Rust by Julie Mars

Author:Julie Mars [Mars, Julie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: General Fiction
ISBN: 9781579622268
Publisher: Permanent Press, The
Published: 2012-01-29T05:00:00+00:00

1990

THERE IS something else between the pages of the book of short stories. It is Vincent’s most precious possession: a photobooth strip of Regina, his wife, and Margaret, their daughter. Margaret is only three years old in the picture. She is like a miniature Regina with her black hair and her green eyes, though they don’t show green, either of theirs, in the series of four pictures.

The images have faded, but Vincent keeps them alive in his mind.

After all the years here, where everything he knew has disappeared and his life is one that he could never have imagined and still can’t though he lives it every day, he still dreams of Margaret and Regina, still holds them in his arms each night, still begs God to keep them safe.

Still loves them until it hurts.

WHEN RICO pulled into his own driveway, he saw that the lights were still on in his mother’s casita, and he walked back there before he even checked in at his own house. As he approached her door, he heard the television, some crime show, no doubt. Elena liked to listen to the voices, though she could not see the faces of the actors with any clarity. She also missed the clues and the significant glances that were exchanged between pretty female cops with cleavage, not to mention the closeups of bloody corpses and the constant shots of autopsies in progress.

“Hola, Elena, mi madre,” Rico called as he came in the kitchen door.

“Hola, Rico,” she answered, not getting up. She was sitting on her old flowered couch, a cup of tea in her lap and her feet up on the coffee table. “You’re home late.”

“Sí,” he said. “I’m going to heat up this water and make myself some tea and sit down with you for awhile.” The old Pyrex pot was still warm to the touch as he lit a match and turned on the gas. A box of Sleepytime tea was on the counter, and he opened it and dropped a teabag into a cup that was inscribed with the words “World’s Best Grandmother,” a gift from Lucy, he knew. He found the sugar bowl on the table and got a quart of milk out of the fridge in preparation.

Waiting for water to boil was a chore that Rico found agreeable, especially when the water was in his mother’s old glass pot. He liked the way the blue flame from the gas stove was visible, spread out like thin watercolor paint on the bottom of the pot. He liked the moment when the water started to dance and then commence its churning. He liked the idea that the water became vapor, a mysterious transformation. Even the steam, rising like smoke from his tea cup, pleased him.

“What are you watching?” he asked, as he entered the living room and sat down on the opposite end of the couch. A commercial for some anti-depressant drug was blaring away on the TV, so he knew they had at least thirty seconds to chat.

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