by Tatjana Soli
* * *
Claire spent the morning in the barn with Octavio, going over the coming week’s work. The basket price for avocados was down, but strawberry prices had skyrocketed because heavy rains in Oxnard had spoiled its crop. Both sobering and an act of grace to realize that the world went on despite one’s private turmoil. Late afternoon, Claire came back from shopping to the eccentric sight of Minna sleeping out on the lawn. She lay flat on her back, her arms flung out sideways. Claire touched her on the shoulder.
Minna yawned awake. “What did you buy?” She jumped up like a teenager, eager to look through the bags.
“Go ahead,” Claire said, laughing.
Minna pulled out three velour sweat suits. Tube socks. Orthopedic clogs.
“What’s wrong?” Claire asked at Minna’s obvious disappointment.
“What about something fun?”
“I’m preparing.”
“Prepare for after. Buy a pair of stilettos.”
“I was never a stiletto kind of woman, if you haven’t guessed.”
Minna laughed. “It’s long past lunch. You need to keep up your strength. Let’s eat the leftover salmon.” In the kitchen, Claire sat on a barstool while Minna prepared food, and then they ate.
“I never eat this often.”
“Now you will. Protein is important.”
“So you’ll come tonight? At least get to know the neighbors,” Claire said.
“Sure.”
“Do you go to the movies?”
“Now and then.”
“Donald Richards will be there. He owns a place a mile down the road. He has a menagerie—cows, horses, llamas, goats, dogs, and cats.”
“A Noah’s ark.”
“He’s not a Noah. He tends to get falling-down drunk and flirt with all the women.”
“Occupational hazard, I guess.” The harshness in Minna’s voice surprised Claire. “My sister was a model. I know a bit about that kind of life.”
“What do you mean?”
Minna rose then, pushing the barstool back with her knees. “I should finish unpacking. I’ve been running around like a chicken, exhausted.”
“I don’t mean to be nosy.”
“We’re sisters. You can ask me anything.” Minna sighed. “It hurts me to speak of her. My oldest sister and I haven’t talked in years.” She stood still, lost in thought. “She’s married to a terrible man. An evil little Frenchman. Can’t leave because she has two children with him. He drinks, and when he’s had too much, he beats her.”
The story burst out of her. The ugly, flayed thing lay on the table between them. Claire didn’t know how to respond.
“Why does she stay with him?”
“Why?” Minna asked in a mocking tone. “I suppose because she isn’t thin and young as she once was.”
“A terrible reason.”
“Not everyone was born owning a prosperous farm.” Minna slapped the back of one hand in the palm of the other, a gesture of dismissal. “She puts up with it. Considers it her ‘lot.’ Allows him to call her his nigger.”
Claire looked down, hiding her shock, not wanting to seem prudish, although despite all she had gone through, she did feel cloistered, naïve about the realities of the world Minna spoke of, unable to think of a reply.
“Wouldn’t make a very good book, nuh?” Minna set her cup in the sink, staring out the window, oblivious to Claire’s discomfort. “You’re lucky to live in the middle of this grove. A little blind paradise.”
“Not always a paradise,” Claire defended, but Minna did not hear her.
Minna stretched her arms overhead. “That’s why I’ll never marry, not in this life. Voluntary slavery if it goes bad.”
* * *
Claire took a long bath, and as the claw-foot tub filled, she confronted her naked self in the mirror. Not a vain woman, she had no explanation for the unaccountable vertigo she felt, as bad as if she were viewing her broken, bleeding self in a car accident. She had been avoiding this confrontation, but Minna’s story had haunted her into meeting it head-on. She didn’t want to be either trapped in an untenable situation or self-deluded. Would she ever get used to this? Or perhaps the bigger question, would she survive long enough to get used to it?
Perhaps a person who preferred fictions wasn’t such a bad thing. She conceded the possibility that her daughters were more sensible and more loving than she allowed them to be, that their charity in taking care of her would possibly not have been entirely a burden, might even have rekindled their relationship. But Claire needed to stay on the farm, and they wanted to be done with it, and so she sowed the attitude that she was self-sufficient.
Their family had a long habit of silence. Hush. Not now. The pain is too much. Now she had a new secret. She had been loath to tell what the oncologist had diagnosed: her lymph nodes had been affected; the chance of the cancer’s having metastasized (ugly, foreboding word she had been unfamiliar with) was high. The survival rate equal to flipping a coin. Make this time count, he counseled, and she would, by making sure her daughters were away and protected from new pain. Her gift to them.
Exactly what this girl, Minna, was about, Claire didn’t guess, but she liked the girl’s mixture of bravado and timidity. Claire’s mind, fleeing the reality of upcoming chemo treatments, found refuge in the mystery of Minna. Claire created her glamorous and mysterious, and perhaps just the slightest bit spiritually wise, while not being overbearing, and that was exactly how she found her to be.
* * *
They met in the kitchen at six for the short drive over to Mrs. Girbaldi’s. Minna walked in wearing a silk, spaghetti-strapped dress that draped to her ankles. The dress’s background was black, the foreground filled with the most spectacular flowers. From a distance, the singular effect was that Minna stood naked, huge flowers in red and gold twined around her body. On her feet were the strappy, golden sandals. Claire stood breathless, in awe, before an ancient Mesopotamian queen.
Minna, confused by Claire’s stare, shrugged down at her dress. “Too much?”
“No.”
“It’s a handoff from my sister. The model. After the babies it was too tight around the arse, you know.”
“The hips.”
“Yes.” Minna smiled. “The hips. I appreciate the correction. I always try to improve myself. Be a lady like your daughters.”
“The dogs will howl at your beauty.”
They both laughed.
“In Dominica, the rich white people, the blans, have guard dogs that go crazy howling when they see a black person. But it’s not because they hate us, it’s because they smell their owners’ fear of us. They try to show off and earn their keep.”
Claire stood, not able to say a word. The girl took the words out of her mouth.
“Should we have a drink before we leave?” Minna asked. “I make a smooth martini. Your last chance to have alcohol for a while.”
“Was your mother as beautiful as you?” Claire asked.
Minna looked at her. It was as if she comprehended Claire’s desire for escape. “Maman had the most beautiful face you will ever see.”
“Make that martini. I’ll go get my wrap.”
The phone rang—Gwen calling. Claire told her how attentive Minna was, how she was feeding her a special diet. “She even wants me to take up yoga and meditation. Can you imagine?”
“You sound good,” Gwen said.
“Call me Monday night after my treatment, okay?” When she returned to the living room, Minna was standing stranded in the middle of the floor.
“Where are the drinks?”
“I couldn’t find where you keep the alcohol. It’s not in the bar.”
“Locked kitchen cabinet. Old habit from when the girls were young.”
“Everything is hidden away here,” Minna said. “Why do you people hide everything away? Who was that on the phone?”
“Gwen.”
“Checking on us, nuh?”
Claire paused. “I told
her what good care you were giving me. Like another daughter.”
“Oh, I don’t want to compete with your daughters. I’ll be like a son. Responsible, protective.”
Claire was quiet, watching as Minna expertly chilled the glasses, then coated them in vermouth. She hammered the ice into small pieces before putting it in a shaker. Cut a long curl of lemon peel. “You’re good.”
“You guessed another secret. I worked as a bartender also.”
They clinked glasses.
“To…” Claire floundered.
“To new life,” Minna said. The martini was flawless, so smooth it went down like water.
Chapter 5
By the time they arrived, late and slightly buzzed, Mrs. Girbaldi’s house was full, people queuing at the tufted-leather bar (built by her now-deceased husband decades ago when that was the style). Others strolled the long tables filled with pet-related items for the silent auction: oil paintings of stiff-legged Labradors and setters; ceramic statues and coffee mugs of poodles; pawprint-embossed picture frames; pet-photography gift certificates; plush-covered down beds; plated bowls; GPS-signal dog collars. Claire would donate money but was determined to collect no more clutter in her life. It was time to discard, lighten her load. Her new perspective made every object, mug or diamond earrings, look like junk.
Mrs. Girbaldi regularly hosted blue-chip charity functions and country-club gatherings; tonight there was a holdover from a benefit for Pendleton veterans—in attendance was a disabled marine in a wheelchair, whom she was determined to help find a job. The young soldier had been wheeled next to a serving table in the corner, ostensibly to avoid his being knocked into, but the effect was to isolate him in his cagelike chair. He sat, his horsey, handsome face alert, uniform pressed into knifed ridges, his chest covered in ribbons, while his big hands fumbled with a dainty-handled cup of punch. People passed and nodded in his direction—they were a conservative, patriotic, flag-waving crowd—but the wheelchair, or rather the woundedness that it connoted, made them shy. There was no denying a discomfort with his presence—it felt awkward to congratulate him on his service or to thank him for it. Afraid that it would beg the question of the price he had paid. Was he bitter? Would that bitterness explode against a luckless well-wisher? They were there collectively for simple pleasures. Claire was there to forget, even if only temporarily, and none of them wished to be faced with the moral vagaries of the harsh, larger world outside. So, cruelly, they kept at a remove from the young man.
The crowd was more casual than usual at Mrs. Girbaldi’s affairs—older women with gray poking through their undyed hair; soft-voiced men; surfer types; youngish couples with toddlers in plush, reinforced strollers. Not the typical well-maintained, affluent, older crowd that financed local philanthropic undertakings. Amid this gathering, Minna stood out all the more.
A ripple of attention went through the room as they entered, and Claire enjoyed the vicarious glamour. Did Minna mind being the only black person to enter a crowded room? Did the double takes bother her? Claire watched and thought that if anything Minna thrived on the attention. Because, of course, her beauty trumped all. A couple passing leaned together and one said, “Probably down slumming from Hollywood.”
Minna looked away as Claire tapped the man on his shoulder and whispered, “She’s the great-granddaughter of Jean Rhys.”
He nodded, satisfied.
After they moved off, Minna laughed. “Shame on you. Name-dropping. As if they even knew who she was. Do you want another drink?”
“Why not?”
Claire moved off to the edge of the living room, surveying the scene for anyone she knew. Conversely, she wished for no attention, no one to notice her compromised self.
As Minna passed the young marine, she bent down to him. “You can’t possibly be interested in that punch. Would you like me to get you a Scotch?”
“That would be outstanding.” He laughed, his face lit up, suddenly a young man again, not simply the object of pity. Minna knelt, and he looked at her with delight. All the others who talked to him had remained standing. Of course her attentions would be every bit as recuperative as any job. Minna talked, laying her hand on his knee for emphasis. Someone took a picture of them for the local paper, mistaking her for an actress.
At the best of times, Claire was an ambivalent partygoer, but now she stood paralyzed by the thought of her lopsided chest, shielded by the frail camouflage of a gauzy, knotted scarf. Perhaps Gwen was right and a “boob man” was in order. The absurdity of such self-consciousness did nothing to mitigate it. At her age, in her condition, what did it matter anymore?
Minna moved through the room toward the bar like a lioness prowling her territory. One noticed her skin, its burnished golden brown, her long neck, her powerful stride, her softly dropping feet like sleek paws. The sensation of her nakedness still lingered, but it held no hint of shame, rather a crude-cut beauty, lacking the slightest artifice. It was the rest of them, with their pale skin and bluish veins, their thin legs and bound breasts, who required covering, modesty, and shame. Minna disappeared to the end of the line out the door.
* * *
On the couch, holding court, sat Donald Richards. He and Claire had been distant friends over the almost thirty years of his owning the ranch, although he was only there part-time. They pretended an intimacy at parties that was never followed up on. Claire imagined his debauched lifestyle had little in common with her cloistered one, but they enjoyed being bored together at parties.
The valley regularly attracted celebrities searching for the anonymity they had so eagerly shunned before fame found them. The longtime locals prided themselves on taking no notice of these Hollywood types, carrying it so far as to ignore them, and sometimes past that to outright rudeness. Often after enough ego drubbings, FOR SALE signs would spring up like dandelions, and the celebrities, full of the new hurtful knowledge that, after all, they wanted attention and fawning, would return north to where they would be courted.
One got inured to seeing movie stars in the grocery, or TV hosts pumping their own gas. One got used to the everyday fact that in person they were always shorter and had worse skin, that they were kinder and more fragile than one imagined.
Claire was fond of Don, even imagined they had a mild flirtation going over the years made of equal parts his compliments and her mockery of his stardom. She had grown protective of him. Like a particularly noxious weed, he persisted and flourished on neglect, and the whole community came to accept him.
His eyelids fluttered as Minna passed by while he listened with rapt attention to Mrs. Carsey (talking with hearing-aid loudness) about her late poodle. It must have been a handy gift to have, being an actor, portraying one thing in public while one’s private self attended to its own interests. Minna took a drink to the soldier, stopping only briefly to talk, much to his obvious disappointment.
Don motioned Claire over with an impatient wave. “Who’s your friend?”
“My new … assistant.”
“Introduce. She looks like Halle Berry. But more rustic.”
“She’s way out of your league,” Claire said, hurt pride and motherly solicitude neatly merging.
A line of autograph seekers had formed behind her. Donald’s latest movie had been released the month before. Although he was in his late forties, he played a soldier in the First Gulf War. Claire hadn’t bothered to read the reviews, although she noted in the posters that they had outlined his eyes in kohl, giving him an aging, dissolute Rudolph Valentino look that seemed at odds with the image of the wholesome, young American soldier he was supposed to be playing. In the movie, he goes AWOL, and while escaping into the desert, he meets and falls in love with a Kuwaiti princess, played by a busty Italian starlet. A jaded Romeo and a loose Juliet, and an indictment of war to boot. Claire wouldn’t say it to his face, but she thought there would be more dignity in his growing oranges.
Unbelievably there was Oscar buzz, and Donald even testified before Co
ngress about something to do with the war, although during the actual war he had been boozing and womanizing, in and out of rehab. Now he was talking about opening an elephant-rescue sanctuary on a couple of hundred acres in the Santa Ynez valley area of central California because the terrain was supposed to resemble elephants’ habitat in Africa. All night long people came to talk to him about the Gulf wars and Afghanistan, preferring him to the real soldier.
When Minna came with her martini, Claire whisked her away outside.
“Where are you taking me?”
“To see our wards.”
The lawn was filled with collapsible pens. Two dozen dogs from the shelter had been bathed, fluffed, perfumed, and beribboned, then put in one per pen to be adopted. People walked through the maze of fences, stopping to offer a pat on the head or a biscuit. The attention combined with the confinement wound the dogs up to a fevered barking that rolled in waves through the evening air.
“Whose dogs are these?” Minna asked.
“They’re strays. Hopefully some will get adopted tonight.”
“Why don’t you take one? Save a life.”
“I used to have five at one time. But now, no new responsibilities.”
Minna studied the pens. “All prettied up and then maybe to have their hopes dashed.” She stood close to a pen with a chow mix in it. His fur had been shorn, and his body was small and whitish, his red-tufted head looking oversize in comparison. She reached her hand in to give him a pat, but the dog grew impatient and leaped up against the fence. Minna grabbed his snout, clamping down the jaws, then pushed him back and let go.
“Are you all right?” Claire asked.
“Couldn’t be sure what he’d do.”
The people around them, realizing nothing had happened, chuckled, and Claire couldn’t help a smile.
“Where’d you learn to do that?”
“In Dominica you need to be able to handle yourself around dogs. Some can be mean. Anyway, he leered at me.” Minna smiled, making a face.
“These have all been checked out for temperament. Fostered.”
