Mojave Desert, September 1937
No blood test, no waiting for a license the Clark County bureau happily tosses at you like rice, like holy water or bee pollen—honeyed words inked in haste on an altar between two lovers, two tumbling weeds, two birds sworn to nest until death parts them—the end that eventually rolls its dark curtain down in a leaden clap, an almighty thunder shocking the clay of a red Nevada horizon. I thought of Greta’s starlet toes sinking into cement outside Grauman’s, and in my womb’s gully, new life plotting its infant steps with every breath I take. And, really, what choice did Dick and I have? Once he’d slipped himself inside me last New Year’s Eve when Mother was out, once he slid that ring on my hand at Inspiration Point, waves crashing against rocks and his husky voice warm in my ear: I love you, Doll. There was no turning back. We hit the road, stopping once the whole 300 miles for me to throw up in a service station restroom on Highway 91. Richard holding my head, wiping my face with his handkerchief wrapped around ice from the dispenser out back of the Texaco mart. Once I’d emptied my gut and caught my breath, I felt ready to make it— especially after I chewed a few saltines washed down with ginger ale. My stomach settled, Richard filled the tank, and we were off in a cloud of desert dust. I couldn’t wait to get there. The less I had to think about Mother’s face when she read the note I’d left propped against her rosebud teakettle in the kitchen. About eloping. About the baby growing inside. And taking the car. About the miles between us and goodbye to my former life as a daughter descended from Hollywood elite. A nobody now—a civilian, mother, wife—I swirled a cap of wintergreen rinse around my mouth and spit that bittersweetness into the rest stop sink, smoothed my sweaty curls back from my temples, my stomach settling, my past and its ill-fitting dreams sucked far and away under faucet, drain, sewer, sea. Yes, everything ended up there, didn’t it? And someday soon, Richard would take me sailing on that sea, on our very own boat, our clean new dream atop the waves of time with no mind to the giant bottom-feeding fish of my fading, forgetting past—the one that got away.
