Marisita Lopez was growing ever more frustrated with her status in the second group, although she was not surprised. She had a very poor opinion of herself. This was because Marisita believed in perfection, and held herself to that standard. If you’re a wise person, you understand immediately that this is not a logical goal. The conception of perfection exists only so that we have something to strive toward: Impossibility is built into it, which is why we call it perfect instead of extremely good. The truth is that only a few things in history have ever been perfect. There was a perfect sunset in Nairobi in 1912. There was a bandoneon constructed in Cordoba that perfectly captured the drama of human existence in just a single note. Lauren Bacall’s voice was unmatched perfection.
Marisita believed that a few people could reach perfection if only they tried hard enough. And as she had been trying, and had not reached it, she considered herself a failure at all times.
No one else counted Marisita as a failure. The number of things Marisita could do extremely well was a large one. She could do everything expected of a woman in the early 1960s: She could clean, and she could cook, and she could sew. But she could also play the foot pedal loom like Paganini played the violin, and it was said that the latter had sold his soul to the devil for his skill. She formed pots out of clay that were so striking that sometimes, when she went to gather clay for a new one, she discovered that the clay had eagerly already begun to shape itself for her. Her voice was so well trained that bulls would lie down when they heard her sing. She was so famed for her studied and just empathy that men and women would come for miles to solicit her as mediator in disputes. She could ride two horses at the same time, one leg on each horse, and still hold down her skirt to maintain her modesty, if she felt like it. Her segueza, developed from an ancient recipe, was so excellent that time itself stood still while you were eating it in order to savor the flavor along with you.
All of this was to say that Marisita was not perfect, but she came much closer to it than many people. But when you have set your sights on perfection, nothing less will satisfy.
The day after her radio interview, Marisita prepared for her next journey in search of Daniel. Although she had been frightened when she learned that her love for him made her vulnerable to his darkness, it hadn’t changed her resolve to search for him. After all, it was no more and no less the risk he himself had taken when he’d offered his help to her.
However, the interview had given her the moment of introspection necessary to realize that her plan to search for him incessantly, without returning for supplies, was suspiciously close to her previous decision to walk out into the desert to die. When she examined her motive for searching constantly without replenishing her supplies or health, she was dissatisfied with the imperfection she found there. Marisita modified her plan to one that would circumvent any of her previous poisonous motivation: She would search for Daniel daily, but she would also spend enough time in Bicho Raro each day to stock up on food and water and to sleep.
Before, she had wanted to go out into the desert because of despair. She vowed that now she would go out into the desert only in the name of hope. She at least owed Daniel this new purity of purpose.
Now she cooked a new batch of tortillas to take with her that day. Although she was not a perfect cook, she was so much closer to perfection than anyone else had ever seen that she had been asked to be the official cook for the pilgrims. The food she prepared smelled and looked so wonderful that the Sorias were envious—though not envious enough to risk eating Marisita’s food. (Rosa was the only Soria to cook now, as Antonia was too angry to cook and Judith had moved, and even she cooked listlessly, since Rosa herself dined only on gossip.) So her near-perfection was only for the pilgrims to enjoy. It was a difficult thing to prepare food when the sky was always raining on her, however, and so special accommodations had been prepared for her.
She already lived in a somewhat unusual home known as the Doctor’s Cabin. It was the oldest surviving building in Bicho Raro and dated from the decade when the Sorias had arrived. It had never been occupied by a Soria, however. It had been built for and by the first pilgrim to come to them in Colorado, a doctor who’d received the first miracle and then remained with them until his death. He had never confessed to the Sorias why he had come to Bicho Raro—his darkness had built up inside him after he’d won a fatal duel with another doctor over forty years before. In many ways, the Doctor’s Cabin was an appropriate home for Marisita to occupy, because the doctor worked tirelessly on healing others but never on healing himself.
It was old and crude enough that it still had a dirt floor, and after it was obvious that Marisita was not leaving anytime soon, Michael and Luis had dug a small drainage system through the cabin’s three rooms in order to funnel water away from her bed and the kitchen. This prevented the cabin from filling with water and drowning her while she slept, and also kept the kitchen counters drained while she was preparing food. A previous pilgrim, now moved on, had used clear plastic and coat hangers to construct her a series of umbrellas in varied sizes. Marisita placed these over the various elements of meals that she was preparing in order to keep everything from becoming waterlogged. It had been difficult at first to see what she was doing through the rain-spattered plastic, but, as in most things, she eventually became extremely good at it.
“How are you today, Mr. Bunch?” Marisita asked. Theldon Bunch, the pilgrim with moss growing all over his body, had lurched to her doorway as she toasted chilies for a later meal.
“Mm,” Theldon replied. He had his paperback novel folded inside out and stuffed in his armpit in a way that Marisita found painful to look at. “Is breakfast done?”
“Breakfast was hours ago,” Marisita said. “You missed it. Sleep in?”
“Time got away from me,” Theldon replied. Time was always getting away from him. “Is there any left, hon?”
“I can make you a plate.” There were always beans simmering, and tomatoes didn’t take long to heat, and a few eggs made the plate look full. Theldon slouched and read his book while he waited, scratching absently at the moss growing on his cheek as he did. While Marisita cooked for him, she thought about the radio show and what she would say about her past if she did agree to be on the show again. She wondered if Daniel could hear her, and if so, how he would feel about her telling the story of him helping her. It was a very strange development to be able to speak to the Sorias in any way, and she could not quite get over the shock of having a conversation with them yesterday after weeks and weeks of being told to not so much as whisper to any of them, after a day where she had seen Daniel Soria destroyed for that very thing.
“You’re a treasure,” Theldon said as she handed the plate to him. “If there’s anything I can do.” He said this every time she handed a plate to him.
“If you ever wanted to grind the corn for me, it’s hard for me to do it without getting it wet,” she told him. She told him this every time she handed a plate to him.