Just Like a Musical (8 page)

He clenched his fist in mine.

“You miss her.”

“When I allow myself to miss her, yes. I feel that I’m still not ready to miss her to the max, though, so I’m just pushing those feelings away, putting them off for the times when I will be stronger. I haven’t even cried since she died, not even once.”

A shooting star lit up the sky. I didn’t make a wish. I just squeezed Joshua’s hand a little harder. I felt safe sitting on that bench beside him while he was opening his heart to me. And I knew there was nothing more that I could ask from that fulgent shooting star, even if she wasn’t a cheater. At that moment, on that narrow wooden bench hidden under the cedar tree somewhere in Arizona, I had everything. 

“Will we try to get some sleep now?” Joshua said after a couple of silent minutes. “It’s late, and we have a busy day ahead.”

It was easier said than done. As soon as we laid our heads on the pillows and whispered goodnight, something hit the window. Then it hit again. We both sat up in our beds. It sounded like someone was throwing tiny stones at our window, trying to wake us up.

“Should we do something? Should we call someone?” I
said.

Joshua stood up and approached the window.

“I think there’s no need to, it’s just an old woman. She’s asking me to open the window.”

And that’s what he did.

“Where’s that girl with the flaming hair?” I heard her say.

For a moment I didn’t know what to do, but then she shouted again.

“Come here, dear child, come! Old Marianne has something important to tell you.”

I had no choice. I approached the window and carefully peeked behind the curtain. The woman on the other side looked like a bum. Her skin was rough and dark, and she was wearing a long, shredded skirt. A mulberry-jam-colored bandana scarf was wrapped around her head.

“Oh, there you are, dear child,” she said in a quiet, but sharp voice. “Give me your hand, I want to read your palm.”

“Thank you,” I answered, “but I’m really not interested. And besides that, I don’t have any money.”

“Money!” she shouted. “Who’s asking for money! Who do you think I am? God gave me this gift and I use it to help people.”

“I’m not sure I need any help,” I said. “And I’m really sleepy.”

“You’ll sleep when you’re dead,” she said, looking straight into my eyes. “And that may be soon,” she added more quietly, still staring at me with her glassy eyes.

I was about to close the window when she spoke again in a more gentle way.

“Please, my child, I only want to help you. All God’s creatures need some help.”

Of course I don’t believe in fortune telling, but I was trapped between my curiosity and feeling pity for this old woman, so I stretched my arm through the window. Her hand was rough like sandpaper. For a moment I thought about Mrs. Wheeler an
d her freckled skin. I wondered what she was doing in that insane moment in time. Was she still lying in that vast, empty hospital room? Was she even alive?

“I knew that you were carrying the great pain the moment I saw you,” the fortune teller told me. I opened my mouth to object, but she quickly hushed me.

“Shhhh,” she whispered, touching her cracked lips with her bony finger. “Don’t talk now.”

I felt Joshua’s breath on my neck. He was standing still in the dark behind me.

“I won’t bullshit you with some mumbo jumbo stories,” she said. “I’m not that kind of a person. I have two important things to tell you. First: don’t stray from your path. You will meet people along the way who will try to draw you off it. Don’t succumb to their wishes. And second… this is very important…” She looked straight into my eyes, her right hand raised in the air. “Don’t overlook the red bird. When you see a red bird, you’ll know what to do. That’s all I’ll tell you.”

She kissed my hand and walked away.

“A fortune teller,” Joshua said, throwing himself into bed.

It was, by all means, the most exciting day of my life. And although the critical decision was made the night before, it was Wednesday morning that finally detached me from my former undecided self. Transforming a big, risky decision into action is like standing in a rain shower – you know there’s a chance
you’re going to catch a cold, but you’ve just got to do it, and really doing it is far better than simply imagining standing in the rain, or even watching Audrey Hepburn getting soaked to the skin at the end of
Breakfast at Tiffany’s
.

“She’s just like I would imagine a fortune teller to be,” said Joshua. “Shredded skirt and commonplaces.”

“I think she was nice,” I said, stretching my legs under the violet cover.

“You think everyone is nice,” he said, yawning.

The feeble dawn light was licking the dirty window pane like it was a lollipop. Somewhere outside, four hundred miles away, Mrs. Wheeler was lying in her bed, not knowing that she was actually waiting for me to bring her daughter back to her. I tucked my hair behind my ears and closed my eyes.

A telephone ring woke us up at eight o’clock. It was my mother. She sounded much different than the day before.

“Are you okay, honey? Where are you?” her voice slinked into my sleepy ear.

“Yes, Mom, everything is fine. We’re just about to leave Phoenix.”

“Please, darling, just call me tonight to let me know you are all right. I worry, you know.”

Of course I know, Mom. How could I possibly forget that?

Her voice was soft and calm. It was hard to believe it was her speaking. I asked her to go to the hospital to check on Mrs. Wheeler and talk to that dark-haired, amber-eyed doctor. She promised me she would do that. I couldn’t detect the reason of her sudden change, and honestly, I didn’t have much time or will to think about it. I had more important things to do.

“To the bright and shining sun,” Joshua said as we stepped into the morning. He was wearing a Daniel Johnston T-shirt and washed out jeans, and I couldn’t help but think to myself how he was the handsomest boy on the planet. Ever. And with the greatest taste in music. Ever.

We didn’t change our plan. Flagstaff was our next destination, and the night was supposed to be spent in Albuquerque, New Mexico. We packed our backpacks and by nine,
we were out at Interstate 17. I looked around to see the
Star Wars
bunch or the fortune teller, but they were nowhere to be found. The whole place looked so different in the daylight – tame and somber. It must have been one of those places that only lived under the cover of the night.

A cardinal-red pickup slowed down. The driver was a thirty-something guy with spectacles and bitten nails.

“I’m going to Flagstaff for a job interview,” he said, moving his notebook from the passenger seat so one of us could sit beside him. I kindly handed over that honor to Joshua; the partial isolation of the back seat was more appealing to me. We only slept about three hours and I really didn’t feel like talking with strangers, no matter how nice they seemed. The bare landscape was sliding before my eyes and I didn’t even hear the conversation between those two in the front seats, until Clinton – that was the driver’s name – said, “Is there something in your eye?”

“Oh, no, not again,” I thought to myself. I wasn’t ready for another Rodriguez scene that early in the morning.

“It’s just the muscle in my eyelid, I guess,” Joshua answered. “I have these tics… it can be annoying sometimes.”

“He also clears his throat monstrously, and he yells ‘moron’ every now and then, and sometimes, but just sometimes, he pulls his left ear like he’s going to rip it off,” I said. “So don’t take it personally if it happens.”

I sank into the comfort of the back seat again.

“Thank you for making it clear, Ruby,” Joshua said.

“You’re welcome, my dear friend.”

We arrived in Flagstaff around half past noon. It was green and it smelled like pines. It was just like someplace torn away from the desert. We decided to take a short walk around before continuing our trip. The easiness of our first ride that day made us cheerful and optimistic. And how great Joshua looked under Arizona light! How breathtaking was the smile he gave me when the big fat cat jumped from the garbage container and scared me! And when he quoted William Blake with, “Travelers repose and dream among my leaves,” I felt like I was the happiest person in the world. I was so happy that I even called my mother to tell her not to worry and remind her to visit Mrs. Wheeler that afternoon.

“Look how petrified this town looks,” I told Joshua. “Where are all the people?”

“They’re in their little offices, of course,” he said, “finishing off their little jobs so they can go back to their perfect little lives with two children and a dog and pancakes, and everything that goes with that. Just like in any clone town.”

“What a bright attitude.” I patted him on the shoulder.

“It’s just the way it is.”

“So if I had a job and two children and one dog and twelve pancakes, would you call me a clone?” I said, brushing my hand over the testaceous building façade.

“No, of course not.”

He stopped walking, turned to me, and put his arms on my shoulders. The ray of sunlight refracted in his eyes.

“I’m sure you understood what I meant. It’s not pancakes that make clones out of
people; pancakes are just a silly symbol. I just think people should find their own way instead of just accepting rules without questioning. Most of them don’t do that, they don’t even think about it. They just live their life in blissful safety. So you can eat pancakes every day and have six children and an elephant, but you’ll never be a clone. Never. Because you’re just not one of these people.”

“Okay, okay, I understand. Don’t get upset,” I said. “Now, I think we should buy that house over there with that lovely heart-shaped pool. And I prefer cats to dogs, actually.”

He pulled his ear and winked at me. I winked back.

It was half past one when we left Flagstaff. We walked to the spot on Interstate 40 that a guy from a newsstand mentioned. The sun was ruthless. I got my Polaroid camera and took some quite somnambulistic photos. An hour passed and no one stopped to pick us up. The cars were fewer than we expected, and the soles of my canvas sneakers were sticking to the hot pavement. We decided to walk down the road rather than wait by the gas station. Joshua suddenly grabbed both of my hands.

“I need to tell you something, Ruby,” he said, gently shaking my arms.

“Oh, look, there’s a truck in the distance!” I said. “Can you see it? A metallic gray truck!”

He dropped my hands.

“I’m sure this one will give us a ride!
We’ll be in Albuquerque by seven.”

He didn’t seem to share my overjoy. I slapped myself on the forehead.

“Oh, I’m sorry. What did you want to tell me?”

“Nothing important. I’ll tell you later.”

The truck driver slowed down.

“I’m only going to Winslow, kids,” he said. It was a rather screechy voice coming from a man whose imposing stomach was nearly touching the steering wheel. His cheeks were dark pink, and his smile was wide and sincere.

He told us that he had kids our age and that he was surprised our parents let us wander across the country like that. He would never allow his girls such a reckless adventure, although he couldn’t look at us without sympathy. He had done his share of wild hitchhiking when he was young, but those were different times, safer and more naive. No one had ideals nowadays, he said. Joshua agreed. He told us that he was transporting refreshments from Phoenix to other Arizona towns. He used to daydream about becoming a rock star, but life had different plans. And being a rock star is more about attitude than anything, anyway.

“Maybe it’s even better to be a rock outlaw than a star,” Joshua said. “Stars fade.”

The driver looked at him with a mild frown, as though he was saying, “You still have a life to live, kid.”

He dropped us off in front of a grocery store on the outskirts of Winslow, a town of blue sky and sepia buildings. Joshua started whistling.

“My father used to listen to the Eagles a long time ago, before he decided that music is not for serious married men who feed their families,” he said. “The song goes like this: ‘
Well
, 
I'm standing on a corner in Winslow
, 
Arizona
,
such a fine sight to see
.
It's a girl, my Lord,
 in a 
flatbed Ford
, 
slowin
g 
down to take a look at me.’”

“You sing very well,” I said. “I wish I could sing. It’s not that I don’t try, but it just sounds tragic. Yes, tragic – there’s no other word.”

It wasn’t a girl in a flatbed Ford that slowed down, it was a woman in an orange Plymouth. She introduced herself as Debbie. Her little daughter, Dolores, was sitting in the back seat. She was a tiny creature in a pink dress with polka dot sunglasses. Debbie suggested that I sit with Lo
–
that was how her mother called her. I guess
Lolita
was her favorite book. Joshua sat in the passenger seat. Everything seemed just fine. We even warned Debbie about Joshua’s Tourette’s and she said that she had a friend in college with Tourette’s syndrome, and that she perfectly understood everything about it. They were heading for Albuquerque to spend some time with Debbie’s parents; she had gone through a terrible divorce and she really needed some time to gather herself. Little Lo was sleeping, her blond head in my lap. Her skin was so soft and pinkish. I wondered, was my skin that soft when I was three years old, and how come I have so few photographs from that period?

“You two may sleep as well,” Debbie said. “I’m sure you’re very tired.”

And so we slept. We slept until our orange Plymouth stopped by the gas station near Holbrook. Lo needed to go to the bathroom and she wanted me to take her there. Her mother scarcely separated her pinkish arms from my thigh, which she grabbed onto like a little octopus. They went away screaming and crying and came back with a ton of sweets and soda pops and smiles on their faces. Joshua and I were waiting in the shade, eating our sandwiches and talking about new-wave films. Debbie gave us a sign and we jumped back in the car. It was quarter to four. Dolores tried to feed me lollipops and M&Ms, sticking them into my mouth. When I finally said I can’t eat any more, she started screaming and hitting her hand against Joshua’s seatback.

“Please, darling, take another one,” her mother said to me in a pleading voice.

I tried to explain that a person twice as big as I am couldn’t eat that many sweets, but she looked at me with the most amiable look and just whispered, “One more, please. She likes you so much.”

I felt weird eating all those candies and even started to feel sick. Luckily, Dolores finally fell asleep, and I could ease my pain with a bottle of mineral water. But then, after a couple of quiet minutes, I noticed Joshua was scratching his left temple.

“Oh, that’s it, right?” asked Debbie. “Your Tourette’s?”

“That’s right.”

“But that’s just a little winking, honey,” she said joyfully. “It’s not a big deal.”

Dolores woke up and jumped on her little feet.

“You wink?” she said sweetly, pulling Joshua’s sleeve. “Wink, wink, wink!”

He didn’t understand that she was asking him to wink for her. She clenched her teeth, tweaked Joshua’s elbow, and screamed, “Wink again!”

“Oh, you can’t pinch people like that, my little birdie,” Debbie said.

I thought that was it, that the little monster would go back to sleep, but then her mother said, in a same pleading voice, “Come on, dear, wink just one more time for her.”

“But I wink better than him, much better,” I said turning Dolores’ shoulders toward me. “Look, I know a million different ways to wink.”

She was satisfied, she was amused, she was laughing and grunting like a little pink pig. I never thought I could feel such repulsiveness for a four-year-old child.

The next hour was calm and I really believed that we would be in Albuquerque before she woke up. It was less than three hours away after all. Oh, how wrong I was! How terribly wrong! The first sign of failure was Joshua’s throat clearing. I don’t know what caused it, or if anything caused it. As far as I know, tics don’t wait for a particular reason to occur, they just come and go as they like. It goes like this – a guy clears his throat, a little girl screams, a mother stomps on the brake, a big girl’s heart jumps under her striped mod dress.

“What was that?” Debbie shouted, looking at Joshua like she was going to chop off his head.

“I’m sorry, very sorry,” he said. “But that’s what I warned you about.”

“Oh, but you didn’t warn me about it, young man. This is much worse than what I expected,” she said. “You scared my little girl.”

So what happened to your friend with Tourette’s, Mrs. Debbie? You killed him while he was twitching his nose?

Debbie’s threatening finger was standing stiff between hers and Joshua’s seats. Then she turned to the back seat. I was trying to calm Dolores by holding her hand and whispering funny things in her ear.

“Don’t squeeze her like that,” her mother groaned. “What do you want – to make her bruise?”

“I was just trying to calm her,” I said, knowing that nothing I said was going to soothe her anger.

“One more mistake and you’re out of here,” she said, pausing between words.

I was fighting with the strong urge to just open the door and take us out of that ridiculous situation, but the sight of the melting desert was stronger. Debbie pressed the accelerator pedal and our gloomy journey continued. No one was talking, even little Lo was sitting silent beside me, looking through the window until she nodded off again. I was counting minutes, miles, and white clouds. We just entered New Mexico, when it happened again – Joshua cleared his throat, and even louder than the first time. Dolores screamed again, and I was sure that little brat did it deliberately.

“That’s it,” Debbie said, stomping on the brake again.

“I’m sorry,” Joshua said. I saw his fist clenching and his knuckles getting red.

“Get out!” Debbie screamed at the top of her voice.

“But we are in the middle of the desert,” I tried to sound calm. “You can’t leave us here.”

“Oh, I can’t I?” she turned to me with sarcastic laughter. “Well, just watch me, miss!”

For a moment everyone was silent. Then she screamed again, opening the door and pushing us outside.

And there we were – stranded in the desert. He should have called her a moron at least. I should have called her a moron.

“Moron!” I screamed, but they were already too far to hear me.

To burst out laughing or to burst out crying – that was the question. We did the first one, but it only lasted for a couple of seconds, until the dust behind the orange Plymouth settled down. There was nothing but rocks and desert plants around us and the sun was still burning madly. There certainly wasn’t anything to laugh about. I sighed and covered my face with my hands.