The Cactus
~
My house overlooked a canyon, and at sunset the pinks and blues played havoc with the colors in my desert garden. The prickly pear cactus, a vibrant green, turned blue, and rusty umber. It was a flat, palmlike plant with long needle thorns arranged at precise intervals.
My mother taught me how to make a soup from the large pads, the cladodes. Her son would cook, she had informed me. A man should know how to feed himself. Over the years, it had come in handy, a technique I used to show off, to impress women.
On the second or third date and I invited them over for dinner. I handed them a glass of Pinot Noir, presented a block of aged cheddar on the back deck, and we enjoyed the sunset as we talked about our common interests.
Before the conversation stilted, I walked over to the cactus patch, flipped a switch blade, and cut off a few nopals, careful of the prickers. This typically elicited some high-pitched cry, a laugh, or a question. And then I would say,
“I invited you to dinner, didn’t I?”
And then we’d move to the kitchen for more wine and more conversation, and with sure movements, I would strip the nopal of its thorns. She would watch my hands as I deftly avoided the spikes, rinsing the paddle and shucking it as simply as a cucumber. The needles fell to the cutting board, and I would never mention it, staying focused on her. If she brought it up, that I was “very good at that,” or “wasn’t I nervous of the prickers?” I told her,
“My mother taught me,” thereby communicating my respect for women. I crafted this routine to communicate all of the right things; I worked with my hands, I wasn’t afraid of thorns, I was a provider.
I changed the music now and again to keep it interesting for myself. When she was gone, I rated the evening; how well had the performance gone? What was the reaction of my audience? Had my messages landed? And how had she played her part, appropriately impressed? I got very good at reading those looks, understanding what they were thinking, and though there were follow-up dates, my interest always fizzled, or hers. One of us just stopped texting or calling the other, and then I would get bored, and go looking, and another would catch my eye.
There was one woman I never bothered to ask. The one who ran the nursery two streets over, selling cactus and other arid environment plants. She managed her stock like she managed her customers, giving them what they needed and then moving on to the next project. I never needed her help; I knew my plants and had no need of guidance in the care of them. My mother had taught me.
But then I got bored. It had been several months since meeting anyone the least bit intriguing. The nursery was quiet, empty but for me, and we got to talking. There was no ring on her finger, and I had never seen a man linger around her. I came often enough that I would have recognized a partner.
I expected her to be pleased when I invited her over. But she shrugged and said sure, she didn’t have anything at home, and she was hungry.
My house wasn’t far, so she followed me back. I hadn’t had time to clean the place, to set the mood, the tone, I hadn’t been planning on asking her. But all my many evenings before had prepped me, trained me, and so I started the music, brought out the cheese and the wine, and she was already on the back deck.
She sipped her glass, taking in the sky, but this time, I didn’t know what color it was. I pulled at the edges of my memory for conversation topics. I had seen her at that nursery for years, but I didn’t know anything about her. Cicadas chirped through the canyon below, and I found I didn’t want to break their hum. I was tired of the pointless questions, but muscle memory took over, turning me to my party trick.
“You can eat those, did you know?” she asked, sliding past me. She went to my cactus patch and stood before the nopals, examining them clinically.
The air was there, the breath in my mouth, but no words came. I didn’t know my part.
In a blink, she flicked out a blade and lopped off a paddle, then another.
“What are you doing?” I asked. Outrage prickled my arms.
“Come on, I’ll show you.”
Speechless, I followed her. She planted her foot everywhere she walked. I noticed it in the nursery, her territory, her ground. But this was here, in my little home, a place she’d never been.
She washed the pads and deftly stripped the prickers. I sat on the other side of the island, just watching. Watching sun golden fingers, callused and controlled, shuck thorns without a second glance, talking on the whole while, telling me about the types of cacti, and the trips she had taken, and the coyotes that visited her camp at night on her last trip to the desert.
She diced the nopals, and I watched as though out of body, unable to look away yet ungrounded. Then she broke the pattern, the familiar ritual.
She reached for the skillet, set the heat, tossed the diced nopals in, and plucked fresh tomatoes from the bowl on the counter.
“Stop,” I wanted to tell her, “You’re doing it wrong. You want the pot. It’s over there. Didn’t you see it?”
But she moved with such confidence that I dared not question her. She knew what she was about. It was as though she had done this a thousand times. I could not look away.
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What a fun read! Thank you so much!!!