After that, Allison wanted to look at some of the shops, so Dad and I offered to take David to the Plaza where he could run around a little. There was a group of kids playing guitars under a tree, which seemed to intrigue Davy. He stood watching them for a while until they stopped playing and tried to talk to him—then he came running back to us. Dad eagerly let him crawl back into his favorite spot, even though Davy’s sneakers left grassy stains on Dad’s pants.
“I’m so glad I could get you two kids together,” he said, his grin spreading out to his ears. “I want you to get to know each other. It’s my goal that you not be strangers.”
I wondered if Allison had the same goal. I kept thinking there was so much I wanted to ask him, so many things I didn’t know about my own father. What does your house look like? Do you like your job? What kind of books do you read? Does Allison make dinner every night or do you cook? What do you do for fun on the weekends? Is it always hot in Phoenix? Is your house air-conditioned? Do you have cactus growing in your yard? Are you and Allison going to have more children? Do you ever think about my mom? Do you ever think about me?
But you can’t just start asking somebody questions like that, even if he is your father. So all I said was, “Do you like living in Phoenix?”
“We love it,” he said. “Ally grew up there, you know.”
“No, I didn’t know that.” Apparently, I didn’t know much.
“Yeah, it’s her home. And I’ve settled in there. It’s my home now, too.”
The man sitting next to me on the bench seemed like a complete stranger. Where was that nervous guy who used to try to keep my mouth busy with burgers and milk shakes so I wouldn’t talk too much? Had I ever sat on his lap?
Dad was so excited about being a husband and father this time around he couldn’t stop talking about it. He even wanted me to be a part of it. I kind of wanted that too, except I couldn’t figure out how to do it. This was a complete family already—mother, father, and child—when you added in a half sister or a stepdaughter it got too complicated. “We’ll get you out to our place one of these days,” Dad said. “Soon! So David still remembers you.” He gave his son a hug. “So you can have a big sister!”
David eyed me uncertainly. He was probably wondering why he needed a sister anyway. I was wondering if that was what all this family stuff was really about. Getting a sister for David, not a father for me.
For dinner Sukey had suggested a restaurant she knew about that had a cowboy theme and fat French fries. Savannah had been invited, too, to thank her for all she’d done for us, so we took two cars. Marsh and Iris climbed in with Savannah, and Dad’s family got into his car, and I stood there between them, unable to choose which direction to go. I felt more a part of Savannah’s family than Dad’s, and certainly closer to Iris and Marshall, after all we’d been through. But I knew I was expected to go with Dad, that I should be glad they wanted me with them, accepted me. Reluctantly, I climbed into the backseat next to Davy’s car seat.
By the time we finished our burgers and fries, Davy had warmed up to me, and to Marshall, too. Since Iris was as silent as humanly possible, he probably wasn’t even aware of her existence.
David had watched gleefully as Marsh stole French fries off my plate from across the table. Since Davy was seated right next to me, he tried the same maneuver. We got into a little game with the two of them ganging up to ravage my plate, and me pretending to be outraged. Davy got the giggles after Marsh gave him a high five. When I ran low on fries, I grabbed a pile from Iris’s plate, since, of course, she wasn’t really eating them, anyway. Allison was a little dumbfounded by her angel and his new pal flinging food around the table, but Dad seemed thrilled with the camaraderie between the three of us. He kept saying, “Are you teasing your sister?” as if teasing were the greatest compliment that could be paid. Which, I guess, from a two-year-old, it might be.
On the drive back to the Black Mesa Motel, there was no question of where I’d sit. David demanded that “Wobin” sit on one side of his car seat and “Marthow” on the other. Iris flew into the front seat of Savannah’s car as if she couldn’t wait to escape the rest of us. Dad’s family had taken a room at the Black Mesa for the night, too, and Marsh and I walked them to their door, each holding one of David’s hands.
“I guess we should say good-bye to you tonight,” Dad said. “We have to get on the road real early tomorrow. Allison’s on a committee about building a new elementary school and there’s a meeting tomorrow night, so we have to get back for that.”
“I would just skip it,” Allison explained, “but this is the week we talk about the various sites we’ve visited and I have to report on my site. It’s pretty important.”
“Oh, sure,” I said. But what I was thinking was, One day? You came all this way, and we haven’t even had a decent conversation yet, and you’re leaving already?
“I wish we had more chances to see you,” Dad said. He looked like he meant it, like he felt bad about the quick visit. Then he said, again, “I want you and David to get to know each other.”
“I know, Dad. Me too. I’ve been kind of thinking I might like to go to college out here,” I said, letting the idea I’d been playing with escape into public for the first time. Why shouldn’t I go to school someplace interesting? I didn’t have to stay in Iowa. Isn’t part of education seeing different things and meeting new people?
“Really, Robin? That’s wonderful!” Dad’s eyes got sort of damp looking and I was afraid he was going to start crying.
Once again, Allison came to the rescue. “Davy and I are going to say good night now. He needs to get to bed.”
“No bed,” he said, but he could tell Allison meant business. Marsh gave him another high five before he ran off to our room, and then Davy even let me give him a kiss on the cheek.
“’Night, Wobin,” he said, letting his dimples show once more.
“Good night, David. I’ll try to come and visit you sometime. Okay?”
He nodded. “Vithit me!” he demanded. Allison gave me a quick hug and hustled Davy into their room.
And then I was standing in the dark, alone with my dad. I smiled shyly. “I guess I better go, too.”
His words rushed at me suddenly. “Tell your mother I want to help pay for your college. I don’t have a lot of extra money, but I can help. I want to be part of it, Robin. I want to be part of your life.”
If you’d told me before the trip that my father was going to make this proclamation, I think I would have been thrilled. At last I was going to have a real father. But that just wasn’t the way I felt at the moment. His words hit me like a handful of pebbles and what I felt like saying was, “Isn’t it a little late now?”
But I didn’t. I said, “Thanks, Dad.” I put my arms around his shoulders in a lightweight hug and let him brush his cheek against mine once more. “Thanks for coming. Tell David I love him.”
The morning after our dinner out with Dad, Iris was in a fury. I woke up to her standing over my bed with her hands on her hips. “How nice of you to rub it in our faces, Robin, that you have this great father and we don’t!”
Apparently my sleeping later than usual had given her a chance to indoctrinate Marshall into this cuckoo line of thinking, too. “Yeah,” he said, frowning at me, “how do you think this makes us feel?”
“What?”
“We know we’ll never be a normal family again—you didn’t need to remind us,” Iris said, glaring at me.
I sat up on the edge of the bed and tried to make sense of what was going on. “First of all, I didn’t even know they were coming—they just showed up. And second, if you think what you saw yesterday was a ‘normal family,’ you’re blind. I haven’t seen my father in three years, I barely know his wife, and I’ve never laid eyes on David before. How is that normal?”
Marsh wasn’t sure; he looked at Iris for the answer. “It’s normal because your father isn’t dead,” she said. “You don’t have any idea how we feel, and you
don’t care either.”
Suddenly I was really sick of Iris, sick of her rag-mop hairdo, her whiny voice, her skinny barfing body, and her crappy attitude. Where did she get off, anyway?
“You, my dear cousin, have no idea how I feel, or how I’ve ever felt, for years and years. Whereas, I have been doing my damnedest all summer to care about the two of you. But right now, I have to admit, I don’t care. Not one little bit.” I stomped over to my open duffel bag to see if I could find something to wear that wasn’t filthy.
Iris tried to hide her shock that I was actually fighting back—I guess she thought having a dead father would easily trump anyone else’s emotional baggage. Marsh, however, took a few steps back from his sister, no longer sure whose side he was on.
“At least you have a father,” Iris said sullenly, trying to win back her advantage.
“Look,” I said. “You had a father for twelve years; Marsh had one for almost ten. I barely had one at all, even though now that I’m practically grown up he wants to get to know me. I’m not saying one is better than the other, but my relationship with my father is certainly nothing to brag about and nothing for you to be jealous of. I know you’re unhappy, Iris, but I wish you’d stop trying to blame it on everybody else in the world!” I grabbed a T-shirt and the least crummy pair of shorts I had, and slammed into the bathroom.
When I came out they were both looking glum, although Iris was quick to put a polish of anger over it for me.
“I don’t have any clean clothes,” I said. “Make a pile of anything you want washed and I’ll stay here and do laundry this morning while you go see your mom.”
“Ha. You probably just want to stay around here to flirt with Cesar some more.”
I did have an ulterior motive for not going along, but not the one Iris suspected. I thought Dory ought to talk to her daughter without me around for Iris to deflect her anger toward. Marsh would be there, of course, but maybe it would be good for him to know that he wasn’t the only one having problems since their father’s death.
I was relieved to see the two of them ride off with Savannah—we definitely needed a break from one another. While the clothes were spinning in Sukey’s machine, I sat outside under a cottonwood tree and looked at some magazines that were lying around for the guests; they were full of beautiful pictures of the New Mexico landscape. I was examining a particularly gorgeous photograph of a place called Ghost Ranch when Cesar came up behind me and looked over my shoulder.
“That’s my favorite place around here,” he said. “Georgia O’Keeffe lived there for years—you know, the painter?”
“Sort of,” I said. “Didn’t she paint big flowers?”
“Yes, but she also painted those mountains. Do you want to go see them? I don’t have to work this afternoon. I could take you—and the kids, of course.”
I grimaced. “The kids probably won’t be speaking to me at all by then. But I’ll ask them. How far is it from here?”
“Not too far—an hour and a half. Worth the trip. I’ll show you O’Keeffe’s paintings of the place. We’ve got a book.”
We sat looking at the paintings until it was time for Cesar to pick up the kids at the hospital. I loved the colors in her work, the pinks and reds and almost blacks, and the curvaceous lines that made the hills seem to be living, breathing beings. I was looking forward to seeing the place she’d lived and painted.
I was folding our clothes and stacking them in piles by each suitcase when I heard the car doors slam. Iris headed straight to room 5, like a tiger who’d sniffed out a deer.
“You told her! You promised me you wouldn’t, and you did!”
“And you told me you were going to stop throwing up. And you didn’t.” I was carefully smoothing the wrinkles out of one of Iris’s tiny shirts, but she grabbed it away from me.
“I’ll never trust you again!”
I sighed. “Iris, will you cool it with the self-righteousness for a minute? You’re in trouble here and somebody has to figure out what to do about it. It’s not a secret I could keep; your mother had to know.”
But Iris was not giving in that easily. “You’ve got her all crazy about it now. She says I have to go see another shrink and a nutritionist and God knows who else as soon as we get home. I knew she’d go apeshit.” She threw the clean shirt on the floor and stomped on it with both feet.
“Well, of course she’s upset. You’re doing something dangerous, Iris. You’ve got to stop it!”
“I can’t stop it! Why can’t you get that? And it’s not about wanting to be skinny either. You think you’re so smart, but you don’t even know why I do it!”
“Do you know why you do it?”
“Yes! Sometimes. I don’t know exactly, but I know that sometimes I just can’t stand to have food inside me—it makes me feel . . . soft and . . . weak. I don’t need food the way other people do.”
“Listen to yourself, Iris. Everybody needs food. You can’t continue to live without food!”
“Maybe I can and maybe I can’t.” She tilted her head up defiantly.
If I’d had a moment or two of regret about breaking her confidence to Dory, it was gone now. Iris needed more help than I could possibly give her.
I told her I was going to Ghost Ranch that afternoon with Cesar; she and Marsh were welcome to come along if they wanted.
“Marsh and I have plans. Tony is letting us ride Eleanor and Ruby. So you can go off with your new boyfriend and do whatever you want to. Don’t let us get in your way.”
“Oh, Iris, you know he isn’t my boyfriend. I barely know him. Can’t you at least try to be a civil human being?”
Her answer was to walk out the door and slam it behind her.
I guess it was on the drive to Ghost Ranch that I realized I’d have to come back to New Mexico again; it wasn’t just a wish—it was a necessity. The shapes and colors were as vivid as Georgia O’Keeffe’s paintings: thick blue sky, swirling white clouds like ghosts themselves, dark gnarled trees standing out against the reds and pinks of rugged buttes. As we were driving we watched black clouds gathering in the distance just beneath the fat white ones. They seemed to sit on the tops of the hills.
“Storm in that valley,” Cesar said. “Keep watching—you’ll see lightning.”
Sure enough, the zigzag of white electricity cut through the dark clouds again and again. I couldn’t stop looking. “Will the storm come here?” I asked.
“Nah. It’s just a local storm. You see them a lot in the afternoons in the summer. They look like a big deal, but they run through fast. In twenty minutes it’ll be clear over there again.” And, of course, it was.
As we turned into Ghost Ranch, I couldn’t keep my jaw from sagging open. We were in a long valley, surrounded on three sides by glorious red mountains. “How can you want to leave this?” I asked Cesar. “I’ve never seen anything so beautiful in my life.”
He parked the car and gazed at the view with me. “I know it’s beautiful, but I’ve seen this beauty so often, I want to see a different beauty. I want to be as surprised by something as you are by Ghost Ranch.”
That I understood. I was beginning to see that if you tried to put yourself in another person’s head, their feelings often did make sense. Unless they were Iris.
Cesar insisted we climb the trail known as Chimney Rock, which ended on a high plateau from which you looked across at two large “chimney” rock formations, and beyond them Abiquiu Lake and the Pedernal, a dark butte also painted often by O’Keeffe. Cesar knew a lot about the geology of the place, but I found it hard to take in much information—I was too overwhelmed by what I was seeing. It seemed to me it would be hard to live here and not want to paint.
By the time we climbed back down we were starving. Cesar opened the trunk and took out a cooler. “There’s no place to eat around here, so I always come prepared.” We sat at a picnic table and he pulled out two tuna salad sandwiches, two ripe tomatoes, a carton of Sukey’s potato salad, a dozen chocolate chip
cookies, and a jug of lemonade.
We polished off the sandwiches and tomatoes without pausing to breathe. Cesar smiled at me. “Okay, I think we can slow down now. Nobody’s going to steal our cookies.”
He made me laugh, which I hadn’t done all that much of this summer. But what I appreciated most about Cesar was that, when he asked you a question, he actually listened to your answer.
“So, Iris is mad at you because you have a father and she doesn’t?”
“Something like that. She’s mad that her father died and she blames the world for it. I think she’s really mad at her father for dying, but she knows that’s ridiculous.”
“Maybe mad at herself, too,” Cesar said. “I think that happens—people feel guilty that they didn’t appreciate the person enough while he was around.”
I nodded. “That makes sense. Anyway, I’m in the path of her fury at the moment, even though my dad’s been AWOL for most of my life.”
“You sound kind of angry yourself.”
“Do I? I didn’t think I was until I saw him here, with his wife and son. I guess I didn’t know what I was missing. It would have been nice to have him around when I was young. Now I think I definitely missed something.”
Cesar handed me a cookie. “I can’t imagine growing up without Roland around to give me grief.”
“Your dad’s great!”
“Yeah, he’s a good guy. I guess what I really can’t imagine is growing up with only one other person around. Just you and your mom.”
I nodded. “It can be intense sometimes. But my best friend, Franny, comes over a lot, too. And, of course, Chris.”
I’d filled Cesar in on the basics of my relationship with Chris on the ride down in the car. Now he stared at me like he was putting together a puzzle. “Most of your relationships are intense, aren’t they? Your mother, your cousins, Chris.”