And then the kids went to bed, and I decided this was the best possible time to talk to him, so I put on something a little more comfortable, if you know what I mean, and we made love, and it was really very sweet, and I do love him, damn it! Then I got us both a Dr Pepper and we sat in the candlelight in our room, just talking, and I told him about the scholarship and everything. I told him how honored I was, and how happy, and about the airline voucher, and my whole plan for the cooking, and that I’d arrange everything so it’s as easy as pie for him.
You know what he said, Naomi? “No.” Just “No.” Not, “I’m so happy for you,” or “I know you’ve wanted to be a writer since you were ten and I’m proud of you,” or anything. Just flat, plain “No.”
I argued with him, tried to present it in a new way. My neighbor across the street told me that whatever he said, he would be afraid that he would lose me if I went, so I was trying to be compassionate, and I told him how much I loved him, and how I would think of him every day, but I really want this chance, that it was rare and special, and I even told him he should be proud of me.
And what he said then was, “No.” Again.
And in that minute, I was so mad I couldn’t even see straight. I thought about my mom, turning into this gray person, trying to please my dad. I thought about my sister killing herself over some stupid boy who used her and broke her heart. I thought about how hard I work to make this family comfortable and real and good. (I’m crying again, damn it!)
That’s when I told him I didn’t need his permission. I wanted his blessing, but not his permission. I told him that I was going whether he liked it or not. He said, “If you do, our marriage is over.”
The one thing in this life that terrifies me is being a single mother, Naomi. It scares the hell out of me. But turning into my mother scares me more, and I have to do this. I have to see if I have what it takes to be a writer. If I give this up, I won’t be me anymore. I won’t be me. And he’ll just be married to a ghost anyway.
I’m hoping he’ll come to his senses in the morning, but if he doesn’t, that’s his problem. My neighbors will help me, I know they will. And my mother-in-law will help, too. Watch and see. I am just so furious with him!!! If he had some big chance to do anything, I would stand on my head to make sure he could do it.
Love,
Shannelle
TO: [email protected]
FROM: [email protected]
SUBJECT: hang in there
ah, shannelle, i’m sorry you’re getting so much resistance from tony. do you think it would help if i wrote him a letter?
he will come around. he loves you and your children and your life. you have to keep on your own path and be true to your goals and your life, and he will come around.
if you’re tempted to give in, i want you to think about your boys and the example that you are providing for them. you’re showing them that it’s worth fighting anyone, everyone, for a chance to really be yourself.
and i haven’t said it before, shannelle, but i’m deeply honored to know you. you are brave and strong and beautiful. i know where you come from, because i’m from there, too. my world was the reservation, but it’s not all that different. poor is poor.
you have my phone number. if you feel scared or lost or lonely, call me. anytime, day or night. i mean it.
love,
naomi
“AIR OF ANDALUSIA ROME”
In this exhibition and audio-visual production curators José María Rueda and Manuel Grosso discover the extraordinary personality of the bullfighter Ignacio Sánche Mejías, an intellectual in the world of bullfighting, to whom Lorca pays homage in his famous poem.
DATE AND PLACE: Fall of 1998, in different sections of the Plaza de la Maestranza of Seville.
SPONSORS: Las Reales Maestranzas.
39
TRUDY
The day after Christmas, my airline ticket for Seville arrives.
As I stand on the porch in the very cold sunshine, the envelope seems to burn my fingers with light and promise. My heart pings. I’ve become enamored with myself again, planning this trip, loving the vision of myself as a woman who can set out on her own, see what she wants to see.
I bring it in and sit down on the couch, open the envelope and look at the itinerary. For a moment, I can see myself settling in on the plane, buckling my seat belt over my yoga pants, which I’ve worn to be comfortable on the long flight. I booked a window seat so that I can see when we land in London and again in Seville.
Then the vision of me in that seat wavers and I see Rick, kissing my neck, and a filmstrip kaleidoscope of memories, more than twenty years of them. If I want my marriage, this stretch of time is critical, and with a pang of regret, I realize I can’t go. Not now. I’ll do it later, when things are stabilized between us, when this dark time is behind us. Maybe Rick will even go with me.
No.
My body protests that idea so vehemently that I’m amused. Okay, so I’ll go alone. Yeah, that’s good. I notice when the tenseness flows out of me. I’ll go alone, maybe next fall.
For now, though, I can’t go. All day, I’ve been alight with possibilities. Hope. I keep thinking of the painting of the woman on Rick’s wall, and what that means. I think of my tears, of his. For the first time in months, I feel there is a chance for us, and I’m not going to let it pass.
I prop the ticket by my computer monitor to remind me to cancel it and my reservations in the Old Jewish Quarter in Seville. Time enough. If I can’t cancel the ticket, maybe I’ll give it to Angel.
As I’m standing there, the phone rings. Without stopping to check caller ID, I answer it. There is silence on the other end of the line. After a minute, I hang up, shrugging it off.
But it happens six times over the course of the day. Again the next day. And the next. The numbers are different, but all are local, and after the twelfth one, I sit down with the Internet and do a reverse lookup. Two of them are cell-phone numbers and return a “no information available” response. The third is Maggie’s Place.
The bar where Carolyn works.
I sit there for long moments, mulling over my options. I haven’t talked to Rick since Christmas Day, and I want to keep it that way for a while longer. The ball is in his court.
The phone rings again, and I look at the caller ID. It’s the one for Maggie’s Place, and I let it ring through to voice mail, wondering if there will be any message. Maybe if she doesn’t have to talk directly to me, she’ll be able to speak her mind.
But when I retrieve the message, there is only a little sound of distant traffic, then the connection is ended.
I hear Angel’s voice say, What are you going to do about that?
In sudden decision, I put on my boots and grab my purse before I can change my mind. The air is bitterly cold and I have to pull a scarf around my face to keep from freezing the little hairs in my lungs. I start the car and let it warm up while I scrape the ice from the windshield. It’s a quiet holiday afternoon, too bright with that cold sun and cloudless turquoise sky, and there aren’t many children out in the bitterness. I drive through town without feeling the slightest bit nervous until I park in front of the bar on Santa Fe.
I stand by the car for a minute, doing some yoga breathing to steady myself. When my heart has stopped racing, I cross the sidewalk, hearing the heels of my boots hit the sidewalk with a sound of purpose, and take a breath before I enter the bar.
In the light of day, it’s a grim setting. The bottles look cold, and the air smells of old nights. There are only a few aging men dotted along the length of the bar, and a pair of businessmen in a booth, eating hamburgers. The jukebox is mute. The television is broadcasting a talk show. Carolyn is washing glasses and looks up as I come in. Her face goes still.
As calmly as I am able—which feels about as steady as an earthquake—I cross the brown-and-white linoleum and settle on a stool at one end. “Hi,” I say, taking my wallet out of my purse. “I’ll have a so
da and lime, please.”
For a moment, she only looks at me. Nothing shows on her wellschooled bartender face. No speculation, no fear, nothing. She dries her hands on the sparkling white bar towel and takes a tall glass from the counter, fills it with ice, then soda, squeezes a lime wedge into it. As she does it, I’m observing her in a way I’ve never had an opportunity to before. There are things I’ve seen before—her hair is painfully over-processed and dry, but today it’s pulled back in a French braid. Her pants are too tight, but the body is still good enough that she can get away with it.
There are things I haven’t noticed before, too. Her hands are long and graceful, with very long, very attractive nails. She’s wearing turquoise-and-silver rings on three fingers. One is on her left ring finger and I wonder with a little pinch in my chest if Rick gave it to her. As she carries the drink to me, the daylight coming in through the windows is not kind to her face. She looks good for forty-nine, but it won’t be long before she’ll have to give up the tight jeans and long hair. And what will she do then?
I feel a sudden pity for her. If Rick and I divorce, I still have a lot of good in my life. I have my education, the money Lucille left me, a sense of possibilities, children, a home. She has a rented house, two children who are going nowhere, a job as a bartender. She needs him more than I do.
Carefully, she puts down a square white cocktail napkin and settles the glass on it exactly in the middle. “A dollar twenty-five,” she says. Her voice is resonant and lilting, very appealing in some way I can’t name. She puts her beautiful hands on the five I’ve laid on the bar. “Take it out of this?”
I nod. Sip the soda while she makes change and brings it back. She fans the three bills out neatly and puts the quarters down on top. I push one dollar toward her. She picks it up, loops it around her finger. Looks at me.
“I came to talk to you,” I say.
“I figured that out.”
I find I have to clear my throat. “I still love him, Carolyn. I think he still loves me, too.”
“No, Trudy.” She lifts an overplucked eyebrow. “He loves me. I’ve given him something you couldn’t.”
“I’m sure you have. I’m not here to argue. I don’t blame you or want to hurt you. I just came to tell you that I’ve spent twenty-five years loving that man and I’m not going to roll over and play dead. I’m going to fight for him.”
Her eyes narrow. “That’s pathetic. He’s been cheating on you for over a year. He hasn’t lived with you for six months. He loves me.” She touches her earrings, brings them out of her hair. They’re pretty silver-and-turquoise. “These are what he gave me for Christmas.”
And this does hurt. Like a punch to the solar plexus. But what did I think? That they wouldn’t exchange Christmas presents? Tacky.
“You could be right,” I finally manage. “I’m not saying he doesn’t have feelings for you. I’m saying that I’m not giving up.” I stand up, put my purse on my shoulder. “May the best woman win.”
* * *
As I pull into the driveway at home, the sun is going down. The air is so cold that the sky takes on a layering like a parfait, a smoky dusky blue on top, with a wide swath of pink below. I run inside and get the camera, even though I know it won’t be as beautiful as it is to my eye. It frustrates me a little, trying to get the perspective just right, and I suddenly remember a tree down the street, on the corner. Carrying the camera, I hurry down there, afraid the light will fade before I can capture it.
And there it is. A Chinese elm with black bark, reaching into the luscious layers of color, showing by contrast how vast the color is. Through the breaks in the street, I can see all the way to the mesas in the west, and the sun is lying between them, gold and promising.
I think of Angel and lower the camera. This is a moment I would like to share with him. The color, the light. Maybe he would speak to me in Spanish about it, teaching me new words. What is the Spanish for parfait sky? As I walk by his house on my way back, I am very tempted to stop, go in. Smell the cinnamon-and-brown-sugar scent of his rooms.
But I keep walking. His car is in the driveway, his magic pumpkin, and a light is burning in the window against the encroaching dusk. I focus on the fading pink in the sky, do not look through the window.
As I climb the steps to my porch, Shannelle arrives, her two boys in tow. “Hi, Trudy,” she says. “Do you have a minute? I need to talk to you.”
She sounds so weary that I glance at her sharply. Her eyes are red-rimmed. “What is it, honey? Another toothache? Come in and let me get you some tea.”
“Not a toothache,” she says. “Boys, go play in the back for a little while, okay?”
I touch her shoulder, flick on a light. Her cheeks are bled pale. “Let’s go in the kitchen. Boys, hold on and I’ll let you have some cookies.” They’re solemn, big-eyed, as they accept them. Always so perfectly brushed and groomed, these two. Without a word, they carry the cookies out to the back porch and take toy cars from their pockets. “What’s going on, Shannelle?”
She slumps in the chair without even taking off her coat, and pours out her story in a weary voice. I put the kettle on, take out big mugs, three boxes of tea, and a new box of Pepperidge Farm cookies. “So this morning,” she says, “he packed a suitcase and went to his mother’s.”
“Damn.”
She leans forward and combs her hair out of her face with sharp, strong strokes. “Yeah, well, he’s not going to bully me. He’s not. I’m sick of everybody telling me what I am and should do and be.” The kettle whistles and I pull it off the burner, pour hot water into our cups. “The reason I’m really here is to ask you a favor.”
“Shoot.”
Dipping her tea bag up and down through the water, she says, “Tony’s mom will let the boys stay with her during the day, even though he’s pissed about it. Roberta is going to keep them weekday nights, which made me feel guilty, but”—she shrugs one shoulder—“I think, and Jade agrees with me, that it’s good for her to stay busy and have something meaningful to do.”
“Yeah. So you need weekend nights? I’d be happy to do it. When are the dates?”
“February eighteen through twenty-eighth. It starts on a Friday, so that night.”
The dates overlap the Seville trip. It feels like a sign—this young woman needs my assistance more than I need to go to Spain. But I’d already made up my mind to give it up.
Hadn’t I?
“Okay, not a problem.”
She lets go of a sigh, reaches over the table. “Thank you, Trudy. So much. You’re the one who gave me enough courage to do it.”
“My pleasure, sweetie.” I squeeze her fingers. “I’m sorry Tony is so upset. I’m sure he’ll come around.”
“Either he will or he won’t.” But a betraying glaze of tears makes her eyes brighter blue. She blinks hard. “It breaks my heart, though, Trudy. It really does. Why do I have to choose one or the other?”
I shake my head. “I don’t know.”
* * *
After she’s gone, I’m restless, roaming the house looking for something to do. Annie is working, Colin is out with some high school friends. There’s a creeping sense of doom closing around me and I’m not sure what it’s about. I go to the greenhouse, with Zorro happily following behind.
Spider Woman is the goddess of the month, a mother image beloved by the Navajo, among others. The statue I have of her is a Native American woman with long black hair and angel wings, her arms outstretched to indicate bounty, openness, giving. I light a smudge stick of sweet grass and sage for her, and the earth-colored candles, and I sit in my little corner with her, among my plants. It is very quiet. The grow lights I use to supplement the darker corners provide a soft rosy glow. The smell of sweet grass and earth and damp growing things eases some of that creeping doom.
This is my sanctuary, this narrow room. It’s always been the place I retreated to, where I felt I could come and just be myself, putter in the dirt and grow flowers that a
re only for beauty and pleasure, nothing else. It was in here that I began to seriously consider the natural-healing classes that I saw advertised on a university bulletin board, where I felt free to erect my altars to the goddess figures who started to appeal to me. Against the dark glass, the angel-wing begonia’s spotted leaves glow, flowers hanging down in giant, sensual clusters, and I think of the photographs of the hotel courtyard in Seville.
Aloud, I begin to chant poetry in Spanish. Lorca, of course, but Neruda, too, and fragments of some others I only vaguely remember. I close my eyes to hear my voice roll through the Spanish syllables. My accent was always excellent, they told me, a point of pride, though I had nothing to do with it. I grew up where the lilt of Spanish influenced English so much that it was easy. And then Lucille spoke to me, gave me words, so passionate, so rolling on her tongue when she read to me the poems of her beloved Neruda. Those words, the words now falling from my lips in my own voice, promised adventure and courage and passion. I hear them and there are tears rolling down my cheeks because I’ve spoken this language only to Angel in all these years.
It will be sad when he leaves, goes on to his adventures.
And still I sit and recite poetry in Spanish. I think of the colors of Lorca, his green moons and silver grasses and water flowing through it all. It gives me goose bumps of pleasure, and I open my eyes to see the green of my world, the yellow glow of the candle, the softness of that rosy light. I see my hands in my lap, long and white, and wonder what they will do a year from now. Five. Twenty.
Zorro curls around my ankles, his tail a bushy softness. “How can I be so old and not know anything about myself?” I ask him. He meows quietly, blinking yellow-green eyes at me seductively. My long white hand moves to his head, fingers rub his ears. It’s like something that belongs to someone else, that hand, and I’m suddenly burning to see the photographs Angel took of me. I blow out the candle, scoop up the cat, and hurry upstairs to the closet in my bedroom, where I’ve hidden them away beneath a quilt we never use.
The Goddesses of Kitchen Avenue: A Novel Page 28