Clearly Now, the Rain (11 page)

Fourteen

We hit Interstate 95 in her brand new Passat, which resembled a chic club: blue dashboard lights, glowing orange needles on the dials, tinted windows and leather seats, bass pounding under your thighs. We went south blindly. It was not until Chapel Hill, North Carolina that we stopped, found a restaurant, and tried to hash out a trajectory. Serala didn't care—she just wanted to drive. I was in the land of my mother's family and thinking I ought to pay respects, make a better connection since I would be moving nearby in the fall.

Inside the restaurant, I have my back to the front window and am devouring my first true American cheeseburger in months. She picks at hers with a fork, wheedling out little coils of ground beef from the raw center—she liked meat to be
still breathing, just wounded.
It takes me half my plate to notice that she is upset. Her eyes are roaming with anxiety. She is hunched forward, her shoulders tense and high, hiding her long neck. Her long fingers toy with the napkin, a soggy fry, a pack of smokes, silver bangles singing a chorus line on her wrist, until she gets exasperated with her own fidgeting and her hands disappear beneath the table. She shakes off my questions then asks:

Do you have some cash?

I say sure I do.

Give me a twenty, will you?

I hand it over and she says,
I'll be back
, and gets up, and pushes through the door, and I think:
Fuck
.
Not in the middle of Dixie
. But when I look over my shoulder she is sitting with a trembling black woman on a bus stop bench. She doesn't even speak—I just see her put the bill into the woman's hand and turn away. I don't say anything when she folds back into the chair and takes a bite of her burger. But she acts like I have.

She was going to be really sick soon, Eli. I can't just watch that.

I say something about how she'd probably just put cash in an abusive man's pocket. Serala shakes her head at me and withholds comment.

We roll into Albion, Georgia, too late to rouse my grandmother, so I pull up to the mansion above her home, the ancient monster that hasn't truly been a home to anyone for generations. It stands above floodlights that barely reach the eaves, the steam of humidity rising through the beams even at midnight, a cenotaph of southern gentry and textile bounty. The house always makes me wince, the manifestation of every shred of discomfort and guilt I've ever felt about my ancestors and kin; it is the looming symbol of everything my mother fled, dragging me at age three to the most distant point in the continental United States. And yet it is gorgeous, dignified, and mysterious, hosting some of my most magical childhood memories and standing as a symbol to the rest of my family of smarts, work ethic, and success.

We roam through the dozens of rooms, the massive joists groaning like the song of whales, past the freeze-frame antiquity maintained since the house found a place on the National Historic Register. We drink our way through a half rack of Michelob, pulling eighteenth-century poetry books from dusty shelves, sitting silently on ornate cherrywood benches, looking around at creepy portraits of long-dead relatives. When I start to feel crowded by the haunts, she kisses me hard, my spine pressed against the huge, framed letter of Confederate secession. The phantoms' presence is dispelled and I drag her up to some master bedroom.

The next morning we sheepishly slide into my grandmother's cluttered house and she is
up and at 'em
, as they say, in jeans, bandanna, and boots, cheeks leathered and wrinkled. She has already been riding and grooming horses, plus an untold number of other tasks. But she welcomes us warmly and doesn't blink at Serala's dark skin, lip ring, and sunglasses. I breathe relief.

The shafts of Georgia morning light make me wince, and I am suddenly returned to a place I've been many times: an odd sort of awkwardness with my relatives. Grandma scorches bacon for me, leaves it half raw for Serala, pours water over instant grits and makes us full. I am surprised by how comfortable the two of them are together, how the edge that powerful women share transcends culture. Grandma as southern and white as they come, in her late seventies, with eight children, dozens of grandkids, a horse ranch and estate. She is gritty in her perpetual uniform of outdoor labor, and a veritable empire of the rural South still rests under her hand. Serala, childless and unmarried, twenty-two, Yankee and Indian, carefully composed with perfume, designer clothes, and makeup, an entire Connecticut workforce under her hand.

A half hour later, in the dust and dander storm of tethered horses, to my shock, Grandma kisses Serala's cheek goodbye. I guess that they understood something about each other in that way that isn't mine to have. They were both, to be sure, always tough as nails.

We smoked stale weed that I'd squirreled away years before then shot off for Tennessee. Serala pushed a pill on me, and I went out like a rookie fighter, sinking through Lyle Lovett's crooning. And when I opened my eyes again, we were exiting
I-40
into the blue dawn of that blue town, Memphis. We got lost, as was typical of us, making loops through the wakening ghettoes till we spotted a trashy motel. We pulled in and I went down for more sleep while she watched the mini-skyline through dirty windows and smoked.

We'd come for Graceland.

I was less than thrilled to enter the King's abode, but I knew it meant a lot to Serala, what with her odd obsession with the culture-thieving son of a bitch (I can't help it). I was hoping that I'd catch a better notion of what it was she dug so much about the so-called King. She'd watch hours of those garbage movies he starred in, and I'd seen her face open with pleasure when she came across his crooning on some radio station—she'd slap the dashboard—
fuck yeah!—
and light a smoke and sing along. She'd damn near broken my fingers once when, surfing the dial, I went on past “Heartbreak Hotel,” forgetting the sanctity. And I'd asked her once what it was about him, but she'd just looked at me like I was a fool and said,
He died high as fuck, on the toilet! That's awesome!
and let it drop, so I had too.

When we get in line and an entire tour bus of ancient Long Island Jews files up at our backs, screaming at one another, tweaking their hearing aids with pale arms, I sincerely want to flee. But the fact that this makes Serala giggly and not homicidal is proof to me that she is happy. That it is enough to hold my arm and wait for a peek at the Jungle Room.

Later, we hit Beale Street. We sit in a smoky, plank-floored joint called the King's Table, where the waitresses are plump and quick and the fat black cook comes out to rub his belly and survey his domain. Blues crackle through the wall from a bar that is thumping in the dusk. We order a platter of meat: five different kinds, and slowly turn it into bones.

I tell her how the South seems more genuine to me in some ways, how people, in terms of their habits, their pleasures, their work, cut to the chase. There is no ceremony at the King's Table, no host, not even tablecloths, but the food they bring us is prepared to perfection. There are no high-cover-charge clubs with suited bouncers approving your attire; just dark and smoke-filled joints that don't hide that they are dens of vice. The bartender is warm but direct, no pretension that he is there to chat. He slides whiskies at us like it's sport.

I think I could live here,
she says, and it sticks with me because I've never heard that before.
It's just run-down and blue enough. Just enough honesty to get by with.

And as the music gets too loud to talk, and I watch her lean back and nod to the blues, smirk a whisky-smirk as an old man starts a guttural, lamenting tune next door, cock her head to the side, and blow a smoke ring that lingers just as long as it takes her to kill her drink. I can visualize her as a regular here. I can see her in a gracious mood, maybe high, maybe uncommonly rested, maybe with the afterglow of sex, waltz in and make witty chat with the fat cook, retire to her regular table, and wait for her platter of meat. And I can also see her angry, sleepless, or worse, marching down the muted glory of this street, stomping into the King's Table to drink it away, and everyone there allowing her to do just that without violating her with an inanity. And I can imagine her finding more than one of the kind of men she likes best (
guitar, dog, and pickup truck,
she says) in the ample shadows over the years.

The whisky in us is starting to burn and we move toward the music next door. It is a weeknight and the town is slow and easy. We match it with a lack of ambition, content to sit on high stools, listening to loud blues, and hold plastic cups of Maker's Mark. Serala gets tipsy and makes me do writing exercises for an hour before we can go back to the motel room with a bottle and cut as loose as we desire.

I don't quite recall where and when we buy the black hair dye. I only remember that when my scalp starts to burn and I am halfway into the bathtub and I try to stand up, she screams at me through her laughter.

No! No! Fucker! You have to stay there—
stay
there!

I have this photo from that night, just one: she's sitting on the bed, right hand plastic-gloved and holding the tube of dye, left hand clutching a plastic cup of whisky. There are streaks of the dye on her jeans and a thick lock of hair has swung down over her right eye. She is looking down and laughing, the way she did when she really got going, and her perfect teeth are showing and it makes me smile, too, every time I see it.

It turns out to be a sloshy blur, predictably. But somehow the joy we feel that night, the fun we have, still burns inside of me, independent of memory. And I do recall what I'm sure is the end of the night: shaking my newly black hair aside and tackling her onto the bed like I might do to Hugh. But then we roll over one time and though it isn't my intention, we go drunkenly fluid, and it becomes something I would not do with Hugh.

We made it to San Diego two days later in time for dinner with an old friend of hers, which was overshadowed by the fact that we would part the next day in Riverside. Serala made comments about sticking around L.A. for a while with artist friends, maybe bouncing back and forth between the city and Riverside—maybe even getting to know Mona a little. And I said
yeah, sure, great,
but I didn't mean it because I knew she didn't either.

In the morning, in a sad Travelodge under an uncharacteristically dark California sky, I'm trying to pack, but she yanks me down on the bed. She's violent and hard and all through it I know that I will be with Mona that night—Mona, who is under the impression I'm officially “with” her now, despite the hedonistic months I've spent away. And I know how bad this is, but it's as if Serala's responding to those thoughts,
yes, this is bad, so fucking bad, you love it.
And when we're gaspingly done and drained, lying a foot apart on the bed, she puts her finger on my shoulder and says:

Oops. Fuck.

And I scurry to the bathroom and see the red crescent blooming on my skin and I'm not quite mad at her, but I do wonder. Did she do it to sabotage me? Did she do it to stake her claim that she came first and it would always have to be that way? Did she really lose herself? And I'm soaping the wound up, trying to wash it away like she does with her scars. It doesn't look too bad and I walk out shaking my head at her and she's dressed and sunglassed and smoking by the window and she says:

Sorry. Hey, let's go get me a dog.

Death row at the San Diego pound is a difficult place. All the mutts are barking and whining, those with hound genes baying, low and horrible, and they're all lying on concrete with shit everywhere, and big ceramic bowls of murky water, and that's it. We walk the gauntlet and a new keening goes up with every cell we pass. But Serala seems mostly unfazed. She has her eye, quickly, on a huge mastiff mix named Barney, who sits regally and pretends, unlike the others, that he doesn't give a shit. He's an easy one hundred and ten pounds and his info sheet says he has slight “behavioral problems,” and that he doesn't do well with children or other pets. And so, of course, she loves him. But she's swayed by my argument that her car, her apartment, her neighborhood, her life, are too small for Barney. And besides there's this strange little red dog that has been looking at her in silence, stuck between two unruly Labradors, ever since we walked in. We go to her and she's not wagging her tail, because she doesn't have one I suppose, but it seems more like she's saying,
What the fuck would I have to wag about?
The way she looks up at Serala would not be called puppy dog eyes. It might be called
get me the fuck out of here
eyes, and after she looks into them for a while and I note that she looks like Santa's Little Helper from
The Simpsons
, Serala gives in.

Knox, as she immediately names her, rides in my lap for a while, but then we switch drivers so Serala can hold her. Trying to hurry through my doubts and the coming pain of saying goodbye, I swing the fancy car in and out of lanes, weaving through commuter traffic at a hundred miles per hour, letting music blast us and holding Serala's knee.

Mona's Ford is in the driveway and the lights are on inside the bungalow. Knox is like a nervous little forest creature on the leash, high stepping on and off the curb with wide eyes. In the last couple of minutes before I go knock and Serala climbs into the Passat, she is looking at the blurry moon in the dirty sky, the sweep of headlights on Indian Boulevard, down at her new dog, but not much at my face. I try to speak all the shards of thoughts floating around in my head. I think she's afraid of breaking down and I understand because if it weren't for the allure of this new girl and all my big plans, I'd be undone, too, at the hollowness opening in me as we disengage. In fact, we wouldn't be saying goodbye at all. But for now it's one-sided; I'm both selfish and helpless, and she knows it so she sucks in a sigh and forces a smile. But there is something left, I'm sure, to do or to say, besides to hug and make the broken, whispered promise,
I'll see you soon?