The End of Eve (10 page)

“Well, anyway, my little urchin progeny,” my mother sighed, waving her hand toward the contractor's plans and then toward us. “The house is going to be beautiful. I'll make any deal I have to with God or the Devil to let me finish it before I die.”

The afternoon sun angled in, giving my mother a sudden otherworldly glow.

It kind of blew my mind how she could be so bizarre and so textbook at the same time. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross' third emotional stage after a terminal diagnosis: Bargaining. You fill your calendar, you start a major project, you extend your deadlines, you make your deal, you buy time.

AS WE WALKED
back out to the car, my phone rang.
My sister.
I handed the keys to Sol, buckled Maxito into his seat. “Hey, Leslie.”

“Hey, dude. Mom emailed that her contractor has a Ph.D. in Anaïs Nin.”

“We just met him. Total creep. And it's a Winchester Mystery House moment over here.” That old California Victorian had been under constant construction for almost four decades because the widow who lived there thought if she finished it, she'd die. Finally it was a hundred and sixty rooms and a mess of stairs that led nowhere and doors that opened to blank walls. She ended the construction. And died.

I heard the flick of Leslie's lighter and her quick inhale. “Winchester Mystery House meets
Henry and June
,” she laughed. “Whatever. Listen. Tell Mom that I hate Santa Fe with a passion and I wouldn't come visit her there even if she was the last mother on earth. Not even if she builds a giant haunted house.”

I kind of wanted to slap Leslie through the phone, but I
just said, “All right. I'll make sure and tell her that as soon as possible.”

Leslie cackled just the way my mother did. “Is there anything I can help you with from here?”

“Not really. Thanks for asking.” I clicked the phone off, glanced out the car window. Another strip mall: Nail salon, burrito shop, organic cotton dog clothes.

Santa Fe. I lived here now.

10.

Conquest

THE SOUND OF DRILLS AND THE SMELL OF FRESH PAINT
. We were turning that gray live/work space into a bright candle shop/veterinary clinic/writing studio at trainspeed. With a little bit of profit from selling your beiged-up house by the train tracks and a Home Depot credit card, it turns out you can build a quick life anywhere you like.

We moved what was left of our belongings – carloads of clothes and the furniture my mother hadn't burned – into the studio apartment and a storage unit down the street.

I bought New Mexican cookbooks from Collected Works Bookstore and shopped for the ingredients at Sunflower Market. Blue corn flour, pinto beans, and red and green chile – I could feed my little family on the cheap here.

Everything was sunshine and transience.

Maia had found a job at a shoe store at the mall, was saving up to get herself back to Los Angeles and college in time for summer session. She showed up at the half-finished live/work space her first day off wearing baggy jeans and high-heeled boots and we put Maxito's car seat in the back of the Oldsmobile and left Sol to paint things blue and the three of us drove off over a speed bump to pretend this new life was something normal.

At the farmer's market at the railyard we stocked up on kale and apricots, green chile mustard and red chile raspberry jam. Maxito tapped his foot, tried to sing along with the one-man
band – a bejangled old guy who played his accordion and twanged Loretta Lynn and Drifters songs.

“Santa Fe is cute,” Maia promised. “When I first got here I was like,
Why have I even heard of this town? It's nowhere.
But it's all right.”

ALL OVER TOWN,
plaques and monuments bragged that Santa Fe was the oldest capital city in the United States, the oldest European city west of the Mississippi, home of the oldest public building and the oldest community celebration – a merry autumn fiesta commemorating colonialism and reconquest. We laughed at the signs. They may as well have just said,
Eat it, New England.
The streets had names like Avenida Cristóbal Colón and Paseo de la Conquistadora.

Maia had hoped to convince my mother to come with us to the hot springs an hour out of town, but my mother said she didn't have time. Maia shrugged. “Who needs miraculous healing waters when you can shop for tile with Ronaldo?”

No matter. I was happy to spend the day alone with my two kids who hardly ever got to spend a day together.

We drove the old highway south out of town, listening to the Native radio station that played songs about dusty dashboards and expired tags. Maxito pointed out cactuses and giant birds as we cruised through half-ghost towns with their abandoned mines and their Old West art and anarchy. We circled back north, past the casinos and the sandstone rock formations, through the towns full of double-wides with low riders and old luxury sedans parked out front.

We crossed the Rio Grande and then the Chama, those red-brown rivers still rushing from the spring's late snowfalls.

The three of us had never been some idyllic family in a soft-focus Sears portrait, but I appreciated the ease of no-held-breath in Gammie's old car, no insults and nothing burning. Just Maia driving, Maxito babbling his Spanglish and counting cacti from the back seat, and me watching out the window, that
desert highway dotted with cemeteries and wooden crosses decorated with plastic flowers.

We got to Ojo Caliente in the blue heat of afternoon and Maia and I took turns soaking in the arsenic tubs and playing with Maxito in the lithium swimming pool where he was allowed to float and laugh far away from the relaxing yuppies with their eye pillows.

“These are our Native waters,” a woman in the lithium pool was saying. Her grandson bobbed up and down next to her. “It's offensive that these white people from San Francisco with their Kokopelli tattoos claim to ‘own' it. They charge us twenty dollars to get in and tell us we can't bring our children?”

Her friend sat poolside, feet grazing the water's surface. She pointed her middle finger toward the main office behind us. “Kokopelli this, bitches.”

We laughed, and it all seemed so normal – this world of blatant conquest and rebellious submission.

Maxito stuck his face in the water and blew bubbles.

“It's beautiful here, isn't it?” Maia whispered as she approached.

It was. Beautiful.

Afternoon faded into evening and Maia took Maxito into the restaurant for a buffalo burger while I soaked the last of the day away alone in the arsenic tub, watching the cliff swallows dart overhead while stars began to appear, at first one by one, all bright and quiet in the darkening sky, then as if by the hundreds.

IT SEEMED IMPOSSIBLE,
how many stars. I held my breath and wished on the falling ones and almost thought that something important and holy was about to happen to us. Almost had the nerve to hope. But right there on the verge of hope I felt the muscles around my heart contract and I felt something more like panic. All those stars.

11.

Trends in Bleeding and Dying

AFTER THE LAST SNOW FALL IN MAY AND BEFORE THE
monsoons of early summer, Maia repacked the big red Oldsmobile with all her earthly belongings and headed west to her new studio apartment in Pasadena to catch up on her junior year.

My mother had commandeered the turquoise trailer and was living in it out behind the gutted duplex. She complained that Ronaldo was slow and an asshole to boot; complained that a mountain lion came down from the hills in the evenings and paced outside the trailer door. “A sham of a contractor,” she sighed, “and a lioness stalking me.”

Sol and I opened our candle shop/veterinary clinic/writing studio on a bright Tuesday and I guess there wasn't much else going on in Santa Fe that week because the newspaper ran a huge color photo of us on the front page of the metro section and people stopped by to pick up their seven-day Guadalupe candles and their Saint Christopher car statues and their blue glass evil eye beads. They stopped by to find out if Doc Sol could cure their dog's ragweed allergies, stopped by to ask about memoir workshops and announce “I've always been told I should write a book.”

In between customers I worked on editing projects and Sol studied rodent anatomy books. Maxito had just started a new Spanish-immersion preschool and it seemed like we might win this game after all.
What if we lived here?
Look at us manifesting a life out of stardust and panic.

A poet I'd once heard of stopped by the blue shop to introduce herself. “I saw you in the newspaper,” she said. “I've read your books.” She had long, dark hair that was just beginning to gray, wore peacock-feather earrings. “Ariel?” She cocked her head to the side. “Do you know that you're bleeding?”

At first I thought she was talking metaphorically, the way poets do, but I'd been bleeding a lot since we got to Santa Fe. Nose bleeds, ear bleeds. I hadn't been particularly accident-prone back in Portland or California, but here I cut my fingers and stubbed my toes. Here I tripped on jagged stones and ripped my skin. I grabbed a tissue from under the counter, held it to my nose.

The poet looked worried for me. “Be careful,” she said. “The desert wants your blood. I'll live here all my life, but I won't die here. I don't want to be buried here. Not in the desert. The star beings are waiting.”

I nodded like I understood.

“Believe me or don't,” the poet said. “I'm Indigenous and Italian, so I'm a witch on both sides.”

“I believe you,” I promised. “Do you mind watching the shop for a minute? I need some coffee.”

Sol had ducked out for a miming class.

IN THE CAFE
across the street, I noticed the barista had raw wounds on her wrist like she'd been cutting herself.

“Oh, yeah,” she said when she noticed my tissue, “the bleeding.” She had gothic script and a few stars tattooed on her neck. “If you don't let the blood on purpose, you'll bleed when you least expect it. The only way to stop it is to harvest an elk.”

“An elk?”

There were paintings of crescent moons and adobe houses on the café walls. Santa Fe paintings.

“Yeah,” the barista said. “You eat the elk's organs. Raw.” She pushed my soymilk latte across the counter. “I mean, if you want to stay here and not bleed.”

I grabbed my latte and nodded like I might actually do it – harvest an elk.
I mean, why not?

I
'
D AGREED TO
meet with my mother and a hospice intake nurse at the shop that afternoon. My mother still didn't need much in terms of care, but I was trying to make the calls friends told me I should make, trying to plan for a future I didn't understand. I figured our first day open at the shop would be slow. So just after the poet left on that bright Tuesday, a fifty-something woman dressed in pink came ballet-stepping in through the French doors.

I leaned across the counter to chit-chat with our pink hospice fairy, explained that my mother really didn't have many symptoms, but she did have this diagnosis and I was trying to get ready for we-didn't-know-what.

“You never can be too ready,” the intake nurse chirped. She had fuzzy blonde hair and a fuzzy rose-colored sweater. “How wonderful for your mother that she has you, Ariel. It's going to be quite a journey.” She leaned toward me and whispered, “One thing to watch out for is when she starts coughing up blood. Promise me that you'll call us when she starts coughing up blood.”

“Sure.” I didn't ask if she expected my mother to start coughing up blood without warning or what. I just nodded. “Of course I'll call.”

A CUSTOMER STEPPED
in. “Greetings from the north, south, east, and west–” She wore flowing sage linens and amber jewelry. She reached her arms out like a scarecrow – or maybe like a crucified person. “Ah,” she said, turning her palms upward. “I know and feel that I am in the right place. My co-worker has placed a curse on me. Do you perform curse reversals?”

“No,” I had to admit. “I do not personally perform curse reversals. But I have a Marie Laveau candle here if you're interested. She's the problem solver. Or you could try Santa Barbara. She's known for her protective qualities.”

The hospice lady squinted at me, like
are you a witch or what?

The cursed customer spun around three times, grabbed both candles, dropped a ten-dollar bill on the counter, and rushed out, calling over her shoulder “blessings and thank you from each of the four directions.”

“Any time,” I called after her.

The pink hospice lady scanned the candle shelves for just a few minutes before my mother crept in looking particularly pale and tired.

It occurred to me that maybe my mother could just turn this illness thing on and off at will – transmutation at her fingertips. Snap and she could be misdiagnosed or terminal, seductress or victim, abusive mother or old woman in need.