Finding Casey: A Novel

by Jo-Ann Mapson

  Glory studied the menu. What tasted good when it was ninety degrees in the shade? A side of flour tortillas dripping with butter? Flan? A chile relleno did not appeal to her today. “Could I have the cheese omelet, hold the tomatoes and onions, please?” Glory asked their server, a lanky Latino guy who looked harried. He nodded. “How about you, Juniper?”

  “I’m not all that hungry. I’ll just have a Diet Coke.”

  “Blue Sky okay? We don’t carry Coke products,” the waiter said.

  “Hold on,” Glory interrupted. “You skipped breakfast to run and you were hungry ten minutes ago. Order something.

  We can take the leftovers home to your dad.”

  “We make half portions of everything,” the waiter said, tapping his fingers against his order pad.

  “Fine,” Juniper huffed. “I’ll have half a BLT, half a side of cole slaw, and a whole iced tea. You guys should start carrying Coke. Blue Sky soda tastes like vitamins.”

  Glory smiled at her adopted daughter’s sass.

  “Bueno,” the waiter said. “Be about fifteen minutes. We’re really slammed today.”

  When weren’t they? If Glory had a choice for dinner out, Pasqual’s was where she wanted to go. Whether you were sitting at a side table in candlelight, or in the bright sunshine with colorful Mexican papel picado banners hanging like laundry across the lofty ceiling, she loved this place. Maybe it wasn’t always a good place to have a quiet talk, but once the food arrived, who cared? Lucky for the people lined up around the corner, a couple of shops had awnings, offering shade. Glory and Juniper had filled the last two seats at the community table. To her left a couple of seniors were going on about their recent weekend in Pagosa Springs. In the talkative air around her, Glory heard Spanish, German, and Japanese. She was getting better at Spanish, but the other two languages were beyond her reach.

  Juniper was leaning on her hands, elbows on the table, a vacant expression on her face. “Hey,” Glory said. “Are you tired of Indian Market? We can go home if you want.”

  “No,” Juniper said. “You still have to find Daddy Joe’s pot, and I lost one of my porcupine-quill beaded earrings. I want to see if I can find another just like it.”

  “I bet you can. Anything bothering you?”

  “Not really. Just thinking about, you know, her,” Juniper said.

  “Tell me.”

  “When we were little kids, Casey always wanted to be the Indian, never the cowboy. She would have loved Indian Market. She would have gone both days, even if it was a hundred and ten degrees out.”

  When Glory and Joe formally adopted Juniper, she had been convinced that moving out of state and changing her name would release her from the grief of Casey’s disappearance. She thrived in the anonymity that came with their move from California, where her tragic family history would always define her as “the sister of Casey McGuire, the girl who never came home.” That was one of the reasons she’d asked to take both Glory and Joseph’s last names when they adopted her. “If I drop Tree”—her middle name—“and McGuire”—her father’s surname—“I can start over brand-new,” she said the day that the papers were filed. Glory and Joseph had looked at each other knowingly, but they agreed, it was her decision.

  Directly across the table from Juniper sat the prototype Santa Fe dude, rail-skinny, craggy face, Levi’s worn smooth over many launderings, leather vest with clay pipestone beads, a silver bracelet crawling with turquoise, and long hair tied back in a ponytail. He had taken off his cowboy hat, leaving that telltale dent of longtime wear. His face was lined from the sun, and he could have been anywhere from forty to sixty. He was staring at Juniper with a glint in his eye that Glory did not like.

  “Something I can help you with?” she asked loudly.

  He chuckled at her protectiveness. “Sorry, ma’am. I didn’t mean to stare. I noticed the young lady’s tattoo. A mountain bluebird, right? My favorite bird. That’s all.”

  Immediately Juniper covered it with her hand and looked down at her napkin and silverware. Glory kept her gaze on the man, but he did not back down. “Thank you for the compliment,” she said in a voice that conveyed exactly the opposite. Like the porcupine, the mother in Glory sent the man a warning: Come any closer, and you’ll have a mouthful of quills instead of that relleno. Joseph’s grandmother, Penelope Manygoats, who had died years before Glory met Joseph, had told her grandson a story for every creature on the planet. The mountain bluebird was an “angry bird that thinks it’s a hawk,” but the porcupine was an “ingenious survivor.” One day, the story went, Porcupine climbed a hawthorn tree to escape Bear, and discovered that the thorns on the tree discouraged the bear’s pursuit. Porcupine called out to the Creator, who spread white clay on his back and attached the wonderful thorns. The thorns evolved to microscopically barbed quills, and Bear never bothered Porcupine again.

  “I haven’t seen you around here before,” Glory said to the still staring man. “Are you local?” For such a spread-out town, Santa Fe had a small-town atmosphere. Eventually you’d run into someone with a familiar face at Trader Joe’s or La Choza. You recognized the regulars, but this man was not one of them.

  He smiled. “Not far. El Guique.”

  “That’s right next to the Ohkay Owingeh Pueblo,” Juniper said. “The Rio Grande runs through it, right?”

  “Yes, it does,” he said. “My fourteen-acre property has three hundred feet of riverfront.”

  That’s a valuable piece of land, Glory thought. Another person you’d never guess as wealthy. “So you’re here for Indian Market, collecting, I take it?” she asked, wishing Juniper had not entered into the conversation.

  “Actually, ma’am, I’m here to show.”

  Ma’am. As if he thought that would make up for ogling a teenager? If he were the least bit Indian, she would eat his hat. “Oh. What tribe are you?”

  “Cherokee.”

  They always said Cherokee. If he had any Indian blood in him, it had to be a microscopic drop. “What kind of artwork do you do?” she asked.

  “A little pottery.”

  “Really? Well, we don’t want to keep you from losing any sales,” Glory said as their plates arrived. “You’d better hurry so you can get back to your booth. Best of luck.”

  Glory had fired a few warning quills; the man put his cowboy hat back on, pulling it down on his brow. He ate quickly, tossed money on the table, and walked away without pushing his chair back in. Glory felt a tinge of annoyance at his lack of manners, but in no time his place was wiped clean and a new diner sat down. The new fellow took out a Tony Hillerman paperback and started reading.

  “How’s your sandwich?” she asked Juniper.

  “Good, but nowhere near as good as Dad’s when he broils the bacon with brown sugar.”

  Such sweets on a hot day sounded nauseating to Glory, but she said, “Daddy Joe is our own top chef, isn’t he?”

  Juniper sipped at her iced tea. “Thank goodness for that. Otherwise we’d still be eating hot dogs and grilled cheese sandwiches.”

  Glory laughed. “Hey, don’t knock my culinary skills. I can still make a better cake than he can.”

  “Pirate ship wedding cake, for sure,” Juniper said, referring to the day they’d met, Juniper a foster child looking for somewhere safe to spend Thanksgiving, and Glory, newly widowed, hosting a pirate-themed wedding on her ranch to pay the bills. “Think you’ll ever make another one?”

  “For your wedding, if you want.”

  And then Juniper’s lower lip was suddenly trembling. “She’ll never have a wedding or a cake.” Tears puddled in her eyes and she tried to blink them away.

  “Oh, honey,” she said. “I’m sorry I said that.”

  Juniper swiped at her eyes. “It’s all right.”

  Between the creepy man and Juniper’s sorrow, Glory’s omelet wasn’t sitting right in her stomach. “I’m full,” she said, setting her fork down. She dug in her purse for money to pay the bill. “I need to use the ladies’
room. Meet me outside, okay?”

  “Sure, Mom. Thanks for lunch.”

  Mom—the word still felt monumental to her—never in her life would she have expected to be called that, and whenever Juniper said it, it was like hearing it for the first time. She smoothed back Juniper’s hair and kissed her forehead. “Finish your sandwich and I’ll meet you outside.”

  As Glory headed to the bathroom, she thought about how some memories could never be filed away. Her first husband, Dan, had been gone nearly six years now, but she could call his face to mind instantly. He would always hold the deed to half her heart.

  Later, as they were about to traverse the last aisle of the market, her cell phone rang. Glory glanced at it and smiled. It was Joseph calling. “What’s up?” she said when she answered.

  “I have bad news.”

  “Oh, no. What happened?”

  “It’s Dolores. She fiddled with the oven temperature and your cake is ruined.”

  Dolores was the name Juniper had assigned to what she called the “house ghost”; what Glory suspected was the groaning of elderly plumbing on its last legs. “A likely excuse,” Glory said. “Just admit that even you, the great chef, have occasional culinary mishaps. Plus you’ll always be second to me in the baking department.”

  He laughed. “It’s my life ambition to catch up. Hey, happy birthday to the most beautiful woman in Santa Fe.”

  She laughed. “You said that this morning.”

  “I was worried you might have forgotten.”

  “As if I ever could forget you. We’re almost done here. Where are you?”

  “Oh, that’s top-secret information. I need to talk to my party-planner partner in crime.”

  She handed the phone over to Juniper and stepped away to give them privacy. Throngs of people attended Indian Market. Glory never tired of the Plaza. The tall cottonwood trees had witnessed so much history, she wished they could talk. For hundreds of years people had been gathering here to celebrate one thing or protest another. On days like today it truly was the heart of the city, pulsating with music, overflowing with Native art, blessed with sunshine. The population was made up of so many different ethnicities that the first thing Glory did when they moved here was buy a history book on the state and spend a month reading it. When she learned that New Mexico was the only officially bilingual state in the Union, she told Joseph, “Governor Schwarzenegger should try this in California.”

  A strolling all-girl mariachi band came down San Francisco Street from the direction of the cathedral. People stepped aside to let them pass, taking cell-phone pictures and videos. They were young girls, maybe fourteen years old, dressed in turquoise blouses and black skirts. Glory applauded as they passed. How could a person play a violin and walk at the same time?

  Juniper was still talking to her dad. Seeing the girls in fancy dress reminded Glory of the celebration following Juniper’s formal adoption. “Just a small gathering,” Joseph had said, and then invited over a hundred guests. Under duress, Juniper agreed to wear the dress Joseph’s mother made for her. It was snow white, three tiers of lace, and something Juniper could have worn to her own wedding, except for the fact that Joseph wasn’t going to allow Juniper to date until she was oh, say, seventy-five or so.

  After the call, Juniper and Glory walked down Washington Street. By now it was beginning to feel like overload—all these booths, jewelry, religious paintings, folk art, sculpture, pierced tinwork. Her eyes blurred from so much beauty. To top it off, she could tell she’d had too much sun because she felt a little faint. How hard could it be to find a decent cooking pot that didn’t cost an arm and a leg?

  She’d been careful not to admire her mother-in-law’s clay pot too much, because if she did, the woman would insist she take it. Even though it had been in her family forever, she’d give it to Glory just like that, she was so thrilled Joseph had found his soul mate. Glory wanted a pot of their own, new, so that Joseph could cook without the ghosts of the cooks who came before him.

  While Juniper looked through the beaded earrings, Glory spotted a micaceous pot big enough to roast a turkey inside. It was the color of adobe, with smoky black patches reflecting the sun, revealing a bronze shimmer. It was fitted with a no-nonsense lid and a finger-sized loop on top, but it was so beautifully crafted it could sit on a shelf. “How much are you asking?” she said to the man standing behind the table filled with similar pots.

  “Six hundred, but if you have cash I could go five-seventy-five.”

  “It’s lovely, thanks, but out of my price range,” Glory said, returning it.

  “Mom,” Juniper said as they moved on, “that sounded like a good deal to me. How much do you want to spend?”

  “No more than three hundred.”

  “Seriously? They charge fifty dollars an inch. You couldn’t cook an egg inside a pot that small.”

  “And you know this how?”

  “Hello? Anthropology major here. Aced art history last quarter, which covered contemporary Native American Indian pottery.”

  “I want to keep looking,” Glory said, and soon they were down to the last half block of booths on Washington Street. The sun beat down on her head mercilessly the way it did just before the temperature was about to break. Her lunch was definitely not sitting right.

  “Look!” Juniper said, holding up a black card with porcupine-quill beaded earrings attached. “I found them!”

  “I knew you would,” Glory said. “Wish I could say the same for my pot.”

  Juniper paid for her earrings, tucked them into her purse, and then they were in front of another booth featuring micaceous pots. It was a bad location, out in the sun, farthest from the Plaza, and she imagined the foot traffic was a lot less because of the heat. The pots for sale were set directly on an unadorned tabletop, no bright cloth beneath, no effort whatsoever to make things look nice. A girl about twenty-five with long dark hair stood behind the pots, smoking a cigarette. She kept shifting the pots this way and that, and her movements made Glory wonder if the girl was high on something. “What are your prices?” she asked.

  “Two-fifty to four hundred. Buy two and I can make you an even better deal.”

  Juniper picked up a tall pot that flared outward from the bottom up to an opening large enough to fit a whole chicken through. Micaceous clay was perfect for slow cooking. After hours on the stovetop, meat fell off the bone and ended up a tender, mouthwatering stew to warm your stomach on winter nights when the temperature dropped below thirty. “I like this one,” Juniper said.

  Glory picked it up and felt the weight. Nice, not too heavy, but not so light she’d worry about breakage. “How much is this one?”

  The girl looked down to her left for a second, the way liars and car salesmen do, and Glory nearly set it down. “Three-fifty cash.”

  “I’ll give you three hundred,” Juniper said, and Glory was momentarily flustered.

  “Now listen, it was my plan to—”

  “Mom, you have to let me do this,” Juniper interrupted. “I saved a ton of money from my summer job, Grandma Smith gave me a savings bond, and Aunt Halle and Uncle Bart send me a check every month like I’m starving in a third-world country. You and Daddy Joe pay for tuition, the dorm, and my car insurance, I think the least I can do is buy you a nice anniversary present.”

  The girl was already wrapping the pot in newspaper.

  “Thank you,” Glory said, feeling guilty that maybe she wasn’t paying enough.

  The girl took Juniper’s money and opened an old-fashioned cash box. She bent down to put the extra newspaper away.

  “Come on,” Juniper said. “I see two spots and the band is about to start.”

  “Okay, I’m coming,” Glory said, and just as she turned to walk away, a movement in the shadows behind the girl caught her attention. Glory saw that it was the man from the restaurant. For a moment, it felt as if time had bumped out of rhythm, skipped a few beats, and Glory was overcome with the desire to rescind the sale, but Jun
iper held the bag and was dragging her to the cement bench that encircled the spire sculpture in the center of the Plaza. The bench was warm from the sun and felt comforting on her bones. There was enough shade from the trees to feel relief from the heat. Onstage in front of them the band broke into “El Porompompero,” one of the most famous gypsy love songs ever written.

  “What did your dad want?” Glory said when there was a break in the music.

  “Nice try,” Juniper answered. “You’re not getting the surprise out of me. You’ll find out tonight. By the way, in addition to your request for tri-tip, Daddy Joe’s making me a great big vat of menudo to take back to school.”