The Lost Recipe for Happiness - By Barbara O'Neal Page 0,81
all of her favorites—chicken enchiladas and chocolate cake with chocolate frosting. Strawberry soda. She brought in Edwin’s favorites, too. Hamburgers from a fast-food joint, and french fries, and Coke in a paper cup. He loved fast food. For Albert, her youngest brother, only fourteen when he died, she cooked chorizo and scrambled eggs and fluffy white tortillas, because he could eat breakfast for days and days.
When the food was ready, she went to the living room to prepare the altar on top of the southwestern-style buffet. First, she spread out a striped serape she used every year, one of the only things she carried with her, place to place to place. It had once covered her bed at the house in Espanola, and now was worn thin and soft, the colors faded. On top of it, she set up the framed photographs—one of Edwin and herself at a wedding dance the year before the accident, one of Isobel at her sixteenth birthday party, wearing a tiara and hamming it up for the camera. There was one of her cousin Penny at seven, which was the only one she could find, and one, always the hardest, of her brother Albert at twelve, grinning with zest into the camera from his prized bicycle, which to Elena’s eyes now looked rickety and rusted and old, the tire fat and sturdy. It was painted blue.
When it was all ready, she put out a vase of red roses, and scattered some marigolds around it. The plates of food were there for the taking, the eggs still steaming, the cake neatly sliced, beer poured into a glass for Edwin.
Today, Maria Elena would go down to the crosses she’d made at the side of the road where the accident had happened. She would take down the worn-out, tattered flowers from the year before, and repaint the names of her dead children, and freshen up the items placed there twenty-one years ago. For a moment, Elena let herself be a ghost with her mother, dusting away the grime of a year, the tangles of tumbleweeds speared with dead leaves, the bits of paper blown in, the odd beer lid or milk bottle cap.
One day, perhaps, she would go to the site again. She had been there only once, the second year after it happened. By then, she’d been walking well again, and had got through rehab and worked as a prep girl in a Santa Fe restaurant. She went home for Easter and her eldest brother Ricardo took her to the descansos.
Elena got out of the car and threw up. It was nothing she could remember exactly, because really, it was all such a blur. But she couldn’t stay. Not even long enough to put flowers down. Ricky drove her back home, silently. Mama clucked over her, washed her face, cried a little. “Oh, m’ija, m’ija,” she said, over and over, her hands cold and gnarled on Elena’s forehead. “You shouldn’t go there. Never, never. La Santisima Muerte let you go.”
In her Aspen living room, Elena bowed her head as was her habit, and prayed the rosary on carved ivory beads she’d owned since her confirmation. Around her, the rustling intensified and the temperature in the room dropped, and still she prayed quietly, letting them come and taste the offerings, and touch her face and hair and pat her back. She prayed decade after decade, and there was a little sound of laughter at her back, and a joke she didn’t quite catch, and a kiss on her cheek and a whispered thank you and she let a few tears fall, but not very many. This altar was not for her, but for them, those who were ahead on the road all would one day walk. A gift to them, a way to honor them.
A knock on the door in her fourth decade startled her, but knowing it was Alvin, she rushed over and opened the door. Julian stood there, looking oddly winded, his hands at his sides. Alvin wiggled happily, and she let him by, patting his head as she put her body squarely in the doorway.
Thinking of his formality with her last night, Elena said, “Thank you for bringing my dog.”
“You’re welcome.” A tangle of sunlight fell through the curls by his temples, edged the line of his dark glasses. The little goatee, artful and self-conscious, surrounded his red lips and drew attention to their lushness. Cherries, she thought. Or plums. She rubbed the inside of