The Wilder Sisters (8 page)

Amanda got up and stood beside her mother. “Who’s that screaming out there? Should you call the police?”

She touched her daughter’s arm. “No, honey, it’s only Doctor Donavan.”

“What’s his problem?”

“Me. I locked his keys in the safe at work.” “Why?”

“He was drunk when I did it.”

“Mom, he looks really steamed. Maybe you should give them back.”

Steamed wasn’t the quite right word for it. Austin looked drowned, furious, and he was standing there letting the rain pelt him like any minute he knew Rose would rush out there with a towel. Not this time. No matter how much she ached to.

“Dammit, Rose, my boots are full of water. I could catch pneumo- nia.”

“Come inside. I’ll give you a towel.”

“I don’t want a fucking towel, I want the keys to my truck!”

He wasn’t completely sober or he wouldn’t have used the F word. “Not tonight, Austin. Tomorrow I’ll be glad to give them to you.”

“Then you’re fired!”

She kept her voice deadpan. “Okay, I’m fired. Goodnight. Have a pleasant walk home.” She shut the door.

“Mama,” Amanda cautioned. “He sounded like he meant it. Maybe you better apologize. You need your job.”

Rose’s heart sank. Her instincts were right: This was going to be about money. She wondered if the absent Caleb had put Amanda up to this. She sat back down on the couch and waited to hear what it was her daughter wanted.

Amanda opened the door. “He’s taking Max! Mother, are you just going to sit there and let him steal my horse?”

Rose craned her neck to look out the window. Sure enough, Austin had thrown a halter around the old gelding’s head and tied the lead rope into a makeshift rein. She watched as he managed to pull his skinny butt up onto the animal’s back. The horse was so wet that Austin nearly slid off the other side, but he caught himself on the fence, swearing; then away he went, riding into the rain, still enough of a horseman that he managed to post the trot. Winky heaved herself at the fence and neighed as if Austin were absconding with the other half of her heart. Locked into a separate stall, the mare wasn’t going anywhere. Eventually she’d quiet down and snuffle her oats, then angle her elegant muzzle across the fence in an attempt to swipe Max’s portion. Rose fetched her book from out of the trash. Of course the story was going to end happily, but somehow, while she was reading, she could lose herself pretending that she wasn’t certain of the outcome. “Austin’s just borrowing him, sweetie,” she told her daughter. “I wouldn’t lose any sleep over it.”

4

Whatever Your Wild Blue Heart Desires

t was the billboard just outside Winslow, Arizona, advertising the vasectomy reversal that caused Lily to start crying. It should have been echoes of the flame-war conversation she’d had via car phone with her boss, Eric, who insisted that a leave of absence meant she was job hunting, not that she needed a break. Paranoid, that about described Eric. And a definite possibility for tears was turning on the windshield wipers and yet again scraping the hell out of the driver’s-side glass with what remained of the wiper assembly she’d forgotten to have replaced. One expected those kinds of things to be the proverbial straw that broke the indefatigable camel’s back. Lily was hardly the crying type, but within the last week she’d done it twice. Breaking up with yet another boyfriend was just cause, but a billboard? All she knew was that miles from anywhere, here was this advertisement for men who could take back a final decision re- garding fertility, and suddenly this lonely howling came bellowing up out of her gut and did not go away. Buddy Guy freaked; he kept pawing her, trying to get her to stop. Eventually she reined it in, but damn whoever had put up that billboard straight to Satan without a soft drink! As if driving long distance wasn’t tough enough without being reminded that her internal clock ticked louder than any other timepiece on the planet. She scolded herself:
You had your chance to become a mother. Get over it
. But of course following one of her own

lectures was never as easy as delivering it.

She switched on the CD player, and the car was filled with Lyle Lovett crooning his Texas-size heart out to Julia, whom all the boys had fantasies about. Think of what might fit between those lips, and how easily it would fit there—that explained male fascination with Julia, who’d already left Lyle’s ass in the dust and bought herself a fifty-acre ranch in Taos. The one commodity northern New Mexico did not need any more of was beautiful women. Just by looking at the CD covers, Lily could tell Lyle would kill in bed. He would positively
shred
. He possessed all the attributes Lily felt essential to a lover: He was skinny, indicating agility. Forget muscle-bound hulks; thin guys had stamina. His lyrics were laconic, which meant he conserved his energy, plus they were intelligent, which meant that after incredibly great sex, if he was able to talk, he’d have something to say. And the way he sang—his voice burned through her speakers as if he were holding back a passion as powerful as a draft horse’s.
Oh, Julia
, Lily thought.
You dumb little rich starlet. You didn’t know what you had when it lay right there in your bed
. Then, after a few more miles had peeled away under her tires, Lily had another thought:
To be fair, neither did I, eighteen years ago. Well, Julia, one of these days I hope one of us smartens up
.

Her stomach cramped, and she swore she could feel dozens of her eggs go bad as she passed the vasectomy reversal sign. She flipped it the bird and gunned the Lexus’s engine, taking it all the way to ninety. Lily’d been pregnant once, accidentally, at eighteen. She hardly ever allowed herself to think about abortion as anything but a necessary medical option. Trouble was, with her medical background, she knew far too much about the various stages of gestation to ease her guilt. The embryo hadn’t even been the size of a watch battery; nevertheless, it haunted her. If she had gone through with her pregnancy, she’d have a nearly grown child now. She supposed that just to punish her the baby would have been a girl, precociously prepubescent, her little body bursting with enough hormonal madness to turn Lily’s hair prematurely gray. On the positive side, her daughter would have had half her handsome father’s genes. Tres Quintero: What kind of father would he have made? If they’d stayed in Floralee, a dependable but frustrated one, because just like Lily, Tres had ambitions larger than staying in a small town. On the negative side, Lily’s daughter would have a mother in the nuthouse because she’d had to forgo a career, an aunt who didn’t speak to her mother, plus a grandmother prettier than the granddaughter could ever hope to

become. On top of all that, like some bizarre mix of ice cream flavors, Lily’s daughter would have to wrestle with the complications of culture. While Lily’s Spanish and Indian blood was diluted enough to dismiss, Tres Quintero was dark skinned. His facial bone structure screamed out his surname. All her life Lily had run from her roots, hoping to avoid the politics that accompanied it, wishing to blend into some larger, more anonymous mainstream where she would be judged on her actions, not the traces of her blood. Marrying Tres—which he would have insisted she do—even at eighteen he was the kind of guy who believed it took two people to make a mistake—would have shut down all her paths. Repeatedly Lily as- sured herself she’d done right not telling Tres, going through the procedure alone, yet she couldn’t help imagining what gorgeous eyes any baby of his might’ve had, or how their mingled spirits would have melded together to create one remarkable child.
Post- partum blues have to be a snap compared to this
, she thought, and took a swig of the juice she’d bought at the Stop and Go in Flagstaff, next to the motel where she’d spent the night. Her mouth puckered and she nearly choked. The sad fact was that without the addition of vodka, there wasn’t a whole lot to recommend grapefruit juice.

In less than a hundred miles she would cross the New Mexico state border. She felt curious as to how that might affect her after all these years. The Albuquerque airport was an aeronautical anomaly, with beautiful tile floors and leather seating. She flew in there all the time when she visited surgeons. The terminal had airflow and art on its walls, not recycled jet fuel exhaust and fading travel posters of faraway beaches. The cool southwestern beige, aqua, and touches of coral eased the traveler’s bleary eye. Whoever had designed it must have understood territorial architecture, because cramped coach seats and dreadful airplane meals were instantly forgotten the moment one stepped from the jetway into the high-ceilinged terminal.

Driving to New Mexico offered another transition entirely. Gallup, the first big town she would come to, was in close proxim-

ity to any number of trading posts she liked to shop: There was the Outlaw, seven miles east, in Church Rock, built in the old bullpen design, and Pinedale, with its enviable collection of dead pawn, just off that little road that ran parallel to I-40. Or in town, and by ap- pointment only, but worth it, Tanner Indian Arts. Her bare wrists just
itched

for silver bracelets. In her mind’s eye she designed herself a pair of custom-made cowboy boots with eighteen rows of feather stitching on the deerskin shafts. If she was going back to the homeland, arriv- ing dressed like a native made sense.

Buddy would flip out if she left him alone in the Lexus. Since the Dairy Queen incident in Flagstaff, they’d already had a long talk about car etiquette. Buddy had felt certain the college kid handing Lily her Reese’s Peanut-Butter Cup Breeze was out to carjack her. The poor kid, his face a battleground of acne scars, was only doing his job, handing her the concoction upside down, which was DQ’s shtick, proof that their ice cream was so thick and creamy it defied gravity. Like a wild dingo high on crack, Buddy lunged, and the kid dropped her money between the drive-through window and her car, where the wind blew it swiftly across the parking lot. He’d nearly cried, and Lily’d had to beat Buddy into submission with her Los Angeles-to-Orange County
Thomas Guide
, which—later on, when she’d thought he was quietly napping—he’d shredded into packing strips.

“Even for you that was an all-time low, Buddy Guy,” she reminded the blue heeler she had named after her favorite blues guitarist, an enthusiastic man who’d never become famous on his own but had played with all the greats—Jimi, Stevie, Robert Cray. “Because of what you did, that boy probably had to quit his job and go for pet counseling. He’s destined for a career in the lawn furniture depart- ment at Wal-Mart, all because of you, you evil, twisted, fang-boy love-puppy cutie-pie. Give Mama a kiss.”

Buddy’s pink tongue hung amicably out of his square jaws, giving every appearance of a satisfied smile. Lily rubbed his head, which was shaped like a diamondback rattler’s. The hair on the very top of his noggin was stiff from leftover Breeze. Lily had only wanted a few bites. Buddy was more than happy to take care of the rest. His approach to Dairy Queen dining was methodical. After he scarfed the larger quantities, it became necessary to tilt the milkshake cup up on his muzzle, thereby furthering his ability to ream the waxy crevices with his tongue. Sure, there was some loss with drippage down the sides of his neck, but sacrifice was inevitable. Also, it was necessary to take the cup past the wax all the way down to the paper; the job simply wasn’t finished until Lily yelled at him for making disgusting noises and threw

the empty into the backseat, the graveyard of her past meals. He looked up at his mistress with his crazily mottled face. Lovingly, taking her eyes off the road for only a second, she delivered him a smooch. “Buddy,” she whispered, “even though your marble sack’s empty, you just might be the only male on the planet I can handle who’s got one.”

Out of all that gibberish, Buddy understood only his name, but that was enough.

Lily decided to stick to I-40, cross the Continental Divide in a routine manner. The yellow cliffs of Gallup were pretty wonderful all on their own. She could always buy jewelry in Floralee. Plus if that hippie dude John was still working the Floralee Post, all she had to do was wear her tightest Calvins and her lacy black DKNY T-shirt with nothing underneath, and John would bury her in afford- able dead pawn up to her stiff brown nipples.

When her car phone rang a second time she regarded it suspi- ciously. Continued fallout from Dr. Help-Me? Eric, eager to go an- other round on her still-unapproved leave? She’d promised to be back in six weeks. The time was more than due her. She had accrued vacation up the yin-yang. If Eric forced her to return to the OR any sooner, she knew she would lose it. She hadn’t slept well the last several nights for thinking about that poor dead gallbladder patient.
Ty can pick up whatever calls come in
, she told her boss.
I left instructions even a chimp could follow
.

The nice thing about car phones was that if the conversation took a bad turn, one could always claim poor reception and hang up. Into the mouthpiece she said, “Lily Wilder.”

“How’s my business girl? Haven’t heard from you in a while, so I thought I’d better check.”

“Pop? Oh, Pop. I’m fine. I am
so
glad to hear your voice. Where in hell are you? You’ll never in a million years guess where I am. Go on, try. Fifty bucks says you won’t.”

She listened to his creaky chuckle and waited. Obviously her father had no idea how many dollars per minute a car phone could rack up. “Well, Little Bit, your mother and I are in Austin, Texas. What you might call a true college town. As far as the eye can see there’s nothing but coeds in tank tops and young boys driving automobiles they didn’t pay for. They’ve got restaurants galore. A person could live here and eat out a different place every night of the week.”

“Did you see the statue of Stevie Ray Vaughn? Did you take a picture for me?”

“No, I didn’t, and no, I didn’t, but just now I do believe my wallet feels about fifty dollars fatter.”

“Why is that, Pop?”

“Because I know exactly where you are twenty-four hours a day, every day. You’re my daughter, which means you’re in trouble, aren’t you? Pay up.”