by Beth Kephart
“I think you guys need some time for just you.”
* * *
The night stirred and the moon creaked, and after a while I talked to my dad. Told him I was thinking of Newhouse and that I fought too much with Mom, and that all we ever ate at night were cold things from banged-out boxes that had been made in Mom’s Corian kitchen twenty hours before. “Mom misses you,” I said, because despite everything I knew she did; it was lying to myself to pretend she didn’t. She missed him, and she was trying to live forward, she was trying to take care. She was just really lousy at it.
“But, Dad,” I said then, “I miss you more,” because it would have been another kind of lying to pretend that I did not. “You dying sucks,” I said, and then I touched his tombstone, and I traced out his name. Traced out the letters of the word Father. Then I sat there listening to the squirrels in the trees until I heard Kevin’s footfalls at the top of the hill, through the graveyard, there beside me. Until I saw his shadow spilling.
“Remember this picture?” he said, but I could barely see what he meant in that moonlight. I didn’t understand until I could actually see the picture Kevin held in one hand. “The five of us,” he said. “The photo your dad took last summer. I thought maybe he could use the company.”
“Yeah,” I said, and now nothing was going to stop me from crying. “Our company. He probably could.”
“I’ll find a stone,” Kevin said, “so we don’t fly off.” He went out into the woods. He returned. It was the two of us. It was all of us. It was we.
And it was then.
THIRTY-EIGHT
I sleep the whole day, and I sleep the next, and the Gypsies come in and out with their songs, and Miguel comes and sits and stays awhile, and Adair calls and we talk, and she says she wants to visit, but I tell her I’m okay now—just tired from it all—and the baby’s okay too. All this time, Estela never leaves me, except for when she goes to the kitchen to make more soup, or to make me tea, or to bring me a dish of my own flan, which turned out well in the end, and when Estela leaves, Esteban comes in and sits on the edge of my bed, looking shy and strange without his hat, his hair falling down past his scar.
You had me scared, he tells me.
I was scared too, I tell him, honest.
The doctor had called and the blood work is clear. Stress is his final verdict. Stress. And over and over, I tell you that I’m sorry, that I won’t go far in the Spanish sun, that I’ll take care of you; I’ll take it easy. When Esteban leaves, Estela returns, and on the third day, the sun comes out and the rain evaporates, and I watch the world through the courtyard window, watch the stork fly back and forth to the chimney, watch Luis, in the courtyard chair, sitting and thinking, not having his birthday. Estela sleeps in her own room that night, I am turning and falling and sleeping and turning, and in the morning, there is music floating in from outside. When Esteban opens the door, he has Bella with him—Bella riding high on his shoulder. He wanted to see you, Esteban says, and Bella makes like he can outsing the Gypsies and outknow duende, whatever that is.
That night I sleep, and it’s you who wakes me at dawn—you pressing out a foot or maybe it’s a hand. She’s a dancer. “What are you going to do?” Kevin had asked me, making it my choice, and you mine, drawing the fine line between us. You have him in you. You have my dad. You have me too. You have everything we’ve seen in Spain, and every meal that Estela’s cooked, that Estela has taught me. You have a ladybird for luck, and a black cat’s tail to help your seeing; you have the sound of Esteban’s story: You don’t have to leave to be free.
Suddenly I miss Ellie, miss having her near, miss the questions she’d ask so that she could answer first, the room she’d make to listen. I miss who I was when I could trust myself most, before I started lying and keeping secrets. I miss everything about before, but also, I’m going to miss this. I will live my life as the queen of missing. That’s who I’ll be, going forward.
Hey.
It’s Esteban, back again—through my door, across the room, and leaning over my bed. I hear the curtains open behind me, feel the light come in from the window that looks out on the old clothesline, the island of nowhere, the back of the cortijo. Turn around, Esteban tells me, and when I do, I see a tree built of sticks—a huge, gigantic tree—and woven in between and around the sticks are all the forest flowers—the forgotten roses and the bougainvillea and the lavender and the yellow. Tierra helped, he says. Tierra misses you.
I feel you turn inside me.
THIRTY-NINE
On the seventh day, I get up, take a shower, and slip into Estela’s kitchen early, before anyone can stop me. I choose six oranges from the blue net bag by the cooler. I split them clean with Estela’s knife. I squeeze and squeeze until the juice is a perfect, sunny orange red. I find an old loaf of bread and I slice it and I batter it up with a couple of cracked eggs, some milk, some cinnamon. I light a fire beneath a pan.
“My father’s French toast special,” I tell Estela, when I find her in her own room, in her thin green slip, on her own bed, finally sleeping.
“Santa Maria, madre de Dios,” she says, kissing me wet and sure on the forehead. “Look at how well I have taught you.”
FORTY
Later that afternoon, I take Adair’s camcorder from the box, slip the batteries in, punch in the cartridge, and start filming so that you will someday see what I have seen, see how I loved you. I will call the film Your Life with Me. It will begin with the lizards in the sun, the S of the cattails. It will star Joselita in pink and Arcadio in the love seat, testing each string with his ring finger, pressing his fingers to the soundboard, skimming his hand across the bridge, until the guitar rasps and shivers. “Así se toca. Olé.”
This is my movie beginning.
This is my life.
You don’t have to leave to be free.
I don’t find Luis with my camera, or Angelita or Miguel, but through the open door of the kitchen, I see Estela and put the lens on her, zoom in as much as the Canon will let me. She stands at the sink. She chooses a knife. She pounds down on something, stirs a pot. She’s changed into a dull gray dress. Her hair falls loose down her back. The skin of her arm doesn’t fall from its bone. She is compact. She is complex. She is strong enough to save me.
I walk, and the camcorder walks with me—through this room, past the freckled mirror, down the hall, in and out of shadows, and whatever the shadows are hiding. I pan the interior of Miguel’s library, the place his boots sit, the sudden crack in the wall of books where a volume has gone missing. I film the crooked pictures on the walls, the split pattern in the floor, the chandeliers made out of hives, the hall, the window, the window, the hall. Now, in the room of bulls, I slide the eye of the camera down each stuffed face—poetry and mind. “You are the pride,” I tell the bulls, and then I return, down the hall and out, toward the back courtyard and the tree house, past the stables.
I feel something near, stepping out of the shadows. I keep the focus tight. All the lens sees is the long seam of a sleeve, a shoulder, the place where the dog struck.
Kenzie at work, Esteban says.
Just . . . filming, I say, lowering the camcorder. I guess.
He lifts the machine straight out of my hands and stares through its glass lens. You’re better? he asks me.
Not as tired, I say.
Well, he says. That is good. He plays with the camera, pans in and out, fixes its eye on Tierra. This is all it takes? he asks.
What?
To be a camerawoman?
I think it takes more than that, I say. Probably a lot more. I think of Adair and Javier’s filmmaker friend. The things they might have taught me. The films I might have made.
If you’re really better, could you help me with something?
What’s that?
With Tierra. She needs new shoes.
Excuse me?
If you could just talk to her, he says. She says she likes you.
I turn the camcorde
r off, take it to Esteban’s room, lay it down on his bed. By the time I come back, Esteban’s got Tierra on a rope, walking her around in a circle. When she sees me, she makes two short whistles through her teeth, brings her lips near.
Tell her something, he says, giving me the reins. I tell her she’s a good horse, and she likes that. I tell her she’s lucky, and she likes that too. Esteban crouches to the ground, lifts a hoof with his hand. He picks away at the dirt and rocks, tells me to choke up on the rope, bring her in tighter.
Does it hurt her? I ask.
Not really, he says.
He puts the knife down and picks up some other tool, starts clipping at the hoof like it’s an overgrown fingernail. He cuts the hoof down until it fits. Then he rasps all around to make it smooth.
That’s one, he says, when he finishes, and now he stands. He wipes the sweat off his brow with his forearm.
You look good, he tells me. You both do. He touches my stomach. He tucks my hair back behind one ear, loosens the bangs on my forehead with his finger. From deep within the house, I hear my name, the way only Estela says it.
You better go, Esteban says.
But you’re not finished.
I’ll get it done, he says. Don’t worry.
But I thought—
Actually, Kenzie, I can trim a horse’s hooves on my own. It was just that, well, you’re better now. And I like being with you.
I like you too, I tell him. A lot.
He tips his hat down on his head. He smiles.
FORTY-ONE
Paella takes thinking, Estela says. Paella takes timing. She’s got a two-handled pan on the fire, and she’s thickened the oil with garlic and bay leaf, and now she gives me the job of boiling the chicken off of its bones and cubing the pork into squares. She tosses everything in. The white sparks fly.
Can you wait? I ask her, after a half hour has gone by.
Wait why?
Just wait a minute, okay? I ask, and then I run down the hall and outside, for the camcorder. Esteban’s there, in his room, when I get there, turning the camcorder over in his hand, trying to understand it.
By the time I return, the meat is brown, and Estela is scooping it from the pan to clear the way for the onions and the peppers, the rings of squid, the tomatoes that she throws in then pushes around with her red spatula. I get it on film. She adds more olive oil. I get that too. She tells me nothing can stick, and then she waves her hand at me, calls the camera a machine, tells me to put it down; I won’t. She adds the rice, the short-grained kind, and cooks it hard to soft, transparent to not. She juices it with lemon, so it won’t stick. She tosses the clams and the mussels into a cold bowl of water mixed with porridge oats, so that their meat will get loose.
“Put it down,” she insists, but I keep filming. “I’m not kidding,” and now I can tell she’s not. I press Stop, place it on the table, let her send me where she sends me—to the counter for extra chicken stock, and for the chicken and the pork, which have been cooling. Now she tells me to come back, to the stove. “Shake the pan,” she says. “Don’t stir. Honor the spices.” She drags the garlic and the bay leaf from the bottom of the pan and drips them out onto a clean white dish. She crushes them into nothing, adds the peppers and paprika, a handful of coarse salt, and then says, “But it is the saffron that matters.” From a shelf high up, Estela reaches for a jar. She tips up to her toes and flails with her hands, and then she has what she wants and she uncorks it.
“God’s finest color,” she says. Not an opinion, but a fact. She plucks out some threads, displays her palm, and tells me about saffron, the flower, which is a kind of crocus, and about the hands that harvest the flower, and the fingers that peel the flower away to release the stigma from the stamen and the stalk. Saffron is red and gold. It is the cure, Estela says, for cancer, pox, itchiness, melancholy. A pinch of the spice in warm white wine will change your life, she explains. It will give you courage. “Paella isn’t paella without saffron. Life isn’t life.”
Through the open door I see Bruno and Rafael on the love seat with Arcadio, Rafael wearing a faded cummerbund. I see Joselita clucking at the cats in the far corner. I don’t see Luis, and I wonder where he is, wonder if he and Estela have, in all these many days, finally talked. If she has confessed. If he understands, now, the photograph he’s carried from town to town, on bus and mule, into who knows how many taverns.
It’s so hot the cats have stopped swishing their tails, and even the fan that Angelita brings now to the courtyard—huge and garish, green with sequins—cannot stir things up. She puts it down as I stand shaking the pan and looking out, watching.
“Pay attention,” Estela says. “Paella takes some thinking.”
“Sí. You’ve said.”
I wonder if the photo is still there in her apron pocket, and what she’s thinking. I wonder where she has gone in her mind, Estela, the queen of Los Nietos, in all these days when I have been turning, resting, dreaming. “You are watching?” she says.
“I am watching.”
“Pay attention.”
She turns the fire off beneath the paella. “Let it sit,” she tells me. “Let it breathe.”
“Yes, Estela.”
“You are turning into a cook,” she tells me. “A good cook. I am proud.” She glances up, and her eyes reach into mine. It is her highest compliment. I have no answer.
“Tonight is Luis’s birthday,” she says. “He’s leaving tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?”
“Sí. Tonight is the party.”
“The actual party?”
“Be ready.”
“But, Estela—”
“The Gypsies will leave with him,” she says. “Angelita, too. They won’t come back for a long while.”
“I should stay here and help you. There’s so much more to do.”
“Go,” she says, “and rest. Por favor.”
I dry my hands. I fold the dish towel. I hook the camcorder into my hand. I head out the door and walk the hall beneath the hives of wasps. I find Esteban outside, polishing a saddle.
So? he asks.
Paella, I say.
Her favorite dish, he says. Given to you.
He leans back and smiles, and suddenly you kick with all the force of what you are, and I see you, the film of you that has been playing in my mind. The pearls, the spine, the ears, the eyes, the cord that takes blood in, and takes blood out. Good blood, bad blood, and now I am crying. For all that I will have to leave to keep you, for all that I am losing again.
I can’t do it, I tell Esteban.
You have to tell Estela, he says.
FORTY-TWO
Estela?” I knock on her bedroom door. “Estela? Are you in there?”
I turn the knob, and it releases. I find her in her dingy slip, dangling the new dress before her.
“Lemons and limes,” she says. She presses it against her, tucks the neck in under her chin. The bright buttons catch the uptilting light. The yellow hem looks closer to gold. I move toward Estela and take the dress into my hands. “Lift your arms,” I say. “And turn.”
“I was thin once,” she says.
“Sí. I saw your picture.”
“It’s a nice dress.”
“I’m glad you like it.”
“A nice dress for a pretty girl. You had some other cook in mind when you bought it?”
“Not really, Estela.”
I slip the dress over her head, pull her arms into its generous arms. Now I gather up the bodice and the skirt and start to tug it down. “Breathe in,” I say.
“I am,” she insists.
“Try harder.”
“I’m going to die.”
“If you die, at least you’ll die well dressed.”
“Phhhaaa,” she says. “What good is that?”
She struggles and turns. I ease the fabric out, away, and down, until finally the skirt releases itself and falls toward the floor in a rush.
“Santa Maria, madre de Dios,
” Estela says. Her face is flushed. Her hair is sticky. She acts as if she thinks we’re done.
“There’s still the zipper,” I say. “Save your prayers.”
“Those were no prayers.”
“Suck in your belly.”
“I was only thin,” she says, “once. Remember?”
“Stop complaining.”
I press and push and tug and finally the cool metal zipper does a little run up her spine. She turns around and faces me, rubbing at one eyebrow.
“Well,” I say.
“¿Sí?”
“Let me see.”
She turns slowly. The hem swings wide. The buttons gleam. “Lemons and limes,” I say.
“Don’t move,” I say. “I’m coming back.”
She puts her hands up into her hair and begins smoothing out the damage. She rustles around in her trunk for a set of old bracelets and stacks them up onto her arm. I leave her there, mirrorless. I turn down the hall, head for the kitchen, and return with a polished copper pot.
“What’s this?” she says.
“Look.” I hold the pot bottom high so she can see herself in its lit-up-from-the-low-light reflections.
“Estela, the queen of Los Nietos,” I say.
“Kenzie, the American girl.” Her eyes are dark, wet spots. Her eyes are a million years of hurting and remembering, a million years of regret. She throws an arm over me, squeezes me hard.
“Estela,” I say.
“What?”
“I have to go home. I decided. This baby is my daughter.”
She looks at me for a long time, searches my eyes. “Comprendo,” she says, at last.
“I’m such a total jerk,” I say, and now I’m crying like the Guadalquivir in rainy season, like Triana in flood. I’m crying, and Estela’s arms are wide around me. The past isn’t buried, not yet. The present is now, and there are consequences. I’m either hurting other people or I’m hurting myself, I’m either taking away our future or my own, I’m either denying Adair or I’m defying my mother, hating Kevin or loving Kevin, loving Esteban or leaving Esteban, but still: I have to take my chances.
