by Tatjana Soli
“I’ll never forgive myself…” Mrs. Girbaldi moaned.
“Let’s do it,” the doctor said.
* * *
Hours later, Claire was lying in a queen-size rattan bed, watching the sunset over the ocean, a regular faux-vacation. Minna sat next to her.
“How is my doudou?”
“I was wrong to make you do this.”
“Now we have the same blood in our veins.”
“You saved my life.”
“We saved each other’s. Don will sit with you while I make arrangements for a hotel. Mrs. Girbaldi is exhausted.”
Don came in, sheepish, and Minna passed him without a word. His hands shook when he touched Claire. “You scared us.”
“It was all my fault. Not hers.”
“Thank God nothing happened.” His face showed strain, the usual veneer worn off.
“Minna’s my angel. You don’t deserve her.”
“I don’t.” Don sighed. “I’ve never met anyone who didn’t care about the bullshit, you know what I mean? Even with the lies.”
“Lies?”
“You know. Her stories change all the time. I tell her she can trust me.”
“The details change. Her actions speak for her, don’t you think?”
Claire fell asleep, and when she woke, the windows were dark. She was alone. The lights were dimmed, and an unfamiliar nurse stood in the corner, head bowed as she ironed Claire’s dress, mumbling, “Padre nuestro … ahora y hasta la hora de nuestra muerte.”
The next morning, Claire asked a new nurse for her dress and shoes, as well as watch and earrings, but they were nowhere to be found. More lost things. The doctor, eager to get rid of them, wheeled Claire out in her cotton hospital gown and plastic flip-flops to the front entrance.
“When you are stronger, come back. We have a new therapy with fetus cells.”
Claire nodded.
When Don’s car pulled up, Mrs. Girbaldi and Minna sat in the front seat with him as if they were sightseers.
“Such a shame,” Mrs. Girbaldi said. “I liked the view here.”
“It’s a bad place,” Minna said. “They are a sham: ripping you off with their miracle cure.”
The drive home was a blur, as if Claire were being pushed by a tailwind of mistakes. She pictured old black-and-white movies where the hands of the clock fly around the dial.
Minna reached back and put her hand on Claire’s knee. The nurse’s words kept echoing in her ears, la hora de nuestra muerte … nuestra muerte … muerte, as if she were telling a truth no one else was willing to admit. Claire clung to Minna’s arm, would not let go, as you would cling to life if you loved it, as if Minna were her air and light and blood.
* * *
Don called the oncologist, who arranged to meet them in the emergency room.
“I will not treat you if you do anything like this again,” the doctor said.
“It was my choice to make this mistake,” Claire said. “I earned it.”
She spent the night hooked up to IVs. Don drove Mrs. Girbaldi home while Minna, bare feet curled up under her, slept in a chair in Claire’s room. In the morning, Claire felt a tingling on her chest and arms and looked down to discover sunburn.
Their trip into the exotic changed many things. Changed Claire’s fear and Minna’s roving. She no longer left evenings. Claire didn’t know if Don’s car no longer waiting at the end of the driveway was cause or effect. For her, the trip somehow had a liberating effect. She no longer felt unequal to her medicine. She went to the hospital by choice rather than sentence. Outwardly her world contracted, but experienced from the inside, life on the farm grew richer and more precious in ways she’d never imagined.
* * *
Her truancy was duly reported to Gwen, who phoned with the studied coolness Claire was sure her children received when caught red-handed at something forbidden. The delicious secret was that no punishment was possible, or rather the most severe punishment possible had already been meted out. As if that weren’t enough, she had almost caused her own demise. What could Gwen do to make her suffer more than that?
Exorcised, Claire returned to treatment. Well-behaved, she listened to music through her earphones and nodded to the oncology nurses in their funny cartoon T-shirts. She would follow the treatments to their natural conclusion. Minna, chastised, stood in the doorway, checking on her, in the unlikely event Claire would try to bolt for another escape. But Claire had lost the desire to flee: like a bird too long domesticated, she would stay in her cage despite the wide-open door.
Chapter 10
As with all things forbidden yet tried, the trip was not without repercussions. At the next chemo session, Claire’s white cell count still hung stubbornly low. The doctor, still smarting over what he considered the betrayal of her trip to the clinic, decided to stop treatment for the time being. An undercurrent of blame was palpable as he filled out her file, as if her rebellion would be the cause of her demise rather than a reaction to it. Claire was to stay at home and receive daily injections of a drug to build back up her blood.
Chastened, Claire played the part of obedient patient and tried to self-inject, but she could not stand to watch the needle plunge under her skin. The nurse sighed at this squeamishness and instructed Minna on how to give the injections. Already in the hot seat for her part in the “runaway” trip, as it was referred to by the girls, as in, “Mom ran away from home,” Minna was grim about the job, her usual playfulness gone. She practiced shooting water into oranges for hours and hours, until she felt comfortable with the procedure, until she reached the point at which Claire could not feel the bite of the needle when Minna fed it under her skin, performing the procedure as a kind of sleight of hand.
The other effect of the rogue trip was that Gwen decided they should have a family gathering over the Fourth of July. They hadn’t all been together for a holiday since their teenaged years, and it was long past time.
* * *
Claire couldn’t deny a certain excitement in watching Paz scour the house clean, the feeling that things could be returned to normal at least for the long weekend. The house had fallen under a kind of a luxuriant torpor during the last months, Claire so distracted by her illness and Minna’s dramatics that she had failed to notice that Paz had indeed become lax as Minna complained, that dust was in the corners and cobwebs in the windows. Bald-headed and frail, Claire readied the bedrooms, set up cots and sleeping bags in the sunroom for the grandchildren, while Paz washed floors and windows, scrubbed toilets and showers. When Claire commented about the state of the house, Paz said, “There is only so much I can do one day a week. Minna tells me, ‘Leave this, leave that.’”
Claire brushed it off, not willing to let anything get to her. She felt a new determination to overcome her illness, felt maybe it was time to make amends.
During all of this, Minna was more morose than usual. “Everything okay?” Claire asked, but didn’t wait for an answer. She had grown familiar with what she called Minna’s blue periods, times when she was so silent and sullen that Claire learned to stay away. Minna had requested a full month’s pay that morning.
“What do you need all this money for?”
Minna looked displeased with the question. “A cousin needs an operation.”
“You’re going to have to start saying no. You can’t give what you don’t have.”
“Why aren’t you resting?”
“You and Paz are doing all the heavy work,” Claire said, although in reality Minna had done little.
“Not true. I saw you cleaning. I saw you baking. You’re going to get sick, and I’ll be blamed again.”
“Minna!” Claire was annoyed. “It’s good for me to have distractions.”
“So that’s no to the advance?”
“I’m not comfortable with it.”
* * *
Some milestones let one know where one is, are able to promptly sink one to the bottom of life like an anchor. One occurred the moment Gwen walked throu
gh the front door, her children straggling behind her. The first thing she did on seeing Claire, standing there proudly bald, was instinctively reach an arm back to shield the children, wanting to warn and admonish at the same time. It was then that Claire felt truly sick, scared, deluded by her earlier confidence. She stayed on her feet through sheer will, betrayed by Minna’s assurances, Looking better. Better and better. The best each day. Claire excused herself and hurried to the closet, wrapping Minna’s magenta scarf over her head, hoping that would bring some relief to her appearance.
“How’re my babies?” she said on returning. Smiled and smiled, because smiling through the death mask was all she could manage.
But the children had caught a glimpse of her naked disease. Her granddaughter, Alice, four, looked at her, and her lip started to tremble. “Where did your hair go?”
Sensing panic, Minna took over: carried bags, gave candies to the children. Shock neatly covered over, disguised. With a marked coolness on both sides, Gwen took Minna’s hand. Unable to take her anger out on her mother, she blamed Minna for Mexico, allowing if not instigating it. Don was negligent, but he was also a stranger and a movie star; Mrs. Girbaldi, eccentric, was equally out of reach. Only Minna was within arm’s reach of retribution.
“This must be little Alice,” Minna said. “Pretty as her mama.”
Tim, stolid as his father, hid behind Gwen’s leg. He had obviously inherited an opinion of Minna from his parents.
* * *
When Gwen and Claire were alone on the porch, balancing ice teas in their laps, Gwen burst into sobs, such a disturbing sight from her self-contained daughter that Claire took her in her arms, reassuring her that after all she looked worse than she felt.
“I had no idea you lost so much weight,” Gwen said.
“It’s the ultimate diet.”
“I can’t believe that in your state…” Gwen wagged her finger as if it was obvious to both of them just how bad that state was. “I can’t believe under the circumstances you pulled this Mexico stunt.”
“I don’t know I’d call it a stunt.”
“What else?”
“Most people on chemo continue working, or raising a family. They have to. I went on a day trip. I had to.”
“Minna was irresponsible.”
“My idea. I forced her. I had to—for here.” Claire put her hand over her heart.
“Your health comes first. What’s the point otherwise?”
What’s the point if the heart isn’t involved? Claire wanted to say.
* * *
At the noise of a car, Gwen hurried to the door. Lucy’s rental car came down the driveway, and Gwen ran out to intercept her. It didn’t matter. The minute Lucy walked through the door and saw her mother, her face dropped. She was the one unable to hide her emotions. It was stupid for Claire to pretend any longer that she wasn’t really so sick, but now she was preoccupied with hiding the signs of the illness: keeping her head covered with scarves or caps; applying eyebrow pencil and rouge to try to add life to her face. She felt ghoulish but didn’t know what else to do. All her excitement over the visit had dissolved and was replaced by a wish to return to solitude.
* * *
Although the house was full to bursting, Claire received less attention now, a fact she gratefully accepted, returning to the normal state of family, and no longer the invalid centerpiece. It could have been fifteen years before except for the addition of Minna. She and Lucy reunited like long-lost friends and spent hours on the back lawn, smoking cigarettes and gossiping. Lucy looked better, stronger, than in years, and Claire felt some vindication in leaving her in Santa Fe. All the bedrooms were occupied, a constant coming and going from room to room, slamming of doors, except Minna’s, which remained resolutely shut. At odd, stolen moments, Claire looked at her, helpless, feeling unfaithful to the house’s former silence and dreaminess.
After a few days passed, Minna asked if she could take the weekend off to visit friends. Claire did not believe she knew anyone in the vicinity and felt hurt that she referred to being with them as a job, something to be shirked.
“You should spend time with your family,” Minna said. “You don’t need me.” As part of her leave-taking, she prepared one of her herbal drinks, which Claire had become addicted to, full of hibiscus flowers and mysterious herbs that dissipated her nausea. When Gwen asked for her own, Minna went back into the kitchen to make a new batch.
“I didn’t mean for you to go to so much trouble,” Gwen said, but did not stop her either.
Minna showed Gwen how to give the injections, frowning at her work on the orange, correcting her till she was satisfied. “More gently, otherwise you’ll bruise her skin.”
“You know the oncologist won’t treat Mom because of Mexico,” Gwen said.
“She was sick before Mexico.”
“Not for you to decide.”
“Nor for you.”
Gwen sighed. “I appreciate your friendship with Mom. It’s made a big difference.”
Minna nodded.
“Maybe we were wrong to insist on her selling. If this place is that important to her. She’s halfway through her treatments.”
“I’m aware of that.”
Before Minna left, she gave Claire a massage with special oils to ease her aches and pains. They sat on the bed afterward, enjoying the evening breeze through the window.
“Where are you going?”
“Santa Barbara. Don’s idea. To see the land he’s buying for the elephants.”
“Of course, you’re going away with him.”
“He thinks he loves me.” Minna giggled. “Drink up.” As Claire finished the last thick, green sludge from the bottom of the cup, Minna got up and straightened things on the dresser. “I don’t want to mention it, but I must. Gwen talked to me. She wants me to convince you the farm should be sold.”
Claire put the cup down hard. “She never quits.”
“Should you think about it?” Minna studied herself in the mirror. “Don has mentioned me moving in with him.”
“Is that what this is about? You want to leave me?”
“I want you to make the right decision for yourself. I worry that you might stay here just for me.”
“I’m staying until I’m well. With you or without you.”
“As long as it is what you want, che.”
That evening, Don’s car pulled up the long driveway, and he kissed the girls on the cheek before he drove Minna away. They watched wistfully as the car departed.
“Some girls have all the luck,” Lucy said.
“Just happens that all lucky girls look like that,” Gwen said.
* * *
Claire had forgotten the routines, how much noise and activity she used to accept as normal: the television always on, phones ringing, music thrumming at all hours in the house, and since the girls’ tastes rarely matched, competing strains of Bach and the Stones. The children scattered toys all over the floor, and Claire had to pick her way around in order to not slip. They cooked or ate out, went shopping, to the playground, beach, and movies; every day was a long, exhausting series of activities. Sometimes it seemed to her they were afraid to ever be still. Had that been her life before?
The newspapers, the celebrity-gossip magazines, the fashion magazines multiplied on the coffee table. When Claire flipped through them, the glossy images depressed her, made her feel beside the point with her balding head and lopsided chest. Alone with Minna, an alternate universe had shown itself, shutting away the outside world. But that world was the medium, the barrage of sensory information, that her daughters lived in, like fish in water, and they thought it eccentric of Claire not to be able to name a single clothing designer, a single makeup line.
“Why can’t we just sit and talk?” Claire said. “When do I have you here?”
“Talk about what?”
“I don’t know. Like in the old days.”
“I don’t remember talking in the old days,” Lucy said
.
Gwen looked over and saw the disappointment on her mother’s face. “I remember lying outside at night on the road. Cars never came by. The stars were bright because the city lights were still far away. We had so much freedom back then; my kids have none of that. But all we could talk about was how bored we were, how we couldn’t wait till we were old enough to go explore the world.
“Okay, turn the radio off,” Gwen said to Lucy. The silence hummed. “We were kids. We talked about what we were doing. We never asked about you. We didn’t think about what your life was like.”
“You were my life,” Claire said. “You and the farm.”
“You were a good mother.”
Claire was silent for a minute, savoring the words. “It makes me sad. Living apart. We hardly know each other anymore. Why can’t you make arrangements to come back here and live for a while?”
A different silence now around the table.
“Here?”
“Why not? Plenty of room. I’m still going to sell, eventually.”
“This isn’t where our lives are.”
“Come on, Gwen. You’re always complaining how hard you work. You and Kevin could spend more time together. Time with the kids. Like your dad and I did. It was a good place to raise a family. You just said so yourself.”
“I don’t want that kind of life,” Gwen said.
She looked at Lucy.
“The place feels haunted. I told Minna as much,” Lucy said.
“You did? When?”
“I don’t know. Before we left that first time. I thought she should know about Josh.”
Claire felt a dropping in her stomach. So it had all been an act at the tree. For a moment, just the time it took to inhale a few dizzy breaths, she felt an anger strong enough to sever the relationship. But did she ever, even for that barest moment, believe that Minna actually had powers? Of course not. So she was just as guilty of willful blindness. Wasn’t the truth that they were going through a ritual, enacting it for each other, and themselves?
“I don’t understand why you two want to live like you are from nowhere, unrooted. How many people in this world have that? Minna understands the preciousness of place.”