I Want My Own Brain
Lorraine Ray
Copyright 2011 Lorraine Ray
Chapter One
Stephanie Falls nibbled her toast into an interesting oblong and listened, without comprehending, as her parents discussed the various effects of the wind that had scoured their yard since midnight. Sometime before dawn—neither parent knew exactly when—a large palm frond had crashed onto the roof of the carport next door, and as they ate their breakfasts the next morning they watched old Mrs. Webster, in polka-dotted gloves and a velour track suit, clamber onto a stepstool in front of her carport. Mrs. Webster’s home was built on land that sloped toward an arroyo, and the Falls’ kitchen window overlooked the roof of her carport. Together, Mr. and Mrs. Falls and Stephanie, watched as Mrs. Webster’s eerie gloves groped blindly for the big palm leaf. The Falls discussed the precision of their neighbor’s yard and how their own modest pink adobe pleased onlookers without garish, old-fashioned, colored gravel. With satisfaction at this minor superiority over Mrs. Webster, who was a relentless busybody, Mr. and Mrs. Falls scraped their last spoonfuls of yogurt out of their cups and then panicked when a horn blared outside.
“I hope that’s not our cab,” said Mr. Falls, his voice rising with nervous tension as he leaned toward the window. He tugged the edge of the curtain aside and scanned the front of the house beyond the cactus hedge and a low pink wall. “Roadrunner Rendezvous!” he exclaimed.
“Oh my god,” said Mrs. Falls in a tired voice. She rose to check the window herself and, then said, “I’ll get the luggage. Go greet the cab or it might leave without us.”
While Mr. Falls carried his empty yogurt cup around the table several times and then ran out to the curb, leaving the front door wide open so that dust and dried Bermuda grass could freely fly in, even onto the wood of the living room floor, something Stephanie had never, ever seen, her mother dashed back and forth to the kitchen enough times to cram a jar of jelly and the butter into the refrigerator door and the dishes into the sink. She also grabbed their bags from the hall, and came back to find Stephanie unmoved, alone at an empty table, still munching a somewhat smaller oblong of toast. Stephanie, who was eight, but small for her age, was effectively hidden by her chair. “Come on,” urged her mother, grasping her wrist and pulling her gently.
“Your cab came early, didn’t it!” screeched Mrs. Webster over the wind. Gloating over their troubles, Mrs. Webster stood on her manicured gravel side yard as Stephanie and her mother came out their front door. She held the great, glossy-brown palm frond upright beside her like a hideous club and squinted in the intense morning sunshine. Behind her, far away, like some stagey, painted backdrop, a desert mountain wore a thick band of tan, a grimy ribbon of dust.
“Yes, yes,” said Mrs. Falls irritably.
“And you say you don’t need your mail picked up?” called Mrs. Webster, feigning neighborly concern.
“It’s not necessary, Mrs. Webster,” said Mrs. Falls, locking the front door. “My parents live in town and they can swing by. You met them once, remember?”
“Hmm,” said Mrs. Webster suspiciously, as though she didn’t believe most people she met were really who they said they were. “Maybe I did, ah-huh, maybe so. But listen, if I were you I’d cancel this trip to Mexico. It was all right some years ago, if you liked rustic vacations, and maybe the worst that would happen to you down there would be some soured refried beans. But now? The place is swarming with drug lords,” she said.
“Our plans are definite,” said Stephanie’s mother.
“You’re smart to leave the little one here then, at least,” she called, but her demeanor showed she didn’t think Mrs. Falls was ever very smart.
At this, Stephanie stopped frowning at the horrid Mrs. Webster. She concentrated her full disapproval on her mother. Her parents’ trip wasn’t news, but during the night Stephanie had forgotten. Just before bed Stephanie’s mother had mentioned, again, the big terrible fact—that her parents were leaving for a second honeymoon in Mazatlan and she wasn’t going with them.
“Goodbye, Mrs. Webster!” said Mrs. Falls. She hustled Stephanie toward the cab and whispered: “Granny Hilda will be there to pick you up after school, but if she isn’t, go to the office and tell them she’s picking you up and they should call her. They know everything, but just in case. I don’t trust that office manager. She acts like she’s taking things down when I talk to her, but most of the time she gets stuff wrong.”
Stephanie’s shock was absolute and all encompassing. The idea of having to stay alone with her grandparents for an entire weekend stupefied her. The whole thing was so unjust that she couldn’t figure out how she ought to start complaining.
“Goodbye!” screamed Mrs. Webster as the sliding door of the cab closed. “Hope I see all of you on Monday!”
The city traffic moved quickly in the cool and windy desert morning. On their way to the airport, they ordered the cab to stop at the open gate in Stephanie’s schoolyard beside a blighted lemon tree and a leafless pomegranate bush. With its dark archways and thick adobe walls, Stephanie’s school had masqueraded as a Spanish mission for forty years. The early sunlight warmed the tan plaster of those walls where a boy in a wool cap leaned backwards and blew into his cupped hands. In the early morning sun his shadow on the wall stretched toward the cab with spidery arms.
The van door slid open, dust blew in along with bright yellow sunshine, and Stephanie’s father lifted her out and set her on the dirt parkway. “There you go, Pumpkin. Love yah,” he said. “Have a great day and learn a lot!”
A morose Stephanie said nothing in response, but she scuffed toward the monitor who was a big woman in dark glasses with a walkie-talkie and an attitude. Stephanie tried to hang around outside the chain link fence after her mother blew a kiss and the van door banged closed, but the monitor would have no part of that, and called her in behind the fence, and sent her shuffling glumly toward the playground. As the cab pulled away, her mother felt a guilty pang to see Stephanie drop her eyes to the ground rather than acknowledge her mother’s nervous goodbye wave. During breakfast Stephanie’s buttery fingers had met up with her short brown hair, but no one had done anything about the resulting mess atop her head.
“Her friends are going to show up soon,” said Mrs. Falls, scanning the empty schoolyard from the van window, “I know it’s an awfully cold, windy morning, and she’s really mad at us, but why does she have to look so miserable? And why did the only flight to Mazatlan have to leave so early?”
“She’ll be fine,” Mr. Falls said.
“Oh, yeah, jeez. I’m beating myself up for nothing.”
“She’ll have a wonderful day and a great weekend,” said Mr. Falls.
“Well, I know Mom will take good care of her,” added Mrs. Falls quietly.
“And your dad. He just dotes on her.”
Mrs. Falls cheered up considerably at this remark. “Isn’t he getting silly about his little snickerdoodle?” she asked.
Her husband nodded. “Yeah, he’s crazy about her. He’s got to stop feeding her so much ice cream, though.”
“I feel bad leaving her. Tell me that nothing much is apt to happen in a few short days,” said Mrs. Falls.
“Nothing much is apt to happen in a few short days. There, happier?”
“A little bit, maybe. Oh, I forgot. Mom mentioned something last night. About Helen. There’s some kind of problem. With her classes. She’s sort of depressed or something and she might be staying over, too. I don’t know. Maybe that’s good?”
“Oh? What?” asked Mr. Falls.
“Helen wants to drop out of school, I guess. She’s upset. She thinks she made a mistake about graduate school and she might be staying over with mom and dad.”
“Graduate school, pppfffttt,” said the cabbie from the front seat, inserting himself in the conversation, “My brother-in-law—he flunked out of a graduate program—Arid Studies! Now he owns a nice organic farm. Out in the country near Rio Rico. He’s not gonna push himself anymore.”
“My days in graduate school were the happiest in my life,” said Mr. Falls.
“You chose well. Everybody knows what a lawyer does, but what exactly is economics?” said Mrs. Falls.
“Oh, economics is it then?” continued the cabbie knowingly. “That’s it. That explains it. No one knows what that is. Economics. That’s bullshit, that’s what that is.”
A startled Mrs. Falls processed the cab driver’s harsh assessment during the time it took them to pass a large parcel of land covered with lacy creosote bushes that were waving frantically in the wind. Mrs. Falls wondered when she saw Helen again if she would be disloyal to claim that economics was bullshit (not that she was forming her opinions based on what some random cabbie had said to her, of course) or if she should tone that down a bit. Maybe it would be better to say nothing, to make no comment of her own and wait and see what her sister said about it. She thought she ought to criticize economics since her sister had been feeling low about herself since she’d entered graduate school, but she would have to take her sister’s lead. Then, thinking about her conversation with her mother, Mrs. Falls remembered she had forgotten to tell her husband that her father was still insisting on marching as a mountain man that weekend, in a parade, but the plan was to include Stephanie.
“Oh, I forgot to tell you. On Sunday Stephanie gets to march in a parade dressed up as a mountain man, or I should say, girl. Up in the mountains in that parade Dad talked about? The one he wanted us to go to?”
Mr. Falls laughed in relief. “Well, we haven’t got a thing to worry about then. If Stephanie gets to dress up in a stinky old suede suit and march in a parade, she’ll soon forget us. Hey, come to think of it, hasn’t she been talking about something she’s doing in school this week?”
“Oh? I don’t know,” said Mrs. Falls, surprised and relieved. “Was there something? I don’t think so. Something different?”
“There was something,” said Mr. Falls. “Ah, I’m not sure what it was. Something she really liked.”
“I don’t know what...what was it? Dancing?” asked Mrs. Falls.
“That’s it! Dancing!”
“Square dancing! Yes, they’re learning that in school. They do that every year. You’re right, Stephanie loves it.”
Chapter Two