The pay phone is far away, and there are too many people between it and me. I move through their voices, their outstretched hands, like a sideways rainstorm. Bobby and Dolores intercept before too many of them circle in.
“We got Hal and Joe guarding the cabin door. How’d you give ’em the slip? You can barely stand upright,” says Dolores.
“I have to call Tamara,” I tell them. Dolores orders the crowd back as Bobby loops her arm around my waist. “I don’t want to break up.”
“Well, halle-fucking-luya! She don’t want to break up with you either, dummy. Why don’t you use the phone at Rose’s?” Dolores asks.
“There’s too much Crystal Beach stuff insider her house.” The two stop dead. I just confessed again, right? ‘The amusement park is sacred’ was all a ploy to make Etta stronger. The boat wood, the souvenirs, all of it. I try to imagine what they’re thinking. That indeed they were right all along? Or that now the money will dry up? That they should abandon me to be trampled by this crowd?
A second later, we are moving again. “Outta our way,” Dolores yells like a boss. Bobby hugs me into her. She doesn’t even make a face at the touch she’s offering me. Is that it? Am I forgiven? Above us, the sky is the same pale yellow as the sun—summer haze. The quarry and grass are pale too. I wonder if I’m losing the ability to see colour. But the gazebo is still stained so red it hurts my eyes.
The pay phone rings before we reach it. Bobby lets go of me to answer. Dolores does her best to shush the crowd. “Who calls pay phones?” she says. “The government!”
It’s Etta, I think. She’s found a way to worm through the telephone lines. She is everywhere. Relentless. In the tap water, I’m sure I’m drinking her. In the grass, she is my every step. Stops at nothing. In everyone’s ears, on all tongues.
Maybe it really is fucking CFS, I think. Because Bobby hasn’t passed the phone to me yet. She says, “Uh huh. Uh huh.” Her hand moves like she’s writing in the air.
“Pen and paper,” Dolores shouts into the crowd. “Gimme a pen and paper now, people!” The crowd listens, hoping a divine proclamation is going to come through a beat-up pay phone, and for a moment everyone is quiet and still. In the lull, I finally spot Etta, waving at me from the shrine steps like she is Queen fucking Elizabeth II. I hate her. And I hate her more for not being close right now. For not being inside of me. She vanishes, and I hear the crowd roar up again with their familiar questions: Is there a message?
Etta appears again on Rose’s doorstep. One hand on the screen door handle, the other waving her royal asshole wave at me. Not Rose’s house. You promised.
Then come meet me on the dance floor. We’ll scream our pretty heads off like a Laurel and Hardy show. A real Dance of the Cuckoos. One can’t do that dance alone, Dollface.
I start screaming right where I stand. I’m a tripped alarm, a possessed siren. The quake in my throat flattens the grass, sends ripples across the quarry, and clears the haze from the sky. Many people in the crowd literally drop and roll and writhe on the ground. They are desperate for the reverberation. They want my suffering and fraudulence. They want my tired empty body. They want any feeling that they themselves don’t have to evoke. I understand this. But how do I un-understand it? How do I un-know?
Dolores is yelling too. And Bobby. She yells “Yes!” and “Finally!” and “Thank you.” Bobby holds the pay phone receiver skyward, triumphant.
“Was it the fucking CFS?” I ask, dazed.
“It was my auntie. I have an auntie. She saw me and Lucky in the news. In one of those photographs. Looks like your phony baloney angel has answered my prayers.” She shows us the piece of paper, the exuberantly scribbled words: Mother’s sister. Cat Lake. North of the Sioux Lookout. Aunt Helen.
Etta blitzes beside me, a blister of divine light, too fast, too sharp. The crowd also sees her and, just like the night the locket was found, everybody moves like there’s a riot.
“Run, girl,” Dolores yells. But it’s too late. I become as diaphanous as lace drapes, easy to tear into. Etta steps into me like a dress. She wears me. She’s wearing me out. Wearing me down to nothing. I am nothing without her. I am being hurt.