by Tatjana Soli
* * *
Claire retreated into her books, plunged back into the Rhys novel to fuel her imaginings of Minna.
The mineral-hard ocean and the palms and the untainted green of Dominica, the jagged hills that so fascinated and appalled Rochester. Were there brilliant parties at her family’s plantation, an approximation of burned-down Coulibri? Was the isolation of Granbois like that of the Baumsarg farm? Where did Minna meet the handsome boy who broke her heart? She had hinted about him, how he kissed her in a greenhouse on the estate of her pink house. Claire had decided on unrequited love for Minna because after thinking at length about it, she could come up with no other reason for Minna’s friendlessness, her moods, the mournful look in her moss-green eyes, glimpses caught when she was unaware of Claire’s watching. The more she read, the more she thought she understood Minna, and even though her absence had only been days long, Claire could not wait for her return, to compare the imagined Minna against the person made flesh.
Of course Claire knew that this was futile, knew these were sentimental wonderings on her part, that even the smallest, no-nonsense glance from Minna would confirm the vainness of her fantasies. She could hardly see the reality of her own daughters because of the network of memories, loyalties, loves, and jealousies that they resurrected and laid to bed, over and over, during that holiday weekend.
She had wanted family since she was a little girl in the small, dark apartment over her father’s bookstore, and this family had been created through, because of, the farm. She was angry that they didn’t see that. Angry that they didn’t accommodate the high price paid. Valued that life so little they were unwilling to keep it going. What was out there that was more important than what was on the ranch? It was impossible to be in their presence—the undertow of the past was too strong, a constant replaying of some infatuation, some slight. Only with strangers, new acquaintances, could one gauge who one was in the present, try on whom one might become.
* * *
The girls’ behavior was to pretend nothing had happened, that Claire was not sick, that everything was the same. But something had happened—Claire had changed. The experience of the disease had opened her up, made her want to reach out, but they still insisted on the mother who required nothing of them. They were more fascinated by Minna.
Exhausted by the heat, they idled away long afternoons on the porch by conjecturing about her.
“What do you think he sees in her?” Lucy asked. No question who they were speaking of.
“What doesn’t Don see in her?” Gwen said. “She’s a mystery. I’ll give her that.”
* * *
On the afternoon of the Fourth, Tim played morosely with a stick in the driveway. A careful child, not wanting to give away too much of himself, miserly for all his six years due to Gwen’s cautious hovering. It infuriated Claire that Gwen forbade him to go into the orchards. “It’s the safest place a child could be!” But Gwen wouldn’t budge. Claire despaired at her tentative, unsure grandson.
“Are you going to see the fireworks?” Claire asked him when Gwen finally relented long enough to go inside for his sunblock.
He shrugged. Claire had only seen him a few times a year since he was born, and he was still wary of her. Obvious that grandchildren needed to be charmed, unlike one’s immediate children, who were more or less hostages to one’s love.
“Mom says I have to stay here. She says you might go away like Mr. Grumbles.”
“Who’s that?” Claire said, a sinking feeling in her stomach.
“The goldfish.” He wiped his nose with the back of his arm. A moment later he sneezed five times in a row.
“Gesundheit!”
“Mom says I’m allergic to plants.”
“But the world is full of plants.”
“That’s why Mom says I should stay inside.”
“Aunt Lucy is going to take you to the fireworks. Do you know why?”
He shook his head, noncommittal, not willing to risk showing excitement.
“They are going to have cannons there, and I need you to tell me how loud they are, okay?”
He looked cheered but still untrusting. Gwen’s child.
“Tell your mom I am not going down the toilet like Mr. Grumbles.”
* * *
As the week progressed, Claire grew more and more exhausted, a hostage to the activity in the house. Forster came by and surveyed the citrus crop, spoke to Octavio. When he offered to take them all out to lunch, Claire begged off.
“How come you never visit when I’m alone?” she said.
“Your Minna doesn’t appreciate visitors.”
Claire nodded, not believing him. Alone in the glory of her empty living room, she sprawled on the couch.
On the coffee table, Gwen had left a stack of books she’d brought about cancer survivorship that Claire refused to read. Now she skimmed through them, intending to dump the whole pile in the trash as soon as everyone was gone. She calculated her best bet was to stay as ignorant as possible of what could happen. She thumbed through a pamphlet on alternative medicine Lucy had included. Formulas for vitamin combinations, herbal elixirs, teas and pastes and poultices. Offers for copper bracelets and crystal charm necklaces. Discounts on pyramid structures built out of lightweight PVC that could be suspended over one’s favorite chair or bed, so that the healing energy of the cosmos would be diverted to cure one. Remedies included bleeding with leeches, diets of macrobiotic food, injections of shark cartilage or third-world embryos, or even a payment plan for prayer directed to one’s recovery, as if lobbying would improve your odds for holy intervention.
Instead she flipped through the growing piles of women’s magazines.
GET 10 YEARS BACK
WE KEEP OUR PROMISES
LIFE IS BETTER WITH BEAUTIFUL SKIN
She blinked her lashless eyes, sucked in her hollowed cheeks, too busy keeping alive to worry about being beautiful.
FOR SKIN SO FIRM
YOU’LL WANT TO SHOW
IT OFF AGAIN
There was nothing she wanted to show off. The airbrushed models made her feel more decrepit by the moment.
LIVE LIKE IT’S ONE BIG PREMIERE
She tossed the magazine down, disgusted and demoralized in equal parts, and a sheaf of white papers fell out. It was an appraisal of the property done a month before. Paid for on Gwen’s credit card. Why, no matter what Claire tried, did Gwen stay so determined to sell the farm? Minna hadn’t been lying.
Claire needed to go through the rest of her treatments, become a model patient, survive, for the simple reason that she had not yet taught the girls what was important in life. Could it be possible her mothering was still not done?
Head spinning, she went to the kitchen to make tea from the last of the mixture Minna had left her. As she leaned over the stove, watching the kettle, a whish of air blew the flame high, high enough to lick the cuff of her housecoat. A singe of flame spun her around and straight into her ten-year-old son. Her eyes swam, and she savagely brushed the blur away, but still he stood in front of her. Fresh and sweet as her dreams, mischievous, and just the smallest bit weary, as if he’d had a poor night’s sleep. Yes, she recognized that, and it broke her heart. Did the dead tire from the grieving constantly calling on them, not leaving them alone to enjoy eternity? Her heart lifted although she knew this was an unthinkable mistake, an error so treacherous that if she allowed herself to believe, it would wreck her.
Many times she had dreamed her boy would return, had returned, that it all had been a horrible mistake. Always unchanged, although his sisters and Claire had aged, and everything else around him had been transformed by time. Even as she reached out for the longed-for hug, she lost consciousness.
* * *
The sun was in Claire’s eyes when she woke, still on the floor. Gwen was running for the phone, yelling directions. The afternoon passed quietly in the emergency room. Gwen stood by her gurney, holding her hand. “I’ll never forgive myself.”
<
br /> “For what?”
“Not preventing this, for going to lunch.”
“Don’t be silly. You can’t always be there just in case.” Even when one was there, one could not always prevent bad things from happening. How long would it take till she herself believed that?
That night, back in her own bed, Claire poured the vitamin drops Minna had left for her on her tongue. Hours later her throat had swelled so big that she could hardly breathe, her chest a vise twisting the breath out. Her skin turned raw with rash. Back in the emergency room before sunrise, the girls and the grandchildren sleeping on chairs in the waiting room, Claire’s blood count again plunged. The on-call doctor asked what she had eaten, then took an analysis of the vitamin drops. Some unidentified compound in the drops had caused an allergic reaction. He threw the drops away, shaking his head.
“Your cell count is low. Your immune system is weak. Stay away from crowds.” He glanced at Tim, who was sniffling. “She needs to be isolated from anyone sick.”
“We’re her family,” Gwen said.
The doctor looked up from his clipboard. “Germs are germs. Do you want your mother healthy?”
“Of course.”
“Then have the kids stay at a friend’s. And why did you take her to Mexico?”
“It wasn’t our doing.”
“You need to take care of your mom,” he said. “She needs you all on board.”
“That’s complicated,” Gwen said.
“Of course we will,” Lucy said.
Chapter 11
A quick family meeting was held around the breakfast table, and it was decided that Gwen would leave early with the children. Mrs. Girbaldi would drive them to the airport. As the girls washed the breakfast dishes, Claire heard Gwen whispering to Lucy, “I’ll have her checked out, too.”
“Have who checked out?” Claire said.
“No one,” Gwen said.
“Turn around,” Claire said. “Sweetheart, quit going behind my back.”
“What do you mean?”
“I know about the appraisal of the ranch.”
“I’m protecting you. Has Minna convinced you to stay?”
“Don asked her to marry him.” Another untruth blurted out. “She hardly needs me.”
Gwen shrugged.
“You’re my daughter. I love you. But this jealousy…”
Gwen blinked her eyes rapidly. “Why do you like her more than us?”
“That’s ridiculous,” Claire said, even though she suspected it might appear that way. “Before I passed out … I saw your brother.” She had intended to keep this a secret, suspecting their reaction, but in her desperation to win them over, she found herself ruthless.
“I just can’t do this. This morbid stuff,” Gwen said.
“It’s a sign. I knew you wouldn’t understand,” Claire said. “I want you to come back here to live. Children need to live here again. It will be like the old days.”
“No one wants the old days back, except you.”
* * *
Gwen passed instructions to Lucy on how to give the injections, but Lucy’s hands shook so badly that she jabbed the needle in like a dart, with such force that it left small, grape-size bruises on Claire’s skin. The grandchildren were herded out the door. Both glanced backward, wondering, she was sure, if they had done something wrong and Nana was sending them away.
“Have them call me on my cell phone,” Claire said.
They stood on opposite sides of the glass window in the living room.
“Alice, will you send me pictures? So I get better?”
The little girl nodded, but she was so young that out of sight was out of mind.
“Gwen, get them some markers.” On Claire’s side of the glass she drew a happy face. Once they realized they wouldn’t get in trouble, the children went wild with the forbidden pleasure of drawing on the glass.
“Can you draw some hair on? Pretty hair for me?” Claire said into the phone.
“Oh, boy.” Gwen laughed. “We’re going to have trouble at home now.”
Tim stared at Claire, not hiding his fascination at how bad she looked, what might be happening inside her, what his mother told him. He started to draw round bugs with scowling faces. “These are the bugs that are eating you,” he said into the phone. “The cancers.”
Gwen grabbed him. “That’s enough.”
“No, no,” Claire said. “Let’s X them out. She put a green X over one; Tim drew a yellow one over another. “That’s a good boy.”
He remained silent, then drew a fish in a bowl that Claire suspected was Mr. Grumbles.
“See,” Claire said into the phone. “Come back from the dead.”
When everything was packed, Gwen made a last attempt. “It’s not too late, you know. To leave. Not too late at all.”
“I need to stay here.”
Gwen pulled away. “I’ll call your doctor directly. Please stay safe, okay?”
“Where else could I stay?”
Gwen grimaced at her mother’s poor joke.
* * *
That night Lucy baked a rigatoni casserole. Claire felt disloyal admitting it, but without Gwen, the atmosphere was more relaxed. It didn’t even bother her that Lucy drank glass after glass of wine. They acted like schoolgirls playing hooky.
“Did I tell you about this artist at the gallery? His name is Javier.”
Claire was happy. On schedule, she drank an elixir before dinner. By eleven she broke out in a sweat, fearing indigestion. At midnight her head was hanging over the toilet. Lucy called the doctor on duty, then brought her a cup of Minna’s tea.
“The pasta probably wasn’t the best idea. Too spicy.”
Claire nodded, hopeful that it could be something so simple.
“The doctor thinks maybe you’re having hot flashes.”
“Of course.” The banality of the explanation made her angry. In her new dramatic circumstances, headache connoted brain tumor.
“Try to sleep,” Lucy said. “Is it okay if I go into my old room to get some boxes from the closet? Her door is always closed.”
“Don’t touch anything. She bites Paz’s head off when things are moved.”
Lucy turned to go away. “I’m going to get a nightcap.”
“Would you sit with me awhile?”
“Be right back.” A few minutes later Lucy sat at the foot of the bed with a shot of tequila. “I never agreed with Gweny, by the way. I would be the same as you—stay where I drew strength and comfort. I’d do a lot of things before I’d agree to live under her roof.”
“She doesn’t like Minna.”
Lucy sipped. “Sometimes people look a lot worse than they are. People do things to survive. Doesn’t necessarily make them bad. Gweny doesn’t accept weakness.”
“How did I get such a brilliant daughter?”
“In the genes, I guess.”
“She doesn’t understand I’m trying to fix things.”
But Lucy didn’t hear her, lost in her own thoughts. “Gweny never got over being frightened that night. She told me they touched her hair. And she wanted to cut it off. Dad wouldn’t let her. He said it would upset you too much. So she just held it all in. I told her you did the best you could for us.”
“I wanted you to have a sense of belonging.” Her parents had been permanent wanderers, making her feel an outsider. She wanted her children to feel the ranch in their blood, to have a bond so deep that it carried them through life and made them strong. “Was that so wrong?”
They sat in silence, the lamp casting a small circle of light around the bed, making the corners of the room dark, the night outside the open windows darker still.
“I saw him, you know.” The words came out before Claire could consider the effect.
“Who?”
“Joshua.”
Lucy nodded, her eyes getting larger, the pupils darkening. It crossed Claire’s mind she might be taking drugs again. “Sometimes I think I’ve seen him. I imagine
it was all a mix-up, and he’s living in another state—like Utah—and has no idea how he got separated from us. Except he’s always still the same age as when he left.”
“Still a boy.”
“Nothing extraordinary ever happened to our family except that. The one thing.”
“I blame myself.”
“We were just unlucky.”
* * *
Claire had forgotten Lucy’s request the next morning when she came into her room, insisting even in Claire’s half-awake state that she had to come and look.
“It’s okay…” Of course, Claire knew of the painted walls, knew of Saint Agatha, knew the effect of all this was like being transported to another world, but now a startling new density had taken place, a crowding of impressions that took one’s breath away as if the room were alive, an organic thing, growing and developing with a logic known only to it.
The first thing to assault one on entering was a giant red heart painted against the turquoise wall. The red feral, punctured with black marks, making the whole room swim in front of Claire’s eyes, but then she realized her mistake, shook herself alert to see—what she had mistaken for a long black bar was a sword plunged diagonally into the heart.
Although the effect should have been frightening, it didn’t scare her. Instead Claire found something brave, fierce, even exhilarating, about it. Below the heart, in fine yellow lettering, was the word EZILI. Below that were symbols, painted pots and cups, next to them a palm tree reaching to the ceiling, snakes winding up its trunk. On the yellow wall, writ large, were the words HE WILL COME.
“We’re not in Kansas anymore,” Lucy said. She walked around the room as if she were viewing an exhibition at a museum, stopping at the table in the corner. She motioned Claire over. At first glance it seemed a crowded jumble of junk. There were at least forty or fifty liquor bottles: Scotch, vodka, wine, beer, all sizes, some empty, some unopened.
“Maybe she’s into recycling.” Lucy giggled. The room had her jittery. “It’s like a folk altar. I’ve seen altars like this in Santa Fe.”
After looking more closely, they saw the arrangement was not random, was far from a cluttered jumble, was in fact laid out with great thought, and a kind of mad deliberation. At the center, among the bottles, was a crucifix, and behind it, taped to the wall, were dozens of religious postcards, some old and yellowed, some shiny new. On the table were a few burnt-out candles, and in the center of it all was the picture of Minna and Claire in Mexico, except the part with Minna had been torn off so that Claire sat grinning alone, her arm embracing empty space.