by Mary Wallace
“Sure, and wear a camisole underneath, since you’re going to be a young lady soon.”
Rosalinda had preened a bit, unused to permission to be herself, unused to someone ahead of her who could affirmatively shepherd her through the path of growing up.
She’d fallen asleep fitfully but quickly, exhausted by the terrible trauma of the day.
Now Celeste stood alone, staring out the open front door into the darkness.
Frank had been devastated when she Skyped him. She could see that he wanted to jump on a plane but she’d convinced him to wait again. Not enough was known yet about the explosions in Hana and she felt the truth on her tongue when she said, “I need time alone with Rosalinda.” Frank hadn’t been offended. Instead, his face had glowed, his eyes filled with tears and he’d said, “my little girl has grown up.”
She stood alone, the cottage quiet. Malia’s grandson had come to collect her, nearly crushing her in his hug, yelling at her in a lowered, broken hearted voice, in Japanese. Malia’s eyes were closed, she accepted his hug, his arms held her both gently and firmly. She’d opened her eyes and blown a kiss to Celeste, then taken her grandson’s hand and his voice changed from admonition to fear and, in English, he said, “I need you, Grandma, I really need you.”
Everyone had made it through their loss, Celeste thought. The first wave of shock and fear and grief had leveled them. But they’d had each other as shelter from the aftershocks, the invisible emotional earthquakes that rolled under and through them.
She didn’t know what she should think. She knew nothing would be clear for days.
So she stood, staring out into the darkened gloom, barefooted, in a camisole and panties, her long legs not cold, her arms folded together in front of her chest to ward off the night that she wouldn’t let embrace her. Her long hair kept her shoulders warm but the cool evening air would need to eventually be addressed, she knew. Not this minute, though, and she walked out the front door into the dusky garden, stepping lightly, like an ethereal shadow, threading between rose bushes, sidestepping thorns and feeling the cool earth under her toes. She found herself in the center of the three redwoods in front of the porch and she realized that the trees created a warm spot between them, so she dropped her hands to her side and stared up at the black sky between the tops of her three trees.
The sound of the tires of a quiet car crunching rocks outside of the boxwood fence disturbed her enough to cover her barely dressed breasts and body. She was ready to go back inside and climb under her comforter to weep, not to meet visitors.
Lights from two cars lit the gravel outside, parked parallel to the front boxwood wall. She couldn’t see who was there.
She chose quickly to hug to the sturdiest redwood, her body hidden by its solid girth.
She looked back to the darkened house, realizing that her cell phone was on the table next to her bed. For a terrified moment, she wondered if the meth dealers were hunting down Eddie’s family, if she and Rosalinda were in terrible danger of retribution. Would they brazenly park so visibly in front of the house?
Leaning against the redwood, she listened to her heart and felt the assurance that whoever was outside the property would not hurt her or Rosalinda, so she turned her face back to the street, forgetting any need to retrieve her phone, to watch as well as she could through the thickness of the elder shrubs.
She heard the quieted thumping sounds of people clutching each other in embraces, quick, strong. It was men, she was sure.
Then two cars, ignitions turned on in tandem, inched gently off the loose gravel of the side of the road, back onto the pavement, driving quietly away.
She was so intent on following the sounds of the leaving cars that she froze when she realized someone was standing stock still inside the arbor, calibrating her presence.
Who? She was cold now, uncovered in the cool night.
Neither moved, both solid footed on the earth.
She breathed as silently as she could, her mind racing. Then her heart spoke, it screamed at her and she flew out of the redwoods, deftly avoiding the rose bushes and the fruit trees she’d threaded so many times with her cups of morning and evening tea.
Her tears flowed so hard that she could not see him. She didn’t need to.
Eddie gripped her too but she released her hold on him long enough to pull a few inches away on the brick path.
His hands caressed her body, his lips gently and firmly smothered her face with kisses while she pulled him closer and closer until she knew it was him. Alive, in her arms.
She grabbed his hand and pulled him into the house, momentarily thinking of waking Rosalinda, but instead she hungrily led him to their bed, tearing off the covers she’d so carefully and despondently placed earlier when she thought that forever she would be sleeping alone.
In the darkness, still with the scent of the strong trees in her burnt nostrils, she pulled him down, wrapping her arms and legs around him, pressing her lips all over his face, meeting his ardor with her own until their bodies joined and rocked and they kissed deeper than either knew how and finally both their bodies exploded in passion. Instead of rolling aside, they held each other tight, continuing their deep kisses for what felt like an eternity of un-clocked time.
The whole world outside fell away and the only real thing was this moment, the physicality of their primal grip on each other.
“I thought you were dead,” she finally said, when her lips had given him countless benedictions.
“I did too,” he said.
“Rosalinda, we both thought you were gone,” the tears came again, this time softened by the reality that he was naked, warm in her arms. “Hana,” she said, her mind racing with too many ways to tell him what she’d seen.
“Fuck, why the hell did you go to Hana?”
“We went looking for you, Rosalinda and Malia and me.”
“You’re okay?” he asked.
“Yeah, your dive buddy gave us tanks after the explosion, he got us on the road out.”
Eddie gripped her tight again and she said, “We’re okay.” Then, with another realization that he was alive, she gripped him as hard as she could. “So what the hell happened?” she asked. “When we saw the explosion in Hana, your buddy thought for sure you’d been in that house on the hill, Malia’s house. Malia was sure that you were there.”
“I was in the house. We had to time it closely so the dealers thought one bomb went off. But we didn’t know they had all charged up there, ready for an all out war. Two different families and two branches of the Mexican cartel all showed up with guns out and they blew up the entire house and the hillside around it.”
“We?” Celeste finally realized that in her fear and then joy, she hadn’t thought of Eddie having help.
“The local cops. The Kihei cops spread the word about my sound bombs in Detroit.”
“But the bombs in Hana, they were one after the other,” Celeste said, circling back to the trauma of the day.
“They weren’t supposed to be. Those insane dumbasses blew themselves up. They lit their own explosions. There was nothing to do but send in the haz mat guys and thank god the DEA guys were there because they had the equipment in their vans. They went in and found all these dead bodies, like a war zone.”
“Why didn’t you die? Everyone said you were in the walls of the house?”
“I was. But I got a really strong premonition that something had gone wrong. I hadn’t done the reconnaissance. I’d let the cops do it. But you’ve got to do your own, you have to know the perimeter and your exits, like I taught you. And I knew that I would be trapped there. I got out of the wall and headed to the back of the house when I saw all the cars speeding up. It was not what we planned. The cartel got everyone freaked out and they were going to take out the local guys. So I headed up into the hills, signaling the cops and we all got out of range right as things blew.”
Celeste held his face in her hands.
“We just stopped to check in
with Malia. That’s how I knew you thought I was dead,” Eddie said. “She was so tired and she shooed me off to come home here to see you. She gave me this to give to you. He reached over to his pants on the floor and pulled out an amulet. “It’s jade and has a phoenix on it.”
She held it in her hands, feeling its cool touch.
“Celeste,” he said, pulling her into a full body hug, “I need to go away for a few weeks, maybe 30 days.”
Her heart in her throat, Celeste threw her arms around his neck, “Why Why Why?” she cried, pulling him as close as she could.
“I need to go into rehab.” He hung his head. “The local cops, they said they’d help me. I’ve got to kick my addictions to my meds.”
“What about the dive shop?”
“Well,” he said hesitantly, “I know I was rude to you about it but you could run it. Malia’s grandson can work for you. And when I get back we can work it together. It would be good for Rosalinda to see a woman run a business too.”
“Rosalinda thinks you’re dead,” Celeste froze. “She thought she should go to an orphanage.”
His face fell. “I didn’t think you would even know I was involved in Hana,” he said, “but Malia said you both outsmarted me.” He brushed the hair off her forehead. “I’ll get dressed and go wake Rosalinda up, let her know everything is okay.”
“Is it?” Celeste asked, cautiously.
“I need to do right by you,” he said.
She looked at his face in the bare moonlit room. Rehab was their best hope.
“Will you marry me?” he asked, his eyes clear, his face filled with love and determination.
“Marry you?” Celeste asked. She’d seen Malia breaking apart roses and shaping small hearts on the paths with the petals out in the yard the other day. She felt the jade phoenix in her fingertips. Did the little witch make this happen?
“I love you. I want to get better with you, to live a long life with you. I will raise Rosalinda so you don’t have to when I get back.”
“No, I told her I’m raising her,” Celeste said, her voice softening. “She’s my girl and I’m her Momma, that’s what we agreed.”
His face radiated with joy and he grabbed her hands. “Marry me, please, Celeste. Malia says she’ll sell me this house.”
Celeste sat up, her eyes lit with her own happiness. “Yes,” she said simply.
She felt him sweep her into his arms, the solidness she knew from the beginning of their relationship in Detroit. “But our family is expanding,” Celeste said, her voice lilting.
“You’re pregnant?” Eddie almost yelled.
“No way,” protested Celeste. Oh my god, Frank would laugh so hard. “Its Malia,” she said, “She considers that she’s Rosalinda’s Grandmother now.”
He laughed with deep relief, “Thank god.”
Celeste had a momentary stab of confusion.
“Because if you get pregnant,” he said, “I want to be around for all of it. I want to take care of you through it.”
Of course, Celeste thought. “Rehab will be good for all of us, you’ll be showing Rosalinda how to stand up for your life too.”
He bowed his head but Celeste touched his chin, raising it to look at her.
“We’d better wake Rosalinda up. I wouldn’t want her to sleep thinking you are anywhere but here safe with us.” She stood up, pulling a nightgown over her bare body. “Put your clothes on,” she said, “we’ll do this together.”
The well-worn wooden floor did not creak, it soothed her tired feet as she led him by the hand down the darkened hallway towards the kitchen and Rosalinda’s room. There was a sweet yeasty scent on the marble countertop in the kitchen, dough was rising that Rosalinda had mixed and pounded herself, in a trance before she’d laid down to sleep. Celeste had diced mangos and pineapples to roll into the dough early in the morning and the cut up fruit sat, covered with a towel, releasing their juices over a strainer.
She let Eddie go in front of her. He reached for Rosalinda’s doorknob but the door was already open a few inches.
Celeste stepped into the little girl’s room behind him and held her breath as he stood over his daughter.
“I’m going to do right by both of you,” he said, a maturity in his voice.
Rosalinda stirred, sitting bolt upright with a deep cry of grief and brokenness, half asleep, calling out in staccato yelps, “Celeste, Celeste!”
Celeste spoke soothingly, “I’m right here, Rosalinda, I’m going to turn on the light, honey.” She reached over and flipped the switch on the small lamp on Rosalinda’s bedside table.
The girl rubbed her eyes, swollen with hidden tears of the last few hours in bed alone, sleeping fitfully, unable in her youthfulness to hold back the sorrow that wracked her.
“Rosie, honey, I’m here.” Eddie’s voice cracked with tears of his own. He stroked her little head and she grabbed as far around him as she could reach.
Celeste watched, her heart feeling whole, even in the face of such terribly sweet emotions.
Never give up hope, she heard the gentle lilting of her mother’s voice and she closed her eyes. She knew her mother’s energy was in the wind around the house, in the scent of the roses, in the dirt that nourished the crazy patchwork of fertile growth outside the cottage.
She reached out and both Eddie and Rosalinda leapt towards her, pulling her into a perfectly fitting hug, they each were puzzle pieces that nestled into each other, whole.
Book Club Discussion Questions:
1. What do you think accounts for Celeste’s almost blind devotion to Detroit? Could it be related to her deep connection to her mother? Or could it be compensating for the poverty and loneliness of her childhood?
2. Detroit’s Mayor suggested that all residents move into 1/3 of the land of the City, so that they could sustain the expenses of that land, perhaps renting out the other 2/3 to Big Agriculture. What would it take for a community to make such a drastic change?
3. Celeste is afraid, but of what? Is it change? She’s lived a smallish, repetitive life until Frank comes to work with her. Is she ready to come out of her cocoon on her own or does she need his energy?
4. Why do you think Celeste is so anti-child? What kind of pain is she hiding behind that repulsion?
5. Eddie stayed in the military, voluntarily re-enlisting several times. As a country, we need young people to join the military but how do we protect their mental health when they are exposed to too much violence and fear and hatred. How do we know what is too much? How do we protect them from the after effects of their service?
6. Methamphetamines are destroying Americans in small towns and big cities. The insinuation of the profit making drug cartels into the making of such an addictive drug is a very dangerous threat for America. How can we fend off this risk? If Americans didn’t buy illegal drugs to escape their fears and pain, would the cartels have as much power? Why do you think that the deaths of thousands in Mexico, murders of dealers and innocents between drug cartels, don’t impact Americans’ use of drugs?
7. When we ‘write off’ a major city as beyond repair and rip down whole neighborhoods, and the recession continues to cause pain and suffering all around the U.S., is there really anywhere you can run to that will spare you? Do you think going to Hawaii represents following a dream for Celeste and Eddie, or do you think they believe that their standard of living will be better there?
8. Do you think it’s possible for Eddie to process his pain and be healthy in a relationship?
9. Do you think Celeste can see her childhood and heal any loneliness through the eyes of Rosalinda?
10. The book follows the thread of elderly women caring for lonely children. Since most kids today are raised in non-nuclear families, how can we facilitate the inclusion of elder energy in support of children?
Please go to www.marywallace.com and submit any questions you think would help readers address these issues.
About the Author
Mary Wallace li
ves in Marin County, California. She is an early adopter and has blogged and written on tech innovation, social justice and contemporary issues for an international audience. She has now turned to fiction. An alum of Squaw Valley Community of Writers, she has written three novels and is working on a romantic series through time. She loves raising her three kids and has put the bumper sticker ‘One People, One Planet, One Future’ on each of her cars through the years. She believes that there is more that unites us than that divides us and hopes for a future energized by love instead of fear. Science is discovering that the heart sends more messages to the brain than vice versa. Here’s hoping for a kinder, gentler human race…
Readers can contact Mary via her website, www.marywallace.com where they can find connections to her Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and other social media sites.
She is available for Twitcam, Skype or Google Hangout Book Club meetings.