Ruth Galm - Into the Valley

She brushed a strand of hair out of her eyes. “Maybe I should get a cup of coffee,” she said, biting her lip. “Could you recommend a place?”

The officer coughed. “Well, there’s a Sambo’s at Second and Main. Just take a right here and go about five blocks.”

“Thank you.”

He hesitated and cleared his throat. “Try not to let someone find you like this again.”

“Yes, sir. Thank you.”

The houses looked gilded and soft in the late light; she did not want to leave them. But the policeman would not start his squad car until she started the Mustang, after which he followed. Her shoulders tensed until finally he turned.

The Sambo’s was a bright orange color outside, the booths and light fixtures the same lurid orange inside. The theme of the restaurant unfolded in a vaguely disturbing cartoon along the walls, in which a tiger was turned into butter as punishment for trying to eat a child. But the melted butter did make one think of pancakes, B. thought, and she ordered a stack and coffee.

Things were happening that B. had not intended. She had not intended to stand on a lawn looking into someone else’s picture window in broad daylight. She had not intended to present a fake license to a police officer. She should, she knew, stop to consider these events. Ascertain some schema to them, formulate a plan in reaction. But she sensed for the first time that something dire might occur if she stopped to do this, if she stopped to examine any of it. What was so terrible about wanting to move forward? she thought.

Cheered by this slant on things and the coffee, B. borrowed a pen from the waitress and began sketching on a napkin the stucco house and the dining room table. When her pancakes came, she noticed a girl sitting alone in a corner booth, also writing, in a notebook. The girl sat with a cup of coffee and a few balled-up dollar bills, a large knapsack at her feet. It was unclear whether she’d eaten or not. Her skin was deeply tanned, her long hair falling in greasy sections to the table. She wore fraying blue jeans, dirty at the hems, a loose peasant blouse, and a choker made of leather. Her feet were bare. She seemed like a brown and wind-tangled child just come in from the beach, except for the frown lines in her forehead and the shadows under her eyes.

“I’d appreciate it oh so much if I could get more coffee the same as everyone else,” the girl said to the waitress, who seemed to be ignoring her. “Jesus Christ. You’d think I wasn’t paying .”

A LIFE magazine protruded from underneath the girl’s knapsack; she ran her toes back and forth over the gloss. B. had seen the cover everywhere in the spring: the bride in a mushroom cloud of white veil, cascading white and yellow roses, the groom’s hair slicked carefully to the side, ascot gray and black. The young senator’s daughter and the young wealthy family’s son. A picture making all the sense in the world.

Except that after the cover appeared, B. had begun having the same dream. Her graduation luncheon, the white-linened tables and camellias in glass bowls, the early humidity glazing her face. (The yellow dress her mother had insisted on to complement her hair sometimes lavender, sometimes blue.) What upset her in the dream was that the speech was never intelligible. The Rotarian’s or Junior Leaguer’s or fundraising committee chair’s words always cut off by a faint high-pitched scream, a terrified animal shriek B. imagined might occur during a stabbing or a rape. What came through made no sense: “Take the higher road. . gentle abiding. . look happy, now. .” What could it mean?

B. woke from these dreams with her nightgown sweat through.

The girl arranged sugar packets in a circle on the table. She seemed engrossed in getting the white packets to curve out smoothly, widening larger and larger until she ran out. The waitress returned and said something under her breath, not refilling the girl’s cup, and at that moment the girl casually swept her arm across the table and dropped all the sugar packets onto the floor.

B. gaped at the scattered packets.

“You should pick those up.” She had not meant to say it out loud.

“Why?”

The girl seemed to look right through her. The blank stare frightened B. She jumped up from her booth, knocking over the silverware, trying to get out. On the way to the register she dropped her purse, the ostrich skin strangely flesh-like against the orange-flecked linoleum, her lipstick rolling onto the floor, the checkbook slipping out. B. scrambled to gather them and pay. Outside, the air was still hot and dry. The town in the dusk looked even more empty. She walked quickly down a few blocks, the white packets raining on the floor and the girl’s sullen blank eyes on her, and when she passed underneath a decorative Spanish arch, there was only the same empty street on the other side.

The next morning, in the motel bed, she fingered the collar of the powder-blue dress. She had not meant to sleep in it. There was a coffee stain at her breast and a pungent dampness under her arms. The night before she’d had the intention of washing her underthings. She’d laid out her bra and panties next to the sink and found her Woolite travel packets. Then she’d sat on the bed and the intention had lost its keenness. She must have lain down.

The already-warm morning air smelled faintly of green onion. (There was a kind of onion grass wasn’t there? Did it resemble chives? The question nagged her.) She watched the line of blue sky through the curtain. It made her think of the sky through the magnolia trees from the day before. The cottages shared the same compactness of the lake house, the same shade and light, she thought. She had lost something in the lake house. She lay in the motel bed contemplating the line of blue sky and what it was she had missed, but she could not grasp it.

When she got up from the bed finally, she smoothed down her hair, limp from the over-washing and wind. She wiped the makeup from under her eyes and applied new lipstick and mascara.

She made sure the bills were tucked into her purse and left the Mustang in the motel parking lot to walk toward the center of the town. It was early, so she stopped in a small park and sat on a bench. The freshly mown grass shone darkly from sprinklers. An old man sat at the other end of the park feeding bread to small brown birds. B. imagined herself coming here to read or picnic. She thought perhaps she could even be like the old man, quiet and serene tossing crumbs of bread.

But a sense of pale familiarity descended on her. Why would the park be any different from the ones in the city? What would she tell people she was doing there? Her head spun. She rose from the bench and walked across the lawn, pieces of wet grass sticking to the bone-colored heels, and tried to calm her breathing. The old man’s birds took flight. She walked past the main street, to the river, low and brown. The onion smell had evaporated, the heat of the day already inescapable. She walked along the river until her breathing evened and the spinning slightly lessened.

She found the real estate office. It was a storefront with a few photos of houses in the window. A woman sat at a desk flipping through papers. She had styled, shoulder-length hair and a tan dress belted at the hips. She studied B. for a beat before she smiled.

“Can I help you?”

“I’d like to look at houses for sale in the area.”

The woman lowered her reading glasses to her nose and scanned B. “Are you visiting from the city?”

“Do you have time to show me anything?”

The woman hesitated. “I can take you round a couple places, although I find it helpful to have both of you along, to ask questions, get things clear,” she said. “Should we wait for anyone?”