Iris shrugged and crawled back behind her disdainful mask. “I like it now. I want to keep it.”
And that’s how we spent the next few hours, Marshall hanging on, Iris pushing away, me somewhere in between, still trying to figure out how to tie everyone together.
Whether from exhaustion or just the need to escape from one another, my cousins and I were each in a separate bed and asleep by nine-thirty. When I woke at seven, Iris was still sleeping, but Marsh’s bed was empty. He wasn’t in the room at all. I dressed quickly to head over to the Bolton-Packer quarters to see if he was making a pest of himself this early in the morning, but as soon as I got outside I saw him walking up from the barn in back of the motel.
“How come you’re up so early?” I asked.
He shrugged. “I just woke up. You guys were still snoring, so I went to see the horses. They’ve got two, Eleanor Rigby and Ruby Tuesday.”
I laughed. “They told you their names?”
Marsh was not in a joking mood. “No. Tony was down there—he takes care of the horses. I helped him with Eleanor.”
“Wait until Iris hears. She’ll be down there begging to ride.”
The anger that flashed across Marshall’s face startled me. “I wish she wasn’t here! I wish she wasn’t even my sister!”
“Whoa! Marsh, I know you’re not exactly best buddies, but . . .”
“I hate her.” He glared, daring me to try to talk him out of it. I kept my mouth shut.
After a minute he broke his stare. “I don’t always hate her. But I hate her when she gets crazy and mad, like she is now.”
“Does it scare you?”
“No!” he yelled. “It just makes me mad and crazy, too. It’s like the chicken pox or something that I catch from her. I just want to be normal again like we used to be.”
“Don’t you think Iris wants that, too?”
“Who knows what she wants,” he said, but his voice was a little calmer. He scratched his sneaker in the dust. “Let’s stop talking about it, okay? I don’t want to be mad at you, too.”
Just then the door of room number 5 opened and Iris walked out in her T-shirt and underpants. “You guys just went off and left me in here all by myself! I wake up and you’re both gone, for godsakes!”
“Jeez, Virus. What did you think—we walked back to Chicago without you?”
“Well, where did you go?”
“We were right outside. You don’t have any pants on,” I reminded her. “And aren’t you supposed to use your crutches?” I pushed her back inside and Marsh followed me.
“I don’t need the crutches. My ankle’s okay. How come you went outside?”
“I went to look for Marsh, that’s all,” I told her. “He went down to see the horses this morning.”
“Without me?”
“You were asleep, dipwad,” Marsh said.
“I want to go see the horses, too!” She seemed on the verge of tears over this nonevent.
“Well, get dressed and we’ll walk down there after breakfast,” I said, but Marshall’s harsher comment drowned me out.
“Why don’t you leave the poor horses alone? You’ll just infect them with your craziness, too.”
I should have seen it coming, but Iris was so fast, I wasn’t prepared. Her fist shot out right in front of me and landed squarely in the middle of Marshall’s face. His head flew back like his neck was on a spring, and the look in his eyes raced from surprise to anger to anguish in five seconds flat. He started to howl as blood poured from his nose.
“You broke my nose! Look what you did, you stupid bitch! You broke my nose!” His hands were cupped to catch the blood flow, but that left his feet free to kick out at his sister. He landed one on her kneecap that buckled her and she fell sideways onto the bed.
“Ow, that’s my bad leg, you idiot!”
This time I could see the retaliatory strike coming and I stepped between them, pushing Iris back down on the bed. “Iris, don’t you dare hit him again! He’s already bleeding all over himself.”
I grabbed Marsh by the shirt, dragged him into the bathroom, and sat him on the toilet seat so I could see how much damage had been done. He was screaming like crazy, totally enraged at what had happened.
“I hope you bleed to death!” Iris yelled.
“Iris, shut up before I kick you,” I yelled back.
There was a knock on the door, but before I could answer it, Savannah and her mother rushed in.
“What happened?” they asked, looking at the three of us.
Iris and Marshall became suddenly mute, Iris crawling back under the bedcovers, Marsh sniffing up blood and tears.
“We had a little accident,” I said. “Marsh got hit in the nose.”
“By her!” he said, pointing at Iris.
“Okay, it’s over now,” I said. “Let’s just make sure your nose is okay.”
“Let me look,” Sukey said. “I used to be an EMT—I know a little bit about these things.” The blood had slowed to a trickle and I cleaned Marsh’s face with a washcloth while Sukey gently moved his nose from side to side.
“Does that hurt?” she asked. He nodded, but obviously he wasn’t in all that much pain anymore. “It’s not broken. The cartilage is fine. You probably just burst a vessel in there. Savannah, go make up an ice bag for him to hold on it.”
Now that the screaming had stopped, I was embarrassed that Sukey and Savannah had seen our dysfunction in action. They would probably think I couldn’t handle my cousins alone, that I was too young to take care of them. Maybe I was. A few weeks ago I wouldn’t have cared—who wanted to take care of them, anyway? But now I was so tied up with them, and I wanted so badly to be the one to help them through this stuff. I couldn’t bear the idea of sending them back to Chicago kicking and screaming and hating each other, when it seemed like they were really just sad and scared and needy. And even though I didn’t have a clue how to go about helping them, it was beginning to seem like my mission in life.
Of course Sukey and Savannah didn’t make a big deal out of the fight. Sukey said something like, “I’ve raised six kids—this is not the first time I’ve seen a sibling-inflicted bloody nose.”
By the time we finished our unusually quiet breakfast and piled into Savannah’s car, Marsh’s nose was fine. I talked Iris into taking one crutch along so she wouldn’t tire her ankle out too much, even though she swore she didn’t need it. We stopped at the hospital first to check on Dory who seemed a little less cheerful than the day before.
“I can’t wait to get out of this traction thing,” she said. “I can’t do anything except lie here and listen to stupid television programs.”
“Lucky!” Marsh said.
The kids were fairly quiet while Dory talked to Savannah about the arrangements for us at the Black Mesa. I kept waiting for Marsh to tell his mother about Iris’s punch and the bloody shirt I’d thrown in the trash. I think Iris expected it, too, but he didn’t say a word. I could have kissed him, although that might have endangered my own nose.
Dory was glad Savannah had planned a day of activities for us. “I’d be more upset if you had to spend all week sitting around this hospital waiting for my arm to heal. Go have fun and tell me about it tomorrow.”
Amazingly, considering the way the day had started, we did have a good time. I think I’d even say a great time. And the kids would probably agree. Savannah had lived in Santa Fe all her life so she was a perfect guide. First we walked around downtown where the buildings are all made of adobe and not more than two or three stories tall. There’s a shady park in the center of town called the Plaza and on one side of it is a long, covered walkway where Indians put their crafts out on blankets to sell—leather goods and pottery and beautiful jewelry.
I tried on a silver ring with small pieces of turquoise set around a circular design. It reminded me of the bright sun we’d spent so much time underneath on this western trip. For a moment I thought I might buy it.
“Do you like it?�
� I asked Savannah and Iris.
“It’s lovely,” Savannah said.
“Yeah, you should get it,” Iris said. “You never buy yourself anything!”
I could have bought it—I had enough money along, and I’d hardly spent any of it, but it was awfully expensive for a ring. I never buy myself things like that—things I don’t actually need. I just couldn’t do it.
I put the ring back on the blanket and watched it sparkle at me.
“You aren’t getting it?” Iris said.
I shook my head.
“But you like it, don’t you?”
“I love it, but that doesn’t mean I have to have it.”
“You’re funny about money,” Marsh said, then put up his hands to block my retort. “I know, you were raised that way, like my mom.” He shook his head over the oddity of Iowa childhoods.
We got ice-cream cones and sat on the Plaza for a while, watching men in cowboy hats and long ponytails, women in short skirts and big sunglasses, in-line skaters in tank tops and knee pads, old people with big dogs, bicyclists with tattoos, and little kids riding in racing strollers. It seemed like every kind of person on earth had a representative right there in that little park.
Then Savannah drove us up to the Museum of International Folk Art, which she said was her favorite place in all of Santa Fe. You could see why. Each room was filled to its high ceiling with folk art pieces from all over the world: embroidered cloths from India, paintings from Africa, dolls from before the Civil War in America, huge bride sculptures from Mexico—so many things it was impossible to see them all. Best were the enormous dioramas in which tiny figures made of wood or clay or even bread dough depicted scenes of village life in various countries.
After lunch we headed up to San Ildefonso Pueblo. For some reason I felt nervous about it; I remembered James at Acoma and the way he looked at us like intruders. But I needn’t have worried—Savannah knew people at San Ildefonso. Her father had studied pottery there with a man named George who was very friendly. He showed us around his studio and the public parts of the pueblo. George’s pottery was all black, too, although each pot was part matte and part polished so that, from up close, you could see a design. He explained that every pueblo’s pottery was somewhat different, and that this was the traditional pottery at San Ildefonso.
George showed us how he starts making a pot, with coils of clay that he builds up layer by layer. It was hard to imagine the time it must take to go from the rough coils to the finished black pot.
“How do you get it all smoothed out?” Marsh asked. “Especially inside the pot?”
“I have tools to help me,” George explained, showing Marsh some small wooden implements he used. “But I use my hands, too. Here, you try to smooth inside this one,” he said, handing him a half-finished pot. Carefully, Marshall took two fingers and reached inside to caress the clay.
“I like the way it feels,” he said.
George nodded. “So do I.”
Marsh was so intent on what he was doing, the rest of us went outside in the sun for a while and just let him work.
We walked around the small cemetery and then rested under the huge cottonwood tree in the middle of the courtyard until Marsh was ready to go. I was happy to see that he didn’t need any prompting to thank George for letting him work on the pot.
On the ride home, Marsh was ecstatic. “He is so nice. I wish I could live in a pueblo. I wish I was an Indian!”
“God, Marshall, get a grip,” was Iris’s comment, but Marsh was too happy to let it bother him.
After dinner with Savannah and her family, Iris left the table quickly. I didn’t follow her, but I was fairly sure that the generous amount of macaroni and cheese she’d just wolfed down was being quickly deposited into the septic system. The problem seemed to be getting worse, and I decided the next day I’d have to find a way to talk to Dory about it.
Meanwhile, it wouldn’t hurt to mention it to my mother. While Savannah and Sukey were looking at Marshall’s drawings (and giving him lots of praise), and Iris was proudly showing Roland the pot from Acoma as though she’d made the purchase, if not the pot, herself, I took my phone card and sneaked out to the pay phone.
“Roland says the car can be fixed,” I reported to Mom first. “There was a lot of damage to the body, but the engine is okay.”
“Well, that’s good news,” she said. “I’ve come up with an idea for driving it back here that I think you’ll like.”
“You’re coming out?”
“Well, the thing is, I can’t really take that much time off right now—several other nurses are on vacation and we’re short staffed as it is. So, I asked Franny what she thought about flying out to New Mexico and helping you drive the car back. You can imagine her reaction.”
“Franny’s coming out?” This was the best news I’d had in weeks. “That’s great!”
“I thought you’d like the idea. I talked to Dory this morning, and she’ll pay for Franny’s plane fare and your hotel rooms and everything on the way back. She said she’s glad you’ll be able to have at least a few good memories from this trip. She made it sound like the kids have been quite a handful.”
Where to start? “Yeah, I wanted to talk to you about that. I’m pretty sure Iris is bulimic.”
“What? Dory didn’t say anything about that!”
“Dory doesn’t want to hear it. I tried to talk to her about it and she said all teenage girls are worried about their weight. For a while I thought it was getting better, but since the accident she’s worse again.”
“Has she lost much weight?”
“Maybe five or six pounds. I don’t think she really wants to be doing it. It’s like she can’t help herself.”
“I suppose it’s some kind of reaction to Allen’s death.”
“I want to help her, but I don’t know what to do about it.”
“Honey, Dory told me you’ve been an incredible help to the kids, that Marshall adores you, and he’s much better than he was when they left Chicago.”
“Yeah, well, she hasn’t seen them much since the accident. They’re both pretty looney again now.”
“Robin, you won’t be able to solve all their problems in a few weeks. These children have been through a huge trauma. It’s amazing you’re having any luck with them at all.”
“You know, the funny thing is, as awful as they are sometimes, I actually like them. Even Iris, who’s a terror. I don’t even know why exactly, but, when this is over, I’m going to miss having them around.”
“I’m sure they’ll miss you, too.”
“Anyway, Dory shouldn’t worry. My memories from this trip will be good ones, very good ones. Even if we didn’t make it to California, I got to see things I never knew existed.”
“I’m glad, honey. I guess seeing the country got your mind off Chris once in a while, huh?”
“Yeah, I guess it did.” Even to Mom I didn’t dare admit just how off Chris my mind had gotten. There was so much else to think about!
I wish this day wouldn’t end,” Marshall said. Iris and I had been reading while Marsh drew in his book. I looked at the clock—it was almost eleven.
“It’s been a good one,” I said, pleased he seemed to have forgotten the early morning fistfight. “But it’s late. We should turn out the light.”
Iris threw her book overboard and flopped down on her pillow. “I’m ready.”
I clicked off the lamp between our beds. “Marsh, can you get the one over by you?”
He was silent a minute and then he said, “No.”
“What do you mean, ‘No’? It’s late.”
“I don’t want to go to sleep tonight. I want to stay up.”
“Oh, Lord,” Iris said. “Do you always have to make trouble?”
“Me? All I want to do is stay up—that’s not making trouble.”
“Okay, okay,” I said. “Let’s not argue about this. Marshall, you have to go to sleep or you’ll be too exhausted to do anything
tomorrow.”
“So? Savannah has to work tomorrow. We’ll just go to the hospital and then hang out around here. I can sleep in the afternoon if I want to.”
By now I knew that arguing with Marshall was not the best way to get him to come around. He was too stubborn to give in. “Okay, you can stay up. But you can’t keep Iris awake. That light has to go out.”
“Then how will I draw?”
“We’ll go into the bathroom and close the door.”
“Are you staying up, too?”
“For a while. I’ll write a letter.”
I figured Marsh would give out before I did, and I could at least stick a pillow under his head and cover him with a blanket before I went to bed myself. Besides, I’d been thinking about the last letter I’d written to Chris, all about good-looking cowboys and Iris and I becoming girlfriends. I’d been so angry when I wrote it that it wasn’t very honest. Even though he’d been cavorting with Gabriella, he’d at least told me about it, and he didn’t deserve the phony-baloney reply I’d sent.
Iris grumbled at us as we got our materials together and took pillows and blankets into the bathroom. “You two are insane—that’s all there is to it.”
We closed the door on her and grinned at each other. “Toilet seat, bathtub, or floor?” I asked him.
“Can I sit in the bathtub?”
“Be my guest.”
Marsh took off his shoes and arranged the pillow and blankets just so, scrambled into the tub with his drawing materials, and let out a sigh of contentment. For my part, I found myself once again sitting on a toilet seat, trying to figure out just what words were the perfect ones to send to Chris. I decided to make a stab at the truth, if only I could figure out what it was.
Dear Chris,
A lot has happened since I wrote you a few days ago, but first I want to go back to the last letter I got from you. Even though I pretended I wasn’t bothered by it, I was. It was all about hanging out with Gabriella and a bunch of other girls and drinking and dancing and sweating. You were talking about caffes and corsos and piazzas—things I’ve never even seen, and it made me feel terrible. I don’t think you meant it that way, but to me it felt like you were giving me the reasons we could never have the same relationship we used to have. It seemed like you had grown up and left me behind.
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