“What?” my mother screamed. She turned again to the river, but her water baby had disappeared. She extended her arms out into the water, hoping they would reach where her feet would not take her. Max’s head resurfaced. He stretched out his body, relaxing on his tumultuous water bed, and began to make his way downstream, gently carried by the manic water.
Our mother fell back, buffeted by her own fear. She sat in the river as it gnawed her legs and back. She sat, quietly counting between the thunderclaps as the eye of the storm passed overhead, and she allowed the rain to cry for her.
Four
As Toby had promised when we first met, he trapped me with magic, wine, and—now that I remember my Homer properly—sex. Las Vegas had everything necessary to make me forget the world beyond. Our hours were punctuated by the scheduled eruptions of the Mirage’s volcano and the performances of the Pirates of the Caribbean spectacular at the Treasure Island. At night we were mesmerized by the pillar of light shooting out of the Luxor’s pyramid. Las Vegas seduced us. It was equal parts Circe’s island and Land of the Lotus-Eaters.
When my workday was over, I loved accompanying Toby down the Strip to Fremont Street, marveling at the exploding multicolored fountains and improbable buildings as if he had created them just for me. We lost ourselves among the gaping tourists, watching them as they mistook Toby’s magic—a handful of new flowers, for instance, that burst from one of the Bellagio’s impressive bouquets—for Vegas’s own. The town seemed to summon Toby’s craft, and tricks tumbled from his fingers. The deep lines in his face, the ones I thought were forged by frustration and worry about the limits to his art, had vanished, and for the first time, Toby seemed not to care who took notice of his art.
One Sunday, we decided to leave the lights and glitz of Vegas and drive into the desert, an expanse that I no longer associated with loneliness, but with color and possibility. We headed east until we came to the westernmost edge of the Grand Canyon. Just off the road where a Navajo woman was selling blankets and jewelry, we parked and watched a distant thunderstorm develop across the canyon. By the time the crack of thunder reached us, it was muffled and distorted. Lightning danced along a distant rim, descending from isolated black clouds. When the storm ended, vanishing to an invisible region of the canyon, Toby and I headed back to the car, passing a display of native crafts.
I’m not often enticed by these stands that pop up along all the well-traveled roads in the West. Mass-produced knickknacks like coasters and picture frames decorated with Southwestern motifs have replaced traditional artisan work. But here the blankets caught my eye. They were not the usual Mexican serapes, but authentically Navajo. I picked one up, drawn to the colors that mirrored the rusty canyon and the blue-black storm in the distance.
Toby nodded his approval. “I knew you’d pick that one,” he said.
“Did you?”
He fluttered his fingers over the blanket, “You know sky and sand, or water and sand.” He tapped the blanket’s opposing colors. “How could you resist?”
I smiled. “Obviously I can’t.”
As I got out my wallet, the vendor tried to interest me in several other blankets, but I shook my head. “Okay, okay,” she said, placing my blanket in a bag and handing it to me. “This one is a good choice. Navajo marriage blanket. Very beautiful.”
I reached over to take the bag from her, but the woman didn’t let go. “If the marriage does not work out, the blanket must be cut,” she said. “This is very important.” Her dark eyes darted from me to Toby. We both laughed. “Very important.”
“All right,” I said.
“This blanket is too beautiful for cutting,” she continued before letting go.
“I know,” I replied.
Toby wrapped his arm around me as we walked back to the van.
We drove away from the canyon, back into the desert, where we found a convenience store on an empty stretch of road. While Toby went inside to buy beer, I watch a rusted FOR SALE sign sway in the wind. Several miles up the highway, we parked and walked into the sand. When the road had faded sufficiently into the distance, I spread the blanket on the ground, and we lay down.
Soon Toby propped himself up on his elbows and looked away from the highway and into the desert.
Before I could stop myself, I asked, “You’re still looking for her?”
The magician shook his head.
“Then what?”
“Habit.”
I nodded. “I know. Even when you suspect someone will never turn up, you keep looking.”
Toby turned away from the desert, popped open the beers, and stared at me.
As we watched the lightning in the distance, I was reminded of the storm that stole my brother. “I know my parents didn’t expect Max to return from the river the night he went swimming in the storm,” I said.
I took a sip of beer and cleared my throat.
“That night on the riverbank, when I clung to a branch and watched the storm,” I began.
Toby leaned back on his elbows.
I let my mind return to the moment when the storm had watched us with its unblinking eye like a liquid Cyclops. Satisfied, the eye closed, dried its tear ducts, and released us from its stare. “The wind continued whipping through the trees, hurling raindrops from their leaves. There was no lightning left to illuminate the blackened water or the disappearance of my brother.” All there was, I remembered, was a contented, rhythmic grumble coming from the river, a sure sign that it was delighted with its digestion of an eleven-year-old boy.
“My father brought my mother and me back
