Dirt

Chapter 17

In the morning, Galen’s mother announced they were packing up and leaving.

But we’re having so much fun, Helen said. I’m really enjoying the cabin. Couldn’t we stay another day or two?

Why are we leaving? Galen’s grandmother asked.

I’ll pack the kitchen, Galen’s mother said. Mom, you can help me.

I’d like more bacon, Jennifer said.

Breakfast is over.

No it’s not. My daughter wants more bacon, so fix her more bacon, little Suzie-Q.

Breakfast is over.

Mom can do it then. Mom, fix your granddaughter more bacon.

Don’t speak to me that way.

Let me tell you a little story, Mom. There was a cat. Do you remember the cat?

What are you talking about?

Mom, ignore her. Let’s pack the cupboards. I’ll go get the boxes from the trunk.

This cat was blind and deaf. Outrageous shit happened in cat-world all the time, but the cat didn’t hear or see anything.

We’re going home, Helen, and if you want a ride in my car, you’ll stop right now.

Golly, sis, I’m only trying to talk about my feelings.

I’ve heard enough. I can’t do this anymore. I’m leaving in ten minutes. Ten minutes. All this kitchen crap can stay. You each have ten minutes to get in the car with your stuff. Grab your purse, Mom, and Galen will help you with your bag.

Then she was gone up the stairs.

Well, Helen said. I guess we’re leaving. It is her car, after all, and she has the keys. It’s hard to change that.

I don’t know what’s happening.

Your daughter is trying to rescue you from me. But I’m your daughter, too. It’s a funny thing, isn’t it? And a tad unjust, given the past.

I don’t understand.

Yeah, well, that’s nice for you. I think you’ve intentionally forgotten everything. Because how can you be responsible if you can’t remember?

Let’s go, Grandma, Galen said. I’ll help you pack your bag in your room.

It’s the new Suzie-Q, to the rescue.

We have to go now, Grandma.

What I want, Helen said, since that’s what everyone’s interested in, what I want is for everything to be undone. That’s the level of responsibility I’m looking for.

Galen took his grandmother’s arm and she rose, finally. I’m sorry, Helen, she said. Whatever it is, I’m sorry, okay?

Don’t give me that snotty attitude, Mom. I’ll be satisfied when you can go back and make everything not have happened. That’s when you’ll have apologized to me.

Galen pulled his grandmother away into the front room and then the bedroom. He helped her pack her small bag with a few bits of clothing.

I don’t feel well, she said.

What’s wrong? he asked. Are you sick?

No. Not sick, I guess. But I don’t feel right. I feel awful.

I’m sorry, Grandma. He zipped up the bag and handed her the tan purse. That’s everything, he said. We’ll go out to the car now. Follow me.

He was ready to fight Helen if he had to, but she hadn’t come into the front room yet. He and his grandmother scooted along the space between hide-a-bed and wall and made it outside. He put her bag in the trunk and opened the front passenger door.

We’re leaving now? she asked.

Yeah. Just a few minutes. I’ll be right back.

Okay, she said, and sat down, and he closed the door and she waited there with her purse on her lap.

They were in the front room now, busy gathering their stuff, not paying him any attention. He made it up to his bedroom and his mother was at the top of the stairs, her suitcase in hand.

Sorry, he said, but she didn’t respond. Just waited for him to step past, then went down the stairs. So he gathered his things into the duffel and then lay back on his bed for a moment. Kind of dizzying, all that had happened on a short trip. But the part he’d never forget was sex with Jennifer. The high point of his life. Her legs spread right here on this bed.

Galen had a boner now, and the timing didn’t seem appropriate, but he went ahead and jacked off anyway, moving quickly, remembering how Jennifer had felt and looked. Preserving his memories, keeping the recording fresh. He wanted to remember this right into his old age. He wanted to be jacking off on his deathbed remembering Jennifer at seventeen.

He cleaned up with the toilet paper but then wasn’t sure where to put it. The garbage had already been emptied, and no more fires in the stove. It would smell if he left it, and they’d be able to smell it in the car if he brought it with him.

He went down the staircase with his duffel in front in one hand and the wad of toilet paper held behind his back. At the base of the stairs, he looked both ways and no one was around. So he slipped through the kitchen and hopped out near the toolshed, where he threw the wad on the ground for the chipmunks. It might help insulate a chipmunk’s den or nest or whatever they had. Then he turned off the water up at the pipe and walked down to the deck, where he ran into his mother.

I already turned off the water, he said.

She didn’t say anything. She looked like she wasn’t even his mother. No recognition, no one home. Just turned around, walked past the car to the spigot to let all the water run out, then got in the car and Galen pushed into the back with Helen and Jennifer and they were off.

Good-bye, cabin, Galen said, as they always did, but it didn’t have the usual jolly feel.

They rumbled down the dirt road and across the bridge, Galen trying to catch glimpses of trout in the creek. My lance, he said. I forgot my lance.

No response from his mother.

We have to go back, he said, but she continued on, over the bridge, pulled onto the highway and the air rushed in. I still haven’t caught a trout, he yelled over all the sound. Damn it.

They came around the bend with the view of Lover’s Leap, where a squaw had tumbled down granite in grief at losing her lover, but Galen was on the wrong side of the car and couldn’t see much past the mafia. He stuck his head out the window like a dog, let his cheeks blow open in the warm air, and could see Horsetail Falls, just a quick glimpse. He had meant to hike up there this trip.

He pulled his head back in. I wanted to hike Horsetail, he yelled. Why are we leaving so early?

His family had turned into stone, though, no one capable of speech. Fine, he said.

They fell down through mountains into the lower foothills, gray pines a pale green, daubed into the forest as if they’d been watercolored. Nearing Sam’s restaurant, which had every video game imaginable, including ones you couldn’t find anywhere else. An antiaircraft one that used actual movies of planes. If you lined up correctly when you fired, the film would cut to footage of a fireball, the plane exploding. Can we stop at Sam’s? he asked.

No response. No one had said anything the entire drive. All in their own thoughts, or not having any thoughts. Apparitions on pause. Jennifer’s thigh against his, and he felt like he had already lost her, felt this restless despair that made him want to just start howling. But he tried to hold it together. He didn’t know what was going to happen today, didn’t know what his mother was going to do.

As they crested the final hill, they could look out over the Central Valley, endless flat expanse of dry yellow grass with irrigated patches. It was a desert. The furnace air blasting in the windows. A version of hell, and why had anyone settled here? Just because it was easier to plant on flat ground instead of a hill? He didn’t understand. The entire valley a self-selected internment camp for the stupid and the poor. But his grandparents had money and education and ended up here. Perhaps because they were both immigrants and didn’t know better. What Galen didn’t understand was why he had manifested this place and this history. What could possibly be learned from it? Why put himself here? Why make himself suffer?

Home sweet home, he yelled over the wind.

No response, of course.

Home on the prairie, he yelled. Home on Mars. Hell-home.

Apparently nothing he said could provoke any response.

I’m a midget, he yelled. I’m a bunny. I’m a coelacanth.

You’re a small turd, his aunt yelled.

Finally, he yelled back. A bit of conversation. Thank you.

An entitled turd, his aunt continued. A small, entitled turd. A dried, entitled turd. Hey, it rhymes. We’re all poets.

Galen wondered what it would be like to strangle someone, to have a throat in his hands and just keep pressing in with his thumbs. It was difficult, probably. More rigid than you’d expect, not easy to crush the windpipe. But he’d be willing to give it his all.

He looked over at his aunt, but she was looking out her side window. Jennifer was smiling, laughing at him probably. Real nice that that would be their last moment together.

So he stared out his own window at uninspired suburbs until they were passing Bel-Air.

They have the best pumpkin pies, he said.

Yes, his grandmother said, yes they do. They have the most wonderful pies. And I think we’re out of pie. We should stop.

Galen’s mother kept driving.

Suzie-Q, we need to stop at Bel-Air.

We just drove all the way from the cabin, Mom. We need to get you settled in and get home and unpack.

It’s been so long since I’ve tasted pumpkin pie, Galen said.

Yes, his grandmother said. It’s been too long. Turn around right now, Suzie-Q.

Galen’s mother looked at him in the rearview, a bereaved look, not what he was expecting. Your chicken and dumplings were wonderful, Mom, she finally said.

What?

We had such a nice visit at the cabin, and I just loved your chicken and dumplings. The dumplings were perfect.

Well, his grandmother said. Well, that’s nice.

Bel-Air was long gone, and soon enough they were at the rest home, concrete block of despair, a place to give up and be forgotten. Galen had in fact forgotten they were returning here. He was getting used to having his grandmother around.

Why are we bringing her here? he asked.

What is this place? his grandmother asked. I know this place. Is this a hospital?

Galen’s mother didn’t answer, just pulled up in front and got out. She grabbed her mother’s bag from the trunk, then opened her mother’s door.

What are we doing? Galen’s grandmother asked.

We’re home.

This isn’t home.

This is home.

I don’t like this place. You take me home right now, Suzie-Q.

This is home, Mom.

Why are you doing this to me?

Galen couldn’t bear to listen. She was pleading now. Let’s take her home, he said.

But his mother simply ignored him. She took her mother carefully by the arm. Come on, Mom, she said, and helped her out of the car. There. We’ll get you all settled in.

Galen’s grandmother looked back at him. I don’t like this place, she said.

Why are we putting her here? Galen demanded.

Because she walked into the forest at night and would have kept going and died. Because she could do that at home, too. I found my mother this nice place because I love her and I want her to be safe. I don’t want her to be hurt.

Galen believed her for once. Her mouth open and ragged, tired, and he could see how worried she’d been last night. He hadn’t realized that before. She’d been afraid she’d lose her mother. Galen felt uncomfortable. He had a sense of his mother’s goodness, and he didn’t like to think of his mother’s goodness.

His mother and grandmother walked away into that awful place. Prison and hospital combined. A place of a thousand voices, none of them talking to each other. His grandmother curtained away in her white linoleum semicircle, waiting. Looking ahead to ten or twenty years of waiting.

She shouldn’t be here, Galen said. It’s better to maybe wander off and die than just wait here in a prison.

That’s true, Helen said. She’s still my mother.

She’s a bitch, Jennifer said. Who cares what happens to her.

Yeah, Helen said. Maybe you’re right.

What if Jennifer says that about you someday?

Huh, Helen said.

I wouldn’t do that, Mom.

You might. It’s true. You might. And that’s fine.

The engine was cooling off, pinging, and it seemed that all its heat was being transferred to the interior of the car. Galen’s entire body was a slick. The windows down, but no breeze, and the outside air almost as hot.

Galen opened his door and stepped out, dizzy. Jennifer followed, her face wet with sweat, hair up in a ponytail. We’re getting a place with air-conditioning, she said. I don’t care where the house is, or how big it is, but it has to have air-conditioning.

Galen walked in a slow circle in the sun. There was no shade. The black pavement radiating. Humans had invented all the shittiest ways to live. Rest homes, cars, pavement, stuck in deserts like this, places you wouldn’t want to live even one more day. It would have been a better plan to walk around naked and never invent anything. That way, you’d have to head for a creek or a lake or at least some trees. You’d never just stand around in a thousand-mile oven.

I can’t believe she’s here, Galen said. And I can’t believe this fucking pavement.

Whoa, Jennifer said.

I’m serious. Every square foot is nothing less than tragic. It’s a sign of how fundamentally stupid we all are.

Down with the pavement.

I’m serious.

I know. That’s why you’re a freak.

Galen kept his focus on the pavement, walked a tight circle, around and around with a feeling that the center would melt, a great vortex that would pull him down. We’re criminals, he said. Leaving her here.

Maybe you can get her to suck it.

Fuck you.

Not anymore. But I think Grandma would be into that. You could close those curtains and she could gum away at it and forget where she is.

What the fuck? Why are you like this?

You could come back an hour later and get it again, because she won’t remember. You could do it all day. Jennifer laughed.

Galen walked away toward the glass doors, but he was only partway there when his mother emerged.

She shouldn’t be here, he said. Even if she walks off and dies, it’s better than being here.

His mother ignored him and walked past. She got in and started the car, and he knew she’d leave without him, so he slid into the passenger seat, damp from his grandmother.

What was the amount on that check? his mother asked as they pulled onto the road.

It was enough, Helen said.

How much?

None of your business.

Well, I just want you to know this. I don’t want to see you or Jennifer ever again.

That’s not a problem.

I mean that. Not ever again. You are never to show up at the house again.

Like I said, that’s not a problem. It was the plan, in fact.

Yeah, Jennifer said. We already talked about it.

But the reason I’m telling you is in case that check doesn’t work out for you. If the check doesn’t work out, you’re going to want to come to the house.

The check will work.

But if it doesn’t, here’s the deal. If I ever see you again, you get nothing. But if you stay away, I’ll get Mom to write checks for Jennifer for college each semester.

Galen pounded the dashboard with his fist. So angry he couldn’t speak. He felt that if he spoke, he would hit his mother instead of the dashboard.

I’m not paying for anything expensive. Just a state school, but I’ll get Mom to write those checks if I never have to see you again.

Galen punched his own thighs. He was afraid of what he could do. He folded his arms in tight and closed his eyes and tried to just get through the time. Trapped here right next to her.