Vivian Vance and Las Vegas, New Mexico

Vivian and Me
by Birdie Jaworski

Vivian Vance and her sister owned the house I call my own. They lived in this simple cracked-stucco box on the edge of the Great Plains, where Mother Earth New Mexico gives birth to a flat-chested Oklahoman girl, a long-legged Texas boy. When Vivian as Ethel Mertz told Lucy Ricardo that she grew up in the Land of Enchantment, she wasn't kidding. I imagine her tooling along the Turquoise Trail outside of Santa Fe in a silver-finned convertible while her handkerchief-covered curls catch white sage and sharp bits of tumbleweed. On purpose, of course. Vivian was that kind of gal.

Doc Holliday rented a room in what is now my backyard. Billy the Kid terrorized the locals, the Rough Riders held their first meeting eight blocks away, Kit Carson regularly rested across the street, the great Navajo Warrior Manuelito rode a gray horse along the Santa Fe Trail that still cuts my town into north and south. I could list the famous people who called Las Vegas, New Mexico home, a stopover, a place of commerce and good tequila, but it would take a ream of paper and more time than I've bought. It doesn't matter. Vivian and her sister reign supreme.

Guero NightHorse laughs when I tell him this. He lifts his brown beaver felt hat and scratches his blonde hair. It's become Our Thing.

"Birdie, how can Vivian be more important than Manuelito? Even Kit Carson?"

I always give the same response, arms akimbo, my feet planted on the cement stairs of my front stoop.

"Guero, Vivian made people laugh. Besides, I can feel her presence sometimes. Her and her sister. I think they visit this old place even though they didn't die here."

Until recently, Guero just nodded, wandered further down the street in search of something to do, something, anything other than lifting the bottle. He's not always successful. A couple times a month he lurches past, doesn't see me, sees three of me, the scent of Tecate and fear rising from his lips. One of those days he stopped. I lifted my hands from my laptop.

"Hey, boy! What's up?"

Guero looked through me, as if Vivian Vance stood behind me, hands on my shoulders, reading my screen, the story that wouldn't gel.

"Were you serious about those spirits? Do you believe?"

I hesitated. Vivian lifted her palms from my shoulders. I felt her take one step back.

"Guero, I don't know for sure. I feel that we're more than our bodies. I've never seen Vivian, not really. But I can feel something here, some kind of funny presence. I did see my Grandpa's ghost once, when I was a child. So yeah, I guess I do believe."

Vivian smiled. I felt her grin raise goosepimples along my arms. A fat spider dropped from the porch eaves and twirled in front of my face - a warning, a roadblock. I shifted my body, let her attach a gossamer web to the iron railing.

"That's a Globe Spider."

Guero moved off the sidewalk onto my driveway. He approached my house, got closer than he ever had, repeated his words.

"That's a Globe Spider. They bring luck, Birdie. My people say they spin stories into their webs. Like in that book about the pig. Stories into their webs. You can't read 'em, but they can read you."

The spider didn't seem to notice his breath, the way it blanketed the porch with green chile and sour booze. I unconsciously lifted my hand to wave the smell west, but caught myself, let it drop. The spider continued to work. I pressed my glasses further up my nose and leaned close, too. One thread against the rail. Another from rail to step. Another from step to an empty ceramic planter that once held an Easter lily. Spin. Drop. Twist. Rest. She barricaded me from Guero, from the land, from the rest of the town I love, spun a story I couldn't read. I knew it was a story of isolation, of introspection.

This spider knows me too well. I'll have to remember to tell the boys to use the back door.

Guero straightened his back with a groan.

"Do you have any spare change? I know I never asked you, Birdie. I just need some money. Can't find any work around here since I got jailed for DWI."

I hesitated. The question frightened me more than ghosts. I knew my answer, though, the answer I always gave the homeless, the placeless, the ones like Guero heavy with psychic fatigue, with the certainty of unhappy death.

"Sure, Guero. Hold on."

I felt Vivian slip into the house as I opened the door. I reached inside my purse and grabbed what little money I had. A few dollars in change. I carefully held it around the web. Guero left without thanks, probably for the saloon, for another cheap can of beer, another slim dull moment. I slid my computer back onto my lap and stared at the forming web. I heard Vivian whisper into my ear.

We're all echos of history. You, me, Guero, Kit Carson, Manuelito, Doc Holliday, Billy the Kid. Only the spiders know us, know what presses us to ask for money, for more time, for another day of good health. Only the spiders know.

The spider lifted one leg as if to wave. Vivian floated above my head, floated above the cedar, above the catalpa. The spider chiseled another scene out of air and silk, a story of an uncertain woman, a dead funny lady, a man with unlikely blonde hair and a deep sorrow, a story only the innocent can read.