put her best shirt on for Kit—and her hiking pants fit looser after her time in Colorado, and she’d brushed her hair—with an actual brush, not a fork—and braided it into one gray-brown braid down the side, now that it was long enough to do so. Not bad, actually. But still…
She stood up a little straighter and looked back up at him—yes, still sparkling blue eyes—and then over to Lulu, who was chattering on. Madrean Sky Islands, that’s another cool word, oh, and also the Dragoon Mountains, whoever named stuff around here was smart!—and Ammalie forced her gaze back to Dan and sure enough, his eyes were there, so she went back to Lulu. Soooooooo many places are named boring Englishmen’s last names, like Mount Everest, like, give me a break, but not here, everything around here has better names, like Pinaleño Mountains and Dos Cabezas Mountains.
Because Lulu was looking up at her now, expecting some response, she focused on the blond, bouncing kid. “Amen. I was in the Collegiate Peaks a few weeks ago,” she said, collecting herself. “And I thought that was the stupidest thing ever, to name gorgeous wild mountains after…you know, stuffy colleges. Literally, I can think of nothing dumber. Come on. I think things should be named after what they look like, or remind you of, or something amusing or clever.”
Lulu was delighted, which made Ammalie delighted, which made Dan delighted.
To Dan, she ventured, “Uh…where you guys staying? I…I’m looking for a KOA or something similar.”
“Don’t know of one of those around here,” he said. “We’re at Cave Valley Cabins, down the road there. Nothing fancy. Simple and clean.”
“There was a pig outside our cabin this morning,” Lulu said. “It smelled weird.”
“A javelina,” he corrected.
“A bunch of birders stay at these cabins,” Lulu chimed in. “Grandpa says there’s a whole spectrum of birders, some snooty and some just normal people. We’re the second group.”
“I myself am trying to learn the birds. Birds and stars.”
“A house wren is my favorite, because they’re so small with such big noise. Did you know the males build a bunch of nests—and then the females pick one? They pretend to keep up those other homes to distract predators. I love that, pretending to have other homes!”
Ammalie startled. Pretend homes. Exactly.
Then she felt a pang for Powell. She missed him, the young him. She was glad for Lulu’s chattiness; soon enough the forces of society or the universe might render this kid mute and sullen, as they had done eventually to Powell. She still needed to figure out why and how that had happened, and why the ages of thirteen to fifteen had been so…much less fun than she thought they’d be…and the ages from fifteen till seventeen seemed to be so much more distant than she thought they’d be…and things had just started to get better and good and then…well, now he didn’t want to talk at all. She had tried and tried. Invited him on trips or to dinner or on walks a thousand times. She longed to know if ever the real relationship, the friendly conversation, would return. How to make that happen?
But wow, she missed him. She put her hand out to steady herself on the car and pinch the bridge of her nose to stop the tears. By then, Lulu was chatting away again and Dan was looking at her with some warmth and some concern, but then their momentum swept them away and they climbed into the Subaru and left. Lulu offered her a friendly wave and Dan offered her a smile and a look that only a true flirt could give.
—
The hike meandered alongside a dry creek bed and strange rock outcroppings that glittered with quartz. Lady was leashed and trotted nearby as Ammalie repeated the names of the trees over and over—placards had been placed to educate: creosote, paloverde, oaks, all of which seemed to have their own scent. The leaves of one tree looked exactly like stars falling to earth, and she was surprised that so late in the year each leaf was still caught in various phases of turning from green and yellow. She had lunch on a warm rock that had another big rock behind it, creating a perfect chair. She read from a novel by Kent Haruf set in Colorado and decided that next up she’d buy a novel set in Arizona. That’s the least tourists could do, she thought—read one novel set in the state they were visiting. Then she napped a little, Lady beside her.
When she woke, she dug the shards of pottery from her pocket and stared at them, resting in her palm. Vincent had never been specific about where he’d found them, only that he pled temporary insanity. He was so delighted in having found something—a key to the past!—that he’d picked them up. He wanted them for his own. It wasn’t until later, spurred by a talk at the local library about the importance of leaving artifacts, that the guilt began to gnaw. How selfish that had been! How small-minded! What if everyone did that! What good were pottery shards sitting on his office shelf? He needed to right his karma. He needed to put them back. He suggested they go together someday to return them.
Someday.
What an easy word to say. What a bizarre assumption.
But she couldn’t do it, it somehow didn’t feel like the right place, and so she put the shards back into her pocket and hiked back to the car and drove the car off the mountain. As soon as she was at the park gate and had reception, she called Powell. He didn’t answer, so she left a message.
“Hey, Powell, I miss you truly. Was thinking about you when you were eight or so, when we built forts and went on adventures around the neighborhood. I just wanted to say that I’m sorry I wasn’t more of an explorer for you later. I was thinking that often I didn’t rouse the energy to do things, and Dad would sometimes suggest trips and camping, and I argued that you should just be allowed to go to the pool or flop on the couch, which is what you wanted to do back then, but now I realize I was just being kinda…lazy, I guess. I was tired. You were too young to know you had options beyond the pool and the couch. It takes some spine, some energy, to get people out and exploring, and Dad was great at that, and now I feel bad that sometimes I was a weight. Not always, but sometimes. I just wanted to say that. I love you. Go explore life. Conjure up the oomph you need to go have adventures. It does in fact take oomph. I hope this makes sense. I’m not wanting to be a nag. But I am still your mom, you know. I love you so much. I really, really, really miss you.”
She let that all sit. It was the truest thing she could say, and it was important.
She texted Mari: All well, you? Love you. Despite not communicating, I am really thinking of you. And hoping all is ok. I’m in remote Arizona. Adventuring. Then she texted Apricot an obligatory photo of Cave Valley and drove on.
She knew the pattern of her people: Powell might text something back in the next day or two, Mari would get back to her as soon as she could, Apricot likely wouldn’t for weeks, and then only out of obligation. As kids, they’d adored each other—at least, that’s how she remembered it. But in their teen years they grew annoyed with each other, and then the adult years sent them spiraling further apart, and then they really rifted with the death of their mother and all the work that involved. Which was too bad—that had been their chance, perhaps, to find the laughter and friendliness of the early years. There were certain things that only Apricot knew, things only siblings growing up in the same household could know. Small things, but still, those things were a part of who Ammalie was.
She resumed driving, and right before she hit the edge of the desert, where the mountains were about to change into flatlands, she passed a little dirt road with a sign that said Cave Valley Cabins. She slammed on the brake, jolting Lady forward, and pulled in. “Sorry, Lady,” she said, reaching out to hold her in the seat, then scratching her jaw, which Lady seemed to love. After a stretch of winding road, and after crossing a wooden bridge, she came upon a cluster of small log cabins. A sign pointed to the lodge, a wooden building with dozens of bird feeders outside. She saw the old Subaru pulled in at one of the cabins and smiled; Lulu had been a little bit of unexpected bright in her day, and Dan…well, Dan. She didn’t know what to make of that.
She scanned around for a water spigot. Her eye rested instead upon a Help Wanted sign in the window of the office. She paused a moment, considering. She’d thought about getting a job at her destinations, but the problem with a job was that people would want forms—IDs and Social Security numbers, and it’s not that she couldn’t do that, but she didn’t want to do that, her whole goal had been to live under the radar, to be invisible, to have some time on earth where she was mostly untracked, unavailable to others, and could move at her own pace and rest until she felt rested and not work.
Also, she had trained enough servers and waitresses herself to know what a drag it was to train someone, only to have them leave. She didn’t want to be that person. But on the other hand, she needed to think about the reality of the trailer. Small, claustrophobic, without electricity, and, well, occupied. And although she had enjoyed daydreaming about some flirty romance between Kit and her, she needed to get real. She should leave Kit to his own…adventure. Besides, he was fifteen years too young, and Dan, well, Dan was fifteen years too old, although she had to admit to the irony of that opinion, given that she was the one who was angry at culture’s rules about appropriateness in general, and about making assumptions based on age. Apparently, she had some unpacking to do of her own assumptions. Who said she couldn’t take a lover twenty years older or younger? No one. She was limiting herself in ways she was barely aware of.
She did a U-turn, left, and drove on, back toward the desert. At a lone gas station, she grabbed some overpriced canned goods and sandwiches and dog food and gallons of water, bought gas, and drove back to Dart, the right front wheel making an unhappy noise, the rutted road surely not helping, but her heart jumping around with some vague excitement. She and Kit would have the sandwiches and chips and ice cream she’d bought. She even had honey sticks filled with weed that she’d bought in Colorado. Perhaps he’d like to get high with her—it had been a long time since she’d done that!—and they’d talk and laugh and embrace the floating coziness that weed generally offered.
She’d hear something of his life. She’d see that smile. She’d feel connected to a man for some brief moment in time. That was enough.
—
The Sea Creature stabbed one good zinger into her heart before slinking down into her stomach, drowning, when she found Dart empty. Not only empty, but empty. No ice cooler, no sleeping bag, no tarp, no tool kit, and nothing but a clean composting bucket and wood chips in the trailer bathroom. No Kit hiding there. Worst of all, no note—though hers was gone.
She sat down at the picnic table and ran her fingers through Lady’s fur. Bundled up in a coat, she was warm enough, but she turned her face up to the sun, as if doing so might warm her heart, too. Suddenly she didn’t feel well. Perhaps losing all that blood in the past days, perhaps eating canned food, perhaps the stress of squatting in someone’s trailer only to find someone there, perhaps the sorrow of seeing Vincent’s handwriting, perhaps missing Powell, perhaps coming across a man who awoke some old feeling but then had disappeared into the desert. Yes, perhaps having people suddenly go missing was just breaking her. Or maybe it was just low blood sugar.
She poured herself a whiskey and ate a few potato chips and watched the setting sun. Fuck the universe. It all just suddenly hurt. The Sea Creature wasn’t letting up, zigzagging and stinging her heart: One zing of nostalgia for eight-year-old Powell. Another sting of regret for not realizing how special that time had been. Another zap of sadness knowing she’d not be a grandmother, probably, given Powell’s realistic fear of the future. Another zing for kids like Lulu never being born, because climate change had made some understandably unwilling to bring someone else into the world. Several zings for finding Kit gone, without a word. A small series of zings in her lower belly for a body going haywire and menopause signaling the end of something, though, of course, she didn’t want a child now, though technically, and insanely, her doctor had told her she still could. She snorted sadly, thinking how absurd it would be to use a condom now, at this late stage in life.
Lady, who was sitting on the picnic bench too, pushed her head under Ammalie’s armpit, as if trying to get her to stop drinking. But Ammalie raised her whiskey in a toast instead and said, “Lady, what can I say? It takes the bite out of the gloom. It reduces the pain.”
As if in response, she began to cramp badly, enough to gasp and lurch forward. She put her forehead on the picnic table. So fucking unfair—her period should be winding down—the whole setup was complete fuckery! She stared down at the grain of wood and said to her armpit and Lady’s nose, “Hey, Lady? You ever feel like you have a new and improved heart? You’ve figured out how to live? You feel you’ve just been born? But then you discover you’re getting old and life is fragile and you could die?” Then she began to cry in earnest, her body heaving, and Lady nosing her armpit while she mumbled sorrowful truths.
—
When she woke at her Midnight Alert Hour, as she’d named it, she sat up in Fluffiest Red and glanced around Dart, lit by moonlight, and moaned. The wind was gusting and the trailer rocked and creaked, the plastic in the window swooshed back and forth, and, god, she felt unsteady herself. And cold. She was still drunk. And high—she’d gone ahead and done that on her own—and not only had it not been fun, all it produced was sweaty feet and dry mouth and endless-seeming munchies, which had required that she eat an entire bag of chips. The trailer started to wave—and it wasn’t all from the wind.
Jesus, why was she always making such bad decisions? She pulled up her sleeping bag and pulled Lady closer to her and gazed at the cupboards in the little moonlight-lit cabin. The cupboard handles were so ugly. Her heart was ugly. She was an ugly person. She lay there, panting, recognizing a general anxiety, a general loneliness, a specifically bad headache.
To distract herself from pain, she considered her day tomorrow, which was spookily open-ended and empty in a spookily empty place. What would she do? There wasn’t enough room for her yoga mat inside the trailer, but she could get her exercise by going on a hike. She could journal and study plants and stars and then she’d…She wasn’t sure.
