The Forgetting Tree

by Tatjana Soli

  * * *

  After they crossed the border, traffic moved quickly through Tijuana, and soon they were on a desolate, winding road, burnt tan fields on either side, the land dropping away to the empty blue ocean. It was hard to remember a time when the land around the farm had been equally bare, the possibility of not having to look through a barricade of houses crowding out any glimpse of distance—mountains or water. But it was not as barren as on her previous visit all those years ago. Was it a coincidence that she always found herself in the desert at low points in her life? She wondered if that trip had turned out differently, if they had somehow come together again as a family, would the future have turned out better? Now Baja had aspirations—half-finished stucco developments everywhere, like a blight, trying to replicate the urban sprawl north of the border.

  “Did you know I came to Cabo in the fifties?” Mrs. Girbaldi said. “It was just a little fishing village then. We all drank in a bar on the sand. Sinatra, Crosby, later on Bobby Mitchum.”

  “You met Robert Mitchum?” Don asked, turning around so that the car swerved.

  “Hey!” Minna said.

  “I danced with Mitch on the beach many times. He said I was as pretty as Lana Turner, if you can believe that.” One could tell by the way she said it that this memory had nourished her through long decades.

  Minna turned around and squinted at her. “He’s right. Most definitely.”

  “Silly.” Mrs. Girbaldi laughed, delighted. “You don’t even know who she was. Anyway. He was a charmer. He died of lung cancer.” Realizing what she said, she looked guiltily at Claire.

  “It’s okay,” Claire said. “I haven’t forgotten. People die.”

  “Yes, they do. Problem is, sometimes they forget to live,” Minna said.

  * * *

  They passed two beer breweries and then a donkey pulling a wagon of mud bricks. When they stopped for gas, Claire got out and stood looking up and down the broken sidewalks. A three-legged dog nimbly picked his way down the road. A place one could lose oneself in. She fantasized that if she ran away, if she bargained not to return to her old life, the cancer would vanish in trade. This hardscrabble town was not a place that accommodated sickness. Death, yes. Decay was visible everywhere—the bleached signs, the unsold dusty cans and bottles in the cashier’s window, the trash-clogged gutters.

  “Do you need to take a pee?” Minna asked.

  Inside the filling station, the men stared hard through the glass at Minna until she glared back and their gazes crumbled away. Claire passed by invisible. One could not blame them. Playing with paper towels and squeegee, Minna helped Don wash the windshield. Her dark skin blazed in the harsh sun, the bright coral tank top she wore in astonishing contrast. Her teeth, as she laughed, like rare pieces of polished ivory. It occurred to Claire for the first time that Don was in love with her. How could he not be? How could any of them not be dazzled by her?

  In the dank bathroom, there was only cold water and soap like gritty sand to wash her hands. Claire avoided the cracked mirror.

  * * *

  The road veered inland, and the ocean dropped from sight. The air grew hotter, sparse grass giving way to glittering-hard desert floor. Don sang cowboy songs from old Roy Rogers films, while Minna sat next to him, dissolved in laughter, trying to sing along.

  For stretches of time, Claire forgot her illness altogether, lost in the thrill of movement, in the lust of Don and Minna for each other, in the cheerful prattling of Mrs. Girbaldi.

  “Where are we going?” Claire asked.

  “First we need to eat.”

  Although the air appeared still, far off in a field Claire saw a whirling of wind as it funneled sand up into a cone. It danced shakily back and forth like a drunken top, a miniature tornado, then landed on a bush, which became possessed, electrified, branches stretching and shuddering. She did not wonder at the credulity of the ancients in explaining such a sight as an act of providence. Although she was amazed, she did not point out the sight to Don or Minna or Mrs. Girbaldi, hoarding the vision until she could decipher its significance. Even riding along in their modern, air-conditioned car, Claire would not have been surprised to see the bush burst into flame, to hear the voice of God. In her illness, she had fallen outside the constraints of time and logic.

  She recalled Lucy’s disappearance all those years ago, and their panicked reaction. Claire should have walked out into the desert without turning back until she found her. So clear in hindsight that Lucy had just wanted to be found.

  * * *

  Don drove them through the gates of a resort along the ocean, and they entered another world, the fake movie version of Mexico Claire had long ago expected—palm trees, fountains, and red-tiled buildings. But the simplicity she also expected was nowhere in evidence: the parking lot was filled with expensive imported cars; the lobby stood marbled and sleek. Here Minna’s glamour was the norm rather than the exception. They were seated on a terrace overlooking the bay; oily, listless waves dragged forward and back, back and forward.

  A lovely, plump waitress, with heavy, oiled hair that coiled like a snake down her back, greeted them. Her uniform was straight out of a B movie—white peasant blouse with an elastic neckline pulled down over her shoulders, ruffled skirt in red and green that accentuated her full hips. When she recognized Don, she giggled, asking for an autograph.

  “Only if you bring us menus.”

  She bowed, hurried away.

  They ate large, moon-shaped pieces of Mexican papaya, the rose-colored flesh served at room temperature. The fruit tasted overripe, even the smell made Claire queasy, but she kept spooning pieces in her mouth, forcing herself to swallow because she didn’t want to appear sick, didn’t want to break the spell of reprieve and be forced to return home. Didn’t want the day to ever end. The waitress brought a tray full of margaritas from the manager. Claire picked up a glass and drank, although she wasn’t allowed alcohol. The girl stood by Don, telling him how she enjoyed his latest desert picture.

  “Dear,” Mrs. Girbaldi said, “can you let the man dine in peace?”

  Irritated, at first Minna ignored the girl. Then she began to ask her for things: salt, a napkin, another order of chips.

  “Is there anything else?” the waitress said, sullen.

  A fork, bottled water, another with bubbles. Till the girl caught on and stayed out of reach at the bar, mooning over Don from afar.

  “Annoying,” Minna said.

  “Source of paycheck,” Don said.

  They ate ceviche and fresh grilled mahimahi and local lobster until Claire felt sick but would not dare refuse a bite.

  Minna smiled. “Somebody must be feeling better.”

  “This is lovely. Like it was forty years ago,” Mrs. Girbaldi said. “Let’s toast.”

  Everyone raised a glass. “To the past.”

  Minna lifted her glass. “To the future!”

  * * *

  Don took a snapshot of them at the table, Claire with her arm around Minna, smiling as if they were ordinary tourists on a pleasure jaunt. When he left to use the telephone, Claire held Minna’s hand.

  “Tell me we never have to go back.”

  “I’m honored you included me in this escape.” Mrs. Girbaldi drank down her margarita.

  “Let’s walk on the beach,” Minna said.

  “No,” Claire said, but it was too late. Minna had already pulled her to her feet.

  “Count me out,” Mrs. Girbaldi said. “I’ll order us another round.”

  They walked along the sand, around a bend that hid the restaurant from view. A breeze came up and rattled the dried-out palm fronds overhead. Claire’s arm that held her hat in place prickled as the blood left it.

  “Let’s wade in the water,” Minna said.

  “It’s too hard.” Claire motioned to the hat.

  “Take it off.”

  “No!”

  “No one cares.”

  “I won’t.” Impossible to explain the damage of
seeing one’s disintegration reflected on the faces of strangers. Far from wanting to attract attention, Claire wished to be invisible.

  “Okay, look.” Minna pulled off the coral top she wore. Underneath, her white cotton bra did not pass for a bathing suit. She hiked her cotton skirt up and knotted it on the side of her hip. Her thigh was rounded and heavily muscled, like a runner’s.

  “Easy for you,” Claire said.

  Minna held out her hand, and reluctantly Claire took off her hat.

  Once it was gone, Claire had to ignore everything, concentrate only on nature, to save herself.

  The water was cool; it tugged and sucked against her legs, luring her out to the darker, purple-blue depths. Claire was not brave enough to look back at the shore so she waded, knee-deep, and stared out. She had never felt so exposed in her surroundings, naked and peeled, a turtle unshelled. Absurd that a hank of hair insulated one so much from the world. She had experienced this exposure before, in a much more devastating form. How had she ever recovered from the stares after Josh’s death? Hadn’t she been singled out and forced into the part of victim then, too? Wasn’t it the same—the internal, private agony and then the public one added to it?

  “This reminds me of home,” Minna said.

  “Tell me what it is like.”

  “A pink house on top of the hill.”

  “Pink?”

  “A beautiful pink house, with a red-tile roof. Windows arched and trimmed in white. And bougainvillea—red, purple, and gold. Bird-of-paradise bushes that brushed against each other like chimes in the wind. Hibiscus flowers as big as trumpets.”

  Claire closed her eyes. “I want so much to see it.”

  “The inside cool as a cave, even on the hottest day. The oiled wood floors smelled of lemons. The greenhouse, hot, humid, smelled of flowers and earth.”

  “Take me.”

  “Leta, our cook, loved me. Famous people came to eat her dinners and said that her dishes were better than the finest restaurants, not only in Roseau, but in Port-au-Prince or Kingston.”

  “Maybe she would have cooked something I could bear eating.”

  “She said her secret was knowing to put both sweetness and saltiness in each dish. She was more than a cook; she had magic. She told me the sun was a sweet orange in the sky.”

  Unlike Claire with her parochial life, Minna dreamed of a specific place because she was already at home in the larger world. Claire imagined that the bookish sophistication of Cambridge and the hedonistic pleasures of her sister’s Paris had taken Minna further and further from the simplicities of that pink house. The exotic, the fantastic, possibly even the transcendent, held no surprises for her. Claire, on the other hand, had buried herself on the ranch until anything outside its borders frightened her. Now she felt alienated inside her own body.

  When finally they waded back to shore, a Mexican family quickly turned around to walk in the other direction, the parents shoving their children along in front of them. The children turned back, jeered. A scene from the novel came to Claire: children taunting Antoinette, singing, Go away, white cockroach, go away, go away. Minna, oblivious to the snub, tied a scarf around her head, then put on her shirt. She handed Claire the straw hat. But Claire dropped it onto the sand. No more hiding.

  * * *

  When they returned to the restaurant, Claire made her way to the bathroom to patch together some semblance of a presentable face. After being in the company of Don and Minna, after being filled with new places, scents, food, after her revelation on the beach, she was under the illusion of returned health, and the death mask that stared back from the mirror shocked her. As if she could outrun her fate. Not a glimmer of health to be found no matter how she searched: shrunken head, skin bluish white like a ghoul’s. She wanted her hat back. What was this conceit of theirs that she belonged among them, the living, the loved?

  Claire dried her hands, determined to go find the hat, or if it was gone, buy another. She took a left that should have been a right, found herself down a dimly lit hallway stacked with cases of cerveza, bags of frijoles and arroz. At the end of the hallway, she saw the back of their pretty, plump waitress on her knees, the heavy, oiled hair like a snake down her back. Don leaned against the wall, his pants down.

  For a moment what she saw did not register. She stood stranded, confused as if in a dream, but Don’s eyes made her back away, made her trip over a box in her panic. The waitress turned. Claire fled, ran, as their laughter chased her. It wasn’t they who were mortified but Claire.

  When she returned to the table, Minna’s eyes widened. “Are you okay?”

  Claire nodded, speechless. Sat down and drank her water, then Mrs. Girbaldi’s.

  The waitress came to deliver the bill and lavished a Cheshire-cat smile while presenting a wedge of flan on the house as Don came and sat down. Did Claire detect sadness in his eyes, or resignation?

  “How kind,” he said, reaching up to straighten the waitress’s crooked blouse.

  “Where have you been, Donald?” Mrs. Girbaldi said. “We’ll be late for our appointment.”

  “Can I have your autograph, Señor Richards?” He signed a menu when she returned with change, leaving a piece of paper among the bills on which her name and number were written. When she turned away, Minna snatched it up and wadded it into her palm.

  “What if I wanted that? Jealous?” Don asked.

  Claire had rarely seen him so pleased. No sadness, certainly no mortification.

  “Not at all. It’s a respect thing. Between women,” Minna said.

  On the way out, the waitress stood at the entrance and again smiled. “Buenas tardes, Señor Richards. Please come visit again. I’m here every Tuesday through Friday.”

  Even Claire fumed that the waitress treated them as beneath acknowledgment. White cockroach. Minna went up to her, stood close as she shoved the paper down the girl’s blouse, holding her in place by stepping down on her foot. Before releasing her, Minna ground down her heel, and the girl screamed.

  The owner came running.

  “I’ll sue you,” the girl said. “It’ll be in the papers.”

  Confused over what had happened, the owner, a bent-over old man, took the girl to a chair, then hobbled into the bar for ice.

  “I don’t think so,” Claire said. She felt a thrill of adrenaline go through her.

  “Why not?” the girl said.

  “Is the owner your father? Or an uncle? Does he know what you do in the back hallway?”

  “Come close, ti sister. You and me need to seriously talk.” Minna leaned closer to the girl and spoke rapidly in whispered tones until the girl jerked her arm loose and escaped, limping away.

  “I didn’t know you had it in you,” Minna said, putting her arm around Claire.

  “You protect your own.” Claire couldn’t have imagined getting involved in something so tawdry, yet she felt thrilled by her own actions.

  In the lobby, Mrs. Girbaldi looked shook up.

  Don was smoking a cigarette. “So you speak Spanish?”

  “Just socially,” Minna said. “The islands are full of pidgin French and Spanish.”

  “Yeah, I saw. My lady is full of mysteries, isn’t she?”

  “That little preview in the hallway that Claire interrupted could have made you famous. Her boyfriend over there behind the bar playing cameraman.”

  Don stared hard at the young man cleaning glasses. “You’re not even jealous.”

  “I’m only jealous of something I want and can’t have.”

  * * *

  They drove farther down the coast, stopping at whim at what captured their fancy—clay statues of dogs and tin mirrors and paper flowers—anything certifiably useless and unneeded, despite Mrs. Girbaldi’s protests about being late.

  “This is Mexico. Time is elastic,” Don said.

  Finally they arrived at the clinic: a tiny, pristine building that sat on a white, prim beach.

  The director of the clinic came out in a st
arched lab coat. He was overly tanned, his thinning hair bound in a small ponytail. He would have looked more in place in a down-at-the-heels nightclub. “Bienvenidos!” he said, as if they had arrived at a resort for a holiday. A young girl in a short sundress served them small glasses of pink juice from a tray. They sat on white sofas, the sliding doors open to the beach, and an overweight, older nurse came out and took Claire away to have blood work done.

  In the doctor’s office, Claire felt dizzy as she took off her clothes to put on a cotton smock. The nurse, too, was sweating in the heat. When she noticed Claire’s nerves, she smiled and patted her hand. With the most delicate touch, she pulled a syringeful of blood. Minutes later, the doctor came in reading her records, shaking his head. His teeth were bleached an unnatural bluish white. He held her hands out, studying her nails, pulled her eyelids down and looked at the tissue.

  “You are not healthy.”

  “An understatement,” Claire said, then leaned over and retched.

  After an orderly cleaned up the mess, Mrs. Girbaldi and Minna were brought in. The doctor frowned at them. “You shouldn’t have traveled with her. Brought her here like this. We can’t help her in this condition.”

  “Please,” Mrs. Girbaldi said. “We can pay handsomely.”

  “Your cell count is dangerously low,” he said to Claire. “You need a hospital. There are drugs that will build the blood back up, but first you require a transfusion.”

  A black wave was coming over Claire, darkness like water rising quickly around her.

  “Help her,” Mrs. Girbaldi pleaded.

  Don came through the door. “What’s happening?”

  The doctor took her pulse. “What’s your blood type? Is anyone a relative?”

  “What’s wrong?” Don said.

  “I’m a universal donor,” Minna said. The doctor flicked his eyes over her. She dropped her voice. “I was screened recently.”

  The doctor shook his head. “You must sign a release. If she dies here.”

  “Oh, no.” Mrs. Girbaldi started crying.

  “Why didn’t you tell me—” Don yelled at Minna.

  “Shut up.”