Rust

by Julie Mars

  Meanwhile, Margaret put each little bit of metal through its transformation from solid to liquefying, from cold to molten, from inflexible to hot putty. It was dizzying to her, the way everything could change, given the right circumstances, such as relentless heat, oxygen, and a determined welder. The idea that these little pieces of steel and iron and brass—so complete in themselves—were about to meld together forever, was somewhat shocking to her. It seemed so random.

  She glanced up at Rico, who had his back to her as he used a monkey wrench to adjust something under the chassis of the Chevy on the lift. She knew he was falling in love with her, though she couldn’t understand why. She could feel love in the air all around her, as if it seeped out of Rico’s pores to form a little invisible cloud that made the dry desert air seem moist whenever he came near her. Today she had told him a family secret, a rare event for Margaret, who normally hoarded the story of her parents’ disappearance, as if by sharing it she would be giving away the last of what she had of them.

  She had to admit, he was sexy, with his beautiful teeth, his long dimples, and his arms that looked carved from something far sturdier than muscle and flesh. He had a way about him, a suggestion that he had endured and would endure, come what may. Margaret, who felt her whole life had been, until recently, one long endurance test, could not help but respond to that. She recognized it in Rico because she herself had so often had to carry on when she really would much rather have crawled away and hid.

  So, despite her determination and her words, such as “I never get involved with married men—never,” which left no room for interpretation, Margaret was not completely immune, and it bothered her. Even in this moment, as she rested on her stool preparing to fire up the torch once more, she could imagine Rico standing behind her, closing his arms around her to demonstrate how to handle the flames and the fire, teaching her how to weld in a risky hands-on way instead of the current hands-off one they had chosen. She could imagine his lips on the back of her neck, kissing her along the hairline, behind her ear, perhaps, until she couldn’t stop herself from turning around, offering her mouth. It had been a long time since it had even occurred to her to imagine such things.

  Margaret let out a breath that she didn’t even know she had been holding and returned to work. And the moment she ignited the torch, all her ideas about Rico disappeared into the flames, and all she could think was, Be careful. Be careful when you play with fire.

  By the end of the morning, Margaret had a lopsided cylinder to show for all her efforts. It was wider at the top, perhaps eighteen inches across, and narrower at the bottom, perhaps six inches. It suggested a conch shell, rolled and welded into a permanent spiral, or a cocoon. It took her hours, and she felt exhausted. When noon came, she carefully put the tools back in their assigned places.

  Rico, in just three days, had begun to look forward to the moment when she released her hair, shook it out, and ran her fingers through it. Then she would carry her bag to the chair in the office, sit down, and dig through it until she found her wallet. She’d extract thirty or thirty-five dollars, depending on how long she stayed, and hand it to him.

  “Thanks a lot, Rico,” she would say, looking straight into his eyes. After she left, he would open the back of the frame and add it to the rest of the money she had given him. It was already a hundred dollars, no small amount for Rico. He still had no plan for what to do with it.

  “So how’d it go?” he asked.

  “Good, I think. I see what you mean about keeping the temperature even. I burned up five or six pieces before I began to get the feel of it.”

  He leaned back in the folding chair until the front feet were well off the ground. “What? Your charts didn’t help?” he asked with a challenging little smile.

  “Not really,” she answered, and then laughed. “I didn’t even look at them. But you knew I wouldn’t, right?”

  “I don’t know anything,” he said. “Everybody’s different.”

  “You really think so?” Margaret asked, and Rico could feel them lifting off, when suddenly whatever they were talking about shifted shape and he felt he had to hang on to keep up.

  “Are we still talking about welding?” he asked.

  “We’re talking about welders now,” she informed him. “Do you really think they’re all different?”

  Rico thought about it for a few seconds. “Some are better and some are worse,” he finally said.

  “See?” she responded.

  “See what?” He didn’t feel there was anything to see.

  “You could’ve told me I was wasting my time with the charts.” For some reason, Margaret felt very irritated by this.

  “You don’t need me to tell you what to do every minute,” he said.

  “Look, I want you to tell me what to do.”

  Rico found this concept hilarious. If there was ever a woman who did what she wanted, it was Margaret. “That’s what you want?” he asked, finding it difficult to keep a straight face.

  “Yes, it is.”

  “Then come over here and kiss me,” Rico said, feeling very far away from whatever they were originally talking about.

  For just a fraction of a second, Margaret felt she was inside a giant prism. Shards of colored light were everywhere. She could disappear into them with just one simple movement. She was tempted, but instead she cocked her head and gave him a mock reprimanding look. “It ain’t gonna happen, Rico.”

  He smiled as if he’d expected that would be her response. As if, Margaret thought, he had to make a joke about his desires in order to let some of the steam in his body blow off.

  “There’s nothing wrong with making a chart, Margaret,” he said.

  It was obvious to Rico, who, after all, lived with six females, that Margaret was revved up about something, though he didn’t know what. At home, he quickly retreated from women in that state. Over the years he’d developed a coping mechanism that he called “doing a U-ey” away from a female of any age who had that particular aura of impatience about her. But today, instead, he wanted to move right into it so he said, “What’s bothering you?”

  “You want a list?” she responded testily.

  “If you have one,” Rico said.

  She did not say, “I feel your lust and love, and I’m afraid it will get out of control and I will lose you as my welding teacher.” She did not add, “I’m scared of the way I felt sprawled out with you on a rock by a busy little river. I’m terrified because I told you about my parents this morning, which is something I never do, and now I can’t take the words back.” Margaret had her own ways of doing a U-ey, so she said, or rather growled, “For one thing, I have to get a fucking job,” and Rico started to laugh. Once he started, he couldn’t stop. “Lo siento,” he said because he knew how women hated to be laughed at, even when they were being impossible. “It’s just so funny.”

  “Why is it funny?” Margaret asked.

  “Because everybody has to have a fucking job. Why fight it?”

  Actually, she thought though she didn’t say it, she wanted to stop fighting altogether. She wanted to stop struggling, too. Stop worrying and stop fretting and most of all stop doubting.

  “I was thinking about what you said yesterday—about being a courier. That seems like a good job for me.”

  “Well, let’s walk down the block and see if Benito’s home. He’s the guy I told you about.”

  “Really?” Margaret said, “okay.”

  She felt obligated to go since she had brought it up, but the truth was she didn’t need a job at precisely this moment in her life. She still had enough money to get by for a few months if she was frugal, which she was. But she also knew that the welding equipment she wanted would cost at least two thousand dollars, maybe more; if a job, especially one that would put her and Magpie on the open desert road, fell into her lap, she would not say no.

  So Rico locked up and they started down Barelas Road together, Margaret carrying her day’s work in her arm l
ike a grocery sack.

  Rico saw Benito’s pickup truck in the driveway. It was a ten-year-old Toyota that he kept in perfect shape. He opened the little chain-link gate to the narrow walkway and they went in. Margaret rested her cockeyed cylinder against the inside of the fence and followed Rico. When he knocked on the door, Benito answered, wearing nothing but a pair of boxer shorts. He had a big mug of coffee in his hand and he looked sleepy.

  “¿Qué pasa, ese?”

  “Nada,” replied Rico. “We came by to find out what you have to do to become a courier.”

  When Benito heard the word “we,” he widened his focus and noticed Margaret standing behind Rico on the narrow walkway. He glanced from her to Rico and then back to her again. Rico, who knew Benito for a long time, could see his mind working, putting pieces together.

  “Ándale, come on in,” said Benito. “I just got up. I made a run down to Roswell last night and didn’t get home till three-thirty.”

  “This is Margaret. She needs a fucking job,” Rico said, plastering himself against the wall so Margaret could step past him. As soon as she did, Benito gave Rico a little playful punch on the bicep.

  “You got a car?” he asked.

  “More or less,” she replied.

  “There’s always work, especially if you can go at the last minute and don’t mind the long hauls.”

  “What’s long?”

  “Couple hundred miles.”

  “That’s do-able,” she said.

  They settled in Benito’s living room, which was spotless. Somebody kept it that way, and one glance at Benito convinced Margaret it wasn’t him. It looked as if he had a big family. There were pictures of kids everywhere.

  “I got a business card around here somewhere.” Benito got up and opened and closed a few drawers before he found it. He handed it to Margaret. It read “Roadrunner Courier Service.” Then, in small print, “Running the road in New Mexico since 1974” with an address and phone number.

  “Just stop by over there. Tell them Benito sent you.”

  “Thanks,” said Margaret. “I will.”

  “You want some coffee?” Benito asked, as if he had suddenly remembered his manners.

  “No, man. I gotta get back to work,” Rico said, standing up. “Gracias, Benito.”

  Margaret got to her feet, too. “Yeah, thanks a lot, Benito,” she said.

  “You live in the neighborhood, Margaret?” he asked.

  “Yeah. Around the block.”

  “Bienvenida a Barelas,” he said. “Stop in anytime,” and she smiled.

  Rico and Margaret let themselves out and proceeded down the walkway, where Margaret stopped for a second to hoist the welded metal into her arms. “I can’t forget this wad of metal,” she said, and Rico laughed. He pushed open the gate and she went through.

  “You gonna check out the courier service?” Rico asked.

  “I think so,” Margaret answered. “I have to think about it a little more, though.”

  “Don’t rush into anything.” He smiled and she smiled back. But there, in the hot summer sun, it crossed her mind that she was rushing into everything, rushing into everything from the flames to the river, from the open road to the endless desert sky, from loneliness to, if she wasn’t careful, love.

  “Thanks, Rico. I’ll see you Monday.”

  To Rico, her voice sounded light, as if saying goodbye to him for a five-day stretch was easy. It did not feel so easy for him, but he called, “Hasta el lunes.” Then he turned to the right and Margaret turned to the left, and they walked away from each other.

  1990

  THERE IS no American prisoner named Regina Donnery in the Fort Aguada Jail for Women. The records go back ten years, and Vincent begs the officer, a young man with a fresh face and kind eyes, to check through all of them. He does, but finds nothing.

  “Could I speak to the guards, perhaps?” Vincent asks. “Someone who has been here for sixteen years?”

  “There is no such person,” the officer says. He wears a name-tag which reads “Sandeep Singh.”

  Vincent feels dizzy. He reaches for the edge of the officer’s desk to steady himself.

  “What about . . . older records?” he finally asks.

  “We don’t have the personnel to do such a search.”

  Vincent feels a glimmer of hope. “But do you have records?” he asks. “Could I look through them myself?”

  “I will ask my supervisor,” says Sandeep Singh. “Come back in the morning.”

  “Please,” Vincent responds. “Please. I beg you.”

  Vincent lets himself out of the office into the sharp sunlight. He starts walking. The town is six kilometers away. It is a tourist destination, and he heads there, hoping to find an American to listen to his story, to reach into his wallet. To help.

  There is no one. He parcels out the last of his rupees. He buys small bits of food from street vendors. He steals what he can to eat. He finds an office building and enters it before dusk, hiding in a closet full of cleaning supplies until everyone leaves. He searches unlocked offices and desks for rupees or food. He rinses his clothes, hanging them to dry over the railing on the second floor. He drinks from the faucet in the bathroom. He sleeps on a short couch in the hallway. In the morning, he walks back to the prison.

  He lives this way for three weeks, until finally Sandeep Singh leads him to a storage room on the edge of the prison grounds. Metal shelves are piled floor to ceiling with boxes. There are signs of rat infestation.

  But Vincent goes through each one.

  On the eleventh day, he finds a paper with Regina’s name. It is written primarily in Hindi.

  He carries it to Sandeep Singh.

  Sandeep Singh reads it slowly.

  He raises his eyes to Vincent’s.

  “She died of hepatitis in 1976, just two years after she arrived here. Her body was cremated.” He touches Vincent’s arm. “I give you my sympathy, Vincent,” he says, as Vincent folds inward. He sits in the chair in Sandeep’s office, which is full of people, and he cries like a baby.

  Little by little, the noise in the room diminishes until there is silence.

  Except for the sound of one old, broken man, sobbing.

  WHEN MARGARET arrived at her house, she greeted Magpie in her usual affectionate manner, and then made a beeline to the cement pad where all her rusty parts were spread out. She carried her hunk of freshly welded metal to the pad, propped it up against the big elm tree, and stared at it for a long time. She had no idea how it happened, but somehow, between Benito’s house and her own, she’d received an image of a finished product, and now she felt compelled to bring it into the world.

  It had started with her spontaneous use of the word “wad.” This was not a word she had much occasion to use, but it had had a place in her vocabulary, and in her mind, ever since the day Harold had given up on her. He had said, “Please. Let me help unravel the wad you use to get through life,” and she had replied with a mean remark, one that—she thought as she lay paralyzed with grief in her bed for days afterward—had been formed completely from the pain in which she was and had always been entangled. It captured her imagination, this idea that she was wrapped in a protective sheath, one that made her safe from hurt though, paradoxically, was itself made of memories that hurt her, layered around her like a cocoon. As she had lain curled up like a baby in the womb on her foam mattress on Avenue B, she had drifted backward through the events that formed this mess—her deep loneliness and her hopelessness and her inability to trust that things could change, maybe get better. Her money struggles, formed in part by a compulsion to live below the radar, a cash-only lifestyle that made her feel like a scavenger, an eater-of-opportunity, a New York City cockroach. Her losses: Harold, who had just walked away. Christina, her one true friend, who had died in the World Trade Center, when fire and melting metal ravaged the investment firm where she’d worked for just seven weeks. Donny, who collapsed behind the Bit O’ Blarney bar and died in the arms
of a regular who had nothing better to do but drink his afternoons away and stare out the window at the tugboats in the harbor. Vincent, her father, the love of her young life, and Regina, her mother, who had always been so elusive, the mother she barely remembered. And the word “derivative,” which was carelessly applied to her artwork, the one port in the storm that was her life. Underneath all these layers was a terrified heart, one that had desperately needed to be wrapped in love to thrive, but had wadded itself in sorrow to survive in the meantime.

  Now, all these years later, she’d been presented with an image. A woman breaking free. Margaret could see it in her mind: a tornado of metal parts, raggedy and welded together like armor. Below it, two ankles that perhaps seemed bound by the tight end, and two feet, too small to stand on. And from the top, a woman’s head thrown back, her face looking skyward, and her two arms, lifted and free, emerging at last. She would call it, “Self-Portrait: Unraveling the Wad Used to Get Through Life.” She would assemble her portrait from rusty engine parts, maybe hang it from the Chinese elm tree in her yard where it could remind her every day of what she was finally ready and able to do.

  For all the years she’d painted, she had never, not once, made an overt self-reference, never created a painting that was even vaguely figurative. She had always stood before a blank canvas like a woman embarking on a journey from which she might not return. She loved that intensity. She loved moving into the paint as if it were a cave she had to find her way out of. Her impulse to weld was similar, but it felt more personal, bigger, and riskier.

  She dumped a bucket of fresh parts onto the concrete pad and started to work. She chose gears for the head, and long railroad bolts for arms. She found screws for fingers and unidentifiable bits of machinery for ears and eyes. Feverishly, she worked her way into three dimensions, as if she knew her mental concepts had been flat for too long and needed to be multiplied by themselves, squared or cubed in her mind as well as her fingers, and now it was happening.