Isabel's Daughter

by Judith Ryan Hendricks

twenty-one

  By mid-October, I’ve managed to get four interviews. Paul insists on lending me money for some new black pants and a lightweight jacket, some black shoes with a small heel that won’t cripple me. I wear Cassie’s circle of turquoise for luck. Everyone says they’ll call me. Eventually they do.

  Two of them say, Thanks for interviewing, but we’ve decided not to hire additional staff at this time. Check back with us in the spring. One says the position’s been filled, period. The fourth one calls me in for a second interview with the chef/owner. This makes me breathless and sweaty-palmed—the way some women go off about first dates.

  Andy Ross, chef of Casa Rosada, reminds me a little of Pete Dimon—tall, fair-haired, and ruddy-faced. I interpret this as a good omen. I fantasize about saying casually to Rita on the phone someday, “Yeah, the guy I work for looks just like Pete.”

  We sit at the textured cement bar. My legs hang off the edge of the high stool, feet dangling in space like a little kid—not exactly the image I’m trying to project.

  He doodles on the résumé I put together on the library’s computer. A little blue-ink race car with squiggles of exhaust coming out the tailpipe.

  “Dos Hombres, huh?” He doesn’t even try to hide his scorn. “It’s a whole different ball game—catering.”

  “Yes, I know.” I smile. “I didn’t like it as well as restaurant work, but when I first moved to Santa Fe, that was all I could find.”

  He rests one elbow on the bar, sipping a mineral water with lime, no ice. “How much notice would you have to give?”

  “None.” It comes out too quickly, before I consider his strategy. “I quit a couple of weeks ago.”

  “Why?”

  “It just wasn’t what I wanted to do.”

  “Bullshit,” he says.

  “Excuse me?”

  “In this town you don’t quit one job till you’ve got something else lined up. Usually two something elses. Just to be safe.” He hops off his stool and walks around behind the bar.

  I’m so focused on what he’s just said, and how I’m supposed to answer, that I haven’t bothered to wonder what he’s doing behind the bar.

  I swallow. “Well, quite honestly, I had a personality conflict with someone at Dos Hombres and—”

  “One of the Hombres, I bet. And I could probably guess which one.” He laughs unpleasantly. “And so you got canned.” He turns his back to me and pulls a bottle of wine out of the wine rack. Then he picks up one of those pocketknife-looking wine openers and plunks them both down in front of me. “Happens to everyone sooner or later. Open that for me.”

  A trickle of perspiration rolls down between my shoulder blades. I’ve watched people use these things, but I’ve never ever used one myself. At Pete’s, when we finally got wine, it came in a box with a spigot, and at Dos Hombres, we had what Kirk called “sissy corkscrews”—the ones that look sort of like a little chrome doll with the two arms that you just push down and the cork pops out.

  This damn thing is like a surgical tool. I break a nail opening the little knife part. I manage to cut off the foil without too much trouble, but then I proceed to totally destroy the cork. He just sits there, not saying a word, watching me screw the thing in crooked and try to pull it out three times. When it finally pops out, it leaves a flotilla of cork crumbs sitting on the surface of the wine.

  “I guess they had screw-tops at the diner.” He peers into the bottle disapprovingly. “What side do you serve from?”

  “The right,” I say. “Clear from the left.”

  “Have you done tray service?”

  “Yes.”

  He points to a table where linens, dishes, flatware, and glasses for wine and water are stacked. “Do a setup for me.”

  I try not to show my surprise. “Don’t the busboys do that?”

  “Usually. But when it’s busy, you might have to pitch in.”

  I slide off the stool.

  I move all the dishes and spread the two cloths, one over the other, turned at right angles so the corners alternate. It’s a table for two, and I put the service plates down first, dinner plates on top, then salad plates on top of those. The plates are beautiful—all white, but each different size has its own textured design on the rim, giving them an intriguing look when they’re stacked. Bread plates go to the left, glasses to the right. Before I’m through with the flatware, I realize there’s a few pieces whose function escapes me, like two long butter knives. Either that, or he’s just thrown in some extra pieces as a test.

  When I finish, I look at him, and right away I know I’ve screwed up bigtime.

  “First of all, the cloths are reversed,” he says. “The finer should be on top, the coarser one on the bottom. You should be able to tell by the feel which is which.

  “Second, you never put a dinner plate on a service plate. The salad plate goes there, and then they’re cleared before the main course. The fish knife doesn’t go on the butter plate, it goes to the right of the entrée knife. But I don’t guess that ever came up at Pete’s.”

  My face flares. I want to tell him where I think he should put the fish knife, but I just say, “It’s not rocket science. I can learn all that.”

  “Are there any restrictions on what hours you can work?” he asks.

  “No.”

  He makes a few notations on my application, takes a leisurely swallow of mineral water, and says, “Well, thanks for coming by. We’ll keep this on file.”

  First I feel cold. Then hot. I tell myself I didn’t hear what he said. “When will you make a decision?”

  “I’ve already made one. The position was filled yesterday. I’ll keep your app on file in case something changes. And you can always check back with us.”

  I can’t move. I stand there, stuck to the floor, while a lot of bad memories pile up from behind like one of those chain reaction car crashes. Disapproving frowns directed at my tacky pilled sweaters, sideways remarks about my size or age, suggestions that I wear contact lenses to make my eyes look normal, the implication that my experience at Pete’s Diner was worse than useless.

  “If you already filled the job, why the hell did you make me come in here—so you could have fun watching me jump through my ass backwards?”

  We stare at each other for a few seconds. Then he says, “I like to keep people in the file in case we get in a bind. What’s your problem?”

  “I have a life. I don’t want to live it in your goddamn file.”

  He shrugs. “Your choice.” He rips my application in half, then in half again. Before he’s finished ripping it the third time, I’m out the door, catching the doorknob and flinging it back so hard that the big glass pane shivers and crashes to the ground. He yells something I can hear but not understand, and I just keep walking.

  The Good Earth is quiet, not even a bell on the door today. Cookie’s sitting behind the counter, a tumbled heap of green material in her lap, and her face opens into a smile when she sees me.

  “Avery, hi. How’s it going?”

  I start to say fine, but something in her dark, watchful eyes makes me blurt out, “I’m unemployed, my roommate’s left town, and I’ve just had the job interview from hell…but other than that, fine.”

  Her laugh bubbles like a fountain. “We’re having one of those days, too. Auntie didn’t sleep at all last night, so she’s napping now.

  That’s why I took the bell off the door.” She frowns. “I hope you didn’t need to speak to her. I’m afraid she wouldn’t be much help today.”

  “No, that’s not why I came. I don’t really know why I came. I just saw the sign as I was driving by, and…here I am.”

  “Well, I, for one, am delighted. I can use the company. Let’s move to the comfy chairs.”

  The bruised-looking hollows under Cookie’s eyes are more apparent in the light from the window.

  “You must have had a rough night, too,” I say.

  Her long snaky curls bounce as she shakes her head. “I’m used
to it. I don’t need a lot of sleep anymore. It’s poor Liza that’s having a rough go. I’m afraid there’s not much more to be done.”

  “I’m sorry.” I never know what to say when people drop that kind of information on you. “But I guess she’s lucky to have you here.”

  “I’m lucky to have her, too. Liza’s my mum’s younger sister, and she’s been like a second mother to me.”

  “How long have you been here?”

  She sighs and leans her head back against the chair’s faded flower pattern. “About five years.”

  “Did you come from the islands, too?”

  “I was born in St. Kitts, but then later, my family moved around a lot.”

  “What did your parents do?”

  “They were professional troublemakers.” When I look puzzled, she explains. “Political activists. They went to different places to organize political opposition parties, labor unions, voter registration, usually staying just long enough to annoy local politicos. Finally when I was about seventeen, they annoyed someone in Jamaica sufficiently to have a bomb planted in their car.”

  “So they were killed?”

  “My father was killed outright. My mother spent the remainder of her days in a wheelchair. I took care of her till she died five years ago.”

  “So then you came here, just in time to take care of Liza.”

  She regards me quizzically. “Yes, but that’s what women do, isn’t it? Take care of people. And make no mistake, she was the one taking care of me at first. I was in a bad way then, and I came to her because she was my only family, but from the very first she made me laugh.

  “When she picked me up at the airport that day I came, she said, ‘Cookie, my dear, one thing you’re going to have to get used to in New Mexico is their odd ideas on race.’ I was rather appalled because I’d heard mostly good things about New Mexico being a very tolerant place. So I said, ‘What do you mean, Auntie?’ And she explained to me that there are only three races here. You are either Spanish, Indian, or Anglo. She said, ‘That means you and I, my dear Cookie, are as Anglo as we can be—just like the Chinese gentleman who owns the dry cleaners.”

  A crash from the back room freezes us both.

  “Auntie.” Cookie jumps up and disappears through the door behind the counter.

  I walk over to the counter and stand, listening. I can’t make out any words, just their two voices—Liza’s thin and reedy like a wailing kitten, Cookie’s lower, soothing, rising and falling like a boat on gentle swells.

  In a few minutes she reappears, shaking her head, smiling ruefully. “She’s going to make me old before my time.”

  “Is she okay?”

  “For the moment. She was trying to reach the glass of water on her night table and managed to pull the tray off onto the floor. I’ve told her to call me if she needs something; I’ve given her a bell to ring…she’s about the most stubborn woman I know.”

  I look at my watch. “I’ve got to get going.”

  “I hope you’ll come again, Avery. I’m not always so scattered. This situation is becoming…”

  “Is it the pain?” I ask hesitantly.

  “Not really, her medications are controlling it fairly well. It’s just they make her a bit woozy. She’s restless and she thinks she can still do everything for herself. The hard part is knowing what to do with her during the day. I don’t dare leave her at home, but I can’t very well close the shop. Most of the time she stays back in Isabel’s old room, but I have to watch her like a hawk to be sure she doesn’t decide to scrub the floors or something.” Again the rueful laugh.

  I hesitate, but only for a second. “I have something that might help her. It’s not a medicine or anything, it’s just a tea. The old lady who raised me said it was good for whatever ails you. Worst-case scenario is it just tastes good and doesn’t do anything. But I was thinking it might help her relax. You, too.”

  “What’s in it?”

  “A bunch of herbs—lemon balm and ginger and anise, fenugreek—and one or two others that I’ve forgotten. I haven’t made any in a while, but I have enough for probably three or four cups. I could bring it by tomorrow…”

  “I’d love to try it.” She frowns. “Unfortunately I have to take Liza to Albuquerque for her med check, so I’m going to have to close the store in the afternoon.”

  “I could just drop it through the mail slot.”

  She brightens. “Oh, lovely. It should be a good day to try it, too. She’s always rather down after we see the doctor.”

  By the time I park by the gate on San Tomás, the sky is deep blue and a silver arc of moon is rising in the sky. Crickets chirp happily. I let myself in the gate with the key Paul gave me and crunch through the gravel to the guesthouse. The lights are on inside, and I know I didn’t leave them on because I expected to be back long ago.

  Paul is sitting in the wingback chair in front of the fireplace. A glass of wine is in his hand. He smiles tentatively.

  “That must have been quite an interview.”

  I pretend to search for something in the depths of my purse. “I guess you could say that.”

  “I had a phone call from Andy Ross—”

  “That son of a bitch.” I toss the purse down on the banco. “He had my phone number. Why did he call you?”

  “I suppose to tell me you broke his door. He saw that I was listed as a reference—”

  “And he wanted to warn you that you were vouching for a psychopath.”

  It’s the first time I’ve heard him laugh—a low, pleasant rumble. “I’m sure all he wanted was to get paid for the door.”

  I look up quickly. “You didn’t tell him you’d pay for it?”

  “I told him that’s why he pays insurance premiums. I said I’d cover his deductible. He was happy.”

  “Frankly, I don’t give a shit if he’s happy or not. And I’ll pay the fucking deductible.”

  His index finger absently rubs the rim of his wineglass. “You can’t pay the fucking deductible until you get a job,” he says mildly, “and you’re not going to get a job if you go around breaking restaurant windows. Sit down.”

  “Doors.” I glare at him. “I don’t feel like sitting down.”

  “He said you were angry because the position was filled, and you slammed the door so hard the glass broke.”

  “That about covers it.” For some inexplicable reason I find myself wanting a cigarette.

  “I can understand your being angry, but not that angry. Not about something like that. Why don’t you tell me the rest of it?”

  “Because I don’t feel like talking about it.”

  “Don’t you think I’ve a right to know?” He sets the wineglass on the floor.

  “Actually, no. I don’t. But here’s the lite version: First, he knew the job was filled, and he let me come anyway. Second, I’m sick of people like him giving me shit because I don’t know which side to put the fish knife on. Above the finger bowl or below? In your ear or up your ass? They think they have to explain what a venue is. I get treated like dog poop because I worked in a—gasp!—diner. Or because I don’t know how to use a frigging surgical corkscrew—”

  “Avery, I think you’re—”

  “I got all dressed up and paid three bucks for parking so he could get off watching me screw up and then, and only then, tell me the job’s been filled. What’s three bucks? Nothing, if you’re pulling down a hundred grand a year—”

  “Avery—”

  “You want to know the worst part?” I start toward the chair where he’s staring at me incredulously. “The worst part, the part that really pisses me off, is that he enjoyed every goddamned minute of it!”

  At this point in the conversation, my foot hits his wineglass, knocking it over.

  “Finished?” he says. I can tell he’s trying not to look at the wine soaking into the Tibetan rug.

  I run to the kitchen, returning with a box of salt.

  “What are you doing?” he asks.

&n
bsp; I dump salt all over the spreading stain. “Damage control.” I look up at him, thoroughly embarrassed. I close my eyes and breathe in deeply. “I’m sorry. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea, me moving over here.”

  He says. “The rug can be cleaned. Don’t worry about it.”

  I start to say that “Don’t worry about it” seems to be his philosophy of life—and one that works best with plenty of money, but for once, common sense intervenes. I don’t need to be picking fights with the one person who’s standing between me and the street. Instead I take a deep breath, force my face into a reasonable facsimile of a smile and say, “What can I fix you for dinner?” When he looks at me in surprise, I remind him that I’m supposed to be his personal chef.

  “I’m giving you the night off. Why don’t we go out?”

  “Oh, no. We had a deal. I can’t stay here if you won’t let me earn my keep. You haven’t eaten already, have you?”

  “No…and I’m not even sure what’s in the pantry.”

  “Well, let’s go look.”

  He brightens. “On one condition. You’ll have to eat with me.”

  The cupboard isn’t exactly bare, but it’s close enough. There’s a plastic bag of tortillas in the fridge. From some ends of cheese, I manage to grate enough for enchiladas, and I throw together a half-assed sauce from a can of chopped tomatoes, a lot of chile powder, and a touch of heavy cream. In the vegetable bin I salvage enough unspoiled lettuce and a few mushrooms that can be trimmed for a salad.

  “I’m going to the farmers’ market Saturday and get some decent food,” I say when we’re sitting on the couch in his office with a fire crackling in the fireplace. “How can you live like this?”

  He shrugs. “I eat out a lot. And on Mondays Mrs. Martinez always leaves dinner for me. She makes so much I can usually eat it for at least two nights. This is great. I can’t believe you could make dinner out of the dregs of my kitchen.”

  “It’s not great.” I laugh. “Actually it’s pretty awful; fortunately, we’re both hungry.” I sink back into some squishy throw pillows and let my eyes sweep the room. His massive desk is unlike anything I’ve seen—it’s red—a beautiful orangey red that looks about a mile deep. On the back and sides, there are painted scenes in an oriental style, with figures carved from what looks like colored stone. Against the wall perpendicular to the desk, his computer sits on a rough wooden table.