More Than Allies (10 page)

Maggie has always thought Lynn is the prettiest, cleverest woman she knows. She admires her for a hundred things. Right now, though, she wonders if Lynn is speaking to her from another planet. “I've got to go,” she says. “Believe me, you don't want to trade your massage for my kids.”

Lynn laughs. “I'll get you a certificate. You can go when you have time. Really, it takes away all the tension. It dissolves it. It's so good for you.”

“Let me think about it, Lynn. I've got to go.”

“Okay. See you Saturday.”

“What?”

“Nora's lunch.”

“Right. Bye.”

She hangs up and pulls Stevie close against her, between her body and the back of the couch. Stevie is already dozing. She also smells dirty. “Oh baby girl, I'm tired of diapers,” Maggie whispers. With enormous effort, she changes Stevie, who fusses halfheartedly and falls back asleep.

Mo calls shortly after. Maggie tells him about Jay's poison oak. She tells him about Polly's baby, who is tiny and fragile and red with anger. She tells him about Lynn's offer to send her for a massage.

“I could do that for free,” he says.

Oh, she would like that, she thinks, longing flushing over her body. “If you were here,” she says.

“If you were here,” he says.

“You better talk to Jay.” She puts the phone down and wakes Jay.

Sleepily, Jay tells his dad about the shed and the poison oak. “Are you going to come?” he asks.

He hands the phone to Maggie. “He wants you.”

Mo wants to know when school is out. It's only a couple of weeks. “We'll figure something out soon,” he says. “I've got to go.”

Jay is watching her. “What'd he say? Is he coming?”

“Some time.”

He turns on his heel, and this time he slams the door to her bedroom.

They need to talk about their son, she thinks. She and Mo. They really do need to talk.

Dulce sat to one side near the back of the gym to watch the skits on Spanish night. She thought that what the kids were enjoying—and they
were
having a good time—was the fun of dressing up and acting silly. Spanish had very little to do with it. There were jumping beans and big bad wolves, señoritas with huge paper fans, a funny game of futbol. There were songs and poems and jumprope rhymes. Through it all, even as she enjoyed the children's enthusiasm, Dulce couldn't help wondering who all this Spanish was for. Would these children travel to Mexico, to Costa Rica, to Spain? Would they find jobs someday where they needed Spanish to talk to their uneducated clients? (Social workers, policemen?) Did they know anybody who actually spoke Spanish? Did they want to?

The parents had brought food. There was an intermission, and everyone attacked the many pots of salsa and bowls of chips, beans and tortillas, mounds of red rice. She had made a tray of sliced French bread sweetened with dark brown sugar and cinnamon, a treat she remembered from childhood. No one spoke to her. She stood against the wall with a wedge of her own food in her hand, alone until Gus made his way to her. He was eating a tortilla spread with avocado. “Nobody's going to like that stuff,” he said, pointing to his mother's bread. Then she couldn't help watching, as people looked over the food, and neglected the
pan
. “I'm the main bad wolf,” her son said. His brown cheeks were rosy with excitement. “Can you see me from back there?”

At the end of the skits, awards were presented. It was so hot in the gym, and the show had gone on so long, Dulce was half-asleep when she heard her son's name.
Gus Quirarte
. She opened her eyes. She leaned forward to watch him walk up to the stage from his place with his class down below. Was this something he had competed for? His expression was one of delight, and surprise: I won something! it said. But what? He was awarded the Language Camp Scholarship. There was much applause. He descended the steps, clutching a certificate, and scanned the audience, looking for his mother. She waved quickly, just above her head. Later he said he wasn't sure what it was for. Learning Spanish, that was all he knew. He liked that. He liked Spanish. He had learned a lot from Lupe's family, from Hilario. “The teacher said it comes to me naturally,” he said. He smiled a smart-aleck smile.

Thursday she cleaned eleven rooms at the motel, then drove home slowly. The car was making strange noises. She said
Jesus, Mary, Joseph
over and over even though she knew she was silly. She changed and went over to the school as the kids were being dismissed. Mrs. Cecil wasn't in the office. The secretary said she was somewhere in the building, and paged her. Dulce sat on the chair by the principal's door. She didn't cross her legs. She folded her hands in her lap, and sat up straight. She wondered how many more times, good or bad, she would have to come to her son's school. She wondered if she would ever stop feeling out of place.

Across the hall, Maggie is in conference with Jennifer, the counselor. Earlier in the afternoon, she was summoned to school to collect Jay and take him home. He had excused himself from class to go to the bathroom, then had gone outside and let the air out of nine bicycles before someone happened to notice him down on his knees busy with mischief.

Now, as requested, she has returned to talk. Jay, deeply sullen, has hidden himself in his dad's old room and refused this very thing, talk. Polly has been oddly silent, offering little comfort and no advice, though she says she's making spaghetti, and could Maggie pick up French bread? Maggie left Stevie peering into the baby's crib while Polly held her hand and explained the baby was resting. She felt extra, not quite necessary. It was somehow her fault that things were going wrong for Jay. As if accused, she felt hot with resentment.

Jennifer says she wonders if there is some particular impulse for Jay's behavior. Maggie considers the word, impulse. It does seem relevant. Mo's impulse to flee. Polly's impulse to mother. Jay's impulse to
be trouble
. Maggie's own lack of impulse. She knows what she does not want to do—does not want to leave Lupine, does not want to be without Mo, does not want to talk to Jennifer, does not want to take hand-me-downs or advice from her friends. It is a humiliating word for Maggie, impulse. It suggests energy, rhythm, getting-off-the-dime. Maybe Jay's impulse is to get his mother moving? Maybe Jay's impulse is to demand that
something be done?
But what?

Maggie knows that this woman Jennifer means well. She is a little older than Maggie, maybe thirty-two or -three, a soft-spoken but efficient professional, with notes and brightly colored files in a plastic stand behind her. She has already added up a few things: Jay's declining performance in school, the acceleration of his bad moods, his withdrawal from his friends.

“I'm not sure that's true,” Maggie interrupts Jennifer's monologue. “The part about his friends. I think he feels they've deserted him. Gus, at least. They've played together the last couple of years. Now Gus is busy—this new boy—” She thinks Jennifer would be full of advice, if only Maggie told her how things are, but Maggie doesn't think Jennifer can understand. How simple it would be to say, Jay's angry because he got left out last night. He's hurt because his best friend is otherwise occupied. He's lonesome for his dad, and hey, he hasn't even been able to buy the high-top athletic shoes he's wanted for months.

“Maybe Jay and I can repair the bicycles,” Maggie says. She has never pumped a tire, but surely she can learn fast enough.

“Don't worry. One of the teachers and a couple of sixth graders took care of it. There was no harm done, really. He just unscrewed the caps and pushed the plungers—”

“He's never done anything like this before.” Maggie feels helpless and accused. She wishes Jay had thought about what he was doing, what it would mean for her. Of course he probably did think. He thought:
I hate them all
. Or:
Take that
.

“I want to show you something,” Jennifer says. She turns and takes a piece of paper from one of the files behind her. It is a drawing. She hands it to Maggie. “I was in Jay's class last week. Sometimes I do little exercises. I try to give them a chance to talk about their feelings. This time, I asked them to draw their houses. You see what he's done.”

Maggie, whose vision is perfect, holds the crayoned drawing in front of her face as if it is a difficult puzzle, so that Jennifer is talking to the back of it, unable to see either Maggie or the picture.

There is Polly's red house, and garage, and behind, the cottage. “My house,” Jay has labeled the cottage. Beside the garage he has drawn something, then scribbled it out with black crayon.

“I asked him about the marked-out part,” Jennifer says.

Maggie lays the drawing on her lap and lets Jennifer tell her what she has already figured out. “It's his dad's truck. He says that's where he always parks it when he's home.”

“What do you want me to tell you?” Maggie says quietly. “If you've figured everything out?”

Jennifer blushes. “I didn't mean to imply—”

“A little boy is hurt and confused. He's a child. Why did his teacher throw him out of Spanish night? What did he learn from that?” She stands up. “I'll take this,” she says, shaking the drawing slightly, “back to Jay.” She is thinking maybe he should send it to Mo, but she doesn't say that now, to Jennifer.

“Maggie—” Jennifer is on her feet. She reaches out, but stops before she actually touches Maggie. Maggie's hand trembles visibly. She puts her arm down alongside her thigh.

“I need to ask your permission—your advice—” Jennifer does touch Maggie, gently, on her elbow, but only for a moment.

“Permission for what?”

“There are still two weeks. We have groups. Jay. He could share his feelings. He could find out how other kids are feeling about these same issues. I think it would help.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“It's a question of which group. The anger group, or the loss group? The anger group would help him get a handle for now, but the other—I think he might do better with those children—”

“I'll have to think about it.” Maggie backs toward the door. “I'll talk to his dad. I'll talk to Jay.”

Outside, she makes it to the corner of the building before she begins to cry. She stops, leans against the brick wall, thinks of other things she might have said. She wishes Polly had come. She wishes Jay had not messed with the bikes.

“Are you okay?”

She jumps. She wipes her eyes with the back of her hand. At first, she doesn't know who is there, then she realizes it is Gus' mother. Dulce.

“Are you sick?”

“No. Upset.” She tries to smile. “Called to school, you know.”

“Yeah. It makes me nervous to come. It made me nervous, every day I ever went to school.”

“I'm okay. Thanks.” She points to the parking lot. “My car's over there. Are you going that way?”

“No. I'm walking.”

“Want a ride?”

“That's okay.”

“No. Really. Let me give you a ride, Dulce. Listen, would you want—could we get a cup of coffee or something? I just have a little time, but—well, would you?”

They go to the Coffee Bliss. It looks as if half the town has picked now to take a break. There's no place to sit. Dulce says, “I just live behind, in the trailer court. Why don't we go there? You've never been to my place. It'll be quiet. Gus won't be home yet.” She looks around.

“Let me get our coffee,” Maggie says, but when Dulce lays two quarters on the counter, she doesn't object. She would like to pay; she is never the one to pay. Polly pays. Her friends pay. She would like to pay, but maybe Dulce, like her, never pays. Maybe it's better to bear one's own cost.

The first thing that strikes her, once they are inside Dulce's trailer, is how much like the cottage it is. The compact kitchen, the slightly shabby couch, obviously used as a bed—a pillow and blanket are piled at one end—and the sense of efficiency, of fitting in the space you happen to have.

Drawings are scotch-taped to the walls. “Gus'?” she says, touching one. A knight on a horse leans over to slash with his sword at a scaly monster.

“He's always at it.” Dulce arranges chairs for them at her small table. They pull the caps off their coffee cups and drink. Maggie feels shy, but comfortable, too. It doesn't seem necessary to find something to say right away.

Near the edge of the table is a stack of more drawings. Idly, she touches the edges, lifts the top—a moat, and trees—and sees, below it, an odd map. “It looks like Texas,” she says, though she can see that the map shows castles and lakes, mountains and forests, a land of dragons.

Dulce slides the drawing along the table closer to her and studies it for a moment. “He creates these kingdoms,” she says. “He reads fantasies. Or used to. He hasn't been doing it so much lately.” She places the paper back on the stack, face down.

“Is it just the two of you?” Maggie asks. She is slightly embarrassed. Jay has talked about Gus for a couple of years, has been to his home, swapped comic books, but Maggie has, at most, spoken to Dulce a few times on the phone, said hello at school events, passed her without attention at Rachel's, and never had the slightest curiosity about her. Yet she has extraordinary looks: amazing hair and eyes, a voluptuousness that she seems to take matter-of-factly, and a way of regarding you, a gaze, that calms and invites confidence, without giving anything away.

Dulce nods, looking away slightly. “For a long time,” she says. She gestures toward the upside-down drawing. “That's where his father is now. Texas. The map. I guess he's thinking about his dad.”

“Oh!” Maggie exclaims. A chill runs down her neck. “That's so strange!”

Dulce regards her passively, but Maggie rushes to explain. “Because that's where Mo is, too. Jay's father.” Dulce gives the slightest nod, asks nothing, and sips her coffee, but Maggie rushes on as if commanded to give details. “He has a friend there, from the army. He has this job—” On and on she goes, like a toy wound tight, talking and talking, as Dulce calmly finishes her coffee. “Jay is so upset.” She recounts his recent misadventures. “I don't know what I should do. Maybe Mo will come up to get him. I didn't want to go to Texas. I don't think I want to go—I don't know what I should do—”