She remembered a picnic she once had with Ernesto beneath these trees. He had said he would remain patient, because he loved her. “My love isn’t going anywhere, Jocelyn.”
Today the trees were green. The wispy cotton they had shed in early summer had been blown away. The path through the bosque was choked by seasonally opportunistic weeds and wild grasses. Jocelyn walked along the river’s edge. She looked up at the houses perched upon the western bluff. The forest was too dense for her to see the mountains that towered behind her — the ones given the name Sandia, Spanish for “watermelon,” because of the watermelon-pinkish color they took on in the waning light of the winter sunsets.
There were Canada geese wading near a sand island in the middle of the river. Jocelyn listened to the sounds of the place where she had grown up: the flutter and cooing of the ubiquitous mourning doves overhead, the distant barking of dogs in this city of canine hegemony, the gentle rustle of a horse brushing the crowding thicket along a nearby bridle trail, the gurgle of the river current purling over rocks and errant branches and other river clutter at her feet.
She loved this city for the sense of place and belonging that it gave her, but she hated it for having held on to her for too long — like the cottonwoods, forever stingy about dropping their leaves. They would shed them only reluctantly, when they were dried and brown and crumbling, and only when the winds shook some sense into their branches. Who was to blame? Her mother needed her, and she didn’t want to make a stand. She’d known young women who did — who then became ostracized by family members who had won their own family lotteries of gender and age and didn’t understand why their little sister didn’t accept her fate with equanimity.
She thought of Ernesto and the way he had wanted to make love to her in the stand of flimsy elms as covert as a chain-link fence. Oh how she had protested, but oh how it had stirred her, had made her feel alive, had made her feel independent even as she was submitting to someone else who had his own idea of what it was that she ought to be doing.
She loved him, of course.
Or did she?
Was Ernesto simply someone who had come along at the right time — when she needed to be loved for the woman she so wanted to be?
They were going to run the restaurant together. They were going to open other Luna’s Restaurant in the Northeast Heights, in Bernalillo, perhaps even in Santa Fe. Ernesto’s father, Silverio, had been content never to dream big.
Jocelyn and Ernesto dreamed big. They aimed high.
“Someday, cariño. Someday soon, yes?”
Someday.
Now Jocelyn felt betrayed. She kicked a rock into the river. She walked back to her car.
Her sister Olivia was waiting at the house. “Weren’t you supposed to be home at five thirty?”
It was twenty past six.
“What do you want, Olivia?” asked Jocelyn. “Why are you here?”
“I need Mama’s recipe for calavacitas. I’m having some people over tomorrow night.”
“You’ve watched Mama make it all your life. You’ve watched me make it. You don’t remember what goes in it?”
“What’s wrong?”
“What do you mean, ‘what’s wrong?’ I come home a few minutes late to a house that I assumed would be empty only to find you standing here making demands.”
Olivia got her pouty face. “I didn’t know I’d be putting you out.”
“You mean because I probably wouldn’t be doing anything important anyway, except throwing something together for Papa and me to eat? We’re having Stouffer’s lasagna, if it’s any of your business — which it isn’t.”
“You’re too young to be going through the change. I wish you would tell me what this is about.”
Jocelyn sat down on the sofa. “The problem, Olivia, is that you don’t know what the problem is — not you or Luis or Marco or Vic. Or Papa.”
Olivia sat down on the sofa next to her younger sister. “I miss Mama too. But we all have to get on with our lives, baby sister.”
Jocelyn didn’t speak at first. She stared at Olivia with disbelief and contempt. Then she said, “I hated our mother. I wanted her dead so my family indentureship would end. She died too late.”
“I don’t think you mean that.”
“I do.”
“And Ernesto wasn’t good for you. I was happy when the two of you broke up.”
“We didn’t break up. He left me. He got tired of waiting. How long did you make Mark wait?”
“Our situations are very different. Are you going to give me the recipe or not?”
“Not. And get out of my house. It’s the only thing I’ve ever gotten from this family, and I’m looking forward to the day that Papa drops dead so I can truly have it all to myself.”
“I don’t believe that you’ve become this person. I won’t believe it.”
“Please leave, Olivia. Go.”
Olivia left, taking her indignation and Reddi-wipped victim complex with her.
Ruben Lucero came home twenty minutes later. Jocelyn served him Stouffer’s meat sauce lasagna. They had a beer. Jocelyn and her father didn’t usually talk much during the quiet evenings following Francine Lucero’s death. They spoke to each other at the store — about shop business — and that seemed enough for one day.
Tonight was different. There was something Ruben very much wanted to discuss with his daughter. And he had something to give her.
It was a brochure for a Caribbean cruise line. “It’s for one of those singles cruises. Your mother and I decided after Ernesto — well, we decided that you needed to get away, that you needed to meet some men who weren’t anything like that sly little weasel.”
“This was Mama’s idea too?”
“Yes. In the end. I did have to do a little persuading, but she came around. Then she had all that trouble in the spring, and the woman we were going to get to come in to help her out in the summer — well, it didn’t work out. And then, of course, she died, God rest her soul. So go on the cruise. Have a wonderful time. Start your life, Corazon.”
“You haven’t called me that in years.”
“It’s time I picked it up again.”
Jocelyn got up from the table. She reached down and gave him a hug. She picked up the travel brochure. “This is the name of the ship? It’s a odd name for a ship.”
Ruben agreed.
Deus ex Machina. It was indeed a very odd name for a ship.
“All right. Comments? Impressions? Yes, Derrick?”
“I understand that we’re supposed to make these comments as positive and constructive as possible, but to be honest, I thought the ending sucked.”
“That isn’t helpful.”
“No, that’s okay. Tell me, Derrick. Tell me why my ending sucked.”
“It was too clever by half. It felt author-intrusive.”
“What do you mean by ‘author-intrusive’? Your hand is up, Sheila. What do you think Derrick means by ‘author-intrusive’?”
“The author calling attention to herself through a transparent manipulation of the story elements. It also sounds like she wrote herself into a corner and had to call upon the proverbial gods for deliverance.”
“Derrick’s right. I did write myself into a corner. Because I knew that in reality, Jocelyn was destined to spend the rest of her life working for her father — both in the Old Town shop and at home — and then after he died, living alone. Pretty dreary stuff.”