The Waters (working title)

The day my mother calls to tell me about the divorce is the night I go home with a man who is allergic to me.
On the phone, I listen quietly as my mother repeats the counsel given to her by her attorney. He told her that contact with my father should be cut; the fact he now lived with another woman was not enough to show cause, and should be left out—a judge would assume the petition to be fueled by jealousy, he had explained.
While my mother goes on, I watch my cat nap on top of one of the many boxes in the living room. With my shoulder, I press the phone against my ear and begin to unpack, placing books on shelves, my grandmother’s broken tea cup on the mantel of the fireplace that doesn’t work, arranging the pieces carefully next to the framed picture of her. I keep the television on, the volume down. A commercial for my telephone company comes on, assuring me that I belong to the largest network in the nation. On the screen, a man answers a call; he turns to find all the people he will ever need, all connect to him by invisible radio waves. When my mother begins to cry, I look out my window, at the rows of cars parked so close to each other they almost touch, shaded underneath trees full and heavy with leaves, with light.
“Am I making the right choice?” she says to me.

At the bar, train stops away, I knew I would lose. In the dim, orange lighting I offer myself to a man with a square jaw, a man who tells me he isn’t picky. It’s July, and outside the warm rain comes down, trees and buildings drip into puddles on the asphalt. We take a cab to his apartment. In the rearview mirror, the cab driver’s eyes move on me briefly. We don’t bother with small talk in the back. Our hands rest between us on the worn leather seat. I let our fingers touch; I let mine play on his skin, until he withdraws. He begins to scratch at his hand, his arm.

It’s from my sister that I first learn about the affair. Weeks before I even think about leaving California, Heather calls on a Tuesday, and I’m late for work. Just as she says, “Anna,” the way she prepares me, I know what will follow. My sister is capable of delivering bad news—she’s collected and precise, but not without compassion; she’s able to answer any question.
“With whom?” I ask, as if knowing will keep me calm.
“With the woman whose name is below dad’s on the bank statement that came to the house today,” she replies.
“And mom?”
“She came back from the store with wine. She’s locked herself in her room with the record player. Anna, please come home.”
I think back to when my mother missed a red light at an intersection. She said she remembered the cars from the left charging at her like fists, the side windows of her vehicle in thousands of pieces all around her, and buried in her skin. The accident, and the procedures that followed, provided my mother with a supply of painkillers kept within pill bottles inside her medicine cabinet, from which I steal. I think of those pill bottles, how there are still so many left locked in with her, enough to guarantee the possibility of disaster, a mess left for my sister and myself.
The drive from Echo Park to Yorba Linda takes me about an hour and a half. The freeway, cutting through brown, sun-drenched hills, tests the limits of my car—a white hatchback resembling a small egg, given to me by my father. Heather meets me at the door when I reach home. From the garage I find a hammer, bringing it down on the doorknob to my mother’s room. She leans against the edge of the bed, her head hanging down as the record player spins LaVern Baker. On the floor is an empty bottle, and another, full, with the corkscrew still in. In the bathroom, Heather and I help my mother as she kneels beside the toilet. We hold her shoulders, her hair. Later, while my sister tips water from a glass to my mother’s lips, I quickly search through the medicine cabinet for the pill bottles.

I’ll say that the man’s name is John. And before we leave the bar together, he asks me a series of questions. One of them, Where are you from? I look down at my blouse and remove a strand of cat hair, letting it fall to the floor. Then I tell him. I tell John where I’m from, and I know he must think that I lived my mother’s life on the beach—in a bikini on a lawn chair in the sand at sunset, chips and salsa on a cooler, a bottle of cheap wine from the ninety-nine cent store —because, “What are you doing here?” is his next question; here, this is everyone’s next question. I think of an answer that allows me to lie without lying. Peeling the labels off bottles, I don’t tell him what I left behind.

My father stays up late at night, smoking at the kitchen table, filling the ashtray and watching the news while the rest of us sleep. Later, he will climb the stairs to the bedroom he shares with my mother. On the king-sized bed, he will lie on his side, his back facing my mother’s as their bent legs form a cove full with space between them; their almost still bodies under the layers of bedding.

From the passenger seat, my mother points to a small establishment off the beach, a café with outdoor seating. There, the wait-staff in white, button-down shirts and black ties carry light trays of green salads and cucumber water to tan women—their hair color from a bottle. “That,” my mother says to Heather and me, “is where I met your father.” I look to my father in the driver’s seat for confirmation; he nods his head once, slowly. Heather’s pink flip-flops fall from her feet as she taps them together, her knees not even reaching the edge of the seat. Although we are six years apart, my mother still has us in matching one-piece bathing suits—but I wear cut-off jean shorts, and headphones around my neck, to show that I’m older. Heather, constantly adjusting her sunglasses in the shape of stars, keeps her legs bare, like delicate stems in the spring.
My mother explains that before that place became a café, there was a bar called Casita Sierra. The inside resembled a sort of cabana, where red Christmas lights hung loosely from the ceiling and the happy hour crowd would track in sand from the beach, their loud chatter drowning out the live music from the mariachi band. The owners were an elderly couple from Galesburg, Illinois, who were more than ready to live the beach life, eagerly handing out wet drinks from behind the bar. My mother would come here with co-workers on nights she didn’t have to fly, ordering margaritas on the rocks and licking the salt from her fingers as she listened to men showing their worth. Looking down at her glass, at the floating ice cubes crashing against each other, she would think of emergency landings at sea, the chances of survival.
I ask my mother how she met my Dad. She replies that my father, at the time, had a friend with a thick mustache and curly blonde hair that was combed back with his fingers, a body that belonged on the beach. After introducing himself, he asked my mother who her taller friend was. My mother was left with my father, a quiet man with an accent who, throughout the night, would occasionally steal glances at my mother’s friend. Almost by obligation, my mother says, did my father ask for her number.
“And then you got married?” asks Heather, leaning forward and pulling on the seatbelt.
“Yes,” she replies. “And then we got married.”

That afternoon on the beach, Heather and I bury my mother in the sand, neck deep.
“Girls, I don’t want sand in my hair,” she tells us, and Heather can’t stop laughing. My father sits under the shade of our large umbrella, his shirt unbuttoned. He refuses to be a part of the beach, exhaling smoke and dropping cigarette butts into the mouth of an empty can of soda.
“My face,” my mother says, “I’m going to get burned.”
I have Heather retrieve the sunscreen, and we apply it on my mother’s forehead, her nose, and cheeks. Then, something comes over me, seeing my mother’s head above the sand, raising her eyebrows and moving her puckered lips left to right as our fingers rub the lotion onto her face, until it disappears into her skin. While Heather gets up and walks towards the water, I remember how in art class we were told that two pieces of clay must be thoroughly smashed together to become one, so that our crude animal sculptures and ashtrays do not fall to pieces in the kiln. I think of the cells that compose my mother’s skin, and also my own. I bring my face down to hers, pressing my lips tightly against her cheek, kissing her loudly.
“Oh, sweetie,” she says smiling. “Look at your sister. Just look.”
We watch her splash in the ocean up to her ankles as the small waves rush towards the sand. When she returns, Heather asks, “Where’s Dad?”
My mother turns her head as much as she can to find my father’s empty lawn chair under the umbrella. “Girls, get me out.”

Puzzle Pieces

Since around late June/early July I've been trying to work on a story, the same way I've been trying to save money. Both haven't been working out so well. What I have so far is a page and a half of prose blocks that almost fit together. I think what I'll do is just post a new prose block whenever I have one done. If anyone's reading this, expect inconsistencies in time and space between the blocks.