Amor and Psycho: Stories (15 page)

The dances took place on Friday nights in the beautifully named town of Madrigal, at the Community House. You could drink artisan gin from a still in the Anderson Valley; you could drink organic hard cider from a farm. Riva had to drive home after, and she didn’t want to take a chance on being pulled over. The police would take her an hour and a half to the county seat, she’d have to spend the night in jail, and then they’d have her license. She didn’t even know how she’d get home if that happened. Her name would appear in the police blotter. Plenty of nights she and Roberto had stepped out for the evening, gone to bars or parties, and he drove home. (Once, she’d reached over from the passenger side and actually steered the car for a few minutes while
he pressed the gas and sang “Spirit in the Dark” exactly as Aretha sang it.) What a pliant idiot she had been! She’d always taken care to drink very little when out with Roberto, so that if a deputy pulled him over and hauled him to jail, she could post bail and drive them home. She’d always kept a check in the glove compartment of the Taurus, just in case.

THE SWING CLASS DREW
more women than men. Riva got the last one, a tall, well-built person named Norman who lived in the woods outside of Madrigal and looked as fit as if he climbed trees all day—which he did, as it turned out. He’d had a girlfriend, but she couldn’t take the winter and the rain, he said. She’d moved back to the city; he liked it here.

The instructors demonstrated a few steps and let the class loose. Norman danced terrifically, sensually, philosophically. They traded partners, then always came back to each other. Riva loved the homey feel of the Community House, which smelled of sweat and venison, and the slippery lyrics that spilled from the speakers: “Satin Doll,” “A String of Pearls,” “I Can’t Give You Anything but Love.”

“Dancing is a conversation, an improvisation,” Norman told her. “You take in a bit of me and give back a bit of you. Nothing you say in words touches the truth of what you say through the ends of your fingers.” He touched the ends of her fingers to his, and she instantly saw what he meant. She could follow him perfectly. Then he pulled his fingers away
and communicated through vibrations in the air between them. He did it simply by looking into her eyes.

Soon Riva was swinging across the floor, her body graceful and knowing. She drank a little of the artisan gin, and felt suddenly that the center of her story lay in the standpoint of the blue pumps she wore. She kicked them off and they leaned into each other like a blue couple watching from the sidelines.

During the break, Riva sat with Norman on a couch in back. He asked her serious questions and they fooled around under a gray blanket. She had never talked to a stranger this way before. “I wish I had a formal, spiritual life,” she told him, “somebody else’s structure. Sometimes I fast for Yom Kippur, but I never feel much except hungry.”

Whatever Riva had felt so intensely in the vibrations in the air between them intensified under the blanket, where their parts touched in several places. “The spiritual condition of hunger works as well as any religion,” said Norman, his eyes and fingers twinkling. “It might even be the point of fasting.”

“You’re still a beautiful woman. You have a hot body,” Norman said. Riva felt a wet object penetrate her ear: his tongue, which functioned exactly like a knife through her heart.

“You do something to me,” he sang, which made her feel, dangerously, like an instigator. Someone began clapping and the room throbbed. Norman danced Riva through the doorway, onto the porch and across the lawn.

“Go Norman,” someone said.

The rain had stopped and stars at unimaginable distances from one another—light-years—blazed together. Riva sat behind Norman on his motorcycle, her bare feet resting on cold metal rods. He spun out of the gravel parking lot and drove straight through the three stop signs in town before cutting loose onto the highway. Her arms tightened around his ribs. Squeezing hard, she opened the throttle to the sweet familiar surge. The tighter she held him, the faster he went.

In a state of mindful trepidation, Jude brought her friend Trina to her house-sit at the Goldsteins’ yurt. Trina would help out during Jude’s daughter’s recovery from surgery and give moral support, since Opal’s recovery was expected to be temporary, really part of an overall decline. On the ride from Oakland to Panther Point, Opal slept in her infant car seat between Jude and Trina. The car seat still fit, sort of, even though Opal was nearly ten; it cradled her small body while she slept. Opal was still not entirely
here
, Jude reminded herself when Trina passed a doobie across Opal’s body. The tissue around her brain still ebbed and swelled, the hospital’s plastic diaper crackled under her nightgown, and a bandage bound her head. Yet—how Opaline—she wore pink lipstick and a dangling bead earring. A felt bag Jude had run up on her sewing machine hung from Opal’s round wrist, filled with
jelly beans Opal had tried (and failed) to count in the hospital. Jude looked away from Opal while she blew smoke out the window. When they got to the Goldsteins’, Jude lifted her limp daughter from the car seat. Opal shouted, “My purse! My purse!” without really waking up. Her hands beat against Jude, found the jelly bean purse, then settled.

As Jude carried her across the threshold, Opal opened her eyes and said, “What’s this?”

“We’re staying at the Goldsteins’ yurt, babe,” Jude told her. “It’s round.”

“Cool,” said Opal.

The Goldsteins’ yurt, in fact, formed a hexagon (a level of detail beyond Opal at the moment), with a pickle barrel attached to one wall. It
was
cool. At the apex of the dome, a window like a lens peered up at the sky, or zoomed in, like a microscope. Even in the main space of the yurt, you could feel the efflorescence of the grow room downstairs, where the plants sprang up lush under lavender grow lights, ripe-smelling, skunky and green.

Jude’s job: to house-sit for a month while the Goldsteins laundered their marijuana money in Hawaii. Coals to Newcastle, Jude told them, but they didn’t know what she was talking about. Jude hailed from back east, from a farm in Pennsylvania, where the references were different.

Trina had promised to help with Opal, whatever Jude needed. But once in the yurt, comfort overwhelmed her and she behaved like a guest. Jude made pancakes; dishes piled up. For their third night together, Jude defrosted one of
the Goldsteins’ free-range chickens and organized a dinner party, a celebration of Opal’s return from the hospital and ritual removal of her head bandage.

Jude’s friend Egon arrived at six—he’d gotten a ride from some friends who planned to wait for him in the parking lot at the pier. “Why don’t you invite your friends to join us?” Jude asked sincerely. She suddenly felt the need of more celebrants, more company, but Egon seemed to know better.

Opal dressed in the pickle barrel, where Jude had set out clothes and stuffed animals. Jude put the chicken in the oven to roast and made a salad, using the Goldsteins’ mahogany salad bowl and tongs, and lettuces from their garden. Trina and Egon talked about where they’d come from. Egon had lived in Bolinas, then Germany, then here. Trina had built up camps all over the Midwest and the West, but mostly she had been run out of campgrounds.

“My camps were burned to the ground,” Trina said. “I was run out of Bellingham, Christopher, Curtis, Marcus, Ronald and Lyle, Washington, as a witch. Run out of Donald and Eugene, Oregon. Everywhere I went—ostracized. I built up a beautiful compound, with tepees and healings. A beautiful place.”

“Where did you build up the compound?” Egon asked.

“In every place,” said Trina.

“That’s too bad.”

Trina shrugged. “Good comes from bad—that’s my religion. It’s karmic science.”

“What religion is this?” Egon asked.

“True religion,” Trina said. “It’s Buddhist-Wiccantheosophy. Have you heard of Sufi Nigiri?”

Egon shook his head. “I never heard of it.”

OPAL EMERGED
from the pickle barrel wearing a wedding dress—a bristling garment of tea-colored lace. It dribbled down over her feet on the rug. Jude put her hand over her mouth when she saw Opal and her eyes filled with tears. “You look gorgeous, babe,” she said.

“I know,” said Opal.

They sat on the rug, an enviable Persian kilim. The efflorescence of the grow room produced an atmosphere that adhered to the inside of Jude’s nose. In spite of herself, she mapped out venues where she could unload a few ounces. To calm her monkey mind, Jude organized the altar: a candle, an abalone shell, a sage smudge stick, a feather, a cloth snake filled with buckwheat hulls. Opal sat cross-legged in front of Jude while Jude cut through the head bandage, removed it from Opal’s head and laid it—stained with blood and pus—in the center of the altar.

Let them see it! Jude had seen it. Opal had worn it. Not an ordinary American life, but her life, and Opal’s life—let America see. Jude lit the sage with a Bic lighter and cleaned herself with the smoke, drawing it around her head and down the outline of her body—her shoulders, waist and legs, around her feet. She smudged herself—story of her life—then she smudged Opal in the candlelight. The atmosphere
here so different from the hospital, where white lights had burned beside Opal’s hospital bed, parked next to the nurses’ station. (Jude stayed there, too, of course, almost every minute, crawling into the bed next to Opal for an hour now and then to fall into an instant sleep in which she dreamed that she was awake, sitting on Opal’s bed in the hospital, next to the nurses’ station.) Here at the Goldsteins’, though, Jude controlled the atmosphere. She handed the sage to Egon, who smudged Trina. Trina smudged Egon, who handed the smudge stick to Jude.

Jude handed the bird feather to Opal. “You speak first,” she said. Opal took the feather, gathered up the skirts of the wedding dress and said, “This is a ceremony for my brain tumor. I have had an operation to take the tumor, but now it is growing back over my speech and hearing. This is why I have called you all here.”

She looked at Jude, who said, “Go ahead and sing a little song, Ope.” Opal sang:

She stopped and stared upward, through the lens of the yurt, then lowered her eyes and handed the feather to Trina.

“Perfect, beautiful,” said Trina.

“I know,” said Opal.

Trina held the feather and crossed her arms over her chest. She bowed her head and waited so long in such stillness, Jude wondered if she’d gone to sleep. Finally, instead of speaking, she made a gargling sound and sucked moisture up into her nose.

“Who are you?” Opal asked.

“Your next-door neighbor on the boat,” Trina said, wiping her eyes.

Jude smiled at Trina. “She knew you as a man,” she said.

“I don’t remember him at all,” Opal said.

Trina pulled a handkerchief from her fanny pack and blew her nose. She thought some more and then said, “Precious Opal, precious, precious jewel, I talked to the Great Spirit and she said this tumor is not part of you. She said to open your mind to healing, and the light of love and health will shine in and the cancer will fizzle like a pizzle.”

“What’s a pizzle?” Opal asked.

“Bull’s willy,” said Jude.

Opal stood up. “Mom, can I take off this dress?”

“Sure you can,” said Jude.

Opal pulled the dress over her head. Underneath she wore a white nightgown and cowboy boots.

Trina handed the feather to Egon, who said, “Wow, I’m blown. I am blown away,” and handed the feather to Jude.

Jude said, “Apple juice, cell phones, aluminum cookware, fluoridated water, formaldehyde carpets, lead toys, lead fish. My father still smokes, his farm a poison swamp. Opal poisoned before she was conceived. What more evidence do we
need? Opal is evidence. But who do I kill? You know what I mean? America?”

Trina nodded, and said, “I’ve been run out of half the small towns in America because I profess the true religion. How sick is that?”

Jude bent over her buck knife and began cutting Opal’s head bandage into strips so everyone could burn some. “We’ll use the woodstove—we’ll definitely be fire-safe this time!” she said.

“I’d like to sing another song,” Opal said. Her arms waved like wands in the air and she sang:

Trina wiped her eyes with the backs of her hands. Egon played “Kumbaya” on an acoustic guitar, and Opal sang along in a sweet, high voice. Jude lit the fire, which hissed and popped in the woodstove.

Trina picked up the wedding dress from the floor and laid it tenderly over a chair. “How do you save all this stuff?” she asked Jude. “The whole time I’ve known you, you’ve lived on a boat or a bus.”

Jude shrugged. “This was my mother’s wedding dress,” she said. “Those were my cowboy boots when I was nine
years old.” She laughed. “It’s all my legacy,” she said. “I had every Barbie doll, too, but my sister sold them on eBay. I have my grandmother’s photograph album of scary Scandinavians. I have her china cupboard filled with a dinner service for twelve. It’s lived everywhere I lived because I thought there would be a future. Who knows? Maybe.”

Jude’s jaw clenched. She felt the furious solitude of her fate—to fight for the weak and expose the guilty. It was the sap in her veins that kept her body upright.

Opal sang:

Jude handed out pieces of the head bandage to Opal, Trina and Egon. One by one, the four of them threw their bandages into the woodstove. The strips of gauze blackened and melted together into a viscous, hard helmet, which smoldered on, even hours later, when they ate.