Can't Buy Me Love

by Summer Kinard

  “The farmer is a parishioner,” Marian explained gently, “and the eggs and bacon are really good for you. They’ll literally give you nerve because of the acids that build up your brain.”

  Vanessa attempted a wan smile and poked a chunk of golden, scrambled egg onto her fork. She must have stared at it for a long time, lost in morose visions of loneliness. Suddenly Gabi was jabbing her in the shin with a cold toe.

  “I said, you gonna eat that, hermana?”

  “Huh?” Vanessa looked up. Gabi had finished her plate and was eyeing Vanessa’s cold breakfast hungrily. “Oh, um, no.” She pushed her plate to Gabi.

  “Eh!” Carla chided shrilly, her brows knit at Gabi. “We were supposed to feed Vanessa out of her sorrows, not steal her food.”

  Gabi shrugged, making rapid headway through Vanessa’s breakfast.

  “It’s okay, Mama Carla. I’m not hungry,” she tried to smile an apology, but only managed to raise one corner of her mouth before her lips quivered and she burst into fresh tears.

  She was pulled into several warm arms and cried herself quiet.

  “Now, honey,” Marian said in her soft, firm way, above Vanessa’s head, “you need to eat soon. But you are not going to have room to take anything good in until you tell us about the hard things filling you up.”

  Vanessa thought Marian made sense. She always made so much sense. “You always make so much sense,” Vanessa snuffled. Someone handed her a soft flannel hanky covered in pink flowers. She rubbed her face and nose and sat up. “Just like Granny,” she continued. She wanted to tell them everything, but her words were stuck in her swollen, achy throat.

  Marian and Carla looked at her calmly. Gabi fell asleep in a corner of the couch. Carla got up and moved toward the kitchen.

  “I’ll get more tea. You talk,” she kissed Vanessa’s head before walking to the counter.

  Marian tilted her head slightly and assessed Vanessa for a long moment. Then she glanced toward the flowers. “Gabi told us that the red vase was your Granny’s.”

  “Yes,” Vanessa nodded. She told Marian about the vase, the hope chest, her anger at God, her growing sense that maybe her life could be holy, her fear that she would never know that kind of peace again that she had felt at Granny’s elbow. “Marian, I knew that God and Javier were a two-for-one deal. And now…” Her eyes were shocked with pain, and she looked away, not wanting Marian to confirm her fear that God did not want her.

  “Vanessa, honey,” Marian drawled slowly, lifting Vanessa’s chin in her warm hand, “God loves you more than any man ever could. There’s no way you can scare him off from you. All our Creator wants for his beautiful little girl—that’s you!—is your pure joy. Javier didn’t take God with him when he walked away from you, babygirl.”

  “Look at this fruit and these flowers and that blanket and those aprons!” Carla interjected loudly. Gabi snorted in her sleep on the couch. “Do you think all that beauty came from nowhere, mija?!”

  “But all that was because of Javier,” Vanessa frowned, feeling tears sting her eyes again.

  “All that was because of love, darling,” Marian corrected, squeezing her hand.

  “What you need is a shrine!” Carla declared resolutely. “So you remember your Granny and your Granny’s God. And you can put Raphael there if you don’t want to wear him, instead of on the floor,” she tsked.

  “I think my beloved Carla is onto something, Vanessa. What do you say we make you a shrine?”

  Vanessa thought of the shrines she had seen. “As long as I don’t have to have a four foot concrete Jesus,” she smiled.

  “Deal,” Carla laughed, and Marian grinned.

  “Um, Marian?” Vanessa asked sheepishly, “Is there any more food?” Smiling had made her hungrier than all her crying.

  “Coming right up, honey,” Marian hugged her before she went to the kitchen.

  When Vanessa was halfway through her breakfast, Gabi woke up with a groan. “I’m so hungry!” she muttered.

  “Come and get you another plate, then,” Marian replied calmly. Vanessa saw Marian and Carla exchange a meaningful glance. She would have to ask why later.

  “So you’re finally eating, hermana?” Gabi asked sleepily. “It’s about freaking time. Ma said you looked like one of those opera chicks wasting away for love.”

  “Javier likes opera,” Vanessa said, trying to keep her voice neutral.

  “Well, bless his heart, that doesn’t give him an excuse to live like he’s in one, dumping a person without giving her a chance to explain herself,” Marian put her hands on her hips and shook her head for emphasis.

  “That’s as judgmental as Marian ever gets about anyone. Bless their heart, and they are forgiven all manner of idiocy. It comes with her profession,” Carla nodded as though this was the way things ought to stand.

  “Well, anyways, I’m glad you’re eating,” Gabi mumbled around a bite of fruit. “Mom, may I have more of this fruit?” she asked Marian when she had swallowed.

  “Of course, Gabi. But slow down. It’s not a race.”

  “So, did y’all fix Vanessa’s broken heart while I was sleeping?”

  “No, mija, but we have a plan. We’re going to make her a shrine.”

  “Good. She can take your Jesus so we don’t have to trip on it.”

  “Actually, Gabi, my terms specified no concrete Jesus.”

  “Oh, well, then. Where’s it going?” Gabi rolled bacon and fruit into her crepe and got up to look around. “It’s not exactly spacious in here.” She stopped in front of the bookshelves and examined them. “Hey, are these the scrapbooks?” She toed the brown fake-leather spines of the three large volumes tilting across the bottom shelf.

  Vanessa half-turned in her chair and looked over her shoulder. “Yes. We should probably burn them or something. They’ve caused enough trouble.”

  But Gabi was flipping through them slowly, not quite keeping the page protectors free of grease and fruit juice. “Hermana, no. You can’t get rid of this one.” She held open the page with Javier’s stunning self portrait so all the women could see it. Marian and Carla rushed over, exclaiming in low tones of awe.

  “I fell in love with him in that picture,” Vanessa whispered, not turning around. She knew which photo Gabi had found. It was the one that shone with Javier’s warmth, the kindness and joy in his soul pouring from his smile.

  “Then it’s a keeper,” Marian said in her sweet, warm Southern way. “I’ll rescue it from our peripatetic gourmand here.” She tugged the book out of Gabi’s slightly sticky hands and walked it to the coffee table. When she had extracted the portrait from the book, she handed the volume over to Carla, who eagerly turned the pages, gasping at the beautiful photography within.

  After the others had pawed through the remaining books and declared the other photos unfit for the likes of a holy oratory, Vanessa puffed air through her lips and sighed. “What now? We have a photo of a gorgeous man. That’s the makings for a teenage breakup ritual, but…”

  “Patience, mija. Now we build the shrine, and then we collect other important photos and images for it.”

  “Do you want it on a bookshelf?” Gabi asked drowsily. She had resumed her spot in the corner of the sofa.

  “Well, what would be even better would be a shelf on a wall you could see and get to easily that had space above to add things later, as the need arises,” Marian advised in an expert tone. Carla smiled at her and squeezed her hand affectionately.

  “Yes, mija. If I remember correctly, before you scared me half to death with your cherry this morning, you have a clear dresser in the bedroom, no?”

  “Ma, listen to yourself. You wonder why I always make embarrassing puns,” Gabi rolled her head on the back of the couch to tease Carla.

  “Ay, get up, mija!” Carla threw one of the new decorative cushions at Gabi, who was forced to exert herself in defense of her face. “Nice pillows, by the way,” she smiled to Vanessa.

  The four women gathered abre
ast, arms akimbo, around the distressed green chest of drawers. Vanessa noticed their stance and laughed, “We look like superheroes.”

  “Super-heroines, mija. And why shouldn’t we? Shrines are holy. Women have been saving the world this way since before men stopped fiddling with their thingies long enough to start wars.” Carla took a breath and made to go on, but Marian interrupted her.

  “Yes, well, we’d better put our sanctifyin’ sassy asses to work if we’re going to get this shrine built before Vanessa has to get ready to work this evening.” Marian held out her hand authoritatively. “Photo.” Carla placed the portrait of Javier in Marian’s palm reverently, and the latter laid it on the dresser top. “This just won’t do. Honey, don’t you have a bulletin board or something we can stick a tack in?” The pale plaster wall was the sort that would crumble without extra care, and it would be the shrine’s biggest obstacle.

  “Hold on.” Vanessa remembered digging a bulletin board with Bradley in the spring, but she did not remember tossing it out when he left. Where had he put it? “Be right back.” She knew Bradley stashed random finds in higher places in the kitchen so that the clutter would not get on Vanessa’s nerves. She reached her hand as far back on the top of the fridge as she could and smiled. Her fingers brushed a wooden frame, which she was just able to pull toward her.

  “Success!” she beamed, dusting the black-bordered corkboard as she entered the bedroom.

  Carla propped it up and nodded. “Mija, go get my purse, will you?” she spoke to where Gabi had stood. When there was no reply, she turned to find Gabi curled up in the bed, sleeping deeply.

  “I’ll get it, dear,” Marian said, swaying her hips in her easy walk into the living room. When she returned, she kissed Carla’s cheek before handing her the bag. “You think of everything.”

  “How do you know what I have in here? It could be chicle I’m after.”

  “Uh-huh,” Marian humored her.

  “But you’re right. I brought some tacks. Just in case.”

  Vanessa tacked the portrait to one side of the center part of the board. “Okay. So now…more photos?”

  “Yes. Unless you have a prayer or holy image you want to add first.” Carla scanned the still-Spartan room as though expecting the Virgin Mary to appear in the cracks of the plaster.

  “What about your Granny, honey? Do you have a photo of her?” Marian spoke quietly, the way one ought to do when voicing another’s own thoughts.

  “Yes. I’ll get it.” Vanessa went to the front closet and rummaged for a few minutes through a drawer that seemed to be filled with mother-of-pearl buttons and yards of bright yellow silk, folded tightly. From under the silk and a length of fleur-de-lis trimming ribbon, she withdrew a rectangular crystal frame.

  “Here she is,” Vanessa said meekly, setting the frame in front of the bulletin board. She felt a surge of filial pride in seeing the photo again. Her grandmother, wearing a huge orchid corsage and an old-fashioned lace head cover, stood with her arm around Vanessa in the church’s transept. You could just see the Virgin Mary’s deep blue cloak at the edges of the image. Granny had asked for the photo to be taken in front of the statue to remind them of the shelter provided by Our Lady’s intercession. They were both radiant, their eyes sparkling in mutual affection.

  “My, my, my, but she looks happy. Vanessa, honey, you must have made her proud, in the best sense of the word.”

  Marian’s kindness struck home. Vanessa’s eyes filled with tears, and Marian wiped them away with her thumbs.

  “So, are you just going to put those things there on that ugly board, or what?” Gabi lifted her head off the pillow to glare and scrunch her nose at the bland shrine, then dropped back down, apparently exhausted by the effort.

  “Mija! Vanessa’s shrine is not ugly!” Carla tilted her head and pursed her lips, eyeing the nascent holy spot. “Okay, but Gabi has a point. It is a bit plain,” she turned to Vanessa. “Do you have a nice cloth for the background? Or paper? It doesn’t have to be religious.”

  Vanessa stared at the ceiling for a moment, mentally rifling through the recent additions to her fabric stash. There was a packet of fat quarters she had not sorted yet. The top pattern was of dia de los muertos skeletons, the bottom of Catrinas. Had the stack included standard religious patterns as well?

  “I’ll be right back,” Vanessa said. She walked quickly to the living room closet. The quarters were near the top of the newest fabric pile. She untied the grosgrain ribbon holding them together and let out a whoop.

  “Did you find something?” Carla called.

  “Only this,” Vanessa rushed in and held up a light blue cotton rectangle covered in large red Sacred Hearts and smaller portraits of the Virgen de Guadalupe surrounded by shiny fake gold. She waved the cloth in the air triumphantly.

  “Let me see,” Gabi mumbled. She pulled her eyes open, grinned her approval of the images, and went back to dozing.

  Carla and Marian helped Vanessa pin the cloth to the board. They rearranged the portraits of Javier and Granny, added an improvised bouquet in the smallest of the ruby depression glass vases, and set up a half-burned beeswax pillar on a saucer. The pillar was also from Carla’s purse, part of her sacred reading routine that she carried around everywhere, in hopes of finding a good spot to deeply hear the words she read.

  They sat on the bed, not taking particular care about Gabi’s arms and legs. She groaned at them, but freed herself and sat up, rubbing her face. Carla, Marian, and Vanessa were smiling, pleased.

  “It needs a cross or something,” Gabi said around a yawn.

  “You know, she’s right,” Marian nodded. “And in the spirit of this family effort, I think I have just the one.” Marian reached in her purse and retrieved a mottled, smoothly worn and oiled hickory wood cross. “This is my worry cross, Vanessa. Although I ought to call it a comfort cross, “worry” is more honest. I hold it when I have a hard time praying, and it helps me remember who’s carrying us all.”

  Vanessa smiled thanks to Marian and propped the cross against the bulletin board. The shrine had room to grow, but it felt complete.

  “Thanks, you all. This means so much,” Vanessa squirmed, unaccustomed to joy. “I have a shrine!” she squealed quietly.

  “Well, then, how about I cook you a good dinner, and then we’ll all get out of your hair so you can enjoy it?” Marian stood and hugged Vanessa. Carla joined them, adding a kiss to Vanessa’s cheek. Gabi got up, but headed straight for the bathroom.

  “Gracias a Dios, Mom! I’m starving!” Gabi called from the open door.

  After they left, Vanessa stood in front of her shrine and let herself remember. Granny’s house had a shrine of sorts, but it was not confined to a dresser. The buffet in her long, high-ceilinged dining room was covered with votives, prayer cards, rosaries, mementos of her children’s and grandchildren’s church art projects, and a few figurines. She smiled as the smell of the candles and old plastic, incense, and glue came to mind.

  The phone rang. Still smiling, she answered it.

  “Vanessa? This is your mother.”

  “Oh. Mom. Hi,” Vanessa sputtered, surprised. Mom didn’t sound drunk, which was even more rare than phone calls.

  “Listen, I know you’re busy, but…” her Mom began. Vanessa’s heart squeezed. When would she get to talk to her mother, if the woman either avoided her offspring or called when under the influence?

  “I’m not busy. I have about half an hour before I leave for work.” Without planning to do so, she pressed Marian’s cross hopefully to her palm. She must have grabbed it automatically when she heard her mother’s voice.

  “Well. Alright, then. I was just calling to tell you that your Aunt Clotilde wants to mail you a bunch of your Grandma’s old junk. I told her you aren’t religious no more, but she said I ought to ask before I made such claims. So I’m calling to see if you want that stuff.”

  “I would love to have Granny’s old things. And I think I am religious again.”
<
br />   “You gone to church, then?”

  “Well, no, but I’m starting to feel less pissed at God. Like we had a spat, but we’re making up.”

  “Well, hell, Vanessa,” her mother laughed, “if that ain’t the damnedest way to talk about the Almighty. Well, I guess you came by it honestly. Your grandma was half in love with God, and the other half was too used to church to think how dangerous that might be.”

  “What do you mean?” Vanessa raised her eyebrows at her mother’s insight.

  “You know, Vanessa. I ain’t got to tell you that God is near about the least safe thing to love in this world.”

  “Do you feel that way, too?”

  “Maybe I do,” she chuckled darkly. “When I ain’t dranking or screwing around, I feel the pull. But He can have me for all eternity, is how I see it. Let me have my own time now.”

  “Does that make you happy?” Vanessa’s voice was meek, and she felt a hint of the old nausea in her stomach.

  “Hell, no. But it’s like I said. Your Granny was too used to church to care how dangerous Jesus could be, and I’m too damn used to my ways to change now, either.” Vanessa heard her mother light a cigarette in the silence that followed.

  “Well, I’d best get going, Vanessa. You take care,” her mother exhaled the first drag of her cigarette into the phone. Vanessa knew that meant she was about to hang up.

  “Mom, wait!” Vanessa called.

  “Hmm?”

  “I love you, Mom.”

  “I love you, too, Sugar. I’ll tell your Aunt Clotilde to give you them things.” She hung up.

  The box was waiting on her doorstep when she left the house for work. Her Aunt Clotilde’s slanted cursive announced that the contents were fragile. Vanessa brought the box to the dining table and looked at the clock. She would have just enough time to open the box if she hurried.

  Inside was a manila Publisher’s Clearinghouse envelope stuffed with magazine and newspaper clippings, a glow-in-the-dark Jesus figurine, some sort of magnifying glass with pasta glued on, three colored stone rosaries, a ribbon-bound bundle of prayer cards from family funerals, and a bubblewrapped square object. Vanessa smiled as she fingered through the contents.