The Goddesses of Kitchen Avenue: A Novel Read online

  Now I welcome Mondays with the glee reserved for special occasions, since going to work offers relief from the endless, lonely weekends. And this Monday is a beauty. Minute ice crystals give the air a diamondlike brilliance, catching and exaggerating the long strokes of gold sunlight coming over the world. Barren treetops poke witch fingers into the Crayola blue of the sky.

  I yank the drapes open to let it all fall into the house. Dust motes dance quietly across the living room, and I realize that I’m humming under my breath, a wordless tune I remember from childhood, light and happy. A good sign. I choose a turquoise skirt with ethnic embroidery from the closet, and a peasant blouse with a neckline that makes me look slightly daring, put on my makeup—not that much of it, admittedly, some blush and mascara and a see-through brownish lipstick. Big hoop earrings make me feel exotic and youngish.

  I can do this. Be single. Even a single mother. I roust a groggy Annie from bed. She complains, as all my teenagers have done, and I think again that the high schools would have much better luck if they’d change their schedule to accommodate this teenager need to sleep till at least ten. It would make so much more sense for school to run from noon to seven P.M.

  In the kitchen, I discover we are down to the last packet of Instant Breakfast—the only thing Annie can tolerate first thing in the morning. The Nutrigrain breakfast bars box, though it is sitting promisingly on the shelf in its usual place, is empty. A deeper search produces one dried-up grapefruit, twelve raisins in the bottom of a box, about twenty grains of whole oats. Resigning myself to a pot of coffee and some milk, I discover there are only enough grounds left in the can for a three-cup pot.

  I’ll stop at Mo’s on the way to work—get a muffin and a latte. Which leaves me time to water the plants in the greenhouse.

  The greenhouse. I fell in love with the house for a lot of reasons—it’s an Arts and Crafts bungalow with all the attendant features—stained glass on either side of the fireplace, smooth woodwork and wainscoting through the main rooms, built-in cupboards with glass fronts. It was, admittedly, a jewel in disguise when we bought it sixteen years ago. Very deeply disguised, since it had been a rental for a decade.

  But once I saw the greenhouse, no other house would do. I could not sleep at night, thinking someone else might get it. For three days, I fretted and worried and paced. Rick pointed out that it wasn’t really large enough for us, that we needed four bedrooms rather than three and a greenhouse. The garage was separate and unheated. That’s what he says now, anyway. Said it a lot more when the boys were killing each other sharing a room, hanging curtains and laying duct tape across the carpet to divide it up. I told him they wouldn’t die from sharing a room, and they didn’t.

  Poor dears. I never felt sorry for them. Never bought the American commandment that All Children Shalt Occupy Rooms of Their Own. I shared a room just slightly larger than a queen-sized bed with my sister. Bunk beds freed exactly enough space for two dressers. We did our homework at the dining room table, just as all of our other friends did. I knew girls who had to share a room with two or three sisters.

  Anyway, Rick wanted a room for each child, and I agreed, at least in theory. But I fell in love with the greenhouse. And for all that he claims he tried to talk me out of the house, he wanted it, too. He was crazy for the huge garage, where he could putter and take engines apart and put them back together. We both got what we wanted.

  This sunny Monday morning, I open the antique wrought-iron and glass door from the kitchen to the greenhouse, and carry my coffee into the moist green world, pausing to let Zorro the cat run in on his black-and-white pantaloon legs. The door closes behind us, shutting out the sudden din of Annie’s techno music.

  Click. Gone.

  Oasis.

  Zorro leaps happily onto the wide table attached to the glass-and-iron, and winds through the pots, rubbing his nose hard on the jade tree. We agree, Zorro and I, that this is the best place in the house.

  It smells of humus and damp earth and the breath of leaves. I almost hear a stir of welcome, the flowers and leaves turning toward me. The angel wing begonia is blooming, a heavy cluster of deep pink blossoms beneath green-and-white spotted leaves. It is taller than I am, the stalks as thick as half my wrist, and I cup the flowers in my palm in greeting. In return, I fancy I hear a trill as light as fairy laughter. I move on to the others, touching a leaf, a flower, a stalk. Put my fingers in the soil of one pot, check the humidity levels there, open the vent for air circulation later in the day.

  It’s not large—long and crowded with nothing more exotic than African violets and a few orchids and geraniums. Seedlings and cuttings sprout hither and yon. Beneath the long, waist-high shelf are empty pots and all my tools. I like it to be slightly untidy in here, so I feel like I’m entering a jungle in the wild. I’d like to have canaries or parakeets flying around loose, but Zorro would probably like it, too.

  In the farthest corner is a white wicker chair and a small table where I set up my goddess altars. They are hidden here because Rick was so acutely uncomfortable with them, but I don’t really mind. Once a month, on the full moon, I change them.

  This month it is Hecate, one that Rick especially disliked, or perhaps was afraid of. It’s a dark statue of a crone with flying gray hair and a dog at her side. The altar cloth is a black scarf printed with silvery stars, and her incense is myrrh. I light a stick of it, then pick up an egg-shaped tourmaline.

  Rick is not alone in not understanding this practice of mine. My children, too, find it odd and even threatening. We were all more or less Catholic, though I have been lapsed for a long time. A couple of years ago, I really needed to find the female in God, and I found Her everywhere, in Hecate and Spider Woman and Mary, all of them. It gives me pleasure to have my altars, and it gives me pleasure that they are, in a way, my secret, that they live here in my private sanctuary.

  Holding the stone in my hand, I sit in the chair, feeling the breath of plants on my flesh. Zorro leaps up into my lap, purring, and I stroke his fur, looking out the window. It has a view of the neighbor’s house, a rental we’ve all complained about for years, the house Angel Santiago now occupies. On a clothesline in the backyard, I can see he’s hung a few clothes. The pajama bottoms he was wearing yesterday morning, a poet’s shirt with full white sleeves, a pair of jeans.

  In the kitchen, I hear Annie clattering and muttering. She’s never really mastered Mondays, and now she bellows, “Mom! I can’t find my purple socks. Did you wash them again?”

  Zorro looks at me, his full soft tail twitching, and licks his lips. “God, imagine that,” I say to him. “Me washing something.”

  “Mom!” Annie yanks open the door. “Did you hear me?”

  Break time over. But I rise with a sense of purpose, needed for something anyway. “Yes, I washed them. Check the dryer.”

  “I keep telling you not to wash my stuff!”

  “They were standing up by themselves, Annie.” I fetch the socks, folded together and smelling of fabric softener instead of dead toes.

  She flings her red hair out of her face, darker than mine, but the same wavy, thick texture. This morning, she’s wearing a long-sleeved T-shirt printed with a Celtic design. She’s very Celtic everything these days; she wanted to know recently whether she could adopt my maiden name, O’Neal, instead of Marino.

  I told her to give it some more thought.

  The shirt shows a slice of lower tummy above the hip-huggers and thick belt. A river of bracelets pours down her arms as she yanks on her socks. Her hair is like mine, but the face belongs to her father—big eyes and full lips, his beautiful nose. It makes me want to touch her, but I wisely do not. “Did you call your dad last night?”

  She looks away. “No, I forgot.”

  “He misses you, Annie.”

  “He should have thought about that before.”

  “It’s not about you, sweetie,” I say gently.

  She gives her shoelace a final tug and stomps her foot down.
“Don’t patronize me, Mother. It’s just as much about me as it is you. He left all of us.”

  Technically, he didn’t leave—I kicked him out. This seems like the wrong time to say that. “He loves you, Annie. And you know that when you’re not being so unforgiving.”

  “Whatever.”

  “Give me a call after school.”

  “I will. Don’t I always?” She grabs her backpack, shoves her arms into her jacket, rushes out when her boyfriend honks. They’ve been going together now for more than eight months and I’m pretty sure they’re sleeping together, probably in the back of his car and other such comfortable places. There are birth-control pills in her sock drawer, which is why I’ve been warned off washing and putting away her clothes. We need to talk about it, and I make a mental note to do so. I’m proud of her for being smart about preventing pregnancy, but there’s more to sex than mechanics.

  In the meantime, I have to get moving if I’m going to have time to stop at Mo’s. My stomach is growling, and I can’t remember what I had for supper, then realize that’s because I didn’t.

  Mo’s neighborhood grocery isn’t far away. It’s an old-fashioned place, with time-darkened wooden floors and wooden shelves, a cooler in the back filled with beer and soda and bottled water. It’s a convenience store in better packaging, with lottery tickets and cigarettes behind the counter and a couple of gas pumps outside. I grab a muffin from the bakery case and pour an extra-large coffee into a paper cup and carry them up to the counter, where the Iranian owner is waiting. “How you doing today?” he says. Tall and handsome, in his late forties, Mo’s been running the grocery for almost a decade now.

  “Good, Mo. How are you?”

  “Good, good.” His voice drops respectfully. “Edgar die last night, huh?”

  Some of the sheen rubs off the day. “Yes. Roberta’s granddaughter, Jade, came in last night, though, so she has somebody with her.” I couldn’t remember if he’d been here before Jade left. “Do you remember Jade? Beautiful girl.”

  “Mmm. That’s good, a good granddaughter to take care of her grandmother.” Abrupt change of subject: “Where’s Rick been?” He smiles, but there’s worry in his dark eyes. He gestures at the counter, where the lottery tickets are held beneath glass. “I not seeing him too much.”

  It’s not the first time he’s asked. “Um, he’s just been … busy, I guess.”

  “Yeah?” He waits for more, ringing up my purchases slowly. The bell rings over the door behind me.

  I don’t know why I can’t just say it: We’re separated. I can hear the words in my head, but somehow they don’t seem to make it to my lips. Picking up my muffin and coffee, I hold out my hand for my change. Reluctantly he puts it in my palm, his heavy brows beetling the slightest bit.

  “You tell him for me that he needs to buy more lottery tickets from me. Sales are down.”

  “I will.” Rushing to get away, I nearly slam into the person who has come in behind me. A hand comes out to steady me as I try to avoid dropping my coffee or spilling any through the little hole on top. “Sorry.”

  “No problem.” The accent is like chocolate.

  I look up into the beautiful face of Angel Santiago. “Oh! Um. Hi.”

  “Good morning.” Is it my imagination or is he admiring my clothes? He smiles, slow and lazy as a cat, knowledge in his eyes, and I think of him raising his arms on his porch. Vividly, suddenly, I imagine putting my face there, smelling him close up.

  It shocks me. “Running late. Gotta go. See ya, Mo!”

  “Bye-bye now. Tell your husband what I said.”

  It makes me chuckle and I wave on my way out. In the car, I start the engine and sit for a minute, aware that I’m not laughing only at Mo’s comment, but at myself. I’m as giddy as a sixth-grader, my limbs filled with sunshine. I take one moment to enjoy it, admiring the sky and sipping my coffee, then shake my head and pull out into traffic.

  He smells so good. So good. The man must be loaded with pheromones.

  * * *

  Work is just … work. I’m a secretary for the music department at the local university, a sprawl of white quartz buildings on a hill above Pueblo. A friend from out of town saw it once for the first time and said, “Whoa. Looks like it was built all at once in a really bad decade.” Which is almost painfully true, though the buildings are beautiful when the sun shines on all that glittery quartz.

  It’s not the job I thought I’d end up with, and in fact, until I broke my arm in July, I had been building a pretty decent massage practice after taking a nine-month holistic healing class on the weekends in Boulder. For two years, the client list had built steadily and satisfyingly, but that ended when my arm was in a cast for three months. Thinking of it, I rub the wrist. It doesn’t hurt anymore. I don’t know why I haven’t called my clients to let them know I’m back in business.

  At any rate, the music department is a relatively interesting place, and I can have access to the university library and research materials. It’s harder than you’d think to keep things going for a bunch of busy, artistically inclined professors and their equally busy, scattered students. At least once a day, I get to be a hero by rescuing some lost information or tracking down a vital bit of data required for graduation or financial aid or any number of other things. Lately, too, I’ve been thankful for the fact that it’s enough to support me after the divorce, and that I have excellent benefits.

  I can also take one class per semester for free, not that I’ve done it most years.

  This sunny cold Monday, however, I’m bored all day. I hit one like that every so often. I’m irked when the professors treat me like an invisible slave. I’m annoyed that the students do not respect my intelligence. It’s all busywork—repetitive and boring.

  On the way home, I do remember to stop at the grocery store, which feels like a victory. I fill the basket with all the things on my mental list, hoping I’m not forgetting anything. It isn’t until I’m putting the groceries on the conveyor belt that I realize how obvious it is that I’m a woman cooking for herself only. The baby cans of tuna and frozen individual quiches and fussy things like goat cheese and roasted pepper strips and a bag of spinach pasta. I look behind me to the young mother trying to control her toddler. Her basket is filled with lunch meat and cookies and a litany of WIC items—apple juice and cheese and Kix cereal. There are also packages of meat. Mostly hamburger, but some chicken and a promising roast. A man lives in her house.

  I don’t know why this embarrasses me so much, but I look away, feeling ashamed, and my gaze falls on the couple at the next checkout. She is very overweight. A solid 275 if she’s an ounce, and I’m good at weight. Her hair is that desultory not-blond, not-brown, and she wears an unappealing pair of glasses. But her husband, a plain but not awful man, touches her shoulder lightly, slides his hand around to the back of her neck. His gold band glints on his finger, and she turns to look up at him, tell him something. He kisses her.

  And I think it isn’t fair that she gets to keep the love of her husband when I worked so hard at my marriage and lost anyway. She’s not worrying every second about her hair or keeping herself perfect, as I have been doing these past months, looking for some flaw that might have led to this breakdown. My wrinkles, I think, some days. My chipped fingernails that I’ve never painted. The fact that I forget my lipstick most of the time, don’t even own a plunging neckline. My sagging rear end. My skin, the color of egg whites.

  Something. It had to be something.

  But here in front of me is the truth. She’s lumpy and ordinary and plainly loved. It sends up a little roar in my head, and I only see the lips of the cashier move at first. I blink. “Sorry, Ken. What?”

  He grins, kindly, a man who has been waiting on us at this Safeway for a dozen years or more. “How’s that ornery husband of yours? I’ve been wanting to make a bet on Sunday’s game, but he hasn’t been around much.”

  “Oh, uh, he’s been busy.” I watch him scan the items, and think I
should have bought a steak for show. Is it possible that they haven’t figured out by now that we’re not living together, that he’s doing his shopping in another store, closer to his apartment? Or do they know? Is that sad sympathy I see in his eyes?

  A face-saving joke appears in my mind: “He’s probably avoiding you—doesn’t want to lose.”

  He laughs politely, bags my female groceries, gives me my change. As I head out to the car, the young woman and her adoring husband are right in front of me. I see that she’s pregnant, and he’s leaning into her tenderly, touching her belly. I’m fine until I put the key in my ignition and the radio plays a snippet of a Pink Floyd song, So, so you think you can tell heaven from hell.…

  I look at my white, freckled, ringless hands on the steering wheel and listen to the car engine rumble quietly.

  I thought I could. Tell, I mean. Heaven from hell.

  * * *

  Jade materializes as I’m taking the groceries out of the trunk. She has circles under her eyes and there are lines around her mouth that I didn’t notice last night. I break out of my self-pity with relief and put my hand on her shoulder. “How you doing, honey?”

  “I’m fine.” She grabs two bags of groceries in one hand.

  “Roberta?”

  She shakes her head. “She’s been in bed all day. Not crying, but not doing anything, either.” She waits as I unlock the door, and we go inside. “That’s why I’m here, really. I’m hoping you can help me with figuring out some details for the funeral.”

  “Absolutely. Come on in, let’s have some coffee or something, and tell me what you need.”

  “Oh, girl!” Jade stops in the middle of the living room. “This looks great!”

  “I guess it’s been a while since you’ve seen it.” I pause to look through her eyes. Afternoon sunlight is pouring through the green-and-fiery-coral stained-glass windows on either side of the fireplace. Dragonflies, period pieces I found on eBay. The light melts over the smooth wood wainscoting, the Arts and Crafts mantel we found in a house about to be torn down. It’s a beautiful room and I’ve worked very hard to make it so. Lately, I’m a little tired of the muted colors of the period and have been looking for models of brighter styles. I wonder if all the muting might be because the samples we have to look at are old and faded.