by Ann Cummins
"I hope she holds up. No use having two cripples."
"I bet you've still got a few moves, mister. I used to enjoy watching the two of you dance. Remember when we had dances in Camp out on the basketball court? Those were good times, weren't they?"
"Were they? Nobody seems to think so."
"Who? Who doesn't think so? You're talking to the wrong people, buddy." She squeezes his arm. He pats her hand and smiles tiredly at her.
But the whiskey has kicked in. He's beginning to feel a little buzz. "Let's have a couple more," he says. When Eddy comes over after the dance, they send him to the bar.
The room is a stew of wedding clothes and made-up faces. All the faces strain toward one another, laughing and talking, sipping champagne. The servers Maggie hired wander around with platters of tiny sandwiches and champagne in plastic champagne glasses. Kids dash in and out of the crowd, but so far only one platter of drinks has gone down.
The second whiskey turns out to be a good idea. He should drink more, Ryland thinks. It could take the place of Xanax. It's good sipping whiskey, so he takes this second one slow.
Midway through the reception, Maggie and George smear wedding cake on each other's faces, and then the servers start passing out cake. Maggie and George bring them theirs.
"Oh, yum," Edna says. "A yellow cake."
"With butter frosting."
"I love butter."
"Mom thinks it's scandalous."
"At our age? Who's counting the calories anymore?"
"No, she thinks a yellow cake is scandalous. She says traditional white indicates purity, but white cake—yuk. I wanted chocolate. We compromised with yellow, even though Mom says it means I'm not a virgin."
"That's just like Rosy. Of course you're a virgin," Edna says, laughing. Maggie rolls her eyes; George blushes. "My, look at Lily. They're tangoing."
"That guy can dance."
They do dance well, Lily and the new boyfriend. Long Lily. Rubber Lily. The guy dips her and spins her and her limbs lope along gracefully. Her face is the color of cantaloupe. "Looks like somebody's had a little champagne," Ryland says.
"If she's drunk, then he's talented," Edna says. "He sure makes her look good."
"Can Uncle Sam dance?" Maggie says.
"Nah."
"Oh, no," Edna says. "You couldn't get Sam on the dance floor. Lily traded up in that respect."
They watch the dancers silently. Though she hasn't said it, he thinks Maggie is disappointed that Sam's not here. She was so thrilled that he made the trip.
The music stops. Rosy's at the bandstand beckoning toward their table.
"We're wanted," George says, and the trumpeter says, "Let the toasts begin." Maggie and George go toward the platform, where a gaggle of well-wishers are lined up at the mike to make drunken toasts.
"I am mad at Sam," Edna says. "I would've liked to see him."
"Maybe you can visit him in jail."
"Ryland. You didn't have Sam arrested."
"I'm thinking about it."
He glances at her. She swishes the liquor around in her glass, lips pursed. "I think, Ryland Mahoney, that you could no more have Sam arrested than one of your kids."
"You think?"
"Yes. I do. Anyway, what he did wasn't so bad. No worse than what Lily did."
"No? What Lily did was stupid. Not illegal."
"Oh, who makes these laws? I think they were just flirting with each other."
He looks at her, incredulous.
"I bet it happens more than you'd think. People can't bring themselves to take the final step. I mean divorce. Especially when the marriage was a long one like Lily and Sam's. I should think it would be like cutting off a limb. We're lucky we've never had to do that, you, me, Rosy. Take it from me, death is cleaner. I miss my men, my husbands. But grief is somehow pure. Divorce. A dirty little business."
"I don't think Sam sees it that way."
"You think not? If Sam cared about the divorce, he would have just signed the papers. He did something certain to get Lily's attention. No, I think Lily's been carrying a little torch for Sam all these years. She was so gone on him. And maybe she didn't plan it this way, but she certainly kept a road open, and Sam, well, what he did guarantees he's on her mind. They're flirting."
"Whoo. Now that is a creative way of looking at it. Edna, you're kooky."
She smiles. "That's what all of my husbands said."
"I'll bet they did. Yes indeed, Miz Friedan, there's nobody like you. I can see why so many men wanted to marry you."
She leans over, putting her hand on his arm, and he gets that whiff of Christmas. "No, you can't," she says. "But if you ever find yourself alone, come on up and I'll show you."
Ryland laughs, throwing his head back, coughing and sputtering at the ceiling.
Edna beams at him. "You know, mister, that's the first time I've heard you laugh all week."
The crowd is thinning. Mill people start coming up to say goodbye and to congratulate him on getting Maggie married. The trumpeter says they have a couple more songs in them, and this one's by request. They start a waltz. It's a song Ryland knows, not Latin music, and here's Maggie in front of him, holding her hands out, saying, "Daddy taught me how to waltz to this," and Edna says, "Give it a go, Ry. Don't turn a girl down twice." He doesn't see how he can say no.
He unhooks himself from oxygen and follows Maggie to the floor. They do a three-step. Maggie sings in his ear: "Last Saturday night I got married, me and my wife settled down, now me and my wife are parted, I'm gonna take another stroll downtown." And maybe it's the whiskey, but he seems to be leading.
Then he is dancing with Rosy. He feels the doughy roll of flesh at his wife's waist that didn't used to be there. It embarrasses her, he knows, so he barely touches her at the waist. Anyway, they know how to dance together—they've done this a time or two in their lives. Rosy looks over his shoulder as she always used to when they danced, and she doesn't smile, because waltzing is serious business.
People in the room are singing: "Stop rambling, stop your gambling, stop staying out late at night. Go home to your wife and family, and stay by the fireside bright." It is a sad song. He doesn't know why it makes him happy. But it does.
36
IN THE DAYS following her father's funeral, Becky and her mother are rarely alone. Becky comes home from the bank each afternoon to find one of her aunts there. They seem to be on shift, a different one supervising the afternoon and evening hours each day. It's canning season, and the kitchen windows are always murky with steam from pots of boiling water, the table full of cucumbers and beets to be pickled, the first of the pie pumpkins to be cooked and frozen, the new crop of gourds to be hollowed. Last year's gourds, which for months hung drying on the back porch, have been taken down. Her mother has begun decorating them with woven beadwork, and they'll be featured in the Christmas bazaar.
Becky spends her free time training for the upcoming race at Hopi. Each evening she comes in ravenous from her run to find dinner on the table, her mother and an aunt sitting down to pinon-studded meatloaf, roasted yams, homemade bread. Her aunts tease her about her appetite, and hold her as an example for her mother, who has none. They tell Delia she has an obligation to eat, even if she isn't hungry, because her body is not her own, it is borrowed for only a little while to do the Lord's work, and eventually he will discard it and call her spirit home.
Becky feels as if she can't eat enough. She's always hungry, even after eating. It's comforting to come home to the smells of food, to chatter, to the mess of beading all over the dining table. Three nights a week several church women come for craft nights, the living room filling with women who knit and crochet. They always invite Becky to join them. "It's so therapeutic," they'll say, "the making of things," and she does join them many nights, preparing the gourds for her mother, organizing the beads, but mostly eating the delicious desserts, oatmeal cookies, apple pie, almond tarts.
When the women leave in the eveni
ng, the smell of sugar lingers. Becky and her mother clean up the dessert things, and it's only when the house is tidy, both of them ready for bed, that they face each other's naked panic. Becky recognizes the wild fear in her mother's eyes, which she suspects reflects her own, a fear of the quiet dark, the absence of his coughing, the tricks on their ears: a middle-of-the night imagined opening of the back screen door; the music of his chanting in the broken hogan. And the horror of severed ties: her grandmother's averted face, the shame of their lies. Becky doesn't see how either of them could have done otherwise, how she could not have stood up for her mother, how her mother could not have stood up for herself.
She runs a minimum of an hour a day, sometimes three hours. It's the only time she can stand to be alone. If she runs to exhaustion, she can almost forget her grandmother walking out of the backyard, Harrison by her side. The memory replays itself all day, every day. Hoping for reconciliation, she and Arnold drive to her grandmother's farm one day. She wants Arnold with her as a buffer. "Use me," he'd said. "That's what I'm for." They bring groceries, enough canned goods, flour, grains, and coffee so that her grandmother won't have to worry for a month. But when they get there, they find a crowd of people and a tepee in the yard. Her grandmother is having a ceremony. For what? Becky doesn't know. "Let's go see," Arnold says, but she wants to hide. She has not been invited, hasn't even been notified. Why are they having a ceremony? For her father? They do not have ceremonies for the dead. Do they? They? Her people? She feels entirely foreign, out of place. "Let's go," she orders Arnold. They turn back and do not deliver the groceries.
She frequently finds herself in a rage that leaves her breathless. The Sunday after the funeral, the newspaper had a full-page account of the plans to renew "uranium cultivation" in the southern part of the reservation, and her name was listed along with a dozen others as a consultant for the tribe. She couldn't believe it. She tracked down Terry Conrad, who was back in town, and ranted at him: "Since when did 'I'll think about it' become yes!" He assured her it was a mistake, that he didn't even know how the paper got the list, which was tentative, only tentative.
She hasn't seen him since. He's probably taken her off his list, which, she tells herself, is good, though it's not going to help her mom pay off her loan.
Harrison doesn't come to the bank anymore. She didn't know how he was depositing his checks until Arnold goaded her into looking at his account, and she saw a deposit at another branch, which made her feel awful, and she snapped at Arnold, as if it were his fault.
She cannot stand herself.
One day she goes home to find the minister and his son at the house. Aunt Pip and Katie are there, too. They are leveling the broken hogan, raking chunks of adobe into a pile. Her mother sits on the stoop, watching, and Becky screams at them all: "What do you think you're doing?"
Her mother buries her face in her hands, and Aunt Katie rushes to Becky, trying to embrace her, but Becky pushes her away. "It was too hard on Delia to have to look at it every day, Becky. It reminds her of him too much." Becky bolts. She gets back into her truck and drives for hours.
When she gets home, her aunts want to talk to her. "This is no life for you," Aunt Pip says. "You need to get back to your own life. Don't worry about your mom. She's in good hands."
She knows they mean well, but she feels as if she's being discarded, as if they are punishing her for losing her temper.
She moves back to town, into a furnished one-bedroom apartment in the new complex near Farmington High School. The apartment has popcorn ceilings and plaster walls painted Navajo white, walls that disintegrate if punctured with nails for pictures. It has a dishwasher, a garbage disposal, a stacked washer and dryer, wall-to-wall carpet, beige, and the front door opens out onto a large communal patio with a gas barbecue and picnic furniture bolted into cement.
Alone in this place, she can't sleep. It's her torment. The only time she can stand being in her body is when she's asleep. She falls asleep easily enough, but wakes moments afterward, heart pounding, mouth dry, in such a rage she feels she will explode. She is furious at Harrison. She keeps thinking about how he just walked away that day. Who does he think he is, judging her? She begins to fantasize about tracking him down at the college. She tells herself she doesn't care if he loathes her, but his avoidance angers her so much. As if she were diseased. She wants to have it out with him. One night, at two A.M., she gets out the phone book to see if he's listed.
Of course he is not. There are five Zahnees, no Harrisons, no initial H. She's tempted to call them all. She can't sleep. Why should they? She looks up San Juan College, but only administrative numbers are listed.
She thumbs through the book, stopping in the Ms, scanning for the name Mahoney, which is listed, right there, number and address: Ryland and Rosy Mahoney.
She stares at the number until her eyes go blurry. She picks up the receiver. She's suddenly shivering. She presses the numbers: 3-2-5-4-2-1-3, listening to the music of the mechanical tones. It begins to ring. She pictures them in their house. Where is their phone? Do they have a phone in their bedroom? She can see the house, the living room, where she sat on a soft sofa, the kitchen, where she sat on a hard chair. Soft, hard. That's all she remembers. She closes her eyes, trying to visualize the phone, which rings and rings and rings until it becomes not a sound but a pulse.
But then he picks up. "Hello?"
She clutches the receiver so hard her fingers throb.
"Hello?" His voice is raspy, weak. Like her father's had been, a voice that slides back into itself. That can't seem to climb out of itself.
"Sam? You there?"
She puts the receiver down on the counter. His words leak up to her. "Buddy? Sam?" She crosses the room to the front door, which is opposite the phone. She stands with her back against the door, then slides to the floor. She can still hear the man's ghostly voice.
She balls her hands and presses her knuckles into her eye sockets. She wonders what the Navajo word for murderer is.
On the last Friday of October, Harrison comes to the bank. She sees him immediately, even though the bank is crowded. He doesn't appear to see her. Actually, he seems to make a point of not looking in her direction. He stands in the line for the tellers.
Arnold, at the door, gives her his high sign. He motions toward the tellers' line, his head jerking like a bobble on a spring.
Harrison is wearing a brown corduroy coat and faded jeans, his hair messily braided. He finishes his business with the teller. Halfway to the door, he glances her way, hesitates. Turns and walks in her direction.
"What's up?" he says, sliding into the customer chair.
"Not much. You?"
"Same."
"Haven't seen you in here much," she says.
"No."
An onyx stud in his left lobe gleams like a tiny animal's eye in the artificial light.
"How's your mom?"
"Fine. I guess. I moved out."
"Oh?" Then, "I read about you in the paper. Your consulting job." The edges of his lips are white, and his eyes are nearly black, cold. Hostile.
She opens her mouth to explain, then closes it.
Two customers are sitting on leather couches around a low glass table in her waiting area. Harrison cut in front of them, a young white couple. The guy stares sullenly at Becky; the girl flips through loan brochures.
"What is that noise?" Harrison says, clipping his words.
"What noise?"
"Like grinding gears."
"Change counter." She looks at the tellers' line, which has grown way beyond its rope boundaries. "See that little man in the green stocking cap? He came in fifteen minutes ago with one of those roller carts. He was pulling four gallon jars of coins. Stupid. Friday is the busiest day. Everybody needs to deposit their checks. It never fails. Some jerk-wad comes in with some ridiculous business that could be handled any other day of the week and jams up the line, and then the customers lose it with the tellers, but it's not their fault
, and it never fails!" She is suddenly furious at the man in the green stocking cap.
Harrison turns, taking in the crowded bank, the tellers' line, the waiting area behind them, the sullen guy, his girl, and now a third sits down.
"I should go," he says quietly. "I'm making your busiest day busier."
"Don't go." She's surprised to hear herself say this. He looks a little surprised, too. He leans back, folding his arms.
"I'm not consulting."
"The paper said—"
"I know what it said. It was a mistake. I'm not saying I wouldn't or I won't, but I'm not. Not yet, not now, maybe not never."
He smiles, his eyes do. He says, "You got real good English."
She tries to smile. Her face feels like it's made of glass. "I thought you were avoiding me."
"'Aoo'. I couldn't believe you were working for him."
"I'm not."
"Good."
"I thought it was because of that day. What I did."
"What? At the house?"
She nods.
He shakes his head. "No. That day was tough. I felt sorry for you. I should have called you. But—I detest that guy, and when I read you were working for him..." He shrugs. "You know, don't take this wrong, but you look rough."
She bites the inside of her lip. She's afraid she might cry. She hasn't cried since she saw him last. She looks at Arnold, who is staring at the monitor on his security desk. "Wave to Arnold. He's looking at us."
"He's not."
"He is. See that monitor? He can flip through channels and see every corner of the bank. Right now I bet he's looking at us."
Harrison waves. Arnold smiles. Nods to the monitor.
"See?"
The sullen guy in the waiting area stands up, banging his knee against the coffee table. He says, "Damn it!"
"You still going to Lowry's meetings?" Becky says.
"'Aoo'. Last week he went over the budget. We raised five grand at the meeting."
"Not bad."