Edna in the Desert (6 page)

“Hello…Mom?”

Her father’s voice put a lump in her throat. It was annoying that her emotions were so strong lately. Determined to make her parents feel terrible about leaving her there, Edna was conflicted. She had to complain, but if she made too good a case against the cabin, they might change their minds and come get her. She might never see Johnny again. She had no idea if she would anyway. Edna had no idea what she was doing.

“It’s Edna.”

“Hi honey, how’s the summer so far?”

Edna expressed concern over the fact that she’d been left in “a slave labor camp” with “no refrigeration” and “no running water,” referring to Grandma and Grandpa’s water that sat in a tank next to their house. She obsessed about what would happen if the water ran out.

“You don’t sit idly by while water runs out, Edna. It gets delivered,” her father informed her. Edna tried to come up with more things to scare him, like “There are no doctors around here. What if I get hurt?” and “I don’t think Grandma can drive.”

“She can.”

“What if the car doesn’t start…and then the phone goes out? The service comes from a cord that runs on poles. It could break. A bird could peck at it.”

Edna didn’t mention that she’d put herself at greater risk than any of these possibilities by wandering out into the desert, but Edward saw no point in bringing that up or letting on that he knew about it. He replied to all her concerns with variations of “Edna, that’s not going to happen.” He could have a helicopter out there in ten minutes if he wanted, but he let her think she was stranded.

“Did you grow up in this shack?”

“That’s not nice, and no, we lived in a house in San Diego. Grandma and Grandpa like it out there.”

“You realize I’m only thirteen. I think this is against the law.”

“I don’t think it’s against the law for you to stay with your grandparents for the summer.”

It was enough to put an end to the subject. Edward hated to do this, but he’d had enough of Edna the way she was. She cried as a last resort, and she was mad at herself for it later. Her performance didn’t make a dent in her father’s hardened heart. She always got lost in the drama, determined to get her own way. She wanted to know that she could go home if she really tried, that she could win, but Edna wasn’t getting much of what she wanted lately.

Grandma always woke up before sunrise and brewed coffee. The luscious smell would seep into the pantry. Edna loved the smell of coffee, but she hated the taste of it. She listened to Grandma move around her strangely improvised home. At least Edna thought it was strange. A washer/dryer and an electric stove stood outside the cabin, on a cement slab under a lean-to of green, corrugated plastic. It was enclosed by stacked driftwood. It was just a little too funky to be nice. There wasn’t much space in the cabin, Edna guessed, and maybe Grandma cooked outside in the summer, when it was too hot to have the stove on inside. Observing the Grandma and Grandpa situation more closely, Edna realized that the pantry was the most private place Grandma could have offered her to sleep and might not have been the additional punishment it seemed when she’d first arrived.

Edna could never fall back to sleep once she woke up in the morning, so she turned on her little lamp and read before Grandma knocked on the door and said, “breakfast.” Books about pioneer women were Edna’s only entertainment, and her parents’ hint was not so subtle: these women struggled on a level that should shame Edna into being grateful for her life of relative ease. Edna
was
grateful, but at the moment it was mainly for the distraction of these incredible stories. Many of the pioneer women left privileged lives to trek across mountains, rivers and deserts, in horse-driven carriages or on foot, to help their husbands look for gold and homestead. After her own brief drama in the wilderness, Edna was awed by the strength it took to survive this. These women, some not much older than she was, had passions and abilities she didn’t fully understand. She might possess a shadow of their fortitude by sacrificing her entire summer in the hopes of getting to see a boy again, but that was just crazy more than anything else.

After coffee was made, Grandma would bring a mug to Grandpa, who presumably drank it in bed. Edna never saw this happen. She was revolted by the thought of her grandparents in bed, and she kept completely clear of their bedroom. Grandma said that Grandpa liked his eggs “just so,” and she was very attentive while she boiled them so they would be perfect every time. It was something that Grandpa must have told her years ago, but Edna doubted that he noticed now. She couldn’t imagine her grandparents as a young couple that did things together and spoke to each other. Grandma brought Grandpa’s breakfast, two eggs and toast, into the bedroom on a tray every morning, and he also had that in bed. Grandma didn’t eat breakfast, but she made scrambled egg whites and toast for Edna. Grandma was stingy with her attention, but she was not stingy about feeding people.

About two hours after breakfast, Grandpa would emerge from the bedroom, silent as always. It was one of the few times he moved. He wore a T-shirt and flannel pajama pants. Edna was happy to never see too much of his old body. He went directly into the bathroom and didn’t come out for at least an hour, when Grandma brought him his clothes. Grandpa came out dressed, walked to the porch and sat in the old wooden office chair with a formerly orange cushion on it. He spent the majority of each day there while Grandma went about maintaining their food, clothing and shelter.

Grandpa’s lunch was leftovers from yesterday’s dinner, or if nothing was left over, it was Spam or canned hash. Grandma brought it to him on a rusted TV tray with purple flowers that leaned against the railing. Grandpa didn’t express anything, ever, except he did seem to love hash. Edna believed this was love because he ate it fast, with an uncivilized snorting sound. Watching Grandpa eat was not unlike watching an animal in a zoo, and like zoo animals, he could get annoyed. Edna got a little too curious for him one day, which he indicated by becoming conscious, raising his eyebrow and peering right at her. Edna shrieked and almost bounced out of her chair.

When Grandma rushed out, Edna thought this must have been the concerned look that Johnny and Sheriff Wegman saw the day she was lost. Grandpa was already back in his catatonic state as if nothing had happened.

“Grandpa looked at me.”

“Oh.”

Grandma peered at Grandpa for a moment and then went back to whatever she was doing. Edna thought she’d be more interested in a lucid appearance by Grandpa. The world became inactive again, too quiet. It was moments like that, when it was quiet after something happened, that felt frighteningly still in the desert.

Edna started to observe things in this place where almost nothing happened, and she attributed her heightened awareness to the media blackout she lived in. Her mind thirsted for new facts. Sometimes a certain cactus would bend over one way and then be in a different position a few hours later. Edna tried, but she could never see it move. A scrub brush looked different degrees of dead from morning to afternoon, or was the color changing with the movement of the sun? An old wildlife guide she found in the garage offered no explanation. Spotting quail or a jackrabbit was entertainment, as Edna looked after the animals and wondered where they lived, what they ate and what in the world they drank. The guide had pictures, a few sentences and practically no information. She wished she knew what had happened to that little bunny she saw when she was lost, but there were some things that were impossible to know, even if your phone had service.

Edna moved a chair next to Grandpa on the porch one afternoon as something new to try. She was a little afraid of him even though he seemed harmless. Grandma had explicitly written
don’t bother Grandpa
on that list Edna had ripped up. Was sitting next to him bothering him?
He didn’t seem to notice her. Grandpa’s eyes were dull. His only movement was the gentle rising and falling of his chest under his flannel shirt. Some gray hairs stuck out of the top of it, where the button was open. It was too hot for flannel, but Grandpa was so still all the time, maybe he didn’t get hot. Or maybe he was boiling but unable to say so. He didn’t seem to be sweating. The breeze lifted little hairs on his arms. His face looked like Edna’s father’s would if a sculptor chiseled deeper definition into it and a painter grayed his hair and roughed his skin. As far as Edna could tell, Grandpa’s head was an empty shell.

She challenged herself to empty her own head, but she sighed and fidgeted. Her thoughts drifted to Johnny and things like the sweat that came through his T-shirt. For some reason his sweat wasn’t gross. She wondered if he ever thought about her. She wondered what he was having for dinner and then what Grandma would make for dinner and if Grandpa ever cared what she made. She didn’t understand how Grandpa was able to do some things, like put food on a fork and put it in his mouth, but not others, like help Grandma do anything, or talk. She didn’t even know if Grandpa saw the expansive landscape in front of them the same way she did.

There was no homework, no French or piano to practice, no gymnastics or yoga or debate team. Why was being good at all these things so important anyway? Edna had no parties to go to and no gifts to buy. She was missing some birthdays. She didn’t have a million texts to return, and she didn’t have to load a bunch of photos and write captions. Or tweet something or retweet something. She had no way to pin. Her Tumblr hadn’t been updated. In the real world, Edna was always doing something or on her way somewhere. Her rhythm of changing activities every hour, every day, was slowly unraveling here in the desert, with no next activity. She painted the porch for four hours one day, which she only estimated because of the cramp in her shoulder and the changed position of the sun.

Because of their rocky start, Edna kept a polite distance from Grandma most of the time. This was easy, as Grandma spent chunks of her days crocheting or absorbed in her complex cactus garden. Once, Edna asked if she could help her in there, but Grandma only shrugged and seemed confused.

“I make it up as I go along.”

Somehow Edna understood that the garden was Grandma’s creative project, and there was not a lot to do out here in the middle of nowhere. Edna started her own projects, like painting the porch and making a stone path from the cabin to the eucalyptus trees. Looking for flat rocks was a great way to waste time. If anything was a sin in the real world, it was wasting time, but at the cabin that was all she did. Maybe the real world was too hectic. She’d become much more likely to snap than she used to be. Her therapist should have thought of this. It was decided: the first thing Edna would cut out of her routine when she got home would be those futile therapy sessions. Talking about everything did not always help. Sometimes Edna was sure that not talking about things would be better, but then she was accused of “avoiding” and told she needed more therapy.

The sun was getting low, and Edna had done tons of chores to keep from being bored. Doing nothing felt like falling—out of what and into what she didn’t know, but every afternoon it took a while before she stopped trying to think of things to do. All the laundry was folded. There was no point in sweeping any more. There were no more dishes until after dinner. She’d already been a Tibetan monk three times that day, and even though that literally meant doing nothing, she just couldn’t do it anymore.

Grandma would make dinner soon. She was tired of checking on Edna by that point, so sitting with Grandpa in the late afternoon was the best part of Edna’s day. The wind picked up by then and became an invisible beach ball tumbling across the sea of creosote bushes and wafting over their smoky smell. The long afternoon shadows swayed in a rhythm that calmed Edna, and the breeze cooled her. If she’d had been told a week ago that the best part of her day would be sitting next to Grandpa on the porch staring into the desert, she definitely would not have believed it.

Edna also wouldn’t have guessed that she’d miss the nightly dinnertime interrogations from her mother and the constantly fidgeting mess of Brandon. Dinner was terrible here, offering unfamiliar foods that were high in sodium. It created an interaction with Grandma unbuffered by chores or logistics. Edna was discovering new things about herself in exile, and one of them was that she didn’t like being alone with a person who never had anything to say, if that person was capable of talking. Grandpa had an excuse, though Edna wasn’t sure what it was, and she liked being around him better. She hated being around Grandma. Grandma’s silence felt like rejection, and Edna’s comments that “it was a beautiful day,” “I saw a jackrabbit” or “I might paint the porch” were given a word or two back and then, instead of being nurtured into a conversation, left to wither. Edna thought about making up a tray and eating outside with Grandpa, but by the time dinner rolled around, sitting with Grandpa was not exactly something worth fighting for. It was hard to eat with such a big lump in her throat, but soon Edna got used to it, and then it went away. Her mother’s incessant questioning would be forever less irritating. It had only been six days, but watching her family drive away in the Audi felt like a hundred years ago.

Edna decided to acquire a taste for coffee as another thing to do for the summer. She found it bitter and absolutely hideous, but celebrities were always pictured with a coffee in their hands, and she wanted to know why. It was tolerable if she put enough sugar in it. She couldn’t believe this was what adults craved every morning, and it gave her all the more reason to question authority in the future. Edna stepped onto the porch with her mug for the first time of the day. She would probably step onto the porch fifty more times throughout the day before her late-afternoon sitting session with Grandpa. The only thing that ever changed much was the angle of the sun and the occasional lean of a cactus.