Desert Boys (23 page)

For this reason, Reggie preferred to feel sorry for himself in the privacy of his own bedroom. On Charitye's last night, he stayed awake in bed, staring up at the stray hairs in his eyebrows, remembering Allison. This was an insomniac pastime he'd grown to resent and rely on.

One thing he resented: the beginning, the time spent waiting behind her in the small (God, how short the lines used to be in the Antelope Valley!) registrar's line at the community college. Allison kept turning around, this sunburned and goofy farm-girl-turned-student. Certain freckles on her face were illuminated by the holes in her straw hat. Nineteen eighty, and he was wearing a Reagan button on his denim jacket. Allison said, “Reagan, huh? Plays a cowboy on TV, but he's too goddamn slick to be good for farmers.” She reached out and unfolded the list Reggie had been carrying at his chest so she could see which classes he was signing up for. Skeptically, she said, “Beginning Poetry. Next semester you'll take the course on finishing a poem, that how it works?” Reggie started to correct her, but Allison interrupted. “A joke,” she said. “I know you Republicans ain't heard many, but they're called jokes.” Later, over coffee, she described her father's farm, and Reggie asked her to repeat the word “weevils” a hundred times—“Way-vulls, way-vulls, what's so funny about way-vulls?”

He was resentful, too, of the end. He'd found her in the stable, her eyes open and crossed like a child's funny-face. A surprising lack of blood (flooding, as it did, to the inside of her skull). The seat of her pants was covered in shit—he'd figured, wrongly, that she fell in horse dung. She'd gone to the hospital then, alive in no way but a technicality, until her body made the decision for everyone and just quit. When he returned home, Reggie thought of nothing so much as beating Genie to death with a shovel. He must have held the spade so tight, it bruised the back of his hands. How long did he look that animal square in its enormous, intelligent eyes before telling it—out loud, like he'd just realized—“You're a fucking horse.” He resented the end because Allison's death brought with it a severe loneliness, a reminder of his own impending death, of not having children in the world to sweeten the tasteless batter of mortality.

It occurred to Reggie that every time he thought he was remembering Allison, he was actually remembering the way she'd made him feel at different points in their entangled lives—that anytime we try to remember anyone we've loved, what we're really remembering is ourselves.

Of course, a man can think in this way for only so long before it becomes tedious. So Reggie willed himself out of bed. The sun wouldn't be up for another three hours or so. He felt his way along the dark hallway into the kitchen, where he opened the fridge, searching for juice. The light from inside the refrigerator hurt his eyes. To let them adjust, he turned away. That's when he saw the sheet of paper—frills along the left edge where it had been torn from the spiral notebook—on the kitchen table:

Uncle Reggie,

Here's that poem I promised. It's called “The Costs and Benefits of Desert Agriculture,” and it's a draft so don't judge it too harshly.

 

Men built a river so that desert girls can finger

the nutrient-heavy leaves of alfalfa

in the summertime. Chickens clamor

while horses eat six-dollar bales

of hay. If men built the river so that water

flows west, can the water change its mind

and flow east? Can the desert girls swim

against the current with nothing on

but the lights of a carjacked pickup?

Can the horse tiptoe into the widower's

bedroom & whisper apologies before daylight?

I know, I know. Ending a poem on a question. I had a bunch of lines about wearing Aunt Allison's hat at the end, but that seemed less poetic and more trying-to-be-poetic, you know? Thanks for letting me stay here, and for everything you've taught me. By the way, I'm borrowing your truck for a trip. It's time I took that dare. Love, your niece, and forever

Yours,

Charitye Peterson

Reggie ran to the spare bedroom to check if she was pulling a prank. She wasn't. He ran outside, and, sure enough, his truck was missing. Considering his options, he found a flashlight and made his way to the stable, out of breath. He mustered a hello to Genie. Careful not to stand behind her, he lugged Allison's old saddle over Genie's back and whispered into her ear: “I'm going to learn how to ride you tonight, okay?”

Atop the horse in his boots and hat, Reggie looked the part. But no matter how high he lifted his chin, the rest of his body's posture—crouched low to Genie, one shoulder higher than the other for some twisted sense of balance—proved how ridiculous a man he'd become. For miles and miles he rode, speaking in a low, cinematic voice into Genie's ear: “In the middle of the night, a man and his horse ride out of the farmland and into the suburbs, past the fast-food chains and used-car lots and community college, into the foothills above Avenue N, upward, upward to the aqueduct where he suspects to find and rescue his runaway niece.” He laughed at himself. He said, “Genie, babe, we're almost there.” Genie, out of shape from years of disuse, spat her breaths. They'd been riding for an hour, maybe more; the sun was getting ready to rise. Charitye's poem was the poem of a teenager, Reggie thought, but he knew it was better than anything he'd ever written. He especially enjoyed those last lines: “Can the horse tiptoe into the widower's / bedroom & whisper apologies before daylight?” He enjoyed imagining what else Genie might whisper to him in the nighttime. Maybe she'd have a toothpick-in-the-mouth drawl, and whisper: “Let's go someplace new, cowboy. That girl ain't gonna be up there at that old waterin' hole. I reckon she's long gone by now, way out past these parts. It'll just be you and me and the aqueduct. What are you planning, Reggie? You aim to kill us tonight? Walk me right into the river? You know the sayin' about leadin' a horse to water. Hey, why don't we drop this nonsense and go someplace new? Because all I know is, that young girl's mother's gonna be knockin' at your door pretty soon here, Reggie. How 'bout let's not be there when she gets there. How about it, huh? Promise me. Let's be anywhere but there.”

*   *   *

Wherever Reggie went, I never saw him again. Charitye I sought out recently. She's a server at the Bunker Burger off Knickerbocker's golf course, and during her break, we spoke for a little while. About five years ago, she said, they expanded their driving range. Lushest Bermuda grass in town.

 

HOW TO REVISE A PLAY

First, attend one. After all, if you're not willing to spend the sixteen dollars to see, for example, a modern, gay, Spanish adaptation of
Romeo and Juliet
titled
Ramón y Julio,
how can you expect anyone to see yours? If the production you've chosen to attend is in, say, your hometown, some 350 miles south of your San Francisco apartment, rent a car. Take the weekend. Remind yourself that this is why, as a blogger, you've sacrificed workplace companionship and a consistent reason to dress yourself in the morning—this mobility.

Take more than the weekend. Take your boyfriend, Lloyd. Understand that the five hours on the road might be tense. Lloyd, despite a tearful heart-to-heart between the romance shelves at Dog-Eared Books, still may not have totally forgiven you for not letting him meet your mother. Now it's too late. Understand that the only way to make up for this is to introduce Lloyd to your father, and that this is the real reason the two of you are going to the Antelope Valley. Lloyd knows this, too, of course, but neither of you should mention it. Instead, continue talking about the modern, gay, Spanish adaptation of
Romeo and Juliet,
and tell yourself you've made a leap in maturity, that you feel so ready to share your family with another person that a conversation about bringing Lloyd home would merely seem self-congratulatory.

Make sure, however, to call your father to inform him that he'll have company. He's a Midwesterner by birth and doesn't enjoy surprises. When he, too, acts as though this—his only son bringing a man home for the first time—is not a big deal, continue to play along. One way to do so is to replace the word “you” with the word “ya,” as in, “Love ya, see ya soon.” Hang up the phone and chat incessantly with Lloyd about your hometown. Explain how surprising and uplifting you find it to have a modern, gay, et cetera, et cetera being staged in the conservative desert death-hole you so desperately attempted all your life to escape.

Drive. Allow Lloyd, whose laptop contains thirteen hundred pages of a novel about whaling, to be the poet. Let him call the I-5 “the yellow spine of California.” Let him describe the Joshua trees in the desert as dancers striking poses or deformed hands or barnacles—barnacles bunching from the smooth hull of a ship. When you're this close to home, it's vital you focus on the concrete—literally, almost—on, for example, watching for potholes and observing traffic signals. At a red light beside
CAMACHO'S AUTO SALES
, ignore the tiny triangular flags beating against one another in the wind. Keep your eyes on the light. When it turns green, feel the wind's hold under the car and hear Lloyd say it feels as though you're in an enormous, swirling glass of wine.

Turn right onto Comstock Avenue. Your destination is on the left. When Lloyd jokingly asks how you can tell your house apart from all the other nearly identical tract homes on the block, point to the only palm trees in town, which a neighbor had transplanted from Los Angeles, and say, “Mine's the one across from Hollywood Boulevard.”

Recognize the bent old man examining a sprinkler head in your summer-dried front lawn: that's your father. Pull the rental into the driveway alongside your mother's burgundy Corolla, which, judging by the white splotches of oxidation, hasn't been moved since she last parked it there. Do the math—almost a year. Before opening the car doors, answer Lloyd's question. He's had five hours on the road but waits until now to ask what he should call your father. Tell him Ed will be fine. Make that Edward.

When your father hugs you, remember the funeral at Forest Lawn. Your mother's brother Gaspar paid for the coffin, the flowers, the space, and the alcohol. You and your father were the only men in cheap suits, and the hug between you—jackets lifted and bunched—was awkward. Afterwards you slalomed between your Armani-clad extended family to the gold-fauceted, marble-floored, ridiculous bathroom and sobbed. “You okay?” asked the towel-dispensing attendant, a Filipino man your father's age you pretended not to see. “How about these Middle Easterns,” he said, trying to lighten the mood. Other than your long eyelashes, you look nothing like your mother, and this wasn't the first time someone talked about Armenians as if you weren't one of them. The attendant must have mistaken you for a member of the waitstaff, frustrated after dropping a tray of wineglasses. When you asked what he meant, he said, “That's a lot of money to spend on the dead, no?” He passed you a hand towel, thick and soft and slippery, like a cashmere sweater. On the way out, to demonstrate that you hadn't been affected, you tipped the attendant a dollar. As you hug your father now, allow yourself to feel angry at that man, for making that one dollar what you think of when you think of your mother's funeral.

Get over it—you have work to do. Introduce your father to Lloyd, and take a look at them as they shake hands to see what kind of first impressions they make. Your father is in his early sixties, hair the blond-gray of mummies. Otherwise, he looks healthy: he's lost weight, and he's wearing a new (creases still intact) polo shirt tucked into slacks. As for Lloyd, you'd convinced him to shave his green-dyed goatee and to discard his usual “à la David Foster Wallace” bandanna, but the rest was his choice—tight white jeans tucked into '90s-style high-tops; a forest green deep-V; a decorative, lightweight navy scarf sporting white polka dots in the shape of terriers. The pale skin on his face is purple in the two spots where the sun comes through his tinted glasses. You hate those glasses. Hold your applause when he removes them. As he introduces himself, notice his lisp—“Greetingss, Misster Kushner”—for the first time in years.

Examine your father's tone as he compliments Lloyd's terrier scarf.

Follow the men into your childhood home. The living room is decorated almost exclusively with porcelain angels, the one exception to your mother's hatred of the gaudy. Female angels in ballet poses, baby angels lifting children over a fallen bridge, male angels farming wheat—from the glass-encased shelves of curio cabinets, from the white-flecked bricks of the mantel, and from the sills of windows narrow and wide, the multitudes sing.

On the coffee table sit three plastic bottles of water and a bowl of pizza-flavored Chex Mix, the extent of your father's efforts as host. Your mother would've sliced and salted cucumbers, tomatoes, and cheese. Flat, skinlike bread would splay in the belly of a wicker basket. Mention, in a light mood, your father's relative ineptitude, and listen as your father agrees that yes, your mother was better than he, in more ways than this.

When Lloyd says the scene reminds him of a novel called
The Left-Handed Woman,
try to change the subject immediately. Your father is in the business of selling furniture. He does not want to talk about literature. Still, try to remember why you're here. Have compassion. Take a seat with Lloyd on the floral couch you once wet as a child, and listen.

Watch Lloyd scoot forward on the cushion. “Well,” he says, “it's about a couple—a hetero couple—and the woman, you guessed it, is left-handed. When she leaves, the man has to go to his cupboard and turn all the mugs so that the handles are on the right side. Isn't that something?”