Rust

by Julie Mars

  Creating artwork in three dimensions was far beyond her skill level for the moment, yet she could imagine a future self able to do it with ease, and she rushed toward her. By Monday, she would have all the parts figured out, and she would transport them intact to Garcia’s Automotive and learn how to weld this unexpected self-portrait together permanently. She needed rusty nails. Pawing through her parts to no avail, she got in her car, Magpie in the backseat, and drove to Coronado Wrecking. She parked under a shade tree.

  “Be right back,” she said to Magpie, who was not allowed to get out of the car at the junkyard.

  By this time they were used to seeing her. The woman at the desk, a middle-aged lady who looked far too put together to work in a junkyard—what with her decaled nails, pressed jeans, and print blouse—was on the phone, and just waved as Margaret signed in and let herself out the back door into the acres and acres of old sinks and bathtubs, massive wooden doors, assorted construction materials, cars, and machinery. Carrying her orange bucket from Home Depot and a pair of thick work gloves, she passed through the huge metal shed that contained thousands of doors and out the other side, into the realm of scrap metal.

  Sometimes, when she entered Coronado Wrecking, Margaret felt that she was stepping into a post-modern cathedral. It took her breath away to see the dirt roads disappearing around the mountains of junk, a few pilgrims attempting to pillage, sack, and raid. It felt right for Margaret to be here, collecting what had been relegated to uselessness and reshaping it into something else. Within each section of the yard there was no particular order, and she had to poke around for a while before she found a pile of nails, small bolts, and nuts. She collected all there were, perhaps a quarter of her bucket, and headed back to the office to dump them on the scale.

  “That was fast,” said the woman with the decals on her nails as she weighed the parts. “Three dollars.”

  “I have my dog in the car,” Margaret explained as she straightened out three crumpled bills from her pocket. “I don’t want to leave her too long.”

  “No, you don’t want to do that in this heat,” said the woman as she tilted the scale back into Margaret’s bucket, and then presented her with a receipt. “Well, see you next time.”

  “It’ll be soon,” Margaret said, and then, because she couldn’t help it, she added, “I finally started welding today. My first time.”

  “Congratulations, honey,” said the woman, smiling in such a way that Margaret knew she meant it.

  When she got back in the car and turned on the radio to Evening Edition, she knew it was after five. That surprised her. Since she had been in New Mexico, time had changed, both shrunk and stretched. She had never inhabited time in this way, this no-job, no-classes, no-responsibilities way, and she liked it. Even if by the standards of the consumer world she was living a minimalist, if not a monastic life—where her major purchases were consistently made from a junkyard—it seemed luxurious to her, and she was grateful for it every single day.

  But today she had told Rico she needed to get a job. She knew when she said it that it was a distraction, created in the moment to help her keep herself hidden, but something had backfired. It was as if the concept of “getting a job” was sitting in the back of the bus, and when he had asked her what was wrong, she had suddenly dragged it up to the driver’s seat and forced it to sit down. Once she’d done that, it had taken the wheel, and now she was heading for the workplace. This was probably a good thing. She was all alone in the world, with no one to bail her out if she got in trouble, and could not afford to kid herself about her finances, though she had done well so far. Tomorrow, she thought, she would visit Roadrunner Courier Service and see what happened. If not tomorrow, then Friday.

  She happened to be passing Fourth Street, the turn she would take to go to Garcia’s Automotive, which naturally made her think of Rico. Rico of the acetylene torch. Rico of the TIG and MIG welding apparatus. Rico of the heat and flames and melting metal. Rico of the dragon tattoo and the dead brother. Rico of the “Come over here and kiss me.”

  It certainly wasn’t as if Margaret had never heard that line before. Such comments were frequently fired like rockets into the air at the Stereophonic Lounge, where flirting with the bartender was a favorite sport. She had responded to Rico in exactly the way she would respond to any other guy: with a playful putdown and a change of subject. And, like the guys on the barstools, he had taken it in good humor and adapted immediately to the new conversational direction.

  But that sentence kept ringing in her ears.

  She wouldn’t mind kissing him.

  Margaret knew a thing or two about kissing. Some women didn’t take it seriously. “It’s just a kiss,” she had heard them say, as if kisses were unimportant and therefore dismissable. Dismissable kisses, Margaret had noted, were usually illicit, conducted on the sly by married people or lovers whose partners would not think of a kiss with someone else as innocent. She had never seen it that way either. To her, to kiss was more like opening the door to a raging fire in the hallway. Everyone knows better than to do that. Everyone knows that when you open the door, the fire rushes in and consumes you. Once she was kissed, and, more importantly, once she kissed back, she was never the same again. A man had made his way inside her, and, once there, he could do damage. He could refuse to leave. He could fill her with hope and then walk out the door. He could disappear to India forever. Anyway, she barely knew Rico. He was her teacher and perhaps her friend. He was also a married man.

  She needed to erase “Then come over here and kiss me” from her mind and from her ears, too. “Change the fucking channel,” she suddenly said out loud, as if her mind were a radio and she could adjust it at will. It was a phrase she had heard teenage girls in New York use, kids she’d sat next to on the subway, when their faces were lit with exasperation.

  She made a right onto Eighth Street and headed home. The neighborhood was familiar to her now: the homeless woman, dressed in a raggedy trench coat with her short-haired dog on a leash, sat on a swing in a corner playground. Teenage boys with shaved heads worked on cars parked on the street. Young girls in revealing tops pushed strollers along sidewalks where weeds sprouted in the cracks. She had entered into nodding relationships with several neighbors, thanks to her walks around the block with Magpie. Little by little, Albuquerque was becoming home, even if she had only passed one short season here, just part of one summer, though in some ways it felt much longer. She parked her car in the driveway, locked up the gate for the night, and lost herself in rusty parts. It was already dark when she finally noticed that she was working in the dim glow of the one streetlight that lit the alley behind her house.

  She went inside and turned on the bathwater. While it ran, Margaret washed her filthy hands in the bathroom sink. Brownish water, the color of dirt and rust, circled the drain, rinsing off her fingers in lighter and lighter shades until it ran clear. From the time she was little, she had always enjoyed the process of cleaning up. The idea that her body could be restored to its pristine state pleased her. Perhaps it was a reaction to Catholic school, where the nuns were always harping on the ways in which black marks were etched into a person’s soul, possibly forever. It was unfair, she thought, especially the idea of Original Sin, which meant you arrived as a babe in arms with a soul already black with crimes you didn’t even commit.

  “Did Mommy and Daddy leave because of me?” she had asked Donny over and over for months after she’d first been deposited at his door.

  “No, my darling,” he had said. “They left because they’re young and selfish and they want to see the world. Some people are restless like that, and your mother is one of them. They love you with all their hearts.”

  “Did I do something wrong?”

  “No, Margaret. You’re a wonderful little girl. You did everything right. Every single thing. Don’t you be thinking it’s your fault because it isn’t.”

  But at night, in her bed, Margaret would make promises to God: If
you bring them home, I promise I will never cry again. I promise I will not whine. I won’t ever wake them up when they want to sleep, and I won’t ever touch Daddy’s paintings before they’re dry. And . . .” Her litany went on and on though God never responded, and once it became obvious that her parents were gone for good, Margaret could actually feel her own black soul, right in her chest, heavy with the sins which drove her parents from her. Perhaps as compensation, she became the cleanest child in the whole world. She scrubbed and washed with such vigor that Donny sent his neighbor, Mrs. Sullivan, on a special mission to find the gentlest possible soap, and washcloths with next to no texture. He replaced his own fingernail brush, which had coarse bristles, with a soft nylon one, and he took to limiting the amount of time she could spend in the tub. Looking back, Margaret was amazed and touched by his sensitivity, by the small things he noticed about her and acted upon with love.

  She glanced up from the sink and looked into her own eyes in the mirror. It was one of the things Donny had taught her to do when she was a child. “Look into your own eyes long enough, and you’ll always know what to do,” he had said. So there she was, staring into her green eyes in the bathroom mirror as the tub filled with water and steam collected on the edges of the mirror. She knew her eyes connected her to her own truth, just as Donny had said. She also knew that the truth she was looking for had to do with Rico, with his “Come over here and kiss me,” and with the defenses she’d layered around her, just to get through life.

  ALL AFTERNOON, Rico concentrated completely on the work he had to catch up on in the shop. He turned up the radio to cancel out any thoughts of Margaret, and he ignored the sense of emptiness that settled like dust in the shop the moment she walked out the door. He liked her ways, how she put his tools back in precisely the right places and even restacked the remaining pieces of metal and moved them to the back of the workbench so he’d have room to work there if he needed it. He liked the way she looked him in the eyes when she paid him. He wanted to do things for her—like tune up that old car of hers, especially if she ended up working for the courier service.

  By five-thirty, he was exhausted and he shut everything down with a sense of relief. A look at his appointment book, though, warned him he’d be busting hump for the next three days. It wasn’t until he climbed into his truck and pulled out of the parking lot that he thought of Rosalita. So far, he had not even told her about going to Jemez Springs with Margaret or visiting Fernando’s grave. They had made love that very morning with all of that—where he had been until one in the morning and what he had been doing—hanging heavy in the air between them, and neither mentioned it. He found it very odd and somehow exciting.

  Rico drove slowly over the speed humps on Riverside Drive. Wilfredo was out in the driveway shooting baskets. He waved and called out, “Rico, want to play?”

  “Maybe later, Wilfredo,” Rico answered. “I’m just getting home and I’m starved.”

  “Okay, maybe later,” the boy responded.

  Rico pulled into his driveway and parked. He hesitated for a few seconds, perhaps storing up some equilibrium before he headed inside. When he opened the front door, the smell of arroz con pollo enveloped him. It was so normal, so right, to enter his house full of women and smell the dinner cooking.

  “Is that you, Rico?” Rosalita called. “Dinner’s almost ready.”

  Her voice sounded natural, too. He moved to the kitchen door and looked in. Rosalita was fluttering around the stove. Elena was already at her place at the table, which was in the process of being set by Mirabel, and Jessica and Lucy were visible through the screen door, playing with a bright red kickball in the backyard.

  “I’m going to take a quick shower,” Rico said.

  Rosalita looked up from the pots and pans. “Cinco minutos,” she said, raising a wooden spatula in his direction like a saber.

  “Cinco minutos,” he repeated, already retreating from the kitchen doorway.

  In the bathroom, which he had tiled himself in seafoam green, he stripped off his clothes and undid his long ponytail. His hair was as thick and straight as Margaret’s, though not quite as long. Rosalita usually trimmed off a good four or five inches a year in the spring. Otherwise, all he did was wash it, comb it straight back, and gather it into a rubber band. He paused to examine himself in the mirror for a second while the shower water warmed up. He looked like a man ready for anything—muscular and trim and even a little bit wild, like an Indian from the old western movies, with his black hair loose and flowing over his shoulders.

  He stepped into the shower, enjoying the beating of the hot water on his back, thinking how strange it was to come into his own house, to stand in the kitchen doorway where everything appeared to be quite normal, and know, clearly, that he and Rosalita were headed for a big scene and it would happen soon. Rico accepted and expected that, but he hoped, selfishly, that it could erupt in private. It was a wish that made him sad.

  He hadn’t even settled at his place at the table for one minute before Lucy asked, “Papi, where were you last night? You’re always home for dinner.”

  Rico wasn’t used to lying because he rarely had a reason to bother, but now he said, “I had to work, mi hija.”

  “So late?” she responded. “I heard you come in after midnight.”

  “Yeah, well, a good customer of mine, he needed his car this morning,” Rico said, feeling worse with every word.

  “You shouldn’t have to stay so late,” Lucy said.

  “It almost never happens, thank God,” Rosalita said as she placed a platter of pollo in the center of the table. As she leaned forward to do so, she temporarily blocked the visual line from Rico to Lucy, and he felt grateful. He tried to catch Rosalita’s eye, but she didn’t glance at him.

  “So how was everybody’s day?” Rico asked, realizing when he was halfway through the question that he had spoken the line Rosalita always said in this moment.

  Ana had just slid into her chair. “I made an A on my psych test,” she said, and everyone clapped. It was a little ritual that they always adhered to: good news from anybody got a round of applause.

  “Tell us one of the questions, Ana,” Maribel prompted. “Make it a hard one.”

  Ana thought for a moment and then said, “Okay. A serotonin reuptake inhibitor is most frequently prescribed in the treatment of a) color blindness, b) Alzheimer’s disease, c) chronic depression, d) alcohol withdrawal, or e) obsessive compulsive disorder.”

  Everyone at the table was silent. Then Maribel said, in a matter of fact tone, “D. Alcohol withdrawal.”

  “Wrong!” said Ana, and she launched into the particulars of the serotonin reuptake inhibitor. The actual words soon faded for Rico, became like the pleasant hum of honeybees in the trumpet vines outside the window. He was happy here at dinner with his whole family, his harem, as Rosalita called it, gathered around, eating the food that he was able to put on the table for them. He loved the way Ana, with her interest in science, was always willing to dumb down complicated science concepts for them. Sometimes he would raise his hand in the midst of it all and she would call on him and he’d ask a question. “Professor Garcia,” he would begin, “why does . . .” and she would look very serious and then continue on with more and more animation in her voice. She was the scholar in the group, and he had no idea where she got it. Lucy was the dreamer, and Maribel was the most like Rosalita—practical, down to earth, and calm.

  Rico’s eyes shifted to Rosalita. She sat opposite him, but her face was turned toward Ana, and he only saw her left profile. She had been a beautiful young girl, so fresh-faced and innocent that Rico had fallen for her at first sight. That had happened at her quinceañera, to which Rico had been invited because Elena and Rosalita’s mother were church friends. He’d had nothing better to do so he tagged along, planning to feed his face, drink a few beers, and move into his evening. But when Rosalita had come out of the house, wearing high heels with a strap around the ankles and a low-cut flowere
d dress that left no doubt that she had achieved womanhood, he was smitten. He was almost twenty, a full-grown man, so he had respectfully asked her father for permission to dance with her. Once he took her in his arms, once she melted into him and gazed at him from underneath her eyelashes, thick with the mascara she was finally allowed to wear, his heart was already pounding under his shirt, and he had to fight the urge to lead her out of the backyard in front of everyone and disappear into the sunset in his truck.

  He had been with several women by that time, but his heart had never acted up before, never felt inclined to open wide and welcome love. But he could barely refrain from whispering “Te quiero mucho, Rosalita” into her ear at the end of their first dance. It must have been clear that whatever had enveloped him had also descended on her because, even though it wasn’t the politest thing to do at her quinceañera, she refused all the others—boys and men—and from then on, she was Rico’s and that was that. After a month, Rosalita was riding her bicycle toward Garcia’s Automotive at the same time Rico’s father was leaving at the close of business. Within minutes of his exit, Rico would unlock the door to her, and they would climb into the backseat of whatever car was in the shop and not even come up for air until her curfew, which during the first year was eleven p.m. Rico wore condoms, colored ones that he bought in packages of fifty. Despite that precaution, Rosalita got pregnant before a year and a half had gone by. She gave birth to Lucy when she was just seventeen. Neither she nor Rico ever regretted it. Rico had already found his piece of land and, with his father’s help, had purchased it on a twenty-year real estate contract. He and Rosalita moved in there together when only one room of the house was constructed—wheel barrowful of adobe by wheel barrowful—when there was no running water, an electrical panel consisting of two fuses, and an outhouse. They were deeply, completely happy.