More Than Allies Read online

  She baked the chicken and they ate in silence. While she did dishes, he showered and put on clean jeans. She bit her lip to keep from telling him to put on pajamas. Lately, he had taken to dressing at night in the next day’s clothes. It made his morning short work. Usually, she found it endearing.

  “Sit down,” she said. He was making her nervous, pacing in such a small space. He pulled the curtain aside to look out where there was nothing to see except other trailers. It was a hot evening, and he wore no shirt. His shoulders and arms were still round and soft with baby fat, but in his back he looked small, and his hips were slim. In another couple of years, he would begin to grow in earnest; he would fill out. He would have less and less to say to her. This was what she expected of a boy, though she had never lived with a brother. She had watched the boys in the barrio. She had watched their mothers.

  “Sit down,” she said again. He plopped down on the couch. His pillow and covers were still messy from the night before. She had an urge to straighten it all up. Instead, she sat across the room, the table between them. She said, “There are things about your father you should know.”

  His head jerked up, like an animal at a sound in the brush. “What things?” he said. His eyes had narrowed. There was a challenge in his gaze. Watch what you say.

  “We were very young, Gustavo and me. When we married.”

  His chin jutted forward. He slumped against the back of the couch, his legs out, his knees bent toward one another clumsily. He said, “You never got a divorce.”

  She stared at the table. There were stains and burn marks in the veneer. She couldn’t remember it ever being any better. The marks had been there when she moved in. It would be nice to have a new table, a table made of good wood.

  She wanted to sit by him, but his gaze had a sheen of hostility in it. He thought she was going to say bad things about Gustavo. She only wanted him to have some realistic idea, any idea at all, what he was like. What he had been like.

  “He’d left Texas and gone to a cousin’s in L.A. He didn’t have a steady job. We lived with other people. We never had any money.”

  “So?” He feigned boredom. Maybe he was bored. Maybe the details of grown-up life were too tedious to consider, at his age.

  “He liked to drink with his buddies. He liked to drive around. He got in fights.”

  “I know what you’re going to say. About him going to jail.”

  “That’s where all that took him.”

  “You told me it wasn’t his fault.”

  “I said he didn’t mean to. I said it was the other man’s knife. But it was his fault, too. He was drinking too much. He was arguing. He couldn’t back off and let things be.”

  “I don’t care! Everything is different now!”

  “Time has passed,” she conceded.

  “He’s not in jail anymore. I don’t care about that.”

  “He left us all the time. He liked to be with his buddies. Other men.” He wanted a woman, not a wife.

  “I was a baby. Maybe he didn’t like babies.”

  “I had to bring you home. I had to take care of you.”

  “There wasn’t anything he could do, was there? From where he was? What was he supposed to do?!”

  She couldn’t remember why she had begun this. What she wanted Gus to know. She opened her hands, palms down, on the table, and stared at her knuckles. “I did what I could. I’ve always taken care of you.”

  “It’s different now,” he said again. “But you want me to be mad at him, because you are. Only, I’m not! I don’t even remember him. What would I be mad at?”

  “He’s far away. His parole, it’s to Texas, to his folks’.”

  “We could go there.”

  “It’s not such an easy thing to pack up and move.”

  Gus looked around. He didn’t have to say: how much is there? He said, “Why not? Hilario’s family has lived that way his whole life. And he’s happy.”

  There was no use in arguing this. Probably, Hilario was happy. Probably Hilario didn’t know yet how tentative his life was here. But it hurt to hear Gus say Hilario was happy; what he meant was, he was not.

  “I thought we were compadres,” she said.

  Gus jumped up. “Why do we live like this? Like we’re the ones in prison? You work and come home. Who do you ever see? I don’t even have grandparents. I don’t have nobody but you.”

  “My mother—” Her jaw clenched. “My papa went to Mexico when I was little. I’ve told you.” She was afraid she might cry.

  “I wish I lived with Lupe! You think she’s dumb, I know you do, but she’s not. She talks to us. And I understand her. She doesn’t care if she has to say things to me five times. She tells me about where they’ve lived. About Mexico. She tells me some day I’ll have a family, too. And she tells me in Spanish!”

  “Of course.” It wasn’t something she had ever thought about.

  “I wish I lived with my dad.”

  “You don’t know him. How can you say that?”

  “I know he’s my dad! Just because you don’t love him, doesn’t mean I don’t.” That chin up again. “Lupe says sangre es todo. Blood is everything. He’s my father!”

  Dulce reached over and picked up Gus’ map of Texas. “He’s a long long way away.”

  Gus grabbed the picture and crumpled it into a ball and threw it to the floor. He ran around, pulling pictures off the wall. “Gus,” she pleaded. He threw his drawings around the room. He was sobbing.

  Dulce got up and grabbed him. She tried to pull him to her, but he wouldn’t let her. He turned and hunched in on himself. Helplessly, she said, “Sandy might take you to Portland next month. There’s your scholarship. It’ll be a nice summer.”

  Gus looked at her over his shoulder. “I want to go to Texas, Mama. I’ve got cousins there, don’t I? A grandpa and grandma. Abuelos, Hilario says. He says they’re the best.”

  “Not yet!” she cried. This was supposed to happen a long time from now.

  “There’s nothing here, Mama. Do you remember when you got me my new bike last year? And I rode it down through the new houses off of Main, where the streets are nice? And a policeman stopped me.”

  “Oh my sweet boy.”

  “He thought I stole it. He thought I was a poor Mexican kid and I took some Anglo kid’s bike! I don’t belong here. I hate it. I hate Lupine.”

  “Anglo kids get in trouble too.”

  “Not because they look Mexican, they don’t.”

  She sat down heavily. “We’ll write Gustavo about this summer. About you visiting.”

  “Sí, Mama,” he said, and grinned. “Yo soy tu hijo. Y su hijo también.”

  She wouldn’t cry. He was proud of himself. Mi hijo. He was a child. “But you’re just a boy, Gus. I’m still your mother. You still belong with me. You come home to me.”

  Nora had made arrangements for lunch in a private room at the Anjou Restaurant. It was her treat. They dressed up for a celebration. Nora had run Carolyn Dannon’s primary campaign for the Democratic nomination for the district’s Congressional seat, against the man who had made a poor showing last time around. Now everybody was saying Dannon was dynamite. She was part of the new wave that might change the shape of Congress. Nora was feeling smug. Her life was full of brand new possibilities. Then too, she had sold a piece of property that had been in contention for nearly four years. A developer from California had wanted to build a golf course, but approval had been endlessly hung up; a second golf course didn’t suit the sensibilities of the town just now, Nora said. Then there had been plans for houses, expensive ones, but the developer was called back for new hearings so many times he threw his hands up, forfeited funds, and fled to Idaho. Then Nora had made the ultimate sale, the result of her ingenuity and negotiation skills. A consortium had bought the property to build a language-immersion grade school. There had been talk about a replica of a medieval French village, too—say, Eze—as a fund-raising tourist attraction, but that had gone the
way of the golf course. A school, though, that was perfect. “You wait,” Nora said to them, not for the first time, “when Measure 5 kicks in, and property taxes for schools are curtailed; parents in this town will be racing for private alternatives. Some of them figured it out ahead of time. The Planning Commission sees it coming. Ergo, my biggest land sale.” She poured champagne for everyone.

  She looked spectacular, wearing a yellow linen dress with deep armholes. Maggie couldn’t stop staring at her shoulders and arms. They were so defined. Lynn had tried to get them all to her gym, but she had convinced only Nora who, as Nora would, had achieved excellence and a new look. She had cut her hair so short it was shocking, but it looked great. Everybody made a fuss over it. Nora smiled chummily at Lynn and said, “I went down to L.A. with Lynn for a few days. Julia Roberts’ hairdresser cut it.” She smirked and said, “Go on, go on, have a good laugh, but it’s true. And it was fun.”

  Maggie wondered how long lunch would run. She had told Polly an hour and a half. She felt dreadfully guilty, going off like this, but the plans had been made for nearly two weeks, and Polly said she should go, Gretchen was going, it would do her good. The baby Kendra had slept a little better Friday night, and Polly looked more rested. She had pulled the plastic tub out from the garage and set it on the patio with a couple of inches of water for Stevie to splash in, then moved the baby’s crib out there, too. “We may just spend the day out here,” Polly said, waving them away. Maggie thought she was being brave and generous, the way she always was. There was no guarantee both babies wouldn’t start screaming five minutes after Maggie left. But Jay-Jay had been invited to play with Gus (a happy surprise), and Stevie was just one child, Polly’s own grandchild, after all, and Maggie would have been crushed to be left out of the lunch. Gretchen had actually threatened not to go, herself, but Maggie made such a fuss about it, Gretchen said, okay, okay, and put on a new long T-shirt dress so tight her nipples poked out like thumbs.

  Nora waved her hand. “We’re all looking good.” Maggie looked around, suddenly self-conscious and eager as a schoolgirl. She’d spent the last year letting her short thin hair grow to her shoulders, but it was so limp and uninspiring, she just pulled it back, or, on a special occasion like this, pinned it up in a flat twist. And, in a country where women starved themselves to be thin, she was, without trying, too skinny to look good. She smiled and wished she had worn something nicer than her bleached denim skirt, a skirt Polly had lent her to teach in and never got returned.

  Rachel was wearing her Indian dress with bits of mirror all over the bodice. Lynn, beside her, was an opposite of style, in a simple, expensive, fawn-colored raw silk dress. Something about her was odd, but Maggie couldn’t put a finger on it. She almost wished she had taken Lynn up on her offer, and gone to raid her cast-offs for something new (to her) to wear. She felt immensely out of place, aware that she was the odd one in this group, the least-educated, untraveled, most ordinary member. She tried to think what a character in a book would do.

  She held up her glass. “To the group,” she said. They toasted. Nora said, “To the year of the woman.” She was always reminding them that they were a critical mass. Rachel said, “To the Muse,” and Gretchen, sighing, said, “To fate.” Lynn clicked her glass the loudest and said, “To food, ladies, that is what this is all about.”

  As if on cue the food began to arrive, served by their “waitperson Andrew.” Andrew announced each dish, biting his consonants as if they were part of the fare. First they had eggplant caviar and baked mozzarella, followed by a sweet potato soup that surprised them with a touch of jalapeno. Nora had asked that everything be served family style.

  They tasted and exclaimed and settled into eating. Lynn said she had been thinking of writing a cookbook. She didn’t have enough to do. People were always raving about her food. When the group met at her house, they came earlier than usual because they knew there would be some fantastic array of dishes to try. “It would be around the theme of classic movies,” she explained. “Couscous and roast lamb, Casablanca. Espresso and lobster, Annie Hall. You get the idea.”

  They all laughed. Maggie thought it was a ridiculous idea. Who would want to make a meal of espresso and lobster? She laughed with the others, of course. She stole a glance at Gretchen, whose laugh also sounded a little forced. Gretchen gave her a sly smile. They had sworn that, no matter what, they would not eat rabbit, for which the Anjou was famous. Not after seeing those poor rabbits skinned in Roger and Me, a movie she did not suppose Lynn would include in her cookbook.

  While they waited for the main dish, Nora passed out a new brochure she had made up for Carolyn’s campaign. Besides its exhortations to vote for Dannon, it had a snappy list of practical and urgent ways to “keep on doing the job women have to do.” Things like checking “Ms.” and joining the National Women’s Mailing List. Challenging sexist slurs. There were twenty admonitions. On the front of the flyer, though, there were only these: GIVE TIME. GIVE MONEY. VOTE.

  They looked over the pamphlet. Nobody wanted to challenge Nora—the booklet was fine—but nobody wanted to stand up and cheer, either. Nora’s head-held-high expression made it clear that there was more coming, once that sank in. Maggie knew she would be leaning on them all summer about the campaign. Ever since the Clarence Thomas hearings, she’d been buzzing like someone born again. They had all been aghast and mesmerized and one hundred percent sympathetic with Anita Hill, but Nora was far gone. She had become political.

  Nora talked for several minutes about the job of electing Dannon in a traditionally conservative district. She reminded them that in the last election, the district Democrat lost the state representative’s seat by two hundred votes. They all listened politely, but nobody said anything. Maggie wondered if they all had the same thought, that they weren’t there to celebrate; they were being enlisted.

  “People think politics are about big-city slickos buying TV time and working tricky psychological moves,” Nora said. The cords in her neck stood out. “But Carolyn Dannon is going to be elected because we are going to lick stamps and call voters and hand out pamphlets and make a difference.” She let that sink in. “Women will elect her. You will elect her.”

  “Maybe we should get some more wine,” Lynn said.

  Maggie said, her voice hardly above a squeak, “I’ve got two kids.”

  Nora raised her eyebrows. “Which means you have three times as much at stake as a single person. Four, if you count Mo. Do you still count Mo?” She scratched her chin, pondering something. “Maggie, have you ever considered what it means that every member of your family has a name reduced to its diminutive?”

  Maggie recoiled. Her eyes stung. She laid her napkin down and scooted her chair back.

  Gretchen clasped her arm. “If you go, I’m going,” she said.

  “Wait, wait. This is not personal,” Rachel said. “Is it?”

  Maggie slumped back into her chair.

  “Sorry,” Nora said. Clearly, she was not. She looked around at them with her most penetrating gaze. “You are all for Carolyn, aren’t you?”

  Rachel said, “You know Sandy’s family is staunch Republican. But you can count on my vote. Just don’t expect a lot else. I’m going to finish my novel this summer.” She seemed very pleased. “I’ve been awarded a residency on an island in the San Juans. Two months.”

  “Congratulations,” Maggie said. She wondered what Sandy thought of that. She was relieved to leave the subject of her own marital status behind so quickly. Nora had already told her she thought she ought to divorce Mo. Maggie remembered exactly what she had said: A separation is not an egg to sit on.

  Food arrived. Not rabbit. With some uneasiness, but an effort to smooth things over, they commented loudly and long on how good it all looked, much as they had commented on themselves.

  Gretchen, whose eyes were red-rimmed, said wryly, “Maybe we should talk about books.” They smiled at one another, and dug into their penne al tonno. Gretchen pursued the ma
tter. “After all, we are a book group.”

  “So who’s reading what?” Lynn said. When nobody spoke up, she patted her mouth with her napkin and said, “I’ll confess, I haven’t read anything but magazines in a month.” They had agreed to meet in May and set a new schedule for the rest of the year, one book each, then skip Christmas. “Dermott and I have been watching old movies. My Life as a Dog. He always watches that before he starts a new script. And Chinatown. Jack was never better than that.”

  “I’ve been running a political campaign,” Nora said archly, as if she’d been accused of something.

  Maggie chewed on her lip. “I’ve been trying to reread Madness of a Seduced Woman. It’s one of my favorite books. But I get so sleepy, I’m only on page eighty-five.” She didn’t dare say how hard it had been lately. How reading hadn’t quite fit in.

  Gretchen said bitterly, “I haven’t been reading, either, but there’s time enough to read now.”

  Nora’s eyebrows lifted. “School’s out, I take it?”

  “Phoebe has arrived, if that’s what you mean,” Gretchen said.

  “Phoebe?” Lynn said. “Alex? Phoebe Alex?”

  “You should reread Madame Bovary, Gretchen,” Nora said. “Of course, she was the married one in that.”

  “I thought we were au courant,” Lynn said.

  Andrew brought the salad.

  “We should look at some of the foreign writers,” Nora said. “In a shrinking global world, we’ve got to face our diversities. Assimilation is an old and dead idea.”

  “You mean all those transistor radios in third-world countries will run out of batteries?” Gretchen said.

  Maggie felt a headache starting at the base of her skull. She moved lettuce around on her plate. She had hoped, when she joined the book group, that their shared passion would make them friends. She had thought they were friends. “What I like,” she said quietly, “is a book that enthralls you, makes a whole world you can’t escape for days and days.” She looked up boldly. “I really need that sometimes.”