Isabel's Daughter

by Judith Ryan Hendricks

  Isabel Colinas

  Beauty is the impossible coming true

  A few steps away, Paul waits, hands in his pockets.

  “How long since you’ve been up here?”

  He turns slightly away from me, and his answer careens off into the air. “A long time.”

  We drive back out to the highway without speaking. I get out and pull the gate closed, wrap the chain, and secure the padlock. When I get back in the car, I say, “Tell me how she died.”

  The muscles in his arms tense as he grips the wheel.

  “She drowned.”

  “Where?”

  “The pool.” His voice is flat and quiet.

  “Your pool? How could she—it’s not even that deep.”

  “It was an accident. It never should have happened.” His hands relax, then tighten again as a faded green pickup truck approaches from the south. He sits preoccupied, waiting too long, finally pulling out just ahead of it. The driver leans on the horn, and Paul’s face seems to follow the elongating sound, but his eyes are blank.

  “It was a Saturday night. September 7, ’91. We had a party every year after Fiesta. To close out the tourist season and just see old friends. It went on very late. We all had way too much to drink. By the time everyone left, Isabel and I were arguing—again.”

  “About what?”

  He shakes his head, but keeps his eyes on the road. “I don’t remember. Everything and nothing. It was happening a lot then. That night was particularly bad. She threw a pot at me and it broke a window. It was all so stupid. So futile.”

  His mouth presses into a thin, straight line.

  “I told her we should sleep it off and talk in the morning. She was so angry she didn’t want to sleep with me. We argued about that, too. She said she was going to stay in the guesthouse. She kept some things out there.

  “She ran into the kitchen and grabbed the keys to the guesthouse. I tried to take them away, but she ran out the back door. I was furious. I couldn’t stand the way she looked at me—as if she hated me. I slammed out the front door and went for a long walk.”

  The road is suddenly and eerily deserted. The green pickup has long since passed us and disappeared.

  “If I’d followed her…”

  He turns the wheel sharply, hitting the brake at the same time. The car slides to a stop on the gravel shoulder.

  “I could have saved her.” His voice is like a thin sheet of ice over a very dark river.

  I can’t look at him, so I focus on a row of weathered mailboxes across the road. The engine has died, and the vented air quickly turns warm and stale. “What happened? When you came back.”

  “I was gone a long time. An hour. Maybe longer. When I came back, I went in the front door. I went upstairs. I went to bed. So I didn’t know. All the outdoor lights were off.” He turns his face to me. “You see what I’m saying, don’t you? It was dark. She’d had too much to drink, she was upset, she fell in the pool. Hit her head…” His gaze goes back to the landscape outside the windshield.

  “And I went to sleep.”

  I should say something. Silence has become the third passenger in the car. Beads of sweat are forming on my forehead, my nose.

  I see Isabel, facedown in the dark pool, her long gold-and-black skirt tangling around her legs while her lungs fill up with water and Paul tosses, restless in his bed.

  At some point he turns the key in the ignition and guides the car back onto the road, gradually picking up speed, now back in control.

  When we pull up in front of Alma’s, I open the door. I don’t turn my head, but my eyes shift to his profile.

  “I still don’t understand—” I have to stop and clear my throat. “Why didn’t she just stand up?”

  He doesn’t answer immediately. When he does, his voice is oddly inflected, like those phone messages that piece together separately recorded words. “Probably she was unconscious or disoriented. And…because of the pool cover.”

  I get out and close the door. Before I get to the bottom of the stairs, he’s driving away.

  eighteen

  It’s a rare summer Sunday that Rita and I are both off. And today we’re both so wired we can’t even sleep in, so after a fast cup of coffee, we decide to power walk Canyon Road from Paseo de Peralta out to the Church of Cristo Rey before it gets too hot and then have lunch on the porch at El Farol.

  Walking in the shade along the river is pleasant, but a warm dry wind is already gusting across Peralta, and we’re both sweating like the proverbial little pigs by the time we turn up Canyon. Turistas are out in force, dressed for Art Safari—men in their walking shorts and polo shirts, women looking like giant poppies in their gauzy cotton dresses. Some insist on driving through the narrow streets, and there’s the inevitable nonresident maneuvering his Cadillac the wrong way in the one-way zone.

  Watching them can sometimes be mildly interesting, but it’s not worth a twisted ankle, so I concentrate instead on the narrow, ragged sidewalk, letting the monotony of my steps lull me into a trance.

  At some point Rita stops cold.

  “Avery, is that—?”

  She’s staring hard across the street, where someone is just opening a door for business. Pinnacle Gallery. In the window is the portrait of Isabel, with a sign that says, “Works by Thomas Hemmings.”

  Again. The impact of it overwhelms the memory of seeing it before.

  I nod. “That’s her.”

  We dash across the street to stand in front of the window.

  “Wow,” says Rita. “Wow. Ave, she’s beautiful.”

  “Was beautiful.”

  “Can I help you?” It’s the guy who was unlocking the door.

  “How much is this picture?” Rita asks.

  He smiles, his blond hair lying carelessly on his forehead. “I’m sorry, this one’s not for sale. It belongs to Mr. DeGraf, the owner.”

  “Well, how come it’s in the window then?” Rita demands.

  He gives us a salesman smile. “It’s such a spectacular piece, it draws people into the gallery. Then they can see some of Tom’s other work.”

  She nods. “Sort of like bait and switch, huh?”

  His laugh shows his teeth all the way back to his molars. “You could say that, I suppose.”

  She nudges me. A woman is waiting behind us to go inside the gallery. We step out of the doorway to let her by and as the blond guy turns to follow her in, his eyes fall on me. He’s already starting his sales warm-up, but there’s a tiny blip, a pause as his eyes slide from my face to Isabel’s and back again.

  By the time we make it out to the Church of Cristo Rey and back down to El Farol, we’re exhausted in the way that only a dry, fierce heat can drain you.

  We get a table on the shaded porch and order our green chile cheeseburgers. I know I shouldn’t have a beer; I’ll end up falling asleep this afternoon, but it sounds so good that I order one anyway after Rita promises to drink part of it.

  The service is slow here, but that’s part of why we like it, I guess. You never feel like they’re rushing to turn your table. We sit in silence, the slow breeze ruffling our damp hair, watching the shoppers, tourists, and locals parade past us.

  Rita twirls the plastic table card advertising a tasting of El Tesoro Tequila. “You okay?” she asks me again.

  “I don’t know. I’m so wound up. I feel like I’m skating on the blade of a knife.”

  She takes a piece of the wheat-smelling country bread and dips it in olive oil. “Don’t you think that sort of figures, considering what’s going on right now?” She reaches across the table for my beer.

  “One morning I actually thought I saw her. I went chasing after this woman on West San Francisco.” I press my lips together. For some reason, it seems important to explain myself. “I almost wish I’d never seen the goddamned picture, you know?”

  From the way she’s looking at me I can tell she doesn’t know. She doesn’t even suspect. Her forehead creases with concentration.r />
  “Now I’m not saying it’s impossible, I’m just saying—you know how when you get a new car, all of a sudden you start seeing lots of people driving that same car?”

  I stare at her, lost for a reply, but the waiter saves me, arriving in the nick of time with our food.

  Juana is already waiting for me Friday afternoon in the kitchen at Dos Hombres, drinking iced tea and pulling out packets of plastic flatware and napkins, little salt and pepper shakers that screw together cleverly, plastic bottles of Dos Hombres private label hot sauce, which is actually just the cheapest grocery store variety with a few added “secret ingredients.”

  Together we pack up Mrs. Donovan’s tailgate party—cheese and cayenne crackers; hummus with roasted garlic; chicken breasts stuffed with goat cheese, piñons and sundried tomatoes; cold marinated filet of beef; cold poached salmon with raspberry chipotle sauce; red potato salad with snow peas and asparagus; and olive oil cake with orange-strawberry salsa.

  “Is it going to her house or what?” Juana asks after we’ve checked off everything against the job sheet and packed it into one hot carton and one cold, and a basket for plates, utensils, condiments, and glasses.

  “No, I’m supposed to meet her in the parking lot at the opera.”

  “You want me to take it? I’m going to my cousin’s in Española tonight. I could drop it off to her on my way.”

  “Sure, if you don’t mind. I’ll clean up here.” I hand her the delivery card. “Look for a white Mercedes SUV with Texas plates. She’s tall, blond, very tan, lots of diamonds.”

  “That should be easy. There’s prob’ly only about five thousand gringas there who look like that.”

  I laugh. “The license number’s on the card. Thanks, chica. I owe you.”

  “No, I owe you.”

  “For what?”

  “That stuff you gave me for my mother. The tea.”

  “Did she like it?”

  “Yeah, it was great. I mean, she got some relief from the sweats, and she’s not holding water the way she was. Plus I don’t have trouble getting it down her, because she likes it. She said her tia Lupe used to make some stuff like that. She was a curandera down in El Paso. Strange lady—she could tell you what your dreams meant.”

  She gives me an appraising look. “You ever do any of that? Dream stuff.”

  I pick up the dirty utensils and turn on the water. “Nope. Thanks again for taking that stuff.”

  It’s hotter than blazes at four o’clock. By the time I walk home, all I want is a cold beer. Maybe some blue corn chips and guacamole. Rita’s sitting on the couch with a magazine in her lap, not reading.

  “You’re home early,” she says.

  “Juana did my delivery tonight. What are you doing home?” She’s been spending so much time with Rick lately that sometimes I only hear her coming and going.

  Her eyes flicker. “I just felt like spending some time with you for a change.”

  “You want a beer?”

  “No, thanks. I have a Coke.”

  I get a Tecate out of the fridge and open it, then plop down on the couch, untie my jogging shoes and kick them off, wiggling my toes. Through the open slider, the words to some heartbreak ballad drift up from Alma’s.

  “So where’s Enrique?”

  “He’s been offered a job at the Albuquerque Sun,” she blurts out. “He wants me to go with him.”

  For a minute I can only watch her roll the magazine into a tube and then release it.

  “You mean, go back to Albuquerque?”

  “You could come, too.” She smiles hopefully. “It would be just like old times. Sort of.”

  I drink some beer and try to get a handle on the ninety-degree turn my life has just taken. “Rita, it wouldn’t be anything like old times.”

  “We could live close to each other. We’d see each other a lot. Rick really likes you.”

  “And I like him. But that doesn’t make us one big happy family. Besides, I’m not going back to Albuquerque. There’s nothing there for me.”

  “Well…” Her voice drifts away, like it’s blown by the wind.

  I get up and go in the kitchen. “When?”

  She clears her throat. “Two weeks.”

  “Two weeks?” It comes out almost a gasp.

  “I can stay through September. I could—”

  “No.” I turn on the water just for something to do, just to hear the sound of it rushing into the empty white sink.

  “Avery, please don’t be mad.”

  “I’m not mad.” Even as I’m saying it, I know it’s a lie. A big, black, outrageous, pink-eyed, flared nostril, yellow-bellied lie. I am mad. I’m absolutely furious. Seven years, and I get two weeks notice.

  “You are too mad.” She’s standing right behind me.

  “Don’t start telling me how I feel.”

  “And don’t you start trying to make me feel guilty for wanting to be happy. All I ever—”

  I turn around, leaning against the counter. “If you feel guilty, maybe you should ask yourself why. Like maybe it’s because you’re leaving me high and dry with two weeks notice, to find another apartment—”

  “Oh, puh-leeze.” Her west Texas twang kicks in. “Avery, you’re twenty-five years old. You can find a place to live by yourself. If you don’t want to, then come to Albuquerque with…us.”

  “You don’t even know him. It hasn’t even been—what—four months?”

  “Amost five. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. I do know him. And I know how I feel.”

  I cross my arms. The edge of the counter digs into my back, and I focus on that small pain to avoid the big one that’s looming. This is a new thing for her. Oh, she’s been “in love” before. Lots of times. But not like this. She’s never even talked about moving in with anyone, much less moving away with them.

  “I’ll go ahead and pay my half of the September rent,” she offers.

  “No, thanks.”

  “Avery, don’t be like this. I know you need the money to stay here till you—”

  “I don’t need your money.”

  Her expression softens, and I have to dodge the hand she tries to put on my arm. “Avery, you’ll always be my best friend.”

  “Right.”

  “You know, so many times in all the time we’ve been together, I’ve felt like you didn’t care about me the same way I cared about you—”

  “Rita, will you please stop talking like a Hallmark card?”

  I walk back into the living room, but she follows me. “Listen to me, Avery. This is life. People come and then they have to leave for a while. It doesn’t mean they don’t care. You don’t have to lose touch. This is normal.”

  She stands there, rubbing her palms together.

  “Normal.” I repeat the word like a dummy.

  Suddenly I can’t stand to look at her trembling chin or the water pooled in her lower eyelids like rain in catch basins.

  I go in my bedroom, closing the door behind me.

  “Avery…”

  I stretch out on the bed.

  “Let’s talk about it.” Her voice is muffled through the door.

  “Not right now.”

  Even through the door, I hear the long, resigned sigh.

  So this is normal.

  Then how come it doesn’t feel normal? How come it feels like some goddamned black hole sucking me dry?

  Juan Largo Street is easy enough to find. It’s a pedestrian walkway off the northeast corner of Taos Plaza, and Tom Hemmings’s studio is supposed to be on the right-hand side all the way at the end, past the J. D. Challenger Gallery. That’s according to my newly purchased Guide to the Studios of Taos Artists.

  The modest adobe structure has two doors, one at ground level, and one at the top of a rickety flight of blue-painted stairs. I start toward the lower one, but then I notice a long bank of windows jutting out from the brown adobe wall upstairs. Good light for a studio.

  At the top of the stairs the smell of turpentine hits
me first, then the music. Some wild kind of tuneless jazz. I take a deep breath and open the door.

  The place reminds me of that joke about Española—how a tornado touched down and did several million dollars worth of improvements. It’s filthy—paint spilled on the floor, spattered on the walls. Paint covered rags, jars with bouquets of paintbrushes, old pizza boxes, full ashtrays, and empty beer bottles. Canvases in varying stages of completion are propped against everything.

  The wall opposite the bank of windows is mirrored, I guess so you can see the fabulous view of the mountain without turning around. But the man in the center of the room, applying paint to a canvas with a palette knife isn’t looking at the view. He’s focused so intently on the work in front of him that he might as well be working in a closet.

  When the music clicks off, he looks up and catches sight of me in the mirror.

  “What the fuck…?” He turns around, straightening up from his crouch over the canvas. He’s tall and lean with gray hair cut very short and the most amazing blue eyes. Before he finishes swearing, he stops and stares at me, slack jawed.

  “Unbelievable,” he mutters. Unthinking, he wipes a hand on his baggy white pants, leaving a streak of orange paint in good company with all the other streaks. He walks over to me slowly, looking at me from different angles. “She was taller.”

  “I’m sorry to just barge in—” I begin.

  “Oh, bullshit. If you were that sorry you wouldn’t have come. I’m really busy. I should just throw your skinny ass out of here.” He’s built like a runner, all long bones and ropy muscles. His collarbone sticks out of the gray V-neck T-shirt that hangs on his frame.

  “I just want to know about her. Please. If this isn’t a good time, I can come back whenever you say, but I have to talk to you.”

  He snorts. “I told you, she was just a model.”

  I try to engage his eyes. “And I told you, I know different.”

  He folds his arms across his chest. “Who’ve you been talking to?”