Isabel's Daughter

by Judith Ryan Hendricks

  The fireplace is stone, not a kiva, and above it hangs a Tom Hemmings painting of some old farmers staring at a dry acequia. You can almost smell their stale sweat, taste the dust in the air, feel the sun beating on their heads through a yellow haze.

  He sees me looking at it. “That’s one of Tom’s,” he says. “Amazing, isn’t it?”

  I nod. “It’s so…real. But not like a photograph. You can tell it’s a painting, but you still feel like you could step into it.”

  “His brush technique. His use of color and light. His style is very complex, you might even say delicate. Like the old masters.”

  “In what way?”

  “If you look at the paintings by the old masters, they have an incredible depth and richness of color, texture, and transparency. Effects that can only be produced by layer upon layer of paint. Artists like Titian or da Vinci sometimes used forty or fifty layers. Not many artists want to be bothered with that anymore. Tom was trained as a restorer as well as an artist, so he appreciates those older techniques. He understands what can—”

  He breaks off, looking sheepish. “What art do you like?” He’s only being polite, but the intense way he zeroes in on me, I could almost believe that my preferences matter.

  “I like useful art. Like baskets and pottery and rugs.”

  He nods. “I like those, too. And it’s odd, I never thought of them as art until I came to New Mexico. I was educated in France and England, studied painting there—”

  “Do you paint?” I ask.

  A rueful half smile. “Not anymore.”

  “Why not?”

  “I wasn’t good enough.”

  “Says who?”

  “My teachers. One in particular told me in no uncertain terms that if I wanted to make a living in art, I should pursue art history.”

  “And you let some pompous old fart decide what you could do with your life?”

  He sighs. “Of course it was more than that. But he was right. I think the main reason I wanted to be an artist was for my mother, anyway.”

  “Was she an artist?”

  “No. She was like me. Loved art, but didn’t have the talent. She worked in galleries in London after she left my father. She lived for art. And artists. Our flat was always full of peculiar people. It wasn’t uncommon for me to wake up in the morning and find some strange man snoring on the floor next to my bed.”

  “So she wanted you to be an artist?”

  “I don’t know. She never said as much. I just felt that if I were a famous artist, I could…win her back or some such foolishness.”

  “Back from where?”

  His shoulders lift slightly. “Back from the glamorous world where she lived, I suppose.”

  “But didn’t you live with her?”

  He peers into the fire. “We lived in the same flat. I don’t think we ever lived in the same world.”

  I get up quickly, stacking our empty plates and shuffling out to the kitchen. “I’ll just clean up.”

  “We might as well finish this wine,” he calls after me.

  When I come back from tucking the dirty dishes into the dishwasher, the fire is sputtering. He gets up to add another hunk of wood and pour out the rest of the wine into our glasses. He waits by the hearth for a minute until the new log blazes up before settling himself next to me on the couch. His physical proximity sends a pleasantly guilty ripple through my whole body.

  “Tell me about that one.” I point to a small picture over the computer table. “It’s a santo, right?”

  “A santo can be any image of a saint, but it usually refers to a carved wooden figure. These paintings are usually called retablos.” He smiles slowly. “This one is very special. And very rare. Go over and take a good close look at it. Tell me what you notice about it.”

  I walk over to stand in front of the picture. It’s a woman in a simple white dress with a green mountain in the background. Her halo, which takes up the top third of the picture, looks like real gold leaf.

  “Well…it’s much simpler than most of the ones I’ve seen.”

  “Yes. What else?”

  I study the woman. “She’s different. More native. I saw one similar in Tom’s studio, but the woman looked very European. Spanish.”

  For the thinnest slice of a second, his eyes darken. Or maybe it’s just a shadow from the fire. Then he says, “This woman is Malinche. She has the Mayan features, broad cheekbones, prominent nose, full mouth, dark skin.”

  “What makes it so valuable?”

  He gets up and comes over to stand next to me. “Three things. One, the fact that it even exists. For hundreds of years Malinche has been widely considered a traitor who delivered her people up to Cortez. Two, the fact that she was painted as a saint. And you notice the picture doesn’t have a cross or any of the usual Christian symbols. Other than the halo. The volcano in the background is called La Malinche.”

  “Somebody must have liked her then.”

  “The picture probably came from Tlaxcala. The tribes in that area hated the Aztecs and they became allies of Cortez. Malinche has always been venerated there.”

  “And what’s the third reason?”

  He turns away from the painting almost reluctantly. “It was a gift from your mother,” he says.

  Cate Mosley probably used to be beautiful. She still is, from across the room. But when you get up close, you see that she has that very thin, pale skin that some Anglos have. It wrinkles in this high, dry air like old leather, sagging into flaps under her chin. There’s a fine network of blood vessels around her nose, but her eyes are a beautiful clear green, like gemstones.

  And they feel as cold as gemstones when she turns them on me.

  “Well, there’s no mistaking you’re her daughter.”

  She motions me inside her studio, which is cluttered with bolts of fabric, baskets of ribbon and yarn. Lint is everywhere, balled up in corners like dust bunnies, covering every surface, hanging in the air. It seems to go with being a fiber artist.

  The walls are slick and white, like they were designed to showcase her work, but there are only a few collages on display. She notices me looking. “I’ve gone to soft sculpture.” She nods at a form sitting on a pedestal. It’s about two feet tall, black and gray, kind of lumpy, and there are pieces of what looks like twigs and leaves poking out of a long fold on one side of the piece. “Freestanding. I find it more kinetic, more involving, more dynamic than flat work.”

  I wear my ignorance like a sign around my neck. “It’s very interesting.”

  She laughs and then abruptly remembers who I am. “Elaine said you wanted information.” She lifts one hip and plops it down on a tall stool but doesn’t offer me a seat. “What kind of information?”

  “About my mother. I never knew her—”

  “Doesn’t surprise me,” she says flatly. She folds her arms across her jade green shirt. Her left forearm is covered with silver bracelets that jangle noisily and flash light off in every direction.

  “Why do you say that?” I already don’t like this woman, but I try not to let it show.

  “No offense, but she was exactly that kind of person.”

  “What kind of person do you mean?”

  “The kind who’d give up her child if it wasn’t convenient to keep her. No offense.”

  I exhale wearily. “I’m not offended. I’m just looking for some answers. I’m sure you can understand.” Actually, I’m not sure of that at all, but I need her to open up a little. “Can you tell me why you say she was that type of person?”

  “Because she was a selfish bitch.” Her eyes snap with anger. “There are takers and givers in this world, babe, and your momma was the former.”

  I don’t say anything. I read somewhere that if you just keep staring at someone long enough, they’ll eventually tell you everything you want to know and then some.

  “I mentored her. She didn’t know shit from Shinola about fibers or quilting or collage. All she’d ever done was some pr
etty mediocre watercolors. She was going nowhere fast.”

  “Then why did you teach her?”

  “She had a certain color sense,” she says, a smile barely moving her lips. “And she came on so sweet. Told me how much she admired my work. Okay, I was flattered. I felt sorry for her. I liked her. She could be exceptionally charming when there was something in it for her.” The smile vanishes. “As I found out too late, she was a user. She learned all she could from me, then dropped me like I was Typhoid Mary. But…” When she raises her eyebrows, the skin on her forehead looks like plow furrows, “…not before she seduced my husband.”

  Her word choice strikes me as a bit silly. In her dramatic voice, the word seduced takes on overtones of a costumed melodrama—one of those cheesy plays where the audience cheers the heroine and throws popcorn at the villain.

  “He thought she actually cared about him—men are so stupid—but as soon as Paul DeGraf appeared on the horizon, Dave got the old heave-ho. Came crawling home with his tail between his legs.

  “Of course she found out that life with DeGraf had its own drawbacks.”

  “Like?”

  “You should ask him about that.” Her eyes narrow. “Surely you’ve met him.”

  Even though there’s no reason for it, I feel suddenly exposed. I keep hearing Paul’s admonition that there are no secrets in this town. Does she know I’m living in his guesthouse?

  “So what did you think of her work?” I ask quickly.

  Cate Mosley gives an irritated little snort. “I think she was very good at what she did. Which was to steal a lot of people’s ideas and synthesize them into her own hodgepodge style. No offense.”

  I’m in the kitchen roasting peppers over the burner of the Wolf range when he brings the tray back and sets it on the counter. He opens a file folder that’s tucked under his arm, pulls out some papers clipped together.

  “You just need to sign this. For the cabin.”

  I wipe my hands on the towel that’s tucked into my belt and take the paper he holds out to me.

  It’s a pretty simple thing, this Quit Claim Deed. It just says that Paul Julien DeGraf relinquishes all claims and rights to the property in Bluebird Canyon to Avery James, effective October 1, 2000, for the consideration of $1.00.

  “Is this legal?” I hate sounding like I just rode into town on the last turnip truck, but I can’t believe anything legal could be this simple.

  “It will be,” he says. “As soon as you and I both sign it, and my attorney records it.”

  The pen rests motionless in the crook of my thumb and forefinger as I stare at the piece of paper. “Are you sure?”

  “That it’s legal?”

  “That you want to do it.”

  I would understand completely if he laughed at me, but he doesn’t. “Of course. Aren’t you?”

  “You’ve heard the saying, there’s no free lunch?”

  “I have. However…” His thumb worries the corner of the file folder. “I’m not sure why you believe it applies here. You think there are strings attached?”

  “I think there’s strings attached to just about everything.”

  He looks down at the folder, then back at me. “It disturbs me. That you feel you can’t trust me.”

  “It has nothing to do with you. Not you, personally. I just believe that everything has a price. Cassie taught me that.”

  “Who’s Cassie?”

  “The old lady I lived with when I was in high school. In Florales. She was pretty sharp. She said even knowledge isn’t free. That if you learn something, it usually means you have to do something about it.”

  “What do you think you would have to do about the cabin?”

  “Take care of it, for one thing. I don’t want to own a place and just let it fall apart. And it’s not just the money. It takes my time. It takes my attention. It might ask me for something I can’t give or don’t want to. It’s a little scary. I’ve never owned anything before, except for my truck.”

  “Are you saying you don’t want it?”

  “No, I’m not saying that. I’m just saying…if you give this to me, if I accept it, I want it to be done…mindfully.” I break off, my face suddenly warm.

  He holds out an envelope. “Maybe this will help you to think about the place in more concrete terms.”

  “What is it?”

  “Open it.”

  I slide my thumb under the flap, rip it open, and pull out a check. For $25,000 and some change. I stare at him.

  “What the hell is this?”

  “It’s from Isabel’s estate.”

  “I can’t—”

  “Please. This is something that doesn’t require any mindfulness at all. I know she’d want you to have it.”

  “But you could have just given me the money.” I search for some explanation in his face. “You didn’t have to move me into the guesthouse.”

  “I don’t want you to live on this. You should invest it. I’ll put you in touch with—” He makes an abrupt U-turn. “That is, if you’d like, I can introduce you to a good financial planner.”

  “Never in my wildest dreams have I ever pictured myself head-to-head with a financial planner.”

  “It’s yours. I hope you’ll use it wisely.”

  My eyes open as soon as it’s light. I roll onto my back and watch the sky turn from silver to blue. It’s one of those moments that you want to keep forever. I’m warm, I’m comfortable. I don’t have to get up and go to a job where somebody hates me. There’s a check for $25,000 sitting on my night table. I’m queen of the world.

  twenty-two

  I try to settle into my new life. A life so different from anything I ever imagined for myself that I sometimes jolt into full awareness like out of a dream, look around me to see if I’m really where I seem to be, doing what I think I’m doing. Which is mainly cooking for Paul.

  Breakfast four days a week—a no-brainer. Café au lait, orange juice, a three-minute boiled egg, and a toasted baguette with butter and jam—which he calls a tartine. Most nights I cook dinner. He eats alone in that empty dining room at the starkly cold glass-topped table. He eats whatever I want to cook. I have unlimited funds for the best ingredients, a shelf full of lavishly illustrated cookbooks for inspiration. It’s a cook’s nirvana.

  Once in a while he goes out to a restaurant or to someone’s house. The following day, he never fails to tell me that he should have stayed at home, since my food is so superior to whatever it was they were serving. Sometimes Lindsey comes for dinner, and when she’s here, the temperature seems to rise a few degrees, the lights burn a little brighter, and her laugh makes its own party. She’s the only person I’ve ever seen light a cigarette in this house. He just smiles and waves the smoke away till she leaves, and then he runs around emptying ashtrays into the garbage and opening all the windows.

  A pretty good case could be made for the idea that what I really am is not a personal chef, but a paid companion, since he freely admits that I’m the only one who’ll listen to his stories. I got an earful the night I told him about my visit to Cate Mosley.

  The only indication that he was angry was the color that crept up his neck into his face. Not exactly red, it was more a dark, mottled earth color like a clay pot before it’s fired. I could sense him searching for the right words to express his contempt for her. He finally settled on “shrill and insecure. Not to mention a second-rate talent.”

  It was about the worst thing I’d ever heard him say. Not that he seems like such a Goody Two-shoes, but I have the feeling that for the most part, he can’t be bothered discussing anything or anyone who ranks that low in his opinion.

  “It was a classic case of the student surpassing her teacher,” he said. “Cate never forgave your mother for being more talented than she was.”

  When I got to the part about Isabel seducing Mosley’s husband, he actually laughed.

  “David Mosley is delusional. How he could have imagined that Isabel had any interest in him
whatsoever is beyond me. He was fixated on her, of course. That’s understandable, particularly considering that he was married to the Medusa. But she never gave him any encouragement at all.”

  “How can you be so sure?” As soon as I said it, I wished I hadn’t.

  The flicker of doubt was brief, but it was there. “She wouldn’t have had anything to do with someone like him.”

  It was after dinner that night and we were sitting in his office—me on the couch, him at his desk, shuffling papers from one stack to another. It was something he did a lot, and I never saw that anything actually got rearranged. It was just a nervous habit, something he did while talking, the way other people fiddle with their hair or twist a ring round and round on their finger.

  “Why are you still here?” I asked him all of a sudden.

  He stopped his paper stacking and looked at me. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, why don’t you sell this place? Get a new house.”

  “I like this house.” He said it evenly, matter of factly. “It took me a long time to get it just the way I wanted it. Besides, it’s close to the galleries and I—”

  He was missing the point, maybe on purpose. “What I mean is…” I paused, trying to choose my words carefully. “Don’t you think it might be easier to get on with things if you weren’t living here. Where—everything happened. In a different place, maybe you could—”

  “Forget?” The word sort of floated in the air between us.

  I shook my head. “I know it isn’t the kind of thing you forget. But maybe you could put some distance between the past and present.”

  He leaned back in his chair, and his eyes drifted away from my face, sweeping the room. As if he might find a trace of her clinging to the walls. When he looked at me again, he didn’t exactly smile, but his expression was softer, almost wistful.