Sycamore Read online

  Dedication

  For TW

  Epigraph

  We are tangled

  We are stolen

  We are living where things are hidden.

  —John Doe, “The Golden State”

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  You Are Here

  In a Crevice of the Earth

  Sounds from Inside

  The New Girl

  Unearthed

  Skates

  Azaleas

  Traces

  Maybe You Already Know

  The Shaking Season

  Who, What, Where, When

  At the Front Door

  Lights in Winter

  Hold Still, This Is Going to Sting

  Outside the Window

  A Ride Home

  The Hunger Year

  Say You See the World

  Thank You for Calling

  Mass and Gravity

  Sundown at the Orchard

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  You Are Here

  January 1991

  Her first night in Sycamore, the girl snuck out of the house. Wearing frayed purple canvas shoes and a new puffy vinyl winter coat the red-orange of an ocotillo bloom, the girl paused on her tiptoes on the threshold when the front door hinges creaked. Her mother, deaf in her left ear, didn’t stir, and the girl shut the door with a click. This wasn’t the girl’s first time to slip out the door late at night, and it wouldn’t be her last. (There would be a last time, but not tonight.) For now she had this night, her first in a small northern Arizona town where her mother had dragged her. She shoved her notebook inside her coat and hurried down the driveway. Her breath smoked in the desert winter air.

  At the end of the driveway, beyond the porch light’s bowled halo, she stopped. No Phoenix streetlights. No swish of tires from nearby Seventh Avenue, no shouts echoing from the bus stops and bars, no jet engines from red-eyes at Sky Harbor. She stared into a cold, silent darkness so vast she grew dizzy. An eerie quiet. Unquiet. Sweat pricked her armpits, and she widened her eyes, thinking about the owls that roosted in their neighbor’s ash tree back home, that prizefighter bob-and-weave as they gauged what lay before them.

  She looked up, and the silence stopped. The carbonized sky howled as the Milky Way cracked its sternum, exposing its galactic heart. She clenched her eyes shut as if she’d stared into a klieg light. Back in central Phoenix, in a neighborhood blanketed by the grapefruit haze of streetlights, the night sky never sank into black. Even out in the desert, beyond the city’s glow, stars and planets hung back like shy children. Her nostrils flared at the sudden smell of mint, and she shivered with the sensation she had tumbled down a hole. She thought, Oh my god, I’m Baby Jessica! I’m in a well! Help! It’s dark in here! She laughed with a hard exhale, and the sound surprised her. She opened her eyes. That was her father’s laugh, a caw that veered into honk.

  Her eyes began to adjust. The shapes of trees and shrubs and rooftops sharpened, and neighbors’ lights emerged as pushpin dots along the edges. Her new street stretched before her, a single stripe down its center. Roadrunner Lane. Beep beep, she thought, picturing childhood cartoons, and as if on cue, coyotes began to yip in the distance. The silhouette of the Black Hills loomed—to the west, she knew, because the sun set over the hills—salted with the lights of Jerome. Her nose, ears, and feet growing numb, she hopped up and down for warmth, trying to decide if she should go inside for a hat and thicker socks. Instead, she began to jog the mile east toward town.

  Though she was tall and long-legged—she’d hit five-ten that year—she was not a graceful runner. Arms flailing and feet dragging, she felt more like a branch caught in a rushing river, lurching over rocks and roots, tumbled forward by the force of mass and gravity. Sixteen had been the Year of Hips, and she had to cinch the waistbands of her wider pants with belts and safety pins. And look at those feet. Ridiculous. It was a wonder she didn’t trip over them every second of the day. She’d quit ballet last year, self-conscious now of her body in a leotard, of her lumbering leaps and thuds on the studio floor. How had humans evolved into these stupid, unaerodynamic bodies? Still, she was outdoors. She was moving forward, gulping down clean, cold air. In the low end of the foothills, the road swelled and dipped, crossed washes in the depressions. Downhill, she picked up speed. Her puffy red jacket made a pleasing slushy sound as her arms swished against it, her notebook tucked against her heart. Impetuously she leaped, a quick jeté, jeté, jeté, defying gravity for three brief spans.

  The impulse to be out—she’d had it since she was young, when she would burst through the door and leap off the steps en route to the playground, the yard, the swimming pool, back when she was young enough to perform along the way, all extended arms and chassés and pas de bourrées. On her recent late-night excursions in Phoenix, she usually went only as far as the backyard; she stretched out on a blanket in the grass with a flashlight and a book, or on irrigation nights splashed through the flooded lot, feeling the earth sink and squish between her toes. Once she had her license, she would sometimes take her father’s pickup, rolling it silently to the end of the drive with the engine off, and after he packed up and left, she did the same with her mother’s brown sedan. She didn’t always go far, mostly up and down the grid streets of her neighborhood, listening to mixtapes on the stereo. She’d park under a streetlight and write in her notebook, scratching out her lousy poems, trying to calm her itchy nerves. Like now, she wasn’t seeking trouble or mischief or clandestine meetups—well, she once had been, when she was with the Boy, but not since they broke up almost six months ago. Instead, she was easing the tightness that grew in her all day as she bumped her way through the school halls with her newly belled hips, as she evaded the Boy and his smirking friends, as she navigated her parents’ arguments, the tense conversations that stopped short when she entered the room. Here in her new town, she didn’t know what she was seeking. Out. Go—that was the impulse.

  Breathless, the girl stopped atop a slope from which she could see the center of town. In Phoenix, when she viewed the city from some height, the sprawling city hissed and spit, defiant in its radiant heat. The little town of Sycamore struck her as something out of a fairy tale in its smallness, in its cluster of businesses along Main Street, its small college on one side, her new high school on the other. Though it seemed to emit a gentle sigh, a sleepy breath, she thought not of sweetness but of Frankenstein: “By the glimmer of the half-extinguished light, I saw the dull yellow eye of the creature open.” As soon as she thought it, she grinned and rolled her eyes. Such drama. As her mother always said, Lighten up, J-bird. You’re sixteen years old.

  Almost seventeen now. She didn’t know why, but that was important. One step closer to people taking her seriously. One more step away from this sucky year.

  Earlier that afternoon, her mother had driven them to the high school. As her mother filled out paperwork to sign her up for classes, the girl leaned against a pillar and watched the other students walk the halls, slouch against the rows of yellow lockers, scatter like dice when the bell rang. About the same as in Phoenix: plenty of shit-kickers, jocks, and cheerleaders overly fond of hair spray. She did see one kid who clearly worshipped Morrissey and another with a safety pin in his ear, wearing a Misfits T-shirt, so maybe all was not lost. Misfit. Ill-fitting, like a too-tight coat or shrunken gloves, like her stupid pants belted tight at the waist. Why was it she recognized herself in the prefixes, in altered meanings: Unsettled. Uneasy. Misshapen. Atypical. Ex-girlfriend. Ex-daughter.

  Two boys, wearing flannel shirts and jeans and wrestling a
large cardboard box, shuffled by. They both looked at her and smiled; once they’d passed, they whispered over the box and glanced back, laughing. Those laughs: at once flirtatious and threatening. She tugged her sweater over her hips and fought the urge to crouch. She thought of the Boy, whom she had forbidden herself to think of, and how she’d once gotten a buzz from his flattery, a rush of heat from his touch. She crossed her legs and twisted into herself.

  Afterward, her mother drove them around town for half an hour. Up and down Main Street, through the bordering neighborhoods, around Sycamore High and Sycamore College, to the post office where her mother would start work in two days, up the hairpin switchbacks to the tiny abandoned mining town of Jerome and its tight streets, where houses teetered on steep slopes. The girl tracked road signs, freshly memorized for her driver’s license test: Do Not Enter When Flooded. Road Slippery When Wet. No Passing. Yield. Stop Sign Ahead.

  At a gas station in town, the girl kept her face to the passenger window. A woman at the next pump wore mismatched striped socks and a giant yellow ribbon safety-pinned to her sweater. Across the street was a motel, the Woodchute Motor Lodge, which was built to look like cabins, all connected by a covered wraparound porch. Behind it loomed a strange black outcrop, a small mountain in the middle of town.

  Her mother sighed. “The silent treatment is getting old, J-bird.”

  “What is there to say?” The girl shrugged. “We’re here. It’s done.”

  “There’s plenty to say. Tell me what you’re thinking.”

  She was thinking of everything as usual, her head spinning with a mess of the mundane and the profound: the president announcing war, how the rows of lockers looked like stained teeth, whether the letters on the Woodchute’s sign were hatched to resemble logs, the question of reality, of knowledge, of love. Her breath fogged the window, and she traced an X through the moisture. X marks the spot. You Are Here. Or was she? Were any of them?

  Her mother went on, “I know we’ve been over it, but it’s worth repeating. It’s a big change, and it all happened fast. Too fast. I know, and I’m sorry. We have a lot to figure out. It’s just you and me now. I need you on board, okay? I need you—” Her mother tugged on the girl’s arm. “Look at me, would you?”

  The girl pulled her arm away.

  Her mother shook her head. “The aggrieved teenager thing doesn’t suit you.”

  “I guess you would know,” the girl said. “Mother knows best.”

  “Right.” Her mother laughed.

  “It’s not funny,” the girl said. “It’s not a joke.”

  Her mother rubbed hard at her forehead, pinching between her brows. Her voice rose as it did when she forgot to modulate, as if she were speaking over the din of a crowd. “Look. I didn’t want to get into all this before, because finances are my problem, not yours, but the fact is, even if I’d wanted to stay, we couldn’t. I had to sell the house. I couldn’t buy your father out, pay the lawyer, all the bullshit I didn’t want in the first place. That’s the part of divorce no one talks about. It’s expensive. It breaks you. Financially and otherwise.” She sighed again, tugging on the lobe of her bad ear. She lowered her voice. “But even if that weren’t the case, I needed a change. A fresh start. We both do.”

  The girl slumped lower in her seat, thinking of her father. In California with his new blond wife, his new baby girl. Beautiful girl, something he’d once called her. The sister she’d wanted when she was younger, whom she’d begged her parents for (not understanding what her mother meant when she said, “We can’t have any more kids, honey”). She could not reconcile this new image with the mental family picture she had always known. It was as if she and her mother had been cut out and replaced with two strangers’ faces. Not a sister but a replacement. His new beautiful girl. It seemed like a bad dream creeping in during the day, and she’d think, No, that’s not real. Except it was. And her father was the one holding the scissors and paste. She had decided she would not speak to him again. He didn’t want them? Well, fuck him. Fuck. Him.

  Her mother said, “We’re here. You have a year and a half left of school, college to think about. Give it a chance.”

  The girl turned and looked at her mother, who sat facing the windshield, her jaw flexing as she tried not to cry. In her mother’s profile, the girl could see herself, the longish chin and straight nose, the messy curls her mother pinned with combs, the laugh lines fanned at the corners of her eyes. Like a snapshot of her future self.

  She reached out and touched a freckle on her mother’s wrist.

  Her mother wiped under her eyes and smiled at the girl. “I had a wild thought. What if we like it here?” She gasped and clutched at her heart.

  The girl rolled her eyes. “Heaven forbid.”

  Her mother grinned. She turned the key ignition and tapped the steering wheel. “You want to drive? Come on.”

  The girl hid a smile in her sleeve. They switched sides, and she settled herself behind the wheel, latching the seat belt.

  “Check your mirrors,” her mother said. “God, I can’t believe you’re taller than me now. Taller than your dad even.”

  Your dad, instead of Dad. Another among all the changes.

  The girl said, “Can’t wait for the witty repartee at school. ‘Hey, how’s the weather up there?’ ” She stuck her finger in her mouth and made a gagging sound. She thought of those laughing boys in the hall, of how she’d slumped against the pillar, trying to hide. After the Boy and his dumb lies, that’s what she’d been doing at her old school: hiding in plain sight, ducking from the sense of shame that dogged her like a shadow. Her shame wasn’t about the sex so much as being duped, as being stupid: she’d believed him. Her, the girl who questioned everything. Love—ha.

  Her mother reached over and squeezed the girl’s arm. “Try. Okay? For me? Come on, it’ll be an adventure.”

  Her mother fell silent, and she did too, knowing that had been one of her father’s favorite phrases; he’d say “adventure” with a goofy French accent. She revved the engine and checked her mirrors before pulling the car to the parking lot exit. She started to flip the turn signal but realized she had no idea which way was home. Home. A house on a street she didn’t yet recognize. She put her forehead on the steering wheel and blinked hard.

  “Left, J-bird,” her mother said, reaching over and cupping the back of the girl’s neck.

  Her mother’s palm, warm as a sun-heated window. She had the strange sense she was hearing a secret, the universe whispering hot into her ear: Don’t blink.

  The girl sat up. She pulled her shoulders back and pressed her spine against the seat. Okay. No more hiding. From here on out, head on.

  Standing in the dark, her breath slowing, the girl marked an X in the air, over the town in the short distance. You Are Here. She leaned against a stop sign and pulled her notebook from her jacket. She rolled off the rubber band that kept the pen wedged inside and then put the band in her mouth and bit down. She liked the pressure of the rubber between her teeth, the slight squeak and resistance. She liked the oddity of writing when she could barely see her hands, the words sprawling crooked and unruly across the page. When she finished her thought, she snapped the band around the book and zipped it inside her coat. Then she walked to the center of the road and lay down on the pavement. The rocky asphalt dug into her scalp, scuffed her jacket and jeans. She drew an X across the sky. You Are Here. And where in the world was here in relation to all that? What were the soldiers in Iraq, the Iraqis themselves, seeing right now? How easy it would be for her, for everyone, to disappear. If they even existed at all. She thought, It’s thoughts like these that make you so fuckin’ popular. Where’s your school spirit? Rah rah rah. She laughed, breaching the quiet. Her father’s laugh. But her mother’s looks and humor. And all her own, too.

  Seventeen. Who would she be then? Who would she be here?

  She opened her eyes as wide as she could. Don’t blink, she told herself.

  Something rustled
in the bushes next to her, and she jumped up fast. Too cold for snakes and lizards. A jackrabbit? Javelina? Or a mountain lion—weren’t they nocturnal? Or, she thought as she scuttled backward, a human? She turned and ran home in her gangly lope. Elemental, rushing, a force to be reckoned with.

  The girl let herself in the house, the soles of her canvas shoes squeaking on the tile. Home. Same worn plaid twill couch with grandma’s quilt across the back. Same shelf of faded green A–Z encyclopedias, the dictionary, Big Red, open on top. Same rocking chair with her old one-eyed teddy bear in its seat. Yet nothing was the same.

  In the bedroom, her mother hadn’t budged, sleeping on her right side with her hands tucked under her cheek, her brown curls obscuring her bad ear. She’d been sleeping a lot these days, climbing into bed soon after dinner, staying under the covers on her days off. She slept hard, seemingly immune to slammed cupboards or clanking dishes or thudding doors. The girl stood close and watched her. Her mother began to whimper, and the girl saw a glint of wetness. Crying in her sleep again—the only time she really ever saw her mother cry. She sat on the bed and put her hand on her mother’s shoulder. Her long hair brushed her mother’s arm.

  Her mother stirred. “Jess? Is that you?”

  “It’s me,” the girl said. “I’m here.”

  In a Crevice of the Earth

  Though it was late June, with temperatures climbing into the 100s, Laura Drennan walked her new town during the afternoon, the heat pressing right through the soles of her tennis shoes. She slathered on sunblock and wore the only hat she could find in the moving boxes: a stupendous lime-green foam visor emblazoned with a cartoon frog slamming a tequila shot, which emerged from under a pile of shoes, a faint tread mark on the brim (her best guess: it had belonged to the Girlfriend, she of the jean skirts and pencil hips, acquired on a little clandestine trip down to Tijuana with Charlie). And so Laura wore it—why not!—as she walked in a high-stepping stomp to ward off the diamondbacks she knew were coiled in the foxtails (though so far she’d seen only skittish lizards and grasshoppers, plumes of gnats, quail darting under the brush). Despite the sunblock, her arms and legs darkened to the color of a terra-cotta bowl—even the tender band of skin on her now-ringless ring finger had faded. Dust nested in the cuff of her sock, leaving a geologic circle above her anklebone.