Forests of the Heart

  The knock came again.

  “Go away,” she told whoever it was.

  She started over at the beginning of the solo, one Webster had done when sitting in with the Art Tatum Group. Cole Porter’s “Night and Day.” Closing her eyes, she let Tatum’s piano roll through her head. She kept time with her foot. Tap, tap, tap. Felt the swing of the music. And now she’d come in, fingers spidering across the buttons. Getting the notes wasn’t the problem. But that tone was going to elude her forever.

  “Come on, Miki,” she heard Hunter say through the door. “Open up. I know you’re in there.”

  Well, duh. That was so obvious, he lost points for saying it. But she stopped playing and leaned her arms on top of her instrument.

  “I’m too sick to come to the door,” she told him.

  “Bullshit.”

  What was Hunter doing here anyway? He was supposed to be at the store. So was she, of course, Monday morning bright and early, nine-thirty through to three or so unless it got really busy, except, hello world. Her life had ended. She had the best of reasons for wanting to be on her own, considering how well she’d handled things with Donal last night. What was Hunter’s excuse?

  “Miki?”

  Sighing, she slid the strap of her accordion from her shoulder and went to stand beside the door.

  “Who’s watching things at the shop?” she asked.

  “Fiona.”

  “I thought you were letting her go today.”

  There was a long silence from the other side of the door.

  “I couldn’t do it,” he said finally.

  Miki undid the lock and swung the door open.

  “Wimp,” she told him, more out of habit than with any feeling. Her heart simply wasn’t into teasing him today.

  Hunter came in and toed off his wet boots.

  “How could I do it?” he said. “The store feels like a family—”

  “It’s as dysfunctional as one at least.”

  “And letting her go would be like you kicking Donal out of your apartment. It just wouldn’t feel right.”

  Miki felt as though she’d been hit in the stomach—but of course Hunter couldn’t know. It was an innocent remark, nothing more.

  She turned and led the way back into what had once been the dining room. Once she threw out all of Donal’s stuff, she supposed she could reclaim her bedroom and this could be the dining room again. Or she could hang herself from the light fixture and then Donal and his Gentry freaks could turn the whole place into a wolfish den.

  God, now she was beginning to sound like some of Fiona’s little Goth friends, the ones who thought death and suicide were so cool.

  “You’re just too soft,” she told Hunter, trying to keep her voice light.

  “That’s not quite how my accountant’s going to put it.”

  “But it is why we all love you so much.”

  She sat down on the end of her bed and lit a cigarette, waving Hunter to a chair. He slumped into it, adjusting the seat cushion where it sagged.

  “You’re not helping,” he told her.

  “Sorry.”

  “So, really—what gives?”

  She shrugged. “I just felt like a time-out.”

  “Right. You never blow off anything.” He glanced around the room. “Is your phone working? I tried calling, but there was no answer.”

  “So that was you.”

  “Miki, you know you can …”

  His voice trailed off. Miki saw where he was looking. Why’d she have to go and leave that lying around?

  Hunter picked up the torn piece of canvas. It was most of the Green Man’s head, the paint smeared in one corner where it hadn’t quite dried yet. Miki still had a smudge of green on her jeans where she’d wiped off her fingers. It had looked like blood, weird green blood, the kind that would come from the veins of a tree man.

  “That’s part of Donal’s painting, isn’t it?” Hunter said. “What happened?”

  Miki wouldn’t look at the piece of canvas in his hands. She’d had her fill of looking at it.

  “Miki?”

  “Nothing happened,” she said. “Donal came home in a snit and trashed it, end of story.”

  “But after all the work he must have put into it…”

  Miki shrugged. “It was supposed to be him, you know. Like a self-portrait. I didn’t realize it until I got up this morning. You can see it in the eyes.”

  Hunter looked, but it was plain he couldn’t find what she had.

  “But why would he—”

  “Trash it, or paint the damn thing in the first place?” Miki broke in, her voice sounding oddly calm to her ears. “That’s easy enough. He put his foot through it so he wouldn’t have to drag it around with him when he left last night.”

  She was aware of the worried look Hunter was giving her, but she couldn’t seem to stop.

  “And he painted it because he thinks they’re going to make him the Summer King, the stupid little shite.”

  “The summer king?”

  “Umm. Only say it capitalized— the way Pooh bear would.”

  “You’re losing me here,” Hunter told her.

  Miki sighed and butted out her cigarette in an overflowing ashtray. “Donal’s got himself mixed up with what he thinks are the Gentry—you know those hard men that were after you the other night?”

  “Yes, but what do they have to do with anything?”

  “It’s a long, tedious story. Sure you wouldn’t rather go for a beer instead?”

  “It’s not even noon.”

  “Well, I could go for one, except I’m fresh out. You can’t keep beer in this place—not with Donal around. But I suppose that’ll change now.”

  “He’s going on the wagon?”

  Miki laughed, wincing at the bitter edge she could hear, the complete lack of humor.

  “As if,” she said. “No, I threw him out last night.”

  “You—”

  “That’s right. Out on his ear.”

  “Because he was drinking … ?”

  Hunter didn’t try to hide his confusion. What would be so unusual in Donal drinking?

  “No,” Miki said. “Because of the painting.”

  “The painting.”

  She could see that he was trying to understand, but not making any headway. She didn’t blame him. It made no sense, considering how close they’d always been, she and Donal, the two of them against the rest of the world.

  “Because of what it means,” she told Hunter. “Because he’s bought into all this old, hurtful shite and I don’t want to see where it takes him. Maybe I can’t stop him but I’ll be damned if I’ll watch him do this to himself.”

  “You’ve totally lost me,” Hunter said. “You’re going to have to start at the beginning.”

  Miki gave a slow nod. “How about we at least do it over a cup of tea?”

  “Sounds good. Do you want to have it here, or go out for it?”

  “I think pretty much anywhere but here would feel better.”

  3

  Bettina found herself dreaming about los cadejos—something that hadn’t happened in almost seven years, not since the night her grandmother had walked out into the desert during a thunderstorm and never come back. The little pack of raucous dogs came to her while she was wandering through the winter Newford streets, a burst of rainbow colors, yipping and yapping some silly song, gamboling all around her, goat hooves clacking where the pavement was bare. She wasn’t sure how long they went traipsing through the streets together, but after a while los cadejos drifted away, leaving only the echo of one of their nonsensical songs behind, and then it was her abuela walking with her, arm-in-arm on one side, the Virgin Mary on the other—completely improbable, claro, but this was a dream, and wasn’t anything possible in a dream? Or at least one didn’t think to question the improbabilities while dreaming.

  Just before Bettina woke up, the three of them were sitting on a patio outside a Lower Crowsea restaurant in a snowstorm
, trying to get a waiter’s attention. La Virgen had been particularly testy, constantly repeating, “All I would like is some mineral water. Is that so much to ask? One small bottle of mineral water. You would think I was asking for the blood of my Son.”

  Bettina woke to a terrible guilt, feeling as though she should go to confession for even dreaming such a thing about the Virgin. But after seven months of living in this city, she still hadn’t found a church to attend. Truth was, she hadn’t tried very hard. She had looked, especially when she first arrived, but she didn’t feel at home in any of the ones close to Kellygnow—there were too many gente rica, rich people, for her to feel comfortable—and Our Lady of Assumption on the East Side, where Salvadore and Maria Elena went, was too far away, though Salvadore had offered to pick her up whenever she wished to go.

  Pero, she and her faith were no longer as close as once they’d been. She wasn’t sure if it was her fault, or that of the church, but she hadn’t been attending mass regularly even before she’d left home to come here. She couldn’t remember when she’d last been to confession. The only tangible result so far was Mama’s exaggerated disappointment.

  Bettina sighed. Sitting up, sleep still thick in her eyes, she regarded the John Early statue of la Virgen that stood in her room. There was no recrimination in her eyes, but then the Virgin never accused.

  “Perdona,” Bettina apologized. “I know you have unlimited patience and would never be so rude.”

  The house seemed quiet as she washed up and got dressed, as though everyone in residence was either out this morning, or sleeping late, but when she reached the kitchen, Nuala was there as usual, pouring Bettina a mug of coffee as soon as Bettina came in through the door. There was guilt in this, too, for Bettina, having someone see to her needs the way Nuala did. While she could understand the housekeeper looking after the others—the artists and writers—she was uncomfortable when Nuala’s efficient administrations included her. Meals, laundry, coffee, and tea. “You are a guest in this house,” Nuala explained to her. Sí but not one of any great importance.

  Sometimes Bettina felt everyone was far too generous to her.

  “A package came for you this morning,” Nuala said.

  Bettina smiled her thanks for the coffee and carried the steaming mug over to the table where the package waited for her, brown paper, wrapped in twine, with an Arizona postmark.

  Mama, she thought until she saw that the return address was La Gata Verde in Tubac. Adelita’s store. She opened the package to find a cardboard box. Inside was a letter lying on top of tissue paper. It read:

  Mi estimada Bettina,

  It was rude of me to speak the way I did last night—I am writing this on Monday morning, I wonder when you will receive it? Before the weekend, I hope, but only if I get it into the mail today.

  You know I’m not one to analyze my feelings—certainly not the way Suzanna does. She watches way too much Oprah, so far as I’m concerned. But I do know there are hidden reasons for why we do and say the things we do, and I have thought much on why I am so unforgiving when we speak of Abuela and things mystical. The truth is, mi hermana, I am jealous. It seemed to me that Abuela always had more time for you. I know this was because you never tired of her stories and desert treks as I did, but logic doesn’t always enter into how we feel, does it?

  Earlier this morning I went down the street to La Paloma to look at their chimeneas to use in back of the house for those times I can’t get Chuy to build a campfire. There I found these little wooden dogs. They reminded me of the stories you used to tell me about the children of a volcano that you said had come to live inside your chest—do you remember? What was it that you called them?

  I hope you will accept them as a small apology for my impatience with la brujería. I will try harder in the future.

  Chuy and Janette send their love—the painting is hers. ¿Está bonito, no está él? I swear I don’t push her, but I can’t keep her away from my art supplies and she’s fascinated with the prints Suzanna runs off her lithography press. Perhaps she will be an artist, too.

  Mama asked me to include a little something from her, I have no idea what it is.

  Call me soon. Te echo de menos, hermanita.

  love

  Adelita

  Bettina smiled as she set the letter aside. That was Adelita, her writing, as always, a mix of stiff phrases and casual conversation. She was never as comfortable putting words on paper as she was putting images. Bettina pulled the box closer. Funny that she would dream of los cadejos on the same day that this package came. She hadn’t even thought of them in years.

  Unfolding the tissue paper, the first thing she saw was Janette’s painting: a small watercolor of a lizard, poking its head up through a cluster of Mexican poppies. Although the subjects were accurately rendered, Janette had been more liberal in her color choices. The flowers of the poppies were the brilliant gold-yellow they should be, but their stems and leaves ran a gamut of light pink through to rich purples. The lizard was a dark, deep blue with yellow markings, the ground a lighter blue, while what could be seen of the sky was an almost iridescent rose color, as though it had been formed from an endless cloud of fairy dusters. In the bottom right-hand corner Janette had carefully printed out her name in neat block letters.

  The whole thing reminded Bettina of a desert sunset. Homesickness thickened in her throat and made her chest feel too tight. It wasn’t so much the desert she was missing as Janette’s growing up, day by day, so far away from where Bettina was making her home. Living here, Bettina was missing it all.

  “That’s lovely,” Nuala said, coming over to the table to look at the painting.

  “My niece painted it for me.”

  “She seems to have as much talent as her mother.”

  Bettina nodded. With the painting removed from the top of the package, she could see a small bundled piece of cotton cloth that had been tied closed with a piece of twine. She picked it up. Through the cloth she could feel what seemed to be beads. A necklace, perhaps, she thought, but undoing the knot in the twine, she folded the corners of the cloth back to find a rosary.

  This could only be from Mama.

  While her first thought was that it was yet another attempt of Mama to play on her guilt, when Bettina studied the rosary more closely, she realized it was anything but. The beads were made from various sacred beans and seeds that had been collected in the desert, the crucifix carved from dried cholla spines. Combined they evoked two potent brujeríos: that of the Virgin, and that of the desert. This was something Abuela might have given her, or Papa. To have it come from her mother felt… confusing, she supposed.

  Looking up, she found Nuala’s gaze riveted upon the rosary as well. The older woman reached out a hand, fingers brushing the air above the threaded beans and seeds.

  “This is very powerful,” she said.

  “It’s from my mother.”

  “She is a wise woman.”

  For a moment Bettina thought how incongruous the idea was. Of all of them, Mama would have the least to do with Abuela’s medicines and brujería, or Papá’s Indios mysteries. But then she considered how Mama had kept them all together, fed and clothed them, tended to their bodies and their spirits.

  “Sí,” she said, nodding slowly. She closed her hand around the rosary and felt it grow warm between her palm and fingers, felt it tingle against her skin the way the air did before a thunderstorm. ‘“In her own way, she is very wise.”

  She carefully stowed the rosary in the pocket of her vest and returned to the package, taking out Adelita’s gift. Nuala chuckled as Bettina set the small wooden dog carvings on the table by her coffee mug. There were five in all, Mexican folk art dogs painted in a rainbow palette of pinks, blues, lime greens, and bright yellows. Two stood on their hind legs, one seemed to be trying to sniff its own genitals, the remaining two were posed like coyotes made for the turistas, snouts pointing at the sky.

  Truly los cadejos, Bettina thought.
br />   “What fun,” Nuala said. “Your niece could have painted them.”

  Bettina smiled. The freedom of color was similar, though the carvings were much more garish, almost fluorescent.

  “They were born in a volcano,” she said.

  Nuala gave her a puzzled look.

  Bettina smiled. “Once upon a time,” she said, laying the palm of her hand between her breasts, “they lived inside me.”

  The good humor left Nuala’s features.

  “Think of this,” she said. “What do you call a wolf that pretends to be your friend?”

  Bettina shrugged. “No lo sé—I don’t know.”

  “A dog.”

  “I don’t understand what you mean,” Bettina said.

  But she remembered something her father had told her once, about dogs and wolves.

  A dog is never simply what we think we see. He keeps us safe from the wolf and coyote, but deep in his heart, he is a wolf, a coyote. He is the one that…

  “They walk between the worlds,” Bettina said.

  Nuala nodded. “And between is an ancient and potent piece of magic. It always has been, in all its shapes and guises. From the bridge that spans the gorge, or connects one side of the river with the other, to that moment that lies between waking and sleeping. From the gray mystery that lies at the junction of night and day to those twilight places where mingle and meet all the languages and cultures of the world, all the stories and landscapes and arts.”

  Bettina nodded, the memory of her father’s voice growing stronger in her mind. All dogs are spirits. They carry potent brujería so we must always be careful in our dealings with them.

  “And in those places,” Nuala said, “you will always find him waiting: the dog, the wolf, the fox, the coyote. In some guise or other. And no matter what he promises you, death is the secret he keeps hidden in his eyes. In the end, there is always death, and it isn’t his.”