The Goddesses of Kitchen Avenue: A Novel

by Barbara O'Neal

  Something about his words makes me feel emotional. I lower my head, pull my upper lip between my teeth.

  He gets to his feet. “All right, let’s get to work, then.”

  And this time, I smile, showing that I’m thrilled. “Thank you,” I say fiercely, and shake his hand. “I will work hard. You won’t believe how hard.”

  “I believe you.” He pulls his hand away. “Let’s go.”

  They come to me, my essential things.

  They are refrains of refrains.

  “In Another Mode”

  FEDERICO GARCÍA LORCA,

  Translated by LYSANDER KEMP

  20

  TRUDY

  The deep coral wall startles me the next morning. I stand and admire it, surprised and pleased at my bravery, thinking that I might get some India cotton pillows—with tiny mirrors—to go with it.

  Emboldened, I put on some music and turn it up so that I can hear it in the kitchen, not caring if I awaken my slugabed child. The rule is, you can sleep as late as you like, but I don’t have to change what I’d be doing during normal hours. The CD is a Paul Simon collection I’ve had for years, one that never fails to lift my spirits. Once Richard, my eldest, came by and I was playing it, and he said, “This CD always makes me think of my childhood. We always used to catch you dancing all wild in the kitchen.”

  Darling boy.

  This morning, I’m barefoot beneath my loose pajamas with their drawstring waist. The small weight of my breasts bobble around unfettered, and it makes me feel young. Like I might have a life ahead of me still. Singing along to “Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard,” I pull out a heavy ceramic bowl one of the students in the art department made for me years ago, and check the fridge for the ingredients for blintzes. There are some blackberries in the freezer, some cottage cheese I bought the other day, and although there’s no sour cream, there is applesauce.

  Blintzes are also one of my few kitchen specialties. I burn waffles every single time, and it irks me to have to keep a waffle iron clean, and I don’t seem to have the knack of keeping biscuits soft enough, but my blintzes are excellent. If I’m making breakfast for me, I might as well do what I like. Singing aloud, I put cottage cheese, cream cheese, eggs, and butter into the blender, whirl it all together, and set it aside. After “Me and Julio” are a couple of songs I don’t like, and I hit the CD player to skip to “Rock of Ages.” Measure flour, milk, eggs, and oil into a bowl and stir it smooth, singing, “Ooh, my mama loves me.” I do love my children. This song used to make them happy when I’d grab them and rock them back and forth. I’m glad one of them remembers.

  I don’t have a crêpe pan, but the biggest cast-iron skillet works very well, and I set it to heating while I open the berries and put them in the microwave.

  And bopping in my kitchen, in my bare feet, I suddenly feel so excited. God, I can do anything! Go anywhere, be anybody! I’m healthy. I have resources. My kids are practically grown. Beneath my old pajamas is skin that could still be touched by someone in love. Or passion.

  Skip cut seven. Also eight, which is “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover.” Also nine, which is a sort of hymnlike thing I’m not in the mood for right now. Which takes us to ten, “Late in the Evening,” and I take the pan off the burner just so I can give it my full attention.

  This is the song the kids used to try to sneak up on me on. The Latin rhythms, the slightly Cuban sound just stirs me up, and although I’m not much of an elegant dancer, I do love to get down, especially in my own kitchen, all alone, where it doesn’t matter if my shimmy is lousy (which it is). This morning, it’s a joy because I can throw up my hands and dance like I’m really good at it, because there’s no one to see me.

  And there I am, a gorgeous young woman, Spanish maybe, with breasts spilling lusciously out of a tight blouse, and I have on high heels, and my arms are above my head, bracelets skittering down in a feminine wash. My hair swishes over my shoulders, breasts, arms, and I’m singing, too.

  God, it’s so much fun. I think of Lucille, and Angel, who probably knows how to dance really well, and my red wall, and I’m alive for the first time in months. I’m warm. Hot, even. I want to drink and dance and have wild sex.

  Rick Marino is an idiot. How could he ever want anyone besides me? The thought comes to me as I get to the end of the song, and it makes me laugh.

  I open my eyes.

  And scream before I can register it’s only Rick standing there. He’s leaning against the back door, his eyes smiling, his tongue tucked under his lip in the way I know so well. He looks awful. Haggard and pale, like he hasn’t slept, but I don’t care this time. My cheeks flush with humiliation and before I know it, I’ve hit him, hard, in the arm. “That’s not fair!”

  He laughs. “What? I’ve seen you do that a million times.”

  I slam the pan down on the burner. “I don’t care!” I whirl around. “You have no right to just keep coming in here like this without any warning.”

  “I knocked—you didn’t hear me, but I could hear the music. I didn’t think you’d mind.”

  “Well, I do! This is my house. I don’t just come into your house. I don’t even go to your house.”

  “You could, if you wanted to.”

  “Well, I don’t.” Humiliation, full-throated as a scream, pulses through me, and I put my hands over my face. “God, Rick, I was having so much fun, and you took it all away by spying on me!”

  He casts his eyes downward. “Sorry. I just stopped by to bring you some things.” He lifts a plastic shopping bag. From Lowe’s, I notice, and heat fills my belly. One by one, he puts the goods on the counter. Lightbulbs, both sixty watt and one hundred. “I noticed the porch light was out the other day.” Dish soap for the dishwasher. A hammer, because I complained that I didn’t have one when he took his tools with him. “Check this out. It should be a nice size for you.”

  “It’s good. Thanks.”

  His nose twitches. He doesn’t look at me. “Making blintzes?”

  “Yeah. Figure I might as well make my favorite things since I’m the only one eating around here.”

  He nods. “Well, sorry I bothered you. Put your song back on and dance all you want.”

  “Rick,” I say to stop him as he’s turning. He stops, hope in his face. Hope of what, I wonder? “We can’t just keep living in the middle like this. I need to go on. It’s too hard to have you just coming and going. You have to call me first.”

  “That’s fair.”

  Why do I feel so lousy about this? I’m not the sinner here. He is. Still, I can’t leave it at that. “Annie is off work tomorrow night.”

  “Yeah. Lotta good it’ll do me. She hasn’t returned one of my phone calls in a week.”

  “She’s been pretty busy.”

  “Right.” He swallows. It makes me notice his throat, how thin his neck looks.

  “Can I offer a suggestion?”

  “Sure.”

  “Just show up, Rick. Be there when she gets off work tonight. Usually she gets off around ten, but sometimes they go a little later.”

  “I didn’t want to make her madder.”

  “I’m not saying it will work for sure, but it’s worth a try.”

  He nods.

  Some demon, the old wife-person I was for so long, says, “I know they aren’t your favorites, but if you want some blintzes, I have plenty.”

  “Thanks, but I made some bacon and eggs already.”

  “Okay.” I smile. “Have a good day.”

  For a minute, he stands by the door, his arms limp at his sides, and just looks around the kitchen. “You, too,” he says, and goes.

  * * *

  Annie says, about the new wall, “I hate it.”

  Jade says, “Wow. Fantastic!”

  Shannelle suggests that a few lemon-colored accents might be really great, and she’s right. I buy pillows in pale orange and lemon yellow.

  Rick has been scarce, mainly because I check the caller ID every time the phon
e rings and I answer it only when I’m feeling calm and strong. Today, he’s stopped by to bring me some tamales from a customer’s wife. He stands in the middle of the living room and stares at the wall, saying nothing until he notices the television is gone. Wide-eyed, he says, “What’d you do with it?”

  “I put it upstairs. I never watch it.”

  “Yes, you do. What about The Sopranos?”

  I shrug. “It’s not the same. I canceled HBO anyway. Seemed stupid to pay sixty dollars a month for something I never use.”

  “You canceled cable?”

  The tamale I’ve heated in the microwave is absolutely perfect. I stand in the kitchen barefooted, eating it at the counter. “God, this is good.”

  “Trudy. Why did you cancel cable?” He swings a hand at the wall. “And how could you do something like this without talking to me?”

  I laugh. It’s somewhere between bitter and sad. “You don’t live here anymore, Rick.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  I raise my eyebrows. “A mechanic also fixed the brakes on my car.”

  Hands on his hips, he says, “Well, that was brilliant. Why didn’t you just ask me?”

  “It’s time I learned to do things on my own.” My voice is very calm. My heart isn’t pounding. “I mean, I don’t know what you’re planning on, exactly, but I told you two weeks ago that I’m tired of living in the middle. You’re obviously really in love with Carolyn, and it’s time I accepted that and moved on.”

  “It’s not like that.”

  “Whatever it is.” I shrug, stick another tamale in the microwave. “We can be friends because I have a hard time imagining a life without you in it and our kids need you, no matter what they think right now. I also think you need them.”

  “Of course I do.” His brow is beetling, drawing that dark look into his eyes. Boiling in the blue. “Is this what you want?”

  “Rick, I have things to do and I don’t want to get into a big fight. Maybe this isn’t the best time to talk.”

  He looks back at the red wall. Nods. “When is Colin going to be home for Thanksgiving?”

  A pain hits my solar plexus. “He’s not. He’s going to a friend’s instead. He’ll be home at Christmas.” The microwave dings and I take out the tamale, wrap it in a napkin, give it to Rick. “Have you talked to him?”

  He sits heavily at the table, unwraps the corn husk, salts it. “If you want to call it that. He’s polite and answers my questions, but then there’s always some reason to get off the phone.”

  I pour him a glass of milk, sit with him at the table. “He’ll come around.”

  He says nothing.

  Suddenly, I am aware of his mouth, his hands. His hair, shining. The silence of a childless house all around us, the luxury of a couple of free hours. I think of our bed—my bed—how good it would be to lie down in it with him, have his hands on me. I eye the line of his throat and imagine kissing it, and my nipples pearl under my blouse.

  He notices, raises his eyes. There’s surprise there, but something else, too. A taut sense of anticipation, green with possibility, and blue around the edges with memory, grows, fills the kitchen like some wild jungle plant.

  I turn away, stand up, move a spoon from the counter to the sink, focus on breathing evenly. It’s been months since I had sex, and I feel every long minute of deprivation now, feel it on the nape of my neck and the soles of my feet, every single inch of my body so starved for touch that a single brush of his finger on my shoulder would probably make me shake from head to toe.

  “That shirt’s new, isn’t it?” he says.

  It’s an airy green peasant blouse, a little too thin for the current weather, but it’s warm inside. “Yeah,” I say. “I’m turning back into a hippie, I guess.”

  “It’s a good look for you.”

  It might be safe to turn around, and I do, but he looks at my flushed face and his eyes glitter. “You should probably go,” I say, putting my hands on the counter behind me. Both defiant and relaxed. I don’t need you.

  But his blue, blue eyes have been looking at me for years, and he knows exactly what’s in my mind just this minute. “We could fool around,” he says, lightly. “Friends do that for each other once in a while, right?”

  And God, I am tempted. It dries my throat, and makes me shake, I want it so much. But if I do, if I let myself take this beautiful, sexy man upstairs to my room, I will be right back to square one, and I’ve made a lot of progress the past few weeks.

  I close my eyes. “Can’t do it.”

  “All right.” He’s so lighthearted that I realize I was hoping for a little coercion, which only sends flames of anger into my body to mix with the flames of hunger, and I’m ready to have a mad orgasm or take a rifle to the nearest tower, and it requires everything I have to turn away, put my hands in my pockets so I won’t hit him or reach for him or whatever it is that is roaring through me. “You change your mind, you know where to find me.”

  I toss my hair out of my face. Glare at him. For a single, heart-wrenching second, I see past the glitter he’s trying so hard to put on for my sake, down to the bottom of his empty, empty world.

  Then he’s gone, and I’m calling, “Thanks for the tamales!”

  * * *

  By evening, my mood is no better. It’s a week to Thanksgiving, and I’m trying not to think about what it’s going to be like to have all those missing plates around the table. Richard, Jo, and Minna are coming, and I’ll coax a sullen Annie to the table, but it’s not going to be easy.

  I call Jade, who is not home, go out for a walk, and come home even more restless. Contemplate a movie. I need a life, is what I need. I spend an hour on the computer looking up courses I could take in January. Spanish meets five days a week, but I think I might do it anyway.

  Finally I do what I’ve been thinking about for hours: I put on my makeup, very subtly so it won’t show, bundle up the tamales, and carry them next door. It’s just dusk, and the wind chimes are ringing in the wind that’s blowing my hair as Angel answers the door.

  “Hi,” I say, grabbing a hank of hair out of my face so I can see him. He’s wearing jeans and a simple white shirt, and looks like something you’d want to take a really long time to eat. “I won’t bother you, but I thought you might like some tamales. My hus—my soon-to-be ex-husband, that is, brought them over and I can’t eat all of them.”

  “Come in.” He smiles and steps back, bowing in a courtly way to gesture me in.

  “That’s okay. I just wanted you to try them. They’re made by a woman in town who—”

  Gently, he reaches for my hand and pulls me over the threshold. “It is too cold to talk on the porch.”

  “I just didn’t want to interrupt anything.”

  “No,” he says, spreading his hands, “as you see, I am doing nothing at all and am glad to have a visitor. Would you like some coffee?”

  I hesitate, wonder what I’m doing. “I’d rather have something stronger.”

  His smile is brilliant, shiny white and knowing. “Wine, then. I prefer it myself.” He points to a sofa. “Sit. I will be right back.”

  I perch on the very edge of the couch, and don’t take off my coat. It’s a small place, just four rooms in a box, but I am pleased by the small touches of home he’s given it. There is a serape over a chair, purple and green, and some velvet throw pillows around the room. No television, I notice, but it might be in the bedroom. A collection of black-and-white photos adorns one wall, and I get up to look at them. “Are these your work?” I call.

  He brings big goblets of red wine. “Yes. Do you like them?”

  Like is an understatement. They are all of women, some beautiful, some not. Their bodies are all sorts of shapes, slim and long, round and squat, some nude, some just ordinary sittings—a peasant Indian, an old white woman at a fair, balloons around her head. In every one, he has caught something extraordinary, and I’m struggling with what it is. “They’re luminous.” My finger hovers over the cu
rve of a nude’s back, the skin glowing as if lit from within, and I point to the cheekbones of the Indian. “You have a wonderful eye.”

  “Thank you.”

  I turn. “Are you a professional?”

  He lifts a shoulder, meets my eyes. “Sí. It is how I travel. The travel gives me subjects, and the subjects give me money to keep seeing new things.”

  “Why did you stop in Pueblo?” I sip the wine. It’s a light-bodied crisp thing, like a harvest night. “It seems an unlikely spot.”

  He looks over my shoulder to the photos. “Not really.” He sits and gestures for me to do the same, and he’s so comfortable in his own skin and with me there that I start to relax. He flips through a stack of CDs on the floor, picks one out, sticks it in. Spanish guitar fills the room, and he smiles. “Will this do?”

  “Perfect.”

  Sitting cross-legged with his back against a chair, he sips the wine. “A friend told me that Colorado Springs was beautiful, and there were things I should see there, but I did not like it.” He shook his head. “There is a coldness in the air. No warmth in the faces. So I was going to drive to New Mexico, but first I have a relative here and I stopped to see him, my uncle.”

  “Oh, really? Where does he live?”

  He points over his shoulder. “One block away. That night, the light came down the street, and it looked as if there would be fairies coming out of the shrubs. So I stayed to see if I could find them.” He smiles. “Are you afraid of me now?”

  I laugh. “No. Not at all. I know just what you mean.” The guitar is throaty and full of sex, and yet I feel no urgency, just sitting here. He’s too young, too beautiful, too everything for me, but it does my wounded soul some good to have him being kind this way. I don’t feel like a hag sitting in Angel’s house. “Now I feel a little silly that I was taking your picture in the park, like I knew what I was doing.”

  “No, no! How did it turn out?”

  “I haven’t developed them yet.”

  “You should. Then show me. I will teach you, if you like.”

  “All right. Sure. I was thinking today I’m ready to learn some new things.”