Lilac Mines (18 page)

Lilac Ambrose disappeared on August 24, 1899, four months before the new century (exactly 49 years before Felix's mother was born). According to the first slide, Calaveras County was in the middle of a record heat wave. Felix sifts through stories about a mule shortage, a pie bake-off, a mayoral race. Everything seems touched by sepia fairydust, ripe with the possibility of clues. At the same time, there's just so much of it, and she doesn't know where to focus her attention. She keeps waiting for the camera to pan in on the thing she's supposed to learn. But this isn't a movie, it's microfiche, and the slide slips in and out of focus beneath the light. Every time she twists the knob, she seems to make it worse.

When she gets to August 25, she finds an article she's already read bits of in Luke's book. MINER'S DAUGHTER MISSING. Poor girl didn't even get her name in the headline. Felix plods through the familiar facts. She learns a few new things. Lilac was said to have a lovely singing voice. Everyone agreed that her father doted on her. Finally Felix gets to something concrete: “Miss Ambrose was last seen near a home on Moon Avenue near the Church in the late afternoon. Passersby recalled her poplin dress and brown, plaited hair.”

Moon Avenue, Moon Avenue. Felix thinks she remembers passing it with Tawn, a skinny, particularly shabby road that ran north-south. Somewhere between Washoe Street and the endless chaparral. Is it within walking distance of the other mine entrance? Riding distance? But the article doesn't say anything about a horse. Or a mule.

There are more articles, printed over the next few weeks, providing updates on the search. Blurry photos of men in hats and an occasional woman in, natch, a bonnet, gathered around a hole in the mountain. Twenty men and ten mules looking for her, says one article. Then 15 men, then nine, eventually just her father. After that the articles stop. There's a story about the mine closing a few years later. It wasn't out of reverence for Lilac, though some people said the mine was cursed—the silver was simply gone. A year later, the newspaper was, too. And a few years after that, the town was empty.

Felix returns to the August 25th issue. Out of habit, Felix's eyes wander to the masthead. When she was an intern, she was always looking at the magazine's masthead to make sure that the New York intern hadn't been promoted to contributing writer before she was. Now she sees the Washoe Street address of Nora's Unisex Salon. Below it, the names of the
Examiner
staff:

Danis Hogan - Editor In Chief

Danis Hogan, Jr. - Deputy Editor, Senior Reporter

Barrett Lyman - Reporter

Olive Hogan - Printer

Calla Hogan - Assistant Printer

The last name is in tiny, smudgy type, but it screams like a war headline. North and South Main used to be called Calla Boulevard, Anna Lisa had mentioned. Why would the town name a street after the assistant printer at the newspaper? Did she do something heroic? If her family ran the paper, surely they'd report it if she did.

Felix sits on the edge of her chair and slides sheet after sheet of microfiche under the magnifier, dates both before and after August 24th. But there are no headlines about Calla Hogan. She didn't win a pie bake-off, and she definitely didn't rescue Lilac Ambrose from the mine.

Felix pauses at September 11, 1899. It's weird, how September 11th was just September 11th back then, not
September 11th.
It was the day that something called
Good-Bye, My Lady
opened at the Silver Bird Theater, and another day that no one found Lilac Ambrose. Felix locates the masthead, hoping to find that Calla Hogan has been promoted to reporter.
Kick that Barrett Lyman's ass, girl,
she thinks.

But Calla isn't there at all. Felix works backward. September 10th, not there. September 9th, not there. The last day that her name appears on the masthead is August 26th. She left the paper just after Lilac left forever.

Just in case the babysitter sprinkled some truth in with her stories, Felix asks Henrietta/Brittany if she knows anything about Calla Hogan's semi-simultaneous, seemingly silent disappearance. She doesn't, but she does produce a city social register from 1899. Felix scrolls the brittle book of names, addresses and professions. For the most part, only the men's professions (“miner,” “miner,” “doctor,” “newspaperman,” “miner”) are listed. The few women who aren't wives have titles like “teacher” and “widow.”

Felix scans the pages for Moon Avenue addresses. Who was Lilac visiting that day? The register is listed alphabetically by name, not address, and there is no index. Painstakingly, she copies:

G. Burke, 139 Moon Ave.

Mr. & Mrs. John Crabb, 490 Moon Ave.

Mr. & Mrs. Theodore Downs, 211 Moon Ave.

T.E. Duncan, 232 Moon Ave.

Mr. & Mrs. Kelly Gundersen, 363 Moon Ave.

When she discovers “Mr. & Mrs. Danis Hogan, 423 Moon Ave.,” her heart cartwheels in her chest. Barrett Lyman lives down the street at 501. She underlines his name and draws two asterisks next to it.

She sticks it out through “Beale Winston, 370 Moon Ave.” She thanks Henrietta/Brittany, who is reading
Maus
with her feet up on the circulation desk, and leaves the library. Felix's skin tingles with excitement as she steps into the bright outdoors. The day has gotten windy, and the gap of arm between her T-shirt and tall gloves is punctuated with goosebumps.

She stops at Lyle's Olde-Fashioned Soda Fountain at the corner of Main and Fulton Streets. The store is spacious, the walls lined with a rainbow of candy: licorice, gumdrops, tiny wax soda bottles, peppermint sticks like barbershop poles, pastel taffy. All the stuff that makes for a great display but tastes kind of nasty. She likes the smell, though: dust and wood polish and sugar.

“What can I getcha?” asks the old man behind the counter. He reminds Felix of the greeter in that Wal-Mart commercial, the feeble, sad man who made Felix never want to go to a Wal-Mart.

Felix studies the menu, a miniature marquee above the counter. “A sarsaparilla, please.”

Is this the place Anna Lisa and Meg came, after they drove and drove? Did they share a glass with two red-and-white straws? They couldn't have, she realizes, it might have gotten them arrested.

Felix sits at a table near the window, where she watches a horse and buggy carry tourists past her car. Sarsaparilla is surprisingly earthy, somewhere between root beer and Dr. Pepper and a-long-time-ago. It tastes the way the store smells. She takes her sketchbook out of her bag, flips past a line drawing of a Tawn-esque girl in retro lingerie, and writes:

Moon Avenue near church—close to mine entrance #2?

Calla Hogan—asst. printer till 8/26/05, then ??

Calla Blvd.?

Lilac: liked singing

That's it, really. She does not have new information, she has a new mystery. All she can come up with are detective-show plotlines: Barrett Lyman was a serial killer who stashed young women's bodies in the mine; or Lilac was pregnant with Barrett Lyman's baby and got chased out of town.

She slouches in the wrought-iron chair. The red sun rests in a hammock of mountainscape, as if it too is contemplating invisibility. Felix wonders what Tawn is doing. She looks at her cell phone, but there are no messages.

“You know you're not supposed to lift heavy things,” Al scolds. Gerald Hill's face is as red as the crate of tomatoes he's carrying. Al, who was sitting behind the cash register writing to Meg in very tiny letters on the back of a paper napkin, saw him struggling and ran over, placing her arms beneath her father's. His are wirier than she remembers. She swallows her surprise.

He sighs. “A girl shouldn't lift things for her father. It's just not right.” But he lets Al carry the tomatoes to the produce section. “I have to admit, though, I don't know what I would have done without your help these past few months.”

Al arranges the tomatoes in staggered rows. She hates being reminded that it's been months.

“You have a knack for this, you know,” Gerald says. “Everything is stocked and put away. The back office is neater than it's ever been. That secretarial training has paid off.”

“I just try to finish what I start is all,” Al says, wiping a blob of tomato pulp on her apron. She feels her own face reddening as a result of her continuing lie, yes, but also something like pride. Everything here is so comfortable. To be a good clerk, all she has to do is imitate her father. To be a good girlfriend—well, she has no idea.

“But you seem a little down sometimes,” Gerald says gently, ducking his head to look Al in the eye. He wrings a corner of his apron. He's not used to counseling his daughters. “Am I right?”

“Well, I'm worried about you.” This is true. His arms are so thin. His copper hair is thin, too. The father she always assumed could save her from an H-bomb can now be defeated by a few pounds of tomatoes.

“Oh, no need to worry.” He puts his arm around her shoulders in a gesture of forced jolliness. “I'll be fine. I'm not the young man I used to be, but if I were, how could I have such a beautiful, grown-up daughter?”

“Dad.”

“I'm serious. You're almost 21 years old. In fact, I think it's time you took more responsibility around here. I think you're ready for it. How would you like to help me out with the books at the end of the month?”

He looks so excited, like he's giving her a gift. She cannot tell him she doesn't plan to be here at the end of the month.

“You have a good mind,” he continues. “You know how to look around and say, 'What needs to be done here?' That's a priceless skill in this line of work. You're trustworthy, you're a real helper. You could be a great… oh, a teacher or a nurse.”

He beams, and it makes Al want to be a teacher or a nurse. She returns to the counter, where she rolls her letter into a gumball-sized wad and puts it in her pocket.

That night the Hills have a good, heavy dinner. Rice and chicken smothered in cream of mushroom soup, green beans with Durkee onions, buttery biscuits. The food is a lullaby, making Al never want to leave this table.

It's early December, and the living room windowsill is already lined with a row of vigilant Santa Clauses. Suzy pushes a sliver of chicken around her plate, the beads of her bracelet clicking when she moves.

“I… I think I'd like to go back to L.A.,” she murmurs. All other noises stop.

“But that was only supposed to be for a little while,” her mother replies. Eudora's hair is pulled back in a bun, making her face look more heart-shaped. Like her daughters, she has a trail of freckles marching over cheeks and nose. But hers are pale and peachy, like footprints about to be washed away by rain.

“I know, but I
like
L.A.,” Suzy says stubbornly. Words fail to describe what the city is to her, Al can tell. And Al doesn't know what Los Angeles is to Suzy any more than Suzy knows what Lilac Mines is to Al. But there's something in the way she calls it L.A. now, not Los Angeles. The lilt of a local.

“I'm 19, you know,” Suzy continues. “A lot of girls my age are married or in college, or they have jobs.”

“You've been working at the store,” Gerald reminds her. He always sits up straight at the table, knife and fork propped in anticipation.

“Sure, but I've been working in L.A., too.”

“For your aunt,” Eudora adds.

“No… lately at a hot dog stand in Santa Monica. On the beach.” Suzy plays with her bracelet, stretching the elastic and rolling the pink faux pearls between her fingers. “It's slow in winter, so they didn't mind me taking off for a while. They said I could start up again when I got back. But there's also… there's also this man I've been going with.”

“A
man?”
says Eudora. Al knows her mother means “not a boy?” but she hears “not a woman?”

“His name is Peter Weems. He's a student at Pepperdine, he's going to be an English professor someday. It's not serious yet. I'm just saying a girl needs to be loyal to her boyfriend.”

Their parents have lots of questions about this Peter Weems. But they seem to agree with Suzy: a girl has to think of her future. Suzy won't be the one to help her parents into their old age. She is called by a city so big it can be known by initials, by a man with his own house in Santa Monica.

Later, Al helps her mother with the dishes, dinner heavy in her stomach. “Suzy causes me so much heartache,” Eudora sighs, elbow-deep in water that would burn Al on contact. “This Peter sounds like a solid young man, but you never know. And I worry when you girls are so far away. I suppose that's a mother's job, though.”

“What about seeing the world?” Al protests. “I mean, it can be… educational… to be far away. People go to other countries, they.”

“Oh, of course,” Eudora agrees, “of course.” She blasts the soapsuds off a plate. “But then they come home. That's how the world works.” She turns to her oldest daughter, and Al wants to melt into her sureness. “I'm glad that at least
you
have a good head on your shoulders. I probably don't tell you that enough, but I want you to know. I think you're a smart, sensible girl, and I don't take it for granted. Even if I do pick on your hair and your clothes, it's been good having you home.”

That night Al puts on one of her men's button-down shirts. She needs men's clothes for strength right now. She pulls a brown wool sweater over it, and puts on her winter coat. She needs warmth, she needs layers of protection. She tells her parents she's going to Nancy-Jane's house.
Again?
they say. In truth, she's only seen Nancy-Jane once, with Terry, but she is Al's new fake best friend. The fake part reminds Al that she has no real friends here.

She walks halfway across town to get the blood flowing in her frozen veins. By the time she gets to the pay phone in front of Lola Felix's Beauty Shoppe, she's shaking so hard she has to hold the receiver with both hands.

“Hello?” says Meg.

“Meg?” Al says. It's barely a squeak.

“Hello?”
She sounds impatient.

“Meg! It's me.”

“Oh, sorry, you're so quiet.”

“How are you?”

Meg laughs sharply. “Um, fine. I don't know. How can I answer that question, Al?” It feels good to be called Al, even though it would feel better to be called Darling. “Sometimes I'm fine, sometimes I'm not. That's life. It's hard to sum up.”

“I know… ”

“Jean and Sylvie broke up,” Meg says. She's quiet for a minute. “Jean and I have been talking, finally. I mean, really talking. At Lilac's,” she clarifies.

“Oh,” says Al. She watches her reflection in Lola Felix's window. A shaggy-haired, boyish girl superimposed over a landscape of barber's chairs and photos of movie stars with perfect curls.

“Are you trying to make me jealous?” Al hears herself say.

“Probably.” Al imagines Meg twirling her ponytail. Then she imagines her sitting down on the edge of the bed, in that hard, resolute way she sometimes does. She realizes she can't remember the color of Meg's bedspread.

“I want to come home. To my real home, with you. I really do, but, well Suzy's leaving soon to go back to Los Angeles and…”

“Do you? Because you could. You left once. You could do it again.”

“It's not that easy,” Al protests. “My family needs me.”

“I
need you, stupid.” Meg's voice cracks. Even so quiet, even over the distance, it's unbearable. Al holds her breath. “I'm not going to beg you,” Meg says finally.

Is the quilt blue? Maybe a couple of the patches, but that's not the predominant color. Al wants to summon that world, the feeling of watching Jody and Imogen dance, the hard work of the mill, the curve of Meg's hips. But all she can see is herself, lamp-lit, half-formed beneath the red FELIX'S arcing across the glass.

Fine,
she thinks. If she can't summon it, she will make it go away. This limbo is too much. She'll fold Lilac Mines into a little black ball, like the unsent letter in her pocket.

“Fine,” Al stutters, “m-m-m aybe… maybe…” Maybe she can get on a bus. She'll run to the bus station and sleep on one of the hard benches until it opens in the morning.

“Just say it, Al,” whispers Meg. And because Al has to say what Meg thinks she's going to say, and what her family—if they knew—would want her to say, she says it.

“Maybe I should stay here. Maybe we should… call it off.” Her words are blurry. Her nose is running.

“That's what I thought. You are a sorry butch, Al.” Meg is sobbing and coughing. “I love you, but I can't have all the courage for both of us.”

Al is crying too, but she makes no noise. She's always been this way, a tears-on-pillow crier. As a child, when she would emerge from her bedroom after what she thought was a tantrum, people would look up and say,
Oh, where were you?

Where am I?
Al wonders now.

There is a long silence. Finally Meg says, “Good-bye.”

And Al tries to say, “Good-bye,” but it's just her lips moving in the window.