by Susan Slater
“My truck wouldn’t know what to do if I put it inside at night.”
“Connie, I don’t know what to say—this is all so perfect.” Julie took in the computer and twenty-one-inch monitor in the mini-office to her right. Even a space to work.
“Don’t say anything. I’ve looked forward to having you here. It’s my treat. I have a couple appointments this afternoon, but let’s have dinner here tonight. Seven thirty?”
Julie looked at Ben who nodded. “That would be great.”
“Oh, I hope you don’t think it’s presumptuous of me, but I’ve hung a few designer dresses in the closet. I must pare down—I’ve collected far too many things over the years. You’ll see some still have their original wrappings. If there’s anything that you’d like, I’d love you to just take it.”
“I couldn’t—”
“Yes, you could. With Skip gone, I have very little use for dressier outfits. There’s a lovely off-white vintage Chanel, dress and jacket, that might just work for that very special occasion we just discussed.” A wink and Connie turned to leave the room.
+ + +
Julie took Ben back to the hospital to pick up his truck and belongings—all of which seemed to fit into two cardboard boxes and one grocery sack.
“Indian suitcase.” Ben teased and pointed to one of the boxes.
Did he even own luggage? Julie wondered. Funny how there were still lots of little things she didn’t know about him. It wasn’t as if they were planning a cruise—because of work, a honeymoon might be totally out of the question. And if he did bring his clothes in a box, would she mind? She smiled. Her mother would, but she wouldn’t.
Ben followed her back to the airport to return the rental. It felt good to climb into the cab of the pickup and snuggle against him.
“I’ve missed this.”
“I could probably say the same thing.”
“Probably? A disclaimer?” She playfully punched him in the shoulder.
“Hey, you know any good shrink is going to hedge his bets.” But he laughed and threw an arm around her shoulders. “I’ve missed you.” Anything else he was going to say was lost as he kissed her.
+ + +
“I’m going to admit to being a snoopy old lady. But when I took towels back to your room this afternoon, I saw the most marvelous storyteller. Is one of you a collector?” Connie opened an intricately carved liquor cabinet and withdrew a bottle of pale gold liquid.
“My mother’s work,” Ben replied.
Connie turned to face him, “I didn’t realize you knew your mother. Knew who she was.”
“I was adopted at four—the summer my mother died. The memories are not the most pleasant.”
Something in his tone made her drop the subject. They were in yet another small sitting room off the dining room that had nothing but glass for its fourth wall. Dinner had been perfect—duck salad, potato pancakes, a pâté to start, twisted cheesy bread sticks hot from the oven—Julie knew she could get used to this life. Rosa had probably been stolen from some five-star restaurant.
“Would anyone like a fire? Ben, if you would do the honors, it’s as easy as flipping that switch. I think the room is a little chilly.”
The wood was piled teepee style in the corner horno—three up and two crosswise on a raised hearth that offered a close-up banco-style seating arrangement to each side. The gas lighter took the work out of wadding paper and praying the fire would take off. Julie watched the burst of flame as Ben ignited the gas element and savored the air now scented with piñon.
“Can I get you something? I’m having a pear wine—almost a liqueur but not quite. It’s exquisite.”
“No thanks,” Ben said.
“Julie?”
Julie shook her head, “The view from this room is my after-dinner treat.”
“I agree. I congratulate you on situating this house to complement the landscape and vice versa.” Ben walked to the window-wall. “This house is exquisitely done.”
“Thank you. It’s the one thing I’ll leave behind that will outlive me. The Consuelo Bigrope house. One up on Mabel Dodge Lujan, don’t you think? Or Millicent Rogers?”
The reference to the two heiress’s houses in Taos was apt. New Mexico liked to honor its eccentric dowagers, writers and poets alike by preserving their habitat. D.H. Lawrence also came to mind.
“How old did you say you were when you were adopted?”
The question was abrupt. Julie looked quickly at Ben. This was not something he readily talked about. How strange for Connie to approach such a sensitive subject.
“Four.” Ben swiveled an overstuffed leather armchair so that he could enjoy the view and sank into its soft comfort. “My mother died and my grandmother thought it might be best for my … my what? Chances, I guess. She sensed the importance of an education off the reservation.”
“So you really don’t know much about your history?”
“My parents let me visit during the summers if I wanted to. We used to call it pueblo summer camp. There were some summers that I chose not to go. The church camp my friends went to had an Olympic-sized swimming pool. As a child I thought it was superior to swimming in the Jemez River. So, no, a few scattered summers weren’t enough to learn my language or know the ceremonies. I’m an outsider.”
“Would you change things, if you could?”
“You mean go back?” Julie sensed Ben’s reluctance to continue as he paused a moment. A buttermilk gold moon appeared above the mountains. He waited until it had cleared the nearest rounded peak. “Congress passed the Indian Child Welfare Act in 1978 because of what was perceived as problems. Indian children losing their heritage, going back as adults and being shunned.”
“Is that what happened to you?”
“More or less. I went back to live with my grandmother and complete an internship in the Tewa Pueblo a few years back. I lost my grandmother that summer after just a couple months together.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“One of my uncles has her house now. There was no way that I could stay there. I’d been gone too long.”
“Do you feel strongly about outsiders adopting Indian children?”
“Very little of it’s done any more. Child Welfare League of America, National Indian Child Welfare Association, Lost Bird Society—very few Native American children are allowed to leave their extended families today. I’d often thought of organizing a group for adopted Indians who were taken from their tribes as children—for some, the trauma is devastating. It would be easy today with the internet. Maybe I should follow up.”
Julie was amazed at how calmly Ben was retelling such a painful part of his history. And more amazed that Connie would probe.
“But the question was, would I have wanted things done differently.” Again, Ben took his time in answering. “I suppose not. I can’t not be appreciative of what my adoptive parents did for me. I was the late-in-life baby they could not have had any other way. My mother was well into her forties, the survivor of one bout with cancer. She was gone before I entered high school.”
“Did you think of going home then—I presume you called the res home?”
“It wasn’t really an option. My adopted father needed me. And, yes, the res is home.”
The silence in the room was deafening—or whatever the saying was, Julie thought. The moon’s light rippled across the brick floor; the fire crackled, casting dancing shadows across the furniture in a yellowed light. Connie switched off a reading lamp and then remotely dimmed the ceiling lights.
“Sometimes I just like to enjoy the moonlight inside. Moonlight and firelight—a combination difficult to beat.”
Julie agreed. This natural light, funneled through an expanse of glass, gave the viewer the best of two worlds—on a night like tonight, the warmth of being inside and the front row spectator seat to the desert world surrounding them.
“Would you be Dr. Ben Pecos, Ph.D. psychologist, if you hadn’t left?” The sound of Co
nnie’s voice intruded on the beauty, Julie thought.
“It’s a good question. Studies today seem to indicate high achievers will attain full potential no matter what the obstacles. This includes environment. But I don’t think the studies have included kids on reservations. It’s damned hard to leave.”
“Did you ever think of adopting?” Julie was curious about Connie’s acute interest in Ben’s childhood. “Skip’s children must be very close to your age.”
“I thought about it, but it wasn’t an option for Skip. He could not have accepted someone else’s child.” Abruptly, Connie rose and placed her glass on the sideboard. “It’s bedtime for me. Thank you for so gracefully playing twenty questions. I’m curious about life on the reservation—I’m a contributor to Lost Birds and hope I do the right thing by uniting families who’ve been separated.” Connie brushed Julie’s cheek with a kiss. “I’m sure you’ll be up and about before I will. Rosa will be here at six. Just tell her what you want for breakfast. It’s so great to have you both here. Thank you for agreeing to come.”
Julie waited until Connie was out of earshot. “Any reason we couldn’t do the same?”
“Go to bed? It’s only a little after nine.” Ben feigned surprise. “Surely, you have some reading to do …? Maybe we should just sit here and enjoy the fire.”
Julie made a face, grabbed his hand, and pulled him toward the door.
+ + +
Julie awoke with a start and an uneasy feeling that a noise had intruded on her subconscious. But she couldn’t recall what it had been or where it had come from. She lay perfectly still, keeping her eyes half-lidded, willing her breathing to sound even, and then she took inventory. She slowly moved her eyes to the right, the left, then straight-ahead and up as far as she dared. Nothing seemed out of place. Not that she had perfect vision through half closed eyes in a darkened room; in fact, this was probably stupid. These were new surroundings. There was a man beside her snoring softly in a post coital stupor. It could have been anything; the drying of the new pine vigas supporting the ceiling could have made popping or cracking sounds—that would be enough to wake her.
But some sixth sense made it necessary to continue to control her breathing. What was it researchers said about a sixth sense? That really your peripheral vision had picked up some potential danger—something subliminal that sent a warning to your brain? And the brain dictates the flow of adrenaline.
Movement. Another rush of adrenaline. To her far left coming toward her. Maybe twenty feet away. The shadowy figure hesitated, then rapidly faded from her line of sight. She kept her body rigidly still and strained to hear any sound, breathing evenly as if asleep. There it was—the faint click of the side door being pulled shut. The very click which awakened her when it was opened? Probably.
This was not some duck-salad induced moment of indigestion. She threw back the covers and hurried barefoot across the Italian tile. The door was unlatched. She slipped the deadbolt into place and paused. There was the distinct lingering of scent in the air. A perfume she knew well. Guerlain’s Champs-Élysées. Her mother’s favorite but also Connie’s. Last year for Christmas the two women literally traded large bottles of the stuff—each sending the other her favorite as a gift. It had become a joke but attested to their closeness.
But why would Connie sneak into their room at 3:17 in the morning? Julie forced herself to walk around the large sitting room/bedroom combination. Nothing was amiss. She checked the bathroom, a huge room with sunken tub and glassed-in wall that continued the architect and owner’s penchant for bringing the desert inside. At least there was no shower curtain à la Psycho but could she ever bathe in front of that kind of openness?
She sat in a desk chair, far too awake to go back to bed. Should she wake Ben and tell him? But tell him what? That she suspected Connie of voyeurism? Maybe Connie had just remembered something she’d wanted to tell them. But how could it be important enough to sneak into their room in the middle of the night? And why would she use the side entrance? That would mean walking outdoors most of the way around the house. Julie knew one thing for sure—she’d check the lock on the door next time.
Chapter Four
Her nightgown’s filmy silk stuck to her perspiring body, her nipples chafing against its whisper softness. The memory of his caress lingered; a finger sliding down between her breasts, tracing an aureole on the left, then on the right, mouth encompassing one then the other, lips tugging gently before his tongue circled and began flicking, quickly teasing each nipple into aching erectness. She arched her back as his hand slipped between her legs and she turned toward him, crying out his name. And her arms gathered in the emptiness of air. A dream. One more in a parade of dreams, real, hauntingly real, but of another world. Did she believe she would join him soon? Yes. She had begun to hang onto that. It was her solace. She was going to meet him and he would be waiting. Wasn’t the message not to fear? He had crossed and now it was her turn. And he had forgiven her.
Connie pushed to a sitting position and fumbled for her cigarettes in the dark. The flare of the lighter brought the room into stark unreality. She held the flame to the tip of the cigarette. Weren’t there jokes about smoking after sex—she couldn’t remember any that delivered a punch line about smoking instead of sex. She bunched the covers around her legs and balanced an ashtray on one knee.
Would people think she was crazy if she told them that he talked to her? Read her poetry, his poetry filled with images of their time together—time which was far too short, time that evaporated. A brief four months. But still a time she lived and relived over and over all these years. She could still feel his touch as though it were yesterday and hear the huskiness of his voice, “My darling, we are meant to be together. Promise you’ll come with me.”
She had longed to leave Skip. They would have gone away and been a family. There could have been other children. But how stupidly naïve she had been. Skip CdeBaca owned people and bound them to him with money and favors, letting go when he wanted and not before. She pressed the switch at the head of the bed and a bank of spotlights came up slowly to illuminate the artwork that stretched around to circle the bed. Gorman, English, Peña, Shoulter—originals, old now, created when the artists were struggling to be recognized.
She walked to the closet, using the rugs as stepping-stones even though water circulated beneath the floor to warm the bricks. She pulled open the hand carved doors to her closet, another room with a vaulted ceiling, its domed glass top now showcasing twinkling stars. If you want to know how you really look, study yourself in natural light—the light that never lies. If you have the nerve, that is. And she did. Time had been kind. She studied herself in the bank of mirrors that framed a fitting room—really an alcove with step-stool and dress mannequin. Had twenty years changed her that much? Not really. But what good was her beauty now? She shivered and reached for a dressing gown.
She knew what she was looking for and, parting a rack of eveningwear, she pulled the large box from a hidden shelf and carried it back to her bed. When she had been diagnosed, it had come to her what she should wear to be buried in—what was proper. Yes, that was the correct word. Proper. Cheated in life, she would not be cheated in death. She lifted the lid and gently unfolded the simple, high-necked ivory satin floor-length wedding gown. There were a hundred tiny pearl buttons that reached from hem to high, stiff collar to accentuate her long graceful neck. The circle of matching satin which anchored a shoulder-length veil would soften the severity of the bun laced with pearls, or maybe she’d wear her hair in a single braid. Pearls at her earlobes and a cascading, matching rope that reached to her waist. The instructions for her burial would include a viewing.
Chapter Five
Julie sat up. Nine o’clock. How could she have slept so late? There was a note on the pillow beside her—love from Ben, he’d call later. She threw on jeans and a sweatshirt then pulled her hair back, barely getting all the bright red wisps not to defy capture and spring out from
under the confines of a velvet band. A splash of water to clear her head and she was off to the kitchen. It was obvious from her stomach’s growling that dinner wasn’t even a memory.
“Good morning. I let you sleep. I’m a great believer in our bodies dictating needs.” Connie was sitting at a stool at one end of the butcher-block worktable with papers spread out in front of her. “Help yourself to waffles and sausage. I have two offices and yet this is my favorite place to work. I think it’s the light here. The skylight gives me perfect overhead illumination without glare.”
Julie had to admit the kitchen’s domed overhead skylight—bigger than any she had ever seen—showed off the natural wood and gleaming appliances to good advantage.
“Is Rosa here this morning?”
“She’s in some part of the house with the cleaning crew. Once a week she brings 4 or 5 relatives to do the heavy cleaning. I’d like to show you around after you’ve eaten. I even thought we might go over to the land office later.”
“That would be great.” The waffles and sausage were gourmet, but she wasn’t here for an extended all-expense-paid vacation, Julie reminded herself. She’d agreed to step in as marketing consult for the land development company. She would design brochures and media packages and represent Land of Enchantment Realty to the public—even record a couple TV spots.
“Do you have any servants who stay here at the house?”
“Not yet. There are two guesthouses under construction. Rosa will move in when the first is completed.”
Julie thought of mentioning that someone had come into their room last night, but somehow that seemed ludicrous in broad daylight since there was the possibility it had been Connie herself. The scent of Champs-Élysées hung in the air.