“How’s work going?” she asks as I quickly minimize the window on my screen. “Everything okay? I didn’t ask before. I was too preoccupied.”
“Great, everything’s great!” I sound psychotically enthusiastic even to my own ears. As I glance at Esha, something occurs to me: Bulldog distributes her chiles. She knows him. She knows chiles. It’s an a + b = c kind of thing. Maybe she has an idea about what he was doing in his trailer. “But something weird did happen last night,” I say, and tell the story.
She stares at me, looking horrified as I talk. “You shouldn’t be snooping around in the dark where there’s a no trespassing sign,” she says sharply. Not the answer I was expecting. “That sort of thing could get you killed, Faith. You have to think. I have no idea what Cruz was doing with chiles in his trailer and, frankly, I have no idea why you should care either. Maybe he was doing a science project. I have no idea. He’s my distributor. That’s it. You need to focus on your work. I hired you because you’re smart. So start acting like it.”
“Fine,” I say and fold my arms. About a dozen things line up to lash off my tongue, easy venomous retorts, but before I can unleash the Faith Flores viper, I stop myself and breathe. (Thank you, Aunt T, for that lesson on anger management.) Telling off Esha will only end one way: Getting fired. “You’re right,” I say. “I don’t know—”
“No,” she interrupts with a long sigh and a twist of her necklace. “I’m sorry. I was harsh. I just know that area, Faith. The places you’re sneaking around. There are a lot of drugs up there, dangerous people. I don’t want you to get hurt.”
***
Alma picks me up after work, repeating the same routine from the first time she took me home to meet Mari and Amelia. That day feels like a decade ago, I think, remembering how nervous I was.
Mari flings open the door and jumps out of the truck before Alma cuts the engine. “I’m going home,” she sings with unabashed enthusiasm, then hugs me. With her thin arms circling my torso and her hair tickling my cheeks, I’m plunged into total time-warp mode. We’ve only known each other for a week, but it feels like forever.
We finish our embrace and squeeze into the front of the truck, next to Alma. Her hair is loose and long around her shoulders, her eyes clear and bright. “Miijas,” she says with a fiercely protective smile, “let’s go home.”
When we get to Alma’s, Biscochito and Sopapilla are waiting outside. At the sight of Mari, they bark and wag and whine with seismic enthusiasm, then Sopapilla shoots off to find a ball and Biscochito flops over for tummy rubs. As I watch Biscochito belly up, paws skyward, head askew, tail wagging, it hits me how most people (present company included) could learn a thing or two about love and loyalty—and especially about being in the present—from a canine.
Alma disappears into the house and soon we follow. Smell like memory hits me the second we open the door. Aunt T’s house has the stale mustiness of the herb section in the health food store. Places with Mom always smelled old and dirty, the need for laundry and dishwashing. The smell that I already recognize as that of Alma, Mari, and Amelia is this: a savory concoction of garlic, onion, and chile.
“Where’s Amelia?” I ask, realizing that more than anyone I associate these smells with her.
“At the store. Needed a few things. She’ll be home soon,” Alma tells me. “She made Mari a welcome home meal and wanted it to be perfect. Let’s go outside. It’s a beautiful evening.”
We go out a side door to a flagstone patio set amid a profusion of flowering plants—Monet on drugs, I think remembering the junior high trip to the Philly art museum and the impressionist paintings we saw there.
“Do you like it, Mija?” Alma asks, eyes folding into weathered creases of sun and smiles.
“Gran did this all herself,” Mari says before I can answer. “You should’ve seen it when she bought the place, right Gran?” She twinkles up at Alma. “All dirt and weeds and rocks.”
“Just needed some loving hands,” Alma says proudly. “Come, I’ll show you around.” She leads me to a coyote fence, another New Mexico concept I’ve gleaned, putting me one step closer to the local category. The earth in front of the fence bursts with white flowers.
“I know this one, jimson weed, right?” I say, recognizing what I get now is a total New Mexican classic. I don’t say it’s possibly the liquid gold plant, but in case they wonder how I know what it is, I quickly add, “Georgia O’Keeffe painted it. I’ve seen the posters.”
“That’s right, and this one over here’s Eragrostis trichodes,” Alma says, citing the Latin name as she slips her hand into mine. “The common name’s sand love grass. I planted it as much for the name as for anything else. And this one’s Philadelphus microphyllus, mock orange. The butterflies love it. Here’s Ribes cereum, wax currant, great for the robins, and here’s Mahonia haematocarpa, red barberry desert holly—another snack for the birds. Of course there’s Allium sativum—garlic, and these are the Agastaches. Great for hummingbirds.”
“Man,” I say when she pauses for breath. “You’re like a total botanical dictionary.”
She laughs. “I took a few courses at the community college, that’s all.”
“She’s being modest,” Mari chimes in. “She didn’t just take the courses. She taught them. She’s a master gardener. I swear Gran knows everything there is to know about native plants of New Mexico. People are always calling for her advice. Garden hysteria. It could be midnight and people are like ‘oh my God! I have yellow spots on my roses!’”
Alma laughs and waves away the compliment. “I always wanted to go to university and be a botanist, but my family was too poor when I was growing up in Mexico and once I came to the United States I had to start working. So university was just a dream.”
“You still could go,” I say.
“At my age?” She laughs again, holding her hand to her chest. “No, Mija. I don’t think so, but I think I passed on those scientist genes to you. Science must be in our shared genetic code, no?”
Something jumps in my chest when she says this. The idea that my love of science, my wonder for the world and all the things we don’t know about it, could be inherited from a grandmother I just met congeals the connection, the sense that maybe I really do belong with these people.
We walk the perimeter of the yard and end up next to a low, south-facing adobe wall bordered by flowering shrubs. Beneath the shrubs I see two rocks, each one painted with an intricately detailed hummingbird. I bend down and pick one up. “What are these?”
“Mari painted them. There’s one for Alvaro. One for Mary—their mother. Alvaro’s is a calliope and Mary’s is a rufous. Isn’t that right, Mija?” she asks, glancing at Mari.
Mari just nods and I notice the twinkle in her eyes is gone, like her spirit’s been severed from her body. “I’m tired,” is all she says, and now I notice the shadows beneath her eyes, the lingering effect of the hospital and the liquid gold and the loss of both parents. “I’m going to go take a nap.”
I swallow back a lump. I love you seems too forward and, anyways, the words stick in my throat. “Okay,” I say, lamely. “Have a good rest.”
Alma squeezes my hand and silently we go back inside. She sits on the couch and pats the seat for me to join her. I expect her to say something about Mari. Instead she says, “Want to see some pictures of Alvaro?”
The question catches me by surprise. I’ve seen exactly two pictures of my father, and I’m not sure I want to see more, to immerse myself in the man who sired three kids, one of whom he ditched, but when I open my mouth to say no, the word yes comes out instead. Yes. I do want to see the photos. Yes, I do want to know more about The Jerk. The Sperm Donor. Daddy Dearest. Because Mari loved him and maybe that means he wasn’t all bad.
Alma lumbers over to a chest beneath the front window and opens the lid. She bends over and digs around for a moment, then slowly straigh
tens. “They’re not here,” she says, turning to face me. “Amelia must have them. She’s been possessive of the pictures lately. Could you go get them for me, Mija? They’re in a blue photo album. She probably has them in her closet.”
“Of course,” I say. I realize I’ve never been in Amelia’s room. I go in expecting some black hole, soul-sucking décor, but what I find is a total surprise. Lavender walls with white trim. White bedspread atop of a neatly made bed. A bulletin board with professional photos of artsy looking foods. A neatly stacked pile of Cook’s Illustrated magazine. It’s like looking inside someone’s diary.
Even though I’m completely curious about the mismatch of the room with the girl I know, I’m overtaken by a strong sense that I shouldn’t be here. I go to her closet and focus on finding the photo album. I’m looking through a pile of sweatshirts and tees when I see not the photo album Alma asked for, but something else. A shoebox with blue duct tape. The box Rudy gave Amelia at the Farmers’ Market. I pick it up and am contemplating how to remove the tape without Amelia knowing when I hear a voice behind me.
“What the hell are you doing, Guera?”
I spin around.
“I didn’t hear you come in,” I say to Amelia, a stupid and obvious statement, and also not a response to her question, so I add, “Alma asked me to come in and get a photo album.”
“Well, that’s not it, is it?” she snaps, but beneath the bravado, she looks terrified. She snatches the box from my hands, puts it back in the closet, then turns back to me and hands me a photo album. “Here. This is what Gran wanted you to get.”
I start to leave, but when I pass the stack of cooking magazines, I stop. Cooking takes me to catering, which takes me to Esha, which takes me to the board meeting and the fact I said I had a chef. I volunteered Amelia. And I didn’t just volunteer her. I billed her as a pro. Esha’s counting on me to come through. What was I thinking? Amelia will never do it. How am I ever going to get her to say yes?
“Something else?” Amelia asks when I don’t leave.
“Actually, I have something to ask you.”
“Okay, then ask.”
“It’s a favor really.”
“Fine. A favor. What?”
I bite my lip, ready to fight, bribe, barter, and beg. “So, there’s this big-deal, boardmember dinner meeting at SCPG next week. My boss is presenting her research.” I pause and reach for the lighter. “There’ll be about fifteen people there, and the caterer backed out. They’re thinking of featuring various chile dishes. I thought maybe you could…” I pause again. “Maybe be the chef?”
She shrugs. “Okay, sure.”
“Okay, sure?” I repeat, thinking total earwax situation, and I heard wrong.
“Yeah, Why not? Sounds fun.”
I look around for a flying pig. All I see is an enthusiastic robin singing in a tree outside the window. “Okay, then…really?”
“Yes, Guera. Really, but we’ll need to plan the menu,” she tells me as if her agreeing to do this is no big deal. “But I can’t do it now. I have to finish Mari’s dinner.”
“Yeah, sure,” I say and back out of the room before she can change her mind.
As Amelia finishes getting dinner ready, I sit on the couch with Alma and she shows me a half dozen photos of my father, all when he was about my age. I’m struck again not just by how handsome he is with his dark skin and eyes, but by how normal he looks, just some kid. Alma tells me a little bit about him—mundane everyday facts— that he played soccer and loved horses and had a dog named Cairo. A bubble of anger rises up in me, but almost as soon as if forms, it pops. I’m with Alma now, and Mari, and yes, (big sigh) even Amelia. I might have gotten my genes from Alvaro, but the truth is, it feels like the whole Dad-DNA thing skipped a generation—went straight from Alma to me.
Alma and I sit together until Amelia calls us to the table and Mari emerges from her room. After last week’s dinner here, a meal in which Amelia stormed away and refused to speak to me, I have no idea what to expect. But Amelia is civil, decent even. We talk, share food and stories and laughter. Sitting here in a “How was your day?” and “Please pass the salt” kind of normalness, I get that normal isn’t nothing—it’s everything. The shallowest of trivial banter has never felt so deep.
Twenty-five
I manage not to contact Jesse for the rest of the workweek, and by the time Friday arrives I figure it’s just twenty-four hours until I see him. I can make up for blowing him off then. I already told Clem I’d be busy this weekend, but tonight, the night of his orchestral debut with the Dallas Symphony, is all about my platonic boyfriend—well, my platonic boyfriend and Dahlia.
Dahlia’s convinced me to go the plaza for a live Latin band before we head to the Lensic. I agreed—on one condition: I don’t dance. To this she responded with a mysterious and unsettling, “We’ll see about that.” You’d think, though, instead of heading to the central square in Santa Fe, we were heading to fashion week in Paris. She’s having some kind of mental fashion breakdown, laying waste to her closet in manic what-to-wear frenzy. Worse: she wants my opinion.
“What about this one?” she asks, spinning around in what must be the tenth outfit.
“It’s great,” I say, as enthusiastically as I responded to the other nine.
“That’s what you said about the last one and the one before that,” she protests, ripping off the shirt and standing in front of me, all hands-on-hips exasperation in her bra and underwear.
“Sorry, I guess I just think you look good in all of them.”
“But one has to be better than the other,” she insists.
I slap my hands on my thighs, determined to actually leave the dorm before tomorrow. “Okay, the green thing,” I say decisively.
“What green thing?”
“That one.” I point to a wad of silky green fabric now balled up on the floor.
“You mean the tunic?” She picks up the fabric and dangles it between two fingers as if it’s a rat carcass. I nod, and she shakes her head and makes a disgusted sound in her throat. “That one’s horrible!”
I groan and fall back onto the bed.
She finally decides on a blue thing—I mean tunic—which to me looks a lot like the green thing, but whatever, nobody ever named me fashion editor of Vogue. She pulls on black leggings and silver flats, pins her hair back, rolls on lipstick, and changes the rubber bands of her braces to match the blue tunic. Matching rubber bands? Lipstick? Okay, now I’m worried. Why my farm girl friend, Dahlia, who in the three weeks I’ve known her wears the same thing three days in a row and often forgets to brush her hair, has gone all runway-queen-from-hell is one mystery I can’t solve.
When we get downtown, though, the reason becomes clear. She drags me to the Häagen-Dazs on the edge of the plaza, but we don’t go inside. We stand on the sidewalk amid flocks of tourists, while Dahlia checks her phone every five seconds to see if anyone’s texted. I’m about to break rank and head for a scoop of double chocolate when a ponytailed guy with a tie-dye shirt and a Jesus beard comes toward us. Dahlia’s face lights up.
“Hey,” Jesus says to Dahlia.
“Hey,” she says back.
They stand there all oversized grins and self-conscious hands with the awkwardness of two people who like each other, but haven’t committed to the liking, and want to touch, but haven’t committed to the touching. After several minutes of witnessing Dahlia and Jesus making lovey eyes at each other, I clear my throat.
“Oh, sorry!” Dahlia turns bright red and spins around to me. “Faith,” she says, pushing me forward so I nearly fall and take out Jesus. “This is Marcus. Marcus this is—”
“Faith,” he says with a bright smile. “I got it.”
“Marcus works on the farm,” she says to me, but her eyes are glued to her guy. As we order ice cream, Jesus/Marcus tells me that he’s really into organi
c goat-farming (hence Dahlia’s goat cheese) and I’m thinking these two are a match made in the pasture. The talk of farming also reminds me of my trip to Ernie’s, of Rudy’s absence, that I still need to come up with a plan for finding him. But that, I decide, is for tomorrow. Right now is for ice cream.
When we finish our ice cream, we wander to the plaza; the center of downtown activity, with a stage at one end where a band called El Corazón is playing upbeat Latin sounding stuff. Grass and trees border the concrete square in front of the stage where serious dancers who know the moves congregate up close to the band, and the less serious ones who don’t, but try anyway, teem in the back. A girl in a sparkly tube top executes improbable tricks with a hula hoop; another blows giant soap bubbles. There’s a guy talking to himself and a guy talking to anyone who’ll listen. There’s a bald guy making balloon animals, a shirtless hacky sack guy, a bunch of stoners, vendors selling popcorn and drinks and fajitas and green chile burgers, and families with dogs and kids playing in the grass. Jesus/Marcus and Dahlia join the dancers, but I stay safely on the edge, sticking with one fact I know to be true. I can’t dance.
I’m happily planted in my non-dancing bubble when someone gropes my shoulder. I whirl around, fist cocked, ready to punch the lights out of whoever’s assaulted my personal space.
“Surprise!” the blue-eyed phantom standing in front of me says. I go mute, a speechless cross between mortification and delight. “Nice to see you, too,” Jesse says when I continue not to speak.
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