When the world tips over, p.34
When the World Tips Over, page 34
“Thank you,” I say, a sudden surprising surge of pride filling my chest and making my cheeks hot.
“Well?” he says.
“Well, what?”
“Can I take that wheel for a minute while Bob here puts that plank of wood under your wheels? It’s not their first rodeo with this.”
“Is Bob naked?”
“Afraid so.”
“Why?”
I wouldn’t say it was a laugh that comes out of Craggy’s mouth, more a mirthful guffaw. “Hell if I know, to tell you the truth. Now, get on out of there before more of them descend on us from the hot springs like ants on a picnic.”
I get out of Purple Rain, realize I’m still in my pajama top, which would probably render me underdressed anywhere else on earth. Several of the nakeds smile and wave at me. This is certainly a friendly part of the Milky Way I’ve found myself in. I try not to look at breasts and penises and balls hanging like wind chimes on one old guy. Whoa, didn’t know about that either.
I hear laughter coming from a grove of oaks to my right and see a small boy and an older boy watching the show from a tree branch, like two birds. Not naked, I note with relief. The not naked young boy’s waving. He’s a skinny stick with a tangle of brown curls on top. I wave back at him. The older boy must not realize the little boy had been waving at me so thinks I’m waving at him. His face breaks into a smile and then he’s waving at me too. He has dark straight hair and a baseball cap. Okay, potential allies, I think. We, the clothed, shall stick together. (Who knew I would lose my virginity and go to the prom with this person years later? It ended a few weeks after we graduated.)
Naked Bob is a very large man, which is great because it means I can’t see his PENIS (!) under his enormous hairy belly when he comes up to me and says, “Hello! You look younger than an acorn. Can’t believe they gave you a license. Well, don’t worry, we’ll get your rig out of here in no time. Any friend of Dexter’s is a friend of mine.”
Dexter. Craggy’s name is Dexter. Does not ring a bell. “Thank you,” I say, noticing a police car gliding up the road toward us. He pulls in behind Dexter’s truck. I have a very clear vision of myself in jail.
“What happened here?” says a mustached man getting out of the patrol car. He looks around at me, the nakeds, Dexter. His eyes even track to the boys in the tree. “Who was driving this here RV?”
“I was,” says Dexter.
“Oh yeah? Then who was driving your truck, Dexter?”
“I was,” says Naked Bob.
The police officer looks at Bob. “Like that?”
“You got a problem with my God-given attributes, Bruce?”
“And who are you?” he says to me. “Because I heard a little girl was driving a purple RV at the speed of light down Highway 43.”
Dexter walks over. “Well, you heard wrong. This here’s my niece Cassidy. She was riding in the back when the rig spun out of my control. She and my sister are visiting from Oregon, and I wanted to show her the sights and take her for a morning dip in the hot pools. I was just giving the leg a stretch on 43.”
“Stop hassling us and give us a hand now, will you, Bruce?” Naked Bob says impatiently.
And just like that, I’ve been sprung from jail, no more questions asked, just all of them, some dressed, some not, yelling at each other, quite loud at times, on how best to get Purple Rain out of the ditch.
I watch them, still unable to think straight, waves of dizziness and nausea coming and going, my legs feeling weak beneath me, thoughts spinning around and around. Why did Craggy Dexter say I was his niece? Am I his niece? Did Mom have a brother? How does he know my name? And why did he cover for me? Where did my mother go? What am I going to do? Why is everyone naked? Around and around until eventually only one thought is left and it’s just me and it. What I’ve been terrified of my entire life has happened:
My mother’s abandoned me.
I give in to the lightheadedness, the exhaustion, feel my legs give out and…
Cassidy
When I wake, I’m in my bunk in Purple Rain. I bolt upright, thinking for a gorgeous fleeting minute that I dreamt it all… I stick my head out of the bunk and look down, see the mirror shards have been cleaned up and the remains of Mom’s note are in a neat pile on the table. Next to it is a plate of pastries, a bowl of blueberries, a jar of jelly.
I part the curtain, see that Dexter’s outside in a beach chair, a guitar in his arms. My warden. Did Mom have a brother she never told me about? Is that why I’m here? He does kind of look like us. Behind him is the yellow house where Mom abandoned me.
I climb down the ladder, take a deep breath, and open the closet. Mom’s side is as it always is, like a clothes explosion, unlike mine, which is tidy and organized. “You’re so anal, Cassidy!” she’d said once, taking handfuls of my carefully folded shirts and throwing them into the air. I sigh. Her side is still her side, everything balled up and shoved in, ten dresses to one hanger and the rest of the hangers empty. It doesn’t look like she took anything. I pick up a yellow sundress and bring it to my face and breathe in. “Where are you?” I say quietly. Then: “How could you do this to me?” I pull out her light blue dress from the corner it’s jammed in. Her favorite. The one she wore the night Dave proposed. I lift a few strands of stray blond hair from it and carefully tie them around my finger. I put on the blue dress, then go into the bathroom. Her toiletry bag is still there, her toothbrush, soap, shampoo. Her jasmine oil.
I dab some on my neck and wrists. (Though I don’t understand it, Wynton, long after I finish this bottle, to this very day in fact, I swear I continue to smell like this perfume, this scent that I associate with my mother and our time together.) Then I go to the table and pick up pieces of the note she left, wishing I hadn’t done such a good job of shredding it. I can’t remember much of it now that whatever she gave me has worn off. There’s no doubt in my mind that she drugged me. I get the Scotch tape and sit on the bench and start putting the note back together. Maybe in the part I didn’t read, it said when she’d be back. Maybe it said who Dexter was.
Not sure how much time goes by.
I continue with the note, sticking my finger in the jar of jelly periodically because it’s incredible. Like manna. I look at the label: Dexter Brown’s Grape Jelly. He makes this jelly? I study the label because it’s familiar. Then I stand and open the cupboard behind me because as I suspected, there’s another jar just like it, and next to it a bottle of Dexter Brown’s Red Vinegar and a bottle of Dexter Brown’s Pinot Noir.
A day comes back to me. Mom and I were at a wine festival up north and she was talking to a man selling jars of something or other. He looked like Dave from behind, same messy hair and lanky frame, same easy gait as he stood and slowly walked over to her. Nothing new. She was always talking to men who looked like Dave. But this time my heart had started fluttering because they were hugging like they knew each other. As I walked toward them, I got more and more certain it was really Dave. Maybe he’d left Joanne and had been scouring the state looking for us? Dave turned around and all that hope retreated inside me. It was some older man, more weathered and just not Dave. I went back to Purple Rain. When Mom joined me, she had the jelly, the vinegar, and the wine. I try to remember what she said to me about the man who must’ve been Dexter but can’t. I pick up the bottle of jelly. There on the back is an address and an email.
I go to the window and look at the man strumming his guitar under his cowboy hat. There’s a harmonica around his neck. He really does look so much like us. Could it be her brother? Why would she tell me she was an only child then? My mind whirs and whirs and then I’m thinking how easy it would be to imagine him on a horse. Is he an old boyfriend? Why would she leave me with some rando ex-boyfriend?
Unless…
I look at the shattered girl in the remains of the mirror.
Unless … he doesn’t look like us, he looks like me.
Because…
But what about Jimmy the Dead Drowned Dad?
I haven’t been honest with you—
No, not possible, right, Wynton?
I run back to the note, continue working on it. Soon, I make my way through her barely legible words:
I haven’t always been honest with you. I met your father at a bluegrass festival in San Diego, spent one beautiful afternoon together, and that was it. I never knew his name or where he lived and figured it’d be easier for you if you thought he was dead rather than out there somewhere with no way to find him. Like all my decisions, it wasn’t very thought through. We ran into each other recently and he was as wonderful as I remembered. I think you’ll find you have a lot in common. After communicating with him by email, I know he will keep you safe in ways I can’t…
The note continues but she doesn’t tell me where she’s gone or when she’ll be back for me. The final part of the note is about money. She says there are two bank accounts in my name, a college fund and a savings account that I can use for living expenses and that there’s a bank card in the drawer with a sticky note attached that has the PIN.
I open the drawer. There’s a bank card in it that has two names on it: Cassidy Snow and Mary Snow. Her name isn’t even Marigold; it’s fucking Mary. Mary Snow. A stranger’s name.
I go to the window and peek out the curtain.
He’s still out there, waiting. For me. There’s something about his face, a stony patience, that tells me he’d wait forever. I walk across Purple Rain, grab the door handle, and open it. I say to the man sitting in the chair, “You’re not my uncle.”
“No.”
“I know who you are.”
“Makes one of us,” he says, and I catch a smile in his eyes that reaches nowhere else in his face. “You hungry?”
I nod, step down from Purple Rain. His bones crack as he rises from the chair.
As we walk to the yellow house, the sun’s warm and welcoming on my skin, and its rays dapple the path, so it looks like my father and I are walking on water.
“You don’t seem surprised,” I say quietly.
“Are you kidding? This is me surprised out of my goddamn mind.”
This makes me laugh and it feels so good. “Really?”
“You have no idea.” The smile in his eyes this time is so fleeting, I barely catch it.
“So, if you win the lottery or get struck by lightning, this is you,” I say, thinking we’re already shooting the shit, like I did with Dave.
“Oh, I’ve been struck by lightning – it was nothing compared to this.”
It’s probably premature to like him. It’s probably premature to feel like I’m jumping on a trampoline inside myself because I have a father. A father who makes dry jokes, who waits for me, who smiles only in his eyes. Then he stops mid-step and when he speaks next, his voice is full of emotion. “I need to tell you that I didn’t know about you until a few weeks ago when your mom emailed me.”
“Did she get your email from the jelly jar?” I ask, still trying to put all this together.
He nods. “Not sure if you were at the festival that day. The moment I saw her, I knew who she was. Hard to forget your mom, she’s like a meteor.” Eye-smile. “She didn’t recognize me at first. Had to remind her how she lured me away from my favorite bluegrass band eons ago, telling me she had to know everything about me that very minute, said it was destiny we met. Something about how she could imagine me on a horse and then she went on about Jupiter being conjunct to something or other. Never done anything like that before or since, don’t have an explanation either, felt like I was under some kind of spell. But it turns out she was right, it was destiny.” The smile this time finds his mouth. “You are that destiny.” He shakes his head. “I must’ve read that email from your mom fifty times.” He laughs and it makes me feel warm inside. “Asked Nigel – my vineyard manager – to print it out, and to be a hundred percent honest and I will admit this to you only, I slept with it under my pillow that night so I could look at it first thing when I woke up. Couldn’t believe I had a daughter. I felt—” He swallows, his face brimming with emotion. “I don’t know how to describe it. It felt like some kind of redemption. Some kind of grace.”
I’m confused by this story, by all the feeling in his words, on his face. My voice comes out slight, tinselly. “You mean you were happy?”
I’ve always been a burden, a leech.
“Happy doesn’t come close. I felt, well, don’t know how to describe it. Like someone switched on the lights. I emailed back, inviting you and your mom to visit. Painted the house even—” The canary yellow? “Then didn’t hear back, just about gave up, tried the email again but it bounced back. Then woke up yesterday to a purple rig in my driveway. Next thing I knew I was involved in the first car chase of my life.” He eyeballs me, lifting an index finger. “Never again, by the way. No more driving until you get a license.” I laugh to mask that I’m welling up, realizing I finally have an honest-to-God parent.
The summer days pass.
Then the years do, and Wynton, for the first time in my life, they’re safe and happy ones.
There’s this Louise Glück poem I love now. I’ve tattooed my favorite line from it on my shin: Of two sisters one is always the watcher, one the dancer. That was Mom and me. I was always the watcher, but with my father’s eyes on me, in these years, I become the dancer.
Wynton
You know Cassidy’s there because you smell flowers, but she’s not saying anything. For hours, lifetimes, it seems. Is she reading? Just sitting and staring at you?
You hope she’s touching your arm. You remember how she brushed your face with her fingers in the moonlit road, like you were something precious.
You remember how when you played violin you tried to find the ache between notes with your bow.
Now you are that ache.
Finally, you hear, “I’m not sure what you know about your family and what you don’t, Wynton, but I need to tell you that we’re okay, you and me – we’re okay.”
Then the scent of flowers is gone.
Dizzy
Standing on the porch in the yellowy sunlight holding her father’s hand, Dizzy no longer felt like the walking-talking paint splatter of a person she usually did, instead like a calm fearless one who was no longer afraid her big brother was going to die. A girl who wasn’t even afraid of being face-farted again or being ugly forever or even being without her one best friend. She felt taller. Maybe she was taller? She remembered the moment in the Alonso Fall story when Alonso found out the truth about his real father and started giving off light, and how maybe she was undergoing such a transformation herself. Because didn’t Alonso actually get taller in that moment? Maybe the same magic from Cassidy’s stories was in Dizzy’s family in the here and now, but it was more subtle, so you had to look harder for it. She wanted to ask the others if she was indeed growing in fast motion, but read the room and kept it in.
Miles was still seething, his face like thunder, his eyes pinned to the man in the cowboy hat, their dad. “What kind of father leaves his whole family and never comes back?” Miles cried out, clearly not yet realizing they were in a miracle. Dizzy had read once that there were at least two hundred reported cases of spontaneous human combustion in the last century, and watching Miles in this moment she wondered if she was about to witness another. “I just don’t get it,” he raged on. “Do you know how much I needed you?” He gestured toward Dizzy. “All of us! You’ve never even met Dizzy – the most incredible kid – and she’s twelve years old!” Dizzy’s mouth fell open. Miles thought she was an incredible kid? It made her feel like an incredible kid! She bit her cheek so as not to smile. Who would’ve thought she’d be having these kinds of epic moments right in the middle of the absolute worst week of her life?
Her father was taking Miles’s outbursts as if they were physical blows, and she felt the man retract each time another one hit. She held on tighter to his hand trying to tell him through her touch that everything would be okay now that they’d found each other. She scanned the others. The guy in the doorway, whoever he was, looked like he was watching two cars colliding at top speed and there was nothing he could do to stop it. Sandro was barking desperately at Miles from their father’s feet. Felix looked like he wanted to bark too. Dizzy noticed the pigs in the sty had pushed their snouts through the fencing of their pen. A row of sunflowers that Dizzy could’ve sworn had been facing the road were now looking their way.
The whole world was at attention.
“I understand how angry you are, Miles,” their father said. “You have every right to be.” His voice was tight, like the words might be choking him. “There’s no excuse for what I—”
“No, there isn’t!” Miles stamped his foot, then pointed at the house. “Please explain to us how it’s okay that all this time you’ve just been up here being someone else’s father?”
Wait, Dizzy thought. Whose father? She regarded the young man in the doorway whom, she remembered now, their father had called Nigel. He caught Dizzy’s gaze and at the same time she said, “Are you his son?” Nigel said, “Not me,” and Miles said, “No, Dizzy. Cassidy! This is her house, remember?”
A brand-new chord in Dizzy began vibrating. In all the shock and excitement and hallelujah, not to mention her potential personal physical transformation, she had not remembered. She felt like she might fall off her own legs. That meant… “Cassidy is my sister?” She whispered the words, dropping her father’s hand, bringing both of hers to her chest. She had a sister? A big sister? And it was Cassidy. Her sister had pushed her out of the way of that truck and saved her life. And Wynton’s too. Oh, oh, oh. This was an even bigger miracle than she’d thought. A mega-miracle was happening. Her body felt like a live wire. Holy cow cow cow. This was better than any miraculous event she’d ever researched. She’d rather have a father and sister drop out of the sky than shoot fire from her fingers like Buddha or fly through the air like Saint Joseph of Cupertino. Even if this news meant Cassidy wasn’t an angel or Energy Being. Because how could she be if this man was Cassidy’s father, just like he was Dizzy’s? But Dizzy didn’t care about that anymore.
