Summer Dreams (2 page)

She sighed and released his hands, wading back into the water until it lapped at her knees. "So what have you been doing with yourself, Esteban? Besides helping
mi abuela
and playing baseball?"

He was surprised she was asking about him. Usually, they avoided talking about his prospects. In the past, he'd had trouble completing anything he started. He'd get excited and take on a project and stop mid-way. Seeing himself through Natalia's eyes, he must appear unreliable and unfocused. But lately, he'd made a conscious effort to stick with his choices and see them through.

"I finished my associate degree in hospitality management. I'm working full time for a resort. After work, I help your grandmother and practice baseball. My league plays on Sunday. I stay busy." He glanced at her. "And you?"

Her eyes lit up, and she splashed through the water. She grasped his shoulders and gave him a little shake. "That's wonderful, Esteban! You've found yourself." Then she looked down, shrugged and scowled. "I wish I could say the same. I'm still teaching special education, but it's not as fulfilling as I had hoped." She hesitated and released him. "I don't know ..."

Stiffening, he wanted to grab hold of her again and take her in his arms, but instead, he focused on controlling the conflicting emotions churning through him. Though she'd seemed sincere when she congratulated him, now he felt like a child, laying his accomplishments at her feet. As if he could change the past and the way that she saw him, the way she felt about him. After all, he only had an associate degree from a local college. She had a bachelor's degree from a major university in Texas, with hours toward a master's degree.

But he shouldn't be thinking of himself, he should be focusing on Natalia and what she was trying to tell him. She sounded so unhappy and uncertain. In just a few words, she'd admitted her engagement was over and that she wasn't that happy at her chosen profession.

If that was it, he wanted a chance to make her happy. He'd always wanted to make her happy. Maybe he didn't deserve her, but he'd give anything to have a chance to be with her.

"Natalia, would you go out with me?"

It was the first time he'd asked her for a real date. He'd never had the courage before. But somehow, her new vulnerability emboldened him, removing the old barriers.

She raised her face to his, her wide, tawny-colored eyes searching. "Oh, Esteban, that's so sweet of you to ask me out." She turned her face away and shaded her eyes with her hand. "Look, the sun's setting. I think we better start back or Pura will be worried."

***

Natalia snatched her hand back. "Ouch!"

Her grandmother, Pura Alberty, went on the offensive, pushing Natalia aside and waving her hands. Clicking her false teeth, she made incomprehensible whooshing noises at the black and white speckled hen. The chicken rose awkwardly, flapping its wings and clucking. The hen hopped down and abandoned its nest, leaving two brown eggs unprotected. Pura scooped them up and placed them in the wicker basket.

"That's Minerva. She's new and hasn't learned her manners yet," Pura said.

Natalia nodded, studying the small drop of blood on her forefinger. Wiping it on her apron, she decided it was nothing ... less than nothing. The hen had startled her, that was all. Why was she so jumpy?

She grinned and thought, Minerva, indeed. Her grandmother liked to name her animals after classical Greek and Latin figures. Pura said it leant them a certain dignity. Zeus was the reigning rooster of the henhouse. Besides the chickens, there were two milk cows, Hera and Diana, an enormous pig called Diogenes, and a nanny goat by the name of Apolinaria.

After they collected the brown speckled eggs, Pura would cook an immense breakfast of fresh eggs and chorizo. The heavy breakfast would last them through lunch. Her grandmother didn't believe in cholesterol, and Natalia always returned to Dallas carrying a few extra pounds. Once home, she'd spend hours in the gym, working off Pura's cooking.

"How was your school year?" Natalia broke the silence.

Last night, she'd been too exhausted---and too confused to say more than a few words to her
abuela
. But despite that she'd slept well, with no city noises and the cool mountain air blowing through her window. She'd listened to the calls of nightjars until she drifted into a deep sleep.

"Each year grows worse. I don't know why I keep teaching." Pura tapped her forehead with one gnarled finger. "Empty heads and mouths full of disrespect. That's the students they give me."

"It's the same at my school, even though I teach in a good district," Natalia said. "But wasn't it Sophocles or was it Socrates, who said the youth are growing worse and worse?" She shrugged. "I think all generations feel the same."

"
Sí
, but not all generations have had television and cell phones and video games and IPads and …"

Natalia laid one hand on her grandmother's arm. "Now don't get started, Pura, you know how it upsets you to talk about---"

"I know, I know." She shook off Natalia's hand. "But the youth learn their values from those awful electronic gadgets, not their parents, Nieta. All that junk is an abomination, and parents have surrendered their rights."

Nieta … it was good to her Pura call her by her family nickname. Pura was the one who'd christened her with it when she was barely old enough to toddle or so her mother had told her.

But Pura's rant on the new millennium's electronics was another thing. All those gadgets were anathema to her. She hated them, refusing to have most of them in her home. Natalia half-agreed, limiting her television viewing to biographies and documentaries and putting her cell phone on vibrate when she was at her grandmother's and texting only in the privacy of her bedroom. No video game had ever graced Pura's humble home, but she did make one concession to the electronic generation: a tablet computer to help her prepare schoolwork for her classes.

And yet, her grandmother loved the radio, listening to Spanish soaps by the hour. When Natalia had pointed out that the radio was an electronic gadget, Pura had declared that radio was different because you had to use your imagination, like reading.

Her
abuela
was also a voracious reader, but she refused to buy a Kindle or Nook, saying that was no way to read a book on some stupid computer screen. Instead, Pura had a storeroom at the back of her house filled, floor-to-ceiling, with books she couldn't part with. Natalia had spent all of her summers grazing through the stacks of books, written in both Spanish and English. Pura was the one who'd educated her about Spanish literature.

"Teaching can be tiresome, but it's still what I want to do," Natalia said. "There's nothing like seeing the dawn of understanding on a student's face. Though lately, I've been feeling …" She shrugged.

"
Sí,
you do reach a few. The ones who are willing," Pura admitted. "It's why I keep going back." At seventy, her grandmother was well past the age to retire. The farm, her radio soaps, and reading should have kept her busy enough.

Natalia studied Pura from the corner of her eye, and she noticed her hands were a trifle more twisted with arthritis, her back more stooped. Pura had had cataract surgery for the second time during the spring. Her grandmother's advancing age depressed Natalia. She didn't like to think about Pura's mortality. Natalia couldn't imagine a world without her grandmother's passionate opinions and eccentricities.

As much as Natalia loved her mother, she had always felt closer to her beloved
abuela
. They shared a special bond, a link which often allowed them to read each other's thoughts. And that special bond was what drew her back to New Mexico each summer. Or was it?

She wasn't ready to go down that road yet. Instead, she said, "I'm signing up for summer school tomorrow. I only need six more hours to become accredited here."

"Do you really want to live and teach in New Mexico?"

"I've been earning hours to do it."

"
Sí
, but I never believed you would. I thought of it as a hobby for your summers here."

Pura herded the squawking, flapping chickens before her, shooing them from the henhouse. She grabbed two buckets of grain, and Natalia followed her to the farmyard. Pura handed one bucket to Natalia, and they both started tossing the grain to the pecking chickens.

"And how is everyone at home?" Pura asked.

On the face of it, someone else would have thought Pura had suddenly changed the subject, but Natalia knew better. Her
abuela
never left a topic of conversation until it had been thoroughly discussed and dissected. Pura had just decided to use another approach, circle the issue and come back to it. Sometimes, her grandmother's tenacious but circuitous probing exasperated her. Today, she welcomed it, feeling unsure of how she felt---about a lot of things.

"I told you last night, they're fine. Mami
y
Papi are both looking forward to retirement ... unlike someone I know."

"Pah." Pura dismissed Natalia's observation with a toss of her head. "It's different for them, they have each other."

Natalia didn't need to ask what her grandmother meant. Pura had been devoted to her husband, Miguel, Natalia's grandfather. Years ago when he'd asked her to move to the city, she'd followed him without complaint. Even though it had meant leaving her family's farm, the remaining acreage of a once-great Spanish
rancho
, given to Pura's family by the king of Spain before New Mexico was part of the United States.

Her grandparents had moved to the Dallas area, where there were more opportunities for a penniless carpenter. Natalia often wondered if her poor and uneducated grandfather had resented marrying Pura, who owned land. But it hadn't kept them from loving each other. Her
abuela
had adapted herself to city ways and even earned a degree at night, eventually becoming a teacher. When her husband died, she'd returned to her farm in New Mexico.

Miguel had been the love of her life. She had never gotten over losing him.

Natalia wondered if she would ever find a love like that.

"Mami grows more frustrated with her students each year, too. She says they refuse to work. That they want everything spoon-fed to them." Was it any surprise that Natalia's passion was teaching? She came from two generations of teachers; it was almost a genetic trait.

"It's all those gadgets," Pura repeated. "And your sister, Sonia, how is she?"

"Sonia is ... Sonia. This is her third year in college, but she's barely a sophomore. Her sorority functions take precedence over classes."

Natalia scooped up a handful of grain and spread it for the chickens, fighting down a pang of conscience. She was never certain if she was jealous of her younger sister or if she held her in contempt.

They were so different. Natalia had been born serious-minded and scholarly. She'd always excelled at school, winning honors from the time she was in kindergarten. Sonia, on the other hand, was a social butterfly. Beautiful and gregarious, she filled the house with her friends and activities. School was her last priority.

"She's been engaged over ten times with no result," Natalia added. "I've lost count. I don't know how Papi can retire if she stays a student forever. I don't know why he and Mami don't---"

"Do what? Change her nature?"

Natalia bit her lip. Pura's defense of her younger sister's flighty ways hurt. "What makes Sonia different from the students who drive us crazy? The ones who refuse to work? I thought you'd agree with me."

Pura snorted. "I raised your mother with values, and she taught those same values to you and your sister. Sonia will settle down. It's just a matter of time. Some people need longer childhoods, that's all."

"I hope you're right," Natalia murmured, her feelings still tender.

After all, it was she who came every summer and visited. Sonia would come for a week and be dying of boredom, ready to return to Dallas in two days. But her grandmother didn't show favoritism between the two sisters or any of her other grandchildren, either. Natalia admired her impartiality, but sometimes, she almost wished her beloved
abuela
would favor her. It was wrong, but she couldn't help herself.

"What about your engagement, Nieta?" Pura circled around, catching her off guard, despite Natalia knowing better.

She opened her mouth and then closed it, not knowing how to start. Her grandmother put away the tins of grain and said, "We've finished with the chickens. Let's start breakfast. I'm starving."

Natalia trailed after Pura, the basket of eggs looped over her arm. She idly kicked at tufts of grass growing haphazardly in the yard, trying to gather her thoughts and make sense of her feelings.

They entered the kitchen and her grandmother immediately started pulling out a bowl, skillets, and spices from the cupboard. Natalia retrieved the chorizo and the home-grown veggies from the refrigerator, taking up her usual stance at the cutting board, knife in hand.

Pura reached over and grabbed an egg, cracking it on the rim of her blue and white pottery. "
Dime
." Pura prompted.

"I'm twenty-seven years old."

Her statement was the same inane thing she'd told Esteban yesterday, and it didn't really explain anything, but maybe that was how she wanted it. To admit she felt as if she were destined to be an old maid, having wasted her youth, sounded too melodramatic. But that was the way she felt.

"Got tired of waiting for the García boy, eh?" Her grandmother broke another egg and dropped it into the bowl.

"
Sí
, he wasn't ready to marry. He won't marry until he's made his fortune." She lifted her shoulders and let them drop. "And he spends it as fast as he makes it, so ..."

"But if you loved him, you would wait."

"I guess so, Abuelita."

"Then you don't love him."

"I thought I did. I waited for Hector for six years. That was long enough."

"Love doesn't keep count of the years, only the joy."