Ruth Galm - Into the Valley

B. went into the bathroom for her travel bag — she could at least comb her hair. But when she opened the bag she found her nightgown folded neatly on top. How many days now had she slept in the dresses? She took out the nightgown and held it up before her, the filmy length pleating onto the floor. Then she removed the top of the back of the toilet, lifted the nightgown by one finger, and sank it into the water. It billowed like a last gasp. She forced it under and replaced the lid.

She walked back into the bedroom and watched the sleeping girl. B. was closer to the girl’s mother’s age, she realized. The girl’s mother having undoubtedly worn the kid gloves, danced with the Brylcreemed boys, perhaps received her own vanity set. The realization made B. sad and weary. The girl’s knapsack was next to the bed. B. opened it. The notebook was on top. She held it up to her face but she could not make out the words in the dark. The girl moved. B. put the notebook back in the knapsack and crept into bed.

They slept in the warm room until noon. The bill when they checked out was too much to use just the roadhouse money. B. excused herself to the car for a moment and reached under the seat. When the clerk counted out her change, she stared at the dirty worn bills in place of the beautiful crisp one. She shoved them in the ostrich-skin purse. Outside, the carsickness was in full bloom. Her temples pounding and jaw clenched in the searing parking lot with dead grass in its cracks. In the rearview mirror, she noted the sallow flecks in the whites of her eyes, the lines in her forehead.

They stopped for gas. B. hooked one of the rusty pumps into the gas tank and leaned against the car. Her gaze landed passively around her. On her legs, sunburned and growing hair. On the filthy bone-colored heels. On the back of the girl’s head, the white part in the two braids and the blonde down against the brown neck. Next to the gas station a dun-colored eucalyptus break stood motionless in the heat. B. watched it, waiting for movement. She decided she could make her plan later. She could drive with the girl for now. Why not.

When the tank was full she went inside and returned with coffees and two packages of doughnuts.

“I don’t eat that,” the girl said.

“Oh.” B. hesitated, then slid both packages under the seat. “The guy inside said there’s a gold rush park just down the highway.”

The girl did not look up. “We studied it in school.” She was flipping again through the torn LIFE magazine. B. sipped her coffee, hiking up her dress to rest the paper cup between her legs. She liked the idea of her legs splayed like the girl’s. But she did not want to see the magazine again, the magazine agitated her. She started the engine and drove past the eucalyptus break, where no branch had moved.

“Which direction should we go?” B. asked.

“I don’t care,” said the girl. “Not Sacramento.”

B. took a road north. The girl lit a cigarette. The smoke and the musky scent and the half-nakedness felt more normal in the car now. Today, the girl wore only the suede vest, without a bra, and the jean cutoffs. Long gray feathers were braided into her hair on each side of her head. She fiddled with the radio until a rock-and-roll station flickered in and out. A man was singing low to an accompaniment of calliope bells. B. tried to open her mind to the bells, to the man’s slithering tones. But the odd notes and exhortations seemed to highlight the dirt and dead insects on the windshield, the trash on the road.

“Maybe I should head to San Francisco,” the girl said. “Jed is probably sick of them by now, waiting for me. He told me we’re soul mates from another life. Like a cosmic link. Like I’m his Cleopatra, his old lady from another time.” B. was sure Jed was no Anthony but held her tongue. “So those dingbats can ball him all they want. For now.” The girl put her feet up on the dashboard and picked at some open skin on her knee.

“Maybe you should go,” B. said.

The girl turned to the window. “Maybe.”

They drove through an eerie stretch of wooden stakes high in the ground. Unnaturally bright green vines climbing up the brown wood. B. finally understood they were hops. She had the sensation from the stakes that she and the girl were filing through enemy lines, row by row bellying to the other side.

She could feel the girl staring at her now. “You’re pretty,” the girl observed in her impassive tone. “Like a movie star.”

B. fingered the diamond brooch. “Thank you.”

“I’d rather look like something, ” the girl went on. “Like Janis Joplin.”

“You don’t seem like a drifter,” she added.

“I’m not drifting. I’m visiting. I might stay.” B.’s mind folded up the defeats of the realtor, the university man, the grocery store in her mind. She made herself see the valley as a long golden plane and herself golden in it. She deliberately did not think of the checks or the banks.

“Driving, drifting, whatever. . You still don’t seem the type.”

The golden image vanished. “What about you?” B. said testily. “You’re drifting.”

“But I’m young,” the girl concluded in her flat tone.

The inside of B.’s head lurched.

“I haven’t decided my plans yet,” B. said.

“This country has it all wrong,” the girl said. “I’m going to Spain. Andalusia.”

“Spain is ruled by a dictator. It’s authoritarian.”

“And then to Morocco. India, China, Istanbul, you get it? Forget this apple pie bullshit.”

“The Chinese are Communists,” B. said faintly.

The girl brought her feet up on the dashboard, picking at the calluses on her toes. She whistled “Yankee Doodle Dandy” through her teeth as she pulled at small springy strips of dead skin.

B. realized then that a black car had been in the rearview for some time. A kind of sedan.

The girl closed her eyes and scratched her legs absentmindedly.

B. had not seen any other black sedans in the valley.

The girl was raking her nails up and down, eyes still closed, and B. saw then the scabs like raspberries across her skin.

“That’s poison oak,” B. said. “You need ointment.”

“Ointment,” the girl repeated.

She opened her eyes and looked irritatedly at B. “I left my mother in Fontana.”

“I’m just telling you, that’s poison oak. We should find a druggist.”

The girl sat up and examined her shins. She sucked at her teeth. “When the fuck did that happen?”

“You don’t wear any stockings.”

“Are you kidding me?”

B. glanced back at the black sedan. It was several lengths behind them. She continued on the two-lane highway. She would try to avoid the freeways now, she decided. At the first intersection the gas station attendant with his large green-peaked pimples pointed them east for a pharmacy. B. drove and when she realized the black sedan was no longer behind them, she felt no relief.

They reached the town and the pharmacy and B. stepped out of the car, smoothing her dress out of habit, the wrinkles now deep in the fabric. The girl crossed her arms, slouching in her seat.

“I don’t like doctors.”

“It’s not a doctor, don’t be silly. It’s just poison oak. He’ll give you some medicine.”

“What do you care?”

“You can’t walk around with poison oak.”

B. went inside, the girl following reluctantly. It was an old pharmacy with wooden counters and hundreds of drawers, a dusty film in the air blown around by table fans. B. approached the short bald man behind the counter. “We need something for poison oak, please. Do you have any calamine lotion?”

“I don’t serve those types.”