Her knees are weak, and she holds on to the towel rack, closing her eyes, taking a breath, and another, feeling her heart beating against her throat.
She hears laughing, talking, good-byes, and then the front door opening. She loosens her grip on the rack and walks to the front room, just in time to see Mama closing the door behind her and then leaning back against it. She sees Mama’s mouth moving but Zoe can’t put the words together. It is a background jumble, as if she and Mama are moving on two different planes of time. As if her run to the bathroom has jolted her into another dimension. Has it? She feels nothing. She looks at Mama’s eyes. They’re unfocused, her pupils large, black, watery pools circled with a thin line of blue. Her dress is twisted and hanging off one shoulder, her dingy bra strap exposed. It tugs across her bloated middle, and Zoe sees the lines that have folded into her face since yesterday. Mama lifts her hand to brush her hair from her forehead, her beautiful forehead that Zoe has kissed so many times, but now its soft milkiness is a remembered dream. The planes she and Mama move on converge once again, and she hears Mama’s words.
“What the hell you staring at?”
“Nothing, Mama,” Zoe answers. “I’m staring at nothing.”
Mama pushes past her, and Zoe hears her stumbling in her room, drawers slamming too loudly, closet doors swinging too wide. Mama returns in only her slip and settles on the couch with a half-filled glass in her hand. “Hand me the controls, will you, sugar?” There is no talk about Zoe’s day, school, or her suspension. No questions.
She hands Mama the control and goes to her bedroom, not bothering to shut the door. She hears the click of the TV and chopped-up conversations as Mama flips through the channels. Chopped-up conversations that sound so familiar to her, like it is the only way people talk, talking but never finishing, finishing where there is no beginning.
She pulls the duffel from under her bed. She fills it. This time the decisions about what to put in seem easy. Her hands move methodically. She does the same with one pillowcase and then another. She hears Mama laugh and then soft whimpering, like an animal that has been wounded. Pauses, coughs, sobs, and the clink of the glass punctuate Mama’s pleas.
“Sugar…,” she moans.
“Come here…,” she calls.
“I need to talk to you…,” she sobs.
Chopped-up conversations whose only beginning is Mama.
Zoe takes a piece of blue-lined paper from her notebook and begins writing. By the time she is finished and returns to the living room, Mama is asleep. She tapes the note to the TV screen.
There is Chinese in the refrigerator. The dishes are done. The utility bill is paid. I don’t live here anymore. I live at 373 Lorelei Street.
I love you.
Zoe
She loads the duffel and pillowcases into her car, and when she drives away, she leaves the chain-link gate swinging open wide.
Ten
Zoe paces the porch.
Walks in small circles.
Pulls in careful breaths.
Jiggles her hands to shake out trembling fingers.
It’s 8:20, dark, much too late to be knocking on an old woman’s door to take a room. She might scare the hell out of her if she rings the bell now. And after paying the electric bill today, she only has a hundred and thirty-six dollars left. Not even enough for a full month’s rent. But tomorrow night she works, and she can usually count on her Thursday shift to bring in fifteen or sixteen in tips. She’ll be extra nice to the customers. Her words will be all sugar—Yes, ma’am and No problem, sir—even if they ask for a thousand fucking substitutions. She’ll squeeze twenty bucks out of tomorrow night. Will Opal wait until then?
The bulb to the right of the door glows a soft yellow, washing the gray-blue slats of the porch in a warm golden haze, blotting out the rest of Ruby, the world, in a safe circle of light that holds Zoe in. There is nowhere else to go. The room is already hers in her heart. She puts her finger to the bell, and with a jerky movement she forces it forward before she can change her mind. She hears a muted buzz, soft humming, and then the door swings open wide. Opal is smiling, her hair wrapped in a jeweled orange turban, a few stray curls spinning out near her ears, and a flowing purple caftan lapping near her ankles. She pushes open the screen door, waving Zoe in. “Ah, yes, yes,” she warbles in her birdlike voice. “You made it. I was wondering when you’d get here.”
Zoe steps inside. She tries to think back to her conversation with Opal. She is sure she never said anything about coming. “You knew I was coming?”
“Oh, not tonight. But I knew. I can read people’s eyes. I read yours. They said today or tomorrow. Friday afternoon at the latest.” Opal winks, and Zoe isn’t sure if Opal is teasing or if she’s a brick short of a load, but she likes the idea that someone could know what lives behind her eyes. She’s not sure anyone has ever done that before. Opal guides her along by her elbow to a small table in the entryway, still humming her tuneless song. She opens its single shallow drawer and shuffles some papers aside. “Here we go.” She places a small silver key in Zoe’s palm, tweaks her head to the side, and says, “Welcome, Zoe Beth Buckman, to Opal’s Lorelei
Oasis.” Opal looks up at the ceiling, squints her eyes, and then nods her head. “Yes. Yes. I like that. Though I did consider Opal’s Lorelei Hideout, too. Sounds dangerous and exciting. What do you think?”
“I—” Zoe is drawn to Opal’s eyes. Can she read what lies behind them, too? For this moment, it seems she can. Wrinkled flesh gathers in folds around the old woman’s eyes, circling the amber pools, the black pupils, the flecks of faded green, and Zoe sees…she is not sure she can put a name to it yet, but she recognizes it. It stirs up images…searching beneath a pillow for a quarter that has replaced a tooth…sitting frozen for half an hour with a few bread crumbs in her cupped palm, barely breathing as a mourning dove steps closer and closer…driving home from Wal-Mart in the front seat of a jostling truck, stroking a brand new tennis racket laid across her lap…a word something like hope…or maybe possibility is the better choice…possibility…the word she reads in Opal’s eyes. “I like them both,” she says.
Opal claps her hands and cackles. “Well, we’ll stick with oasis—for today. Who knows about tomorrow!”
Yes, Zoe thinks. Possibility is the word. She reaches into her purse and takes out all her cash—one hundred and thirty-six dollars, most of it in bulky singles from her tips. Opal wrinkles up her nose and, still smiling, waves Zoe’s fistful of money away.
“Oh, no, no. Let’s not spoil our celebration by counting out that tonight. You can pay me tomorrow, and since we are already a week into September, let’s make it an even hundred, shall we?” Before she has finished her last sentence, she is floating up the stairs, her caftan billowing behind her like a purple cloud, calling back to Zoe, “Might as well go in this way tonight. I’ll show you where the bathroom is and then we can get your things. You did bring things, didn’t you? Can’t nest without your own things. Hurry, dear, the moon is almost up. You won’t want to miss it! And you still have to meet the Count.”