Banana Rose (21 page)

“You talk as if New Mexico is a person.”

“It almost is. It calls me—” I paused. “The way you do.”

Gauguin studied the backs of his hands. “I guess Taos was never like that for me. I don’t miss it much; I’ve just missed you. Now that I’m back in the city, I can’t believe that we lived that way for so long—dirt floors, no running water. Meanwhile, everyone else was growing up, learning how to make a living. Here I am now, working for my father. It feels weird.”

That Sunday we went to breakfast at Gauguin’s mother’s. Alice lived in a brick apartment house on the north side of town. The elevator was broken, so we had to walk up two long flights of stairs.

When we got to the third floor, Alice was standing in the hall with the apartment door wide open. “Honey!” she cried as she took Gauguin’s face in her hands and gave him a big kiss on the lips.

Surprised by such a blatant show of affection, I awkwardly moved from one foot to the other.

“Oh, Mom, I want you to meet Nell.” Gauguin stepped back and presented me.

“Hello, Nell.” Alice reached out her hand.

Now I could see her close up. She had high cheekbones and dyed black hair in a short permanent. Her skin was pale, her lips were thick like Gauguin’s, and she wore bright red lipstick. Her eyes were dark blue and sparkled when she looked at Gauguin. The spark went out when she turned to me.

The living room was dominated by a flowered couch and matching flowered curtains that hung on either side of a big window. A white wicker end table held a pile of
National Geographic
magazines, and there was an afghan thrown over a red chair. Above a wooden bureau hung a group of framed photos. I stepped over to see them better. “Is this you, Gauguin?”

“No, that’s his uncle, my brother, when he was a boy,” Alice explained while lighting a cigarette.

“How about this?” I pointed to a young boy by a boat, holding up a fish.

“No, that’s not him either.” Alice blew out a puff of smoke.

“Hey, girl, why don’t you help her?” Gauguin flirted with his mother. “Here I am.” He stepped over and pointed to a young boy on a horse, wearing shorts, a white T-shirt, and a bandanna tied around his neck.

“Oh, is that Dixie Sue?” I asked.

Alice snickered. “You told her about that?”

I watched Gauguin turn slowly and face his mother. “Yeah, you know I loved that horse.”

Alice waved her hand. “Let’s have some food. Gauguin, you must be starving.” She walked into the kitchen.

Gauguin and I continued to look at photos. “There I am,” he pointed. I felt the weight of his hand on my shoulder. “That’s me and Alice’s dad at Christmas one year. There’s none of Rip,” he whispered.

“Food’s on,” Alice called from the dining room.

We turned and joined her. From across the room, I noticed how skinny she was in her royal blue slacks. My mother would be jealous.

We sat down and she handed me a plate of scrambled eggs. “These are delicious,” I said after tasting them. “There’s fresh basil in them, isn’t there?”

She nodded and turned to Gauguin. “Want some coffee, sweetheart?”

He reached out his cup.

“Where can you get fresh herbs around here?” I asked.

“We have Lund’s. They sell everything, from all over the country,” she snapped at me.

I was confused. I thought I had asked a reasonable question. Why was she so defensive?

Gauguin quickly held up one of her biscuits. “You can’t get these in Lund’s. Only Alice makes them like this.”

“Mmm.” I nodded and slabbed on some more honey and butter. “They
are
good.”

“Don’t they have them in New York?” she asked. She was half curious this time, but cautious. Now I got it. She was afraid I was a New York snob, that I would think Midwesterners were hicks.

“No, not like these.” I smiled. “Mostly as kids we ate rye bread, pumpernickel, and bagels. My father owns a luncheonette.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Didn’t your mother bake?”

“No.” I shook my head. “My grandparents lived with us. My grandmother baked cookies, pies, and—” I was about to say challah, but suddenly I felt shy about the braided bread we ate on the Shabbos.

“Well, when Gauguin was young, I baked every day. Right, honey?” She patted Gauguin’s hand and seemed to soften.

Gauguin nodded and took a big bite out of his biscuit. ‘Then”—she looked down at her hands— “when I got divorced fourteen years ago, I didn’t have time. I went back to school and trained as a dental hygienist.”

“Oh, do you like doing that?” I tried to brighten things. “I always appreciate going to get my teeth cleaned.” I smiled at her broadly.

“You do?” she asked, amazed. “Most people dread the dentist’s office.”

“Not me.” This seemed to please her. “I like keeping my teeth healthy.”

“Well, you do have a nice smile,” Alice offered.

“Thank you,” I said. “I even thought at one time of becoming a dentist.”

Gauguin burst out laughing. “Nell, you?” He pointed at me. “Come on.”

Alice took my side. All of a sudden she was a feminist. “Why can’t a woman become a dentist?” She turned on Gauguin.

“I didn’t mean that.” He held up his hand. “It’s just that Nell’s a teacher. I can’t imagine it.”

“Oh, it has always been a secret wish of mine.” I turned to Alice. “Did you know that Doc Holliday and Zane Grey were dentists? Also Thomas Welch was one. He was the founder of Welch’s grape juice.”

“My, I didn’t. Let me write that down.” She got up to get a pad and pencil.

When her back was turned, I made a face at Gauguin and whispered under my breath, “I’m not just a teacher. I’m a painter.”

He was taken aback, as though he’d forgotten all about that.

When Alice returned to the table, Gauguin announced, “Nell and I are getting married.”

Alice’s mouth fell open, but she quickly recovered. “Well, my, well, well, congratulations.” She bent over to kiss the top of Gauguin’s head and stroked his cheek. “My boy, I’m so proud of you.”

Suddenly she turned to me. “I thought they wouldn’t let you marry out of your religion.”

I felt my face flush. “Oh, my parents are very liberal,” I explained.

When Gauguin and I got back in the car, he leaned against the seat. “Whew, that was hard.”

“What was going on? After you announced our engagement, she ignored me the rest of the breakfast, except for that one jab at me being Jewish.”

“She’s never gotten over her divorce. It killed her. And she doesn’t want to lose me.” He started the car. “My dad had been cheating on her for years, but the final straw was when he went out with my old second-grade teacher. Maybe she thinks I’m cheating on her, too.”

“But if she feels so possessive of you, how come she never called and hardly wrote all the time you were in Taos?” It didn’t make sense.

“That’s the way she is.”

“Oh.” I nodded. Some explanation.

There was something in the way Alice sucked in the smoke on a Camel that I couldn’t forget. I thought about it the whole while we weaved through the streets of Minneapolis. Then I realized what it was: It accentuated her cheekbones. Gauguin seemed awkward with her. I sensed something yellow and sexual between them.

This will be hard, I thought to myself. I had no experience playing the other woman.

I
FLEW BACK TO
Boulder, gave notice at my job at the halfway house, and began to pack. On the long afternoon walks Eugene and I took, he would stick his face in the blooming lilac bushes. “So you’re going to be married?”

I slept with him my last night in Boulder. The next day he shook my hand before I stepped into the car, then touched my cheek. “Take care of yourself, Nell. I forgot to tell you, I love you. You are a great being.” I threw my eyes down to his chest. I couldn’t bear looking into his dark crow’s gaze. I took his hand in both of mine. “I will write,” I said.

Eugene leaned into the car and wrapped a red wool scarf around my neck. “I think it will be getting cold.” I nodded, not sure what he meant. I pulled away from the curb and headed toward Fort Collins.

A half-hour into my drive north, it began to snow. The snow fell hard. The full spring leaves caught the flakes and were weighed down by them. I could no longer see out my car window, so I pulled to the side of the road and walked two miles in my sneakers to a motel. The wind blew steadily, and above me I heard cawing. I looked up and saw a crow. It circled twice over my head and then disappeared, swallowed up in this great spring snowstorm. I knew the crow was Eugene.

The next morning, the hills outside the window of my rented room glistened. I read magazines in the motel lobby all morning until the roads were cleared, wrapped in Eugene’s red scarf. As I ate my lunch of scrambled eggs and English muffins, I felt the gaze of his crow eyes. “You are a great being.” What had Eugene meant by that?

At about two in the afternoon, I was able to get back on the road. The sun felt good as I walked to the car. The car was cold, but it started right up. I had trouble getting the clutch in second and had to let it warm up before I took off into the white spring.

I drove across the northern part of Colorado and was in Ogallala, Nebraska, when I stopped in a Howard Johnson’s for the night. I’d rarely stayed in a motel—mostly I slept on friends’ floors. Now I was staying in one two nights in a row. They gave me room 211. My eyes were red from driving, and I called Gauguin for the first time in two weeks.

“Gauguin, I’m tired. I’m scared. You should have flown in and driven back to Minneapolis with me,” I cried.

“Nell, don’t start,” he said.

We were on the edge of an argument. Instead we hung up quickly. When I got off the phone, I went down to the cocktail lounge.

“Can I have a scoop—no, make it two scoops of coffee ice cream with bittersweet hot fudge?” I asked.

“Ma’am, we don’t serve ice cream in the cocktail lounge,” the waiter explained to me.

“Well, is the luncheon counter open?” I asked.

“No, ma’am, not at this hour,” he said.

“Well, then, how am I going to get my coffee ice cream?” I asked.

“I’m sorry. We serve drinks here.” He began to get rigid. I paid it no mind.

“Could you sneak into the fountain area and get me some ice cream? Please—I’ll pay extra,” I cajoled.

The waiter, who looked eleven but, I was sure, had already studied geometry in high school, sighed. I looked at his large Adam’s apple. I waited.

He did it! He proudly brought me two scoops in a silver dish. The hot fudge was cold, but it was the best sundae I ever had. I ate it slowly with a silver spoon. I wanted to make it last.

T
HE NEXT MORNING
, it occurred to me: Should I stop at Anna’s? After all, I was in Nebraska! I took out the map. Why hadn’t I thought of this before? I knew she lived in Omaha, in a small apartment over a hardware store. I could follow Highway 80 and stay with her overnight. At first I had thought I would drive straight through to Minnesota, but now I was in no hurry to hit Minneapolis. I was getting scared. It would be good to see Anna.

I stopped at a Texaco station and asked the attendant where I could find a pay phone. He pointed to the cashier’s room.

I dropped a lot of coins in the slot and dialed Anna in Omaha. How come I had never thought of calling her long distance before? I asked myself. We only wrote. The phone rang twice.

A man answered. “No, Anna moved.”

“Who are you?”

“I took the apartment over from her a month ago. Just a minute. I think I have her new address,” he said.

I wrote down the phone number he dictated, but just as he began to recite her address I spied a cooler full of Tab, Dr Pepper, Fresca, Coke, and bottles of orange juice. I stretched the phone cord to get at the OJ.

“Just a minute. Just a minute. What’s the address?” I asked again.

“Eight twelve Columbine,” he repeated. “It’s in Dansville. She moved there.”

I hesitated. “Where’s that?” “North,” he explained. “What’d she do that for?”

“Money. She was offered a part-time teaching job there for next fall.”

I unscrewed the lid from the OJ bottle. “Thanks.” I hung up and stuck my hand in my pocket for more coins.

Her phone rang. It rang and rang. No answer. I hung up and headed for the car to look at my map.

“Hey, you! Aren’t you going to pay for that?” I had the distinct impression that someone was addressing me.

I stopped, turned around, looked at the attendant in the doorway, then looked down at the OJ in my hand. “Oh, sure. Sorry. Is Dansville far from here?”

My plan was to drive to Dansville and find 812 Columbine. It wouldn’t be hard. I’d surprise Anna. She’d love it. If she wasn’t home, she couldn’t have gone far. The town looked small on the map.

I got off the freeway at Grand Island and headed north on 281. The road followed the railroad tracks for a while. Most of the towns I passed had only a bar, a gas station, and a tall granary. Then the land spread out around it. This was the lonesomeness Anna had talked about. I stopped in a relatively large town that had a strip of stores and walked along the sidewalk looking in the windows. People eyed me suspiciously. Emerson, pop. 127, knew who belonged. I didn’t. I went into a secondhand store and browsed through the boxes of clothes, mirrors, and plastic dinnerware. I found a pair of very used boys’ brown cowboy boots. I tried them on. They fit perfectly. Well, no, they didn’t fit perfectly. They were a half-size too small, but they were perfect anyway and I bought them for fifty cents. The woman behind the counter was luxuriously large and wore a beautiful full-length nylon dress with green flowers on a black background. She had bought it in the store just the other day, she told me.

“Oh, you’ll like these. Just oil ’em a little when you get home.” I continued on to Dansville. When I got there, the bank clock blinked 8:02. I could see it from blocks away. As I waited for the streetlight to change, I had this strange feeling that it was always 8:02 in Dansville; 8:03 never came up. A sign on the road said the town’s population was 20,000. I stopped at the Sunoco.

“Where’s Columbine?” I asked the attendant.