The front-seat epiphany left her open to embracing the Narrative, only this time that of her own — not mother’s, daughter’s, wife’s, not anyone’s but hers. She would hold in her hands (and heart) the gloriously random, still meaningful, still unique Saga of Dusty Wilding. That’s what this ghostly place was telling her: it was time to live her story, without encumbrance. She needed only be awake enough, aware enough, to watch it unfold this moment (impossible to have any other), as she sat in this car on this street, the street upon she once lived, and once died too — where Janine (her birth name) and Aurora Whitmore, or at least her idea of them, died, together.
How could any of that be a problem? To jump from one cosmic narrative to another? How a problem, to be fully conscious? To acquiesce to what was, what is? To have the veil lifted and finally see? How a problem, to know nothing could be altered, nor would one wish it to be?
Ida Pinkert would say, “Yes, it’s true. Your baby was murdered,” and I’ll be okay with that.
I’ll be okay.
Because I’m a survivor.
That’s what I do.
—
After a few minutes on the porch, she thought she heard a small voice. Bending to listen, it seemed to be saying, “Come in! Come in!” She turned the knob and pushed through.
There stood Ida, giddily encaged in a walker.
She took hold of Dusty’s wrists. “You look wonderful. Oh, I had no idea you’d get my note and I am so pleased. There were so many times I was going to call you over the years, Janine, you must forgive!” Her face scowled with worry. “Oh, I called you Janine. Do you mind? You don’t mind if I call you Janine?”
She led them to the kitchen, where they sat at a table strewn with bills and reminder notes. It was obvious Miss Pinkert spent her waking hours there. A relic of a television was on, sound muted.
“I went to see all of your movies until it became just too hard to get around. A girl comes once a week; she drove me to the library. I asked Griselda — that’s her name, she’s from Salvador — I asked if she knew how to send something on the computer but apparently she did not! She doesn’t speak English very well, though I think she speaks it better than she says. She certainly seems to understand it well, very well. I think she’s lazy… I thought she would know how to do the computer. I thought that if you have one of those Apple phones—which she does, even her little girl has one, how they can afford it I don’t know—I thought if you have one of those Apple phones and you’re young, well, relatively, then you would know how to send a message on the computer. But you see she didn’t. So a young man helped me. Oh, he was wonderful.
“The last time I visited your mother was, good Lord, I want to say five years ago. Could it be so long ago? At that lovely, lovely place. That was a lovely place you found, but so far away! The gals at church used to take me, they were wonderful, I paid their gas, well, offered to, but they wouldn’t take my money. Not at first! And I don’t know why I visited your mother because once I got there, well, sometimes she just wouldn’t say a word. She could be in a mood, you know — oh, she was famous for her moods! But I suppose I thought it was the right thing, she was all alone, I don’t think many people talked to her, it was always difficult to be her friend, for Reina to be a friend. If you can’t be a friend, then you won’t have too many. That’s the general rule. I don’t even think the staff talked to her! Not that much, anyway. She didn’t have an easy time of it there. I don’t think she had an easy time of it anywhere. So I suppose I was trying to ‘lighten her load.’ We’d known each other so long! Good Lord, too long. And that is what — I believe that is what a friend is for. You can’t always have reciprocation.
“Well, it got harder to get the ladies to take me but eventually they did because I insisted on giving them money and they just had to take it. I paid their gas, plus twenty dollars, which eventually became forty dollars, gas plus forty dollars, but that was my limit. I am on a fixed income! Then, well, I suppose it just became too much because people have their own lives, they have children and husbands and all kinds of things. And they could only drive me on weekends — they worked — and I suppose they wanted the weekends to themselves. Who could blame them? No one wants to cart an old lady up to Santa Barbara for twenty dollars. Or forty dollars. Because that was what I eventually gave them. Maybe they wouldn’t do it for a hundred dollars! And I wanted to reach you, Janine — oh, for years! — but I just didn’t know how. Reina wouldn’t talk about you. When I asked if she’d seen you, she would not say a word. And I daren’t ask for your telephone because she would have been suspicious. She was a little paranoid, you know. So one day I got very bold and did a terribly sneaky thing. I told one of the nurses — they knew I was ‘the neighbor,’ and a harmless old lady, which I was and still am! — they could plainly see I knew the lay of the land — that you and your mom weren’t ‘close.’ So one day I took one of the nicer ones aside and told a little white lie. I’m calling it that but maybe it was a big white lie! I said that you and I spoke every day but I’d had a terrible flood — there were those awful, heavy rains at the time — and the telephone people were at my home trying to fix everything and all of my papers with all of my phone numbers were just soaked and I was worried you would might be trying to reach me and that you wouldn’t be able to… would they please give me Janine’s—Dusty’s—number again? ‘Again’ I said! Pretending that I already had it, or had it once, which of course I didn’t. Oh, that was terrible of me. I didn’t even think to ask for your computer name. Lord, I felt like a criminal! Just shaking like a leaf. Well, I don’t know if they believed me! But they were so kind to give me your number, and even a way to reach you on your computer, which I could not decipher. I called a few times but there was never an answer. And it just kept ringing so I couldn’t leave a message… I thought they must have given a wrong one, just to get rid of me!”