No Place Like Home (14 page)

A note in the kitchen, written in Malachi’s sprawling hand, said they’d “Gone fishing. Be back later. Shane’s fine. Three stitches, a bunch of bruises, no broken anything. He’s had some good drugs, so he’ll sleep long. Love, M.”

The “love” made me smile. It wasn’t a surprise, somehow.

Through the window, I saw that heat was rising across the fields, not yet shimmering, but starting to suck the gloss from the leaves on the trees. Probably hit a hundred today. I stepped out on the back porch and wandered into the herb garden, surprised to have this unexpected time to do nothing at all.

Berlin trotted out behind me, and I bent over the cilantro, pinching some between my hands. The soapy scent eased the tight muscles in the back of my neck and I drifted along the rows, thinking of a good hot salsa for this afternoon’s dinner. Michael loved it and fresh tomatoes were good for him.

At the end of the herb garden opened the big square of vegetables I’d planted. It was something I’d missed a lot during our years on the road, and when we’d settled in New York, I slept on a futon in the living room in a one-bedroom apartment in order to have access to a modest little balcony—actually not much more than an iron grate wide enough for one person—just so I could grow some fresh tomatoes and herbs.

This was so much better. The zucchini was doing its zucchini thing—sprawling wildly over everything. The day’s squash blossoms were starting to close, but in the shadows beneath some of the bigger leaves, they still stretched open in glorious invitation. I knelt and fingered one of them, thinking in a vague way of a squash blossom and sun-dried tomato dish I’d created for Michael’s restaurant. It had been one of the most popular things on the appetizer menu, and I thought about sharing it with my mother and grandmother, but knew they’d never add it to the Falconi’s menu. No way. Too New World.

In between the squash and the straight rows of various kinds of tomatoes and peppers were nasturtiums and marigolds to keep away bugs, then another row of squash and pumpkins. The lettuce and broccoli had long since bolted, and I made a mental note to replant next week for a fall harvest of salads.

The hard, late July sun beat down on the part in my hair and on my arms, and I sleepily thought of the broad-brimmed straw hats that hung on hooks in the back room. I should have put one on to protect myself from wrinkles—you just have no idea how much damage this climate does to a woman’s face—but it was too much trouble to go fetch one. I almost heard Sylvia tsk aloud.

Sylvia. I remembered summer mornings we’d spent on this very plot of land, companionably pulling weeds or harvesting herbs. I shadowed her constantly, coming out to the farm to spend the night whenever I could finagle it, which most summers was quite a bit. I loved getting away from the chaos of my house, my mother was more than happy to have one less kid to deal with, and Sylvia loved having a little helper who would do anything she asked without question. Even then, she’d been very old.

It was magic, being with Aunt Sylvia. She laced everything she did with stories of Sicily or herbal lore or tales of the saints—I have never yet met another person with her prodigious knowledge of the saints—and it seemed to me that she knew everything there was to know about everything. In the evenings, I sat on the porch and drew pictures of the cottonwoods with pastel crayons, and she praised every single one like it was a Monet.

Standing there with the smell of bruised marigolds wafting up from beneath Berlin’s careless paws, I could almost see that girl I’d been. The ghost of her playing in the orchard, her hair falling upside down to brush the ground as she hung by her knees from a peach tree. Her shirt fell toward her neck and she caught it, careful not to let her chest show.

She’d maybe been a little too thoughtful, that child, too questioning at times, but very happy. Eager to take her place in the world where she’d been born, delighted by the little things that made a woman’s life, the simple calm chores of cooking and making beds, the more lush delights of gossip and canning, the delirious excitement of getting everything ready for a feast day—Christmas was good, but Saint Joseph’s Day was even better.

Berlin snapped at a fly and vigorously scratched the spot where she’d been bitten. I kicked off my shoe and rubbed my toes along her side, wondering where that young girl had gone. How was it possible that she had turned into
me
?

My mother says I went boy crazy. But it wasn’t that, exactly. I won’t deny that hormones hit me hard, that I went to bed one night a little girl who liked pastel crayons and woke up the next morning completely and sizzlingly aware of every male on the planet. It seemed I couldn’t
not
see them, that I hadn’t noticed before how interesting they were, how decorative, how fascinating. How
different.

But with that awareness came something more compelling. I saw men’s lives.

The men in my world went places, and not just the market or church or a sister’s house. They went out to drink with one another, sometimes for hours and hours, and they did not make explanations about the time when they came home. They went to the dog races with one another, and to garages to speak the mysterious language of engines. Men wrecked cars and had fist fights and were forgiven. They went to work and bowling. Men laughed loudly whenever they felt like it, not like the women who only really laughed with one another. And if somebody went “bad” for a while, carousing or drinking too much or having an affair, it was always a man who did it. Never a girl. Never, ever a woman.

Until me.

Even in my current melancholy mood, I had to smile. Somewhere between twelve and fifteen, I made up my mind that
this
girl was not going to be bound by those laws. No way.

I took up smoking. I learned to drink by stealing bottles of homemade muscatel from my uncle’s basement—and trust me, that’s the way to learn your limits real quick. I got on the Pill and learned to strut. I found out that a woman has an entirely different kind of power than men do.

In my auntie’s backyard, I wandered over to the tomatoes. I’d picked over the Romas yesterday, but there was a bright, enormous Early Girl ready and I plucked it, taking time to admire the plump, hot, red weight of it in my palm, thinking it really must have been a tomato Eve offered Adam in the Garden. So much more dangerous than apples.

Eve knew the power of temptation, knew that the right smile or a slant of the eyes or a certain loose-limbed gesture could command entire armies. Once I discovered that power, there had been nothing my parents could do, no matter how they punished or pleaded or dragged me to the priests. Their rules, their world had no meaning anymore. I got good grades and didn’t screw up at school. I did my best to protect them from the reality of who I was becoming, but there was that little problem of the two degrees of separation in Pueblo—nothing ever stayed secret for long. I told myself I had to endure it only until I graduated from high school, and then I’d be gone. No way this little Podunk town was going to keep me.

So by the time I met Billy at the state fair the summer I was seventeen, my choices had already been made. I was just waiting for my ticket out.

Abruptly, I put an arm across my middle. Billy, Billy, Billy. The thought of him had been dogging me for days. The thought of all he’d been, all he’d destroyed—and how little I’d been able to do for him in the end. And in the attempt, I’d lost everything else, my father highest on the list.

“Jewel?” The word, coming into the deep stillness, made me jerk around hard enough that I almost dropped the tomato.

Malachi had come down the steps and well into the garden. “Hi,” I said, and rubbed the tomato with the hem of my shirt. “Catch anything?”

“Not a nibble.” He swished through the rows to me, his big feet in their work boots surprisingly graceful. Neither his silly fishing hat or vest dulled his sex god aura one tiny bit, and when he paused to toe a weed to death, he was about twenty times more alluring. Men who don’t know a weed from a squash lose twenty points automatically in my book. “You all right?” he asked.

“Fine.” I didn’t look at him, concentrating instead on the tomato, pressing the firm, soft flesh with my thumb. “How’s Michael?”

“Really tired.” He sighed, squinted toward the horizon. “Maybe . . . uh, I don’t know.”

“What is it?”

He blinked at the horizon, hard. “Walking made him too tired to talk. Is that normal?”

I looked at the tomato, bit into it, took a long second to revel in the hot juice, mingled with seeds, in my mouth. “Mmm. Want one?”

“No thanks.”

“Some days,” I said, “he doesn’t get up at all. Some days he’ll walk all over and come home and cook for hours and be none the worse for the wear. It’s all normal.”

A mute guy-nod. He dropped into the easy squat of a man comfortable in the outdoors and tugged off his hat. The hard sunlight arced red and gold through his hair.

I put my hand on his shoulder in silent comfort and ate the tomato, giving him time. In the distance, the heat haze had formed, a shimmering, silvery plane over the sun-bleached grasses. It looked magical, like it could carry the weight of a couple of humans. I thought about wading into it, imagined it pooling around our ankles like water.

“How bad is it, Jewel? I mean, like how much time?” He lifted his head, put his hand around my wrist. “No bullshit.”

I liked the feel of that hard, callused palm, liked the size of it and the strength. “That’s not really a question anyone can answer. People stay a long time right at this stage—months, years, even.”

“But?”

“But anything could take him, at any minute.” I shrugged. “A cold. A cut.” I thought, but didn’t say,
pneumonia, anemia, carcinomas, a bad hangnail.
So many things. The funny thing about AIDS is that it does make you appreciate the ordinary miracle of the body’s usual line of defense.

I took a breath, couldn’t quite meet that penetrating stare while I told the truth. “He started on antivirals pretty early, and they helped, but because he was on them for so long, the side effects started hitting him pretty hard. He’s chosen to give up the drugs because they made him a lot sicker than the disease.” I looked at the ground, noticing an ant laboring along with a crumb. “He’s taking an aerosol antibiotic once a week, and drinking a tea that seems to help, and taking vitamins. That’s it.”

His thumb moved on my wrist, back and forth.

“So, really—” I began.

“I get it,” he said gruffly. His mouth worked. “Gather ye rosebuds while ye may, right?”

A quick, sharp sting of tears made me blink. “Yeah.”

He nodded, then took my hand and carried it to his mouth for a kiss of gratitude. I knew that was all it was—had been the recipient of just such a gesture from Michael a hundred times. It occurred to me that one parent or the other had been physically very affectionate—but I noticed the purse and clasp of his mouth, wanted to linger there with my palm against his lips, wanted to spread my fingers and touch the day-old whiskers on his jaw.

“Thank you,” he said, gruffly, then let me go. For a few minutes, he plucked weeds, then stood up. “I’m going to the market. You need anything?”

“Yes, please. Let me get a list.” I paused, looking up at him. “I’m very glad you came, Malachi.”

“Me, too.” He looked down at me, his eyes deep and unreadable, then touched my face. “I’m glad you’ve been there for him.”

“Oh, no,” I said. “It’s always been Michael who was there for me.”

I thought, just for a second, that he might bend down the rest of the way and kiss me. I had enough time to think what that might be like, how rich it would be to stand in the hot sun and kiss Malachi Shaunnessey ever so gently, how his hair would feel, brushing on my face, and what it would be like to feel his hands on me.

It was long, as such moments are sometimes, much longer in terms of everything that goes through your head. As if some ringmaster had suddenly pulled back the heavy curtains, I saw him very much more clearly. The alligator-wrestling angle was a front, a way to keep a very gentle heart safe from harm.

If he’d really been the kind of guy he pretended to be, he’d have heard of his brother’s impending death and run off to the wildest outposts of civilization to drink himself senseless on the local brew and weep into wooden cups about his brother who was dying, far away.

Instead, here he was, doing what was important: being here. Spending time. Facing it.

It scared me to see that. Scared me a lot more than his big beautiful body or his delectable mouth or even his reliability around the house. At the exact instant he would have bent, I skittered away. “Let me get that list for you.”

Shane stirred about three, groggy from painkillers and sleeping in a hot stuffy room. “I’m starving,” he said gruffly, rubbing his tummy.

“Good. I’ve got a big dinner planned, but I could scramble you some eggs to tide you over.” He settled heavily on the stool by the window and propped his elbows on the table. “That sound okay?”

“Yeah. Coffee, too?” he said hopefully.

“Sure.” I pushed a pile of diced onion out of the way and wiped my hands on the towel tucked into the strings of my apron, all the while trying to assess his condition without staring. The eye was bad—as purple as pansies across the lid, which was less alarming than the red point of impact on his cheekbone. “How are you feeling?”

A shrug. His big fingers touched his stitched, swollen lip. “Okay.”

I hummed along with The Boss as I got a fresh pot of coffee going, then filled a plastic bag with ice and gave it wordlessly to my man-child. He’d talk in his own time, and questions or nudgings from me would only make him retreat. I kept it matter-of-fact. “Head hurt?”

“A little.” His eyes lowered, but he put the ice against his temple, wincing a little. “Not as bad as it did this morning.”

“And no concussion or skull fracture?”

“No.”

“Good.” I took three eggs from the flat on the bottom shelf of the fridge and a bunch of chives from the crisper. No ham, but a few slices of bacon were left from yesterday’s breakfast and I took them out, too. Humming along with “Used Cars” to show I was perfectly content, I broke the eggs into a bowl.