Blue Rodeo

by Jo-Ann Mapson

  Minnie smiled. “Owen, if you want to see that lady’s check so you can get her name, just ask me.” She pressed No Sale and reached under the till box for the checks and set them on the counter.

  Embarrassed, but thankful for the year-round tan that hid his blushing, he took the check from Minnie. Margaret R. Yearwood, P.O. Box 1187, Blue Dog, New Mexico, 87401. Sixty-seven dollars and ninety-two cents drawn on the Bank of New Mexico, Santa Fe branch, check number 103. She had good handwriting and used a blue fountain pen.

  He handed the check back to a smirking Minnie. “You know something?”

  “What?”

  “Your old momma’s right, Miss Turtle Lips.”

  2

  FOR THE FIRST TIME IN SIX MONTHS, MARGARET YEARWOOD HAD company in bed. Sometime during the night, Echo had crawled in beside her, wormed her way between the pillow and her chest, and lain so still Margaret hadn’t noticed she was embracing a dog. She awoke with her arms cast around the skinny brown body, the funky aroma of canine tickling her nose. Add stealth to her sins, right after promiscuity. In her mind’s eye Margaret pictured that strange blue dog taking advantage of Echo, his cowboy master tipping his hat and saying a big Western “ma’am.”

  Welcome to New Mexico, where the first thing we do is knock up your dog. All I need is a litter of puppies to send me over the edge, she thought. I’ll make a few calls, take her to the nearest veterinarian, have her spayed, won’t even mention this fracas to Peter That’s the responsible thing to do, just have her fixed and quit worrying. She sighed. God knew how long she’d slept like that, but it was bliss to once again feel a warm body against her own. “You slept like this with Peter, didn’t you?” she whispered to his dog, who stretched lazily and gave one of those funny mystery-mutt noises, a sound halfway between a growl and singing, then tunneled deeper beneath the sheets on the old iron bed that came with the rented house.

  She pulled the covers up over the hump of dog body, remembering how Peter’s “made” bed had looked the same way back home—a place neither of them lived any longer. A hundred and forty miles south, in the town of Riverwall, her son was settled into the boys’ dormitory at the School for the Deaf.

  She could have pictured Pete at age fifteen a lot of different places, ranging from a varsity water polo meet to juvenile hall, but never there, or so far away.

  The administration took into consideration his “special circumstances,” meaning his newly acquired deafness following the meningitis. Initially they indicated they might be able to “umbrella” Peter in under his father’s gene pool. Ray was one-quarter Cherokee, just barely qualifying his son as Native American. But it turned out one-eighth Cherokee blood wasn’t enough. Margaret could sense the paper shuffling, the committee about to say no, when she offered them herself in exchange. If she moved from California to New Mexico, providing proof Peter was establishing residency, they would keep her son. She agreed, on the stipulation that they kept this information from Peter. That last thing she wanted from her angry son was gratitude based on guilt.

  At his birthday party he’d made it clear he wanted to live with a foster family; that if he had to be deaf, he might as well live with other deaf people. He was still a minor, and the divorce had awarded her custody. She knew she could have reeled him back in and forced him to stay with her—if she wanted to play dirty, she could have gotten his father on her side as well. Or, this one time, she could set aside her own desires and give him his wish. Sure there were other schools for the deaf, good ones, three in Southern California alone, but Riverwall was the nearest one with a foster family program. Family—as if she could define what that word meant anymore. Her own parents were dead, she wasn’t speaking to her sister, Nori, and a month ago her divorce from Raymond had grown its legs and begun walking out into the world. The therapist supported Peter’s wish. She thought placing Peter with a deaf couple was a great idea, and a way to “defuse” the explosive situation their fractured family had become. Maybe so, but letting Peter go made her feel branded with the words parental failure. Logically, there was wisdom in allowing everyone a corner in which to heal. In her heart, however, logic made a weak opponent.

  In order to submerge Peter fully into the deaf culture, he would have to learn American Sign Language by immersion—what place more logical than a residential school? But on the weekends, when other kids went home to their families, Peter would take the bus not to his mother in this three-bedroom farmhouse, but to Santa Fe, to the Hidalgos, a deaf couple who had raised two deaf children of their own. Just like an exchange student, the therapist said. A whole different culture. As she said the words, Margaret had focused on the therapist’s desk, where a framed photo showed two sunny-faced toddlers, both no doubt in possession of all their faculties, both not yet capable of hating their mother. That, too, comprised a different culture.

  With Peter in his school, weekending with foster parents, where did that leave his mother? Literally, without purpose or plan in Blue Dog, New Mexico, paired with a mixed-breed dog who as of yesterday was no longer a virgin. If she drove ten miles over the speed limit, Four Corners was one hour away. Closer to town, trading posts offered a variety of attraction from mass-produced San Ildefonso-type pottery to museum pieces secured under glass. Scattered on the nearby reservations, weavers pulled woolen yarn through their hand-built looms, creating painstaking patterns in the old tradition. But right now, what Margaret knew of Blue Dog was this house, the hardware store, and the market. It was a town she’d chosen for reasons nearly as faded as the once-green T-shirt in which she slept.

  As she dressed in the previous day’s jeans and a clean blouse, Margaret imagined her son walking into the classroom in his new school. Pete always had a hard time starting out. He’d project this deliberately sullen exterior to keep everyone distant, he wasn’t easy with others. Someone else always had to make the first move. Maybe they’d place him with the perfect roommate, someone with a similar background who would take him under his wing. More likely, though, he’d lock himself up inside and fit in nowhere. This is separation anxiety, she told herself, trying to ignore the adrenaline tingles cramping her empty stomach and causing the hair on the back of her neck to lift. Whether your son succeeds or fails, whatever happens this year, Margaret Yearwood, your job is to stand back and watch. If she said it enough times, she might begin to believe it.

  Downstairs, she set out kibble for the dog and made herself a piece of toast. Washing the butter knife and putting it away at once, she realized she was trying to bond with the old house, impart familiarity into those gaping spaces by opening drawers and cupboards, surveying her meager belongings, all newly purchased, items without history. She’d left behind her Limoges china; the everyday dishes, too, Blue Mesa from Dansk. After Peter’s illness, everything she touched felt like detritus, the accumulation of twenty years of a failed marriage. Most of the furniture stayed with the house as part of the rental agreement. Everything else went to the thrift shop. The only things she’d salvaged were her most comfortable clothing and a secondhand Navajo rug Ray liked to make fun of—Come take a look at Margaret’s little relic, he’d say. My wife, the junk-store pack rat.

  She thought Ray might want a lamp or two, a painting; he’d chosen most of them, insisting they buy only the best because, by God, they could afford it. But neither his son nor his wife ever held his interest like the pages in his typewriter or those Hollywood women, ambitious, ready to shinny up to whatever body might land them one step closer to the fame game—women like the one he’d left her for, the one who was going to have his baby, in the not-too-distant future, actually. If I could have, I would have given him more babies, Margaret thought. If I’d had more than one to practice on, I might have done a better job at motherhood.

  I don’t want to live with either one of you, Peter’d said on his birthday. After a raging scene, though it was clear his father had no intention of making space for Peter in his new life, Ray had driven off, leaving Peter in tears. That was
the moment I really lost him, Margaret thought. Right then he was on his way to New Mexico, even if it meant he had to hitchhike to get here. It was up to her to hold herself together, drive Peter and his duffel bag to the airport, watch him board the white America West jet with the other passengers as casually as if he were going off on a hiking trip with friends. Pete was fair at reading lips of people he knew, a quick study when it came to speech reading. But how would he communicate with the stewardess if he needed something more complicated than a Coke? Sure, he still had command of his voice, and though he’d initially resisted, in the past two months he had mastered finger spelling, but how many people in airports knew the rudiments of sign language? The therapist suggested that he carry a note pad and pen at all times. He might use them. But things happened, people panicked. And it wasn’t just children who could be cruel. Adults had more practice.

  He’d had to change planes in Phoenix for Albuquerque. She worried the entire duration of the flight, allowed him two hours for claiming luggage and the bus ride, then worried some more. At six, right on the hour they’d promised, the secretary called and told her Peter had arrived safely. He was fine, he would write soon. They had TDDs—telephone services for the deaf. Margaret had the system installed herself as soon as she knew he was coming home, the awful coma business in the past. But it wasn’t lack of hearing that kept Peter distant.

  Before his illness he wore his clothing like garments for battle: Def Leppard T-shirts, torn black jeans, the shin-high combat boots with long red laces. When they were a family, Peter polished them every Sunday on the deck on folded newspaper, making certain they were in full view of his father, just to let Ray know that he was buying his shoes at Army-Navy surplus. His vocabulary seemed limited to as-few-syllable communiqués as he could muster: “Later”; “No way”; the occasional “Cool.”

  There were times she had no idea where he was or who he was with. He kept his parents at arm’s length. To recall life before meningitis felt like sifting though the wreckage of some train disaster, but there’d been occasions during that time when she and Peter could talk. They’d taken drives together, circling through the canyons and watching the hillsides change color. In Southern California that meant two shades: vivid green in winter, flammable dry yellow in summer. She remembered one day two years ago they’d stopped across from a crumbling stables to feed their lunch apples to pasture horses, some of them so thin and poorly kept their ribs showed clear as barrel staves. At Peter’s request Margaret had taken his notebook paper and sketched the horses. Until she’d taken it down to pack away, the drawing had been tacked above his computer in his room. Unless Peter begged her to, she didn’t really draw anymore, except for doodles on her shopping list, cartoons to liven up notes reminding him to clean his room. The horses in her sketch had four legs and all the other expected horse accoutrements, but horses were meant to be represented the way Da Vinci had drawn them, lovingly painted into the landscape like Caravaggio, or sculpted life-size in marble by Bernini’s chisels.

  The day of that drive, Peter was at his best. His long fingers stroking the neck of a gray gelding, his low voice wooing the animal toward the fence and the apple, he’d turned to her and said, “You know, you really are pretty, Mom,” then blushed and turned back to the horse, a much easier companion. On his birthday, with just as much eloquence, he’d called her a bitch.

  A husband could leave you if he felt like it. So, too, a son. But how did you go about leaving yourself? Did you just pick up and leave behind your waterfront house, your friends, the old Margaret who dropped off everyone’s dry cleaning, remembered the gardener’s birthday, learned three different ways to make ratatouille? Could you simply rent a new life among these yellow summer flowers in northern New Mexico, foregoing people for a place? Somehow, without thought to what leaving meant, she’d done just that.

  Peter’s aversions couldn’t keep her from driving by the school. After the dry heat and traffic of I-44, a left turn onto 25 deposited her into the rarefied air of Santa Fe. From there it was surface streets all the way to the town of Riverwall. For exploration along the way, there were art galleries by the score, museums that shamed Los Angeles jewelry so finely crafted it belonged in private collections that would someday reflect history, instead of tarnishing on tourists’ necks. The state capital was so small a town and so artfully clustered together it seemed an unlikely place to conduct anything but a sleepy kind of government. The Santa Fe River ran through the center of downtown, narrowed to a trickle of water easily traversed by a bridge, barely a hint of what it would become in wintertime. Once Margaret got past the glitzy Plaza hotels and the shops off Palace Avenue, the town grew tough looking, calloused. In winter enough snow accumulated to transform the small streets and roadways into narrow, icy pathways. Perhaps that was what rusted out cars and turned people who lived here so inward and guarded.

  Despite the whimsical chili pepper lights strung in the shop windows, there was evidence that wind and rain worked on a daily basis to erode adobe, chiseling its way into the smooth, thick walls. Sober-faced workmen troweled and painted right alongside the tourists, unnoticed. The shopkeepers were sullen and businesslike. The Indian women selling jewelry in the Plaza stared vacantly into space, inured by continual rejection, flatly stating, “Necklace,” if Margaret so much as hesitated as she passed.

  Yet the tourists were upscale, anxiously toting three or four shopping bags apiece, hurrying into shops for another pricey treasure. If they weren’t trying to bargain with the Indians over turquoise, they were charging art on their credit cards.

  She stopped for a cup of coffee at an outdoor café down the block from the Hurd Galleries, where one of the Helga paintings sat pedastaled beneath a column of carefully directed light. The face took hold of her momentarily, and she thought that Helga—chin downward, left braid starting to unravel over her naked shoulder—looked slightly ashamed of herself, possibly even guilty for causing such a furor in the art world. She wanted to visit all the galleries; someday, if Peter would agree to it, together. They could walk side by side through the exhibits of folk art without speaking, absorbing the energy of the paintings and sculptures, creating a kind of temporary bond between them. Art might be eternal, but right now, looking at it alone hurt.

  The town of Riverwall lay five miles to the west of Santa Fe. The school for the deaf was on a busy two-lane thoroughfare, a cluster of pale yellow adobe-style two-story buildings framed by dark brown beams. Empty on the weekend, it resembled an abandoned fortress. No one came out to meet her; no one swung on the swing sets or was there to pledge allegiance to the three flags in the raised platform in the entryway. Trees lined the grounds, several generations of tall junipers; hardy, redolent pines; and something that looked like chokecherry. She explored the circular driveway at ten miles an hour, her driver’s-side window rolled all the way down. Magpies called to one another so loudly that they seemed almost to be barking rather than singing. Passing trucks periodically assaulted her ears, but whether the noises here were birds, cars, or alien starships didn’t really matter. The students wouldn’t hear them.

  Ullman Hall, the dormitory visible from the school front, was festooned with hand-painted shields that looked faintly Indian. Uneven lightning slashes and crude animal fetishes in primary colors decorated white paper circles. Next door to the school, surrounded by a chain-link fence, was one of those old graveyards—Madrone Cemetery—the kind with marble and granite slabs of inscribed headstones, thick old cottonwoods, and overgrown grasses that took away any potential spookiness. They’d buried her mother, Colleen, in such a place, in Massachusetts, just south of their hometown of Deerfield. Everyone stood out in a light rain, ruining their good black dresses. She knew her sister, Nori, was equally relieved that Colleen was dead, but neither of them was able to acknowledge that to the other. Soberly they watched the polished casket being lowered into the rocky earth. Her mother had spent the last six months angry at everyone, trying hard to drive them awa
y, bewildered when they retreated. Her father would follow in less than a year. In California cemeteries were called “memorial parks,” kept as well trimmed as a golf course green, squeaky-clean and somehow terrifying down to each individually clipped grass stem. There, despite the attention to cleanliness and manicured grounds, the undeniable stench of death filtered through the sunshine, thumbing its nose at the well-manicured perfection. Here, in this weedy graveyard, death felt like a medium, a process that accepted worn-out human beings and, in return, gave back seasonal wildflowers. The surrounding trees patiently oversaw each generation’s exit.

  She parked. If Peter were here, he wouldn’t know the car. She’d bought it only a few weeks ago. She entered the courtyard and wandered through the headstones, finding whole families of Garcias, Sandovals, and Estradas. Both wives of the school’s founder, Louise and Gyda, were buried on either side of their husband, the man to whom they’d each borne deaf children.

  Farther down the rows, the headstones were haphazardly placed, carved out of crumbling red stone, the names on them well into the process of erosion. On one headstone after another, each no larger than a dinner plate, she read the legacy of the Gutierrez family. Baby girl, three months; baby boy, one day. After that they quit giving the ages of the children. Margaret fingered a strand of New Mexico fleabane, growing rampant over the cemetery grounds. The flowers resembled miniature daisies, needle-thin petals and a tuft of yellow center smaller than the moon on her little fingernail. She let the spindly stem go and watched it bounce back toward neighboring grasses.

  When they were first married, she and Ray planned to fill their house with children. She got pregnant the first month they tried. Ray sent her a bouquet of pink sweetheart roses. When she miscarried that baby at four months, she thought they had used up their quotient of bad luck, that it would never happen again. But luck had nothing to do with biology.