Kirstin Valdez Quade - Night at the Fiestas - Stories

“Yep. Live in the same house my dad built.” Carmen selected a cookie, pinky turned out, and nibbled as she explained that she lived next door to her diabetic mother. “She’s stubborn as heck. Won’t let anyone help with the shots, but wants you to stand in the bathroom watching.”

Margaret was surprised to learn Carmen had a twenty-five-year-old son and a six-year-old granddaughter, whom Carmen watched in the afternoons. “She lives with her mom, Ruben’s old girlfriend. I wanted them to get married, but”—heavy sigh—“what can we do?”

“I’d never have guessed you had a granddaughter. You look so young.”

Carmen hooted. “I wish!” She sighed again. “Well, Ruben’s not perfect, God knows, but he’s my baby.”

Margaret was wondering how she’d describe Carmen’s accent to Harold. “I’m planning to learn Spanish. Maybe you could tutor me.” She said it without thinking, then faltered.

“I don’t speak Spanish. Not good, anyways.” Carmen shook her head, and for a moment the scar disappeared in the crease of her neck.

Suddenly, Margaret was afraid Carmen might not agree to work here. She was about to explain that she’d only assumed because of the accent when Carmen looked up, grinned. “The only words I know are cusses.”

That smile — the white, even teeth — Margaret could have hugged her for that.

Carmen stood, wandered to the kitchen, aimlessly opened an empty cupboard. “I think this will work good.”

MARGARET TOLD HAROLD about Carmen that night on the phone while she chopped mushrooms for her salad. “She’s wonderful, Harold. Great sense of humor. And a saint, takes care of everyone. She’ll come in the mornings and leave in time to collect her granddaughter from school. It’s the perfect setup—” Then she added: “At least for now. When you get here we can reconfigure.”

“Good, Mags. I wish I were there. This case is rough. One useless deposition after another.” He talked about work for a while, and Margaret let her mind wander because she could tell he was happy. Carmen had clearly had a difficult life, but she was cheerful, open. The blade of the knife slid smoothly through the pale flesh of the mushroom, and Margaret thought once again of Carmen’s scar. She pictured the knife, or the accident — it might have been an accident — a piece of glass from a car’s windshield, a childhood collision with a sliding door. Whatever it was, there would have been blood everywhere. Her fingers felt weak.

She was on the point of telling him about the scar when Harold’s voice trailed away. He cleared his throat. “You’re sure everything’s okay, Margaret?” he asked. “With us?” His voice was husky, pained, and all at once the harmony drained from the conversation.

Lately, Harold had been oddly intuitive as he’d never been before. Just three weeks ago, as she was packing the kitchen, setting aside duplicate dishes for Harold to use in his new condo, he’d stood in the doorway watching her. His thin wrists seemed gray, exposed by the rolled sleeves of his Oxford. “Are you leaving me?”

“Of course not,” Margaret had said, looking at him steadily from the mess of newspapers and dinner plates. He’d searched her face a moment, then relaxed, reassured.

And she’d meant it. In those months leading up to the move, Margaret had felt tremendous tenderness for Harold. She needed to keep him safe as much as she needed to be apart from him.

Now she said: “Of course everything’s okay. I forget how late it is there with the time difference. I’ll let you go, sweetie.”

From the living room, Daisy whined, in response, maybe, to the wail of a coyote too far for Margaret to hear. Daisy wasn’t used to the new house yet. She peered around corners, clung to the walls, eyeing the kitchen or bedroom before scrambling wildly across the open spaces, nails clacking on the tile.

Margaret lifted Daisy and held the dog’s warm, quivering body against her chest. She pressed her forehead against the cold window, peering past her reflection into the darkness beyond. You had to be careful with little dogs way out here, the real estate agent had said. They could be carried off by coyotes or bobcats or, more rarely, mountain lions. Even a hawk might swoop down and lift little Daisy into the air, tearing her silky gray fur with razor talons.

MARGARET HAD HAD OCCASIONAL gallery shows in Rockland, Maine, near where they spent their summers, and she periodically illustrated text-heavy children’s books about historical events. While the books never sold very well, two had won obscure awards for historical accuracy; and over the years she’d sold a number of paintings — fourteen — of abandoned farmhouses and docks and lobster boats, children crouched at the water’s edge. It wasn’t much, perhaps, but many artists did their best work in their later years, and Margaret hoped — with all her heart she hoped — that this would be true of herself.

Her current project, Canute Commands the Tides , was promising, completely different from anything she’d done before — more personal, more urgent. It was based on the legend of Canute, the Danish king of England, old fool, who, claiming he could stop the tides, ordered his throne carried to the waterline, where, predictably, it was swamped by waves. It seemed to Margaret there was something marvelous about Canute’s determination. Instead of submitting to the tide of life, letting old age drag him away and under, Canute had railed against it.

She’d started Canute Commands the Tides two years ago, after their daughter Charlotte relocated to Johannesburg. Margaret hadn’t even known they’d been considering a move until Charlotte and her husband announced they’d be packing up the girls and going clear across the ocean.

What had really shocked Margaret, though, was the stunning, paralyzing sense of abandonment she’d felt. When Harold was at work and Margaret had the house to herself, it seemed she couldn’t stop crying, and when she wasn’t crying, she wandered from room to room, feeling utterly without purpose. “I don’t think it’s nice,” she told Charlotte coldly, long-distance, hating herself. “We’re not young, you know. We need our granddaughters.”

The real problem, she realized, when she began to get hold of herself, was that all her life, she’d never really chosen , just allowed the currents to pull her this way and that. Even her art — especially her art — she’d just let happen to her. She’d never truly decided , thrown herself into it headlong, made it matter.

Canute himself was not in any of Margaret’s paintings: just his throne and the lapping white-tipped waves. In her first attempt, the throne was gilt-edged and red velvet, sinking in the sand, upholstery sodden. But the year was so early, 1015. She pictured what she knew of those feudal lords. Brutal battles fought with clubs and spears and seaxes. Thanes. Thralls. Feasting kings distributing the spoils of war among subjects in heavy-beamed mead halls. The next version of the throne was a plank-backed wood armchair, high and hard. In her next attempt, she downgraded Canute again, giving him one of the yellow-spindled kitchen chairs that had been in her childhood home in Marblehead. Still, the painting wasn’t right.

Now, in her new home, Margaret sliced the packing boards from her canvases and laid the paintings side by side on the floor, discouraged by the blank backgrounds, the crooked sketched lines, the paint that had been worked and reworked into mud. Daisy nosed the corner of one, and Margaret nudged her away with a toe, still studying her attempts.

Margaret rubbed her face with anxious hands, and the familiar and nauseating cocktail of emotions surged: guilt, impatience, dread, ambition. She must get herself organized: set up the studio, begin a strict schedule. She would tackle Canute; she would move forward.