Irises

by Francisco X. Stork

  I am doing this for you, Mary, Kate said in her mind. I’ll wait until you understand that and believe it in your heart. I’ll take courses at UTEP and then after that, I’ll go to Stanford and you can come with me.

  Mr. Ortega was speaking. “I can’t guarantee how long this will take. It’s a little bit of an unusual situation, your mother being at home, so I’ll need to do some research on how best to handle this. I would recommend moving ahead on the legal aspect of it. You can always postpone the actual removal of the feeding tube until you’re ready. How have you been paying for your mother’s care? I take it your father’s medical insurance stopped paying a long time ago.”

  “We’ve been paying out of Father’s salary. It’s expensive.”

  “Well, you certainly can’t afford to pay for those services now.” He stood up, and Kate stood up as well. “I’ll get going on this. Oh, I’m going to need a five-thousand-dollar retainer from you before I can start working on your case. You can mail me the check, or better yet, drop it off with Linda up front.”

  “How does a retainer work?” She felt stupid asking, but given the scarcity of funds, she needed to know.

  “The retainer is money you give me up front. It means I’m your lawyer. If we spend less, I’ll give the rest back to you. If more is needed, I’ll ask you for more.”

  “How much more?” She panicked for a moment as she tried to do the math in her head. They had thirteen thousand dollars, more or less, from what the church gave them and from Father’s savings account. There was Father’s pension, which was around forty thousand according to what Mr. Lucas had told Mary. How long could they live on that? Not for very long, if the medical bills and legal fees were too high.

  “It depends. Five thousand will cover filing the papers and a couple of routine court appearances. Let’s start with that.” He touched her shoulder as they walked. “I know you have limited funds. I’ll keep the costs down. If there are no unanticipated problems, we’ll come in around ten thousand or close to it.” Once they reached the door, he told Linda to give her the client information sheet. “Give me a call in a couple of days and let me know how you made out with your sister.”

  “Wait,” she said. “I’m not going to make any decisions today. I need time.”

  “You’re not sure about your mother?” he asked pointedly.

  “She’s not just my mother. I need time. I need to talk to my sister and I’m sure she’ll need time to take it all in.”

  “I see.”

  “Please, I don’t want to start this process before I feel she’s ready.”

  “Why don’t you go ahead and fill out the form. That way, if you make a decision for me to proceed, you can just call.” Then he turned around and marched back into his office.

  She took the form from Linda and went to the sofa to fill it out. When she got to the place on the form that asked for immediate family, she wrote down only Mary Romero (sister).

  Mary was in the toolshed, covering her paintings with burlap to protect them from moisture. She held the half-finished painting of the irises before her and couldn’t imagine ever finishing it. At that moment, she couldn’t see herself painting again.

  She and Kate had hardly spoken since their last conversation, the afternoon after she went missing. Even when Mary told Kate about her visit with Mrs. Fresquez, Kate had listened quietly but not said anything. Kate didn’t seem angry; she seemed preoccupied. If only Kate would tell her what was worrying her.

  Just then she heard Renata’s voice. Mary came out of the shed and there she was, with Marcos beside her.

  “Look what the cat dragged in,” Renata said, proud of herself.

  Mary walked toward them. As she got closer, she saw Marcos’s face. There were bruises under both his eyes the color and shape of small eggplants, and his lip looked like it was torn in half. “What happened to you?”

  “Is a long story.”

  “He says that it’s a long story,” Renata interpreted.

  “Is Sadurday, ’member?” He took out the sketch of the eagles that he had shown them in the cafeteria.

  “I’m sorry. I can’t go. I have to take care of my mother.” Kate had gone out grocery shopping with Mr. Cisneros, the old gentleman who used to drive Papa around.

  “That’s why I’m here,” Renata piped up. “I can watch your mother while you take a look at this wall.”

  “I don’t think that’s a good —”

  “Mary!” Renata shot Mary her best Don’t be stupid expression.

  “I vut a sea beld in ma ca,” Marcos said.

  “He says he put a seat belt in his car. Would you please go now? Go!”

  “Eee only dake a secon.”

  “He says —”

  “I know what he said. It’s not going to take a second. It will take about an hour. The community center is way over in Socorro. And how did he get you to help him?”

  “I vent and god her.”

  “I couldn’t say no to him,” Renata said, pretending to flirt. She opened the gate and began to push Mary toward Marcos’s car.

  “Talita’s number is on the wall by the telephone in case something happens,” Mary said as she walked. “Kate should be back soon.”

  “All right already!” Renata shouted.

  They drove a block before Mary asked him, “How did you know about my mother?”

  “I ast awond about yu.”

  “Why?”

  His eyes were nearly closed and his lip was puffed up, but Mary saw him smile. As far as he was concerned, it was a question that didn’t need to be answered.

  “What happened to you anyway? Can you see? Are you sure you can drive?” She pulled on the newly installed seat belt to make sure it was tight. “You’re doing community service for some crime you committed and you’re still getting into fights?”

  “I ad to.”

  “You had to? Here we go again with the I-had-tos.”

  He gripped the steering wheel with both hands and only nodded. The rest of the trip they drove in silence. It was painful for him to talk, and she didn’t feel like asking any questions out loud. Inside she was swarming with them. Why was she with him? She saw his busted face back at the house and still she got into the car with him. Why did she feel he was a good person when all over his face there was evidence that he was bad?

  He parked the car directly in front of the community center. She never imagined the wall to be so wide and long. It was going to take him a year of Saturdays to complete. They stepped out of the car and stood in front of the wall. “It’s huge,” she couldn’t help saying.

  He made a gesture with his hand as if to say it was no big deal. Then he opened the door to the backseat of the car and took out a large sheet of architectural drawing paper. He signaled for her to follow him to a picnic table, where he unfolded the paper and secured it with bricks and rocks.

  She stood back, amazed. The two eagles he had sketched initially now flew inside two circles that overlapped. In the overlap, he had drawn two shaking hands. The perspective of the eagles’ outstretched wings was perfect. One was light brown with a white crest and the other was all brown, but both had golden beaks. The circles themselves were blue, but yellow and orange and pink beams shot from their circumferences like bursting sun rays.

  “Vat you sink?”

  “First you’ll need to paint the wall white,” Mary said, trying to keep herself from showing admiration.

  “Yeah, den?”

  “Then you’ll have to move what’s here to there.” She pointed first to the piece of paper and then to the wall.

  “Ow?”

  “You’ll need to draw it on the wall with a thick pencil. First you’ll have to locate where the eagles go by putting markers on the wall. Like for this tip of the wing, you draw a spot; for the curve of the wing, you put another spot. Then you connect the dots. You’ll need to measure carefully to make sure everything is centered. It’s like hanging a picture.”

  “You elp me.”r />
  “No way.”

  “Vie not?”

  “I can’t, that’s all.”

  Just then a man came out of the building. “Hey, Marcos!” he called out. He came over and shook Marcos’s hand and waited for Marcos to introduce her, but Marcos suddenly seemed flustered.

  “I’m Mary,” she said. The man held out his hand and Mary shook it.

  “Mary, nice to meet you. I’m Raul Canuto, the director here.” He turned to Marcos. “We have that money so you can buy the supplies. Why don’t you go in and get it from Betty?”

  Marcos limped away. Mary hadn’t noticed the limp before. She wondered whether it was from the time he jumped over the fence into her yard.

  “So how do you know Marcos?” Mr. Canuto asked.

  Mary hesitated and then said, “From school. We met in art studio.” It was sort of true.

  “You’re going to help with the mural?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “He could use your help,” Mr. Canuto said.

  “I can’t.” Mary said. She thought of Mama and Kate and all that was ahead of her.

  “You want to help him but you can’t, or you don’t want to help him, so you can’t?”

  It took her a few seconds to understand the difference. She felt herself blushing. She hadn’t painted an eagle since . . . since she painted that eagle for Papa.

  “You know how he got beat up?” he asked.

  “He said he had to get in a fight.”

  “Yes. That’s more or less right. He had to. Only it wasn’t a fight. It was a beating. He had to get beat up before he can get out of his gang. Did he tell you he was trying to get out?”

  She remembered his first visit to her backyard. “Yes,” she answered.

  “He’s a good kid. He just needs a second chance.”

  She wanted to tell him that whatever Marcos needed, it wasn’t her, but she couldn’t. A strange pang of joy kept her from speaking.

  Marcos came out with a white envelope in his hand. Mr. Canuto patted him on his shoulder, looked at Mary as if they had just agreed on something, and went back inside.

  Marcos stood back to take in the whole wall. Mary could see he was imagining how the mural would look when it was finished. She walked over to stand beside him. The wall was so blank, so open, so ready to be painted. She said, “If you do all the preliminary work, I suppose I could come now and then to make sure you’re getting the detail work right.”

  “Eally? Oo would do dat?”

  “Yeah, I suppose.”

  “Mister Canuto is gonna pay me even dough he doesn ave to. Oo can ave aff of vat I get.”

  “Half? My part is worth more than that,” she said, pretending to be serious.

  “Aff and aff,” he said firmly.

  He offered his hand to seal the deal, and after a moment of deliberation, she took it.

  Kate needed to talk to Simon and to Andy. She decided to start with Simon. She waited for him by his car after school on Monday and watched him emerge from the building, Bonnie by his side. As soon as they saw her, Simon whispered something to Bonnie and she disappeared back into school.

  Simon approached her, a serious look on his face. But she knew him well enough to know he was not angry. It was the kind of focused look he put on when he did the books after the restaurant closed.

  “Thank you for letting me talk to you alone,” Kate said, looking in Bonnie’s direction.

  “No problem,” Simon said.

  She leaned on the hood of his car. “Simon, I owe you an apology.”

  “Forget it,” he said. He didn’t sound bitter. He sounded more as if he wished to avoid any discussion of their breakup.

  “I don’t know what happened.”

  “You were being honest.”

  She smiled at him. He was a kind, kind person. “Actually, I need to apologize for my behavior way before that night. I’ve been a jerk.”

  “A jerk? How?” He opened the back door of the car and threw his backpack inside.

  “It’s taken me a while and I still don’t have it all figured it out, but I actually don’t think I was honest with you —”

  “Oh, Jesus! So now you’re going to tell me that you never felt anything for me. Is that what you want to get off your chest? Please, I don’t need you to be that honest right now.”

  She stopped. Maybe he was right. Maybe what she was doing was more for her own sake. “You’re right, you’re right,” she said quickly. “I don’t want to unload my own guilt on you for what I did.” She paused and then decided to continue. “But I think you need to know that I took you for granted, that I never appreciated you the way you should be appreciated. You have a good heart, and I didn’t deserve you.”

  He looked at her as if assessing her sincerity and then he offered her his handkerchief. She dabbed her eyes. She hadn’t come to cry in front of him.

  “That’s twice I’ve seen you cry,” he said.

  “I wasn’t supposed to cry.”

  “You didn’t come here to make up, did you?”

  She shook her head. “You’ll be happier with someone like Bonnie, trust me.”

  “So what exactly did we have these past two years? We were friends who made out . . . occasionally?”

  She knew he was partly trying to be funny, but she considered only the serious side of what he said. “We were very good friends.”

  “Being very good friends is not so bad, you know. My mom and dad are very good friends. I think that if you marry your very best friend, you’re starting out pretty much where you want to end up. That other stuff, the romance, disappears after a while. That’s what everybody says, anyway. We’re comfortable with each other, we respect each other. If you wanted to go to Stanford, I wouldn’t have stood in your way.”

  “Simon . . .” She lowered her eyes. “You’re a good person.”

  “But . . .”

  “The other night, the morning everyone was looking for me, I ended up spending a very sleepless night thinking about you, among other things. The one thing you need to know is that I liked being with you. That wasn’t pretend. There may have been reasons I was with you besides the fact that I liked spending time with you, but those other reasons don’t take away the fact that I liked spending time with you. Does that make sense?”

  “Can I ask you something? Something that’s none of my business?”

  She knew what he was going to ask. “Sure.”

  “Where were you that morning we couldn’t find you?”

  She reached out and touched his arm. “You broke up with me that night, remember?”

  “So you were with another guy.”

  “Nothing happened,” she said to him. “Trust me.”

  “It doesn’t matter.” She detected sadness in his voice. They turned to see Bonnie coming out the front door of the school. Apparently, she had decided that she’d given them enough time.

  “I would like it to matter,” Kate said. “The next few months will be hard for me and Mary. We could use a friend. And . . . I could use my job back. I’m the best waitress you have. You’re not going to fire the most dependable employee you have just because you broke up with her. You’re too good a manager to let that happen.” She wasn’t asking. She was telling him, reminding him.

  He tilted his head backward and smiled. “We’ll see,” he said. “I guess you better go now.”

  “Do you think Bonnie will ever talk to me again?” she asked.

  “Give her time. I’ll make sure she comes around,” he said.

  Andy was sitting at his desk, staring out the window. She looked at him for a few moments before knocking, and in those moments he reminded her of her father. He too used to look blankly ahead as if waiting for the Holy Spirit to drop the right word into his sermon. Andy turned around and sprang to his feet as soon as he heard the knock. “Kate!” he exclaimed.

  “Do you have a minute?”

  “Yes, come in.” He closed the door behind her. She sat on the edge o
f the sofa and he pulled his desk chair around to sit in front of her. “How’ve you been? I didn’t see you in church yesterday.” She could tell he was at a loss as to how to proceed. He hadn’t called since the night they spent together. She had told herself she didn’t care, but still, the courteous thing would have been to call. Simon would have called.

  “I’ve been more or less okay.” She waited.

  “I’m sorry I haven’t called. You left so . . . abruptly. I wasn’t sure . . .”

  She waved him off. “I went to see a lawyer last week.”

  “Oh.” It took him a few seconds to understand. “About your mother? You’re going to go through with it?”

  “Not immediately. When the time is right.”

  “You’re sure about this?”

  “I’m sure.” She paused. “I have a theological question for you. Is guilt a sign that what we are doing is wrong?”

  “That’s a difficult one.” He shifted in his chair.

  “My head tells me that I’m doing the right thing, but my heart is full of guilt.”

  “Guilt about what?”

  “Guilt that I’m ending my mother’s existence on earth, that I’m taking away whatever possibility of life she has, however remote. Guilt that I’ll be hurting Mary so much. I haven’t done anything yet, and I can already tell that I’ll feel bad for a long time, maybe forever.” She turned to look at the bookcase, which was now filled with his books. “What do your books tell you about guilt?”

  “The thing is, sometimes we feel guilt when we shouldn’t, and sometimes what we call guilt is simply the pain that comes from doing what’s right, even if it hurts others. I’m not sure you’ll ever stop feeling that pain in what lies ahead for you. It doesn’t matter what you call it. It’s going to hurt. . . . But you’re smiling. What are you thinking about?”

  “Talking about guilt reminded me of the other night at your apartment. Did I make a fool of myself?”

  “No, why do you say that?”

  “Agreeing to go to your place.” She blushed.

  “Kate, I’m just as responsible for that as you are. I’m only human, and you are very attractive, as you know.”