Break the Skin (12 page)

“Mine,” he said. “The blame is all mine. I own up to that, but gee, Betts, I did it all for her. She wanted that diamond ring.”

He’d always been such a little boy around her—starstruck—and it looked like all his trouble, all his time on the run, hadn’t changed that a bit. I’d told him, when he’d phoned to check in from time to time, about the things she said to me. How she called me a cow, a hoochie bitch. “Me,” I told him. “Your sister.”

I guess, if I wanted to take an honest look at things, I’d understand why he’d never gotten over Carolyn. She was a princess—all that blond hair, those blue eyes, her trim and curvy figure. A
gringa
, a Barbie doll, every Mexican boy’s dream. But that’s not being fair. It wasn’t just the fact that she was white and blond and so
bonita
. She was also—deep down I knew this to be true—a good person. I’d seen the way she’d fussed over Pablo when they were first starting out and he hadn’t yet got into trouble with Slam Dent. She did all the things for him that had never
seemed that important to me. She kept her house in order, decorated it with little doodads from Pier 1—baskets and silk flowers and the like. She bought matching window treatments from JC Penney, sprayed the rooms with tutti-fruity air fresheners from Bath & Body Works—scents like Basil and Thyme, Lavender-Vanilla, and Cinnamon Stick—did everything she could to make that house, as she told me once, a place Pablo would look forward to being in after a stretch of days on the road, hauling freight as far as El Paso or Houston or Lubbock.

“I’m going to look her up today,” he told me that morning in my yard.

“You do what you want,” I said. “You’re a big boy, Toots. I’ve got my own fish to fry.”

I had that little issue of wedding rings to see to, and later that morning, I told Donnie we were going downtown.

“You going to work early?” Emma asked when I opened the front door and found her on the step about to knock.

“No, we’re going downtown,” I said. “We’re going to First People’s Jewelers.”

“Ooh, lovebirds.” She put her hand over her mouth and coyly turned her head as if she were shocked. “I bet someone’s getting a diamond.”

At the jewelry store, we sat on cushioned chairs at a glass-topped table, and a woman with black hair and pretty hands brought out rings for us to see. She laid them out on a black velvet cloth and asked me if I saw anything that caught my fancy. She even picked up my left hand and let it lie on her palm. “Something dainty, maybe,” she said, and I thought she was saying that my hand was small and anything large would overwhelm it.

“No,” I said. “I wanted to see the Seduction Solitaire.” If it was good enough for Carolyn, then it was good enough for me.

The woman frowned at me. “That’s a big diamond,” she said. But she found it in the case, and she slipped it onto my finger. “What do you know?” she said. “It fits. How lucky is that?”

She’d been right, though. It was too much of a ring for my hand, and I felt ashamed to see it there on that stubby finger—so ugly mine was next to her long, slender ones. Mine were just right for curling around the barrel of a tat machine, but not so much made, it seemed, for wearing fine jewels. I noticed how the skin was starting to wrinkle around my knuckles and how there were ink stains in my cuticles. I wondered what I’d been thinking when I got the notion that I deserved this fairy tale, this chance to be a bride.

Then Donnie said, “The gold looks so perfect against your skin.” He took my hand on his palm the way the woman had done, and it was like she vanished, and it was just the two of us—Donnie and me—alone. “Beautiful,” he said.

I felt it then, the way the world can disappear and the only thing that matters is the person you’re with, the one who knows you better than anyone else alive. That’s what I felt that day in First People’s, like everything could be perfect: my little brown fingers, that gold band, the Seduction Solitaire engagement ring with a diamond that was stunning in its clarity and cut—the light sparked out around it—and Donnie and I; we could be grand forever and ever.

“How much does it cost?” My voice was so small, overcome with the love I felt for my life at that moment. I still remember what it was like to be surprised by the magic lurking in the world. Donnie was right. The golden ring looked just right against my brown skin.

“A set? Wedding band, too?” The woman with the black hair and the pretty hands had a pair of black-rimmed half-glasses that she kept on a beaded chain around her neck. She looked at me over the tops of those glasses. “That diamond is a Hearts on Fire diamond, the most perfectly cut diamond in the world.” She told us that less than one percent of rough diamond crystals are pure enough to become Hearts on Fire. “They’re what the movie stars wear,” she said. “I’m afraid these rings are
mucho dinero.
”

I hated it when the
gringos y gringas
spoke Spanish to me. Whenever
it happened, I felt like a little girl, a finger wagging in my face.
Mucho dinero
, the woman said, and I knew she was implying that I couldn’t afford the cost of those rings.

But like I’ve already made clear, I’m sometimes too brassy for my own good. I didn’t hesitate.

“These are the rings I want,” I said, my voice strong now.

“But, Baby,” Donnie said. “You don’t even know how much—”

I cut him off. “It doesn’t matter.” I took off the set and laid the rings on the velvet cloth. “I want these rings.”

The woman told me the price, a sum I could never afford in a million years, and still I didn’t back down. “Is there a matching wedding band for
el caballero
?” I asked, and the woman squinted at me. If she wanted to speak Spanish, okay, we’d speak Spanish. “The gentleman,” I said, hoping the woman felt stupid. I put my hand on Donnie’s back. “Is there a band for him?”

“Of course,” she said.

“Good. Then we’ll want it, too.”

The woman took off her glasses and let them dangle from their chain. She looked me square in the eye. “And how will we be paying?” she said.

That’s when the door opened, and Pablo came storming in. He took me by the meat of my arm and jerked me to my feet.
“Vamanos,”
he said, hissing it beneath his breath, and before I could stop him, he was dragging me toward the door. I saw the look on the jewelry store woman’s face, and I knew she was thinking, Well, of course, another squabble between hot-blooded Mexicans, just what she’d expect and a sure sign that she was right: I was wasting her time looking at that Hearts on Fire diamond ring. I tried to dig in my heels, but it was no use. Before I knew it, we were out on the sidewalk, and Donnie was with us, telling Pablo to leave me alone.

“What’s your problem, anyway?” Donnie said. “How come you’re making a scene?”

“You could have told me.” Now Pablo had his finger up in my face. “But you didn’t say a word.”

I yanked my arm free. “Told you what?” I rubbed my sore arm. “How’d you even know where we were?”

“Emma,” he said, then he started to calm down, and he looked all embarrassed because he’d blown up like that. “Damn it all to hell, Betts. Why didn’t you let me know about what happened to Carolyn?”

Donnie was petting my arm, rubbing his hand along the place where Pablo had grabbed me. “You’ve got no right to treat your sister like this.”

“You’re right.” Pablo ran his hand through his hair like he was trying to wipe the memory of what had just happened out of his brain. “Sometimes I just go a little
loco
. Hotheaded, right, Betts?”

It’d always been that way. Pablo would let his temper get the best of him, and he’d just go off. Then he’d be sorry. He’d give me the moon and the stars to try to make the two of us feel better.
I’m an idiot
, he’d say, and I’d agree.
But you love me, don’t you?
he’d ask, and I’d tell him,
Sure, I love you—until next time. Until always
, he’d say, and kiss me on the forehead.

But this time, in front of Donnie, I wasn’t so eager to forgive. Now that I had a man to stand up for me, I didn’t have to let Pablo off the hook. I said, “You keep what’s between you and Carolyn to yourselves. I’ve got my own life,
muchas gracias, señor.
”

I said the Spanish part in a catty way, letting him know I thought his trouble with Slam Dent was the foolish game of little boys stoked with too much machismo. Think about it. How much trouble in the world comes down to exactly that? Donnie was different. He was gentle and kind and yet firm when he needed to speak up about something he knew was wrong. He’d told Pablo he should treat me with respect, and I thought, Well, he’s right. It hurt me to have that woman in the jewelry store see me in the midst of something ugly like that—I knew she’d be talking about it at home that evening; “Mexicans,” she’d say—and, too, it hurt me to think about that Hearts on Fire diamond ring still resting on that velvet
cloth inside the store, a store I’d never go back into, not unless I could buy that ring with cash money and watch that woman’s eyes pop out.

“What were you doing in there?” Pablo asked me.

“Buying wedding rings.” I saw the woman in the store returning the Hearts on Fire ring to the glass case and turning the key in its lock. “You sure took the romance out of it.”

“I’m sorry, Betts.”

And with that, Pablo went into the store.

I watched through the window as he spoke with the woman. She had her arms crossed over her chest at first as if she feared he might do her harm. Then Pablo said something that made her laugh. She looked at the window and caught me watching, but I couldn’t bring myself to look away because now Pablo was taking out his wallet and fingering out a pile of bills onto that black velvet cloth where only minutes before all those rings had rested.

The woman picked up the cash and counted it. She found an order pad, and I could tell she was getting information from Pablo. I knew he’d just put a down payment on those rings, and my heart leapt with joy, because could it be he’d just bought them for Donnie and me?

When he came out of the store, I threw my arms around his neck and gave him a hug. “No one’s ever done anything like that for me before.” I kissed him on the cheek. “But shouldn’t you keep that money and give it to Slam Dent so he won’t hurt you?”

Pablo eased himself out of my arms. “What do you think, Betts?” He lifted an eyebrow and smirked. “I’m buying that ring for Carolyn.”

I felt the ground drop away from me, and I swore I was falling. I watched him walk away from me. I called his name, but in a voice so weak there was little chance that he heard me. Or, if he did, he didn’t care. He didn’t stop or even look back. He just kept walking like he didn’t have a reason in the world to think of me.

Donnie was still stroking my arm. “Are you all right, Baby?”

“I’m fine,” I told him, but, of course, I wasn’t. Inside I was shaking.

“Do you want to go back into the store?”

I shook my head. Then I told him the truth, as hard as it was for me to admit. “I don’t have the money for those rings.” I let my breath out with a gasp, and I felt the tears start to come.

“Don’t cry.” He pulled me close to him, and I pressed my face into his chest and listened to his heart beating, that strong, steady beat that reminded me of the drum circle on the lawn of the Language Building the night my new life began. Who knew where it was going? I only knew I was thankful for the arms that were around me, and the beat of that heart, and that soothing voice telling me everything was going to be all right. “No worries, Baby,” he said. “Rings or no rings, I’m here.”

WHAT DO YOU
do when you’re being hunted the way Pablo was and your ex-wife, whom you still love, tells you that the man who’s after you came into her house and held a gun to her head and made her take off her clothes and looked her over for a good long time?

You go off. At least that’s what Pablo did. You go looking for that man, that Slam Dent, and you don’t give a shit what happens when you find him.

Donnie and I hustled back to the house, but by the time we got there, Pablo and his car were gone.

I looked through the spare bedroom, and all his things were still there: gold chains and bracelets laid out on top of the dresser; a pair of cordovan loafers lined up neatly in the closet; silk shirts and dress slacks still on their hangers; a Gideon Bible, taken, no doubt, from a motel when he was on the road, open now on the nightstand to the beginning of the thirteenth chapter of the Book of Hebrews. I’d never known Pablo to be a religious man, and I could only assume that some night, when he was on the run, he’d become so frightened, he’d opened this Bible and looked for comfort. I rubbed my hand over the page—so thin and sleek it was—and then I read, the first verse, “Let brotherly love continue.”

It blindsided me, that exhortation to love, and I was sorry for the anger I’d felt toward Pablo at the jewelry store. When I thought about him hunkered down in a motel room God knows where, longing for home, I couldn’t help but feel sorry for him.

The second verse was one I knew, the one about how we should take care of strangers because sometimes they might be angels, and if we turned them away, who knew what might happen tomorrow. That’s the thing that froze me, that uncertainty about what was coming at me from the future. I kept turning it over in my head, the fact that when we make a choice, we create a realm of possible consequences, and another collection of possibilities go zooming past us, and we never know what they were. We never know how things might have turned out differently. What was left to us, then, but, as the verse said, to let love continue? I told this Lester Stipp that he was mine, and now here I was in the midst of what I’d made. I didn’t know if he was an angel come to save me, but in my heart I believed it was true.

“I have to find him,” I said to Donnie. “I have to find Pablo.”

But it was almost time to open my shop. “I’ll take care of it,” Donnie said. “You just go.”

So we agreed that he’d open up Babyheart’s Tats, and he’d tell anyone who came in that Miss Baby would be there shortly. He’d let them leaf through the sample tats. He’d get them coffee or a Coke. He’d shoot the breeze. He told me not to worry, and I gave him the key.