Windfalls: A Novel Read online

One night in mid-July, long after she’d gotten Travis to sleep, Cerise was scrunched on the sofa, so engrossed in studying that she barely looked up from her textbook when the front door opened and Melody came in.

  “Hi,” Cerise said, pausing to highlight a section about maternal-infant bonding before she added, “How was work?”

  “Work sucked,” Melody answered. “But—check this out.” She tossed something on the sofa next to her mother.

  “What is it?” Cerise asked, glancing up from her book to see what Melody had thrown. Her first thought was that it was an ornament for some weird Christmas tree, but when she picked it up she saw it was a grapefruit, although its coarse pink skin had been decorated with a sinuous, many-pointed star.

  “It’s Celtic,” Melody said, pointing at the star. “It’s very magical. Tree says I’m learning fast,” she added proudly. “He says I’m almost ready to try a real tattoo. I just have to get my depth a little more consistent first.”

  “Try a real tattoo?” Cerise asked warily.

  “There’s lots of money in tattooing. If I get good at giving tattoos, I can make way more money than I’ll ever make selling burgers at McVomit’s. Even teachers and bankers want tattoos these days. Tree says my designs are deeply cool.”

  “Just as long as you never get one yourself,” Cerise said, studying the star embedded in the grapefruit’s sallow rind and thinking of Melody’s perfect skin. She remembered the tattoos on the flaccid biceps and wrinkled forearms of the men at Woodland Manor, the blurry purple anchors and flags that had always reminded her of the mimeographed worksheets her teachers used to give her back in grade school. She said, “If you get a tattoo, you can never get rid of it. You’re stuck with it, your whole life.”

  “That’s the point,” Melody answered primly. “It’s important to have things that will be in your life forever. But don’t worry—if I ever get one, it’ll be small and easy to hide. Tree says tattoos are sexier if you have to hunt for them. Some people practice on chickens,” she went on, “but I’ve quit eating meat.”

  “Quit eating meat? What? When?”

  “When I met Tree.”

  “Why?”

  “Do you have any idea the kind of poisons they pump into meat? Hormones and drugs and crap like that? Besides,” Melody said, retrieving her grapefruit and examining it proudly, “Tree says its bad karma to eat someone else’s flesh without getting their permission first.”

  It made no sense for Melody to quit eating meat, especially because for every shift she worked, she got a free Quarter Pounder and a large drink and a fries. And it made Cerise sick to think how even a little butterfly tattooed on Melody’s ankle or her shoulder blade would deface her lovely daughter. But at least Melody had a job. At least she wasn’t coming home drunk, though sometimes Cerise thought she recognized the scent of marijuana in her hair. At least the clothes Melody wore were her own, or were so flimsy or tattered it didn’t frighten Cerise to wonder where she got them. At least Tree didn’t carry a knife or suck bruises into Melody’s neck.

  And once or twice after that, on nights when Travis went to bed on time and Melody happened to be home from work, nights when Cerise was too tired to even try to study, they found some old movie on TV, made popcorn, sprinkled it with the cheese powder packet from a box of macaroni and cheese, and sprawled together on the collapsing sofa, watching the movie in companionable quiet, the popcorn bowl between them, and only their jaws moving as they gazed at the screen, their fingers occasionally brushing when they both reached for popcorn at the same time.

  But before August was half over Melody got fired for helping the Lost Children picket the restaurant where she worked with signs that said “Unfair to Animals” and “Eat Your Own Meat.”

  “Lost your job?” Cerise said, when Melody told her. “You mean you were fired.”

  “I couldn’t take it anymore, working at a place that sells murdered animals. Do you know those cows never even see the light of day? They spend their whole lives standing in their own shit. They can’t even walk.”

  “You were doing so good,” Cerise mourned. Travis, who had been watching cartoons while Cerise tried to study, slid off the sofa and trundled across the room to where his laser power blaster lay.

  “Oh right,” Melody scoffed. “Like a job at McNazi’s is doing good.”

  “It was a start. It’ll be harder to get another job, now you got fired.”

  “Ask me if I care.”

  “Mama. Meedee,” said Travis, pointing the laser blaster in their direction. He pulled the trigger, the lights flashed, and the electronic catechism began once again, though the lights seemed weaker, the voice deeper and more slurred than usual.

  Cerise said, “Don’t point that thing at people, Trav.” To Melody she added, “School’s starting soon. How’re you going to buy school clothes without a job?”

  Travis fired again, and the lights strobed wearily. “Target,” the voice drawled, dropping an octave lower.

  Melody said, “There’s a boutique at the mall, and the lady’s said she’ll sell my T-shirts.”

  “You lost a good, steady job,” Cerise said, wavering between fear and anger. “You got fired.”

  “Just back off, okay? You should be proud that people want to buy my art. I don’t give a flying fuck if I got fired. Besides, it’s my life.”

  “Well, it’s my life, too,” Cerise said, snapping her textbook shut, sending the yellow highlighter spinning across the room. “And I—” she began, but suddenly Travis let out a shrill wail.

  “What’s wrong, Travie?” Melody asked, turning toward him with eager solicitude as Cerise leapt up from the sofa.

  “What’s the matter, baby?” Cerise said, snatching Travis up before Melody could reach him. Imagining black widows or scorpions or hornets, she asked urgently, “What’s wrong?”

  “Anh, anh,” Travis howled, his face red and hard with frustration as he pulled the trigger of his silent power blaster.

  “Let me see, Travie,” said Melody, tugging the power blaster away from him and trying the trigger herself. “It’s not working,” she announced above his cries. “You have any more batteries?”

  “Are you kidding?” Cerise called back. “I don’t even have money for diapers.”

  “Baddies,” said Travis, snatching the word. Shaking the toy in his dimpled fist, he clung to Cerise and cried, “Baddies, baddies.”

  “Let me see, Travie,” Melody said, reaching for the power blaster and sliding the battery cover off the bottom. “It takes one of those square kinds with the little snaps. What else uses those?” she asked, her eyes roving the room.

  “Nothing we got,” Cerise shrugged. “It’s okay, Trav,” she added, patting his back. “It’s just a toy.”

  “I’ll fix it,” Melody said, spying the smoke detector that hung from the ceiling at the entrance to the narrow hall.

  “You leave that alone,” Cerise snapped as Melody reached up to take the cover off.

  “Oh, come on,” Melody answered, her hand pausing in midair. “Just for tonight. I’ll get a new battery for the smoke detector tomorrow. It probably needs one anyway by now.”

  Coldly Cerise asked, “And just what do you plan to use for money, now you don’t have a job?”

  “I’ll have money soon—lots of money now that I’m working for myself. I’ll be able to buy all the batteries you’ll ever need as soon as my shirts start selling.”

  “Baddies,” Travis cried, stretching out his arms to Melody.

  Cerise twisted her torso to keep Melody from reaching him, and Melody shrugged and dropped her arms, headed past them toward the tiny kitchen.

  “You leave that smoke detector alone,” Cerise said over her shoulder to Melody. “I mean it,” she added grimly, as she hauled the screaming toddler off to bed.

  “Don’t worry, Travie,” Melody called after them as she opened the refrigerator and bent to peer inside. “Meedee’ll get you a new battery. I promise.”

  BEYON
D THE END OF EVERYTHING

  THE WHOLE TIME THEY WERE PACKING, ANNA WAS CERTAIN that at some point Lucy’s imaginary friend would relent and decide to move to California with them. But even after the house had emptied to an echoing shell and they’d said good-bye to Sally and Mike and Anna’s parents and all their friends, Noranella remained resolute.

  On the final morning, as their loaded car pulled out from under the shelter of her great-grandfather’s spruce and down the driveway to the road, Lucy craned her head to watch the only home she’d ever known receding down the valley. “Bye, Noranella,” she said from the backseat in a voice so small and sad that for an unhinged second it seemed to Anna they should find a way to stay for Noranella’s sake alone.

  “Oh, Lucy,” Anna begged as they crested the hill and the house disappeared from view. “Please make Noranella come.”

  “I tried,” Lucy answered wistfully. “But she refuses to adubricate.”

  It was August, and Anna was nearly nine months pregnant, so full of baby that she could barely breathe. Eliot had suggested that she and Lucy should fly to California and he could drive the car down by himself, but Anna had wanted them all to stay together. She’d hoped, too, that it would make the move feel more real if they traveled the whole way by car, though now, as she tried to adjust her seat belt around her swollen belly, she gazed out the window and wondered if she’d made the right decision.

  They drove on into the shining morning, but even before they reached Salish, Anna felt like a stranger, passing through a land that was no longer hers. Harvest was in full swing. Pickups were parked at casual angles on the freshly stubbled hills while combines lumbered over the fields like packs of dinosaurs. Anna remembered the harvests she and Sally had spent as kids, riding the loaded trucks to the grain elevator. She remembered her grandpa joking that he was a multimillionaire because there were a million kernels in every bushel of wheat. She remembered the summer suppers her grandmother used to fix, the ice cream she used to churn by hand. She remembered later, making love with Eliot on the slope of the butte, remembered helping Lucy spread her sleeping bag beneath the stars, and it was less like being uprooted than having the roots ripped out of her to be leaving all of that to live in California.

  “California,” she’d echoed blankly when Eliot first told her about the job he’d found, as the director of the USDA Plant Germplasm Center at UC Santa Dorothea.

  “Plant Germplasm Center?” she’d asked. “What’s that?”

  “It’s a seed bank, the government’s attempt to try to promote research and maybe preserve some genetic diversity. It won’t pay well, but it’s a pretty good job for someone who just lost his head on the tenuring guillotine.”

  “In California,” she’d repeated, trying to find a way to make her enthusiasm match his own.

  “Northern California,” Eliot had qualified. “North of San Francisco.”

  After months of strain and worry, it was marvelous to think that Eliot might have a job, but northern or southern, all Anna could imagine of California were palm trees and freeways and Ansel Adams’s photographs of Yosemite. She’d had never been to California. She’d planned on going to the opening of her Los Angeles show, but because of her pregnancy she’d had to call and cancel it instead. Later, when Eliot went down to Santa Dorothea to find a house for them, she’d had to stay behind to finish teaching and clean out her office for the new photographer.

  The baby gave a lurch inside her. Reaching down, she pressed her hand against the spot where the movement was most distinct. When she first told Eliot that she was pregnant, he’d turned pale and opened his arms to her, holding her not in celebration but as though some great disaster had just struck. “A baby?” he’d echoed dumbly. “Are you sure?” But at the sight of the fear and yearning that trembled in her face, his whole bearing had grown firmer and more solid. “We’ll manage somehow,” he’d promised, and his voice had held more certainty than she’d heard since he’d lost his job.

  “How are you doing?” he asked now, reaching across the front seat to lay his hand on Anna’s knee.

  “Okay,” she answered in a voice she’d intended to be hearty but which sounded wan. “I’m all right.” Later that afternoon, the house that had sheltered four generations of her family would be unlocked by strangers. Strangers’ hands would open the cabinets and drawers her great-grandfather had built, strangers’ feet would climb the stairs and claim the rooms, and some time that evening, strangers would catch the scent of her grandmother’s roses wafting across the yard.

  “How about you, Monkey Buckets? How’s it going back there?” Eliot asked, tilting his head and speaking to the backseat.

  “Okay,” came Lucy’s forlorn reply.

  “Do you want to listen to a tape?”

  “No.”

  “Are you hungry? Should we get your mom to rustle up some grub?”

  “No.”

  “Are you thirsty?”

  “Uh-uh.”

  Eliot shot a glance at Anna, who roused herself enough to ask, “Are you sure you don’t want anything?”

  “Yeah.”

  Lucy sounded so sad. Anna wished she could gather herself and try to comfort her, but she felt inert, too stunned and stupid. All morning she watched listlessly as the hills flattened and the harvest light grew thin and the land became drier and rockier and less lush. They drove for a hundred miles along the dammed Columbia River, and Anna stared dully at its torpid power. At Biggs Junction they left the river, and by midafternoon they were driving across a high plateau filled with rock and sagebrush.

  “It’s empty country, isn’t it?” Eliot asked. “Maybe it’s a good thing we let Jesse sell us that cell phone, after all.”

  At the mention of Jesse, Anna felt a familiar twinge of remorse. After a few more scrapes with the law, he had joined a church, married a girl he met in Bible class, and bought a cellular phone franchise. Last summer he hired his mother to decorate his showroom, and now the family’s consensus was that he’d turned out all right. But Anna still remembered the ardor in his voice that night he’d talked about his art. She wondered if he ever craved the thrill and satisfaction of painting in the dark. And then she wondered which was sadder—for him to miss it or for him to never think of it at all.

  Lucy broke the silence to announce, “Guess what?”

  “What?” Eliot asked.

  “Guess who’s coming with us?”

  Anna heard the tingle of discovery in Lucy’s voice and forced herself from her torpor to ask, “Noranella?”

  “Nope.”

  “Then who?”

  “Noranella’s ghost!” Lucy announced triumphantly.

  “Her ghost?” Eliot asked.

  “Yep,” Lucy answered. “And Noranella’s ghost is starfing for M&M’s.”

  Maybe it will be all right, Anna thought, staring at the desert unspooling in front of them and listening as Lucy divided her candy between herself and the ghost of her imaginary friend. The baby thumped against her bladder, and she reached across the seat to lay her hand on top of Eliot’s.

  “Okay?” he asked, glancing over at her. But before Anna could answer, Lucy spoke. “Where are we?” she said in a small, bleak voice. “Noranella’s ghost wants to know.”

  “We’re in central Oregon,” Eliot said. “Just north of Shaniko.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “We’re going to our new home,” Anna answered patiently. “Remember? We’re moving to California.”

  “Is that beyond the end of everything?” Lucy’s voice held a streak of panic, and when Anna heaved around in her seat to look at her, she saw that her daughter was gazing out across the barren landscape, her exquisite little face pinched with despair.

  AFTER MELODY LOST HER JOB, SHE SPENT LESS AND LESS TIME AT THE trailer, and when she was at home, she seemed sadder than Cerise had ever known her to be.

  “What’s wrong?” Cerise asked one evening when she looked up from her algebra workbook to see that Melod
y was staring at the TV news with tears glittering in her eyes.

  “The world,” Melody answered bleakly. “Everything.” But when Cerise tried to ask her what she meant, she shook her head impatiently and left the room, and Cerise, who had a test the next day, could only look after her with an aching heart.

  The summer term ended, and when her grades came in the mail, Cerise opened the envelope with the same sense of doom she’d always had when she was a kid and her report card arrived. But this time she could hardly believe what she saw—two B’s and three A’s. She felt an enormous upwelling of pride, and then, a second later, a little prick of disappointment when she realized that no one else would value those letters as much as she.

  Fall semester was approaching, but when Cerise offered to go with Melody to the local high school and help her get enrolled, Melody told her about the alternative school where Tree had gone. It was deeply cool, she said. At the alternative school she could study what she really wanted to learn. She could avoid all the crap—the pep assemblies and study halls and cliques—and still graduate ahead of the other kids her age.

  “What about college?” Cerise asked, and Melody answered breezily that Tree had been accepted at MIT.

  “So he’ll be leaving soon,” Cerise said hopefully.

  “He’s not going yet,” Melody said offhandedly, tossing her head so that her hair rippled down her back like a river of blond light. “He’s got more important things to do.”

  “What—”

  “Besides,” Melody said, changing the subject with another flick of her hair, “do you have any idea how dangerous high schools are these days? Kids get killed all the time, going to high school.” She reminded Cerise of the Columbine massacre and the shootout at Jefferson High and claimed that last year two boys had been stabbed in the lunchroom of the school Cerise wanted to send her to. She said that the biology teacher had found a bomb in his car, and that all the girls she knew who went to that school developed bladder infections rather than use the lavatories where the gang girls hung out. She said, “I can’t believe you’d want to risk my life by sending me to a place like that.”