CHAPTER NINE
Sharon groaned. Al laughed a little and pecked her on the cheek. "I'll get it," he said, standing up while raising her to her feet. He left the room, taking another mouthful of his artificially sweetened coffee. He moved through the kitchen and opened the door.
On the cinderblock stoop stood Stevie Penja, bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet. Behind him was Celestina, looking uncommonly radiant. Her hair was freed of its customary knot, brushed out in a raven-black curtain. Instead of her customary assortment of ill-fitting, third-hand housedresses, she wore a fine linen blouse hand-embroidered with roses, and a red circle-skirt with a deep ruffle—probably her wedding clothes, carefully preserved to serve as Sunday best for the rest of her life.
"Hey!" Al exclaimed, smiling broadly. "My two favorite people!"
Celestina blushed very becomingly. "Today I get first cheque at new job," she said proudly. "Buy food, even put money away for the rent. So I say, I make churros for kind Señor Calavicci who helps me with form, makes sure we eat when I have no money, tells Senor Andriuk how I am good worker."
She held up a platter covered with a faded tea towel.
"Churros? Seriously?" Al asked.
"Sí, sí, yes," Celestina said.
"And chocolate!" Stevie added, holding up a covered bowl.
Al laughed. "Celestina, you're the answer to a sick woman's prayer!"
A concerned frown lit upon the pretty face. "Señora Calavicci, she is ill?" she asked anxiously.
Al gestured vaguely. "Uh, we're both a little under the weather today," he said. "C'mon in!"
He flattened himself against the wall, holding the door to admit his guests. Celestina herded Stevie ahead of her with one hand. Al closed the door, instinctively bolting it, and followed them into the kitchen.
"Sharon just made coffee," Al said. "You want some?"
"Sí, Señor Calavicci, that would be very nice," Celestina said.
"How 'bout you, Stevie?" Al asked. "You like coffee?"
"Yucky!" Stevie said, setting his burden on the table next to the covered platter.
"Esteban!" Celestina admonished. "We say no, thank you to Señor Calav—to Mister Calavicci."
Al grinned and patted Stevie's shoulder. "It's okay. I was just teasing him. You'd rather have milk, wouldn't you, sport?"
"Yup, yup," Stevie said, grabbing the edge of the table and bending to look underneath. With a puzzled frown, he looked up at Al. "Chethter?" he said.
Al whistled. "Chester! Here, boy!" he called. "Chester!"
Obediently, the terrier trotted into the room, his tail whipping from side to side and his ears at attention. He ran to Al and stood up on his hind legs, forepaws on his master's calf. Stevie crowed in delight and squatted down on the floor, petting Chester with clammy but fond hands. Like his owner the dog saw not the boy's handicaps, but only his huge capacity for love, and soon Chester was absorbed in Stevie, licking his hands and nuzzling his knees.
Celestina watched for a moment, misty-eyed, then turned back to Al. "Señora Calavicci, she is sleeping?" she asked.
"Naw," said Al. He looked towards the hallway. "Hey, Sharon, come here!"
An annoyed voice drifted back, loud and strong. "I'm not the dog, Al! You wanna talk, you come here!"
Al flashed Celestina a sheepish half-smile. "Darling," he called, in a singsong voice with just the smallest hint of tension; "we have company!"
There was a silence, and then Sharon came into the room, grumbling as she went. "What do you mean, company—oh!"
She stopped abruptly when she saw Celestina. There was a moment of silence as Sharon took in the visitor's youth, her radiant smile, and her beautiful clothes. A self-conscious hand raked through Sharon's unbrushed hair, then tugged at the frayed hem of her stained paintshirt.
"Uh… hello," she said awkwardly.
"Señora Calavicci," Celestina said, dipping a quick curtsey.
Al smiled broadly. "Sharon, this is Celestina Penja. She lives up the street."
"Sharon," she said flatly, shaking hands with the other woman. "Pleased to meet you."
"And you," Celestina affirmed. "Your husband is very good neighbor, very good friend."
Sharon shot Al a strange look. "I imagine he is," she said, rather frostily.
"Celestina brought us a present," Al said, moving to the fridge to dig out the milk. "Churros."
Sharon frowned. "What?" she said.
Celestina beamed proudly. "Churros. Mexican treat," she said. "You put them in chocolate."
"You'll love 'em!" Al promised. "Does the dip need warming?"
"In this heat? Are you kidding?" Sharon asked, her aspect brightening a little at the mention of chocolate, but still wary.
"I think it is still hot," Celestina agreed. "Esteban, come to the table."
"Esteban?" Sharon echoed in puzzlement.
"Stevie," Al said, nodding at the boy as he got awkwardly to his feet. "Stevie's my best buddy, aren't you, sport?"
"Betht buddy," Stevie agreed, climbing onto a chair. Al set the milk in front of him, noting happily that Sharon's aloofly hostile expression had softened drastically at the sight of the child.
"How do you like your coffee?" he asked Celestina.
"Very much, gracias," she answered. "It is nice treat."
Al chuckled and rephrased the question. "What do you like in your coffee?"
"Nothing, gracias, nothing. Only coffee," she told him, uncovering the dishes.
Sharon approached, her interest piqued. "What are they?" she asked.
"Pastry," Al said. "Pan fried and rolled in sugar and cinnamon. To die for."
"Well, they look lovely," Sharon said, pulling out a chair for Celestina. Al brought the coffee pot to the table and topped up his mug and Sharon's.
"Señor Calavicci says to me you are a painter," Celestina told Sharon.
"She is, she's a very gifted artist," Al said, dipping one of the horn-shaped pastries in the dish of chocolate and giving it to Stevie before taking one himself.
"Art-ist," Celestina repeated. "A great art-ist like Señor Dali."
"You know Salvador Dali?" Sharon asked.
Celestina nodded. "Once there was an exhibit in Santa Fe. Carlos and I, we go to see the paintings. Beautiful. Magical."
"Dali's a genius!" Sharon exclaimed, a blissful smile spreading across her face. "Is Carlos your husband?"
Celestina nodded. "Sí, yes, Esteban's papa." A shadow of sadness flashed across her face as she sipped her coffee. Then she smiled again. "Perhaps I can see your paintings?"
Sharon blushed a little, clearly flattered. "After coffee and cher—ch—"
"Churros," Celestina said.
"Churros," Sharon repeated.
Satisfied that the girls were going to get along, Al turned his attention to Stevie. Soon they were occupied in one of their impromptu lessons in spoken English.
MWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWhen they were done eating, the small party moved into the studio. Sharon began to show Celestina her work. Al settled on the floor with Stevie, and the two of them started giving Chester a very vigorous belly-rub while they continued their exercises in linguistics.
"Oh, I love it!" Celestina said presently, stroking the glazed surface of the living room window painting. "A house, such a pretty house."
Her voice took on a dreamy lilt. "Some day I wish to live in such a house."
"Don't we all, honey," Sharon said, an underlying sourness infiltrating her words. Then her tone shifted back to brightness. "C'mere! I'll show you one of Al's."
"Hey, hang on!" Al cried, scrambling to his feet. He knew which painting she would show, and he knew what she would say about it. And he didn't know which bit horrified him more.
"Don't be silly!" Sharon cooed. "Why, I'll bet you even forgot to tell her that you're a painter, too!"
Celestina looked at him in awe. "Señor Calavicci, you are art-ist also?"
"Naw, I just paint a little for fun. Just for kicks," Al said. "Now, c'mon, Sharon, you don't want to show her that!"
It was too late. Sharon pulled the canvas, his final project from her class, from behind a stack of her own, propping it on one of the shelves. "It's called San Diego Sunset," she said. "I made him name it."
Celestina looked at the oil painting slowly, taking it in first in its entirety, then in pieces as she had been doing with Sharon's work—treating it much more like a piece of art than as the half-articulate scrawl of pain and nostalgia it was. A swirl of colors indeed very closely resembling a sunset formed the background. The subject was a woman's pale body, unclothed. She knelt parallel to the canvas with her feet curled delicately under her. Her torso was turned away, her back curving from the hip up the side, facing full to the viewer. Her face turned over her shoulder so that you could see that, in fact, she had no face, but only blankness where one should have been. Her hair was dark and swept her bare shoulders in soft waves. Set in each shoulder blade was an eye, a large, dark brown eye. From each eye a tear was falling, tracing twin rivers on either side of her spine. Her right arm, extended behind her as if to support her in the impossible position she held, leaned against the sunset, and the long, shapely forefinger and thumb clutched a single perfect stem like the scepter of a queen. Its greenness in the swirl of reds and oranges fading to purples and blues was at once jarring and eye-catching. Atop the stem was a brilliantly white flower. A calla lily.
"He won't explain it," Sharon said; "but the way I figure it…"
Al flinched and looked away. Here she went again with her story about the inner pain of woman and the lily as a surrogate for a certain part of the woman's anatomy not visible from this angle. He had borne it with good humor in front of the girls in the "Painting With Your Inner Harlot" class, laughing lewdly and stealing kisses from his betrothed to the delight of the other students. But if she said it to sweet, devout Celestina…
To his surprise, the guest interrupted. "I see the lily," she said softly. "So beautiful. A lily for a love lost and dead, but a love that will be found again. Resurrected." She turned to Al and smiled sadly. "Such a beautiful painting, Señor," she told him.
Al swallowed the pain rising in his throat at her gentle words. He reached out and stroked her arm, shaking his head. "Lost and dead, maybe," he said; "but that's all. It's not coming back."
Celestina mirrored his gesture. "No," she said. "Lilies are in the church at two times. For funerals, and at Easter. Both are times to mourn death and to celebrate new life."
Al looked at the painting, trying to see it through Celestina's eyes. All he saw was the imperfection of it: the one shoulder longer than the other, the smudge of blue where there shouldn't be one, the hair that didn't quite capture the essence of that soft cloud of faultlessness he remembered. It was nothing but a pitiful attempt at faking a gift he didn't have.
"Mama, see!"
Stevie's happy voice tore through the solemnity of the moment. "I painting!"
"Sí, mi amore, many paintings," Celestina said absently, still gazing at Al's picture.
Sharon let out a yelp of shock, and set the canvas unceremoniously on the floor. Al and Celestina turned to follow her horrified gaze.
Stevie had acrylic finger paint all over his hands, his face, and his shirt. There was a blue handprint on Chester's head, and another on the carpet—and several more on the paper Al had just finished with.
"Painting!" Stevie announced happily, smearing his fist across the easel.
Forgetting he wasn't versed in her native tongue, Celestina began to upbraid the child in frantic Spanish. Sharon surveyed the damage in horror.
"God, what a mess—no, stop it!" she cried as Stevie reached for the paper again.
Al swooped in before Celestina could get her hands on the boy and gathered him into his arms, very glad that he was still wearing his own paintshirt. He laughed, and so did Stevie, leaning forward to embellish the top of the picture. "It's okay, sport! We'll paint this one together, huh?" he said.
"Yup, yup!" Stevie said blissfully, concentrating on his work.
"Oh, Señor, I am so sorry!" Celestina sobbed. "He does not know, he does not understand, please, I am sorry—"
Al shifted Stevie's weight against his hip and caught her wrist. "You listen to me," he said. "It's fine. Absolutely fine. He didn't hurt anything: it's just something I was doing for the heck of it."
"No?" she whispered.
"No. Absolutely fine."
"Are you kidding?" Sharon wailed. "Would you look at this mess?"
"We can clean up the mess," Al said, picking up the palette and letting Stevie dip his hand again. "Really, Celestina, it's no problem."
MWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMBy six Stevie and the studio were cleaned up, and the guests had left. Sharon leaned against the kitchen counter, watching Al scrub the paint out of Chester's fur.
"You know, I've never liked kids," she said pensively.
"Aw, lighten up," Al said. "He didn't hurt anything."
"Huh. He reminds me of Rich when he was that age. Hell on wheels. I thought maybe a retarded kid'd be less trouble than a normal one."
"Don't say normal," Al told her sharply. "There's no such thing as normal. Anyway, Stevie wasn't trying to make trouble. Finger-painting and stuff—it's what they do with him at school. He just thought that's what the easel was for. Besides, it was my mine, not yours: it's not like it was something serious."
She launched herself forward and leaned on his shoulder. "It could be serious if you'd just let it," she said. "That painting you didn't want me to show, it's really good."
"I don't want to have this argument tonight," Al said flatly. Really, the last thing on earth he wanted to do was discuss that picture, especially with his wife. The safe atmosphere of the art class, where anything went and everything was okay, didn't exist here. It wasn't Sharon who had made the safe space, but the feel of a roomful of people all sharing intimacies in a completely vicarious way. There the painting had been something to laugh about. Out in the real world, it betrayed entirely too much about its creator.
"Then what do you want to do tonight?" Sharon asked, kissing the side of his face and clutching the crest of his hipbone.
"I was thinking, how 'bout we go out to eat?" Al said. "There's this Italian restaurant I've been meaning to try."
"I'm a meat 'n potatoes kind of gal," Sharon said.
"We'll do meat and potatoes next time. You got yourself a half-Italian husband, you'll eat Italian tonight." Al grinned rakishly at her. "Man of the house insists."
"And afterwards?" Sharon asked slyly.
Al wiped one sudsy hand on the towel next to the sink, and cupped it around one of her perfect breasts. "Use your imagination," he said, and he kissed her.
Chester shook himself indignantly, spraying water and bubbles in every direction.