Fragile Beasts (10 page)

“What kind of a name is that?” Klint snorts.

“It’s Spanish. It means tempestuous one.”

“Give me a break,” he mutters.

“We’ve known each other for a long time,” Shelby says to me while leading the way up to the front door, “and you’ve never asked me about Aunt Candace’s bull before.”

“So it’s real?”

“Of course, it’s real. Why wouldn’t it be real? It’s just a bull. Lots of people have bulls on their farms.”

The door is almost twice my height and has a border of small square windows all around it. A gold knocker the size of my head with the name
JACK
etched into it is anchored in the very center.

Shelby pushes the door open and we follow her into a huge entryway that
reminds me of entering a church. The wood floors are the color of honey, and the staircase is carpeted in plush chocolate, mustard, and orange flowers curving off to one side. The walls are hung with paintings and mirrors in ornate frames, and a gold chandelier as big as our kitchen table hangs from the ceiling.

One of the paintings in particular catches my eye. It’s a bullfighter dressed in sky blue and gold with socks the color of Pepto-Bismol and a cape of yellow and purplish pink raised above his head as a bull charges past him. Plaza de Toros Madrid, Gran Corrida de la Prensa is written in bold black letters along the bottom and beneath it the name, Manuel Obrador, and in quotation marks: “El Soltero.”

I’d like to get a closer look, but Shelby ushers us into an adjoining room to meet her aunt.

I know instantly that there’s no chance Candace Jack’s going to ask me how I’m doing. There’s not going to be any hugging or phony sympathy of any kind. I’m relieved about that, but it’s not the kind of relief that allows a person to relax.

She stands very tall and straight, all alone in the middle of the room, nowhere near a chair or couch even though she’s surrounded by tons of furniture, looking like she’d choose to stand for the rest of her life rather than accept the comfort of a seat.

She’s wearing a long black skirt, a silky gray blouse tied in a bow at her neck, and black boots, the pointy-toed, lace-up kind that witches wear, and I can’t help thinking about all the kids she’s supposedly eaten. She has glasses but she’s not wearing them; they hang from a gold chain around her neck.

She’s definitely scary but not because she’s ugly. She’s not bad-looking for an old lady and the moment I think that, I cringe inside myself just imagining what would happen if Klint could somehow read my thoughts. I’d spend the rest of my life hearing about how I’m hot for a granny. Grannyfucker: that would be my new nickname. Every high school baseball player in the state of Pennsylvania would know it in a matter of days.

It’s true, though. She’s not bad-looking. Her hair is white and smooth and has a snowy glimmer to it, and it must be long because it’s rolled up into a fat coil on the top of her head.

I can’t figure out what color her eyes are. They’re greenish gray, kind of beautiful but terrifying like the sky gets at sunset on a stifling hot, perfectly still summer day right before a thunderstorm.

She keeps her hands clasped in front of her and stares directly into my eyes. Hers aren’t kind but they’re also not mean. They’re watchful like Mr. B’s. I understand why she scares people, but it’s not her face; it’s her presence. She takes up all the space in a room.

“Aunt Candace, this is Klint and Kyle Hayes,” Shelby introduces us.

Miss Jack doesn’t make a move toward us, and we don’t make a move toward her. We all seem satisfied with our mutual decisions on the matter.

“I’m pleased to meet you both,” she says. “Welcome to my home.”

“Thanks,” Klint and I mumble.

She waits and when we don’t say more, she says, “I thought since Shelby has to drive back to school tonight that we should eat dinner early. Does that suit you?”

Klint replies with a shrug.

“Sure,” I add.

She fixes us, in turn, with her stare, and I can tell we’ve both just failed Beginning Conversation 101.

She brushes past us out of the room. Shelby makes a face at me, but I can’t tell what it means except that we’ve done something wrong.

Everyone else walks quickly through the entryway, but I stop in front of the picture of the bullfighter. I can’t help it.

Mom used to tell me I asked too many questions. I guess when I was a little kid, I never shut up. I wanted to know everything. How far away is the moon? Why don’t grape Popsicles taste like grapes? Do plants have feelings? How do you make cardboard? Why do people say “nervous as a cat” when cats seem pretty calm?

I think the reason I learned to read before I was even in kindergarten is because I wanted answers, and I could only get them from books. Mom got mad when I asked her too many questions. Dad, on the other hand, was always willing to answer me, but it didn’t take me long to figure out his answers were usually wrong.

Mom said I drove her crazy. I thought it was just an expression. If I had known it was the truth, I would’ve kept my mouth shut and maybe she would’ve stayed.

“Excuse me,” I speak up. “Can I ask a question about this painting?”

Everyone stops and turns around and stares at me. Shelby looks angry. Klint shakes his head.

“Of course you may,” Miss Jack replies. “But it’s not a painting. It’s a poster advertising a corrida, a bullfight. What is your question?”

“Why’s the cape pink and yellow? Isn’t it supposed to be red?”

“A torero uses two capes. First, the capote”—she points to the fabric billowing out behind the man like a sail on a boat—“then later, the muleta. That’s the red cape you’re referring to. It’s much smaller than a capote. The red color is a matter of tradition. Bulls are color-blind.”

“No way.”

“Yes,” she says.

“Speaking of color-blind,” I hear Klint comment from behind me, “check out the guy’s socks.”

Miss Jack ignores him, but her lips flatten with disapproval.

“Then why do bulls charge when you wave something red at them?” I keep going.

“The color has nothing to do with it. They attack moving objects. The color is simply tradition.”

“Is this the bullfighter’s name? Manuel Obrador?”

“Yes.”

“And what about this part? El Soltero?”

“His nickname. Most toreros have nicknames.”

“What does it mean?”

“Think about it,” she instructs me. “It’s not that different from the English equivalent.”

“Soltero.” I repeat the word. “Soldier? Solid? Solemn? Solar?”

“Solitary,” Klint interrupts.

Miss Jack turns and looks at him.

“And what do you call a man who chooses to be solitary, to live alone?”

“A hermit,” Shelby volunteers.

“A bachelor,” Klint says.

“Yes,” Miss Jack agrees and heads toward the dining room again, “Manuel Obrador was the Bachelor.”

Shelby gives Klint an admiring glance. How did he figure that out and I didn’t?

I lag behind and watch the two of them walk side by side behind Miss Jack.

Why am I even here?

I look back at the poster. The bull, on all fours, is almost as tall as the matador who’s standing upright on two feet. The animal’s back is about as high as his shoulders, and its horns are as thick as his arms.

The little black shoes he’s wearing look like ballet slippers. I can tell there’s no cleats on them, and I wonder if that’s done on purpose to make things more difficult for him. It occurs to me that some traction might be helpful when a guy’s running around a dirt ring with a bull chasing him.

He has his feet close together, planted flat on the ground, with his arms reaching high over his head holding the cape, his entire body stretched out in a graceful curved line, his face full of concentration but no fear, looking more like he’s about to launch himself off a cliff into a lagoon in a swan dive than he’s trying to prevent a huge, pissed-off animal from charging at his balls.

If I had to pick one word to describe him besides “stupid,” it would be “vulnerable.”

I catch up with the others. We’re eating dinner in a cantaloupe-colored room with a whole wall of windows and smooth, blue ceramic tiles on the floor, each one painted with a design of green curlicues and yellow flowers. The table and chairs are made of a dark wood with green-and-gold-striped satin cushions on the chairs. The tablecloth is pale green with pink roses embroidered all over it.

This room is covered with paintings, too, all different styles and all kinds of different subjects, but my eyes are instantly drawn to one of a bullfighter again. I can’t tell if it’s the same guy who’s in the poster. The brushstrokes are smudgy—impressionist stuff, I think—and he’s wearing a white suit this time and using a red cape. On the opposite wall is another painting that looks like it was made by the same artist. It’s of a woman dancing in a tight red dress that flares out at the bottom in frothy layers of ruffles. She has slicked-back, black hair and big hoops in her ears. Her back is arched slightly and her arms are stretched above her. The pose looks familiar and I realize her body’s making the same line that El Soltero’s body makes in his poster.

I know the type of dancing she’s doing, but I can’t think of the word then it comes to me all of a sudden: flamenco. It’s a kind of Spanish dancing.

I don’t know where I picked up the word. Probably from a movie or TV. Not from school. We hardly studied Spain at all. Once we memorized the names of all their explorers, our teachers seemed to think there was nothing
else worth knowing about it. Instead they’re hung up on countries we’ve beaten in wars, like Germany, or countries we’ve saved in wars, like France, or countries we’ve beaten in one war and saved in another, like England; and of course they all love Italy because just about everyone in America has some great-great-grandfather Vincenzo who came over on a leaky boat and cried when he saw the Statue of Liberty.

Miss Jack tells us to take a seat, then she excuses herself for a moment.

The three of us look at one another. The table’s not as big as I expected. There are only eight chairs sitting around it. I thought we’d eat in a cold, gloomy room the size of a school gym with one of those long tables that seat a hundred people and Klint and I would sit at one end and Shelby and Miss Jack at the other, and whenever we wanted to talk to each other we’d have to cup our hands and shout, “I say, my dear, could you be a good chap and please pass the caviar?”

The table’s set for four: two on one side and two on the other. Klint and I take seats beside each other, and Shelby sits across from me.

The whole room’s not what I expected. It’s kind of wild. Nothing matches but still everything seems to go together.

Most of the mothers I know would freak out in a room like this. Everything in their houses has to be color coordinated.

Aunt Jen’s house is that way. The carpet is dark purple. The furniture is light purple. The walls are white with purple flowers. The curtains are white lace. She has white lace all over the place: on the coffee table, on the arms of the chairs, on the back of the couch.

She has a statue of a ballerina in a purple tutu, a purple glass bowl filled with fake grapes, and a bunch of white candles in purple holders that smell like vanilla. She has a painting of a field of violets and another one of a litter of kittens with purple fur.

All of it’s very girly stuff. I think she picked the style on purpose not because it suits her but because she’s trying to make people think she’s a real woman. It’s like laying palm leaves across a pit for a lion to fall into, only she lays a trap of doilies and cookie-scented candles for men to fall into.

“Your aunt has a real thing for Spain,” I say to Shelby after we sit down.

“You have no idea,” she says, shaking her head.

“Why?”

“I guess she spent some time there when she was young. She doesn’t talk about it, and my dad says Granddad never talked about it, either, except to complain about Calladito.”

“Who’s Calladito?”

“On one of her trips she brought back a bull named Calladito. According to Dad, she paid a fortune for him and she and Granddad had a big fight about it and didn’t speak to each other for a long time. But when it turned out she could make a ton of money from breeding him, then Granddad didn’t hate him so much.”

“What happened to Calladito?”

“He got old and died. But Aunt Candace has always kept one son from each generation. Ventisco is Calladito’s grandson.”

She opens her napkin and puts it on her lap. Klint and I do the same.

We hear the click of Miss Jack’s boots on the tiles heading in our direction.

“What’s Calladito mean?” I whisper across the table to Shelby.

“The Quiet One,” she whispers back.

“Excuse me,” Miss Jack says as she returns and takes a seat. “I had something I needed to attend to in the kitchen.”

Following at her heels is a short, brown man in butter-colored pants and a turquoise shirt carrying a basket of bread and a big glass pitcher of water with ice and lemon slices in it. He’s bald except for a ring of gray hair around the top of his head that’s the same color as the bristly mustache covering his upper lip and drooping down both cheeks. His face is shiny, smooth, and round like a Buddha’s face, but his body isn’t fat at all. His eyes are black and friendly.

“Luis,” Miss Jack says to him, “this is Klint and Kyle Hayes.”

He nods at each of us, smiling.

“Mucho gusto,” he says.

He sets down the bread, pours water for all of us, then disappears and comes back right away with four bowls of soup and another bowl of olives on a tray.

“Sopa crema de tomate,” he announces.

He puts a steaming bowl in front of each of us. It looks like tomato soup, but it has a white swirl of something in it and a bunch of green leaves on top.

Shelby sticks her face near the bowl, closes her eyes, and takes a big sniff of the soup. She looks up at me smiling dreamily.

“I love Luis’s homemade tomato soup. It’s so good.”

She picks up her spoon and stirs it slowly until the white stuff disappears.

“I never thought about anyone making tomato soup from tomatoes before,” I say. “I guess I always thought it originated in nature as a red blob of paste in a soup can.”