“I get it … you look at it one way and it’s two people kissing, another way and it’s an urn.”
Rex grinned down at my husband, Bernie. Bernie just stood there, grinning too. They were looking at a large black-and-white acrylic that Bernie had worked on for months, part of his Master’s Exhibit. That night we were having a preview and party at our apartment on Lead Street.
There was a keg of beer and everybody was pretty high. I wanted to say something to Rex about that crack. He was so blasted arrogant and cruel. And I wanted to kill Bernie for just smirking. But I just stood there, letting Rex stroke my behind while he insulted my husband.
I freshened up the onion dips and chips and guacamole and went out on the steps. No one else was outside, and I was too depressed to call anybody to come see the unbelievable sunset. Is there a word opposite of déjà vu? Or a word to describe how I saw my whole future flash before my eyes? I saw that I’d stay at the Albuquerque National Bank and Bernie would get his doctorate and keep on painting bad paintings and making muddy pottery and would get tenure. We would have two daughters and one would be a dentist and the other a cocaine addict. Well, of course I didn’t know all that, but I saw how things would be hard. And I knew that years and years from then Bernie would probably leave me for one of his students and I’d be devastated but then would go back to school and when I was fifty I’d finally do things I wanted to do, but I would be tired.
I went back inside. Marjorie waved to me. She and Ralph lived upstairs. He was an art student too. Our place on Lead Street was in an old, old brick building, with high ceilings and windows, wood floors and fireplaces. Just a few blocks from the Art Department, on a huge lot with wild sunflowers and purple weeds. Ralph and Bernie are still good friends. Marjorie and I got along okay. She was good, simple. She was a bagger at Piggly Wiggly, cooked things like Beenie-Weenie Wonder. Came over one morning ecstatic because she figured out that she could just lie in bed and pull all the sheets and blankets tight, then just slide out carefully and tuck everything in. A real time-saver! She saved butter wrappers to oil cake pans with. Why am I being so petty? I loved her.
“Guess what, Shirley! Rex is moving in to the vacant apartment! And he’s getting married!”
“Damn. Well, that will pep things up around here.”
It was exciting news. He was an exciting man. Young, only twenty-two, but his talent and skill were incredible even then. We all accepted the fact that he was destined for fame. He is pretty famous now, here and in Europe. He works in bronze and marble, simple classic pieces, not at all the wild stuff he was doing in Albuquerque. His sculpture is pure, the conception of it filled with respect and care. It catches your breath.
He wasn’t handsome. Big. Red-haired with sort of buckteeth and a weak chin, a jutting brow over piercing beady eyes. Thick glasses, potbelly, beautiful hands. He was the sexiest man I ever knew. Women fell for him in a second; he’d slept with the entire Art Department. It was power and energy and vision. Not like a forward-looking vision, although he had that too. He saw everything. Details, light on a bottle. He loved seeing things, looking. And he made you look, made you go see a painting, read a book. Made you touch the eggplant, warm in the sun. Well, of course I had a wild crush on him too, who didn’t?
“So who is she? Who could it be?” I sat beside Marjorie on our sagging sofa bed.
“She’s seventeen. American, but grew up in South America, acts foreign, shy. English major. Maria is her name. That’s the scoop so far.”
The men were talking about the Korean War, as usual. Everybody was afraid of the draft, as school was no longer a deferment. Rex was talking.
“You have to have a baby. It came out last week. Fathers are now exempt from service. Can you think of any other reason for me to get married, for chrissake?”
That’s how it started. I mean I don’t think we all just went to bed that night and conceived babies. But maybe we did, since exactly nine and a half months later Maria, Marjorie, and I all gave birth, and our husbands didn’t get drafted. Not the same day. Maria had Ben, a week later I had Andrea, and a week after that Marjorie had Steven.
Rex and Maria were married by a justice of the peace and then they moved in. But not like other people. You know, you clean the place up, borrow a pickup truck, put up bookshelves, drink beer, unpack and collapse. They painted for weeks. Everything was white and beige and black, except the kitchen was a burnt ochre. Rex built most of the furniture. It was stark and modern, set off by his huge black metal and stained-glass sculptures, black-and-white prints. A fine Acoma pot. The only other color was on the ruby throats of the Javanese temple birds in a hanging white cage. It was impressive, straight from Architectural Digest.
He even redid her. We went over, with stuff to eat, while they were unpacking. She was sweet and fresh. Lovely, with curly brown hair and blue eyes, wearing jeans and a pink T-shirt. But after they moved in her hair got dyed black and actually ironed straight. She wore black makeup and only black and white clothes. No lipstick. Wild heavy jewelry that he had made. She stopped smoking.
She talked more when he wasn’t around, was funny in a Lucille Ball way. She joked about the makeover, told us that the first time he had seen her naked he had said, “You are asymmetrical!” He made her sleep on her stomach, nose flat against the pillow; her turned-up nose was a slight imperfection. He was always arranging her, the way she sat, stood. He moved her arms around as if they were clay, tilted her head. He photographed her endlessly. As she grew more and more pregnant he drew charcoal after charcoal study. One of the finest things he ever did is a bronze of a pregnant woman. It’s on the grounds in front of General Motors, in Detroit.
We couldn’t tell how he felt about her though. Whether he had just married her for the baby. She must have had some money; he bought a rare MG-TD the day after the wedding. I can understand him marrying her just for the way she looked. He wasn’t affectionate. He mocked her and ordered her around, but maybe he just couldn’t show how he felt.
Maria worshipped Rex. She deferred to him in everything, was almost speechless around him, although with us she joked and chatted. It was scary, or pitiful, however you want to look at it. Every night she went to the studio with him. “I can’t say anything, but he lets me watch him. It is so magnificent to watch him at work!”
Little things. One winter morning I went to borrow some coffee and she was actually ironing his jockey shorts so they would be warm when he got out of the shower.
It wasn’t just that she was young. She had moved around all her life. Her father was a mining engineer; her mother had been ill, or crazy. She didn’t speak about them, except to say they had disowned her when she got married, wouldn’t answer her letters. You got the feeling no one had ever told her or shown her about growing up, about being part of a family or being a wife. That one reason she was so quiet was that she was watching, to see how it was all done.
Unfortunately she studied Marjorie’s cooking. I was there one night when Rex got home. She proudly presented him a casserole made out of hamburger and Frito chips. He dumped it in her lap. Hot. “How tacky can you get?” But she learned. Next thing I knew I saw her with Alice B. Toklas, making Shrimp Aurore.
Every day she changed the bottom of the birdcage. The New Yorker just fit. She deliberated for hours about what picture to put. No, Rex hates those Steuben glass ads! She hated the birds and would ask me to clip their nails for them, or take their dishes out to clean them.
Maria was scared to death about having a baby. Not the physical part. But what do you do with it?
“What will I teach it? How will I keep it from harm?” she asked.
Those months were happy, with the three of us pregnant. We all learned to knit. Marjorie made everything pink, which was too bad, because it came out Steven. I made everything yellow. I’m practical. Of course, under Rex’s direction, Maria made clothes and blankets in reds and blacks and umber. A khaki baby sweater! We spent hours at Sears and Penney’s buying receiving blankets and nightgowns and shirts. We’d pack everything carefully away in plastic and then take turns going to each other’s houses and taking out every single item. We drank iced tea and ate Wheat Thins and grape jelly while we read to each other from Dr. Spock. Maria always had to reread the part about rinsing out the diaper in the toilet. She liked how he reminded you to take out the diaper before you flushed the toilet.
Rashes. We were all terrified of rashes. They could be nothing. Just heat. Or they could be measles or chicken pox or spinal meningitis. Rocky Mountain fever.
When the babies started to move we’d sit there close on the couch together and feel each other’s babies moving and kicking. We’d cry and hug each other, with joy.
The babies would be born in September. Maria got the idea that they needed flowers to be blooming then, so there we were out in the blazing New Mexico sun with our fat selves, hoeing and planting zinnias and hollyhocks and giant sunflowers. Maria even sent away for exactly two hundred poplar trees from the Department of Agriculture. She insisted on planting them all herself. They were only two inches high but she planted them three feet apart, like it said to. All around the house, almost all around the whole block! She had to buy more hose that she lugged home on the bus from Sears. The poplars grew though, were at least two feet tall when the babies came.
I’ve long since remarried. To Will, a banker, a kind, strong man. I have a doctorate in history and teach at UNM. The Civil War. Sometimes, going home, I go out of my way to drive past Lead Street and the old apartment. The neighborhood is a slum now, the building a ruin, covered in graffiti, the windows boarded up. But the poplars! Higher than the tall house, shading the whole dusty desolate block. A good thing she planted them so far apart, they are a close lush wall of green.
None of our husbands were around much during our pregnancies. They were either working or teaching or in seminars. Rex was having an affair with Bonnie, a model, but I don’t think Maria knew. With another friend I would tell her, give her advice, butt the hell in, but with Maria you just wanted to protect her, keep her safe. Not that she was stupid. She saw things, but she always had that hesitancy of a blind person on a curb. You had to stop yourself from reaching out to her. Or you reached out, with whatever it was she needed. And she’d smile, Gosh, thanks.
The babies were born. Rex was at a show in Taos when Ben came, so Bernie and I took Maria to the hospital. It was a hard labor. Maria had something the matter with her spine and the coccyx had to be broken before the head could come out. But it did, with hair as bright red as Rex’s. Bawling and lusty. It really seemed that he was born with that passion and zest his father had.
When I got to the hospital room the next day I was surprised to see Maria out of bed, and standing at the window. Tears streamed down her face.
“Oh, are you sad Rex isn’t here? We finally found him. He’ll arrive any minute!” (We had found him at last, at the La Fonda in Santa Fe, with Bonnie.)
“No, that’s not it. I’m happy. I’m so happy. Shirley, look at all those people down there. Walking around and sitting in the cars and bringing flowers. They were all once conceived. Two people conceived them and then each of them was born into the world. Born. How come nobody ever talks about this? About dying or being born?”
Rex seemed more interested than pleased about the baby. He was fascinated by the fontanelle. At first he took a lot of photographs, then he stopped. “It’s too malleable.” Rex became more and more irritated by the baby’s crying, spent even more time at the studio. He was working on a series of bas-reliefs. Big, brave ancient things. I’ve seen them several times at a museum in Washington. I like to remember how we all used to go watch him work on them in the sweltering studio.
He hated the baby’s smells. Maria washed every day, by hand, kept changing sheets and diapers. She got even thinner but her breasts were full, her face radiant. “Incandescent!” Rex said, and he did drawing after drawing in warm pastels.
Our Andrea was born, and then Steven. Both dear serene fat babies. Bernie and Ralph were as thrilled as Marjorie and I were, even dropped their seminars to be at home more. Maria and Ben would come over in the evening. We’d all watch Ernie Kovacs and Ed Sullivan, Gunsmoke. Sometimes we played Monopoly and Scrabble. Mostly, shamelessly, we just played with the babies, kissed them and nursed them and burped and changed them. A smile! That’s just gas. No, it was a definite smile.
We got used to not seeing much of Rex. He even worked all weekend, when we barbecued out by the zinnias and poplars. Maria never complained, but she looked tired. Ben was colicky, didn’t sleep. She was always anxious. How can I please him? Soothe him? How can I sleep?
Rex received a grant to study in Cranbrook in the fall. A good art school in Michigan. It happened quickly, he got the news and started packing up his tools. He was at the studio the night before he left. I went over to see Maria. Ben was asleep. Maria was quiet, asked me for a cigarette, but I said no, Rex would kill me.
“Would you take the birds?” she asked.
“Sure. I think they’re great. I’ll get them tomorrow.” That’s all we said, even though I sat there for a long time. Horrible time, one of those when you know you should speak, or listen, and the silence echoes.
At six the next morning Rex was packing up the car and trailer, then he drove away. Minutes later Maria appeared at my door with the birdcage and a bag of seed. Thanks! While I got dressed for work I could hear noises from their apartment, hammering and music and thumping.
I got over there just a few minutes before Rex did.
She had taken down all the modern paintings and prints, tacked up college dorm posters. Van Gogh sunflowers. A Renoir nude. A rodeo ad with a bucking cowboy. Elvis Presley.
Covering the ecru couch was a Mexican blanket. Not a Oaxacan blanket but orange green yellow blue red purple with tangled dirty fringe. From the radio that usually played Vivaldi and Bach, Buddy Holly rocked away.
Her hair was in pigtails, tied with yellow ribbon. She wore pink lipstick and turquoise eyeshadow, was back in jeans and the pink T-shirt. Her feet, in cowboy boots, were up on the kitchen table. She was smoking, drinking coffee. Ben crawled around on the black kitchen tile, wearing only a soaking diaper, making wet serpentine swirls. He had zwieback in one hand, all over his face. With the other hand he was swooping pots and pans out of the cupboards and onto the floor.
I stood there. Rex came walking up and into the living room. He hadn’t been gone over half an hour.
“Fucking axle broke. Have to wait.” He looked around.
“Where are the temple birds?” he asked.
“At my house.”
They stared at each other. She sat there, in terror, didn’t move, didn’t even pick up the baby, who was fussing now, zwieback everywhere. Rex was furious. He lunged toward her. Then he stepped back, and just stood there, utterly stricken.
“Hey, you guys … excuse me for butting in, but, please, don’t get upset. This is funny. Someday you’ll look back and it will seem very funny.”
They ignored me. The room was limp, soggy with anger. Rex turned off the radio. Perez Prado. Cherry Pink!
“I’ll wait on the steps for the garage to call,” Rex said. “No. I might as well just leave,” and he left.
Maria hadn’t moved.
Missed moments. One word, one gesture, can change your entire life, can break everything or make it whole. But neither of them made it. He left, she lit another cigarette, I went to work.
Both Maria and I were pregnant again. I was really happy, and so was Bernie. Maria didn’t want to talk about it. No, of course she hadn’t told Rex. So it was different this time; I waited, hoping, for her to get enthused about it.
We had a great autumn though. On weekends we went to the hot springs in the Jemez, had picnics by the river. On hot nights we all piled into our car and went to double features at the Cactus Drive-in. Maria was calmer, happier. She had a translating job, spent hours working while Ben slept. She took a poetry class at UNM, sat in the sun, reading Walt Whitman, smoking, drinking coffee. She always wore a red bandana, because her roots were growing out. She grew more relaxed with Ben, enjoying him. The rest of us went over to her house more, ate chili and spaghetti, played charades with the babies crawling around us.
Thanksgiving. Rex was coming home. God, I couldn’t imagine what she was feeling. I was a nervous wreck. I helped her get the house back into pristine condition, lent her some Miltown to get her back off cigarettes. She said she’d rather not be alone with Rex at first, so planned a welcome-back dinner. She put a WELCOME HOME! sign up on the front door but figured he’d think it was corny and took it down.
We were all there, nervous. Several other couples from the department. The apartment looked great. White chrysanthemums in a black Santo Domingo pot. Maria was deeply tanned, wore white linen, a flash of turquoise. Her hair was long, straight, and jet black.
He burst into the room. Dirty and lean and alive, boxes and art folios sliding onto the floor. I had never seen him kiss her before. I ached for them to be okay.
It was a celebration. She had made curry from scratch, there was tons of wine. But it was Rex, really, that brought news and jokes and an eddy of excitement that lit us all. Little Ben careened around the room in his rubber walker, drooling and laughing. Rex held him, swooped him up, gazed at him.
Over coffee, Rex showed us slides of work that he had done that summer, mostly the sculptures of the pregnant woman, but countless other things, drawings, pottery, marble carvings. He crackled with excitement, possibility.
“Now for the news. You’ll never believe this. I still can’t believe it. I have a patron. Patroness. A rich old lady from Detroit. She is paying me to go to Italy for at least a year. To a villa outside of Florence. But forget the villa. There is a foundry. A foundry for bronze! I’ll leave next month!”
“Ben and me too?” Maria whispered.
“Ben and I. Sure. Although I’ll go first and get things together.”
Everybody was clapping and hugging until Rex stood up and said, “Wait, that’s not all. Get this! I also got a Guggenheim!”
My first thought was for Bernie. I knew he’d be glad for Rex but could understand him being jealous. He was thirty, Rex only twenty-three and his future was there already, on a silver platter. But Bernie meant it when he shook Rex’s hand. “No one deserves it more.”
Everyone left but Bernie and me. Bernie went home and brought back a bottle of Drambuie. The men drank and talked about Cranbrook, looked through the slides again. Maria and I washed dishes and threw out garbage.
“About time we went home,” I said to Bernie and gathered up Andrea. Maria and Rex had gone in to check on Ben. We waited to say good-bye, heard them whispering in the bedroom.
She must have told him she was pregnant again. Rex came out of the bedroom, pale. “Good night,” he said.
He left the next morning, before she or Ben woke up. He took the paintings and sculptures and pottery, the radio and the Acoma pot. None of us ever saw him again.