Aurora
This story originally appeared in the July 2020 issue of Orca, A Literary Journal
We smell the eucalyptus before we see the house. We don’t need headlights tonight; the moon is bright enough. We drive slowly, careful not to drown out the hoot of the great horned owl with the sound of our tires. Jed’s hair is the color of red clay in this light, smoothed flat against his forehead from leaning against the window.
From this distance, the house looks the same as it did when we were kids. It reflects the moonlight back to us, its walls pale blue against the dark mountains. In the daylight, those mountains look undeniably prehistoric, oddly shaped rock formations growing out of them like eyes on a potato. I park the car next to the avocado tree and listen to the absence of our engine in the desert. Jed looks at me with bright blue eyes. “It’s just like I remember it,” he says.
Up close, the house looks like it’s risen from the desert itself, out of dirt and yucca. The few intact windows are crusted with lime at the edges. Buttercups bloom between the spokes of a bicycle someone’s left behind, and jimsonweed crowds around the steppingstones Mom laid. I never thought we’d come back here, especially not now.
Jed grabs the hand-held police scanner and puts it in his pocket. “Just in case we hear anything,” he says. We lock the car and take Mom’s path up to the house, crushing the weeds flat beneath our feet as we go.
We don’t need a key. Someone has already jimmied the lock on the front door. Jed hesitates before it, turns back to me. He looks uncharacteristically shy, as if struck timid by the nearness of the house. “Are you ready?” he asks. I nod. He pushes the door open.
The door leads directly into the kitchen. Only a diffused glow illuminates the house, like moonlight must look a hundred feet underwater. I can’t see more than a few feet in front of me, but my muscle memory takes over, my left hand finding the kitchen counter. Mom used to keep our keys here in a tortoise shell from a dried-out riverbed.
Jed goes to the sink where weeds grow out of the garbage disposal. He moves soft as water over the linoleum, drawing in the dust on every surface with his fingertips. Dad used to say that the desert had its own special, saffron-colored dust. “Desert spice,” as he called it, was so gritty and heavy it stayed in our sheets for days.
I feel my way to the living room on my right. Mom’s velveteen couch, the only furniture left, blends into the darkness until I’m about two feet in front of it. Mom used to spend amber afternoons there, hemming my school dresses and praying the rosary with Father Ryan on the phone. The screen door next to the couch is ajar, as always. We never could get it to shut all the way. When the wind picked up at night, it sounded like someone was knocking, and I used to creep through the dark as a kid, barefoot with a softball bat, just to make sure it was only the door.
I can hear Jed walking down the hallway where Mom gave birth to him on a bathmat. The winds had been particularly strong that day, blowing desert spice into the house. Our neighbor, Mrs. Cisneros, gasped when she saw Jed’s caul, a little sack of fluid stuck to his head.
“June,” she said, getting so close I could smell honey on her breath, “your little brother is a caulbearer. Do you know what that means?” I shook my head. “This veil here,” she gently peeled the sack off the top of Jed’s head, “means he’ll be lucky every day of his life. He can never drown, get burned by fire, nothing.”
Mom heard this and named him Jedediah, so people would always know he was a friend of God. I bet Mom would’ve been shocked to hear that just yesterday her friend of God got carried away, pulled out a knife in a bar fight, and killed a man in front of a roomful of witnesses.
Jed and I meet back in the kitchen. He crushes a forgotten beer can on the counter until it’s round and flat as a silver dollar. “There’s a mattress on the floor in Mom and Dad’s room. We could probably sleep on that,” he says.
“No, come on, you know the deal,” I say. “Two hours here and then we hit the road. You promised.”
“But it’d be fun,” he says, smiling. “We can sleep outside like when we were kids.”
“This is the first place the police are gonna look.” I chew on a hangnail I started this morning. “And there aren’t even sheets for the mattress.”
“Yeah, I think the maid forgot to leave those.”
“I can get us a motel if you need to sleep.”
“It’s not about sleeping. I just want to be here longer,” he says. “Two hours in Aurora is nothing after twelve years.”
“Thirteen,” I say reflexively.
“Thirteen. See, you’ve obviously missed it here too.” He puts his hand on my shoulder.
“Of course I miss it,” I say, shrugging him off. “You’re not the only person who gets to miss this place.”
“Okay, so let’s stay here tonight,” he says. “You know you want to.” He looks so bright and earnest that I almost tell him yes.
“No. Two hours and that’s it. Then we keep driving south.”
He sucks air between his teeth and looks down at the floor.
“Look, I’m sorry, but they’re gonna find us if we stay all night. This isn’t me being boring, it’s me making sure you don’t get arrested.”
“Jesus, fine.” He flicks the flattened beer can into the sink. “Let’s at least look at the stars for a while.” I sigh. Jed’s always been good at finding compromises.
We drag the mattress onto the cement porch. Someone’s left a lawn chair there, facing east. I wonder if they use it to watch the sunrise like Mom did. We wait for two tarantulas to scuttle away before we drop the mattress and dust off our hands. Jed falls back on it and stretches his arms to the sky, yawning. The tattoos on his knuckles don’t look right in this sweet, quiet place.
“You’re awfully comfortable for someone on a mattress people have done God-knows-what on,” I say.
“No big deal. I’ve been on worse.” He lets out a big breath. “Wow, I needed this,” he says. He props himself up on his elbows to look at me. “Thank you for doing this. For taking us here. I mean it.”
“Well, you didn’t give us much choice, Jed.” The words come out harsher than I should have let them, but he doesn’t fight me on it.
He laughs, still quiet enough that the rest of the desert can’t hear him. “Really though, I’m glad you took us here, of all places. You’re the best.”
The moonlight makes him look younger. He’s as pale as he was as a boy, back when he was afraid of the coyotes’ yips at night. I don’t know how to reconcile the two: Jed, six years old and scared, singing Dad’s songs to drown out the coyotes, and Jed, twenty-two and high, stabbing a man he’d only just met. I don’t know who or what to blame for that kind of change.
“I’m not the best,” I say. “I’m gonna go get the blanket from the car. I’ll be too cold out here without it.”
“You’re the only person I know who could get cold in a desert.” He laughs and flops back onto the mattress.
I take the long way to the car and stop above the basin where the trailer used to be, near the stand of eucalyptus. We lived there one summer while we painted the house.
The night wind is starting up, but I can still feel the heat of the day through the soles of my shoes. As I reach the lip of the basin, I sense that someone else is here with me, even before I look.
Mom is sitting under the trailer awning mending one of Miss Conrad’s dresses. The trailer door is open and Dad is inside, brewing Ephedra tea and whistling. Jed, four years old and naked, darts between the eucalyptus trees. He tears off a handful of leaves and buries his nose in them, smiling at me before he turns and runs back into the grove. The sky is crow black with night, but Mom, Dad, and little Jed are bright as noon, lit by an invisible sun.
“Juney,” Mom calls out, “what took you so long?” She’s so real I could hug her. Even her upper arms are sunburnt like they always were during the summer. I can smell her pine deodorant.
“Juney’s back and you’re gonna be in trouble,” Dad sings, dancing out of the trailer with his mug of tea. “Want me to sneak you into my show tonight? I’m filling in on bass at the Hideaway. Maybe you can sing with us.” He still has his big red beard.
“Shush, Russ, I asked her what took her so long.” Mom looks at me expectantly.
I don’t know what to say. “I’m old now,” I blurt out.
Mom and Dad look at one another and bust out laughing. “Are you?” Dad asks, taking a big gulp of tea.
“I’m 26,” I say.
“I know sweetheart, but that doesn’t exactly make you ancient.” Dad smiles.
“What on earth did you do to your hair?” Mom asks. Questions like that used to make me roll my eyes, but now I have a lump in my throat. I’ve missed hearing her care about every part of me.
“I cut it,” I say. My whole childhood, she and I wore our hair the same way–long and thin, with bangs that grew down to our temples on either side–but I’ve kept mine in a bob since Mom died. I didn’t want to think of her every time I brushed my hair. “What are you doing here?” I ask.
“I guess we could ask you the same question,” Dad says.
“Jed’s in trouble.”
“Hmm, trouble doesn’t sound like your brother to me. Your mom named him Jedediah for a reason.”
I exhale. “It’s just a name, Dad. It doesn’t mean anything.”
Mom pats Dad’s hand before he can reply. “Honey, tell us what’s going on with your brother.”
“Well, he showed up on my fire escape this morning–” I stop myself. They’re young and happy. They’re both alive; their car hasn’t flipped yet. Their biggest concern right now is which shade of yellow to paint the house.
“Go on, you can tell us anything, you know that,” Dad says. But I can’t tell them about what came after them, not without causing hurt–Jed and I moving between foster homes, Jed crying nonstop for Mom until he started acting out instead. Maybe he felt her absence the most because I made such a disappointing replacement.
“June, talk to us,” Dad says, more insistent this time.
A half-truth seems like enough in this case. “Well, he got in a bad fight last night and there were witnesses. He showed up on my fire escape saying we needed to leave Reno. We just stopped in Aurora for a couple hours on our way to the border.”
“Oh no.” Mom’s head shakes a little from side to side, and she puts her hand to face as if to stop it. “Is he okay?” Her voice has so much worry in it that I’ve never missed her more.
“I don’t know,” I say. It’s the truth.
Mom brushes an invisible wisp of hair away from her face. “Why didn’t you help him sooner? You’re his big sister.”
“Mom, I’ve tried. I promise. I’ve been helping him for years. Things haven’t been easy for him. Or me either, really. I’m trying Mama, but he’s a hard person to help.”
“No, he’s not. He’s just a little fragile, that’s all.” Mom says.
I almost tell her that she isn’t the one who’s gone into debt for his rehab, but Dad speaks to her before I can. “She knows that, Bonnie. She’s doing the best she can.” His voice tapers to something just above a whisper, soothing Mom and me into silence.
“June!” Older Jed calls from somewhere near the house, breaking the quiet.
All three of us startle at the sound. “I’m gonna check on him,” I say. “I’ll be right back. Please, please don’t leave.” I turn and take the path toward the house.
I’m almost there when I see my eight-year-old self leading Older Jed by the hand. Her hair is long and stringy, probably sticky with watermelon juice as it always was during the summer. Little June whispers something that makes him laugh.
“I found–you,” he says to me. He smiles at younger June, who waves.
“Are you sure this is her?” Little June asks Jed, skeptical. “You said she’d be me, but older.” She smells like the aloe gel Dad used to put on our sunburns.
“I’m June,” I say, sticking out my hand.
Little June rolls her eyes. “Yeah, sure. Are you a doctor?”
“No,” I say. Little June frowns. “I sell equipment to doctors though,” I add.
“Well, then there’s no way we’re the same person. I’m going to be a doctor,” she says, looking me up and down. I’m not sure how to tell her that medical school isn’t going to happen.
“I want to see Mom and Dad,” Jed says, bouncing on the balls of his feet.
“They’re right over–” I turn toward the basin, “well, they were right over–where’d they go?” Little June laughs and runs toward the house.
The night suddenly gives way to motion. The wind picks up, the lights in the house turn on, and the stars flash pink as grapefruit. The Mr. Coffee pot gurgles in the kitchen.
Mom peeks her head from behind the screen door. “Oh good, you’re both here,” she says smiling. She’s wearing her buttermilk-colored sundress.
“Mama!” Jed cries, his voice cracking. He moves so quickly and automatically it’s as if he’s being pulled. He wraps around her and cries. “Mama, you’re here.” He pulls her tighter against his chest. “I missed you too much. I can’t even tell you how much.” He loosens his knees, hanging onto her more than holding her. It occurs to me that Jed must’ve felt weightless all these years without Mom for an anchor.
She lets go and smiles at him, small and beautiful standing there in the doorway. “I missed you too, baby boy.” She pushes the door further open to give us a view of the dining table, set with Mom and Dad’s special-occasion china. “Do you two want some dinner? You must be hungry.” Jed looks at me for permission. Mom watches me hesitate, and laughs. “Juney, the skeptic, as per usual. Come on in.” She’s so close and soft.
As soon as we walk through the door, Little June and Little Jed run out of their bedroom. They lie belly-down on Mom’s couch and look at us over the armrest. They whisper to each other and giggle every few seconds. Little Jed makes goofy faces at Big Jed when Mom isn’t looking.
The fossil we found by the side of the road sits on the mantel; the living room still has its canary yellow carpet. Mom’s and my rock collection is artfully arranged in its plexiglass box on the kitchen table; the key to dad’s truck rests in the tortoise shell by the front door. The house looks as it did when we were children, lit by great-grandma’s green lampshades.
Mom sits in her spot at the table and gestures for us to do the same. Dad pushes home fries from a cast-iron skillet onto our plates.
“Now, kids,” Mom starts, but Little Jed cuts in.
“Which ones?” he asks, looking at Little June, who smirks.
“The big kids,” Mom says. “Tell us how you’ve been.” She smiles and puts her paper napkin in her lap as elegantly as if it were cloth. Jed waits for me to go first.
“We’re good. I work in medicine now,” I say.
Dad leans across the table and takes my hand. “That’s great! So you’re a doctor after all.”
“No, she’s not. She just sells them equipment,” Little June says, happy to know something other people don’t. Mom’s smile slips for a fraction of a second.
“Do you have a boyfriend?” Dad asks. “Or, oh man, I guess by your age, you might be married. Makes me feel old.” I shake my head, embarrassed to be answering no to both questions.
“She’s got a really great apartment in Reno with a nice roommate,” Jed says helpfully. “June’s really got it all together.”
“Sounds like it,” Mom says, her voice lined with doubt. “I guess that leaves you time for your singing? Since you don’t have a doctor’s schedule?”
“Yeah, I guess it does,” I lie. I haven’t sung in years. Mom nods absently and butters Little Jed’s dinner roll.
“Well, that’s great sweetheart. You were always so disciplined,” Dad says. He turns to Mom. “Remember how she used to put herself to bed? The first time she did it, I thought she must’ve been hiding outside or something. It didn’t even occur to me that a kid would enforce her own bedtime.” He looks at me, laughing. “But I go into your room and there you are, fast asleep with your hair braided and everything. Meanwhile, Jed’s outside hunting for lizards.” Dad’s laughing cheeks are round and red as pincushions. He always loved telling that story.
Mom reaches for Jed’s hand. “But Jed, how are you doing? I’m worried about you.” She hands Little Jed his dinner roll and he stuffs it into his cheeks, imitating a squirrel.
Big Jed smiles at Mom. “I’m okay. I’m just glad to be home,” he says. I watch him anticipating the questions she’s going to ask, and he adds, “I still drum sometimes, here and there.”
“That’s wonderful!” Mom says, clasping her hands together. “That’s so great you’ve found time for your art.”
“Taking after your old man with the music,” Dad says, leaning back in his chair.
“But what’s this about the police?” Mom asks.
“As long as I lay low for a while I should be fine,” Jed says, looking at me for backup. I nod.
“Well, why don’t you both stay here? It sounds like you need time at home,” Mom says. Jed squeezes her hand, nods, looks over at me.
“That’s a great idea,” Dad says. He watches me open my mouth to object. “You’re clearly a little aimless right now, honey. Maybe it’s best if you come home. Things are better here.”
“Much better!” Little Jed pipes in.
“Juney, you know better than anyone that we have to keep your brother safe,” Mom says. “He’ll be alright here with us looking after him.”
“I bet you could even go back to school in Aurora if you want June, become a doctor,” Dad says.
“Yeah, you should do that!” Little June says, tucking her feet under her. Little Jed traces his finger around the tattoo comet on Big Jed’s forearm.
“You and I can go on our walks and find more rocks for our collection,” Mom says, her eyes crinkling beautifully. Dad picks up his guitar and starts humming the Buddy Holly song we used to sing together.
“Things are less complicated here,” Jed says to me. He looks more relaxed and open than he has in years, as if old parts of him are coming up for air. “It could be good for us. What do you say?” I’ve missed seeing Jed so sure of something, but the impossibility of coming home tugs at me, keeps me tethered.
“No,” I say quietly.
Mom sets her fork down on her plate. “Why am I not surprised?” She doesn’t sound angry so much as accustomed to defeat.
I keep looking at Jed. “We have lives to live, and they’re not in Aurora.”
“What do you have now that’s more important than us?” Dad asks. I start to formulate a response and realize I don’t have one. My blood beats heavy in my ears and my mouth goes dry. Nothing new of mine is worth missing. Nothing in the past thirteen years has come close to the life I had with Jed, Mom, and Dad.
“Everything else feels so much more temporary, doesn’t it?” Jed says. I know he’s right, even if it makes me nauseous.
Nothing is as beautiful as this kitchen, with the Mr. Coffee pot brewing and Dad humming our song more and more loudly. If I stayed, we could put our clothes out to dry on sandstone and leave the screen door wide open in case a jackrabbit wanted to wander in. I’d be a doctor during the day and a singer at night. We’d keep Jed safe from the police, and maybe he’d play drums in Dad’s band. Every day would be gentle and slow, like this one.
“Well, June?” Mom asks. I can tell she’s waiting for me to say no, and something about her certainty compels me to contradict her.
I look at her and nod. “It’d be nice to come back,” I say, almost convincing myself it could be possible.
Mom smiles at her plate and sets her napkin on the table. Little June gets out of her chair and hugs me. “I’m glad you’re staying,” she says. “You can come watch me in my spelling bee next week.” I remember the exact day she’s talking about, all the third-graders packed into the cafeteria with the squeaky PA system.
Mom clears the table. “Let’s go look at the stars for a while,” she says. We leave through the screen door and walk to the eucalyptus grove all together. Dad’s truck has replaced my car next to the avocado tree and Mom’s steppingstones are free of weeds. Jed smiles at me and squeezes my shoulder, glad to be together again.
We lie under the eucalyptus and put our heat into the earth, letting it cool us. Little June takes my hand and I rest my head on Jed’s shoulder. We look at the sky together and watch as bright pink stars wink back at us.
I’m not sure how long Jed’s police scanner has been chattering, but it’s still dark outside. I reach for Little June’s hand and grasp bone-dry twigs instead. I sit up so fast I see spots, hoping they’re still here somewhere. Dad’s truck is gone, replaced by my car. The only person left is Jed. He’s staring up at the sky, blinking as though he can’t believe what he’s seeing. I close my eyes, willing Mom and Dad to come back, convincing myself I can smell Mom’s pine deodorant. I’ve never wanted something more.
They’re talking about us on the police scanner, saying that my car was spotted heading toward Aurora earlier. Amidst the numbered codes, a policeman reads out our address. They’re only a few minutes away, but Jed is still staring at the sky, looking more heartbroken than worried.
“You saw them too, right?” he asks, looking over at me. “Mom and Dad were here.”
I don’t know what to tell him. I heard Dad sing tonight and I saw the wrinkles along Mom’s hemline, but now the house is just as we found it–dark, empty, crusted with alkali and beaten by wind. There’s no use in comparing fantasies right now. We need to leave before the cops show up. A dispatcher’s voice comes through the static, saying something about sending more cars.
“All I know is we need to leave right now.” I stand up and scan the trees for signs of Little Jed, in spite of myself.
“What are you looking for?” Jed asks.
“Trying to see if we’re surrounded. I think we’re okay though.” I pull my keys out of my pocket and run toward the car, but Jed doesn’t follow. I turn around. “Get in the car, Jed. Now.”
“No.” His voice is choked and unsteady. “I’m not like you. I need them.”
“And I don’t?” A voice on the scanner says they’re passing the QuickMart, only about a minute away. “The cops are almost here. We can talk about this in the car,” I say.
He screws his face into something between anger and sadness, then settles on sadness. “I need a do-over. To do it better.”
I’m so aware of being his sister, of being the only person in the world who understands his need for home, because I need it too.
I exhale. “There’s no such thing as a do-over.” I don’t know if that’s true after what I saw tonight, but I need to stop indulging Jed.
“You don’t mean that,” he says. “You want another chance too.”
“Of course I do, but that’s impossible.”
Just then, the lights turn back on inside the house. I hear Dad whistling and frying something on the stove. The police cars are coming up the hill. Mom sticks her head out of the screen door, wearing the same sundress.
“Jed! Come quick!” she calls, motioning to him.
He turns from me and runs without hesitation, hugging Mom once he reaches the house. The police cars switch on their sirens. Jed turns and looks at me as Mom closes the screen door behind them. I walk toward the cars with my hands out as if to stop them, but a voice on the loudspeaker tells me to freeze, to put my hands up. I look back at the house. Mom and Jed are gone; the house is dark and hollow once again, the lights out, the rooms empty.
