A Room on Lorelei Street (19 page)

A room is not much. It's not a remembered birthday. Not fresh sheets or a greeting at the door. Not a packed lunch or being wakened for school. It's not a hug or interested eyes. It's not a name pronounced correctly, the only name that kept you in this world when you were a peanut to be flushed away. A name that made the angels throw a party. A room is none of those things. And a room is surely not forgiveness. Forgiveness for growing, being, speaking, and breathing. Just a room.

Not much at all.

The motel lamp is dim. A low brown glow spreads a layer of dirty light across planes and edges of a room she can't define. She closes her eyes. A half thought. More of a knowing she tries to get hold of, pin down.
So what. It's not like I'm a virgin
. A half thought with filmy words that she squeezes and turns.

The light is clicked off, and only a sliver of green neon slashes through a draped window.

She thinks on the room. Her room. Not on the musty, colorless carpet beneath her feet. Not on her grease-stained dress falling to her ankles. Not on the meaty hand that cups her breast, or the clammy lips at her neck. The room. She thinks on that.

Beautiful, Zoe.

Soft, Zoe.

Yes, Zoe.

Zoe.

But she doesn't say his name. She doesn't know his name. The room. A bulldog. Space. Air. A thousand stars all her own. The room is what holds her.

It is over quickly. She is grateful for that.
Grateful
. Clothing is gathered. Keys plucked from the nightstand. Her purse tucked back beneath her arm. Soon they are in his car headed back to the diner. A slip of time that lives in a dream world. Hardly there.

He pulls in next to her car and jumps out. He runs around to open her door, but she is already out, rummaging for her keys. He reaches into his hip pocket for his wallet.

“What kind of tip do I owe you?”

She wishes they had taken care of it back at the motel, but she couldn't speak then. Now it is easy. “Ninety,” she says. He pulls out a hundred dollar bill and tucks it in her palm.

“Worth every sweet penny,” he says. He bends to kiss her cheek, and she hardens her bones into place, forcing them to stay put. It is the least she can do for the extra ten.

He gets in his car and leaves, pulling the air with him, gray exhaust left in its place.

She waits there, the oily fumes holding her. She grips the bill tight so it wrinkles, crinkles, shapes to her fist.
Crinkling, wrinkling
. Her car. She should go to her car.
Crinkling.
But her legs don't move. Murray's neon sign crackles and snaps. The pump groans. It's all the same.
Crinkling
.

But it's not.

What the hell is so different? The yellow sign glows, flattens her into place, and the pump groans. Details swell. But then it's not the sign or the pump at all. It's a glance. A fragment. A second look. Beyond her circle of yellow. Beyond the oily fumes.

She sees him.

Carlos.

Standing at the door of Murray's.

How long has he been there?

A dead weight pulls at her lungs. She forces a step. And another. Until she is an arm's length from him.

“Carlos—”

He smiles. A quick, jerky smile she hasn't seen before. “Just stopped by for a late dinner.” His hand brushes through his hair, wipes at his chin, and then is shoved into his pocket to keep it still.

“Right. You told me. I forgot.”

“Yeah. Just dinner. No big deal.”

His words don't match the stiff movement of his lips.

“Carlos—”

“You don't need to explain.”

She doesn't. She is floating, hovering somewhere outside herself. A hollow distance that can't be measured. Far, but as close as skin to skin. She looks at his eyes.

She reads them.

She
recognizes
them.

They are her eyes. Her own eyes.

Her own eyes looking at Mama.

The hollow distance cracks with the fumbled jingling of her keys. The car. The door. The key. She drives, but she doesn't go home.

Black meets black. Moonless sky touches earth and aqueduct. Only low rumbling and a dusting of light on steel beams proves the snaking water is there. Her shoes are gone, kicked loose somewhere in the gravel. A breeze rustles the mesquite, a clattering of leaves, a voice in the blackness.

Never say never. I learned that two lifetimes ago. So will you
.

Her foot finds cold steel, and she understands. Can finally root into the feeling. The comfort a cold white bathtub holds. A step. Another. Her feet feeling the way. And voices. Voices twining in with the rumble, the air pushing them up.

What the hell you looking at?

Nothing, Mama. Nothing
.

Six inches of steel that can't be seen. Air rushing up her legs. Rushing up. Pulling down. A step. Her arms at her sides. No stretching for balance.

You'll never make it.

No more steps. Just cold steel curling into her toes. Cold smooth steel, numbing, like porcelain. But not enough. Carlos's eyes travel through the black. She sees them again. Sees herself.

Never say never.

Her hands slide up to her arms. She is cold.

Never say never.
Grandma is right. She is always right.

The echo hits her in the face, nearly pushes her from the beam.

What Mama wouldn't do for a drink.

What I wouldn't do for the room.

A choking gurgle comes from her throat. She feels the clammy lips at her neck, the paw at her breast. She needs to wash her crawling skin.

What I wouldn't do
.

Just like Daddy…just like Mama.

Her fingers loosen on the bill still in her fist. Loosen, a cold finger at a time, and the bill flutters like a black butterfly into the rumbling below.

You'll come crawling back
.

But she is never coming, never crawling. She can't. There is nothing to crawl back to.

“Zoe,” she whispers into the night.

“Zoe,” a word thrown to the breeze, wanting to catch somewhere, but her whisper is lost to a moonless night, and there is no one else to hear.

She closes her eyes and takes another step. So black mixes with light. Up becomes down. Chaos becomes calm. Being becomes not.

Just like Mama.

Just like Daddy.

Never far enough away….

Opal adjusts the For Rent sign in the window. It's been over a week. She's not worried. Someone will take the room. She's read three pairs of eyes, and one leads the rest. She steps back and surveys the room. Zoe's things are gone. The room is as it was before. Exactly as before, except for the stone bulldog. The bulldog had to go.

A car door slams.

“She's here! She's here!” Opal squeals. “I knew it! I could feel it in my bones! I read it in her eyes!” She leans out the window and sees a slight blonde girl standing near a car at the curb. “I knew she was coming! I knew!” She clasps her hands and makes a final sweep of the room.

“Is there anything you can't read in someone's eyes, Opal?”

Opal stops, her caftan lapping at her ankles like a gentle tide. Her head tilts in her comfortable birdlike way and she smiles. “Some things,” she says. “Like why you can't take the room off the porch. A little cramped, sure, but the view is fine and the free rent's even better.”

“You've already done enough, Opal. More than you know. And I've already stayed here long enough without paying rent. I owe you. I will always owe you.”

“No, Zoe Beth Buckman. No owing.” She cups Zoe's face in her soft wrinkled hands. “I took as much as I gave. Truly. Now, you can read
that
in my eyes, can't you?”

Zoe looks, reads, nods. “Yes,” she answers.

Opal sits on the bed and pats the bare tuftness next to her. Her hurrying is gone out of her. “Sit with me,” she says. Zoe does. She has the time. Except for the stuffed pillowcase in her hand, her bags are all packed in her car.

“I'll miss the tennis matches,” Opal says. “So will the Count.”

“Me too,” Zoe says. But in an odd way, she is mostly relieved. It makes it simpler. Being kicked off the team makes her other decisions easier. It's less to hold on to. Almost freeing. She thinks of Grandma, holding so tight, trying to keep together what has already come undone. So much like herself. She smiles. Like Mama. Like Daddy. And now it seems, like Grandma. Parts of them, all a part of her, too. A thought like that would have made her crazy a week ago, but now she can hold it like a harmless bug in her palm.

“You'll be okay, Zoe. I feel it in my bones.”

“If your bones say so, it must be true.”

“That room is always here, though. Just so you know.”

Zoe nods. “And the knowing is enough.”

Opal reaches into her pocket and pulls out a large round apricot. “It's a record! One for the books!” she says, and places it in Zoe's hand. “Never had one last till the first week of October before. Hung on just for you. Odder than a June bug in July. What do you make of it? Think it's a sign?”

Zoe turns the apricot in her hand, feeling the delicate velvet of the skin. “I suppose it's fate, Opal. Fate, pure and simple. And maybe a sign, too. A season that's late in coming is finally here.”

Opal nods agreement, and they share the silence, a connection like arms holding them together.

The doorbell buzzes, and Opal becomes a flurry once again, shushing the Count, who is bellowing in the hall below. “Quick!” she says as she jumps up and runs out the door, “Should I stick with Opal's Lorelei Oasis? Or should I try something new?”

Zoe smiles. “Oasis worked just fine for me. But why don't you wait and see? It might come to you the minute you look in her eyes.” Opal claps her hands together, delighted with the possibility, and nods her good-bye.

Zoe leaves down the outside stairs, her overloaded pillowcase bumping along each step. She takes in each thump, each creak, each scent, each sight, like she is memorizing time, like it is all new and she is overcome with what she might have missed. She glances over her shoulder, back at the garden. The tops of her rutabagas are spiky green tufts now. She won't be here when they are ready to dig up, but Reid said he would come. Was it the drama? Like the final act of a play that made him offer to do it? Or had he forgiven her? He didn't say as much, but she thinks that was it.

She unlocks her trunk and then stops to look down the shaded street, dappled light pocking the sidewalks and cars. Lorelei. A street she never knew existed three months ago. What will she discover three months from now? She almost missed the chance to find out. It's been over a week since she was at the aqueduct, but she can still feel the chill of that night on her arms. She relives it every day. How close. How terribly close….

Voices pushing her but then saving her, too. Her own voice,
finally,
speaking louder than the others. Chopped-up conversations with Zoe as their beginning and end.

Never far enough away.

The possibility came to her. Of her own making.
Far enough
. Pieces of possibility that gathered together in a tight strand.

No matter what had happened, what had brought her to the aqueduct, the wondering was worse. She knows that. Slipping into blackness would leave Kyle with the same wondering that Daddy left her. The wondering that can never be satisfied.

For Kyle. And the wondering that eats
. She opened her eyes. She couldn't leave him with that.

And then on the heels of the chopped-up voices there was a whisper on a moonless night, a whisper as crisp as a cold breeze.
Special, Zoe. Stars, Zoe
. Whispers Daddy left her that meant something, too.

Zoe.

Mama didn't. Mama made a choice.

So could she.

It was then her arms rose for balance and fear held every cautious step. The night was blacker, the beams narrower, the distance as far as forever, but she worked her way to the other side and fell into the dirt with gulping breaths.

She sat there in the dark, afraid to move. Shivering. Shamed. But alive. Never far enough away, but maybe a place far enough for now.

And then, amazingly, Grandma's chopped-up words last of all as she searched in the dark for shoes she never found.

Be a good girl, Beth. Let's put all this behind us. Start fresh
.

Yes,
Zoe thought.
Fresh.
Maybe not the fresh Grandma had meant. But fresh in her
own
way. Maybe the kind of fresh Aunt Nadine had to find.

Chopped-up voices. Bits and pieces. All a part of her now. Forever splintered into her for better or worse. But the choosing, the
choosing
is what Mama gave her. Not a peanut growing all on her own, after all, but something of Mama, too.

Bits. Pieces. Endings. Beginnings. And choosing.

She throws her pillowcase into the trunk and looks up at the room one more time. She sees a hand slip the For Rent sign from the window. A momentary fear skips through her, but then she shakes her head. Opal's bones always know. She has to believe that. They always know. She gets in her car and drives the quiet Sunday streets of Ruby to Mama's and parks at the curb just behind Mr. Henderson's pickup. She gets out and pauses at the gate.

The weeds have grown thicker; the summer blooms are all gone. She stares at the house and imagines it with daisies crowding the porch. She imagines a cool, lazy sprinkler and open, breezy windows and a lawn that is almost green. She imagines a young woman sitting on the steps weaving daisy chains into her hair and a man chasing a little boy with a hose.

It used to be a house,
she thinks.

You could almost have called it pretty
.

The chain-link gate groans as she passes through.

She stops at the steps and looks down at a faded doormat that once said “welcome.” She reaches into her pocket and pulls out the last apricot in Ruby, maybe the last one in the universe, and sets it on Mama's doormat. She takes a step back and looks at it. An apricot out of season. Mama loved apricots. Loves apricots. Zoe hopes she sees it.