Kirstin Valdez Quade - Night at the Fiestas - Stories

“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-full 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.