A DARKNESS PALE
CRISSCROSS
…Irie found out her girlfriend had started drifting…
Crisscross
Toula quickly declined. Her expression went flat. When Irie tried to talk to her, she looked away as though distracted by something more essential. Somewhere… When Toula looked at Irie, it felt like she was looking through her.
Irie did what she could to be helpful. Drifting was either medical, or psychological, though there wasn’t evidence for either. It was undetectable, until it wasn’t. Drifters gradually stopped direct communication and then stopped communicating all together. It was true that in the end they killed themselves, drifting into the wild and discarding their clothes and starving or freezing to death, but until such activities were actively occurring there was no legal way to hold them. Irie heard about families who followed their loved ones into the woods and grabbed them once they were naked and had them committed, but this seemed ultimately pointless. The drifter always were released because they were never a threat to themselves or others, or gravely disabled. They were complacent and even pumped full of antipsychotics they would start drifting again. Keeping them locked up in their home was equally futile – at some point the drifter would figure out a way to leave.
Toula continued to cook the meals and went shopping and did the laundry. She stopped going to all her groups, which meant Irie stopped going too. Every night she still watched movies with Irie. She became placid and polite. When she talked to Irie she talked as though Irie was someone else.
About a week after their visit with the counselor, she began taking walks after breakfast. One night, toward the end of January, she was gone when Irie came home. The power was out, again. Irie wasn’t sure what to do and wandered around the house with an oil lamp, sealing drips and telling herself it was entirely possible tonight wasn't the night Toula was gone forever.
She felt like she was creeping through a stranger’s house, which was true. When they’d moved up from LA, completely broke, Toula’s parents let them set up in their semi-finished first floor garage. Toula’s parents died a couple of months later, leaving the house to Toula. Not long after that the chemical composition of the snow changed and it started eating wood and tar. Irie and Toula could barely afford the property tax, let alone a good roof tarp, and made do with shitty alternatives. It meant drippy ulcers running all through house and them staying in the basement
Irie decided it was better to accept Toula as gone. Toula was gone forever, no doubt already naked somewhere in the woods. Most surely dead. There wasn’t anything to do about it. Irie didn’t want to think about it. She returned to the basement and flopped onto their couch and put her head in her hands and stayed like that until the silence of the garage became too loud, the dusty smell of concrete too over powering.
She watched the movie she’d rented, The Long Good Friday, and went to bed.
She thought about Toula’s directive. Be brave and find herself. Irie wasn’t sure why Toula thought she wasn’t in touch with herself. Irie found herself every time she looked in the mirror. Clearly. She was someone who wasn’t anyone. She was ugly and selfish and stupid. She needed to be told what to. When she made decisions they were no good.
She made the decision to fill the new empty hours by watching more movies. Just like when she was a kid. When she watched movies she thought about nothing. At work she thought about work. In between times she thought about Toula. She couldn’t tell if she missed Toula or missed how Toula took up the time. She felt terrible and out of control. She was afraid she’d get worse, like that night her father had shown up.
No good. She watched more movies and her VHS player broke. Thanks to the Big Dip, electrical components were rare commodities and Irie didn’t have enough money to get the player fixed or to buy another one, and went into a panic and bough a six-pack of stout. The brew was skunky and gritty and she knew as soon as she'd finished all the beers she slapped on her snow shoes and went out and bought more. She now felt the same as when she'd found out Evie was gone. Evie had been no good for her but she'd been fantastic at telling her what to do and the most excellent plug for the emptiness. Evie had been so clear and strong and radiant. When Evie left the booze took over completely and somehow it had taken her to Toula.
Where was the booze going to take her now? Further into the emptiness. That was who she was. That was how it had been when she was growing up. She experienced a lurching thought: the Orchard. Her uncle and dad and their distance and the formal way they interacted with her, when they bothered to interact with her. She thought about the afternoon her dad called her and told her they’d burned it all down, and how it was always nothing and then it wasn’t even that. That was what caused her to join up with AES. That was what had caused her to stay with Evie until… And then that last visit from her dad and going nuts…
She was clearly going nuts again, and because she was so loaded she didn't mind at all. She took a steam bus to Svenson. These days the region was a bustling hub for greenhouse and warehouse farming. There was a constant meandering convoy train of flatbed treads crisscrossing the back roads and keeping the goods moving. She drank the bottles she’d stuffed into her snow pants and hitched a ride to the Orchid’s entrance and snow shoed the rest of the way, clomping past rows of black and gnarled apple trees, until she came to where she believed the farmhouse had stood. She passed the shacks where the seasonal pickers stayed, which were now ruins. Behind them was the steep hill which housed the harvest storage space.
Irie saw a wide aluminum awning fabricated over the door of the storage space. She got closer and noticed the door itself was new. There was a push button mechanical lever lock. S.O. was hand painted on its face.
That night her father talked about a birthday key. Irie wondered and sucked in a lungful of frigid air. She pulled off her glove and pressed her birthday into the mechanical keypad, thinking, everything’s frozen, everything’s dead. There was the snap of bolts and the handle jerked. The door easily opened inward.
She was in some sort of movie set. Irie lit a propane flashlight. Different rooms were in different stages of construction. All of it abandoned. She pondered and then understood. Her dad had been trying to recreate the old house. So many boxes filled with books and VHS tapes. There were bookshelves against the walls. There was a wood-burning stove exactly like the one she used to lie in front of, listening to Starship and Genesis on her boombox. In a closet space she found a collection of survival gear, water purifiers, blankets.
Here was the Source Orchard. Here was the shit the crazy old man had been talking about.
“Dad. Dad, what the fuck?”
Strangely, looking around with her flashlight, she felt somewhat less agitated and scared, though she acknowledged she was still very drunk.
…Irie now actively searching, though she’s not sure for what, so she hits a bar and…