The Goddesses of Kitchen Avenue: A Novel

by Barbara O'Neal

  “Okay.”

  “Close your eyes,” I say, and brush my hands with long strokes through her hair and scalp. “You might cry, but that’s okay. Don’t worry about it.”

  She’s already relaxing. Her voice is a little farther away. “Okay.”

  And then I let Nakai, with his melancholy, beautiful flute, fill the room, let my hands do their work. Her body is strong and hard, some of it with muscle, but mostly with tension. It lives in her face because she tries to keep from showing anything, and in her shoulders and neck, which are like granite when I first begin, because she’s carrying too much with her. I work there for a long time, smoothing and easing, feeling her wince when I find the pockets of painful knots. I ease back a little, smooth and smooth and ease, and she makes a soft sound. I smile.

  As I work, something eases in me, too. I feel something buzzy flowing down my spine, through my legs, to the floor, all the poison I’ve been carrying with me, or at least some of it. The more I work, the more ease I feel through my scalp, through my arms. My wrist twinges slightly now and then, but it’s not a dangerous kind of twinging, just a long-unused joint coming back to life.

  Ah, I have missed this. Missed the gentleness of this room, the peacefulness of the practice, the great benefit there is in giving. How did I survive these months without it? Why didn’t I just come down here sometimes and lie down and just give myself up to my grief and let the healing spirits of the goddesses and all the mothers and ancestors come in and take care of me?

  Grieve, as Jade is grieving. Tears appear and disappear, and when I’m finished, I touch her back gently. “Take your time, sweetie. Don’t get up too fast. I’ll make us some herb tea. Just come up when you’re ready.”

  I pour her a huge glass of water and put it on the table, and put the kettle on, finding the big ceramic cups I got at the Renaissance Festival a few years ago. I missed it this year, and it’s one of my favorite places to go mess around. As I ready the cups, filling two tea balls with a mixture I have made for me at the herb store for things like this, I realize Rick never once went with me.

  And for that matter, he always hibernated when I had evening clients come in. It made him acutely uncomfortable that I wanted to do this—it took two years to convince him that I really wanted it, that it wasn’t some fleeting interest, but a genuine offshoot of my interest in yoga and natural healing.

  Why in the world did I let him bully me that way?

  Jade comes up, looking dazed, her hair captured in a scrunchie at the top of her head, and she throws her arms around me in a fierce hug. “Thank you,” she breathes in my ear. “I needed that so much.”

  I hug her back. “I know.” What she doesn’t know is how badly I needed it myself.

  For the first time in months, I feel like myself.

  For a while, she’s quiet, drinking water, staring at a spot in the middle of the table. I think fancifully that she could be Yemaya, except for the yellow shadows under her eyes. Her eyelids are puffy.

  “What I don’t understand, Trudy,” she says at last, “is why I even care. He’s a liar and a thief and a cheat. Why does even one cell of my body still want him?”

  She doesn’t really want an answer. I raise my eyebrows, nudge the cookies in her direction.

  “I mean, I sit there every day in my office, passing judgment on those girls. I’m pissed at them. They make terrible choices. Throw themselves away on those loser men.” She spreads her hands. “And how am I any different?”

  “Jade, don’t be so hard on yourself.”

  Her red-rimmed eyes look lashless. “Look at me in this minute. I’m crying over a man who married someone else, and I still want to write him a letter and tell him how much I loved him.” She puts her head down on her hands and lets go of a deep, pained sigh. Her hair scatters in coppery corkscrews over the table and I reach for a lock of it, rub it between my fingers.

  “I hate,” she says, “that I know what he’s saying to her. That he’s saying exactly the same things in exactly the same words and voice. Not just the ideas, you know? The exact same words. And she’s thinking, just like I did, that he made them up just for her. Like, he propositioned her in the same way, and he got her into his arms the same way.…” She lowers her voice, slurs it a little bit. “Come here, baby, let me hold you.” She makes a noise, a growl, and covers her ears like that will shut out the sound. “And after sex, he will say, ‘Damn, baby, I can’t even move.’ ”

  It’s only then that she looks up at me and sees my face, which I feel must be gray with recognition. “Oh, Trudy, God, I’m sorry.” She loops her hand around my wrist. “Don’t think about it. Start singing ‘The Star-Spangled Banner,’ right now.” And she starts it, “O-oh, say can you see …”

  But I say, “When I read his e-mails to Carolyn, that was the thing that slayed me. He called her some of the same pet names. Like, I always thought they belonged to me. And I know that he suggested some of the same things sexually. I don’t want to say them, but it was very obvious.”

  “How can they do that? Are they just that cold?”

  “I don’t know.” Maybe it’s the fact that my hands are still buzzing from giving a massage, that all that energy is still humming in me, but I put my palms over my chest and I feel the calm pressing through. “Maybe we do it, too, and just don’t realize it. Maybe that’s why we get jealous, men and women, because we know so much about our lovers and how they do things that it’s way too easy to picture them doing and saying the same things with someone else.”

  Putting his hands low on my/her belly, kissing my/her neck, making that soft, low sound of anticipation …

  I start to sing, “O-oh, say can you see …”

  Jade joins in. We sing it all the way through. “America” is next, and then we measure each other for a minute. She narrows her eyes, takes a breath, and starts, “You’re a Grand Old Flag,” which makes us laugh, and I raise my glass and click it against hers and it’s better.

  At least for the moment.

  * * *

  The next day, I pick up some photographs from Safeway and I’m excited to discover that a couple of the ones I shot of Angel at the park are pretty good, as well as a few others. In my excitement, I carry them over to his little cottage before I even go home.

  “I got some pictures back,” I say when he opens the door, afraid suddenly that he’s going to see through my ruse. Ever since Thanksgiving night, I’ve wanted to come see him.

  He doesn’t say anything at first, just stands there looking at me, dressed only in his Ecuadorean pajama bottoms and no shirt.

  “Were you sleeping?”

  “No.” His expression is so serious, and I haven’t seen this before. I’m not sure what to do. Stay? Go?

  It occurs to me that there might be a woman in his rooms, and I flush. “Sorry. I’ll come back when it’s a better time.”

  “This is a good time.” He reaches for my arm, pulls me inside, looks out on the street before he closes the door. “Come, drink coffee with me.”

  “Is there something wrong? If this is a bad time, I can come back.”

  “No, no.” He turns, and I admire his long, smooth back as he leads me to the kitchen, where there are papers scattered over the table. Letters, maybe. He gathers them into a pile, clearing a space for us. “Please, will you sit down?” A little spark comes into his face, tilting up his eyes. “You have not have coffee so good as mine, I promise.”

  I settle in my chair uneasily, placing the three envelopes of pictures primly before me. For the first time, I see he is a real man, with a real life that has nothing to do with my fantasies of him, nothing at all to do with me or magic or releasing me from my pain, and I am slightly ashamed for using him, even mentally. When he puts the coffee down in front of me, I smell the fragrance of cinnamon and smile up at him. “Everything about you smells good, you know that?”

  He pauses, puts one palm on the table. His ribs, covered by skin as smooth as toffee, are even with my
nose. I could kiss them.

  I hold my hands on my lap. He waits for a minute, looking down at me with his head at an angle.

  All I have to do is give him a single sign. I feel them crowding around my body, a twitch in the neck I could bend, a shiver in the arm I could raise, a tingle in the fingertips that know his skin would be smooth as butter. As if there is something baking, I smell yeast and sugar and something dark.

  But I can’t even raise my eyes, lift a finger. Instead, I turn my head away, look at the table.

  A little hmmph comes out of his mouth, but he moves away, gives me the space I am asking for. He sits down again across from me at the table, and I see his fingers land, then move away from the letter in a very thin envelope.

  “Is something the matter, Angel?” I ask.

  He makes a little noise, a half-sigh through nearly closed lips. Again his hand gives him away, strays across the space to the letter on top. A colorful stamp with ESPAÑA on it decorates one corner, and it’s the spidery, elegant hand of a vigorous young woman that wrote the address.

  There is directness and something haunted in his eyes when he looks at me. “Roberta tells me you are in love with the husband who is not living with you, yes?”

  I lift a shoulder.

  He leans over the table, puts his beautiful brown hands around mine. “Here is my secret. I have been wandering the world shooting photographs of women because this one”—he inclines his head toward the letter, both angrily and with resignation—“broke my heart. She wants a man with money, and I do not have any.”

  I turn my palms upward to his. “Tell me.”

  “She lived nearby, since we were very small. Our mothers were great friends, and they were happy that we loved each other. They dreamed they could be abuelas together, to the same children. Never was there anybody in my eyes or heart but Juliana, nor anyone in hers.”

  “What happened?”

  “Her father died. And her mother was fortunate to find a wealthy man to love her, and take her to a big house, and my Juliana, she became accustomed to those things.” His thumb moves on mine, and he looks there, as if it is too hard to look in my face and speak the rest aloud. “Still, we planned to be married, and I am a photographer with my pictures in the magazines, and I think it will make her happy enough.” He tsks, nods to himself. Raises his eyes. “Do you know what she did, Trudy?”

  I shake my head.

  “She did not come to the church the day of the wedding. Shamed me in front of my family and all our friends and all the people I saw every day at my work, because she decided she did not want to do it, after we planned for a year.” His cheekbones redden with remembered humiliation. “She did not come.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “So, here I am. I could not stay there, face them. I left the next day, came to America, where no one knows me.”

  “And she writes to you?”

  “She is sorry.” One eyebrow cocks. “It makes me angry every time.”

  “Mine says he’s sorry, too.” I pull my hand free, raise my arm. “I took a tire iron to his truck windows and broke my arm when I found out he had another woman.”

  He laughs, richly, his brilliant white teeth showing, and I think, How could someone have left this man at the altar? For a moment, I am tempted to stand up and put my hands on his face and kiss him, but it seems too bold, too obvious, and then he’s picking up my photographs. “You brought me your pictures, eh?”

  “Remember, I’m just a beginner.”

  He smiles. Opens the envelope.

  Light from the north window in the kitchen softly glides over his shoulder, illuminating the sleekness of his skin. He doesn’t look at me as he opens an envelope, shakes out the photos, takes his time looking through them. He pauses now and then to drop one on the table, and I realize my hands are working together in my lap. I want him to like them. There’s a small pile in a stack when he opens the last envelope, the ones I shot that first day in the park, and the first one is of Angel himself, close in on his face, and he’s looking directly into the camera.

  “I liked that one,” I say. “The light on your nose.”

  He nods, drops it in the pile, does not smile as I had anticipated. There are two others he drops, too, from this set, and then he puts them away. “You have done well,” he says, and smiles. “This one, especially,” he says, showing me one of the pond and the Victorian iron fence. “You see? There is good light, good combinations of shape.”

  There he is, sitting next to me, shirtless, and he offered his body, and I’m smelling his skin, and he’s so close that there’s a rippling awareness burning in my ears, my thighs. I can’t even hear what he’s saying because I’m trying to think how to fix this. What would Lucille tell me?

  “Angel,” I say.

  He raises his head, shows me those green-and-gold eyes, and I reach out and touch his cheek. “You surprised me, that’s all.”

  “It is not necessary to our friendship,” he says quietly.

  “I know.” I stand up and bend down to kiss his mouth. My hair falls around us. He makes a soft, rich sound, and puts his hands on my waist, then one in my hair, pulling me down onto his lap. The taste of him makes my skin ripple.

  I have not kissed anyone but Rick Marino in over two decades. Angel’s lips are lush and firm, and he kisses with genuine pleasure, exploring, letting me lead as long as I need to. There’s a wild pulse in my throat, shakiness in my body, and I’m afraid I’m going to look very foolish, but I touch his chest, rub my palm over the sleek flesh, feel his heart thundering beneath my hand, and raise my head. “I have wanted you since the first time I saw you,” I whisper, and touch his mouth with my fingers. “I’ve never seen a man so beautiful. Ever.”

  Then his hands are on my face, hard, and his mouth takes mine. My hands are in his hair, on his shoulders, stroking the skin I’ve so wanted to touch. And he’s pulling me into his lap so that I straddle him right on the chair, our chests brushing, sex pressed together, hard, and his hands are on my hips, squeezing my buttocks, then on my breasts, and—

  Oh, God.

  I have not had sex in so long that my entire body ignites at his touch, his kisses, the feeling of his skin and his hair, and he’s skimming off my shirt and I’m raising my hands to help him, and his mouth is on my breasts through my bra before I even lower my hands, and then I’m getting out of that as fast as I can so I can feel that rich mouth on my naked—oh—breasts and my neck, and then I need to taste him, and I drink of his flesh, his neck, his face, his mouth again, my hands on those angles of chin and cheekbone. He’s breathing so hard, I’m flattered when I notice, and there’s a sheen of moisture on me, on him, that is our sweat, our desire steaming out of us in the cinnamon-and-coffee-scented kitchen.

  Then he’s up and leading me away from the chair and into his bedroom, where it is dark and smells of soap and aftershave and I’m lying on the bed with only my jeans on, while he skims away his loose trousers to show me his whole, lean, long, beautiful body. My voice is throaty, soft when I say, “I think I would like to take your picture like this.”

  “And I,” he says, falling on me, kissing my torso, pulling my hair around me, smoothing it over my breasts and waist like a gossamer garment, “cannot think of anything but this.” He touches my sex through my jeans, “and this.” He kisses my belly, suckles hard, and makes a mark as he unfastens, unzips, and I lift my hips and let him take that, too. “Red here, too. So beautiful,” he says, combing his fingers between my legs, and then I’m spilling over, spilling into him, into this moment, and I hold it at the same time I feel it, the wilderness that is Angel, the exotica of having sex with a man I barely know, in the middle of the day. He thinks of the condom because he is more practiced, and I find I don’t mind it, because there is so much else to enjoy—the spill of his wavy hair around my face as he kisses me, enters me, lifts my hips and legs and—

  Oh, it’s so decadent and so good and I hear Lucille laughing somewhere on
the other side as an orgasm splits me in two—taking me to the other side of my life, dividing me into the Trudy who was and the Trudy who will be, and I hold him tightly, rock him close as he follows me, and we shiver into the collapse, but we’re still kissing and I’m tasting his neck and his jaw and we’re rolling together, slick with our sweat, into a cocoon of release and pleasure.

  He lifts up on his elbows, shoves his hair out of his face, looks at me closely and seriously. So close, his eyes are extraordinarily beautiful, the gold and green and flecks of blue. “Are you all right?” he asks softly, touches my cheek.

  I start to laugh, slide closer, run my hands over his hips. “Sí.”

  The catlike sultriness comes back into his eyes. “That’s good, Trudee. Very good.” And he begins to make love to me all over again, this time slowly and with great skill, and it leaves me absolutely boneless, which is when he takes me to his kitchen and feeds me, and kisses me, and feeds me some more, and I can only imagine how I must look when he says, at last, “Now, sweet lady, I would like to take your picture. Would that be all right?”

  “Clothes on or off?”

  He smiles, stands, and holds out his hand. I take it and allow myself to be led, wearing only his shirt, into his bedroom. He takes the green-and-purple serape from the chair and tosses it over the bed and pulls open the drapes, which makes light fall in gold bars over the floor and the bed, and there’s a quickening in my chest as I begin to understand. Without waiting for his instruction, I shrug out of the shirt and lie down on top of the serape on my stomach. Warm sunlight falls in thick swaths over my bottom and across one arm, and Angel makes a soft sound, bending with camera in hand to spread my hair over my back and shoulder, then he steps back and says, “Look at me, mi embruja,” and when I do, I feel a shiver wash over me as the camera clicks, knowing it was all for these photographs, that somewhere in his future another woman will lean in and look at my eyes, my hair in this captured moment, and say, “She is so luminous.”

  Thinking this, I smile very slightly and he makes a sound and his shutter whirs, then he is bending and kissing me and his hands are on my body and I know I will never, ever forget this day.