Into the Valley (17 page)

IV

&$9

33.

She woke with a crick in her neck and an imprint on her cheek from the backseat of the Mustang. She had no idea how long she had driven or where she had gone, and she knew she must have stopped only from sheer exhaustion. Her throat was dry, a white mucus filmed over her lips. She tasted her own breath. Her head stung and when she reached into her hair, she found the plastic headband digging into her scalp. She cracked it in two and dropped the pieces to the floor.

Somewhere in the night she had put back on the ivory sheath. Somewhere in the night she had thrown the green poplin stained with blood out the window, had rubbed off her makeup. She did not look in the rearview mirror or at the compact but felt the smears on her cheeks. Her cuticles were grimed black.

The Mustang was hidden in trees. She faintly remembered
driving into the walnut orchard from the road. Farther and farther up the wide row into the middle. She stepped out and stood in the dust, breathing in the piquant smell of the unripe walnuts. Her body was hot with the spinning and nausea. The
warm benevolent carsickness continuing to pulse through her.

She went to the trunk of the Mustang. Her body still understanding before she did what actions to take. She removed her makeup case from the travel bag and one by one tossed its contents, the eyeliner, the mascara, the lipsticks, into the dust.

In the shade of a tree, she took off the bone-colored heels and buried her toes in the dirt. Some of the hard green fruits had fallen and split, the open rinds intensifying the scent, transporting her to a faraway land. Her mind was an even plane inside the warm spinning. Why had she so resisted the truth? She braided and unbraided a strand of her hair, wondering.

When she stood up, she was unconscious of the dried mud all over the sheath, the dust and rind sap on her legs. She went back to the travel bag. The diamond brooch she laid very carefully in the dust, next to the bone-colored heels. Apart from her they were a curious still life, the significance of which seemed important.

Important but not of interest.

34.

She lost track of the
hours. Several times gazing up into a walnut tree, she was dazed by the sun. This blinding seemed to bloom from the heat in her skull. In it, images came to her. The girl in the suede vest and leather anklet dancing around the circle of stars and moon, chanting, then shaking B. violently. “You should've taken it for yourself,” she said. “Why didn't you just take it?”

The girl vanished before B. could answer and she was left staring at the stars and moon alone. But what was it that she had wanted? What should she have taken? She pressed her fingers into her forehead. Now all B. wanted was the carsickness. She waited for the girl to return so she could explain, but the girl did not reappear. B. rocked herself gently back and forth, humming something from
The King and I
, a tune about a dance but she could no longer remember the words.

At some point, she cleaned the knife. The blood had thickened to a gluey film. Daughtry was already out of her mind. In the end, he had nothing to do with it.

She waited until dark to leave. The even sharper scent of the rinds in the moonlight invigorated her, made her linger. But she knew she must move on. She walked barefoot to the car, started the engine. The headlights on the rows of trunks animated them into a momentary line of compatriots, waving her off.

She pulled in at the first gas station to fill the tank and get something to eat, but there was a police car at the pumps. She kept to the side roads after that.

35.

Darkness swallowed the valley. The black wall on either side of her total and yet incapable of penetrating the even plane in her mind. She thought she passed the chapel, a brief white flash in the road. But there was no need to try to pray now. She had everything she needed.

 

36.

When the sunrise came she did not get off the roads. On the contrary, the light refracting off the blue enamel projected her out into the valley in infinite beams of power and strength.

She wished she could tell her mother.

37.

She thought briefly of the girl from the bridge. Who must have hung in the same warm spinning. Who, as she stood out over the endless turquoise water, must have felt the certainty and precision of its truth.

&$9

In the buttes the sun was coming down, golden through the oak leaves, shadowed on the heavy green of the chaparral. She left the Mustang and walked up the same path. (And yet the urge to find the same tree had left her. She hoped in the end it was new.) It did not hurt her foot to climb, the wound was healed, and her bare feet never sensed the hard dirt or spiked grass going up, her body the thick air, the ostrich-skin purse swaying at her side. She sat under a tree and looked out over the valley. An inscrutable plateau of brown and green, yellow and pink. Impossible for her to imagine what was beyond the dull haze. She could not get to it.

As the moments passed, sitting with the knife, B.'s mind floated with dark, choking figures. High voices gasping for air. She tried to talk to them, to soothe them; she tried but they only vaporized into the sun.

And then an image came that comforted her. A field she remembered, a single dead field in the midst of all the green. Yellow, desiccated husks, as if everything had been carefully grown and cultivated and then abruptly given up, left without water to shrivel and die. Now its withered limbs waiting to be torched so all could start anew.

A small breeze came up the side of the buttes, through the oak tree. B.'s hair blew loosely in the hot dry air. She did not lift her hand from the knife to fix it.

Acknowledgments

First and foremost, my deepest gratitude to Mark Doten and Bronwen Hruska. You got this book when no one else (in publishing) seemed to get it. I would not be here without the audacity of Soho Press. To Mark specifically for his brilliant eye and ear, his gift for arc and story that made the book better; you are a winning-lottery-ticket of an editor. To everyone at Soho—Abby Koski, I'm looking at you—you make dreams come true. Thank you.

To the Ucross Foundation, heaven on earth, where I found my ending.

To everyone in my life, beloved friends and family, who supported my declaration that I was writing a novel without once calling me crazy (to my face) or seeing a page of it. To Mary Gordon, whose love and friendship have been an unanticipated treasure in this life, and whose single comment opened up the whole book. To Kara Levy, Helene Wecker, Brian Eule, Zoë Ferraris, and Michael McAllister for countless infusions of moral support (and to Kara and Helene for invaluable early-draft reads). To Mary Hansen for helping me get this book into the world. To Khristina Wenzinger for generous and vital help on pacing and structure. To Ingalisa Schrobsdorff, Sheehan Grant, and Adam Cimino for being early and steadfast champions.

To Clare Beams, how do I honor the level of attention you showed this book, the meta and micro ways you nudged it into what it became. I am perpetually grateful.

To Michelle Adelman, words are inadequate. For your sanity and communion in writing, book drafts, and living life. To Emilee Yawn, for friendship and creative kinship beyond imagining.

To Bernard Galm, literary co-enthusiast and devoted uncle. To Stacey Berg, for planting a seed for the novel, encouraging its most embryonic form, and for unwavering love and encouragement. To Amalia, Ella, and Ruby Galm for being the best-ever antidote to writing.

And finally, to Paul Galm. For an almost inexhaustible capacity to walk with me through the days, for the love, humor, and real talk that make me the luckiest sister I could imagine.