If she needed something, I would get it. And then I would leave. Errands. That’s what I would say.
I paused outside the bedroom door. “I can see your feet,” she said. I opened the door. Her face looked calm. The peaceful face she wore when she was awake, the face of a yogi, of a healer, of a wise woman who knew things you might not know. Alabaster skin and her bare shoulders, and she might have been naked under the sheets.
“Hey.” She looked me up and down. Slowly she lifted her index finger. Slowly she pointed to the center of her neck. “Where’s your necklace?”
“It fell off.”
“Interesting,” she said, and touched her lips.
I made myself ask. “Can I get you anything?”
She tapped her lips. She didn’t take her eyes off me. “Did I ever tell you how my dad used to make me French toast?”
I shifted my weight. “No, you didn’t.”
“After he beat me, he would make me French toast.” She shook her head and smiled. “It was his way of apologizing.” Her fake lips, her fake teeth, her wig. The fact that these things still made her beautiful annoyed me. “I think you owe me an apology, Nan.”
“Oh?” Be calm. “For what?”
She pointed her finger at me. She drew circles around me with that finger. “Your energy toward me has changed.”
I looked at my feet. “I’m happy to make you French toast, Ana.”
She touched her heart. “I would love that,” she said.
I smiled for her. She said nothing. I smiled harder. She squinted at me. “Okay, Nan,” she said finally, “I see what you’re doing.” She blew me a kiss. “We can play nice.”
“I’ll be back with your French toast,” I said, and closed the door.
“Door open, please!”
I pushed the door back open. “No problem!” I sang.
I went to the kitchen. I cracked the eggs and stirred them fast. Compassion. Kindness. She would know if I made this French toast without love. I watched the butter melt and bubble. I watched my hands pull the bread through the egg. I felt nothing.
The sound of the chainsaw stopping. The sound of the truck driving away. After they had gone, another sound. The police. I ran to the window. No police. I was going crazy.
I arranged the French toast lovingly on a tray and brought it to her with a glass of apple juice and two Red Vines in a jar. This kindness would release me from having to spend the day with her. “Here you go,” I said, setting it on the nightstand.
She was reading a book. Chuck’s Hawaii book. Big Island Revealed. She’d taken it out of his drawer.
“Oh, Nan,” she said sweetly. “You do love me.”
I put my hands in my pockets, but I was wearing spandex that had no pockets.
And then a noise and I flinched. I went to the window. Not the police. Nothing.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “If they come, I will take the fall. I told you that already.”
“Ana,” I said, “I have to ask you something.”
She raised her eyebrows. She was amused.
“Did you hit him on purpose?”
“No,” she said, looking straight at me. Her eyes were steady, focused. “Who do you think I am?”
I looked at her. She looked at me. Steam rose from the French toast.
“Well,” I said, “I’m off to run some errands.”
“Where?”
“The store.”
“Can I come with?”
It took courage to say, “I’d like to be alone right now, if that’s okay with you.”
“Nan,” she laughed. “Come on. You hate being alone.”
“That’s not true.”
“Please,” she said, “you know you hate it.”
“Okay, I’m going to get going,” I chirped. “Do you need anything from the store?”
She held my eyes. And then—hand on her stomach. She winced.
The requisite “Are you okay?”
She shook her head.
I went to her. Her face, still strained. “Nan,” she whispered. She was breathing normally again. Good. “Don’t leave me.”
“I’m just going to the store. I’ll be right back.”
She blinked several times.
I stood. “I’ll see you in a little while.”
“Wait. If I die while you’re gone, what will you have wished you had said to me? What do you want to say to me before I die?”
I knew what she wanted. “That I love you, Ana.”
“I love you, too, Nan.”
I blew her a kiss. “Bye.”
“Don’t be alone for too long.” She winked. “You’ll get depressed.”
I smiled harder. “See you soon.”
She winced again. I pretended not to notice, and left the room.
But I felt like a bad person so I went back to check. Through the crack in the door, I expected to find her holding her belly and breathing it out. But no, she was picking at her fingernail, looking bored. Then she picked up a slice of French toast. Syrup dripped onto the sheets. She didn’t notice or she didn’t care. She lowered the toast into her mouth and took two big bites, one right after the other.
33
I feel lonely, I thought, as I walked deeper into the forest. I feel scared, I thought, when I heard something living brush through the leaves and quickened my pace. My shoes, I thought, when the path turned to mud. When I stopped to tie my muddy shoe and heard no cars and no dogs and no people and no sound in the world beyond the ringing of crickets, there was only the thud of my heart beating, and it was beating fast.
I screamed. I screamed as loud as I could until there was nothing left.
Afterwards, silence.
No one came to save me.
The crickets didn’t stop to make room for my noise.
The world was the same as it always was.
Nature didn’t care.
34
Safeway was crowded. All these people and I couldn’t look into their eyes. Hands on the cart, eyes on the food. I walked like I was underwater. I examined every product. I didn’t want to go home.
I’d heard the “Hey you!” but I didn’t think “you” was me until someone touched my arm.
It was Marigold. Or Petunia. I didn’t know which was which. “Sandwich Sistah,” she said. Her hollowed cheeks and barely any blue in her eyes because her pupils were so dilated. And then Petunia or Marigold—the other one—walked up with a loaf of Love’s bread. “Fuckin’ A, this store is backward,” she said, dropping it into their cart, which was full with the big backpack they slept on.
“Look who it is,” the first one said, and the second one looked at me, barely any blue in her eyes either. “Sandwich Lady!” She hugged me. She was so thin. “Girl, we been missing you. Look, we even making our sandwiches like yours now.” She motioned to the jar of Skippy in the cart.
“When you coming back?” the first one asked.
And then they were both looking at me, their gaunt electric faces and their sweatshirts hanging off their scarecrow bodies, and I don’t know why I said, “Soon. I’ll be back soon.”
?