The Wilder Sisters (25 page)

From the outside the weaver’s shop looked exactly like its coun- terparts, a place to shop for locally made handicrafts. Tan adobe walls were cracked by the elements, a yellow cat sat in a window box smashing the geraniums, an empty hammock hung limp. The only movement came from a sun-faded windsock blowing in the breeze. Rose opened the door and let herself in. There was the small wooden counter she remembered, the shelves holding skeins of hand-dyed yarn, multicolored beads of glass and wood, assorted jars of herbs, vials of botanical oils and all manner of religious statuary from magnetic Jesuses for car dashboards to pale blue plaster Virgins suitable for a garden centerpiece. By the light of a south-facing window, the woman Rose recalled from her childhood sat at a loom, pulling colored threads into the fabric of what eventu- ally would become a shawl. She was older now, the age of a great- grandmother. Rose remembered that the woman didn’t speak much English, but that hadn’t stopped Mami from communicating her needs. She smiled and greeted Rose like an old friend. “
Ya hey
,” she said in Navajo. “
Haash iinidzaa
?”

Rose’s languages were so rusty she didn’t attempt a reply. It was a relief not to speak, because she knew had she tried to do that, she would have started to cry. She tapped her left breast, just over her heart. “
Destrozado
,” she said, using the Spanish word for “broken.” The weaver’s face crinkled with compassion. She got up from her loom and took Rose by the hand into the next room. It was just as Rose remembered it, beeswax candles placed in
nichos
carved into the adobe walls, the windowless space small but in no way confining. She motioned for Rose to undress and lie down on the table in the center of the room. Rose set her purse on the floor. She shut her eyes and listened to the sound of matches striking, smelled the brief scent of sulfur before the light from the candles brightened the room. She unbuttoned her blouse and peeled it away, feeling the candlelight strike her breasts, where beneath the layers of clothing, Austin’s

hand had awakened in her a feel-

ing so compelling that she wanted it to disappear, to be gone forever, and to take with it when it left, her memories of that night as well. The old woman handed her a sheet with which to cover herself.

Rose let her clothes be taken from her, folded into a small, neat pile atop the wooden bench. She laid down upon the table and tucked the sheet around her. From behind her head came the scent of something sweet and healing, oil of lavender, perhaps, but there was something green mixed into it, juniper or arnica, she guessed. The woman dripped the warm oil onto Rose’s forehead in a steady stream. She dabbed it onto her shoulders, at the pulse points in her wrists, the hollow of her throat. She massaged the oil into Rose’s skin, working on her neck and shoulders with long, broad strokes. Rose felt her body relax everywhere except her chest. The area around her heart continued to throb, as if it were stuck with a foreign body that was slowly poisoning her. The
arbolaria
pressed her warm palm, fingers splayed, to Rose’s chest. She took a deep breath and exhaled. Rose did the same, willing whatever medicine there was in this room to find its way into her body’s strongest, sorest muscle. She wanted everything she felt for Austin Donavan to be exorcised. She told herself that she desired the absence of love as much as she had ever wanted anything, for her children to be safe, Philip to have survived the accident, Lily to stop sleeping with so many men, her mother to remain faithful to her father, Shep to gain some weight, Winky to deliver a healthy foal next year, a drink of cool water on a hot summer day, all those things and this, too. The woman’s hand rested on Rose’s heart as she murmured to her in a dialect of Spanish different from the languages Rose grew up hearing. Rio Grande Valley Indian, she figured from the formality of the grammar. Her speech sounded older, her delivery of each syllable caused her voice to rise in pitch and Rose to concentrate on their probable translations:
chiguata
(woman),
pague
(was that some kind of medicinal plant?),
topil
(authority),
arrollar
(lull to sleep),
dispertar
(awaken?),
dar bau
(she had no idea what that meant), until the hand lifted away from Rose’s chest and she felt the skin of her breast chill to gooseflesh. This wasn’t like it had been all those years ago with Mami, when Rose had fallen asleep under soft fingers and awakened feeling lighter than breath, so hungry she couldn’t wait to eat dinner and they had to stop on the drive home for a sandwich and chips. The woman gently touched her shoulder to let Rose know the treatment was finished.

She left the room. Sleepily Rose buttoned her blouse with awkward fingers. The candles in the windowless room flickered as if generat- ing their own wind. When her legs felt steady enough, Rose wandered back into the room where the loom was. Behind the counter, the woman assembled paper packets, filling them with some kind of white dust.
Oh my God, polvos
, Rose thought, the be- witching powders some people used to attract someone they desired. This was magic, which not only collided head on with her religious beliefs but also seemed a kind of last-ditch attempt only those doomed to failure would attempt.

“
No entiendes, Señora;
I want love to go away, not to come to me,” she said in her best Spanish. “
Lo odio
.” When the woman didn’t reply, she repeated the phrase in the little Navajo she knew. “
T’oo jooshla
. Don’t you see? I hate him, in every language there is.”

The woman handed the powders to Rose and took a statue of Saint Anthony down from the shelves. She pointed to a photograph on the wall, mimed the action of taking the picture and wrapping it around the statue. Rose fingered the plastic statue of the balding man holding two lilies and a child. When Anthony preached from the riverbank, the fishes stood on their tails to listen. He was who you prayed to when you needed help finding lost objects. On high holy days, people pinned money to the stoles wrapped around An- thony’s neck and it was said that among saints, Anthony particularly blessed the poor. The saint even had his own bread, named especially for him. But there was another purpose for the statue, and Rose knew the drill from her mother’s confession. Mami said the day she had met Chance Wilder, she had asked him for his photograph. In- stead of carrying it in her purse or framing it inside a locket, with a length of string she had tied his likeness to a statue of Saint Anthony, then tucked the statue beneath her mattress. Within the week Rose’s future father was at her side, proposing marriage, begging her to let him fill her up with babies. And the most amazing part of the story—when she lifted the mattress to remove the statue that had done its work,
her
picture was somehow there, too, tied face to face with Pop’s. Lily and Rose had laughed so hard when she told them that they lay down on the floor and held their sides.
Do this and your loved one will never desert you
, Mami insisted. Turn Anthony on his head, the same thing could happen, but under the mattress at least your secrets were kept secret.

“
Remedio, por favor
; I came here to be healed,” Rose repeated.

“
Sí, sí
.” Within her rapid-fire explanation Rose caught the general meaning:
The cure is to accept when something is meant to be
.

Meant to be
. Rose opened her wallet. The weaver lifted the ten dollars Austin had given Rose out of the bill compartment. She fingered it and smiled, and then wrapped it around the Saint An- thony, securing it with a rubber band. Rose let the statue fall into her purse. She handed the woman a twenty, which she accepted.

Outside the weaver’s, Rose looked east at the tree-covered mountains. Here and there the blanket of evergreen was broken by trees on fire with autumn colors. In a crooked line, the yellow and red traveled down the mountainside, a reminder that no matter how stranded a person felt in her life, the seasons continued at their reg- ular pace. Lately everything beautiful in the world made her feel just how alone she was. Come winter, the snow would turn the mountains to a bridal white, and the skiing would bring in throngs of tourists. To Rose, only riding horses compared to cross-country skiing, to making first tracks in a snowy field, that in itself a solitary pursuit. But each season someone schussed into a tree or in a macho display of idiocy ventured off the designated trails, got lost, and froze to death from exposure. If it wasn’t any one of those things, there was always death by drunk-driving accident, where the lives of innocent bystanders paid the toll, just as Philip had. The drunks, fully insulated, usually bounced.

Friday night, after a week of awkward conversations with Aus- tin—
Sign this invoice, Call that doctor, Where’s the payroll checks
?—and working hard to keep her guard up whenever Paloma walked into the room, Rose made her way home. Just as she had every day that week, she stopped at the church to say her prayers. Today, however, after a quick genuflection at the altar to the Virgin and a dab of holy water on her forehead, she fled. At the market she bought five Eternalux candles, two Our Lady of San Juans, three Guadalupes, and a box of twelve vigil candles. She pushed her cart down the aisles, saying hello to people she saw every Sunday in church, to the parents of kids Second Chance used to run with, making light- hearted small talk instead of admitting that she had no idea where her son was. She picked up a bunch of red grapes, a wedge of sharp cheddar, dark bread, and a bottle of Bordeaux. In the checkout line she scanned the tabloids to see what movie star had gotten caught with his pants down this week. Her sister

hadn’t called in so long she figured maybe Lily had gone back to California by now, to her high-paying job and her condo with the ocean view. Life in California had to be easier than life in Floralee. A person could never feel lonely in that kind of crowd. Rose took her bag of groceries out to the Bronco. It was Friday night, and the streets were hopping. Lovers were going to the movies, out for supper, to hear the last of the seasonal concerts in the park. A low- riding Chevy passed by, its lavender paint job polished to a sheen, its speakers pulsing with music. Rose drove on home and rode Max until it was too dark to make out the road in front of them.

When they got back to the barn, she spent a luxurious hour un- tangling his long, dark mane with her fingers and a wide-toothed comb. She mixed the old gelding a hot bran mash with dark molasses, and stirred oats into the bucket, smiling when she heard his nearly imperceptible nickerings of pleasure. As she stood listening to the greedy rasp of the old gelding’s tongue against the bucket, she wondered how her mare was doing. Tomorrow she’d drive up and check on her, exercise her so she wouldn’t lose her gaits, but only in the arena where she’d be safe.

A couple of times Rose threw the ball for Chachi, but after a few retrievals, the Jack Russell let it drop at his feet and returned to digging holes. She went inside and made herself a snack of the cheese and fruit. As she bit into the first red grape, she felt surprised by the explosion of sweetness on her tongue. Considering how much she loved food, the preparation of meals, serving meals to others, watching their faces light up as familiar tastes were savored, it was as if she’d forgotten how good a grape could taste. Deep in her center, all that cooking defined Rose. She loved all facets of preparing dinner, even scrubbing the pots. It wasn’t that she wanted to be a professional chef, but if she never got to cook for anyone but herself again there was a part of her she felt might forget its purpose.

She telephoned the ranch to see if Pop was there, if he and Mami wanted to come for dinner on Sunday. Nobody answered, not even Shep, and she hated leaving messages, so she hung up. Her parents were probably laughing around a table thick with friends, interesting people, maybe eating at the restaurant that served kangaroo. In so many ways Mami was braver than her oldest daughter.

Rose lined the candles up along the edges of the bathtub and

arranged the votives on the windowsill. She took box matches and lit every wick until the room glowed brighter than it ever had under electric lights. Shadows played in corners where the candlelight flickered against the walls. She drew a bath, dripped in lavender, bergamot, valerian, and poppy oils. She took off her clothes and sank into the steaming water, breathing in the complex, earthy scents. All week long in church she had prayed for strength and felt her prayers fall back into her mouth like sand collapsing down a hole. To show for her efforts she had sore knees and one time, a headache so fierce she wondered if one of Lily’s migraines had come to visit. Where was her sister, anyway? She trailed her fingers through the bathwater, carefully shaved her legs even though she couldn’t think of a single person on earth who would care if Rose Wilder Flynn had smooth skin or stubble. Every time she thought of Austin she pushed him from her mind, but that didn’t stop him from coming back.

After the bath she patted herself dry with a towel and sat on the edge of the tub surrounded by candlelight. She looked into the mirror above the sink. The vertical frown line between her eyebrows rarely relaxed. Her skin was clear, though, and her neck strong, her posture upright. Her breasts still looked nice, didn’t they? They still felt good to touch. After two babies and forty years, her slight belly felt earned, womanly. She cupped her hand between her legs, where the dark hair was thick and kinky, twice as curly as on top of her head. Everything was fine except this place inside her felt so lonely that if it could howl, she was sure it would put the coyotes to shame. Rose tore open the package marked
legítimos polvos chuparrosas
.

The paper was stamped with a smudgy likeness of a hummingbird inserting his long, narrow beak into a flower. It didn’t smell like anything. On the back, in Spanish, the weaver had written:
Powder of the hummingbird, dried under full moon to conserve the natural flower perfume. Powder your body on a Friday night, after a bath in the alcove, to obtain the grace of true love
.