Chile Death Read online

  She had a point, but I didn’t want to tell her that. I said, "Sorry, Ruby. It’s a good idea. It might even be a great idea. But this isn’t the time for it.”

  Ruby pulled herself up with a calm dignity. "You’re wrong, China Bayles, and I won’t take no for an answer. I am going to nag you about this every single day until you say yes.”

  I sighed. When Ruby says something like that, she means it. I was in for a long siege.

  She smiled and fluffed her hair. “And in the meantime, I’m going to spend some of my winnings on a perm and a new pair of shoes. I’m going out tonight.”

  "Oh, yeah?” I was glad for the change of subject. "Who’s standing in for John Travolta? Do I know him?” Of course I knew him. In a small town like Pecan Springs, everybody knows everybody else. Well, almost everybody.

  "JJ Cody.”

  "JJ Cody?” I frowned. "As in Jerry Jeff?”

  Ruby’s giggle was almost self-conscious. "He likes his friends to call him JJ.”

  "His friends?” I leaned my elbows on the counter. "Forgive me for sounding like a mama hen. Ruby, but Jerry Jeff does have a reputation as a local playboy. A married playboy.” His wife, Roxanne, is the office manager at the Cody & Clendennen Insurance Company, where her husband, Jerry Jeff, is a partner.

  "They’re separated,” Ruby said. "Roxanne is filing next week.”

  "Gee, I hadn’t heard that.”

  "You’re not on the right branch of the grapevine, China.” Ruby waved her hand airily. "She and Pokey Clendennen have been playing around together for months.”

  “But Pokey is Jerry Jeffs business partner!”

  “It’s not very smart,” Ruby agreed, "and I’m sure it causes all kinds of tension at the office. But Jerry Jeff and I aren’t involved romantically,” she added. "Our dinner tonight is simply business.”

  "Well, I hope you weren’t thinking of having dinner in Pecan Springs. If you do, it will be everybody's business.” I looked at her curiously. "And just what kind of business do you and Jerry Jeff have?”

  "Now that I have all this money, I was thinking that I ought to . . . well, you know.” She made a vague gesture. "Become more fiscally responsible. Take care of some things I’ve been meaning to do for a while, and didn’t have the money for. Like insurance.”

  "Not a bad idea,” I said. “But mind what I say, or you’ll be an item on the local grapevine tomorrow.”

  Ruby made a face. "That’s the trouble with small towns. People feel like they’ve got a right to know every little detail of everybody else’s life.” She changed the subject briskly. "So how’s McQuaid?”

  "Better.” I began jotting down the checks. There weren’t that many of them. "He has full use of both arms now, and he can move his legs. Not much, but a little. He has quite a bit of pain, but Karen, his physical therapist, says he’s making progress. She should know,” I added. "They spend half the day together.”

  "He’s making progress? Oh, China, that’s wonderful!" Ruby clapped her hands. "Maybe the two of you can get married soon.”

  "Maybe.”

  She sobered. “He’s still resisting?”

  “On the subject of marriage, he’s the Rock of Gibraltar.” The last time I had brought it tip, McQuaid hadn’t said no. He hadn’t said anything, just looked out the window, pretending he didn’t hear me.

  Ruby gave an indignant harrumph. "Well, in my personal opinion, he’s acting like a jerk. Here you are, being a mother to his child, managing the house, spending hours and hours at his bedside — ”

  "That has nothing to do with it.”

  “I don’t know why not,” Ruby retorted. “Doesn’t it show how much you love him? I mean, isn’t that what marriage is all about, in sickness and in health and all that?” She shook her head. "I just don’t get it, China. For years, McQuaid has been after you to get married, and you kept saying no. Now you’re willing, and he’s — ” "Paralyzed," I said. "And if you don’t get it, I do.” "Oh.” She gave me a sidelong look. "The physical stuff, you mean. Sex.” She paused. "It’s not . . . working?”

  "I can’t personally testify to whether it’s working or not,” I said. "There’s only room in that bed for one, and anyway, his roommate is always around. It’s hard to try anything under the beady eye of an eighty-seven-year-old chaperon.” When McQuaid had first moved to the Manor, he’d had a private room. But the cost was high and he felt isolated, so he asked to be moved in with Jug Pratt, whom he had met in the dining room. Given the narrow range of options, Jug was a good choice. "His roommate is sort of a sit-down comic,” I said. "He’s always cracking bad jokes. It gives McQuaid something to do besides staring out the window.”

  "Is that what he does?” Ruby sighed heavily. "I guess I didn’t ... I mean, he’s not always going to be . . . that way, is he?”

  “If you mean, is he always going to be paralyzed, impotent, and clinically depressed,” I said, "I doubt it. But the verdict is not in yet.”

  Ruby winced. “I don’t know how you can be so matter- of-fact about it.”

  “What do you want me to do? Bang my heels on the floor and have a tantrum? Tear my clothes to shreds and run down the street screaming?”

  Ruby took this seriously. “What you’re doing is very bad, you know. You're stuffing all that anger and grief and suffering down inside you. You’re like a volcano with a lid on it. You’d feel less pain if you let out some of your feelings.”

  “Well, maybe,” I said. I finished adding up the deposit slip, stared at the disappointing total, and sighed. "But I’d probably feel a lot less pain if Brian’s mother paid her back child support.”

  Chapter Three

  For centuries, herbalists have recommended rubbing red pepper into the skin to treat muscle and joint pains. Medically, this is known as using a counter irritant—a treatment that causes minor superficial pain and distracts the person from the more severe, deeper pain. . . .

  Michael Castleman, The Healing Herbo

  Neuroscientists believe that when a concentrated solution of capsaicin [the chief chemical compound in chiles] is rubbed on the skin, the resulting burning sensation causes pain messengers (Substance P) to notify the brain to start producing endorphins [natural painkillers.] Liniments [containing capsaicin] work on this principle, and capsaicin is the active ingredient of creams for painful skin and nerve conditions including shingles and neuralgia.

  Carolyn Dille and Susan Belsinger

  The Chile Pepper BooK It was May by now, and Leatha had been with us, off and on, since March. On the one hand, I really needed her help, especially in the evenings. Brian usually rode his bike out to the Manor to see his father after school, while I went for a couple of hours between dinner and bedtime. The boy was old enough to be trusted in the house alone, but it wasn’t fair to abandon him for several hours every night. Leatha kept him occupied and happy while I was with McQuaid.

  She also turned out to be an unexpected help around the house, cooking meals, doing laundry, and tackling the jobs I’d been meaning to do for months and just hadn’t gotten around to: the kitchen floor, for instance, which was so cruddy it had to be scraped with a paint scraper before it could be scrubbed.

  She had taken over the school chores, too, baking cookies for Brian's class and sitting in for me at his school play (which took place the same afternoon McQuaid got fitted for leg braces). After the play she took Brian shopping at the mall, where she bought him two pMrs. of the outrageously expensive designer jeans he covets and the most expensive sneakers they could find. All in all, she was the spitting image of grandmotherly benevolence and generosity. She and Brian had become great chums (he clearly knew which side his waffles were buttered on) and every- body kept telling me how lucky I was. To which I would growl something to the effect of "Yeah, the three of us are just one big happy family,” and change the subject as fast as I could.

  I know, I know. I can almost hear what you re thinking. Such a sweet deal you have, China. You should be ashamed of acting like a
thankless twerp, an uncivil sorehead. Be grateful for your mother’s help with the house, for what she’s giving to Brian. You need her, and she’s there for you. What more can you possibly want?

  But that’s the rub, don’t you see? I don’t want mare from Leatha—I’d be delighted to settle for less. For Brian’s sake, at least, it was good that she was there, and I appreciated her help. But anybody who’s ever had a mother, especially if the relationship has been a troubled one, knows that this kind of help isn’t free. There’s a price to be paid, and I was the one who would have to fork it over. If I relied too heavily on her, how would I manage when she was gone? And worse, how was I going to repay her for the last couple of months? I was about to wind up with a big debt, emotional and otherwise, and no hope of settling it. Someday, when the old hurts had healed, Leatha and I might be able to connect more deeply, but I didn’t want obligation or gratitude to be the bond that pulled us together.

  So when my mother announced in mid-May that she planned to go back to the ranch in a couple of weeks, I was happy to hear it. Brian, however, wasn’t glad at all. In fact, he and Leatha seemed to be hatching something between them. The suspicion came to me gradually, watching them whisper and laugh together as if they were sharing a secret. It was another week before I found out what it was.

  One morning in late May when I was getting ready to go to the shop, Leatha came into the bedroom, in bathrobe, fuzzy slippers, and pink foam-rubber curlers, and told me that she wanted to take Brian to the ranch when school let out for the summer.

  "No,” I said, squatting down to look for my leather sandals under the dresser, where Howard Cosell invariably drags them in case he’s lonesome during the night. He never chews them, only licks. McQuaid says he has a foot fetish, and he’s sublimating.

  "But it would be so good for him, China,” Leatha persisted. "Sam can teach him to ride Rambo, and he can go swimming and fishing every day, and Jeannie is there with her new baby. We could be his family.”

  1 found my sandMrs. The straps were limp and damp. In the night, Howard had graduated from licking to sucking. "Brian already has a family,” I said firmly. "He has his dad. And me. I grant you that I am not his mother, but I’m the closest thing to a mom he has.”

  “China,” Leatha said, "I must speak frankly.”

  "Don’t you always?” I asked.

  But that wasn’t fair. One of our difficulties is that we almost never speak frankly. My mother and I have learned all sorts of interesting little gambits, clever defenses, quick feints, all for the purpose of concealing our true motives from one another. We’re like lawyers for opposing sides, testing each other, each trying to scope out the other’s vulnerable spots. Only in this case, we’re not strangers, as most lawyers are. We are intimately related, and we’ve been perfecting our strategy for decades.

  She ignored my remark. "Between the shop and the Manor, you have hardly any time for a small boy. And Brian spends only a few hours a week with his dad. Surely—”

  Now, all this may be true, but I suspected that it wasn’t the real reason behind Leatha's offer. Or behind her visit, for that matter. I wanted to be as independent of her as possible. She wanted to tie me more closely.

  "Leatha,” I said again, “no." I gave myself a quick glance. My shaggy brown hair needed a three-weeks-ago trim and I had to do something about the widening swath of gray at my left temple. But there wasn’t time for anything more than a couple of quick licks with the hairbrush, which is about the limit of my patience with my hair. No time for makeup, either. But that was okay because I only wear it when the Queen comes to town.

  She folded her arms and met my eyes, challenging. She had decided to be stubborn about this. “I really think you should give this more thought, China,” she said. "A summer on the ranch will do wonderful things for the boy. When he comes back for school next fall, he will be a different child.”

  Her use of the declarative instead of the subjunctive was not lost on me. “1 appreciate the offer,” I said, "but Brian belongs here. He and I have to stick together. And he needs to be able to see his father every day.”

  "But that’s just it! ” She threw out her hands. "Haven’t you noticed how deeply depressed the boy is? Seeing his poor father in that wheelchair, knowing that he may never walk again — ”

  "Nobody knows that for sure,” I said quickly. "And anyway, a little depression isn’t going to hurt Brian. His father’s paralysis is a fact of his life, just as your alcoholism was a fact of mine. The sooner Brian learns to deal with the pain, the healthier he will be."

  Leatha’s mouth pulled down, and I knew I had gotten through. We hardly ever mention our mutual past unless we’re quarreling about it. "I don’t think the two situations are parallel,” she said stiffly.

  “They are exactly parallel,” I said. I dropped the brush in the drawer and shoved it closed. "Long-term illness is just as likely as alcoholism to make a family dysfunctional.”

  Leatha is quick on the uptake, and she turned the argument around. "In that case, it would be good for him to get away. Anyway, a few weeks’ vacation will be good for him. He’ll make new friends, get plenty of sunshine and fresh air, and have a wonderful time.”

  "He needs to stay Here.” I stuffed my blouse into my jeans.

  Leatha looked at me for a long moment. "You’re jealous,” she said wonderingly.

  "Don’t be ridiculous,’’ I snapped. But I had to admit to myself (not to her, never to her) that somewhere in the complexities of my psyche, there was probably an ounce or two of jealousy, mixed with my instinct to hold Brian close in these moments of pain. Well, maybe more than an ounce. Maybe a couple of pounds.

  It was a day or so after Leatha's invitation. I opened the door to McQuaid’s room with my usual sprightly hello, which felt (as it usually did) terribly artificial, McQuaid shifted in his wheelchair to greet me, turning away from the window with its spectacular view of the goat pasture adjacent to the Manor. The field will someday sprout another wing of the main building, and the goats are not there for the amusement of the Manor’s residents. They are gainfully employed in the business of eating the cedar trees that cover the building site. In our part of the country, it’s cheaper to rent a flock of goats than to hire a bulldozer. The job gets done almost as fast, and nobody has to worry about burning the dead trees—which may also be a problem, if we’re having a dry spell and the county commissioners have imposed a burning ban. All things considered, goats are much less hassle, and a lot more interesting to watch.

  "Afternoon, China,” Jug Pratt greeted me cheerily.

  Jug is stooped and wizened, with a freckled scalp and sparse patches of gray hair that stick up over each ear, like a great homed owl. He’d lived in this room for a couple of years in apparent contentment, which I found hard to understand. How does a person—any person, of any age—become reconciled to such restrictions? The sight of Jug perched on the side of his bed reminded me of this question, which has a great deal of urgency for me, given McQuaid’s situation.

  “Hey,” Jug said. “You heard the one about the guy who played golf after dark?” He was wearing a faded blue T- shirt with cereal stains on the front and gray wash pants held up with yellow suspenders. Beside him was a paper bag of peanuts which he was shelling and eating. He was tossing the hulls into the wastepaper basket, but Jug doesn’t see very well, and the floor was littered with misses.

  I grinned. "Yes,” I said, going past him to McQuaid, who has the bed next to the window in the double room. “Yesterday.”

  Jug grinned back. "Then it oughta be better today. Practice makes perfect, y’know.” He flexed his fingers. "My arthuritis is sure actin’ up today. It’s been real fierce since I had the shingles last winter.”

  "Every day and every way—” McQuaid said dryly.

  "Better and better,” I murmured, and bent over to kiss him, nuzzling his neck and slipping a hand inside his plaid shirt, feeling the warmth of his skin and the warm, soft tenderness that flooded t
hrough me. I wanted to fold him in my arms and hold him to me, hold him against all the hurt and fear. But McQuaid stopped me, stiffening under my touch, pulling my hand away.

  “Feelin’ him up, eh?" Jug asked amiably. He cracked a peanut. "Better watch out, young lady. Afore you know it, you’ll be sittin’ in his lap, same’s that purty black-eyed nurse that comes trippin’ around at bedtime, just to say a sweet good night to Mac here.”

  "Oh, yeah?” I straightened, pretending severity. "How about that, Mac?”

  “I’m totally innocent,” McQuaid said in a bored voice, but playing along. “Anyway, she’s got blue eyes. You know I don’t go for blue eyes.”

  I turned to Jug. "How much would I have to pay you to take notes?”

  "Gimme a kiss ’n’ we’ll call it square,” Jug said lecherously.

  “How about if I give you some ointment that’ll help your arthritis?”

  He shook his head. "Tried everythin’ under the sun. Nothin’ works.”

  "Then you haven’t tried hot peppers.”

  He squinted at me. "Listen, lady. I been eatin’ peppers since I was weaned. They ain’t done nothin’ for my ar- thuritis. They shore made me horny, though.” He cackled. "When I was a youngster. I’d stuff myself with jalapenos, primin’ mesself for a Satiddy night.” He grinned at McQuaid. "Say, that’s whut you need, Mac. A good dose of hot peppers. Hotter the better.” He cackled maliciously. "Rub ’em on yer pecker an’ see if that don’t make you get up outta that chair and dance a jig er two. Lot more fun than sitting’ there, strain’ out the window.”

  McQuaid shuddered. "Sounds like the remedy’s worse than the ailment.”

  “In an ointment, peppers might help your arthritis, Jug,” I said hurriedly. “I’ll bring you some.”

  The old man flexed his fingers. “If you hadn’t already heard it, I was goin’ to tell you about the guy who played golf after dark, and come in at two in the momin’. His wife sat him how come he was out so late. He said — ”