Arizona Allspice (3 page)

My mom, my brother and I, would groan or joke that his obsession with conspiracies had come from living too long in a trailer park. Sometimes he would get fervent about the conspiracies or really irritated that we didn’t take him seriously. My mom would then say that he’d better go take his blood pressure medicine and calm down. He’d saunter into the bathroom to take the pills he kept in the cabinet. I later found out those pills weren’t for his high blood pressure. They were for his sickness, the delusions and suspicions that were plaguing him. My mother knew all along.

For the first time in my life, when I witnessed Dad’s behavior after Mom was rushed to the hospital, I’d seen my dad for who he really was. I, who believed so strongly in not being superficial, saw that my life, my family, had been a sham.

What happened to Mom?

 Did Dad hurt her?

What do we have now? Who do we have now?

I asked myself those questions as we drove to Duncan, our neighboring city, where my mother was taken. We ran into the hospital. We’d been running for hours, it seemed. We reached the hallway adjacent to the emergency room.

“Mama?”
I whispered. I latched on to my brother’s arm. I could hear my pulse in my ears as my mother was swarmed by nurses and doctors.

“Are you her family members?” A doctor asked. “We’re going to have to take her into surgery,” the doctor continued. “She’s had a heart attack and the EBCT scan showed a very blocked artery. She’s probably had heart disease for some time now. We’re going to do the best we can to stent that artery before the damage to the heart muscle is irreparable.”

I watched as the quiet shell of my mother was wheeled away, her body snaked with tubes from her arms, her chest, her mouth and nose. Manny and I only got a chance to brush a hand along her arm as she was whisked past. I felt something I didn’t think I’d feel: anger. My brother and I didn’t deserve this. My father was not my father. He was a stranger to me. My mother had lied to us and now at the age of 41 she could die and leave me with no answers, when I needed her the most, to see me off to college, to make us dinner and to love us, to help me when I get married and have children, to cheer us up when we were down, when I was falling. I was falling and darkness fell over the hospital room.

When I woke up I was sitting in the hallway on the cold tile floor of the hospital, my back leaning against Manny and his arms around me. When I turned to look at him, he began to sob. “Don’t ever faint on me like that again! I can’t lose you too,” he sniffled. “She’s gone, Elaine.” When I heard him say those words I couldn’t cry. I hated myself for ever being angry with my mother in her last moments. I didn’t deserve to let any of the pain go by allowing myself to shed any tears.

Marna
Elaine Roberts

A Mother, a Wife, an Angel

November 9, 1967 - June 3, 2010

Manny and I never discussed it; the falsehood of our family. We both knew our mom was dead and our dad was schizophrenic and neither one of us would be leaving Cadence, Arizona to go to college. We needed to stick together and take care of our father.

Our school allowed us to graduate, thanks to Raul who volunteered to bring me my work as well as Manny’s. He even watched our dad for a few hours while we took final exams. Like I said, Raul had been very helpful. I didn’t understand Manny’s problem with him. He never really accepted or understood my relationship with Raul. Neither did his over-opinionated friend Joey Kinsley.

Manny and I had known Joey since high school, but neither of us were friends with him, until five or six months ago when the two started working together at the
PiCo
Automotive Factory. I wasn’t friends with Joey, but I knew him. Everyone knew Joey. With his soccer skills, his lady-killer reputation, and his infamous bouts of rage with the fiery red hair and steel blue eyes to match, how could he go unnoticed? It was obvious why Joey didn’t like Raul.  Everyone in town knew Raul, too, so he was Joey’s competition for the limelight.

I could smell Joey’s desperation from a mile away.
The way he pined for me to adore him like every other girl in town did.
It disgusted me that he couldn’t wrap his mind around the fact that I didn’t want to be in his entourage. I couldn’t even understand why Manny was friends with Joey. All they did was bicker with each other anyway.

THREE

“You still like that girl?”

“Joey, you know how I am about Denise,” I answered. “It’s been four years and I haven’t given up on her. I just need to get her to open up her mind and forget about what her Dad thinks.” I pulled off my gloves. “I know she’s just scared.”

Joey pulled off his gloves and safety goggles and we started walking to the locker room. We both shoved our gloves and goggles into the back pockets of our dirty blue jumpsuits. At the sinks, we lathered and scrubbed at our fingers in unison and then splashed water onto our faces, rinsing the sweat and smudges away. “I think you should move on,” Joey said while toweling his hands and face.

“Are you kidding?” I explained how it was impossible to just ‘move on’ without getting some kind of closure on the history Denise and I shared. We walked to our side-by-side lockers, stripped off our work jumpsuits and began changing into clean clothes. “You understand what I mean?” I finished my speech as I slipped my arms into my shirt. “Don’t you?” I asked when Joey didn’t answer. I looked up to see that Joey hadn’t been listening to me. Apparently he was more interested in his own handsome face.

******

I glanced into the mirror that hung in my locker. I smoothed a hand over my hair, the tips of my fingers running over the florid, medium length curls. I looked into my own blue eyes and then down at my nose. I had faint freckles there. I looked at his shoulders in the mirror where my tendency to freckle was quite visible. The freckles across my nose and cheeks didn’t bother me as much. And my lips…I didn’t feel like they fit the masculine features of my face, my strong chin and nose. Maybe if my lips weren’t so pink and didn’t have so much of a
Cupid’s Bow
then maybe she’d… I swiped the back of my hand across my mouth…

******

 “Hey!
Cabrón
! Stop admiring yourself already so I can have a two-sided conversation here.”

“Sorry.” Joey snapped out of the spell and pulled a white t-shirt over his head. “Yeah, I think you should move on. It’s been a while and Denise’s dad isn’t going to suddenly not be a racist drunk.”

“But, sometimes Denise says things that make me certain she wants me to be there for her.”

“She just says stuff, you know, because she knows you like her. Denise is going through some mess with her dad right now so she might say things to you just because she feels lonely at the time.”

I raised my eyebrows. “And how do you know all that?”

Joey averted his gaze down to the belt he was looping through his jeans. “I’ve heard some things around the neighborhood, that’s all.”

“Besides,” I noted as I finished buttoning up my shirt, “isn’t it hypocritical of you to tell
me
to move on? You’ve been a
secret
admirer for just as long. At least I’ve given it a chance by telling Denise how I feel.”

“Yeah, and neither of us have what we want, do we?” Joey slammed his locker closed. I followed behind him, heading out of the locker room and out the door into the parking lot. “Manny, why don’t you spend some time on getting your sister out of that house with your abusive lunatic father instead of
trollin
’ for
ass!
”

“I really care about Denise but there is no way in hell I care about her more than my sister! You…you are a hurtful angry bastard sometimes, you know that? This is exactly why Laney doesn’t want me
hangin
’ out with you! You shoot off at the mouth! You’ve got no
self control
!”

Joey winced. “I’m working on it, okay! I’m working on it! Just…” He shook his head with his eyes clenched shut. He took several slow deep breaths to calm down. When he felt the heat at his neck and
face dissipate
, he blinked his eyes open. “I don’t want to be like this all the time, Manny. You know I don’t want to.”

“Yes. And you know how it is trying to keep what’s left of my family together and that
I’m
working on it.”

“I’m sorry, man. I get worried about her sometimes.”

“Apology accepted Superman.
Always trying to save the damsels in distress.
Now let’s go pick up some drinks and chill at your house. I got a present for you.”

Joey smiled.
“Another story?”

“Yup, another one.
She lent it to me this morning. It’s in the truck.”

 Joey jogged over to my black F-150. I routinely gave Joey a ride to and from work. Joey was hired at the factory six months earlier. His temper, however, made it difficult for him to be placed within the company so he was tossed from one department to another like a problem foster child. Everyone could see Joey was bright because he could learn everything so fast. It took him two days to understand the assembly line while it took other employees at least a week of training. His various supervisors were ecstatic with his progress and then baffled by the anger he spewed when he made an inconsequential mistake.

One day, Joey had an exceptionally bad fit that resulted in
PiCo
docking most of his paycheck as reimbursement for the automotive parts he had attacked with a blowtorch. Joey struck up an initially awkward conversation with me which became a fifteen-minute long confessional. That day we formulated a plan. My end of the deal was to use my supervisor position to get him another job. Joey’s end of the deal would be invaluable to both Elaine and I if it succeeded, and it could only work if Elaine knew nothing about it.

I stepped up into the truck to find Joey searching all over for the journal.
“In the glove box.”
Joey quickly opened the glove compartment and pulled out the brown leather-bound journal. He flipped through the pages to the most recent entry. A little smile crossed Joey’s face as his eyes scanned the page. It was a quiet ride since Joey was enthralled with the journal. Sometimes I wondered how Joey and I were able to be friends. I was a reserved math nerd and Joey was a jock and very high strung. We argued.
A lot.
But I supposed we balanced each other out in the end. Plus, I was enjoying the planning and conspiring, and secret trafficking of Elaine’s journal. It was fun. And it was for a good cause.

I pulled up to the convenience store. I didn’t need to ask whether Joey was going to come with him. I left him to read in the truck and walked into the store that was located next to the local bar. I waved at Mr. Jeremy, the owner, and then went to the refrigerated section. Looking through the frosty glass door, my eyes fell on a case of beer I wanted. I heard the chime of the bell above the front door. I thought it was Joey walking in but instead I glimpsed Raul and his soccer crew entering. Raul sauntered straight to the deli and dining area along with his buddies.

I opened the walk-in refrigerator and grabbed the case of beer. As soon as I stepped back out I could hear their loud laughter. I stood in the aisle holding the case as Raul’s voice cut though me like a knife.

“Elaine? Yeah I’ve known her for years. She acts tough but she ain’t.
Ella
es
una
facilona
, really.”