Common section

24.

The Mine Shaft Tavern

I DIDN’T HEAR FROM MY MOTHER THAT DAY OR THE NEXT. I made hot and sour soup with tofu and shiitake mushrooms, settled back into the idea that I might not see her again, that after a week or a year someone would notice the smell of death and I’d get the call I didn’t know how to prepare for. The waiting manifested in a constant, low-level stabbing pain in my right shoulder, made me feel at once jaded and on edge, but I figured that not seeing her again would be all right.

Sure, some part of me would always be that magical-thinking four-year-old waiting for my good mother to rescue me from this witch, but I hadn’t come all this way looking for my good mother. The only thing I’d written on my wrist all those months ago in Portland was Behave in a way you’re going to be proud of.

I was sitting at my desk, futzing with a story on my computer and clicking around Pandora.com looking for music I might like when the email came through. The subject line alone filled me with sudden dread.

From: evedebona@yahoo.com

Subject: Thanksgiving

Date: November 13, 2011 4:01:06 AM MDT

To: arielgore@earthlink.net

Dear Ariel,

I am very aware that I missed our appointment the other day. The fresh eggs were delicious. Can we talk about Thanksgiving now? I think it would be a good idea for you and Maia and Maxito to come here for the feast.

Love,

Mom

I IMAGINED PULLING into my mother’s gravel driveway, my kids all dressed up, finding the place locked.

I envisioned the door open, the smell of roasting turkey and sweet potatoes, my mother wielding a giant carving knife with a handle made of bone.

I remembered the Thanksgivings of my childhood. My stepdad always kept a firm grip on the white bone of that carving knife.

I thought about refusing her invitation, inviting her to my little adobe south of town instead. But who’s to say I wouldn’t open the door, expecting to see my mother, and get a process server instead, legal papers in hand?

From: arielgore@earthlinh.net

Subject: Re: Thanksgiving

Date: November 13, 2011 8:02:34 AM MDT

To: evedebona@yahoo.com

Hi Mom,

The kids and I would be happy to spend Thanksgiving with you, but we already have a plan. There’s a bar out on Highway 14 called the Mine Shaft Tavern. It’s in Madrid. Maybe 15 miles out past the penitentiary. They do a community Thanksgiving. You’re welcome to join us.

Ariel

From: evedebona@yahoo.com

Subject: Re: Thanksgiving

Date: November 13, 2011 8:03:21 AM MDT

To: arielgore@earthlink.net

At a bar?!?

YES. THE MINE Shaft Tavern. It seemed the appropriate place to emerge from underground.

My mother didn’t RSVP to my Thanksgiving bar invitation, but it was all I had to offer. I didn’t want to bring my kids to her house and I didn’t want to give her my address. I would behave in a way I was going to be proud of, and she could take it or leave it. Maia and Maxito and I would spend the day together regardless. Abra and her one white friend from the Native Arts College would meet us there, too. Sol would come pick Maxito up later in the evening for a second dinner at her place.

So it was Thanksgiving afternoon and we set out from our little adobe, took the back roads into the Ortiz Mountain range, headed south and west on that winding desert highway into the glare of the November sun.

Maia wore a tight black dress with a fur collar, stiletto heels. She pushed a Black Keys CD into the player.

“Do you think Nonna will show up?” I asked her.

“Oh, she’ll show up,” Maia hummed.

“Who’s Nonna?” Maxito asked form the back seat.

I looked at him in the rearview.

He tugged at his clip-on bow tie.

“She’s your grandmother, honey. Maybe you’ll remember her when you see her.”

We rolled into Madrid, that Old West town half a parody of itself. The Mine Shaft’s parking lot full of hogs and trucks and VW vans. The bar spilled over with bikers and cowboys and hippies. All leather jackets and cowboy boots and the smell of flowers and patchouli. I recognized the white girl with dreadlocks who’d come into the candle shop to warn me that Sol was leaving notes for Bipa at the mime school. My skittish single mom neighbor huddled with her kids at a table near the fireplace, avoided eye contact with anyone.

We grabbed a long wooden table in the corner.

No band played, so a dozen preschoolers had taken over the raised back corner of the bar, squealing as they stage-dived.

Maxito sidled up to join them, stood shy on the periphery at first, then jumped in and lead the gang until he limped back to the table, flushed and worn-out.

We didn’t have to wonder after my mother for long.

“Nonna!” Maia yelled.

Gray dress and red lipstick. She floated in on the arm of a six-foot-five black man who she introduced first to the bartender and then to all of us as “my son the surgeon” despite their obvious lack of physical resemblance.

“No Ronaldo?” Maia mouthed.

My mother rolled her eyes. “I suppose he’s with his wife.” She looked me up and down. “Happy Thanksgiving. Have you lost weight?”

Maxito kept his eyes on his grandmother as she moved back and forth through the crowd.

The cowboys in their tight jeans and turquoise belt buckles glanced up at her from their seats at the bar when she passed. She flirted and danced with them, Dixie Chicks and Rascal Flatts singing through the speakers, wood floorboards creaking. My mother laughed.

THE SURGEON NUDGED me as we waited in the potluck line for turkey and greens. “I hope you know she’s leaving everything to me.”

I picked up a dinner roll, spread it with Earth Balance, nudged him back and winked. “I hope you know there isn’t anything to leave.”

The surgeon frowned as he piled his plate with mashed potatoes, poured the vegan gravy.

I hadn’t had a drink since Sol left – sought the clarity of sobriety – but I was ready for a beer. I set my plate on the bar and ordered a pint of Dead Canary Ale.

Maia had finally turned 21, but nobody asked her for an ID when she shouldered up next to me and asked for a Bloody Mary.

“HOW DO YOU like the Native Arts College?” the surgeon asked Abra’s friend at the long table.

The girl shook her blonde locks. “The Native people are very racist against whites.”

“I can imagine,” the surgeon scratched his chin, like he took her seriously. “Those racist Native Americans. That’s been going on for hundreds of years.”

Abra laughed at that, but the blonde girl nodded like she’d finally found someone who understood her pain.

Maia smirked as she cut into her smoked turkey. “This might be more similar to the original Thanksgiving than anything I’ve ever experienced.”

Family and strangers sharing a meal; toothy smiles as if we weren’t all in it for the kill.

A PAUL SIMON song started through the speakers and my mother glided back to our table. “I love this place,” she sighed, and she put her arm around the surgeon. “You’re such a dear man to bring your mother here for her last Thanksgiving.”

Maxito stared at her, then glanced at Maia, at the surgeon, at Abra and at Abra’s friend, and then at me, his four-year-old heart/mind taking it all in. “I like turkey,” he said softly as he stuck his fork into the pile of meat on his paper plate. “I just really like turkey.”

Maia lifted her Bloody Mary and shrugged. “Let’s not even list what we’re thankful for this year.”

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