Banana Rose (8 page)

I gunned the car faster, spewing up a cloud of dust behind me on the winding dirt road. I was heading to town and then north past town. This was the third time I’d gone there this week, each time after trying to paint.

I made a right at the blinking light and then took the first left. I got out near the canyon rim and began to walk the ridge line. Down below I could see the town of Valdez. I had the feeling that with the right wind my feet would leave the ground, that I would float in currents with the ravens, who drifted above the small adobe houses huddled below in fields. I wanted to fly. I visualized magpies and hawks, but I couldn’t feel the essential motion of a bird. My heart wanted to soar, but I couldn’t lift my body. How do I feel as free as I did that one day out behind the Luhan house? I couldn’t go back to the cottonwood. It had already given me its gift. I told Gauguin to fuck off when he said I wasn’t disciplined about painting. I told him it was none of his business, it wasn’t my style to practice scales like he did. But what was my style?

I was concentrating on how to fly. The sky was an intense blue—deeper than blue—it was heaven and it was calling me. My legs were hanging out my red shorts, and in my mind they were lifting.

Just then I saw someone walking in the opposite direction on the ridge. We came upon each other face to face. She was the tallest human being I had ever met. I arched my head, like a finch to a stork, and the first words I said to her were, “How tall are you?”

“I am six foot one in my bare feet.” She stared back at me hard. She had deep gray eyes, short blond hair that seemed to be chopped instead of cut, and an almost perfectly heart-shaped face. Her eyebrows were so light, they seemed not to be there at all, and I noticed she held one shoulder higher than the other. On that Thursday she was wearing a red, black, and white plaid button-down, short-sleeve shirt and blue jeans. She was barefoot. The next thing she said to me was, “You’re not big enough to be a raven. Maybe a sparrow.” Then she walked around me and kept going along the ridge.

First my head twisted and then my whole body, so I could follow her with my eyes. She had a book stuffed in her back pocket. I squinted. I could see
The Ballad of the Sad..
.

“Hey—” I ran after her. “Are you reading Carson McCullers?” She turned, pulled the book out of her pocket, and flashed me the cover. “I read it in tenth grade. I loved it,” I said.

“I’ve read it about eight times. Have you read it since tenth grade?” she asked.

“No.” I looked down. “Do you live around here?” I asked, changing the subject.

She nodded and pointed to a small adobe on the other side of the road.

“How did you know I was pretending to be a bird?” I asked.

“Because I do that, and I could tell.”

“I’m Nell.” I held out my hand.

“I’m Anna.” She had big hands, too.

“Do you live alone?”

“Yes.” She paused. “Do you want to come in for tea?”

“Sure, I’m a little tired from flying right now, anyway.” I was trying to be charming, but it came out sounding corny.

We walked through a wooden gate and down a narrow dirt path. The back door was open, and the screen slammed behind me. There was only one big room with a blue sofa bed—a white sheet hung out below the cushion—in the corner, a hot plate on the red kitchen table in front of the window that faced the ridge. The desk was actually a door on some cinder blocks. There were books everywhere. Anna cleared three from the kitchen table when she brought over the green teapot.

“Flannery O’Connor, Tennessee Williams.” I read the book spines. “You like Southern authors?”

“Yes. They have so much of America in them,” she answered.

“I loved
Gone with the Wind.
” I could see this didn’t impress her. She pursed her lips. I wanted to impress her. There was a wine-red overstuffed chair with carved feet by the wood stove. “Where do you come from?” I asked, changing the subject again.

“I was brought up in Nebraska, but I went to school in Colorado.” She poured mint tea into two purple cups, using a strainer to catch the leaves. She had long fingers.

“Hey, did you ever read Willa Cather? I just read a book by her. Let’s see, what was it called?” I snapped my fingers. “
My Antonia
, that’s it, all about Nebraska.”

“Yeah, we read her in high school.”

“Well, did you like her?”

“I dunno.” Anna pushed a piece of hair from her face.

Hmmm. Willa Cather didn’t impress her either. “How old are you?” I asked. I was curious about her. “Do you like living alone?”

“Yes, I like it a lot. I’ve always lived alone. I’m writing a novel.”

“What about?” I asked.

“Oh, I’m not sure. It takes place on a Nebraska farm. The woman on the farm is so lonely, she communes with the cows, and when the cows are sold for meat, she goes crazy,” she answered.

“Gee.” I scratched my ear.

“It takes place in the 1800s,” Anna said.

“How long have you been in Taos?” I was asking so many questions, I felt like Agatha Christie, searching out facts for a new mystery.

“Nine months. What about you? What do you do?” The tables were turned. She asked the questions now.

“I fly.” I smiled. Maybe she would like me.

“What else?” she asked.

I wanted to tell her I tap-dance, I sail, I drie semis, I’m a short-order cook, I live in a cave, my mother is an antelope, I eat kosher salami, I have no willpower, I get lost on the subway, I have eleven aunts, my cousin is a rocket scientist, a horse once kicked me in the teeth.

“I teach part time in the winter at Red Willow.” I told her the truth instead. “And I’m trying to paint.”

She wasn’t listening. She looked out the window. When she turned back to me, her left eye was turned in toward her nose.

“Anna, are you okay? Your eye’s in.” This was all spooky, and I was nervous.

“I know. I’m okay. It does that sometimes. I’m supposed to do eye exercises to keep the muscle strong. I forgot the last week,” she explained.

“Can you make it go back?” I asked, alarmed.

“Yeah, just give me ten minutes. I guess I can’t cheat on the exercises.” She stood up and went over to the window. Suspended on a string in the middle of the window was a rubber ball. She reached out and swung it. She slowly swayed her body, keeping her eye on the ball. When the ball finally came to a standstill, she did it again.

I watched one and a half swings and then walked over to the bookcase. All of the Beats were there. Jack Kerouac, Gary Snyder, Diane DiPrima. A whole row of Hemingway, and then Anaïs Nin, Colette, Ken Kesey, Alan Watts, Lorca, Pablo Neruda. Then an author named Jane Rule, Djuna Barnes, Jean Rhys. I turned back to look at Anna. She had long arms. I looked beyond her to the kitchen counter and the refrigerator, which shifted into a loud hum. She had electricity. There were three red five-gallon plastic containers on the floor. She hauled water. Gauguin and I had one of those containers. I filled it at the school. Two white dishcloths were hanging over the wood counter.

“Anna?” I broke the silence. “Can I talk while you’re doing these exercises?” I asked.

“Yes, but not fast, because another part of me is concentrating.”

“How old are you?” I asked again.

“I’m twenty-seven,” she answered.

“Who are you friends with around here?”

“Not too many people.”

“Does it get lonely around here?”

“Yeah, some.” She reached out and stopped the ball. “I’m done.” She turned and smiled. Her eyes weren’t cockeyed anymore.

“I ought to be going.” I felt nervous.

“So soon?”

We ended up sitting on an old green torn car seat in the back of her house. We both stretched our legs out long in front of us and leaned back with our faces in the sun.

“If only we had some lemonade with lots of sugar.” She laughed. “My mother used to set me up in the driveway with a Kool-Aid stand. I’d sit and read Freddie the Pig books.” Anna sat up and turned to me. “Have you ever read those books? By Walter R. Brooks. I can’t remember much about them, but I loved them. About a pig.”

“No, never heard of them.” I sure wished I had. I squinted up at her. She looked like rain, that fresh.

“Well, anyway,” Anna continued, “I’d wait for someone to come. I thought I was going to get rich with that little lemonade outfit. No one ever came. We lived on a farm, miles from anything. The horses in the field across the way hung their heads over the fence, only the horses had no money. After what seemed like hours, my mother came out, plopped down a quarter, and bought some.”

I opened my eyes again. My face had been in the sun for a long while. Anna looked yellow. Everything was golden, the tall weeds, the hard, dry dirt. I felt dizzy. “Anna, didn’t you have any brothers or sisters to buy lemonade?”

“Yeah, I have an older brother, Daniel. But we didn’t get along too well when we were young.” A long pause. She was thinking of something. “I once caught him jerking off in the woods near our house. I was eleven. Daniel was thirteen. It was fall. He cracked open a milkweed pod. You ever see one of those?” she asked.

“I think so.” I nodded. I was getting nervous again.

“Well, the seeds are white and real silky. Daniel filled his hands with them and jerked off into them. Must’ve felt good. I was in the shadow of an elm. I was scared, and I made a sound. He caught me before I even had a chance to move and smeared his hand all over my face. It was sticky and the seeds stuck. He hissed at me, ‘Don’t you ever tell anyone.’ He squeezed my arm real tight. I got the message. Hell, there was no one to tell anyway.” Anna scratched her leg. “What about you? Do you have any brothers or sisters?”

I put my hands behind my head and leaned back. “I have a younger sister. She wants to be a rock star. Lives in New York. She’s twenty-four and worked for a while as a bartender in a fancy club. She wears silver sneakers and auditions for bands. We don’t see each other much. She was out visiting at Thanksgiving. She thought it was boring here, kept wanting to go to clubs.” I laughed. “I told her the only club here is the Boys’ Club. She went to Safeway at midnight and walked up and down the aisles because it was the only thing open. They were restocking the shelves. Oh, yeah, and that sheepskin place. They stretch skins all night. She even went there. Anything with lights on.” I flicked an ant off my knee. It was getting cooler out, and the shadows were growing longer. “Y’know, I should get going.”

“So soon?” Anna yawned.

I hesitated. “Do you want to come for dinner tomorrow night? You could meet Gauguin,” I said.

“I don’t have a car.”

“If you can hitch there, I’ll drive you back or you can stay overnight. We have an extra sleeping bag. Do you have something to write on? I’ll give you directions.”

She went in the house and brought out a green spiral notebook and opened it to the back cover. “Here, draw a map.” She handed me a yellow pencil.

I drew the long dirt road, past the cemetery and Barela’s candy store. I drew a square with a pitched roof and a door for the candy store. I turned to Anna. “Don’t get carried away when you pass the candy store. I think it’s a front for the mafia. The mafia sneaks three sheep from Eloy’s barn down the road, finds no one in Taos wants them, and then sneaks them back under the cover of the candy store. Big operation. Last year the store had four pieces of licorice for sale. This year they have two. Some one from Truchas bought one, thinking it was a cheap way to repair the soles of his shoes. He’s dead in a ditch now. He got hungry and ate it. Once I saw someone come out with a soda.”

“Soda?” Anna questioned.

“Oh, pop. I always forget that out here you say ‘pop.’ In New York we say ‘soda.’ Not baking soda—the kind you sip through a straw.” I turned and smiled at her. There I was again, trying to be charming.

I drew plum trots by the ditch as part of the map. I made the ditch a wavy line. I drew the trees laden with plums. I even drew Mel’s totem pole near Blue’s house and Arturo’s lambs on his front lot. Seven of them. The scrawniest things you’d ever seen.

“Okay, okay. I’ll find it.” Anna laughed and pulled the notebook from me.

“Come around six. Bring some of your novel, if you want. I’d love to hear it,” I said.

Anna looked down and then over at a tree. “I haven’t shown it to anyone.”

“Well, it’s up to you. I’m sure Gauguin would like to hear it, too. How long have you been working on it?” I asked.

“A year and a half.”

I left Anna, and on the way to Talpa, I stopped in Safeway and bought jack cheese, corn tortillas, sour cream, green chiles. When I got home, the coolness of the adobe rose up to greet me. The house was dark with small thick windows. Gauguin and I had stapled up screening to the outside frames so the windows could be opened. I looked around our small kitchen.

I put the brown bag from Safeway on the table and went into the bedroom and lay on the bed. We had a flower-patterned blue and white rug to cover the hard, unfinished adobe floor. I wasn’t tired. I just wanted to lie down. I liked Anna, especially her eyes, even if they were cockeyed.

Gauguin was whistling outside. He passed by the bedroom window. “Gauguin,” I called when he entered the kitchen. “Where were you?”

“Out practicing.”

“Gauguin, I met a writer today. I asked her for dinner tomorrow night.”

He stuck his head in the bedroom and smiled. “Is that why you left the groceries on the kitchen table?”

A
NNA CAME FOR DINNER
at the time of rose sunset. She entered the house through that soft light and sat down at the kitchen table. I served enchiladas with sour cream and chopped green onions spooned on top after the tortillas, onions, chiles, and cheese had bubbled together in the oven. They were my specialty. I wanted to make a good impression on Anna.

She picked at them and asked for a beer. We didn’t have any beer in the house. Gauguin and Anna seemed to like each other, but it was clear that she was going to be my friend. Gauguin excused himself after dinner and went in the back room to practice. We could hear him chopping out a song on his guitar, the instrument he used whenever he tried out something new. Ping. Ping. Long pause. Ping. Ping. Ping. Short pause. A full strum. After a while we didn’t hear him, though he continued to play.