Home to Harmony

“I should warn you that she howls at night.”

He turned to look at Marcus Barnard, who’d come up behind him. “I wouldn’t blame you if you wanted a different room.”

“It’s all right.” David knew how the dog felt. He’d howl, too, if they wouldn’t put him in a mental hospital for it. Already, he had to see a shrink. “Why is she so sad?”

“She misses her owner.”

“Where is he?”

“He died. About a year ago.”

“Wow.” Looking again into Lady’s sad eyes, he felt his own sorrow well up and his eyes start to water. “Sorry, girl.”

Marcus cleared his throat. “She could use a friend and she seems to like you.”

“Yeah?” Would she come into his room? He opened his door and stepped inside. “Want in, girl?”

Lady shivered, whined and stepped toward him, then back. She sat again. David’s heart sank.

“Give her time.” Marcus acted so calm, like nothing could shock him. He was a psychiatrist, so maybe nothing did.

“Yeah. Sure. Thanks.” He closed the door, leaving Lady outside. Maybe she thought he needed guarding.

Inside his room, David felt worse. He’d thought it would be cool to have his own place, like in a hotel, but it smelled dusty and neglected and the bed was creaky-ancient and he didn’t have any of his posters. This wasn’t his place. It was a beat-up cell in a nowhere prison. He didn’t even have Internet.

To calm down, he fished a joint from his small stash, then the bag of Cheetos he’d brought from home. He meant to eat only organic from the commune like he and Brigitte had discussed, but that goat cheese had tasted like ass.

He took a giant hit, then flopped onto the bed. From the ice chest he’d put beside his bed he popped a can of Dr Pepper. He would quit junk food once he felt better.

He wanted back to Phoenix now. Brigitte was going to a bunch of parties this weekend. He’d miss the whole summer with her. In August, she was doing a backpack-hitchhike deal, heading to Seattle, then across the country. By Thanksgiving, she’d be in Europe. If he didn’t lose his nerve, he’d go with her, screw school. It was all a fascist factory of mind control anyway.

He took another toke, holding it in a long time, but the pot didn’t erase how raw he felt inside. He should run. Hitch a ride to the pathetic town and take the bus home. If a bus even came to New Mirage.

If he knew how to drive, he’d borrow the Volvo, or one of the commune’s pickups or, hell, maybe that school bus of Bogie’s painted with hippie crap. Brigitte would love how retro it was. But he didn’t know how to drive because Christine said no permit until his grades went up.

She killed every hope every time.

David studied the smoke curling up from the spliff. His mom would go nuts if she knew he’d brought weed. Everything freaked her out. She always had her eye on him, making him nuts with questions: Where are you going? Who will be there? How’s school? Do you like your English teacher? Are you using drugs? Promise me this, swear that, agree to x, never do y.

His thoughts smeared and echoed. The bud was doing its trick. Good. He needed the world to blur. He took a long swallow of soda and a handful of the cheesy curls, which now tasted creamy and tangy and melted amazingly on his tongue.

Christine didn’t know anything that went on inside him. Whenever he tried to say something real to her, she went pale and scared or red and mad.

At times like this, loaded, he thought about his father. If he only knew where he was. Christine refused to find him. She claimed he would disappoint David, hurt him, that he had a terrible temper, that he was a flake and a jerk.

David didn’t believe that. His dad would relate to him. He would know that smoking a little dope was no big deal. David wasn’t a druggie, he wasn’t “using” like his mother claimed. Like he was on meth or heroin.

He’d done mushrooms a couple times, Ecstasy once and a kid at a party had some Vicodin, but that was just recreation. And he didn’t do booze. Too harsh. He didn’t need drugs.

All he needed was Brigitte. His mother hated her because she was older, because she had ideas of her own. So unfair. Thinking that sent the red flood into his head and he wanted to break something—a wall, a door, a window.

It scared him when he got this angry. His mother said that was how his father was. Even if it was true, he probably had good ways to handle it he could teach David.

Brigitte could always talk him down. Brigitte was his steady center. Brigitte was his life. He had to get to her.

So much burned inside him. He wrote stuff—poetry, mostly, like Brigitte, but also song lyrics. He should practice guitar. Once he got better he could compose. Except it took so long to get better. So, so long… And he’d be here so, so long….

He remembered Christine asking Marcus if he would jam with David, like David was a needy geek. He loved his mom, but she wanted to stroke his hair and read him bedtime stories like he was still five and scared of the dark.

He couldn’t take her anymore. And he hated being mean to her. She’d be sad when he left with Brigitte, but she should get it. She’d left home when she was a teenager, too.

Knock, knock. “Can we talk?” Christine again. He put on his headphones for her own good. If he opened the door he’d just hurt her again.

CHAPTER THREE

THE NEXT MORNING, when Christine opened her eyes and saw gauze over her bed, she shot bolt upright. Where am I?

Then her mosquito bites kicked in, itching madly, and it all came back to her. She flopped back onto the creaky, saggy mattress of her childhood bed.

Her cheek itched with a new bite. So did both elbows. Damn. Mosquito repellant and calamine lotion were going on her grocery list, no matter what David thought.

“We said breakfast, not lunch,” Aurora grumbled when Christine met her in the kitchen for their visit to the clay works barn.

“It’s only seven-thirty, Aurora,” she said on a sigh.

“Well, let’s go then,” Aurora huffed.

Christine grabbed a slice of fruit bread and joined her mother, who was walking so slowly it seemed painful. Worry tightened Christine’s chest. Twice, she reached to support her, but gave up, knowing her mother would slap her hand away.

The barn that housed Harmony House Clay Works was cool and dim and smelled of moist earth. Sunlight slanting in from windows lit wide swaths of thick dust in the air. A crew of four young men shifted items from potter’s wheels to shelves that already held drying pots, bowls and bells.

“Hey there.” A woman in a red-paisley do-rag left the clay she was kneading, wiped her hands on her overalls and came close. “You must be Crystal,” she said, holding out a callused hand. “I’m Lucy. Pleased to meecha.”

“Happy to meet you, too.”

“Lucy runs the show when I’m not here,” Aurora said. “She’ll tell you what she needs you to do. Lucy?”

“Mostly you’ll handle the orders. Also make sure I got crew and clay. Help us load and carry when we’re in a bind and such. I’ll show you the books.”

Lucy led Aurora and Christine to a makeshift table at the rear of the barn—plywood resting on sawhorses with beat-up bar stools for chairs. On top were a ledger, a small invoice pad, an index-card box and a clay-grimy calculator. Not much of an office, Christine thought with dismay.

“Is the income steady?” She flipped through the handwritten ledger.

“About half the year,” Lucy said. “Trouble is we turn down jobs when it gets too busy.”

“We get backed up,” Aurora said, shrugging. “No big thing.”

“That’s a shame,” Christine said, hating the idea of inefficiency or lost profits. Maybe this was an area she could help. “Do you have a Web site?”