The Star Garden (18 page)

He was building, not a gentle, kindly nest, but a formidable castle. A fortress, like the ones from before the Norman Conquest. I looked downward, able to make a better judgment of what I was seeing than before. Like a miniature of the castle at Edinburgh in Scotland, this house rose from a three-sided hill. From what seemed to be its ramparts, he could see anyone coming from below in the distance long before they’d see him. I turned back to stare in the direction of the hacienda. The tight feeling in my chest relaxed. I said, “You come along, too, if you will. There’s food for the Sixth Army waiting for supper. We could use another man on our side of the table.”

“I’ll come just for that reason, then. What do you think of the house so far?”

I didn’t want to say. It looked more like a dungeon than a castle to me. “It’s going to take you some time to get this finished. Maybe a year.” That way, I’d have time to think plenty, figure this way and that, whether I wanted to live here.

“Could be. Don’t think I’m going to be in it by summer. Wearing my fingers clear off is slowing me down. Mixing that stuff, I thought I’d hit something with red dirt in it, and then I found it was my hands bleeding into it. The only luck of it is the cement seems to stop infection.” He held his hands out for my inspection. “My workers will be back next week, and Harland’s coming out again. I think I’ll have a roof on by July. Between toting rocks and planting a field in April, I’ll read all those books about cattle raising in between hauling topsoil from the sheep field.”

I saw Rudolfo’s rig head up the road. I wanted to postpone this supper as long as I was able. “You need a can of teat salve. Show me again, how you are going to cool off this kitchen,” I said. The homely stack of drab rocks and mortar began to look less ugly. Then I asked him what was the measure of the place, and how many rooms he expected, and where would he have the stairs and all. We walked around the place on top of the wall as far as it would go, and back again to where the wall stepped down to the ground.

He said, “Well, I figure—if we, that is—that Chess will need a room, and your ma, and then I don’t know about Gilbert or Charlie and Elsa. They’re welcome but Charlie’s likely to want his own place.”

“I reckon if I came here to live it would just be with Chess and Granny. I …” Suddenly a pain as deep and threatening as an arrow went through my ribs and made me clutch at my sides. I felt all the losses I’ve ever known crowd into my soul at that moment.

“Are you ailing?” he said.

It was hard enough to lose the living. But to never again look out the kitchen window and smile toward Jack and the others? “My graveyard is on the hill where I can see it. Back there. You can’t see it from here. I’ve always been able to see it from the house.”

“I’ll build it taller so you can.”

The pain went into my throat and I held both hands at my collar. I could barely breathe. “You don’t understand. I have—babies buried there. And …”

“And Jack?” Udell’s eyes pierced mine.

“Yes. No, it’s not that,” I said feebly. Udell pulled on my arm and I let go of my throat, put my hands on his shoulders and let him surround me with his arms. But it was Jack. Jack waited there, always at hand in case I needed him. I held tightly to Udell’s shoulders, nestling my face against his neck. When I looked up at last, he smiled at me and kissed my forehead. Then he kissed my hair, right over my ear.

“It’s all right if it is that,” he said. And then he kissed my mouth, sweetly and gently erasing all other thoughts of longing and loneliness. His eyes held mine and with a shared pain he whispered, “I know. I know. Let’s get along, now.”

I pressed Baldy too close with my knees and he bolted out of his tracks, trying hard to do what he thought I wanted. I had to circle him around to ride alongside Udell’s workhorse. I had to get my mind back on the horse, and not on the fellow next to me, or Baldy would likely take off for Texas, the way I felt. I wondered if I had taken up loneliness for a habit, and was too addled by it to recognize the end of it.

We weren’t home a half hour before that fancy trap pulled by the four yellow horses came up to the edge of the yard, and I knew our siege was on. There was no more time for musing on either the past or the future.

Rudolfo grandly presented his four other daughters and an eight-year-old son, who I rarely have seen, and they all formed a line and curtsied or bowed. The boy wasn’t like any I’d had around, and it occurred to me that Rudolfo rarely mentioned him and I couldn’t for the life of me remember his name. It wasn’t too long that I came to realize the child was blind. Nearly mute, too, though he did whisper softly to his sisters, but he was led around by first one then the other, and helpless if no one touched him. Luz stared haughtily at the furnishings, and taking a seat in one chair she finally deemed suitable, stiffly said that their
madrastra preciosa
greatly regretted her health required her to stay at home. I knew Rudolfo’s new wife was great with child, and wondered if that was Luz’s regret, too. The two were the same age. I also knew the sneer on Luz’s lips was hidden from her father by her position in the room, the voice perfectly sweet and light.

I said to Rudolfo, “Well, aren’t you going to ask that fellow, that driver, to have supper, too?”

Rudolfo smiled that too oily smile of his and didn’t even turn toward the carriage. A man, very small in stature and with a mild, unmoving face, stood holding the reins of the lead horse. He had on the clothes of a deep-country peasant from Mexico, loose white cotton pants and shirt and a plain brown se-rape over his shoulders. His hat slid forward, then, as if he were asleep on his feet. “Caldo? He is only
el chófer,
and eats with the men when he is done working for the day. Now, dear friends, let us be merry and celebrate the return of our trust in one another, and how happy I am that you have opened your
cocina
for the joining of our
familias
at this time.”

He couldn’t know what those words meant! However, everyone was on their best behavior, and so we went to the supper table. Granny come from the parlor to the dining table just then with a hard, angry look on her face, and a cold chill ran up my spine. There would be no guessing or shushing anything she might say, so far was she beyond the spell of normal conversational regimens. However, without another word, my mama announced she’d be going to bed as she didn’t feel up to taking a meal. I was saved from her springing an untimely announcement on Rudolfo, but not from her glare, equally as furious as Luz’s had been, and hers she freely turned on everyone in the room before she left, including me.

Outside, a stiff breeze had come up. Chess and I brought out bowls of hot vegetables and plates piled high with tortillas and risen bread made with that fine white flour Udell had given me. We set it out with the best doings I could lay up, that is, a good sharp knife and fork, even for the blind boy, and napkins at each place, too, starched and ironed flat with creases by Elsa Mal-donado Elliot just that morning. Then I carried in two plates heavy with roast chicken that had baked slowly with onions and pomegranate juice. I wasn’t the cook in charge of it this night, and I’d never cooked it that way. Usually I’d just roast it and take the drippings and make gravy, and still have to beat the boys off it so there’d be enough to feed us all. Never anything so fancy and elegant. Elsa had put her touch on the finery by making the chicken that way. Charlie said he’d give her a signal after he told her papa she was there, but to wait in the kitchen.

Well, we were just bursting with polite talk about nothing in particular, and all Rudolfo’s family made continual compliments on the food. All the while, Elsa was listening for the right time to come out. That fancy chicken, though, changed the state of everyone in the room. Rudolfo took one bite and looked up at me. While he chewed, the expression on his face went from happy to puzzled, suspicious to angry. He took a drink of water. Glowering, he put down his knife and fork and raised one hand, lowering it to the table. With that movement, all his children noisily put their utensils down, too. He did not smile as he said, “Señora Elliot, the graciousness of your hospitality knows no boundary. There was only one person in the world to create
polio granadita
in this way. You have never served this at your house before.”

I’d had enough. This was just plum wrong. “Rudolfo, let’s have a talk. There’s something I got to tell you, and this here was supposed to make it easier but it’s not. I haven’t felt right about this all along. Now—”

“It’s just chicken, Señor Maldonado,” Charlie interrupted. “There is someone special here who wants to see you.” He was about to go on talking, but at those words, Elsa hurried from the kitchen door, her eyes bright with sentiment, her arms open wide.

When I saw Charlie’s expression, I knew he hadn’t meant for her to come out yet. His face was darkened by some kind of passion I feared could be anger, but I wasn’t sure. My son was no sniffling boy, of that I
was
sure. Rudolfo let a smile flick across his expression, then he looked around the room at all of us gathered there. He stopped Elsa in her tracks with another raised hand. “What are you doing here?” Rudolfo asked. There was no happiness in his voice.

“
Papal”
the girl said. Elsa drew herself up, her arms still lifted. Took in a long breath. I reckoned she’d been going over her speech for this minute all day. Maybe for weeks. Elsa said, “I’ve left the Sisters,
papa.
I am not a novice anymore.”

Luz had tears in her
eyes,
no longer the haughty and bitter one, and the other children looked expectantly toward their oldest sister, waiting only for their father’s sign to rush her and smother her with kisses. Chess put his hands in his lap. The man had never eaten a meal without both elbows propped in plain sight. Gilbert shot a look at Udell, who sat up straighter but said nothing.

Rudolfo glared at me. As if each word struggled to come from his lips, he said, “And these … friends … of ours. You betray me, and betray the Virgin, and you are so ashamed you have come to their house instead of your own home? You couldn’t come to your father’s house, where you belong?”

She fastened her gaze to the ring on her left hand, turning it as if to check its roundness. “I have come to my husband’s house, where I belong. I love you,
papá.”

Rudolfo stood and angrily swept his napkin to the floor. Then his every word got louder until he was shouting and gasping, “Who is this husband? Who takes my daughter and makes her God’s whore? Who dares to impale the finest flower of my house, stealing her virtue and mine? Let him show himself. Let him come forward and be strangled for his crime! Let him be torn apart and pitched into …
malo que el diablo
… Where is this fatherless son of some cursed—” He stopped short. His eyes nearly shot flames as they settled on my face.

Silence dropped into the room as if the air had turned thick as pudding. Elsa’s brow was damp with sweat, and though she didn’t cower or shrink from Rudolfo, her eyes were red and brimming over. Luz had a cold expression as she watched her sister come undone before their father. Rudolfo’s children’s eager faces turned from joy to horror. They clapped hands over their mouths in fear. Tears slid down Elsa’s cheeks and printed blots on the front of her black bodice. “I’ve wanted to see you. I wrote you,
papí,
that I was not happy.”

“It is not a daughter’s place to be happy. It is a daughter’s place to obey her father!”

Charlie stood then, not touching Elsa but close to her. “She did obey you, Señor Maldonado, as long as she could take it. But you couldn’t keep us apart. Elsa and I have married. This is her home, now. With me.”

Rudolfo trembled visibly. My mouth went to cotton. The food from the table seemed to cry out then, that we’d staged this betrayal and that it was cruel. The telltale sauce in crimson loops around the chicken was getting a film over it as we stood, all of us frozen. Silent. Before this very moment, the supper had seemed a fair enough way to tell him of the elopement and not get shot for the trouble of being a messenger. I surely regretted that we hadn’t come up with some better way. Something easier for the man to take. I felt lowdown and mean.

Rudolfo said, “No!” Then he turned his glare to me. “So you sent your
cabrón
to—to filthy my house, my daughter.”

“I won’t have that language in my house, Rudolfo. They were in love long ago.”

“I know what is best for my own daughter! Not you.”

“They married without telling any of us.”

He stared hard at me. “So you wait, with your trap, you wait to take, to keep, what, Dona Elliot?”

“
Papá?” Elsa.
said.

Rudolfo raised his hands, looked into both palms, then clenched them tightly into fists. “Magdalena, Luz, take Cedric. Margarita, all of you, go to the coach.”

The girls, except for Luz, began to whimper. Cedric cried aloud for Elsa while being led away. Luz led the parade toward the door. Elsa watched them go, and called their names, one by one. Only Margarita turned and waved to Elsa, but Luz pushed the child’s hand down with an angry slap.

“
Papá, “
Elsa said, “please, dear
papito,
let me sit at your knee, just like long ago. Let me bring you coffee and the flan I have made for you, just the way you like it, the way
mama
made it, with rose essence I saved so long to buy, just for you.”

Rudolfo took a step toward Elsa and Charlie, and quick as that, Charlie tugged Elsa behind him and put up a hand to his defense. But Rudolfo did not strike him. He pulled his hand short before it even got close.

Elsa stepped forward again, too boldly, I’d have to say, and smiled through her teary expression, begging, “
Papá,
come and sit…”

Rudolfo’s face grew darker still, and it seemed as if lightning crackled in his
eyes.
He squinted at her face and leaned over, closing the distance between them, then said, “All
my
children … are in
el coche!”
Then he whirled around, stepping squarely on the creased napkin lying on the floor, left the room, left the house, leaving the front door hanging wide open, and from it we felt a cold blast of air that carried on it the sound of horses being whipped furiously as they drove from the yard.