All That's Left to Tell(24)

Near his knee was a small stone, and he picked it up and gave it a short toss. Saabir watched it slide under a shrub.

“And then, closer to home, when it was almost sunset, we were still outside of town, and we were passing a farm where a line of cows was headed back to the barn. It was idyllic, really. A Norman Rockwell painting of goodness. I looked into the backseat, and I could see Claire’s face. And she was staring at the cows, and then when they were gone, she stared into a dried cornfield that hadn’t yet been harvested. And her eyes were narrowed, and I was astonished to see her crying. And then she said, ‘But that was bullshit. None of it was real. None of it. I can’t believe the things a beautiful place can make you believe.’”

The three of them—Marc, Saabir, and the woman—sat in silence then. A cooling breeze came up the hill and through the trees, and he remembered a time when he was young when he’d visited an old friend who lived in the mountains in Oregon, and how late at night the wind poured through the firs with a deep, sweeping whisper, and he’d thought if he could hear that sound long enough it would have scrubbed his soul clean.

“I wonder if Saabir would be willing to share his cigarette,” he said.

The woman spoke to him, and Saabir rose from his stone seat, his knee popping, and strode over and handed Marc the half-smoked cigarette. It tasted vaguely of Saabir’s mouth, some subtle, unknown spice, and reminded him he hadn’t eaten. Marc took a deep, long drag, and resisted the urge to cough. He hadn’t smoked in twenty years. He exhaled and handed the cigarette back to Saabir.

“Thank you,” Marc said. Saabir moved a few steps away behind him, so for the first time, all he could see were the mountains and the valley.

“You know, I’m sure it sounds like I told that story intentionally. Because we’re here, in these hills. I didn’t. Before the moment those words came out of my mouth, I wouldn’t have remembered what Claire said on the way home.”

With neither Saabir nor the woman in sight, under the isolating sky, it felt as if he were talking to himself.

“I don’t understand how she could feel so much despair at age sixteen.”

Here, maybe, he thought, had she grown up in poverty, had she seen too much suffering, but not back home. She had been partly right about beautiful places. Sitting here, now, the sun beginning to emerge from behind the cliff face warming his back and brightening the horizon, he could see the beauty, he could observe it and remember how, a few minutes ago, his eyes filled with tears, but it didn’t penetrate, it didn’t fill spaces taken up by other things, even the memory of Claire, temporarily transfigured by beauty, bounding toward the car. She was sixteen. Why hadn’t she been living closer to her skin? Then at nineteen. He closed his eyes and shook the image of her away.

He heard Josephine take a few steps toward him, and as the sun shone from behind the wall, he could see her shadow cast near his own. He could see its narrow shoulders and perhaps its cloaked head.

“For the first few minutes Claire could think of very little to say to the woman, as she sat quietly beside her in the tiny truck,” Josephine said.

Marc flinched at the mention of Claire’s name. Would Josephine take up her story even out here, standing behind him, with the low desert wind sighing through the mountains?





7

Claire was used to making small talk with the guests at the motel, but had been traveling alone on the highway for so many hours that any question or observation was eluding her. She kept stealing surreptitious glances at the woman, who was, she now realized, maybe older than she looked, maybe in her late twenties, lines at her eyes and the corners of her mouth, but her expression held a subtle sense of mischief that conferred a kind of boyishness. The woman—Genevieve, she reminded herself, an unusual name—picked up the scarf she’d worn over her head in the sun and wiped some road dust from her face, and then took a corner and rubbed it gently over each eye; Claire had never met someone whose eyes appeared so deeply gray, so impenetrable, and they were by far her prettiest feature.

“So what’s in Chicago?” Claire finally asked her.

“A boyfriend. An ex-boyfriend. He says it’s the best city in the world, and he wants to show it to me and have me live with him there for a while. Probably, he’s lonely. Or wants some company in his bed. But I’ve never been, and I’ll have a place to stay for a few months.”

The woman smiled and shifted her gaze from the road to Claire’s face, and asked, “So who’s in Michigan?”

“My father,” Claire said.

The woman nodded and looked out the windshield, squinting. She pushed her sleeves up over her shoulders, and then ran a hand over each arm. The light hairs there were golden in the sun that came through the side window, and didn’t seem to match her raven head. Claire guessed the woman colored it.

“Wow,” she said. “It’s so good to feel the air coming through.”

Claire smiled at her. “You could’ve gotten heatstroke.”

“Well, I’m used to it. It’s always hot here.”

“There’s an extra pair of sunglasses in the glove box, if you want.”

“No, that’s okay. When I’m not driving, I like to see the world as it really is.”

Reflexively, Claire looked out the top of her sunglasses. The sagebrush and distant plateaus were bleached pale in the sun.