Mariner's Compass (31 page)

“C’mon, Emory,” Miguel said as he fried homemade taquitos. “Any team where the official battle cry is ‘sooiee’ cannot be a team that is to be taken seriously.”

“I’ll have you know, my young and virile gendarme, that it is a well-known fact that pigs are significantly more intelligent than bears.”

That comment garnered a lot of hoots and hollers from Elvia’s brothers.

“What did he call me?” Miguel asked me when I stole a hot taquito and dipped it into the guacamole his youngest brother Ramon was mixing.

“Check the dictionary,” I said, laughing.

“Get out of here,” Ramon said, pulling the bowl of guacamole out of my reach. “No chicks allowed until we’re finished.”

“What’s on the menu?” I asked.

“You heard the man, sweetcakes, vamoose,” Emory said, winking at me across the room. “The menu’s our secret.”

The kids had commandeered the big-screen television in the family room, and in the living room the women were sitting around a bowl of fresh, hot tortilla strips and green chile salsa. On the smaller television in the corner played the movie
When a Man Loves a Woman.

“I would give up M&M’s permanently for just one night with Andy Garcia,” Ramon’s girlfriend, Maria, was saying. The other women nodded and laughed in agreement. Señora Aragon sat in her husband’s recliner, knitting. She
tsked
and shook her head in mock disapproval.

“Happy Mother’s Day, Mama Aragon,” I said, handing her the flowers.

“Gracias
,
mija,
” Señora Aragon said. “They are
muy bonitas
. You are a good daughter. Have some chips. They are not crispy like mine, but they are
bueno
.”

We all laughed, knowing that letting the men invade her kitchen was not the treat for her that they thought it was. It took great forbearance and patience on her part to allow them this once-a-year access to her exclusive territory.

“I know, but we have to let them think they’re as good,” I said, taking one and dipping it into the salsa. “Those delicate egos.”

“No kidding,” Christina, Rafael’s wife said. She taught fourth grade over at the school near the golf course development. “I tell Rafael that no one mops floors like he does just so he’ll keep doing it.”

“I never thought I’d see the day one of my macho brothers mopped a floor,” Elvia said, rising up from where she was sitting next to her mother. “Here, I’ll put these in water, Mama. You talk to Benni.” As she passed me, she reached over and gave me a quick hug, a sign of deep affection from my normally reticent friend. “You doing okay,
amiga
?” Though we didn’t discuss it much, she knew how hard this day was for me.

“I’m fine,” I said, hugging her back. “It’s nice seeing Emory in there feeling so comfortable, don’t you think?”

Her black eyes softened slightly, and she answered in a low voice, “I’ll deny it if you tell him, but he’s starting to grow on me.”

“He has a way of doing that,” I said, holding her gaze for a moment. This was no small thing for her to admit, and we both knew it.

“So, how’s your leg?” I asked Señora Aragon and settled back to listen to her detailed explanation of what the doctor did about the small clot that had formed. By the time dinner was ready, it was ten minutes to six.

“Can’t you stay for just one plate?” Señora Aragon asked, her lined brown face fretful.

“I’m really sorry, I can’t,” I said. “I promised I’d meet Daddy at the cemetery at six. I’m going to be late as it is.” I grabbed another taquito and gazed longingly at the
pollo verde
and red chile tamales. “We’re going out to eat afterwards, though I know it won’t hold a candle to this feast.”

“Give Señor Ben my greetings,” Señora Aragon said. Her husband nodded his agreement. “This is a hard day for him.” She put a plump arm around my shoulders. “And for you, too,
mija.
”

“Let me walk you out,” Emory said, peeling off the white apron he was wearing over his pale blue Egyptian cotton dress shirt.

Outside, the rain had stopped, though the clouds were still black as tarnished silver and turbulent with moisture. With his sleeves casually rolled up and his blond hair hanging loose across his forehead, Emory was more happy and relaxed than I’d ever seen him.

“You like the Aragon family, don’t you?” I asked.

“Yes, I do,” he said, sticking his hands in the pockets of his wool slacks. “They’ve been remarkably accepting of me. More so than that stubborn daughter of theirs.”

“Don’t worry, cuz. She really likes you. And she trusts you. That’s saying a lot for Elvia.”

His emerald eyes darkened. “Benni, what is it with her and men?”

Remembering the married sabbatical replacement professor who so calculatingly seduced then dropped her our senior year at Cal Poly, I shook my head. “That’s not for me to tell you. Just keep doing what you’re doing and you’ll be fine.”

“Are you all right?” he asked, pulling his hands out of his pocket and laying them on my shoulders, massaging them gently.

“Don’t worry. Daddy and I have done this every year since I can remember. Situation normal.” Except that it wasn’t this year, and somehow Emory had sensed that.

“I’ll call you later,” he said, his face creased in worry.

“Get back to your dinner. They’re going to eat up all the guacamole.”

MY FATHER’S TRUCK was already parked in the cemetery parking lot. I left Scout in the cab and glanced around. Three other cars were there, and a small family group walked, laughing and talking, toward a grave near the back. Across from them, nearer the highway, my father held his hat in his hands, staring at my mother’s headstone. Above me, a squirrel chattered and ran down the gray trunk of an old pine tree. The dense smell of the hothouse roses in my hands overwhelmed the faint scent of pine and fresh cut grass. My boots sank slightly in the soft soil, and though I tried not to think about it, it occurred to me I was treading across a multitude of bodies to reach my dad.

“Hi, Daddy.” I kissed his cheek, then immediately sank to my knees, unwrapping the cellophane around the roses. As I arranged them in the sunken vase that my father had already filled with water, I strained to hear the conversation of the other family group, who seemed to be telling some amusing story about the person they were visiting. I envied their easy laugher, their fond memories. But in the brisk wind, tasting of rain and wet dirt and something sharp and pungent, like mustard, I silently picked dead leaves off the roses and trimmed the stems with my pocketknife. When I finished, I stood up next to my father.

“They’re real pretty, Benni,” he said as he did every year. “She would have liked them.”

“Why?”

He turned to me, his wind-reddened face surprised. “What do you mean?”

“I mean why would she like them? Were pink roses her favorite flower?”

He looked away, putting on his hat and pulling it down to shadow his face. His shoulders hunched slightly under his canvas Carhartt jacket. “She liked them.”

“Yes, you said that, but why?”

“Benni, I don’t know, she just did.”

In the long silence, we could hear a rumble of thunder behind us. My father looked up at the dark sky. “Looks like we’re in for some more rain.”

I shoved my hands deep into the pockets of my Levi’s jacket, trying to think of a way to coax him to talk about my mother.

“Daddy, about when you and Mama got married . . .”

“Benni, why do you keep bringing that up? It’s old business.”

“I’m just curious is all. There’s so much I don’t know about her, about the both of you.”

“She loved you more than her own life,” he said, his normally laconic voice sharp and defensive. “That’s all you need to know.”

“You’re wrong,” I said, feeling like the most horrible person in the world for making him go through this, but I couldn’t seem to stop myself. “I need to know more. I want to know about the circumstances surrounding my birth.”

“What do you mean, circumstances? We got married, and then you was born.
That’s
the circumstances.”

I inhaled deeply and said, “I was a normal baby?”

“Of course you were a normal baby. You was as normal as they come.”

“How much did I weigh?” I knew, but I wanted to see if he’d lie.

“I don’t know. It’s written down on your birth certificate. You was born a normal weight. You was normal all the way around. We thanked God for that.”

“Except I was born seven months after you and mama were married.”

He looked at me, his face flushed with anger and embarrassment. “Your mama was a good woman. We got married. Don’t you be thinking bad about her now. Not now or ever. She was a
good
woman.”

“I’m not making any judgments about her morality, Daddy, but she was pregnant when you got married, and I wanted to know—”

“I’ve had about enough of this. I think I’ll just skip dinner and go on back to the ranch.”

“Daddy,” I called after him. “Wait, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to imply she wasn’t a good person. I just . . .”

He turned to look at me, the deep lines of his face dark with anger. “We made our mistakes back then, little girl, but we did right by you. Don’t be judging us now.”

“I’m not,” I said, my eyes hot and burning. “I just wanted to know. I wanted to know about who I was, how I came to be.”

“You are the daughter of Ben and Alice Ramsey.
That’s
who you are. How you came to be is our business. Let the past stay there.”

His back was stiff as he walked away from me. I wanted to run after him, beg forgiveness, take back everything I said. But another part of me was angry—angry that he wouldn’t talk to me about this, angry that there were secrets that concerned me and that no one would talk about them, angry that this man who taught me to ride, showed me how to shoe horses, patiently explained over and over how to doctor sick calves, might not even be my biological father. That my father might be a horrible, manipulative man who had changed everything in my life by leaving me his estate. A man who might be a murderer or a drug dealer or both. Daddy’s truck pulled slowly up on the highway, belching white smoke in the cold evening air. I watched him, my heart heavy as concrete, until the truck was out of sight.

I turned back to my mother’s headstone, wanting to react. I wanted to yell and scream at her for . . . I didn’t know what. Loving two men? Desperately marrying the first one who asked? Not leaving me some kind of instructions on how to live?
Leaving me when I was so young and vulnerable
.

As if she had a choice
, a voice deep inside me said. But I pushed that sensible voice aside, not wanting to feel anything but the anger that caused my chest to burn like fire. She left me before I could ask her all the things a daughter needs to know—what was it like when she was pregnant with me, who gave her her first kiss, what her relationship with her own mother was like, how she coped with her mother dying.

Another distant roll of thunder sounded, and the rain started slowly, then picked up in speed, as if someone knew that I, who hated to show emotion, needed a substitute. Soon rain was streaming down my cheeks as if it were my own tears. But still I couldn’t cry.

I jumped when I felt the hands on my shoulders.

“Just me, sweetcakes,” Emory said.

I leaned my head back against his chest and gave a long, shuddering sigh. “Daddy just left. He’s real mad at me, Emory. I pushed too hard, like I always do. He ...”

“He loves you, Benni. He’ll be all right.”

I turned and looked up at him, his blond hair wet and plastered against his forehead. “Your jacket’s going to get ruined.”

“It’s wool. I imagine the sheep spent a fair amount of time in the rain.”

I tried to smile but couldn’t. He brought out a linen handkerchief from an inside pocket and handed it to me.

“Thanks.” I wiped the rain off my face.

“Are you ready to tell me what’s going on?” he asked.

Slowly, as the rain continued to soak both of us, I told him, in broken sentences, all my suspicions about Jacob Chandler, my mother, and my father.

When I was finished, his eyes were shiny with the tears I couldn’t seem to shed. “I had no idea.”

“Apparently neither did I.”

“What are you going to do?”

“What can I do, ask my father for a blood sample to compare our DNA? He won’t even talk about what happened when he and my mother got married. He thinks I should let the past stay in the past.”

“Maybe he’s right.”

I scowled at him. “Easy for you to say.”

“That’s not what I mean.”

“Do you realize that if Daddy isn’t my biological father that I don’t have one person on this earth who’s related to me by blood? That Dove isn’t ...” A painful lump formed in my throat.

“That’s not true,” he said quietly. “You have me.”

I looked up at him, realizing what he said was true. We were related on both sides of my family. The lump eased, and I swallowed, tasting salt at the back of my throat. The rain slowed to a soft drizzle, and I shivered in my wet jacket. “Thanks, Emory.”

“You need to get in dry clothes,” he said.

“I’ll run the heater on high driving back.”

“No, go by your house and change clothes. I insist. Remember that bronchitis you had in February. You don’t need a relapse.”

“Yes, Mama Littleton,” I said, smiling weakly. “You do the same.”

“I will. Elvia and I have a date later on, so I was heading home anyway.”

“How did the dinner go?”

“No one grates cheese like I do, though I do believe I’m going to purchase Señora Aragon a food processor for Christmas. All in all, I think I held my own.”

I put my arms around his neck and hugged him. “I’m sure you did, Emory.”

It was almost eight o’clock when I pulled into our driveway. I could see Gabe in the kitchen window putting away a sack of groceries. Part of me had hoped he wouldn’t be home, that I could slip in and change clothes without speaking to him. Another part of me wanted to fling myself into his arms, rest in the comfort of their strength and love.

“Gabe, it’s just me,” I called, coming in the front door followed by Scout.