“So how long will it take for you to screw my head back on straight?” Marlene asked as a test. She figured that anyone who was offering a cure through finger painting was either a quack, a con, or kidding themselves and her.
“That’s up to you,” the administrator said. “We offer classes in different forms of self-expression through art, with the idea that it might lead to asking yourself the right questions for the answers that are already there. I know that sounds like a lot of gobbledygook, but you might eventually understand what I mean. But there’s no responsibility to perform here. No requirements, other than you follow a few basic rules mostly having to do with respecting the rights and privacy of the other clients. If you want to talk to one of the counselors, gain a little insight from an outsider’s perspective, you talk. If you just want to splash paint around or pound on clay, well, we believe in a form of therapy where the best answers are the ones you can discover within yourself if given space and time, which is what most people don’t have in our world…. By the way, do you like Mexican food, or I should say, New Mexican cuisine?”
The tangential question caught Marlene off guard. “Yes,” she said, “such as it is here in Manhattan.”
“Then even if you come to Taos and decide we’re full of bullshit, you won’t be wasting your time,” the administrator said with a laugh. “You haven’t lived until you’ve set your mouth on fire with our Hatch chilies or gorged on a blue corn enchilada smothered in homemade green pork chili. And did I mention, Taos is one of the most beautiful places in the world.”
Marlene liked the administrator and the low-key approach appealed to her. What the hell, she thought, I could use a vacation, and I’ve always wanted to be an artist…at least as of five minutes ago. “Okay, you’ve convinced me. How do I sign up?” she asked. “And are there any rules against margaritas?”
The family had taken her sudden announcement well. At first the boys had looked dismayed at the thought that she was leaving them again, only this time she was going farther. But after she explained she was enrolling in an art school, their faces brightened at what they thought was really a further sign that she was again interested in normal mom things instead of shooting people.
Marlene hoped so, too, but she couldn’t completely break from old habits. Despite assuring Lucy that she was heading west unarmed, she’d secreted her Glock 9mm beneath the driver’s seat of the truck. It was cheating, but she meant it only as a security blanket; she was as lost without a gun nearby as other women were without their purses.
14
AFTER CROSSING INTO NEW MEXICO, THE TWO WOMEN stopped at a hot springs resort in the mountains called Ojo Caliente. Lucy, who was a walking, talking tourist brochure, said that since ancient times the Indians had thought that the mineral baths had healing properties. The two women didn’t know about that but the outdoor pools—with varying degrees of temperature from bathtub warm to just shy of scalding—certainly took care of a number of aches and muscle knots that had formed while they were driving across half the continent.
As she settled back in a pool that night, Marlene was amazed by the stars overhead. When she was talking to the Taos center’s art director, the woman told her that one of the reasons the Santa Fe–Taos area was considered such a painter’s paradise was its clear light. She said scientists had actually ascertained that the skies over northern New Mexico were the clearest in the United States. “Consequently, our sunrises and sunsets, the way the light strikes cloud formations and the landscape, is unique,” the woman said. “I hate to use the word, because it means different things to different people, but what always comes to my mind is pure. Sometimes it’s like seeing, really seeing, something or someone for the first time.”
The night sky Marlene was marveling at could also be attributed to the clarity. At an elevation of about eight thousand feet above sea level, there was less atmosphere to block the fainter stars and, removed from any major town or city, less light pollution to compete with the starlight. In one region of the sky, there seemed to be more stars than there was space between them, a veritable roadway of twinkling lights of various sizes, brightness, and even color—incandescent white, yellow, red, even an icy blue.
“The Milky Way,” Lucy said, following her gaze.
Intellectually, Marlene knew that the night sky was not a flat surface through which the stars as pinpricks of light shone through. Astronomy had been required at Sacred Heart Catholic High School, and she’d been on the usual field trips to the planetarium. But only now could she fully comprehend that the universe had depth and form. Only now did she really understand what an insignificant piece of rock she and the rest of mankind were floating around on, and how even smaller that made her.
Only a couple of days earlier, Marlene might have recoiled at the thought. She’d been stripped of her shell by the purity of nature, humbled before its age and grandeur. But now, aided by a bottle of red wine, she felt that perhaps the cleansing had a reason. Instead of approaching this phase of her life as a glass so full that there was no room for anything new, she had been emptied and was ready to learn again. With that thought came the overwhelming feeling that there were forces in motion that in her current state she could not understand, at least not yet, but that in some way she had a role to play in some drama as Lucy and Dugan had each noted. She hoped that it would be as a hero and not a villain. But for the moment she was content to soak in the beauty of the night as a chorus of yipping and howling suddenly rang down from the hills around Ojo Caliente as the coyotes greeted the rising of the full moon.
The Land of Enchantment proved to be as exotic during the day as at night, when the women left the resort in the morning to complete their journey to Taos. Coming from the East where the undergrowth and hardwood forests occupied every inch of ground not kept clear by man, this land was almost barren, the vegetation sparse and built for survival in an arid climate. There was something almost alien about the rust-red and white rock formations and hills—mesas, according to Lucy—so flat on top that they looked as if some giant had scraped them off with a trowel. It was a land full of surprises. They would be driving along what appeared to be a flat stretch, unbroken for fifty miles, and suddenly the land on either side of the road would plunge off into deep ravines that would cause either driver to hit the brakes and crawl along as though the space might suck them over the edge.
New Mexico was beautiful, they agreed, more vivid than their photography book had been able to portray. But it was in a way they struggled to define. Not the awe-inspiring grandeur of the Colorado mountains. More subtle. As if the land was patient enough to wait for its qualities to ensnare the viewer over a long period of time.
As they continued south, the women noticed that the highway was a death trap for a variety of animals. Deer, raccoons, skunks, rabbits, snakes, and indistinguishable lumps of bloody fur littered the blacktop and shoulders. These attracted the carrion eaters, including the large black bird standing in the middle of the road next to the remains of a badger when they stopped the car to take a photograph of Taos Mountain, which had appeared in the distance.
Marlene thought the bird was a crow, but Lucy informed her that it was a raven. “In many Native myths, the raven is often a thief—sometimes good, in that he takes things back that someone else has stolen and gives them to the owners, but there is also an evil version who is greedy and steals for his own purposes.”
Marlene had turned to look at her daughter for the discourse on Indian mythology. When she looked back, the raven was staring at her with a piece of bloody meat dangling from its shiny beak. It cocked its head to the side and fixed her with an eye so black that it would have looked empty except for a glint. With a casual motion, it threw its head back and tossed the meat down its gullet. The bird then gave her another look and opened its beak to caw. She got the distinct impression that the creature was laughing at her and shivered involuntarily.
Get ahold of yourself, Ciampi, she thought, it’s a big blac
k bird. They don’t laugh, especially not at people. She decided that Lucy’s Indian mysticism talk and the alien landscape had gotten to her. The bird, which had taken a couple of steps toward her, had injured its leg at some point in the past and walked with a limp. Good, maybe that’ll slow you down and somebody will run your ass over, she thought. Then maybe the badger’s cousin will come along and pick at your bones. The bird gave an angry retort and flew away.
“Guess he didn’t like us disturbing his lunch,” Lucy said.
“Yeah,” Marlene agreed, “guess not. Fuck him.”
• • •
The women drove into Taos and were instantly charmed by the adobe buildings and narrow streets. A wedding of a young Hispanic couple had just taken place with the newlyweds, their family, and friends driving around the old town square honking their horns as shopkeepers came out of their stores to wave along with the locals and tourists.
The romance of the place did not fade when they pulled into the parking lot of the Sagebrush Inn south of town. As Lucy had noted from the inn’s Web site, the Sagebrush had been built in 1929 as a way station for travelers on their way to Arizona and points west. It had also served as a magnet for artists and writers. The painter Georgia O’Keeffe had lived and worked there for a time, as had the novelist D. H. Lawrence.
The original building was now the cantina and lobby. The rooms were plastered with the ubiquitous adobe and featured ceiling beams of polished logs and were furnished with heavy Spanish-style furniture covered in geometrical Southwest designs. The bathrooms were works of art with tiled floor and sinks. As promised, their adjoining rooms each contained its own small fireplace, and they were delighted that the evenings were cool enough to light a fire and sit side by side watching the flames and holding hands.
Marlene was just as delighted that she only had to leave her room and cross the courtyard to reach the cantina. It featured a big wooden bar of the sort seen in cowboy movies. The walls were decorated with Navajo blankets, the namesakes of longhorn cattle, and various styles and qualities of Western art including, the bartender told her, several originals by the famous Indian painter R. C. Gorman.
At night, the cantina was packed with customers there to dance to a country-and-western band. Many of the patrons looked like they’d also stepped out of one of those movies. The men wore cowboy hats and pointy-toed boots, and the women full-length fringed skirts or jeans with belt buckles the size of chastity belts. Granted, some of the men were what natives referred to as “California cowboys,” in that their western finery was all for show, and they’d never been closer to a horse than a carnival carousel. Their hands were soft, having never known a day’s hard labor, much less a lifetime of it.
Of course, there were real cowboys, too. Men who worked on the ranches outside of town. When they shook her hand, it felt like she was gripping a piece of wood or rough leather; they were the hands of men who worked with rope and barbed wire and horses. But as hot and dusty as their work could be, she never saw them slumming when they came into the bar. They always dressed up in new blue jeans so tight—to the sighs of the women from New York City—that it seemed it would be impossible for them to do anything except stand up straight. Along with the jeans, the men wore fancy western shirts with Southwest patterns and mother-of-pearl snap buttons, and well-shined dress-up boots. They sported the big silver belt buckles, too, only theirs had engravings on them like 1999 Taos Bull-Riding Champion.
The Anglos, as the women learned whites were referred to, weren’t the only race represented in the bar. Half the crowd was comprised of Hispanic men, who wore their own versions of western finery, handsome with their trim moustaches and dark, piercing eyes. The Latinas were their physical matches with their shining black hair and dazzling white smiles. Some of these vaqueros and senoritas, according to the bartender, were from families who had lived in the area since the sixteenth century. “They actually consider Mexicans who cross the border to work in this country to be outsiders,” he said. “More so than the Anglos.”
Of course, he noted, the Indians had been in the region much longer than any of them, but only their men were represented at the Sagebrush cantina. Some wore big black hats with round crowns and flat brims with lots of silver encircling their wrists. Others simply wore their dark hair loose so that it fell about their shoulders.
Anglo, Hispanic, or Indian, they all seemed to be accomplished western dancers. After a margarita or two, Marlene and Lucy allowed themselves to be taken out onto the dance floor and swirled, spun, and dipped. Sometimes their partners moved at such breakneck speed that it might have been alarming except that there was also the feeling that their partners were in complete control and so they learned to relax and just go with it.
The men were unfailingly courteous, tipping their hats, opening doors, and rising from their seats if a woman stood or approached their table. They also addressed women as “ma’am,” and in such a way that it didn’t sound like an age thing but a gallantry that was all but lost in New York City, even in polite company.
A couple of young cowboys took an immediate fancy to Lucy. After a couple of weeks, one in particular, Ned Blanchet, had persisted enough in staking his claim that Marlene began teasing her daughter about her “new boyfriend.”
Ned was a ranch hand—“We don’t call ourselves cowboys,” he’d politely informed them—who worked on a spread east of town and had a nighttime job as a watchman at a Catholic retreat in the foothills north of the city. It was apparent that he didn’t have much formal education; in fact, he proudly announced soon after they met that he’d quit high school and started working at age fifteen. He wasn’t much to look at—his thin features a bit too irregular, his teeth never having been introduced to an orthodontist, and his ears stood out like satellite dishes. But Marlene thought that there was something about the Southwest sun and weather that gave even a homely face a rugged quality that made up for some of the niceties; not to mention he had a lean, lithe body “to die for…not that I noticed.”
Lucy confided to her mother that her “friend, not boyfriend,” Ned, wasn’t the pushy sort. In fact, he’d never ever tried to kiss her (a remark tinged with just a hint of disappointment, to Marlene’s delight). He was the perfect romantic cavalier.
Once as they were leaving the dance floor, a tall, body-builder type, who’d been leaning on the bar and drinking heavily most of the night, made a remark about Lucy’s breasts, or lack thereof, as she and Ned passed. Ned had immediately spun on his boot heels, but Lucy, the eternal pacifist, insisted that he let it go. But the other man, who was obviously one of the aforementioned California cowboys in an ill-fitting straw ten-gallon hat and brand-new boots that had never seen the inside of a stirrup, did not.
“Looked like a couple of boys dancing out there,” the man announced in a booming voice. He was apparently impressed with his own size, bank account, and the fact that he came from Los Angeles. “I guess that’s what you locals would call coyote ugly.”
This time Lucy wasn’t able to stop Ned when he turned and walked back to where the loudmouth smiled as he approached and struck a karate pose. A second later the stranger was on his back, laid out by a single punch to the nose from a man he outweighed by forty pounds.
“Apologize to the lady,” Ned said evenly.
“Ned, it’s not necessary…,” Lucy began.
Ned looked her in the eye and then back at his stunned opponent who had raised himself on his elbows as blood poured out of his nose, ruining his expensive new shirt. “Sorry, Lucy, but this is a matter of principle. Now,” he spoke again to the man on the floor, “apologize unless you want me to put the toe of my boot where the sun don’t shine…pardon the expression, Lucy.”
The man looked once at Ned’s boots, then his balled fists, and then the steel-gray eyes. The band had stopped playing and the crowd was quietly watching the drama, hoping for more action. But the man swallowed his pride and tried to make amends despite his broken nose. “Thorry. N
hidn’t nean it.”
“That’s better,” Ned replied. “Now I’m going to turn my back and escort the lady to her seat. When I turn around, I think it’d be best if you had skedaddled on out of here. I don’t know much ’bout Los Angeles, but out here, we still treat women with respect.” The man did as told and was last seen spinning the wheels of his Porsche in the gravel parking lot and heading for friendlier territory.
At her seat, Lucy acted mortified that violence had been done on her behalf. She spent several minutes lecturing Ned that “words aren’t worth fighting for,” and that she would have preferred if he had simply “ignored the asshole.” The young cowboy took the tongue-lashing with his head bowed, hat and hands on his lap. “Yes, ma’am. Sorry, Lucy, won’t happen again. Yes, ma’am. No, ma’am.”
When Lucy decided Ned had suffered enough, she bestowed a smile on him like a queen showing mercy on an erring, but much-loved, subject. “Well, aren’t you going to ask me to dance, my Galahad?”
Ned’s head popped up and he broke into a gap-toothed smile. He had no idea what a Galahad was, but it sure sounded fine coming from Lucy’s pink and promising lips. He scooted back his chair and stood in one fluid motion. Extending his hand, he said in his best knight errant, “I’d be mighty pleased, Lucy, if you’d do me the courtesy of a dance.”
Under other circumstances, another city perhaps, Lucy would have laughed at the exaggerated chivalry. But here in the American Southwest, gallantry was as natural as the yipping of the coyotes she could hear coming from the desert late at night as she stood on the balcony outside her room. She smiled demurely and gave up her hand. A minute later, she was laughing wildly and Ned was beaming as they whirled to the frantic pace of the “Orange Blossom Special.”
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