Pie Town Page 10

  Roger raised his eyebrows at the girl.

  “I’m just guessing,” she said. “But think about it, you in your line of work, Fred and Bea alone at the diner at all hours of the day and night with their doors unlocked and their cash registers full. And from what I see, half the people at this party look like they’re ready to fall over any minute.” She slid a piece of hair out of her eyes. “I know there are a few things I survived that I didn’t have any business making it through.” She shrugged. “I guess I’m weird, but I figure every day for anybody is a miracle.” She faced Roger, who didn’t respond.

  They both looked over at Alex just as the boy turned around. He grinned and motioned for Roger and Trina to join him.

  “Guess we need to get moving,” Roger noted.

  “I suppose so,” Trina responded.

  And the two of them caught up with Alex, and they all headed in the direction of the picnic shelter.

  Chapter Fourteen

  It was after ten o’clock before everyone had cleared out from the party. Malene and Roger were the last ones left, packing up the leftovers and the party supplies, cleaning up the tables, and tying up the trash bags and throwing them in the back of Roger’s truck. The moon was high and full.

  “Good party,” Roger said as he walked up to the shelter from the ball field, a large bag of garbage thrown over his shoulder. He dropped it by his side.

  Malene was stacking up another load of plastic dishes and boxing up the condiments. “It was nice, wasn’t it?” She stopped, yawned, and sat down at the table where she was working. She decided to take a break. “Alex seemed pleased.”

  “He was worn out,” Roger noted, taking her cue and sitting down at the table across from his ex-wife. “He’ll sleep good tonight at your dad’s.”

  “He got so many gifts,” Malene commented. “It took Daddy and me at least four trips to get everything in the car.” She smiled. “And you know how big that trunk in the new Buick is.”

  “Yes, Oris has made me look inside his trunk at least three or four times.” Roger stuck his hands in his pockets. “Did Frieda drive your van to his house?” He knew Alex’s wheelchair couldn’t fit in a car, even Oris’s Buick.

  Malene nodded. “I figured you would give me a ride back,” she responded.

  Roger nodded. He never minded driving Malene anywhere.

  “He is smitten by the girl,” Malene said, eyeing Roger, waiting for more information about his new tenant.

  “Trina,” said Roger. “And I know,” he added. “He had his eye on her the first time he saw her.”

  “That working out, her living in the apartment?” she asked. Alex had told her about the living arrangements right after he met Trina.

  “So far. Of course, she hasn’t paid me anything yet.” He shook his head. “What is it with these young people? You and I had to live at your parents’ house for months before we struck out on our own.”

  “And we had at least enough money saved,” Malene recalled, “to pay rent for a year when we finally did move into that little apartment near your office.” She shrugged. “Just a different generation, I guess.”

  Roger waited. “He thinks she looks like Angel.”

  Malene sighed. “I know.”

  There was a pause between the two.

  “You know, he asked me at least five times this morning if the mail had come. He never said, but I know he was hoping for a card from her.”

  Roger shook his head and didn’t respond.

  Malene blew out a breath. “I know that I said not to try to find her, to leave her alone, but honest to God, you think that girl would have called, at the very least, just called to tell her son happy birthday.” She shook her head. “Or sent a card. I swear, I tell myself every year I’m not going to get upset, and every year it just burns me up.” She looked up at Roger. “We did not raise that girl to be this way.”

  Roger took off his hat and ran his hands through his hair. This was the conversation that never ended. It was the fight no one could ever win. It was the main reason their marriage had ended. Malene could not let go of being angry at her daughter. He sighed and didn’t answer.

  “Oh, don’t sit there and act like I’m just being irrational. You could see it bothered Alex that she didn’t come. You told me yourself he was asking about her. And you were the one who wanted to go up to Taos and get her.”

  There was no response. Roger just dropped his glance away from Malene.

  “Just let me be mad for a few minutes,” she said. “I deserve at least that on the boy’s birthday.”

  Roger looked up and smiled. He loved Malene. He had since they were twelve years old. They had divorced not because he had stopped caring about her or because he fell in love with someone else or because, like so many other married couples, they had just drifted apart. They hadn’t even fought all that much. They divorced because they could never seem to agree on how to make their daughter face her addiction and her poor choices and get her to be somebody she would never be able to be.

  Malene wanted to use the tough love angle: make Angel pay for her mistakes, make her go to prison and face the consequences of her choices. And Roger, well, Roger realized that he was always trying to save his daughter.

  He used every resource available to him as sheriff to try to get his daughter opportunities to do better, to be better, to tow the line, to do the right thing—finish school, come home, get a job, take care of her child. In the end, neither strategy seemed to work. Angel had chosen her own path, and there was nothing either parent could do to force her down another one.

  When Angel turned fifteen, she became somebody neither of her parents recognized. And none of Malene’s tough love antics or Roger’s attempts to arrange for her salvation—the drives from one end of New Mexico to the other to bail her out or get her cleaned up, the favors from lawmen across the state, his efforts to keep her out of prison and in a halfway house or an inpatient facility—none of it worked. Even though Roger knew Malene knew it wasn’t his fault, she needed somebody to blame. And so he let her blame him. He figured it was easier than having her blame herself, so he made the decision, not long after Alex was born, when it was clear that Malene was eaten up with anger and bitterness, that he would give her that gift. He would let her hold him responsible. He felt like he was anyway. As angry as Malene was, Roger was guilty. So he took the blame for them both. At least that was something.

  The two of them sat in silence.

  “The cake was good,” Roger finally said.

  “It ought to have been,” she responded, willing to change the subject. “The grocery store in Socorro lost my order, and I had to drive clear up to Los Lunas to find a cake big enough to serve everybody. Ended up costing me forty dollars for the cake and sixty dollars for gas.” She shook her head. “It was supposed to have a guitar on it, but all they had at the Wal-Mart was Disney characters and monsters. I just had them write ‘Happy Birthday’ and be done with it.”

  “Alex loved it. And I’ll cover the extra costs,” Roger offered. “It was worth it.”

  Malene shook her head. “Nah, it’s all right. Daddy gave me some money.” She rested her arms on the table. “It was good cake, though, wasn’t it? I mean, being one I just picked up without ordering.” She leaned against her elbows. “It’s a shame we don’t have anybody baking around here anymore.”

  Roger nodded. He remembered the sisters and their bakery. Everybody complained about too many pies and cakes and not enough meat and potatoes, but it was sure helpful for special occasions to have somebody in town who could bake a cake.

  “You sounded good tonight,” Malene said, referring to Roger’s music. He and a group of other musicians had played and sang for about three hours.

  “I couldn’t keep the strings in tune for some reason, the humidity I guess, but it was fun, and Alex seemed to enjoy the music. I think he was happy about his gift from us. He already knows a few chords, and the size of the guitar is perfect for him.” Roge
r was glad he had sent away for the small guitar. It worked well for someone confined to a wheelchair.

  “It was much nicer than I expected. I know I owe you more than you asked for.”

  Roger shook his head. “We’ll just call it even, with the cake and all.”

  Malene nodded.

  There was a pause.

  “The new priest seemed to have a good time.”

  Roger laughed a bit. “I don’t think he ever understood which punch was for the children and which punch …”

  “… my father got hold of,” Malene interrupted. “When did Oris buy liquor?” she asked. “And how did he get it in the punch bowl with no one seeing him?”

  Roger shook his head. “I didn’t know what was going on until I noticed Ms. Millie going back for her third or fourth cup.” He thought for a minute. “Have you ever known her to dance with your father?”

  “Not like that,” Malene answered. “For a second there I even thought she was going for a stripper’s pole.”

  Roger slid his hand down the back of his head and across the back of his neck. “Now that’s something I do not care to witness,” he noted.

  Malene laughed. “You seemed pretty happy yourself. How many cups of punch did you drink?”

  Roger shook his head. “A few more than I needed,” he replied. “But not as many as Father George.”

  “Yeah, I figure he’ll have a bit of a headache come morning,” she said. “Maybe you should drive up there and check on him, make sure he can make it to his early Mass in Omega.”

  “You’re asking me to babysit the new priest?” he asked.

  Malene shrugged. “He seems so young and nervous. And he tries too hard. And he’s probably never had more than wine at communion in his whole life. You checking on him is just the neighborly thing to do. After all, it was our party.” She paused. “You think he was able to drive back to the parish house okay?”

  Roger scratched his head. “Well, since all the deputies were here, at least he wasn’t in danger of being pulled over for a DUI.” He placed his hands on the table and rubbed his fingers together. His thoughts went to smoking a cigarette. “And I haven’t gotten a call about a priest in a ditch, so I’m sure he’s fine.” He looked at Malene. “What about you? Did you have a little punch?” He winked. He could tell his ex-wife had imbibed. She seemed to have loosened up a bit as the party went on, and he had enjoyed watching her in her relaxed state.

  She waved off the question. “Maybe a couple of glasses,” she replied. “But that was hours ago. Now I’m just tired.” She rested her chin in her hand. “You thinking about a smoke?” she asked.

  Roger leaned back and shoved his hands in his pockets. “It’d be a great time for one right about now.”

  Malene nodded. “You’ve done good this time,” she commented.

  “Almost a month,” he noted. “And it’s just as hard as it was the first day.”

  They both laughed. There was a pause in the conversation.

  “Full moon,” Roger finally said. He peeked out of the shelter and looked up at the sky. “I can’t remember the last time we sat alone outside under a full moon.” He sat back up and smiled.

  “You used to sing to me under the full moon,” Malene remembered. “What was that song you used to sing, something about a freckle beside my lips?”

  “Ese lunar que tienes cielito lindo junta tu boca. No se lo des a nadie cielito lindo, que a mi me toca,” he sang.

  “You know I fell in love with you because of your singing,” Malene said.

  “You fell in love with me because I was the only boy you could beat in a footrace,” Roger responded.

  Malene laughed. “You never were very fast.”

  “That’s not what you were saying by the time we were in high school.” Roger smiled.

  Malene shook her head. “Ah, to be young again,” she said, dropping her head on her arm to rest.

  “Ay! Ay! Ayay! Canta y no llores, porque cantando se alegran, cielito lindo, los corazones.” Roger sang another line from their song while Malene closed her eyes and smiled.

  It was the perfect ending to a perfect day.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Father George was drunk. He had managed to drive himself back to the parish house without incident, although he had gone a few miles before he realized he had turned on the windshield wipers and not the lights. He handled the dirt road up to the parish and was able to park the car in the appropriate place next to the house. He had to wait a minute to be able to get out of the car, catch his breath, steady himself, before he could manage to stumble to the door, unlock it, and walk inside. But that was all he could do before the spinning intensified. He hurried to the bed, falling on it.

  When he first left the party, he thought he must be sick, coming down with something, since he hadn’t knowingly drunk alcohol. However, by the time he had gotten off of the main road and was having such a hard time concentrating while he drove, he knew what was happening. The punch was spiked, and he was definitely intoxicated. He thought the people standing around the bowl of punch seemed oddly delighted that he was enjoying so much of it. He thought it had been a bit strange that everyone stopped talking to watch him as he poured himself a glass. He was not the reason for the tainted drink, but he was certainly an entertaining consequence. The people at the party, members of his parish, had watched their priest unknowingly get drunk. The room spun as George realized what had happened and suddenly remembered the only other time in his life when he had had that much alcohol. Like this one was sure to become, it wasn’t a memory he cherished.

  George moaned, jumping up from the bed to run to the bathroom. He was going to be sick. “What on earth did I drink?” he asked out loud. After thirty minutes of vomiting up everything he had eaten for the entire day, he crawled to the kitchen, pulled a bottle of water from the refrigerator, and headed back to his bed. He sat on the edge and took a few swallows of water. The room kept spinning. He closed his eyes and leaned forward over his knees, dropping his head in his hands. Voices and bits of conversations floated across his mind.

  “Get some boots,” he recalled somebody saying. “You two just seem to show up everywhere together,” the same voice commented. “You believe in angels?” a girl asked. “Altar Guild … that skunk seemed to take up with the priest … den of rattlesnakes at the parish house … cancel Mass… .” The voices just kept resounding, getting louder and louder. He ran back to the toilet.

  Father George Morris had been planning to be a priest since he was eight years old. That was the year his family moved into the downstairs apartment in a house that was right beside St. Peter’s Church. He discovered the way to the altar on the day they moved in, and once he found that the side door was always unlocked, the one next to the priest’s private office, George spent more time at the church than he did in the apartment.

  He loved everything about the place. The music, the chanting, the silence, the incense, the candles, the order of things, and mostly the relief he felt when he entered. It became his own private sanctuary, his solace, his home. Since his parents were either fighting or working late hours or drinking until they passed out, neither of them seemed to mind or notice that their only son was becoming so pious. They didn’t say a word when the priest would let him stay over for meals or even sleep in the parish hall, or when he made arrangements for the boy to start parochial school. After all, it didn’t cost them anything. They were just glad not to have to worry about bus schedules or even teacher-parent meetings, since the priest handled them. George was out of their way, and that was all that seemed to matter to them.

  George flourished in the church and in the parish school. In his early years as a student in public school, teachers had assumed something was wrong with the boy. He was too quiet, too sullen, too withdrawn, and they were always having him tested for disabilities or assessing him for special needs. One teacher thought he might be deaf. Another was convinced he was autistic. They would arrange for doctors and
clinical trials, and as long as they were free and held during regular school hours, his parents never interfered. They didn’t share the teachers’ concerns about their son and yet didn’t mind the special attention. Since they weren’t willing to spend extra time trying to analyze or understand their only child, they were glad to have experts interested enough to try to figure the boy out.

  Only when George was five years old did his father demonstrate any special interest in his son. He tried, as he put it to his wife, “to get the boy out of his shell.” For weeks he tried teaching his son how to box, goaded him into emotional outbursts, even whipped him when George refused to fight another boy who lived next door. Mr. Morris finally gave up and went back to drinking and playing cards with his friends when George stood out on the porch, locked out for four hours, missing supper and practically freezing to death, because he wouldn’t scream out what he wanted. Finally, his mother rescued him, unlocking the door and taking her quiet, unemotional son to bed. Neither parent tried to figure their son out again, leaving the diagnosis and treatments to teachers and school aides and well-meaning social workers.

  At the church and the parish school, however, George blossomed. He was still quiet and even-tempered, did not have many friends, and preferred to work alone, but instead of raising suspicions from the adults, his behavior was rewarded and celebrated in this setting. He was coddled by the nuns and set apart by the priest as a special child, even one called by God to service. He had found his place at an early age, and in almost twenty years he had never regretted his childhood or the decision he made. He had even found great love and pity for his parents, and he was grateful that they had moved to that apartment and grateful that they never stood in the way of God’s plan for his life.

  George lay on the cold bathroom floor, his mouth dry and his head starting to pound. He didn’t try to get up.

  After seminary, when he finished his studies, he asked for a call to serve in another country. He believed there was greater reward in serving the poorest of the poor. And he relished the thought of being out of America, away from the influence of television, the Internet, and all things secular. He thought it would be a good fit for him to serve in missions.