Barbara Samuel (38 page)

Barbie, using an emery board, said,
Get over yourself, babe. Please.

Good point. Those two had a lot of shocks ahead. Everybody did—that was the bitch of it, wasn’t it? Nothing ever stayed smooth and beautiful and good, not skin, not faces, not the road of life. What mattered was the way you lived with what happened to you.

Wishing for a cigarette, she thought about that. What was ahead of her when she was that age that she wished she hadn’t lived through? What would she change?

Taking a little notebook out of her bag, she opened it and, pen poised above the page, gazed toward the horizon,
admiring the blue mountains, the bluer sky, the softness of adobe buildings.

Number One, she wrote, and paused again. Then she drew a circle around the words and wondered why she hadn’t just written 1.

The obvious one was drinking. Going insane with drink in Albuquerque until she had an accident she couldn’t remember.

Doing it again.
Barbie flipped her shoe off her toe, popped a bubble.

“Shut up.” She raised her head. On a balcony over the square, a woman leaned on the wall and gazed down at everything. She wore a gold blouse and her hair was a soft red and she looked happy to be where she was. Luna reached into her bag and pulled out the sheaf of papers. What would she change?

Betrayals.

Suddenly, she stood up. She didn’t want to brood anymore. She didn’t want to whine. She was sick to death of being afraid all the time—afraid of the past, afraid of Marc, afraid of driving, afraid of herself. She was sick to death of second-guessing every thought, every move, every decision. With firm strides, she marched to the pay phone and called a cab.

There was one thing she could change today. Right now.

Once again, she went to the garage of her mother’s house and opened the door of her car. It was still adjusted to her specifications from the last time she’d tried, but she touched the mirror anyway.

She felt fierce. Scared, but ready, as she put the key in the ignition and started the car, then took a breath and eased out of the garage. The first flutters of panic started, and she forced herself to just breathe. In. Out.

She made it to the little flat spread of driveway and took a break. She even turned off the car for a minute and got out, walked around, remembering to breathe. In. Out. Just breathe.

Barbie climbed into the passenger seat and put on her sunglasses like she had all the confidence in the world.
Come on. We can do this. I’m right here with you.

For a minute, Luna wanted to put her head down and cry. But somehow, Barbie gave her courage. She knew she was imaginary, knew it was a silly game she played with herself, but it was enough. Enough courage to climb back in, put the car in drive, and ease out on to the road.

Luckily, there was little traffic. Trying to get used to the feeling of the enormous, deadly machine around her, she drove about five miles an hour down the narrow lanes around her mother’s house. It had worried her, ahead of time, thinking about driving those lanes, but the car was neat and somehow fit Luna’s sense of space in a good way, so it wasn’t as creepy as she had anticipated, even when an SUV came up on the other side, pretty fast, and just passed her. Luna was holding her breath, her hands gripped hard on the wheel, and made a few of those stop-start moves with the gas, which was kind of embarrassing.

And then, she got to the main drag and a stop light. Which was red. The panic started coming back and she had a flash of—something—before she remembered to breathe. In. Out. She was sweating so much she took a second to press the button to roll the window down, and a wind freshened by chamiso blew into the car, rustling her hair.

Doing great, girlfriend.

The light turned green and she eased forward, knowing she now had to go at least twenty or get honked at,
which would be highly alarming and she didn’t need the aggravation. So she pushed the pedal down and sailed around a corner, down into the warren of streets that led to her house. Here she could go more slowly, since the streets were tiny and covered with gravel and only idiots drove fast.

The sense of explosive accomplishment she felt when she pulled into her own driveway was like a cannon going off. Two and a half miles. She’d driven two and half miles!

Slamming out of the car, she went inside to call Joy, but she wasn’t there. Luna was crushed. Maybe she’d gone to Maggie’s house. Luna could drive another half mile, surely.

Joy had been worried about Maggie all day. She’d called, but Maggie never answered, and Joy had finally gone to all their hangouts—to the Loaf and Jug and down to the park, and even to the deserted school. She saw Mr. Romero there, and asked if he’d seen her, but he hadn’t. So Joy walked back to Maggie’s. She knocked for about five minutes, waiting politely in between, but no one was there, and that made Joy’s stomach hurt. Taking out a piece of paper, she wrote a note.

• • •

She folded it into an envelope and put it in the mailbox, with Maggie’s name on the outside, then headed down the street toward her own block, her heart kind of heavy. She missed Maggie. She was her only friend here, and if she couldn’t patch things up with her, who would she talk to? She wished for her little brothers. They’d be getting home from soccer practice, their hair and clothes wild and dirty, their freckles beautiful across their little noses, and they’d have stuff to tell her about, their big moves and how they got yelled at by the coach. She really missed them a lot.

Enough to go home?

No. The feeling was surprisingly solid. She really liked being here. She liked her teachers, especially the art teacher. She loved living with her mom—it was special, somehow. She loved the house and the town and everything else. She just wished she could have her brothers with her, too.

Car tires spitting out gravel at a low rate sounded behind her, and Joy glanced over her shoulder, half hoping it was Ricardo. It was just a plain blue car, and Joy moved to the far right, hoping it wasn’t going to be some gooney man. Once, in Atlanta, a man had driven very slowly beside her all the way down to a park, and when she finally realized maybe he needed directions, she’d bent down to ask and saw that he had his thing in his hand.

Disgusting.

The car did slow down, and Joy kept her face stubbornly forward, even when the car window rolled down on her side. It kept pace with her for a few seconds, then somebody said, “Hey, you silly girl. Look at my ride. Get in!”

Joy turned around, her mouth dropping. “Mom?”

Luna was behind the wheel, her hair windblown like she’d been joyriding all over town with the windows down. “Whoo-hoo! I got my license!”

Finally realizing it was
really
her mother behind that wheel, Joy opened the door. It was a pretty nice car, really, electric blue with power windows and nice leather seats. “Where’d you get the car?”

“Told you I had one. My mom bought it for me two years ago.” She pulled sunglasses down over her eyes and looked in the rearview mirror before taking off, very gently. “You aren’t the only one who’s been nagging me to get back in the driver’s seat.”

Joy wiggled into the seat. “It’s beautiful!”

“Wanna go to DQ and get a sundae to celebrate?”

“Sure!” Impulsively, she leaned over and kissed her mom’s cheek. Luna patted her hand.

At the Dairy Queen, they ordered their sundaes, hot fudge for Luna, strawberry for Joy, and carried them outside. Joy’s mom was cheerful, almost giddy, and Joy loved her like crazy. All of a sudden, she was tired of carrying around her big secrets, and she said, “Mom? Can I tell you about some things?”

“Of course.”

So Joy took a breath and told her all about the boy in Atlanta, and how ashamed she was of herself for the whole thing, and her mom just listened, didn’t try to make it less than it was, or freak out. In the end, Luna said, “It’s a tough lesson you had to learn, but it’s not such a bad one, in the long run, you know?”

“What d’you mean?”

“Well, now you know that people just use each other for sex sometimes, and that you don’t feel good about having sex under those conditions. You need more, and that’s smart.”

A giant, giant weight just fell off of her then. “Oh!” She blinked. “I never thought of it like that.”

“Nothing wrong with making mistakes as long as you learn from them.”

Joy nodded, gathered her courage and said, “There’s something else.”

“Okay.”

“It’s about Dad.”

Luna gave Joy her poker face. Patient, listening, non-judgmental, but Joy felt the tension in her mother’s body. “I’m listening,” Luna said.

“He’s having another affair. He has been for a really long time. I don’t think April knows, or at least she doesn’t know
know
and it was making me so mad that I couldn’t hardly talk to him.”

The therapist’s face cracked open and Joy saw real sorrow dawn. “Oh, honey, I’m sorry. That had to be a terrible situation to be in.”

“I never knew if I should tell her or not.”

Luna shook her head. “Not your responsibility.”

“Would you tell her?”

She said nothing for a moment. “No. It’s not mine, either. It’s entirely possible she knows and is only able to keep her dignity by not saying anything about it.”

“But how could you stand to live with that?”

“People live with all kinds of things, sweetie. I’m glad you told me.”

Joy let go of a heavy breath. “Me, too.”

Winter blew in at suppertime, whirling down from the mountains to slam hard into the city. It came like a giant broom, sweeping summer out of town. Thomas lit a fire in the fireplace in his living room for the first time this season, taking pleasure in the ritual of cleaning, laying, lighting. Tiny had gone to his domestic violence class,
leaving Thomas and Placida, Tonto and Ranger, to eat supper in the cozy kitchen. Thomas ate two big bowls of beef stew with sliced bread, following it with giant cups of red Kool-Aid.

It was only as he finished that he realized Placida wasn’t speaking, or even eating, come to that. “You feeling okay,
Abuelita
?” he asked her, his hands on her tiny fingers.

“Just tired.” She looked toward the windows, her lips turned down. She rubbed her hands over her upper arms. “Maybe I’m going to church tonight.”

“I’ll come with you.”

She nodded. “It starts at seven.”

“Maybe you should go take a little rest until then.”

“You won’t forget?”

“Promise,” he said earnestly, putting his palm on his heart.

She pushed herself to her feet, and with a pang, Thomas saw that she was frail. Old. Very, very old. It was easy to forget because she was so busy, and such a
busybody
, but once in a while, it showed. Tonight it was in the hunching of her shoulders, and the shuffling of her feet as she moved toward the door. Thomas put his napkin down, wishing he could pick her up and carry her—she was so small and he was so big—but she would never allow it.

The phone rang as she came close to the door, and her hand whipped out, fast as the tongue of a snake, to capture the receiver before anybody else. Thomas allowed himself a small, hidden grin.
“Hola?”
she said too loudly.

He collected his dishes and carried them to the sink, pretending not to be interested in the conversation. From the other end of the line, he could hear a female voice, upset, and he thought it might be Angelica.

“No,” Placida said, her mouth hard. “Don’t call here no more. No more.” She hung up.

“Who was it?”

Placida lifted her chin. “Nobody. You never mind.” She shuffled away, and Thomas let her go, then picked up the caller ID and pressed the button. “James Coyote, 505-555-2122.”

Nadine, not Angelica. What was going on? Outside, the wind whipped hard around the windows, sending sprays of light pebbles into the glass. He decided to let it go. If it was important, she would call back.

Placida could not fall into a deep sleep, only lay on the bed, thinking, her head full of pictures like always lately. She had not slept well for many weeks, not since her house burned down. Every night, she dreamed of beasts with big teeth and panting tongues. She dreamed of snakes crawling out of the heart of a rose, and of a pregnant black dog with a torn ear, coming to bring danger.

It was fitting Tomás should come with her, to church tonight. Tomás, her last one. He was gentle with her, holding her elbow to help her into the high seat of his truck, then making sure she secured her seat belt. Her sweater was buttoned all the way to her neck and she put the scarf she brought over her head, because the wind was bringing winter.

She stared out the window as they drove to the church, seeing now that the trees were getting ragged. Soon the snows would come. She would ache, all day and all night. Mornings it would take a long time to crawl out of her bed, and nights would mean putting her body in just such a way to make it not hurt. She didn’t want no more winter. Enough.

At the church, she waited while Tomás came around.
She looked up at the church, seeing the light spill out into the night, a yellow that made her think of her girlhood and the candles they had used. Hard days, those, not like now, but she missed them anyway sometimes. Missed her sisters and her mama, mainly, and the smell of cinnamon in
empeñadas
cooking for Christmas.

The passenger door opened, startling her, and she blinked at Tomás, forgetting for a minute why he was there. What a handsome man he had always been! Not pretty like so many of the boys in her line. Pretty faces caused trouble. No, Tomás had steadiness in his broad shoulders, kindness in his big hands, gentleness in his heart. And he was so lonely, this one. “All I was doing was bringin’ you a wife,” Placida said in Spanish. He smiled, and she remembered that he didn’t speak Spanish too good.