by Yvonne Prinz
Meanwhile, all the usual suspects have reappeared. Every newspaper in the area is buzzing around my dad again, wanting his opinion on the plight of the migrant farmworkers and the flawed immigration policies of this administration. The San Francisco Chronicle is even doing a big story on the case, with a side story exposing the abuse of farmworkers and the dangers they face crossing the border to find work. They want to interview my dad and they’re coming out next week to take photos.
Steve and I make the drive over to Reynaldo’s to fetch Tomás. This time I’m at the wheel the whole way. It seems to take about half as long as it did when we delivered him.
When we pull into Reynaldo’s vineyard, Tomás is standing there with his little duffle at his feet. The wounds on his face have almost healed but otherwise he looks the same. It occurs to me that knowing he has some money coming doesn’t really change the fact that he lost someone he loved. When he sees us he grins. I’m not sure I’ve seen him smile like that before. He’s standing with an intense-looking young woman with fine features and long black hair. They seem to be saying good-bye like they wish they weren’t.
On the ride home I can understand enough Spanish to know that Steve is giving Tomás a hard time about the girl, and he looks away, embarrassed. I pinch Steve hard on his bicep.
We only have one tiny driving episode on the way home when I pass a car on the one-lane road and then panic because I can’t find fourth gear, but I finally do find it. I see Tomás crossing himself in the rearview mirror. It probably didn’t help that I started screaming. It also didn’t help that Steve was laughing at me.
When we arrive home my dad tells us that Uncle Ned worked his magic on the insurance company and he managed to extract one hundred and fifty thousand dollars from them. Most lawyers would take a third of that as their fee, but Ned only wants ten percent to cover his costs. The money will be slow in materializing, so Tomás will be with us for a while. Considering what everyone went through, this might not seem like a lot of money, but to Tomás it means the difference between a good life and one of endless labor and risk-taking. It will buy a future for him and Rosa and probably his extended family and his in-laws.
Steve goes into the kitchen and gets busy on his famous enchiladas, a Mexican homecoming dinner for Tomás. I stand next to him and whip up a big bowl of guacamole with fresh avocados and limes. The mood is festive and we joke around a lot. My dad puts an Eddie Palmieri CD on the stereo. He’s Puerto Rican but it seems to work. Miguel and Tomás run into town for a case of cervezas and when they get back a toast is made in Spanish, something about prosperity and friends and those who have passed.
After dinner Steve pulls me out of my chair and we two-step across the linoleum in our bare feet. I’m an awful dancer but Steve’s had a couple of beers and he seems not to notice. Rufus barks at our feet. I look over at my dad watching us. He’s smiling and he nods at me. I’d forgotten what it feels like to be held in the gaze of a parent like that.
I look at the clock above the sink and leave the boys in the kitchen as the volume of their conversation increases. I wander onto the porch with Rufus and sit cross-legged in the swing watching darkness settle onto the farm. The buildings and fence posts become shadowy and a cool breeze mingles with the warm air, scenting it with sweet grass. The chicken coop has been repaired and the chickens are calm again, as chickens go.
Rufus pricks up his ears at a pair of headlights coming up the drive. His tail thumps three times and a low growl gathers in his throat as he IDs the visitor. When Forest opens his car door, Rufus leaps down the porch steps, tail wagging, and gives him a proper welcome.
Forest walks slowly toward me and I try to figure out if he’s nervous. I decide that he probably isn’t. As weird dads go, mine is about neck and neck with his, maybe just a hair ahead.
I take his hand and pull him into the brightly lit, noisy kitchen. The boys stop their animated Spanish and give Forest a hearty, loud welcome. I introduce him to my dad and Forest leans across the table to shake his hand. There’s a certain amount of sizing each other up but my dad is pretty cool about the whole thing, offering up a chair at the table and asking if he’s eaten. There’s a half-eaten casserole of enchiladas sitting on the counter. Forest eyes it hungrily and I make him a plate. He digs in and the conversation resumes. I can see him following the Spanish floating over his head, trying to catch threads of it. He’ll be fluent before long. I make a promise to myself to learn too. Over the summer I’ve picked up a lot, but if I tried harder I could be part of this conversation. I sit down next to Forest and he smiles at me and squeezes my knee under the table. Rufus curls up on the wood floor with his head on Steve’s bare feet, completing my ragtag little family.
Chapter 20
On the last day of my summer with Forest, which is also the eve of my birthday, Storm stands behind me and ties the long white apron at my waist. Then I do hers. Somehow she manages to make her apron look sexy. I look like I work in a basement morgue at a hospital. Forest is wearing a white apron too. He looks like he works with me at the morgue. We’re part of the volunteer waitstaff at the second annual Field of Greens dinner, another one of my dad’s brainstorms. The miles-long white-tableclothed dining table runs between two rows of organic cornstalks in the middle of a cornfield. The guests are locals and out-of-towners, all of whom have paid one hundred dollars a plate to taste the bounty of all the organic and sustainable farms, vineyards, and ranches in the area. The farmers, ranchers, and vintners who contribute to the dinner get in for free, and famous chefs from San Francisco, Berkeley, and a few other places are invited to participate by preparing one course each. All the food is prepared in a big tent with generators humming behind it to power the stoves. The profits go to support Field of Greens, my dad’s sustainable farming group. It pays for advertising and educational programs and the rest goes into a fund to help support starting farmers or suffering farmers or whatever else comes up.
Millie, from the diner, is in charge of us and she hands us each a bottle of white and a bottle of red wine.
“Red goes in the round glass and white goes in the taller one. Please don’t mix them up. Oh, and no sampling!” She looks at Storm when she says this.
We head to our sections. Forest walks next to me and Storm falls behind. She sees something worth taking a second look at in the form of a tall dark waiter.
“This is a breeze,” says Forest.
“Yeah, talk to me in four hours when we’re pouring coffee and serving dessert.”
As we pour the wine, another group of waitstaff, volunteers from the participating restaurants, brings out the first course, an amuse-bouche made from local goat cheese with peach chutney and caramelized leeks, served in a leaf of endive. The waiters carry massive trays, and the plates are miraculously delivered in a matter of minutes.
My dad is sitting next to Reynaldo and his wife, Maria. Steve, Tomás, and Miguel sit across from them. Connie Gilwood is sitting way down at the other end of the table. This must be my dad’s doing. Tomás doesn’t know who she is. My dad hasn’t arranged for her to meet him yet and tonight is certainly not the night for an “I’m sorry I killed your wife” talk. Connie is sitting next to a friend of hers, a woman I recognize from town. She has high hair and long nails and gold bangles that announce her every move. She’s carrying a handbag large enough to fit a toddler. She’s probably a Realtor. She’s probably selling Connie’s house. Connie is wearing a long, flowing lavender cotton skirt and a plain white T-shirt. She has silver hoops in her ears and her hair is pulled back in a ponytail like the last time I saw her. A few loose strands fall across her thin face. The effect is quite pretty. She appears to have given up the Heather Locklear look for good. Maybe it wasn’t attracting the right people. In this deconstructed version of Connie Gilwood I can see a bit of Forest in her eyes and around her mouth.
We whisk the empty plates away and new trays of food magically appear, loaded with cups of chilled cucumber and dill soup with crème fraî
che from an organic dairy near here. We refill the wine and water and clear endless plates as course after course is delivered. The table is full of appreciative diners and there’s a lot of oohing and aahing.
As I’m clearing my section I’m noticing that my dad is heavy into a passionate conversation with Reynaldo, and Tomás is leaning in too. He appears to be involved in whatever they’re talking about. I’m curious to know what it is but I’m too busy to go over there and see what’s going on. Steve is entertaining a group of city women, his regular Ferry Plaza Market customers. He no doubt charmed them into buying tickets. I can tell that he’s deep into the wine already. Nothing pleases Steve more than free wine and lots of women. Jane, who’s working with us, watches him and rolls her eyes at me.
The main course is finally served on big platters, family-style. Roasted ears of corn rubbed with chipotle butter, links of chorizo sausage made from pork and grass-fed organic beef, barbequed chicken, roasted artichokes with romesco sauce, potato croquettes, and stuffed bell peppers. As soon as we set down the platters, the servers fill their own plates in the tent and we sit in a circle and dig into the food that’s been making our mouths water for almost two hours.
A band wanders onto the small makeshift stage carrying their instruments. They look like they might have started hitchhiking in Mississippi about four days ago. There’s a stand-up bass player in a porkpie hat, a washboard player/drummer, and a hangdog guitar player. They start in with some old Hank Williams tunes, the perfect accompaniment to a country dinner. I heard that Uncle Ned, who looks nothing like a lawyer and everything like a banjo player tonight, is going to sit in later. Storm is sipping from a pink plastic tumbler of white wine and she’s getting pretty cozy with the tall dark waiter. Watching her, it occurs to me that Storm might start to feel very old when she actually reaches the age that she tells everyone she is now. It’s like she’s robbing herself of her own youth. She sees me watching her and winks at me.
The sun starts to dip in the sky and the smell of sweetgrass and cornstalks fills the air. Forest and I sit next to each other, eating without any table manners. He’s never experienced anything quite like this and he’s taking it all in like a Boy Scout on a field trip. After every bite of food he makes a comment and then after a while he just groans with pleasure. He’s never tasted food like this. I brush some hair out of his eyes and look at him with so much love that I must look like I’m going to burst. I start to think about him leaving. He reads my mind and shakes his head. I’ve told myself that every moment till he leaves has to mean something (with time out to go to the bathroom and sleep a little). I want him to leave here with a head full of memories, enough to last him till we see each other again. I’m having trouble imagining my life here without him. I snap a photo of him shoving a forkful of food into his mouth. He’s become so used to me taking photos that he barely notices. I take one of Storm too. It’s hard to get her when she’s not posing. She sticks her tongue out at me.
As the main course is cleared away, my dad gets onto the stage and talks a bit about Field of Greens. He brings all the chefs and their staff out from the tent to cheers and wild applause, then he gets all the waitstaff to stand, more applause, and then he says a few words about the people who dig and haul and plant and weed and do all the backbreaking work to get this wonderful food to the table. There’s only a handful of workers at the table but my dad makes them stand up and the table claps for them. Storm whistles like a sports fan and we all cheer for Tomás, Miguel, and Steve.
Dessert is served: strawberry and peach shortcake and plates of lavender shortbread and meringues. The only thing we’re serving that didn’t grow here is the coffee. We walk around the tables with big thermoses but most people are out of their seats by now and the band is playing again. Ned is up there with his banjo and people are waltzing politely in the grass and gathering in small groups. The volunteers join the party and someone lights tiki torches next to the band and lanterns on the table as darkness closes in on us. The kitchen is lit by the generator-powered lights and we pile up all the dishes in there until Millie tells us that our work is done. I look around for Storm and see her making a discreet exit into the cornstalks with Tall Dark and Handsome. Forest and I grab hands and take off like schoolkids at dismissal time.
The path goes for a quarter of a mile till we come to the field where all the cars are parked. We jump into Forest’s car and bump along the field watching the bugs fly at our headlights until we find the main road. Then we barrel down the road to the tar pits. The car knows the way. When we get there, Forest turns off the engine and kills the headlights but he leaves the stereo playing. There’s a blues CD on. The sound of it puts me in a strange mood. The water looks thick and oily in the dark.
Forest turns to me and grins. “You’re probably wondering why I’ve asked you here tonight.”
“I asked you, remember?”
“Oh, right. What for?”
“I wanted to discuss the economic situation in sub-Saharan Africa,” I whisper, “among other things.” I take my camera strap from around my neck and hand my camera to Forest. He leans over and puts it on the backseat.
“Right. Other things.” He runs his hand along my jaw the way he always does before he kisses me. His hand smells like the awful pink soap from the sink in the tent. He presses his lips against mine and I move in a little closer. I feel my body responding to him but I’m all instinct, like a cat. The real me is in the backseat, watching, fascinated.
Forest runs his hand from the small of my back to my bra strap. I’m wearing the only nice bra I own, a soft pink lacy cotton thing that Storm made me buy “on the outside chance that anyone would ever see it,” she explained. Storm owns lingerie that comes with directions. I’m guessing that she’s helping Tall Dark and Handsome remove it right now.
I arch my back as Forest’s hand explores my body. He pulls gently at the hem of my skirt, revealing my bare, tan legs, which look to me very unlike the legs he’s been looking at all summer in my cutoffs. Somehow they’re part of a different package now. All the scrapes and bruises and Band-Aids are invisible in the moonlight and they look long and sensuous and new.
When I envisioned having sex with Forest (and I have a million times), I didn’t see how things would simply move along toward it like this. I imagined a more clinical setting with a lot of discussion about what we were going to do next. I imagined Forest reassuring me that it wasn’t going to hurt and that I shouldn’t be afraid, but none of that is happening. I’m not at all afraid. My hands are moving over his body on their own. They seem to know what to do and where to go. Our kissing is long and deep and as natural as breathing. We seem to share a tongue and our lips are exactly the same temperature. The kissing sends an electric charge through my body all the way into my toes. Forest gently pushes me back on the seat and I struggle out of my skirt, a little awkward but manageable. He pulls my tank top over my head and looks at me before he kisses my belly and my chest. I pull at the straps of my bra and he undoes the clasp. (Storm highly recommended the front clasp for this very purpose.) I’m naked now except for my panties and I’m grateful for the darkness because they are nothing to write home about. I unbutton his shirt and help him out of it. I throw it into the backseat, where the real me is still sitting, impressed as hell.
The rest of our clothing somehow disappears from our bodies and we’re skin-to-skin for the first time ever. I feel him against me and marvel at how something can feel so hard and so soft at the same time. The words I’d heard to describe it always made it sound like a weapon to me, something made of cold, hard steel, something to be feared. Forest rifles through the glove box for a condom and, I have to admit, it’s awkward. All action stops while this weird little gelatinous thing is produced and put on. It’s like the person you’re about to have sex with suddenly decided to grow some sea monkeys and they just happen to have a package of them in the glove box.
Forest tells me that he loves me. It’s like he knows I ne
ed to hear it before we go any further. My hands pull him closer, closer than we’ve ever been.
When it happens, I suck in my breath and hold it. There’s a resistance inside me and then there isn’t. It does hurt a bit and then it doesn’t. I feel like Forest and I are working toward morphing into one being and then the connection is complete. I start to breathe again. I’m surprised when a tear rolls down my cheek. Forest sees it and kisses it away.
“I love you,” he says again. He lies next to me on the seat; our bodies are warm and the air is warm and we hang on tight to each other. I don’t want him to move. He doesn’t.
“Are you okay?” he asks.
“I’m great. It was so emotional. I didn’t expect that.”
“Neither did I,” he says.
“But you’ve had sex before. Wasn’t it like that?”
“No. Everything is different with you. It’s us. We’re different.”
“Better different?”
“Yes, better different.”
“Hey, you wanna go swimming?”
“Yes.”
“We don’t have a towel.”
“I have an old blanket in the trunk.”
We jump out of the car and run naked, laughing, across the tiny beach. I hesitate a moment when I see the black bottomless water but Forest splashes past me and then turns back and grabs my hand. I follow him in. The water is only slightly cooler than the night air. I wrap my legs around Forest and we bob in the water.