The Wilder Sisters (44 page)
“Fattening up nicely, everything moving on schedule. I check her myself, twice a day.”
“I miss you, Pop. How’s Mami?”
“Just dandy. She’s trimming the tree as we speak. We’ve got gold ribbons, silver pinecones, some fancy twigs spray-painted all to glittering, and I didn’t know there were that many dog ornaments to be found in New Mexico, but your mother has rooted them out. She’s got dog biscuits all tied onto the ends of the branches with twine, too. I keep telling her, ‘Poppy, the dogs’ll eat ’em right off the tree when you aren’t looking,’ but you know how much she listens to me.”
“How about Rose? What’s she up to?”
“Smack in the middle of doing absolutely nothing since she quit her job. I’m a little put off with her, to tell you the truth.”
His voice had gone rough around the edges, and Lily’s skin went to gooseflesh. “Why?”
“Holing up like that doesn’t do anybody much good. Well, your mother’s taking her out to lunch soon. Maybe she can snap Rose out of this slump.”
Lily wanted to tell her father not to count on it. If Rose could hold a grudge long enough for it to grow lichen, the situation with Austin could sideline her indefinitely. “And my buddy, Shep?”
Her father was quiet for so long that Lily wondered if the cordless had cut out on her; sometimes it did that, never during a conference call, but usually in the middle of a conversation she really didn’t want to end. “He isn’t doing too well, Lily. I checked him into the hospital yesterday. I asked him if there was anything I could get for him, and he hinted around he wouldn’t mind seeing you if you could spare the time. Do you think you can swing a quick trip? I know you’ve only been home a couple of weeks, but Christmas is coming….” his voice trailed off the way it did when he was near tears, which for a horseman, took considerable provocation.
Lily had programmed the telephone numbers of all the airlines
into the speed-dial function on her cordless. “There’s a doc I can visit in Albuquerque next week. Can it wait that long?”
“Just how much do you know about Shep’s problems?”
A sudden burst of rain beat so hard at the sliding door that Lily wouldn’t have been surprised if the safety glass shattered. “Of course I know about it. I didn’t say anything because he made me swear not to.”
“It isn’t like he’s on the breathing machine yet. But I wouldn’t wait much after say, Monday?”
Lily could have sworn she felt a cold hand close around her heart. “I’ll be there as soon as I can make my reservation. I’ll rent a car at the airport and drive up at light speed.”
Her father’s chuckle was one of the finest sounds in the world. It almost made up for being alone over the holidays. “Don’t know if this will interest you, but I heard from the guy down at the feed store that Tres Quintero flew back to California. Guess he couldn’t take the winter.”
“Really?” Lily said, her heart pounding with excitement that he might be in the same state. But probably it was a Leah thing, some college-girl crisis only Stepdaddy could smooth over. “I guess if he can’t handle winter in New Mexico he deserves to live in California. I’ll make my reservation the minute I hang up. See you soon, Pop. Big sloppy kisses.”
“Back at you, little girl. Fly safe. Hold a good thought for Shep- herd, won’t you?”
“Oh, Pop. It kills me that you thought you had to ask.”
Shep in the hospital—and so soon. This was a family crisis, the real thing, not some manufactured spat between sisters. Weddings and funerals—at times like these the clan was supposed to gather. Lily punched Talk on her cordless phone and started trying to find her nephew again. She called the editor of
Dirt Rider
, which had offices in LA, NYC, Detroit, Chicago, and Atlanta. The Southwest was in- grained in Second Chance; it was in his lineage, his blood. Lily didn’t think he’d veer any farther east than Colorado. The editor provided her with telephone numbers of various dirt-bike folk there, and in Arizona and New Mexico. Lily left messages with the numbers she’d been given and waited for someone to call back. “Tell him to come home,” she told them. “It’s an emergency.” Now that she’d taken care of business, done
all she could until the morning, she lay back against the couch pil- lows to rest. Out of the corner of her left eye, a purple-and-yellow glow shimmered. She was about to dog-cuss the neighbor’s lights until she recognized the sparkly vision for what it was: incipient- migraine aura. She leaped to her feet to get her pills and at once buckled to her knees, humbled and dry-heaving at the vise-grip pain in her left temple.
After a series of long, slow breaths, she crawled to the bathroom, climbed over Buddy, and patted her clammy face with a damp washcloth. The nausea settled down to a tolerable queasiness, so she inched her way up the stairs in search of her purse. Two pills, another swallow of Coke, and she settled facedown on her bed. Her heart beat in time to the throbs of her headache. She shut her eyes and curled into the fetal position. When she first started getting the headaches, she’d been convinced she had an aneurysm. She’d talked one of her doctor pals into comping her an MRI. As she lay in the tomblike machine, claustrophobia, her childhood bogeyman, descen- ded with a vengeance. Rather than embarrass herself in front of a doctor, she concentrated on remembering the greatest sex of her life, which of course just happened to be with Tres Quintero. Recalling his skill as a lover had taken her mind off the small space in which she was enclosed like some hastily bound mummy, but now calling Tres to mind just made her sad. The bones around her eye socket blazed.
Half an hour
, she told herself.
Then the drugs will kick in
. The pills always made her hands and feet go cold. She pulled the com- forter up over herself and tried visualizing the pain being chased into a corner, the same way a good cutting horse could select and move a single cow from the herd. Sometimes, with the right horse, all you had to do was hang on. Nothing compared to the feel of a thousand pounds of horseflesh between your legs except—oh, what was the point of even thinking about it?
Buddy came trotting upstairs. Whenever Lily was sick, he stuck close to her side, as if his latent heeling instincts might be called into use should she become disoriented on her way to the bathroom. He lay down on the carpet next to her bed, licking at her hand. Lily dozed. She dreamed of riding Sparrow, her very first pony, shared with Rose, but secretly she knew the horse liked her best. Her feathery mane hair was colored the most wonderful shade of caramel. Lily laid her face
against the mare’s neck, smelling the sharp, distinctive odor of female horse, and noted how that smell was sometimes stronger than others, depending if Sparrow was in season. It was summer, they had trailered her out to the lake, and Lily rode her bareback into the water using only a rope halter. The moment the horse’s hooves lifted and the mare transformed from a walking animal to a swimming one, her legs curving in the murky water like a carousel horse, Lily felt like she was flying.
Buddy snored, startling her awake, and Lily was overcome with the feeling of loss. Why did all that good stuff have to end with pu- berty? Why couldn’t a girl go back, if she chose to, remain in that in-between stasis forever, brave enough to take off her T-shirt if it was hot out, tough enough to climb the tallest tree and—miniskirts be damned—risk scarring her knees. Simply possessed of a spirit so fierce she’d think nothing of lifting a fist to a bully, even if tucked away in his shorts somewhere, he was hiding a penis.
Lily remembered looking down at her breasts one morning and noticing her nipples, swollen and sore. They felt exquisitely painful to the touch, but the discomfort couldn’t stop her from pressing her fingers against them, or all day long the awareness of them rubbing against her clothing. Boys she thought nothing of began to turn their heads, to look at her differently, as if they, too, sensed the change, and were just as uncomfortable in their skins. Lily had responded the only way she knew how—in competitive mode, putting her guard up—except with Tres.
We’re doomed
, she thought to herself, flipping the pillow off her overheated face.
We’ll keep on butting up against each other in search of love until we draw our last breaths. I can’t take it that pretty soon Shep isn’t going to be here. That I won’t be able to tease him or shock him or just stand there and watch him doctor Pop’s horses. Dammit all, it isn’t fair that good people have to die
.
When her bedside phone rang, Lily expected one of two things: Pop to be calling to stay it was too late, or miraculously, that Second Chance might have gotten one of her messages. She pulled the re- ceiver toward her, and the phone fell on Buddy’s head, causing him to yip at an awful pitch. “Whoops,” she said, her voice a little slurred from sleep. “Sorry, Buddy. I mean, I dropped the phone on my dog, Buddy. His name is Buddy. Jeez, whoever this is, sorry. I mean hello.”
“Lily, it’s Tres.”
No way could this be happening. She rubbed her eyes. “I heard a rumor you were in California. Where are you? Leah’s dorm room?” There was a pause. “No, I’m standing at a pay phone in that very odd cowboy bar you told me about, in rather damp sawdust. You’re right about the couples wearing matching shirts. It’s awfully loud
in here.”
Hall and Oates throbbed in the background, and Lily’s migraine waved from a far-off corner. “I never lie.”
“Your subdivision is like some three-thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle with no edge pieces. I’ve been driving around trying to find Palomino Street for what feels like hours. I’m soaking wet. I thought it never rained in Southern California. And people around here are not ter- ribly friendly when you ask for directions. Right off they assume you’re a serial killer.”
Lily smiled and rolled over onto her back. “Blame
El Niño
. Everyone’s paranoid. Around here they don’t know fly fishermen from the Unabomber. Too bad you’re not a flood insurance salesman instead of an unemployed shrink. Or an umbrella distributor. You could clean up.”
“I’m filled with regret.”
“You know, Tres, I’m not sure how to respond to this phone call.
I think I remember that I’m kind of pissed off at you.” “I’d like a chance to explain in person.”
Naturally. As if they were equipped with sensors, men called the moment women were beginning to accept the loss. She should hang up the phone right now, this moment. Her fickle mouth opened right up. “Got a pen?”
“Yep. A little cowboy napkin to write on, too.”
She explained the twists and turns and told him where to park. He said, “Thanks.” Lily said, “You’re welcome.” They listened to each other breathe for a while, and Lily said good-bye first, but she didn’t hang up until Tres did. Then she turned to Buddy and, using both hands, took a firm hold of his muzzle. “Do not blow this for me,” she warned. “I mean it. Take a doggy Valium and let whatever is supposed to happen happen.”
Take the feed store job, working the counter. It paid only min- imum wage and meant lifting grain sacks all day; still, a 10 percent discount on hay was something to consider.
Crawl back to Austin and find a way to endure the humiliation of spending eight hours a day around a man she’d once slept with, who now desired only her accounting skills.
Decide nothing and keep the lunch date with Mami.
Rose flipped through the hangers in her closet for anything she might have overlooked. She was now down almost 20 pounds from her original 130, and everything she owned hung on her. It wasn’t that she didn’t eat, she ate half a cup of oatmeal in the morning, a cup of soup and carrot sticks at lunch, maybe part of one of those frozen entrees for dinner. She put a hand to her cheek and felt the distinct angles of the bones through her skin.
Finding nothing satisfying in the way of wardrobe, she braved Amanda’s bedroom. Despite recent cleaning efforts, a musty smell met her nose the moment she opened the door. Echoes of unresolved arguments lingered in the static air. Her daughter’s lightning-quick departures always caused her to picture Amanda in midspin, turning on her heel to flee something her mother had said. If Amanda were to have a baby of her own, that might cause her to settle down, maybe even change her ideas about parenting. Maybe.
But if Rose continued to follow this thread, she knew she’d have to stand Mami up, lock herself into her bedroom, and spend another day
hiding. She pushed aside the mess of shoes and rumpled blue jeans that lay at the bottom of Amanda’s closet. In the middle of the rack she found a nearly new outfit that had come from Chelsea Court down in Santa Fe. Even with Ginny’s courtesy discount—Mami had placed a greyhound with the shopkeeper—the clothes had cost as much as a week’s worth of groceries. Amanda begged, promised to muck stalls, repaint the barn, anything. Only these clothes made her feel pretty. If she were dressed like this, that boy she liked at school would notice her, and if she had a decent boyfriend then she’d study, make good grades, go to college—the possibilities were endless. Rose had tumbled right down that slippery slope and written out the check. Amanda wore the outfit twice that she could remember. The top was a stretchy black lace pullover, embroidered with au- tumn-colored flowers and leaves. The slacks were heavy black twill, Capri-style, with a hidden zipper up the back, something only Barbie dolls or women with flat bellies could pull off with grace.
Rose stripped to her bra and panties—her good bra from Nord- strom’s—after Lily’s crack she’d thrown the white cotton one away—then dressed in her daughter’s clothing. She shut the mirrored closet doors to study her reflection. That area of gray growing out from her part had widened. In a strange way its presence felt com- forting, as if the outward and visible change reflected how she felt inside where no one could see. Amanda’s shirt hugged Rose’s breasts, outlining her rib cage. The fabric was semisheer, too reveal- ing. If not for the strategically placed roses, it looked almost as if she wasn’t wearing any undergarments. Her hipbones stretched the pants fabric tight across her stomach.
Good golly, Miss Molly
, Shep used to say when she or Lily walked out of the ranch house dressed to impress, or he’d let go one of those primal male sighs that meant language was too much of an effort. Remembering that made her smile. Rose ran her hands from her pelvic bones up her breasts, curious how it was she could present this sort of pared-down, utterly sexual persona yet feel absolutely nothing. Maybe that one night of lovemaking with Austin was her body’s swan song. Oh, for goodness sake, the clothes would do for lunch with Mami. She pulled her black Jones New York blazer over the blouse and her black overcoat on top of everything. So much black. On Georgia O’Keeffe the color provided a neutral background, showcasing her remarkable face. “I, on the other hand, look like I’m headed