The Forgetting Tree

by Tatjana Soli

  “But you never can trust them totally,” Donald said. He had followed them outside. “Claire has been trying to keep us apart.”

  Minna looked into her drink, stiff and prim as a schoolgirl, and Claire was embarrassed for the poor impression she was making. Now she was as eager for them to like each other as she had formerly been reluctant for them to meet.

  “Minna’s studying at Berkeley,” she said.

  “Really? My daughter’s a freshman there. Where do you live?”

  “I just started PhD work there. I did undergrad at Cambridge.”

  “Too smart for me,” he said.

  “Actually, Minna is the great-granddaughter of the novelist Jean Rhys.”

  Don looked blank.

  Minna leaned on one leg while droning off the whole recitation in a bored, singsong voice. “Her best-known book, Wide Sargasso Sea, was a postcolonial answer to Jane Eyre.”

  Don still looked blank.

  “You know … Rochester?” she said.

  “Oh, Rochester, sure. I’m not a totally illiterate actor. So you’re an intellectual?”

  “That was great-granny. I’m just a simple girl.”

  “I’ve been rereading the book,” Claire said. “Rochester’s obsessed by money and lust. A perfect role for you.”

  Don laughed. “What are you doing with boring old Claire?”

  Stung by the insult, Claire debated what to tell him. She wasn’t ready for full public disclosure.

  “I’m a friend of Lucy’s. I’m staying on the ranch for the summer.”

  “Dear,” Don said, taking Minna’s arm as he led her away, “come give me your sage advice on a dog I’m considering adopting. I want to name him Heathcliff.”

  She looked over at Claire, and they both realized they had been played.

  “Sometimes first impressions are deceiving,” Don said.

  Claire waved them off. “Go. Tell him to take the dog. Save a life.”

  Minna gave Claire a strange smile. After she disappeared with Don, Claire went back inside and sagged down into a sofa, exhausted. The interaction had served as distraction, but now, alone, reality came down on her even more heavily than before. She didn’t like lying about her cancer, but maybe it was better than suffering those pitying looks that the soldier had endured. She wanted to escape her own life. It had been a mistake coming, she thought, and just as she was contemplating sneaking out, Mrs. Girbaldi made her way over.

  “They’re all eating and drinking up a storm, but no donations or bids,” she said. “Wrong type of crowd.”

  “Don’s taking another dog.”

  “Good,” Mrs. Girbaldi said, eyeing a potential donor at the cheese table. “He seems to have made a new lady friend, too. Be right back.”

  Claire ate and talked, drank and listened, constantly checking for Minna’s return, ready to leave. Over an hour passed before she came back.

  “Where’ve you been?”

  “We took the dog to his house.”

  “I want to go home.” Claire grabbed her purse and said curt good-byes.

  Mrs. Girbaldi looked unhappy as Claire pecked her cheek. “Leaving so soon?”

  “Nerves about Monday.” In the car, alone, Claire turned to Minna. “You drove to Don’s house?”

  Minna looked straight ahead, out the windshield, petulant as a teenager. “Yeah. We put the dog in the yard and then we fucked on his couch.”

  Claire shook her head as if the girl’s words had blurred meaning. “What are you saying?”

  “I thought that’s what you wanted. You threw me at him.”

  “What I wanted? I don’t even know what that means. That you’d do something like that if I wanted?”

  “Which part?”

  In that moment, Claire knew she was in over her head. As much as she liked Minna’s iconoclasm, she realized she was habituated to the opposite—people, including herself, who offered no surprises. Was Minna’s wildness the right thing for her now?

  “I enjoyed it if that’s what you’re asking,” Minna said.

  “How will I face him? This is a small community, everyone will know. He’ll want to see you now.” Then a new thought occurred to Claire. “Are you quitting me?”

  Minna leaned over and rubbed Claire’s arm up and down, rough and comforting as if reassuring a child. “I explained to him I don’t want a romance now, okay? It was just recreational.”

  “Jesus.” Claire looked at her. “You slept with him?”

  Minna giggled, and then they both broke into roaring screams of laughter, a shredding, incredulous kind of hilarity that tore up the animosity between them.

  “For your information,” Minna said, when they could at last breathe again, “he doesn’t know who Rochester is. Had him confused with Heathcliff. He said he could read our reactions, and he played us. He’s very small.”

  Claire screeched, choking, and covered her ears. Her chest and stomach ached with the heaves of laughter; it was the first time she had laughed since her operation. “No more. No more, no more, no more, you bad girl.”

  * * *

  That night Minna walked into the kitchen wearing pale blue cotton pajamas, face washed smooth, hair pulled back in a bun. It felt like going back in time to when the girls were in their teenage years. Claire heated milk in a pan, and they talked about the logistics of the coming week. Already, the events of the evening were fading, and they had eased into a routine of familiarity that was out of keeping with the short time they had known each other.

  “Not to hurt your feelings, but I like you much better now that your daughters are gone. You seem … more yourself.”

  Claire laughed. “They’re good girls.”

  “I love Lucy. She saved me.”

  “You’re too young, but when you settle down and have children … you love them more than your own life. But they grow up to be your jury. All the judgment of how you raised them, the mistakes you made. It’s a lifelong sentence.”

  “You’re a good mother.”

  “I don’t think they see that.”

  They drank from their mugs.

  “Can I tell you a secret?” Claire said.

  “Of course, my sister.”

  “All I want, all I’ve wanted since … a long time, was to stay on this farm.”

  “It’s not much of a secret.”

  Claire shook her head, impatient. “My daughters don’t understand.”

  “No.”

  “They have no feeling for the land. Refuse to live here. They want me to leave, and sometimes I have doubts … maybe they are right.”

  Minna put her hand on Claire’s. “Maybe you should offer the ranch to one daughter to take over. She runs it and gets to keep it.”

  “That would create hard feelings.”

  “It’s their choice. Maybe there will be only one taker. Hopefully there will be one taker.”

  * * *

  An hour later in her bedroom, book slumped against her chest, Claire awoke to the sound of a strangled voice. It took several minutes to shake off the impression that its source was not in her dream, which had been troubled, nor even from an overloud television, but real, and its source was Minna crying. She pictured Don come back, charged with lust, beating against the French doors. She ran into the kitchen with the only weapon in reach—her book—only to find Minna, her back to Claire, screaming into the phone.

  “Mwen renmen-w, I love you … I told you—I take care of you as soon as I can. You push and push, Jean-Alexi, and I just disappear again, you hear me?”

  How to account for the momentary conviction that Minna was an intruder in her house, even though she was wearing the robe Claire loaned her? Her feet were spaced apart, her shoulders hunched, as if enduring a strong wind, or preparing for a lash. That posture created a whole new idea of Minna from the one Claire thought she knew. She was speaking English quickly, mixed with a guttural, foreign-sounding language (maybe French?) whose words Claire couldn’t pick out.

  “Minna
?” Claire whispered, more to hear herself aloud, wake up from an apparent dream, than to be heard. Minna turned, and the face that looked back at Claire was a stranger’s—flamed eyes, tendons and bones swelled in rage against the surface of her skin. But it was the expression of fury—or perhaps the adrenaline of terror?—that took her breath away.

  No dream. Claire turned away, as if she had been shown something shameful, something not meant for her eyes, as provocative as a vision of Minna and Don writhing on his couch. She groped her way back to her bedroom and lay rigid under her cover, scared, staring at the ceiling. More excited talking on the phone, something at last concluded, and the receiver was hung up. Perhaps Claire fell asleep, but after a prolonged period Minna, her Minna, kind and smoothed over, came through the door as if the other had never been. She carried a cup of herbal tea.

  “Have a nightmare, doudou?”

  “No,” Claire said, looking out the window, at the dresser, anywhere but at her.

  “Drink,” she coaxed, and Claire reluctantly did. Minna leaned over her in bed, stroked her damp hair, plastered down by panic. “Don’t ever be frightened of me.”

  Chapter 6

  The late spring brought a fierce bout of tule fog through the orchard every morning. Minna and Claire walked like ghosts, barely visible one to the other. Trees slid by like apparitions, the only tangible thing the scent of the leathery white blossoms that foretold future harvest. The quiet brought a sense of invisibility.

  The natural world colluded with this illusion: rabbits stood in their path, not flinching till they were almost close enough to reach out and touch them. Hummingbirds hovered close by their faces as if in search of nectar. One morning, Minna lifted her arm and pointed through the fog to an orange tree, under the branches of which a coyote lay curled sleeping as if enchanted.

  They discovered a mutual admiration for silence, so on their walks there would be only the sounds of their feet against the earth, only the slight husking of their exhalations. For old times’ sake, Claire would stoop down and take a pinch of dirt, place it on her tongue, taste whether it was too sweet or too sour, worrying about the harvest, although modern chemical tests made the practice obsolete. Minna did her divining in other ways—leaving a large glass of water in the kitchen with a piece of floating bread swelled, a portent of plenty, she insisted. She had heard Claire and Octavio discussing the small yields of apricot and avocado that season, attributed to low bee pollination. Places, too, can be haunted; the spirits want to be propitiated.

  “I’m not watching things closely enough,” Claire said.

  “You need to be watching only your health.”

  “The farm barely gets by. A bad harvest, and I’ll have Forster complaining.”

  “This is Octavio’s job. If he doesn’t do it well, you should replace him.”

  Claire was surprised by her presumption, not sure how to react. “Octavio’s good. And loyal. He’s been through a lot with us.”

  “I don’t like to see you worried.”

  “What about your worry? That phone call a few nights ago?”

  “Can I tell you a secret?”

  Claire nodded, not sure how much she really wanted to know.

  “He’s a distant cousin I had a crush on for a while.”

  “Why do you call him?”

  “Why? Because I owe him money. Why? Because he’s a voice from home.”

  “Maybe you should put him behind you.”

  * * *

  Farmers, like as not, assess an operation not by its current crop, nor its location and climate, nor even its prospect, but direct their attention straight to the real wealth of a farm: its soil. The soil, far from being ignored as dead filler, is recognized as a live, changing, vital organism on which the life of the farm depends. The amount of rainfall, of sun and shade, of decomposing plants, of soil amendments, the rate of harvesting, all contribute to its vitality. Neglect it, throw away its careful balance, and life comes to a standstill.

  Claire knew these things and wondered if the knowledge transferred to the human body—what was the effect of depression, poisons, surgeries, fear, and anxiety within her own body? Minna was on a campaign of strange means to realign Claire with the natural world, and as much as she claimed not to believe in its efficacy, she appreciated the effort and grew more and more fond of her. Her naïveté made Claire overlook the quirks that were coming out. Small things, such as when one morning finding an expensive crystal glass broken in the sink. She asked Minna about it, and the girl denied knowing anything.

  “But that’s absurd. It’s only you and me here.”

  “Ask Paz.”

  “She hasn’t been here in days.”

  But these were minor flaws. Mornings Minna ground spices with a pestle. She insisted that Claire anoint herself with a combination of lime and nutmeg, which made Claire feel she was a dish about to be consumed. Afternoons Minna planted dried leaves in the ground from a velvet bag she carried, explaining that four leaves of one, boiled in tea, fixed the kidneys, five could kill you. At night, candles burned everywhere, while she chanted prayers. Claire prayed only that Minna wouldn’t end up burning the house down. Minna insisted on cooking one meal a week consisting only of white: chicken meat, white rice, white rum. For an inexplicable reason, no salt, which made it impossible to eat. When Paz scraped it out into the garbage, she made a face.

  “I can cook for you. Mama and I can bring you good food.”

  “It had to be white,” Claire said, realizing how ridiculous she sounded.

  * * *

  Later, alone, Claire teased Minna. “Do you really believe in all this? You, an educated woman?”

  “They live side by side. The normal and the magic.”

  Claire wagged her head, unsure.

  “Picture they live inside each other. You see what you have the ability to see, no more.”

  She told Claire that her grandmother on her mother’s side was a high priestess. Her mother, a schoolteacher, scorned all that, thought it was what made the island backward, but after giving birth to Minna she suffered from a darkness. Depression, melancholia, or postpartum, whatever it was, she stopped caring for her baby, or anything else. The grandmother said an evil spirit inhabited her. They exorcised it in a ceremony, fed her herbs, and she was fixed. Afterward maman was willing to learn the old ways. She was a full priestess by the time grandmother passed.

  Claire was thrilled with this revelation, the most Minna had told her about her past so far. Even though Claire remained skeptical of the folk remedies, none of it bothered her enough to put a stop to it, although her former healthy self might have been offended by such nonsense. In her sickness, her new vulnerability, she had grown superstitious, willing, within limits, to latch onto any promise of relief and succor, any magic trick capable of helping her find her way back to health. Wasn’t it like hoping a cosmetic might erase the signs of age? She had as little faith in Minna’s potions and chants as she would a palm reader, but with no expectation, she was pleased simply with the novelty of the undertaking.

  * * *

  After the first few weeks had passed, the honeymoon phase of the relationship, they had grown accustomed to each other’s rhythms—Claire woke early, while Minna slept in. They both were incurable night owls.

  Despite Minna’s explanation, the phone call from weeks before still bothered Claire. Was it partly resentment about Minna’s ongoing affair with Don? Claire had gone as far as to discuss it with Forster and Mrs. Girbaldi. Later she regretted this lack of faith on her part, wished she had kept her mouth closed. Predictably, the two had arrived at the same conclusion: Mrs. Girbaldi thought Minna should be fired right away; Forster thought that her explanation had been a logical one, which made it even more necessary to get rid of the girl. But the more everyone jumped to find fault with her, the more Claire was inspired to be loyal. Minna was like a stray that fears the world will turn on it again at any moment. Perhaps they would never understand certain things about h
er. How well did any human being know another, after all?

  * * *

  Claire slipped Minna’s pay into an envelope and put it on the bombé chest in the entry hall where she left mail, although no mail ever came for Minna, and none seemed ever to go out. As Claire sat reading in the living room, Minna came in holding the check. Claire looked up from the book, embarrassed to be confronted with the bare workings of their relationship.

  “I wonder if you could advance me a few weeks?”

  Claire waited, but no explanation was forthcoming. “If you need it,” she finally said.

  Without making a decision to be deceptive, Claire neglected to pass on this news to Forster or Mrs. Girbaldi, already sensing that their misgivings would turn to full rebellion against keeping Minna. Did it really matter that she was paid in advance?

  Minna’s need for money seemed insatiable to Claire, who never observed her shopping or buying anything personal. It was a mystery what the money was for. How large could the debt to the cousin possibly be?

  * * *

  The girls’ calls marked the week, taking turns every other day: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. How’re you? Fine. How’re you? Great. Couldn’t be better. Once in a while on Friday through Sunday, Claire called them, and they would answer, startled, apprehensive. “Everything is fine,” Claire would say. “I simply miss your voice.” And she did. Having someone in the house again, especially a young woman the same age as they were, made her long for the companionship of the old days.

  She was too shy to talk to them of the torture of the chemo treatments, how her stomach was in knots the morning of the first treatment before they got in the car, how as she walked down the hallway to oncology, her body broke out in a sweat, and Minna, sensing her panic, held her hand and began to talk of their plans to plant a vegetable garden in the backyard.

  The first few treatments she had not felt sick; the nurses had been hopeful she would be one of the lucky ones with few side effects, but after the third treatment they came with a crushing ferocity. She refused to burden the girls with how she would be so nauseated and disoriented on the way home, she vomited into a plastic shopping bag. Most of all, Claire felt she needed to protect them, as if they were still too young to be exposed to this kind of suffering. But Minna, younger than Lucy, insisted on sharing this burden. So on Monday: How’re you? Here, let me put Minna on. On Tuesday: How’re you? Tired. Wednesday: Talk to Minna.