Isabel's Daughter

by Judith Ryan Hendricks

  “Well, I found out who my mother was.”

  “Have you talked to her?”

  “She’s dead.” I’m a terrible person for enjoying the shock value of those two words.

  “I’m really sorry, Avery.”

  I shrug it off. “At least now I know. Her name was Isabel Colinas. She was from Colorado, but she came to Santa Fe to be an artist.”

  “And was she?”

  “Yes. A fiber artist. Quilts and stuff like that. I guess she was pretty successful. I’ve seen some of her work. It’s amazing.”

  Felicia comes back with his soup, sets his bowl down, the basket of tortillas, wrapped in a napkin. I watch him examine the labels on different bottles of hot sauce till he finds the one called “Nuclear Fusion” and doctors his soup liberally with it.

  He takes a bite, adds more sauce. “So how did you find her?” he asks.

  “I was working for a caterer, and I was at a party at this art dealer’s house and I saw a picture of her. A portrait. An oil painting by Tom Hemmings.” I can tell he has no clue who Tom Hemmings is.

  “How did you know it was her?”

  “Because she looked exactly like me.” My studied reserve goes out the back door as I lean across the table. “Even her eyes, Will.”

  Saying his name out loud jangles every nerve ending in my body.

  “She had this little cabin,” I add quickly. “Not far from here. A place called Bluebird Canyon. It needs work, of course, but Bettina’s got me someone to do plastering and fix the windows and the roof—anyway, that’s sort of why I came today. What are you doing down here?”

  “Looking for you, I guess.”

  I stop breathing.

  He dumps a whole packet of sugar in his tea and stirs it around. “Every time I drive this highway lately, I stop here. Thinking maybe you’ll be here again.”

  “Why?”

  Now he sets down the spoon and looks at me. “A lot of time’s gone by, Avery. A lot’s happened to both of us. I think we still have some things to say to each other.”

  I give him the coldest look I can manage under the circumstances. “Whatever you have to say to me, it better be something you wouldn’t mind your wife hearing.”

  “My wife?”

  “The former Randi Klein. You remember her.”

  “Not very well. We’ve been divorced for three years.”

  My one boot slips off the rung of the chair.

  “Then why are you still wearing your goddamned wedding ring?”

  “To remind myself not to do anything else stupid.”

  I watch him eat, that careful, polite way of his. I watch the tiny beads of sweat on his forehead from the heat of the sauce.

  “So,” I say. “Tell me what happened with you and Randi.”

  He leans back in the chair. “Not a lot to tell. I was…unhappy. She was, too.”

  “What was she unhappy about?”

  “She hated Florales. Always did—”

  “Why did she marry you then? You never looked like you were going anywhere else.”

  “And Kevin dumped her. He got back together with Stacey.” He shrugs. “I don’t know…one minute we were hanging out at Lucky’s, telling each other our troubles, next thing I knew we were getting married.”

  “So what happened?”

  “It was a mistake from the get-go. You put two unhappy people together, seems like it multiplies times four. Her way of dealing with it was to go to Lucky’s and drink it away. My way was to hang out with the horses and not talk about anything. One day she just left. Not too long after that I got served with papers from some big lawyer in Denver.”

  “But why did you leave the ranch?”

  “Had no choice. I had to sell my share of the ranch to Chuck. To pay her what she wanted.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “It was probably the best thing that ever happened to me. Getting out from under my brother. I’ve been working with Darryl for two years now. We’ve got a ranch down by Pecos Monument.”

  “Are you happy there?”

  “I think it’s what I always wanted.”

  Felicia comes by with a refill for his tea, and he waits till she’s gone before he adds, “Work-wise, anyway.”

  My stomach feels like a knotted rubber band. His eyes are searching mine, and I have to look away. “Things are a lot different now, Avery. I’m not a rich kid anymore. I’m a poor cowboy.” He tries to laugh. “We’ve both been through some changes—I mean I have no idea what’s going on in your life right now, but…”

  I know where this is heading and I want to get up and run away before it gets there. “Will—”

  “Wait, Avery. Just wait. You haven’t even heard what I’m going to say and you’re halfway out the damn door.” He puts a warm, dry palm on my arm. “I want to see you sometime. I’m not saying we can pick up where we left off, but now that I know where you are, I can’t just walk away.”

  While I grope for something, the right thing—or anything—to say, he pulls a few pieces of paper out of his shirt pocket and separates a dirt-smudged business card from the rest. “Here.”

  I take it from him and read: “Stony River Ranch, Darryl Hutt, Will Cameron (505) 435-1227.”

  “Think about it,” he says. “Think about it and then call me. If I don’t hear from you by Christmas, I won’t bug you again.”

  I stick the card in my pocket and stand up. “It’s good to see you, Will.”

  I’m outside, down the steps, and at my truck before I think to look at the sky. The clouds are low and heavy as a pregnant woman. While I’m fishing the key out of my pocket I hear the door shut again.

  “Avery.” Footsteps crunching in the gravel. Before I can get the door open, his hand is there, holding it shut.

  He’s standing so close to me I’m surrounded by his scent. The cold wind circles my neck.

  “I know why you left,” he says. At this range I can see the pale stubble of his beard.

  I swallow the argument that rises in my throat. It doesn’t matter.

  One calloused finger slips down inside the neckline of my T-shirt, hooking the flat S-links of the gold chain. He tugs gently but steadily until the heart of gold nuggets emerges.

  “You didn’t trust me,” he says.

  For a minute the heart dangles from his finger. Then he lets it fall, silent and heavy against my chest.

  “You still don’t.”

  He’s already moving away from me when I feel the first drops of rain.

  twenty-four

  Something wakes me after what seems like only a few minutes of uneasy sleep. Noise—low key, but insistent. Like static. I roll onto my back, open one eye in the cold darkness to stare blankly at the strange pattern of reflected light on the ceiling.

  The noise is water.

  I sit straight up, shedding sleep like a coat off my back.

  I throw off the covers, and my feet splat on the soaking rug. I run, slipping on the wet tiles down the hall to the bathroom, feeling for the light switch just inside the door. The floor is wet, but no water is running.

  I splash through the living room into the kitchen, where the water is almost up to my ankles. The sixty-watt bulb over the stove is on, and the whole floor glistens darkly under spreading ripples of water. I open the cupboard under the sink to see water gushing from a small white hose.

  Kneeling in the cold water, jostling the plastic basket of cleaning supplies, groping for the oval metal shutoff valve, I turn it first one way, then the other. The flow shrinks to a trickle and stops.

  On the pad next to the kitchen phone, he’s left the number of the hotel. It’s late, but I should call the insurance company first thing tomorrow. Reluctantly, I dial the number, and the hotel operator connects me to his room. The phone rings four times and then a woman’s voice says, “Hello?”

  I try to think what to say. Have I got the wrong room? There are other voices in the background, laughter and music.

  “I can’t hear
anything,” she says, not into the phone, and there’s a rustling as she hands the receiver off to someone else.

  “Hello?”

  “Paul, it’s Avery.” My voice feels stiff and awkward.

  “Avery? What is it? Are you all right? Hold on a minute.” He puts his hand over the mouthpiece, and when he comes back on the line, there’s silence behind him.

  “What’s going on? Is everything all right?”

  “Just a little accident. A pipe burst under the kitchen sink. In the guesthouse. The whole place is flooded. I’m sorry. I was asleep, and—”

  “Oh, don’t worry about it.” He sounds relieved. “Are you all right, though?”

  “I’m fine. I just thought I should call your insurance company and I didn’t know where to look for it.”

  “Good idea. There’s a Rolodex on my desk. Look under Travis. Eugene Travis. There are two or three numbers. You can call him on his cell phone tomorrow.”

  “Okay. I wasn’t asleep that long…it must’ve happened pretty fast. It’s kind of a mess over there, everything—”

  “Don’t worry about it. Gene will take care of it.”

  It’s quiet on the other end. I can almost see his frown. The flicker of worry in his dark eyes—that look of quiet concern he’s always throwing at me, that I’ve gotten to expect and even maybe to want from him, even though I keep batting it away. “Are you sure you’re all right?”

  “I’m fine. Just sleepy and cold.”

  “You can use my room. There are clean linens on the shelf in the closet.”

  “Okay. Sorry to bother you.”

  A sigh. “Avery, you’re not bothering me.”

  “See you Sunday.”

  My steps echo up the stairs and along the hall toward the only open door. The house is absolutely silent. I’m used to silence, but always in small spaces. A house this big full of silence is overwhelming. I wonder if it bothers him. Does he sing in the shower? Talk to himself? Turn on the TV? Stereo?

  His bedroom is small and spare, almost monastic, in spite of the colors—mud walls, a blue quilt on the bed, a weathered red night table, and a bright yellow folk art bookcase set under the blue casement window.

  The closet has no door. I think at one time it was a bathroom, but now it’s just a large alcove off the bedroom, full of neatly organized racks of black and gray clothes. One shelf holds three sets of towels, all black. Beside them are three sets of sheets, all white.

  I make up the bed hurriedly, but I’m cold again, so I don’t undress. Instead I lie on my back, rigid as a corpse, blankets pulled up under my chin, thinking about the party that I obviously interrupted. The woman who answered the phone.

  When I was a little girl at Carson, sometimes at night I’d suddenly get the weirdest crawling sensation deep in my legs. Like they were walking on their own. I found out later from a nurse at UNM that it’s called Restless Legs Syndrome. I outgrew it eventually, but the way I feel now reminds me of it—the sense of movement without intent or even awareness. I get out of bed, move to the window, and open the blue shutters, and look down on the silent, shadowed yard. From here I can see the faint glow of the solar lamps that line the walk, but most of the yard is hidden by the curving bulk of the second-story guest room.

  I can’t see the pool.

  I grab my jacket from the hook on the back of the door, slip into it, pull on my boots, and go out.

  Canyon Road is deserted. All the galleries are closed and shuttered, dark except for a few lighted display windows. The trees toss melodramatically in the wind like a group of bad actors, and leftover storm clouds scud across the sky, lit from behind by the moon.

  In one courtyard, kinetic sculptures of odd metallic birds circle and flap like ghosts hovering over me—more elusive than menacing, reminders of what no longer exists—or worse, what exists, but is out of my reach. When I’m so cold that I can’t feel my feet anymore, I turn and head back to San Tomás.

  At nine Saturday morning Cookie calls to say that the shop is closed today, but she’ll be there taking inventory and rearranging the stock, and that she’ll bring Isabel’s things if I want to stop by.

  I show up just after 1:00 P.M. and she greets me at the door with a clipboard in one hand and half a tunafish sandwich in the other. Her hair is completely hidden by a bright green cotton scarf.

  “Hi,” she says, leaning in for a hug. “I hope you’re hungry. I ordered this from Sandwich Board, and it’s the size of a small rowboat.”

  “I could probably be persuaded to eat a piece of it.”

  “Excellent. See if you can find a place to sit down, and don’t mind the mess.”

  I look around at boxes and tins, jars and paper bags, empty, dusty shelves, vacant drawers with faded paper lining. Two large garbage cans lined with plastic trash bags are well on their way to overflow. “What are you doing?”

  “A thorough inventory and general housecleaning.” She cuts half of the sandwich in half again, making it the size of a normal sandwich. “Here, if you can finish this, you’re welcome to the rest. Would you like something to drink?”

  “Just water, thanks. It looks like you’ve got your work cut out for you.”

  “Poor Liza. I don’t know when was the last time she went through all this. At first when I came, I wasn’t that involved in managing the place, and then after she got sick, I never had time to see to a proper cleaning.”

  “You need some help?”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t ask it of you, thanks. It’s nasty work.”

  “I don’t mind. Really. Paul’s gone till tomorrow night and I have nothing exciting going on.”

  “Paul?”

  “Paul DeGraf.”

  “Isabel’s…intended?”

  I laugh. “Yes. That’s where I’m living now—in his guesthouse. Which is currently flooded because of a busted pipe under the kitchen sink.”

  “So where are you sleeping?”

  “In his—in the main house.”

  One eyebrow goes up, but she doesn’t say anything.

  “I guess it is a bit strange. But I lost my job at Dos Hombres and my roommate chose that exact moment to move to Albuquerque with her boyfriend, so I was sort of in a bind. Paul said I could live at the guesthouse free if I’d cook for him. It’s just till I find another job,” I add quickly.

  “Doing what?”

  I shrug. “Waiting, I guess. It’s about all I know.”

  “You seem to know a fair amount about herbs.”

  “Only what I learned from Cassie, the old lady I lived with. She had her remedies. They were about half herbal and half voodoo.”

  Cookie smiles. “Nothing wrong with that. Is that where you got that tea?”

  I nod.

  “Well, it’s damned fine stuff. Maybe you’d think about selling it here?”

  I swallow the last of the sandwich. “I never thought about selling it. It wouldn’t make much sense, would it?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, Cassie grew stuff, harvested wild herbs, traded for some things. If I had to buy the ingredients here, then sell the mixture back to you, wouldn’t that make it kind of expensive?”

  Cookie laughs brightly. “Well, I wouldn’t charge you retail, silly. I think we could work something out, but you don’t have to answer now. Just think about it. I’d love to carry it.” She wraps up the remains of the food and stuffs it in a white paper sack. “And now, if you’re still temporarily insane enough to want to help me, we can start pitching the stuff in those tins. I think it’s been here since the conquest.”

  The afternoon doesn’t pass; it crumbles around me like paint off a weathered door. The air is heavy with the dusty scents of dried herbs, the sharper smells of rubbing alcohol, vinegar, volatile oils of rosemary and peppermint and eucalyptus, steam from the teakettle that Cookie keeps going more for it’s humidifying effects than for tea. I find it all strangely comforting.

  We’re both tired and filthy. I’m parched from dusty air, a
nd the icy water from a jug in the little refrigerator seems like the best thing I’ve ever tasted. I can’t get enough.

  She picks up one of the old apothecary jars from her aunt’s collection, turning it around, looking at the light through the wavy, bubbly, blue-tinted glass.

  She frowns. “Of course now that we’ve washed these, the labels are going to disintegrate. Most of them were unreadable to begin with, but that means I have to sit down and write new ones.”

  “Maybe you should make them in Spanish.” It comes direct from brain to mouth, no more than idle conversation, but she perks up.

  “Of course I should. They were all in English and Latin, but hardly anybody uses the botanical names any longer. And lots of people come in asking for them by Spanish names. I can put English and Spanish on the labels and just keep my handy Latin crib sheet at the register. What a wonderful thought, Avery. I know a few of the names—ruda is rue, romero is rosemary. Yerba buena—mint…”

  “Albácar,” I add, seeing Cassie’s face. “Basil. Ajenjibre—ginger. Canela—cinnamon.”

  We bat the words back and forth. “Mananzilla, álamo, toronjil.”

  I love the sounds rolling around in my head like a song with a secret meaning.

  “Sabino macho.” She does a little flamenco dance. “This is all so exciting. I’ll have to get a book.” She pats her stomach. “But first, pizza. I’m buying. With anchovies or without?”

  “With.”

  “A woman after my own heart.”

  I don’t know what I was expecting. Maybe a shopping bag or a cardboard box full of books or magazines, old clothes, maybe photos—odds and ends left behind when Isabel moved in with Paul. What Cookie drags out of the backseat of her car is a suitcase. A fairly sizable one. Other than a thick layer of dust, it looks brand-new. It was obviously never used. It’s locked.

  It’s heavy, too. She helps me hoist it into the back of my truck.

  “How did you know it was Isabel’s?”

  “There’s a tag on the handle,” she says. “It’s got Isabel’s name, but my aunt’s address.” She’s looking at me inquiringly. “I have to say I’m near dying of curiosity. If it hadn’t been locked, I probably would have opened it.” She looks mildly embarrassed. “After all, it could be some new piece that no one even knew she was working on.”