blog of beginnings

We sat up in bed, passing cards back and forth, until the deck was finished. "I'll bet you my car that you don't win the next one," he said. I told him if that were a real bet, I'd take it. He said, "It's a real bet. Take it."

"Why would you bet that in a game like this?" I said. 

He shrugged. "Tired of my car," he said. 

He looked at me, almost wincing. "You've been winning all night."

"I--need a car," I said.

"I know. Well then."

I lay back on the pillows, stretching my arms as he began shuffling the cards. "What if I lose?"

"You won't lose."

We played down the deck again, and this time I lost. He shook his head. "You lose on purpose?"

"No. What now?"

"Play again for the car and win next time."

"Just give it to me," I said.

He shrugged. "No." 

He dealt out the cards, and we played down the deck this last time. In the end, I won, again. "You've got a car," he smiled, then turned on his side away from me.

Playing along with the joke, I went to the window. It was one of those nineteen fifties living room picture windows, large and wide and sealed shut, out of place in a bedroom. Somewhere in the driveway, in the dark outside, was the car, an old gold-colored Porsche with matching hubcaps, which he said was unusual for Porsches of that period.

It was at first too dark to see. The property was set so far back from the road that there was little light from the street lamps. Large trees grew along the driveway but in the back was pasture for horses and all the trees there were cut back. The property was right in the middle of town. He said he owned eight acres. He must be rich. He didn't act rich, day-to-day. His idea of a date was driving his Toyota Tundra to the 20th Street drive-in Sonics, getting a $1.34 cherry soft drink, and anything around that price or just a little more for me.

I pressed my face to the glass and looked outside until I could finally see the silhouette of that Porsche clearly, beneath a tree.

The silhouette of that tree held my eyes. It being early April, the tree still had no leaves. It was a headed old Chinese elm tree. All its branches had been cut off a few years back due to some disease, now sprays of new growth were coming through from the cut spots. The new growth would spurt leaves for the tree in a few weeks, the tree would survive, but the cure had destroyed what it was. It was a maimed creature, beloved enough for him to have gone to the expense of having someone cut off its branches in order to save it, now simply a terrifying, magnificent freak.

Can someone win? The blueprint for gains is all around us. Not to pound the world in winning, but the winner just whiffs above the trees.

I slept the rest of the night on my crossed over arms. Standing up, I felt the impression my arms had made on my cheek, but the mirror in the bathroom showed no marks, and there were no dreams.

This house is different from other houses. It is our house. It isn't a rental, and it isn't a room in a relative's home. It isn't a place where stories of successes and failures are told. Success stories are forbidden inside the house. Failure stories can be told on the back porch or in the garage where cigarettes are smoked and then thrown in a clay pot.

Maybe journeys don't matter because there are no children here. Taking care of people's lives already done with count in a hundred different ways.  

The routine is I am awake while everyone is asleep. In the dark I can make out shapes: rectangular light through the glass in the porch door with its slatted blinds; spots of light through the wide black windows. The dogs and the puppy seem like large rags on the floor. I get out of bed, and the puppy rag stands up on its four feet.

Followed by the puppy rag, I go downstairs into the kitchen. I open the fridge door. I'm not thirsty. Not hungry. Tired, but not sleepy. I start to close the door, then see the half loaf of ground beef from Walmart just sitting there and remember that all the dog food we'd cooked is gone. I pull out the beef, put on a pot of water, step on the puppy as I reach for a knife, a cutting board, potatoes; start dragging over the high stool, change my mind and hunt for the remote to the kitchen t.v., then begin dicing potatoes, then squeeze all of the beef into almost boiling water. Then I'm a spectator as the meat fragments in the water.  

"Fragments" is an oil country notion. The drills fragment the soil, using chemicals that seep into the groundwater. In this part of the northwest New Mexico desert, huge power plants fragment the air with mercury, and huge derricks do the same with secret chemicals underground.

I sit back on the stool, reaching for a National Geographic, swinging one leg for the puppy to play with, but he's smarter than that, so I turn off all the lights.

I watch as the puppy shadow pads around the kitchen, then assumes and remains in the rag position.

We sat up in bed, passing cards back and forth, until the deck was finished. "I'll bet you my car that you don't win the next one," he said. I told him if that were a real bet, I'd take it. He said, "It's a real bet. Take it."

"Why would you bet that in a game like this?" I said. 

He shrugged. "Tired of my car," he said. 

He looked at me, almost wincing. "You've been winning all night."

"I--need a car," I said.

"I know."

I lay back on the pillows, stretching my arms as he began shuffling the cards. "What if I lose?"

"You won't lose."

We played down the deck again, and this time I didn't win -- I lost. He shook his head. "You lose on purpose?"

Music playing on one of the high channels of his t.v. wound down and the next song began. "What now?"

"Play again for the car and win next time."

"Just give it to me," I said.

He shrugged. "No." 

He dealt out the cards, and after we played down the deck, I had won by a hair. "You've got a car," he smiled, then turned on his side away from me.

With a light feeling, I went to the window. It was one of those nineteen fifties picture windows, large and wide and sealed shut. Somewhere in the driveway, in the dark outside, was the car, an old gold-colored Porsche with matching hubcaps, which he said was unusual for Porsches of that period.

It was too dark to see. The property was set so far back from the road that there was no light at all from the street lamps. Trees grew along the driveway but in the back was pasture for horses and all the trees there were cut back. The property was right in the middle of town. He said he owned eight acres.

I pressed my face to the glass and looked outside until I could finally see the silhouette of that Porsche clearly. Then I pulled back, embarrassed.

He was the kind of man who gave you expectations. When I was with him I expected to experience unusual things as if they were commonplace.  

I pictured parking the car in my neighborhood of oil and gas trucks and pick ups. 

There would be glances at me. 

Well, I was no one's daughter anymore.

I slipped out of the room, into a large common room without furniture, that must have once been two or even three smaller rooms.  

The house -- a ranch house more than fifty years old -- was being opened up on the inside and there was still some construction going on to complete the interior of a large extension, which he had built himself. Part of the finished part of the extension was a small study with walls of bookshelves facing each other and a window seat and window at the end of it.

There was a book on one of these shelves with a picture of a study that looked almost identical to this one.

I looked on the shelves for something to read. There were books on design, oil, minerals, mining. History books on the Spanish settlers of New Mexico and the Apache. He was descended from both of these people, who had fought over huge parcels of lands from Santa Fe west through Chama.

This had not been his family's home. He'd picked it up at a foreclosure sale, he said, and bragged about paying the other bidders each a thousand dollars not to bid. Everything in his life was bought at discount, used, or at a fire sale. 

In the garage were a catamarang, a Ford F-250, a BMW motorcycle. 

I pulled a book on orchids from the shelf. There were some beautiful flowers. Degarmoara Creole. The book smelled old, thick cover, cloth binding, practically never been opened. I put it back.

I pulled an oil book off a shelf and sat in the leather-smelling recliner to read it. The chair was bonded leather, with the look and feel of genuine leather but for certain nowhere near the cost.

There were drawings of the teeth of drills, layers of earth, geological maps. I traced the detail in them with my finger, understanding little of any of it. It felt fine, not understanding.

I wasn't ready to sleep. I wanted to delay having another of those stupid dreams. 

Like last night, I dreamed I fell off a boat. The water weighed down my shoes and my phone was in my pocket. I managed to swim back to the boat and as I climbed on board, the phone was ringing. I thought what a good phone it was, and that I was lucky, because I couldn't afford another one. Then I answered it. It was my mother, dead now for fifteen years, telling me she loved me.

Why would she say that, even in a dream?

You can tell who are the people who are loved by their mothers. He was probably one of these, loved by his mother and even aunts, but he was also bitter-sweet, like so many men not close to their fathers. His friends were women. His handful of friends who were men were gentle father-figures. 

I heard him before he came into the study. "It's 1:23," he said. "Tuesday."

I just looked at him. "Is the Porsche really mine?"

He nodded.

"Fuck." 

"You're good at cards. We should go to the new casino in Fruitland, maybe this weekend. They have a live roulette table. You should try roulette."

"Someone told me I shouldn't gamble -- for real -- unless I forgive my father."

"That's a high bar to climb before having a little fun," he growled, without knowing at all what I was talking about. "Mine wasn't much of one," he added.

"Well, he was a good provider, but not much of a father," he added again. 

I said, "We could go to the casino, swap father stories there and not gamble."  

"That's no fun," he grumbled. "Forgive him now, and let's go."

"Okay," I said.

He took my hand and led me to the kitchen door. "I feel like walking," he said.

"Okay." 

The door opened to a concrete pad that stepped down to the pasture. He walked forward, pulling me along. I felt my body shudder as I followed. Maybe from the desert breeze coming and going in all directions. Maybe it was from being able to walk on private acres in the center of town. Maybe it was from owning a Porsche. 

Tranquility was in the mix tonight.

Maybe tranquility was how people who owned more things than they needed felt all the time without knowing it and all they wanted to do was get rid of it in order to get more of it. 

When Aunt Jeanine came to visit she liked to sit in this Queen Anne chair near the front door, by the south-facing window, in the sun. She would lay her head back and as she fell asleep, her mouth opened slightly. She slept in the chair for hours until the sun fell below the sill. This morning as every morning, I felt surprise as I passed the chair and Jeanine was not sitting in it. After I fed the dogs, I went over and sat in it. After a little while, I brought out my phone and played Fruit Ninja for too long. Then I put the phone away and just sat, looking into the livingroom where the dogs were sprawled on the rug and on their beds. "Tranquil," Jeanine would say. 

This morning I walked upstairs from window to door to window in my home, seeing snow cover the ground through wide windows on the north side, snow half-melted on the deck through the west-facing glass door, and the wet street ploughed clean of snow out the high east window. The view south through the small window over the bed was simply of dry bare earth. Earth the color of human beings who are the first dwellers of this high desert part of the American southwest. The wind blew, sounding like a whistle, an avalanche, quiet.

The preacher was small to the right of a stage. He was bent forward now, jumping on one foot then another, his shoulders raised, his mouth moving as he almost shouted words at a thousand people. She felt the emotion of everyone all around, all of them wanting to be full of feeling, a feeling of some of the preacher's frantic hope.

She felt her own furious want flow through her. The stained glass that ran in a thick ribbon of colors across the back of the stage -- so well made that it seemed silken and blowing in a wind -- took air from the large space and inflated her want like a balloon.

She felt dizzy with past and future wants. She was a child following the backs of women's heads. She was a small child taken among women with slight sloping shoulders. She was in a crowd of men and women, walking for miles with candles up a hill. The press of the crowd was so close that she could smell the sweat of each individual person in the tropical heat. She wanted to run. She swayed with the sensation of running.  

The preacher was speaking loudly. She heard "gold" and "anticipation" but knew he must be saying something else. In frustration at not understanding, she started to cry. It was the frequent sensation of beyond words. Sometimes simply the anticipation of knowing was gold enough, but not now. The man next to her was swaying and leaving her entirely alone.