Heiresses of Russ 2013 Read online

  “Get your sorry asses outta me and Dwight’s—outta my truck.” That would be Claude.

  “Daddy? Where’s Daddy?” And that would be that kid Dwayne? His age was all wrong for Dwight to be his dad, but who else was it rising out of that supply box, pale-faced in the yellow courtesy light?

  The kid must have stowed away. He held out his arms and kicked free of something and Claude stepped up to grab and lift him and now I had a great shot. Couldn’t have been better. But I didn’t take it.

  Next minute I wished I had when dudes on either side yanked Aim and Rob out of opposite doors. I heard her yell at them and get slapped.

  Someone else was yelling, too—not me, I was busy shimmying off the roof while there was cover for my noise. “No! Don’t hit her! No! Put me down!” Little Dwayne was on our side?

  Brightness. Someone had switched on the truck’s headlamps. I ducked down. Aim was crying hard. They shoved her to the pavement. I hadn’t heard a peep outta Rob. When they marched him into the light I saw one dude’s hand over his mouth and a shiny piece of metal right below his ear. Knife or a gun—didn’t matter which. Woulda kept me quiet, too.

  Only four of ’em. Plus Dwayne. Seven bullets seemed plenty—if I didn’t mind losing Rob.

  I didn’t. But Aim would.

  Bang! Bang! Walter wasn’t quite loud as a shotgun. Glass and metal pinged off the pavement, flew away into the sudden dark. Only one round each for the truck’s headlamps. I was proud of myself.

  Light still came out of the cab from the overhead courtesy. Not much. I couldn’t see anybody.

  But I could hear ’em shouting to each other to find the chica, and shooting. Randomly, I hoped. No screams, so Rob had probably got away all right.

  I shifted position, which made the next part trickier, but would keep the dudes guessing where to kill me. I went round to one side, with the frame of the open driver’s door blocking my vision. Walter stayed steady—I gripped him with both hands and squeezed. Got it in one. I was good. Total night, now. I squirmed off on my belly for a ways to be sure no one had a flashlight, then crawled, then stumbled to my feet and walked. Headed north by the stars, with nothing on me but Walter, my knife, my binoculars. A blanket. Not even a bottle for water.

  It was a shame to leave all the provisions the Rattlers had given us. And too bad I had to damage a high-functioning machine like that truck. Aim would cuss me out for it when we caught up with one another at Edmonds.

  Aim would be fine. She always was. Rob, too, most likely.

  •

  I took the rest of that night and part of a day to walk there. It was easy: 99 most of the way. The stars were enough to see that by, and the Aurora Bridge was practically intact. I wondered what facts Aim would have told me about it if we were going over it together. All I knew was people used to kill themselves here by jumping off. Kids? Didn’t we used to have the highest rates of suicide?

  If Aim didn’t show up at Edmonds in a few days maybe I’d come back. Or find some Likewise.

  I snuck in the dark past where they used to have a zoo, worried I might run into some weird predator. I didn’t; when the animals got out they must’ve headed for the lake on the road’s other side. The sky got lighter and I began to look for pursuit as well as listening for it. Nobody came. The stores and restaurants lining the highway would have been scavenged out long ago. I was alone.

  No Aim in sight.

  Rain started to fall. I hung the blanket over my head like the Virgin Mary. Because of the clouds it was hard to tell time, but I figured I turned on to 104 a couple of hours after sunrise.

  I went down a long slope to the water. Rob had said if we got split up to meet by a statue of sea lions on the beach.

  This was my first time to be at the ocean. It was big, but I could see land out in its middle. Looked like I could just swim there.

  Route 104 continued right on into the water. The statue was supposed to be to its south. The sand moved, soft and tiresome under my wet chucks. I spotted a clump of kids digging for something further towards the water, five or six of ’em. They didn’t try to stop me and I kept on without asking directions. A couple of ’em had slings out, but I must not have seemed too threatening; neither chica pointed ’em my way.

  A metal seal humped up some stairs to a patch of green. Was this the place? I climbed up beside it. At the top, a garden. I could tell it was a garden since it wasn’t blackberries, though I had no idea what these plants were. But they grew in circles and lines, real patterns. And more metal seal sculptures—okay, sea lions—stuck out from between them.

  Definitely. I was here. I curled up in the statue’s shelter and the rain stopped. I fell asleep.

  A whisper woke me. “Lo!” My heart revved. Aim? Eyes open, all I saw was Rob.

  “You can’t call me that.”

  “Sorry. Didn’t want you to shoot me.”

  I sat up straight and realized I had Walter in my hand. Falling asleep hadn’t been so stupid after all.

  Rob’s ice cream throat had a red inch-long slice on one side, so it had been a knife the bridge dude held there. He seemed fine besides that. “Is she around?” he asked. “She and you came together?” I shook my head and he folded up his legs and sat down beside me. Too close. I scooted over.

  We didn’t say anything for a long time. Could have been an hour. I was thirsty. And hungry. I wondered if maybe I ought to eat from the garden.

  Rob held out his water bottle for me and I took it and drank. When I gave it back he didn’t even wipe the mouth off.

  The clouds pulled themselves apart and let this beautiful golden orange light streak through. The sun was going down. I’d slept the whole afternoon.

  “Look,” said Rob. “Look. I know you and Aim—”

  “You can’t call her that.”

  “Yes I can! Listen. Look. You were with her before me and I don’t want to—to mess with that.”

  As if he hadn’t. “And?”

  “And—and we were talking.” Among other things. “And she was saying if we got married—if she got married she would want to marry both of us.”

  I stared at him hard to make sure he was serious. Me and Aim had teased each other about being married ever since we met in gym class. Even before people over twenty began going Otherwise.

  Apparently I wasn’t the only one it was more than a joke for.

  “So would you?”

  “Would I what?” But I knew.

  “Would you freakin marry me! Would you—”

  “But I’m a lesbian! You’re a dude!”

  “Well, duh.”

  “And only because you wanna hook up with my chica? Unh-unh.”

  “Well, it’s not only that.”

  “Really?” I stood up. He did too. “What, you’re in love with me? I’m fat, I’m a big mouth, a smartass—”

  “You’re plain old smart! And brave, and Aim thinks you’re the closest thing to a goddess who ever walked the earth.”

  “What if I am?” I wanted to leave. But this was where she would come. I had to be here. I wrapped the blanket around me and tucked my arms tight.

  “Yeah. What if you are? What if she’s right? I kinda think—” He quit talking a minute and looked over his shoulder at the beach. “I kinda think she is. You are.”

  If he had tried to touch me then I would have knocked the fool unconscious.

  Instead, he turned around and looked at the beach again. “That’s him,” he said. “Captain Lee.” He pointed and I saw a bright yellow triangle sailing toward us out of the west. “Our ride’s here ahead of time. I have to go meet him and tell him we need to wait for Aim.” He left me alone with my wet blanket.

  It was almost dark by the time he came back, carrying a bucket. “Here you go. Supper.” I was ready to eat, no doubt. Inside was a hot baked yam and some greens with greasy pink fish mixed in. I washed it all down with more of Rob’s water.

  We took turns hanging out at the statue. Rob had connections with th
e locals, the Hammerheads and this other group, the Twisters. He stayed with them, and I bunked on Lee’s boat.

  Three days dragged past. I got used to a certain idea. I let him put his arm around me once when we met on the stairs. And another time when he introduced me to a dude he brought to pick some herbs in the garden—they were for medicines, not that nice to eat.

  And another time. We were there together, but with my binoculars I saw her first. I shouted and he hugged me. Both arms. I broke away and ran and ran and yes, it was Aim! And Dwayne, which explained a lot when I thought about it afterwards, but I didn’t care right then.

  “Aim! Aim!” I lifted her in the air and whirled us around and we kissed each other long and hard. I was with her and it was this reality, hers and mine and everybody else’s, not one I created just for me. I cried and laughed and yelled at the blue sky, so glad. Oh so freakin’ glad.

  Of course I had known all along she’d make it.

  And then Rob caught up with me and he kissed her too. She held my hand the whole time. So how could I feel jealous and left out?

  Well, I could. But that might change, someday. Someday, it might be otherwise.

  •

  Harrowing Emily

  Megan Arkenberg

  “It’s like no matter how much I shower,” Emily says, “I can’t get the smell of grave dust out of my hair.” She stands in the bedroom door, wrapped in a burgundy bath towel, and all I can smell is her soap and banana-scented shampoo.

  “I wonder if Persephone feels like this after she claws her way out of Hell.” She towels her hair brutally and leaves it as it falls, small blonde spikes sticking up at her temples and behind her ears, a crown of colorless thorns. With one hand pinning her wrap across her breasts, she rummages through the closet, settles on a sweatshirt and a pair of jeans, and slips back into the bathroom to change.

  She never used to be shy about changing in front of me. And she never used to talk about gods.

  •

  The therapist told me to stop listing the things that are different about her. Of course, the therapist doesn’t believe that Emily died in February—died and came back. And I have no proof. I didn’t call an ambulance, or the neighbors; I spent that hellish night curled around her cold body on our bed, too numb to move. Then, in the morning, she was here again.

  Except it wasn’t quite her.

  (She never used to eat rare meat. She never used to lie on the couch in her pajamas, watching daytime television. She never used to cover her face when she passed the hall mirror, as though afraid of her reflection.)

  “You had a very frightening experience, Zoe,” the therapist says. She has settled on “experience” as the proper word for my girlfriend’s death, damnation, and resurrection. “It’s changed the way you view Emily. But you’ve told me yourself that this list, this catalog, isn’t helping you heal. It’s not helping you confront the reality of your fear for Emily.”

  (She never used to wear long sleeves in summer. She never used to hate the smell of lilacs. She never used to go days without sleeping, standing at the kitchen window, watching the moon climb over our neighbor’s trees.)

  “Perhaps we should have Emily join us for a session,” the therapist says. I tell her I don’t think that’s a good idea.

  •

  Emily’s brother has visited once since his sister died. We ate grilled cheese sandwiches at the kitchen counter. Kevin and I sat on the bar stools and Emily stood by the sink, nibbling at her sandwich as though she didn’t quite know what it was.

  “Our family has…that is, there’s a history…” Kevin began, haltingly, and I was tempted to finish his sentence. Of coming back from the dead? Of going to Hell? He bit into his sandwich, chewed and swallowed slowly. “Our maternal grandmother used to see things. After Aunt Alice died. Grandma thought she saw Alice sitting at the piano in the living room.”

  “Are you saying I only think I see Emily?”

  “No, no…this isn’t about you, Zoe. All I’m saying is, people in our family have a habit of changing. And they don’t need to go through Hell to do it.”

  (She never used to sleep fully clothed, on top of the bedspread. She never used to pull flowers out of the vase on the dresser, swearing she could hear them die.)

  •

  “What did Emily do that would have gotten her sent to Hell?” my mother asks. She is infinitely practical.

  She sits back on her heels, drags off her ladybug-patterned gardening gloves, and frowns at the twig of a rosebush she’s just finished potting. It has a charred look to it, like something rescued from a burning house.

  “I don’t know,” I say. “Maybe God hates lesbians.”

  Mother snorts. I remember that she hated most of my girlfriends when I was growing up—thought they were sloppy, uncouth. Emily changed all that—Emily, who was nothing like my usual type, who had asked me out six or seven times before I finally gave her a chance. She took me dancing. Mother loved Emily long before I did.

  “What did she die of?” Mother waves an empty hand at me, her sign for me to pass the water bottle, which is full of vodka and lemonade.

  “I don’t know. Nothing obvious.” Like a gunshot, I mean. Or suicide. “She’s had hypertension for years, so I thought maybe a stroke or an aneurism.”

  “Aneurism. Uncle Pavlos died of that.” She nods her head, as though she approves, as though that were an acceptable thing from which to die.

  (The hypertension is gone now. Emily told me after her last physical. And that scar behind her knee, from the motorcycle accident her sophomore year of college—gone, like chalk wiped from a slate.)

  “Can you be damned preemptively?” Mother asks. “For driving your girlfriend to drink?”

  I lift my mouth guiltily from her bottle, wiping spiked lemonade from my chin.

  •

  I went through her internet history. Link after link for recipe exchange forums, the Facebook pages of her friends from graduate school. Tons of local classifieds, a few not-so-local. (She never told me she’d considered moving to Oregon to find work—even when she knew it would mean leaving me behind, knew I’d never lived a week of my life outside of an hour’s drive from Chicago.) She’d bookmarked a blog post with a picture of a kitten in a kiddy pool, above a caption that I didn’t get.

  I closed the browser window with more questions than answers.

  She hasn’t touched me since she came back from Hell. Nothing more involved than a cold peck on the cheek. If she nudges me accidentally while we’re making the bed or while I’m pouring a bowl of cereal, she quickly apologizes and skitters out of the way.

  (She never used to apologize. She used to go out of the way to jostle me, saying things like Hey, gorgeous and You should get in my way more often.)

  She’s stopped looking for work, too. Well-meaning friends still leave classified pages in the mail slot, or drop them off at my office, with some ad highlighted or outlined in thick marker. Emily crumples them up and throws them away without reading.

  (She never used to put newspaper in the garbage. She used to recycle.)

  “Zoe, what are you afraid of?” the therapist asks. I’m curled up on her ugly couch, a ring of damp tissues around the wastebasket below me—I’ve never had good aim.

  “Her,” I say, which isn’t entirely true. Or it is true, but grossly over-simplified. The truth is, I’m afraid I’ve lost her for good. Afraid that she’s gone, and I’ll never have the courage to admit it.

  •

  At four in the morning, I come downstairs to refill the glass of water from my bedside table and find her standing over the sink. Her hands are folded, fingertips neatly up-pointed, like a first communicant or a statue of an angel. The sky above the treetops is already purple, working its way toward dawn.

  “So what was it like?” I ask.

  She doesn’t turn. (She never used to speak to me without looking me in the eye.) “It was like stepping outside on the hottest day in August and getting slapped i
n the face by the humidity.” She looks down, inspecting her fingertips, as though they belong to a stranger. “It smelled…dead. And floral. Damp, in a way, but also like dust. I can’t get the smell out of my hair.”

  “What did they do to you?”

  “They fixed me,” she says. “They made it so I wouldn’t be sad anymore.”

  (She never used to complain of sadness.)

  “So you’re happy now?” I ask. I try not to make it sound like an accusation.

  “No.” She shakes her head. “But I’m not sad.”

  •

  I never used to pray. I started by accident. I was walking around our yard, noting which bushes needed trimming, which beds would need fresh mulch when the weather dried out, when I saw a strange flower poking its head out of the yew hedge. It was a crocus. The flower that distracted Persephone so that Hades could drag her down into the underworld. And suddenly I was angry, deeply angry, and all my wrath was directed at that tiny purple hell-opening flower.

  I knelt to tear it up.

  And I began to pray instead.

  Dear God, I’ve learned my lesson. Please give me back the woman I love. I promise she will never be sad again. I promise to do better, this time.

  His answer came in the smell of the crocus.

  Dear child, what makes you think this has anything to do with you?

  •

  “Zoe,” she says. She’s opened my door without knocking, and she’s standing there in her bath towel, her hair dripping down her back. “Are you awake?”

  I put down my book, set my reading glasses by the ceramic coaster beneath my glass of water. It’s a few minutes past midnight. “What’s happening, Emily?”

  Without taking a step, she is standing at my bedside, and her icy hand cups my cheek.

  “I’m dying. And this time they won’t send me back.”

  I cover her hand with mine. Her calluses are harder than I remember. “I think this was a test,” she says. “To prove to me that I wouldn’t want things different from the way they were. That I wouldn’t choose to live without sorrow.”