Response to prompt #25
The Desert of
Manzanita
by Helen Sadler
Life crawls in Manzanita. The children go to school. The adults go to work and do all
their adult things. The flowers bloom and the sun sets over the ocean, which is
irritatingly relentless in its tides and moods. Some days I think I will have
to crawl out of my skin in order to ever feel free. And that isn’t too far from
the truth.
I did get out of Manzanita once. I begged my mom to take off
her medical billing job – a good two weeks – so we could drive south to Los
Angeles, into the Joshua Tree Forest and the deserts of Nevada and those
stunning Salt Flats in Utah. This was home to me – a place that is dry and
scratchy and unforgiving. Because that is my every day reality. Nowhere like
the desert, with its spiky trees and cacti, its ability to draw every bit of
moisture out of your body leaving your sinuses aching and your skin akin to the
Gila monsters. Ah, the desert. My
home.
I had dreams, great dreams, amazing dreams when I was
growing up in Manzanita. There was no doubt in my mind I would spend my life
here. It wasn’t a huge tourist town then; it was just the locals and newbies
who occasionally showed up on our doorstep hoping to be taken in. More often
than not they were. But not everyone or everything is welcome in Manzanita, as
beautiful as the sky paints the sky and the mountains reflect that glory.
Redemption is hard to find.
There was a boy. Yes, isn’t there always a boy? This is the
wonderful dream part that I go to in my mind only at great risk of encountering
sadness that I will not be able to control. My mother has warned me about
thinking too much about the past, and to not even think too much about the
present. Mother is happy if I
don’t think at all.
But I brought you here to tell my story, so here it is.
I was in love with a boy. Super secret. The only one who
knew was my dear friend Hope Gillerman.
I swore her to secrecy with every pinky swear and zippered mouth motion
and pleading I could possibly conjure up. She laughed. She kept my secret. I thank her for that.
The boy’s name was Donald Hake and we were in the same grade
at Neah-Kah-Nie High School. He was handsome and smart and funny and everyone
loved him. Especially me. There was a gang of us back then, of which I was a
bit on the periphery. There was
Siobhan and Daniel and Jenn and Jane, and a smattering of others who came and
went.
Daniel and Jenn were always together. She was the tall
redhead in the group, the one who was super at sports and everyone loved her
easy manner. Daniel? Well, even back then we questioned whether he was truly
meant for Jenn, but as kids we figured everyone wanted to experiment. No issue for me, anyway. I wasn’t
interested in him.
If Jenn was the tall redhead who caught every man’s eye, I
was the short redhead who was invisible to anyone with testosterone. If Jenn
was the vision of an Olympic goddess, I was the elephant dancer in a tutu. Yes,
I was trying to be a dancer, even though I had a horrible sense of balance. It
was the only thing I wanted to pursue.
Donald – he played saxophone and guitar. Hope played the flute.
She was dedicated. I just
wanted to dance even though my body barely cooperated and I never made it into
anything but intermediate levels at the dance studio I had dreamed of owning
one day.
I wanted Donald.
He was never going to see me dance, so I started to think I needed to
make myself more noticeable. After
all, didn’t that work for Ariel in The
Little Mermaid? Didn’t that work for the Sandy in Grease? Just change who you are. Simple. Gets you the guy every time.
I saved my babysitting money and bought new clothes. No, not
leather pants! But there was a big
beach blast coming up and I was determined to show up as a new person. It was the end of Junior year. I figured it was now or never to nail
Donald down, to help him see how much I loved him, so I was determined I had to
be at that event. And I was going to surf.
Remember. No
sense of balance. I now know it was a silent form of epilepsy, but I had no
idea at the time.
I showed Hope the clothes I had purchased for the event;
halter top, tight shorts, skimpy bikini (yes, even though I wouldn’t be wearing
it to surf.) I kept them hidden from my mom. She would have had a cow and a
half. Hope? Well, she tried to understand.
“Deana, I don’t think you have to change who you are for
Donald. Maybe just talk to
him. Have you ever talked to him?”
I had to admit I had not. Ever. Like never ever.
On the day of the big beach event, the end of the year party
where beer was sure to be flowing and maybe I would get Donald’s attention, I
found out that Hope’s grandmother was ill, and she wasn’t going to make the
party. I was stunned. I stalled. I almost didn’t go.
Then my desire to impress got the best of me, and I called Siobhan for a
ride.
Yes, I drank beer.
And yes, I did my best to surf.
All the way up to the time I woke on the beach with a ton of people
hovering over me and no feeling in my body. Until that moment this girl thought maybe she had a chance.
I still had not talked to Donald, but I knew I was getting close.
And it was Donald who leaned in and told me the ambulance
was on the way. Ambulance? What? At that moment I could have
turned into a sand crab and buried myself deep in a hole, so deep I would come
out in some hovel in China. These are the only words he ever spoke to me. I’m
in critical condition and all I can think is that he finally talked to me, and
I had no way to respond.
As it turns out, while trying to surf I had a seizure which
left me dumped hard on the beach, where I proceeded to have a stroke –
left-sided hemiparesis, to be exact. I was carried off the beach by paramedics.
My mother came to the hospital in a tizzy because I hadn’t been honest with her
about where Siobhan and I were going, and that was basically the end of me.
I spent my senior year being tutored at home. I took online courses for my associates
degree from a community college just so I can make a living. My right side is
partially paralyzed and therapy only took me so far. My brain just doesn’t
cooperate. I missed all the senior
year events I had longed to be part of, with Donald of course: prom,
graduation, the whole works. And,
of course, I could no longer dance.
Donald was long gone out of my life. I don’t believe he ever
checked on me. I truly had been invisible to him all along.
And Olivia Newton-John had made it look so easy.
Time went on.
Jenn and Daniel broke up and before long she was with my Donald. (See how I did that? My Donald. Still. I’m
hopeless, just like Mother says.)
Manzanita. Life
creeps along as another day comes and I have no prospects. I am employed editing technical
journals online, something that I can do from home and doesn’t require the
irritation of not ever being able to drive. I drink too much diet Sprite. I
watch far too much television.
Then the tragedy. Donald in the path of a log truck losing
its breaks. He survives. His son
survives. His daughter Lydia dies. Jenn loses it. They divorce.
This is the “Tragedy of All Tragedies” in Manzanita. The
whole town made a big deal out of Jenn’s daughter dying. Everyone but me attended the funeral
(which was at a graveyard overlooking that nasty Pacific. Who would lay their child in such a
godforsaken place?) They cried and worried about “poor Jenn” and “such a tragic
thing to occur so fast.” Well, I
had something horrendous happen to me which changed my life in a flash, and no
one grieved or wrung their hands over the fragility of life. That’s the price I
pay for not dying.
And yes, it got messier after that. Jenn breaking up a marriage. Mary Ann Tucker able to voice the anger
I have held in for so long. (We have quite an active gossip mill here in
Manzanita.) This broke Donald’s heart for good, I think, and he moved away
eventually. Not that it matters. I
hadn’t seen him in years anyway. Just rumors and maybe an occasional picture
someone took. All our sad lives started that moment I had an epileptic seizure
and time came to a stand still. Forever.
Mother says I need to start thinking about what I will do
someday when she is not here to take care of me. Not sure what she wants me to do. Start dating?
Now? Who would have me?
The evening Mother made this suggestion I found myself
looking out the window, something I rarely do. I thought about my ridiculous
love for Donald and my competition to be like Jenn and my lost dance dreams and
my missing friendships. No one wants to be around me now since I’ve lost my
sense of humor and ability to express feelings appropriately. Hope, yes, she stops
by sometimes, but she has her hands full with her own children.
I look out the window long after dark, thankful I can’t see
the wretched ocean. I know one day
I need to get out of here. I know
one day I will find a way to move, a way to get to the desert or the salt flats
or anywhere but this rocky heartbreaking coastline. Away from this insular
atmosphere that gets harder to breathe in every day. I may not even wait for Mother to pass away. I may need to
make my move. I look at the tall trees and wish they were Saguro cactus. I look
at the mountains and wish they were miles of sandy dust. I want to go to a
place that feels as dry outside as I do inside. It is only there I will find
rest. It is only there I will be
consoled.
This story stems from Kevin Canty’s story “The Whore of
Manzanita.”
