Yellow Mesquite

by John J. Asher

  Vanita had babysat while he and Sherylynne attended the musical, Fiddler on the Roof, and from that moment Sherylynne was hooked. They saw Mary Poppins and she bought the soundtrack, and while they were unable to afford tickets to My Fair Lady, The Sound of Music, or Hello Dolly, she bought the soundtracks for those as well.

  “We have to stop this spending,” he said. “Right now I can’t even buy art supplies till the first of the month.”

  She accepted the fact of their poverty with a rueful smile, a gentle touch of her fingertips to his cheek, filling him with the guilt of inadequacy. They were both disappointed that Martin had been unable to sell more of his work.

  On Saturdays and Sundays, when the weather permitted, he took Leah out in her baby buggy. Sometimes Sherylynne went along, but more often she stayed in, listening to her music, one bare foot drawn up in her chair seat, chin resting on her knee, a distracted far-away look.

  “I wish you’d try to make a few friends,” he said, for what must have been a hundred times. “Get out once in awhile.”

  She pointed out that he didn’t have a lot of friends himself. It was true. He knew a good many people, but very few of them he would define as friends. Originally he had hoped to meet and befriend working artists, but on the whole he had been disappointed by how little they had in common. Most of the newer artists were into Pop, and he was still unable to convince himself that a soup can or a comic book was art just because a few artists and a few critics said so. Of course, van Gogh painted such non-dramatic object as an old pair of work shoes, a chair, his pipe, but he took them out of the realm of the ordinary, infused them with something otherworldly. Pop Art was a celebration of the everyday—not even a celebration, to his way of thinking—just everyday.

  He still admired the Abstract Expressionist, but that movement was dead, and besides, they were a suspicious bunch. The ones who hadn’t died or committed suicide kept pretty much to themselves.

  He worked, struggling to find and nourish his own vision, while trying to keep an open mind. If nothing else, he had learned that morality had little to do with intelligence or creativity; Warhol and the factory crowd, for instance. The Abstract Expressionist hadn’t been a bunch of angels, either, but the work itself, the best of it, was elevated above the moral failures of its creators.

  HARLEY RETURNED FROM work one evening to find Sherylynne sitting at the table in her jeans as usual, the one bare foot up in the seat of her chair, chin on her knee, forlorn. She said hello, then reached around her knee and poured a dollop of peach brandy into a cup of hot tea. Leah had gone to sleep in her crib nearby. Normally, he would have awakened her, but he sensed something in the air. He took a can of Rheingold from the fridge, popped the top with a church key, and took a seat at the table with Sherylynne.

  “Okay. What’s up?”

  “Vanita is making a trip back to India,” she said dismally. “Now I have no one at all to talk to.”

  “How long will she be gone?”

  “Six weeks.”

  While he felt for her, concerned that she and Leah would be more isolated than ever. he didn’t know what to do about it. He had exhausted the subject of her refusal to generate some sort of social life.

  “I’m thinking of taking Leah to visit my mother,” she said.

  He stopped, the beer halfway to his mouth. He set it down. “Sherylynne…you know we can’t afford that.”

  She dropped her knee, leaned across the table and covered his hand with hers. “I can sell that necklace?”

  He was beyond surprised. “Is that what you want?”

  “It’s not doing anybody any good upstairs in that box.”

  He thought about how much the necklace might bring. It was obviously worth a lot of money. They could live on the proceeds for quite a while. But from Whitehead? That was out of the question.

  “That necklace is yours,” he said. “I’m having nothing to do with it.”

  “I need to see my mother, and she needs to meet her only grandchild. I think that’s the best use for it, that necklace.” She looked at him, eyes moist, imploring. “Don’t you?”

  SHE INSISTED ON taking a cab to the airport, just she and Leah; returning him to the loft by cab would be an unnecessary expense.

  He stood with her on the loading dock, holding Leah, waiting for the taxi. Leah looked from one to the other, her little face troubled.

  Sherylynne put one arm around his waist, placed her other hand in the crook of his elbow. “I hate leaving you,” she said, looking up into his face, her eyes glistening with unshed tears. “Maybe this isn’t such a good idea…”

  He forced a smile. “No. You need to see your mother. You need a break.”

  “I wish you were going too.”

  A Yellow Cab came down Franklin from the direction of Broadway. He handed Leah to Sherylynne, then picked up the two bags and followed her down off the loading dock. The driver got out, nodded, and opened the trunk. He took the two bags from Harley and placed them inside, then closed the trunk and opened the rear door for Sherylynne. She put her free arm around Harley and kissed him with a passion she hadn’t shown in a long time. Leah leaned from Sherylynne’s arms toward Harley, her hands opening and closing for him to take her. “Dadda,” she said. “Dadda…”

  He let go of Sherylynne, cupped Leah’s face in both hands and kissed her on each cheek. “I love you both, more than—” he stopped, unable to continue.

  The cabbie got in. He placed his hand on the trip flag, waiting to start the meter.

  “Tell your mother hello.”

  “I’ll tell her.” She got in with Leah. He shut the door after her. Leah strained toward him from inside, her face puckering behind the glass, one hand out to him, her baby fingers opening and closing, either in “take me, Dadda,” or “good-bye, Dadda.”

  Sherylynne leaned around Leah as the taxi pulled out, eyes wet, mouthing, “I love you…” Then, turning, she watched him through the rear window, one hand covering her mouth until the taxi disappeared up Franklin.

  He stood, watching them ride away—something pulling out of himself, an attached thread unraveling his heart.

  Chapter 39

  Petition

  THE LOFT WAS empty. Silent. His own footsteps drew attention to themselves. While he had never been aware of echoes, now every fork touching a plate resounded unnaturally. The radio, on the other hand, sounded perfectly normal. It was his own isolated movements that mocked him in the big empty space.

  Three days and Sherylynne hadn’t called. Mrs. Riley didn’t have a phone, and he didn’t know her neighbor’s number. He kept telling himself that that was the hitch. Had there been an accident, someone would have notified him.

  With concern came floods of memory: the first touch of her body, the stolen moments in Aunt Grace’s boardinghouse; Sherylynne stepping out of her panties, straddling him with sweaty passion on the one chair in his boardinghouse room. He took pleasure in recalling the habit she had of tilting her head when she listened, her freckles suggesting childlike innocence. He visualized her ascending the staircase to the loft, her body moving in rhythm to its own inner music. He warmed, revisiting an image of her nursing baby Leah—a Madonna as painted by a Renaissance artist, a drop of milk glistening on the peak of one nipple. He had taken pleasure in her presence, and longed for her in her absence. With painful yearning he relived again and again his last sight of her, whispering her love through the taxi window….

  A WEEK PASSED and he became seriously worried. But what to do? He had no idea how to get in touch with Mrs. Riley, or her neighbors. When a second week passed, he was on the verge of calling law officers in Vinton, Louisiana, to check on her.

  On Friday at noon, he went to lunch at a Chock full o’Nuts with Steve and Fred. He tried not to think about Sherylynne, grateful that, as usual, the talk was of art.

  When they returned to work, Nelda, the department secretary, flagged him at the reception desk. “Harley, a gentleman here to see you.” />
  His heart faltered, seeing a thin, balding man in a shapeless suit, rumpled white shirt and a paisley tie. The man rose from one of the reception chairs, a clipboard and a manila envelope in hand. “Harley Buchanan?”

  “Yes…” he said, little more than a whisper. Fred and Steve exchanged quizzical looks, then politely sauntered on toward their cubicles in the layout department, stealing curious glances back over their shoulders.

  “Mr. Buchanan, this document is for you. If you’ll just sign here, please.”

  Harley looked at the clipboard, at the manila envelope. “What is it?”

  “Conformation of receipt.” The man attempted a smile. “Twice already I’ve tried to deliver to your home address.”

  Here it was—the bad news informing him of whatever tragedy had befallen Sherylynne and Leah. He took a step back and let himself down in one of the reception chairs before his legs gave way.

  Nelda rose partway up behind her desk in alarm, paused, then slowly resettled herself.

  Harley attempted to pull himself together. Watching his hands take the clipboard, he tired to focus on the single sheet of paper, its one short paragraph stating receipt of a petition from…from…Midland County, Texas…318th District Court…?

  A small glimmer of cautious relief—it was some legal whatever from back in Midland, and not a notification of tragedy from Vinton, Louisiana. Shakily, he signed his name on the line marked with a red X. The man practically snatched the clipboard from his hands, handed him the envelope and hurried toward the elevators.

  “Are you okay?” Nelda whispered.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, breaking the seal on the envelope, pulling a small sheaf of papers out, “I thought something had happened to—” He stopped in mid-sentence, his eyes fixed on Sherylynne’s name typed under a line reading: Name of person filing for divorce (Petitioner). On a line below, his name was typed under: Your spouse’s name (Respondent). It was a one-two punch—Divorce? Midland, Texas? He absorbed it at once: Sherylynne hadn’t gone back to Vinton, Louisiana, at all, but to Midland…which meant…

  Only vaguely aware of proofreaders returning from lunch, of Nelda watching, he got up and stepped around the corner toward the men’s room.

  He threw up in one of the toilets. When after a few minutes he came out of the stall, Mr. Nelson, his supervisor, was standing at one of the sinks, washing his hands, watching him with what might be either concern or displeasure. Of course, Nelda had gone to him.

  Harley stepped to a lavatory a few units away, rinsed his mouth and spat a few times, then washed his face.

  “Sorry,” he said weakly.

  “Are you okay?” Mr. Nelson asked, drying his hands on paper towels.

  “Yes, sir,” Harley said, drying his own face and hands. “I’m good.” He had an insane urge to laugh out loud, to run amok.

  Mr. Nelson watched him closely. “Anything I can help with?”

  Harley shook his head, unable to speak.

  “Listen,” Mr. Nelson said after a moment, “why don’t you take the rest of the day off. You don’t look well.”

  Kindness at this point was something he couldn’t deal with. He nodded, mute, blotting his eyes with the paper towels.

  “You know, if there’s anything we can do…” Mr. Nelson said gently.

  Harley was both grateful and humiliated. “Thank you,” he managed. “Just had a bit of a shock is all.” He paused again. “I don’t think I’d be much good to you this afternoon. So, yes, I’ll take you up on that offer. I ’preciate it.”

  THAT EVENING HE looked the petition over. There was a “Waiver of Service” form included, a part of which read, “I waive the making of a record of testimony in this case,” and “I agree that the case may be decided by the presiding Judge or the Court or by a duly appointed Associate Judge of the Court.”

  He put the papers aside and called Whitehead.

  “Son, what’s got into you, anyway?”

  “What’s got into me?”

  “I never took you for one to abuse a woman.”

  “What? She tell you that?”

  “Said she was afraid to stay in the same room with you, her and the baby both.”

  Harley didn’t know if Whitehead was lying, or if Sherylynne had really told him such a thing.

  “Let me talk to her,” he said.

  “She ain’t here, livin’ in that little house of y’all’s.”

  “She have a phone?”

  “She said if you called, she didn’t want to talk to you.”

  “Well, one of us is crazy as hell, that’s for sure.”

  “She sez so. Sez it’s you.”

  “What’s she living on? You giving her money?”

  “I’m gonna pay her a little bit to come over twice a week, clean and cook up a little something. She said you wouldn’t give her any money.”

  “She really tell you I was abusive? You know me better’n that.”

  “Well, that ain’t for me to say. I ’spect that’s what she’s tellin’ the court.”

  THE NEXT MORNING he called the Midland Child Support Services. They refused to tell him where Leah was. He threatened not to pay if they didn’t, and was informed that Sherylynne had gotten an injunction against him: he wasn’t allowed within fifty yards of her or Leah. Furthermore, a warrant for his arrest would be issued if he ceased payments.

  “Are you crazy!” he shouted.

  He hung up and wrote a hand-written letter to the court in Midland, explaining that he didn’t have money to make the trip for the court hearing. He enclosed a copy of his weekly check stub, and asked for visiting rights to see Leah.

  Love, he decided, was like the chicken pox, or measles; it slipped up on you when you weren’t looking, and sometimes you got over it and sometimes it left you with pockmarks and atrophied testicles.

  HE STILL WORKED Monday through Friday at JCPenney, but had to drop the two classes at SVA for lack of money.

  At night he listened to WBAI, or Jean Shepard and Long John Silver on WOR. He often lay awake, stomach knotted, longing for Sherylynne. He missed Leah, missed his own family, and determined he’d make a trip home to Separation if Martin ever sold another painting.

  HE TOOK REFUGE in work at JCPenney, lapsing often into stupors in which he shut everything out, and for a time was aware of nothing other than organizing the car batteries, tires, and golf clubs on the pre-printed layout sheets. As long as he could focus on the job at hand, he did okay. His coworkers were curious, of course, but considerate. The more he withdrew, the more they left him alone.

  Back in the loft, his paintings darkened. His forms became fragmented and more abstract, and began to interlock in peculiar juxtaposition. Sharp angular shapes with violent undertones found their way into gridlike compositions. A painting was finished when he found he could live with it a while and still find it interesting.

  He stood back from the wall now and studied a piece he had been working on: My Mother’s Kitchen. He recalled his mother’s kitchen as clean and bare: sunlight shimmering on the fields, reflecting back through the screen door, dazzling off the scrubbed countertops and floors. He recalled an old crock mixing bowl—Naples yellow with two bands of cobalt blue; the smell of yeasty bread: the happy humming of his mother’s voice as she kneaded dough on the enamel-topped table: the clink and clatter as she mixed and stirred and baked. It wasn’t the appearance of the kitchen he was after, but its essence, the way it felt in memory. He had struggled with the elegant feminine shapes, the spare purity, the high-keyed silvery light, until finally the juxtaposed elements were almost entirely abstract. The result was distilled emotion. Emotion without sentimentality. He felt it was his most successful work to date.

  And there was no one to discuss it with.

  He thought of van Gogh who sold only one painting in his short, tormented life, unappreciated and misunderstood by almost everyone other than his brother. But how much did anyone ever fully understand anyone else? Ultimately, everyone went
through their life alone, with their own thoughts and feelings, and if they ever connected with anyone on any level at all, they were the exception. Blessed.

  He cleaned the brushes with mineral spirits, dipped them in linseed oil, wiped the excess off, and dropped them upright in coffee cans. He disposed of the oily paint rags in a metal garbage can he kept behind a folding screen. Well, for the moment, anyway, he was pleased. Now he would see if he could live with it.

  HE RECEIVED A registered letter from the 318th District Court in Midland, Texas, stating that due to his neglect in returning a formal response, Sherylynne Buchanan had been granted a divorce in absentia. Child support was almost one-third of his take-home; he was to make the payments to Midland County Child Support Services. He had been granted alternating weekend visiting privileges, and alternating Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays with approved supervision. He would be responsible for any and all travel expenses.

  Chapter 40

  Texas Bank & Trust

  NOVEMBER CAME. He had been in New York one year. Sherylynne and Leah had been gone seven months. His bank account was exhausted each month after rent and child support. No longer was he able to afford quality art supplies. He took peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to work instead of going out with Steve and Fred. At home he cooked pinto beans and rice, and made potato soup.

  The smell of roasting chestnuts on the cool air replaced the soured heat of summer. He turned off the ceiling fans and the Vernado shop fan which he carried back and forth between the work area and loft where he slept. Some nights now, he dug out an extra blanket.

  He sometimes thought of Frankie—that kiss on Christmas Eve, the emotional parting before Sherylynne arrived two weeks later. He hadn’t heard from Frankie since. They had only been friends, but close friends. Too close, he realized now, and that was why she had dropped from sight.