by Tatjana Soli
“Could you wait in the entry for a minute?” Claire said. Then she faced down Gwen. “I want her.”
“You shouldn’t rush—”
“Why not? How much better do you think we’ll know anyone else?”
“What about references?”
“She worked in a coffee shop.”
“I wonder,” Mrs. Girbaldi said, as she poured herself a glass of wine, “how well she’ll adapt to life here. It certainly isn’t Cannes, or Cambridge, or even Berkeley.”
“Well?” Claire pushed.
“It feels funny,” Gwen said.
“She’s very smart.”
Gwen frowned, threw her hands up in defeat. “It’s your decision.”
“Tell her to come in,” Claire said.
And just like that, opposition to Minna crumbled like a house on a false foundation. Or perhaps, the resistance had been halfhearted; already Gwen and Lucy were making plans of escape. Even Gwen seemed satisfied that she had put up an honorable fight. A release of tension, a giddiness, enveloped them now that a solution had so propitiously fallen into their lap.
* * *
The next morning, Claire woke to the smell of coffee. In the kitchen, Minna was dressed in white polo shirt, white jeans, and white tennis shoes. True, the girls’ intuition had been correct in that it felt odd to have a stranger living with her. The habit of solitude was entrenched. This was a shotgun decision—her only way to get what she wanted. Still, she felt a sense of astonishment and relief that Minna was made flesh, not a dream, despite the evidence the previous night when the girl went to Lucy’s car and pulled out of the backseat all her worldly possessions packed in two cardboard liquor boxes. Her sudden appearance as companion so improbable that it distracted from Claire’s preoccupation with her illness, a welcome relief. She poured coffee.
Minna was frowning. “Sorry, but where do you put your trash?”
“Trash? There’s a can under the sink. For big stuff, there’s a bin in the garage.”
“I couldn’t find it anywhere. You Americans, always hiding everything ugly away.”
Claire gave a polite shrug.
“I walked in the orchard this morning. So beautiful. On Martinique we grew sugarcane and bananas mostly, but we had some avocados and citrus for the local markets. It reminds me of my island here. I squeezed a pitcher of juice for us.”
“I thought you said your plantation was on Dominica.”
“We had plantations on different islands.”
“That’s what I recognized in you,” Claire said.
Minna looked up then, embarrassed.
“You appreciate the land.”
“Your daughters are unhappy with my staying here?”
“Unhappy with me,” Claire said.
* * *
Claire backed out the ancient Mercedes from the old carriage house that served as garage. Forster’s family had insisted on buying American cars, starting during the war—a succession of Fords, Chevrolets, and then with Forster’s generation Thunderbirds and Mustangs. But despite their vehement patriotism during that period of the forties and fifties, fruit with the Germanic Baumsarg name did not sell; the produce had to be sent to a middleman, who relabeled the source, at a significant discount. They were krauts, enemies no different from the Japanese. Hanni had told stories to Claire about the deprivation suffered while she was a young woman, when the only butter available was lard colored with food dye.
Since the eighties, the choice had centered on the most economical. The diesel Mercedes belched a black cloud when Claire gunned it and shuddered at stoplights from its worn shock absorbers. The odometer had clocked over 250,000 miles, and the car still had its original, albeit peeling and fading, silver paint job.
Minna sat behind the wheel and ran her finger over the lacquered-wood dash. “Nice.” She had put on a headscarf and large hoop earrings for the outing to the airport.
“Hardly nice,” Claire said. “I hope you’re good on freeways.”
“I love to drive. I’ve driven cross-country five times. Up to Alaska once. Down to South America.”
“Where to?”
Minna looked at her feet, suddenly shy. “Colombia. And Costa Rica. Peru, of course.”
“You drove to South America?” Claire asked, incredulous, and Minna blinked, but before she could answer, the girls came out with their luggage. By the time the car was loaded, there was no room left for a fourth person. Lucy’s suitcases took up most of the backseat, piled high with tote bags, so that Gwen had to squeeze in.
“Aren’t you coming?” Gwen asked when she saw Claire hesitating in the driveway.
Minna sat behind the wheel, humming to herself as she checked her earrings in the overhead vanity mirror.
“Hurry, I’m tight on my flight time,” Lucy said.
“Where will I fit?” Claire asked, waving her hand at the car.
“Maybe let your mother rest?” Minna said.
It was miraculous, the speed with which the barely accepted fact of Minna’s caretaking was taken for granted and even relied upon.
The girls piled back out of the car to say their final good-byes, and for the first time Claire felt their imminent absence. The fear surprised her. She thought she had conquered it during the years of their college, the shorter and shorter visits, the growing distance of their adult lives. Had she made a terrible mistake in not selling the farm, not following Gwen’s advice? Was Lucy right, had she stripped out all the happiness to be had from this place? But if she admitted to a mistake now, then she would also have to admit her earlier mistake in staying all those years before.
Panicked, Claire stood rooted to the spot, unhappy. She came within a breath of calling the whole thing off, revealing her cowardice.
Minna watched, two sharp lines like incisions forming between her brows. “The sun is making you dizzy,” she said, and pulled Claire away from the car and into the shade, the girls following.
Perhaps Minna was right, perhaps the white noon sun was making her light-headed. Under the shade of a fig tree next to the front door, she tried to relax into the feeling of protection. Beyond, the sun still scalded, firing the fine dust in the air. It lit up Minna’s headscarf, with its garish yellows, greens, and reds, cheap and harsh in the burning light. Who was this girl and why had Claire been so impulsive, so starved and willful, as to insist on her company? Standing in the shade, doubt shook her.
Minna had left the driver’s-side door open, and the buzzing sensor made an anxious, insect whining in the background. Ignoring it, Minna folded her arms under her breasts and watched the leave-taking for a moment.
“I want you two to know that I will treat Claire as I would my own mother.”
The girls teared up. Mollified, they pulled out Kleenexes and dabbed their eyes. They embraced Claire. Minna excused herself and went into the house. The girls drifted back toward the car as they traded final good-byes, admonitions, promises, encouragements, schedules. They would take turns visiting home.
When Minna came out, she was carrying a book. “This is for you.”
Claire looked down at a first edition of Wide Sargasso Sea. She opened it to the title page and read the faded, spidery blue autograph. “This is too much.”
Minna shrugged. “It was meant for you. Maybe I am superstitious, but sometimes I think certain people come into our life for a reason.”
The taillights were at the end of the drive before Claire could thank her. Minna was right. She was where she had fought to be, having achieved her dubious goal, buried away in the middle of her groves. Claire turned her back on the car, her fleeing daughters, opened the book to the first page and hungrily began to read.
Chapter 4
They settled into a pattern of days.
Mornings were hardest. Knowledge of the cancer like a weight. Each morning Claire woke, the fact of the disease pressed down on her like a stone lid, like a tombstone, a covering of earth. She was accustomed to a cloistered solitude, had been reinfo
rcing its walls for all the years since Joshua’s death, freely perambulating the garden in housecoat and slippers, sipping her oversize cup of coffee as her fingers trailed elegiac lavender heads and spiky, stick-leaved rosemary, cradled flesh-soft roseheads and dimpled citrus. Her garden and the ranch beyond it had always given her such consolation, but now she gazed on it as one about to go away on a long journey. Paradoxical since she had fought so hard to stay on the ranch; it had ended being her sole victory.
But the atmosphere of the farm had changed. She felt eyes watched her. In addition to Minna, there was Paz, who came once a week for cleaning. They hadn’t seen each other in a year when she came through the door. She went to Claire and buried her face on her shoulder. “How are you, mi tía?” Claire marveled at how self-assured she had become since she’d been away at college. “I wish you would have let me care for you.”
“Give me my wish—your name on the door of a law office.”
Paz blushed. “Among other things. It’s official—Steven and I are marrying at the end of the year. You’ll come?”
Of course, Claire thought, if I’m here. “Are you sure you have time for this?”
“Spending money.” Paz laughed. “School’s expensive.”
Even during the times that no one was at the ranch, the possibility of it threw a veil of self-consciousness over all Claire did and saw. My lavender, she repeated to herself. My rosemary, my roses, my farm. But despite the insistence, it now seemed a changing and remote landscape.
* * *
The doctor sent thick booklets describing the procedures of chemotherapy and radiation, and Claire signed endless papers stating than she understood the risks, would hold harmless those who would poison her with the intention of a more ultimate health. She tried to distract herself with the activities of the farm, but it seemed as if her old life had been transcribed into a language she could not understand.
“What do you think about spraying the back field?” Octavio asked.
“Yes. I think so. I don’t know. What do you think?”
“Should I ask Mr. Forster?”
“No. No need to. I’m fine.”
“I think you do too much. You need rest to get back your health.”
“I’m fine. This is what I need.”
* * *
Instead of the farm, Claire plunged into the most private of worlds, the pages of a novel, for comfort. That old luxuriousness like a warm bath that she had not realized how much she missed. The book Minna gave her was a weathered, smallish hardback. The pages yellowed and brittle and smelling, she imagined, of faded spices. Claire stared at the signature for long moments, feeling a thrill that the author had actually held this volume; it made the reading more urgent.
Rereading a book was a different experience from coming upon it for the first time. Especially if it was well-loved, like a favorite piece of music, it was capable of taking you back to a former self. In college, it was a revelation that the madwoman, Bertha, in the attic of Jane Eyre, might actually have an argument, might actually be a human being; moreover, a wronged one. That there were explanations for the crazy behavior. That the tall, dark, stoic Rochester might just be a misogynistic schemer. A newlywed when Claire next reread it, unpacking her boxes of books in her new home under Hanni’s scrutiny, this time she was much taken by the sensuality of the island, and the newlywed status of Antoinette and Rochester. That, too, had been omitted from Jane Eyre, as if Jane were jealous of Rochester’s erotic past. Now, all these years later, she identified with Antoinette’s mother, Annette, her fear, a common fear of women through time, that her better days might be behind her. How could she not try for all the things that had gone so suddenly, so without warning. Then, so close to the relief of marrying Mr. Mason, the death of a son now doubly destroyed Claire. Claire had to lay down the book and take breaks while reading the passage in which Annette’s son dies.
From the vantage of her older self, Claire knew that when disaster struck, no matter how long prepared against, it was always sudden, always took your breath away. That much she understood. Some might consider Claire herself a madwoman, one in a citrus orchard instead of locked up in an attic. But she understood why the mother insisted on riding out on her horse each morning in her shabby clothes, despite the jeers, why she kept walking up and down the glacis, keeping vigil over her abandoned Coulibri and all the things that were now a thing of the past. If one gave up the past, what was there?
In the year following Josh’s death, the newspapers filled with the court case and then the sentencing of the three men, Claire had gone into town, alone or with the girls, and experienced repeatedly the hushed silence when entering a store or restaurant, the whispers, “That’s her!” She had achieved a macabre, unwanted celebrity. The fruit stand sold out daily for a year before attention finally shifted away.
She would not allow her illness to turn her into an object of pity; she refused to be sequestered. Instead of staying in the house, she put on jeans and sneakers, a sweatshirt over her bandaged chest, snuck into the orchards, and took long walks along the snaking rows of citrus. She wore a large-brimmed straw hat, hiding her face, the skin that would be sensitized by the chemo. The workers who saw her, probably thinking that she was indeed a madwoman, dodged out of her way quickly, making her privacy so complete and absolute it was almost as if she were invisible.
Claire spent long hours reading on the couch, and Minna served her thick, frothy health drinks.
“I can’t. I’m not hungry.”
“This is important. Builds the blood.”
Claire sipped and grimaced. “What is it?”
“Secret recipe from Maman.”
* * *
The following Monday would be Claire’s first chemo treatment, so she tried to luxuriate in the last days when she was still free to pretend away her illness. Mrs. Girbaldi was hosting her annual fund-raiser for animals, and although Claire shrank away from the effort of having to socialize, she decided she should go because to attempt to live a normal life seemed essential for what lay ahead.
Saturday morning Minna and Claire sat over coffee and newspapers on the patio. Paz was mopping in the living room, and Claire did her best not to hover over the girl. The house hardly felt hers anymore. Not only did Paz’s presence make her uneasy, she itched to correct details, such as the amount of oil used on the floor. Paz used too much and left behind a faint tackiness on bare feet. Not having control irritated Claire. When the mop handle clattered on the floor inside, she jumped, still groggy from having read late into the night.
Minna stood and looked out over the orchards. “This is a God place.”
“Excuse me?”
“You are lucky to have this. There are powers here.”
“It’s true. I draw strength here.”
“It can heal you if you allow it. Maman said trees healed you.”
“I want to explain some things—just because I hired you doesn’t mean I can’t take care of myself.”
“Of course.”
“I don’t intend to lie around being sick. I expect you to be productive as well. Live your own life, too.”
“Something bothers you?”
“No. Yes,” Claire said. “I’m not a pushover.”
“Are you feeling uncomfortable with me?”
“I’ve had to be strong to keep this place. You should know this.”
“That’s hard to do always.”
“Yes. But it’s who I am.”
Minna sipped her coffee and said nothing. Finally, she sighed. “Sometimes you have to give up power. For a time.”
Claire worried that she had offended the girl. If she left, Claire would be back to square one with her daughters. She had become crafty in her grief, sly in her fanatical attachment to staying on the farm. Minna had slippery edges, which meant she might do better than most. A hunger was there that Claire could work with.
“It must have been amazing to grow up on the islands,” Claire said, lightening t
he mood.
Minna blew on her coffee, which must have gone cold quite a while ago, an unnecessary, theatrical gesture. “It was a magic place. We owned things there like you do here.”
“Did you appreciate it at the time, how special it was?”
“It was simply our life.” Minna shrugged. “My maman preferred oil lamps at night. I would sit on her bed as she rubbed a cream made from coconut and flowers on my arms and legs and neck. She told me it would give me soft skin for my future husband someday.”
Claire smiled. “An idyllic childhood.”
“A way of life. People came for dinner and stayed a week. My parents had so many friends the house was never empty. I was never lonely there. Always a picnic or a party or an outing to go on. Like here, no?”
“We were happy here. Once.” Claire knew there was no such nostalgia for the girls. To them the ranch was simply earth and fencing and buildings. They were oblivious that it had spawned them as much as Forster and herself. “I’ll be out tonight.”
Minna nodded.
Claire thought of her own first lonely nights on the farm. “Would you like to go with me?”
“Should you bring your help?”
“You’re my assistant.”
Minna looked up and grinned. “It will be a raucous party, I hope? I’ll be your chaperone. Keep the men off you.”
“More like I’ll be the mother hen guarding her chick from the wolves.”
“But I’m a wolf. Just like you, I can take care of myself.” Minna stood and gathered the breakfast dishes. “Can I use the phone for a long-distance call to home? Just to let them know where I am. You can deduct from my wages.”
Claire waved off Minna’s suggestion, embarrassed by the mention of money and pay, dismayed how it ruined her effort at camaraderie, still so tenuous. She felt ridiculous, like having a schoolgirl crush, trying to make a good impression on this girl.
“I insist,” Minna said. “We must keep business and friendship separate.”
Claire was pleased by Minna’s mention of friendship, implying that she looked at this job as something more than a way station. Despite Claire’s protests to the contrary, she wanted a companion to go through her ordeal with.
