Only twice in two decades had I dipped into the nest egg. The first time was to pay for the natural healing course in Boulder. Rick had been hoping to talk me into a new truck. The second time was for Colin’s trip to Italy.
And the shit, as they say, hit the fan. Rick was furious, didn’t think it was fair to pay for Colin to go to Italy when neither of the other kids were getting a trip like that. I argued that I would happily pay for any one of them to do something similar. Annie has talked to me about a six-week stay in Hawaii when she graduates, and I fully intend to give it to her. Richard had turned down the chance to go to Venice for his honeymoon, choosing in his Richard-like way to drive to the Grand Canyon instead.
Do I feel guilty?
If not, what’s this lump in my throat?
If it had tipped the scales toward losing Rick, this one thing I’d kept to myself, what did that mean? Am I selfish, or is he? Are both of us?
But the movie captures me, carts me away from the buzzards of thought, and by the end, I’m sobbing into my hands with acute satisfaction. Colin hands me a napkin and smiles gently. “Told you. Just your kind of tragedy.”
“I’m shattered.” I wipe my face. “It was perfect. Love and art.”
The doorbell rings, just once, so I know it has to be someone other than Rick. Stopping by the bathroom on my way, I blow my nose, and Colin beats me to the door. It’s Shannelle standing there, hair flying in the wind, arms crossed tight against her chest. “Hi, Shannelle,” I say, surprised. “Come on in.”
She comes in, nods at Colin. “I hope I’m not interrupting anything.”
“Not at all. What’s up? Want some tea?”
“We also have coffee,” Colin says.
“Oh, that sounds good.”
He holds out his hand. “I’m Colin.”
“I forgot you two haven’t met. Shannelle, this is my middle son, Colin, as I’m sure you’ve figured out. Colin, this is Shannelle Pacheco, who moved in across the street.”
She smiles and I see her blush a little. “Nice to meet you. How’s school?”
“Going well, thank you.” He is still holding her hand, and lets go quickly, tucking it into his hip pocket. “Sorry.”
I smile, bemused. They are, after all, only four years apart, though Shannelle seems much older because of the way her life has gone. “Sit down, Shannelle.” I gesture toward the table. “Coffee or tea?”
“Whichever one is less trouble. Is it all right if I take off my coat?”
“Sure.” I get the coffee and come back and see her through my son’s eyes for a moment. Her tumble of glossy blond hair, the bright blue eyes, long silver earrings dangling beneath her hair. She has taken off her coat, which shows the slightly threadbare sweater beneath it and the small, roundedness of her body. He appreciates it.
Shannelle spreads a piece of paper flat on the table. The hand that smooths it is shaking a little. “I got this in the mail today,” she says, and pushes it across the table as if it has poison on it.
I pick it up. It reads:
Dear Ms. Pacheco,
We are delighted to inform you that you have been selected to participate in the Orcas Island Writer’s Retreat, February 18–28, 20—. All fees, lodging, and board are included in the scholarship. Participants will be expected to—
I raise my eyes and reach over the table to grab her hand. “Shannelle, this is fantastic! You must be over the moon!”
Her eyes fill with tears. “How can I possibly go? Tony will have a cow, I don’t have the money for the flight, I don’t know if I can leave my boys for ten days.” She puts her free hand on her chest. “I just don’t know what to do, where to even start!”
“May I see it?” Colin asks.
She nods. Blinks hard. “I can’t believe they picked me,” she says in a near-whisper. “This woman who has been sort of teaching me gave me the homework assignment of applying and I just did it. I never thought they’d take me.”
Colin whistles. “This is a very prestigious workshop. You must be really good.”
“I’m okay.” She plants her hands on her thighs, stares at the letter with some fierceness. She raises her eyes to him. “I love it, though.” Her hand touches her heart again. “Really love it.”
“You have to go,” Colin says. “No matter who gets mad. This is the program that gave Allen Naranja and Naomi Redding their starts. You know that, right?”
Animation floods Shannelle’s face. “Naomi is my teacher! The one who gave me my assignment.”
His mouth drops. “Naomi Redding is your teacher?”
“Yeah! We met on-line, at a character workshop she led, and we hit it off. Right away.”
I’m looking at them. I don’t know the name, but I haven’t kept up with the world of letters. Colin’s envy is almost palpable. He’s a poet and a student and one day may very well be a writer, but it’s plain that Shannelle has captured his entire interest.
“You must be very good,” Colin says, and puts the paper down in front of her. “You have to go. Life doesn’t give you opportunities like this every day.”
The excitement drains away from her once again. “I know that. I just don’t know how to make it work.”
“Mom,” Colin says. “Tell her.”
I smile. “He’s right, Shannelle. This is a big break, a chance to get what you want, and your teacher believes in you enough to have given you the homework assignment to apply. She probably knew you’d make it. And imagine what you can do with ten uninterrupted days to write, in the company of other writers like you.”
“Oh, and you should see this place,” she says. “It’s in a forest and everybody has a little cabin of their own, and they bring you meals all day. You don’t have to do anything.”
“So what we have to figure out is what the blocks are, one at a time, and see if we can come up with solutions. What’s number one?”
“There are three and they’re all important. Tony, airfare, the boys.”
“Okay. Tony—let’s come back to him. The boys. I can understand how it would be hard to leave them, but the angle to think about is that you might have a chance here to give them a better life, and a happier mother. If you’re doing what you love and believe in, you give them permission to pursue their own goals.”
“Oh! I never thought of it that way.” She nods. “And I might be able to sell something to get the airfare. I looked on-line—it’s three hundred dollars.”
“You can go through Priceline and get it for about half that,” Colin says.
“Really?”
“I’ll show you later.”
“Thank you.” She looks at me, sighs. “Tony.”
“All right.” I can see that he will not be happy about this. He’s a good man, but old-fashioned and blue collar. “He’ll say all kinds of things, but the big fear at the heart of it will be that he’s going to lose you if he lets you do something like this.”
She nods. “That’s part of it, but he won’t like taking care of the kids by himself and he doesn’t cook too good.”
“Maybe your mother-in-law would help.”
“I’m sure.” She looks at me, then at Colin. “The other thing is … oh, I don’t know.”
I give my son a look and he gets up. “I’ll let you guys talk. I have to call some people.” But he stops and squeezes her shoulder. “I know about fifteen people who would kill to have that letter.”
“Thanks.” She waits until he goes, then raises her head. Her mouth is working and I see that the tears are right there beneath the surface again. “What if they all laugh at me, Trudy? All those people Colin is talking about, they’re from a different world than me. They’ll have the right clothes, say the right things, know things about life that I just haven’t ever had a chance to figure out yet. I’m sure they’ve all been to college and stuff. I’ll never fit in.”
“Oh, sweetie!” I grab her hand, and suddenly I feel the presence of Lucille in the room, around me. The air smells of a loamy ga
rden on a hot summer day. “The first day I went to college, I was about to turn around and leave because I was so afraid of those same things. Everybody seemed so much more polished and together. Nobody in my family had ever gone to college, and in fact a lot of them thought it was stupid. But I got there and found out nobody cared about my background. They cared about my future, who I would become.”
“I’m scared to death. Scared to take it, scared not to.”
“All I can tell you is that when you get to be my age, it will haunt you every single day if you don’t do it. You owe it to yourself to claim it.”
“Was there anything like that in your life that you think about now?”
The smell of earth rises more thickly, the scent of tequila and overgrown roses. I close my eyes, dizzy with it. “Yes. I never finished my education. I got pregnant and I came back to Pueblo and I’ve been happy, but I would have been happier if I’d kept going.”
“Are you going to do it now?”
On the wind, I can hear Angel’s wind chimes. “I’m going to Spain in February. To see where Lorca lived and wrote. That’s where I’m starting, anyway.” And I know, saying it aloud, that I’m really going to do it. That it’s almost a sacred promise now.
Somehow, I also have to help Shannelle take the chance in front of her. I look at her hands, working together, with their worn flesh and the chipped nails. I see the faint stain on the front of her sweater. I see myself at that age, and Lucille telling me a woman needs money of her own. I know what I’m going to do, but it has to be done right. “I have a feeling that if you just open yourself up to all of this, it’s going to work out just fine, Shannelle. If you like, I’ll go shopping with you. We can find some inexpensive sweaters and things to make you feel more confident.”
A little light of hope is glowing there in her blue eyes now. “Okay.”
“Promise you will call and accept first thing in the morning.”
“I promise.”
I give her my best grin. “Wow. I might be sitting here with a someday acclaimed writer.”
She laughs, then gets up and hugs me. “Thank you, Trudy. I mean it. This helped a lot.”
“No problem, kiddo.”
After she leaves, I get online and go to Priceline and book a flight to Seville on the eighteenth of February, returning on the first of March. I have no idea what I will do there. I don’t know if I’m insane, if I will regret it, if this is the craziest thing I’ve ever done.
I know that it scares me and that it is my promise to Shannelle. If she can be that brave, so can I.
WOMEN IN BOXING
Claire Buckner, a St. Paul mother of three, made Minnesota amateur boxing history the other night with her crisp left jabs and power right hand thrust. The 24-year-old Theater Arts major at the University of Minnesota became Minnesota’s first AAU woman champion in a four-bout card held Friday night at Bierman Building.
“Female Boxer Makes History”
PAT THOMPSON,
St. Paul Pioneer Press, May 14, 1978
34
JADE
The week before Christmas, Rueben calls me to come to the gym on a Tuesday night. It’s practically empty when I get there, except for Rueben, who crosses the gym as I emerge from the stairs. “Where is everybody?”
“Exhibition in Colorado Springs. Pablo’s fighting.”
I open my mouth. “Why didn’t anybody tell me?”
“Not important. Get changed and we’re gonna warm you up. Chantall will be here in forty-five minutes.”
My grin blazes over my face, too big too contain. “I get to spar with her?”
He nods.
I’m back out on the floor in five minutes flat, loving the fact that my hair isn’t getting in my way. Rueben is waiting with a jump rope and we go through my paces. I love the part where he rubs my shoulders. We’ve been very good since that kiss at the diner. Truth is, I haven’t had a lot of extra time, and he’s been working with the boys at the home nonstop. Christmas is a bad time for those kids.
Chantall shows up with her trainer at exactly 6:45. There’s a fierceness about her, and Rueben leans in to give me some pointers. “Watch for the uppercut.” I nod, and he laces my gloves. I’m ready.
It’s different this time. Without the chatter of onlookers, it’s quiet enough I can hear the shuffle of our feet as we circle. I have time to be scared, thinking of my just-barely healed eye. I know it’s a mistake to favor it, but I do find myself angling my body so that she’ll hit the other side. She notices. Swings from the right, catches me lightly below the jaw. I dance back, watch for that hitch in her step, swing, and catch her, but not as hard as I’d like. She nods to herself, lifts her chin, comes back at me.
It goes like that. Back and forth. Taking each other’s measure, throwing some punches. A few do a little damage, both mine and hers. She knows now to watch for my right and I realize it’s the strongest punch I’ve got, so I have to struggle a little.
I’m frustrated. In the rise of emotion, she lands a sharp jab to my mouth. I taste blood. Adrenaline cracks through my body. I catch her with a flurry of softer, faster jabs, and she grabs me. We struggle for a minute. I can smell her sweat.
We’re locked together and she lands a body blow. Lower-back ribs. Better than the kidney. “Bitch,” I hiss, and shove her away.
From there, it’s grim. She’s hurting and so am I. She’s ducking my cross and I’m ducking hers. The hitch in her gait is more pronounced and I know that’s the secret to knocking her down this time, but my arms feel like they weigh 940 pounds.
She rallies and lands a one-two punch to my face and the just-healed eye, and I think, fuck.
I’m slow recovering.
The uppercut slams my teeth together. Sends me staggering backward, but not quite down. I’m quick with defense, hold her off, shake my head.
It’s what I needed. The cold kicks in. Silver all through my veins. I plant myself, wait for her to come to me.
Hit her.
And down she goes. I’m panting, and can feel the sweat dripping in my eyes. She’s struggling to her feet, but her trainer waves his hand. It’s over.
“Fuck you!” she cries out at me. “I’m gonna kill you.”
I’m walking away. Back to Rueben. I meet his eyes, let him see that it took everything I had.
“Good job, Jade.” He gives me water, helps me off with the gloves. “Let her get changed first.” He gives a signal to the trainer, and we go in back.
Behind the doors, he says, “How’s the jaw?”
Tomorrow, I won’t be able to talk, but it moves up and down okay. I put my hand to it. “That’s a bad punch.”
“You only caught part of it because you were going backward when she landed it.”
I whistle.
“Yeah.” He says gruffly, “Get on the table,” and I lie down on the massage table on my stomach. There’s a feeling like soda pop has replaced the marrow in my bones. He’s rubbing my shoulders. I make myself think of the fight. “Did you see that she has that hitch in her step? That’s how I got her the last time.”
“Used it again this time, too. Good work.” His thumbs burn into my sore shoulder and I groan. “She hurt you a little bit, though, huh?”
“Some,” I admit. “I was favoring my right side. Didn’t want her to hit my eye again so soon, and she knew it.”
“I saw that.”
“But it was still good. I learned a lot.” The buzzing in my bones is growing. I feel powerful and alive. Like there’s light burning up through me. “God, I love that feeling when my glove connects.”
He chuckles. “I know what you mean.”
“I wish I could give that to every woman in the world. All those young girls who sit in my office with no friggin’ power—I mean, Chantall could be one of them, but she made herself strong. Oh!” I scramble over to my back, sit on my butt, grab his hands in my excitement. “Oh, God, Rueben! Why couldn’t there be boxing for girls. I mean, for real? Why could
n’t we do that? Maybe not all of them. But some of them.” I look up at him, my mind swirling with the possibilities. “It could be so good!”
“Lord have mercy,” he says, and then his giant hands are around my head, and he’s kissing me. It hurts a little and I pull back the slightest bit. He says, “Sorry,” but doesn’t stop, just goes easier.
There’s so much in me already that everything just explodes, and I’m kissing him with all I’ve got. It’s impossible not to let it just flow out right this minute. I don’t care where it leads, where it goes, if we stop or start. It’s just right to be devoured and devouring, our mouths so hungry we’re practically biting each other. I move so that my legs go around him, and I pull him into me.
And this is a man who is over the line. I can feel it. His hands are on my back, on my neck, my face, my ass, pulling me into his very hard self. There is almost a sound of humming between us. I don’t know if it’s the sounds we’re making or the sound of our hunger spilling out of us. “Touch me, Rueben,” I whisper.
His hands skim off my sweaty T-shirt and then the sturdy, unsexy sports bra beneath. He’s bending into my flesh, kissing my neck, the upper rise of my breasts, back to my mouth as his hands stroke me. “I should take a shower,” I breathe.
And he says only, “No,” as he curls me into the crook of his big arm and turns me sideways and kisses me. My mouth and my face, his hand running over my arm, my breasts, my side. “Let me taste you like this one time.”
That’s what he does. Then we’re skimming out of our pants, me out of my shorts and him out of his sweats, and we’re joined, hard, my arms around his neck, his strength all that we need, and it’s not pretty or sweet but it’s really good.
And there has never been a man, ever, who felt like this. Just right. His body fits my big one. His height is right for mine. I hold him inside me, my drained arms looped around his neck, and breathe into his chest. He kisses my head and rubs my back and we’re swirling back to earth.
“I wasn’t trying to tempt you,” I say quietly. Afraid now that he’ll be angry with me.
“No. I know.” He moves against me. I feel him smile. “I’m weak.”
The Goddesses of Kitchen Avenue: A Novel Page 24
