The Goddesses of Kitchen Avenue: A Novel Read online

  Explore. Dream. Discover.

  MARK TWAIN

  3

  SHANNELLE

  TO: [email protected]

  FROM: [email protected]

  SUBJECT: How I find time

  On October 11, 20—, Joanne Reed wrote:

  >>>how do you guys find time to DO the writing???? I’m having such a hard time lately!<<<

  Joanne—I love football season! My husband’s buddies think he’s the luckiest guy in the world because I make him go watch the games somewhere else. Every Sunday afternoon and most Monday nights, he puts on his Bronco coat and his Bronco jersey and goes out to his brother’s house or to the Riverside so I can get my work done. I love it! This weekend, I have written nearly twenty pages on a new story!!

  Shannelle

  TO: [email protected]

  FROM: [email protected]

  SUBJECT: More on recent inspiration

  Hi, Naomi! I don’t mind the lowercase at all—carpal tunnel seems to be the worst thing of all. I’m glad you’re getting the surgery.

  Yeah, my tooth still hurts, but I have had many toothaches and have learned to manage them. I can’t afford to waste the time Tony is at the games. He’s so jealous of the writing, as if it is a lover who will steal me away, a seductive Other who has some mysterious claim on me. In a way, I suppose it’s true—writing satisfies me on some level that nothing else can. I am lonely when I have no time for it, lonely for the sounds of words rolling through my mind, lonely for the sights only I can see, lonely for the people I meet on the page. When I tried to explain it to him, he was worried that I might be mentally ill! He asked me how it is different to hear voices as a schizophrenic (he works at State Hospital) than as a writer. I did not have a good answer for him.

  Anyway, it spares me anxiety to simply do the writing when he is not around. I do sneak in here now and then when he’s asleep, but not too often. It would be nice if I could quit the bowling alley, but then I couldn’t pay for day care, and I’m getting quite a bit done on Tues and Thurs, when my youngest is at the baby-sitter’s.

  Got a new rejection on the ghost story last Friday. (I can’t tell you how I’ve learned to hate seeing my own handwriting on an envelope!) It was a good one, a personal note from the editor, but she said many of the same things I have heard before—much praise on voice and tone, but too “different.” She did not know how she would publish it, as young adult or mainstream or horror, said that it did not quite fit the constructs of any of them.

  I felt so frustrated that I used your advice—I ran a huge tub of water and poured in some bubbles (all I had was Mr. Bubble, but it created quite an exuberant tub of foam!) and had a good cry. It helped. I had hoped that I might have been on track a little more with this one, but I guess it’s just not time yet. I’ve written quite a bit on the new one—another ghost story! I don’t know why I always want to write ghosts!—and I like it, so that’s good. How many rejections did you say you had before you sold something? Like 43 or something, right? I only have collected 16 and a half (since one was a half yes). Miles to go.

  I’ve been rambling on and on here. Sorry. Gotta get to work now. Talk to you soon!

  Love,

  Shannelle, your ever-grateful fan and friend

  TO: [email protected]

  FROM: [email protected]

  SUBJECT: tooth and men and other troubles

  hugs on the rejection. just remember you have loads of talent and more gumption than 99% of all the people i’ve ever met and i know you’re going to make it in this game if you just hang in there. the piece on your neighbor was one of the most gorgeous things you’ve done and i want you to keep going. he’s a terrific ghost—and i lol’d at his banter. you’ve turned pain into humor, and that’s the best kind. it doesn’t matter that there are ghosts in everything—you have good reasons for that, babe, and we all get stuck with certain things—you’re writing a very intelligent, comic novel and it’s original and it’s real and it’s yours. i still have faith #3 will sell. send it out to the next one on your list.

  more hugs on tony’s resistance to your writing. i’ve heard other writers talk about a spouse’s jealousy of the writing. i met lyle long after i’d established myself, so it hasn’t been an issue between us. we have other issues, tho—animal issues!!

  things here are so chaotic. the new puppy now weighs 48 pounds and has yet to see his 6-month birthday. my dh, who thought it would be so lovely to have this darling little pup (is that dear or damned husband today? i have no idea!!), has taken his stallion to a neighboring ranch to service the mares, so i am left to mediate fights between the puppy and the tabby, who isn’t quite sure if she wants to be loved so madly; make sure the old dog isn’t tearing off a puppy ear; and supply peanut butter sandwiches to the real-life children. why am I having another child, again? two children, one husband, a dog, a puppy, three horses, five goats, and six sheep were not enough to keep me amused? (at least the morning sickness is gone—thanx so much for the raspberry leaf tea idea.)

  ah, but what would I write about without them?

  i’m sending along an application for a writer’s retreat. they have full-ride scholarships and i think you’d get in with no trouble, so as your teacher, i’m ordering you to at least apply. consider it your homework for the day.

  go to the dentist!!!

  love,

  naomi

  A trip is what you take when you can’t take any more of what you’ve been taking.

  ADELINE AINSWORTH

  4

  TRUDY

  Shannelle, the new girl—well, woman, I guess, since she has two kids and a husband—showed up at Roberta’s door within minutes of my arrival. The ambulance came and went, taking Edgar’s withered body to the morgue. I made phone calls to break the news gently to a list Roberta had prepared ahead of time. Now I sit with the old woman on her couch, the clock ticking loudly on the wall, as gloomy a sound as I’ve ever heard.

  Roberta has been my next-door neighbor for sixteen years, since Rick and I moved in. She welcomed our young family with a pot roast and all the trimmings and a lemon cake that is still Rick’s favorite in all the world. I’d been so tired from moving boxes and trying to keep track of the children and trying to get everything at least settled enough that we could sleep that I’d wanted to throw my arms around her and cry.

  And now I sit with her for the same reason—just to be a presence when she needs one. She loved Edgar more than God, though she’d never admit it. They’d been married sixty-two years last month, and if ever there was a man worth loving, he’d been it. A true Christian, loving and real, practicing his faith in everyday ways, all the time. I think about him as I sit with Roberta, knowing she must be thinking of him, too. No, thinking is too small a word. I’m sure her entire body is filled with him just now, every cell sliced wide open.

  The clock ticks in the quiet.

  It’s a bright room, with big, clean mirrors and a well-dusted piano against the wall. The colors are the sunny greens and yellows of a summer afternoon, the furniture as comfortable as hammocks. She uses lemon oil to clean the wood, and Pine-Sol on the floors, a trick she swears is her secret for keeping water bugs at bay. The water table is high in the neighborhood, and the nasty, giant-sized cockroaches are an eternal problem, at least for everyone except Roberta.

  Roberta herself is neatly dressed, as plump and kindly-looking as an old-fashioned kindergarten teacher. Her skin is smooth, thanks to the care she takes to wear a hat outdoors, and there are small pearl earrings in her lobes, and the remains of a good lipstick she put on this morning. She’s tearing a tissue to tiny threads, the lint falling unnoticed to the floor. I touch her upper back gently, rub it the slightest bit.

  Shannelle, perky and blond and impossibly young, is making coffee, cutting a freshly baked coffee cake into squares for us and anyone else who might be arriving. She’s humming softly under her breath as she bustles around, finding a table
cloth in one of the drawers that she shakes out and spreads on the broad dining room table, then puts out a stack of napkins, forks, spoons, cups. There’s a ham in the fridge and she brings it out, unwraps it, opens a can of pineapple chunks, comes into the living room. “Roberta, where would I find the brown sugar?”

  Roberta surfaces for a moment. “It’s in blue Tupperware, sweetie, lower left-hand counter. You puttin’ that ham in?”

  “Yeah,” Shannelle says. “Seemed like a good thing, with everybody comin’.”

  “You’re a good girl.” Roberta’s hands still for a minute. “Will you look for me, and see if there’s some greens in the freezer? Church has been bringing so much around, and I think there were greens.”

  “I’ll look.” The sound of her digging, moving, talking to herself. “Found some!” she cries. “Mustard greens, right?”

  We hear a car outside, a slamming door. “See who that is, Trudy, will you? I don’t want nobody from the church right this minute. They can come tomorrow.”

  I look through the small window cut into the door. “It’s Jade.” Roberta’s granddaughter.

  Jade lived with Roberta all through college, and I knew her well, but it’s been seven or eight years since I’ve seen her. Back then, she was a skinny thing, bouncy and full of a sweet idealism that always touched me. She was always extraordinarily beautiful in the way mixed-race children often are, somehow combining the best qualities of their parents into something as luminous as twilight.

  That was then.

  The woman rounding the car wears black boots with tall, square heels and a tailored jacket of buttery black leather. She’s better than six feet tall, and strides up the walk with a no-nonsense, touch-me-not aura that is more than a little intimidating.

  She is still beautiful, with those high cheekbones and elegantly cut mouth and wide-set, enormous green eyes. But she’s let her hair grow and it tumbles around her shoulders in wild curls, streaked with red and gold amid the darker strands. I have great hair, don’t get me wrong—it’s my one wealth and I’m vain about it—but for an instant, I feel a flash of envy for such untamed extravagance. “Jade!”

  She grins and rushes up the steps to throw her arms around me. “Trudy! It’s so good to see you! God, you don’t look a single day older, I can’t believe it!”

  She doesn’t know, of course. How could she? She’s been on the road since yesterday morning. I hug her, keep my hand on her arm as I draw her inside. “I’m afraid there’s some bad news, honey.”

  She sees her grandmother sitting with the piles of shredded Kleenex in little tufts of snow around her feet. “Oh, Grandma!” Jade says, flowing over to Roberta. “I’m so sorry, but I’m here now.”

  As if she’d been waiting for this anchor, Roberta crumples over and begins to weep. Shannelle and I can go now, but I’ll wait for her to finish putting the greens in the pot. Jade fetches a Librium for her grandmother and I help Shannelle—we make a pitcher of sweet tea, fill the sugar and creamer containers Roberta likes, crystal and silver. I carry in a cup of hot chocolate to Roberta. It’s her favorite and she thinks it sinful to drink so much. “You need a little something,” I say gently.

  “Thank you, darlin’.”

  “I’m just gonna get my things in, Gram. Be right back.” Jade looks at me. There are no tears on her face, only that mask of toughness that startles me a second time—whatever has happened in her life has been hard on her. “Would you mind helping me bring in a couple of boxes before you go? I don’t want to leave them out there all night.”

  I nod and follow her out. A gust of wind, carrying the bone-deep chill of winter arriving, sweeps over us, blowing our hair into tangles. Jade unlocks the car and reaches into the backseat. “There isn’t much. I put most of it in storage.” She hands me a box that looks hurriedly packed, things just thrown in without much regard for order. “I guess you heard I’m divorced.”

  “I did. I’m sorry.”

  A shiver of almost grief crosses her face and she turns back to the car, hauls out a suitcase and a cosmetic bag. “Well, yeah, what’re you gonna do? Least I got out of there.” She pauses, looks at me. “You, too, huh?”

  I swallow. We just filed the papers. “It’ll be final the end of February.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  The wind is rustling through the box, and I put a hand over the photos about to fly away. “Yikes! Hold on or the wind will take everything.”

  “They’re all like that.” For a minute she looks flummoxed.

  “It’s all right. We’ll just make a couple more trips.”

  We get the boxes and bags into her old college room, a place that must look exactly as it did when she left, degree in hand. It’s cluttered with the detritus of a young woman’s hopes—flowers, music posters, frills and lace. Jade tosses off her jacket, showing arms roped with hard muscle, and with a noise of disgust, reaches for a poster of a kitten and tears it violently off the wall. I smile.

  “What?”

  “It helps to say fuck a lot.”

  She laughs. “Yeah? I’ll try that.”

  On top of one of the boxes is a photograph of a man. “This him?” I point and wait for permission to pick it up.

  Jade nods. “Dante.” She sighs.

  He’s not particularly beautiful, a dark-skinned black man with eyes just slightly tilted upward at the corner, but there’s something about his expression, a glint, a charisma that’s palpable in two dimensions. My fingertips feel it. “Whew.”

  “Yeah.” Jade takes the picture and with another brittle move, tears it in half. “Fuck you.”

  I laugh and give her a short hug. “If you need anything, you know where to find me.”

  “Thanks. And thanks for sitting with Roberta. This is gonna be so hard for her.”

  I only nod.

  Shannelle dashes across the street to her lamp-lit house. I move more slowly toward mine. It’ll be empty still, since my daughter, Annie, won’t get home from work for a couple of hours. In the air is a smell of cooking mixed with the autumn-leaf cold and it makes me lonely. I’m also hungry. I wonder if it’s worth the trouble to go to the grocery store.

  It isn’t until I start to turn into my place that I see him, the new neighbor, coming toward me, his long hair lifting and blowing.

  “Hello,” he says, extending a hand. “I was getting something out of my car and saw you. It seemed a good time to introduce myself.”

  It’s dark now, but the streetlights offer plenty of illumination for me to see his face is like something out of a dream, cat-shaped with a wide, high brow and flying eyebrows and a narrower chin. His eyes are almond-shaped and alertly lazy. It’s hard to tell the color in the dark, but they’re light, blue or green.

  He’s taking my hand, which I’m not aware of stretching out. His fingers are long, graceful. “I am Angel Santiago,” he says. I can’t quite place the accent—it’s more fluid than the Spanish that I hear in the voices of Mexican immigrants. Maybe he’s from farther south, Peru or Chile.

  “Trudy Marino,” I say, aware as he holds my hand loosely that I am a woman, that I have breasts beneath my four layers of clothing, and hips beneath my jeans. “I live … here.”

  “I know.” He’s used to his effect on women, I’m sure, and I feel stupid because he’s a good fifteen years my junior. Jade will like him. Jade must have him. The two of them together will be like caramel sundaes. “I saw you earlier.” He lets my hand go. “Someone died?” he asks with a soft lift of his chin toward Roberta’s house.

  “Yes. Edgar Williams.” Suddenly, my throat is full of tears because it hits me that he’s really gone, and I blink hard. “He was a very good man.”

  “He leaves a widow?”

  “Yes. Roberta. And her granddaughter, Jade.” I smile. “She’s very beautiful.”

  “I saw her, too.” He gives me a slight smile that’s somehow intimate, like I will understand something. I don’t.

  A gust of wind rains leaves down on our h
eads and I shiver. “It was nice to meet you, Angel.”

  He reaches toward me unexpectedly, taking a leaf out of my hair. He presents it to me like a gift. “Good night, Trudy,” he says, and melts away into the darkness.

  * * *

  It’s really too early to go to bed, only seven o’clock. The house echoes around me as if to exaggerate the loneliness. In the kitchen, I find some stale crackers and a butt of cheese that’s perfectly edible once I trim off the dried-up edges.

  Really have got to get to the grocery store.

  I look for a magazine to read, turn on the stereo to the PBS station, which is playing agreeable and upbeat Celtic music.

  I could read more Lorca. But he’s reminding me of my lost dreams and I’m not in the mood.

  There’s always e-mail. I hope for a note from my middle child, Colin, away at Berkeley, but there’s nothing. Until three months ago, I carried on a lively correspondence with a group of natural healers and massage therapists I met in Boulder two years ago, but I haven’t been participating, out of shame. There are two women who still send me e-mails, and there’s been one waiting for me to answer for more than a week. I don’t know what to say. Life sucks seems unnecessarily bleak, especially since I’ve always been the original positive-thinking guru.

  Lotta good it did me.

  I open a new window and type:

  TO: [email protected]

  FROM: [email protected]

  SUBJECT: Alive and Hairy

  Hey, Jen. Don’t worry, I’m much better today. I should know better than to leave hysterical phone messages. It’s only bad once in a while, honestly. Annie is working all the time she isn’t out with her friends or in school, and that’s the way it should be. She’s furious at both of us, anyway, so it doesn’t really matter. It’s easier to have her busy.

  It’s just boring, really. I used to complain that I never had any time for myself, and I didn’t, but I didn’t expect it to end all at once. No more dinners or breakfasts to fix, nobody to hustle from place to place. No lessons. No noise making the rafters shake. Even the house stays clean since there’s nobody here to mess it up.