Kansas Troubles (4 page)

“I don’t know,” he said. “Let me think.” He peered over her head and gave me a broad wink. I showed him a clenched fist.

Okay, I thought: cooking. Always high in the competition between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law. She had the home team advantage of giving birth to Gabe and raising him. I had the visitor’s edge of daily exposure to his habits and that not-to-be-taken-lightly leverage of sleeping with him. I took a deep breath and followed them into the house.

Let the games begin.

I STEPPED OVER the threshold, feeling a bit like Dorothy, and was stopped in my tracks by a snarl. Actually it was more of a wet snuffle, but what the flat-faced creature with the skunk markings and stubby tail lacked in visual impact, she more than made up for in enthusiasm.

A Boston terrier with a rhinestone-studded collar and an attitude. Just what I needed.

She studied me with bulgy dark eyes, then growled deep in her throat, took a big wheezy breath, and coughed.

A Boston terrier with an attitude, a cutesy collar, and asthma. Great. Well, she obviously belonged here, so I figured we’d better make friends. I stooped down and held out my hand in a friendly gesture.

Now, let the record reflect that I like dogs. All dogs. Some I’ve even loved. There was one, a tough, solidrumped old Australian shepherd named Pick who was my best friend until I was fourteen and he died of cancer. I would have taken a bullet for that dog. I’m telling you, there are few things in this world that beat sitting on the front porch of my dad’s ranch, dawn breaking over San Celina’s hilly horizon, all blood-orange and yellow, a hot cup of coffee in one hand, a cool canine nose in the other. And dogs like me. As with horses, I talk low and slow, and don’t try to rush them. Works every time. Well, almost every time.

“Good girl,” I crooned. She took one panicked look at my outstretched hand, let out a terrified scream, and dashed into the other room.

A minute later, Gabe and his mother came back into the room. Kathryn held the trembling dog in her arms.

“What on earth did you do to Daphne?” she asked. The dog whimpered.

“Nothing,” I stammered. “I just—”

“Heavens, I’ve never seen her act like this before. Daphne just loves people. Are you by any chance afraid of dogs? They can sense that.”

“No, I—”

She turned away before I could defend myself. “Now, now, princess, she’s not going to hurt you. Want a treat?” The manipulative little mutt yapped in excitement. Kathryn walked into the kitchen, calling over her shoulder, “Supper’s on the table. You two better wash up.”

“Daphne?” I whispered to Gabe when we were alone. “Try Cujo.”

His grin was as big as the Great Plains. “Watch it, Princess Daphne is Mom’s pride and joy. She’s the granddaughter of two national champions. To get on Mom’s good side, you’d better make friends with the princess.”

“I was trying. That dog took an instant dislike to me.”

“Dogs don’t make emotional judgments. They react by instinct. You must have done something to scare her.”

“I didn’t do anything!” I exclaimed. “Quit taking the dog’s side.”

“I’m not taking anyone’s side,” he said, chuckling. “Just give Daphne another chance. Maybe she just needs to get used to you.”

During dinner, every time I shifted my feet, a low growl came from under the table. Only my respect for Daphne’s canine compatriots in general kept me from acting out my fantasy of a football-sized ball of black-and-white fur flying over a goal post.

“Where did you say Becky and Angel were?” Gabe asked after dinner. We had moved to the front porch and were eating cherry cobbler and homemade vanilla ice cream. Gabe and his mother shared the wooden porch swing while I reclined a short distance away on the redwood longue. I was thankful that Daphne had grown weary of her vigilant watch over my dangerous presence and had retired to a corner of the porch where she startled herself awake every so often with her wheezy snores.

“Becky’s in Wichita,” Kathryn answered, the squeak of the swing punctuating her sentence. “Paige and Whitney are having a dance recital tonight. She said she’d see you at her house tomorrow.”

“If she thinks I’m dressing up in bell bottoms and love beads, she’s out of her mind,” Gabe said. He had warned me about Becky’s penchant for theme parties. According to Kathryn, the Sunday afternoon barbecue Becky had planned for Gabe’s first get-together with his old friends had a sixties motif.

“I think she’ll just be happy to have you there, dear,” his mother said evenly. “Angel’s over at the bowling alley. She’d planned on being here, but two of her employees called in sick. She works too many hours, but she won’t listen to me. Maybe you can talk to her. Get her to cut back some.”

With her recent divorce settlement, Angel had bought Derby Bowl and was apparently running it very successfully.

“It’s better than that bartending job in Kansas City,” Gabe said evenly.

“Still, she works much too hard.”

“I’ll talk to her,” he promised.

“Isn’t that kind of like the rooster crying fowl to the chicken?” I commented. Gabe certainly wasn’t the person to dispense advice about how to overcome workaholism.

“Gabe, you’re as bad as Angel,” his mother said with a sigh.

He grinned at her. “No one’s that bad.” He stretched his arms out in front of him and let out a loud groan. “I can’t tell you how good it feels to be a civilian for a change. For the next two weeks, the biggest problem I plan on tackling is what to eat for breakfast.”

I closed my eyes and let the rhythmic creak of the porch swing, the whirr of the crickets in the thick vines, and Gabe and his mother’s murmured conversation filled with names of people unknown to me lull me into a light sleep. It seemed only minutes later when I opened my eyes. In that time dusk, damp and heavy, had settled around us, and the summer locusts vibrated like tiny buzz saws in the dense treetops.

“Welcome back,” Gabe said, straddling the end of the chaise. “I’m going over to the bowling alley to see Angel. Want to come?”

I sat up and pulled at my cotton shirt; it stuck uncomfortably to my back like wet tissue paper. “No,” I said, taking one of his big hands and sandwiching it between mine. “See her alone first. I’ll meet her tomorrow.”

He placed a kiss in my palm. “Don’t wait up.”

On the way upstairs I paused at the wall outside Gabe’s old bedroom, where he and I would be sleeping. A gallery of family pictures covered the ecru wall, the patina of age giving the older ones a blurry, dreamlike appearance. My eyes traced Gabe’s life from pudgy-faced toddler through the toothsome gawkiness of preteen years to a slim, hard-faced young man in full-dress Marine uniform.

One photograph in particular fascinated me. He and his father, Rogelio, stood in front of a faded blue Chevy pickup with a rounded hood and old-fashioned grille. Gabe must have been about fifteen or sixteen; he had that slope-shouldered, sullen look boys that age seem to perfect to a science. His father, probably then in his early forties, with thick, wavy black hair as shiny as water, rested a possessive hand on Gabe’s shoulder.

“I took that picture right before my husband’s heart attack,” Kathryn said, coming up behind me. She handed me two thick navy blue towels. Daphne stood loyally by her side, her upper lip quivering over tiny fangs, ready to defend her mistress against any evil I might be planning. “It’s the last picture we have of him.”

“He was a handsome man,” I said. “Gabe looks a lot like him.”

“Yes, he does. Good night, Benni. Let me know if there is anything you need.” She started down the stairs, then stopped and called over her shoulder. “There are some photo albums you might like to look at in the bottom drawer of the dresser.” Daphne growled a good night.

“Thanks.” I hugged the towels to my chest and stared at Kathryn’s retreating back, trying to imagine us ever getting beyond this polite guest routine. Though I was raised in California, I was unquestionably used to the Southern way of doing things. When someone married into a Southern family, he or she became just that—family. With all the aggravating trappings that sometimes went along with it. This polite but definite Midwestern reserve would be a challenge to say the least.

After a long cool shower, I put on my favorite bedtime attire, one of Gabe’s extra large T-shirts, and opened the dresser drawer. Setting his four high-school yearbooks on the bed, I quickly poked through the rest of the drawer’s contents—boy scout badges, old catechism lessons, a black penknife engraved with his initials, GTO. In the back of the drawer was a flat, hinged box with a photograph attached to it with a fat rubber band. I slipped it out and studied it closely. It showed Gabe and Dewey and a short, wiry Hispanic man standing next to a bunker of sandbags. Dusty green fatigues with baggy pockets hung low on their sharp hipbones; their bare chests glistened with sweat. Gabe had a gaunt, jumpy look to him, his blue eyes a stark contrast to his deeply tanned skin. He wore an olive-green cloth headband tied around his head gang-banger style. “Piss on Death,” it boasted. A gold crucifix nestled against his dark chest hair, next to his silver dog tags. A long, menacing rifle rested casually across his arms. This young, hard-faced Gabe was frightening, but also appealing in an earthy, sexual sort of way. Dewey didn’t look much different from his photograph of seven years ago. He apparently had one of those faces that settles into itself at eighteen or so and never changes much except for a bit of wrinkling around the eyes. He stood spread-legged, thick, sinewy arms folded across his chest. The other man was the same height as Dewey, but thinner, with a flat, wide nose and deep acne scars carved into his cheeks. He smiled with widely spaced front teeth and pointed a skinny finger-pistol at the camera. “Perro Loco” was written in black felt pen across the front of the Hispanic man’s helmet; “Cowboy,” on Dewey’s.

I opened the hinged box and gazed down at the military medal suspended from a red, white, and blue ribbon and lying on a bed of cheap-looking blue velveteen. A brass-colored star with a tiny Silver Star in the middle. I turned it over and read the inscription: “For Gallantry in Action—Gabriel Ortiz.” I set it down next to me and pulled out his 1964-1965 yearbook—the year he was a freshman. I was propped up against the flat maple headboard, yearbook across my knees and, as Dove would say, checking my eyelids for holes, when a movement on the bed woke me.

“What are you doing still awake?” Gabe stretched out next to me. I leaned over and kissed him, wrinkling my nose at the stale scent of cigarette smoke clinging to his clothes.

“I wasn’t. You smell awful. What time is it?”

“Past midnight. Angel and I got to talking.” He sniffed his shirt sleeve. “You’re right, I guess I’d better take a shower. Apparently bowling alleys are one of the last strongholds left to the smoking public.”

“Did you get your sister’s life all straightened out?” I asked.

“Angel can take care of herself. Most of the time, anyway. Mom tends to be a little overprotective with her bear cubs.” He bounced gently on the bed. “This feels pretty comfortable. Sure beats the twin bed I slept on the first sixteen years of my life. So, what do you think of Kansas so far?”

I didn’t answer right away, but instead looked up into his face—the sharp, high cheekbones I’d caressed so often, the black hair with just the slightest silver at the temple, the eyes that could go from slate-blue to iron-gray according to his emotional thermometer. I burrowed under his arm and kissed his neck, inhaling his heavy, gingery scent, almost as familiar to me now as the Zest soap I’d used all my life. Even with the intimacy we’d shared, there were times when he felt a complete stranger to me, when I awakened tangled up with him, smelling our mingled scents, and wondered what brought us together, what would keep us together. He’d lived forty-three years, and only six months of them had been with me. In this land of vast blue skies, green and gold prairie, and slow-talking people—where I was the stranger, not him—I was overcome by a sudden longing for San Celina’s misty, oak-covered hills, its tart air redolent of cattle and horses, the comforting sound of Dove’s raspy, scolding voice, and I felt like crying. I trembled slightly in his arms.

“Hey, what’s wrong?” he asked. “It’s not Daphne, is it? Don’t let that old mutt get to you. She’ll warm up.”

“It’s not that. I’m just tired, I think. The change of time and scenery and all that. All the new people I’ll be meeting. I miss San Celina already. I guess I’m not the most flexible person in the world.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” he murmured, running his hand over my bare thigh. “You’ve always seemed remarkably flexible to me.”

I laughed, pulled up his shirt, and lightly scratched his stomach. “Well, I’m glad your mother replaced your twin bed with a queen-size.”

“Me, too. I experienced some pretty lonely nights in this room, but those days are definitely over.” He rolled on top of me, kissing me deeply, his hands reaching under my hips and pulling me against him.

After a few enjoyable minutes, I flattened my hands against his chest and pushed. “Well, Mr. Lonely, you can just dip that branding iron in a bucket of cold water. Not here. Not on your life.”

“What? Wait a minute, we’re going to be here two weeks . . .”

“It won’t kill you.”

He moaned dramatically. “You
are
kidding.”

“Am I laughing? I’ve explored this house thoroughly. Two of the three bedrooms are upstairs. That leaves one downstairs. One very significant one that we are, at this moment, smack dab over.”

“So?” He pushed up and gazed down at me, his mustache twitching.

“So, you know what I’m saying. These are wooden floors, and that’s your mom’s bedroom, so you are outta luck, buddy boy. I’m here to make a good impression. I have the rest of my life to bounce the bedropes with you.”

“Bounce the bedropes? Okay, Calamity Jane, just what am I supposed to do for the next two weeks?”