by Lucia Berlin
Rashes. We were all terrified of rashes. They could be nothing. Just heat. Or they could be measles or chicken pox or spinal meningitis. Rocky Mountain fever.
When the babies started to move we’d sit there close on the couch together and feel each other’s babies moving and kicking. We’d cry and hug each other, with joy.
The babies would be born in September. Maria got the idea that they needed flowers to be blooming then, so there we were out in the blazing New Mexico sun with our fat selves, hoeing and planting zinnias and hollyhocks and giant sunflowers. Maria even sent away for exactly two hundred poplar trees from the Department of Agriculture. She insisted on planting them all herself. They were only two inches high but she planted them three feet apart, like it said to. All around the house, almost all around the whole block! She had to buy more hose that she lugged home on the bus from Sears. The poplars grew though, were at least two feet tall when the babies came.
I’ve long since remarried. To Will, a banker, a kind, strong man. I have a doctorate in history and teach at UNM. The Civil War. Sometimes, going home, I go out of my way to drive past Lead Street and the old apartment. The neighborhood is a slum now, the building a ruin, covered in graffiti, the windows boarded up. But the poplars! Higher than the tall house, shading the whole dusty desolate block. A good thing she planted them so far apart, they are a close lush wall of green.
None of our husbands were around much during our pregnancies. They were either working or teaching or in seminars. Rex was having an affair with Bonnie, a model, but I don’t think Maria knew. With another friend I would tell her, give her advice, butt the hell in, but with Maria you just wanted to protect her, keep her safe. Not that she was stupid. She saw things, but she always had that hesitancy of a blind person on a curb. You had to stop yourself from reaching out to her. Or you reached out, with whatever it was she needed. And she’d smile, Gosh, thanks.
The babies were born. Rex was at a show in Taos when Ben came, so Bernie and I took Maria to the hospital. It was a hard labor. Maria had something the matter with her spine and the coccyx had to be broken before the head could come out. But it did, with hair as bright red as Rex’s. Bawling and lusty. It really seemed that he was born with that passion and zest his father had.
When I got to the hospital room the next day I was surprised to see Maria out of bed, and standing at the window. Tears streamed down her face.
“Oh, are you sad Rex isn’t here? We finally found him. He’ll arrive any minute!” (We had found him at last, at the La Fonda in Santa Fe, with Bonnie.)
“No, that’s not it. I’m happy. I’m so happy. Shirley, look at all those people down there. Walking around and sitting in the cars and bringing flowers. They were all once conceived. Two people conceived them and then each of them was born into the world. Born. How come nobody ever talks about this? About dying or being born?”
Rex seemed more interested than pleased about the baby. He was fascinated by the fontanelle. At first he took a lot of photographs, then he stopped. “It’s too malleable.” Rex became more and more irritated by the baby’s crying, spent even more time at the studio. He was working on a series of bas-reliefs. Big, brave ancient things. I’ve seen them several times at a museum in Washington. I like to remember how we all used to go watch him work on them in the sweltering studio.
He hated the baby’s smells. Maria washed every day, by hand, kept changing sheets and diapers. She got even thinner but her breasts were full, her face radiant. “Incandescent!” Rex said, and he did drawing after drawing in warm pastels.
Our Andrea was born, and then Steven. Both dear serene fat babies. Bernie and Ralph were as thrilled as Marjorie and I were, even dropped their seminars to be at home more. Maria and Ben would come over in the evening. We’d all watch Ernie Kovacs and Ed Sullivan, Gunsmoke. Sometimes we played Monopoly and Scrabble. Mostly, shamelessly, we just played with the babies, kissed them and nursed them and burped and changed them. A smile! That’s just gas. No, it was a definite smile.
We got used to not seeing much of Rex. He even worked all weekend, when we barbecued out by the zinnias and poplars. Maria never complained, but she looked tired. Ben was colicky, didn’t sleep. She was always anxious. How can I please him? Soothe him? How can I sleep?
Rex received a grant to study in Cranbrook in the fall. A good art school in Michigan. It happened quickly, he got the news and started packing up his tools. He was at the studio the night before he left. I went over to see Maria. Ben was asleep. Maria was quiet, asked me for a cigarette, but I said no, Rex would kill me.
“Would you take the birds?” she asked.
“Sure. I think they’re great. I’ll get them tomorrow.” That’s all we said, even though I sat there for a long time. Horrible time, one of those when you know you should speak, or listen, and the silence echoes.
At six the next morning Rex was packing up the car and trailer, then he drove away. Minutes later Maria appeared at my door with the birdcage and a bag of seed. Thanks! While I got dressed for work I could hear noises from their apartment, hammering and music and thumping.
I got over there just a few minutes before Rex did.
She had taken down all the modern paintings and prints, tacked up college dorm posters. Van Gogh sunflowers. A Renoir nude. A rodeo ad with a bucking cowboy. Elvis Presley.
Covering the ecru couch was a Mexican blanket. Not a Oaxacan blanket but orange green yellow blue red purple with tangled dirty fringe. From the radio that usually played Vivaldi and Bach, Buddy Holly rocked away.
Her hair was in pigtails, tied with yellow ribbon. She wore pink lipstick and turquoise eyeshadow, was back in jeans and the pink T-shirt. Her feet, in cowboy boots, were up on the kitchen table. She was smoking, drinking coffee. Ben crawled around on the black kitchen tile, wearing only a soaking diaper, making wet serpentine swirls. He had zwieback in one hand, all over his face. With the other hand he was swooping pots and pans out of the cupboards and onto the floor.
I stood there. Rex came walking up and into the living room. He hadn’t been gone over half an hour.
“Fucking axle broke. Have to wait.” He looked around.
“Where are the temple birds?” he asked.
“At my house.”
They stared at each other. She sat there, in terror, didn’t move, didn’t even pick up the baby, who was fussing now, zwieback everywhere. Rex was furious. He lunged toward her. Then he stepped back, and just stood there, utterly stricken.
“Hey, you guys … excuse me for butting in, but, please, don’t get upset. This is funny. Someday you’ll look back and it will seem very funny.”
They ignored me. The room was limp, soggy with anger. Rex turned off the radio. Perez Prado. Cherry Pink!
“I’ll wait on the steps for the garage to call,” Rex said. “No. I might as well just leave,” and he left.
Maria hadn’t moved.
Missed moments. One word, one gesture, can change your entire life, can break everything or make it whole. But neither of them made it. He left, she lit another cigarette, I went to work.
Both Maria and I were pregnant again. I was really happy, and so was Bernie. Maria didn’t want to talk about it. No, of course she hadn’t told Rex. So it was different this time; I waited, hoping, for her to get enthused about it.
We had a great autumn though. On weekends we went to the hot springs in the Jemez, had picnics by the river. On hot nights we all piled into our car and went to double features at the Cactus Drive-in. Maria was calmer, happier. She had a translating job, spent hours working while Ben slept. She took a poetry class at UNM, sat in the sun, reading Walt Whitman, smoking, drinking coffee. She always wore a red bandana, because her roots were growing out. She grew more relaxed with Ben, enjoying him. The rest of us went over to her house more, ate chili and spaghetti, played charades with the babies crawling around us.
Thanksgiving. Rex was coming home. God, I couldn’t imagine what she was feeling. I was a nervous wreck.
I helped her get the house back into pristine condition, lent her some Miltown to get her back off cigarettes. She said she’d rather not be alone with Rex at first, so planned a welcome-back dinner. She put a WELCOME HOME! sign up on the front door but figured he’d think it was corny and took it down.
We were all there, nervous. Several other couples from the department. The apartment looked great. White chrysanthemums in a black Santo Domingo pot. Maria was deeply tanned, wore white linen, a flash of turquoise. Her hair was long, straight, and jet black.
He burst into the room. Dirty and lean and alive, boxes and art folios sliding onto the floor. I had never seen him kiss her before. I ached for them to be okay.
It was a celebration. She had made curry from scratch, there was tons of wine. But it was Rex, really, that brought news and jokes and an eddy of excitement that lit us all. Little Ben careened around the room in his rubber walker, drooling and laughing. Rex held him, swooped him up, gazed at him.
Over coffee, Rex showed us slides of work that he had done that summer, mostly the sculptures of the pregnant woman, but countless other things, drawings, pottery, marble carvings. He crackled with excitement, possibility.
“Now for the news. You’ll never believe this. I still can’t believe it. I have a patron. Patroness. A rich old lady from Detroit. She is paying me to go to Italy for at least a year. To a villa outside of Florence. But forget the villa. There is a foundry. A foundry for bronze! I’ll leave next month!”
“Ben and me too?” Maria whispered.
“Ben and I. Sure. Although I’ll go first and get things together.”
Everybody was clapping and hugging until Rex stood up and said, “Wait, that’s not all. Get this! I also got a Guggenheim!”
My first thought was for Bernie. I knew he’d be glad for Rex but could understand him being jealous. He was thirty, Rex only twenty-three and his future was there already, on a silver platter. But Bernie meant it when he shook Rex’s hand. “No one deserves it more.”
Everyone left but Bernie and me. Bernie went home and brought back a bottle of Drambuie. The men drank and talked about Cranbrook, looked through the slides again. Maria and I washed dishes and threw out garbage.
“About time we went home,” I said to Bernie and gathered up Andrea. Maria and Rex had gone in to check on Ben. We waited to say good-bye, heard them whispering in the bedroom.
She must have told him she was pregnant again. Rex came out of the bedroom, pale. “Good night,” he said.
He left the next morning, before she or Ben woke up. He took the paintings and sculptures and pottery, the radio and the Acoma pot. None of us ever saw him again.
NOËL. TEXAS. 1956
“Tiny’s on the roof! Tiny’s on the roof!”
That’s all they can talk about down there. So what, I’m on the roof. What they don’t know is I may just never get off.
I didn’t mean to be so dramatic. Would have simply gone to my room and slammed the door, but my mother was in my room. So I slammed out the kitchen door. And there was a ladder, to the roof.
I flung myself down, still in a tizzy, and took some sips from my flask of Jack Daniel’s. Well, I declare, I thought, it’s right nice up here. Sheltered, but with a view of the pastures and the Rio Grande and Mount Cristo Rey. Real pleasant. Especially now that Esther has me all set up with an extension cord. A radio, electric blanket, crossword puzzles. She empties my chamber pot and brings me food and bourbon. For sure I’ll be up here until after Christmas.
Christmas.
Tyler knows how I hate and despise Christmas. He and Rex Kipp run plumb amok every year … donating to charities, toys to crippled children, food to old folks. I heard them plotting to drop toys and food on Juarez shantytown Christmas Eve. Any excuse to show off, spend money, and act like a couple of royal assholes.
This year Tyler said I was in for a big surprise. A surprise for me? I’m embarrassed to admit this. You know I actually imagined that he was taking me to Bermuda or Hawaii. Never in my wildest dreams did I figure on a family reunion.
He finally admitted he was really doing it for Bella Lynn. Bella Lynn is our spoiled rotten daughter who’s back home now that her husband, Cletis, left her. “She’s so blue,” Tyler says. “She needs a sense of roots.” Roots? I’d rather see Gila monsters in my hatbox.
First off he invites my mother. Up and takes her out of the Bluebonnet nursing home. Where they keep her tied up, where she belongs. Then he asks his one-eyed alcoholic brother, John, and his alcoholic sister, Mary. Now, I drink. Jack Daniel’s is my friend. But I still have my sense of humor, not mean like her. Besides she has incestuous feelings for Tyler, always has. Plus he asks her boring boring husband, who didn’t come, praise the Lord. Their daughter Lou is here, with a baby. Her husband left her too. She’s about as empty-headed as my Bella Lynn. Oh well, in no time they’ll both be running off with some new illiterate misfits.
Tyler went and invited eighty people to a party Christmas Eve. That’s tomorrow. This is when our new maid Lupe went and stole our ivory-handled carving knives. She hid them in her girdle, bent over for some fool reason crossing the bridge to Juarez. Stabbed herself, almost bled to death and it all ended up Tyler’s fault. He had to pay for the ambulance and the hospital and a huge old fine because she was a wetback. And of course they found out about the wetback gardeners and the wash woman. So now there’s no help at all. Just poor Esther and some part-time strangers. Thieves.
But the worst worst top of everything is he invited my relatives from Longview and Sweetwater. Terrible people. They are all very thin or grotesquely fat, and all they do is eat. They all look as if they have seen hard times. Drought. Tornadoes. Point is these are people I don’t even know, don’t ever want to know. People I married him for so I’d never have to see again.
Not that I need any more reasons to stay up here, but there is another one. Once in a while, clear as a bell, I can hear every single word Tyler and Rex are saying down in the shop.
I’m ashamed to admit this, but, what the hell, it’s the truth. I’m jealous of Rex Kipp. Now I know Tyler’s been sleeping with that tacky little secretary of his, Kate. Well, I.C.C.L. Which means I couldn’t care less. Keeps him from huffin and puffin top of me.
But Rex. Now Rex is year in, year out. We spent half of our honeymoon at Cloudcroft, other half on Rex’s ranch. Those two fish and hunt and gamble together and fly all around Lord knows where in Rex’s plane. What galls me the most is how they talk together, out in the shop, for hours and hours. I mean to say this has nagged me to death. What in Sam Hill are those old farts talking about out there?
Well, now I know.
Rex: You know, Ty, this is a damn good whiskey.
Tyler: Yep. Damn good.
Rex: Goes down like mother’s milk.
Tyler: Smooth as silk.
(They’ve only been swilling that rotgut for forty-some years.)
Rex: Look at them old clouds … billowing and tumbling.
Tyler: Yep.
Rex: I expect that’s my favorite kind of cloud. Cumulus. Full of rain for my cattle and just as pretty as can be.
Tyler: Not me. Not my favorite.
Rex: How come?
Tyler: Too much commotion.
Rex: That’s what’s fine, Ty, the commotion, It’s majestic as all git out.
Tyler: God damn, this is a nice mellow hooch.
Rex: That is just one hell of a beautiful sky.
(Long silence.)
Tyler: My kind of sky is a cirrus sky.
Rex: What? Them wispy no-count little clouds?
Tyler: Yep. Now up in Ruidoso, that sky is blue. With those light cirrus clouds skipping along so light and easy.
Rex: I know that very sky you’re talking about. Day I shot me two buck antelope.
(That’s it. The entire conversation. Here’s one more:)
Rex: But do Mexkin kids like the same toys white kids do?
Tyler: Course they do.
Rex: S
eems to me they play with things like sardine cans for boats.
Tyler: That’s the whole point of our Juarez operation. Real toys. But, what kind? How bout guns?
Rex: Give Mexkins guns? No way.
Tyler: They’re all crazy about cars. And the women about babies.
Rex: That’s it! Cars and dolls!
Tyler: Tinker toys and erector sets!
Rex: Balls. Real baseballs and footballs!
Tyler: We’ve got everything figured out just fine, Rex.
Rex: Perfect.
(I mean, what existential dilemma these dickheads got figured out beats all hell out of me.)
Tyler: How you going to find it, flying in the dark?
Rex: I can find anyplace. Anyhow, we’ll have the star.
Tyler: What star?
Rex: The star of Bethlehem!
I watched the whole party from up here. Boy was I a relaxed hostess, lying under the starry sky, my little radio playing “Away in a Manger” and “White Christmas.”
Esther was up at four, cooking and cleaning. Have to admit Bella and Lou helped her out. The florist arrived and the caterers with more food and booze, bartenders in tuxedos. A truck came to deliver a giant bubble machine Tyler had set up inside the front door. I can’t think about my carpet. Loudspeakers started blaring Roy Rogers and Dale Evans singing “Jingle Bells” and “I Saw Momma Kissing Santa Claus.” Then cars and more cars kept on coming with even more people I never want to see again in my life. Esther, bless her heart, brought me up a tray of food and pitcher of eggnog, a fresh bottle of old Jack. She was all dressed up in black, with a white lace apron, her white hair coiled in braids around her head. She looked like a queen. She’s the only person I like in this whole wide world or maybe it’s that she’s the only one who likes me.
“What’s my slut of a sister-in-law up to?” I asked her.
“Playing cards. Some men started up a poker game in the library and she asks real sweet, ‘Ooh, can I play?’”
“That’ll teach them.”
“That’s the very thing I says to myself minute she started to shuffle. Zip zip zip.”