Evening in Paradise

by Lucia Berlin

  Her lungs were bursting, heart bounding with fear as she rowed, fighting the swift current to get back into the bay. Once inside she had to keep pausing to hear where she was, listening for the gentle whisper of waves breaking on the beach. The mist had turned to clouds. It was so dark, her hands so bloody now she couldn’t beach the canoe. It capsized; she lost the oars. She swam then underwater until she was free of the boat. Flailing, choking, she realized that she could stand. Cool white foam swirled around her. She lay in the sand until she could make it across the river. The river water seemed warm, heavy after the ocean. Crabs, a turtle, bumped her leg; schools of minnows tickled her ankles like raindrops.

  She reached the path and by force of habit followed the line of cutter ants into the garden. Even in the dark she could see that they had eaten the stock and the roses. Two donkeys were in the vegetable garden; she shooed them out and shut the gate, the barn door. She giggled. Inside, Buzz had moved to a hammock. Nathan slept peacefully. It was still dark, but roosters had begun to crow, donkeys to bray.

  Maya was shaking as she bandaged her badly blistered hands. Buzz woke, sat up straight, disoriented.

  “Where’s the box?”

  “It’s safe.”

  “Where’s the box.”

  “In the blue canister.”

  “Where’s Victor?”

  “He’s dead. He OD’d.”

  “Where’s Victor?”

  “He’s gone. Go up to bed.”

  Buzz went out to the far corner of the garden to pee. The sky was turning lavender. Stiff-legged he walked back to the ladder and climbed up to the tapanco. He had the box with him.

  Maya dragged the copper fire kettle up the trail beyond the house, dumped the still red embers and ashes into the flowing water. She scoured the pot with sand.

  Inside she made a fire to boil water, put dry bandages on her hands. Everything was hard, muffled, because of her hands. Raking, sweeping. Awkwardly, determinedly she swept the sand of the living room until it was smooth, as if no one had been there.

  Pilla arrived before Nathan woke. Maya had changed and combed her hair, was drinking coffee at the table.

  “Doña! Are you ill? And your hands! ¿Qué pasó?”

  “Pilla, it was a terrible night. The señor was very ill, maybe the dengue. I stayed up with him, fell from the ladder onto my hands.”

  Immediately, when an addiction resumes, the lies resume. Fear comes back.

  Suspicion comes. Those gringos must have gotten drunk, Pilla thought. My poor Nathan!

  “And the Mexican man?”

  “He is gone.”

  Pilla went out into the garden.

  “The boat is gone too,” she said drily.

  “No te digo pues … it was a terrible night.”

  “¡Aí, y las rosas! The ants ate them!”

  Losing patience, Maya interrupted her.

  “Please, dress Nathan and take him for breakfast in the village. Bring him back at dinnertime. I have to rest. I’m worried about my baby.”

  “You’re not spotting or cramping?”

  “No, but I’m exhausted. Please, take Nathan for me.” Maya thought she might scream, sob, vomit, but she stayed calm, rocked Nathan, awake now, weeping bitterly about the missing boat. Luis came running down the trail, his machete glinting in the sun. Hot already.

  “Fíjase, señora. Ronco found your canoe smashed up at the point, on the pelican rocks.”

  “And the man? Maybe he’s drowned!” Pilla was cheering up with all this news to tell in the village.

  “No. He left on foot,” Maya said. “I expect the canoe just came unmoored. The river is high. We’ll get a new one, a nicer one, Nathan.” For God’s sake please go, all of you, she said to herself.

  “Didn’t like his looks. Callejero … vicioso,” Pilla whispered to Luis. Vicious, the Spanish word for addict.

  Maya lay in the hammock under the mango tree, was falling asleep when Liz appeared, smiling at the gate. Good morning! She was beautiful in a pink shift, her red hair crackling in the strong sunlight.

  “Come in, Liz. I’m too tired to get up.”

  The women embraced; Liz pulled a leather chair out by the hammock. She smelled clean.

  “You are so clean!” Tears ran down Maya’s face.

  “What’s wrong, love? Oh, is it the baby? You’re not losing the baby?” She held Maya’s hand.

  “No. It’s Buzz. A connection showed up yesterday; Buzz is back on drugs.”

  “He’s been clean a long time, Maya. He’ll do it again. Be patient. He loves you and the children. He’s a very beautiful man, a man with a beautiful noble soul. And you love him very much … be patient.”

  Maya nodded while Liz spoke, shivering, her teeth chattering.

  “I want to go back to the real world,” she said.

  Liz pointed up to the green palms, to the sky. “This is real, Maya. You’re just worn out. Rest all day. Jay took the boys and Juanito up past the waterfall to the orchards.”

  The women drank tea. Liz stroked Maya’s hair, patted her shoulder. “Don’t worry,” she said. “It will be all right.” Maya fell asleep then and Liz left.

  Maya was awakened when she heard the Paladín’s whistle. Is it coming or going? I don’t know if I’m coming or going! Why do I make jokes at the worst of times, like Mama did?

  The Paladín headed out of the bay toward the ocean. Maya lay back in the hammock in the hot sultry afternoon. No, she thought, it isn’t going to be all right. The fear and the desolation felt familiar to her, like coming home. Ashes.

  MY LIFE IS AN OPEN BOOK

  You know, the only place in Corrales that’s not adobe. That three-story white farmhouse, grove of cottonwoods higher than the house. Sits on two acres of land, next to Gus’s field with the herd of Black Angus. She’s been gone for years now but all anybody ever calls it is the Bellamy house. Before Claire Bellamy moved in it was the Sanchez place, no matter who lived in it. He’s the sheep rancher who built it back in 1910.

  The whole town was just dying to see what poor fool had bought the place. Couldn’t help but feel sorry for her even though it was only a thousand down. Course she’d be rich now if she’d a kept the place. Anybody coulda told her the pump was about to go, about the termites and the wiring. Nobody figured on the roof caving in. That had been a darn good roof.

  Claire was divorced, no more’n thirty, with four children. The oldest was around ten, the baby not even walking. She taught Spanish at the university, did some tutoring too. Took the older boys to school every morning and the little ones over to Lupe Vargas’s. Painted the whole inside of the house herself, fenced in the corral, planted vegetables, built rabbit hutches. Course they didn’t eat the rabbits or ducks, just had them running wild, and a goat and pony too. Two dogs and near to a dozen cats. Come on out back … you can see the house plain as day.

  You could see better when she was there. She didn’t have curtains on any of them tall windows. And I have these here binoculars. For the birds. Pileated woodpecker lives down in that old dead cottonwood. She loved birds too, used to go lean on Gus’s fence evenings, when the red-winged blackbirds were all out. Prettiest sight you can ever see, them birds against the green grass, the black cattle.

  It was just like a living doll house. Children all over hell and gone, hers and the neighbors’. In trees, in wagons, on trikes and the pony, running in the sprinkler. Cats in every window of the house. Evenings you could see her and the boys at the table, and after she had bathed the little ones she’d put them to bed and read to Ben and Keith. She’d wash up then, feed the animals. Dining room light would go on; she’d be studying for hours. If me or Arnold got up to let the dog out, twelve, one o’clock she’d be up … couple of times she fell asleep right there, her head on the typewriter. She’d be up at six though, feeding the animals and then getting the kids ready for school. She was in PTA; Ben and Keith were in Scouts and 4-H. Ben took violin lessons from Miss Handy. The town had been keeping its
eye on her, had just about decided she was a worker and a darn good mother.

  Then she up and carries on with that Casey boy. A bad one, Mike Casey. Him and his brother, Pete. Always had been. Dropouts, thieves, dope fiends. Smoked that marijuana right there front of God and everybody, outside Earl’s grocery. Their folks are two old drunks. I’ll tell you it was pitiful. Least Mike helped out at home. Cooked some and cleaned up. Most of the time he just played the guitar or made boats. Models, from scratch, perfect as could be. He was a sight. Long dirty hair and a earring. Motorcycle clothes with a skull on the back, big old knife. I mean to say he was something to see. Just plain scary.

  Now we all would have understood if she took up with some nice man, but this was sicko and him barely nineteen, to make things worse. And not that ever she bothered to hide anything. They’d walk to the ditch in broad daylight, her and Casey, the children and dogs and one cat that liked to swim. Weekends they’d load up his pickup truck with bedrolls and a cookstove and take off Lord knows where.

  She still studied late as ever only he’d be there writing too or playing his guitar. Then the light in her room would be on, their room I guess. Couple of times in the full moon I saw them out on the roof, in the treetops. A body couldn’t help but see them, plain as day.

  One night I saw him carry in something heavy in a gunnysack. Finally made out it was that pink marble angel from the cemetery. Real old, people come special to see it. I had a mind to call Jed, he’s the State Police, but Arnold said wait and see. Sure enough she had a fit, waving her arms and hollering. He took it back that night; only he put it on the grave backwards, facing the mountains. Still sets that way.

  Bessie thought somebody ought to give her a talking-to. That boy had been in Nazareth, and in detention hall twice. He was likely to break any minute and murder all them poor children, or worse. She even left that baby with him. When she was gone he let Ben and Keith drive his pickup in the field and shoot tin cans with his BB gun. We was all worried sick, just sick. Didn’t talk to her though but we told Mattie Price and Lupe Vargas not to let their kids play over there.

  * * *

  We have a movie of the afternoon we met Casey. Nathan had learned to swim in the clear ditch the day before and he wanted it documented. It was the second hot summer day. I lay on the blanket watching the kids, listening to the crows, looking at dragonflies through the zoom lens. Dozens of them, startling neon blue, sunlight paler blue through the tracery of their wings, darting, hovering, lapis lazuli skimming the green water.

  Then a Spanish galleon in full sail glided right through them. An exquisitely made boat, about eighteen inches long. It belonged to Casey. I had seen his brother, Pete, just that morning out on North Fourth, in a phone booth with a blowtorch. Casey just seemed to look bad, all decked out and bizarre in leather, with a skull studded on his back. He had always seemed magic to me, like a figure from Black Orpheus. Or a Harlequin, from afar, against the white sand dunes or the pink tamarisk in the woods, against the red wet sand of the riverbed.

  He squatted on the bank of the ditch, let the kids play with his boat, told them how he made it. After a while he politely took it away from them, dried it with a T-shirt and wrapped it in his black jacket. He took off his pants and dove into the water, dragonflies scattering. His body was beautiful. He had a Civil War face, sort of hillbilly and gaunt, sunken shifty eyes, a sullen mouth, bad teeth. He came home with us for dinner and then just stayed. That night he showed me a trapdoor that led to the roof, to a ledge right in the tops of the cottonwoods. You could see the whole little town, look down on the sleeping black cattle. Owl in the tree. We became lovers up there on the roof. In the morning when we woke in my bed he was already known to me, familiar. There was no transition. When I went downstairs he and the boys were cooking flapjacks and after breakfast the three older ones went off with him to the ditch.

  I try to remember what we ever talked about, but I can’t. And I’m a talker, so are my boys. We did wordless things with Casey. All day on the mesa digging for pot shards, muttering or sighing, letting out a yell whenever we found abalone shell, turquoise, a big piece of pottery. Quiet, our fishing lines in the water. Padding through Canyon de Chelly, climbing Acoma. The baby, Joel, would sit mesmerized, watching his brothers help Casey work on boats. At night when I studied and graded papers Casey drew or played his guitar. When I’d glance up he would glance up too.

  We camped out a lot at our cliffs. Not far from town but the road was bad, long hike in. Stark red cliffs, sheer above a valley and looking far to the south, beyond Route 66, beyond Acoma. No sign of Indians ever being there, which was strange; it was such a holy place. Sky all around and in sight of all the sacred places. The Sandias, the Jemez, the Rio Grande. We explored, climbed, watched the hawk against the sunset. Porcupines with the green quills. Nighthawks at dusk and an owl at night. Wild dogs the boys thought were coyotes. We watched the puma kill a deer. That was lovely. Really. No one else ever went to our cliffs except the hunter who killed the puma. We hadn’t seen the man but his picture and the puma’s were in the paper. We looked for tracks then, found deer tracks and puma tracks and then dog tracks and man tracks. By the stream.

  Took eight months before I thought. I had ignored glares from old women at Earl’s store and we had all just laughed at Jennie Caldwell watching us with binoculars from her back porch. Casey and I were the town scandal, Betty Boyer told me. Then Keith told me the Price kids weren’t allowed to come to our house. I sat on the back porch. The reason I had moved to Corrales was to start a new life, bring my children up right. In a small peaceful town, part of a community. I planned to get my doctorate and teach, just be a good teacher and a good mother. If I had thought of a man in my future he would have been graying, kindly, with tenure. Now look.

  Casey was washing dishes. He called out, asking me what I was doing.

  “Thinking.”

  “Jesus, Claire, please don’t think.” But I had already.

  “You have to go, Casey.”

  He got his guitar, said, “See you around,” and was gone. It was as hard on the kids as on me. Worse when we found a Zuni grave without him, and at the deer dance in San Felipe.

  Marzie, another graduate student, kept asking me to go out with her. She belonged to the Sierra Club and Swinging Singles, even Parents Without Partners, and she wasn’t even a parent.

  Casey sort of eased back into our lives. He didn’t live there and we weren’t lovers, most of the time, but he was there a lot. He and the boys were digging a duck pond. He’d watch the kids while I was at the library. Finals were coming up. Weekends we went swimming in the ditch or out to the cliffs. Joel learned how to walk.

  I remember talking to Ben and Keith on the phone, saying it was a red-letter day, whatever that means. My last final and that afternoon I was picking up a new VW camper. I had told Marzie that I would go out with her, to celebrate. To a dance at the German American Club. No intellectuals, no academics. Just swingers, she said.

  I drove the new van home. The boys were thrilled with it. It had a built-in bed, a refrigerator, and a stove. Joel got in it right away with his blanket and toys, climbed in and out for hours. Casey took them all for a ride while I cooked dinner and dressed. Miniskirt and long earrings. The kids were so upset about me going out I realized I should have done it long before. I told Casey I’d be at the German American Club. I said I would be home late, would call him later to check in. I remembered to put on perfume, went back upstairs.

  The German American Club was pretty bad. Loud disco and then a German polka band wearing lederhosen. Accordions. We danced with jet pilots from Kirtland and technicians from Sandia. Bomb makers. What was I doing there? I called home four or five times but it was busy. Phone must be off the hook. We had one smart cat who used to knock it off so she could hear the voice say your phone is off the hook. After a while I began to have fun, dancing and drinking beer. Anybody can tell you I have no head for liquor. Marzie looked even sillier than I
did, in a silver lamé jumpsuit. She disappeared and I ended up with a pilot named Buck. Handsome in a Nazi way, like old black-and-white Richard Widmark.

  * * *

  I figured that Casey boy had gone berserk for sure, run plumb amok. He was driving that pickup like a bat out of hell up and down the ditch roads, spinning on the bank, dust flying, crows squawking and three of those poor Bellamy children up front in the cab. That settles it, I said, and called the State Police. Jed must have been down to the store talking with Earl; the police car was there in five minutes, lights, sirens, and all. Casey began to speed up and get away but then he stopped and got out of the truck. He looked like a madman. He and Earl climbed up on the bank and looked down in the water, like they was wondering if fish were biting. Earl went and talked on his radio and then Casey and the kids followed him to the Bellamy house. I got my sweater and flashlight and took off across Gus’s field.

  She had gone out, in the new van, to the Spanish American Club to celebrate the end of school. That’s what she taught, Spanish. They’d all been eating dinner and then Casey saw Joel was gone. That baby had just started walking. They called him and looked all over the house and then they looked outside and there were his little red tennis shoes. Saddest thing you ever saw, them little red shoes. Couldn’t have gone far barefoot, I said, but Jed said the ditch wasn’t far. He said there weren’t nothing to do but drain them ditches. He called the volunteer fire department and called in for more police.

  The men all went to the ditch. Casey and the boys were searching in the woods. Folks from town were arriving so I had Arnold bring over the church coffee urn, go get some Styrofoam cups and cream over to Earl’s. Earl sent a case of Coke, cold. I sent Arnold back home for some tuna-and-macaroni casseroles from the freezer and two berry pies. Bessie never wants to be outdone. She went home and got chicken, a whole ham, and potato salad. Lupe Vargas showed up with a full washtub of tamales. Did your heart good, to see how our town pulls together when folks are in trouble. And those volunteers, the men who were draining the ditches were the very farmers who needed that water for their crops, that time of year more’n any. But not one complaint. Just doing what anybody would of done.