The Orange Blossom Express

by Marlena Evangeline

  Hank had thought that this was a rotten time in the universe to be married. Nothing had convinced him more than the trip to Santa Cruz. Girls were available! Indeed they were. She was available. The dark haired beauty. Oh yes. She said so. Free love! Free sex! Right there in the redwoods, on the trail, up over the bank, on the grassy slope full of miners lettuce, and false hemlock, and fern, right beyond the banana slug, on the soft floor of the redwood forest, sex was alive and well and who was that coming on the trail who who was it oh yes it was just Hank coming with all things free the noise of voices in the distant party still distant and mingled with the stream below and the girl underneath the new girl the new girl the girl who wasn’t his wife no she wasn’t she was someone else who was she? She was free love, wasn’t she?

  The buffalo died in the frozen fields …

  CHAPTER 28

  SO WHAT WAS IT, MAGGIE WONDERED, AS she opened the sliding glass door and stepped out on the redwood deck that flanked the kitchen, feeling a sudden cold afternoon fog well up around her. Was marriage just an exercise in talking to other people about something you don’t have in yours? Was that it? No. It wasn’t for Lucy on this wedding day, it certainly was not. What else was it? What might be made of something like marriage and how could you make it? She’d made a commitment. Did she have to be committed because of it? To what institution? What mental ward? Was this heavy mental? Uh huh. Too heavy. Too mental. Sent-i-mental? Where was this sending her? Is this where gone girls go? Send her back. Back where? Where could she come from now that she was here? Forward? Oh yes. That’s it. She had to take what she took. And she’d taken it. Yes. She had so it was hers. Choice. She shook her head, as if to the party, feeling her inside thoughts rather than the festivities.

  Ullr was curled under the quince tree. She whistled and the white dog perked his ears, and then, started up excitedly, prancing over to see her as she whistled again.

  “Wanna go for a walk? What do you say? Wanna go?” the dog wagged his tail jumping around turning in circles knowing the words but not knowing which way to go, wanting her to show the way. “Come on,” she said and patted her thigh and the dog ran in circles as she moved away from the commotion of people, stopping at the truck to get a sweater and then past the cars towards the redwoods. She and Hank and Gary had walked to the creek earlier that day. Hank had thrown a branch into the water and they had watched it float away. The redwoods, Gary had explained, drank about fifty gallons of water a day, then expelled the same, the woods seeming like a mini rain forest, that felt softer to her than the desert, and she liked the wet climate, something about all the water made her feel differently. Ummm. Even the cold fog swirling around her seemed fresh she decided as she walked on towards the tall red trees, coming to the moist path, leading over a fallen branch, moving over a rock, by a lightning-struck stump, charred like cinder, past a mossy boulder, and on towards the lovely sound of water rushing towards the sea.

  She heard voices ahead, familiar. The dog rushed onward. Who was there? she wondered, thinking it might be anyone, anyone at all, laughing and talking and what was that sound? No talking, just laughing, and my what was she walking into? Should she turn around? But who was that? Not Hank. Only sounding like Hank. And Rebecca? That was foolish. That thought she thought she was having was stupid! She was definitely going mental, imagining the stupidest of things; don’t imagine that, Maggie, you can imagine almost anything but don’t imagine what isn’t there would never be never ever that just wouldn’t happen in your life the one you happen to be living think a lot of things but don’t think that stupid thing stupid things happen lots of them but not that kind of thing only flirting things harmless things that Hank did when he didn’t talk to you, Maggie, don’t imagine anything else or feel anything else just feel blank and empty and foolish because you have a marriage that isn’t working and you can sense it but you can’t say it again because you’ve already said it a million times and saying it hasn’t helped it but you don’t know why not the why why why of it because you still have a marriage you promised to keep and he said it too didn’t he? Did you imagine that too? No he said it. He did. Hank said it. But Hank was at the party. Surely. Both Hank and Rebecca were at the party, weren’t they, of course they were, they weren’t here in this glade of her imagination that she was imagining should she turn back Ullr Ullr she called too late and she heard Hank say Ullr Ullr what are you doing here laughing then not laughing not laughing at all as Maggie stumbled into view looking at him and Rebecca the two of them together the part of her right in front of herself standing against her as if none of it had ever mattered but it had it had all of it every minute every second matters and this one did yes it mattered it mattered one fuck of a lot this fuckola that Hank was having with someone else and she couldn’t take her eyes off the girl struggling with her tight bell bottoms squirming them up her legs pulling on her blouse over her big boobs boobs that Maggie would never have ever boobs that wouldn’t erase anything boobs that made big impressions everywhere god how Maggie hated watching her with her big fucking boobs and Hank right in front of her couldn’t help but watch too oh shit fuck screw why couldn’t the son of bitch just not watch after fucking he could just quit watching right then and there but he didn’t he didn’t even as he zipped the fly on his Levi’s he couldn’t keep his eyes off the girl who pulled on her vest and slipped by Maggie standing right smack dab in the middle of the path and not moving no way. What? What is that sound Maggie? Is that the sound of one heart breaking? Did you hear that large muscle tear apart? Rip like a garment come apart at the seam? What will she do with it now? That great pain? The pain changing from despair to rage to grief to despair to anger to sorrow to doubt to disbelief and still changing. What can Maggie do with this pain inside her? How can she make it behave? Where will it go this pain now that it’s found her? Where will she keep it? Will she keep it? How long must she keep it? Think about it now think about these feeling very hard and think how long she needs to keep them. Long enough to learn from and then she needs to learn it. That lesson. That life lesson. The trust lesson. The marriage lesson. How many more lessons are there? What? That many?

  The first cut is the deepest …

  CHAPTER 29

  San Bernardino, California

  HANK SAT DOWN IN A WOODEN chair and grabbed a magazine, Time, and flipped through the pages to an article on draft dodging a love it or leave it kind of deal and maybe they were right or maybe if you can’t be with the one you love love the one you’re with but who do you love just who do you love who do you love. The doctor came out and told Hank that it had been an ectopic pregnancy because her tubes were all twisted and scarred from something. He’d had to operate and would have performed a hysterectomy but thought that it would be too much for her right then but they could forget about children because she’d never get pregnant again. He’d removed one ovary and the other was a mess. Sorry he said and disappeared. Hank folded the magazine and put it back down on the dark wooden table. He’d thought as much as she’d thought that it might save them, save the marriage, and he’d wanted that, he thought, he wasn’t entirely certain always but right there in that hospital he wanted more than anything to save that marriage.

  Five days later Maggie got out of the truck and stood in the wind. Her stomach still hurt from surgery. The garden had shriveled to almost nothing, and she sighed against the ruin after all the hard work of it. Hank put her suitcase in the bedroom.

  “Are you certain,” he asked when he came out. “I can stay for a while you know.” The idea of it had recently appealed to him but here they were with more than an idea to reckon with. He wanted to go and he wanted to stay too.

  “Sure,” she said. She wasn’t sure but as sure as she knew how to be. What she was certain of was that she couldn’t do what she’d been doing any longer. This was the only way she could be certain of changing it. But then everything had changed drastically anyway, she was certain of that, but it didn’t seem to matter. None of it
seemed to matter right then. Go. Stay. Come back. It was equal. No matter. “I can’t see how it would help.” But she couldn’t see how it would hurt either. She just couldn’t see.

  “I guess I’ll go then,” he said. “I’ve rented a place in Santa Cruz fairly close to the airport, so I can fly down whenever you want me to. I don’t need much, but I’ll drive down later and pack some of this stuff up. Is that okay?” He wished she’d throw something or yell. He wanted to see her stiffen against him and make him feel something other than this nothing this vast desert of silence that stretched between them, the landscape spattered with spiny cactus and sharp rocks and broken shale stone.

  “Well, call me or something,” she said watching the vista between them widen like a gaping canyon and Hank standing on the other side almost within calling distance but she no longer had the capacity to breach the gap.

  “I’ll do it,” he said.

  When he had left, Maggie assessed the deserted ranch house, the abandoned garden, her work room caked with dried clay, and tried to imagine the emptiness extending day after day after day. There was a pervasive ache inside her stomach she could not escape; it followed her from room to room as she thought about packing Hank’s things. She rummaged around in her red purse and pulled out a cigarette. She lit it and smoked. The cigarette made her feel different, she thought, drier, less like herself and she wanted to be less than she was since she was unsure of how to be more. On the patio she noticed how desolate this place had always been, as if seeing for the first time something she should have recognized before and it made her wonder about her thinking and how she thought things. Next door she noticed Rosemary working a horse in the corral. The filly was still dark, her coat had not yet turned; it was a gray muddy color but Rosemary held her to the circle and the young horse moved into a flying change in the center of the figure eight and extended her stride. There was someone watching her work the horse, leaning on the corral, someone Maggie didn’t recognize. She waved and Rosemary tipped her hat, without letting the horse break stride.

  “Who is that?” asked Ibarrio.

  “My neighbor,” said Rosemary. “I’ll go over later and ask her to dinner. She’s just gotten out of the hospital.”

  “Ah,” said the young Costa Rican thinking the gringa looked very pretty and blonde and that it would be nice to meet an American woman. That that would seem like the beginning of his American experience really, meeting one of the natives, so to speak, and he looked forward then to dinner and meeting the neighbor.

  Rosemary wiped lemon oil over the dark oak table before setting it and arranging the silver. Her cousin, Isabel Vasquez, Ibarrio’s aunt on his father’s side sat rocking in the dining room intent on the large television set. Rosemary returned to the kitchen and carved the turkey, placing it on a platter, along with dressing she’d already scooped from the bird. She took the platter to the table along with the gravy and potatoes and the remainder of the traditional American dinner she had fixed for her guests. Maggie sat across from Isabel with Ibarrio to her left. The conversation carefully skirted Maggie’s failed marriage, but centered on Ibarrio’s plans in America, the land, he smiled of school and opportunity. His aunt, Isabel, was proud, she said in broken English, that her nephew had come all this way for his education. But certainly it helped to have Rosemary with school so close. It had been settled that Ibarrio would take over chores for Rosemary and take a room in her house. The women had arranged it and the idea suited Ibarrio. He loved being in America and had even driven a car that very day all the way down to San Bernardino.

  At home, later that night, Maggie lit one of the kerosene lamps for atmosphere and sat in the silent ranch house thinking about what Isabel had said about the orphanage in Guanajuato. There were babies in Mexico that needed homes, and she suddenly felt a need for one. The thought rose inside her like an obsession becoming somehow a need rather than a desire.

  The next day her body hurt less. She went back next door and discussed the idea with Rosemary and Isabel who both applauded the idea and offered their help. Maggie could go to Mexico later, and Isabel would find someone to help her look for a baby to adopt. Isabel, excited at the prospect, encouraged Maggie to come. Naturally, she could not do it the ordinary way because her husband was not involved. They would find a way, Isabel said, in a conspiratory fashion, to help Maggie bring a baby back to America.