Just Like a Musical (9 page)

“What are we going to do?” I said. “We’re trapped here.”

Joshua looked behind.

“I guess there’s nothing much we can do but to wait for another car to pick us up.”

We started walking. My mother called and I lied to her. I said we were in a hotel in Albuquerque. It’s not that I was afraid of her reaction; I just didn’t feel like listening to her high-pitched soprano. She said she visited Mrs. Wheeler that afternoon, but she didn’t have any good news for me. Mrs. Wheeler’s state was even worse than when I visited her a couple of days before.

Not even one car slowed down. We were jumping and waving like lunatics every time we saw one approaching us, but the drivers would just act as if we were invisible. We were about fifteen miles from Gallup. I suggested that we go back and find some place to sleep there; I really didn’t want to spend the night in the desert no matter how much in love I was, but Joshua reminded me that we had only three days left before Monday, when he needed to get back to work. He said that someone would surely give us a ride. I suppose he didn’t know how lonely sunsets look at the Interstate 40. I didn’t know either. The sun goes down so quickly… well, when you’re scared to death, at least. I could barely keep the tears from spilling out of my eyes.

“Hey, are you crying?” Joshua said, gently raising my chin.

“Almost,” I said, trying to put a smile on my face. “I’m so scared.”

He leaned his face closer to mine and
brushed his lips across my forehead
. I could feel his heartbeat just above my collarbone.

“Don’t be afraid,” he said, kissing my forehead. “I’ll take care of you, I promise.”

Another car passed by, but again – the driver didn’t even look at us. We found a lonesome withered tree and decided to spread our sleeping bag under its naked crown.

“I’m sorry I got you into this,” I said.

“Sorry? Why? If anyone should apologize, it would be me. I’m the one who got us stuck in the desert.”

“Thank you for coming with me,” I said. “And it wasn’t your fault, that woman was neurotic, or something worse.”

Have you ever spent the night in the desert? The silence of the desert night is so thick that when you lie down with your face up to the sky, it’s seems like the whole universe is sitting on your chest. Joshua was exploring my palm with his thumb. My body was so close to his, so close that I felt dizzy. And frightened. And wonderful.

“I think I hear coyotes,” I said.

“You only hear your fear. Just try to relax, okay?”

“What did you want to tell me today?” I asked. “You said it was nothing important, but I think it was.”

“You know me so well,” he said, sighing and turning his eyes toward me. “I just wanted to tell you how much this means to me, how much you mean to me. I’m in love with you, Ruby. I’m in love with everything about you. And I know I’m messed up, and I know that you deserve better than a messed up, fucked up guy with a dead sister and a ghostly mother and all other shitty stuff, and I know that I should probably just turn around and spare you from my chaos and pain, but I can’t. I can’t… because I love you. I guess that’s selfish, but that’s how it is. I love you.”

C’mon mouth, unfreeze now.

“Thank you,” I heard my voice.

Oh, no, Ruby, that’s not the thing to say.

“I can be so stupid sometimes,” I said. “What I wanted to say is that… I love you, too. I really do. Some declaration of love, ha?”

“It’s the only one I want to hear,” he said.

His eyelashes fluttered against my temple. Our fingers mingled like swans’ necks when they kiss. I’d told a boy that I loved him for the first time in my life. I
loved
a boy for the first time in my life.

“Hey, your tics are less frequent now,” I said.

“Yeah… that’s because there are no people around.”

“Oh yeah? And what am I then?”

“You’re awesome.”

We fell asleep in each other's arms
. When we woke up, the sun was up. It was Friday. We needed to get to Oklahoma City, or at least near it, by evening. We shared a burrito, packed our things, and hit the road.

After the previous disastrous hitchhiking day, the new dawn was more encouraging. Just a couple of minutes after we raised our thumbs, a van door opened. The driver introduced himself as Dexter. He was in his late twenties, which was a relief after listening to all the preaching, warnings, and nostalgia for youth during the last forty-eight hours. He was heading for Wichita. That meant that he could drop us off in Oklahoma City. But were we really in a place to be optimistic after everything that had happened the day before? I looked at Dexter’s smiling face with suspicion, only allowing myself a shadow of a shadow of hope.

I was sitting in the back seat, soaking in the ocher landscape, immersed in my thoughts. Suddenly, that little place just
under my ribs started pulsating. The picture of my father playing on the lawn with Keyla and Brian jumped before my eyes. He was running and laughing, carrying Brian on his shoulders. Then he put him down to tie his shoelace. He turned around and winked at me secretly so that no one could see. I missed him. I missed my little brother and sister. I missed being their sister. I missed myself in that picture. And at the same moment, I was so angry with my mother. How do you do something like she did to someone you supposedly love? How do you make that move? Did she hope that he would just forget about everything? Would he still be with us if it wasn’t for my ill heart? Did he leave us because he was afraid that he would have to watch me dying? Or would he have left us anyway? My mind reeled with these unanswerable, painful questions until we stopped by the gas station near Albuquerque.

“Hey, you look strange,” Joshua said when we got out of the car. “You’re so pale. Are you feeling okay?”

My phone rang. It was my mother, of course. I wasn’t inclined to talk to her, so I just ignored the ringing. A flock of pigeons flew over our heads.

“Birds are free,” I said. “And so am I.”

Joshua frowned. His dark eyes examined my face.

“Is your sister always so dreamy?” Dexter asked.

“She’s not my sister,” Joshua answered.

He looked at me with a reluctant smile.

“She’s my girlfriend,” he said, taking my hand.

Dexter suggested that we have a coffee in a little café by the gas station. We gladly accepted. One squeak of the door and we were in the 1950s. The floored was checkered, the jukebox was playing Elvis Presley, even the waitress was wearing a light blue circle dress and Bettie Page bangs. Dexter told us about his job – he was working as a dog walker in New York City. He said it was the best job one could imagine, far better than spending time in a claustrophobic corporate building. He spent a week with his parents in Phoenix and now he was going to visit his sister who got married recently, and then back to Brooklyn to breathe the sweet air of cement and smog and liberty. As he spoke, I became more convinced that we were safe with him, that he wouldn’t throw us out of his car for winking, or coughing, or laughing, or being rude, or whatever else we did to deserve such treatment in the past. Dexter was one of us; he didn’t believe in stuffy good manners and conventional dungeons called offices. While he was talking, Joshua was holding my hand under the table. “My girlfriend”. Those words echoed in my head like the prettiest melody. Love makes you so mellow that it almost sucks. I suddenly regretted not answering my mother’s call.

“I’ll be back in a minute,” I said and gently pulled my hand out of his.

I stepped outside. It was 2011 again.

“I was so worried!” my mother said in a crying voice. Why didn’t you answer your phone? Oh, Ruby, please, tell me where you are and I will send you some money so you can travel properly.”

“There’s really no need for that,” I answered, trying not to sound harsh.

“But if you really have to go there, you could at least accept some help. I’ll send you some money and you can get back by bus, or plane, as you like it,” she said.

“No, Mom. Please just let me do this my own way, okay?”

“But maybe your way isn’t the right one, you know.”

“Let me find out myself,” I said.

A family of three passed beside me when I hung up and turned around to enter the 1950s again. The woman looked just like the fortune teller from the outskirts of Phoenix, only younger, cleaner, and with brighter and smoother skin. She looked at me and smiled. Her little son pointed his hand toward me.

“Dorothy!” he said, grinning.

There are still parents who show their kids The Wizard of Oz
. That was comforting to know. They won’t all grow up wanting to be droids, vampires, and psychics. I smiled back at him. Joshua waved to me through the café window.  Not to stray from my path – that’s what the fortune teller told me. I felt I was on my path more than ever.

When I entered, Dexter and Joshua were paying the bill. We bought some food and drinks to go and climbed back into the van. Dexter said his friend from high school lived in Amarillo and that he would like to pay him a short visit if we were not in a hurry.

“It’s a working day, but I hope he will be able to get out for half an hour or so,” he said.

We knew we couldn’t get further from Oklahoma City that day, and even if we could, we didn’t want to visit Sarah in the evening, so we agreed. We would probably agree even if we were in a hurry, because Dexter was the best fellow traveler we could ever ask for, and we couldn’t allow ourselves to lose him.

Amarillo was dusty and flat. It somehow reminded me of home I left behind. Dexter’s friend worked in the Chase Tower. We waited for him in the nearby park. I thought it was a good idea to leave two of them alone for a couple of minutes, but Dexter insisted that we stay. He said we had to meet Charlie, that we would certainly like him. And we did. He showed up wearing a big smile and the White Stripes badge on his plain white T-shirt.

“To hell with
bureaucracy!” he said. “I’m so glad you called me out. Have to be back in fifteen minutes, though.”

“Do they allow you to work dressed like that?” Dexter said, hugging him.

“No, but I surely won’t get out on the street dressed in a gray suit and a tie,” he said.

He kept his cool wardrobe in his locker, along with the comic books that he read during his lunch break. Guys like Dexter and Charlie make you believe in the possibility of normal adulthood, that place-time-heart joint where you still listen to music even when you’re thirty-five, you don’t wear brown shoes, and your hair has never met the perfect parting. Yeah, it’s possible.

We left Amarillo in high spirits, slamming the cherry-red van door behind us.

“Hey,
Dex, this car of yours is like a time machine,” I said.

“Really, and how’s that?”

“Well, it’s simple. We’re listening to Joy Division, I’m wearing heart-shaped sunglasses and a 1980s dress, and Joshua here has a haircut like one of the Byrds members, I just still can’t decide which one of them.”

“Oh, that’s not nice, Ruby!” Joshua said, pulling his ear.

“I saw this movie about a guy with Tourette’s syndrome once,” Dexter said. “It was kind of funny.”

“It’s not that funny in real life,” Joshua said. “Not funny at all. Actually, it can make a hell out of your life sometimes.”

“Yeah, I guess it’s hard,” Dexter said. “Not that I know much about it.”

“Yeah, it’s not easy. But what can I do? Some people have green eyes, some have killer smiles, and I have Tourette’s syndrome,” he laughed.

I glanced through the window. The white line on the edge of the roadway looked like an endless satin ribbon. I put the headphones in my ears and closed my eyes so I could see myself better. I felt that everything inside me was young and fragile. And the music flowing from my iPod into my soul was the proof that my life was real – finally real.

Joshua’s fingers tapped my shoulder.

“Sleeping?” he said.

I shook my head no.

“Sometimes I feel that every Okkervil River song is the story of my life,” I said, removing the headphones from my ears and handing them to Joshua. “Just listen.”

We arrived in Oklahoma City around six. Dexter gave us his phone number and invited us to visit him if we ever come to New York.

We had almost 200 dollars in our pockets and decided to find a place to sleep in downtown Oklahoma City rather to spend another night in some dreadful suburban motel. I went to the window and drew the curtains apart. The city below looked like a postcard. Our final destination was so close. Somewhere behind those buildings, Sarah was watching TV, or she was reading a book, or maybe she was fixing dinner for her family, unaware of tomorrow’s encounter.

“To the bathroom, sloppy!” Joshua
laughed, pulling my ankles and dragging me across the floor.

Something strange happened when I came out of the bathroom. Well, two strange things, actually. I was sitting on the corner of the bed, toweling my hair, when my cell phone rang.

“What are you doing?” my father’s voice jangled against my eardrum.

“Uh… I’m just drying my hair,” I said, taken aback.

Have I mentioned that my father calls me three times a year? Those rare and precious occasions are: my birthday, Thanksgiving, and Christmas.

“No, Ruby, I’m asking you what the hell are you doing there, wherever you are right now?” he raised his voice. “Do you know how irresponsible your behavior is?”

“And who are you to teach me responsibility?” I said, shocked by my own words. “You left me as soon as I was born.”

Silence on the other end of the line sounded like a seashell when you hold it against your ear. Silence that screamed how everything was breakable, and that the image of my father in my head was just an image, nothing more. It was my own construction, my own work of art, my own deception. And it hurt. It hurt me to realize that I actually didn’t know that man on the other end of the phone. Because he’s never been there for me, not even to check my body temperature and make me wear three sweaters at once. Never.

Something moved behind the curtains.

“I know that you know why I left,” my father said, breaking the silence.

“I know why you left Mom,” I said, walking toward the curtain. “But I can’t tell why you left me.”

I quickly pulled the curtains. Something fluttered across the room and flew out the window.

“Oh, it’s a red bird!” I screamed, pressing my hand against the window sill.

“What?”

“Look, Dad, I’m fine, don’t worry,” I said and hung up the phone.

Do you believe in black-cat-bad-luck, find-a-penny-pick-it-up, and all that stuff? Well, I didn’t, but I still couldn’t ignore what I just saw.

“What’s wrong?” Joshua said.

“It’s just what she told me,” I said, stretching my arm to the window.

“Who told you what?”

“Don’t you remember? The fortune teller told me to watch out for a red bird. When I see it, I will know what to do.”

“So what should we do?” he laughed.

“I don’t know.” I shrugged my shoulders. “I think I just want to go outside and breathe.”

“Did your father upset you?”

“No, I just realized something that I should have realized a long time ago,” I said. “Let’s go, there’s fun outside. The red bird told me.”

***

Did you know that even vanilla ice cream tastes better when you’re in love? Who could have guessed that? And Oklahoma City lights? Oh, they’re magical! After walking for a while, we bought some junk food and found a lovely little park.

“I love unhealthy food,” I said. “It tastes like freedom. Not that I would eat cheeseburgers all the time, I don’t even like them that much, but you know, there’s something so liberating about it – knowing that you’re doing something that your parents wouldn’t have allowed, something that is essentially bad for your health. It may sound self-destructive, but it really isn’t. It’s just freedom in a dangerous package.”

“What’s bad for your body may be good for your soul,” Joshua answered.

Joshua understands everything. Sometimes I don’t even have to explain things to
him; he understands exactly what I mean by the tone of my voice. Some people are meant to wander around the world together, conjoined in imperfection and internal poetry of their beings, the kind that’s not expressed in words, but soul beats.

“Hey, you remember that night when I told you not to believe the shooting stars?” he suddenly said, taking my hand.

“How could I forget it?”

“Well, there was a reason I told you that,” he whispered.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”
He took a deep breath and moved his body closer to mine. “Well… it’s kind of a short and sad story,” he started in a trembling voice. “I saw a shooting star the night Macy was diagnosed with cancer. I made a wish. It never came true. She died three months later. That’s when I started hating shooting stars. When the sky is dark and clear, I can’t even look at it.”

The words got stuck in my throat.

“I will never make a wish again when I see a shooting star,” I muttered. “I wish I knew her… your sister.”

“It’s not that I really believed that a shooting star would make my wish come true, of course,” he said. “It’s just that I will always remember that – always – how I made a wish, and she died.”

A skinny brown street dog stopped by our bench. Joshua gave him a piece of his sandwich. He wagged his tail, licked his nose, and lay down by the bench. A group of girls in satin dresses passed by. It was a prom night, and the air was milk-warm and fragrant.

“Do homeschoolers have a prom?” Joshua asked me, chewing his roll.

“Maybe somewhere, but not in our town” I said, thinking about Mrs. Wheeler’s beautiful dresses.

No prom for me, that’s for sure. No corsage, no satin dress, no prom dance. And before that: no summer camps, no messages in my school locker, no school plays, no bland cafeteria food. And all that just because of one scratched knee. Sometimes I imagine how my life would be if I hadn’t been born sick. But how can I be sure that it would be better than now? Maybe it would be a disaster. Maybe I would suck at it.

“I hated mine. I was the first one who left” he said, winking. “All those hysterical girls, and boys in dark suits, and corny music.”

The silence was unreal for a Friday night in a big city. But what do I know about big city nights? Only what I saw in the movies. I spent my whole life in that torpid little Californian town. It must have been that Joshua thought about something similar, because his next question was about me going to college. Only a couple of months earlier, I was eagerly waiting for the day when I would pack my things and leave my house
for a better and more exciting life, far away from my always-worried mother and small town non-events. But now, the idea of leaving was breaking my heart into pieces.

“Los Angeles isn’t that far away, you know,” I said, not believing my own words for even a second. It was far, far, far away, almost 150 miles away from Joshua’s house on the hill.

“Does your mother know that you’re going?”

“Sure,” I answered. “She’s going to visit me once a month and I’ll have to promise that I’ll wear an undershirt every time the temperature drops below seventy-seven degrees.”

“I’ll miss you,” he said.

“Are you going to visit me?” I asked, still feeling those little pieces of my wounded heart stabbing my skin from the inside.

“Of course I will,” he said and looked at me seriously. He wrapped his arms around my body. I felt his warm breath on my neck.

“I’m so glad that I found you,” he said. “I mean, what was the probability really?”

I wanted to tell him how we probably wouldn’t have met if his sister hadn’t died and he hadn’t moved from Virginia. And we wouldn’t have met if I had been in school that Friday afternoon like any other seventeen-year-old girl in our town had been. But I didn’t. I knew he was thinking the same when he said, “Kundera writes in
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
that every event in life is a result of a series of coincidences affecting each other. It’s frightening when you think about it.”

“It’s like people don’t really have any choice, right?”

“Yeah, or they have only the illusion of a choice.”

“That’s awful,” I said.

He stretched his legs and rubbed his knees.

“I think we should get to know Oklahoma better,” I said.

“Where could we go?”

“I don’t know, let’s ask Google,” I said, pulling my cell phone out of my bag.

***

Half-empty, dusty bar in Oklahoma City with a guy who has Tourette’s syndrome? Repeat after me: “Not a god idea, Ruby girl. Not a good idea at all.”

It happened in the blink of an eye. We didn’t even try to buy alcohol using Joshua’s fake ID. We were just two nice kids sipping tomato juice, when a big guy approached us and said, “Aren’t you kids supposed to be in bed by now?” He grinned at us, showing his bad teeth.

We tried to ignore him, but he was persistent.

“I asked you something!” he said.

I turned around, desperately looking for someone who would help us, but no one seemed to be interested in what was going on. Brushing off the beads of cold sweat that drizzled down my neck, I stood from the stool.

“Sir, we don’t want any trouble, if we have somehow offended you…”

He cracked his knuckles and drew his face near Joshua’s as if I was invisible. I remember the song that was playing on the jukebox.
It was “Great Balls of Fire”, and when Jerry Lee Lewis said, “Oh, what a thrill,” the big guy grabbed Joshua’s neck. I never liked that song. And now I hate it.

“Now ya
gonna tell me what’s your pretty face doing here so late,” he grumbled, laughing ominously.

Joshua winked and pulled his ear.

“You think that’s funny?” he shouted.

My mind started replaying, “Don’t say the word, don’t say the word!”

But the word sneaked out of Joshua’s mouth and cut the smoke in front of big guy’s nose in half. There was nothing between them anymore. I covered my face with my hands. The next thing I remember was that we were standing in front of the bar and Joshua’s nose was bleeding.

“We need to take you to the hospital,” I said, trying to stop the bleeding with a paper napkin.

“No need for that,” he answered, lightly pushing my hand away, “I just need something cold to put on it and it will be okay.”

“I think I saw a grocery store on our way here,” I said. “Wait for me here.”

And of course that grocery store was closed, and of course I didn’t know what to do. “A tornado would be great now. That way it would be complete,” I thought to myself. There was no one around. I was standing on the street trying to figure out what to do, when I suddenly heard the sound of shutters opening and a ray of light illuminated the sidewalk.

“Hey there!” a hoarse female voice said. “You down there!”

“Are you talking to me?” I said, raising my head toward the light source.

“No, I’m talking to my great-grandmother whose ghost is standing beside you,” the woman said. “Of course I’m talking to you. What are you doing there?”

“I’m… I’m just waiting.”

“Are you lost?”

“Actually, I was looking for ice… or anything cold.” I said. “My friend hurt his nose… and I… the grocery store is closed.”

I h
eard her footsteps moving away, then getting closer to the window again.

“Here,” she said, and the bag of frozen beans landed on the sidewalk beside my feet. “Drunk kids.”

I opened my mouth to say “thank you” but the window was already closed.

“I met God,” I said when I got back to Joshua. “And she tossed me a bag of frozen beans.”

“I’m a walking disaster,” he said. “You should have found a normal guy to accompany you. You won’t get far with me.”

“A normal guy?”

“Yes, someone who wouldn’t get you in a mess like that.”

“Well, I found you, moron,” I said, pressing the bag against his nose.

We waited and waited, but his face didn’t start to look any better. His nose was terribly swollen and his left eye was black and almost closed. It was Friday night, and we were alone in an unfamiliar city with almost no money and no one to call. It couldn’t get more complicated than that. But even in that gloomy moment, with Joshua’s blood on my fingers in that poorly lit park – I was happy. In some weird and inexplicable way, I was actually happy.

“We really need to get a doctor to check that,” I gently said, caressing his hair. “Come on, get up!”

“Please just don’t do what the red bird tells you anymore.”

How were we supposed to know where the hospital was in Oklahoma City? We had to take a cab, and the driver ripped us off. We now had less than 120 dollars left.

***

Hospital smell again. And invisible hard candies in my hands.

“Don’t worry, sweetie,” the nurse said. “He’ll be fine. Please fill in these forms, and the doctor will see you in a few moments.”

We were sitting in the waiting room forever, way longer than a few minutes. I would say a few hours, but I’m prone to exaggeration when I’m nervous. Joshua was silent.

“Joshua Peterson,” the nurse called as if we weren’t the only people in the waiting room. “Please, come with me.”

He followed her to the end of the narrow hall. The door closed behind him. A pinch of guilt squeezed my soul. It was all my fault. I shouldn’t have suggested that awful bar. It was obvious from the second we entered that we shouldn’t have been there.

After ten long minutes, Joshua’s silhouette appeared at the end of the hall. As he approached, I saw that he was smiling, but the arch of his raised eyebrows was telling me that he was worried.