Local Girls (15 page)

They left in the morning, as soon as Mike had gone to work.

“I'll be waiting for you, sweetie,” Margot had whispered to Mike when she kissed him goodbye, but she'd already been holding the keys to the Corvette in her hand. “He's the best,” she told Gretel as they headed north on the interstate.

Gretel was still wearing her black dress, but she'd taken a pair of scissors to the wool and scooped out the neck in deference to the weather. She'd slipped on the yellow flip-flops she'd bought the day before, and left her heavy black shoes under the bed in Margot's guest room. She had one of Margot's scarves tied around her hair; it was frothy and blue, the exact color of the Florida sky. Gretel flipped down the visor and smiled when she caught sight of herself, a vision in chiffon and sunglasses.

“When my neighbor Dora told me about this woman, I thought I'd wait for you to go with me,” Margot said.

“Yeah, sure.” Gretel smirked. “Meaning you were afraid to go yourself.”

“I'm not afraid.” But in truth, Margot had been awake all night, her nerves a jumbled mess.

“Fine. We'll go and you'll see it's bullshit and that will be that.”

The woman in question was located in a shopping mall in Glades, beside the Dunkin' Donuts. Her name was Natalie LeFrance, and she could cure whatever afflicted you for a hundred and fifty dollars, or so Margot's neighbor Dora had sworn. Dora herself had been covered with warts until her visit to Glades and now her skin was clear and smooth. Well, Margot's problem was more serious than warts, so naturally she was a little anxious. She had the right to be.

What Margot wanted was a baby. She had yearned for one for more than sixteen years, all through her first marriage, and during those years when she was single, and now, with Mike. Every doctor she went to told her pregnancy was impossible for her, she'd have to be a fool to keep trying. She'd read all the medical literature about infertility, been to the specialists, and had followed any suggestions, no matter how far-fetched. She had stood on her head directly after sex. She'd eaten only chocolate and asparagus, then switched to a diet of grapefruit and hard-boiled eggs. She'd had intercourse once a month, then three times a day, and none of it had worked. Now here she was, in a parking lot, pulling into a space next to a Fotomat on a broiling-hot day. It was a run-down shopping area with weeds sprouting through the asphalt and a big old palm offering the only shade. The air smelled like sugar and doughnuts and melting tar.

“Lovely spot,” Gretel said. “It looks like the perfect place to get mugged.”

But Margot had a good feeling. She felt light-headed and somehow carefree.

“This is going to work,” she insisted. “I just know it.”

“Oh, sure. If you believe in it,” Gretel said.

“You think it's wrong to believe in something?”

Margot had gotten out her lipstick and had begun to reapply the deep scarlet color to her lips. Now she turned to her cousin, and Margot seemed so innocent and so desperate Gretel didn't have the heart to be honest.

“Fine. If you want to believe you can find a cure in a shopping center, then believe.”

Gretel herself had believed in very little since the deaths of her mother and her brother, and who could blame her? Okay, maybe she believed in random atrocities, the old anthill theory, that human beings were equally liable to be squashed by the careless feet of fate.

When Margot and Gretel got out of the car, they noticed that two guys who worked at the Fotomat were leaning out their window, giving the Corvette the once-over.

“Lock it,” Gretel said.

“Whatever happens happens.” Margot had bigger issues than a possible stolen vehicle.
“C'est la vie.”

“Okay. It's your car.” Gretel took the chiffon scarf from her head, then tied it around her throat so that she gave a far jauntier appearance than she meant to. “But let me ask you one thing. Do you really think someone with true healing powers would be located next to a Dunkin' Donuts?”

“Depends on the rents.” Margot knocked three times on the door, as per Dora's recommendation, then rang the bell twice. She'd wanted this baby for so long it had almost become a living, breathing person already.

“Tell me one thing.” Gretel took off her sunglasses in spite of the Florida glare. “Do you think she could have helped my mother?”

Gretel's mother's cancer had metastasized so quickly and so aggressively it was like a kick from the center of the universe that struck and destroyed before anyone had time to blink.

“I don't know,” Margot admitted. “Maybe. Maybe not.”

Gretel's black dress was sticking to her skin like needles and pins. Margot had recognized it as the one Gretel had worn to her mother's funeral the minute her cousin had stepped off the plane, but she was far too polite to mention her observation. Gretel had been wearing the dress almost constantly for over a year. She'd been washing it by hand, but it was shrinking all the same.

“If we'd just taken my mother here, she'd still be alive? Is that what you're trying to tell me?”

For years Gretel had been cutting her own hair and the dark strands stuck up in wisps all over her head. This hairstyle looked like the saddest thing in the world to Margot. She remembered the day Gretel was born, all the hope she and Frances had had, and now Gretel was a full-grown woman with a terrible haircut who didn't believe in anything.

“Honey, we did everything we could for your mother.”

 

“Maybe we didn't,” Gretel said. Her voice sounded funny, even to herself. The black dress felt like a nest of hornets on her back.

Gretel sat down on the curb, where weeds with yellow flowers were growing. She started to sneeze and her eyes welled up, but she didn't care.

Margot sat down beside her cousin. “We did everything,” she said. “Trust me.”

They had been buzzed into the storefront, but they hadn't noticed. Now the door opened and a woman wearing short shorts and a white halter top appeared.

“Are you coming in or not?” It was Natalie LeFrance, the healer. Margot recognized her from the neighbor's description. Thick hair pulled into a ponytail. Silver earrings. A little blue tattoo at the base of her neck in the shape of a spider, caught in a web.

“What do you think?” Margot asked Gretel. “Should we?”

 

Gretel could not remember the last time her cousin had asked for her advice. “We're here.” Gretel shrugged. “What the hell.”

The storefront was air-conditioned and as cold as a freezer. There were bottles of herbs on a shelf, along with a TV, turned on without the sound. They sat around a table and drank glasses of warm ginger ale.

“I can see you're in a lot of pain,” Natalie said to Gretel.

“I'm not the client,” Gretel informed her. She couldn't help the smirk on her face.

“Really? I'm seeing pain.”

“I'm the one with the problem.” Margot tapped on the table. “I can't get pregnant.”

“Okay. Listen to me. I want you to have sex with your husband twice tonight. Once in the moonlight, once in the dark.” Natalie LeFrance leaned both elbows on the table and lowered her voice confidentially, even though the closest human life-forms were the Fotomat guys out in the parking lot. “You understand, of course, I have to be paid for my services.”

Gretel snorted. “Naturally.”

Margot reached for her purse to search for the hundred and fifty dollars she had brought along, but the healer stopped her.

“Not money. The ring.”

Margot's diamond was just under two carats, an unusual yellow-white stone.

“Oh, yeah, right.” Gretel got a good laugh out of this one. “Like she'd give you her ring.”

The odd thing was, the ring had always fit Margot's finger perfectly, but now it felt too heavy. All at once, she realized how much more comfortable she would feel without it. She slipped it off.

“You're crazy,” Gretel said.

The healer had the diamond in her pocket before you could count to three. “Right before you have sex, eat this.” She took Margot's hand and dropped a large avocado into her palm. Next she gave Margot a packet of herbs. “Mix this in—every bit of it.”

Margot nodded. She actually had tears in her eyes, that's how close she felt to her heart's desire. When they went back outside, the heat was like a brick wall. The parking lot seemed to be melting. The two guys from the Fotomat had been sitting in the Corvette, but as soon as they caught sight of Margot and Gretel approaching, they scrambled out.

After she'd gotten into the car, Gretel locked her door and rolled up her window. “A diamond ring in exchange for an avocado and some catnip,” she scoffed. “Now that's a deal.”

“We'll just have to see, won't we?” They were pulling out into traffic, but Margot would have felt safe even if she hadn't looked both ways. That's how secure she was. That's how certain she was that fate would see her through.

“I think Mike and I should have you locked up,” Gretel informed her cousin.

“Just try it.” Margot grinned. She felt so extremely light she might have been made of pure air. “You won't get far.”

They drove at eighty miles an hour the whole way home, and only stopped once, to pick up some groceries. Gretel, so used to cold, gray New York, hadn't bothered with sunscreen, and by the time they got home her cheeks were pink. While Margot fixed supper and waited for Mike, Gretel went upstairs to the guest room. She stretched out, and without meaning to, fell asleep in the heat of the late afternoon. She was so exhausted she might have slept the whole night through, if she hadn't heard them in their bed. Margot and Mike were all the way down the hall, behind the closed doors of their bedroom, but Gretel could still hear them having sex. It was so wild many of the neighborhood cats had gathered on the closest street corner to join in, howling beneath a sliver of silvery moon.

Gretel put on her black dress, and for the sake of privacy, she went downstairs. But even down in the kitchen, she could still hear Mike and Margot making love. She found her way to the patio, where the nearly empty bowl of guacamole Margot had served Mike was left on a wrought-iron table. Still, she could hear them going at it, even outside. At last, she went to the pool, which looked green in the moonlight. There were white moths skimming over the surface of the water and a thousand stars in the sky. At night, the scent of jasmine was sweet and rich and something was calling—a cricket or a frog, Gretel couldn't tell.

She sat at the shallow end of the pool, her legs dangling in the water. Margot and Mike must have opted for an open window rather than air-conditioning, even on this hot night, because Gretel continued to hear them. She had been thinking about sorrow for so long she was amazed to hear the sound of love. What a foreign language it was. How odd to an ear unused to such things. Gretel swung her feet back and forth, so that she would hear only the ripple of water, but those echoes of love kept on and on. The woolen dress was driving her mad by now; she could have sworn she had somehow picked up fleas. For two cents she would have ripped it off right then and there; instead, she did something she would have never expected of herself. She dove right into the pool.

The whole world turned fish-cool and silent. When she surfaced and began to swim laps, all she heard was water. So much liquid was an extreme relief; soon she began to shiver, not with cold but with pure pleasure. She felt as though she'd been wandering in the desert for a thousand years, and was thirsty enough to drink an entire ocean. She didn't go back into the house until long past midnight, and by then it was quiet. She left circles of chlorinated water on the tile floors and on the stairs. The dress had shrunk so badly it no longer reached past her thighs. It was so tight she had to cut it off with a pair of manicure scissors she found in the medicine cabinet.

In the morning, when Margot came down to fix coffee, Gretel was already out by the pool.

“How did it go?” Gretel called when she heard the commotion in the kitchen. She was wearing the pink bikini she never thought she'd have a need for.

“Great,” Margot called back.

Margot had already decided that if the baby was a girl she'd name her Francesca. If a boy, he'd be Frankie. And if it was neither, why, then she'd go and buy herself another diamond ring—three carats and flawless.

Margot took the orange juice from the fridge, poured two glassfuls, then carried them out to the patio. “Hey,” she said when she spied Gretel without the horrible black dress. She stopped in her tracks. “What happened to you?”

“Don't get all excited.” Margot could read too much into anything. “I just went for a swim.”

Margot placed the glasses of juice on the little metal table. “If I added a little champagne to the OJ, we'd have ourselves mimosas.”

Gretel slipped on her sunglasses while she waited for Margot to collect the bottle of champagne Mike had opened last night. The hour was so early even the birds were still in the process of waking. All the same, it was clearly going to be an incredible day; you could tell that from the way the sun was rising.

“It's flat but it's good,” Margot said when she returned to fix their mimosas. “Just like me.”

“Promise you won't ever tell me I have everything.” In spite of herself, Gretel noticed the sky was breaking open above them into delirious shades of blue. “Swear that you won't.”

“All right,” Margot agreed. “I won't tell you.”

Local Girls

Gretel stands by the gate, her fingers wrapped around the metal fence post. There are the roses, which she planted herself. Once, they were nothing more than seedlings packaged in brown paper and string, but with time they've become a gorgeous torrent of blooms, tumbling over the fence. Where the cherry tree had been, there is now a bed of English ivy, the growth so dense and thick anyone would guess it had been there forever. The sky is terrifically blue and clear; it's the only thing which has remained constant. Those clouds have always turned to castles when you squint your eyes, but once you blink, they're gone. Blink again, and you'll come to believe you never even saw them in the first place. It was all your imagination, that's what you'll start to think; it was all in your mind.