Banana Rose

“Yeah, she’ll always be there,” she said, crushing out her cigarette.

  I paused. “I went through a hard divorce.”

  “I went through one, too, once. They’re a bitch. Where’s Gauguin, anyway?” she asked.

  “In L.A.”

  “That sounds like a good place for him.”

  “Is Eugene still here?” I asked, trying to act nonchalant.

  She looked at me closely. She wore makeup now. It was becoming. Blue eyeliner and brown mascara.

  “Eugene became a serious practitioner of meditation and they made him head of the whole sitting program. It’s a regular job from eight to five every day.” She paused. “Hey, you ought to call him. He’d love to see you.”

  “Yeah, I think I will. Do you have his number?” I asked casually.

  “It’s 555-3802. He rooms with a close friend of mine.” She glanced at the clock on the stove. “Nell, I’ve got to go to bed. I’ve got a job now in an office.”

  Jane had already left for work two hours earlier when I finally got up the courage to call Eugene. The receptionist answered the phone, “The Tibetan Center,” and told me she would check, but she thought he was in a meeting. I tried to imagine Eugene in a conference room at a long table.

  “Hello, Eugene here.” I heard his voice.

  “Hey, this is Nell Schwartz!”

  He let out a laugh of delight. “Why, hello there! Where are you?” We decided to meet for lunch. I would pick him up at his office. He suggested we go to a restaurant across the street that served New Orleans–style food, “gumbo and all.”

  I waited for him on a bench in a long gold-carpeted hallway. On the far wall was a large oil painting of a black dragon spewing out blue fire. The dragon was wrapped around a gold snake and had a man’s body gripped in its talons. The line from a Buddhist chant went through my head.

  I turned and was amazed to see Eugene walking toward me in a suit, even though Jane had told me he would be. And he had on brown laced shoes with a design punched in the leather. Wingtips, they were called. Wingtips! I stood up as he approached me. He had a big smile on his face, and his arms were opened wide.

  “Nell!” he said, and we hugged.

  “Eugene.”

  He shook his head. I imagined his old curls shaking. He took my arm and steered me out the front door and down the five steps.

  At Louie’s, across the street, we sat at a table on the porch with a pink linen tablecloth. The sun was on my back, and it felt good.

  We settled into our seats and looked at each other. He reached his right hand up to his lapel. “Like it?” he asked. “I found this suit in a secondhand store for thirty-five dollars, had it cleaned—good as new.”

  The waiter brought our drinks, and we clinked glasses, both of us laughing.

  “So?” he asked me, leaning over, his elbows on the table.

  I told him about me and Gauguin, about what it had been like to live in Minnesota, about Gauguin’s parents, about our divorce. It felt easy to talk to Eugene, and odd—we hadn’t seen each other in so long. Then I told him a bunch about my paintings. He nodded and just listened. I remembered he was always a good listener. I paused, looked down at my napkin, and then blurted, “Eugene, what do you think being a hippie was all about, anyway? All those years in Taos?”

  “Love.” He didn’t hesitate. “It was about love.”

  “Where’d it go?” I asked.

  “I hope it’s still here. I’m still the King of the Hippies, even though I dress differently. What else is there but love?” I saw his crow eyes again, but I wasn’t convinced. A lot of years had passed.

  He leaned closer. “You know, a year ago I completed a special practice of a hundred thousand prostrations, and then I went back to Taos. I wanted to do two weeks of intensive meditation there. I remembered there was an old green 1949 trailer out back of Wisdom Mountain.”

  Yes, I nodded. I remembered it vaguely.

  “It was small, just enough room to sleep one person, but it had personality. Rounded roof, thin mahogany veneer inside.” He showed me the curve of the roof with his hand. “It was like an old roller skate someone had left in the pines. I cleaned it out, set up an altar, and entered fourteen days of sitting meditation by myself. I slept maybe six hours a night. The rest of the time I sat cross-legged on a cushion. On the thirteenth morning, I felt ready to perform the ritual that concluded the hundred thousand prostrations. It requires extreme concentration, counting out a hundred grains of rice, placing them in a pattern on the altar, destroying the pattern, counting out sixty-eight grains of rice, and so on. Real complicated. If you miss even by one grain of rice anywhere in the mantra, it is said that you could go crazy. That’s why I sat so long before I started it, to clear my mind. There was a chance that in doing it I could burn through karma to pure, naked attention.

  “Well, just as I laid out all the necessary incense, candles, and rice to begin, I noticed a plastic bag under a bench. I pulled it out. It held a small amount of white powder. I thought, ‘Hey, this must be baking soda or maybe cocaine.’ I didn’t know. There was only about a quarter of a teaspoon in all. I decided to take it just for fun, as a celebration. The amount was harmless. I licked it out of the bag. Within a half hour, after counting out one hundred grains of rice, I was tripping my ass off. It turned out that the powder was blue lightning acid. Someone must have left it there years ago, and in that time, instead of deteriorating, it had tripled its potency. The rice was dancing, the trailer was humming, and I was on a locomotive sailing through time. I knew I had to complete the ritual no matter what. It’s said in the scriptures that once the Great Way ritual is begun, it must be completed or death ensues. I tried to put all my concentration into it, but of course I was tripping and had no concentration. The only thing I had to gauge it against was a clock. I continually glanced at the clock as I performed the ritual in order to stay connected to something and keep grounded. I knew that under normal circumstances the ceremony took six hours.

  “At sunrise the next day, I placed the last rice kernel in front of the fifteenth candle in the exact direction to mark wisdom beyond wisdom and vast eternity. On LSD, the ritual had taken me twenty-four hours!

  “Yes, Nell, I’m still a hippie,” he concluded. “I’m a freak, and I always will be.”

  I spooned saffron rice into my mouth. The sunlight glinted off my empty glass. I smiled at him. “I’m glad you’re still a hippie. I think I am, too. It never really leaves us.”

  “Do you want dessert?” Eugene asked, wiping his lips with the pink linen napkin and then putting it on his empty plate. “Good place, huh?”

  “A great place.”

  Then he wrinkled his forehead in consternation. “Uh”—he looked at his watch—“I better get back to work.” He paid the bill for both of us. Then he hesitated, reached across the table, and took my hand. He wanted to say something and then decided not to. He got up, then sat down again. I realized Eugene was nervous. I had never seen him that way before.

  “It’s good to see you,” he said.

  I nodded.

  “I missed you.”

  I nodded again. There was nothing else to say.

  He got up once more, and I watched him cross the street and climb the steps to the front door of the Tibetan Center.

  Back at Jane’s, I was eager to move on to Taos. I planned to leave the next morning.

  “Where will you stay when you first get there?” Jane asked that evening.

  “Sam and Blue’s up on the mesa. They have an old silver bus they’re going to give me.”

  “Living in a bus, gonna be a hippie again?” Jane asked.

  “No, not really. I just don’t know any other way to live in Taos. It’s temporary until I get my feet on the ground.” I paused. I looked at her. “I’m going to be a painter now.”

  I dropped Jane off at work the next morning and then got back on the highway. Bypassing Denver, I headed south toward Colorado Springs and then past Pueblo. At Walsenber
g I headed off the interstate, going west toward Fort Garland.

  51

  ABOUT TEN MILES from the New Mexico border, I stopped in the town of San Luis and parked in front of an empty storefront. Next door was a restaurant. In the window they advertised enchiladas and tacos for seventy-five cents. There was a little historical fiesta going on in the town. I crossed the street to go to the bathroom in the gas station. On the way I passed a secondhand store and stopped to look in the window. There were three green melmac plates on a shelf, a candelabra—probably made of tin but painted gold—on the windowsill, and a pile of comics in a corner. There wasn’t much to look at, but I kept looking. I touched the pane of glass in front of me. The glass became water under my fingertips and the sidewalk rippled. A breeze lifted the cottonwood leaves above my head and rustled my hair. Suddenly I remembered. Gauguin had bought a pair of khaki pants in this store once. They were from the 1950s. He got them for twenty-five cents. Banana Rose and Gauguin had been here. At that moment I thought I would never get those two names out of my head. The Midwest full of rivers rose in my face, the miles of highway, South Dakota, Gauguin’s grandmother—I looked at my reflection. My hand was spread out on the glass. My hair was short. My sandaled feet were planted on the cement sidewalk. I breathed so deeply, a bouquet of carnations bloomed in my chest. I was full of sorrow and love and there was no way out of it.

  I walked slowly toward the Exxon station. People dressed in festive costumes rode by on horseback. Everything passed me: color, wind, time. The bathroom was locked. I went to the office for the key. I’m returning to New Mexico, I thought, as I opened the locked wooden door.

  South of San Luis the land spread out the way I knew it would. Lots of sage; naked, treeless earth; blue-gray mountains in the distance. Most of all, big sky and tremendous space. My heart flung open.

  WELCOME TO NEW MEXICO. THE LAND OF ENCHANTMENT. That sign always made me smile. I pulled over, got out, leaned back against the hood of the car, and just gazed around, enjoying the sun on my face. I was home. I turned and walked off into the sage.

  “Sage,” I cried. “I haven’t seen you in so long.”

  I picked a few thin twigs and brought them to my nose. That smell again. I inhaled it and my whole body dissolved into the land.

  I went back to the sign, leaned against it, and sang the Shehecheyanu at the top of my lungs. I thanked God for bringing me to this day.

  When they were released from the concentration camps, instead of grabbing guns and going mad, the Jews slowly walked past the barbed wire, came together in a bedraggled circle, and sang the Shehecheyanu. I was no Jew in a concentration camp. Still, I sang the prayer and held the sage up so I could smell it. When something as good as returning to New Mexico happens, there isn’t much to say. The sky and the sage were better than anything I had remembered.

  I realized that for a time I had thought Gauguin and New Mexico were one, so when he left, I believed I could never have it back. But the land was always here. It would be here after Gauguin was gone. After I was gone, too. But now I could return. I remembered a poem I had read by Pablo Neruda just before I left Minneapolis. It said, “Those who return never left.” A part of me had always been here, moving among the chamisa, the Sangre de Cristos, the gorge. A part of me had traveled the goat path in Talpa, sat in the rain under a piñon, even as I waited for a bus in the brutal December cold on Hennepin Avenue. That part of me kept me alive, even while my marriage crumbled. I didn’t know much else, but I knew this: I was not homeless. I had survived.

  I got back in my car and drove to the mesa. When I got there, Blue was feeding the chickens. She put down the pail she was holding and cried, “Sugar, you’re back! Got your postcard a few days ago. I thought you’d be here by now.”

  “I am here by now.” I flung my arms open.

  Blue hugged me, then paused. “I have some bad news. Sylvester ran off a day ago. I can’t find him anyplace. I never heard of a rooster just running off—but you know Sylvester. He was very special”—she scrunched up her face—“and weird.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’ll help you look for him.”

  “Well, never mind.” She waved her hand. “I got the school bus all ready for you, and then Lightning and his friends made a mess in it. I shipped him off to his father in Texas two days ago.” We walked into the greenhouse.

  “It’s okay, I’ll clean it up. I’m so happy to be back.” I trailed after her into the house.

  We had tortillas and beans for dinner, just the three of us. I was glad. It felt ordinary and natural, as if I’d always been there.

  But then Blue said, “I made something special for you, Nell. Or should we call you Banana?”

  I put my head to one side. “Lets stay with Nell for now. I have enough to adjust to.”

  “I made you a noodle cake.” She went to the refrigerator.

  “A noodle cake? Never heard of it,” I said.

  “It’s Blue’s original recipe,” Sam said.

  “Yes, it’s spaghetti noodles. I cooked them, mixed them with lots of honey, and put them in a cake pan. Then I put it in the freezer. When it set, I frosted it with chocolate. Chocolate’s still your favorite, isn’t it, honey?”

  “My, what a novel idea,” I said. “Have you tasted it?”

  “No, this is her first,” Sam said, beaming at Blue. “She’s an artist.”

  Blue brought the cake to the table. “I wanted to print ‘Welcome Home’ with jelly beans, but I didn’t have any.”

  “That’s fine. I understand.” I took a forkful. “Hmmm, this is quite a taste sensation. Going to have it at your restaurant? What was the name of it?” I asked.

  Blue laughed. “Something about unusual combos. You made it up.”

  “I guess this fits.” Sam smiled.

  “Blue’s Babies.” I snapped my fingers. “That was the name of your restaurant.”

  52

  IN THE DISTANCE someone was whistling the most beautiful concerto. I knew who it was and I walked toward the sound.

  “Remember me?” I asked old Joe Sandoval. “Do you have any of last year’s dried apples?”

  Joe was leaning on a pitchfork next to a ten-foot pile of straw. “Maybe so. I’ll go look in the root cellar.” Joe was sixty-five. He’d lived in Talpa all his life. He traveled to Taos, five miles away, about once a month. He’d been to Santa Fe, one and a half hours away, only three times in his life.

  He reappeared. “Now I remember. You and that fellar lived down the road. He had some kind of instrument he was always carrying. Can’t recall.”

  “A trumpet,” I said.

  Joe handed me a plastic bag full of dried fruit.

  “Are these still the best?” I asked, opening the bag.

  “Suppose so,” he said, scratching his ear. “You look good. How many years ago was it?”

  “Four, four and a half, maybe. Ummm, these are good. How much?” I took another bite.

  “A dollar maybe.”

  “Sold.” I handed him a bill. His fingers trembled. He’d been hit by lightning three times and lived.

  We waved good-bye.

  I walked farther down the road. I’d been back a week. Wild sunflower heads bobbed all along the road. Apricots were turning yellow-orange and under each fruit tree there were many that had already fallen. I looked over at Taos Mountain. Thunderheads were forming that would bring the afternoon rain. This land had not failed me. Each rock held a slice of eternity. I passed rose hips, not yet ready for picking. I turned and saw the elephant mountains. They were still kissing. I waved. Dark cloud shadows floated across their faces.

  How could you ever leave? I asked myself. I’d left it for him. The letter was in my pocket. It had arrived yesterday. I took it out and read it again.

  Dear Nell,

  L.A.’s okay. A tough place. I’m trying to connect with the music scene. I’m still blasted from everything that’s happened this year. I think about you, sometimes so much I want to burn you
from my brain. Then I realize: You live in me. I have to let you be. I hope you are well and happy. I still love you.

  Gauguin

  I folded it up and put it back in my pocket. My heart was a dark prune. It became more wrinkled every time I read that letter.

  “This is where we lived, Gauguin,” I said out loud. “This is where we walked and kissed”—I passed our old house—“and made love.”

  All of a sudden I needed to get away from Talpa. I ran up to the reservoir where my car was parked, got in, and drove into town.

  Lee’s Bakery was next to the post office. I ordered Harvey’s special there—lox, onions, and scrambled eggs—and from a rack near the counter bought a card with a picture of the pueblo on it. I sat down in the back room, and while I waited for my order, I wrote.

  Dear Anna,

  I’m sleeping out on a platform Sam built—I can watch the stars at night and I’m using the school bus for a painting studio. The mesa is still heaven. It’s calling you. I hear it. “Anna,” it says, like a long low train whistle. I hope you come. I miss you.

  XXX,

  Nelly Belly

  P.S. Treat you to a malt at Rexall’s when you get here. No vanilla.

  I didn’t tell her that Rexall’s had become a tourist place, but at least they’d kept the soda fountain.

  When I finished my eggs, I dropped Anna’s card in the mail slot next door and drove back up to the mesa. Blue and Sam had been gone for three days on a wood run near Tres Piedras. They’d be home this afternoon. I was glad. I was getting tired of being the only one up there.

  I parked beside Mohammed, Sam’s 1940 red Chevy pickup, got out, and looked around. Boy, this was big space. A person could get lost here. Not me. I smiled. I’m going to paint.

  I went right over to the bus. Even though I could already see lightning in the distance, I opened some windows. It was hot in there.

  Okay, I said to myself, we’re inside, but let’s paint what’s outside.

  I drew a straight horizon line. Above it would be mountains. I’d keep the bottom flat and full of sage. Yellow sage, I decided. Who could ever capture the mysterious dusty blue-green color it really was?