Rust

by Julie Mars

  “Is everything okay with Elena?” she asked.

  “I guess so,” Rico responded.

  “With you, everything is always a guess. Why is that, Rico?” Rosalita said, but she said it with a chuckle.

  Rico did not take up her question. “She’s on a Fernando jag,” he said instead.

  “What’s new?” asked Rosalita, who had long ago grown tired of what she called Elena’s hit tune, “What Happened to Fernando?”

  Rico sat down in the middle of the sofa. “We’re lucky, you know, Rosalita? That we never had any trouble like that with any of the girls.”

  “Well, there was that moment when Lucy got pregnant,” Rosalita said.

  Rico dismissed it with a wave of his hand. “It’s not the same thing,” he said.

  “I know,” Rosalita said. “I’m just saying we’ve had our hard times.”

  Perhaps because Rico had been listening to Elena in a new way, he felt calm, as if listening in that particular way soothed both mind and spirit. He turned to Rosalita, saying, “In case you’re wondering, I haven’t slept with Margaret. I haven’t even kissed her.”

  “But you want to,” she said in a matter of fact tone.

  “I wouldn’t mind,” Rico said, “but that doesn’t mean it’s going to happen. She’s said no, for one thing.”

  “So you asked her?”

  “Not exactly, but it came up.”

  In this moment, late at night, calmly sitting on the sofa admitting feelings which are forbidden, which are rarely talked about calmly with one’s own spouse, Rico felt unusually strong. It had to do with Elena, he thought, with her comment that she could now die in peace. She must have wanted to give up at times, and what she got in the end was so minimal—just a spontaneous visit to the cemetery by a brother who didn’t even know why he was doing it. But it was enough to set her free. Even if Rico did not want her to be free enough to die on him, he was still inspired by her determination to claim some respect for her older son, no matter how long it took.

  He reached toward Rosalita and covered her hand with his. She did not turn toward him, but she did not move her hand away from his either. “I’m so sorry about how lonely you’ve been for the last few years,” he said.

  Now she turned to face him. He could see tears in her eyes, silver crescents. “I’m sorry, too,” she whispered. “I’m sorry you were lonely, Rico.” And right then, as if the words “I’m sorry” had the power of a tidal wave, they were swept toward each other; and right there, in the living room where any of the girls could show up at any moment on their way to the bathroom, they made love.

  When it was over, after they had collected their clothes from the floor, after they had moved into the bedroom and Rosalita had fallen asleep, Rico remained wide awake. He felt content and peaceful, lying there with his wife’s head resting on his chest, and hearing the plaintive quality in the voices of the coyotes howling far away down the river.

  A heightened awareness filled Rico with such awe that he kept his breathing as quiet as possible so as not to disturb the experience. He had his wife in his arms again, and suddenly their relationship seemed new. He had inadvertently given his mother the gift she had been waiting for. At the bottom of it all was Margaret, who had shown up in his shop and started an uproar.

  He would not see her for several days, and that idea was unbearable. Rico already knew that he would concoct a reason to drop by her house. Did she feel the same way, he wondered. Was she over there in her little rented house dreaming of him? Perhaps plotting a way to see him long before Monday came? It did not seem at all contradictory to Rico that he was deeply happy that he and Rosalita were back on track, while he still had a desperate longing for Margaret.

  That rooster that drove Elena mad had already started to crow before Rico finally drifted off. When he woke up, Rosalita was gone and he had just enough time to join Jessica and Lucy at the breakfast table and then head off to work himself. The events of the past few days, they were all good, he thought, but he was happy that he would be busy at the garage all day—too busy to think.

  1991

  THE PLANE approaches the city just before dawn. Vincent is tired. He has been on his way home for half his life, waiting to land. He peers out the window into the darkness, which ends at a wall of lights, even at this late hour.

  It is August.

  Vincent wears sandals, and he is grateful that, however it happened, he is returning when the city is hot, when his clothing is suitable to the weather and he does not have to worry about freezing on the street.

  He knows New York well, or at least he used to.

  By the time he passes through Customs and Immigration, it is light outside. He steps through the revolving door, and it smells like pavement. There is a line of waiting taxis, but he finds his way to a local bus stop. The bus will take him to a subway station. The subway will take him into Manhattan. He will change trains as needed and finally emerge from underground on the corner of Eighth Avenue and Fiftieth Street.

  He will walk to Donny’s apartment.

  Ring the bell.

  Wait.

  AS HE opened the hood on a mint 1957 Thunderbird, one that he had personally kept alive against all odds for the past twenty years, it occurred to Rico that, while he had talked to Rosalita about Margaret, he had never talked to Margaret about Rosalita. He had admitted the truth about his infatuation to his wife as if she were a friend to whom he could say anything, rather than a spouse—and a jealous one, at least she had been in the past. She didn’t show many signs of jealousy now. She seemed instead to have put on blinders and retreated into a more solid part of herself, as if hunkering down to wait out this tornado was the smart position to take. And maybe it was.

  He wondered, as he tested the spark plugs and adjusted the carburetor, how he would have handled the news of Rosalita’s big crush on whomever-it-was four years ago if she had admitted it when she was in its grip. Would he have flown into a rage? Clamped down on her, questioning where she was at all times, like most of the other Chicano guys he knew? Gone after the guy? He didn’t know. He couldn’t know, because Rosalita, unlike Rico, had never owned up to her secret yearning, her great temptation, her sudden desire for a new life that did not include him.

  Of course, things were different, very different, four years ago when she had come to her fork in the road. He tried to think back. They had been together nineteen years at that point, no small amount of time. It was the year before Lucy got pregnant, a year after Ana’s quinceañera, the year Maribel entered Rio Grande High. Rosalita was thirty-five, and he was thirty-nine. He didn’t remember suspecting that there was another man anywhere on the horizon. He thought, as Rosalita withdrew, that it was a temporary state that lingered, brought on by the routine of so many years together coupled with the approach of middle age and all the adjustments women had to go through.

  From that moment in the high school parking lot when Rosalita had finally told him the truth, Rico had fought the urge to press her for more information. He knew he was better off turning away from the details—both the identity of the man and knowing exactly how far it progressed. Knowledge of these things would eat at him. Because he was in the grip of his powerful lust for Margaret, because he had this idea in his mind that they shared a destiny, he had managed to remain somewhat detached, as if he were on a hilltop far away from this chaos.

  But now, he realized that he wanted to talk to Rosalita about it. It seemed important, probably because they had started to fuck again, which was more or less the same thing as oiling the gears on this Thunderbird. It kept it going, and that was that. So when he arrived home that night, after dinner was done and Elena was safely delivered back to her casita, Rico stepped into the living room and said, “Come outside, Rosalita. It’s a beautiful night. Come and see the stars.” All the girls were there in the living room, and Rico knew instinctively that she would not want to reject such an invitation in front of them.

  “Are there mosquito
es?” she asked halfheartedly, but before she even finished the question, she had gotten to her feet and slipped on her summer flats. She carried her glass of iced tea with her.

  “No, not many,” he answered. “Anyway, I’ll light the citronella candles.”

  When she stepped out the door, he took her hand and led her to the back patio where, years ago, he had placed the flagstones, one by one, in the dirt, and then filled the cracks with fine sand that had set over time like cement. They had placed a round, glass-topped table with an umbrella in the middle of the patio, along with six chairs with waterproof cushions. Rico ignited the citronella, and soon the air was heavy with the scent of lemons. He lowered the umbrella, so they could have an unobstructed view of the sky, which was bursting with tiny white stars. It had cooled off to perhaps seventy degrees, and the night was unusually languid. Even the thousand South Valley dogs were quiet.

  Rosalita took a long sip of her iced tea and then shook the glass so the ice cubes clinked against the sides. “I have the feeling that something bad is coming,” she said with an attempt at a smile.

  “Why did we stop talking to each other, Rosalita?” he asked with urgency. He could see that she was wary of him, and he wanted to reassure her. “I’m just looking back, trying to figure it out.”

  “I don’t know if you can figure it out, Rico. Some things just happen.”

  “But we let it happen.”

  “We couldn’t stop it.”

  Rico sat back in the chair and stared at the dark sky for a long moment. “I’m trying to talk to you, and I feel like I’m hitting a wall.”

  “I’m talking back,” replied Rosalita. “You just don’t like what I’m saying.”

  That was true. He wanted an opening, a place to slip inside and begin to explore, but he felt Rosalita was closing doors as fast as he pried them open.

  “Whatever we would say, we’d probably only hurt each other,” Rosalita said.

  “You think so?” Rico paused to search for words. “We’re so out of touch, Rosalita. I don’t feel like I know you anymore.”

  Now Rosalita pushed back from the table. “Oh Rico, in fifteen minutes, you’ll know me.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means you’re just in a mood.”

  “Okay,” he said. “Forget I asked.”

  “That’s predictable,” said Rosalita with a sigh. “You might not know me, but I know you. I knew you would say that.”

  Rico felt trapped and helpless. Whatever he said, Rosalita reduced it, turned it into a dead end. He remembered this feeling, a cellular memory that surfaced strongly in this moment. Over those four years, there were suddenly dead ends everywhere, and after a while they stopped trying, both of them.

  “Something has to change between us,” Rico finally said.

  “Everything is changing,” Rosalita replied. “Haven’t you noticed?”

  “I mean for the better.”

  “Open your eyes, Rico,” Rosalita said. “It’s late. I have to get up early. Que sueñes con los angelitos, mi amor.” She kissed him quickly on the lips. “See you when you come in.” Then she walked off toward the house.

  Rico watched her go. She wore a loose dress, the kind she slopped around the house in after she had her bath, and Rico could see the shape of her body swaying a little from side to side under it as she walked along the path. Sitting there, paralyzed with frustration, he felt as if he’d suddenly been locked up in a coffin. It was easy to blame Rosalita, to see her as the one who’d slammed down the lid and bolted it shut. As a way of simply doing something new and different, Rico decided to sit there in the citronella glow and try very hard to see this conversation from her point of view.

  She had reduced his quest for intimacy with her to a mood that would pass, and she had added that she could predict his “forget it” response. He had wanted an opening and had received a closing down, or so he felt. But staring into the black sky, knowing that it encompasses all the stars and planets of the universe, it hit him that it could be possible that a closing was really an opening, and that Rosalita’s responses—while frustrating—might actually help him find his way if he looked at them in the right way. Despite everything, he trusted her, and he believed in her good will toward him.

  He picked up two little pebbles from the ground and put them in front of him on the table. In the dim moonlight they looked like bone fragments because of their pale color. One could signify: “It means you’re in a mood. In fifteen minutes you’ll know me,” a Rosalita idea; and his was “Forget it.”

  Rico was puzzled, but he had the crazy idea that he held the answer—or at least some clues—right in his hands. He had the sudden urge to phone Margaret for help, but since it was ten-thirty it seemed too late to call—especially since he’d also have to drive to the shop to find the slip of paper with her phone number. It occurred to him that he could swing by her house to see if the lights were on. It was, literally, one minute by car from her house to his shop, so maybe, just this once, if it looked like she was up, he would ignore the lateness of the hour and call.

  Putting the two little stones in his pocket, he got up from the table, hopped into his truck, backed out of the driveway, and took off up Riverside Drive.

  BY THE time Margaret concluded her business at the Motor Vehicle Department and returned home, it was after two. The sun was high and intensely bright in the sky. Just feeling the rays on her shoulders as she walked from the car to her house made her instantly sleepy, and she made a beeline for the futon couch in the living room. Magpie came and settled on the floor next to her, and Margaret trailed her hand over the side of the couch to rest it on her best friend’s head. Her last thought, just as she sank into sleep, was that she needed to bring plenty of fresh water on their trip farther into the wild west. She had a few plastic jugs, but, probably because she had seen so many western movies, she felt the need for a canteen, too. She remembered being in the movie theater with Donny, who loved westerns more than anything, and whispering, “He doesn’t have enough water,” as the lone cowboy, outlaw, or lawman scanned the empty desert that stretched way past the horizon. “It’s just a movie,” Donny would whisper back. “There’s a catering truck filled with water parked nearby. Don’t you worry.” But for her own venture into the wilderness, she wanted to be extra sure.

  Nancy had told her the boxes for the client were expected late the next afternoon, a Friday. There was no great rush on it, so Margaret planned to head out on Saturday or perhaps even Sunday. The directions Nancy had given her relied heavily on the odometer: Go west for 2.7 miles and take a right onto the dirt road. After 9.1 miles, you come to a Y. Bear right. Drive straight 28.6 miles and then start to look for a fence post on the left with an old Chock full o’Nuts coffee can nailed to it. There was a notation under that: “Bullet holes in coffee can make it hard to see.” Reading that, Margaret had let out a little bleat of laughter.

  “What’s funny?” Nancy had asked.

  Margaret read her the note.

  “They got nothing better to do out there,” she said. “They’re living like a hundred years ago: no water, no electricity, no nothing.”

  “Really?” The idea of no simple home conveniences was hard to compute.

  “Poverty’s terrible, too,” added Nancy.

  “Doesn’t it seem strange that somebody living like that has the money to pay a courier service to come out there once or twice a year,” mused Margaret.

  “Go figure,” Nancy had said.

  Margaret slept on the couch for two full hours and woke up wondering if she’d continue on straight through the evening and night if she just rolled over. She had slept more in her seven weeks in New Mexico than she ever had in New York. Maybe I’m really tired, she had thought when the daily naps began. Maybe she had years of stress to make up for. Later, she recalled a documentary she’d once seen on Death Row prisoners, in which the narrator mentioned that they often slept up to eighteen hours a day—about th
e same amount of time that Magpie probably logged. Maybe, in the temporary absence of pressure, Margaret was reverting to her own animal nature.

  She made herself get up, though, and shuffle into the kitchen, open the fridge, and assemble the ingredients for a grilled cheese and tomato on whole wheat. When it was toasted to a golden brown on both sides, she poured herself a glass of sparkling water, added a dash of cranapple juice, and went outside. Drawn to the concrete pad under the elm tree, she stood amidst the rusty parts and simply studied them as she slowly ate her sandwich from one hand and sipped her drink from the other. The old engine parts, gears, screws, and everything else could fit together in a million ways; and no one, including Margaret, knew where they would end up until they were welded into place once and for all.

  Perhaps that was what she liked the most about being an artist—that ability to stand, stare, and see things that weren’t there just as clearly as the ones that were. Margaret felt at home on that edge between what was and what wasn’t yet. In many ways, she felt she belonged there, suspended in those moments of pure potential. Yet, the drive was always toward form. She was thinking, as she stood there, about how a great actress can indicate the complexities of a character’s personality by nothing more than a look that passes quickly over her face. She wanted her creation to have a face that could be read just as easily as a great actress’, even if it was composed of rusty parts. The question was how to capture that hidden quality. Finally, she squatted down and began a new round of assembling. She had no plan. Furiously, she worked, part by part. Hours passed before she finally stood up again.

  She went into the house to find Magpie’s leash and started toward Eighth Street. Just one block north of her house was a ball field with a half-mile track circling it. Magpie liked to take a spin around it in the evening, pausing every few feet to sniff out whatever it is dogs seem so obsessed with. A Little League game was in progress and there, standing at the edge of it, was Benito. He saw Margaret, waved, and began to amble