No Place Like Home (21 page)

I straightened and the fabric held everything in place for the moment. “What do you think? Too much? I can get a corset or something like that to keep everything in place for the wedding. If necessary, I can change right afterward.”

She was silent and I looked up. Her head was cocked, a sad smile on her face. “You are still so beautiful, Jewel.” She tugged a hank of my hair over my shoulder. “Even when you were a baby, people used to stop me in the street so they could look at you. Not around here, of course, but everywhere else.”

Not around here because the community would have been respectful of her worry over the ‘evil eye’ being cast on a baby. “Thank you,” I said quietly.

“I have always worried more about you than all three of the other girls put together. And you can still surprise me.” She smiled and turned me around to face the long mirror in the corner. “Look at yourself.”

In that instant, looking at myself in the long oval mirror, I knew my mother loved me. The color was exactly perfect, bringing out a topaz light in my eyes, pointing out the strands of red and gold in my hair, turning my skin a burnished pale honey. And the style that had seemed so tacky in the dressing room bridal shop now looked like a Victorian ball gown, especially when she reached out and pulled the sleeves down to reveal my shoulders. “The other girls were shy to try this, but that’s how they’re supposed to be worn. A woman’s shoulders are made to be displayed.”

I touched the tattoo. “I can cover it with makeup for the day.”

“Good idea.”

“What are you going to wear, Mama?”

She gave me a distracted smile. “Oh, probably that lace dress Sylvia gave me for Christmas a few years ago. It’s a nice color.”

“The peach dress?”

“Mmm,” she said around a mouthful of straight pins she used to nip in the waist of the dress.

“Mama, no. That dress is a lot more than a few years old. You’ve had it since I was in high school.”

She took the pins out, frowning at the fit. “Well, but I haven’t worn it more than five or six times.”

“No, you need a new dress.”

“Costs too much. You know how much it costs for a wedding these days?”

I turned and took her hands in mine. “Please, Mama? Let us buy you one, all of us girls. We could make a day of it—drive up to Nordstroms and find something really beautiful.”

She was shaking her head before I finished. “No time for that. Got so much cooking to do, and these dresses to fix, and a million other things.”

“I can help with the cooking.”

“Oh, you have too much on your plate as it is.”

“No pun intended,” I murmured.

“What?”

“Nothing.” I was calculating how to get her a great dress, one that would reveal her in all her beauty for once in her life. “Really, Ma, I’ll do some cooking. What’s left?”

She let go one of those sighs and shook her head. I’d ask my grandmother. And talk to my sisters about the dress idea. Maybe getting to Denver to go to Nordstroms was too much—there was a shower this week, and a lot more prep to do for the wedding—but maybe Dillards.

She unzipped me. “Do you think Dad’s ever going to forgive me?” I asked as she carefully lowered the fabric from my body. I stepped out equally carefully, and then dived for my jeans.

“He will.” She patted my arm. “You’ll see.”

“When?”

Carefully she settled the dress over a ladderback chair. “Might go easier if you leave that man alone.”

“By ‘that man’ I guess you mean Malachi?” I sighed, pricked with anger even though I knew it was true. Malachi summed up in one luscious package all that my father thought was wrong with my morals.

She didn’t answer. And Nana Lucy came in carrying what looked like a hundred green penises, forty of which she shoved into a bag for me to take home. “I can’t use this many zucchini, Nana! I have a whole patch of my own.”

She might have been deaf. “Freeze them.”

There was no point in arguing. I tried to forget the bag on the table when I left a few minutes later, but she sent my mother out with them. “Nice try,” Mama said.

Maybe I could make some fried zucchini for dinner. I wondered if Malachi liked it.

FROM THE MUSIC BOX MENU:

Zappa Zucchini—The delectable Jewel Sabatino made this one up (see her squash blossom appetizer above). Thinly sliced, lemon-marinated zucchini grilled golden with cherry tomatoes and freshly ground black pepper.

Chapter 15

During my exile, August was the month that came to mind when I thought of Pueblo. Winters here are mild and unremarkable. The spring is lovely—wet and cool in the evenings, clear and golden in the mornings. It’s a city filled with crab apple trees that bloom all at once and yards full of tulips, then irises, then the first early summer roses and lilacs.

By July, the sun is starting to suck the green from the landscape and all but the most exuberant of flowers—God bless marigolds and petunias!—have hidden themselves until September.

And then comes August. In August, the blaze of the relentless sun irons the color from everything and you move in a sort of blinking daze. Sprinklers run all day and night, and you can smell the green and silver sprays of water pouring life into lawns and trees. The sound of them clicking or swishing, together with the thumping of swamp coolers and the whir of overhead ceiling fans, accompanies every movement.

In August, hundreds of thousands of elm trees—too fragile for the heavy snows or the high winds, but so fertile they grow everywhere anyway—offer nearly bare branches to the blisteringly clear blue of the sky, their leaves devoured all summer by mustard bugs who then slime everything beneath with their offal.

But this August brought something new. Woven through the new but familiar pattern of days, like some nubby, hand-spun wool through plain muslin, was Malachi. Even as the days blurred together beneath the force of sun and Michael’s decline and the increasingly hectic preparations for the wedding, I knew his stamp would linger in my memory—the scent of his skin seeping over the dry ragweed smell of the fields; the glitter of his dark eyes alight in the soft gray evenings; the low, rich sound of his laughter laced through the birdlike chatter of females in such an uproar.

In August, Malachi became my rock. He was there, reliable and consistent, capable and kind and wise, through everything.

On August first, the temperature was 101. On the second, it was 102, where it stayed, relentlessly, day in and day out, for six days, when it jumped to 103 before settling back to 101 for a week. Unusual to hit so high, so long, but it did.

Jasmine and Shane took it personally, grumbling from one task to the next in wilted hair. Michael was protected from it in the hospital, but Malachi and I moved his bed downstairs to the parlor for his return, where he’d have the benefit of the breeze that blew in from the porch. If the heat was bad enough, he could sleep in the hammock slung between two hooks outside. I was also thinking of those narrow, steep stairs and how exhausted he’d been climbing them. This would make it easier.

Naturally, since there was more to do than could be done anyway, I started landing an average of one or two new accounts every week and realized I’d need to find a professional kitchen before much longer. In New York, I’d rented a restaurant kitchen in the wee hours of the morning, when it would have ordinarily been empty. It wouldn’t be hard, especially with my family connections, to make a similar arrangement here.

Malachi made himself indispensable—pitching in with uncanny accuracy wherever he was most needed. He often ferried Shane back and forth to work, fed the animals, swept floors. My family grew used to asking him to take care of things for them—one day it was driving my grandmother around to three doctor appointments in her staid gray Buick. Another, he made phone calls for Jane, who was so overwrought at all that was left to be done that she broke down and had hysterics. Another, he ran my pies to every account in town and came home with a wad of tips he gave to me with a wicked twinkle in his eye.

The best times were when we sat with Michael, who grew stronger every day, and I learned their history, both together and apart. When I learned how deeply they’d both been wounded, and how strong they each had become at the site of the scar.

On Thursday evening, I dropped Shane off at the restaurant. Malachi rode along so we could stop in for dinner at the hospital. Michael had been taken off the respirator and moved to a regular room, but they weren’t about to release him for another four or five days, and he was quickly becoming the most irritated—or irritating?—patient on the ward. I’d stopped earlier in the day at Pepe’s, a gourmet Italian/Mexican deli out in Blende, to bring him olives and goat cheese and sun-dried tomatoes. I’d cooked one of his favorite dishes, lemon-grilled zucchini, and Malachi smuggled in a good red wine in the waistband of his jeans. The nurses looked the other way when we spread the feast out, and Michael turned the television to ESPN because Malachi could not get enough of sports all day long every day.

“Man, I can’t wait for football season,” Malachi said with that yearning in his voice.

“Tell me about it,” Michael breathed, and cut me an amused glance. “Almost time, Jewel. Aren’t you thrilled?”

“Oh, definitely. Can hardly wait.” I rolled my eyes.

“You don’t like football?” Malachi said with an edge of exaggerated surprise.

“I’d rather walk barefooted through goatheads.” I lifted a forkful of cheese and roasted peppers, eyeing his shoulders. “I guess you were every coach’s dream, though, huh?”

Michael, ever the older brother, snickered. “Not exactly.”

“Hell, how could I follow Michael? They all thought I’d be some big superstar like my brother the quarterback, and all I had was size.”

I grinned. “You didn’t teach him the Game of Games, Michael? Some older brother you were.” Michael had been all-state quarterback his senior year in high school and could have gone to college on a football scholarship, but chose instead to hit the music road with Billy.

“Hey, I tried,” he said. “Boy had the coordination of a Great Dane puppy.”

I laughed, and so did Malachi. He lowered his head, a little abashed. “It’s true. I tripped on mosquitoes in those days. Broke the coach’s heart, it did, especially after my sophomore year.”

“Lord, that was a summer!” Michael said, shaking his head. “You know how it was when Shane turned fifteen? Ate you out of house and home?”

“Like he doesn’t now?” But I remembered the difference. Entire boxes of cereal, whole gallons of milk, giant pizzas with all the trimmings, double orders at Burger King—with shakes instead of soda, by his own choice—all in a single day.

“Oh, no. You have no idea. When he was fifteen, that May,” Michael said, animation lending his razor-thin face an illusion of health, “Malachi was, what? Five-eight? Five-nine?”

Malachi nodded, doing a fair job of devouring a loaf of French bread by himself now.

“In October, he was six-three and still growing. He ate from morning till night every single day and was still skinny as a rail.”

I kept myself from eyeing his gorgeous thighs, which were not at all skinny now. A restless little wish for his body roamed across my mouth and breasts, and I pushed it away. “That’s quite a growth spurt.”

He glanced at me, as if he’d felt the pulse that suddenly started thudding in my belly, and his eyes grew liquid, wicked, amused. He winked lightly, dispelling the tension. I shook my head at his wordless bawdiness and he laughed.

When I looked back at Michael, there was a very small smile around his mouth. “Anyway,” he said. “The boy had the size, and the coaches were slobbering, but he couldn’t hold a football to save his ever-lovin’ life.”

Malachi held his hands in front of him, examining them. “Shame, ain’t it?”

I thought of what else he could do with those hands. “Everybody’s got a different talent.” I licked my lower lip.

“True enough, sugar. True enough.”

“Wait a minute,” I said, narrowing my eyes at Michael. “I’m confused. I thought you left home when he was younger than that.”

Michael nodded. “Mama got herself a real good job in Biloxi, got herself a good church congregation, and she settled for the first time. They didn’t move anymore, so I stopped in as much as I could.” He frowned, staring into the past. “I knew you then—that was after the second album.”

I peered at a forkful of peppers, thinking again how much younger Malachi was. “That was the summer Billy and I went to Sicily.” I wrinkled my nose, thinking I’d been trying to get pregnant in Lucca Siccula when Malachi was having his growth spurt. “You’re a child, son, a child.”

His eyes crinkled at the corners, deep fans of sun lines born on his wild adventures. “Nah, you’re just old.”

“Ah, too true.”

“It’s just right, biologically speaking,” Michael said. “Women need a man a little younger.”

“Michael!” I protested, embarrassed in spite of myself.

He looked at me innocently. “What? You think he never heard of sex? He ain’t that young.”

Too much. I narrowed my eyes at him—he was always matchmaking me with someone. My love life after Billy had been his personal quest.

“Malachi,” Michael said, “would you run and fetch me some soda water out of the machine at the end of the hall?”

Clueless as all men, he jumped up. “Sure, bro. Be right back.”

As soon as he was gone, I stood up so I could get close and talk quietly. “What are you doing?”

He took my hand, hard. “Don’t talk. Just listen for once, will you?”

I nodded but didn’t smile.

“I see you lookin’ at him, sugar, in a way you haven’t looked at anybody in a long time. Maybe ever. And I see him looking back the same way. You’d be good for each other.”

I glanced over my shoulder. “It’s sweet of you, but no.” I squeezed his fingers gently. “Remember George.” George had been a decent enough sort, a Queens native with an accent just Italian enough to make me homesick. He’d been attractive, never married, with a house of his own in Jersey. I’d liked him well enough, but he’d fallen head over heels in love in six weeks flat and it took me a year to get rid of him.

He waved his hand. “George was Andre’s idea. I never did much care for him.”

“And Thomas?” A svelte and charming sociopath who captivated me for weeks, then stole three thousand dollars from the register one night when nobody was looking.

Michael winced. “Not my best call.” When I would have come up with another disaster of a name, he said, “What about David?”

I had to concede that hadn’t been bad. We’d dated for a long time, at least by my post-Billy standards, which was about eight months. I hadn’t been ready for a commitment and he was ready to settle down and have children, so we parted friends. “He was okay.”

“And who introduced you to Billy, hmm?”

I laughed. “Now which side of the line should I put that on?”

His clear blue eyes sobered. “The good side, Jewel. You had fifteen good years.”

I’d been kind of hoping for fifty. “At which point he self-destructed like a bomb from
Mission: Impossible
.”

“You gotta make peace, honey. Sooner or later, you’ve gotta just claim your life.”

An unexpected pinch of tears made me blink. “No, I don’t.” I heard Malachi’s step behind me. “And stop matchmaking,” I whispered.

Although he gave a good show for a solid forty-five minutes, maybe an hour on a good day, Michael tired very quickly, and after supper we left him with a big pile of magazines and novels and the channel changer. I kissed his head on the way out, feeling the thinness of flesh over bone on his brow, the furnace of illness in his pores. “Sweet dreams,” I said.

Outside, the sun had set, and the world had cooled a solid fifteen degrees. Without the iron of that sun beating you to death, eighty degrees at 20 percent humidity is pretty damned pleasant and I wasn’t in a hurry to get home. “Shane doesn’t get off for a couple of hours. You want to go find a beer somewhere?”

“Love it.”

We went to a hole-in-the-wall tavern downtown that had been there as long as I could remember, a comfortable neighborhood bar with tall booths and a dart game going on in back. He ordered tomato beers and we carried them outside to the patio. A folk guitarist wearing a long flowered skirt and a macramé top sang a wistful ballad. Her fine blond hair lifted on the wind, and although she was not particularly pretty, she had that rosebud dewiness you start to notice the minute you’ve lost it. When she saw Malachi wander out, she missed a chord and he gave her an easy grin. She smiled back, instantly smitten, and sang the next song toward him.

A gold ring looped through her belly button.

I focused on the tub of geraniums to my left, suddenly very aware of the round of Malachi’s bicep pushing against the plain white cotton of his shirt, of the shape of his wrist and hand on the table, the sense of his thigh not that far away from mine. Beneath the sound of guitar and girl-voice was the omnipresent summer music of crickets and cicadas.

“God,” Malachi said suddenly, nudging me with his elbow. “This guy looks just like Billy! Look!”

Coming through the back gate was a young man, maybe twenty-five, with the long, ropy build that seems to lend itself so well to guitar players. He was dressed in black, head to toe, black leather pants that caught the light in strategic spots, black bandana tied pirate fashion around his head. The dark hair fell nearly to his waist in rippling waves. It was a style—bad-boy rock and roller—but there was a greater similarity, too. A darkness clinging to his mouth, a loping way of moving.