by Zoe Chant
Anger—righteous anger—boiled hot and bright inside her as she stamped up the tiled walkway under the towering California pepper trees, and onto the shaded verandah of her old rancho-style house. She stepped inside the cool, dim living room, and took a deep breath. Home. Safe.
Safe? What did that even mean in this situation?
She slammed the front door behind her.
“Godiva?” A woman’s voice echoed from the kitchen.
That was Wendy, one of Godiva’s former houseguests. After Wendy got her house back from her sleazy, grabby ex in her divorce, she’d moved back in, but she still came over to help Godiva, knowing how much she loathed kitchen work.
As Godiva told all her houseguests on their arrival, “I love eating, but I really hate cooking and cleaning. After years of long shifts as a waitress, the last thing I ever wanted was to come home to more food prep and cleanup. So I never was any good at cooking, which means when I say help yourself in my kitchen, I mean it.”
Wendy was a fabulous cook, and was turning into a fabulous friend. Too fabulous to snarl at, so Godiva didn’t answer, but turned down the hall toward her end of the rambling house. She passed the library she shared with her houseguests, then her study, which no one but her entered, and fetched up in her bedroom that looked into the garden full of native trees and wildflowers. But the sight no longer had the power to enchant her.
Feverishly she began yanking drawers open and tossing clothes into a suitcase. She should call a Lyft. But to where? The airport? She could pick a city once she got there, wherever the next flight went . . .
“Godiva?” That was Wendy again, a pretty, curvy woman of fifty, standing in the doorway looking worried. “Are you okay?”
“No. Yes. I’m fine.” Godiva’s knees trembled, and she plumped down on her waterbed. It sloshed comfortingly under her. It wasn’t the kind she’d put up with in the seventies, which inevitably leaked and smelled of mildew. A modern one that had all the comfort and none of the drawbacks. But they were harder and harder to find.
She looked around. If she ran, she lost that comfort.
She lost everything.
But . . . wasn’t that better than having her heart shredded and stomped into smoking bits by him turning up again?
Vaguely aware of the knocker rapping on the front door, she turned to Wendy. “I’m glad you dropped by,” Godiva said. “Look, I’ve been meaning to do this anyway. I mean, I’m eighty-plus years old, and everyone is always yapping about bucket lists and so forth, though I don’t feel old. No, I’m sidetracking myself. Wendy.”
She snorted out a breath.
Just do it.
“You can move back out of that termite-infested money-pit of yours. Give it back to your crapsack ex, since he tried so hard to take it from you out of sheer spite. Let him throw money down that rathole. You move back here with your kid. Take over my rooms. You’ll take care of the other houseguests the way you’ve been helping me, right?”
“What?” Wendy stared back at Godiva, looking as if she’d been whacked by a two-by-four. “Wait, what’s happening?”
Godiva resumed the feverish packing. “I’ll contact you when I get . . .” Somewhere? Anywhere but here.
Wendy continued to look bewildered.
In the silence that followed, the knocker at the front door rapped more insistently. Godiva mentally shrugged—it was either a delivery, or a visitor for one of her houseguests, of course. Her friends never just dropped by.
She dropped the socks she had been pulling out of her top drawer. “I’m not crazy. I mean it. You’d be able to quit that grunt job and write full time . . .”
“Godiva, what’s wrong?” Wendy asked.
“I just need to get away for a time. Call it R&R.” She didn’t admit that her own definition was ‘run and reinvent.’ It wouldn’t be the first time. Godiva hadn’t thought there’d ever be a need again.
Surprise, surprise.
Wendy eyed her uncertainly. “You’ve a perfect right, of course, to take a sudden trip . . .”
Godiva could have kicked herself. She’d totally forgotten that tomorrow was the Writers’ Group. For at least a year she’d been trying to coax Wendy into attending, as she was a talented writer. Very talented, actually—though she didn’t believe it, after years of insidious putdowns from Bill, her trash fire of an ex.
It was not surprising that Wendy kept wavering about attending. And Godiva had promised to be there when she was ready. They’d even talked about this week.
Wendy blinked, then said slowly, “I’d thought . . . no. This is not even remotely about me. Godiva, you don’t look like nothing’s going on. What happened? Can I help?”
Guilt made Godiva wince as the thought hit her—if she ran now, she would never again see anyone at the writers’ group. “Ah, I just really need a getaway,” she said, and knew from the way Wendy blinked that she sounded like a madwoman.
“Okay,” Wendy said, backing into the hallway as she added quickly, “I’m not ready for a writer’s group yet anyway, to tell you the truth. Maybe I’ll be ready eventually. In which case I’ll woman up and go by myself. That’s for me to deal with. What matters right now is you. If you need a vacation, I’ll be glad to help here.”
At that moment the door knocker rapped more insistently. Wendy cast one troubled glance back, then closed Godiva’s bedroom door softly.
Thirty seconds later there was an unfamiliar knock on the door.
“Godiva?”
Godiva tossed aside a sock. “Doris?”
Doris never just dropped in on anybody. Her well-meaning but volatile family was so up in everyone’s business that Doris always scheduled everything.
Godiva went to the door and opened it. Doris stood there, with Bird at her shoulder, eyes wide. Farther down the hallway Wendy hovered, looking worried.
Doris said, “Godiva—” Her eyes flicked past Godiva to the bed, and the suitcase, then widened. “You’re leaving?”
Godiva had badly wanted to just slide out. She loathed partings and farewells. But caught was caught.
“Come in,” she grumped.
They did, and as Bird shut the door, Doris said, “Godiva, if you feel unsafe—”
Godiva sighed sharply. “No. Nothing like that. That is, I’m in no danger.” She scowled. “If anyone is, it’s him. I knew I had to get out of here,” she muttered, turning away. “I knew it.”
“What? Get out of . . . the room? The house?”
“The town,” Godiva said fiercely as she opened a drawer and pulled out a fistful of undies that were the very opposite of granny panties. She’d spent far too many years grimly rewashing the same three pairs of cheap cotton undies until she’d finally had enough success to climb out of poverty. Usually it made her smile to be wearing silky, lacey nothings in lurid colors beneath her clothes. Stuff no one knew was there but her.
Now, the sight of them, the sight of everything, torched her to the toenails.
“This whole week . . . I just knew I had to get away. I must be like those animals that can sniff an earthquake coming,” she muttered as she hurled the panties into the suitcase. “After all these years, how dare he show up here. In my town. Tools right up in that gangstermobile, as if nothing happened, as if it wasn’t sixty mother-loving years . . .”
“He?” Bird asked in a cautious voice. “Rigo? The man who came to the bakery?”
Godiva’s lips parted, but her throat had tightened. She froze, furious with herself. Nope nope nope. Not a single tear for slimy sidewinders.
She shook her head, mentally surveying her stuff. Her library, the garden outside, that she had worked on for over twenty years.
It was time to go. Rip the band-aid and just do it.
“Please let us help,” Bird said softly. “You did that for every one of us.”
“As well as half the women in this town,” Doris added.
“There’s nothing to help.” Godiva crossed her arms tightly. “It’s time I moved o
n.”
“It seems . . .” Bird said tentatively, “ . . . you don’t trust us?”
Godiva propped a fist on her hip. “Wait a minute. How did my moving on become about trust?”
Doris leaned against the door. “Godiva, you chucked that tray at that man like a champ.”
Bird added, “And the Shakespeare. The only time I’ve ever heard you hurling Shakespearean insults has been at total nogoodniks.”
Doris then chimed in, “Gangstermobile? As in, Rigo is a gangster?”
Godiva took a deep breath. “I don’t know. That car made me think of gangsters. How could I know either way? I haven’t laid eyes on that sniveling lewdster of beastliness since the day I told him I was pregnant, over sixty years ago, and he up and vamoosed.”
Bird’s jaw dropped. “He walked out on you when you were pregnant?”
“He was outa there so fast he probably left a vapor trail. I haven’t seen him since, until he snaked into the bakery this morning, like a snaky snake thing.”
Doris’s eyes narrowed. “Jen had to go with Nikos . . . somewhere. But when she hears this she’ll want to knock him into next Tuesday. What a scumbag!”
Godiva pinched her brows. “I better call Linette, and tell her I’ll pay for damages,” she muttered.
Doris said, “Do that. Though when we left, she’d just put her kids and their buddies to work, as 99% of the mess was theirs.”
“Yeah, but I started it,” Godiva said. Then couldn’t help but grin. “And I nearly got him, too.”
Bird said gently, “What can we do for you? Call the police?”
“For what?” Godiva said, dropping her hands—her gnarled, eighty-year-old hands, so unlike the slim brown hands that had once caressed Rigo’s smooth, warm skin, all fine muscle over strong bones. “There’s nothing to call the police for. They’d laugh me off the planet for reporting an abandonment more than sixty years ago.”
Bird’s chin lifted. “Was he abusive?”
“Naw. I never would’ve put up with that.” Godiva looked at two of her longest-term friends. Yes, it did seem to be time to fess up. Rip the band-aid.
“If you want to hear this sadsack story of mine, better grab a chair. Though I’ll try not to whine too long. Stop me if I do.”
Doris sat on Godiva’s reading chair, and Bird perched on the footstool, saying, “In all the years I’ve known you, you’ve never whined, but you’ve listened to us whine. You’re owed.”
Godiva plopped down on the end of her bed, which undulated gently under her. “I should probably begin at the beginning. I was born in a shack in the desert just south of the Rio Grande. My pa loved his moonshine more’n us, which was why my ma walked out on him after one bad night too many.”
Godiva shut her eyes, thrown back to when she was barely twelve, and her mother had woken her in the middle of the night. You’re strong, mijita. Much stronger than I am. You’ll survive. I won’t unless I get away, Ma had whispered in Spanish, and then was gone with barely a rustle.
“Life was okay when Pa vanished on his benders. To this day I have no idea how he and my Ma ended up together. She was a dreamer. She saw exactly one movie, something with Shirley Temple in it, and she was so jazzed she named me after the child actress. We lived so far out there were no neighbors, much less any schooling. While we chopped cactus and pounded corn meal to make tortillas, she taught me the alphabet, and the basics of reading and writing. But not long after she left, Pa went on a bender. When he got back he burned our shack down and came at me, roaring that it was all my fault she was gone. I hid up, and once he stumbled off looking for his jug, I beat feet for the big city. ‘Big city’ being Hidalgo, which had one major street, but that looked huge to me.”
“You were twelve?” Bird asked, her eyes huge.
“Yup.”
Doris shook her head slowly, and looked down at her hands, then up. “What happened next?”
“In those days there was no child welfare, at least in those parts. I got a job washing dishes at the Main Street diner. The owner let me live behind the kitchen in trade for doing all the laundry by hand, as well. Just me, a scrub bucket with lye, a wringer, and a clothes line. Every Sunday, when the diner closed, I spent ironing. I learned English by listening to the customers. One of the waitresses started teaching me English reading and writing at night so I could take over chalking the menu each morning.”
Godiva cackled, looking back. “Everything I’d been through was nothing to tackling English, with its miles of verb tenses and spelling rules shiftier than snake-oil salesmen. What do you even do with tough, through, though, plough, and cough? The Spanish alphabet is honest. What you see is what you get.”
Godiva knew she was taking a sidetrack, and checked on her audience.
Sure enough, Doris and Bird weren’t laughing.
So she forced her way back to the point, though this was a whole lot harder than it had any right to be. “Anyway, life was a grind in those days. This was during World War II. Then the war ended, and things picked up a little when the men came back. A rodeo hit town. The town came alive at night, or at least the establishments catering to the cowboys, who spent their earnings as fast as they made them. I liked visiting the animals. I might have been young, but I was savvy. Or thought I was. Then one day out at the corral I met Rigo.”
She closed her eyes. “Short version: one look, and I thought it was Forever. Go right ahead and laugh.”
She opened her eyes. Still no laughter.
“Yeah, okay, then I’ll laugh. I was eighteen and he didn’t look much older’n me, though sometimes he talked like he’d been around during the days of the silver mines. You know, horse and buggy days—though a lot of towns didn’t get electricity for many years. Hidalgo only had one phone in the entire town.”
She was letting herself get sidetracked again, sighed, and forced herself back to the painful past. “He was the fastest rider in that rodeo. Never tossed. I went to watch him as often as I could. The way that man looked riding . . . It wasn’t just his looks, which could set an ice cube on fire. It wasn’t the daring, or trick riding, which they all did. It was the way he and the animals seemed to understand each other, to become one. It was the hottest thing I’d ever seen before a stitch of clothing ever came off.”
“Then he went after you?”
“Nah. Paid no attention to anyone. He was as wild a rider as the rest of them. He also drank like a fish, but he wasn’t mean, like my Pa. Like some of the other boys in that rodeo. He was nice to the other girls waiting tables, and to the shoeblack boy, Eddie, who polished their boots. In those days everyone said Eddie wasn’t quite right in the head, but now I think he’d just be on the spectrum. Rigo was nice to Eddie. Talked slow and easy, and Eddie trusted him. Though he didn’t trust easily.”
Godiva sighed. “Sometimes I snuck out to the corral in the early mornings, while my wash water was on the boil, and most of the rough riders were sleeping off their night’s guzzling. I liked to go pet the noses of the horses, and take them our withered carrots and bits of apple. Sometimes I’d see Rigo there, grooming the animals—no one else seemed to bother looking after them that way—and he smiled at me. Smiles turned to talk. Talk turned to . . . what it usually does.”
“You said he was drinking, too?” Bird asked, wrinkling her nose.
“At first, he drank as much as the rest of ‘em. But like I said, he was never a mean drunk. Still. Between the talking and the kissing, we had ourselves a conversation. I told him right off I liked him fine, but I wouldn’t walk out with any man who was splashing up to the back molars with the diner’s hooch. So he started drying up. At least when I saw him. After a time, that was pretty much every day.”
Godiva paused, and saw sympathy in Bird’s face, and a slight frown on Doris’s forehead.
Godiva took a deep breath. How to shorten this up? “That rodeo wintered over in town, as lodgings were cheap. Sometimes he vanished for a day or two. I couldn’t figure out what was dogg
ing him. But when I saw him again he was sober, so I didn’t hassle him.”
She shrugged a shoulder. “Come spring they took off, and it was like the sun had gone out. I spent my hard-earned nickels taking myself to movies and watching them all the way through three times, even the newsreels. But the rodeo was back the next winter, and the moment he walked into the diner, the sun shone again.”
Godiva snorted. “Something was wrong. I could see it. Not just him. In retrospect, that rodeo was probably a shlock outfit. He came to me one day after being gone a week. He had a bruise on his chin, and another on his temple. His knuckles were split. I could see he’d been in a fight. I asked what happened, he said horse trouble. I thought, as you do at that age, if I loved him harder we’d be all right. The inevitable happened—I missed a period. Then two. By the third missed period I’d figured out what was what. He disappeared again for a few days, but then came back really beat up. He walked right into my arms, holding me tight. I told him the news, expecting we’d marry and I would take care of him and our kid, and life would be daisies and butterflies. But he let go of me like I’d grown cactus spines and looked away like I’d whacked him between the eyes with a two-by-four. He wouldn’t even meet my eyes.”
The room was absolutely silent.
Godiva sighed. It felt like swallowing glass to dredge all this crap up—as if anything could be done about it after all this time.
“He said his head was still ringing from the fight and he had to go, though by then there was a full-on thunderstorm outside, hail and all. I, idiot that I was, kissed him and promised him I’d bake him a cheese and tomato pie on the morrow—the only thing I knew how to make at the time. I made that pie, but there was nobody but me and Eddie to eat it. Rigo didn’t show up, didn’t show up. Late the next day I heard that half the rodeo had vanished, leaving the remainder with all the owner’s unpaid bills. Rigo was one of those who’d hightailed off. That morning I took a long walk and faced facts. I’d been stupid. I’d never be stupid again. Or waste a tear on him.”