The Forgetting Tree

by Tatjana Soli

  Another thing that marked them as foreign—the Nagys were a reading family and derived their knowledge of the world first through books. Subsequently, Claire found she only really understood a subject if she read about it in print. Close to Hollywood, all their neighbors worshipped movie stars, but they instead worshipped writers. A house of freely mingling nationalities—the Russians with the French, the South Americans with the Deep Southerners with the Irish. Dostoyevsky nestled against Borges, Zola communed with Faulkner and Joyce. As well, there was no discrimination between the living and the dead, and when school friends asked about the pictures of the grim men (Kafka and her father’s favorite, Márai) in the living room, Claire lied and said they were distant great-uncles.

  The gloomy apartment was crowded, the small rooms overwhelmed, filled with a past life bigger than their present one: towering antique armoires from Austria, featuring fixed forms of birds in flight and flowers native to the Black Forest. No longer being fashionable, these were picked up cheap at estate sales. An armoire in Claire’s room was made of darkest wood and covered a whole wall, featuring a black bear with a gaping maw in which Claire used to hide a single grape. A tarnished Polish samovar with its potbellied blue flame boiled away on a sideboard each Sunday, while Raisi served Viennese pastries on china to the neighborhood ladies, scandalizing them by giving the grown-ups thimblefuls of eye-burning slivovitz, plum brandy, poured into crystal goblets stained the red, blue, and gold colors of church windows.

  Almos tried to learn golf, planned days at the beach, bought a barbecue, but Raisi stubbornly clung to the old ways as if she were still in a place of scarcity, still in a place of cold, blowing winds.

  Now Claire looked at the things inside her own house so painstakingly gathered, including the chest with the black bear, the samovar, the books. Had that really been her, trying to create a home so hard? A museum of family? She, after all, wasn’t an exile like Raisi, or was she? Had she inherited the damage of loss the way the children of soldiers inherit that specific heartbreak?

  * * *

  Guilty about falling asleep for a few hours after the first week, Claire woke to the news that a piece of paper had been left in the mailbox, no observers, with a demand for ransom. The police immediately went into action, interviewing all the workers again. “I need to talk with you,” Claire said to Forster.

  “What?”

  They went outside to the porch. “I offered them money.”

  He paused, considering, and his slow deliberateness maddened her. “I don’t think—”

  “What if I gave them the idea to take Josh?”

  “Stop it.”

  “We need to get the money.”

  “The police said no.”

  “He’s not their son.”

  “Let them handle it.”

  “My fault. Our son.” Claire ran into the house. Punched the numbers of the bank and demanded to speak with Mr. Relicer. She was told he was in a meeting. “This is an emergency,” she yelled. After too long, he came on.

  “Mrs. Baumsarg, we heard—”

  “I need money. An increase.”

  “Yes, well … the line was closed at your request.”

  “Open it again. Can I pick it up?”

  “Under the circumstances, it wouldn’t be responsible.”

  The answer was so in character, Claire hung up.

  She ran back to Forster. “Let’s sell the farm. We can get money fast.” He walked out of the house, slamming the door. For the rest of the day, they did not speak. When Claire walked into the kitchen, Raisi stopped chopping vegetables and took her aside.

  “You must stop this.”

  “What?”

  “Pitying yourself. We don’t know what happened to Joshua. But I see what is happening to the rest of the family. Do your job—hold things together.”

  * * *

  Then it occurred to her at last, the obvious choice. She went to Mrs. Girbaldi, the wealthiest woman in the county. “It’s a horrible thing to ask for. You have the right to tell me no,” Claire said. “Nothing is more precious than a child,” Mrs. Girbaldi said. The two of them went to the bank. A withdrawal wasn’t even recorded since she had enough cash in deposit boxes to satisfy the amount. The bag was placed in the location specified, a lonely stretch of highway toward the desert, in the crook of a tree. The women went to a diner for coffee, and when they drove back, the bag was gone.

  After an hour, they had still heard nothing. Back home, Claire stood vigil on the porch, unable to tell anyone what she had done.

  That night, Claire turned her back to Forster, only waking when Lucy tugged at her. The child mortified that she had peed in her sleep, soaking her sleeping bag. Claire took her into the bathroom, running the bath and washing her as she had when she was a little girl.

  Lucy rested her head on her mother’s shoulder. “Is it our fault?”

  “What?”

  “We let Joshua go away.”

  “Never think that.”

  “Will the bad men come back for us?”

  “You’ll be safe. I promise,” Claire said, bringing her to their bed and letting her sleep nested between them.

  The next morning, Forster announced he would call the developers.

  “I’ve taken care of it.”

  All through the next morning, all through the next week, nothing. Then Octavio was allowed to turn the water back on, and the sprinklers ran, breaking the hard, cracked dirt, and still they heard nothing. As if, collecting the money, the kidnappers forgot their part. Claire kept replaying that night. It had been Octavio’s pickup going up the driveway. When did Josh decide to go after her?

  * * *

  At the Mejia quinceañera party, his daughter Paz wore a long blue gown. Her skin was milky, the crown of paste jewels on her black hair catching the light of candles, making her look as if flame were sparking off her body. It all came down to this, and whatever was out there in those dark fields, Octavio needed to protect his daughter, his whole family, from it. Despite the loud music, his father was dozing on a sofa pushed into the dining room. It was the old man’s new trick—the ability to sleep constantly, under any conditions. Octavio squeezed his father’s shoulder gently and only got a sleepy shrug in reply. He opened a beer and drank the full thing down in one gulp.

  “Tavi, take it easy. The night has just started,” Sofia said, walking past with a tray laden with food. “People are paying attention.”

  Sofia had never cared what people thought when she let Octavio take her to the lake all those years ago, but life changed. The house was crowded beyond standing room with relatives, and relatives of relatives, and friends, neighbors, only a small number of whom Octavio recognized, and the heat inside grew thick and pushing. He would go broke entertaining strangers, all people whose opinion his Sofia suddenly cared so much about. Not once did she suggest canceling for Joshua. Where had his gentle wife’s heart gone? Nevertheless, Octavio stopped in awe at the sight of his firstborn child; his eyes grew watery. Twenty years from this night, would Octavio himself be tucked away on a sofa, worn out by life, while his Paz threw the quinceañera for her own daughter? It exhausted him, the endless cycles of life, like the harvest.

  “Ah, Papi, not now. No tears.”

  Paz had replaced his young Sofia in her gentle concern for him. What worse hell could there be than to lose one’s child, one’s future? His love of Joshua was just as fierce as if he had been blood. Octavio shuddered as if a cold breeze had crossed his hot skin. Worse than the worst thing he could imagine, which was losing one’s land.

  The band tuned up for the first dance, the one reserved for father and daughter. Octavio had learned steps with a dance teacher, who gave Sofia and the girls lessons, but he was too tired to practice every night for it to do much good. Now he clumped across the floor, his footwork even more cloddish compared to the princess steps of his Paz. He was self-conscious, mortified by the bright light and the attention of all these strange eyes on them. Let P
az have the light, only outside was he himself, among his trees, one with the earth that he tilled like prayer. Eat the orange, taste the sweet juice that was like liquid light; he wasn’t too shy to take credit for that. He stepped on Paz’s satin slipper right before the music stopped, but she pretended she felt nothing. A good girl. They ended to applause, and Octavio was released to go outside, cool off, and hide.

  * * *

  Paz was circling a group of older teenagers who ignored her, trying to make eye contact with a boy she favored, when she heard them talking about two young men from Apatzingán, Mexico, involved in a crime with a local delincuente who was always in and out of jail. News traveled in the neighborhood more reliably than in the newspapers, but even second generation felt no inclination to go to the police. Policía were still thought of in terms of their homeland, a force that could just as easily bring more trouble than less. Instead, it was preferable to close ranks and take care of trouble from within if possible. The Mejias were not much part of the community; they were considered a bit conceited, barely a step below their beloved employers so that they took the disappearance as a family matter. Sofia was determined to remedy this to get her daughter married even if Octavio was determined to turn a blind eye. This grudge allowed the guests to gorge themselves on the food and drink without guilt.

  Paz wished to move off and forget such talk on her special day, but the words boy and money stuck in her ear and nagged. Her father’s heart had been heavy the last weeks; he scowled and kicked out of his way her younger brothers and sisters. Pretty, childish Joshua, who always flirted with her, was missing, and a bad outcome would not be good for any of them. Like a bird, Paz flew to her father, and he in turn herded the boys into a closed bedroom, despite Sofia’s begging that it was time to cut the cake, that he was ruining the family’s night. That he was always more interested in the Baumsargs than his own family.

  * * *

  Octavio’s fists clenched and unclenched, his uncles and brothers behind him, rumbling like thunder in the mountains. These were young, innocent kids, thinking they were cool by being in the know of gang talk in the neighborhoods. They had only heard wisps of gossip. Two no-goods were passing through and had met a small-time criminal named Denny Larsen at the local bar. Just out of jail for burglary, using a fake ID, he had found a job with a local caterer and worked the birthday party at the Baumsarg ranch. He bragged it would be an easy robbery. Start-up money for getting in the drug business. Octavio understood what had nagged at him earlier about the stolen silver globe—it had been found in the bag of a waiter, who was promptly fired. The Baumsargs refused to press charges.

  Octavio went down the porch steps of his house, the house he had grown up in, where he raised his own family, and yet the steps felt unfamiliar. He knew with certainty that nothing would ever be the same. Blood pounded in his head something fierce. If he didn’t know better, he would say that he was having a heart attack, but this was an attack of a more intimate kind. His brother Avelino clutched a broken-edged baseball bat. A cousin held a pipe. Octavio had seen nothing that dark night, but the air had felt menacing as it now did. An electrical charge brushed over his skin like the feel of fur. The memory of a broken female body on the ground was replaced by the standing form of Paz, in her beautiful, shining blue gown that matched the night, sparks coming off her hair from the paste diamonds.

  “Papi?”

  “Call the police,” Octavio said under his breath to Sofia, who came out to see why he insisted on disgracing them in front of everyone they knew. He charged off with a roar like a bull, to save what had already been lost.

  * * *

  As Claire sat at the kitchen table with Forster, her parents, and the girls, a truck roared to a stop in front of the house. Forster looked up but did not rise, as if he had a premonition that this was something he did not want to rush to meet. Octavio walked straight in, as was his habit. Paz trailed behind in her blue satin gown and tiara, ribbons in her hair and satin shoes. She cried as Octavio pulled her by the arm.

  “We must talk,” he said.

  Gwen and Lucy, already in pajamas, stared at the girl, who now appeared a stranger. They had grown up together, played in the orchards and in each other’s house. Beauty that Paz was, Josh developed a wild crush on her. Now she stared back in all her adult finery, badly out of place, and she wanted to hide.

  “You look pretty,” Lucy said.

  Paz stared back without staying a word.

  * * *

  Raisi herded the girls up to bed, closing the kitchen door behind them. In their room, they worried out questions.

  “Why did she come?” Gwen asked.

  “She probably wanted you to see her beautiful dress,” Raisi said, guessing from the foreman’s seriousness that the real answer was far worse. “Since you missed her party.”

  “She looked like a princess,” Lucy said. “Did you see she had lipstick on?”

  “Why was she crying then?” Gwen persisted.

  Raisi sat on the edge of the bed and covered her face in her hands for a moment. The world was a lure and a trap, a trap and tragedy. She had found this out as a young girl and never been disabused of the knowledge, although there was no acting on it, only enduring it. She got up to make coffee for the real mourning that she feared would now start. “Best to get dressed, girls. There won’t be much sleep tonight.”

  * * *

  The sheriffs came out and cordoned off the property, not allowing anyone on without permission. Police vans parked on the highway road. Floodlights were carried out to the remote area by the lake. Yellow tape unspooled and wrapped from trunk to trunk like a child’s game. The two sheriffs’ cars blocked the road to the orchard, careless and crooked, as if their drivers were in a great hurry.

  The stark light of the searchlights gave the lemon trees and the fields around it an otherworldly feel, like a photo negative. Minus one child, the insulated Baumsarg world cracked open, the X-ray revealing a diseased inside. Octavio stood by the patrol car, his face contorted by pain. Claire sat in the back of one of the cars, her head bowed as if at a confessional. Each breath a labor. She was angry at the hurry that came too late. As if Joshua were lying under his blanket of dirt holding his breath. As if any of them could still be saved.

  The officers stood knee-deep in dirt, one sheriff slope-shouldered and one potbellied with an aching back, shoveling, and then Forster let out a moan so strange it did not seem likely to come from such a large man, more like the noise of an animal trapped in the high mountains, leg caught, helpless.

  He pushed them aside, parted the last inches of dirt with bare fingers. Then yelled for everyone to turn away in shame. Claire stumbled out of the car. The sheriffs, sweating, turned and with smudgy fingers stroked their felt hats. In the etched shadows, their expressions turned blank. Such outlandish grief made them dumb.

  A glimpse of pant leg that turned out to be dirt-encrusted jeans. The bright red of a Keds sneaker that Josh had insisted on buying, so that he could spot his shoes easily for gym class. A pain charged through Claire’s body, and she knew with certainty that she would never recover from the sight. It grafted itself, unwanted, onto her. A cicatrice of grief.

  Octavio fell on his knees in front of her. “Forgive me.”

  A distaste, like bile. “What are you talking about?”

  “I should have somehow protected him. I didn’t know enough.”

  That was the final blow. Not even the death of Josh that destroyed, but her inability to save him from harm—a parent’s first duty—was what undid her.

  Chapter 3

  The land was the first thing to understand. The Baumsarg family’s citrus ranch was one of the most valuable pieces of land in Southern California—580 acres of groves, with a ranch house and numerous outbuildings of wood with corrugated-tin roofs that flashed in the sunlight like semaphores. The majority was planted between Valencias and Washington navels. The Valencias that spring were blooming white blossoms and in fruit at
the same time, the novelty of which delighted Claire. Acres and acres of perfumed white, orange, and green.

  Claire felt she had arrived in paradise when she married Forster and first came to live there as a young bride. Both sides of their family were from immigrant stock, raised for hardscrabble adversity and expecting no better, but always persevering. The promise of land made the hope fresh for Claire, made her feverish with dreams and plans, even as it had grown stale for the inherent family.

  She did not know the ranch was already in peril by the time Forster and she first met at UCLA. An awkward, gangly blond of German descent, Forster carefully maneuvered a cup of punch through a boisterous crowd at a university social to bring it to her without losing a single drop. She was the shy girl at school, and his attention overwhelmed her.

  “You have the most delicate hands,” he said. How to explain that the moment he saw her, it was clear-cut that she was the one, but he had to pretend the knowledge away.

  In the bathroom, the other girls had teased her over his attentions. “He’s a rube. He’s got dirt under his fingernails, in his ears. A farmer boy.” Claire came out of the bathroom less flattered by his attentions, more wary.

  Sensing he might already be losing her interest, he blurted out, “Would you like to go outside?”

  She would. Away from the curious eyes, the ironic, curled smiles. In the dark, the spring air was fragrant. They stood on the stone patio and gazed into the gloom of eucalyptus trees to avoid each other’s eyes.

  “It smells so nice,” she said, thinking how to make a quick exit.