The moon is high above the yard when I step around the side of the house. I am keyed up from work and seeing John and Sage again. I won’t settle for a while. I often spend time out by the pool when I first come home from the bar, unwinding, soaking up the silence.
As I step around the corner, I see Shirley sitting in the plastic chair in the moonlight. I am equal parts glad and annoyed. I had forgotten they were here, but now the memory rushes back, and I remember all the reasons why Shirley and the girls needed to be here. I think she is asleep, slouched down, but then her long arm trails the side of the chair and draws a plastic tumbler up to her mouth.
“Hey,” I call out in a whisper, because I don’t want to startle her. I try to make my voice sound light and friendly. She nods, either because she is too dazed and drunk to be surprised or she had heard my car.
“How was work?” she asks, looking up at the moon. I almost expect her to howl; there is something otherworldly about her in this light. With the night I have had, I wouldn’t be surprised if she did howl and transform into a great, hairy wolf.
“You know, it’s a bar,” I say, throwing it away. It’s a nothing job. I sit down on the concrete, my feet flat and my knees drawn up.
“Which one?” she asks, and I tell her. “Yeah. I know Pete’s. They have good bands sometimes, but too many Navy boys.” She makes a face, letting me see clearly what she thinks of Navy boys. Her diction has slipped, and her words are long and slow.
“Billy Reed played tonight. Familiar?”
She shakes her head and takes a drink. I lean back on my hand, feeling the residual heat of the day coming up from the concrete.
“Want a drink?” she asks, and I think for a second that she is going to offer me her cup, but then she lifts the bottle from where it was nestled alongside her body. It is two-thirds gone.
“No. I don’t really drink,” I say, keeping my voice low and neutral. “I like your girls,” I add.
“Yeah, they are somethin’ else.”
“They’re seven?”
Shirley nods but doesn’t say anything, staring out across the water and through the yard.
“What grade does that put them in?” I try to calculate but can’t remember.
“Second,” she says, “No, wait. Sasha got held back.” Her brows draw together, and I can tell she is trying to remember if that is right.
So like my mother. A creeper crawls my spine. What a night.
“So she’s in first. I was held back, too.” I don’t want her to think that I judge Sasha for it.
“Yeah,” she says, not the least bit interested, “it’s better for them not to be together anyway.” I can’t imagine how that could be true, but I just look down into the water of the pool. “They live with their dad,” she adds, and I don’t know how to respond to that. So I don’t.
“Well, I think they’re great.” From the corner of my eye, I see her tongue work its way around the rim of her teeth and hear her pouring a new slug of vodka into the tumbler.
“So how’d you end up here?” she asks, recapping the bottle and settling it again in the crook of her hip.
“I came out with a girlfriend, but we had a falling out.”
“So, you gay?” she asks, and the question sounds hollow; she isn’t really interested.
“No, not me. She was just a friend. She had a cousin who had a room, you know.” I wonder if it would be easier if I liked women. Would that change the conflicted way I feel about sex, about the power and control of it? Not that it matters. I don’t seem to like men anymore, either.
“So what did you fight about?”
I let out a long sigh, “She stole some money from me.”
“That sucks.”
“Yep. It does.” I tilt my head, and my bones give a satisfying snap, releasing tension. “After that, I needed somewhere to stay and saw an ad in the paper for this place. It’s really peaceful.”
She snorts. “You mean boring.”
I laugh because she thinks she made a joke. “I don’t know. I like it.”
“They’ve never rented it before. That’s why I was surprised you were here.” She glances at me, trying to understand something. “Vicki said it was Ina’s idea.”
I nod. “I think so.” Vicki isn’t her mom, but it seems they are comfortable with each other—like there is like, if not love. We sit in silence for a long time, enough time for her to drink through the contents of her glass and add some more.
“She’s odd,” her voice rasps, and she lets the last word draw out.
I don’t know which of them she means—Ina or Vicki, so I say, “I think she’s great. Both of them.”
She snorts but doesn’t say anything. Another long stretch of silence closes around us, and I think she may have fallen asleep. She has been motionless for so long. Then her arm ratchets, and she lifts her glass.
“So what do you do?”
“I work for Southwest, in and out of Vegas, mostly. Their hub is Vegas; I’m trying to transfer.”
“That would make it hard to see the girls,” I say and instantly regret it.
“No different from it is now. Their dad is a jerk.” She clears her throat and spits a wad onto the concrete on the other side of her chair, and I clench my teeth and look away. Mucus is so gross. I can handle blood just fine, but snot makes me queasy. “We’re divorced, you know. He’s on business in San Francisco this weekend, and his new wifey couldn’t keep them.” There is a hard note in her voice, and another slug of the liquid in her glass goes down her throat.
I don’t say a word, not knowing the right thing to say. I hear Sasha telling me, “She doesn’t want us,” and I wonder who she had been talking about, the mother or the stepmother. Poor girls. I’d always felt like my mother didn’t see me, like I was a burden, a difficulty, because I always needed something: attention, clothes, food, supplies. Still, I’d never once felt like she would let somebody else have me. I always knew where I would sleep, and I always knew what home looked like. For better or for worse.
Time stretches out with no words between us, until she stands up, wobbles a bit, and bumps against the pillar on her way to the sliding door of the basement. She left her empty tumbler, but took her bottle. I think she forgot I was here. I sit another half hour until the chill of the desert night overtakes the residual heat and starts to creep through my clothes.
I hear them breathing in the living room, and I hesitate, tempted to go make sure they all have blankets, but Shirley may not be asleep yet and that would seem weird. I turn down the hall toward my bedroom. I open the door, and the overwhelming scent of vodka takes me back in time. I step quickly away from the door. Shirley is sprawled out across my bed, face down, snoring into my pillow. At first I am annoyed, irritated that she took my room, but I let it go. This is more her house than mine. I think of the girls sleeping on the pull-out bed at the other end of the apartment, and I go down to find a place on the loveseat.
They are deep asleep. One is curled in on herself, and the other is flung open to the world, her legs and arms akimbo. Looking at their faces, there is nothing to tell me which one is Sasha and which one is Simone. I think it’s Sasha folded in on herself, sleeping the way she lives, quiet and protective, and Simone is taking it all on, ready for the battle that is life. I drag the blanket from the back of the loveseat down and over myself, using the armrest as a pillow, and let my eyes rest on the girls, thinking about the road they are on and if there is any way I can pull them free of it . . . until I finally sleep.