Irises (10 page)

It was all very strange. Kate had never been the type to dwell on how or what she felt, and here she was wondering about things like love. She longed for the insurance money to come, for the acceptance letter from Stanford to arrive. She wanted to clearly and definitively say yes or no to Simon, to make decisions, to have a plan and go for it. The problem was that nothing was settled and everything was in the air. Sh
e'd get
back to being herself when all the pieces stopped moving.

Kate wanted to ask Bonnie for advice about Simon's proposal, but she knew that if she did this, the news would be all over school in a flash, and Simon would be hurt. It was one thing to be turned down privately and another for the world to know. So as much as she wanted to talk about it, she didn't tell Bonnie.

“You know what you need?” Bonnie said to her one day after school. She was giving Kate a ride to her job at the Red Sombrero.

“What?” Kate turned down the radio.

“You need to go shopping.”

“Yeah, right.” Kate chuckled to herself. She could just see herself spending a ton of money on new clothes.

“I'm serious. I know your dad died and everything, but you got to keep on living, and you can't go on living the way yo
u live
d when he was alive. You need to catch up with the times, girl.” Bonnie took one of her hands from the steering wheel and poked Kate in the thigh. “We need to get you some decent clothes. You have a great body. You need to show it.”

“Maybe,” Kate said.

“What do you say we go this Saturday? I can pick you up and we'll go to the mall and hit every store. It will be soooo much fun. I'd love to upgrade and accessorize you. You'll be transformed, like Cinderella.”

Kate laughed. How good it felt to laugh. “Am I that bad?”

A car full of boys pulled up next to them and started making catcalls. Bonnie flipped them the finger. “Idiots,” she said. She sped away. “You're not
bad
bad. You're just, I don't know, frumpy.”

“Frumpy? Oh, great.”

“You know what I mean. It's not your fault. That's just how it is at your house
.
.
. was.”

“It was Father,” Kate said, immediately regretting it.

“That's the way he was. What he believed and all.” Bonnie hesitated. “I always thought you had problems with all that strict stuff.”

“I thought I did too.” The car was making a right turn and Kate could hear the tick of the signal blinker. She knew Bonnie wanted her to say more.

“You don't anymore?” Bonnie's look was full of curiosity. “I'm sorry if I offended you. I always thought
.
.
.”

“Don't be silly. You didn't offend me,” Kate said quickly. “Of course I didn't agree with him. My father had good intentions and I loved him, but we didn't need to have all those restrictions on how my sister and I dressed, what we listened to on the radio, who we went out with.”

Bonnie seemed relieved. She pulled into the Red Sombrero's parking lot and stopped the car. “I can't believe he didn't even let you drive. Are you going to get your license now?”

Kate shrugged.

“No?” Bonnie asked. She turned off the motor. Kate thought
that was a nice gesture. It meant that Bonnie was okay with talking a little longer.

“I'd like to, but I don't know when or how I would study for it. I was thinking the other day how incredible it is that we don't even own a car. My father didn't believe in owning one after the accident. We couldn't even have a horse and carriage like the Amish,” Kate joked. Bonnie had a questioning look on her face, and Kate realized that Bonnie didn't know who the Amish were. “Whenever Father had to go visit someone a
t th
e hospital, he took a cab or he got a ride from someone at church. Mary's spent most of her life on the Ysleta bus. I'm lucky to get rides from Simon or you.”

“Unbelievable,” Bonnie said, shaking her head in dismay. “I honestly don't know how you do it.”

“Sometimes I don't know, either.” Kate stared at the restaurant's front doors. The thought of stepping in there and smiling at strangers filled her with nausea. “Well, off to work.” She opened the car door.

“What time shall I pick you up on Saturday?” Bonnie was grinning.

“What?”

“Shopping!”

“I guess I could call the hospital and tell them I'd be the
re at
two. We could go in the morning. But
.
.
.” Kate stopped. She didn't want to tell Bonnie about her financial concerns.

“Okay, I'm going to pick you up at your house at ten. We'll shop, have Japanese at the food court, and then shop some more. Bring your credit card.” Bonnie started the engine. Kate stepped out, closed the door, and waved.

Credit card
, she said to herself.
Yeah, right.

 

I
t was Mary's last day of art studio. She was not looking forward to saying good-bye to Mr. Gomez. Even though she would still see him around school and she could still drop by anytime, things would be different now that she would no longer paint under his supervision and guidance.

Mr. Gomez was in his office, typing on his computer. Hi
s de
sk was cluttered with open art history books, school forms, and advertisements for art supplies. Mary stood at the entrance and looked for a few seconds at her painting on th
e w
all, a yellow lotus floating on a dark green pond. She remembered how happy he'd been when she had first given it to him. She knocked on the door.

“Mary!” he said, turning around. He stood up and shook her hand. Mr. Gomez was a short, pudgy, balding man with dark-rimmed glasses and a large nose. He did not look like anyone's idea of an artist. If it weren't for his hands, which were always spotted with different colors, no one could ever tell he painted. “Come, sit down.” He picked up a stack of st
udent notebooks from
the only other chair in his office and plunked them on his desk.

“I came to pick up my paintings,” she told him as she sat down. “I can only stay a few minutes.”

He made a funny clicking noise with his tongue. “You don't know how upset I've been since you told me you couldn't come after school anymore. I've been dreading the day you come to pick up your things. It's like now it's really final. There has t
o be
a way to get you to stay. Is there someone I can talk to? This aunt of yours, what about her? If I could convince your father, I can convince anyone.”

Mary thought that the extra hour of painting probably wouldn't make much of a difference, given how she was feeling about painting. “It's not possible,” she said. “It wasn't a decision that Aunt Julia made. It's something that my sister and I decided. I need to go home and take care of Mama.”

Mr. Gomez nodded, but the furrows on his forehead said that he wasn't happy about it. “Well, I guess one way of looking at it is that you really don't need what little guidance I giv
e you
. You can paint on your own now, you always could, and you can always ask for my help, in the unlikely case you need it.” He smiled.

“Mr. Gomez, I don't know how to thank you.”

“
Por favor!
I've learned more from you than you have from me. What you have is a gift, a
don
, as we say in Spanish: a way of seeing and feeling that I've never encountered in a young artist before.”

It always embarrassed Mary to hear Mr. Gomez praise her painting that way. There was something about taking credit for her paintings that didn't seem right. A finished painting surprised her most of all. Who did
that
? Did
she
do that? It was as if some other painter had used her eyes and hands as instruments. After Mama's accident, getting complimented for seeing and feeling was particularly hard, since she knew i
t wasn't
true anymore. “You shouldn't sell yourself short,” Mary said.

“But I am short,” he said, winking.

“You know what I mean. You taught me all I know about painting.”

“Okay, I will grant you that. I taught you all you
know
. But your painting is so much more than knowing.”

“Knowing is good,” Mary said. She thought about how she had studied every single painting that Vincent van Gogh had ever painted, all that she had learned about the substances he used to mix his colors, his brushstrokes, even how he framed his paintings.

“Yeah, I suppose,” he said sadly.

She stood up. “I'll come by to say hi whenever I can.”

“You better,” he said, perking up again. “But even if you forget about me, I won't forget you.” He pointed at her painting of the lotus. “Oh, by the way, I've asked Marcos to help you.” Mary was about to ask who Marcos was when the phone rang. Mr. Gomez answered it and then immediately put his hand over the receiver. “He's a good boy,” he whispered. Then he turned back to the phone.

When she entered the studio, she saw the same boy who had told her how unapproachable she was. He was bent down over a desk, drawing, and did not see her. Was he Marcos? Who Mr. Gomez said was a good boy? This was the person who was supposed to help her? Help her with what?

There was no way to get to her corner of the studio without passing him. She needed to pack her supplies into a plastic bag and grab the painting of the irises she had been working on. She would take home the paintings stored in the back room little by little. If she hurried, she could be out of the room in about five minutes. She took a deep breath, straightened herself up, and walked directly toward her painting.

She went past him without looking at him or acknowledging him in any manner. She reached her easel and began to pack up her supplies. Then she heard the chair of his desk screech and knew he was standing up. In a few moments she felt him standing next to her. She moved away.

“I'm not going to hurt you,” he said.

She ignored him and continued putting brushes into a plastic bag.

“I want to show you something.”

He held out a piece of paper. She looked at it without taking it from his hand. It was a picture of Hi-Yo the horse.

“I finished it the other day after you left.”

She squinted. It was not an extremely accurate drawing, but he had captured in a mysterious way the horse's elegance. “It's okay,” she said, looking away.

“Okay? I thought it was pretty good. The head was the hardest, and at first I got the front legs shorter than the back ones, but I finally got them right, don't you think? I couldn't get out all the eraser smudges.”

She took the drawing from his hand. Maybe if she commented on it, he would leave her alone. “You finished this the other day?” she asked.

“Yeah. What do you think?”

The curve of the horse's back was perfect. She could tell i
t was
drawn in one single movement. “How long did it ta
ke you
?”

“I don't know, about five minutes. Another hour to fix the damn legs.”

She tried to hold back a smile, but couldn't. Then her eyes caught sight of the tattoo on his hand and she reminded herself to be careful. “Do you like to draw?” she asked.

He leaned back and sat on the edge of the desk he had been using. “I guess,” he said. “I'm always doing it. Mostly in boring classes and on walls.”

He was trying to be funny, but she didn't laugh. Once, someone had sprayed the side of their church with graffiti, and she remembered how hard Papa took it. “Were you sent here from detention again?”

“Nah,” he said. “Mr. Gomez grabbed me during lunch and told me to come. I thought he wanted me to do some more drawings, but then he asked me if I had a car and I told him yeah, and he wants me to give you a ride, to help you take all your paintings and stuff.”