Backseat Saints (33 page)

Most of the couples I see don’t match up in the usual ways. My gaze is pulled to a tiny Asian girl, straining up on tiptoe
to kiss a tall, stooping black man, then a pair of Swedish-looking blond ladies holding hands, then a slim, attractive fifty-year-old
Hispanic woman who is walking arm in decidedly unmotherly arm with a bulky guy, his pale head shaved clean and gleaming. He
must be twenty years her junior.

My mother is close, perhaps even present, but strange works here as camouflage. I begin to understand how much little ol’
Claire Lolley from Alabama must have changed in order to belong. She has done it, though. It is as if I can feel her heart
beating, and it is the same heartbeat that the city has, a thready, strange arrhythmia that shouldn’t work as well as it does.

I will find her. I am obeying the most basic drive there is. New lambs, blind and soaked in afterbirth, go immediately to
their mothers. They know, and I know. She can blend into the landscape all she likes. I will find her. Watching for her, I
drive right past the turn for the Berkeley branch library and have to go back.

The VW is used to the gentler hills of Alabama. It struggles to crest a slope so steep that I have to pump the brakes to keep
the bald tires from playing sled on the downside. The library is a squatty brick building wedged in between an organic food
mart and a gas station. It has slitty 1960s windows like my library back home—a little slice of familiarity in a city so strange,
I feel like I have left my home planet—but it has no parking lot. The street is lined with meters with a two-hour limit.

I backtrack until I find a tiny half slot open on a residential side street with no parking limit posted. This space would
defeat the smallest Honda, but I squeak the Bug back and forth, like I am sawing it into place. I make it.

Gretel and I get out and start walking back to the branch. It’s the best place to start. Claire Lolley may have changed, but
I can’t believe she’s changed so much that they won’t know her at her local library. Back in Fruiton, she and I went to the
library two, sometimes three times a week.

We are passing an Indian restaurant, and the air has a tangy, sharp smell. My mother had a similar scent, like ginger and
other unfamiliar spices. Gretel lifts her nose to snuff. I do the same thing, just as a homeless fella comes up even with
me. He is gusty and overripe, and I get a noseful.

He grins, showing me less than ten teeth, and falls into step beside me. He has a ragged swath of braided hair poking up out
of the rag he has wound around his head, and his eyes roll around in separate ways. Gretel mutters low in her throat, a warning
noise, as he leans in and says into my face, “You a bull daggahhhh!” with cheery relish. I stop, startled, but his message
has been delivered, and he keeps walking.

“Just a harmless weirdo,” I tell Gret, who has her hackles up. My voice calms her but not me.

The homeless fella catches up to an older lady in a peacoat who is walking along in front of me. He delivers the same message
to her. She smiles at him and digs in a brown paper sack she is holding, then pulls out a sandwich and hands it to him. He
takes it and hurries on, eager to tell all the women ahead of us that they, too, have been identified as bull daggahhhhs.

“The weird go west,” I tell my dog. Anyone too strange for Berkeley must walk straight into the sea like a lemming to drown.
Or possibly grow gills. If they are too odd for this city, there can be no place for them above sea level.

I hook Gretel’s leash to the bike rack by the library’s front
steps and tell her I’ll be right back. Inside, I am greeted by the familiar smell of musty books. There’s a counter with two
librarians behind it, and to their right, I see the low shelves and the outdated computers of a typical reference section.
The furniture is covered in crackly blue vinyl. They are obviously underfunded, the furniture and technology years out of
date, just like back home. The whole building could be swapped out for the library in Amarillo and no one would notice. Not
until they looked at the librarians, anyway.

The closest librarian is a young woman, and I automatically skip over her to look at the man at the other end of the counter.
He has a sheaf of dark hair falling over his forehead and a pierced nose. His eyes are as black and shiny as oil slicks.

He looks up at me as I pause a few feet back from the counter with my mother’s book clutched close in one arm. He sees me,
and his shoulders tuck in and his spine bows slightly, as if a little bit of breath has been pressed out of him by an unseen
hand.

A pretty woman is a Christmas tree, my mother told me in the airport. This fella is hanging things on my branches as his gaze
sweeps from my face all the way down my body to my hips and then back to my face. Ideas fly from his widened eyes and land
on me like teeny, decorative burdens. He is giving me shyness, maybe, some book smarts, and a certain yielding sweetness in
the bed. The oil-slick eyes get me, and I find myself hanging a few ornaments myself, giving him deft hands and a sense of
humor.

Ro Grandee would go lean over the counter and touch her hair a lot of times, maybe touch his. She’d pinch and wheedle information
out by turns. Rose Mae Lolley would simply hop over to his side, get herself a fist full of testicle, and twist until he spilled.
I pause, uncertain, and then do the one thing that comes least naturally: I step straight toward the female librarian.

She looks soft, as if she’s been raised in a box and purely milk-fed, like veal. A line of teeny blue butterfly tattoos flutter
out from behind her ear, cross her collarbone, and disappear into her blouse.
I give her the most friendly, open smile that I can muster, put my hand out, and say, “Hi, I’m Ivy. Ivy Rose Wheeler.”

She takes my hand and says, “All Swan.”

I blink. “All what?”

“All s
wan
,” she says, smiling, then explains, “that’s my name.” She spells it for me, Alswan, then cranes her long neck at me, trying
to look like she’s at least some swan. She’s got a good yard of extremely rumpled golden brown hair, wild, like she’s spent
the afternoon having cheerful jungle sex with Tarzan in the stacks. Tarzan kept her bra, looks like.

She’s for sure younger than me and maybe prettier than me, which makes her about the last creature alive any of my former
selves would go to for help; score one for the new girl. I plant myself in front of her and I say, “I found this book of y’all’s.
In an airport.”

I hand over the Stephen King book, and Alswan flips open the cover to read the stamp. “This is ours all right. Thank you.”

“The woman who left it, she also left something in it. Inside it. Something important. Or valuable, I mean.” I’m practically
stuttering. I’m not sure what kind of person Ivy Rose will turn out to be, but sadly, she’s a terrible liar. At least to women.
Perhaps, I think, this is because I weathered adolescence without a mother to practice on. Something else to put on Claire
Lolley’s long, long tab. “I need to get in touch with the woman who checked it out.”

Alswan’s eyebrows come together. “I can’t give out information about our patrons. That’s not… We don’t do that.”

“I understand,” I say, nodding. “But I was hoping you could contact the person and tell her I’m here with the book.” Alswan
regards me with a healthy skepticism. I soldier on. “The thing I found, it’s not something she can easily replace. She must
want it.”

Alswan’s mouth purses up into a prim wad, as if, under the sex hair and the tats, the spirit of my hometown librarian is rising
up inside her. Mrs. Blount once gave me this exact face back in
Fruiton, when she caught me reading D. H. Lawrence at thirteen. Alswan clearly has not bought what I am selling, but she humors
me and says, “I’ll take a look.”

She turns her monitor, canting it so the back is squarely facing me. She looks back and forth from the book to her screen,
typing in the numbers on the spine. She waits, squinting at her screen, while the old computer grinds its way to an answer.

I can’t see the information that comes up, but Alswan says, “Oh,” in such a tone that I know at once she recognizes the name.
This girl knows my mother; she softens toward me immediately. As she turns back to me, she looks me up and down, fast. It’s
as if she is trying to see through my clothes, but not like her male colleague did. There’s no sex in it. Curiosity, maybe
some pity, but no sex. Her voice is considerably warmer when she says, “You’re one of Mirabelle’s girls! You should have said
so.”

“Mirabelle,” I say, flat, so it could be a question or a confirmation. My mother’s name is Claire, and as far as I know, I
am her only girl. Still, the name goes with the gypsy clothes and long strings of hair, and the first thing people in hiding
change is their name. My heartbeat picks up.

Alswan says, “Yes. Our book club meets at her house. Just wait over there, okay? I’ll call her and tell her you are here.”

“Okay,” I say. I blink at her, suddenly short of breath, and she blinks back, all earnesty. I say, “Tell her it’s Ivy
Rose
. From the airport. Tell her I’m the one who has her book.”

“Don’t worry,” Alswan says. Her smile is now so warm and encouraging that I find it slightly creepy. “She’ll remember you.
She does this all the time.”

“Thank you,” I say, wondering what it is my mother does all the time. I have some doubt curling up from my stomach like a
growing vine, trying to close my throat. What if this mysterious Mirabelle is not even my mother? Perhaps my mother stole
the book from
her.

I step away from the counter as Alswan picks up the phone. I
do not go far. There’s an “Our Book Club Recommends…” table just to the right, where some industrious soul has set up a display
of novels. I pick one up and stare at the cover, straining my ears to pick up Alswan’s soft voice.

“Mirabelle?” I hear her say. “It’s Alswan, down at the branch.” I try to look as uneavesdroppy as humanly possible, but Alswan
turns her back to me and I can’t hear what she says next.

After a minute, she turns back to look at me. I pretend to be lost in the book I am holding. I don’t even know what it is.
Hell, it could be upside down. I’m listening so hard, I’ve gone half-blind to compensate. I catch Alswan saying, “… five one
sounds about right… Ivy… yes, dark hair.”

Alswan turns away again. I wait until she hangs up, and then she’s busy, writing something down on a piece of scrap paper.
When she’s finished, she gestures me over.

“Mirabelle’s been expecting you.” The breath rushes out of me in a
whoosh
, and I realize I have been holding it. My mother is Mirabelle is my mother. “See, I told you she’d remember! Her house is
a short walk away, not even five minutes. I put her number down in case you get lost.”

The paper says, “
Mirabelle Claire
,” and then a phone number. Under that, Alswan has written detailed directions. I skim them. I am less than six blocks away
from my mother’s house.

Alswan is still talking. “She says she is about to start a reading, so you’ll need to wait outside. She’s sending Parker out
to meet you…” Alswan falters. “That is, I didn’t think. Do you mind a man?”

“Do I mind a man who what?” I ask.

“Oh, you know,” Alswan says, and now she sounds a touch embarrassed. I look at her, puzzled. It’s clear I don’t know. “I thought
you might be gun-shy.”

A little Rose Mae Lolley gets out then, and I find myself smiling at her, showing quite a lot of teeth. “I’m not gun-shy.”

“That’s good!” Alswan says, almost as if she’s proud of me. Like
I’m two and I just took a brave bite of my peas. She adds in a reassuring tone, “And anyway, it’s only Parker.” She dismisses
Parker as a sexual threat with a wave of her hand, and I think this Parker must be eighty-five, or gay, or five feet tall
with no arms. Or maybe she only means Parker is taken.

It suddenly occurs to me that Parker might be taken by my mother. She is sending Parker outside to wait for me, so they must
be living together. They may even be married. They could have children for all I know, and everything in me recoils at this
idea, my mother off in California raising a herd of babies that she liked enough to keep.

“Are you okay?” Alswan says.

“I’m sorry, yes,” I say. I’ve fallen down a rabbit hole. I start to go, but Alswan puts her hand on my arm, stopping me. I
freeze beneath it. I’ve never understood girly-girl friendships, all that hugging and squealing and air kissing. Girls can
be so touchy-feely with each other. Me, I’m just touchy. But she seems sincere, and I’m so dizzy with hate for this Parker
and my mother’s imaginary children with him that I don’t mind it. Much. She says, “You’re going to be fine. I know Mirabelle.
All you have to do is follow her rules, and she’ll do anything for you. Anything.”

I nod, solemn, though I haven’t the faintest clue what she is talking about: One of Mirabelle’s girls. Do I mind a man. Her
rules. I’m wondering now if my mother has shed her gypsy clothes and become a madam. Or a matchmaker for lesbians.

Outside, Gret is sitting up waiting for me, her nose pointing straight at the doors she last saw me enter. “I didn’t forget
you, silly dog,” I say. I unhook her and we fall into step. Alswan’s directions are easy to follow, even with a detour to
get my bag from the VW. I could drive the rest of the way, but as hard as it seems to park around here, I decide to leave
it and tote the duffel.

We walk down the streets, my feet moving faster and faster.
Gret drags. A thousand dogs have peed out greetings onto the strip of green by the sidewalk, and Gretel wants to pause and
sniff-read them all. I click my tongue at her, tug her along. I am close. I will see my mother—or at least her house and her
maybe-husband—in four blocks. Then in three. Now I am almost running, questions stacking up with every step.

Alswan said she was about to start a reading; I assume this means she has some hapless new age seeker paying her to lay her
weathered cards. Hurrying will only mean waiting longer outside with this Parker fellow, but I can’t seem to slow. I am desperate
to see the house where she lives, the man who shares it. Even now, accepted and on my way, I can’t quite believe this Mirabelle
is my airport gypsy, my long-lost mother.