Paradise (5 page)

Mavis never learned what she planned to do or who meet in L.A. (well, San Diego). “To get it on,” was her single answer to Mavis’ inquiry. Nevertheless, somewhere between Topeka and Lawrence, Kansas, she disappeared along with Mavis’ clear plastic raincoat and Sal’s yellow boots. Odd, because Mavis’ five-dollar bill was still attached to the gearshift with a rubber band. They had finished the barbecue and potato salad in a tacky restaurant named Hickey’s. Bennie’s “to go” order was wrapped and sitting on the table. “I’ll take care of this,” she said, nodding toward the check. “You go on to the toilet before we hit the road.” When Mavis came out, Bennie and her ribs-to-go were gone.

“How the hell I know?” was what the waitress answered. “She didn’t leave even a penny tip.”

Mavis fished out a quarter and placed it on the counter. She waited a few minutes in the car before trying to find her way back to sweet 70.

The quiet Bennie left in the Cadillac was unbearable. Mavis kept the radio on, and if one of Bennie’s songs came on, she sang too, mourning the inferior rendition.

Panic struck in an Esso station.

Returning the rest room key, Mavis looked through the window. Beyond, under the fluorescent lights sheltering the pump, Frank was leaning into the Cadillac window. Could he have grown that much hair in two weeks? And his clothes. Black leather jacket, shirt opened almost to his navel, gold chains. Mavis buckled and when the attendant stared at her she tried to make it look as though she’d stumbled. There was nowhere to run. She rummaged the Colorado maps in the rack. She looked again. He was gone. Parked close by, she thought, waiting for her to emerge.

I’ll scream, she told herself, pretend I don’t know him, fight him, call the police. The car was no longer mint green, but oh God—the license plate was the same. She had the reg. Suppose he brought the title papers. Was there a bulletin out? She could not stand still and there was no retreat. Mavis went forward. Not running. Not tripping. Head down, searching her purse for a twenty-dollar bill.

Back in the car, waiting for the attendant to collect the money, she examined her surroundings in the rear and side-view windows. Nothing. She paid and turned on the ignition. Right then the black-jacketed, open shirt torso appeared in the right-hand mirror. Gold links catching fluorescent light. Hard as she tried to control it, the Cadillac lurched out of the gas lane. Scared now, she forgot what to look for. Junction what? Turn right to go south. No, west. Enter 70 at what? But this was east. Exit ramp goes where?

An hour later she was traveling a road already driven twice before. Exiting as soon as possible, she found herself on a narrow bridge and a street lined with warehouses. Secondary routes, she decided, would be better anyway. Fewer police, fewer streetlights. Trembling at every traffic light, she made it out of town. She was on route 18 when night came, and drove on and on until there was nothing but fumes to fuel the engine. The Cadillac neither sighed nor coughed. It simply stopped in a well of darkness, headlights picking out thirty feet of tarmac. Mavis switched off the lights and locked the doors. A little courage, she whispered. Like the girls running from, running toward. If they could roam around, jump in cars, hitchhike to burials, search strange neighborhoods for food, make their own way alone or with only each other for protection, certainly she could wait in darkness for morning to come. She had done it all her adult life, was able to sleep best in daylight. Besides and after all, she was not a teenager; she was a twenty-seven-year-old mother of…

Early Times didn’t help. The tears wet her chin, crept down her neck anyway. What it did eventually was knock her out.

Mavis woke felt-mouthed, ugly, unfocused, and knew she was ravenous because the sun, watermelon red, looked edible. The screaming blue horizon that surrounded her was minus invitation or reproach and supported by a billion miles of not one thing.

There was no choice. She relieved herself as Dusty had taught her, got back in the car to wait for another one to pass by. Bennie was smart; she never left anywhere without a dripping box of food. Mavis felt her stupidity close in on her head like a dry sack. A grown woman who could not cross the country. Could not make a plan that accommodated more than twenty minutes. Had to be taught how to dry herself in the weeds. Too rattle-minded to open a car’s window so babies could breathe. She did not know now why she had run from the gold links coming toward her. Frank was right. From the very beginning he had been absolutely right about her: she was the dumbest bitch on the planet.

During the wait, in which no car or truck or bus approached, she dozed, woke to awful thoughts, dozed again. Suddenly she sat up, wide awake, and decided not to starve. Would the road girls just sit there? Would Dusty? Bennie? Mavis looked closely at the surroundings. The billion miles of not one thing had trees in the distance. Was this grass or a crop of some kind? Every road went somewhere, didn’t it? Mavis collected her purse, looked for her raincoat and discovered it was gone. “Christ!” she shouted and slammed the door.

The rest of the morning she stayed on the same road. When the sun was highest, she turned into a narrower one because it offered shade. Still tarmac, but not enough room for two automobiles to pass without using the shoulder. When the road ran out of trees, she saw ahead to the left a house. It looked small but close and it took a while for her to discover it was neither. She had to negotiate acres of corn to arrive. Either the house was backwards or it had no driveway. As she drew closer she saw it was stone—sandstone, maybe, but dark with age. At first there seemed to be no windows, but then she made out the beginning of a porch and saw the reflection of huge windows on the ground floor. Circling to the right, she glimpsed a driveway leading not to the front door but around to the side. Mavis turned left. The grass near the porch was tended. Claws gripped the finials on either side of the stone steps. Mavis climbed the stairs and knocked on the door. No answer. She walked around to the driveway side and saw a woman sitting in a red wooden chair at the edge of a vegetable garden.

“Excuse me,” Mavis called, her hands funneling around her mouth.

The woman faced her, but Mavis couldn’t tell where she was looking. She was wearing sunglasses.

“Excuse me.” Mavis moved closer. No need to shout now. “I broke down a ways back. Can anybody help? Is there someplace I can call?”

The woman stood up, gathering the hem of her apron in both hands, and came forward. She wore a yellow cotton dress with tiny white flowers and fancy buttons under an apron of what looked like sailcloth. Her low-heeled shoes were unlaced. On her head a wide-brimmed straw hat. The sun was beating hard; a hot wind kicked up, turning back the brim of her hat.

“No telephone out here,” she said. “Come inside.”

Mavis followed her into the kitchen where the woman dumped pecans from her apron into a box by the stove and removed her hat. Two Hiawatha braids trailed down her shoulders. She slid out of her shoes, propped open the door with a brick and took off her sunglasses. The kitchen was big, full of fragrances and a woman’s solitary mess. Her back turned to Mavis, she asked her, “You a drinking woman?”

Mavis didn’t know if a drink was being offered or solicited.

“No, I’m not.”

“Lies not allowed in this place. In this place every true thing is okay.”

Startled, Mavis breathed into her palm. “Oh. I drank some of my husband’s liquor a while back, but I’m not what you’d call a drinking woman. I was just, well, wrung out. Driving so long and then running out of gas.”

The woman busied herself lighting the stove. Her braids fell forward.

“I forgot to ask your name. Mine’s Mavis Albright.”

“People call me Connie.”

“I’d appreciate some coffee, Connie, if you got any.”

Connie nodded without turning around.

“You work here?”

“I work here.” Connie lifted her braids from her chest and dropped them behind her shoulders.

“Is any of the family here? Seem like I knocked for the longest time.”

“No family. Just her upstairs. She couldn’t answer the door if she wanted to and she don’t want to.”

“I’m headed out by California. You think you can help me get some gas back to my car? Show me the way out of here?”

The woman sighed at the stove but didn’t reply.

“Connie?”

“I’m thinking.”

Mavis looked around the kitchen that seemed to her as large as her junior high school cafeteria and that also had swinging wooden doors. She imagined rooms full of rooms beyond those doors.

“You all ain’t scared out here by yourselves? Don’t seem like there’s nothing for miles outside.”

Connie laughed. “Scary things not always outside. Most scary things is inside.” She turned from the stove with a bowl and placed it before Mavis, who looked in despair at the steaming potatoes, over which a pat of butter melted. The Early Times drunk turned her hunger into nausea but she said thank you and accepted the fork in Connie’s hand. Anyway, the smell of the coffee was promising.

Connie sat down next to her. “Maybe I go with you,” she said.

Mavis looked up. It was the first time she saw the woman’s face without the sunglasses. Quickly she looked back at the food and poked the fork into the bowl.

“What you say me and you go to California?”

Mavis felt, but could not face, the woman’s smile. Had she washed her hands before warming up the potatoes? Her smell was walnuts, not pecans. “What about your job here?” Mavis forced herself to taste a tiny bit of potato. Salty.

“It’s by the sea, California?”

“Yeah. Right on the coast.”

“Be nice to see water again.” Connie kept her eyes on Mavis’ face. “Wave after wave after wave. Big water. Blue, blue, blue, yes?”

“That’s what they say. Sunny California. Beaches, oranges…”

“Maybe too sunny for me.” Connie got up abruptly and went to the stove.

“Can’t be sunnier than here.” The butter, salt and pepper mashed into the potatoes wasn’t all that bad. Mavis was eating rapidly. “Go for miles and don’t see a speck of shade.”

“True,” said Connie. She placed two cups of coffee and a pot of honey on the table. “Too much sunshine in the world. Vex me. Can’t take it no more.”

A breeze swept through the kitchen door, displacing the food smell with a sweeter one. Mavis had thought she would gulp the coffee when it arrived, but the satisfaction of the hot, salty potatoes made her patient. Following Connie’s example she spooned honey into her cup, stirring slowly.

“Did you think up anything about how I can get me some gasoline?”

“Wait awhile. Today maybe, tomorrow maybe. People be out to buy.”

“Buy? Buy what?”

“Garden things. Things I cook up. Things they don’t want to grow themselves.”

“And one of them can take me to get some gas?”

“Sure.”

“Suppose nobody comes?”

“Always come. Somebody always come. Every day. This morning already I sold forty-eight ears of corn and a whole pound of peppers.” She patted her apron pocket.

Blowing gently into her cup, Mavis went to the kitchen door and looked out. When she first arrived she was so happy to find someone at home she had not looked closely at the garden. Now, behind the red chair, she saw flowers mixed in with or parallel to rows of vegetables. In some places staked plants grew in a circle, not a line, in high mounds of soil. Chickens clucked out of sight. A part of the garden she originally thought gone to weed became, on closer inspection, a patch of melons. An empire of corn beyond.

“You didn’t do all that by yourself, did you?” Mavis gestured toward the garden.

“Except the corn,” said Connie.

“Wow.”

Connie put the breakfast bowl in the sink. “You want to clean yourself up?”

The rooms full of rooms Mavis imagined to be lying through the swinging doors had kept her from asking to go to a bathroom. Here in the kitchen she felt safe; the thought of leaving it disturbed her. “I’ll wait to see who comes by. Then I’ll try to get myself together. I know I look a sight.” She smiled, hoping the refusal did not signal her apprehension.

“Suit yourself,” said Connie and, sunglasses in place, patted Mavis’ shoulder as she stepped into her splayed shoes and on out to the yard.

Left alone Mavis expected the big kitchen to lose its comfort. It didn’t. In fact she had an outer-rim sensation that the kitchen was crowded with children—laughing? singing?—two of whom were Merle and Pearl. Squeezing her eyes shut to dissipate the impression only strengthened it. When she opened her eyes, Connie was there, dragging a thirty-two-quart basket over the floor.

“Come on,” she said. “Make yourself useful.”

Mavis frowned at the pecans and shook her head at the nutcrackers, picks and bowls Connie was assembling. “No,” she said. “Think of something else I can do to help. Shelling that stuff would make me crazy.”

“No it wouldn’t. Try it.”

“Uh uh. Not me.” Mavis watched as she organized the tools. “Shouldn’t you put some newspaper down? Be easier to clean up.”

“No newspapers in this house. No radio either. Any news we get have to be from somebody telling it face-to-face.”

“Just as well,” Mavis said. “All the news these days is bad as can be. Can’t do nothing about it anyway.”

“You give in too quick. Look at your nails. Strong, curved like a bird’s—perfect pecan hands. Fingernails like that take the meat out whole every time. Beautiful hands, yet you say you can’t. Make you crazy. Make me crazy to see good nails go to waste.”

Later, watching her suddenly beautiful hands moving at the task, Mavis was reminded of her sixth-grade teacher opening a book: lifting the corner of the binding, stroking the edge to touch the bookmark, caressing the page, letting the tips of her fingers trail down the lines of print. The melty-thigh feeling she got watching her. Now, working pecans, she tried to economize her gestures without sacrificing their grace. Connie, having launched her into the chore, was gone, saying she had to “see about Mother.” Sitting at the table, smelling the pleasure the wind brought through the door, Mavis wondered how old Connie’s mother was. Judging by the age of her daughter, she would have to be in her nineties. Also, how long before a customer would come? Had anybody bothered the Cadillac yet? At whatever gas station she got to, would there be a map showing the way back to sweet 70, or even 287? She would go north then, to Denver, then scoot west. With luck she’d be on her way by suppertime. With no luck, she’d be ready to leave in the morning. She would be back on concrete, listening to the car radio that had got her through the silence Bennie left, hours of nonstop driving—two fingers impatiently twirling for the better song, the nicer voice. Now the radio was across a field, down one road, then another. Off. In the space where its sound ought to be was…nothing. Just an absence, which she did not think she could occupy properly without the framing bliss of the radio. From the table where she sat admiring her busy hands, the radio absence spread out. A quiet, secret fire breathing itself and exhaling the sounds of its increase: the crack of shells, the tick of nut meat tossed in the bowl, cooking utensils in eternal adjustment, insect whisper, the argue of long grass, the faraway cough of cornstalks.