by Amber Foxx
Charlie stood behind Bernadette as she dropped bread into the toaster. Placing a hand on her hip, he slipped his palm around to caress her buttock. Like a deer in the headlights, Bernadette did nothing. She didn’t protest, didn’t respond with affection, but held stiff and still aside from opening a jar of peanut butter.
Mae made a noise whipping a pillow case off, the Yellow Gentleman jumped from his nap in the rocking chair, and Charlie let go of Bernadette.
“Hey, hon.” Hubert came back on the phone. The sound of his voice felt like a return to earth from a dark planet. Even the sound of his eastern North Carolina drawl was like an anchor to a better place. “Heel to longest toe?”
“Yeah, that’s what they said to measure.”
Charlie helped himself to a banana, peeled it, broke off half, put the remainder tucked in the peel back on the counter, and drifted into the living room, eating the halved fruit in two bites.
Hubert gave her the measurement, and Mae repeated it as she looked for the scratch pad she kept in her purse so she could write down the number. “Eleven and a half inches ...” Charlie placed a hand to his heart and raised an eyebrow, eyeing Mae up and down. She ignored him, asking Hubert, “What’s that in centimeters? I think the guy said they size them that way.”
As she wrote down the information and finished talking with Hubert, Charlie settled into the rocker, rubbing his knee and dropping down hard on the last few inches of the descent. Dramatizing it, Mae thought. He was as bad as her mother.
His voice held an exaggerated wistfulness as he said, “Wish I could run again.”
Mae put her phone and note pad in her purse. Maybe Charlie was trying to make small talk, but she felt as if every word he said was an attempt to trick her, to trip her, to wind her around his little finger. The sexual innuendo on the inches struck her as more than a mere lack of taste. He wanted to trigger an emotion, maybe check out her attitudes about sex. And even in these innocuous comments like wishing he could run, he seemed to need to get a reaction in some energy-sucking way Mae couldn’t define.
“You’re going to be a personal trainer,” Charlie persisted after Mae’s silence. “What would you tell me to do for this knee?”
Mae started for the closet to get her coat to walk to the store. “I’d tell you to do water aerobics and not try to run except in a pool. And lose fifty or sixty pounds.”
“You’re no fun. I shouldn’t do special exercises for it?”
“Coffee’s almost ready," Bernadette said from the kitchen doorway. “Mae, what can I get you to eat?”
“And Charlie?” he spoke with a mock pout. “What can I get you to eat? Or is the old man too fat to be offered any breakfast?” He grinned at Mae, daring her to follow up.
Bernadette gave Mae a look that was hard to read—pleading, exasperated, confused.
So much for getting away from Charlie. It would be rude not to accept breakfast and leave Bernadette alone with him. Ignoring him one more time, Mae said, “Whatever you’re making is fine,” and Bernadette went back into the kitchen. Mae closed the closet door. “You come over here for breakfast often, Charlie?”
With a narrow little smile he fixed his eyes on Mae and slowly shook his head side to side. Bernadette brought coffee mugs into the living room and set them on a small square table against the wall opposite the window. “Charlie’s taking care of the Yellow Gentleman while I’m away next week. He came to get the key.”
Lie. He let himself in. He already had a key or they wouldn’t have been in the bedroom. Bernadette would never have let that slip. Too private for a woman who never shared anything, having him there while Mae was in the shower. He had to have walked right in and woken Bernadette up.
“Going to New Mexico,” Charlie said with a sigh, rocking, gazing at the painting. “Too bad you can’t get to see Bessie.” Bernadette said nothing. “What’s this conference on again?”
“Forgetfulness in old white men,” Bernadette said as she stepped back into the kitchen, and Mae laughed. Charlie wasn’t actually old, more like Jim and Sallie’s age, but he seemed to like to make a scene about his age to get attention. “It’s not a formal conference. I’m meeting with some people who are thinking about adding a school of traditional medicine at a tribal college.”
“Bessie could teach there.”
“Charlie—” Bernadette walked in with a plate of peanut butter toast and a stack of small plates. “You don’t even know her. I wish you’d stop acting like you do.”
“In the spirit world, maybe I do,” he said, starting to rise, then sitting back down again. “God, this weather. Kills my knee. What would your traditional medicine do for an old man’s knee?”
“I’m not a medicine person.” Bernadette returned to kitchen again. “Ask Mae to heal your knee.”
Mae recoiled and said nothing, hoping this was a slip-up or a joke.
“I couldn’t go to the—what are those gods called?” Charlie looked at the painting. “Isn’t that a healing ceremony?”
Bernadette brought in the coffee pot, set it on a trivet shaped like a trio of swimming dolphins, and pulled out a straight-backed wooden chair to sit down. “The mountain gods are called Ga’an.”
Charlie transformed the Apache word into a comic sneeze, exaggerating the stop in the middle, and Bernadette forced an exasperated crooked smile, as if he had told the same old joke too many times. Mae joined Bernadette at the table, but felt no appetite. Hearing Charlie mock the name of Bernadette’s mountain gods and seeing her put up with it was hard to swallow. Mae might not care for religion, but she wouldn’t make fun of it to a believer.
“Could one of you ladies hand me a cup of coffee?” Charlie asked, turning the rocker so that the rug beneath twisted with it and he didn’t have to get up. Bernadette gave him a questioning and disapproving look. “Really,” Charlie said, “getting up is rough. Going up these stairs was bad today.”
“Mae,” Bernadette said, pouring a mug of coffee, “why don’t you try healing his knee? You can practice a little now that you’ve started, and maybe he’ll stop complaining about it.”
“You can’t be serious,” Charlie said. “Psychic, personal trainer, and healer?”
“I was her practice client for both yesterday,” Bernadette said, offering him a mug. He didn’t take it. Instead, he reached to the shelf along the wall behind him with an awkward twist that made him grunt, then straightened out, grasping a rattle. It was a leather-wrapped stick with a painted gourd on one end and a similarly sized tuft of fur on the other.
Holding it like a dumbbell, Charlie bicep-curled the rattle, shaking it slightly, eyes closed, and imitated a Native chant in nonsense words, then chuckled. Neither Mae nor Bernadette laughed. The joke, Mae thought, was creative, but it was mean.
He set the rattle back on the shelf and accepted the mug. “I think you ladies need some coffee.”
Bernadette sipped hers, picked up a slice of peanut butter toast. “I’m wide awake. Your jokes aren’t.”
The tension stretched tight among the three of them, broken only by the sounds of eating and drinking, and the occasional uneven rocking of Charlie’s chair over the twisted rug. Mae drank two cups of coffee and managed to eat a slice of toast in spite of the unpleasant mood. She didn’t want to be sleepy on the road.
What was the hidden fight going on between Charlie and Bernadette? He walked into her bedroom, put his hands on her ass, and made tasteless, possessive comments about her possibly having an affair with Mae. He made fun of Bernadette’s culture but seemed to have a kind of attachment to it or longing for it at the same time, though he didn’t appear to ever have been to her reservation or know much about it. Bernadette seemed annoyed with him, and rightfully so, but she let him touch her and trusted him to take care of her cat, even though he had, perhaps, invaded her sleep in the form of a wolf.
Mae had the answer to one of her questions. To her disgust and disappointment, the relationship existed. She still didn’t know if Berna
dette had also actually seen a wolf, or what that spirit had done, and if that night-shape had come from Charlie. Getting an answer to the wolf spirit question would have to wait until the drive to CVU, though, or until after Charlie left.
“Excuse me.” Bernadette rose. “I’m going to take a shower. Mae, I’ll be ready to take you to your car as soon as I’m dressed.”
“I’m heading to the running store.” Mae also stood and gathered a load of the breakfast dishes to take to the kitchen. “I might be back a little after you’re ready, but I’ll try to be quick.”
Bernadette left, going into her bedroom and closing the door, while Mae brought the dishes to the sink and came back for a second load. As she carried the mugs to the kitchen, Charlie said, “I’d go with you if you’d heal my knee.”
Mae set dishes down, walked to the closet, and opened it to take her coat out. “You won’t give up on that, will you?”
“Of course I will, if you can’t do it. I don’t want to embarrass you.”
He’d done it—annoyed her to the point of snapping. Gotten to her, like her mother could. “I can do it.”
She tossed her coat on the couch, opened her purse, and took out the pouch of crystals. She had no idea what might be good for arthritis, but she picked a few she felt drawn to—the green and white leafy one, the turquoise, and the clear quartz. She looked at Charlie. “Straighten that chair out. I’ll trip on the rug.”
He did as she asked, facing the rocker back in its original direction, untwisting the rug. Mae sat next to him on the floor, and he furrowed his brows. “Do you really know what you’re doing?”
“Maybe. Let me concentrate.”
Charlie raised both eyebrows and spoke with mock respect. “Yes, ma’am.”
Mae closed her eyes and tried to picture the pages she’d read in the crystal book. Turquoise—it was good for skin, but it wasn’t for bones and joints. Good for spiritual protection, though, and she’d need that, dealing with Charlie. And the green and white stone. She’d felt right using that on Bernadette. Its name and properties came back to her. Tree agate, for healing trauma. Well, maybe Charlie’s knee had been traumatized.
In a way, Mae couldn’t believe she was actually about to touch him and try to do him any good, but it was like the bet with Maloo. She had to follow through, and she had to do her best. After all, she would have some training clients soon, and she might not like all of them. It was good practice for that, if for nothing else. And, she had to admit it, she liked to win.
Slowing her breath, Mae focused on the feeling of the crystals in her left hand, and hoped she was protected spiritually as she laid her right hand on Charlie’s knee. If she saw that wolf in him she was going to pull back right away.
To her relief, when the tunnel carried her vision and opened, all she saw was the back of his patella and the articular cartilage where the femur met the tibia. It looked normal, like the picture of a knee in the anatomy section of her manual, not arthritic as far as she could tell. Then the tunnel opened deeper, and she saw in a flash a tall, shapely young woman with white-blonde hair. At the same moment, a painful jolt of electricity shot into her hand.
Charlie’s leg jerked. “Jesus!”
Though it only lasted the split second of the pain, the image of the woman was so vivid and alive Mae sensed she would know her anywhere if she ever met her.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Charlie rubbed his leg. “You call that healing?”
“Sorry.” Mae rose. “That was weird. I got like a shock or something, too.” She took the crystals to the kitchen and made them a salt bath, rinsed them quickly, and returned to the living room to put them away in the pouch. She felt Charlie staring at her.
“Did you do that on purpose?” he asked.
“No. It was like ... hooking up the battery terminals wrong.” She wondered if she should tell him about the woman. She’d probably seen something that was none of her business, gotten to something else instead of what was wrong with his knee. Another misstep with the sight. “But I did get a look inside your knee, and the cartilage isn’t worn out. It all looked fine. If you exercised low impact and took some weight off, it really might feel a lot better.”
Using his arms for assistance, Charlie rose and made a show of flexing and extending his knee a few times. “I think,” he said, “you’d better stick to personal training.”
Mae pulled on her coat. “I plan to.”
“Good. You certainly don’t have the touch of a healer.”
Tempted to argue, Mae stopped. Why defend herself as a healer? Nothing good had come of trying. Bernadette wasn’t any better after all. Mae was done, and Charlie could think what he wanted. She really meant to stick to personal training.
She grabbed her bag and started out the door, closing it behind her. It felt good to close off Charlie. Then she realized she’d taken her gym bag instead of her purse, and hoped she hadn’t locked the door by accident. She tried the handle, the door opened, and as she stepped in to pick up her purse, she glimpsed the door of Bernadette’s bedroom closing behind Charlie.
Stunned and repelled, Mae jogged down the stairs and pushed open the heavy doors of the lobby, stepping out into the gleaming wet world of the spring-like thaw. As she strode down the sidewalk, she tried to shake off the disappointment of her last view of Bernadette’s life. How could she possibly have thought this woman was wise and spiritual, someone who could advise or guide her? The situation with Charlie was creepy as well as hopeless, and this educated, independent woman let it happen. Somehow all that sacred art and spirituality and ritual didn’t do her any good. It wasn’t any better than Rhoda-Rae’s Bible-thumping kind of faith.
Everything on the street, anything that wasn’t Bernadette’s apartment, seemed fresh and wholesome. Cars splashing brown water looked better than paintings and pottery. People walking with their coats unbuttoned, talking on cell phones as they walked that brisk city pace, looked incredibly healthy, and not just because they were trimmer than rural North Carolinians, but because they were in the real world, the normal world. They weren’t living in some crazy place where there were gods and spirits and beliefs in healing.
Mae didn’t want any more to do with that place and that world, where she could see people’s secrets and memories and not do any good for seeing it. Bernadette had felt good after the attempt, and so had Mae, but the next day things weren’t any different. It was probably like religion, like the way Rhoda-Rae always got all uplifted right after church but didn’t act any nicer to Arnie that evening.
The only good thing that had come of any of this was money. Mae could pay the rest of her tuition tomorrow, buy Hubert his shoes today, and close the door on this freak episode of her life. Crazy to think that maybe her mother was right, that using the sight could let in something evil. But it felt like it had—she’d seen the wolf.
After buying the barefoot shoes, Mae felt better. She had her gift for Hubert. Leaving the store, she remembered that the road to CVU ran parallel to Colley Avenue and she still had her gym bag with her. All she would have to do was keep walking, take a left on any side street, and she’d get to the campus. She could find the fitness center, since she’d driven to it. A good walk, probably three miles, it was exactly what she needed. It might be rude not to go back, but with Charlie going into Bernadette’s bedroom Mae couldn’t return.
The further she walked, the cleaner she felt. When Mae reached her car, she put her bag and Hubert’s new shoes in the passenger seat, then paused. She had to do one last thing with the crystals before she put them in the attic for good. She had to give herself a brushing off, one last riddance of the cobwebs and dust of Charlie and Bernadette’s relationship and the wolf shadow.
Taking out the biggest clear quartz point, Mae ran it around her as if she were vacuuming the air around herself and imagined all the negativity coming off, like the way the snow and ice had vanished. She laid the crystal in the sun on the hood of her car to cleanse i
t in the light.
Maybe it was good she’d had this strange and scary night and this failed healing. If she’d had any lingering doubts that giving up these practices was a good idea, now she had none. She wasn’t being pressured by family. It was her choice.
Chapter Thirteen
February 18, 2010
709 Riverside Drive
Truth or Consequences, NM 87901
Dear Mae,
I’m sorry it took me so long to write you back. When I got your letter I was the happiest man in the world, and maybe the saddest too, for thinking of all those years without you and what I missed. It sounds like you grew up smart and strong, and I’m glad you’re happy with your husband and children.
I’ve started and restarted this letter over and over so many times, I finally had to write just a little and promise you I’ll get to the rest of it when we get to know each other again. I hope you’ll want to. I’ve thought of you every day, but your mama was so dead set against my getting in touch, she might have made things bad if I had. I’ll explain all that when I figure out how.
I’ve been out here pretty much the whole time since I left Boone—Santa Fe, then T or C. Took some getting used to brown instead of green, but I can walk to the Rio Grande from my house, and there’s hot springs all over town. I hope you’ll visit someday. I’ll race you on the trails up over the river.
Hope your new career is off to a great start. Don’t mind if your daddy feels just a little proud that you went into something for sports and fitness.
The package is something your Granma Jackson wanted me to give you when you turned sixteen, so it’s about ten years late. (Sixteen was her old-time idea of being grown up, since that’s when she got married herself.) I’m sorry it took so long, but she didn’t want to give this to your mama, figured Rhoda-Rae would never give it you, and I suppose that’s true. But I thought highly of the healing work the Outlaw women did, and even tried to see if your Granma could heal me of what was coming between me and your mama. Not that she could. I’m not trying to be mysterious or hold things back about this, I’m just giving us time to make sure I can explain it and you’ll be all right with it.