Rose sat there stunned. The forbidden subject, and Mami had brought it up, casually discussed it, and revealed her heart, all in a matter of minutes. What did she say? Thank you? “Are you giving me advice?” she finally asked.
“Not exactly.”
Her mother reached across the table and touched the white streak in her daughter’s hair. Self-consciously, Rose reached up and gently pulled her fingers away. “Do you think I should dye it?”
“Your hair is your flag, Rose Ann. The decision is up to you. You’re going gray the same way I did.”
“How is that?”
“Every shock that hits you from now on will travel through body and be revealed in your hair. I think it’s going to be
maravilloso
when it’s entirely silver. You weren’t a pretty child the way Lily was, but you are going to make a striking older woman.”
It was just like Mami to temper a compliment. Rose looked at her
plate. The leftovers from the tamale sampler would make a second meal. Rose couldn’t have eaten a bite more, whether Mami made a scene or not. Joanie and Chachi noisily licked the plate Benito had brought them until Rose reached down and took it away.
Mami chattered about the tastes of each different tamale and made notes on a napkin. “These are the best,” she said, pointing to the mushroom tamales. “But the sun-dried tomato one has too little texture. Corn isn’t enough.”
“What if you added olives?”
Mami nodded excitedly. “Maybe some peppers, too.”
In a few weeks’ time it would be Christmas. As she did every year, Mami expected Rose to stand alongside her in the kitchen and mix up huge batches of masa and lard into paste. Then, with the back of a wooden spoon, Rose would spread the paste across a corn husk and send it along to be filled with shredded pork, chile verde, mushrooms, whatever, and tied with thin strips of husk. The idea
didn’t make her mouth water like it usually did. Maybe she should go to the doctor, ask for B
12
shots. She looked up and saw her
mother fold her hands on the tablecloth. The posture was unmistak- able: imminent lecture.
“You know, Rose, when you and Lily mended your fences I was thrilled. I try to stay out of you girls’ business, no one can say I don’t. But I feel that I just have to say this one thing.”
“Mami,” Rose warned.
“No, I must. Then I have something else I need to tell you. Some- thing serious.”
Rose pushed her plate away. “Fine. Say it. Get it over with.” “Your sister Lily isn’t as strong as you think.”
“Give me a break. Lily’s like some unstoppable force of nature.
You ought to have named her after an element, not a flower.”
Mami nodded. “There’s truth in what you say. Lily’s spirit is strong like quicksilver is strong. When you two quarrel, she’s trapped, with no outlet. If the climate gets cold enough, she cannot be more remote.”
Rose spread her hands. “And this is supposed to mean what? Mercury can be poisonous. I’m getting a headache trying to follow you. Just tell me, and let’s ask Benito for the check.”
Mami pressed her lips together. “I should think that being older you could find it in your heart to be the bigger person here, to overlook Lily’s shortcomings. To be there for her.”
“Be there for Lily?” Rose sputtered, her voice rising in pitch. “
I’m
the one whose children turned into thieves and motorcycle fanatics so thoughtless they can’t even be bothered to telephone home and say Happy Thanksgiving to the woman who gave birth to them, who gave up any hope of a sex life to raise them to adulthood after their father died, and I’m the one whose husband was screwing somebody else, not that anyone gives a damn, and I’m the one who picked the wrong man again, and Lily—” Rose ran out of steam and breath at the same moment, looked around and saw that half the people in the restaurant, Austin included, were looking her way. She clapped her hand over her mouth. The dogs pawed nervously at her ankles. “Oh my God. I have so little sleep under my belt I just blurt out every thought that comes into my head. I could curl up and die.”
Her mother looked out the window at the cars in the parking lot. In the afternoon light, her face showed the strains of age. She reached across the table and patted Rose’s hand. It was such an unexpected, tender gesture that it made Rose ache for a whole lifetime of that kind of kindness.
“Shepherd’s in the hospital, Rose. I think he’s going to die soon, maybe this week, if the doctor your father hired knows what he’s talking about. I’m going to need you to help me with the arrange- ments. This is going to be very hard on your father. Those two go back almost fifty years, Rose Ann, not to mention hundreds of horses. It’s going to be a sad time for all of us, but I’m most afraid of how it will affect Lily.”
Benito chose that moment to set the check down on the table. “So how was everything?” he said, smiling tentatively.
Rose burst into tears.
“
Lo siento
,” he said, handing her a napkin, as if the application of linen to her overflowing eyes would quell the outburst. “Don’t worry about the bill; this lunch is on me. Maybe next time we can feed you a better meal.”
“Benito, listen,” Mami said. “Rose just got some bad news, and it hit her hard. The food was wonderful, really it was.”
He let out a sigh of relief. “I still won’t let you pay for it.” He touched Rose’s hand. “Maybe this isn’t the best time to ask, but if you want a job here, we’d love to have you. Only part time, I’m afraid—prep work, salads, and soup—and the hours are terrible, but if you decide you like the work, it could turn into full time. If you’re interested.”
To embrace good news so soon after hearing about Shep only made Rose’s tears flow that much harder. All she could do was pat her cheeks with the napkin and shake her head yes. Mami laid a tip down on the table. “It seems that we’ve solved two problems today. That’s wonderful. But she’ll have to start next week, Benito. Right now Rose is needed for family business.”
There were times all you could do was walk past a church, quickly, without stopping, and Rose knew this was one of them. The sanctu- ary of an empty pew was too tempting. Yes, they provided comfort, a space for reflection, but avoiding the hospital room was the wrong thing to do. After Mami left, Rose drove to the veterinary office and dropped the dogs off with Paloma, who gave Rose a quick hug. “Go be with your family. If you don’t make it back by closing time, Rey will make sure they get supper. Nacio and I will feed the horse to- night. Just go. And Rose? When all this is over, try not to be such a stranger.”
“
Gracias
, Paloma.” Rose hurried to the client parking area, found her car keys, and a flush of shame burned her skin. She’d been so focused in on her own troubles she’d neglected her friend. She didn’t have such a surplus of friends that she could afford to do that.
Just let me get through this business with Shep
, she prayed,
and instead of behaving like some self-obsessed idiot, I promise I’ll start acting like a human being
.
Floralee’s hospital boasted 125 beds, an emergency room, two ORs, a radiology department that shared space with the hemato- logy/pathology lab, and a volunteer-run gift shop that sold yellow- ing get-well cards, slipper socks, playing cards, and breath mints. What it didn’t have was the kind of state-of-the-art equipment Lily was used to selling, or renowned physicians able to work miracles. Its doctors were down-home specialists. They set broken ankles in casts so that a cowboy could still go riding while his bones knitted themselves back together. A workingman’s lacerations, or trauma caused by an excess of beer and country-and-western music, were stitched up neat, but it wasn’t plastic surgery. The hospital held free vaccination clinics for children whose parents couldn’t afford their shots, delivered a couple of dozen babies a year, and dried out the occasional drunk who generally went back out there and got wet all over again. Anything more
complicated they sent by ambulance to Santa Fe or to Albuquerque via helicopter. Rose walked into the reception area, received a sincere smile from the woman working the desk, and kept moving, checking the brown plastic signs on the wall to find the wing Shep was in. Beneath her boots the shiny linoleum was polished to a glare. A warm, clean-soap-safe smell filled the hallway. Rose passed two doctors dressed in blue scrubs and a nurse who still wore those old- fashioned rubber shoes that didn’t make any noise. The nurse told her which room was Shep’s. Rose hesitated only a moment, her palm flat against the laminated wood door. As soon as she opened it, this crisis would be real. She steeled herself, gathering her resolve, calling on every last bit of composure. All the way over here in the car, she’d cried her tears. Now was the time to put them away.
A nurse was checking Shep’s vital signs when she pushed open his door. Hat in hand, her father was standing at the foot of the bed looking down on his oldest friend, whose skin bore the unhealthy pallor of those who are fundamentally tired and on their way out of this world.
Rose touched her father’s shoulder. Without looking, he reached up and laid his hand over hers. She whispered, “Tell me what you need me to do, Pop.”
“I wish I knew. Just stay here with me, I guess. He’s going downhill so fast.”
The nurse finished her work and left the room. Shep was hooked up to various machines, but not a respirator. There had been one of those in the room when they let her in to see Philip. Someone had cut into his neck in order to fit in a tube to help him breathe. In the end, what was one more hole in his mangled body? At the time her faith helped her believe his spirit had already departed.
Rose sat down in one of the chairs. Her father stood between her and Shep’s bed. For long minutes they said nothing at all. Occasion- ally her father squeezed her hand, and Rose felt its age as strongly as she did its warmth. It was hard for her to raise her head, to look up and acknowledge that Shep’s death was coming, because she knew that it wasn’t going to be the last one she’d experience. Someday she’d be standing at her father’s bedside, and that was going to hurt ten times more than this. Eventually she noticed that her father’s other hand was clasped around his old friend’s. He and Shep weren’t blood, but they didn’t need to share DNA to feel a bond. She rubbed her father’s
knuckles with her thumb, wondering how long he’d been standing vigil. “Pop? You want me to get you some coffee?”
“Thanks, but I don’t think I could stomach it. Let’s just stay put until your sister arrives. Just before you got here she called from the airport. The way she drives, it shouldn’t be long now.”
“Yes,” Rose said. “I imagine.” Lily would be here soon. After all, she was the one Shep loved best. Losing him would rock her world. Mami had a point there, but surely when he was on his deathbed, Lily could manage to hold herself together.
llowing you back in my heart was harder than leaving my job,”
Tres said when he’d shaken off the rain, left his shoes on the welcome mat, and settled in at the foot of Lily’s bed.
She wanted to argue,
Look how easily you love Leah
, but, stoned on pain relievers, for once she was able to hold her tongue. “Maybe if I knew the reasons you left I could believe that,” Lily answered.
Tres took a breath and let it out slowly. “I had this patient, a middle-aged woman, moderately depressed but certainly not suicid- al. Been seeing her a year, and it seemed like she was making pro- gress. Turned out she’d saved up the pills I’d prescribed for her anxiety and taken them all at once.”
Lily sighed. “That’s awful, Tres. Every doc I know shoulders his failures, but it’s the decent ones that don’t forget them.”
“Maybe you’re right.” He got up and touched the framed print of the white coyote. “Veloy’s work?”
Lily nodded, and the movement made her already spacey brain feel like Jell-O bouncing inside her skull. “Every time I look at it I miss being home so bad I can feel it in my chest. Why do I get the feeling you’re not telling me all of it?”
He smiled. “Because you know me too well. After I lost that pa- tient, I told myself it was a fluke: I’d never let it happen again. Then this teenage boy, whose major problem seemed to be nothing more complicated than adolescence and being the object of his parents’ custody battle, cut his wrists and bled to death in a swimming pool. He left a note saying he ‘didn’t want to make a mess.’ I still don’t know how I missed the clues.”
Lily didn’t need to hear any more, but she knew it was essential for Tres to tell her.
He shoved his hands into his pockets and looked her in the face. “I’d lost my instincts. How could I continue practicing if it meant risking a single client’s health? So I took the leave, and I still don’t want to go back. Whenever I think about it I come up against a wall.” Several times Lily wanted to interrupt, but she petted Buddy in- stead. Her blue doggie was being remarkably calm, but she knew
him well enough not to trust outward appearances.
“So maybe you can understand why I’m gun shy,” Tres said hopefully, “even though around you I swear it’s the last thing I want to be.”
Lily held out her arms. Tres went into them gratefully. She held on to his shoulders and ran her hand up the back of his collar, which was damp from rain. She bent and smelled the skin at the nape of his neck, which smelled like campfires and cloudy days, and faintly of detergent. She kissed him there, and he ran his fingers through her hair. After a while of that they got naked, but with every incre- mental motion of increasing passion Lily’s migraine pain returned, so fiercely that she started to cry. “Damn!” she said. “I’m going to have to take another pill. This hardly ever happens.”
“Migraines are often symptomatic of underlying conditions,” Tres warned when he looked at the prescription label of her medicine. “When’s the last time you saw a physician?”
She laughed. “Depends on your definition of ‘see.’ Far too often, if you ask me. I’ve had the tests, Tres. I let this one go on too long. By morning it’ll be history. Come on, let’s try it again. Just don’t make me move too much and I can probably—”