Edna in the Desert (16 page)

Edna was lingering on the porch when Grandpa put his hands down on the arms of his chair and pushed himself up. She’d seen him look like he was going to get up before, but he’d never actually done it in front of her without Grandma’s coaxing. He stepped to the railing. Only Edna, Grandma and then Johnny took note of this. He looked conscious. If he was going to say something, Edna wanted to be close enough to hear it. She’d never stood next to her grandfather and looked up at him before. He was taller than she’d thought. He looked down at her and smiled. Edna couldn’t tell if he recognized her before he looked away. He put his hands in his pockets and tapped his foot to the music like anyone’s grandpa might.

“Grandpa?”

He didn’t say anything, but it was a transformation. It only lasted a short while, maybe half a song. Grandpa turned and held onto Edna briefly as he sat back down. She sat next to him quietly, like they always did, only it was dark and they were watching people dance instead of the empty desert. It was the best few minutes she had at the party.

Edna tried not to look like she was focusing on Johnny when she took some pictures later, and after the dancers were danced out, she passed around Grandma’s old newspaper article. It was hard to convince Grandma this was a good idea, but Edna knew it would spark conversation about how beautiful Grandma was, San Diego in the 1960s, and how much they all loved the Pineapple Upside-Down Cake. It inspired second helpings and was a perfect way to end the party.

Edna couldn’t watch Johnny and Jenny leave together, so she lost herself in the kitchen in the sea of dirty cake plates and baking mess. When Johnny found her to say good-bye, she didn’t even look up. She just mumbled “bye” with her eyes fixed on the bubbles and water as she swished the forks around. Before she knew it, she was standing with Grandma as their last guests, Raul and Freddy, disappeared into the darkness on their buzzing motorcycles.

“That was a wonderful party, Edna.”

Grandma sounded like she really thought so. Edna burst into tears. As she cried on the steps of the porch, in Grandma’s lap, of all places, she realized it was the first time she and Grandma had ever sat together except to eat, and wondered why Grandma didn’t ask her why she was crying. That was weird. Or maybe she knew.

“It was very nice of you to make this party for Grandpa.”

Grandpa was still there, a few feet away in his chair. Edna sniffed into one of his old hankies she’d bleached and ironed perfectly.

“You’ve been doing a lot of good things since you came here. The porch looks much better painted.”

She’d only painted the porch to make their ramshackle cabin look presentable.

“I can tell you’re a good girl.”

Edna didn’t have either the heart or the guts to tell Grandma that she wasn’t—that she’d only had the party because she wanted a date with Johnny and that, in fact, she’d exploited Grandma for the cake. Then she’d clumsily dropped it on him, or, worse, she’d subconsciously done so because she wanted his attention. There were so many reasons she was horrible. She was a deceptive person, too weak to admit it, and her plan had failed. She’d never tried this hard at anything and not succeeded, and the tears burst out of sheer frustration, along with everything else. Edna really had to get a hold of herself. The last time she was this emotional she had to go for a million tests.

“Thank you, Grandma. The cake was delicious.”

She sobbed more. She still had a lot of work to do if she wasn’t going to be the same girl she was when she got here.

“You were right that Grandpa needed this,” Grandma added.

Edna sniffed. She had no idea.

“Maybe.”

“I haven’t seen him happy in a long time. And everyone enjoyed themselves. That’s something to be proud of. I don’t think I could have done it as nicely.”

Grandma was thinking of comforting things to say. Edna thought she was much better at it than her mother. Grandma didn’t communicate much, but when she did, she was focused. And she was right. Everyone did have a good time, except Edna and probably Johnny, the only two people who mattered. But maybe they weren’t the only ones. People who hadn’t seen Grandpa in years might remember how he ate, but they’d also remember him laugh. And he got to laugh, if that’s what it was, and he stood up on his own and tapped his foot to music. In fact, Grandpa was as animated as Edna could ever remember. Her sobs subsided. She sniffed and sat up.

A family of quail ran along the edge of the orange glow cast by the Christmas lights. They moved side to side like a school of fish, kicking up little clouds of dust. A baby quail lagged behind, investigating something in a creosote bush. One of the adults returned for him, and he scampered along.

The low morning sun bounced off the white sheets standing in as tablecloths and flapping in the breeze. Grandpa’s embroidered hankies had blown away and were stuck in nearby creosote and scrub brushes. Ants had found some sugary pineapple on a cake knife, and they were making a treacherous climb up a table leg and onto the sheet. They could only get on when it rested still, without wind. There was an ant traffic jam going up the leg and no exit strategy once they’d made it to the cake knife, but the whole thing was about to end anyway, Edna thought. Life is fragile.

Grandpa stared out into the desert from his chair and tapped his foot again to the bluegrass records. They sounded eerie over the morning wind. The desert, Edna decided, could be as ominous in the daytime as it could be at night, maybe more so.

A few tender words had not turned Grandma into a Chatty Cathy, and they cleaned up the rest of the party mostly in silence. Edna was beginning to grasp that Grandma simply didn’t have much to say, and when she did, she said it. She wasn’t one to force a conversation. Edna usually looked forward to her mother’s postmortem of a party and evaluation of her stupid friends’ behavior, but Edna had never been so crushed at a party before. It was liberating not to have to conjure up chat about it while being perplexed by Johnny and Jenny. She was glad she was still stunned and numb, because when reality sunk in, it was going to be pitiful.

Everything she’d done for the last eleven days had been in anticipation of this one night, of spending time with Johnny and making plans to go out together again, if Edna steered the conversation successfully. It was supposed to have been the beginning of the rest of their summer together, not the sad end of it. She spent a lot of time sitting next to Grandpa on the porch, trying to picture and then not picture Johnny and Jenny together. She wasn’t sure how she could face Johnny the next time he came to deliver groceries, and it wasn’t nearly as satisfying to think about their kiss anymore if he was cheating on a girlfriend when he did it. Or maybe it wasn’t the worst thing in the world. No, Edna was sure it wasn’t as good.

She hoped that life was nothing if not unpredictable, and that if things were going to change, they would hurry up about it.

Edna might have known that Johnny was unavailable a long time ago if she’d had Facebook. She could have saved herself the emotional trauma and her grandmother a laundry list of crazy requests. Without the chance to obsess about him online, Edna got to know Johnny as a real person, not a cyber-reflection of one. She saw how he smiled and how he acted and how cute it was that his eyebrow went up when he was thinking. Her impression of him wasn’t based on stuff he bragged about or posted pictures of, or the things he had. Any girl would fall in love with Johnny because of the way he looked, but there were other reasons why Edna fell in love with him. Even if he hadn’t been as good-looking, she would have fallen in love with him eventually.

Her grandparents’ cabin and its surrounding property had been groomed as if the President had come and gone. Painting the porch, a main activity of Edna’s days, was done, and there wasn’t a weed left to be pulled out of the ground. If Edna wanted weeding to do, she’d have to start on the rest of the basin. She couldn’t languish on the porch for as long as Grandpa did in a day, so a little while after the party was cleaned up, she took a long bath. The bathroom was roomy with a big, old tub. Tubs were one thing Edna liked better old, and she couldn’t even tell the water came from a tank. It was an exaggeration, telling her father they had “no running water” here, but Edna didn’t mind exaggerating to make a point. The hot water soothed her back, which ached from overwork for the first time in her life. The bathroom window looked out into the wilderness. Edna opened it. The breeze was warm but it cooled her wet skin. The big tub with a view of distant, rolling hills could be a treatment in a spa. They almost never had a good view in the treatment rooms. Edna’s body relaxed, but her mind still raced.

The more she thought about it, the less she liked the fact that Johnny had kissed her when he had a girlfriend. She asked herself if this was something to confront a person about, and she decided it was. Johnny didn’t say he couldn’t kiss Edna because he had a girlfriend; he said it was because he thought she was too young. This wasn’t exactly honest. Honesty was important if they were going to be friends, which they naturally were, though it had never been mentioned. The next time Edna saw him, she’d have to clear this up. Edna was able to trick herself into having a reason to talk to Johnny as much as any other girl might.

By the time late afternoon rolled around, Edna was next to Grandpa on the porch again, gazing into the distance like they always did, and the new reality of a girlfriended Johnny had been fully absorbed.

Edna imagined that Grandpa’s mind was still, a crystal-clear lake, while hers was a storm, battered with violent, disturbing forces. She tried to lose herself in the sway of a creosote bush or a lizard sighting. She tried to be a crystal-clear lake like Grandpa, but the sinking pull of hopelessness kept winning. Even a cute bunny couldn’t liven her mood as he scampered through the scrub brush. Dinner with Grandma was more depressing than usual, and Edna missed her family and escaping into television terribly. In the days immediately after the party, Edna floated between jealousy and sorrow in a valley of despair.

The groceries had to be delivered eventually. Bishop’s General had offered delivery service since they’d opened in the 1950s. There were always a few customers who were willing to pay extra to stay away from civilization. Until this visit Edna didn’t know she was related to people like that. No one told her anything.

Edna thought she’d be off the roller coaster she’d spent weeks on once she knew Johnny had a girlfriend, but adrenaline raced through her when she saw the red truck coming. It raced even harder when he stepped out of it. She was angry at her body for doing this. He waved hello before getting Grandma’s groceries out of the back, as if nothing had happened. As if nothing about the way they should relate to each other had changed.

She was sure her mother would advise her not to question him about Jenny. She would tell her that she shouldn’t push things. For example, having the party was pushing things, and look how that turned out. But if Edna was crazy when she thought Johnny liked her, she wanted to know. It might help her understand boys in the future. And there was still the issue of honesty between friends. She waited until they were out in the Bronco and some distance from the cabin.

“Why didn’t you tell me that you have a girlfriend?”

She tried not to sound too much like a lawyer for the prosecution.

“Because I don’t have one?”

“What about Jenny?”

He slowed down on the empty dirt road. He studied her.

“You were jealous.”

It was obvious. Edna never knew she had a problem with blushing before this summer. When she got home she was going to look up a good hypnotist.

“Jenny was my girlfriend for, maybe, a month. Last year. She works at the store. She didn’t have a ride to the party.”

“Oh.”

“My grandparents can’t stop talking about it, you know. It was nice.”

“Thank you. Thanks for all your help with it.”

This was mixed news. Mostly Edna was embarrassed, and she didn’t like the idea that Johnny had ever had a girlfriend before, though it was unreasonable to think he hadn’t.

“You and Jenny looked like you were in a fight. Displaying anger at someone in public is a sign of intimacy.”

At least she had a logical explanation.

“She was mad because I wouldn’t let her drive. She had her permit taken away.”

Maybe Jenny was pretty, but after a month Johnny didn’t even like her. Edna was sure of it because there was no way she didn’t like him. Edna didn’t like Jenny either, and that was before she knew Jenny smoked and had trouble with the law. It made sense. Edna had spent the last several days with a stomachache, conjuring up horrific scenes. She’d never considered that she was wrong about the whole thing. She’d have enjoyed the party much more if she had. This illustrated her main apprehension with boys and love. Once Jenny got out of the Jeep, Edna couldn’t see reality. The reality was that a girl slammed a car door, she wasn’t nice, and Johnny didn’t talk to her. Edna dropped cake on him and didn’t even look up to say good-bye. It was awful.

“Oh.”

“I can’t be your boyfriend, Edna.”

“Who said you should be my boyfriend?”

“No one had to say anything.”

“Well, I can see how it might be confusing when you act like my boyfriend. When you take me places and punch people if they say something rude about me. And you do nice things for me. And you kiss me.”

It was all true. Johnny had never met a girl who drove him crazy, one he wanted to talk to or spend much time with or do things for. Edna was able to be herself more and more with him, and the more she was, the more confusing he found it.

“I said I shouldn’t have kissed you,” he reminded her. “We can be friends, OK?”

“If you say so.”

She wasn’t promising anything. Perhaps Edna couldn’t talk Johnny into being her boyfriend the way she might talk her mother into going shopping, but she had the confidence of Cleopatra, giddy with the disappearance of Jenny and the fact that Johnny thought about being her boyfriend even if he thought he couldn’t be. He pulled the Bronco into the garage.