Banana Rose (15 page)

“You’re going to leave all this?” I asked Anna, gesturing widely. I couldn’t believe it.

“Yes,” she nodded.

When I went home, Gauguin was playing the accordion in the back room. He had found the accordion at a garage sale the week before and figured out how to play a few simple songs on it. He liked trying out different instruments.

“Nell, is that you?” he called out.

“Yeah,” I called back, and sat down on a wooden chair by the kitchen table.

“C’mon back.”

“No,” I yelled out to him. I traced the blue checks on the tablecloth.

Gauguin walked in and put his hand on my shoulder. “What’s up?”

“Anna’s leaving.” I looked up from the tablecloth.

“Where to?” He ran his hand through my hair.

“She’s leaving. That’s all.” I pushed his hand from my hair, walked over to the window, and breathed on the pane so it became foggy. I drew a heart in the center of the fog with my finger. Gauguin waited by the table. “She’s moving back to Nebraska. Says it’s her home.” I turned around to look at him. “Doesn’t anyone love it here like I do?”

“I can understand her wanting to go,” he said softly.

“Everyone seems to leave. They come and go in Taos. No one stays forever like I want to.” I hated everyone.

“Well, you know how I feel. There’s no way to make a living here.” He stepped behind me. “Nell?” He ran his finger along the collar of my sweater.

“Oh, you! You wanted to go six months after you moved here,” I spat back, and stepped away.

“I like it, but there’s nothing happening. It’s pretty, but pretty gets old.” Gauguin was angry now too. Then he paused and softened. “I’ve stayed here because of you.”

“I’m going for a walk,” I said, and slammed the door behind me.

I didn’t walk far; mostly I stood out on the dirt road and looked up at the sky, turning my head at the sound of Blue’s goats. There was a bite in the air that carried me down the dark river of winter.

I
N THE MIDDLE OF
December, Anna left. I drove her to the Lamy train station, and on the way we stopped in Santa Fe.

“Hey, let’s go for lunch. We have plenty of time,” I said, trying to be cheerful but feeling like I might burst into tears at any moment.

“Okay, but I don’t want to miss the train.” Anna sat in the passenger seat, opening and closing her hands.

“Hey, Anna, would you cut it out? These are our last moments together. I’d like them to be meaningful. Could you at least act as if they were?” We pulled up at a sandwich shop in Tesuque.

“Sorry, Nell. I’m just nervous.”

“Would you quit calling me Nell? I’m Banana!” I got out and slammed the car door. I didn’t want her to leave.

“Hey, wait! We have to lock the car.” Anna went to my side, opened the door, pushed down the button, and then slammed the door closed.

I didn’t wait for her. I went into the restaurant and stood by the blackboard menu. Anna came up behind me and put her arm around my shoulders.

The waitress showed us to a table by the window and took our order. I asked for potato chowder. Anna had a sprout salad and lentil soup. It had snowed that morning and the blacktop was slick and wet. It stood out against the snow and the crystallized tree branches. A red Chevy pickup turned the corner onto a long dirt drive full of mud and slush.

“Hey, Anna, there’s a trailer park.” I pointed. “I remember hearing about a palm reader who lives there. Want to go? You should know your future before you leave.”

“Naw, Nell—I mean, Banana.” She was really trying. “I just want to be with you. No palm reader. I want just to pay attention.” A broad smile spread over her face. “Maybe I’ll write about us sometime.” She pretended her finger was a pencil and she wrote on the green tablecloth. “‘Nell, who liked to be called Banana, sat in the simple sandwich shoppe. She feared her friend leaving, but her friend knew they would always be together.’”

I grabbed the pencil from her, which was her finger, and began writing, too. “ ‘Nell had a sorrow in her, not only because Anna was leaving, but because Gauguin wanted Nell to leave, too. Once leaving began, it continued until there was nothing left.’ ” I liked my last line. It made me feel like a poet.

Anna looked at me. “So
that’s
it. What’s going on?”

“Gauguin’s sick of Taos.” I ate a potato chip that came with the soup.

“Will you go with him?” Anna asked.

“I don’t know. There’s only one thing I love more than Taos, and that’s Gauguin. He’s been wanting to go for a long time, but I haven’t given him much space to talk about it.” I shrugged. I wanted to change the subject. Anna nodded.

I studied Anna closely. I was determined to remember everything about her. Her knuckles were bigger than her fingers; her wrists were thin. Her hair, which was mostly straight, had a curl behind her left ear. She sometimes chewed at the ends of her hair and she clipped her fingernails short. She seemed calm, but I knew her to be nervous underneath, never sure that she was really sane.

She was telling me about a mare her mother still had. “Ginny is so old now, you look at her and she doesn’t look like a horse anymore.” Anna liked animals. They matched her silence. I think what I liked most about her was that she knew something about herself that no one could take away. Something nameless.

Just before the waitress came over to ask if everything was all right, Anna put a strand of hair behind her ear. I made that gesture bind me to her. “You’re not eating, Nell,” she said to me.

“No, I’m not hungry.” I turned the spoon around in the soup.

“Do you remember when we walked down to the Rio Chiquita after you’d eaten peyote buttons?” Anna asked. “You didn’t say one word the whole walk, and then when we got to the river—” I started laughing and nodding, knowing the end. “I thought you were into something really deep, like the oneness of nature. I was waiting for you to say something profound. Just when we got to the river’s edge, you stopped, looked at me intently, and said, in the most serious voice, ‘The frogs in Pittsburgh are as big as cocker spaniels.’ ”

When she said that part about cocker spaniels, I laughed so hard, I choked on my potato chowder. “Here, drink this.” Anna handed me a glass of water. I took a big gulp. A tear rolled down my cheek and I shook my head from side to side.

When we reached the station, there was only one other woman waiting for the train. She wore a net on her gray hair. At her feet was a shopping bag. We could see a box of tissues in it and what looked like crusts of sandwich bread in a plastic container. She wore a yellow cardigan and a heavy white shawl. Though it was December, it was hot in the sun. She sat on a bench, leaning against the station wall.

I leaned over and whispered in Anna’s ear. “Maybe she’ll give you a Kraft American cheese sandwich on the train, if you’re good.”

Anna crinkled her nose. We heard the train coming, and we stood up. Anna had two big gold suitcases and a box. I was going to ship the rest of her stuff. The front of the train passed and stopped ahead of us.

Anna grabbed me. “Nell, I’m gonna miss you.”

I helped her lift her bags up the three steps. Then she jumped down again. “Hey, Nell.” She bent to my ear, and in a whisper loud enough to be heard above the engines, she said, “If you didn’t have Gauguin, I’d be in love with you.” My head jerked around. She let out an enormous happy scream and jumped on the train. She smiled so big, I was sure her crooked front tooth would fall out.

I yelled above the train, “Are you serious?” She nodded vigorously, laughing so much I wasn’t sure whether to believe her. I gave her the finger. Under the big sky, the train pulled away, past the red cliffs. She waved.

I stood on the platform, watching the train disappear and listening as its sound became faint.

Now Anna was gone. No more malts at Rexall’s. Maybe that was a good thing, since she ordered vanilla anyway. I told her it was disgusting. She didn’t listen. I liked that about Anna. She had her own mind. What else didn’t she listen to? She didn’t listen when I told her about the way Gauguin made love. Now that I thought of it, I ought to be mad at Anna for not listening, but how could I be? I loved her and she had just now left on this train headed somehow for Nebraska and away from New Mexico.

A
WEEK AFTER
A
NNA
left, Blue came over to our house and said she wanted us to meet her new boyfriend. I was surprised when she first told me about him a month ago. I didn’t know she even went out with men. It happened suddenly. He was riding a motorcycle through the blinking light north of town and he almost smashed Blue’s dog into smithereens.

She screamed after him, “You jerk! Watch where you’re going!” She grabbed Bonnie’s collar and dragged him whimpering across the road, back to the Texaco station. Then she shoved the nozzle from the gas pump into her pickup. When the register recorded $8.11, the man on the bike sped up beside her.

He took off his leather glove and held out his hand. “Sorry about your dog, ma’am.”

Blue didn’t look up. She snarled at him. “Think you’re a big shot on a motorcycle, don’t you?” She climbed in her truck and slammed the door.

That was it. He fell in love with her and followed her home. She ignored him, told him to get his trashy bike off her land. He must have had some kind of mystical connection with Blue, however, because though it was late September, he sent her Christmas tree ornaments, silver balls that had Day of the Dead paintings on them. They fit perfectly with the way she was decorating her house that fall. After that, she was willing to meet him in town a few times for malts at Rexall’s. He loved to eat and would order two for himself. Blue barely finished hers. Things happened gradually, she told me.

I said sure, we’d come to dinner.

She was pleased.

Sam stood up from the table when we walked in.

Oh, my god, I thought. He looks like a madman. Blue may have been a tinge mad, but this was all-out crazy. His hair was matted, his skin rutty. He wore a T-shirt ripped wide open at the neck. He had thick hands. He didn’t say a word of greeting, just stared at us.

I could tell Gauguin was stunned, too. He tried to make a joke. “Hey, I like your hair. Did it with an egg beater?” Blue laughed behind her hand.

Sam simply responded, “No.” He didn’t register that it was a tease.

When we sat down, Blue asked, “Want a beer?”

I didn’t. Gauguin did. Sam was already drinking.

Blue had made delicious posole with green chile and onions. The natural accompaniment would have been tortillas, but Blue made french fries to go with it. She put a big plate of them, still greasy from the frying pan, on the table. They turned out to be delicious together.

“Hey, Blue.” I closed my eyes and made believe I was touching a crystal ball. “I can see it now. A restaurant: Blue’s Babies. And the food will be unusual combinations: sardines with refried beans, cornflakes in ginger ale, fried liver and raw apples.”

We all laughed, except Sam, who bent over his plate and kept eating. Blue, Gauguin, and I talked about goats and chickens, Sylvester, her rooster, our garden, about Lightning, who was visiting his father for the holidays. Gauguin even sang a new song he was writing, and I told Blue about two pictures of shadows I had drawn.

“Shadows?” Blue asked.

“Yes, I’m experimenting with pastels. I’m trying whatever comes into my head.” I glanced over at Sam. No reaction. I wanted to kick him under the table. Hey, you! I wanted to scream. Wake up!

Blue said, “That’s good,” and she put her arm over Sam’s shoulder, scrunching him near her. “Do you like the posole, honey?”

Even then he didn’t say anything. He nodded like a hairy sheep with a heavy head.

“Maybe we should leave,” I suggested nervously when dinner was over.

“Not yet. I have something to tell you.” Blue looked over at us while she cleared some dishes. Our motion to get up from the table stopped. I was afraid she was going to tell us she was getting married. “Sam is a carpenter. He’s building a house for us up on the mesa, and when he’s done, I’m moving in with him.”

Sam still stared straight ahead.

“You’re moving! Not you, too?” I cried in disbelief.

“It’s only eight miles away.” Blue looked at me.

Gauguin asked, “What kind of house?”

Blue answered Gauguin. “Oh, it’s a very unusual house. Sam’s making it up as he goes along.”

Gauguin looked at Sam. “I bet,” Gauguin said.

My hands were sweating. I felt emotional. The mesa? That was where Anna had lived when she first came to Taos. All that space, she said, healed her. My heart started to ache, remembering Anna. I didn’t say another word.

Blue walked us out the door while Sam moved to the couch. The night was cold and snappy. She took my arm. “Banana, I’m not leaving. Don’t worry, I’ll still be around—I’ll always be here. Good or bad, Taos is my home.” She understood how I was feeling.

“Promise?” I grabbed her. “I miss Anna so much,” I breathed into her shoulder.

“Come with me one day to the mesa and see where I’ll be living. It won’t be for a while. Probably not until next September. Sam’s doing it all by hand.”

“Okay,” I said, and let her go.

Then Gauguin hugged Blue and thanked her for the delicious and unusual dinner.

Gauguin and I walked down to our house. We could hear Blue shutting her door tight behind us.

“Banana, he’s a weirdo,” said Gauguin, and we both started to laugh.

I
N FEBRUARY, IT SNOWED
so hard that we had to order an extra cord of wood. The wood we had collected in the fall on wood runs in Gauguin’s pickup was not enough to keep us warm through that much cold. The cord we bought had half birch, some piñon, and some cedar. The piñon burned hot, because of its dense sap. The cedar smelled good and was the best to split open, because it was so beautiful.

The morning after the cord was delivered, I went out to chop wood, the way Gauguin had taught me. My breath thickened as it hit the air. The sky was a frozen blue, a color so clear no one yet has been able to name it.

I put a log of cedar on an old tree stump that was near the woodpile. The log split the long way and exposed the red heart of cedar. I opened that red heart over and over again in the stiff morning light.