The Gifted Gabaldón Sisters Read online

  Just as I’m about to veer left onto Eastman, Jaime pops into my thoughts for the first time the whole crazy day. He’s been incommunicado since he uninvited himself to the wedding. Clearly, he took my rejection of his proposal too personally. He’s probably at Self-Help Graphics now, over on Gage. He teaches art during the week, but spends weekends printmaking. He’d probably like a break around now. Maybe he’ll glance from his work and flush when he sees me, his eyes shining. Or he might turn his back, pretend I’m not there. Worse, he could start yammering about marriage, picking up where he left off. Like I’ve got so much leisure time I need another activity, like I don’t have enough people eating away at my life that I need a husband, too.

  I flick on the blinker. Yeah, there’s plenty of trouble in this place —me raising Elena alone, my dysfunctional clients, my goofy sisters and besotted father, my poor, helpless brother disappearing from sight. More than enough trouble here and not enough time to delete half the shit that keeps piling up. Still, under this starless bowl of night and in these mostly empty streets, oil-stained and shimmering under the streetlights, this world seems hollowed out, bigger to me now, even capacious in its way. First chance I get, I swing a turn for the studio on Gage. “Hush,” I’ll say, “hush. Let’s not talk tonight.”

  SUBJECT: FERMINA/FAMILY LIFE

  WPA: 7-30-38 —DC: HMS

  July 29, 1938

  Words: 568

  LOS CAMBIOS

  Soon after the wedding, Eulalia’s mother died, and her land was passed on to the newlyweds, though they remained in the Gabaldon household. Over time, Eulalia gave Decidero ten children: five girls and five boys. With each successive birth, she grew more outspoken and determined until she was running the household like a stern and judicious cacique. While the aging Gabaldons struggled to keep up, Eulalia made decision after decision, working her will above all others. Decidero grew timid in her presence, for she would not hesitate to mock and scold him. But Eulalia raised her children to have respect for Fermina, whom she regarded as a confidante and ally, and Fermina took pleasure in these little ones.

  Her favorite was Juan Carlos the second youngest. He was born in the seventh month of Eulalia’s confinement. The family worried he would not survive, so Decidero, who had a Model T by that time, drove out to fetch the priest to baptize him. Afterward, Decidero built a small box in which to bury the boy. But Eulalia and Fermina used that box as a bed for the baby because it fit so neatly behind the stove. Within days, a violent snowstorm descended upon the valley. The baby survived that blizzard, and by springtime, he was fat and lively.

  Juan Carlos remained healthy until just before his tenth birthday, when he contracted rheumatic fever. With the fever, he grew delirious before slipping into unconsciousness. Again Decidero drove out for the priest. Eulalia sank to her knees before her shrine to the Virgin, while Fermina sat beside the boy, stroking his forehead and talking to him in a low voice. Fermina told him all she knew about her father, her brother, her mother, but she said nothing about Inocencio or Decidero. She talked all that afternoon until it grew dark. By the time the priest arrived, sweat broke on the boy’s forehead. In the morning, he was sitting upright and smiling.

  Juan Carlos was known for obedience; he would do whatever he was told to do. As a joke, once when Juan was still a boy, Decidero told him to stand in the cornfield to keep the crows away. After the boy went out, a storm broke. Thunder cracked and lightning scribbled down from the dark skies. Fermina signaled him from a window, but he refused to budge. Fermina found Decidero alone in the sala, dozing in the rocker. Yrma and Eulalia had gone visiting with the girls. She drew close, listening to Decidero’s breathing —the peaceful rhythm of it. Then she slapped him hard, nearly knocking him from his seat. “You will do as I say,” she told him. “Go bring that boy inside.” Without a word, he rose to summon Juan Carlos back into the house.

  Years passed and the children grew into young men and women. First, Inocencio died in 1932, and then Yrma passed two years later. Nowadays, Eulalia’s daughters handle the housework, leaving little for Fermina to do, though she still enjoys working in the garden. Eulalia’s children continue to treat her with kindness. They bring her candy and small gifts from trips to Albuquerque and Santa Fe. Though it is impossible, Fermina wishes there was a way for these young men and women to recognize her, as she does them, and one day call her nuestra abuela.

  13

  LAS POSADAS —LORETTA: 1987

  When I flew home for my father’s surgery in December, Cary and his wife met me at the airport. They would take me to Bette’s house, where I planned to stay the first night. On the way there, Aracely claimed she was starving, and after the long, tense flight, and because Chris wasn’t around to protest, I seriously wanted a drink. We collected my bags, trundled them out to the parking lot, and Cary drove us to a darkened Mexican restaurant in Inglewood before delivering me to Bette’s. There, Cary and Aracely ordered dinner by courses, and I requested ceviche and a glass of house red.

  “Listen, Loretta, we’re going to have las posadas at my mother’s house on Saturday,” Aracely said after the waiter brought our drinks. “We want you to come.”

  I sipped my vinegary Chianti. “Me?”

  Aracely explained that her new stepfather had planned the party to introduce his friends to her family, including the in-laws. “Sophie and Bette will be there. Even Rita might come.”

  “Yeah, it’ll be like a family reunion,” Cary said. My brother, always heavy, had grown stouter with marriage. Like Rita, he’d inherited our mother’s height, but even at six feet, he wasn’t tall enough to carry the extra weight with grace. He seemed awkward, bulky as a tamed bear stuffed into the booth across from me. Despite his girth, his thinning hair, and his five-o’clock shadow, Cary’s expression matched that of the apple-cheeked seven-year-old who’d twine his chubby arm with mine in solidarity. This was a face I could not refuse. “Will you come?”

  Normally, I shunned things like this, but the wine infused me with warmth and magnanimity. “Sure, why not?”

  Bette greeted us, wearing just a beige towel knotted between her breasts. Her hair, mucky with black dye, was piled atop her head. The tarry mess reminded me of seabirds rescued after oil spills. She hugged me and retreated to the bathroom to rinse. I stowed the carton of leftover ceviche in the refrigerator and made small talk with my brother in the kitchen —very small talk. Since his marriage, my brother had lapsed into grunts and monosyllables in place of whole sentences, even with me, his favorite sister. Aracely departed for the living room and flipped on the television.

  In a short while, Bette emerged —hair wet, but indisputably black.

  “Where’s Elena?” I asked.

  “It’s Sophie’s turn to pick up the kids from day care. She’s giving them dinner and bringing them later,” Bette said. “Are you hungry?”

  “Sure,” Cary said.

  “We just ate,” Aracely hollered from the front room, where she watched a sitcom with a hectoring laugh track. “Don’t give him anything.”

  “Real charmer, no?” Bette opened the refrigerator door and handed Cary a pack of tortillas and a block of cheese.

  “I brought ceviche.” I pointed out the takeaway box. “Do you have wine?”

  Of course, she had a case of California red, an opened bottle from it uncorked and breathing on the counter. She poured a brimming stem glass for me to take outside with the ceviche and a bag of chips. She followed me out to the patio, bearing her wine, stash box, and an ashtray.

  “Sour,” said Bette, after tasting the ceviche. “But not half bad.”

  “So how’s the old man?” I asked.

  “Oh, he’ll be okay. They’re just putting that thing in —what do you call it?”

  “Carotid stenting.” I’d already assured my brother and sisters by phone that this is a pretty routine procedure in which the surgeon inserts a tube —a stent —to widen the artery and increase blood flow in the area blocked by plaque.<
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  “It’s no big deal, as you know.” Bette rolled a joint and lit it. “He’ll be okay, really. Nothing fazes him.”

  Somehow sad, but true —nothing much fazed my father these days. Apart from floods, earthquakes, and fires that required him to turn on or shut off water mains, little disturbed him when we were younger. And now that he was retired, even natural disasters failed to excite anxiety in him. As I puffed on the joint Bette passed to me, I resolved to try harder with him. I would listen. I would laugh at the bad jokes and ignore the unintended slights. “I’m going to be better to Dad this time.”

  “You won’t make it five minutes.” Bette took the joint from me and drew on it.

  “You’re good to him.”

  “I never —absolutely never, ever —say anything truthful or important to him.” She lit a joss stick and set it in the ashtray. “I bullshit. That’s how I’m nice to him.”

  “I can do that.”

  “Five minutes tops.”

  A boom from the house startled me. Sounds of struggle and shouting, suggestive of a ransacking in progress, followed the explosive noise.

  “Sister Sophie’s here,” said Bette. She gathered up the Baggie of grass and paraphernalia, stuffing everything into a cigar box she secured with a bungee cord. “She’s got the kids,” she explained. “I have to hide this shit.”

  Laughter spilled from the open windows. The entire house shook.

  “She’s doing shtick, la pendeja. We were supposed to go shopping this afternoon, but she flaked out on me. Says she doesn’t go shopping anymore.”

  “Sophie doesn’t shop?”

  “Not for clothes.” Bette stashed the cigar box in the crawl space and barricaded the opening with a cinder block, before returning to sit at the table with me.

  “Why not?” I buttoned my blazer, glad I’d worn it for warmth on the plane. Bette’s overgrown hilltop yard grew chilly in the evenings. Shadows shifted, yellow eyes glinting from their depths, as feral cats stirred in the bushes.

  “Male odors.”

  Since Harold’s disappearing act, Sophie had become cynical about men, but did their very smell offend her? I pictured my youngest sister sniffing at clothing racks for traces of . . . men? “She can’t even stand their smell?”

  “What smell?”

  “Men —the way they smell.”

  “What the fuck are you talking about?”

  “Male odors. You said Sophie won’t shop because of male odors.”

  “Mail orders, babosa, she buys from catalogues.”

  The back door flung open and Sophie’s large body filled the frame, her hands on her hips as she shouted at the top of her lungs “¡Ay, borrachas!” before emitting a grito that sent the wild cats skittering.

  We checked my father into the hospital —a newly constructed facility in the foothills of La Cañada —the next afternoon. The old man was nervous in his overtalking, overfriendly way. Bette and Sophie were right behind him schmoozing everyone in their path, while Cary and I followed in awkward silence. It struck me that while my father and these two charmed the people they met, Cary and Rita tended to ignore others, and I spoke to strangers, here and in Georgia only when necessary. I imagined a sociability gene that somehow leapfrogged past me, my brother, and Rita.

  “You can call me ‘Speedy,’ ” my father told the nurse’s aide.

  “It’s unintentionally ironic,” I said, making a stab at friendliness.

  The aide wrinkled her brow. “O-kay.”

  “My sister’s a doctor, a veterinarian,” Sophie explained, cupping her mouth to deliver a stage whisper. “No one understands her.”

  “We get a lot of that around here.” She glanced at me. “One hundred over seventy —pretty good, huh, Doctor? You’re lucky, Mr. Gabaldón, to have a daughter who’s a doctor.”

  “One thing I take pride in,” he said, puffing up to boast —sad to say, I held my breath here —“is good blood pressure.”

  Sophie cast her eyes to the ceiling. “Yeah, Dad, you deserve an award, a golden blood-pressure-cuff thing.”

  “Sphygmomanometer,” I said.

  “Nothing fazes me,” said my father, radiant at his own insensibility to stress.

  After he had been prepped and gowned, an orderly arrived to wheel him through the sunlit corridors toward the lift to intensive care.

  “Oh no,” Bette whispered to me. “That’s where they took Pam.” Not too long ago, my father’s second (and third) wife had succumbed to what her attending physician described on her death certificate as “complications due to alcoholism.” One night, my father discovered her perched on the toilet seat, blood streaming from her urethra. It took four paramedics to convey her from their second-floor condominium to the ambulance. In this ICU, she had undergone an excruciating stint of renal failure before dying.

  The elevator opened and the orderly rolled Dad through a short hall leading to the unit. We trailed close behind. The attendant then pushed the wheelchair into a room across from the nurses’ station.

  “It’s the same fucking room,” Bette said in my ear. The pale green wallpaper, glossy waxed floor, hospital bed, and beige visitor’s chair suggested order and neutrality; no trace of Pam’s agony lingered here.

  The orderly helped our father from the wheelchair into bed. “This okay, Mr. Gabaldón?” He handed him the control to the wall-mounted television.

  “It’s good. What time is it, h’ita?” my father asked no one in particular. I remembered once hearing him call that corrosive crone Pam, “h’ita.”

  But Cary —his h’ito —answered, “Almost four.”

  “Oprah!” The old man grinned and switched on the set. “You can all go on, get something to eat or something, and leave me alone with my girlfriend.” He never missed the talk show if he could help it. Once, Pam flung a bottle of bourbon (empty of course) at the television screen, shattering it, so he would pay attention to her while Oprah was on. Afterward, my father moved to Bette’s until Pam replaced the set.

  “You really want us to go, Dad?” asked Bette.

  “You can come back after the show.” He found the lever to elevate the head of the bed. The motor hummed until he sat upright. Oprah in a burgundy pantsuit loomed into focus on the screen overhead. “She looks good in red, ¿qué no?”

  “Are you okay in this room?” Bette asked.

  “Yeah, I’m fine. Nothing fazes me. Go, go.”

  That evening, we all stayed in the hospital waiting area until the surgeon emerged after eight to report that all went well, and then Sophie left to collect Elena and Aitch from the babysitter’s, as it was her weekend to have them, and Cary headed home. Bette and I drove to our father’s condominium, where we would spend the night to be closer to the hospital. “Now the real work begins,” she said as we pulled out of the parking lot.

  “What do you mean?”

  “We’ve got to get rid of all that shit.” Bette dug a joint from her bag and lit it.

  “What shit?” I watched the road.

  She passed me the joint. “Pam’s shit. Dad hasn’t thrown out a thing —those knickknacks and idiotic doodads, her clothes.”

  “What about her kids?” I remembered Pam’s middle-aged daughter and sons. “Don’t they want her stuff?”

  “They more or less told us to junk it. Dad won’t bother with any of it, not even to get rid of the clutter. So we have to do it before he comes home.”

  “Is this a different route?” After a drag, I passed the joint back. I didn’t remember this many residential streets between my father’s place and the hospital.

  “I come this way after dark because I can’t stand those stupid light displays on the main drag. Santa, reindeer, baby Jesus, and Christmas tree bullshit —you know I hate that ugly crap.” Bette drew on the joint and spoke hoarsely while holding her breath. “I never want to see another fucking Christmas thing as long as I live.”

  “But aren’t you going to las posadas at Aracely’s?” I asked.

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p; She let out her breath with a whoosh. “You’re joking, right?”

  The next morning after she visited our father, Sophie met us at the condominium to start “throwing out shit,” as Bette put it, while the little kids were with the babysitter. Rita would be arriving with Rafe and their toddler, Danni, that afternoon. We planned to finish before she showed up and prolonged the process by hectoring everyone.

  The second-floor condominium apartment looked as though it had been decorated by the manager of a gag-gift store: a dusty clutter of gimcrack, framed signs, and ugly craft displays, like the homemade rag doll —hanging in the kitchenette —designed for storing plastic grocery bags that had to be inserted between its dangling legs.

  “Not what I’d call a ‘feel-good’ place.” Sophie pulled a sign that read AVOID HANGOVERS: STAY DRUNK from the kitchen wall and chucked it into an empty carton she’d brought for trash. The glass frame shattered on impact. “Oops.”

  “Can we get rid of this?” I pulled a toilet magnet from the refrigerator. “It’s always bothered me, right there on the refrigerator.”

  “Hey, I want that.” Sophie snatched it. “It really flushes.”

  “It’s yours. Just get it out of my sight.”

  She tossed it into the box with the sign. “I’m kidding, mensa.”

  “Listen, payasas, we’ve got to be organized, instead of running here and there throwing random things away.” Bette tied her hair in a ponytail and pushed up the sleeves of her sweatshirt. “Where should we start?”

  “The bedroom closet,” Sophie said. “Those awful clothes.”

  Poor Dad had about four inches of space for his few shirts and slacks, his one suit, and a sports coat. The rest of the rack was crammed tight: Pam’s dresses, blouses, skirts, jackets, and even T-shirts draped hanger after hanger. These were the kind of T-shirts a person sees in souvenir shops and wonders, Now, who would be corny enough to buy one of these? Pam would, that’s who. She collected T-shirts that read: World-Class Grandmother; Daytona Beach Bunny; Georgia’s on My Mind; I Got Sloshed in Margarita-ville; and Kiss Me, I’m Irish!