by Tatjana Soli
* * *
From the dark surrounding groves, three men appeared, as if they had metamorphosed from the very trees—two Hispanics and one masked by a baseball cap and a bandana from the eyes down. They mumbled about looking for work while the bandanaed one squinted through the darkness at the house, farther up the drive.
Impossible that a house brimming with hundreds of people the day before could be empty and helpless tonight.
“My foreman, Octavio, is here. He will take care of you.”
But the bandana man seemed hostile to what he sensed was a lie. One of the Hispanic men, wearing a dirty, reeking T-shirt, had a stagger that she thought was a deformity until she noticed the same heaviness in the stride of the other. Drunk. She pictured the loaded rifle safely on the top shelf of the closet in the entry hallway. How perfectly, uselessly far away it was. Even if she reached it, the child-lock would take extra precious seconds to unfasten.
Out of the corner of her eye, Claire saw Gwen walking down the drive looking for her. A cold sweat formed under her arms at the sparkle of a moonlit blade in the hand of the bandana man. She bluffed, “Octavio, where are you?” until he hushed her with a shave of metal. They must smell fear on her like dogs.
“He’s gone home,” Gwen yelled back.
The bandana one touched her arm with the cold flat of the blade as he stood partially behind her. His breath was hot and sour; she could smell his unwashed skin as Gwen came up to the group.
“Qué linda. Bonito pelo,” said the staggering one as he reached to touch Gwen’s hair. Quickly she stepped back, eyes widening as she registered that none of these were their usual workers. Far away, Lucy could be heard arguing with Joshua. Claire saw it, too, for the first time, her daughter’s new curves, now a young woman rather than an awkward teenager, and it put a vise on her heart.
“Go back to the house, Gwen.”
“No!” the bandana one said. “Keep her.” He signaled to the other, who locked his arms around Gwen’s narrow shoulders in a bear hug. When she struggled in a spasm of panic, he shook her like a rag until her body went quiet. He held her with one arm and punched her on the side of the head with his other hand. She yelped in pain.
“Let her go back.” Claire put herself between the men and her daughter, her body forming a protective shield.
Raspy laughter from the other two, and the bandana one nodded. “Let’s all go see what’s in the house.”
Her thoughts stopped, sputtered, jumped, grabbing. “Money,” she said, the suggestion of what they might otherwise do intolerable.
“Let’s go.”
“Not here. It’s at the bank. Tomorrow.”
The bandana one laughed, and she knew this was what got him off, the humiliation. He clapped his hands, an understanding between them. “We’ll need a hostage. Otherwise you’ll tell the cops.”
“Touch her and the deal’s off.”
“How do you figure you’re calling the shots?” He stopped, contemplating. “Okay, let the girl go. Keep quiet, cutie, or Mama isn’t coming back.”
A car motor broke the silence, headlights sweeping the trees just short of them as a pickup went up the drive to the house. Octavio returned or Forster come back early? The men ran, pulling Claire with them to the deepest part of the black-bitter orchard. Afraid for herself, more afraid for her children, she let out a cry. A mistake. They shoved her on the ground, a boot kicked her side. “Shut up!” They would kill her. Kill them. Mouth gagged with thick fingers and dirty cloth.
“How does the rich puta feel now? Want to order me around now?” he said, as a fist crushed bone.
Rage, hatred, welled through muscles that should have had the strength of new steel. Unacceptable to her that she could be pinned down so easily, that she could not fight back. That she had ignored Forster’s warnings of keeping a gun close by. Like a dog, she bit an ear and was punched. Kneed a groin and was cut. Would gladly have died fighting back, except the maternal kept her from sacrificing herself.
A small voice, not Forster’s, not Octavio’s, broke through. The worst pain yet—Josh had somehow found them. “Mom?”
She screamed and grabbed hair. A hard knock to her head. As she lost consciousness, she heard a scurrying and then one of the men winded, butted in the stomach. “Grab the little fuck!”
* * *
Recalling those next hours, so frightening, consciousness intermittent, all thought evaporated. She was on the same plane of existence as an animal being led to the stockyard, pure physical dread, and afterward, months later, she understood her mother’s terror escaping across the border, how for so many years she was unable to talk of it. Terror was intimate, entwined in the moment, not translatable.
Afterward, her mouth filled with salt from blood and sweet from blood. Seeded in the dirt, her fingers plowed earth she loved but was now separated from. Divorced, dismissed, expelled from. Was this the feeling of being thrown out of that first, perfect garden? Her farm, her trees, and yet she had been rendered helpless. She woke from unconsciousness to the comfort of a warm rain that turned out to be piss. All bets off because she had fought, and they had gorged on their power over her. She would never forget the spiked hatred in their laughter. Their carelessness. Their lack of fear in repercussion. She lay on the ground, unable to move. Broken arm, torn life. Later (how long? time untethered), alone, she melted into the ground, a superficial burial. Until she remembered Josh.
Chapter 2
The calling voices of the girls were like fingers poking in the darkness. Purple groves that took the dark shapes of men. Leaves in slow swoon on the trees. Her trees, her orchard, but unable to protect her. Broken Claire lay in the dirt as the irrigation came on, the drops sharp and caressing. The earth underneath her fed to mud, but still she lay there. Waiting until the pain washed away. It would never wash away. Curious cleansing of water against evil.
Importune time to be shown eternity, but the stars swung like heavy gates overhead, a celestial unveiling. She saw stars with her eyes closed—a mystery. A mystery, too, why she couldn’t force herself back to the groves, the earth, her brokenness, but kept spinning above. It made sense that heaven would offer itself to those most in need of its vision, not those secure in starched kneel in church pews.
Octavio called her name, but she refused to answer. Did not want the girls or anyone to see her. She in a swale of blackness, hidden. Later she woke to his scooping arms as she struggled blind against him, ineffectual against him, too. He carried her back to the house, but he could not return her.
The house was brightly lit, morbidly festive, as they entered. Forster locked Claire in yet another set of arms. “You’re safe.” Safe hardly.
Behind his shoulder, through her swelled eyelid, she saw policemen and other people. “Are you okay?” “Just some scratches. More scared than anything else.” The doctor took her away. Broken arm, bruises, slight concussion. The house was crowded with strangers, confusing her, as in a dream. Was this still a cruel continuation of her birthday party? A known face, Mrs. Girbaldi, her unlikely confidant, stood by the stairs, owl-like eyes blinking out of her unmade face. Had Claire ever seen her without makeup before?
“Terrible, terrible,” Mrs. Girbaldi chirped.
“Where’s Joshua?” Forster asked.
“Where are the girls?” Claire answered.
They sat on the couch, Lucy and Gwen holding hands. Faces tracked by tears. When they saw her, they jumped up and rushed to be comforted. Buried their heads so hard against her ribs that already hurt badly, but she didn’t care. She hugged each of them, held them away. “Are you all right?”
They nodded, unsure, the damage invisible but felt.
“Where’s Josh?” Claire said.
“He’s not with you.” Forster making a statement.
“She was alone,” Octavio said.
“He ran to look for you,” Gwen said. “Octavio called the police.”
“Where’s Josh?” The idea growing in Claire’s he
ad that all these strangers were to fill the vacuum of his absence. She searched for Forster’s hand, stumbled across the room to the door. “We need to find him.”
“They have search teams setting out. You need rest.”
“Josh is still out in the orchard.” Claire shook her head, fear tightening the muscles. “Where they took me.”
Octavio stood as if made of wood, helpless, silent.
“Come,” Forster said to him. “Show me where you found her.”
* * *
During the first hours of Josh’s being missing, Claire convinced herself it could all be a misunderstanding. Did she really remember his voice in the dark, the headbutt, or was it her imagination that later inserted it into the scene? A cosmic blip that would soon right itself. Her son, the baby of the family and the only boy, was spoiled, no getting around that. Maybe he was up to his favorite trick—pinching a chocolate bar meant to be shared with his sisters, stealing it and hiding out in the orchards to devour it in peace.
As teams of volunteers and police began to scour the acres of orchard, Forster called neighbors, the parents of Joshua’s friends, all in the off hope that Josh had simply run off, cadged a dinner with friends, not called home. Forster prayed for the irresponsibility he usually punished the boy for. Darkness of real night settled in, a penetrating darkness the boy could not tolerate without his night-light before sleep. At ten, Claire still indulged him this.
When Claire’s parents arrived, having turned around within an hour of arriving home in Santa Monica, she collapsed into her mother’s arms. “He’s afraid of the dark.”
Raisi looked at her bruised face. “Oh, my girl, what has happened to us?”
Claire shook her head. “They wanted money—”
“Hush,” Raisi said, nodding toward the girls.
Raisi watched her granddaughters wandering lost in the living room with smudged faces and reddened eyes, with shorts and T-shirts too insubstantial for the evening’s cool. She signaled to Claire’s father, Almos, to look after their daughter, and then she went to work. Herded the girls into their bedroom, drew warm bubble baths. Went into the kitchen and expertly made dough for cookies. Started a pot of coffee and served it to the volunteers congregated on the porch. Made a sort of order from the chaos.
She knew the value of trifles such as warm socks and hot cider in the face of devastation. Claire could count on her. At first Raisi had been a skeptic of this life her daughter chose, but now she was proud of what had been accomplished. Wrong that after such careful work, it could all so easily be undone. She would not tell Claire her experience of life—that this was the way of the world, to unravel everything one loved most. It was always only a matter of time. She prayed it not be so, but her heart ached with the probability.
Raisi found Claire in Josh’s bedroom, curled underneath his narrow single bed. She made her get up and lie on the mattress, under the posters of airplanes and baseball heroes. Josh swore the family to secrecy about the stuffed animals that he still kept, because even though it was babyish, he wanted someday to be a veterinarian. Raisi sat on the bed to stroke her daughter’s head, seeing the discolored skin and swollen eye and temple, her arm in a sling. Hours later when Claire woke, a question in her eyes.
Raisi shook her head. “He’s not home yet.”
“I’m scared.”
“Be brave for the girls.”
* * *
Claire closed her eyes, wishing that this strength were inherited, genetically passed down through the nerve endings, absorbed in the tissue, exhaled in the breath. Raisi, who had escaped Hungary during the uprising, who had lost all her extended family—mother, father, aunts, uncles, brothers—an entire country gone in one swoop of exile. Halfway around the world in Los Angeles, Raisi found and married a man, Almos Nagy, from the same small district village as herself. He ran an antiquarian bookshop in Santa Monica, a dusky backwater of a store that barely made enough to sustain them. Each afternoon, a half-dozen expats would gather and talk about what they had left behind. Things and places and people that over the years no longer existed except in memories.
Almos and Raisi had one daughter and, grateful, were afraid to push their luck for more. They had learned to conserve, to hoard, to save for a time of need. After she’d traveled thousands of miles, Raisi’s life had ended not terribly differently from that if she had stayed in place, except for the longing. Which Claire had inherited, but her nostalgia extended to things not yet gone.
As a teenager, Claire had chafed at the dull, unrelenting routine of her parents—breakfast, lunch, dinner, always rotating between the same predictable choices, regardless of seasons, with only small concessions to the holidays. But now in the days of waiting for Josh’s return, routine was a lifeline that kept the whole family from going under. It returned Claire to the past, trying to find the wrong turn that had caused this.
“Go take a bath,” Raisi said.
Claire hesitated.
“I’ll get you if there is any news.”
In this way, Claire was prodded to go on with life.
* * *
The first restless night passed with no clues to Josh’s whereabouts. Dawn broke with an ache. The next day, all the workers were ordered to go home, and the farm had an eerie, deserted feel as forensic experts took over, going back over every inch of earth in the daylight, sifting soil in places, looking for signs. They worked meticulously from the farmhouse out, so at their current rate the ranch would be done in years if not decades, while each moment mattered to Josh. Claire walked over the farm, scoured the earth where she had been found, not even able to find her own black drops of blood on the soil. The police demanded the water be turned off even though it was a record heat wave, not wanting evidence contaminated. Octavio cranked the big, shuddering wheels of the pumps closed.
Raisi took care of the girls, cooked and cleaned for the family, but the smell of food being prepared in the kitchen was a betrayal to Claire, and an even bigger betrayal when her stomach responded. She thought it unspeakable that life would dare go on with her son not there to eat his dinner. She sat at the table picking at a plate of macaroni and cheese.
Lucy, reading a book at the table, looked up at her. “We’re just like the people in The Cherry Orchard.”
Claire stared at her. “Why do people have children?” she said, then clamped her hand over her mouth in shame. “I didn’t mean that.”
“I know Josh will come back,” Lucy said, patting Claire’s hand with her own childish one.
Claire looked at her. “Why?”
The intensity of the stare made Lucy’s face burn with guilt. “This is his favorite.” Pointing her fork to the food.
The spoonful in Claire’s mouth turned toxic. She ran to the sink and spat it out because, somewhere, her boy was hungry. Her stomach full when his was not.
* * *
The hours passed in a trance, the farm abandoned as the searchers, more desperate, skipped areas now, made looping excursions farther and farther out, past the lake, the fenced ditches, the neighbors’ land. For once, Claire stayed inside, unwilling to go out into the groves. Raisi spent her time in the kitchen or in the living room, brushing out the girls’ hair, stringing it with ribbon, teaching them parlor card games she had learned as a young girl. Dropping their usual teenage sangfroid, the girls now acted clinging and childish.
Claire and Forster fell into bed each night stunned, sleeping fully clothed, with shoes nearby. One night, there was the smallest tap on the bedroom door.
“Josh?” Claire said, bolting upright in bed.
Gwen came in, her cotton nightgown glowing in the dark. “We can’t sleep,” she said. Lucy sulked behind her.
“Bring your sleeping bags in,” Claire said, hiding her disappointment. She watched over them as they arranged themselves around the bed, the bags like cocoons with the unformed girls inside. Since the disappearance, Lucy, thirteen years old, had started to suck her thumb in her sleep. It bothered Claire
how meek the girls had turned, how serious-faced. But how could it be otherwise? Her mother was right. If she wasn’t careful, she would lose them also.
A lifetime in each cycle of hours. Now Claire fought her increasing despair as one day passed into the next by forcing herself to go with Octavio to roam the grounds, both of them gloomy about the burnt edges of the thirsty leaves. If they didn’t turn the water on soon, the fruit would be destroyed. Should they pick early and risk having the wholesaler reject much of it? Impossible without bringing in a full team of laborers. The false drought depriving the trees of their lifeblood, their air and nourishment. A whole season’s worth of work, the entire crop, gone. If it went longer, the trees would die and need to be replanted. Enough to put them out of business.
Claire hid in the girls’ room, reading them story after story, and when her voice cracked too much, they took turns reading. “What would you like? Something new?” But they did not want a story they did not already know the outcome to, did not want the complexities of the adult world. They reverted to their childhood, known classics: Black Beauty, The Secret Garden, Anne of Green Gables, Jane Eyre.
* * *
Housebound, cloistered days, the sound of classical music, the smells of her mother’s cooking, returned Claire to her own childhood.
Their apartment was over her father’s bookstore. One had to wind one’s way through rows of shelves to find the staircase to get there. She would come home from school with friends and be embarrassed by the foreign smell of their apartment, the ever-present smells of cabbage and burning votive candles, her mother’s rosary and thick nylons that made her look ancient and severe compared to the stylish mothers in tennis skirts and sneakers. Their home even sounded different. No big-band records or Sinatra. Instead, Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsodies played continually till the vinyl records crackled, and as a child Claire thought that was the sound of the past itself.