“I don’t have a car.”
“If you can hitch there, I’ll drive you back or you can stay overnight. We have an extra sleeping bag. Do you have something to write on? I’ll give you directions.”
She went in the house and brought out a green spiral notebook and opened it to the back cover. “Here, draw a map.” She handed me a yellow pencil.
I drew the long dirt road, past the cemetery and Barela’s candy store. I drew a square with a pitched roof and a door for the candy store. I turned to Anna. “Don’t get carried away when you pass the candy store. I think it’s a front for the mafia. The mafia sneaks three sheep from Eloy’s barn down the road, finds no one in Taos wants them, and then sneaks them back under the cover of the candy store. Big operation. Last year the store had four pieces of licorice for sale. This year they have two. Some one from Truchas bought one, thinking it was a cheap way to repair the soles of his shoes. He’s dead in a ditch now. He got hungry and ate it. Once I saw someone come out with a soda.”
“Soda?” Anna questioned.
“Oh, pop. I always forget that out here you say ‘pop.’ In New York we say ‘soda.’ Not baking soda—the kind you sip through a straw.” I turned and smiled at her. There I was again, trying to be charming.
I drew plum trots by the ditch as part of the map. I made the ditch a wavy line. I drew the trees laden with plums. I even drew Mel’s totem pole near Blue’s house and Arturo’s lambs on his front lot. Seven of them. The scrawniest things you’d ever seen.
“Okay, okay. I’ll find it.” Anna laughed and pulled the notebook from me.
“Come around six. Bring some of your novel, if you want. I’d love to hear it,” I said.
Anna looked down and then over at a tree. “I haven’t shown it to anyone.”
“Well, it’s up to you. I’m sure Gauguin would like to hear it, too. How long have you been working on it?” I asked.
“A year and a half.”
I left Anna, and on the way to Talpa, I stopped in Safeway and bought jack cheese, corn tortillas, sour cream, green chiles. When I got home, the coolness of the adobe rose up to greet me. The house was dark with small thick windows. Gauguin and I had stapled up screening to the outside frames so the windows could be opened. I looked around our small kitchen.
I put the brown bag from Safeway on the table and went into the bedroom and lay on the bed. We had a flower-patterned blue and white rug to cover the hard, unfinished adobe floor. I wasn’t tired. I just wanted to lie down. I liked Anna, especially her eyes, even if they were cockeyed.
Gauguin was whistling outside. He passed by the bedroom window. “Gauguin,” I called when he entered the kitchen. “Where were you?”
“Out practicing.”
“Gauguin, I met a writer today. I asked her for dinner tomorrow night.”
He stuck his head in the bedroom and smiled. “Is that why you left the groceries on the kitchen table?”
8
ANNA CAME FOR DINNER at the time of rose sunset. She entered the house through that soft light and sat down at the kitchen table. I served enchiladas with sour cream and chopped green onions spooned on top after the tortillas, onions, chiles, and cheese had bubbled together in the oven. They were my specialty. I wanted to make a good impression on Anna.
She picked at them and asked for a beer. We didn’t have any beer in the house. Gauguin and Anna seemed to like each other, but it was clear that she was going to be my friend. Gauguin excused himself after dinner and went in the back room to practice. We could hear him chopping out a song on his guitar, the instrument he used whenever he tried out something new. Ping. Ping. Long pause. Ping. Ping. Ping. Short pause. A full strum. After a while we didn’t hear him, though he continued to play.
“Did you bring your novel?” I asked.
“Yeah,” she answered, and brushed a chunk of hair from her face.
“Read me some,” I said.
“Do you have any wine?” Anna asked.
“Yeah, I think we might have some leftover stuff in the fridge.” I got up, cleared the dishes, and put two glasses down on the table. I poured white wine out of a green bottle and settled back in my seat. “Okay, go ahead.” I nodded.
“I’m nervous. I don’t know what to read to you.” Anna looked into her glass of wine and then up at me.
“Were you born in Nebraska?” I asked, changing the subject.
“No, my parents met in Connecticut. My father was from Nebraska, and when I was in the third grade, he wanted to move back. Have you ever been to Nebraska?” she asked.
“I’ve driven through. My sister was busted in Kearney. She spent two weeks in jail there,” I replied.
“What’d she do?” Anna asked.
“She was driving along with a bunch of friends at 3 A.M., and they were all high on Quaaludes. They were headed for California, and they stopped in a café. The owner took one look at them and called the cops. Rita’s hair was out like Jimi Hendrix, and she was wearing her silver sneakers. You could just see it. Five stoned freaks from New York stop in Kearney for juice.” I laughed. I tried to imitate the way Rita said it.
“She’s lucky she got out,” Anna said, and took another sip of wine.
“Yeah, I think the judge made fun of her last name. Schwartz.” I took a sip of my wine, too.
“It’s amazing he even knew it was Jewish. Most people out there don’t know what a Jew is.” Anna brushed some more hair out of her eye.
“Are you going to read?” I asked, getting back to her novel.
Anna sat with her back to the stove. Over her left shoulder was the window and beyond that the night. “I’ll read you the part about Louise and the cows on Christmas,” Anna replied.
“Okay, shoot.” I leaned back with my arm stretched in front of me on the table. I held the wineglass.
Anna took another gulp of wine and began to read in a shaky voice.
I tilted my head to the right as though to listen better. I really didn’t know much about Anna. She had finished her glass of wine, and I filled it again. She read without pausing and without looking up.
...White and brown, bronze, black. Cows of every color came. They knocked down the barbed wire fences, as though they did not exist. Those boundaries that kept them in their place most days, this night nothing contained them.
And the wolves too. The wolves were bad that winter and everyone knew it. Yet when Louise heard the first wolf-cry, she was not alarmed. The first howls were taken up and echoed with quickening repetitions. A black drove came up over the hill, but Louise and the cows were unafraid. The wolves looked no bigger than dogs, and they ran like streaks of shadows. There might have been one hundred of them. They came to the center with the cattle.
Birds too. Sparrows, looking smaller on the backs of cows, few down from tree branches. Louise thought the moon had risen, because at the center of the animals golden light emanated. She looked up. There were only stars. She got up, and like the prairie dogs, who were coming now too, she moved toward the center. A warm breeze blew gently across the winter night. As though responding to some silent signal, all the animals at once kneeled, bending their front legs.
At this point Anna looked up. “Should I go on? Is it beginning to sound corny?” She rubbed her cheek with her hand.
“No, keep going. I’m into it.” I smiled and nodded.
The sparrows bowed their heads. In unison, all the animals began to moo and howl and bark and screech. It sounded like a holy choir. It began low and it ended high. It was broken by a sudden, complete silence for about two minutes.
Louise looked around. She wanted to be nearer to the cows, but she didn’t dare move. Then it was over. The cows at the center turned slowly, causing all the other animals to break the circle. The wolves shot back, dark and swift, across the fields. Then the prairie dogs. The sparrows lifted off the cows’ backs. Louise backed herself against another oak tree with her hands behind her and watched. Her heart was very open as though it had ta
ken in the golden light at the center. She wondered what that golden light had been.
Anna looked up. She licked her bottom lip. I could see her left eye was moving in a bit.
“Well?” she asked.
“Are you Louise?” I took a leap.
“Some. And some not. What’d you think? Did you like it?” Anna asked nervously.
“You know, I swear it sounds like Willa Cather a little bit,” I said, and then paused. “I can’t believe you don’t like her.”
“Are you selling Willa Cather books?” She laughed, but I could tell she was annoyed. “I never read my writing aloud to anyone.” Our eyes met. I noticed her right front tooth was crooked. I knew she wanted more from me, but I didn’t know what else to say.
Just then Gauguin walked in from the other room. He had his shirt off. You could see a little of his small belly, because his belt was low. His whole chest was covered with red freckles, and he had about five red burly hairs at each nipple. Anna seemed to get uncomfortable.
“Gauguin”—I didn’t move from my seat—“Anna just read to me from her novel.”
“Hey.” He smiled and put on his glasses. “Great, I’d like to hear it sometime.”
Anna bent over her folder. I could tell Gauguin understood she was reticent about her writing. He turned his head. “Can I have some wine?” he asked, seeing the bottle on the table.
“What’s left of it.” I pushed the bottle toward him.
He went across the room to get a glass from the cabinet. “I think there’s more down below.” He pulled up another half finished bottle and uncorked it.
Anna was relaxed now. “Nell tells me you write songs.”
“Yeah, love songs about Nell. ‘Nell has a belly. She doesn’t let me near her when my feet are smelly,’ ” he sang.
“Gauguin, why don’t you sing us a real one?” I asked enthusiastically.
“Maybe later. I thought we could go for a walk,” he said.
“Okay.” I nodded. I looked at Anna. “Do you want to go? Then I’ll drive you home.”
“You can stay the night if you want.” Gauguin looked at Anna.
We left the wine on the counter and walked out into the cool night. There was no moon, but the stars gave enough light for us to see where we walked.
We followed the narrow footpath up by the reservoir, past two rusted junk cars, and stood under some Russian olives, watching the lights of Taos in the distance. Gauguin took my hand. He wasn’t wearing his glasses and I wondered how much he could see. Both Gauguin and Anna began yawning. I told them they had both drunk too much wine and that’s why they were sleepy.
Later, I was too tired to drive Anna home. She stayed overnight. She slept in my green sleeping bag, the one with the red flannel lining. The next morning I was pleased that she was there. Gauguin made us toast and fried potatoes with green chiles. I sat at the breakfast table grunting and making wolf sounds, trying to get them to join in. They wouldn’t. I looked from Gauguin, pouring hot water into the one-cup coffee filter, to Anna, sitting in her T-shirt at the other end of the table. There was something similar about them, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. Some thing about them both being from the Midwest, which meant they were both dumb as crickets and slow as tractors. They weren’t going to become wolves, magpies, or hyenas at the breakfast table with me. I howled alone, and they chewed at their toast.
9
BECAUSE GAUGUIN AND I didn’t have a phone, if we thought of someone, we just thought of them. We didn’t call them, make a date, and put it on our calendar. Then when that Wednesday rolled around, we weren’t obliged to stay home, waiting for them at noon, rather than doing what we really wanted, like going to the river for the whole day. Instead, people came wholly and physically into our lives. They appeared at our door, knocked, and we let them in. We had some tortillas with them, took a walk, played music, or just sat together on the front bench, watching the mountains that looked like two elephants kissing. And then our visitors left.
But after the night that Anna came for dinner, I wanted to see her a lot. She didn’t have a phone either, so I had to drive out there and take my chances. She wrote most of the day. I’d stand on the rim, practice my flying, and then drop in on her. We’d sit on her old car seat out back, drink lemonade, and tell stories. I’d talk about my painting a little, though not much. I didn’t quite know what to say. Sometimes she told me about what she was writing. I think I was the only one she talked to about it. Sometimes we went for a short walk on the rim and imagined flying together.
We’d call out birds that we wanted to be and then see how they got along. Once I was a chicken and she was a hawk; another time she was a sparrow and I was a finch. We tried to make the birds’ sounds, too, and sometimes the wind lifted enough that we were sure we were about to take flight.
One time when I popped in, Anna seemed more dreamy than usual. She said she had had a good day of writing. I told her she was lucky. My latest painting had ended in blobs of brown and unclear figures.
“Maybe those figures are bugging you,” she said offhandedly, reaching for a pink shirt to go over her tank top.
“Huh? What do you mean?” I asked.
“I don’t know. Nell, this is just a guess, but maybe it’s something to do with your parents. They don’t seem to accept your painting. Maybe you’re busy fighting them instead of doing it.”
“Huh?” I said that brilliant word again.
“It’s a hunch, that’s all.”
Anna didn’t usually talk like this. I really didn’t understand what she was saying, but then tears sprang to my eyes. I followed her out the door. We were heading for the rim to practice flying. We crossed the road. “Hey, Anna, since when are you Sigmund Freud’s old aunt?”
She snorted and lightly pushed me away. I’d never noticed before how beautiful her back was. Broad shoulders coming down like a V at her waist. I wanted to reach out and touch her. Did I love Anna or hate my parents? If Gauguin had said what Anna just had, I would have despised him.
“What do you want to be today?” Anna turned to me.
“A pelican.”
“A pelican? Nell, you can’t be that. This isn’t the ocean.”
“I can be what I want.” I curled my bottom lip.
Anna looked at my face. She nodded. “Okay, you can be what you want.”
I held open my arms, but instead of using them for wings, I wrapped them around Anna and began to cry.
We stood there, and she stroked my head.
The sun began to set along the ridge line.
Another day in early July when I came to visit, she wasn’t home. I knocked. “Anna?” I knocked again. “Anna?” I lifted the black latch, and the door swung open—she never locked up. No one was there. The bed wasn’t made. I stepped in and went over to her desk, thinking I’d leave a note. There was a list on her table. “Do the laundry. Bring paper clips, paper, writing pens, emery board, and enough rice for ten days.” So she went someplace for ten days. Probably to write.
She probably likes writing better than me, I thought belligerently.
Sometimes I felt that she’d rather be writing than be spending time with me. Once at Steven’s Kitchen I was telling her about a dream, talking with my mouth full of pecan pancakes, too excited to swallow. Suddenly, I noticed she was drumming the fingers of her right hand on the tabletop.
“Hey, Anna,” I asked. “Are you listening?”
“Yeah, Nell. It’s just that I think I’d better get back to my novel. I missed a whole day yesterday when we went hiking, and then I slept over.
“Didn’t you have a good time?” I asked.
“I had a great time. It’s just that I’ve got to work. There’s no one out there that’s going to make me do it, but myself. You should understand from your painting.”
“Okay, let me finish these pancakes and I’ll drive you home.” I took a big swig from the tea that was already cooled to lukewarm. The truth was, I didn’t understand. I tho
ught it was more fun any day being with Anna than painting.
I was used to Gauguin wanting to practice music, but that didn’t bother me as much. He was in love with me, and besides we lived together. I got to see him as much as I wanted to, and if I really acted miserable and fainted all over the place, he wouldn’t practice that day. We’d go to the river or down to Santa Fe.
“I wonder where she went? She never mentioned it to me,” I thought out loud. I squatted down to watch the birds fly below me and above the town.
I’d left Anna’s house and had gone back to the rim. I looked over the town of Valdez, thirteen crooked adobe houses sighing back into the earth. I counted eight horses in different corrals and seven goats lost among chicken coops, outhouses, and pickup truck graveyards.
Two magpies swept by. A raven. I closed my eyes and imagined myself sailing through air. I lifted my right outspread arm so I could veer to the left. I almost completed the turn, when I stopped. “Oh, hell, I can’t fly today. I’m going home to get Gauguin.”
When I arrived home, there was a note on the table. “Rose, Jet stopped by and we went to the river. Be back by dinner. I’m madly in love with you, Gauguin.”
Shit. No one was around. I started up to Blue’s and then remembered she was out camping in the Pecos. I could read, I thought. We had just taken Nine Stories by Salinger out of the library. We had read “Laughing Man” aloud the other night. I could reread it. I went out on the front bench. It was too hot. I jumped up and went back in the house, slamming the door behind me. Shit! I sat at the kitchen table.
Salinger was on the table. I strummed my fingers on the book, bit the inside of my lip. I glanced down at Salinger and a space appeared in my mind. I filled it in: Salinger was from New York, I surmised. I’m from New York. I put the two together: Therefore, if Salinger can write, so can I! A smile spread over my whole face. I quickly got out four pieces of loose-leaf paper and a pencil from a drawer in the back room and began to write.
Nell walked into Rexall Drugs to buy some cashews. As she passed the counter, she saw some Donald Duck sunglasses. They were red. She reached out and took a pair off the cardboard display rack and put them on. “Is there a mirror?” Nell asked coquettishly in her new glasses, turning to the counter clerk. He pointed to a small square mirror by the cosmetic counter. She walked over and peered at herself. The glasses were too small. They made her nose look big. She didn’t care. They were perfect, she thought stubbornly. She paid the exact amount for them: sixty-nine cents. She counted out the four pennies after the two quarters, the dime, and the nickel.