by Julie Mars
The thought of the word “money” propelled her toward her closet. She slid her fingers into the pockets of various cold weather coats and jackets that were pushed to the back, where she kept her cash. She should put it in the bank, she knew, but she had never in her life had a bank account. It simply felt better to have her money handy. Donny had kept cash all over the apartment, adding dollars here and there from his tips every night to one stash or the other, and she had carried on the tradition.
Margaret collected all of it, poured herself another big mug of coffee, and settled onto the futon couch in the living room to count up. She had $3,946 left, which could keep her—in the style she was accustomed to—for at least three more months.
But not if she bought welding equipment.
She sipped her coffee thoughtfully. Any normal person would look for a job immediately, but most normal people needed to feel secure, which was not something Margaret thought was possible in her own case. She’d had the rug pulled out from under her in too many big, important ways to believe in security. This gave her a kind of freedom that few people had, though she knew it was nothing to brag about.
She put her money back in its hiding place and went outside to stretch out in the hammock. The monkeys chattered like mad in the background, and Magpie paced the perimeter for the second time, while Margaret stared into the branches of the elm tree, imagining her self-portrait hanging there.
“I guess it can’t hurt to check it out, right Mag?” Margaret said. Magpie didn’t disagree, so after her breakfast of toast and coffee, Margaret took out the card Benito had given her and opened her Albuquerque Road Guide. She would present herself at Roadrunner Courier Service in person rather than call, a job-hunting strategy left over from her bartending days. She got dressed with slightly more care than usual, taking a crisp white blouse off a hangar and tucking it into her black jeans.
The office was on Louisiana just south of Central. Margaret was greatly amused by the way the streets were organized in Albuquerque. For example, there was a section between her Barelas home and her day’s destination known as the “presidents’ streets,” in which the north-south roads were named Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, and so on, one street for each president, in chronological order. But the system petered out after Jackson, when it jumped to Truman and then disappeared completely, as if whoever had developed that street-naming strategy had grown bored with the concept or perhaps could not remember who came next after the founding fathers were laid to rest. The same thing applied to the state streets. They came in alphabetical order soon after the presidents, but quickly began to skip some states and totally ignore others. New York, for example, was miles away from the rest, in a different part of town not far from the river. On I-40, the exits jumped from Louisiana to Wyoming with no apology, and no New England states seemed to exist anywhere. It was all part of Albuquerque’s crazy charm, she thought.
Pulling up in front of a small storefront where “Roadrunner Courier Service” was hand-stenciled in the window, she parked and went inside. A bald man in his sixties with a steel grey comb-over sat at a cluttered desk. He wore a telephone headset, into which he was speaking, and operated a complicated phone system that looked far more high tech than a guy in his age range could be expected to handle. He waved her toward a chair, of which there were four, all canvas director’s chairs, lined up against the front window. The one she chose had “Steven Spielberg” scrolled across the back. Another desk, which looked neater, sat empty, obviously temporarily, since a large takeout cup from Starbucks was currently contributing white curls of steam to the stale air.
“I’ll send Henry right over,” the man behind the desk said into his headset. “I’ll get him there within a half hour. No problem.” He hung up and made a call to Henry, providing him with the name of a law firm and an address. The whole transaction took about two minutes. Maybe less.
“What can I do for you?” the man asked, speaking quickly, as if he were used to fitting in a few sentences between phone calls.
Margaret stood up. “I’m wondering if you’re looking for any help,” she said.
“That your car?” he asked with a shift of his head toward the front window.
“Yeah,” she said, giving him a big bartender smile. “It might look bad, but it runs great. It only has sixty thousand miles on it.”
He looked skeptical. “You got a valid New Mexico driver’s license?”
“I’m planning to transfer it over today.” She had not made it to the motor vehicle office yet, had put it off because it seemed daunting to officially kiss her former self goodbye. “My license is from New York.”
“Is it clean?”
“Squeeky,” said Margaret.
“Car insured?”
“Always.”
The phone rang again, and the man made arrangements for the pickup of more legal paperwork, then pushed another button. “Henry, I got another stop for you,” he said, barely pausing before he launched into the details. When he hung up, Margaret spoke fast. “I spoke to Benito, who lives in my neighborhood. He said you might need a driver to do long trips. I’d like to do that—as long as you’ve got. I just moved here, and I want to see the scenery.”
Meanwhile, a toilet flushed nearby and an older woman, perhaps this man’s mate as well as his business partner, let herself out of the restroom in the back and made her way through stacks of boxes and office supplies to her desk. “Pull up a chair,” the woman said. “I’m Nancy.”
“Margaret Shaw,” replied Margaret, extending her hand.
“That’s Leo,” Nancy said with a little wave in her partner’s direction. He was on the phone again, oblivious.
Nancy wore a track suit in pale green with darker green stripes down the sides. She was in good shape for a woman her age, too—enough to convince Margaret that the big latte on her desk was no doubt nonfat and probably decaf, too.
“Have you ever been out to the Navajo rez? Out by Gallup?” asked Nancy.
“Never been anywhere,” Margaret replied, “which makes me more than happy to go.”
“You want some coffee?” Nancy asked. “They just opened a Starbucks. It’s really nice. Let’s run over there.” She was already collecting her purse from the bottom drawer of her desk. “I’ll be right back,” she called to Leo, and the two women walked out the door. Leo barely nodded. It was clear to Margaret that Nancy would use any excuse to take off from the Roadrunner office. The Starbucks was only half a block away, and as they walked, Nancy launched right into details about Margaret’s potential job.
“We got a client forty, forty-five miles off I-40 northeast of Gallup. He lives at the end of about thirty miles of dirt road, and let me tell you, the roads are for shit once you get off the highway. Other drivers who’ve made the run tell me you can’t go more than ten, fifteen miles an hour. That’s why they don’t want to go back. Takes too much time. Beats the hell out of their vehicles, too. You got four-wheel drive?”
“Yeah, but I’ve never used it,” Margaret said.
“First time for everything, right?” Nancy replied. “Anyway, this client has a couple big boxes delivered to us every six months or so, and we run them out to him. You interested?”
“Is he Navajo?” Margaret asked.
“Who else would live out in the middle of nowhere? The last guy who went saw a bobcat sleeping on a rock by the side of this guy’s driveway. Nobody wants the job, but if you’re mostly interested in seeing the scenery . . .” Nancy let the question linger in the air.
“I want the job,” Margaret said, “as long as I can bring my dog with me.”
“You can bring three acrobatic midgets and a bearded lady for all I care,” said Nancy, and they both laughed.
Margaret was already captivated with the idea of wandering along dirt roads on an Indian reservation, finding her way through lonely rock formations out of a John Wayne movie.
“I’ve got pretty good directions back at the office. This guy lives
way up in the hills, but you leave the box with some old Indian lady. He leaves the money with her, too. Cash.”
“Do I have to get officially hired?” Margaret asked.
“You’re hired, honey, believe me,” said Nancy.
They sat at a table outside Starbucks in an abbreviated patio on the west side, and Margaret stared out past the volcanoes at the horizon. From her New Mexico guide book, she knew Gallup was a few hours away, right near the Arizona state line. She smiled to herself.
She was heading into Indian country.
1991
IT TAKES him forty-one days to reach the American embassy in Bombay. Along the way, he begs. He steals. He approaches foreign tourists and tells them his long story. He can see the horror in their eyes. He is grateful for the rupees, and, in one case, the twenty dollar bill in U.S. currency pressed into his hand by a man in his fifties who has taken up yoga and is headed for a month-long retreat at an ashram in Mysore.
He tells his story once more to an administrative assistant in the embassy, an American man young enough to be his son. This man places a transatlantic phone call to Donny’s apartment, but the number is disconnected. Vincent, whose parents died together in a freak chimney fire that destroyed their cabin three months before he met Regina, has no one else to call.
There is no one but Margaret left from his old life, and he has no idea where she is.
In the end, after several meetings and three months on the streets of Bombay, Vincent receives a passport and a stack of papers. By signing them, he promises to repay the cost of the one-way ticket to New York City. His passport will be deactivated until this debt is paid in full, they say, and Vincent nods and agrees to the terms.
He believes he will repay the debt, that he will somehow get on his feet again in his home country.
He believes that he will find his daughter, that she will welcome him into her life.
The administrative assistant, who has come to like Vincent and perhaps feel his pain a little bit, gives Vincent five crisp twenties in a sealed envelope. “That should last you about five minutes in New York,” he says, with a laugh. He shakes Vincent’s hand and walks him to the door of his office.
As Vincent descends the stairs, he calls, “Vincent! Let me know if you find her.”
“I will,” Vincent promises, and he means it.
EVEN AS Margaret sipped her expensive latte on the Starbucks patio, she had no illusions about the ease with which she’d become a Roadrunner employee. Nancy had made it clear: nobody else would take this job. That idea pleased Margaret—it made her feel like a nut, not a bad feeling. It made her feel unpredictable and adventurous.
But as she drove away from the office, headed to the Motor Vehicle Department to become an official New Mexican, a memory presented itself, a moment with Nick from long ago. He had shown up at her apartment, where she had retreated to lick her wounds in private after the rejection from the trendy SoHo art gallery owner. She had left Nick a message to that effect on his machine, which seemed the only polite thing to do since it was his connection that had sent her there in the first place. But she waited to call until she knew he would be in class. She did not want to speak to him—or anyone else, for that matter. She had wept nonstop, the kind of crying that wears a person out, the kind that made her ribs ache, her head so congested she could barely breathe.
Her buzzer was broken. Two hours later, when she heard him calling her from the street, she had no intention of letting him in, but after twenty minutes of hearing “Margaret! Margaret! Margaret!” from three floors down, she could not bear it anymore. She opened the window, throwing him the key to the downstairs door in an old change purse. She let him in, and that was when he had told her to shape up, get over it, get back on her feet. She had kept right on crying, and finally he grew exasperated and headed for the door. Turning around, he pointed an accusatory finger at her.
“You know the reason you won’t make it as an artist?” he asked in a thin, cool voice. “Because you put being a nut first. You want to be a nut more than you want to be a success.”
He stormed out, giving the door a good slam behind him. What he had said rang true in that moment, shone like a beacon of truth in the midst of her meltdown. She couldn’t agree with the word “want.” She didn’t want to be a nut. She just was one. She could see that this simple fact could prevent her from becoming the somebody she wished to become. He hadn’t said her nuttiness or self-destruction kept her from being a good, or maybe great, artist. He said it stopped her from being a success at it. There was a big difference, after all.
Sitting in her little studio apartment in the East Village, Margaret began to think about her parents: her mother, uncontrollable and wild and beautiful, a risk-junky who could not bear to sit still; and her father, a painter himself, whose black moods still colored her memory of him. She could vaguely recall images of him standing before a canvas, his hair a mess and his face contorted, as he furiously slapped paint onto it. She had a little mattress in the corner of their loft near Chinatown. She could actually remember sitting there, observing him, and wondering if he even remembered he had a little girl. And even Donny, her Rock of Gibraltar, had his dark phases. “It’s just me Irish blood,” he would say when she asked him what was wrong, why he seemed so deeply sad at times. “Me Irish melancholy coming home to roost.” Given all that, what were her chances of ending up normal? She was actually surprised she’d done as well as she had.
But today, being designated by Nancy as the only nut willing to drive out to the middle of nowhere with a package from Roadrunner Courier Service, had made her feel happy. It might not contribute to her success as an artist, but it would add a few dollars to her fund for welding equipment, which was no small thing. Perhaps she would spend the night out there, parked by the side of a dirt road in total darkness, just she and Magpie. The backseat of the Colt Vista folded down, leaving plenty of room to stretch out. She decided to purchase an air mattress on her way home, just to keep in the car, along with the sleeping bag she already had. This could be an adventure if she treated it as one.
Margaret had already looked up the various locations of the Motor Vehicle Department, so she headed to the corner of Rio Bravo and Coors in the South Valley. Right next door, there was a smog inspection station featuring a wall mural of a buxom blonde babe in overalls, all tits and ass, under the name “JoyJoy’s,” and Margaret pulled in. Her car made it through the inspection process, though she politely declined the bumper sticker that read, “I passed gas at JoyJoy’s.” Then she crossed the lot, parked, and entered the MVD office.
She took a number from the dispenser just inside the door and settled into a molded plastic chair. All around her, little children attempted to get red gummy bears from a machine that took quarters, and outside, men in cowboy hats smoked in the parking lot. She heard only Spanish. There were twenty-eight numbers before hers, so she went next door to a coffee shop and had a chocolate-covered donut and an iced tea at the counter. When she returned, she dug into her bag for her sketchbook and began to draw. The images that came to her were of her self-portrait, waiting to be born from the fires at Garcia Automotive. She would not tell Rico that it was a portrait of her, though. “A feminine figure,” she would say.
When her turn came, Margaret stepped forward, filled out forms, and had her photo taken. The license was good for ten years, and looking at it, it occurred to her that she’d be pushing fifty when the time came to renew. It seemed impossible, unacceptable. Forty-seven was too far in the future to be one driver’s license away. It depressed her. Surprisingly, so did removing the New York plates from her car. Chapter closed, she thought. Turn the page.
RICO HAD remained at his mother’s casita for a long time. Her dramatic comment—“Now I can die in peace”—had shocked him, and, holding her in his arms and feeling how fragile she was, he had suddenly been consumed with dread. Was Elena ready to depart this world? Was his visit to Fernando’s grave the last nail in her cof
fin, as she seemed to imply? The act that set her free to die? He wanted to ask her to take those words back. This idea of life without her scared him that much.
But instead, they talked about Fernando. This time, when Elena started in with “He was a good boy until he was about twelve,” Rico actually listened. He had heard it so many times that he had begun to hear that sentence as a signal to shut himself down, to become a man who nodded and grunted but set his mind elsewhere. Now he felt her confusion and pain, felt the way in which she searched for clues about what had gone wrong, and how she felt responsible and helpless and guilt-ridden, even now, after so many years.
“It was probably the testosterone,” Rico said, echoing Margaret’s words from just yesterday. “It was like poison to him for some reason.”
“You think that was it?” Elena asked. “Can that happen?”
“We’ll have to ask Ana,” Rico said. He could just see the light in his daughter’s eyes and hear her say, “Let me research it.”
Elena segued into older memories, how handsome Fernando was as a baby, how proud she was to be a mother. He was one of those unusual babies who talked before he walked. He had a sweet tooth. No boy was ever happier to have a new brother than Fernando was when Rico came along. He liked arithmetic and music and hated English and history. He made his first Holy Communion wearing a little black suit that Elena had made on her old pedal sewing machine. On and on she went, up through the years, but when she arrived at twelve, Rico said, “It’s late, Elena, let’s call it a night,” and she agreed.
“Lock up behind me,” he said as he left. He heard the lock click into place as he walked along the path to his own house. It was five to eleven, but Rosalita was still up, sitting in the same spot on the couch where she’d been when he left.