Night at the Fiestas: Stories (6 page)

Monica stepped aside to let the girl in from the wind, and, when Amanda entered without hesitation, reminded herself to warn Cordelia never to set foot in anyone’s home alone, ever.

Amanda surveyed the trailer: the
Riverside Shakespeare
, Beatrice’s wipes and diapers on the table, Beatrice herself, who’d wakened and stopped mawing her fist to greet Amanda with a pleasured gurgle.

Amanda looked Monica over. “Why are you wearing that?”

“It’s my mom’s best dress,” Cordelia said, clambering down from the loft. “It cost over three hundred dollars.”

Amanda frowned. “What’s
she
doing here?” she asked Monica.

“I missed the bus,” said Cordelia. She had brightened at the arrival of the older girl. “And Elliot took our car. Are you here to play?”

Amanda didn’t answer, just looked with discontent at her backpack.

“Is everything okay, Amanda?” Monica asked. “Why aren’t you in school?”

Amanda straightened her shirt carefully under her coat, shrugged her skinny shoulders. “Why isn’t
she
in school?”

Though Amanda was only nine, there was something teenagerish about her, something disturbing and sexual. She wore her sleek dark hair parted on the side, and it slipped off her shoulders and down her back. The white tips of her rather large ears poked though the silky curtain. In October, when it was still hot during the day, Monica had seen her in a bikini, spreading a towel on the hard-packed dirt to sunbathe. Another day, Amanda tucked the hem of her shirt into the neck and pulled it down so that it resembled a bra. Monica had watched over the edge of her book as the girl walked the length of the park, sashaying past the adults. Who knew what went on in that trailer?

Now Amanda bit her lip, looked around critically, then set her backpack on the bench seat and scooted in. She folded her hands on the table.

“Are you sick, honey? If you’re sick, you should probably be home in bed.”

When Amanda didn’t answer, Monica abandoned the role of concerned, motherly neighbor. She sat at the table opposite her, pulled Beatrice to her lap, and waited. Cordelia sat beside Monica and folded her own hands, mirroring the older girl.

Amanda frowned at the baby. “She’s got boogers all over her face,” she said, then seemed to lose interest. “Where’s all your stuff? Don’t you even got a TV?”

“No,” said Monica, the same hint of pride in her voice she always had when asked this. “We don’t watch TV.” Stupid, showing off to a nine-year-old.

“You don’t got heat either?”

“Well,” Monica laughed. “Usually we have heat.”

“It’s
broken
.” Cordelia shot an accusing glance at Monica. “And anyway,” she told Amanda, placing a protective hand on Beatrice’s forearm, “that’s not boogers. She’s just chapped.”

Amanda pointed to the cardboard box that held Elliot’s soil samples, each tied and carefully labeled. “What’s that stuff?”

“My husband’s samples. He’s a geologist, which means he studies rocks.
Geo
means
rock
in Greek.”

To that teachable moment, Amanda made no reply.

Several times over the months, they’d heard Amanda’s mother yelling at her children from across the lot. “You get back here this minute or I don’t want to see your face ’til you’re twenty-one!” She’d shout breathlessly, bracing herself with a hand in the doorway, as if even standing were an enormous effort, and Monica and Elliot would laugh. Elliot did a strangely accurate impression of Amanda’s mother, but made her seem both crazier and shriller than she was.

Funny, only now did Monica feel ashamed, mocking the woman’s impotence, mocking the despair and futility that would lead to such a pointless threat.

“Can I get you anything?” She would have liked to offer the girl cookies and milk, but they’d just used the last of the milk and never had cookies.

Amanda scratched the back of her hand with a dirty nail, leaving dry tracks in the skin. “I thought maybe you’d want to buy something from me,” she said finally.

“Buy something?”

“Is it expensive?” asked Cordelia.

Beatrice patted Monica’s chest, ready to nurse.

Amanda indicated her backpack, distracted by the sight of Monica’s breast as Monica maneuvered it out from the neck of the dress and into Beatrice’s waiting mouth.

“What are you selling? Cookies? Magazines?” Amanda was still looking at her, and Monica suddenly felt very aware of the sensation of Beatrice’s mouth pulling on her nipple. “So,” she said. “Let’s see what you have.”

Amanda pulled her gaze away and unzipped her backpack. She arranged her wares on the table: a porcelain figurine of a milkmaid with a pail in her one remaining hand, a slack-needled odometer with loose wires, a worn pornographic magazine without a cover, a quarter-f bottle of shampoo. She turned the odometer slightly, to better display its virtues. “A dollar each. Except this”—she indicated the magazine—“is three dollars.”

“Let me see that,” said Cordelia, reaching for the magazine with its confusing fleshy close-ups.

Monica pushed it away. “It’s inappropriate,” she said, and Cordelia slumped, glowering.

Beatrice released Monica’s nipple with a pop and strained toward the objects.

“Amanda, where did you get these things? Do they belong to you?”

Amanda scowled. “Yes,” she said defensively, then added, “Duh.”

Monica pictured the scenario: Amanda picking them from the park’s dumpster, or, more likely, selecting them from the objects in her own home, turning them in her hands, evaluating them, stepping around calves and overstuffed shoes, while her family sat oblivious, watching television. “Why are you selling them?”

“Why are you here?” Amanda countered. “At Shady Lanes.”

“For my husband’s work.” Monica gestured again at the box of samples. The real question, Monica thought, was what Amanda needed the money for. Candy? Cigarettes? Maybe she was saving up for her escape. Maybe she simply wanted to have the money, to know she could make choices.

“Elliot’s getting his Ph.D.,” said Cordelia self-importantly. “In Santa Fe I lived one block from a swimming pool. We’re going back there.” She turned to Monica. “Aren’t we going back there?”

“I’m not sure where we’ll end up,” said Monica.

“Elliot got in a fight with his advisor,” Cordelia told Amanda, shaking her head with regret.

“Where did you hear that?” asked Monica. “It wasn’t a real fight.”

“It was,” said Cordelia. “That’s why it’s taking so long for him to get his Ph.D.”

For the first time Amanda looked mildly interested. “Did he punch him?”

“No,” Cordelia said with scorn.

“It’s not true, Cordelia,” Monica said.

“It
is
true,” Cordelia insisted. “You said. I heard you.”

Monica was having trouble breathing. It wasn’t Elliot’s fault he’d had to switch topics and start all over, just because of some unfounded insinuations. No one ever said the words
falsified data
, but Elliot had insisted on starting all over, insisted it was the only way to clear his name. He’d made the decision on his own, swiftly, had refused to consider rethinking it. And now, a year later, his funding had run out, and he seemed further and further from completion. What if he never finished?

What if they stayed out here—or if not here, in some equally godforsaken place—and this was her whole life? What if there was no tenure-track job on the horizon? No trim green quad, no book-lined living room? Monica thought of their bank balance, dangerously low, no infusions in sight, thought about how there was nothing left to cut from their budget, how she didn’t even know anymore if Elliot
was
brilliant. For all his flaws, Peter would never have found himself in Elliot’s position, chipping away stubbornly at some theory without guarantee of success. Peter was too savvy and self-interested. Monica glimpsed a future as barren as the salt flats, and as she did, the enormity of her disloyalty to Elliot made her catch her breath.

“Well? Are you going to buy something or not?” Amanda asked. Her hand was on the milkmaid.

“I’m sorry, no,” Monica said. Amanda was already packing the objects into her backpack.

What choice had Monica had, really? A lifetime of impossible hours at menial jobs, single-motherhood, her looks straining and distorting—that was no choice, not for her.

“Can you zip me?” Amanda waited, gazing over Monica’s head while Monica fumbled with her coat, then she swung her backpack over her shoulder. Her lips were blue. Monica shivered.

Monica held the door open for the girl, and the wind yanked it back and forth in her hands. “Goodbye, Amanda.” If Monica’s voice was taut, the child didn’t seem to notice. She jumped down the steps and into the wind. A dust devil whirled across the lot.

When Monica turned from the door, Cordelia had Beatrice on her lap, her skinny arms tight around the fat, smiling baby. She glared at Monica. Her brows were straight and thick, her father’s brows. “You lied. I don’t care what you do, but you shouldn’t lie in front of a baby.” Under those brows, Cordelia’s eyes blazed.

“You don’t know the first thing about it, Cordelia.” Monica turned her back on her daughter, the blood hot in her face. From the window she watched as Amanda trudged across the dirt to the bathrooms. The child’s shoulders were straight; she didn’t seem defeated.

In a rush Monica pushed open the door, stuck her head into the wind. “Wait!” Amanda stopped, then after the briefest pause, turned. “Wait a minute. You may be able to do something with this.” Monica was already sliding the straps off her shoulder.

“No!” cried Cordelia. “What are you doing?”

It was the right gesture, Monica saw now, to slough off everything that had come before, to give herself entirely to this life with Elliot. Monica imagined the dress tossed and wrinkled among Cordelia’s clothes, the straps knotted, the hem dragging on the floor, beads cascading every time it was touched. She imagined her daughter wearing the dress, reminding her. No, Monica couldn’t have borne it.

“How much is it?” Amanda eyed her from the doorway. “I have to save my money.”

Arm across her breasts, Monica hunched to cover herself and stepped out of the dress. She pulled on her sweater and jeans, hurrying, suddenly afraid Amanda might leave without it. “It’s a gift.”

“You can’t give it to her!” Cordelia cried. “You said it could be
mine
!”

Monica folded the dress into a square, the cold silk slipping against itself, handed it to Amanda.

Amanda shoved it into her backpack.

Cordelia’s eyes filled with angry tears. “I don’t really think it’s ugly.”

“We’ll talk about this later, Cordelia.”

This time Monica did not watch to see where Amanda went; she shut the door on the child with a profound sense of relief. Monica pulled Beatrice from Cordelia’s arms—too hard—and bounced the baby on her hip, covered the warm scalp with kisses. She did not look at Cordelia.

Monica knew what she’d tell her daughter later: that Amanda didn’t have nice things, that it was important to be kind to people who didn’t have the same opportunities. And when Cordelia made a fuss, as she was sure to, then Monica would remind her sharply that the dress was hers, Monica’s, to do with as she liked.

E
LLIOT ARRIVED HOME
that night after they’d all fallen asleep.

“Jesus,” he said and rezipped his coat. “It’s colder in here than outside.”

Monica swung herself into his arms. The night air clung to him, and she shivered.

“You’ve been sitting in here like this? God, you’re tough.”

Monica smiled, pleased, as he kissed her hair. “How was it?” She took Elliot’s jacket zipper in her fingers, pulled it down again and folded herself against his chest, breathing the cold, sour smell of wool and his week-old sweat, the dry scent of blowing dirt and sagebrush. “We missed you,” she said happily into his sweater. “We missed you so much.”

For nearly an hour, they stood outside—Monica stood, Elliot crouched—by the heating panel. Monica, lips and nose numb, held the flashlight while Elliot fiddled with the heater with gloved fingers.

“Did you find what you needed?”

One by one the stubborn screws loosened under Elliot’s screwdriver. “I checked out a bunch of deposits that looked promising. Lots of gravel, lots of sediment, but in the end, nothing datable.”

The relief she’d felt at his arrival drained, and now all the uneasiness of the day was upon her again. “You didn’t find
anything
you could use?”

“Monica, honey, it’s very complicated.” He paused in his work, looked at her over his shoulder. “You have to find the right cross-cutting relationships, the right exposure. If it were
easy
, we’d already have this figured out.” He spoke with forbearance, but she could see the irritation in his face. Hadn’t he just wanted to come home to his snug family? And now here he was in the cold while his wife judged, harassed, blamed.

Elliot turned back to the heating panel. “Shine it here.” The wind had died down, and the desert was oddly quiet. Out on the dark highway, the sign was motionless on its post.

“I’m sorry,” she said. She concentrated on holding the light steady. “It’s just been an awful day.”

At bedtime, Cordelia had asked, “Can I sleep with you and Beatrice tonight?”

“No,” Monica had said. “You have your own bed. And Elliot will be home.” She’d patted the mattress in the loft, and Cordelia, clumsy in her layers of sweaters and sweatpants, hauled herself up the ladder.

Monica kissed her daughter goodnight over the edge of the loft, descended, then stepped back up the ladder and placed her hand on Cordelia’s back. “Listen. Tomorrow will be better, sweet pea.”

Cordelia burrowed deeper into her sleeping bag, teeth chattering. “Okay,” she said, then fell asleep with her usual ease.

Now Monica said, “I did something stupid today.” She told Elliot about Amanda’s visit. “And then after her sales pitch, I gave her my dress.” Elliot’s hands cast outsized shadows against the side of the trailer. He frowned into the panel. “My best dress. Out of the blue. I don’t know what I was thinking.”