I remembered Nancy. I remembered her gratuitous hand-squeezing. I always suspected her of eating all the chocolates I brought for my mother.
“All right. I’ll call back,” I said.
I had a hard time convincing Johnny that it was okay to drive with the bones in the car. Perhaps I didn’t manage to convince him of that. I think what I said was that we had the bones, we had to deal with them. We had to find out whose (and who) they were. We had to give them a proper burial. Anything short of that would be sure to anger someone’s ancestors, was sure to bring on a plague of sores and drought and woe. I also wasn’t convinced that my mother would have an answer for me. I didn’t doubt that she knew where the bones came from, but she was not very forthcoming on a number of things. I was beginning to wonder if the bones had been left there by her because she had nowhere to take them, no place to bring them out to. I didn’t voice any of this to Johnny. I was still trying to make it seem normal.
Nurse Nancy would lead me to my mother, but what if she had nothing to do with the bones? At least I would know that and knowing, at that time, was more important to me than anything, including what dim room my father had chosen to deposit the living remains of my mother.
At the second of my colleges, Simpson, a women’s college, I had taken a pre-Columbian art course with a man named Barry Buster Parkinson. Barry Buster thought I had a real gift when it came to writing about art. He appreciated my jargon-free papers, the “pop” aspect of my approach to art history. For my final project, I made a hundred-fifty-pound replica of a monumental Olmec head out of aluminum foil, and received an A for the term. I was sleeping with Barry Buster at the time, but I don’t think this influenced the grade. I was also sleeping with Lou Walsh, the geology instructor, and I barely managed a C.
Barry Buster and I had parted on good terms. He found my departure from the school mind-boggling and seemed to hold himself personally responsible. He was a very moral guy, other than the occasional sexual dalliance at his wife’s expense. He told me that if I ever needed him, I should feel free to call him and he would be glad to assist. He probably meant letters of recommendation, but I’d never needed any of those. I called the Simpson art history department from the motel desk while Johnny watched on, keeping a good six feet between him and the box of bones.
The secretary’s voice rang through the receiver.
“Gail,” I said. “It’s Katherine Shea.”
“Katherine! How are you?”
“I’m actually in a bit of a bind.”
“How can I help you?”
“Well it’s really not that big of a deal. I just need to speak to Mr. Parkinson.”
“Barry’s in Mexico.”
“What’s he doing there?”
“He’s putting together a show. It’s going to travel around.” Gail made it sound like he was a producer for Lost in Yonkers. “He’s at the Anthropological Museum in Mexico City.”
“Really?”
“He’s taking pictures of pots, those cute little pots that look like animals and stuff.”
“Do you have a number for him there?”
“I have a home number for him. You can talk to Gaia.”
Gaia was Barry Buster’s wife.
“Okay. Give me the number.” I pretended to write it down. “Thanks so much, Gail. Listen. I’m hoping to be in Pritchardville in the next few months, and I promise I’ll stop in and see you and the rest of the Simpson gang.” The Simpson Gang. I had no idea who they were, nor did I have any intention of ever setting foot in Pritchardville again.
“Well?” said Johnny.
“I don’t know.” I shrugged. “Let’s get going. I’m sure I’ll think of something.”
Within the hour we were driving down to Albuquerque. It was two in the afternoon by the time we got there. Johnny drove over to the University Quarter and parked behind the Frontier Café. I went to sit in a booth and he got lunch, cinnamon buns and fresh-squeezed orange juice. The crowd at that time was made up of college kids of the funky variety getting breakfast, all tattoos and piercings, contrived hair, and bare arms and bellies. I lit a cigarette.
“Are you sure you want to go to Maine?” I asked.
Johnny nodded. “It’s not like I won’t be back,” he said.
After lunch we drove over to the airport. Continental had a flight to Newark that left at four. I didn’t want to know how much it was. There was a long line of people at the Continental counter waiting to check in for an earlier flight to Los Angeles. At the Aeromexico counter two attractive women were gossiping in Spanish, slapping each other playfully. There was a poster of a stepped pyramid deep in jungle greenery hanging behind the counter. Also one of an immaculate powder-white beach. And another of a bowl of soup in which a coy langostino beckoned to me with a slender claw.
I returned to Johnny. I held my ticket in my hand. Johnny looked at it.
“Mexico?”
“I thought of something,” I said.
“Where are the bones?”
“I checked them. I didn’t want to take them through the scanners.”
“You sure this is a good idea?”
“No,” I said. “I’m rather convinced that it’s a bad idea.” I didn’t even have my passport, but apparently one only needed a driver’s license to go to Mexico. “There’s an hour until my flight. Let’s get a beer.”
I ordered Carta Blanca and Johnny had a Coors Light. I gamely squeezed some lime into my beer. “You ever been to Mexico?”
“Juárez.”
“Any fun?”
“I got drunk and then someone beat up my friend.” Johnny laughed. “My friend said that someone was me. The margaritas were thirty cents apiece.” Johnny took a cigarette out of the pack and put it in my mouth. He lit a match for me. “Why are you going?”
“Cheap margaritas.”
Johnny shook his head. He looked at me long and hard. “Be careful, Katherine. I got a bad feeling about this.”
Johnny gave me a rib-cracking hug at the gate. I had a moment’s panic when I thought I might be doing the wrong thing by leaving him. He was so strong. Johnny fished in his pockets and found a pack of pseudoephedrine and a bottle of Tylenol. “For the headaches,” he said. I don’t know when he bought them.
There were about fifteen people on the entire aircraft, which could easily have transported one hundred. I thought of drug operations, covert smuggling schemes. How else could an airline survive? The flight attendant offered me some chicken enchiladas and my choice of white or red wine, or champagne. I asked her if she had any tequila. She smiled and headed back up the gangway to the cockpit. I heard a belt of hearty male laughter and the clink of glass. Then she came back my way with a half-empty, unmarked bottle of the golden liquor. She poured me a double shot into a plastic cup and smiled.
“Who do I have to thank for this?” I asked.
“The captain,” she said.
We flew for a while through the clear skies and the earth peeled away beneath me in brilliant green and flat blue. I sipped my narcotic drink. The plane fell some distance, then recovered, then dipped to the left, and then recovered. We entered a toxic brown cloud. The speaker hissed to attention and after a few unintelligible nasal eruptions, went dead. My ears felt the slow ache of increased pressure and I yawned to pop them. All this I took to mean that we had begun our descent into Mexico City.
A bump, a skid, and a bump later, we had escaped the heavens and were once more bound to the soil.
16
I found a hotel within walking distance to the Zocalo, or old town square, and the Belles Artes museum. The taxi driver said the hotel was owned by his cousin. With my Italian and a few Spanish words I was able to communicate somewhat, but he’d told me the room was some price that I’d converted to a suspicious ten dollars a night. The room was, in fact, ten dollars a night. It did have its own bathroom and a TV, set on an ancient dresser, that fizzled on in black and white and offered two Mexican soap operas and a Western set in San Antonio, which, from this particular geographic location, was actually a “northeastern.” I felt significantly better than I had in the previous days and was beginning to regret having asked Johnny to take the car back. Given some rest, I probably could have driven myself.