Read Online The End of Eve by Ariel Gore - Free Book Online Page A

Styrofoam shot. “It’s a submarine naval training station under there. Good one, huh? The Russians or the Chinese or nobody never gonna suspect a submarine base in the middle of the desert, are they? Submarine training in the desert.” Anthony Perkins kind of squinted and laughed at the same time. “Is that your sister you’re traveling with?” He gestured toward our room with that chin.
    â€œYeah. My sister.” I nodded. “I better get back to my sister.”
    Anthony Perkins lifted his Styrofoam cup and smiled at me. “To family,” he said.
    I tapped the edge of my cup against his. “To family.”
    A couple hundred miles then down the 95 in the already-hot morning, the odd ghost town rising up from the brown-green sand and shrub. Nevada.
    I studied my map. Lake Mead wasn’t so far. Surely this blue hawk-shaped thing on the map just outside Vegas would be swimmable.
    AS SOL AND Maxito splashed in Lake Mead, I collected garbage on the shore and dialed Maia’s number.
    â€œHey, Mama,” she breathed into the phone.
    â€œHey, Mai Mai. So, I got this email from Nonna?”
    Maia sighed. “Yeah. We were staying at this hotel in SantaFe, but we got kicked out. I don’t know what Nonna did to them, but the cops came and kicked us out.”
    In the lake, kids threw their plastic balls and squealed and splashed while their parents drank beer and yelled at them from their beach chairs on the shore.
    â€œWhat’s wrong with the duplex, Mai Mai?”
    â€œWell, Nonna kind of had the house, like, gutted. See, she doesn’t want it to be a duplex, so – and, well, she didn’t get a building permit or anything, right? So she doesn’t want the trailer on the land. Because it might draw attention. Then she’ll get fined ten thousand dollars which she doesn’t have because, you know, she gave the rest of her money to the contractor and, should I go get her?”
    â€œYeah, put her on the phone.”
    I looked across the lake’s surface, out past the kids and all the motorboats and water skiers, the brown-red rocks and mountains beyond.
    A cool two billion years ago, this was the Western coastline of North America. California and Oregon hadn’t yet come crashing in. I thought about continental collisions and inland sea floods, volcanic eruptions and the ash and lava flow that would seal this rock and land together for a while. Now the earth’s rift crust stretched to pull itself back apart here, separate continents still desperate to diverge.
    â€œFinally,” my mother said by way of hello.
    â€œWhere I am I supposed to go, Mom? I sold my house. I’m traveling with a toddler here. I can’t just not come to Santa Fe.”
    My mother kind of groaned an exhale into the phone. “Ariel, don’t get hysterical. I’m going to build us a beautiful home. In the meantime I’m going to rent us a beautiful little guest house. I’ve just found something on Craigslist. It’s small. One room. It sleeps five. The migrant workers of the world would certainly consider it quite luxurious. But, honestly, Ariel, if it’s not good enough for you, get your own place. I can’t take care of everyone. I have cancer.”
    I didn’t know what to say. “Mom, this is insane. That duplex was partly mine. You just ... gutted it?”
    My mother hummed. “All right, I’ll tell you this, but only because I want you to understand. The contractor and the worker I’ve hired didn’t want this job. The worker is suicidally depressed. He’s been through something no one should have to go through. The contractor is bankrupt at nearly age seventy. He’s wonderful. He has a Ph.D. in Anaïs Nin.”
    â€œYou’re serious, Mom? Anaïs Nin? This qualifies him to take a wrecking ball to the house?”
    â€œDon’t be dramatic, Ariel. I hired them both out of self-imposed