The Wilder Sisters (24 page)

When their drinks arrived, Austin drank half his juice down, wincing. “My stomach’s full of caterpillars,” he said.

“Did you think getting sober was going to be easy?” “I never expected I was going to want to find out.”

“You’ve been living your life under anesthesia, Austin. Things are going to feel uncomfortable from here on in.”

He touched his glass to hers. “Better make sure we toast that good news.”

Their food arrived, and they ate in silence. Rose picked at her
sopas
. Austin was so newly sober that maybe he’d forget what she’d said, even though she was sure she’d replay this night in her mind for years. She paid the check, and they walked up the street, into the church, and located the meeting room. On a table by the door all manner of AA literature was stacked into colorful piles, most of it free for the taking. Rose stopped there. Austin said, “What? You’re not coming with me?”

“You’ll be fine. I’ll be waiting for you in the car.”

But she did not leave the church until she saw him place his hand on the back of an empty chair. She was that uncertain. Relief flooded her pores when she heard the chair scoot across the floor.
Just listen to what they have to say
, she mentally sent his way.
Nobody’s asking more than that
.

She walked around town before returning to the car, remembering the first time she’d gone to an Al-Anon meeting. The sight of that open doorway was daunting. But people said hello; they left her alone when they saw how close she was to tears. While she listened to their stories she began to understand how universal her struggles were, that making it into the meeting chairs was proof of human endurance. Austin would do fine so long as he didn’t fight it. And she knew he
would
fight it, with every fiber of his being.

Remember that alcoholism is a disease
, she told herself.
It’s hard to take the first step. From here on things can only get better for him. A little serenity is better than none
.

She walked back to the Bronco in the kind of autumn evening when the crickets were busy chirping, and the air coming down off the mountains smelled so clean and crisp she wanted to take a bite out of it as if it were an apple from the tree that grew in front of her parents’ ranch. The one-of-a-kind craft shops and galleries were open for much shorter hours now that tourist season was ending. Santa Fe had been like this once, historic, charmingly small, more like a territory than its current expansive state, awash in tourists. Everywhere she looked, small changes had come over the sleepy town of Taos. If Taos wasn’t exempt from change, then Floralee’s days were numbered. JCPenney’s was gone, and in its place, a store that sold African art. La Fonda de Taos wasn’t as fancy or full up with guests as its Santa Fe counterpart, but in a small room behind the front desk, the strange, chaotic nudes D.H. Lawrence had painted while he lived there still hung on the walls. Rose peered in the window and tried to imagine what life must have been like when the Lawrences and Mabel Dodge Luhan were there, and then Georgia O’Keeffe, Ansel Adams, and Maynard Dixon. Such lasting treasures for the world had come from a circle of talented members of that generation. Their friendships were well known. Were any of them drunks? Had they walked through this plaza agonizing over how to help each other pull their lives together? Rose buttoned her sweater. A few of the shops in the plaza were vacant, and she wondered what outrageous amount they rented for, or if they would stay empty until next year.

Inside the Bronco she put her key into the ignition, tuned the radio to the Spanish station, and sat there listening to Julio Iglesias. All but the basics of the language were lost on her, but Spanish, with its stresses and rolling
r
’s remained a universal tongue in which to seduce women. She often thought that if she had married a man of Hispanic descent, strengthened her bloodline, she would have given birth to children more connected to their culture. Heritage was like faith, it bequeathed a foundation. Grandma had tried to impart the basic tenets, but for every Spanish proverb whose meaning Rose knew, she’d forgotten twice that many. As Mami aged, her roots seemed to become more important to her. Philip was amused by his mother-in-law’s eccentricities, but Amanda cursed her brown eyes and begged for colored contact lenses. Second Chance had inherited the most visible trappings of the genes in dark hair and a complexion that tanned to

bronze.
At forty, too much of your life is spent on thinking of what ifs
, Rose decided, closing her eyes and letting the music spill over her. If Julio was singing lies, at least they were romantic ones.

When Austin knocked at the window, she startled awake. He got in the car, and she turned the engine over without asking him how the meeting had gone. He’d tell her if he wanted to. Before she could pull out in traffic, however, Austin reached across the seat and shut the engine off. He sat back against the seat cushions and the sound of their breathing filled the car. Before long all that silence began to fog up the windows.

“It’s getting late, Austin. Both of us have to be at work in the morning.”

He answered that by pulling her to him and kissing her mouth. As soon as Rose recovered from feeling stunned, she discovered that Austin kissed women the same way he dealt with horses: He did not hesitate, there was no fumbling, his mouth found hers the same way he could find a vein in a horse’s neck with a silver needle and stick it on the first try. He opened her lips with his own and began to move his tongue at a brisk clip, circling hers, exploring her, making her feel small and surrounded and entirely vulnerable. Lingering on the outskirts of the kiss, she was aware of the scratch of his day’s worth of whiskers, his warm breath smelling slightly of coffee, a rough hand at the back of her neck and fingers moving through her hair. It was as if with his mouth he had reached down inside her body, moving insistently forward until with no rest stops or side trips, the kiss landed hard between her legs. She knew this would keep her awake all night, but she let Austin go on kissing her until somehow, in the middle of all that wonderful sensation, she detected just the faintest scent of citrus, and remembered the orange peels on the dashboard of Austin’s impounded truck, the reason it was there, and her emotions began to ricochet all over her brain, pulsing inside her veins like adrenaline.
I’ve been wanting this for God knows how long, I’m so wet I’m aching to pull this man inside me, to take whatever it is he’s generous enough to give me, and all I can do is sit here and think, he’s imagining I’m Leah
. She pushed him away.

With the back of his hand, Austin rubbed his mouth. “What you said at the restaurant—did I misunderstand you?”

“No.”

“Then what is your problem, lady?”

The neon sign of the Taos Inn glowed in the distance, not far from where Pueblo Road joined with Highway 68, the stretch of road where Philip had been hit. The street was congested with motels and hotels, quaint inns, luxury bed and breakfasts. Rose had driven past Casa Europa several times, wondering if the interiors of the rooms were as inviting as the exterior, if the legendary owl still fre- quented the tall cottonwood tree growing behind the inn that used to be El Buho Gallery. In the off season, their rates were almost af- fordable. Working people could just walk in, plunk down a credit card, and for the night, enjoy a fireplace, privacy, a bed they could call theirs. Taos was far enough from Floralee that nobody would know if they did. In her place her sister Lily would have already checked in and unwrapped the complimentary soaps, but as much as she would have liked to, Rose couldn’t make her heart move at light speed. This thing she’d wanted to happen for so long was happening out of sequence. Austin was supposed to get sober first, be completely over Leah,
then
want her. He watched her in earnest, waiting. He wasn’t going to do anything else until she let him know.
I’ll kiss him one more time
, she told herself, ashamed at the depth of her desire.
Once won’t matter. I won’t care who he’s pretending I am, I’ll do this for me, selfishly, and commit this moment to memory and that will be enough
.

She tilted her chin up and looked into his eyes. Austin moved to meet her. The second kiss started out the same way the first one did, but when she put her hands on his shoulders, the kiss transformed into an expedition. Austin pulled her close. He ran his right hand up her side and stopped just below the swell of her breast. His thumb barely grazed the spot where her nipple pressed against her blouse and her sweater, making contact so precisely it was as if he’d mem- orized the location, and Rose, a woman with two years’ worth of needing to be touched, felt herself dissolving in his hands. In the car’s small compartment, they strained to press their bodies against each other until they were nearly on their knees, the seats beneath them impossibly rigid, the stupid gearshift in the way, the AA liter- ature falling to the floor, their elbows bumping in a desperate effort to have skin speak to skin. They broke apart and touched foreheads, gasping simultaneously, and in the back of her mind Rose was in- undated with questions:
How come it never felt like this with Philip? Because I was seventeen

years old and he was the first man to make love to me? Because I was about to shrivel up from need? Amanda said I shouldn’t read those romance novels. Amanda was right
.

Austin rubbed his fingertip across the frown lines wrinkling Rose’s forehead. “I’m here for you,” he said.

She took hold of his fingertips and pressed them to her lips. After a measured breath, he exhaled. “I’m here, Rose, like I’ve al-

ways been, to listen to your problems and share a laugh and work at the clinic, but I can’t be the lover you want me to be. I’m a wreck and you know it.”

There were a million logical rebuttals to that statement, not the least of which was what she felt rise up in his blue jeans as he pressed his body against hers, but Rose couldn’t speak over the hole he’d just blasted through her heart. She wasn’t going to humiliate herself any further by arguing. She was forty years old, for God’s sake; Austin was in his fifties. This wasn’t some teenage dalliance that would dissipate by the end of the next school day. Austin was saying things, talking as if he held the corner on rejection. Had he stopped to consider what such a kiss could do to a woman, particularly one so uncertain of her worth that she stood in front of the closet for half an hour each morning, trying to remember which clothes he’d complimented her on the week before so that he’d say how nice she looked again? Was she starved? Oh, so what if she was! Did that excuse him putting his tongue in her mouth and thumbing her breast as if it were his God-given right? She started the car and switched the radio station to English. She tuned in to some big-band instru- mental with a complex horn section. Austin didn’t complain. Rose put her hands on the steering wheel at ten and two and let out the clutch. Her mouth was stinging with the feeling of his. It filled up with salt. She was holding back the ocean only by the force of her bruised lips. The tide rising up inside her felt angry, too large to control. She kept her eyes on the road. No matter what he said, and even if he didn’t say anything, she wasn’t going to cry until she was safe in her own bed, with all the lights off, facedown in the safe harbor of the pillow.

On Tuesday morning she was sitting at her computer entering in- voices into the AVS system when she heard Austin clear his throat. She looked up, but said nothing. He appeared nervous, which she attributed to

alcohol withdrawal, but he was clean, combed, and entirely sober. The good signs outweighed the bad.
Concentrate on that
, she told herself.
Forget everything else
.

“Wanted to let you know I’ve worked out a ride to those meetings in Taos.”

“That’s good.”

He crossed the room and laid a ten-dollar bill down on her desk. “What’s that for?”

“Dinner last night. That makes us even.”

She looked at the bill, old and worn to softness the same as Aus- tin’s jeans. The kisses had been a mistake. He wanted to be quit of her, and so here was her money. Rose didn’t dare look up. What was there to say that wouldn’t make her sound pathetic? By the time she had herself under control, Austin was long gone.

The New Age proponents who found New Mexico so irresistible had created a high profile in Santa Fe and Taos. There were shops galore selling crystals and offering touch therapy, cut-rate Rolfing, a good aura scrubbing, you name it. Rose sat at her computer for an hour thinking about ethics before she took her purse in hand and left work two hours early. “I don’t feel well,” she told Paloma. “I’m going to the doctor. I’ll get to the books tomorrow or whenever.”

Paloma touched Rose’s forehead. “You seem a little warm.”

Terminal embarrassment will do that to you
, Rose thought, but she only smiled and waved good-bye. She drove out of town, passing hippie shops, the Overland Trading Company, the river rafting headquarters where Philip used to meet his buddies and take off on weeklong adventures that never included her. He’d come home windburned and rejuvenated, talking about retiring early, buying a custom-made kayak, but never said one word about teaching her to paddle.

Toward the ski basin, the little cafés and general stores thickened in number. Rose passed shops that would earn most of their income in winter when the skiers arrived. She kept driving until she came to a line of adobe buildings where there was a women’s collective selling paintings and jewelry, a pottery maker, and a weaver. It was the weaver she was seeking, if she was still here. The old Spanish- Navajo woman made blankets and shawls, but that wasn’t all she did. She was also an
arbolaria
, specializing in healing herbs, and rumored to be a
curan-

dera
, a woman who possessed certain powers, a kind of touch therapy no course of study could deliver because what she knew how to do came from her blood. Long ago, when Grandpop died, and Rose couldn’t get over missing him, wasn’t able to concentrate in school, or even keep her breakfast oatmeal down, Mami had taken Rose here.
Don’t tell Pop
, she had cautioned.
Sometimes, Rose Ann, a woman has to look in special places for healing
.