“Uh-huh.” Mary yawned. “Don’t you have any sisters?”
“Yes. Sue. She does charity work. We have a dog, too. His name is Jules, and he likes to watch us play badminton, so he can chase the badminton birds. When one goes outside the fence, he retrieves it.”
They went on to discuss the Oliviers for a while, with both of them embellishing the lives of the family. How Marcus loved to paint and how Swan was a pianist. And how Jules would sit on the line of the net, his head going back and forth, back and forth, watching the badminton bird rise and descend. They piled on details until the vague and airy outline of the Oliviers threatened to collapse. And then they stopped.
After a silence, Mary said, “To make this trip, we’d need money. A lot.”
“I still have almost three hundred dollars.”
“We’d need more than that. We’d be gone a few days. We’d have to pay for gas and food and motels. I’d have to go to the bank and get some of my own money. It’s not that I mind, it’s just that sometimes it’s hard to convince the bank person that I need it.” But when was the last time she’d had to? Not in months, for she needed nothing beyond what the trustee would send her every month for food and clothes and spending money. He himself paid Rosella’s salary out of his trustee’s account.
“I’ll pay you back.”
Mary frowned. The would of this discussion had turned to will, as if it were decided, and Mary wasn’t sure she liked this being taken for granted. “I’ll think about it.”
“Okay.”
Mary was left then to think about it. She would much prefer to argue about it. She lay with her hands behind her head.
“I can go in the bank with you,” said Andi.
“No. You’d tell him I need triple-bypass surgery. Good night.” Mary turned over on her side and watched the pale night beyond the window. She could see the small blooms of cactus, the shapes of rocks. It might be, she thought, what the landscape of the moon looks like. Sleepily, she thought of driving and driving and driving through it. Idaho. Idaho. She formed the word soundlessly, thinking it must be Indian.
15
As they sat eating blue-corn pancakes, Rosella said, “Tomkin’s car is busted. I thought maybe we could drive into the city and Tomkin could drive you back in our car.” Rosella turned another pancake on the grill.
“But then how would Tomkin get back?” He was Rosella’s friend and was to have picked her up this morning. Driving into the city was exactly what Mary wanted. She exchanged a look with Andi.
“Him? Easy, he’s got a lot of friends with cars.” Rosella plopped another pancake on Mary’s plate. “Just don’t let me catch you driving that car, miss. I know what you get up to, don’t think I don’t.”
“Me? I’m only fourteen, for heaven’s sakes!”
Rosella grunted. “You’re only fourteen when it suits you. Rest of the time you’re a hundred fourteen.”
Mary poured a thick band of syrup over her pancake. “Andi can drive. Legally.” Mary looked across the table at Andi, who smiled—who beamed—at Rosella.
Rosella looked at Andi with deep suspicion. “Who says?”
“Rosella, I’m seventeen. Do you know anyone who doesn’t learn to drive by then?”
“Yes, plenty. Zuni don’t think driving cars is what life’s all about.”
Andi ignored this. “Learning to drive, it’s like being baptized; it’s like a Vision Quest.”
Rosella raised her eyebrows over her coffee cup. “What do you know about Vision Quests, eh?”
Andi started in on a long description, little of which was authentic, most of it a litter of specifics tossed out so carelessly that it was hard to separate fact from fancy. There was a detailed accounting of eagle-feathered headdresses and the summer solstice “when you go back for the Kok . . . Kokok . . . well, it sounds like Coca-Cola—and all dress up like turtles.” Mary had to marvel at the nerve of her, trying to get all of this past Rosella.
“Coca-Cola? You mean Kok’okshi? You are a—what do they say?—you are a mine of misinformation.” But Rosella seemed impressed by any non-Indian going into such detail, misinformed or not. Mary could tell by the way Rosella listened. Rosella finally said, “First of all, Vision Quest and baptism are not the same; they are not alike. Vision Quest is not to wipe away sin, it’s to make your spirit stronger. And where’d you ever hear that about dressing up like turtles? That is one of the craziest things I ever heard. It is the ancestors coming back to the pueblo in turtle form. This is not Halloween, young lady. Where did you get this crazy information, anyway?”
Andi thought for a moment, as she ate her pancake. “From a seer.”
“What seer? You mean shaman? Wherever would you come across one?”
Andi shrugged. “He was sitting beside his RV at the side of the road. We just started in talking. He said I should go on one. A Vision Quest.”
Mary just shook her head. Apparently, for Andi, there was no such thing as getting in too deep; she simply got in deeper. She would have all three of them caught here for days in this intricate saga, this web of bogus details.
But one thing Rosella would have to admit: Andi was as good a storyteller as any Zuni.
16
“We need maps,” said Andi, after Rosella and Tomkin had left with a friend of Tomkin. They had managed to convince Rosella that they would be fine, that Andi could indeed drive back and forth to Santa Fe if they needed something. Andi had done such a masterly job of convincing the two of them, Rosella and Tomkin, she had almost convinced the three of them—Mary included—until Mary suddenly realized that she herself would have to drive the car back to Tesuque.
Mary had been to the bank and done an equally masterly job of convincing the bank officer—a pleasant man who had been Angela’s trustee and now was Mary’s—that she needed a few hundred dollars for a trip. “Five hundred should be enough.” It was, after all, her money, her parents’ legacy. What she should have done, probably, was ask for small amounts from time to time and saved up for just such an emergency.
She had a hard time thinking of this as an emergency, especially after they’d bought some maps. Mary realized with a small shock that she’d never been anywhere, not that she could remember, outside of New Mexico, except for Mesa Verde in Colorado. She and Angela had come here from New York years before because an uncle had lived here. He was the only relative left, her mother’s brother, now dead.
Idaho. Up there next to Wyoming and Montana. My God, it was miles and miles! The excitement was compounded by the anxiety of driving all that distance. She shook herself out of a sort of trance induced by staring at lines and highways and place names.
“Here it is,” said Andi, nearly ripping Idaho in two, she brought her finger down on the map so hard. “Idaho Falls. And here’s Salmon.”
They stood looking at the tiny black dot for some time, as if the little town would suddenly mushroom up from the map, its residents going about their business, going in and coming out of its stores and schools and tiny houses.
All that distance, thought Mary. All that illegal distance. She had never thought herself particularly timid before, but now, looking at the determined set of Andi’s face, as she stood reading a book, Mary felt her own resolve weaken, trickle away like one of those distant winding rivers, those black and wavering lines.
What she felt in her veins was water, not blood. She looked from the map to Andi again. “You be careful of her, she’s tricky. Like Coyote.” But Rosella hadn’t been able to suppress a smile when she’d said it. So the trickiness was, perhaps, not all bad.
Andi had two other paperbacks beneath the one she was reading. When Mary came up to her, she shut it, smiled. “I’m buying these; they’re about Idaho and Colorado. Come on, let’s go home and see if I know how to drive.”
“That’s going to be a treat.” But Mary was secretly pleased that Andi was already thinking of it as home. “I guess we better stop in Tesuque on the way and see Isabel.”
&n
bsp; • • •
Mary always thought Isabel Woodlawn had taken a wrong turning on her way to a Jane Austen novel, one of those fussy, vapid, hysterical types who really meant the heroine no harm and usually ended up causing nothing but.
Isabel Woodlawn came to the door looking fraught with problems and impossibilities she would never have life to deal with, not even if she had, like the cat she carried, nine of them. Isabel had a vague, unfinished prettiness as if she hadn’t waited around long enough for the hands of fate (or God, or the lady behind the Clinique counter) to put the finishing touches to, to fix the illusion that the space between the eyes was wider or the tilt of the nose perkier or the cheekbones higher. Today she was wearing another of her broomstick skirts, loose blouses, and a scarf twined about her forehead and falling down her back. Chunky silver earrings jingled when she turned her head.
Mary introduced Andi and Isabel introduced her cat, Cranky. The cat was spoiled to death, to the point it got its mistress to carry it around thrown over her shoulder like a fur piece. Mary was perfectly happy to have her act in loco parentis, a phrase Mary loved in relationship to Isabel. Mary had never been able to understand how Rosella, who certainly had good sense, thought Isabel a good bet as a caretaker. Maybe it was because Isabel talked so fast and at such length that one took this word storm to have an object, a target, when actually the words were a shower of arrows falling somewhere but never on the mark.
Every time she walked into Isabel’s “ranchita” (as Isabel called it), she had to smile. Isabel must have looked at every picturebook ever published on Santa Fe style. She had it all. The adobe house, the kiva in the corner of the kitchen, the vigas on the ceiling, the farolitos edging the roof. In the living room, Mary and Andi sat down in chairs covered in bright zigzags and Isabel sat on a cushion on the raised hearth.
No one would have mistaken Isabel for a native of New Mexico. She was from southern California and, like so many Californians, had made herself over, inside and out, into her idea of a native.
It really got to Mary how these women would come here and enter into what they appeared to believe was a more spiritual way of life. Mary wondered why they thought that loose clothes, long hair, and little or no makeup helped to do this. Their skin got leathery because they disdained the creams and emulsions they had lathered on themselves in their California lives. They also appeared to forgo soap and water, apparently thinking that cleaning and creaming were part of a beauty regime that had tyrannized them in Beverly Hills and Marin County.
Naturally, it cost money to support this illusion: the pure cotton, the elaborately embroidered tops, the turquoise, silver, and authentic Kirman rugs, the beaded vest that Isabel was wearing today. It killed Mary that these women were trying to “get back to nature” in one of the most sophisticated cities in the country. It was really that which drew them, though they didn’t seem to know it.
“Has Rosella gone to her pueblo?” asked Isabel brightly. To Andi, she said, “Rosella’s an Indian.” Andi’s smile and nod must have encouraged Isabel to stretch her mind even further. “She’s a—now, don’t tell me—a Zuni,” Isabel said. “There’s a festival, you see, and when Rosella goes back to her pueblo, I take care of Mary—I mean, well, Mary’s hardly a baby, is she, but it makes Rosella feel better if someone can take charge in case there’s an emergency?” Isabel had a way of turning declarative statements into questions, as if unsure of her ground. She fanned herself with her hand, as if merely thinking about it made her sweaty and hot. “I watch over her.”
With about as much effect as the moon, Mary thought, looking at the ceiling.
“But with you here, an older girl—how old are you, dear?”
“Nineteen.” Andi snapped it out with no hesitation, as if she could hardly wait to spring it.
Mary wondered if she’d forgotten she’d told Rosella she was seventeen.
“Well, if you’re going to be there, Mary certainly doesn’t need me to keep her out of trouble.”
If you only knew. “I’m showing Andi around; she’s never been in the Southwest before. I thought maybe we could drive to Taos tomorrow. She wants to see the church; you know, the one in Ranchos de Taos.”
Isabel’s brow wrinkled beneath the bright scarf, thinking that over; Taos was sixty miles away. Decision time in the hacienda. “That’s a distance. I don’t know. . . .”
Andi spoke with authority. “If it worries you, Mrs. Woodlawn, of course we won’t go. But I just want you to know I’m a very good driver; I got awards in school when I finished the driver training course, and my dad has me drive in all kinds of difficult situations because he wants to be sure I can handle a car. I’ve helped out other drivers with problems, like changing tires or charging batteries, things like that. I remember once. . . .”
Mary sat with her hands locked behind her head, listening to Andi spin out her tale of life on the road and the astonishingly responsible things she’d done. Isabel Woodlawn’s eyes were glazing over, probably the effect Andi was trying to produce. After all her driving experience, she started in on churches and how interesting she found them. “I really want to see this one—”
“St. Francis of Assisi,” said Mary. “It’s more a chapel.”
“Yes. And then there’s that chapel outside Santa Fe—”
“In Chimayo,” added Mary.
Isabel was enthusiastic. “Oh, yes. The ground there is holy; it’s famous for its healing powers.”
After they’d talked for what seemed like hours about how spiritual a place Santa Fe was, how mystical, how haunting, it was Mary’s eyes that began to glaze over. It astonished her how quickly Andi adapted to whomever she was talking with. When it was clear that Isabel was convinced she had found a friend and an ally in Andi, Mary said it was time to leave.
• • •
Later, at home and after dinner, Andi said, “Maybe we should take a tent, some camping gear. Do you have any?”
“Me? I’m not a camper. Anyway, I thought we were going to stay in motels and eat in restaurants.” Mary had been looking forward to this.
“We are. But you never know; we might have to go somewhere where there’s no place to stay, no motels or anything.”
Mary thought for a moment. “Angela had a tent she used to take with her when she went on her Sedona trips. I don’t know if she ever used it.”
They found the tent in a storage room, together with other of her sister’s belongings: long-skirted flowered dresses that Angela had liked to wear, books in boxes, turquoise jewelry—all of them belongings that reminded Mary, who didn’t want to be reminded. She was glad that Andi wasn’t interested in clothes. But it did strike Mary that Andi was about the same size as her dead sister.
Andi was absorbed in seeing how the tent worked. It was a small one. “I’d have to study to see how it goes up. Still, it won’t hurt just to toss it in the trunk with some blankets.”
Mary hoped they wouldn’t have to use them. She had never liked the idea of camping. Andi, though, seemed ready for anything. Mary asked, “What about the stuff you left at the cabin?”
“I take most of my stuff with me whenever I leave it. I never know who might be there when I go back. I have my backpack and this.” She held up the smiley-face bag.
Mary had had several opportunities to look in the bag, but she hadn’t.
Andi said, as if Mary had asked, “A couple of Elmore Leonard mysteries and some T-shirts and underwear.”
“We should decide on clothes and stuff. I mean, to make sure we pass for older.”
“I am older,” said Andi.
How irritating. But Mary had an answer. “It doesn’t make much difference whether you are, if I’m the one that’s going to drive.”
Andi ignored this, or didn’t hear it. She was looking at some skirts and a dress hanging forlornly on a wooden peg beside the door. Taking hold of the hem, she fanned out the flowered skirt.
Mary looked at it sadly. “That was my sister’s.”
> “Oh, I’m sorry.” Andi dropped the skirt. “I was just thinking that it’s loose-fitting; it might fit me, but not if—”
“Go ahead, try it on. But let’s do makeup first.” Mary hated to admit, even to herself, that her interest in this was not merely practical; she loved the idea of dressing up. She pointed to an old oak table where a large mirror hung on the wall and another, full-length, leaned against it.
They moved to the table and Mary opened its center drawer. She scooped out lipsticks, powders, eyeshadows, and liners—a dozen or more makeup items. “It sure took Angela a lot of makeup to get that natural look.” Mary swiveled up a bright red lipstick, applied it, stepped back to view herself.
“That’s the wrong color. You look like Spider Woman.” Andi picked up another. “Try this.”
Mary wiped off the red lipstick and put on the new one, a gold-tinted rose, a sunset color. She nodded. “That’s better.”
Then they were both experimenting with sweeps of powder and rouge, coatings of foundation, brushes of eyeshadow, giggling and jockeying each other for position in front of the mirror. Gently shoving Andi around, Mary wondered why one of them didn’t use the other mirror. They must have wanted to share the experience; they must have wanted to see, stroke for stroke—lipstick, liner, blush—how much they were alike.
Andi went to the peg beside the door and took down the dress. “I’ll be right back.”
While she was gone, Mary rooted through another box, the one the British police had returned some of Angela’s things in, and found her driver’s license. There was certainly a resemblance, and no one expected an exact match. When she heard Andi coming, Mary got up and went to the door.
• • •
The dress came as a revelation. From the distance of the hallway’s end, Andi looked like Angela. She was tall; she was also beautiful. It was a blanched, starving-pale beauty, almost transparent, so that Mary was reminded of the strange visions she’d had of Angela moving toward her through the wavering desert heat.
Biting the Moon Page 8
