Banana Rose

  Suddenly I had a terrifying thought. He’s going to kill himself on that horse! Calm down, I said to myself. I’m sure he can ride. This is none of your business, Nell. Just sit down and do your still life. I bolted for the door.

  “Holy shit!” I said out loud as I ran up the hill.

  Bonnie’s barking had frightened the horse. He was stumbling and bolting every which way and was about to head for our vegetable garden. The chickens had dispersed in a flurry, and Sylvester had flown to the roof of a truck. Rip, scared to death, had dropped the reins, and they were dragging on the ground. Blue was trying to grab them.

  “Oh, my god! Oh, my god!” yelled Rip from atop the horse. The horse’s hoof smashed through the fallen guitar. Rip’s hat dangled down his back, the string choking him around the neck.

  “Grab the reins, and get off!” Blue screamed. Her goats had scattered and were heading up the hill behind her house.

  “I can’t! I can’t! Please get me off!” Rip yelled back.

  Henry Sandoval, the neighbor across the ditch, came running over. He swooped down on the horse, grabbed its reins, yelled for Blue to take Bonnie into the house, and began leading the horse around in circles while stroking its mane. “Climb off,” he commanded.

  Rip gladly swung his right leg over and touched ground.

  “Well, thank you, sir. Thank you.” He held out his hand.

  “Later,” Henry said, and concentrated on the horse.

  I crossed the ditch and came over. Blue walked back out of the house. “Thanks, Henry,” she called out.

  Henry walked the calmed horse over to the fence and tied its reins to the post.

  “No problem,” he said. “I’ve got to get home to my chickens,” and he crossed back over the ditch.

  Blue turned to me. “Henry always thought Anglos were jerks. Now we’ve proven it to him.”

  I looked over at Rip.

  “I need to sit down for a minute,” he said. He looked very pale. “I thought it would be easier to ride a horse.” He turned toward Blue. “I thought I’d come and sing you some songs we sang down in Indiana.”

  “Your guitar’s busted.” I bent down to pick it up.

  “Oh, no! I borrowed it from the hotel clerk. Where’s a music store down here? I’ll go get him another.” Rip reached out his hand as I passed the broken guitar to him.

  “Music store’s in Santa Fe,” Blue said, looking at the splintered instrument.

  Suddenly, it felt as though we were all moving in slow motion.

  “Your boots? New, huh?” I asked. “Comfortable?” I could tell they weren’t.

  Rip grimaced and changed the subject. “What should I do about the horse?”

  “Can’t you ride?” I asked. “Gauguin’s so good.”

  “He learned from Alice’s side of the family. No one on my side ever came near a horse.”

  “So why’d you ride up here?” asked Blue.

  “Well, it’s the West. I just got a hankering to,” Rip explained meekly.

  I nodded. “Uh-huh. We didn’t ride much in Brooklyn, either.”

  “You mean you can’t help me with the horse?” he asked.

  I shook my head.

  “I hurt my back years ago—thrown off one. I can’t help either,” Blue added.

  The midmorning sun was intense. “Let’s move into the shade,” I said.

  “I’ve got to drive to town in a minute to pick up Lightning.” Blue headed for the house.

  I could see it was going to be me and Rip and the horse. “What’s his name?” I asked, and looked over at the big animal munching some weeds.

  “I think they called him Flash at the stables,” Rip told me.

  I nodded. “Well, how are you going to bring him back?”

  “Nell, do you have an old pair of my son’s sneakers? These boots are killing me.”

  “No.” I shook my head. “Gauguin took his two pairs of shoes with him.”

  “He only has two pair? Why, I ought to buy that boy some.” Rip tried to muster some authority, but it quickly faded. “Well, I guess I’ll have to walk Flash back. I’m certainly not getting on him again.”

  “It’s five miles. Take you about two hours.” I had this strange feeling I was in a play, but none of the actors belonged except the horse and the land.

  Rip walked over to the horse. He put his big hat back on his head and reached for the reins.

  I walked him down the long driveway to the road in front of our house. “Sure you’ll be okay?”

  “Oh, sure, don’t worry about me.” He waved.

  I watched him hobble past Joe’s in his new red boots. The horse walked obediently behind him, happy now that it had no weight on its back. My hand reached for the doorknob as my eyes remained fixed down the road.

  What about other barking dogs? I thought. Talpa was full of them. And cars? Trucks?

  “Rip!” I yelled, waving my hand and running after him. “I’ll walk you to the pavement.” I wasn’t sure what I could do to help, but he seemed so helpless.

  He smiled weakly. He was defeated, but I could see he was glad for the company. “How far’s the pavement?” he asked.

  “Half-mile.”

  “Boy, do I have blisters.” He shook his head. “I can’t wait to get back to the hotel. Blue probably thinks I’m a damn fool.”

  “I’d forget her. She has a boyfriend.” I eyed him conspiratorially. “Should have asked me.”

  “Oh, I never think about those things. Alice was engaged to someone else when I met her.”

  I nodded.

  “When will Gauguin be here?”

  “Late afternoon.”

  “You know, Nell, you’re the best-looking girl Gauguin’s ever been with,” he said, turning and looking at me.

  I ignored his comment. “Here’s the pavement. Got to head back.” I stepped away from him and waved.

  In the late afternoon, I was sitting at the kitchen table when Gauguin burst in.

  “Nell, I went direct to the hotel when I pulled into town, and I couldn’t find Rip. When I called up to his room, he didn’t answer. It turned out he was in the bathroom the whole time. He has the runs and he’s nauseous, and when he’s not on the toilet, he’s soaking his feet in the tub. What a mess.”

  “I’ll say,” and I told Gauguin what happened that morning. He said he’d heard some version of it from Rip.

  “What’s wrong with your father, anyway?”

  “He’s crazy when it comes to women. He busted up the family when I was ten over a woman house painter she came to wallpaper the living room—but Alice kept taking him back. He thinks all women are goddesses like his mother.”

  “Jesus, is he that foolish?” I asked, incredulous.

  “No, he’s actually pretty smooth, I’m afraid to say. He’s just out of his element, has some romantic idea about cowboys. You should see him back home, where it’s his turf.”

  “I’d rather not.” I was sitting in front of the still life I had intended to paint that morning. It was of a melon, three pears, and a blue teapot. I picked up my brush.

  “Rip says he was poisoned by the mushrooms you made last night,” Gauguin told me.

  “Come on, you don’t believe that, do you? I ate them and I’m fine, and so did Blue and Lightning.” I looked up from the arrangement of fruit. “He’s probably got the glitch. He drank a lot of water last night. You know, everyone gets sick when they first come to Taos until they get used to the water.”

  I was suddenly tired of Gauguin’s father. I hadn’t seen Gauguin since yesterday, and that was how he greeted me? I began to paint the melon yellow.

  “Well, I’m going to try to get him something to make him feel better and see if I can hang out with him some more. He leaves early tomorrow.” He stepped toward the door.

  As he reached for the knob, I said, “You know, I didn’t poison your father.”

  “I know.” He ran back and kissed me. “Got to go!” he called, and ran out the door.

>   I sneered in his direction and then went back to my picture. What a family, I thought. Then I thought of my family and decided I should shut up.

  The yellow looked good on the melon. I added some orange.

  21

  IT WAS IN MAY that I dreamed of Isaac Bashevis Singer. I was living in the town of Taos, which in the dream was a broad avenue of cars, taxis, and flashing neon lights. I wrote Singer a letter, and he came to visit me. He rode a white horse that changed into a burgundy-colored Morris Minor. He parked in front of Grandpa George’s. I waited inside to meet him at a table with a red linen tablecloth. The room was dimly lit. As Isaac passed under the front door, a sign blinked: “Steaks as Smooth as Butter.” He sat down next to me and said, “I have a cold.”

  My mouth fell open. I was afraid he’d die.

  The waitress came over and he ordered chicken soup. He asked, “Could you make sure there’s a lot of breast in it?”

  I said, “But Isaac, you’ve never eaten meat in your life!” Then I woke up.

  Two nights later I had another dream, this time set in North Dakota. I was in a small café in a town named Upton. My grandfather drove up in a white jeep, entered the café, and sat across from me. I was eating a cucumber. I was nervous, so I talked a lot. I couldn’t control my mouth. I told him about a math test I had just taken. He turned to me and asked, “What’s four times four?” Then he looked at the menu and I understood that he was about to order a hamburger.

  I yelled, “No!” and woke up, my heart beating hard. I looked around. It was morning and Gauguin was not lying next to me. I got out of bed and went outside. Gauguin was sitting on the bench out front with a plate on his lap. The plate was blue and there were two fried eggs on it with toast.

  I sat down next to him and told him the whole dream and how I felt in the café. He nodded. I told him the whole dream again, this time describing more of how it had felt to be in North Dakota. Then I told him the dream I had had two nights before, the one where Singer met me in Taos. Then I just sat on the bench, looking out at the mountains like two elephants kissing.

  Gauguin didn’t say a word. After a moment, he held up a forkful of egg yolk, my favorite part. He put it to my mouth and I ate it.

  A week later, I told Gauguin I had to have chicken, that I had to buy a chicken at Safeway and cook it and eat it. Until that moment, I had been a vegetarian for seven years. I would eat turkey on Thanksgiving if someone else cooked it, but mostly I ate no meat. The meat department in the grocery store was essentially nonexistent to me.

  Gauguin asked me if I was sure I wanted to do this.

  Yes, I said.

  He drove me over to Safeway in Betsy Boop and waited outside while I went in. I leaned over the cool refrigerated air and stared at cellophane packages. Yup, they still sold chickens and chicken livers and wings and thighs. I felt dizzy. The chicken was fifty-three cents a pound. I saw a row of packages in which the chickens were cut up in eighths. The chicken skins were pale yellow. I could see the raw meat underneath. My hand reached out and picked up a package. I felt its soft coldness. I dropped the package back and ran down the aisle and turned the corner. I stood in front of the saltine crackers and wept, but a voice in me urged, “Do it. Go ahead. Buy it,” and I knew the voice was not the devil. It was me. I wanted to eat meat again.

  I went around the corner, picked up the package of chicken that was cut up in eighths, and stood in line to pay for it. As I waited, I chewed a stick of spearmint gum and tears rolled down my cheeks. The cashier rang up the price, put the chicken in a brown paper bag, and handed it to me after she counted out my change. I took the bag in my left hand and marched out the automatic exit door as if I were accompanied by Beethoven’s Ninth.

  Gauguin started up Betsy Boop, and it jiggled loudly in idle as I settled myself into the seat with the chicken on my lap. I felt the truck’s accusation, also the magpies’ and the cottonwoods’, as we chugged along the road back to Talpa. I was Abraham bringing Isaac to the sacrificial rock. Gauguin said nothing and then he turned on the radio. It was full of static and a country singer’s voice droning on about a yellow moon. He turned it off.

  When we got home, I made chicken with wine and onions. Gauguin said it smelled good, but he was going out to practice with a new band. I sat alone at the kitchen table with a thigh in wine sauce in front of me. I took a bite. I put it down. I felt slightly nauseous even before the chicken hit my stomach. There was something about cooking meat myself and eating it after seven years that really made it meat, really drove home “animal” in my mouth.

  But I wanted it, and I knew it. The two dreams I had told me that. I wanted to eat meat from now on, but there was no mistake about it. An animal had died and I was biting into its flesh. I finished eating the thigh and slurped up the onions in wine sauce.

  From that moment on, in a hundred ways I tried to say good-bye to Taos. “Look, Nell,” I’d say as I rode down to the Red Willow School. “See the turn, the broken fence, the fallen adobe. Take it in,” but it didn’t work. I never really believed I would leave New Mexico.

  22

  “JESUS, NELL, WHAT the hell are you doing?” Gauguin ran across the yard and grabbed my arm. I sat in the driveway, my mouth covered with dirt.

  “I’m eating it,” I said.

  “What is the matter with you?” I looked up. It was August first.

  “You’re eating the land?” He was incredulous. I lifted another handful to my mouth. He shoved my hand away and lifted me to my feet.

  “I don’t want to leave!” I screamed.

  “Cut it out already, will you?” Gauguin said.

  “No!” I pulled my arm away from him and stomped up to the vegetable garden at Blue’s. She was visiting her mother in Baton Rouge. We’d said good-bye so many times before she left that it became unbearable.

  It was the best vegetable garden we ever had. I sat down and pulled out small tender pigweed that grew near the heads of Bibb lettuce. We could make salade niçoise. I’d ask Gauguin to go into town for a can of tuna. There were some potatoes back in the kitchen we could boil.

  “Nell.” I heard him coming up to the garden.

  “Do you want to have a salad?” I yelled without turning around.

  “Nell, the truck’s packed. Everything, including our dishes. We’re leaving. Now.” I looked up at him. I didn’t say a word. I began to pull weeds again. Gauguin squatted beside me. “Please, Nell,” he said softly.

  I started to cry. “I can’t.” I shook my head. “I want to make a salad.”

  “C’mon, the house is empty.” Gauguin pulled gently at my sleeve.

  Hearing the word empty, I stopped, pigweed still in my hand. Something shifted in me, and I knew it was all over. I stood up and followed Gauguin to the truck. I settled into the passenger’s side and stared at my hands in my lap.

  “Aren’t you even going to say a final farewell?” Gauguin asked as we pulled away from the house.

  “No, I’m carrying it all with me. I’ve got it all in my head,” I said quietly. I pictured the orange-flowered curtain that hung from thumbtacks at the windowpane, the braided brown rug in the kitchen, the black wood stove, the bumpy adobe walls that we’d painted fresh white, the turquoise windowsills, the Russian olive by the porch, the shadow from the marijuana plant that grew so high last summer, it took up all the light by the back door. I started to chew at my hair, the way Anna used to do.

  We hit the blacktop, and at the turn the truck skidded a bit.

  We drove past the terrible Mexican restaurant where Blue had gotten food poisoning so fast, she started vomiting immediately after the last bite of her taco, past the courthouse with the farmer’s market in front. Red chile ristras hung from posts. Past the one stoplight in town, past JCPenney’s where I had bought orange plaid flannel sheets, past Kit Carson Park and the post office on the left. Box 1206. I suddenly remembered I’d forgotten to return the key. “Gauguin, we’ve got to stop at the post office. I have to return the
key.”

  “They’re closed, Nell. It’s Sunday. You can mail it to them,” he said.

  Box 1206. I was sure the mailbox was filling with letters for Nell Schwartz that I would never get.

  “We’ve got to stop. I’ve got to get my mail,” I said in a last-ditch attempt never to leave Taos.

  “Jesus, didn’t you have them forward it on Friday?” Gauguin was exasperated.

  “Yes, but you know how they are.” Then I took a deep breath and just gave in. “Okay, keep going.” I looked out the window, defeated.

  Past the entrance to the pueblo, past Taos Mountain, though you couldn’t ever pass it. It followed you wherever you went for a hundred miles. Past cows and the nodding wild sunflowers that grew all along the edge of the road like a thin yellow highway line. I started to cry. Gauguin reached out his hand and touched my leg.

  “Are you mad at me?” he asked.

  I turned in disbelief. “Gauguin, we’re leaving...” I paused. “I hate you,” I said under my breath.

  “Yeah, should be in Boulder by nine tonight,” he replied. We slowed down at the blinking light and then continued at top speed.

  Past the chamisa, past the bar in the valley at Arroyo Hondo, past the sign for San Cristobal. The road ascended and then evened off into Questa. Past Questa and the café that sold thick shakes, past the grocery store with the public phone outside.

  “I can’t believe this is happening,” I said aloud.

  “It’s only six hours north. You can come back and visit,” Gauguin said.

  “You’re an asshole. I hate you,” I repeated.

  Gauguin began to whistle. I looked out the window again. The land was full of sagebrush and stretched for miles. Back, way back behind me, I felt water rising. It was in an adobe house and the water washed away the whole house and the fields behind the house. Something was drowning as we headed north into another world.