Barbara Samuel (21 page)

Luna crept in around one, the back of her neck damp from a shower, her cheeks hot with spent passion, and found Joy asleep on the couch in front of the television. It gave her a pang of guilt—this was what she didn’t want to do to Joy: be a party-hearty kind of mother of the sort that was becoming more and more common. Women lost and overwhelmed and so hungry for touch that they slept with any man who was halfway friendly. Luna had always understood the need, particularly among those women who were most harshly judged— the young ones who had no man and a passel of children. What else could make you forget like sex could? She knew why they needed it.

But life for a mother wasn’t about what was good for
you.
It was about what was good for the child, and the hollow feeling in Luna’s belly told her she wasn’t
thrilled with herself about this. She should be the one asleep on the couch, waiting for Joy to come home.

“Hey, honey,” she said quietly, kneeling next to the couch. “Time to go to bed.”

Joy moved her head, then one finger. Collapsed back into sleep.

“Joy,” Luna said again.

“Go ‘way,” she said, shrugging her hand away. “I’ll sleep here. I like it.”

Half smiling, Luna nudged her daughter one more time. Joy had always been a champion sleeper. Luna could cart her anywhere when she was small, and Joy would just sleep—Luna would tumble her down wherever, and she’d slump into her cat-curl and sigh back to sleep.

Now, however, she was too big to carry. “C’mon, babe, get up. You’ll have a crick in your neck in the morning.”

“I don’t care.”

“You will.”

Finally, Joy opened her eyes. Or one eye, anyway. “Okay, I’m going.” She flung out one hand to let Luna haul her up, then stumbled into her bedroom, pulling off her shirt over her head as she went. The line of smooth, thin back, made whiter by the black bra across it, made Luna want to go lie down next to her, protect her forever from anyone who would see that back and not take proper care of it, not love it the way she did.

Joy’s door closed, and Luna moved around the house, picking up some dishes and an empty bag of Fritos and a pair of shoes Joy had left in the middle of the room for no apparent reason. An open box of stationery was on the table, and two envelopes were addressed in Joy’s girlish, looping hand. One was to April Loggia. The
other was to Bobby and Bruce Loggia. The
o
‘s and
g
‘s had smiley faces in them.

It had to be killing her to be away from her brothers. She was devoted to them.

Even after she finished the straightening, Luna felt no closer to sleep than she had when she came in. Her body was soft with release, but she was also keyed up, wanting—something.

Tobacco. Tequila. White zinfandel. A long Marlboro, red pack.

Yeah. All of the above.

Instead, she made a cup of hot chocolate in the quiet kitchen and put some crackers and cheese on a plate and carried it all into the workroom. She didn’t feel like getting all covered with paint, so she wandered over to the corner and picked up a Barbie doll she had bought at Toys “R” Us in Pueblo a while back. Teresa, Barbie’s Hispanic friend. They didn’t have Teresa back in the old days—choices had been limited then to blond, brunette, or redheaded, bendable knees and a twisting waist. Elaine and Luna had had lots of them, though Elaine had never been into them as much. At seven, Luna was serious about her Barbies. She had a carrying case with little hangers, and drawers for the shoes, and infinitesimal combs and brushes. She ironed tiny dresses and spent hours and hours and hours just making up things that were going on with the girls.

When she hit adolescence, girls didn’t even wear makeup, much less play with fashion dolls, so Luna reluctantly put the dolls aside and they were eventually given away, along with the Colorforms and roller skates and chalkboard.

Best Friend Barbie said,
Didn’t know how much you needed me, didja?
Her hair was in a ponytail, and her shirt was tied up under her breasts.

Au contraire.
Luna sipped her chocolate. Somewhere between that reluctant giveaway and now, she’d managed to amass quite a collection. At first, she pretended they were kitsch for her dry dorm room—a cute one at a garage sale, a flea market, the toy store—Barbies of various ages, generations, occupations. She wasn’t into Midge or Francie or any of the others, and in truth, she had a distinct preference for the standard perky blonde. The longer the hair, the better. This probably said something about her enslavement to a male-dominated society’s standard of beauty, but what the heck. She could never get her own hair to grow past her shoulders and purely loved the idea of it swishing around her waist.

Unlike some serious collectors who tracked down original beauties from 1959, Luna’s collection was not particularly notable. Sometimes she bought them new— especially the costumed ones, and some from the Dolls of the World Collection—but she didn’t treat them with reverence or anything. They came out of their boxes and she posed them around the room and fussed with their hems and adjusted their hair. Beast Ken, out of his heavy Beast costume so she could see his cheerful face, was currently sitting on the windowsill with his arm upraised to Medieval Barbie, who was getting very dusty. Luna picked her up and brushed her off. Should take better care of them.

Most of the dolls were just ordinary ones from garage sales or thrift shops, dressed or decorated according to the mood of the moment. She picked up one in New Orleans once, a dark-haired ‘70s model with a few paint splatters over her feet. Luna hung
milagros
from her ears and fingers, and wrapped a turban of shiny blue fabric around her head, and a Copacabana kind of bra and skirt that she found right on the shelf of the local grocery store. She occupied a corner all her own in
Luna’s bedroom—complete with a tiny blue crystal ball and some itty-bitty tarot cards that Allie and Luna spent a whole night making once.

She knew it was a silly sort of thing for a grown-up woman. But it also didn’t hurt anything.

Tonight, she plucked at Teresa’s skirt, touched her tiny shoes. She’d fallen in love with this one the first time she’d seen her—the long hair, her dusky skin, her pretty mouth. Teresa in all her guises was the exception Luna made to straight Barbie. This particular one was Quinceañera Teresa, a girl dressed up in a weddinglike dress for her fifteenth birthday celebration. Lots of girls around Taos still celebrated the
quinceañera
in the old way and she’d always had a sneaking envy for it. She wasn’t clear on the details, since she’d never actually attended one, but the girls went to church and dedicated themselves to the Virgin, then had a reception afterwards. It appeared to have most of the accoutrements of a wedding—the dress and attendants and a cake.

Tobacco. Tequila. White zinfandel. A long Marlboro, red pack.

What was this about? She rolled her neck, rubbed a shoulder.

She wanted a cigarette. Badly. Had all evening. Being with Thomas, rich and wonderful as it had been, had not given her the peace she thought she might have been hoping for. The nagging pain, deep in her chest, was still there, and she brushed Teresa’s hair with a tiny plastic brush, trying to pinpoint it.

It wasn’t unfamiliar, the deep, hollow ache. As a young teen, she’d thrown herself into her studies to alleviate it, often falling asleep over a book. As an older teen, she discovered cigarettes helped. And then—oh, joy of joys—she’d finally discovered alcohol. Nothing eased that ache like a good shot of tequila. When she
first started drinking, it was the first time in her life she’d been able to escape that eternal, endless, constant ache. She’d never known how it felt. The dark feelings were just—erased. She could relax. Breathe.

They don’t call it self-medication for nothing
, Barbie said.

Luna nibbled on a Ritz and brushed Teresa’s hair and thought about the man speaking Spanish at the VFW. Thought about her rush to have sex with Thomas, even though they both knew it was too soon.

Thomas. Ugh. Was she nuts? It was insane to be sleeping with a man, letting her heart be captured, an inch at a time, by a man who was still maybe in love with his ex, a man so good and gentle and kind that he’d break her heart to pieces eventually. What kind of sane woman allowed herself to get tangled up in a relationship like that, especially when her life was coming together so well?

Hair fell in her face and she shoved it away violently. Self-sabotage was her specialty. And just looking at the whole thing objectively, that’s certainly what this looked like.

Across the room, Barbie wiggled her foot with a knowing little look on her face.
Is that really why you’re freaked tonight?

“I have no idea,” she said aloud, then picked up her cup and drained it. She’d go to bed. Just stop thinking.

Run, run, run away
, sang BF Barbie from behind her. Softly, not meanly.

“Whatever,” Luna said, and turned off the light. Sometimes retreat was really okay. At least if she was asleep, she wouldn’t be thinking of the relief a cigarette might bring.

• • •

Thomas had not slept so well in years. He awakened with a sense of optimism, hearing birds twittering outside, seeing the bright dawn breaking over Taos Mountain. The house was asleep. He had only one thought in his mind.

Luna.

He had not showered when he came home, so he could sleep with the smell of her on him, and he raised his hands now, smelling her on his palms, and he wanted to see her. Make sure she wasn’t regretful. So, without coffee, without anything, he set out in the cool of a September morning and walked the three blocks to her house. He heard himself humming “White Bird” under his breath.

Hope. God, it had been a long time. Even the sight of her house, that building that had the good fortune to rest over her head, gave him a faint rush of adrenaline, and that made him want to laugh, too. Flowers grew in wild profusion around the adobe, the grass long and starred with dew. Across the narrow street, a trio of longhaired goats bleated at him, and he said, “Good morning,” before he turned to go up to her porch, trying to scent her. He did not want to wake her, but even more, he didn’t want to wake her daughter.

Obviously, she rose early, since he’d twice seen her afoot before seven. So he sat on the porch and waited, watching the sun climb into a brilliance of blue sky, tipping cottonwoods with glittery color. And he thought of her. Closed his eyes, called up the look of her eyes and her mouth, open in panting hunger. His body was covered with tiny bruises and scratches and he wondered if she was marked, too.

The door opened behind him. “Thomas!” she said in surprise.

He leapt up. “I wanted to make sure you were okay,”
he said, coming toward her. He stopped, stricken, just a foot away. Her hair was unbrushed, tangled and wild, like spun light around those big dark eyes that hid and revealed.

“I’m fine,” she said quietly, still staring at him.

He reached out a hand and pulled her closer, putting his hands around her face so she would look up at him. “Thank you,” he whispered, and kissed her. She tasted like coffee and sugar, like something wicked and real, and he was all the way there in three seconds.

She pushed away. “My daughter!”

“Sorry.” He stepped back.

They stood there looking at each other, and Thomas felt foolish and immature, his hands too big at his sides. The silence stretched an endless, agonizing time, like dead air.

He said, “I guess I—”

She said, “Thomas, I—”

They halted, waited, spoke together again. “I’m being so rude!” she said, as he said, “I’m sorry to have barged in like this.”

Luna laughed and took his hand. “Come in and have some coffee, why don’t you?” She led him into the kitchen, and he stood in the exact place where he had kissed her the first time, and the same, helplessly longing sense of wonder filled him as it did then. He wanted to bend his head into her neck, smooth a hand over her back, just be close again, chest to chest. The sensation was physical, a not-quite tingle on his chest, the front of his legs, his palms. She poured coffee into a big red mug and brought it to him.

“My daughter is asleep in the other room,” she said quietly. There were shadows below her eyes and he raised a thumb to touch them.

“Did you sleep well?”

“Not really,” she said, smiling a little. “You?”

“I did.” As if there were invisible strands winding around them, he moved closer. “I woke up thinking of you.”

She put a hand up, keeping him at a small distance. “Maybe this is too rash, Thomas. I haven’t even
kissed
anyone in years. It feels too fast.”

He put his hand around the side of her neck and bent closer, hungry to smell her skin. “I thought we were going to skip the small talk.”

“That’s not small.” But the force behind her hand softened. Her face lifted.

“Too much talk is always small,” he said roughly, and bent into the offering of her mouth, and it was no different this time than any other. Any sense of propriety or resistance dissolved in the union, and he pulled her into him, into the places on his body that needed her, against his chest, his legs, his mouth. He filled his palms with her bottom, his mouth with her tongue. She tugged on his hair with one hand, wrapping it around her arm, and leaned into the crook of his elbow, all of her soft and giving and receptive, and he lifted her up to the counter. “I just want to look.” She nodded, and he opened her robe a little, and kissed the pale moons of her breasts, her throat, her mouth.

“Oh, God, Thomas,” she breathed, kissing his ear, his eye, pulling him into her, wrapping her legs around him. “I want you so much again it’s like a drug.”

“When?”

“I don’t know. I promised my daughter a picnic by the river today.”

“I’ll bring Tiny and meet you there. We’ll sneak away.”

“No! I can’t do that,” she whispered. Her face was troubled. “Not with my daughter there.”

“I’ll just go. We don’t have to do anything. Please,” he whispered like a boy. “Please.”