BECAUSE GAUGUIN AND I didn’t have a phone, if we thought of someone, we just thought of them. We didn’t call them, make a date, and put it on our calendar. Then when that Wednesday rolled around, we weren’t obliged to stay home, waiting for them at noon, rather than doing what we really wanted, like going to the river for the whole day. Instead, people came wholly and physically into our lives. They appeared at our door, knocked, and we let them in. We had some tortillas with them, took a walk, played music, or just sat together on the front bench, watching the mountains that looked like two elephants kissing. And then our visitors left.
But after the night that Anna came for dinner, I wanted to see her a lot. She didn’t have a phone either, so I had to drive out there and take my chances. She wrote most of the day. I’d stand on the rim, practice my flying, and then drop in on her. We’d sit on her old car seat out back, drink lemonade, and tell stories. I’d talk about my painting a little, though not much. I didn’t quite know what to say. Sometimes she told me about what she was writing. I think I was the only one she talked to about it. Sometimes we went for a short walk on the rim and imagined flying together.
We’d call out birds that we wanted to be and then see how they got along. Once I was a chicken and she was a hawk; another time she was a sparrow and I was a finch. We tried to make the birds’ sounds, too, and sometimes the wind lifted enough that we were sure we were about to take flight.
One time when I popped in, Anna seemed more dreamy than usual. She said she had had a good day of writing. I told her she was lucky. My latest painting had ended in blobs of brown and unclear figures.
“Maybe those figures are bugging you,” she said offhandedly, reaching for a pink shirt to go over her tank top.
“Huh? What do you mean?” I asked.
“I don’t know. Nell, this is just a guess, but maybe it’s something to do with your parents. They don’t seem to accept your painting. Maybe you’re busy fighting them instead of doing it.”
“Huh?” I said that brilliant word again.
“It’s a hunch, that’s all.”
Anna didn’t usually talk like this. I really didn’t understand what she was saying, but then tears sprang to my eyes. I followed her out the door. We were heading for the rim to practice flying. We crossed the road. “Hey, Anna, since when are you Sigmund Freud’s old aunt?”
She snorted and lightly pushed me away. I’d never noticed before how beautiful her back was. Broad shoulders coming down like a V at her waist. I wanted to reach out and touch her. Did I love Anna or hate my parents? If Gauguin had said what Anna just had, I would have despised him.
“What do you want to be today?” Anna turned to me.
“A pelican.”
“A pelican? Nell, you can’t be that. This isn’t the ocean.”
“I can be what I want.” I curled my bottom lip.
Anna looked at my face. She nodded. “Okay, you can be what you want.”
I held open my arms, but instead of using them for wings, I wrapped them around Anna and began to cry.
We stood there, and she stroked my head.
The sun began to set along the ridge line.
Another day in early July when I came to visit, she wasn’t home. I knocked. “Anna?” I knocked again. “Anna?” I lifted the black latch, and the door swung open—she never locked up. No one was there. The bed wasn’t made. I stepped in and went over to her desk, thinking I’d leave a note. There was a list on her table. “Do the laundry. Bring paper clips, paper, writing pens, emery board, and enough rice for ten days.” So she went someplace for ten days. Probably to write.
She probably likes writing better than me, I thought belligerently.
Sometimes I felt that she’d rather be writing than be spending time with me. Once at Steven’s Kitchen I was telling her about a dream, talking with my mouth full of pecan pancakes, too excited to swallow. Suddenly, I noticed she was drumming the fingers of her right hand on the tabletop.
“Hey, Anna,” I asked. “Are you listening?”
“Yeah, Nell. It’s just that I think I’d better get back to my novel. I missed a whole day yesterday when we went hiking, and then I slept over.
“Didn’t you have a good time?” I asked.
“I had a great time. It’s just that I’ve got to work. There’s no one out there that’s going to make me do it, but myself. You should understand from your painting.”
“Okay, let me finish these pancakes and I’ll drive you home.” I took a big swig from the tea that was already cooled to lukewarm. The truth was, I didn’t understand. I thought it was more fun any day being with Anna than painting.
I was used to Gauguin wanting to practice music, but that didn’t bother me as much. He was in love with me, and besides we lived together. I got to see him as much as I wanted to, and if I really acted miserable and fainted all over the place, he wouldn’t practice that day. We’d go to the river or down to Santa Fe.
“I wonder where she went? She never mentioned it to me,” I thought out loud. I squatted down to watch the birds fly below me and above the town.
I’d left Anna’s house and had gone back to the rim. I looked over the town of Valdez, thirteen crooked adobe houses sighing back into the earth. I counted eight horses in different corrals and seven goats lost among chicken coops, outhouses, and pickup truck graveyards.
Two magpies swept by. A raven. I closed my eyes and imagined myself sailing through air. I lifted my right outspread arm so I could veer to the left. I almost completed the turn, when I stopped. “Oh, hell, I can’t fly today. I’m going home to get Gauguin.”
When I arrived home, there was a note on the table. “Rose, Jet stopped by and we went to the river. Be back by dinner. I’m madly in love with you, Gauguin.”
Shit. No one was around. I started up to Blue’s and then remembered she was out camping in the Pecos. I could read, I thought. We had just taken Nine Stories by Salinger out of the library. We had read “Laughing Man” aloud the other night. I could reread it. I went out on the front bench. It was too hot. I jumped up and went back in the house, slamming the door behind me. Shit! I sat at the kitchen table.
Salinger was on the table. I strummed my fingers on the book, bit the inside of my lip. I glanced down at Salinger and a space appeared in my mind. I filled it in: Salinger was from New York, I surmised. I’m from New York. I put the two together: Therefore, if Salinger can write, so can I! A smile spread over my whole face. I quickly got out four pieces of loose-leaf paper and a pencil from a drawer in the back room and began to write.
Nell walked into Rexall Drugs to buy some cashews. As she passed the counter, she saw some Donald Duck sunglasses. They were red. She reached out and took a pair off the cardboard display rack and put them on. “Is there a mirror?” Nell asked coquettishly in her new glasses, turning to the counter clerk. He pointed to a small square mirror by the cosmetic counter. She walked over and peered at herself. The glasses were too small. They made her nose look big. She didn’t care. They were perfect, she thought stubbornly. She paid the exact amount for them: sixty-nine cents. She counted out the four pennies after the two quarters, the dime, and the nickel.
Then she went out into the plaza. Lo and behold, along came Anna from across the street. She walked right over to Nell and told Nell that she looked beautiful. Nell crossed her arms and turned away. Anna got on her knees and begged Nell, “Please, be my friend.’”
Nell refused and replied, “You only want me for my sunglasses.”
Anna begged some more, “Please, Nell, it’s not your glasses. It’s you. I won’t write anymore if you don’t want me to. I’ll just play with you.”
I stopped writing. I realized that Anna never called me Banana. I began writing again:
“Nell, I love your name Banana Rose. Where did you get such a name? Banana, dear, if you would be so kind, I’d like to take you across the street for a malted.” Anna would do anything for Nell. Nell saw this and conceded because of the goodness of her heart. Nell was very compassionate and forgiving and was full of Buddha nature.
I stopped writing and leaned my head on my left hand. It was getting cold in the room. I tucked my feet under my legs.
I went to the top of the page and titled my work of art The Malted Afternoon, a novel by Rose Schwartz. I kept out the names Nell and Banana from the author’s name, because they were already in the novel. I didn’t want my public to know the story was about me, the author.
“It’s not such a big deal to write a novel.” I smirked. “Anna can go fuck herself.”
I wished Gauguin would get home. In my next novel, I would write about him. In the novel his name would be Clem. “ ‘Oh, Clem,’ said Columbine as she fainted in his arms.”