Red Weather

21. Limbo

147 21 Limbo They were in Peter’s Cherokee, four of them in the backseat sitting two forward, two back, the way the cousins did summers at her Aunt Moss’s house. The road went up and down hills, curving to the left, then the right. Peter kept his foot heavy on the gas pedal, laughing as they careened toward the Supermercado in Santa Ana. They were out of everything. The power was back, the water. But the store near them still had no rear wall, and Deb, the only one of them with a working car, was gone from early in the morning until late every night. She would come in dusty, her eyes raccooned with fatigue. “I’m not hungry,” she would say, but when Kira put a plate of food in front of her, she would pick up her fork and begin to eat. She would eat straight through, sitting back and panting a little with the effort when the plate was clean. “Beer?” Kira always asked her, but Deb didn’t drink and always shook her head no. They’d been waiting for Rolando to take them shopping, when Peter pulled up in front of their house with Susannah and Lianna, the new teacher from school. Rolando’s Land Rover was acting up, so he asked Peter to take everyone shopping after school. The car twisted and turned, the fruit-shaped auto deodorizer dipping and bobbing around the rearview mirror. It smelled like cherry cough drops. Perched forward, Neva had nothing to hold onto. She felt her head lurch with every movement the car made. “Stop,” she said, and everyone shrieked, “Stop, stop,” and they went up a steep hill and down so fast, she thought her stomach might come out the top of her head. The cherry scent was strong, sweet over a faint odor of mildew. Change rattled in the ashtray. “Kira,” she said, but Kira ignored her, her blond head bent over a score she was marking up with a pencil. Kira could work anywhere. She dug her nails into Kira’s forearm. “Kira, I’m sick,” she said. 148 “Peter, stop the fucking car,” Kira said in a low voice, barely glancing up from her work. Peter pulled onto the narrow shoulder. He turned around, irritated, but Kira ignored him. She reached across Susannah to unlock the door. “Go,” she said, and Neva stumbled out onto the side of the road. Neva went behind a clump of waist-high grass. She leaned over, supporting herself with her hands on the tops of her thighs. She breathed slowly, counting: eight in, four out. She remembered when Will decided to learn to meditate. Energy in, toxins out. She stood up, queasy and panting, but better, her face cool with sweat in the slight breeze. Everyone was out of the car, except for Lianna, the new teacher, who sat in the front passenger seat and stared straight ahead. Lianna’s husband had come down with one of the relief agencies, and she had been hired to teach eighth grade when Jackie Reznick, a twenty-twoyear -old from Cleveland, had finally given in to her parents’ pleas to come home and take a job in a safe place. “Okay?” Kira asked Neva. She was leaning against the Cherokee, still studying the score. Neva nodded. “Lianna,” Kira said. “Neva needs to sit up front.” Lianna did not move. She was enamored of Peter. Her husband was out of town, traveling with a group into the Escazú region where AID thought the farmers might raise goats. When Peter made a joke, Lianna laughed longer than anyone else. She asked him lots of questions. Kira opened the passenger door and waited. Lianna gathered up her things, a large pocketbook and a pale blue sweater. Kira said something to her as she clambered out, too low for Neva to hear, but she saw Lianna’s face flush. The store’s shelves were half empty, bags of sugar forlorn next to canned juice in weird flavors, quince or pomegranate. “It’s like this all the time in Nicaragua,” Susannah said, “because of the American embargo.” “An earthquake or a government,” Kira said. “Either way you’re drinking quince juice.” Susannah and Neva walked up and down the aisles, filling their red plastic baskets. They bought extra for the beggars outside. “What I would give for something spicy,” Susannah said. Neva nodded. She remembered this same sinking feeling when Will would send...