“The gang’s all here,” Esther said. “A gang of what, I don’t know, but we’ve got booze.”
Maud smiled in spite of herself. She started to say, Oh, I’m fine, no need. Really. I’m not feeling up to company, thank you for calling, but by the time she found the words, the three of them had pushed their way inside. In the kitchen, they unloaded sacks, uncorked bottles, turned the oven to 350. They washed the dishes and wiped down countertops and bagged up the trash. Iris got out the broom, swept up crumbs, and then ping-ponged through the house. Rachel, who had subbed for a sick student at play rehearsal and was still in costume as Big Mama, pearls at her throat and her face thick with pancake makeup and eyeliner, handed Maud a glass of Chablis. Esther unwrapped a deli tray piled high with shaved meats and fresh wheat rolls. “Real food. Not all this bakery crap,” she said. She smiled. “Who’s plying you with all this shite, anyway?”
Eat, they said. Drink, they said.
Tell us, they said, if you need to. Or don’t. We’re all yours tonight, Maud. And tomorrow. And the next day. You’re not getting rid of us that easy.
Maud nodded. She didn’t have to thank them, these women she had known as long now as she had known her own daughter. She looked at the deepening wrinkles on their cheeks and necks and hands, the soft stomachs, the fragile skin under the eyes. She had watched them age. They’d watched her age, too, watched her fuzzy curls turn salt and pepper and now almost fully gray. They’d watched her every step of these last years, even when she hadn’t known they were watching. They were waiting, too.
“Thanks,” she said, anyway, even though she didn’t have to.
No problem, they said. We’re here for the haul, you hear?
You’re not alone, they said.
Of course she was, but she knew what they meant. They meant well. Good eggs, every last one of them.
A couple hours later, after Maud had forgotten she was waiting, when she had forgotten to keep watch, a door thumped shut in the driveway. They all swiveled to see who was coming up the walk. Except Maud. Maud turned away suddenly, her back to the window.
Without looking, she knew it was Gil Alvarez. She knew his silver hair was glinting in the fading sunlight. She knew the slump of his shoulders, the deep-set weariness in his face from seeing what he’d seen all those years. She knew how he would comb his hair with his fingers. She knew he’d look her in the eye and say, Maud, can I speak to you?
She knew it, just as she’d known the truth when she returned to the wash and walked through it, slipping on the hot stones, until she reached her own street, Roadrunner Lane. The place where the road dipped, where that fateful night she’d paused upon seeing a slash of water and mud and thought of flash floods. She’d known her whole life how desert washes turned to wild rushing rivers that could knock trucks sideways. She knew the rules: Do Not Cross When Flooded. Turn Around, Don’t Drown. She knew about drivers who didn’t listen, who stalled out in six inches of water and climbed onto their roofs as the cars washed downstream. She knew about hikers swept miles from their tents, crushed under mud and stone.
She knew all of it.
The sun was on its way west again. It would set, and tomorrow it would rise. The world spun on its axis. It spun, and spun, and spun, and here she stood.
Her friends murmured. They touched her back, her arm. They said, Shit.
Maud felt the warmth of their skin. When her knees buckled and she started to go down, they took her weight and pulled her up. They held her steady. We’ve got you, they said.
Still she couldn’t turn around. She stood facing the wall, and she thought, No. Wait. Not yet. I’m not ready yet.
Mass and Gravity
December 22, 1991
Jess walked uphill toward home—her familiar route up College Drive, past the Syc on the right, past Pi?on Drive and sleepy neighborhood houses on the left, onto Quail Run, past the orchard. Her teeth had stopped chattering, and her head had begun to throb, a knot the size of a tangerine. Her father’s sweater was so wet it hung almost to her knees. She was so hot. As she hit Roadrunner Lane—the road to home, she was almost home—she peeled off the sweater and tied it around her waist, remembering now she had taken off her coat and left it on Stevie Prentiss’s car seat when she’d decided she needed to walk home. Why had she done that? Stevie had gone inside her room to grab her keys, and Jess had thought, I need to go home now. She’d shrugged off her coat, climbed out of the car, and started to run. She made it halfway up College Drive before her throbbing head stopped her.
What time was it? The events of the evening had become muddled. She remembered Dani holding an umbrella over her head. Jess’s umbrella. Her father’s umbrella. She remembered bright taillights, lying in a puddle, the yellow sign of the Woodchute above her. She kicked at the pavement. Her toes were numb, but the rest of her was feverish, sweating. All she wanted was to lie down, to pull the covers up, to sink into oblivion. All she wanted was for her mom to sit next to her and put a cool hand on her burning forehead.
When she reached the dip in the road, the one she’d jumped over on the way into town, she could hear the water before she could see it. A staticky gush, like a bath faucet on full blast. The sky dark now, she squinted, trying to gauge how far across it was. Six feet? About as wide as a car. No telling how deep.
Shit. She paced across the road, alongside the water, trying to find the narrowest part. If she had to turn around and take the long route to her house, that would be at least another half hour. She began to cry a little. Why hadn’t her mother come to find her? What time was it?
It’s time, she heard a voice say, a voice inside.
She tasted salt in her throat. Okay. She could do this. She composed her breath and pushed at her eyes. She stretched to her tallest self, brushing her wet hair out of her face. Okay.
She assessed the distance again. If she got a running start, she could make it.
She walked back several yards, turned, and took a deep breath. An easy jump across. A leap she’d done a million times—over puddles and streams, over crevices, off steps. Out of necessity but out of joy, too. To leap, to defy gravity for one tiny moment.
“Don’t blink,” she said.