Banana Rose (23 page)

“What about Neon?” Anna asked.

“He kissed like a fish.” We both burst out laughing.

“I knew he would,” Anna choked out through guffaws.

“Actually,” I said when we’d calmed down, “Eugene was fine. It’s just that Gauguin is the deepest love of my life.”

“Deeper than your painting?” I thought it was an odd question.

I nodded. “I guess. Why?”

“Just a thought.” She shrugged her shoulders. “Nell, it’s just that you love things really deep.”

I smiled. “Well, don’t you?”

“Not with the same intensity. I get more lost. My lonesomeness sometimes takes over. I lose my purpose. I put off writing. Your suffering made you paint. It drove you deeper into what you love,” Anna said. She was curling her napkin.

I forked a bit of pancake into my mouth. What was she saying? “Anna, I’m no better than you. You’ve been working at your writing a long time.”

“I know.” Now she was looking out the window. “Sometimes I think I shouldn’t have left Taos.” She shrugged. “But I’m here now, and the best part is, Daniel and I have really become close. Vietnam broke him. All the killing he saw turned him against war. He’s much more accepting of me. When I moved back, he said, ‘Sis, you mean a lot to me. I didn’t realize that before.’ I was shocked. At first I didn’t believe him, but he meant it. He’s come to visit me a few times.”

“That’s great, Anna.”

Just then the waitress came with the bill, and we fought over who was going to treat whom.

I left Anna the next morning. She sure looked pretty, standing by my car. She wore a white button-down shirt and jean cutoffs. There was something about the gray in her eyes and her hair that looked beautiful against the clouds. It was a white sky, not as good as New Mexico, but as I drove farther north along Highway 281, I almost forgot that. Rich earth soon to be planted with corn rolled into hills. It was a big place. No wonder Anna was so tall.

I pulled over by some trees and squatted to pee. The windshield was full of dead bugs. It smelled so sweet outside. I wasn’t sure why I should go on. I could stop in Pierce, Nebraska, pop. 67, and disappear.

I got back in the car. Something Anna had said the day before kept coming back to me. We had been walking in the cornfields. She was ahead of me. She stopped to pass me the joint we were smoking. As I took it from her, I said, out of the blue, “Anna, I thought the hippie years would last forever.”

We kept walking. I breathed in the smoke and she turned to take the joint back. Our hands reached toward each other. “We have to go on, Nell. That’s the message. We have to go on.” We walked all the way to the end of the corn row, turned around, and came back again.

T
HE ROAD WAS STRAIGHT
, up 281. I passed Julie’s Hilltop Café, went west at O’Neill to 81, and then north again over the Missouri River and into Yankton.

Anna had once said she wanted to have her ashes thrown into the Missouri when she died, so when I got to the bridge, I pulled over. I could see Anna in the Missouri. It would be good to throw the ashes right off this bridge. It was a creaky bridge with wooden planks, and at the other end was Yankton, a yellow city. Not a city really. Brick buildings lined up to stop your eye against the plains. I could see the Conoco station and a rock shop from where I stood on the bridge. A warm breeze touched my face.

Anna was a big person and would have a lot of ashes. It would probably make a little island when I dropped them in the Missouri. I’d be Vasco da Gama and discover it. I’d call it Anna Island and leave an enchilada on it in case Anna got hungry. I’d miss Anna, I mused, and the way she kisses. Kisses! Oh, my god, I’d kissed Anna!

I got back in the car and drove through Yankton. What had I been doing kissing a girl? It was the most naked thing I’d ever done. Even though I was alone in the car, I felt shy. I had enjoyed kissing Anna, but right now it was too much. Someday I’d let Anna know how it really felt. I’d tell her I couldn’t remember, so we’d have to do it again. While we were doing it, I’d try hard to concentrate, so I could describe the feeling, that place where lips meet. I’d run to a piece of paper and write it down, but I’d forget by the time I got to the paper, so I’d have to run back and kiss her again. Over and over. Touch lips, close eyes, put a little pressure, feel the tongue along my teeth, pull away, and run to the notebook. It would be exhausting, but I’d get it. To kiss Anna was to roll a very round raspberry in my hand and not crush it, and then pop it in my mouth. I smiled. That was it. I reached Interstate 90 in South Dakota and turned east. Only one more turn north on 35 after I hit Minnesota. I’d be in Minneapolis before I knew it.

Suddenly I had a sinking feeling. I remembered it was Gauguin who’d told me about kisses being like raspberries. I’d never eaten a fresh raspberry in my life. Maybe raspberries were a Midwestern thing. I’d stolen Gauguin’s line to think about kissing someone else. It was gray out, and the gray stretched a long way across the flat land. I was passing Adrian, Minnesota. I couldn’t see the town from the freeway. Gauguin had driven this route when he left Boulder last November. He’d written a song about the Christmas lights giving a chill up over the hill of the highway. It was a good song. He sang it to me over the phone. Thinking about Gauguin I felt really sad and I couldn’t say why. Not angry or scared, just that kind of bottom sadness that you know is the truth. Gauguin and I would be living now in a city that was a stranger to me.

Past Worthington, Jackson, Fairmont. There was a Stuckey’s off in the distance. The sky was pale yellow where the gray met the horizon. Past the exit for Blue Earth. I liked that name. Maybe we should live there. Naa—right then, even small American towns with exquisite names couldn’t hold me. I would have given anything to see a kosher salami sign. Instead, looming up was a large green sign for Albert Lea and another one for Highway 35 north. Ninety miles to the Twin Cities. I wrapped around the cloverleaf and the sun that did not come out was at my back.

I stopped in Clarks Grove for gas. The tank was half full, enough to reach Minneapolis, but I wanted to stop. I bought some Wrigley’s, standing at the candy machine for what seemed like ten minutes. My right hand sat on the silver knob you pull for your selection to drop down the chute. Let me stay here and pump gas, I thought to myself. Maybe I should paint a picture of the candy in this machine. I didn’t want to drive the next ninety miles. Paralysis set in. The attendant asked me if I needed change. His question thrust me forward.

I got back in the car, pulled out of Clarks Grove, and entered the ramp to the big highway. It was 5:30 in the afternoon, rush hour, but down by Clarks Grove there was no one rushing anywhere. See, I should have stayed, I thought to myself. Clarks Grove was heaven.

I was so nervous about arriving in Minneapolis, I suddenly remembered Stuart Rosen, a guy I’d dated back in Ann Arbor. It must have been because I was back in the Midwest. Stuart couldn’t get an erection. It had to do with Russell, Kansas. He had been brought up there by his grandparents. They didn’t talk to him much and went to bed early. He was left alone each night to pedal his blue Schwinn around the streets in moonlight. It was something about the treelined streets and his grandmother pouring out cold cereal in the morning that kept him soft. I just knew it. Hard to say a man stayed soft because of a town, but I did know there was something back there that he brought to bed with him.

Stuart couldn’t get desire straight. Instead, as we lay out on the windowsill eight stories up, he whispered to me about the Vietnam War. He had ended up in Cambodia, before there was trouble there. “Women masseuses massaged me until I came.” I turned from him, slightly nauseous. It’d been only in the steaming forests of war—the other side of the world from Russell, Kansas—that he could pour his white cells into a stranger’s hands. I remembered his lips. I liked his lips, they were fleshy. I even liked him. It was a long time ago.

Highway 35 North was a straight arrow. The flat green land grew out around me. The clouds had cleared, and to my left the sun began to set. It was a wild sunset. As I hit the sprawling suburbs that began at least forty miles away from the city’s center, the sun turned deep pink. The clouds were an ice blue where they weren’t streaming with gold and fuchsia light. The whole western sky was suddenly enormous. Could this be as good as New Mexico? I asked myself. Probably not, but still it was pretty good.

The suburbs—Burnsville, Bloomington, Richfield—skimmed through the wheels of my car. Suddenly, a thin, flat, navy blue building, like a wafer, shot straight up in the sky. King Kong could never climb it, I thought—there was nothing to hold on to.

It dawned on me that I was lost. Gauguin had never given me directions to his place. I knew it was in the Cedar Riverside area, but I didn’t know how to get there. I turned off at the Seventh Street exit and was immediately swallowed by the red-light district. Nell, I said to myself, here’s your last chance. Become a topless gogo dancer. “Banana Rose, the girl with the yellow heart and rose red lips.” I knew my hippie name would eventually come in handy.

White neon flashed “Girls, Girls, Girls.” I wanted to roll down my window and yell, “What’s all the fuss about girls? I just had one in Nebraska! It’s not such a big deal. They talk to you afterward.”

I wanted to see Gauguin. I didn’t want to see him. I stopped at the curb and asked a man holding a lighted cigarette where Cedar Riverside was. He leaned in a little too close to the car. I was about to yell “Rape!” but he pointed to Fourth Street. “Make a right and follow it over the bridge. You’ll be right there.”

“Thanks.” I rolled up my window. The car stalled and then bounced into first. The streets began to look familiar from when I’d been there in late March, except the trees were now full of leaves. I parked in front of Gauguin’s house. I sat down on the cement stoop. Two steps up, and I would be knocking at Gauguin’s door. I could feel the rough concrete through the seat of my pants. This would be the last time I would see Gauguin, because this time would last all our lives, and there wouldn’t be any more separation. We would be married.

Mr. Steak and a Mobil station were across the street. I imagined making love to the three flash-pause-two-flash rhythm of Mr. Steak’s red neon sign. The white walls would take on the color of the neon and we would be just like every other married couple in their bedroom.

I got up from the stoop, knocked on the black wooden door, and heard the double locks quickly being undone. Gauguin flung open the door, grabbed me, and pulled me inside. Each moment welled into the next like a chameleon changing colors. I was the wall, the ceiling, the windowsill, Gauguin’s lower lip, the bark of the elm on the curb. Then I was none of that, only my tender fear, trembling in Gauguin’s arms.

“What took you so long? I was worried.” He held me closer. “I thought you’d be here yesterday.” He slammed the door shut with the top of his foot. We held each other for a long time, my face pressed to the side of his face, my arms around his neck. Soon we fell into his unmade bed, which was across the living room into the dining room.

I don’t remember a thing about that lovemaking except that it was fast, hungry, almost desperate. Our hands, mouths, and bellies were blind, and we groped to climb all the way back into the plums and wild roses of Talpa. I don’t think we made it. I don’t think it was possible.

Afterward Gauguin asked, “Do you want dinner? I’ll cook for you.”

We ate brown rice with green peppers, red onion, and tofu in a tangy brown sauce.

“Let’s go for a walk down Riverside.” Gauguin handed me a checkered flannel shirt. It wasn’t evening anymore. It had become dark. Everything was cement and humid and a slight chill permeated the air. At Twelfth Street, Gauguin motioned. “C’mon. Here’s a bar I want to show you,” and we stepped through the doors.

Gauguin ordered a St. Pauli Girl. When I hesitated, Gauguin nodded. “Get a beer too.”

“What kind?”

“How about Löwenbräu?”

“Okay.”

I looked around. Mostly men stood at the bar with us. In the back, more men with big biceps leaned over a pool table. Peanut shells littered the black-and-white-tiled floor. Gauguin drank straight from the bottle, so I did, too. Actually, the bartender never offered us glasses. We finished the beers and walked the same route home.

When I pulled down the sheets to get into bed, I noticed bloodstains. I called to Gauguin, who was in the bathroom. He came out with a toothbrush in his mouth.

“What’s this?” I pointed.

“Oh.” His brushing slowed down. “I didn’t get a chance to change the sheets before you came. Sorry.” He paused. I looked away, into the living room. We had made no promises before I moved here, but suddenly I felt trapped. I’d never slept with anyone else in the whole state of Minnesota. Gauguin was my only connection.

“Banana”—he put his hand on my shoulder—“I stopped sleeping with Sherry over a week ago. I’m sorry.”

I shrugged. “It’s okay.” Then I flung the blankets off the bed. “Change ’em now!”

F
IVE DAYS AFTER
I arrived in Minneapolis, I lay down on the couch in the living room, looked out the window, and counted how many times the Mr. Steak sign flashed across the street. I thought this would prepare me to get back into painting. I planned to watch that flashing sign for fifteen minutes and then get up, unpack my paints, and begin. Suddenly an idea came to me—I’d do a painting postcard to Anna and then another one to Blue. This idea excited me. I wouldn’t actually send them the paintings. Instead, I’d talk in my head as I painted, trying to express to them what my life was like now. In Anna’s, there would be the Mobil gas station across the street where I walked just yesterday to buy some gum. Spearmint gum. Anna liked to know details like that. To Blue, I’d want to express what it was like to live in humidity. Take a blue Buick. For an inch above its hood the metal seemed to mix with the air, as though the air here pulled a thing out beyond itself. Blue would like to hear about something mystical like that.