Falling Down by David Cole Page A

ahead of me, always turning to slow for me trailing behind, lost in my own world, Mary herself very much a person used to walking these paths while dealing with the public, while accommodating other people.
    I can’t exactly say what I’d seen to like in Mary Emich.
    I can’t tell you why I felt close to her, but most of all, why I didn’t just leave her and drive away, drive up to the rez.
    I’m really confused, I thought. What do I do?
    My offer to help Mary. Something morbid or coincidental, a contrast between the murdered child, Mary’s not-quite-a-daughter, and my own girls, Spider and her baby?
    Two years, that’s how long I’ve loved Nathan.
    Two years.
    However does somebody say goodbye, after just two years?
    Is it my fault?
    These thoughts left me paralyzed, so I had to tamp them way down inside and resolve to come back to them later.
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    â€œI love this grotto,” Mary said. “I really love the riparian area. Don’t you?”
    â€œI’ve got bad memories of this place.”
    But lost in her own thoughts and emotions, she ignored me.
    â€œThis place, the grotto, it makes me write poetry, it makes me put things into words. In the shade of thesycamores, in the ramada, the plaza, with its deep blue Mexican tile work, oh, I try to write haikus about this. Except I have a hard time keeping myself to the three lines.”
    She stopped.
    â€œâ€˜As a gentle breeze wafts the scent of chocolate flowers up into my brain and the splisssshsplassssh of the waterfall snarepats my eardrums, there, there, it’s okay, everything’s okay, sweetheart.’ I wrote that poem, it’s really a dreadful poem, but I wrote it for my daughter, for Ana Luisa. I got a few lines like a haiku. Around the rock wall, five syllables for the first line, but I kept wanting to write more first lines of five syllables. ‘The wild-flowers in spring. The pingponging penstamens,’ no, that’s seven. ‘The bowing bluebells, the shimmering salvia,’ well, seven again.”
    No idea where she was leading me. Not with her poetry. Not with our destination along the caliche pathway.
    â€œThe night-blooming cereus of Ron’s garden, intertwined and climbing up the mesquite trees. You know, it’s hokey. I think of poetry when I look out Mary I’s window, that’s one of the women I work with. They call us Mary E and Mary I. I love watching the baby coyote pups cool off and splash in the fountain of the vacated children’s garden. And there’s this chunky, purple lizard, he’s called Vin. He hangs out near the stone-covered water fountain, he dares to cross my path every day. Maybe he’s telling me to slow down? Someone or something snatched off his tail the other day. He’s not bothered at all. Life goes on. Here we are. This is what used to be the Haunted Bookshop. Now it’s our education center, our discovery center.”
    She swung open a door, held the metal bar with her left hand. A gold wedding band, a diamond ring, and on her small finger, a Cladagh ring, the heart turned inward.
    I’m taken.
    â€œI didn’t know you were married,” I said.
    â€œWell, I am, well…I’m not, I’m…he’s dead.”
    â€œI’m so sorry.”
    â€œA year ago. Fourteen months. Iraq. Are you? Married?”
    She’d already scanned my left hand, looking for a ring. Not much got by her.
    â€œNo. I have a daughter. And a granddaughter.”
    â€œYou’re old enough to have a granddaughter?” she said. “I’m thirty-six, you don’t look much older than me.”
    â€œI was really young when I had the baby. Fifteen, I think.”
    â€œYou were married before…?”
    â€œThat was a long time ago,” I said. “And I don’t talk about my life.”
    The edge of my sorrow popped out, she smiled, I wondered again, does she cry? Her smile widened even further,