American Elsewhere

CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE




Mona does not immediately become conscious. Rather, the first of her senses to revive itself is olfactory: she smells laundered sheets, a freshly vacuumed carpet, and, perhaps, the smell of something baking.

Then a thought cracks across her mind, waking the rest of her up: This is… not right.

She opens her eyes.

She sees there is a ceiling above her. Not just any ceiling—the ceiling from her childhood home in West Texas, the one she lived in for the fourth and fifth grade. She knows it exactly. How many times did she stare at it as she tried to fall asleep? She can see the remnants of her Glen Campbell poster, which she pinned up there before her father told her to take that shit down, and the few glow-in-the-dark stars she never bothered to peel off.

She sits up. She swings around and puts her feet on the ground. Her multicolored carpet still bears some old stains (she can see where she tried to melt crayons in the second grade), but overall is clean; her shelves are stocked with books, and bedecked with little plastic horse figurines; standing in the corner is her battered old BB gun, which she has cleaned as though it were a rifle. And someone, somewhere, is baking bread.

Mona opens the door and walks down the hallway, rubbing her eyes. As she enters the den, she sees a dull orange blaze as the afternoon sun filters through the glass pendant lamps, and in the corner a stringy pothos that’s in need of some severe trimming, and a fresh bowl of potpourri on the entryway table. And there, in the battered old chair across from the television, is Laura Bright, née Alvarez.

She is in a state Mona has seen her in only once before: she wears the red dress from the can of film Mona found in the attic, and she is immaculate, incredibly perfect, hair curled and lipstick so clean it could have been applied by a surgeon. She is flipping through an issue of Southern Living with a look of slight disinterest. As she licks her fingers, Mona sees her nails are beautifully done in bright red; she cannot ever remember her mother having such excellent nails.

This is wrong. She knows this is wrong. But the dreamy nature of this place makes it very hard for her to really understand why…

“It’ll still be a minute before it’s ready, hon,” her mother says absently as Mona walks in.

Mona stares at her. She takes a few steps forward, and asks, “What will?”

“The bread, silly.” She licks a finger, and turns down a page, perhaps marking a recipe for further study. “The cinnamon bread.”

Mona looks into the kitchen. The light in the oven is on, and something is definitely baking there.

She walks toward her mother. “What’s… what’s happening?” she asks.

Her mother looks up. “What’s happening? What do you mean, what’s happening?”

“This… wasn’t happening just now. I was somewhere else. And you were… you weren’t there at all. I don’t think.”

Her mother smiles. It is such a warm smile. Her eyes are the color of rich toffee. Mexican eyes, like Mona’s. “Well. I did think we needed to have a talk. Why don’t you sit down?” She pats the couch beside her chair.

Mona slowly, reluctantly sits. Something bothers her about the kitchen: the ceiling fan. She remembers when her father installed it, and how he cussed up a storm as he tried to figure out the circuitry, because after that the lights in the den stopped working, and it was because—

“This was a new house,” says Mona.

“What was that, hon?” asks her mother.

A new house. The house they moved into years after Mona’s mother killed herself.

A memory swims up to her: Gene Kelly’s face smiling down at her from the silver screen…

“This never happened, did it,” she says.

“What didn’t?”

“This. This moment.”

“It’s happening now,” says her mother, amused.

“Yeah. But when I lived here… you were already dead.”

“I wasn’t dead then, my dearest. I just wasn’t there, with you.”

“Then this isn’t real. None of it is. And you’re not my momma.”

“Of course I am,” she says, slightly hurt, yet still forgiving. “I’ve always been your mother, Mona. And I know you must feel a little scared right now. You haven’t seen me in so long. And you don’t really know me. But I’m back now. And I want to be here to stay. Are you fighting that? Do you not want me to stay?”

Mona furrows her brow. Something about this place—perhaps something about this time—makes it very hard to think, and remember.

There was a fight. A baby. And she lay in the sun on the roof of a building, watching a mirror…

The mirror.

She opens her eyes.

Things tremble. There is a world behind this world, full of sun and mountains…

Then back. Back to this orange-colored den, and the smiling woman in the chair.

She begins thinking. “Why have you brought me here?”

“Because I want you on my side, dear. That’s where daughters belong, on their mother’s side. I want you to be a good daughter. I want you to be what you are supposed to be.”

“What you wanted me to be.”

“Yes, I suppose,” she says. Her voice is incredibly soft and soothing. “I want you to be here, with me.”

“Why?”

“Because you would be happy here. Happy’s a very hard thing for you to be—isn’t it, Mona?”

“How… how could you ever know what makes me happy?”

“I know a lot, dear,” says her mother. “Mothers always know more than people think.”

“You don’t know me.”

She smiles. “Yes. Yes, I do.” She raises her finger, and taps the air…

… and ripples radiate outward, as if she’s tapped the surface of a pond, and as things ripple they change…

Mona becomes aware of a change in height. She looks down, and sees she is, without a doubt, a little girl of about nine, sitting on the couch beside her mother. But now it’s her mother’s house in Wink, the rambling adobe ranch house. It’s the perfect image of how it looked in the film Mona found, shining with Mid-Century chic and little New Mexican additions. It’s mid-afternoon, and the sunlight through the windows is purer than snow.

Her mother remains the same: red, smiling, perfect. “You wanted this,” she says. “And I can give it to you. You can grow up here, with me. And we can do it right this time. We’ll have Christmases, and Thanksgivings, and I’ll help you with your homework, every night…”

Mona is silent. It hurts to hear this, for this is exactly what she has wanted all her life. But it does not feel right.

“What’s wrong?” asks her mother.

“This isn’t what I want,” says Mona. “Or at least what I want now. I’m not a little girl anymore, Momma. This all… and this all happened so long ago.”

“But it could happen now. It could happen the right way.”

Mona doesn’t answer.

“Do you want more?” asks her mother. She reaches up again and taps the air, and it ripples, and then…

Mona is sitting on a front porch. It’s unmistakably Wink, the sky bursting with a magnificent sunset, and though the house isn’t familiar there’s a cup of tea on a coffee table before her. She somehow knows immediately it’s made just the way she likes it—half-and-half and Splenda.

She looks around, and in the same way she knows this house is her own. She must live here. She has lived here for years.

She looks down, and sees she is no longer the nine-year-old Mona: she is twenty-five, maybe thirty. She hears a door open down the street, and turns. It’s her mother. They live on the same street, apparently. Her mother walks out the front door, smiling, her hair slightly gray, eyes bearing a few more wrinkles, though she is still clad in the dazzling red dress. “It could be like this,” she says as she walks down the sidewalk to her. “We’d spend years together. You’d become your own person, but I’d never be far.” She walks up and rests her arms on the top of Mona’s porch rail. “We’d have tea in the afternoon, and bake pies, and gossip, becoming friends. We’d play cards, I’d tell you tales, and we’d read the paper together on weekend mornings. And I’d always be on hand if it got difficult.”

“If what?”

Mona’s mother, smiling like a magician with a particularly good trick, nods toward the front yard.

Mona looks up.

There is a tree in her front yard. And, hanging from the lowest branch, there is a tiny pink swing.

Mona shuts her eyes, and looks away.

“I’d help you when she cries all night,” says her mother’s voice. “I’d watch her while you nap in the bedroom. I’d show you how to deal with a blowout—which is what we’d call it when diapers overflow.” She laughs a little ruefully, as if she’s dealt with plenty of those in her time, and Mona has to remember—She hasn’t. She’s making this all up. All of this is made up. “I’d always be on hand to tell you what she can and can’t eat, and tricks about storing bottles, and teething. I’d always be there for you. For her.”

Mona shakes her head, and says, “No. No.”

“No what? Why no?”

“I lost my baby, Momma.” Mona feels her cheeks are wet. “I did. It’s hard, and I wish to Christ it hadn’t happened, but it did.”

“But you could have her back. You have her back now.”

“But is she really mine? You want her for your own reasons, I know that. Would I get her back after you do what you need?”

Her mother does not answer.

“So what would you give me when this is all over? A real girl? My real daughter? Or another version of her, stolen from God knows where?”

Mona’s mother does not react to this, nor does she really answer her. She just keeps smiling, and says, “You would be happy.”

“No, I wouldn’t. These are just—just pictures, Momma. They’re not real things. They aren’t.”

Mona blinks back more tears. When she opens her eyes, they’re back in the 1980s West Texas house.

“Are you sure?” asks her mother. “Maybe you don’t know all I can do…”

Mona fights to remember where they are, what’s happened, and who her mother really is, and a question comes bursting out of her: “What do you want with my daughter? Do you want to hurt her?”

“Hurt your daughter? Why, no, my love. I would never do such a thing.”

“You want something with her. What?”

“I want to take care of your little girl. I want to keep her safe—finally, really safe.” Mona has never heard someone sound so painfully earnest before. “I don’t want to be cruel to you, Mona my love, and I don’t want to say that you didn’t take care of her, originally… but she did die, Mona. She died. You weren’t able to protect her, and she died.”

Mona bows her head. “That wasn’t my fault.”

“Maybe not, but you weren’t able to do anything about it. I can, my love. Let me help you. I want to take care of you all. I want to save you from danger. I want to help.”

And as she says this, something slides into place in Mona’s mind, like tumblers in a lock. There was something Mr. First said…

“To save us all from danger,” Mona says quietly.

“Yes.”

Mona starts thinking. She tries to disguise how fast she’s breathing.

“What’s wrong, dear?” asks her mother.

“You’ve said that before, haven’t you?” she asks.

“Did I? When?”

“When you first brought the rest of your family here. The rest of the children. You brought them here when you wanted to save them all from danger.”

Something in her mother’s eyes flickers. “They told you about that?”

“Yes.”

“Yes, but I was right then,” says her mother. “Our world on that side… it was falling apart.”

“But why? No one’s ever been able to tell me why.”

“It just… was. We were too great. There were too many of us. That world, that plane of reality, it could no longer support us.”

Mona opens her eyes again. And, as she has so many times before, she sees two things: she sees this quaint, homey living room, a pleasant mishmash of Mid-Century furniture, perfumed with the aroma of baking bread; and she also sees, just behind it, a broken, smoking town, and an enormous, dark form standing over her…

“When you made me,” Mona says, “you put a piece of yourself in me. You made me like you. Didn’t you?”

“Yes, in a way. I helped you. I made you stronger, smarter. Bigger and greater than you could ever be.”

“But you made a mistake,” says Mona.

For the first time, her mother’s smile retracts, but just very, very slightly. “W-what? A mistake?”

“Yes.”

“I… I couldn’t have. I don’t make mistakes, love. I don’t.”

“You did. The part of yourself you put in me was one that could see. One that could see farther and clearer than anyone else. And now I see you, Mother. I see you so clearly. You’re still the woman I knew in West Texas. I knew you then and I know you now. You always liked fresh starts.” Mona takes a deep breath in, then lets it out. “You were the one who ruined your world over there, weren’t you?”

Mona’s mother is silent.

“You did it because otherwise, you’d never get your family to move,” says Mona. “And that was what you really wanted. Wasn’t it? You wanted a new beginning.”

Her mother’s smile slides away.

“That’s why you took so many places, there on the other side. But one day you ran out of things to take. And you almost despaired. Because you still didn’t feel happy, did you, Momma? No matter how many children you had, or how beautiful and powerful they were, or how grand your homes were, you never felt good about it. Not once.”

“That’s enough,” she says softly.

“And then you found out about another place,” says Mona. “Several planes of reality lower, or… whatever. And you thought—Why don’t we try there? But the only way to get your family to make that move was to convince them their own world was falling apart.”

“Be quiet,” whispers Mona’s mother.

“And now you’re here,” says Mona. “You’re finally here. You’re ready to start your simpler, easier life. Even if you’ve killed many of your own children, or made them so… so awfully wrong.”

“That’s not my fault,” her mother says. “I didn’t make them that way. If they’re unhappy, it’s their own fault. They should have listened to me.”

“God. You can’t admit it,” says Mona. “You can’t admit that… Jesus, that everything you’ve done has been a mistake. That’s why you can’t leave them alone, can you? If you did, it’d mean you were wrong.”

Mona’s mother does not answer.

“You can’t find happiness this way, Momma,” says Mona. “You can’t. You can’t just set it up and move in.”

“No one ever finds happiness,” snarls Mona’s mother, suddenly bitter. She takes a little breath. Then, serene once more, “No one does. No one really knows how to be happy. You just get close, sometimes. That’s all I want—just to get close.”

“No,” says Mona. “There is happiness. Real happiness.”

“That’s a lie.”

“No. It’s true.”

“And what do you know about it?”

Mona looks down at her hands. She suddenly remembers dark hotel rooms, the neon lights of bars, the dull yellow strobe of passing highway stripes; she remembers her father, eyes flat, face averted, as he tore the skin from the shank of a doe, blood pooling on the driveway; and she remembers a tiny black casket, unadorned and shining in the sunlight, fading from view as it descended into a small, careful cubbyhole carved into the earth. “I know… I know what it’s like not to have it,” she whispers. But then she remembers the child she just held in her arms, tiny and squashed and luminous and perfect, and how looking at her made her feel that she’d never want anything again in the world. “I don’t know,” she says. “I don’t know, Momma. Sometimes you find something that makes you feel like you could have nothing or everything and it wouldn’t matter to you at all. Nothing in the world could be better than that thing. And you’ve never had that.”

Her mother is silent for a long, long time. Then she takes a breath. “It doesn’t matter,” she says again, slowly. “I’ll do it anyway. I’ll still try again.”

“Why can’t you just leave us all alone?”

“Because that moment,” says her mother, “that moment of pure, perfect anticipation… that is such a good feeling. You don’t know what I would do to get that feeling again, my love. I have been alive for so long… I have seen so many things… I had children just because I’d never had any before. It was just something new to do. That newness is… indescribable. Even if it only lasts for a little while. But there are so many new places in this plane of reality. I can come close to that happiness again, and again, and again… it will be like heaven, for me. For a little while.” She grows terribly still, dark eyes shining. “Now tell me. Tell me what you’re doing with the child. Tell me what is up there on the mountain.”

Mona swallows. She hopes she can do this.

“I’ll tell you,” she says softly. She shuts her eyes again. “As a matter of fact, I’ll show you.”

Mona sets her arms at her hips, miming holding something: perhaps something long and thin, like a rifle. Then, slowly, she pretends to lift the invisible thing and hold it to her shoulder.


Parson squints through the smoke and the dust at Mona. Were he looking normally, he wouldn’t be able to see anything—but as he himself has said before, there are other ways of seeing than through mere radiation.

She moves. Just a bit—then more. For so long she was still, but now, even though her eyes are closed, she is lifting the rifle to her shoulder and appears to be aiming.

“Hm,” says Parson.


“Watch, Momma,” says Mona.

“What?” asks her mother. “What are you doing?”

“It’s a trick I learned. Watch.”

Then she sets her cheek along the invisible barrel, takes a slight breath, and says:

Boom.


Boom.

The round flies through the giant’s legs, zipping through the tiny gap between its knees and hurtling toward the park.

It whines through the three tall pines that stand in a row beside the courthouse, narrowly dodging several branches.

It slashes through a single pinecone, turning it to fluttering shrapnel.

Then it falls, falls, falls…

And punches a hole in the side of the fat white geodesic dome.

For a moment, nothing happens.

Then something moves inside the dome. Something long, and dark, and ancient.

And one large, furious eye appears in the hole in the dome, staring out.


When the storm first came, everyone knew the dome had been struck by lightning. But, the dome being the dome, no damage was done. After all, the outside had showed no change, no damage.

But the inside… that was another matter. No one had thought that, perhaps, the inside of the dome had changed and become, like so many places in this valley, another place.

Perhaps a prison. A prison chamber for something very old, and something very angry.