VIII

A Beautiful Place to Be

Salinas is forty miles farther south and well known for its iconic place in literature … But it’s grown more distant from Eden than it feels from Lodi. Strip malls, light industry, factory farms, and row mansions to the horizon fill what used to be wide open when John Steinbeck called it a long, golden swale. Like devil spawn—like Versailles mated with Levittown, yielding Doric columns, Roman parapets, swing sets and tricycles under a soft blanket of sound. Fights, farts, fucking, flushes, and forks clattering are a context for the muffled desperation of life passing with intermittent calls:

“What more do you want from me?”

“You cunt! You ruined my life!”

Watsonville, on the other hand, is what it was, yielding produce for sale roadside, like at the Corn Palace.

Chiles rellenos are made from scratch at El Ateño, where the cook no habla Anglais and builds rellenos with pasilla chiles, no poblanos pero pasillas. Exquisite cucina precedes Four Dollar Tuesdays at the restored Fox Theater across the street. These are the days, my friend, in blessed relief from the rest of California.

Allison—Ms. Mulroney—is a country girl at heart who once imagined life in California as a lovely stroll around the block, which it might have been if the build-out wasn’t so rampant and the weather was a tad warmer. But it gets cold and wet, and the scene refracts with every fad, cliché, media trend, and lifestyle, predictable and chronic, spurred by a go-for-it mentality that feels oppressive. But it’s home for the Mulroneys, at least for the time. Oh, Hawaii was her idea; not that he would mind, given a level playing field, but it’s not level. Do twenty car lots count for nothing? Or twenty-two, or four, or whatever it is? At least the problem of location is physical and manageable, while the problem of compatibility is something else. Michael Mulroney often draws on old images to restoreth his soul. The inherent problem is also age-related, as the images get older and older. Only the wedding night still rings clear after so many years: “Oh,” she cooed, with her feet in the air, “I really hope we can, you know, till death do us part.” That was decades ago, when a babbling brook murmured sweetly as a bull trout surged upstream. What a woman, and he marveled that he’d thought as much for so many years.

Allison is a keeper, a certain sexual object, which women want to be once the sexual objectivity begins to wane. But a woman over fifty with a concise pooper and breasts residing above a reasonably flat stomach may not necessarily be married to a contented man. Sexual thrills fade after a few thousand rounds, but that’s why God invented reefer, liquor, and low light—to compensate and enhance. That’s what most women don’t realize, that a bit of exotic lure makes a man want to come home. Women often resist the idea, until the tables turn, like when that kid with the camera drooled over Allison. Did Mulroney mind? Not a bit. Did she look better, after another man admired her? Let’s just say it puts a gal in fresh perspective. At any rate a man shouldn’t be horny all the time or proud of it, but he does feel blessed with fortitude—maybe that’s why he still rides a bicycle at his age. He’s grateful as well for a practical, easy wife. So? Maybe they’ll move, if the price is right. A car lot can run without him easy as a dozen car lots, at least in the short run till he finds a buyer and opens a lot or two yonder.

Watsonville on approach is clearly a pleasurable place in a world of diminishing returns. Take the corner of Lakeview and 129, with a single mom, old-school—twenty-eight, give or take, with no tattoos, no body piercing or slovenly appearance—make that thirty-eight but still a package. Okay, showing some difficulties in her face and neck. Forty-eight seems more the mark, which isn’t to say good from afar but far from good. She simply shows some age, which happens to the luckiest among us. Mulroney doesn’t know her age, but can plainly see the regional mix of road wear and classic lines. She’s well preserved, so she could have had a personal trainer and cosmetic surgery if she’s from Mulroney’s neighborhood. But she seems more original, physically fit as a function of work. She looks like the real McCoy, a woman of sustained curvature and facial beauty, despite the sun and dirt and challenges. Like original beauty, she seems seasoned with care and still a classic. She’s got a little hook in her nose, but that too is like a rule successfully broken.

She sweats under a load of boxes, her print gingham moistened but hardly soiled. Laboring like salt of the earth, she seems soulful as Rose of Sharon and may be a descendent. The place smells like country. She and her young son make a modern fresco of olden times: Rosa y Panchito resigned to simple life. The little dog tags along behind. How cute. Manual labor and hard breathing seem cleaner in Watsonville and not so rare. Panchito works harder than most kids, steady and slow, getting it done.

It feels like a good place to stop, so Mulroney can blow his nose, reshuffle his nuts, rehydrate, and watch the boy and mom unload the car and U-Haul. The Oldsmobile is dinged and faded but seems good for a few more trips. Yeah, closer to forty-eight. How does a woman get here, single mom in a farm town—a woman past the age of realization, who looks like she always knew better?

The U-Haul is a set piece with the bungalow, a stone’s throw from California 129. The boy will ponder direction out that window for the next few years, or maybe he’ll go to the other side of the house, to watch the chard go crimson over a hundred acres, or he’ll watch the big machine base-yard across the road. Maybe he’ll develop tumors from pesticide over-spray while he fancies a future. Lakeview Drive runs north to the littorals of the Eureka Canyon Range at the edge of Corralitos. The yard on that side is flowers in hundreds of rows separated by gravel paths for golf carts, so suburban wives can ride and point at what they want and tell the driver how many.

A FOR RENT sign wobbles in the breeze till Rosa pulls it off the doorframe to claim dominion, just as California was claimed for Spain. Panchito hoists a folding chair under each arm. Rosa gets the other two. They carry the four-top table, the matching end tables, and coffee table, turning each upside down, so the particleboard and staples are facing up. The oak-grain laminate suffers from age, coming unglued. The strips flap with each step. Rosa shakes her head and mumbles.

Still in the truck are the rickety lamps, the toaster, radio, twenty-five inch TV, the bric-a-brac to make the place homey, and the odds and ends of daily lives that strive for more of the same.

These are the days the boy may treasure, when his poor, old, hard-working mom was hardly more than a girl, and they made a home in which to grow. You can’t beat Watsonville for natural charm. And leave it to the Mexicans to live as they should, as life was once lived in America, with less of everything but hope.

Wait a minute. What? A buck-and-a-half, four-slot bagel toaster in designer white from Williams Sonoma? No dings or dents and the tags still on?

Hey. The fuck you staring at? Fucking second-story guy.

Mulroney throws a leg over and clicks in. Rosa knows the guy pulling up in the truck, but her greeting seems marginal, a half-nod. Rosa may be younger than she looks, because hard knocks look old at any age. She can obviously still get back up from down in the dirt, and it must be the motherhood thing that keeps her going here.

Juan Valdez could be Panchito’s father or the latest stand-in. His self-esteem throbs like an artery, especially when he stands near his truck, a chopped and lowered unit with four back wheels and four doors, a very long bed, spotlights across the roof, little amber lights all over, and more chrome than he’s got in his teeth. Why won’t he help with the furniture? At least he brought a new blender—and it matches the toaster. He’s got a load of blenders and toasters. And what? Bread warmers? Pasta machines? Must have knocked off a delivery truck—a big truck parked by a house in the upper burbs, where he got the artwork. It’s a painting of a pregnant devil with a bull’s eye on his stomach.

What?

She looks worked over with nothing to show but a kid and some top-drawer appliances from Juan Valdez. She could have a yard sale at fifty cents on the dollar and convert to a month or two of groceries. Take some of the pressure off. She’s built well though. Probably what got her in trouble in the first place. Who knows? Maybe the kid’ll take care of her in her old age.

Yeah, yeah. You see me. I see you. I’m riding my bicycle. You’re a grit with a truck payment higher than your IQ and a load of stolen merchandise. Yeah, yeah. See you, chump.

So Mulroney eases out, keeping an eye on the swarthy boyfriend, because a man of experience naturally senses the rearview.