The Wilder Sisters (40 page)
never calls me again. Ever heard of a pay phone?”
Tres kissed the top of her head. “Leah arrived the day after you left. She’s been a little needy.”
Lily wanted to scream out,
I’m only in love with you, you idiot
! But she knew if she shut her eyes and said the words, by the time she opened them he would be half a continent away. “Tres, I have to catch a plane.”
“Change your ticket,” he said. “Leave tomorrow.”
“Why? So the three of us can make S’mores in the fireplace and sing camp songs? Come with me.”
“You know I can’t do that.”
Lily looked at him for a long time, not really certain who it was she thought she loved. If Tres Quintero was a ghost from her past, he was a powerful force; her body had never forgotten his touch. If he was using her, there had to be something in his style of lovemak- ing that rendered her bullshit detector useless. If he was backing off because he was scared, then the Wilder woman in her was respons- ible, and there wasn’t anything she could do about that. Forgetting him a second time was going to be harder than the first.
“Come inside,” he said. “Let me at least fix you something warm to drink. You’re shaking.”
All around them, cold wind swirled, reshaping the snowdrifts. Lily felt the chill in her cheeks, the icy air traveling through the jacket, which was designed for a spring or maybe a California winter, those few weeks when the temperature rocketed down to fifty and the population took it as a personal insult. Lily’s blood had grown thin in a state that practically did without seasons. Tres however, hadn’t so much as pulled up the collar on his shirt. What a mistake this was, them trying to reclaim the past. Lily kissed him good-bye, a nice, chaste, lips-closed kiss. She drove to the airport, turned in her car, and uttered a perfunctory thank-you when the ticketing agent automatically upgraded her to first class.
Lily scooped a healthy glob of Trader Joe’s sun-dried tomato pesto onto the first Krisproll out of the package. The wonderfully oily mixture of basil, parmesan, pine nuts and walnuts, minced garlic, fine-grade olive oil, and tomatoes sank into the baked-in crevices of the cracker. Just 1.5 grams of fat in the cracker; an ungodly 18 in each tablespoon of pesto.
They’d been out of the low-fat kind. She inhaled deeply but hesitated before putting it in her mouth. One had to make the best of life’s little moments, and sitting in her living room with a decent bottle of red wine newly uncorked and Buddy Guy on the CD player, just herself and her long-desired menu, was bliss, or it should have been. It was drizzling outside. After she got home from New Mexico, Lily had unpacked, answered her messages, taken the suit to the dry cleaner, and begged him to at least
try
to save it. She caught up on paperwork, finished her expense reports, and set appointments that stretched clear through December into January. She waited two whole days before allowing herself the reward of this meal. It was going to be heaven to taste her favorite foodstuffs once again—as soon as she could put out of her mind how much she missed that stupid non-practicing psychiatrist/fly fisherman/diligent stepfath- er/woodcarver/nature writer who knew the curves of her body like every synonym in his thesaurus.
This morning she’d stood in front of a roomful of surgeons at Cedars-Sinai explaining how much more efficiently their operations would go the moment they began using her company’s endoscopes, laparoscopes, et cetera. Her smile dazzled them. Her delivery was perfect. When they hesitated, her calm, convincing assertions perked them up. Questions regarding cost and reliability were anticipated, her answers cogent and reassuring. She imbued these men with a budget-be-damned desire to own the entire line, she made her company some serious money, she shook their precious, gifted, irre- placeable hands, scheduled training sessions, and then later, on the drive home, she managed one-handed to shuck her pantyhose in traffic that was moving ten miles an hour through a smoggy haze that color-enhanced the California sunset like an animated movie. She wiped away her tears with the bunched-up stockings. Whatever the fat content, she deserved the pesto. She deserved Tres, too, but she no longer desired the pesto and she’d lost the man.
The first glass of wine went down like medicine. An Ansel Adams print titled
Autumn Storm, Penasco
, hung above her unlit fireplace. The spooky gathering of trees and moody sky reminded her of the northern boundary of El Rancho Costa Plente. Peeking through the foliage, the spired church in the photo’s center seemed like a place so far from where Lily sat that it might as well be Mars. If they could find
it, maybe she and Buddy could sit very quietly in the back of a pew, and if what Rose said was true, God would mend their broken hearts. But movie stars and rich people had bought up all the houses and land in New Mexico. The church probably didn’t exist anymore. When you came right down to it, there was no
away
, really, only the representation of it in pictures like these. She wondered how Shep was doing, if he was taking something stronger for his pain, and if after he died dog runs would replace the horse stalls. Buddy laid his paw on her forearm and looked at her with liquid brown eyes. Lily knew pesto was bad for him, all those people-fat grams quin- tupled for doggies. His dish was still full of the high fiber, low-fat kibble she’d bought at the latest vet.
Floralee was the end of the earth, the boondocks, Hooterville un- paralleled, no place for the college educated. It struck her as miracu- lous that in the northern part of her home state she’d stumbled across the one man she wanted. Lily never told anyone in the medical in- dustry that she’d grown up in a town with a population of fifteen hundred. When pressed, she lied and said Albuquerque. A string of drool hung from the corner of Buddy’s mouth. She fed him the cracker, wiped her hands on his coat, picked up the telephone, and punched in Rose’s number. Her sister answered on the second ring.
“Hello?”
“Are you keeping busy?” Lily asked. “Busy helps.” “Yes. I baked for the church potluck this week.” “What did you make?”
“Bread, muffins, that curried vegetable dish with the carrots everybody seems to like. It doesn’t seem right that anybody should go hungry on Thanksgiving.”
Lily already had her travel suitcase packed for the upcoming Thanksgiving business trip. The modest bathing suit she would never find time to use lay folded next to the black and beige clothing that mixed and matched flawlessly. High heels and tennis shoes, too, plus a calculator and her notebook computer, which possessed more bells and whistles than the model Tres used. Only the bottle of sunscreen hinted that this trip was centered around a holiday. They began at Halloween and didn’t let up until New Year’s, relent- less reminders everywhere from Santa at the mall to her neighbor’s house all decorated with the irritating blinking lights. Lily managed by pretending
they weren’t holidays at all, but temporary madness, like the movies on the science-fiction channel that came free with her basic cable service. “Are you going to the ranch for dinner?”
“No, I’m going to work at the church dinner, go home, and pet my dog.”
“Go to the ranch, Rose. Check on your mare. She needs attention, and so does Shep. You know he kind of gets lost in the shuffle around the holidays. Make sure he’s taking his medicine. Drink too much. Maybe you’ll sleep with somebody interesting.”
Her sister laughed. “I think I’m a little ways off from all that.” “Seen Tres around town?”
“Oh, Lily. Hasn’t he called you?” “Lacks a telephone.”
“And balls, apparently.”
“Why, Rose Flynn, I’m shocked. Here you had a perfectly good opportunity to say ‘nerve’ and you deliberately chose the vernacular. I guess now you’ll have something to confess in confession.”
“Actually, I haven’t been to church since you left.”
Lily tucked the phone into her shoulder so she could pour a second glass of wine. “Of course, I take this as a sign you’re coming to your senses, but that’s only my opinion. You haven’t missed church in forty years. Why start now?”
“I don’t know. I just don’t want to go there.” “Does Doctor Cute go to church?”
“He used to, when he attended meetings. I don’t know about now.
I really couldn’t tell you what he does.” “How’s it going at work?”
“I’m sort of pretending I’m on vacation.” “Good for you.”
“Yeah, until next month when I can’t make my house payment. I should hang up, Lily. This is costing you a fortune.”
“I have Dime Line. Don’t worry about my phone bill. Think about something for me, will you?”
“That depends on what it is. If it concerns Austin, count me out. I just want to forget I was ever foolish enough to think I loved him.” “Remember your algebra. The more you try to forget, the more you’ll remember. What I was going to suggest was that you give Austin your resignation. There’s plenty of things you can do if you
need money.”
Rose sighed. “I’ll think it over.”
“Do it, Rose. And keep an ear open for gossip. I want to know what in hell Tres is up to, if you hear anything. Don’t you dare tell him I asked, just find out the details and call me back. Oh, I just love to rub salt in my wounds. It keeps everything so fresh and painful.”
“Okay. Bye, Lily. Sell lots of those scope things.” “I always do.”
It was eight o’clock in the evening in California, which meant it was what—nine—in New Mexico? Lily listened to the click that severed their connection. She shouldn’t have said that to Rose about her job. It was projection—her wanting Rose to quit because she wanted to herself. Lily and Buddy sprawled together on the condo’s living-room floor. Tomorrow she had to get on a plane to a city where the temperature was eighty. A jet from El Toro broke the sound barrier, and the fire-singed shake roof shook with the sound of freedom, which it would continue to do periodically until that base, like so many others, shut down. Buddy let go a mournful howl. Her neighbors started fighting, and the drizzly rain that had been falling since she got home turned to a downpour.
Lay out the welcome mat for El Niño
, Lily thought.
If he’d had a phone to answer, she would have called Tres right then, but her female pride was bionic even if her resolve felt like Jell-O. She thought of all those hours in front of his fireplace. Even if it had only been one kiss, it would still possess the same unforget- table power. She downed glass number two, poured glass number three, and toasted Ansel Adams, who knew how to shoot a picture so realistically that a person looked at it and would give anything to step inside. He must have been quite the man, she mused, brave enough to stand out in the middle of a storm and aim his lens with all that lightning flashing so close by.
loralee’s annual Thanksgiving dinner was originally about feeding disadvantaged children, but over the years it had mutated into one of the town’s larger social events. Various levels of town politics played out alongside the potluck dishes. Whoever was running for public office or reelection or simply wanted to mend fences used the dinner as an opportunity to shake hands and gain allies. Skipping the dinner was on a par with choosing not to vote, frowned upon by those who didn’t get invited to exclusive parties,
like the one Mami was throwing this very evening.
Much of the chatter Rose overheard as she scooped mashed potatoes onto plates in the serving line concerned the upcoming spring celebration of the four-hundredth anniversary of Don Juan de Onate’s expedition from New Spain to San Juan Pueblo, a neighboring town. A high percentage of Floralee residents, including Eloy Trujillo, could trace a relative back that far. Rose watched the judge and his sons mingle with families seated at the long cafeteria- style tables. Two of Eloy’s sons were attorneys, a third taught high school civics, and had in fact, tried desperately not to fail Amanda. However, Amanda, out to prove a point, earned her F to wave in Rose’s face after all. Eloy held up someone’s new baby and made silly faces so the child would smile.
Rose gave each person in line a generous helping. When Austin and Leah Donavan stood in front of her with their plates held out, Rose tried to make herself smile but couldn’t quite pull it off. Then, just as she upended the scoop over Leah’s plate and pressed the lever to release the potatoes, Leah pulled her plate away, and the buttery white
mixture fell onto the crisp, clean tablecloth. Rose gasped, and for a moment it felt as if everyone in the room turned to look.
“Oops,” Leah said. “Sorry, but I don’t eat starches.”
Already she was looking across the room, distracted by someone important who sought her attention. Austin had to touch her elbow to let her know it was time to move on. He helped Rose clean up the mess, then set his plate down on the table. “I need to talk to you,” he said.
His face was difficult for her to read, but his accompanying Leah to this social event seemed to make things painfully clear. They were a couple again, and probably had been for longer than she knew. “You only
think
you need to talk to me.”
“What about work, Rose? You can’t just leave me hanging.”
“I need a break.” She set the serving spoon down, and before Austin could stop her she made her way through the noisy crowd and ducked into the church nave.
Aromatic pine garlands draped festively across every pew. Tied up in gilt-edged ribbons, the sprigs of red berries looked real enough to feed to the birds. Near the altar the heavy candelabrum with beeswax candles stood unlit. At midnight mass on Christmas Eve, with candles blazing, this church would overflow with parishioners. People were happy to stand during the long service just to bask in the comforting presence of a community praising the holy miracle. Rose held onto the back of the last pew. She couldn’t kneel. Her legs simply refused to bend. In this very church she had married Philip. No full mass, of course, since he wasn’t Catholic, but they had stood in front of this altar to make their vows. She wondered how he’d managed such duplicity, if he had separate chambers in his heart, a pocket for each woman. It seemed that Austin did, too. Her own was so basic it could only concentrate on one man at a time.
