Barbara Samuel (41 page)

He closed the door behind him, holding on to her hand, and looked her over, head to toe. “Elegant.”

“You told me not to change.”

“I wanted to see you as you.”

She led him into the workroom and settled on the couch. “The bedrooms are right there, so we have to be quiet.” She sat cross-legged. “You want some tea or something?”

“No, thanks.” He laced his fingers through hers. “I wanted to talk to you in person because I need to tell you something.”

Uh-oh.

“I’m listening.”

He took a breath, raised his eyes. “Nadine showed up at my door tonight. She was hysterical and exhausted and looked like hell, so I—took her in, Luna. I gave her a bed to sleep in. Not mine.”

“Okay.”

“That’s it? Just ‘okay’?”

“What did you want me to say?”

He bent his head, lifted a shoulder. “I don’t know.”

Luna let the silence stretch, wondering what he wanted, what this was about.

“Does it make you uncomfortable?”

She shook her head. “You have to do what you have to do.”

“If it bothers you, she can go somewhere else.”

“No,” she said quietly. “I think you have to be who you are.”

He rubbed his face. “She’s due in two weeks. I thought I could put her up until then if she can’t work things out with my brother. But only if you’re okay with it.”

“I haven’t known you long enough to be a voice in your life, Thomas. You have to follow this through, see where it goes.” Her hand felt cold and she took it away to tuck beneath her armpit. She sighed and shook her head. “And I have to tell you that I sort of knew this would happen. I started out knowing I’d be a transition person for you, and I took the chance.”

“Luna, you’re not.”

She ducked her head, weighing the options open to her. She could ask him to leave so she could think about it, but he’d go home and put Nadine out and feel guilty.

Just tell the truth
, said Barbie.

“This is a good chance for you to figure out where you really stand in your feelings about her.”

“Maybe I’m more interested in where I stand with you.”

“I think this has moved too fast,” Luna said honestly. “I’ve told you—I don’t know if I can really make a commitment. I just don’t know.”

His long dark eyes showed disappointment. Sharp disappointment, actually, which she avoided by ducking her head. “I’m sorry,” she said.

For a long time, he didn’t say anything. “Luna, we’re both old enough to know that happily ever after is a fairy tale. Life is long and things happen.” He took her hand. “It is fast and we’ve fallen in love and that’s a
good thing. The only promise I can give you is that I will always tell the truth. Always, okay?”

She didn’t know what to say.

He stood, touched her head. “You know where to find me.”

She nodded.

“Sometimes, Luna, a man needs to know how a woman feels.”

He left.

Tiny could not sleep. He lay in his bed, tossing and turning and sweating, his blood too hot for his veins. He could feel it running in him, like lava, burning through his arms and belly and groin.

Angelica didn’t want him anymore. She told him on the phone. No more.

But this time, instead of going totally insane, some quiet thing came to him and whispered to be calm. Oh, not all calm—he cried on the phone with her, begged her to change her mind, told her he’d quit drinking and he would never hurt her again. Ever. Even if she hit him with a frying pan, which she had done once. Cracked his skull.

But she didn’t listen to him. Didn’t listen.

Something in him went quiet, then, like he was one of his Comanche ancestors—still and quiet and burning. A plan. He went to bed, conscious of the heavy bracelet on his ankle. He tried to sleep, but that river of heat in him kept jerking him awake. He dreamed of big hands on his wife’s breasts. He dreamed of
La Llorona
, screaming down the river at him. He dreamed of roses, pink ones, falling down on his head. Only the last one cooled him at all and he even slept a while in their perfumed snow.

The children would be sleeping at their grandmother’s
house, so they could go to Mass this morning. Angelica would be alone. Before she got up for church, he would go see her. He would talk, face-to-face. He would kiss her, because that melted her heart when it turned hard. He would touch her. Gently. Only gently.

He would pour out this passion and love on her and she would see the truth.

And he could do it because it was Sunday. Because there was time for him to run errands on Sundays, and he had learned by accident that sometimes the monitoring center didn’t get to calls as fast on Sundays. There was room. There was time.

He would convince her. He had to.

As Luna had predicted, Sally was admitted to inpatient treatment and was not allowed visitors until a thorough assessment of her condition had been completed. Luna had prepared Maggie for the possibility, so she didn’t appear to be devastated by it. “This means she’s gonna get help, right?”

They were sitting alone at the kitchen table. The weather bluster of the night before had died down completely. “Yes. She definitely will get help now.” She touched the girl’s hand. “I’m so sorry this is happening to you, Maggie. You’ve been really brave and together, and you should never have had to do all that by yourself.”

She nodded sadly. Her big topaz eyes were wise beyond their years. “I was startin’ to lose it, though. I just didn’t know what to do.”

“Joy told me you made a shrine to Tupac. Did that help?”

Maggie lowered her eyes. “It sounds crazy, huh?”

“Not necessarily. You must have picked him for a reason, right?”

“Yeah. I got a sign the day of my dad’s funeral. And
then I started reading about him, and he had this bad life, really hard, but he ended up being okay. He wrote this book called
A Rose That Grew from Concrete, and
it’s so beautiful. Like, full of faith, you know? It made me feel stronger to just … talk to him or something.”

“You felt pretty lonely.”

“Totally.” She raised her eyes. “I really, really miss my dad.”

“I bet. That has to hurt a lot.”

Maggie nodded. “Sometimes, I want to do anything I can to get away from it. Sometimes it hurts so bad I want to take a knife and cut my arm, you know, like the Indians used to do? I wanted to have a scar that showed the world I lost something big.” She pressed her thumb hard into a glazed doughnut. “Then I realized that the only way to get through hurting was just to go ahead and hurt sometimes. Not break stuff trying to get away from it, not cut myself. Not take pills like my mom. That’s what she did, you know, kept hiding from it, but it can’t go away unless you face it.”

Luna blinked, and then she went ahead and let go of the laugh of startlement. “You know, Maggie, I was a therapist for years, and sometimes I worked with people who were in their sixties who still didn’t know what you just said. You’re so wise.”

“Wise?”

“Yeah. Even the way you wanted to cut yourself makes a lot of sense in a way. People do all kinds of things to mark their grief. They cut their hair, they cut themselves to make a scar, like you said. It hurts, so much, to lose somebody you love, but you figured out the truth—that you have to just go ahead and hurt.”

“You know, it’s not so bad for me anymore. I still miss him. I still think about things I want to tell him, but sometimes, I go all day and forget that he’s dead. Or
not exactly forget, but it’s okay not to think about it every minute.”

“Right. That’s how you heal.”

“Maybe my mom will learn how, too.”

“She will. And you know she loves you with all her heart, don’t you?”

“Yeah. The
bruja
said she was heartsick. You can’t help that, really.”

“She’s going to get well, you’ll see.”

Joy came out of the bathroom then, her hair wrapped up in a towel. “I’m starving. Mom, will you make French toast?”

“Sure. Do you like it, too, Maggie?”

“I
love
it.”

Thomas awakened long before dawn, even though he’d been out so late at Luna’s house. He was so early he beat Placida to the kitchen, and it worried him enough that he peeked in on her. She was snoring, loudly, so she was still alive. He smiled to himself and closed the door.

A little ache was in his chest this morning. Luna, Luna, Luna. He wanted her. Wanted her here.

And instead, Nadine, who’d made his life hell, was back, sleeping upstairs with her big belly. He picked up the phone and dialed his brother’s number. James answered on the first ring. “Nadine?” The word was rife with worry and urgency, and Thomas frowned.

“It’s me, bro. She’s here.”

“With you?”

“No, not like that, just here. What’s going on?”

“I tell you the truth, Thomas, she’s fuckin’ wacko. She just is. I mean, I don’t know what she’s thinkin’, like her brain went into her belly.”

“She thinks you’re cheating on her, James.”

“Yeah, I know. But, I’m not, Thomas. I love her. How do you prove to somebody that you’re not cheating?”

“You’re not?”

“You thought I was?”

“Well, it crossed my mind.” Thomas pursed his lips. “Done it once or twice before.”

“I know.” He paused, and then said, “Thomas, I would never have done that to you if I didn’t love her so crazy like she’s in my blood. She drove you crazy, but all the stuff you hated, I liked. I still like it. Even when she’s wacko.”

“Maybe you need to come up here. Convince her.”

“Okay. I’m leaving in just a few minutes. Just gotta put on my shoes.”

Thomas hung up the phone and stared at it. Not cheating. Well, at least that was something good.

He picked up the phone and dialed Luna’s number, but before it could ring, he hung up, scowling. Not this time. This time, he wasn’t going to be a fool for a woman. If she wanted him, she had to come to him.

It was surprising how little time it took to drive to Trinidad. Less than two hours. All this time, Luna thought, he’d been close enough to …

The land was a ranch, a working ranch judging by the herds of sleek cattle grazing on the pale yellow grass. A scattering of outbuildings looked deserted, but they kept driving until they came to a plain house, a manufactured home painted red. Nothing fancy, but there were some marigolds planted around the base. A sharp swell of recognition went through Luna—a memory of her father telling her that marigolds were a way to remember the dead.

“My hands are shaking,” she said to Elaine.

Elaine stared through the windshield. “Now what do we do?”

“Maybe,” Joy said from the backseat, “we should just get out of the car.”

“It’s a good start anyway.” Luna took a breath and stepped out. A smooth breeze came across the high plain and rustled her hair as she stretched, then shook her sleeves down.

A man came out on the small wooden stoop that led to the door. He was in his sixties, his hair thick over a rancher’s face. He wore a flannel shirt and jeans and his legs were bowed in the distinctive way that marked a man who’d worked with horses his entire life. “How you doing? Can I help you?”

“Hi,” Luna said, and came forward, her hair in her face. She tossed it away and extended her hand. “My name is—”

“You’re Jesse’s girl. Damn, you look like him.” He lowered his chin a hair, swallowed away some strong emotion. “‘Scuse me. It ain’t been that long and I’m heartsore over it.”

“I’m sorry,” Luna said.

“Y’all come to see about the land?”

“Yes. This is my sister, Elaine, and my daughter, Joy, and her friend Maggie, who just rode along. We just wanted to see it, really, before we made any decisions.”

“I’m Ralph.” He looked at them all for a moment. Then, “Well, whyn’t you come on in for a minute. There’s some of his things here still. I reckon you might like seeing them.”

Luna’s heart squeezed, very hard, one time. Then she moved toward the house.

Elaine said, “I’m going to stay outside.”

Luna paused. Then she nodded and went in alone. She was the one who wanted answers, after all.

The inside of the house was no more upscale than the out. It was serviceable, furnished with a sturdy tweedy carpet in browns and golds. A functional couch and chair faced a big-screen television, and there were no adornments on the wall. The kitchen opened to a small dining area, and a hall led to what Luna assumed would be bedrooms. “Did you live together?”

“Yep. Couple of old bastards, just seemed a way to have a little company, anyways. I moved out here in ‘87, I guess. He took me in, Jesse did, when I didn’t have a pot to piss in.” His mouth moved. “Drank away every goddamn dime I made till then, went through three wives and two families before I landed here in jail and got myself to AA.”

Luna smiled. “I’ve been sober four years.”

“That right?”

“Yeah.” She rubbed her hands on her thighs. “So he was sober, too, my dad?”

“That he was, darlin’. He didn’t talk too much about his lost days, but I gathered they were pretty bad, but he’d earned a twenty-year strip by the time he died.”

“That’s great.” Luna suddenly sat down, winded and overwhelmed.

The old man gave her a respectful moment, then said, “Why don’t I go get that box of stuff for you?”

“I would like that.”

He disappeared down the hall. It was so quiet that she heard the sound of a ticking clock somewhere, an old one,
tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock.
The old man had been doing a book of crossword puzzles, and had almost made it through the book by the look of it. A
TV Guide and
an
Outdoors Man
were the only other things she saw out.

“Here we go,” he said, returning with a box about
two feet square. “He didn’t have a lot—put it all in the land, but this is what he left.”