“You can always call her yourself, you know. She’s fine.” Silence on his end of the phone. Great. She tried not to fall into that trap but heard herself ask, “Something wrong?” and heard her father’s heavy sigh in response.
“I should have never divorced your mother,” he said for the hundredth time. Long ago, Nataly stopped pointing out that her mother had divorced him. It never seemed to make a difference.
“I messed up major,” he added. Nataly nodded silently and could picture his watery brown eyes, tinted red with self-pity, the dark brown hair parted on the side, his sideburns neatly trimmed, whatever the fashionable length, thin lips mouthing the words into the speaker. “Eight years, and not a day goes by I don’t think about it and regret it.”
Nataly wondered if he also regretted Jolene or Earlene or whatever the hell her name had been.
“You and Celeste ever patch things up?”
Jolted, Nataly said, “What do you mean, Dad?”
“You two used to be so tight. Then she goes away, and it’s like you’re always mad at her. Celeste left us all, baby, not just you, so don’t be that way. Don’t be like your mother and make it personal. Be like me. There’s a lot of me in you.”
Shit, thought Nataly. Just great.
“Where do you think you got your talent from? You’re an artist, a visionary like your old man. Hey, tell your mom for me that I will always love her. Only her. Got that?”
“Sure thing.” He hung up.
Nataly moaned, stretched and got up out of her bed. A double espresso couldn’t have blasted her into consciousness more than that random phone call from her father. She slipped on a chenille robe and a pair of scruffy slippers and stepped into her work room.
She was currently obsessed with scarlet and purple. In the center of her loom was a small practice piece. She was experimenting with the textures and the colors, a small sketch for the larger piece she was planning. It wasn’t right yet.
To Nataly, colors had rich meanings. Red, that’s obvious, she thought. It’s love, passion, lust, sex. Purple more of the same, but layered with obsession, creativity, ambition, anger, jealousy. But combined with red, the two colors became loyalty, fidelity, eternal bliss.
She chose fabrics, ribbons, yarn around those reds and purples—braiding, knotting, cutting, stitching them into a collage that ultimately she would stretch and starch and dry until it appeared to flutter around the shoulders of an invisible mannequin.
She lost herself in the repetitive task and started thinking again about her father. He had started taking her to the restaurant when she was young. Maybe she was just ten or eleven, sitting on a bar stool during the afternoon, sucking Shirley Temples through two squat straws, savoring the sweet, sweet grenadine. At the empty bar, Nataly drew or did her homework or watched the TV. She was there, her father told her, because she was his favorite, and Nataly knew that was true. Later though, she realized, there had been no one at home to watch her so the job had fallen to her dad.
She had liked how attentive one of the waitresses was, always getting her something from the kitchen—a cheese enchilada or a bean burrito. This waitress always asked her about her day, her teacher, her friends. The woman’s attention made her feel special, but she also began to notice how that waitress laughed around her father, how she looked at him, how she touched him. Did they think she wouldn’t notice?
Nataly worked on the tapestry until late morning and then took a nap followed by a shower just before she set out for her shift at Rimsky’s.
She found herself looking forward to Thursday nights. For a series of Thursday nights, she waited on Dr. Roeg, the name on his credit card. He usually ordered the sole, always two gimlets before dinner and nothing but water during. She kept her server smile on her face and noticed the insistent gold band. She spoke pleasantly with him about nothing at all and then gave her attention to the rest of the clients in her station.
Dr. Roeg had broad shoulders and manicured nails. He never spoke on his cell phone or tapped on his Blackberry during dinner. He always ate alone.
On a Friday in March, Nataly and Yesenia hunted through the fabrics in the garment district of downtown LA. It had poured the day before. The streets were filled with rubbish and haphazard tents of green trash bags made by the street dwellers. Nataly looked closely at the way the bags were slung around cardboard boxes, how belongings were protected by more boxes, plastic wrap, bungee cords, even tent spikes. These were installation pieces.
Yesenia said, “What are you going to do with the doctor? You’ve got it bad.” Yesenia kept her sleek black hair trimmed like glossy fringe around her pale chubby cheeks, dark eyes, expressive mouth.
Nataly laughed and said, “I’m not going to do anything at all with a married man.”
“Self-denial. Good for the soul. Bad for the body, good for the art.”
Yesenia had just returned from Manolito’s Gallery in New York City. As they passed more tents, Yesenia said, “Do you know, I think the subway is New York’s answer to democracy. Crazies and homeless, ethnics and WASPS, city and suburban, wealthy and underclass. Hmmm. Maybe they have something on us after all.”
“So the owner’s deep into ethnic pieces?” Nataly asked.
“He really likes my stuff.” Yesenia looked sideways at Nataly.
“That’s terrific,” Nataly said, jealousy battling within.
“I told him about you,” Yesenia said. A wide red smile spread across her face, her black hair rippled by the wind. “He wants you to send him your portfolio.”
“Why?”
“I just told him about what you did.”
Nataly paused, thought, then said, “Yesenia, can you imagine? Both of us doing a show in New York?”
Yesenia said, “Las dos, chica. That’s what they’ll be calling us five years from now. It could be amazing. Remember Bernard? He’s out there. Maybe he’ll let us sleep on the floor.”
“As long as he doesn’t join us!” A spark lit up in Nataly’s heart.
“Oh my God!” her mother said later on the phone. “Which hotel should we stay in?”
In May, Dr. Roeg stopped making an appearance at her station. Nataly thought about that. She thought so much about it that once, while Eric the manager was in the kitchen, she logged onto the reservation screen and scrolled through the book. There, going back into February, March and April, was Dr. Roeg, with his phone number and her table number on every Thursday night. But there was nothing for May.
In between waiting tables, paying her bills and working on that small woven sketch, Nataly went to the bars with Yesenia. She liked Al’s, tucked off a dank dirty street. Inside it was dark. And noisy.
Sometimes she and Yesenia would go to the bars in swank hotels and scowl at the men dressed in their business suits. No one there she or Yesenia would ever consider dating. Sleep with? That was a different question.
Late May, Yesenia announced she was moving to New York. “It’s a career
