Chapter 9
Anne hadn’t realized how massive Joshua Tree National Park actually was. Nearly an hour after they’d entered the park, they were still driving with no sign of civilization in sight.
The moon was up and blooming, the only source of illumination other than the car’s headlamps.
It cast a muted light on the endless stretches of uninhabited alien land that unfolded out from the road, expanding for miles and miles.
Tall shrubs, Joshua trees, and small bushes speckled the dirt as far as Anne could see, replicating all the way back into the black mountains.
If there were other people or cars, the desert hid them.
They continued to drive, winding around curve after silent curve.
“Should I just keep going?” Anne asked finally. “Or stop somewhere?”
“Take the next scenic pullout,” Sadie told her. “This is the right place.”
“The right place for what?”
“Not entirely sure just yet,” Sadie said enigmatically. “We’ll see.”
It wasn’t exactly a confidence-boosting statement, but a sign up ahead did signal some vista they definitely couldn’t see in the dark. Anne obeyed Sadie’s request and pulled off the road into the designated stop.
The second the car was in park, Sadie unbuckled her seatbelt and opened the door, climbing out.
“Wait. Sadie, wait a minute—”
She was already gone. Anne watched with rising trepidation as Sadie dashed away from the road, kept visible by the light from the car’s headlamps. The yellow skirt of her dress flapped behind her.
“Follow me,” Sadie called out, not bothering to turn her head. “Leave the car on so we’ve got some light. And watch out for cholla. The needles on those cactus bastards stick to you like leeches.”
Anne got out of the car, the engine still going, and left the driver door open.
“Sadie, we’re a million miles from anywhere.
It’s dark out. We haven’t seen a single person pass us on the road for at least fifteen minutes.
And I’ve watched The English Patient enough times to know that running headlong into a massive desert isn’t a great idea. ”
“Trust me!” Sadie shouted back. Then, “Ow!”
“Wonderful,” Anne muttered. She set off in pursuit.
By the time she caught up with Sadie, they were far enough from the car that she couldn’t hear the engine. The headlights barely reached them, giving just enough light to see their immediate surroundings.
Sadie stood still, looking up.
“Are you okay?” Anne asked.
“What? Oh, I’m fine. That ocotillo got the worst of it. Come over here with me.”
Anne obliged, and a wry comment about prickly things died in her mouth when Sadie grabbed her far shoulder with one hand and pulled her close. They stood side by side.
“Look up, beloved,” Sadie said softly.
Anne did. And gasped.
Thousands of stars glittered above them, pinpricks of sharp light that stood out against the deep basin of the endless night sky. Anne had never seen so many stars in her whole life.
Without any buildings to break it, the sky stretched on and on and on around them, a dark and lovely lid for the world. Somehow, it felt comforting to be so small at the base of all this vastness. For a moment, the enormity of Anne’s unfolding life felt manageable.
“Earlier, I told you that I came here after Fred left,” Sadie murmured. “I didn’t tell you what I did when I was here. I knew you’d say it was silly. Or, at the very least, think it was.”
That was likely true, and Anne felt a sting of self-recrimination. “Tell me. I won’t be dismissive.”
“I spoke to the sky,” Sadie said simply. “To whatever great force is out there. Call it Hashem, call it the universe, call it a higher power; the name isn’t important. I spoke to her. I showed her my grief. It wasn’t too much for her.” She exhaled.
Nothing about that experience sounded appealing to Anne. Letting out your grief just meant making it real and unavoidable. But she said, “I’m glad you did what felt right to you.”
“Try it.”
This time, Anne couldn’t help a disbelieving laugh. “You want me to talk to the sky?”
“No. I want you to talk to something bigger than yourself or anyone else. I want you to see that you belong to”—Sadie flung her free arm out—“all of this. I want you to see that no matter how much you try, you can’t opt out of the gorgeous, scribbled mess of being human.
Look, if it’ll make it easier on you, I’ll go first.” She didn’t wait for a response, instead turning her face to the sky.
“Whoever or whatever you are, I know you’re out there.
I can feel it when I’m here. I hope someday I’ll be able to take that feeling with me when I leave. ”
The stars seemed to wink at them.
“Your turn,” Sadie told her.
Self-consciousness swamped Anne. “What am I supposed to say? This isn’t—normal. I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be mean, but it just isn’t.”
“Let’s face it,” Sadie said affectionately. “You’re not normal. And neither am I. We’re both so much better than that.”
Not normal. On some level, she’d always feared being not normal more than anything else. To be outside what she was supposed to be, always tapping on the glass and desperate to be let in.
But she’d spent thirty years in a marriage that was nothing but tapping on glass, hadn’t she? The two of them, James and Anne, tap-tap-tapping alongside each other for all those wasted years, and never discussing it. Never acknowledging anything real.
Anne took a deep breath, then looked up at the sky and let herself get lost. It wasn’t hard. The black reach of it filled every part of her vision, an indiscriminate and impersonal void.
After a few moments, she began to speak.
“It’s very hard for me to believe anyone’s out there.
Up there. I haven’t since I was a little girl.
But if I’m wrong, if someone really is there, if you’re listening right now, if you know something—if you knew all along this was inside me—” The words began to tumble out of Anne’s mouth without her permission, distraught and pleading.
“I’ve got, what, maybe twenty, twenty-five years left?
And that’s if I’m lucky. Why didn’t you tell me sooner?
Why didn’t anyone tell me? Why couldn’t I know I felt this way before it was almost too late? ”
The stars were silent.
“I’ve always done exactly what I was supposed to do.
Made sure everything was so goddamn perfect that nobody could ever find fault with me, except myself.
But—but I got it all wrong, didn’t I? Even though I tried so hard.
” Anne’s voice fractured at the same time as her heart.
“Have I wasted the only life I’ll ever get?
Did you let me do that, whoever you are?
Did you think I deserved it? What did I ever do that was so terrible, so awful, that I wasn’t allowed to figure it out until the end? ”
“Anne,” Sadie breathed, and there was new weight on Anne’s right shoulder as Sadie inclined her head, resting it there. “Oh, my beloved.”
Feeling ridiculous and raw, Anne stopped speaking.
Hot tears brimmed in her eyes. It was difficult enough to wonder why she was beginning to realize—this—after six decades; on top of that, she really didn’t want to think about a higher power with actual intention.
If some purposeful design was what had kept her from herself, that felt too horrifically cruel to even consider.
They stood there together, Sadie’s head on her shoulder, both of them looking at the sky. The sky looked back at them, heavy and silent.
After a while, Sadie lifted her head. “I think,” she said slowly, “I know exactly what you need.”
“A drink?” Anne wiped quickly at her eyes. One or three glasses of a really dry white would be extremely welcome right about now.
“No, not a drink.” Sadie took a few steps back. “This.”
Incredibly, unaccountably, she started to spin in circles, flinging her arms out wide as she turned.
Anne jumped back to avoid becoming collateral damage.
“When’s the last time you spun in circles? Fifty years or more, I’ll bet. Find that girl again with me. She’s still in there.” Sadie stopped and swayed a little. “Spin with me.”
Anne laughed at the absurdity of it. A distraction, sure, but it was working. “Yeah, right.”
“Spin with me,” Sadie repeated, holding out her hands to Anne. She clenched them multiple times in the universal sign for grab on.
“Absolutely not. I know exactly how this ends: with me breaking my ankle an hour away from civilization. I’m too old for spinning.”
“If I’m not, you’re not. I won’t let you lose your balance. Let’s go back to your childhood. Just for a few seconds.”
“I spent my childhood sitting nicely on a plaid couch in the Greenwich Country Club.”
“You loved to swing on your backyard swing set,” Sadie insisted.
“You told me. ‘The faster the better, the higher the better.’ So swing with me, just like you used to do. Right here, right now.” She clenched-unclenched her hands again, still holding them out in Anne’s direction.
“Grab on. Start pumping your legs. I’m right here with you.
You’re not too old. It’s not too late. This isn’t the end.
It’s so far from the end. You’re still here on this earth, Anne.
And as long as you’re here, there’s always time. ”
A pang of sudden longing wrenched in Anne’s chest. Time.
She thought about her childhood swing set, the plastic red-and-blue-striped seats, remembered the hard press of the metal chains against her tightly-gripped hands.
She’d always felt so happy on that swing, pumping her legs as hard as she could until she was high enough to see the roof of her house.
So happy! And, of course, she’d known then, with absolute certainty, that the rest of her life would just be more and more of that feeling.
It hadn’t been, of course. But if Sadie was right, Anne could still try, as best she could, to give that little girl the future she’d believed in.
So she wiped the palms of her hands on her shirt—a move she’d never make at home—and said, “Fine. Twenty seconds of spinning. That’s it. And don’t you dare let go, all right? If I break something, you’re coming over to take care of me.”
“I won’t let go if you won’t,” Sadie told her. “Just keep your eyes on my face. You’ll be fine.”
Somewhat reluctantly, she placed her right hand in Sadie’s left, her left hand in Sadie’s right, and Sadie’s fingers closed forcefully around hers.
“Like this.” Sadie crossed their arms over their wrists. “Hold on tight—”
And then they were spinning in a circle, in the middle of the goddamn desert, miles and miles away from anything, two tiny specks that twirled together in the dirt under the huge night sky.
Anne desperately wanted to close her eyes, the feeling of it all too much to bear, but then Sadie shouted, “Keep looking at me!”
She did.
The sheer exhilaration on Sadie’s face felt almost as overwhelming as anything else happening, her grin dazzling and brighter than any of the stars above.
The blurring world was gone, nothing left for Anne but what she needed—Sadie’s strong hands in hers and Sadie’s beautiful laugh—and Anne heard herself let out a single shriek, a sudden peal of unexpected delight, as they spun and spun and spun.
True to her word, Sadie didn’t let go, and Anne didn’t either. Instead, they came to a sudden stop first, stumbling a little in the dirt. Anne had to bend over a bit, bracing her hands on her thighs while she caught her breath.
“Okay,” she managed, and stood back up. “That was fun. You were right. I’ll admit it.”
Sadie, also breathing hard, grinned at her. “Thank you for getting on that swing with me.”
This time, the view had been even better than the view from Anne’s childhood backyard. “I’ve still got it, I guess. Some of it.”
“I wish I’d known you when we were kids. You must’ve been a force of nature.”
“Damn right I was. Did I ever tell you about the time I priced out all the other lemonade stands around the neighborhood? I was ten. Mark Nelson’s operation around the corner went under so fast, he couldn’t use all the lemons he’d made his mother buy him, and she wouldn’t let him throw them out.
I took them off his hands at three cents apiece.
” She tossed her head proudly. “You better bet that little shit never pulled my braid again.”
“You’re magnificent,” Sadie said breathlessly, and the longing in her husky voice was undeniable, tremendous. “I hope someday you’ll finally realize it.”
Startled, Anne looked at Sadie. Beneath the light of the moon and faintly illuminated by the distant headlamps, she somehow seemed smaller than usual, more vulnerable. Maybe it was a trick of the light. Maybe not.
She could say you’re magnificent, too. You’re radiant. It would be true.
She couldn’t speak. Truly couldn’t form the words.
So instead, she reached over to take Sadie’s hand in her own, raising it to her lips. Gently, she kissed the back of it.
Sadie gasped.
Despite the smudges of dried ink, despite the lack of regularly-applied moisturizer, Sadie’s skin felt smoother against her mouth than anything Anne had ever touched. She lingered longer than she’d planned, and when she finally let go, there was just enough light to see the desire in Sadie’s face.
The wind kicked up, stirring the ground.
After a moment, Sadie said quietly, “It’s getting late. What do you want to do? Should we go somewhere else or drive back or…?” She trailed off. “If you’re tired, we could just—if you want.”
The trunk of Anne’s car held two small overnight bags with some toiletries, medications, and a change of clothes.
Just in case. She’d packed her bag with a thrilled heat that straddled the line between apprehension and delight.
If they stayed somewhere, if they slept somewhere, if they did that together—
She’d kissed Sadie for the first time just hours ago. But Anne Lowell didn’t do half measures.
“There’s probably a motel in town,” she said. Her mouth tingled with fresh memory, with promise. “If you want to go home, though, or somewhere else—”
“I want,” Sadie said softly. Her sentence wasn’t incomplete. Just ready.