Steps to the Altar

by Earlene Fowler

  “I remember. She works as a docent at the Mission.”

  “That’s her. You could call and ask her next week. She works eight to five Monday through Friday.”

  “Okay, thanks. I’ll call her on Monday.”

  We kissed politely and said goodbye.

  “Aren’t we just being so adult about this,” I muttered as I pulled out of the driveway. Somehow, the fact that we weren’t yelling at each other made our situation feel even more hopeless.

  I arrived at Jamaica You Beautiful at five minutes to eight. It was located in a bright lavender-and-white clapboard house on Lopez Street about five blocks from Elvia’s bookstore. I stood on the porch for a few minutes, attempting to rearrange my despairing mood before seeing Elvia. This was the most exciting week of her life and I was determined not to wreck it with my marital problems.

  Female laughter and the sharp, grassy scent of clean wet hair and hair spray bombarded me when I walked inside. Elvia was already reigning in chair number one, her shoulder-length black hair being arranged in an elaborate hairstyle of curls and braids. Her wedding veil and pearl-encrusted headpiece sat in a clear hatbox on the table next to her.

  “Hey, Benni,” Teresa called over at me. She was the shop owner and Elvia was one of her best customers. “Zelda is ready anytime you are.”

  Zelda was their skin expert. Elvia said my face needed a good cleaning and vacuuming. I couldn’t help picturing a small Hoover upright moving across the bridge of my nose.

  “Okay, I’m here. Vacuum me,” I said.

  Elvia rolled her eyes. “You’ll be amazed at how much better you look after Zelda is through with you. And it’s very relaxing. Besides, I’m paying for it and you promised you would do whatever I asked with this wedding. An inch trimmed off your hair and your nails done.”

  “And I always keep my promises,” I said, going over and giving her a pat on the knee. “My body is yours for the next”—I checked my watch—“one hour and fifty-five minutes. I have to be at the festival booths by ten o’clock or my artists will think I’m deserting them.”

  “You’ll be a new person,” Teresa promised.

  That, I thought, might not be a bad idea these days. Maybe that was the way to keep my husband.

  Zelda, the woman who would attempt to restore youth and vigor to my face, was a tall, red-headed woman with slanted green eyes and sharp features. She settled me down on a table that was not unlike a doctor’s exam table and went to work on my face. The room was warm and had a woodsy scent. Gentle, nature-like music played from a hidden stereo somewhere. After a fifteen-minute massage with oils, when I’d almost fallen asleep from the mesmerizing stroking of her strong, thin fingers, she covered my eyes with small plastic cups and flipped on a bright light. For the next fifteen minutes she scrutinized and cleaned my face with a variety of probes and potions.

  So, I thought, as she poked at something on my forehead, basically a facial is when you pay someone else large amounts of money to pick your zits.

  “Very funny,” Elvia said, turning her chair around to face me after I had whispered my revelation to her. Teresa had gone to get us both cappuccinos from their new copper espresso machine. “It’s much more involved than that. Zelda is the most sought after skin specialist in the county. I had to bribe her with a fifty-dollar gift certificate to the store to work you in today. Your skin looks years younger.”

  “It was wonderful,” I admitted, running a hand over my cheeks. They did feel softer and smoother.

  “I told you she was good. Now Angie is waiting for you. What do you think?” She pointed to her upswept elaborate hairdo of curls and braids. It was a miraculous piece of hair art. Fit for a magazine cover. It could win awards at a competition. And it didn’t look at all like my best friend.

  “Honest answer?”

  She hesitated, then nodded.

  “I think you’d look the most beautiful with your hair down in its usual way. That’s the Elvia who Emory loves. That’s the Elvia we all love. We want to see you walking down the aisle, not your hairstyle.”

  She sat dead silent, her smooth brown face expressionless. I lambasted myself for giving my opinion when I swore I’d just go along with whatever she wanted.

  Then she smiled. “You’re right, Benni. I was getting so wrapped up in what everything will look like in the photographs that I was forgetting what this was truly about. Me and Emory getting married.” Her black eyes grew shiny. “Thank you for reminding me of that.” She grabbed my hand and squeezed it.

  I leaned down and hugged her. “And you guys are going to live happily ever after.”

  She laughed. “Just like you and Gabe.”

  I looked over her shoulder. In the mirror, my freshly vacuumed face glowed healthy and clean, but it was still me. Not a new person, just one with a few less impurities in her pores. “Yes,” I said softly, feeling like a fraud. “Just like me and Gabe.”

  Angie, Teresa’s daughter, who was scheduled to trim my hair, was a short, chesty girl with a diamond in her nose, a long line of pierced earrings up both ears, and a gorgeous head of dark brown hair that cascaded in natural curls around her shoulders. She herself had a delightful, tinkly laugh that reminded me of puppies barking. She herself was like a puppy, cuddly and cute and full of life.

  “So,” she said as she trimmed the back of my hair. “Did you enjoy the French restaurant last night?”

  “What?” I said, confused.

  “Diamanta’s in Santa Barbara. Jenny, a friend of mine, said she saw you and the chief there. She absolutely loved those leather pants you were wearing. Where did you get them? I just love French food, don’t you? Especially their bread. Was it good? What did you have? Jenny says that place is so romantic. You’re so lucky.” She gave a big sigh.

  My face felt numb, but I managed to say, “Do I know your friend Jenny?” My throat felt thick, like I’d swallowed an ice cube.

  She gave a cheery giggle. “Oh, no, you’ve never met. That’s why she didn’t say anything. She only knew it was Gabe because her boyfriend is a new officer at the station and she went to his swearing-in a few months ago. But she said he was with a cool-looking blond lady and I said that must be you. So, was it good?”

  I tried to swallow over the icy lump in my throat. “Fine,” I croaked. “Could I have some water, please?”

  “Sparkling or regular?”

  “Doesn’t matter.” An intimate French restaurant in Santa Barbara. That was more than taking an old friend to dinner in town. That was the beginning of an affair.

  When she came back with the water, fortunately she started telling me about her latest boyfriend, a trumpet player in a jazz band. “He’s totally wicked,” she said. “When he plays that horn, I swear I would follow him anywhere, do anything he asks. Have you ever felt like that about someone?”

  Luckily, I figured out that she was a compulsive talker and didn’t really expect answers to any of her questions. I just made pseudo-interested sounds in the back of my throat and that seemed to satisfy her. After my trim, I was steered toward the manicurist, who clucked over my ragged cuticles. The whole time the shop grew busier and the noise louder until I thought I was going to scream. While everyone around me chattered about dates and Mardi Gras and weddings, I mentally was watching my life swirl down the drain like gray dishwater.

  “You look great,” Elvia said when our beauty regime was finally over and we walked toward our cars.

  “My skin does feel better,” I said, trying to sound enthusiastic. I clutched her wedding veil hat box against my chest, wanting to hold on to something, anything.

  She turned to look at me, her face concerned. “Hermana, are you okay? You look funny.”

  It’s hard to hide your emotions from someone who’s known you since second grade. But I was determined not to rain one drop on her parade, not one single drop.

  “Cramps,” I lied, falling back on that old standby.

  She nodded sympathetically. “Tía Roja always seems
to pay a visit when we’re the busiest, doesn’t she?”

  I just nodded and readjusted my arms around the clear hatbox.

  “See you tonight,” she said when we had reached our cars.

  “With bells on,” I said, with as much fake cheer as I could muster. “Well, actually I have no idea what I’ll have on, but I’ll be there.”

  She laughed and hugged me. “See you there.”

  At the Mission Plaza, where they’d moved the Mardi Gras festival since it had outgrown its original Garden Street location, the crowds were already dancing and eating jambalaya and gumbo at 10 A.M. There were twice as many booths this year and three times as many people. The Mardi Gras committee was trying to make the festival more family oriented to counteract the sometimes bad press the parade usually garnered where scanty costumes and drunken revelry were turning it more like the New Orleans celebration than a lot of people had initially intended. This year there were face-painting booths, coloring contests, a children’s costume parade, and a balloon animal clown for kids. There were also three bands—Zippy’s Zydeco Kings, Alfonse Balfa and his Cajun Cozzins, and Valerie Johnson and the Blues Doctors, a blues band Gabe and I particularly enjoyed. They were regular performers at Iry’s Creole Cafe down near the police station.

  The folk art museum booths were three deep with customers so I jumped right in and started helping, thankful for something to occupy my mind. For the next four hours I sold quilts and pots, stained glass wind chimes, and handmade Mardi Gras masks, only occasionally thinking about Angie’s troubling words.

  At two o’clock, Bobbi Lee pushed me out from behind the counter. “Go look at the booths,” she said. “Get yourself some gumbo and relax. You’ve put in your time hawking our wares. Have some fun.”

  So I was reluctantly cast adrift in the happy crowd, carrying a plastic bowl of gumbo that was probably wonderful, but had no appeal for me. I tried to get interested in the booths selling masks, sparkling beads and fake tattoos showing a grinning alligator wearing a jester’s hat, but all I could think about was Del in leather pants sharing a crème brûlé with my husband.

  As if thinking about him conjured up his presence, I spotted Gabe over near the front of the Mission. Confront him now, a voice inside me demanded. Run the other way, another countered. After a minute of arguing, I decided now was as good a time as any. I pushed my way through the dancing crowd and caught up with him. He was deep in conversation with a deputy district attorney he knew.

  “I need to talk to you,” I said, not even excusing myself before butting into their conversation.

  “Sure,” Gabe said, his face confused and a little irritated. “I’ll catch you later, Sean.”

  The man nodded and walked away.

  “What’s going on?” Gabe said.

  I glanced around. It was too crowded here so I said, “Let’s walk.”

  He followed me out of the Mission Plaza and around the corner to the historical museum.

  “Let’s talk in the garden,” I said. “We can get in the back way. It’s closed for a few weeks while they’re working on the watering system.”

  In the privacy of the old Carnegie Library Garden, where underneath an ancient pepper tree I’d received my first real grown-up kiss from Jack, I confronted Gabe with what I’d learned about his dinner with Del.

  “What’s the big deal?” Gabe said, his voice rising in anger, telling me I was smart to find a private place for us to have this conversation. “Don’t people in this pathetic little town have anything better to do than gossip about innocent dinners between old partners?”

  “Innocent dinners take place where people can see them.”

  “Benni, I’m telling you, nothing happened.”

  “Yet.”

  He glared at me, his eyes a blazing blue against his brown skin. “Is that what you think of me? That I’m a person with so little self-control?”

  I stared up at him, silent for a moment, then said, “Just tell me one thing. Are you still in love with her?”

  His face looked shocked for a moment, then grew still. Not a muscle moved. Around us a mockingbird flew from the pepper tree to the edge of the museum’s roof to an old Martha Washington rosebush that was taller than me. His song was filled with distress and territorial anger and, I knew, a little bit of fear.

  Finally Gabe said in a voice low, rough, agonized, “I don’t know.”

  Heat exploded through my body so quickly I felt like throwing up. I closed my eyes for a moment, chanting silently to myself, Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry.

  “Querida,” he started.

  I opened my eyes and said, “Don’t call me that.” Then I turned and walked out of the garden, slamming the gate behind me.

  He didn’t come after me, which was good. At that moment, I knew I could not trust myself, at that moment I knew I would say things I’d regret later, hit below the belt, thrusting at vulnerable spots as only a lover and a wife could. Places only I knew about.

  Or at least thought only I knew. Really, what did I know about what he’d revealed to the other women he’d had in his life? I could just be another in a long chain of conquests. One that took a little more work because he had to marry me to sleep with me. But marriages were easy enough to dissolve these days. I was a little more trouble to get in his bed, but not much. I’d fallen just as quickly as any of the others.

  I didn’t pay attention to where I was walking, I just wanted to lose myself in the crowd, get somewhere where he couldn’t find me. Before I realized it, I was back in the midst of the Mardi Gras festival.

  “Hey, Benni!”

  I turned at the sound of my name. Over at the children’s face-painting booth, Joan Sackett waved over the crowd. I weaved my way around a group of people dressed like sparkly green cockroaches and sidestepped a woman carrying a dachshund wearing the identical green-and-purple fool’s hat as her owner, a round-faced, frizzy-haired woman who contradicted the adage that people chose dogs that looked like themselves.

  “Hey, Joan,” I said when I finally made it up to the booth. Four people were busy painting butterflies, rainbows, and turtles on the smooth cheeks of children. “How’d you get roped into this?”

  She jerked her head over at a woman in her early twenties who had Joan’s tall, muscular frame and freckled complexion. “My daughter’s working for the recreation department now,” she said, dipping her brush into a muffin tin filled with fluorescent oranges, greens, and blues. “Pull up a stool and keep me company. Gabe was by a few hours ago. Said you were wondering about old records.” She bent close to a ten-year-old girl and continued working on the half-finished parrot framing her right eye. “Close your eye, honey. I don’t want to get paint in it.”

  At the mention of his name, my stomach rolled and churned. I prayed with all my being that my normally open face hid at least a modicum of the pain I felt. For not the first time in my life I wished I lived in a huge, impersonal city where your world could crumble like old concrete without the benefit of a curious audience.

  “I’m looking into the Sullivan murder. Well, not officially looking into it, more like curious about it.” I was glad for a chance to avoid my terrified thoughts and concentrate on a relationship that had been over for fifty years.

  She nodded and stroked a long cobalt blue bird tail down the girl’s cheek. “That’s quite an interesting story. But Gabe was right when he told you we don’t have much left from that time. What’s weird is we have all the records from the late nineteenth century. Back then the arrest ledgers were also the crime files. They wrote everything down right where they logged in the suspect’s name so we actually have great records from then.”

  “Nothing from the forties?”

  “Nope. From what I can tell, the department didn’t start keeping accurate records until the late fifties. The forties were an especially hard time in the San Celina PD. Right at the beginning of the war they brought up a new chief from Los Angeles.” She grinned. “Sound familiar? Excep
t then they did it to sort of clean things up.”

  “There was corruption in the police department?” I wondered if that had any significance in the Sullivan investigation.

  She finished the parrot by giving it a bright purple eye and said, “There you go, honey. Have a ball.”

  “Thanks, Mrs. Sackett,” the girl said and jumped up to gaze at her face in the plastic hand mirror. She and her friends squealed in delight at Joan’s artwork.

  Joan smiled at them indulgently. “Wish my rookies were as enthusiastic about my evaluation reports.” She turned back to me. “There wasn’t really corruption back then. It was more that everything was so small town. Kind of unprofessional. Until the war when Camp Riley was built and so many military men were shipped in to train here on the Central Coast, the county did not have a whole lot of serious crime. A few rancher squabbles about fence lines, a little cattle rustling, but nothing that required a big-city approach. The war changed this area permanently. Anyway, the new chief implemented a lot of improvements, kind of cleaned out the old timers, the ones not willing to change and try new techniques. He was the one who opened the police pistol range and started a program for regular firearms qualification.”

  All of her information was interesting, but it wasn’t giving me what I wanted. “So, what about the Sullivan investigation?”

  She stretched her long arms above her head and rolled her neck. “I’ve been doing this three hours straight. Didn’t know there were so many kids in San Celina. The Sullivan murder was never actually officially solved, as you probably already know. It’s pretty obvious what happened, but even though it was still an open case, no one saw fit to save any of the records or evidence.” She shrugged. “Too bad. Cold cases are being solved quite regularly now that we have so much advanced technology. Some departments even have special cold case detectives. Guess we’ll never know what really happened with Garvey and Maple Sullivan.”

  “Is it possible that anyone who was a police officer then would still be around? Maybe he could tell me something about it.”