The End of Eve (17 page)

I DROVE OUT AN UNNUMBERED COUNTRY ROAD, SWERVED
to avoid a rattlesnake, almost crashed my car into a cottonwood. I caught my breath and checked the rearview, realized the snake was already dead.
Focus, Ariel.

I drove the 20 minutes into town, The Shins on the
CD
player, and I did the things I did in town – picked up my mail from the post office, picked up apples and green chile from the southside farmer's market, picked up Maxito from preschool.

Back home, he played with his Hot Wheels and said “look, Mama, look, Mama,” and I looked and I absently checked my email. Coupons from Urban Outfitters and Country Outfitter, a warning about a full moon in Taurus from Leslie, recommended readings from
Amazon.com
, an overdue bill from my car insurance company, and this: A subjectless message from
[email protected]
.

My first thought was that my mother died and someone was using her email account to send me the news. It had been more than a year since the original death date she'd written on her calendar in red ink. It had been some ten months since I'd last seen her – staring at me through the screen of her bedroom window. I took a deep breath, like breath might prepare me, but when I clicked the email open, I knew she'd written it herself.

From:
[email protected]

Subject:

Date:
November 2,2011
9:56:47
AM MDT

To:
[email protected]

Hi Tiniest,

I wrote a poem and it's getting published. What do you think?

SANGRE DE CRISTO

       
I live alone now

       
in the long shadow

       
of these mountains.

       
Tumors

       
fill my lungs

       
and I am growing thin.

       
By day the dead

       
visit me and we talk,

       
sometimes for hours.

       
At night the puma

       
leaves his cold cave

       
to pace outside my door.

       
I dream that my lungs

       
are the wings of a great butterfly,

       
my spine its body.

       
On waking

       
I recall everyone

       
whom I have loved,

       
and my heart,

       
touched by the sacred one,

       
begins to burn.

I read the poem a couple of times, didn't know exactly what to make of it, what my mother was trying to communicate. Maybe she was just reaching out, writer to writer, the way strangers sometimes did if they'd read my work and wanted to share their own. Maybe it was more than that. To reply felt like a risk, but I took it.

From:
[email protected]

Subject:
Re:

Date:
November 2,2011 2:37:11 PM MDT

To:
[email protected]

Hi Mom,

Your poem is good.

Are you just sharing or would you like me to come and see you?

Ariel

From:
[email protected]

Subject:
Re:

Date:
November 2,2011 2:41:16 PM MDT

To:
[email protected]

Hi Tiniest,

Sweet of you to write back. I hear you left Sol and moved back to Portland? Care to fill me in?

If you're in Santa Fe you could come by the house. I would like that. I have an appointment tomorrow, but I'll be back by noon.

Will you bring Maxito?

From:
[email protected]

Subject:
Re:

Date:
November 2,2011 3:58:49 PM MDT

To:
[email protected]

I think I'll come alone.

Between noon and one?

From:
[email protected]

Subject:
Re:

Date:
November2,2011 4:00:07PM MDT

To:
[email protected]

Wonderful.

“
LOOK, MAMA!
”
MAXITO
squealed. He let go of an orange Hot Wheels car and laughed as it loop-de-looped around the plastic track. “I love my Hot Wheels,” he sighed. “Should we go see if my chickens made eggs?”

“Of course.”

We barreled outside and around the house. Four chickens huddled together under their heat lamp, one balled up on the ground just outside the coop, but still inside the chicken-wire and bamboo fence.

Maxito's face fell. “Is Ping hurt?”

“Don't touch her, baby,” I said, and I pulled on a pair of gardening gloves as I went to touch her.

Maxito's lip quivered as he watched.

“I don't know what happened,” I told him. “Ping died.” It wasn't particularly cold out. No blood or misplaced feathers evidenced attack.

We dug a grave for the chicken.

“Why did Ping die, Mama?'

“I don't know,” I admitted. “Maybe she was sick.”

Maxito wrinkled his nose. “That's sad.”

MAXITO FELL ASLEEP
early. Sol had come when I wasn't home and taken the bed we'd shared for ten years, so I curled up on the cowboy bedroll I'd patched together from cushions and blankets and I closed my eyes.

I dreamed I took a train to my mother's old house in southern Mexico, but when I got there she had this thick file of medical bills all in my name and said I had to pay them. She was showing me the bills, paging through them, thousands of dollars worth of alternative cancer treatments and old Kaiser X-rays. She was licking her index finger – those red manicured nails. “I know you don't have any money,” she was saying, all calm and matter-of-fact. “I'm going to help you,” she said. “You'll just have to sell me your liver and we'll be even.”

I was screaming, horrified, “You can't just put bills in other people's names! You can't demand to buy somebody's liver!”

My mother shook her head. “I can see you're hysterical, Ariel.”

I was running through white hallways, trying to get away Some medical facility and all the doors chained shut. I was in a plastic body bag, ripping my way out. I was back in the kitchen in the house in Mexico. Dark now and my mother approached me. “ Tiniest?” she whispered, and she reached to touch my face. I softened, surprised by her tenderness, but then she grabbed my throat to strangle me.

I woke coughing on my little cowboy bedroll on the floor, got up to check on Maxito, to watch the rise and fall of his chest. It was only midnight. I made myself a cup of chamomile tea.

Relax, Ariel.
But then I thought of all the people who'd ever told me to relax and the way they were always the people who I shouldn't have relaxed around, should've done the opposite. Like the people who say “trust me.” Nobody you should trust ever says, “trust me.” Adrenaline up and run.

But I didn't run.

ONE P.M. THE
next day and I pulled into the gravel driveway of the former duplex, parked next to my mother's new white Prius.

The sound of my boots in that gravel, familiar and faraway.

I approached the door, knocked, then knocked again. I tried the handle, but it was locked. If she'd blown her brains out in there and wanted me to find her, I reasoned, she probably would have left the door open.

She just wasn't home.

I left six eggs in a basket on her doormat, walked back to my car feeling like a chump.

What was I thinking, coming here?

I hated the part of myself that seemed to have this inextinguishable hope, but I didn't know how to snuff it out. I'd been reading my Buddhist books. Pema Chödrön said that, “Only to
the extent that we expose ourselves over and over to annihilation can that which is indestructible in us be found.” But I didn't want this naïve hope to be my indestructible part.

I wanted to be cooler than that.

I wanted to know better.

A deer sauntered down the dirt road in front of the former duplex. Our eyes locked for a second, but I shook my head. This place was just so over-the-top, like some dark and corny spaghetti Western come to life. The deer kept walking, slow and elegant.

I got in my car and turned my key, drove away in the long shadow of those mountains.

24.

The Mine Shaft Tavern

I DIDN
'
T HEAR FROM MY MOTHER THAT DAY OR THE NEXT
. I made hot and sour soup with tofu and shiitake mushrooms, settled back into the idea that I might not see her again, that after a week or a year someone would notice the smell of death and I'd get the call I didn't know how to prepare for. The waiting manifested in a constant, low-level stabbing pain in my right shoulder, made me feel at once jaded and on edge, but I figured that not seeing her again would be all right.

Sure, some part of me would always be that magical-thinking four-year-old waiting for my good mother to rescue me from this witch, but I hadn't come all this way looking for my good mother. The only thing I'd written on my wrist all those months ago in Portland was
Behave in a way you're going to be proud of.

I was sitting at my desk, futzing with a story on my computer and clicking around
Pandora.com
looking for music I might like when the email came through. The subject line alone filled me with sudden dread.

From:
[email protected]

Subject:
Thanksgiving

Date:
November 13
,
2011 4:01:06 AM MDT

To:
[email protected]

Dear Ariel,

I am very aware that I missed our appointment the other day. The fresh eggs were delicious. Can we talk about Thanksgiving now? I
think it would be a good idea for you and Maia and Maxito to come here for the feast.

Love,

Mom

I IMAGINED PULLING
into my mother's gravel driveway, my kids all dressed up, finding the place locked.

I envisioned the door open, the smell of roasting turkey and sweet potatoes, my mother wielding a giant carving knife with a handle made of bone.

I remembered the Thanksgivings of my childhood. My stepdad always kept a firm grip on the white bone of that carving knife.

I thought about refusing her invitation, inviting her to my little adobe south of town instead. But who's to say I wouldn't open the door, expecting to see my mother, and get a process server instead, legal papers in hand?

From:
[email protected]

Subject:
Re: Thanksgiving

Date:
November
13,
2011 8:02:34 AM MDT

To:
[email protected]

Hi Mom,

The kids and I would be happy to spend Thanksgiving with you, but we already have a plan. There's a bar out on Highway 14 called the Mine Shaft Tavern. It's in Madrid. Maybe 15 miles out past the penitentiary. They do a community Thanksgiving. You're welcome to join us.

Ariel

From:
[email protected]

Subject:
Re: Thanksgiving

Date:
November 13, 2011 8:03:21 AM MDT

To:
[email protected]

At a bar?!?

YES. THE MINE
Shaft Tavern. It seemed the appropriate place to emerge from underground.

My mother didn't
RSVP
to my Thanksgiving bar invitation, but it was all I had to offer. I didn't want to bring my kids to her house and I didn't want to give her my address. I would behave in a way I was going to be proud of, and she could take it or leave it. Maia and Maxito and I would spend the day together regardless. Abra and her one white friend from the Native Arts College would meet us there, too. Sol would come pick Maxito up later in the evening for a second dinner at her place.