“I’m talking about exercising for your health, not your figure,” Mama said. “You don’t look so good today.”
“Now, Gabriela, leave the girl alone,” Nick cautioned.
“I’m just tired.” I took a sip of wine. “The museum-”
“You need food.” My mother stood up. “Go put your laundry in. Nick will help me with the salad.”
I went to the laundry room in the recreation center and stuffed my clothes in the machine. When I got back to the trailer, the table was set and Mama was ladling out the chile verde and rice. “Sit and eat,” she said.
Over dinner Nick asked,“ That Frank still giving you trouble?”
“Always. Now he’s threatening to fire me and give my job to the Colombian.”
“Isn’t the Colombian some kind of moron?”
“Yes. Frank doesn’t mean it…I don’t think.”
Mama frowned. “What did you do to Frank to make him threaten that?”
“Why is it always my fault? Why do you think I did something to him?”
“I know you.”
“Mama, that’s not fair!”
“Ladies, ladies,” Nick said.
“All right, maybe you’re right. Maybe I did do something to Frank. But it was justified.”
“What did you do?”
“I… uh…I told him someone should kill him. And I called him a terrible name. In front of everybody.”
Mama looked triumphantly at Nick. “See?”
“Well,” Nick said in a conciliatory tone, “he must have done something to cause that.”
“You bet he did!” I told them in gruesome detail about the tree of life.
Mama sighed. “Isabel. She means well, poor thing.”
“Poor thing!” I said. “She has millions.”
“And nothing else.”
“That’s true. She threw old Doug Cunningham out after he started playing around with that twenty-five-year-old model.”
“Well, Douglas was no prize even before that. Isabel could have done far better. She was a Vallejo, you know.”
During the three decades of Mexican rule in the 1800s, a landed gentry had emerged in Alta California. Spanish by birth, most often soldiers who had served loyally, the dons who founded such aristocratic lines as the Vallejos were granted huge tracts of pastureland by the government. On them they raised horses, cattle, and sheep and built elaborate haciendas. The elegant life-style of the ranchos has been romanticized in story and song and even now is recreated in yearly celebrations such as Santa Barbara’s Fiesta Days. Isabel had indeed descended from a privileged background.
“No,” my mother said, “Isabel didn’t have to marry the likes of Douglas Cunningham.”‘
I poured myself more wine. “What? You think she shouldn’t have married an Anglo?” Mama didn’t approve of mixed marriages, and she was ominously silent whenever I dated an Anglo.
“I didn’t say that.”
“You meant it.”
“Ladies,” Nick said.
“Maybe you think she should have married someone like Frank De Palma?” I smiled as I said it, picturing the immaculate Isabel trying to reform Frank.
My mother’s face, however, was serious. “Certainly not. A marriage like that would have destroyed her.”‘
“What do you mean?”‘
“Look at Frank. If anyone ever lived the tradition of machismo, he is it. Frank demands complete obedience from his women. He would have broken the spirit of someone like Isabel.”
“But Isabel was raised in that tradition, too. You should see the way she defers to Frank at the museum.”
“That’s at the museum. I’m talking about in the home. A man like Frank would have driven Isabel mad. At least with an Anglo she could let her anger loose and divorce him.”
“So why are you always hinting I should marry one of our own kind? You think someone like Frank wouldn’t drive me around the bend?”
Mama sighed. “Not all of our men live and breathe machismo. Frank is an extreme. Look what he’s done to his wife.” Her eyes became faraway, remembering. “Rosa Rivera-as she was called then-was the loveliest girl. Why she married Frank I don’t know. He was the grubbiest little boy when we were growing up in the barrio. And he hasn’t improved much.”
“Well, there’s no accounting for tastes.”
She looked sternly at me. “Your mother would certainly know that.”
“My taste isn’t so bad!”
“Oh? What about that Steve? The one with the motorcycle?”
“Admittedly, he was a mistake.”
“And Jim? All that hair.”
“He wasn’t so bad!”
“No?”
“Well, he wasn’t.”
“Yes,” she said darkly. “I know what you liked about him.”
“Ladies.”
“If you mean, was he good in-”
“Ladies!”
Both of us looked at Nick.
“Enough.”
Quietly we returned our attention to our plates.
In a few minutes Nick got up and cleared the table for dessert. Fresh fruit. Mama liked sweets, but she didn’t dare serve them when the old health nut was around.
Nick wolfed down some grapes and stood up. “I don’t mean to run out so fast,” he said, “but I’ve got a meeting at the rec center to plan for the marathon.”
“Marathon?” I looked up from the apple I was cutting.
“Yes.” His eyes sparkled. “A bunch of us old fogies are organizing a marathon race-show you young folks how to do it right.”
I rolled my eyes. “What next?”
“Next I get you out there. Thanks for dinner, Gabriela. Maybe I’D drop back later.”
“Do that, Nick.”
He went out, and Mama and I sat there in silence. Finally she said, “Is your job really in trouble, Elena?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. Sometimes I feel I should chuck it anyway. The pettiness is getting to me.”
“What would you do?”
“I don’t know. I’d have to move away. There’s not much available in my field in Santa Barbara. And I don’t want to do that.”
“What, my little girl is not adventurous?”
“Not really. I like it here. I like the house.” I looked around the cozy trailer. “I guess I have my mother’s nesting instinct.”
She looked fondly at me. “Both you girls do. I don’t think Carlota would have moved away either, if there hadn’t been such a shortage of teaching jobs.”
“Probably not. Have you heard from her?”
“On Sunday she called.”
“Anything new?”
“No.”
I went to switch my laundry to the dryer. On the way through the rec center I spotted Nick and his “old fogies” conferring in the lounge. There seemed to be some disagreement on how the marathon would be run, because they were all talking loudly at once. Nick waved cheerfully at me, though. I guess they enjoyed shouting.
Back at the trailer, I found Mama unfolding a couple of lounge chairs on the little spot of lawn. “Come and sit awhile,” she said.
I sat. For a few minutes we didn’t speak. Then she said, “Are you sure everything’s all right at the museum, Elena?”
She must really be worried. My job had always had its ups and downs, some more serious than today’s. “Everything’s not all right, but I don’t see why you’re so concerned.”
“I have a feeling.”
“Oh, your feelings!” Mama often laid claim to premonitions. When I scoffed at them, she would merely give me a dark look that said, There are things more terrible here than you can imagine. Unfortunately, her premonitions were usually right.
“So what do you think is going to happen?” I asked.
“I don’t know. It’s just a feeling.”
She sounded forlorn, and I tried to reassure her. “Okay, what’s the worst that can happen? I can lose my job. There are other jobs.”