Gypsies

It was a long drive. They followed the San Diego Freeway south past shimmy instant suburbs and forests of desiccated palm trees, past oil wastelands and cracked concrete underpasses scrawled with Hispanic graffiti. Laura didn’t talk much, seemed to be concentrating on the driving. It was coming on for dusk, rush-hour traffic, blinders pulled down to keep out the setting sun. Michael felt the tension rising in the enclosed space of the car.

He understood that something important was happening. They were going to Aunt Laura’s place to visit, to stay a while, that had been established… but more than that. His mother’s anxiety was obvious. She sat beside Aunt Laura with her spine rigid and her head held almost primly forward. And he could see the concentration gathering in Laura herself, a tensing of muscles.

They left the freeway on an off ramp and turned west toward the ocean, through a range of scrubby brown hills. There was more housing going up along these dry ravines. Billboards for Model Homes. Who would live here? Michael wondered. Why? What was there to draw all these people?

And then they came within sight of the ocean, a gray flatness, shabby roadside stalls and businesses, salt air and the rancid smell of diesel oil.

The change began as the sun was setting.

Michael thought at first it was a trick of the light. The sunset seemed to suffuse the car through the windows on the right. It was momentarily blinding, the way a lance of sun off hot, still water is blinding. But not only that. He felt a surge of something inside him, a disorientation, as if he had been blindfolded and spun a dozen times around. For a fraction of a second Michael thought he was falling, that the car was plummeting through empty space. He blinked twice and held his breath. Then the tires bit pavement again, the suspension bottomed and then steadied. The brightness faded.

But the memory lingered. This was a familiar feeling. When had he felt it before? Just a little while ago, he thought … in Toronto. With the Gray Man.

Like this, Michael thought: a stepping outside and beyond, through the secret doors of the world; and he looked outside with sudden startlement: Where are we now?

But the world—this road—looked the same. Or nearly the same. It might be imagination, but it seemed as if some of the shabbiness had gone. The storefronts were a little cleaner, a little brighter. The air (he was almost certain) felt fresher, the sunset brighter but less gaudy.

He caught Laura’s eye in the rearview mirror.

She looked at him and nodded solemnly, as if to say, Yes, I did that. Yes, it’s real.

He cleared his throat and said, “Where are we going?”

“My place,” Laura said calmly. “I told you.” A sign a

3

Karen had never been good at dealing with the unexpected. She was cautious, therefore, in evaluating this place Laura had brought her to. Turquoise Beach.

A name not on any map she had ever seen, though she supposed you could go to a gas station—here—and buy a map that would have Turquoise Beach marked on it. And other strange places.

They arrived after dark, but the town, what she could see of it, was an i

Beyond this hub was a network of shadowed streets and quiet houses, a similar mix of Victorian brickwork and airy wood-frame buildings. Laura, humming to herself, turned west toward the ocean and parked at last in a patch of gravel adjoining a three-story slatwood house. “We’re the top two floors,” she said, climbing out.

Karen stood in the coolish night air feeling suddenly alone in this new world, reminding herself that it really was that, a new world. Did Gavin exist in this place? If she phoned their old number in Toronto, would he answer?

Did Canada exist, or had the borders been redrawn?

Strange. It made her shiver. She listened to the faint rushing of waves against the shore, prosaic and real. And the stars, she thought: the stars were still the same.

Laura came abreast of her holding two suitcases. Karen said quickly, “Here, let me have one.” But a bearded man bustled out of the front door of the house and took the case out of her hand. “You must be Karen,” he said.

Laura said, “This is Emmett. Emmett lives downstairs. Emmett is helpful.” Emmett smiled somewhat shyly.

He’s courting her, Karen thought. But wasn’t someone always? Laura had always attracted men. Laura had a knack with men.

Whereas Karen had married the first man who showed any interest in her… who had left her to live with his girlfriend by the lake. “Hello, Emmett,” she said.

Michael came around the car with his own suitcase weighing him down. Emmett wisely didn’t offer to take it; instead he said, “Let me show you the stairs. Mike—right?”

Michael followed him into the house.

“He’s nice,” Karen said.

“So? You approve?”

“My first impression is good.”

Laura smiled. “Emmett and I are pretty much loners. But we’ve been circling a little bit. There are—” She made a seesaw gesture with her hand. “Possibilities.”

Karen said hopefully, “You have coffee?”

“Costa Rican. Fresh-ground.”

“I want a big cup of coffee. And a shower.” And a bed, she thought privately. Something soft. With clean sheets.

“Can do. Told you it was nice here.”

And Karen understood that they had begun to be sisters again. After all these years. In this strange place.

4

They sat around Aunt Laura’s old kitchen table for an hour before bed, the two women talking about nothing in particular, sipping coffee from porcelain mugs. Michael watched with a growing impatience. He felt excluded: not from the conversation so much as from what was left unsaid. Between them, he thought, they know. They understand.

When he couldn’t take it anymore, he stood up. It had been a long day and his head was buzzing. But he felt the urge to say something, to make them acknowledge the thing that had happened. This was taboo: but the world was different now; he felt the words come welling up.

“You ought to explain,” he said. And into the sudden silence: “I mean, I’m not blind. I don’t know where we are, but I know you can’t get here from the hotel. Not down the regular roads.” Roads, he thought, angles, doorways. “I felt it,” he said. “You should explain.”

His mother looked away, folded her hands in her lap, regarded her folded hands wordlessly. Michael felt a sudden remorse. But his Aunt Laura wasn’t angry or surprised. She looked at him steadily from her place by the window.

“Soon,” she said quietly. “I promise. All right?”

The gratitude he felt took him by surprise: it was that intense. “AH right,” he said.

Because, the thing was, she meant it. He could tell.

“But bed now,” Laura said. “I think that’s a good idea for all of us. Can you find your room?” Upstairs and to the right.

Tired as he was, Michael lay awake for a time in his new bed in the dark, listening to the night sounds of his aunt’s house and the quiet pulsing of the surf. The house was quiet. For a long time, there were no voices from the kitchen.