RIO GRANDE WEDDING

by Ruth Wind

  Through it all, Molly kept her attention on her brother. He flung himself against the counter, arms crossed, and waited for everything to settle, his eyes hard on Molly. "No way," he said at last. "This is just bull—"

  "Josh," Lynette warned.

  "Bullcrap," he said instead. "I don't believe this is some big love match, Molly Sheffield. How long have you known him?"

  Alejandro spoke. "It has not been long, it is true. But time is sometimes not needed."

  "How long?"

  Molly looked at Alejandro, urging him silently to field this one. She had no idea when he'd arrived at Wiley Farms. He acknowledged her urgency with a nod. "I came here only three weeks ago."

  Josh rolled his eyes. "Molly, I want to talk to you. Alone."

  Alejandro half rose, but Molly shook her head silently. She'd known how hard this part would be, and with Josh in his current temper, she didn't particularly want to subject Alejandro to any more of his raving.

  Josh strode into his bedroom and closed the door. In a low, tight voice, he said, "What the hell do you think you're doing, Moll?"

  As calmly as possible, Molly replied, "I knew this wouldn't be easy for you."

  "You're damned right." He paced toward the window, then back. "How could you?"

  "How could I what? Fall in love? It happens all the time."

  "He's a friggin' alien! I can't believe you have anything in common enough to fall in love." He licked his bottom lip, his eyes narrowing. "I knew there was something wrong that night you bought me a steak at the café. Like you had a guilty conscience."

  "Come on, Josh. I've done it a hundred times. It gives me pleasure to help you sometimes. I don't have to have an ulterior motive."

  "Not always. But you were weird that night. Asking about the kid – I suppose it's the little girl they found on Wiley's land."

  She nodded. A knot of discomfort made her stomach ache. She didn't like to lie, and it seemed she'd done little else the past few days.

  But was lying to save someone's life really a sin? In this case, she felt justified, though her brother would certainly disagree. The thought made her utter a swift prayer: God, please never let him find out the truth!

  "From what I hear, she's pretty sick," he said. "Same age as Rochelle. Makes me sad to think of her out there for two days, scared and alone."

  "Me, too, Josh. We were both worried to death about her. And she is very sick. She has TB."

  He shook his head. Some of the anger drained from his face and softened his shoulders. "Moll, I know how you are. I can see why you'd take in some lost kid, why you'd want to help these two. But don't you see? If you do, you give every other illegal for two thousand miles an excuse to keep trying."

  She sighed. "Josh—"

  "Don't say it, Molly. I don't want you to have to lie to me anymore. Let's just let it stand – you're marrying this guy to help his little girl, and we both know it." His jaw went hard. "If I can prove it, I'll deport him so fast you won't even know what happened."

  Anger burst in Molly. "You go ahead and try. I'm in love with him and I'm going to marry him!" She sighed. "Can't you just be happy for me, Josh? I've been so damned lonely since Tim died."

  "I know. But what has this guy got to offer you? Some poor Mexican illegal with a third-grade education?"

  She scowled, hearing in his assumptions a reflection of her own early expectations. Shame touched her again. "Don't be so quick to jump to conclusions about who he is."

  He rolled his eyes. "I've seen enough of these guys that I don't have to make assumptions. I deal with them, remember?"

  "Who do you deal with, Josh? Do you know anything about them? Have you ever had a conversation with even one of those guys? About their lives, about their educations, about their reasons for being here?"

  "No! And I don't care. They don't belong here. They're making it hard on the rest of us. I pay my taxes and pay my insurance and as far as I'm concerned, they're taking money directly out of my pocket!"

  "Josh—"

  "No, I don't want to hear it. We'll never agree on this."

  A pang of separation struck her. If she chose Alejandro, she was going to lose her brother. How could she make that kind of choice?

  "Can't you just give him a chance? He's not who you think he is. He's an honorable man, Josh."

  He only shook his head. "When are you going to do the deed?"

  Molly hadn't thought that far ahead. Recklessly, she said, "Saturday. Please come."

  "Not a chance."

  Staring at his sullen, closed face, Molly knew she had no choice. "I'm sorry," she said. "I'll miss you."

  * * *

  Chapter 8

  «^»

  Alejandro was drained by the time they went back out to the car. Molly saw it in the paleness of his jaw and the grim set of his mouth, but he asked if they could go by Wiley Farms. He had money waiting there, and his guitar and some of his timings. Wiley's wife told them that he'd taken the little dog to the vet. She chuckled. "Ugliest little mutt you ever saw, but Jim's been treating him like a king."

  "Good." The dog could stay here, pampered, until Josefina was out of the hospital. Molly suspected Leo would not be happy about a dog. Any dog.

  A ranch hand took them down to the bunkhouse, and unlocked a storeroom. There were no clothes, none of Alejandro's or Josefina's – "we give 'em all to the Salvation Army. No point in keepin' 'em" – but the guitar was tucked against the wall, a long woven strap attached to the neck. The check was delivered without a quibble.

  Back at the house, Alejandro muttered a blindly exhausted apology and collapsed in his bed. Molly fetched more antibiotics and some ibuprofen, and roused him enough to insist he swallow the pills, but he was down for the count after that.

  In a way, it was a relief. Not to think about him. Not to gauge her actions by where he was in her house, but simply move around as she always had before he came.

  As she would do when he left. Humming softly to herself, she made a pizza for dinner and some iced tea and carried them outside to the patio. It seemed as if it should be later, after all that had transpired today, but the sun was at its most golden, hanging over the mountains like the magic ball of some oracle, and the rays were warm.

  Leo came out to beg for scraps and she fed him tiny pieces of cheese and let him chase a long stalk of grass she swished along the tiles.

  And the whole time she made dinner, the whole while she played with her cat, what she itched to do was call Lynette and pour everything out to her. It was the first time in her life that she had not been free to do that – she couldn't remember going through anything – even something like picking out a dress for a dance, without using Lynette as a sounding board.

  The only other time Molly could remember that she and Lynette had not discussed every little detail of life was when Lynette had come home from a summer trip and had fallen – head over heels – for Josh. Josh was younger, for one thing, and the younger brother of her very best friend, and they were both very young when it happened – not even twenty.

  But true love it had been, and after six months, Lynette had called and spilled all those days of silence in a phone call that lasted four hours.

  The trouble now was Josh, too. It was damned inconvenient to have your brother marry your best friend, Molly thought.

  And yet … would she really have spoken of this, anyway? Maybe not.

  Finished with her supper, and unable to call Lynette, Molly found herself admiring the long sharp shapes of tree branches against the changing sky, and went inside to get her paints and enormous – and expensive! – watercolor tablet. She didn't bother with an easel, but propped the tablet against a chair and spent a quiet hour capturing the light, the shapes, the shadows, the colors, and didn't think at all.

  * * *

  Sometime after dark, Alejandro wandered out, stiff and still very sore, but also very, very hungry. Flickering blue light led him to the living room, where Molly sat curled on the couch
like a girl, her feet tucked under her. She didn't see him immediately, and he paused in the darkness of the hall, struck by the ordinariness of the scene – the woman in an oversize shirt and tights or something, mesmerized by something on television, a bowl of popcorn at her side. Her hair was loosely tied in a knot at her nape, and wisps of it fell down her neck. He wanted to put his face against that place between her shoulder and neck, where it would smell warm.

  He'd learned as a youth that sex was not an easy thing for him. It was too hard to lie with a woman and stay apart, to keep any portion of himself aloof from it. Twice, as a very young man, he had learned the lesson, that joining made him love, for right or wrong. One more time, then, when he was older, though he was wiser, it happened again – afterward he thought of marriage, but his woman had simply wanted to make love. He had, being a man, wished for the same thing at first. But the feelings went too deep for him, and he could not bear the way she did not take their relationship seriously, and broke it off. She came to him sometimes after that, wanting his body, but she did not want what else went with it.

  He was not a vain man, but he was not a fool, either. He'd seen, in his years, that women often wanted to lie with him. But not join, not heart to heart, as he did. So he learned to stay aloof from them in that way.

  But kissing Molly had shattered those holds, that aloofness. He feared that kissing her was as dangerous as making love to someone else, that already he might be snared more deeply than he wished. As he watched her, he wanted to put his hands all over her, slowly, to fit his palms to the comma shape of her breasts, and uncover the curve of her belly. He thought he would like seeing her in the sunlight that way, seeing all of her and touching all of her, with no covering, no shadows, just Molly in her flesh and her long hair draped over her.

  The cat raced out from some hidden place, startling Molly, and she jumped so violently that popcorn spilled all over the floor. The bowl clanged on the coffee table on the way down, and the cat jumped straight up in the air, three feet at least. Alejandro laughed out loud.

  "You scared us both," she said, then held up a hand. "Watch him," she said, and he saw her shoulders shaking with laughter.

  The cat crept up on the bowl, very, very slowly. Molly moved her foot suddenly, and he skittered sideways, his eyes still focused on the upturned bowl as if it were an animal playing dead, one that would leap upon him at any second. When he was in reach, he carefully lifted a paw and then – slam! – banged it against the bowl. It wasn't quite stable and at the hit, rolled to its side. Leo jumped backward a solid two feet, and Molly dissolved into giggles.

  Feeling sympathy, Alejandro bent far enough to scoop the animal up and hold him close, and murmured in Spanish, "Poor little thing. And she's laughing, eh?" Against his chest, Leonardo's fur felt luxurious, and the animal butted his hand against his chin for a minute, then, comforted plenty, demanded to be let down.

  Molly was on her knees, picking up popcorn, still half smiling. Acting on impulse, Alejandro sank down beside her and started helping. He was still half-aroused, awareness prickling along the back of his neck, and in his keen observation of her, he didn't miss the slight shift of her body. Toward him, not away. When she thought he wasn't looking, her gaze went to his chest, and he could almost feel the brush of that lingering admiration, touching his belly, which was still very flat from his hard work, and his shoulders, and then away.

  He wondered, picking up popcorn, what she would do if he did simply lean close and put his face against her neck. Would she bolt or respond? And which did he truly desire?

  "I bet you're starving," she said. "There's pizza in the oven."

  "Good." He inched a little closer. She picked up the bowl and put it on the table, and he moved again, until they were hip to hip. "Maybe," he said, leaning closer, "there is something I would like better, though, Molly."

  She closed her eyes. That was all. Stayed exactly where she was and closed her eyes. And what was there to do, then? Alejandro leaned close and put his face against her neck, trailing the tip of his nose along her skin. A brush of hair tickled his cheek and he smiled, putting his forehead against her jaw. "I like your smell," he said.

  "Alejandro," she said softly, "if you're doing this because you think it's a good way to repay me, it's okay. You don't have to."

  He laughed and pulled back to look at her. "Is that what you think?"

  A shrug. "Maybe. I mean, you must have women lined up for miles."

  "Miles." He smiled, and lifted a hand, and this time he did not hesitate. "But let me tell you, they do not make me think in the ways I have been thinking of you today."

  She raised her eyes. "What ways?"

  For a moment, he did not know how to answer, and the sweet, lost hungriness in her eyes stole whatever he might have said. Instead, he found himself captured in the watercolor of her eyes.

  They did not move, only sat, side to side, lost in a place that was born by the act of their joined gazes, a place that grew rapidly, excluding the rest of the world. Alejandro thought he could see through, beyond the surface of those irises, and he saw a life, a room where a girl had danced in her underwear before an oval mirror, a teen who stared up at the stars and wondered what if life existed on other worlds, a woman who had made love in this house to a man she had loved. He even thought he could see himself reflected back to him as a much better, stronger man than he was.

  It gave him the strength to simply touch her face lightly with his fingertips, to lift his gaze away from the depth of those eyes to the part in her hair. He closed his eyes and pressed his mouth to the place where her hair met her forehead. Against her brow, he said, "I would kiss you until I died, I think. But that would be bad for you. Maybe bad for me, too."

  Her hands lit on his shoulders, and she brushed her eye against his cheek. "Yes." Breaking away quickly, she rose. "I'll get you some of that pizza. How's that?"

  Alejandro dropped his hands to his lap. "Yes, please."

  * * *

  Josh didn't even bother trying to sleep. When Lynette turned in, he sat up in the living room, idly channel-surfing through the four channels they actually got. No fifty-seven channels, here, no sirree. Cable was way out of the budget.

  His gut burned, even through the antacids he'd been chewing for hours, and it was a burn of fury. Lynette had tried talking him down from his anger, but every time he thought he'd managed to put it aside, he saw his sister in her car, kissing that guy. He'd caught on one detail – a dark hand against his sister's pale face, and it burned in him.

  On one level, he was appalled by his reaction. He'd never thought himself to be a racist. All his life, he'd had friends from other cultures. There weren't that many black people in the valley, but half the county was Latino, so a guy naturally made friends with them.

  But the image burned in him nonetheless. That dark hand against her white face. That peasant hand. He hated to even hear him talk – that slurring Mexican accent.

  And maybe, maybe, he could have gotten used to it – eventually – if he didn't feel in his gut that Molly was acting out of some noble instinct. Taking on this guy's problems because she was too nice and too trusting. He'd use her and throw her away, and Molly would have that lost, wounded look she'd only recently begun to lose. He couldn't stand to see her heart broken again.

  Hypocrite!

  The word burned across his forehead, and with a cry, Josh buried his face in his hands, trying to rub the brand away. He was so confused. Was he a racist at heart? Was that why he resented the aliens so much? Or was his anger reasonable? – he was struggling, so hard, to make ends meet, and they were taking money out of his pocket. Wasn't that a normal reaction?

  He rubbed his forehead harder. There were no answers. Not right now. Maybe he needed to examine his heart to discover if he really was harboring some racist feelings. God knew his head, at least, wanted to believe it wasn't true, but if it was, he had to find out, so he didn't pass it on to his kids – or end up killing somebo
dy out of anger.

  He didn't know how to do it, but he'd think about it later.

  The real issue was Molly marrying some stranger in some misguided rescue mission. That was what he had to stop, come hell or high water.

  The rest could wait.

  * * *

  Molly and Alejandro spent the next morning with Josefina, who was weak and listless in a way that made Molly worry. The doctor simply said the child was exhausted and need more rest, so they left her to sleep, and set out to tackle the slightly awkward details of arranging the marriage.

  After three stops, however, it was plain there was not a judge in the country who would agree to perform the ceremony, thanks to Josh's influence. Frustrated, Molly insisted they go ahead with the blood tests anyway, and while they were driving back, she had a brainstorm. "The details don't matter to you, do they?" she asked, pulling off the side of the road.

  "No."

  "I have an idea." She turned the car around and headed back to a dirt break off the two-lane highway. She grinned. "I'll bet you've never seen anything like what we're about to see."

  A brace of trees marked the entrance, and they turned into what the locals, with no fondness, called "that hippie commune." In actuality, it was a loosely structured community of people with alternative values who'd banded together decades ago to grow organic food in a co-op. Sunshine Farms now boasted a bottom line well in the black, and with the addition of free-range meats, were on the way to making a serious fortune.

  Some of those free-range chickens squawked and fluttered as she and Alejandro stepped out of the car, and he grinned, looking around himself. "Now, this is what I like."

  A collection of houses in various styles dotted the hills, and animals in pens lowed or cackled or called. Beyond, for nearly as far as the eye could see, were fields, emptied now with the onset of winter, but obviously just harvested. A turquoise school bus, parked for twenty years, was painted with the exuberant, stylized sun logo of the farms. It served as the office, and a woman with a pageboy haircut and dressed in jeans stepped down from it. "Hi! What can I do for you today, Molly? Eggs? Cheese? We haven't seen much of you lately."