The Gifted Gabaldón Sisters Page 17

  “What about your mother?” You can’t imagine the stoic Mormon woman being anything but relieved if Harold found work. “She wouldn’t object to you driving a truck? She’s a bus driver after all.”

  “It’s just she has that thing from her work, that problem.”

  “Oh-h-h, that. It’s not hereditary, honey, is it?”

  “No way do I want to go through that. You should hear her moaning on the can.”

  That Harold will never have benefits hits you like a pan of ice water tossed in your face. “It doesn’t have to be like that. We can get doughnut pillows.”

  Harold shakes his head. “The body’s the temple, you know.” And that’s it —discussion over. Harold’s favorite phrase works both as end punctuation and an indisputable reminder: his body is a temple. Below that straw-colored mop and the thick tortoiseshell glasses affixed at the bridge with a Band-Aid, underneath those futuristic velour V-necks and threadbare corduroys, stands the impeccable architecture of sturdy bone and rippling sinew, sheathed in the smoothest, tawniest skin imaginable. Stroking Harold’s bare chest is like running your fingers over sun-warmed silk that happens to be as sweet to the tongue as honey butter.

  You can barely believe that this temple is yours, all yours. In fact, it’s the only thing of physical beauty you possess; because if Harold’s body is a temple, yours must be a mini-mart, a squat concrete square, shelves bulging with canned Vienna sausage, Cheese Nips, Fig Newtons, Tab, Ivory soap, Kotex, Right Guard, and cases and cases of Metrecal. So you fold the application back into your purse. You can almost see the benefits —whatever they might be —flapping out the window like winged monkeys.

  Depressingly, most everyone is home for dinner, most everyone being Loretta, of course, who’s prepared this —her last supper before flying back to school in Georgia —your brother, Cary, and your old man. Bette is likely at her apartment, serving charred meat and leathery potatoes to the Criminal while caring for her newborn baby, and Rita has just moved to Northern California to clear hiking trails and clean up state parks with some outfit she joined after earning an Associate of Arts degree in environmental science.

  With luck, Harold will eat swiftly, and you can slip away before the family acts out too much. But early on, your brother starts in with the air typing. Since he was hired as a typist at an insurance company downtown, Cary has become obsessed with developing his skills.

  “What’s he doing?” Harold asks.

  “Typing,” you say without looking up from your plate.

  “Huh?”

  “He’s typing,” Loretta explains. “He wants you to pass the B-U-T-T-E-D, the ‘butted,’ whatever that is.”

  “The last letter was an R,” Cary says. “That was a clear R, Loretta.”

  “No, it wasn’t. You used your left middle finger, which is reserved for the E, D, and C, and you dipped a bit, so it was a D.”

  “You lie! I didn’t dip. I lifted, and you’re supposed to use the middle finger for the R.” He holds up his middle finger, pressing an imaginary R over and over for emphasis. “Besides, why would I ask for ‘butted’? There’s no such thing.”

  “No, there’s not,” Loretta says. “I wouldn’t pass you a thing, even if you typed a proper word. Typing at the table is rude. I never notice you bothering to type ‘please.’ ”

  Harold slides the butter dish toward your brother.

  “You know they’re hiring guys at the yard —loaders, unloaders.” Your father points the tines of his fork at Harold. “Bet they could use a strong guy like you.”

  “Bad for the back.” Harold stuffs his mouth with meat.

  “Hah?” grunts the old man. “You got back trouble?”

  Harold shakes his head, swallows. “And I don’t want none.”

  “Shoot.” Your father peers over his glasses at Harold. “Young guy like you worried about your back? Are you kidding?”

  “If you lift properly,” Loretta says, “bearing weight can benefit your entire skeletal frame.”

  “The body’s the temple, you know,” says Harold, and you squeeze his thigh under the table, transmitting a silent prayer to la Virgen: Help me out here, please!

  Loretta arches an eyebrow. “Interesting.”

  Cary’s fingers take flight while your father grabs the shaker and issues a hard rain of salt onto his plate. “Stop that typing. Just tell us what you want.”

  “Can’t you see?” Cary retypes his sentence, slowly and emphatically.

  “Don’t give him nothing,” your father says.

  “How is, uh, Rita doing up north?” asks Harold.

  “Fine,” you say, afraid no one else will answer. “She calls once a week.”

  C-O-L-L-E-C-T, types Cary.

  “She must like it up there, eh,” Harold says, stabbing a carrot, “so green and all that. They don’t got too many niggers up there, neither.”

  Now, you have heard about people who can spontaneously combust during moments of intense emotion, and you wish with all your heart that you were one of them, so you could ignite, incinerating the household before anyone has a chance to react. Or even that the Blessed Mother would make one of her unexpected appearances to the faithful and lift you speedily up to heaven. (“You have suffered enough, my child. Take my hand.”) But another part of you —not the heart —feels detached, even curious about who will be the one to savage poor Harold.

  Your father is the likely candidate. Most of his coworkers and buddies at the utility company are black, and he knows better than any of you how stupid and dangerous that word can be, but he just picks up his plate and silverware. Balancing his glass of iced tea against his chest, he heads for the door. He will eat the rest of his meal on the back steps, a retreat reserved for times of most profound disgust, like when Bette first separated from Luis and brought the Criminal home for Christmas dinner.

  Cary’s fingers are frozen in the middle of a word. He looks like a magician halted while casting a spell because he’s forgotten the incantation. You rack your mind for some painless way to chastise Harold before Loretta gets a crack at him.

  Her chair scrapes. She stands and takes Harold’s plate.

  “Hey, I’m not done.”

  You put a finger over your lips. “Shh.”

  “I believe you are,” Loretta tells him. “In fact, it’s time for you to go now.” She carries his plate to the sink.

  Cary’s hands drop to his lap. “Man, I can’t even believe you said that.”

  “What?” Harold is mystified. “What did I say?”

  The entire drive to Harold’s house, you tell yourself you shouldn’t love him. He’s a dolt, stupider than Lydia with her picture books. He says he graduated from high school, but have you ever seen his diploma? He’s just an idiotic white guy with a gorgeous body, and you shouldn’t love him any more than rich geezers ought to fall for buxom strippers who have trouble stringing two syllables together.

  But when he flops on a hassock (his well-formed buttocks at a pert angle) and tosses you the TV Guide, so you can tell him what’s on, you know you can’t help but love him. And after his mother goes to bed, when he’s got you in his arms —skin to skin —on the musty quilt covering the springs hatching from the sofa, you realize you never had a choice about not loving him. If you stopped loving him, you would shut the door on this flesh and these lips and this solid chest —heart thudding —as it rubs against your bare breasts. You would lose this world of supple skin and salt kisses. And losing it, you would be lost, too.

  (Maybe there’s a way you can be smart enough for the both of you.)

  When Harold drives you home, you have him kill the engine and coast through the back alley. You slip off your shoes on the porch as he rolls off in reverse. But as soon as you pad in the door, the kitchen light flicks on, and your father, Loretta, and Cary file around the table, as though assembling for an impromptu committee meeting.

  “What’s up?” you say.

  “We want to talk to you, h’ita.” Your fat
her’s voice is grave.

  “Me? What’d I do?” You aren’t responsible for the words that come out of Harold’s mouth. In fact, one could argue that he’s not entirely responsible, either.

  “It’s about Harold,” Loretta says. “Don’t you find he’s a low-level person?”

  Your father shakes his head. “Level ain’t got nothing to do with it. He’s a lazy no-good.” He props his elbows on the table. “Remember Severito, now he was a real baboso, a true low-level, but he had this cousin Nuncio, and Nuncio was always after your mother because she was real smart, and she could write good. He wanted her to write letters on how he was so slow, he should be tested.” Your father raises his eyebrows, as though he finds his own story hard to believe. “He wanted to be found retarded. He didn’t want to work, but he played cards, and he was a cheater, a cheater’s cheater.”

  “Harold’s not a cheater,” you point out.

  “Oh yes, he is,” Cary says. “Me and Luis play basketball with him. We’ve seen him cheat.”

  “This Harold, h’ita, he’s a sinvergüenza. He don’t even feel bad about himself.”

  “What Dad is saying,” Loretta says, as though your father has just rattled off in some obscure dialect she must translate, “is that Harold seems to be taking advantage of you.” She peers at you over the frames of her glasses. “You know I don’t like to get involved in what you people do, but I’m making an exception because you’re the only one who comes close to me in terms of academic potential —”

  “Gee, thanks,” Cary puts in.

  “But you meet this, this —well, he’s just a goof, isn’t he? —and you don’t apply for college.” Loretta starts counting on her fingers. “You’re eighteen, working full-time at that shop, but you never have money, and you don’t have plans for the future.”

  “I have plans, lots of plans.”

  Your brother gives you a doubtful look. “Like what?”

  “I want to move out, get my own place.”

  “With Harold, right?” Cary nods, as if he knows it all.

  “It ain’t a good relationship,” says your father.

  “So, are you forbidding me to see him?”

  His eyes widen. “Qué forbid, ni forbid. I don’t forbid nothing.”

  “Then what’s the point of all this?” you ask.

  “The point is,” Cary says, “you need to wake up, Sophie. The guy’s an ass.”

  “Funny, I don’t remember the meeting we held for Bette after she left Luis to move in with that Criminal. How come no one ever told her to wake up?”

  “I don’t tell Bette nothing because she don’t listen,” says your father.

  “And I do?” You slide your chair out from the table and stand. “Well, thank you for your input. I have listened, and my thinking is that this is my business, not yours.” You stomp to your room, wishing you had the maturity not to slam your door. Lacking that, you bang it with such force the house shakes.

  You regard yourself in the clouded dresser mirror. Your face is full, red as a beefsteak tomato that’s ripe enough to burst a seam, but your smoke-tinged glasses give you a certain élan. “Yeah, that’s right —the hell with them.”

  Bette or Rita should be here to put in a few words on your behalf. You think of la Virgen and of Fermina, how you once believed she was your fairy godmother. You could sure use some intercession here. . . .

  The phone rings, and someone knocks on your door. You inch it open.

  “It’s for you,” Loretta says.

  Joy sparks. With a lover’s clairvoyance, Harold must have sensed the trouble. “Hey,” you say warmly, even sexily, when you pick up the phone.

  But Bette’s voice, not Harold’s, buzzes in your ear. “Are you high?”

  “No, I just, I thought you were someone else.”

  “Listen, I meant to call earlier. Loretta said they were going to talk to you.”

  “Thanks, I could have used the heads-up. I was just now wishing you were —”

  “I have to tell you something,” Bette says, her voice thick, like she’s been crying. In the background, you hear the baby fussing.

  “What is it?” You hear the Criminal’s low voice grumbling in the background, and Baby Elena is howling now.

  “I got to go, but I wanted to tell you that I love you, Sophie, whatever you do, whomever you’re with. You are still my sister, still a part of me. Call me later,” she says, and hangs up.

  “So, Harold,” you say, stretching out on the beach towel beside his long golden temple, clad now in burgundy Speedos. “What kind of job would you like?” On a Tuesday, Paradise Cove above Malibu is deserted, except for stout mothers with toddlers, and retirees in sagging swimsuits. Alongside these bumpy, blue-veined oldsters and chubby moms, you look only slightly plump, if you don’t peel off the oversized T-shirt, that is. “I mean if you could do anything at all.”

  “Golf,” Harold says.

  “But, honey, golf is recreation, isn’t it? It’s not really a job.”

  “Golf pros get paid lots of money. Look at Jack Nicklaus. He’s rich.”

  “Yeah, that’s true.” You can see Harold has put some thought to this matter, and you want to encourage this. “Good, that’s right. But, honey, don’t golf pros have to, like, enter tournaments and travel around and win money?”

  He scratches his head. “Yeah, I guess.”

  You squirt Coppertone onto his shoulders, rub it in. “It’s not like someone will show up and —poof —make you a golf pro. You got to take steps.”

  “Huh?”

  “You need money to hire a caddy, pay tournament fees, and travel around.” The coconut scent makes your mouth water.

  “I could get a sponsor.” Harold rakes a dried seaweed bulb over the sand.

  “You could, but you’ve got to get noticed first. You’ve got to win tournaments.”

  He drops the bulb and yawns. “I suppose.”

  “Okay, then. What would you like to do so you could enter and win tournaments? I mean, if you had to have some kind of job, what would it be?”

  He thinks about this. “I don’t want to work for nobody. People always get all mad at me, make me do stuff I don’t want to do.”

  “Well, how about working for yourself, then? That guy who started that carpet-cleaning business and became a millionaire isn’t much older than you.”

  “The one on TV? He’s a millionaire?”

  “Yup.”

  “Bet he gets to play golf whenever he feels like it.”

  “Sure he does.” Momentum builds. The discussion is going somewhere!

  “I could do that,” Harold declares.

  “But you can’t, Harold, because of the greens fees.” You hold your breath, scoop a handful of sand, and let it stream through your fingers, casually.

  “I mean I could clean carpets.” Harold sits up. “I could get me one of those . . .”

  “Carpet cleaners?”

  “Yeah, one of those. I could get me one, put it in my truck, and drive around cleaning rugs. When I made some money, I’d get more machines. I could even hire some wetbacks, pay them almost nothing, and spend serious time on the golf course.”

  “That’s right, Harold, exactly right.” This flash of ambition is so encouraging that you say nothing about his plan to exploit “wetbacks.” Instead, you begin curling shut the mouth of the potato chip sack, gathering soft-drink cans and sandwich wrappers.

  “What’re you doing?” Harold asks.

  “Cleaning up. Aren’t we leaving?”

  “Leaving? You got somewhere to go? Thought this was your day off.”

  “I thought you’d want to leave, maybe look at some carpet cleaners,” you say, tipping your hand big-time.

  “Nah.” Harold draws you into his arms. “Not right now that I got me a sexy woman here.”

  “Where?” You make a big deal of looking around to make him smile, but he burrows his head in the crook of your neck, commencing a series of stinging love bites. Feels nice, b
ut clearly, hell has got to be the place where no one gets your jokes.

  The carpet cleaner, a gleaming, steam-snorting monster that Harold wants, costs more than eighteen hundred dollars. You’ve tried talking him into a more modest home version of this machine, but he’s attached to the industrial-purpose apparatus, arguing that he can do office buildings as well as homes with it. So as not to stifle his ambition, you say, okay, that makes sense. But spending eighteen hundred dollars makes no sense at all. He’d have to clean forty-five carpets at forty bucks a pop to break even. The millionaire on television and his fleet of employees can do them for half that, and people can rent shampooers themselves at Safeway for ten dollars.

  Worse than this, Harold expects you to loan him the money, which you don’t have. You’re always broke a week before payday, even though you’re paid twice monthly. You tend to eat out a lot now that Harold’s persona non grata at your house. You practically hemorrhage money when the two of you go out. Just last Sunday, you dropped a cool hundred at the Pomona Fair, not including gas. You’d never realized how expensive having a boyfriend could be.

  (And it’s a serious business, too. Two nights ago, you went shopping with Aracely and Rosa, and your face still hurts from laughing. You never yuk it up like this when Harold’s around. Having a boyfriend is no laughing matter.)

  After that family intervention, there’s no way to ask your father or even Cary to lend you the money. Loretta would no more give you eighteen hundred dollars than she’d take up quail hunting. You doubt Bette, living with the Criminal, even gets to see money, and Rita, just starting her job with that environmental group up north, is likely poorer than you. Nobody you know would contribute to what even you realize is a piss-poor investment.

  When the millionaire in the television commercials says, “Every stain has its solution,” clearly he’s talking about solving problems. This you can do, so you apply your mind to the matter every day, especially at work, where you are aggravated beyond sense by the back-to-school rush of mothers and spoiled, whiny kids, all of whom you hate with a thrilling passion. Plus, your period is due, and anticipating the tidal flow of blood and rib-racking cramps makes you fierce enough to snarl and snap. To top it off, last night you discovered some kid —surely not an adult! —shat in one of the dressing rooms. You gagged cleaning up that nastiness as best you could, but today the whole shop still stinks like an outhouse.