She couldn’t believe her ultraconservative mother had taken a suit like this from the rack, let alone paid for it. The legs were cut almost to the waist and her breasts clearly outlined, her nipples straining the fabric. At first she’d been upset at the gift. They couldn’t afford things like new swimming suits for her when school was starting in a couple of weeks and they still hadn’t bought Enrique, Alma, and Rosa their new uniforms.
But the suit was so beautiful and she looked so good in it she couldn’t stay mad and be excited at the same time. She understood why her mother had given the present to Cheryl and told her to wait until they arrived to give it to her. She never would have even tried it on at home. It would have gone straight back to the store.
There was a knock on the door. “Ready?” Cheryl asked.
“Coming.” Maria stepped off the bed and smoothed the spread before opening the door.
“Wow,” Cheryl said appreciatively. “That’s some suit.” She motioned for her to turn around. “I can’t believe your mother bought that for you.”
Maria laughed. “I know. Me either.”
“I wonder how it’s going to hold up in the water.”
“That’s something I don’t have to worry about. This suit’s not gettin’ anywhere near any water. I can’t swim.” She rarely admitted she couldn’t do something that people who lived outside her neighborhood took for granted. Anyone with any sense would realize she didn’t swim because people like her didn’t have the opportunity to learn. There weren’t a lot of swimming pools on her block. And the buses that stopped on the corner didn’t make connections to any beaches.
Cheryl handed her a towel and sunscreen. “I’m going to stop next door to see if Andrew wants to join us.”
“Hold up, I’ll go with you. I need to talk to him about work. I want to see if he’ll let me start tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow is Sunday, Maria.”
“Yeah, but the plants don’t know that. I’ll bet there’s somebody who takes care of them all the time.” She wrapped the towel around her waist and stepped into her shoes. “Might as well be me.” She stopped and eyed Cheryl. “Or did you want to see him alone?”
Cheryl flushed, leaving pink circles on both cheeks. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
The question surprised Maria. “Hey, it’s okay with me if you two are gettin’ it on. You’re old enough. You don’t need nobody’s permission.”
“We’re friends, Maria.”
She shrugged. “If that’s what you want to call it.”
“That’s what it is. And that’s the way it has to be while we’re here.” She reached in and turned out the light in the hall bathroom as they passed. “Even though the agency isn’t officially involved, they took a chance giving me the time off so I could bring you girls down here. The last thing I need is for word to get back that I’m fooling around with the next-door neighbor.”
Cheryl wasn’t like the social workers Maria and her mother had dealt with in the five years since her father died. She never made them feel like charity cases or like they lived the way they did because they didn’t care or know any better.
Of course they knew better. They had a television. They saw how other people lived. And they wanted that kind of life just as much as everyone else did. But there wasn’t a lot of time or energy or money to paint walls or fix up the yard when you spent the whole day washing and ironing other people’s clothes for fifty cents a shirt the way her mother did.
“Why did you bring us here?” Maria asked. “What are you getting out of it?”
Cheryl didn’t rise to the challenge in Maria’s voice. But then she never did. “I want to show you some of the world outside Oakland,” she said simply. “I’m hoping it will encourage you to want to see more.”
“Why should we care? We have everything we need where we are.” She worked hard to sound dismissive, but wanted Cheryl to give an answer worth hearing. There was a fire to learn and see things that burned so hot sometimes it almost overwhelmed her. Her frustration became anger that she turned on the people who deserved it the least. No one understood because she never gave them a chance. She knew what she had to do, and talking about it wasn’t going to change anything, so why bother?
“It’s easy to talk to you about this because I know you don’t believe what you just said,” Cheryl said.
“What makes you think I don’t?”
Cheryl held the door for Maria to go through first, then followed and locked it behind them. “If you did, you wouldn’t be working so hard to make sure your brother and sisters have a better life.”
“I don’t want them to end up like Fernando. It almost kills my mother when she goes to see him. She has this crazy idea that it’s her fault, that she let my father down because she didn’t keep Fernando out of trouble.”
“How much longer will he be in prison?”
“Twenty-six years.” She had trouble saying the words. “He’ll be an old man when he gets out. Older than my mother is now.”
“What a waste. For everyone.”
Whenever she started to feel sorry for her brother, she thought about the little girl who had been playing on the porch of the house Fernando and his friends had showered with bullets. The girl’s brother had died, and she’d been left blind and in a wheelchair for life. She would not regain her sight in twenty-six years, nor would she get up and walk. Of the two, Fernando got the better deal. Even knowing that, it broke her heart when she thought about her brother being locked away until he was an old man. She missed him as much as she was mad at him.
Maria hiked her towel up and pulled it tighter around her waist. She didn’t like talking about Fernando. It always left her angry and sad and frustrated because there was nothing she could do, no way she could make it better. It just was.
They crossed the path to Andrew’s house and knocked on the front door. He didn’t answer. Cheryl went around the side to check the back deck, but he wasn’t there either. “I guess he left.”
Maria almost laughed. Cheryl was the worst person she’d ever seen try to hide her feelings.
They started down the stairs. “Maybe he had to go back to work,” Maria suggested.
“Yeah, maybe,” Cheryl said. She put a hand out to stop Maria. “Just look at that,” she said in awe.
“What?”
“The ocean. Isn’t it breathtaking?”
Maria gazed at the beach and the water and the birds, even a half dozen guys playing volleyball. They were only a few hours from Oakland, but this was another world.
MARIA STOOD IN THE MIDDLE OF THE GREENhouse waiting for Andrew to finish talking to someone on the phone. Cheryl had dropped her off that morning, supposedly because the nursery was on the way to Fremont Peak, where the rest of them were going on a hike and having a picnic lunch. She suspected it had more to do with Cheryl wanting her to have a chance to meet Paul Williams before she was stuck in a car with him for twenty minutes. Cheryl did things like that all the time and never owned up to them.
Her hands shoved in the pockets of her shorts, she craned her neck to take everything in. The building was huge and made out of thick, hard plastic sheeting. Enormous fans, controlled by a thermostat, were at one end. Pipes ran overhead with sprinkler heads on them. A long tube of collapsed soft plastic with holes the size of a quarters hung suspended from the ceiling. The air was warm and heavy with moisture, but not as uncomfortable as Maria had anticipated.
She was surrounded by thousands of plants on metal mesh tables, some with incredible flowers in pinks and reds and yellows and purples and oranges. The smell coming from the flowers was better than any perfume she’d ever sampled, kind of sweet and fruity and sharp, all at the same time.
Long strands of gray moss grew on racks that lined the back section of the greenhouse. Every corner was used, every counter filled, every person busy.
A woman with black-and-gray hair pulled back into a ponytail sat at a bench. She took plants out of one pot, cleaned the root
s, grabbed a handful of stuff that looked like small pieces of bark mixed with something white, and stuffed it and the plant into a new pot, slightly larger than the one it had just left.
Another woman moved between the tables studying the plants, stopping every once in a while to pluck off a dead leaf or flower and then moving on. When she reached the end of the aisle, she twisted a knob and the table she’d been working on rolled two feet to the side, bumping into the table next to it, opening up another aisle.
The third worker, a tall blond guy with broad shoulders and powerful-looking arms, stood at another table. He pulled plants no bigger than a piece of grass from a flask, wrapped them in moss, and put them in a flat. He wore headphones and moved to the rhythm of a song only he could hear. Maria smiled as he stopped to play invisible drums before moving on to another flask.
“That’s Paul,” Andrew said, coming up behind her. “I’m going to have him show you around and help you get started. If you have any questions and I’m not around, he or Alfonso–you’ll meet him later–can answer them for you.”
“He’s the one who’s going to give me a ride in the mornings?” She’d expected someone older, like Andrew. It had never occurred to her there might be someone her own age working at the nursery.
“I haven’t talked to him about it yet, but I’m sure there won’t be any problem. He comes in five days a week, and has Sunday and Monday off. If it’s okay with you, I’ll set you up on the same schedule.”
“Yeah, that’s fine with me. How long do I stay?”
“I can give you eight hours a day with a half hour for lunch and a couple of fifteen-minute breaks, if that’s what you’re looking for. If you don’t want that many hours, I can–”
“No, that’s fine. The more the better.”
“I thought you were here on vacation.”
She smiled. “I am–Sundays and Mondays.”
Andrew looked at Paul and decided not to interrupt him. Instead, he motioned for Maria to follow. They left the first greenhouse and walked through three more. Each one was built the same way, but contained different plants, or at least different-looking plants.
“Are all of these buildings yours?” she asked.
“These and one more about half this size that I use for specimen plants and breeding. That greenhouse is kept locked and isn’t open to the public.”
“Why?”
“As ridiculous as it sounds, orchid people have been known to go to extraordinary lengths to steal pollen from a unique or award-winning plant.”
“Why don’t they just buy one of these?”
“The ones they want are one-of-a-kind or extremely rare or extremely fine specimens. Some are the parent stock of crosses I’ve made. Without them, the plants can’t be duplicated except by cloning.”
She’d come there thinking she was going to spend a month in the world’s most boring job and was beginning to change her mind. Taking care of plants might not be exciting, but the background was. “How do they steal the pollen?”
“They’ll either snap off a flower and stuff it in their pocket, or use something small, like a toothpick or matchstick to gather the pollen, leaving the flower intact.”
“Amazing.” She stopped to smell a deep red bloom that was larger than her outstretched hand. “How many plants do you have here?”
“Right now a couple of million. We’re inventoried pretty heavily because we’re getting stock ready to ship to the fall shows. Fall and spring are our big selling seasons. We don’t ship many plants in summer because of the heat.”
“A couple of million?” She did some quick calculating. Figuring each plant was worth ten to twenty dollars wholesale–a number Cheryl had given her–even subtracting labor and everything else, Andrew had one healthy bank account.
“That figure includes the starter flats, and we normally lose about half of them.”
“They die?”
“We throw them away.”
“You throw them away?” Her voice betrayed her horror. “Why?”
“There’s a dozen reasons. They could be stunted or haven’t developed properly or the flower isn’t up to our standards.”
He slid open the door to the fourth greenhouse, waited for her to step inside, then closed it snugly to prevent the temperature controlled air from escaping. “This is it,” he said. “I wish I could give you something more interesting to do, but everyone who comes to work here starts the same way.”
“It’s okay. I don’t want special treatment. The job’s enough.”
Andrew stopped to talk to a man who looked so much like her mother’s brother, Juan, Maria did a double take. “Maria, this is Alfonso Martinez. He’s in charge when I’m not around–and most of the time when I am.”
“Hi.” She smiled and nodded. “I’m ready. Just tell me what you want me to do.”
Alfonso sent Andrew a long-suffering look. “When are you going to send me someone who knows what they’re doing?”
“I’m a quick learner,” she said. “And I’m good. By the time I leave here, you’re going to be begging me to stay. I guarantee it.” She reached up and twisted her long hair into a knot on top of her head. “Now, I’m ready to get started.”
Andrew headed for the door. “She’s all yours,” he said, chuckling as he left.
“What do you know about orchids?” Alfonso asked when Andrew was gone.
“Nothing.”
“About plants?”
“Nothing.”
He sighed. “At least you don’t have bad habits to overcome.”
She grinned. “I didn’t say that.”
She’d gotten through to him, and he laughed. “Come on. I’ll show you how to tell a good leaf from a bad one.”
Although Maria had openly fought going to Santa Cruz with Cheryl, Deanna, and Karen, she’d secretly, desperately, wanted to come. Finally, she’d let her mother and Cheryl convince her, but insisted she had to have a job while she was there, hoping some miracle would happen to keep her from taking it so she could have a real vacation like the others. Like almost everything else in her life, she got some of what she wanted, but not enough to make her think anything had changed.
Now that she was here and learning something new, she wasn’t sure she minded so much. If she had to work, this place wasn’t bad. At least it was different. And it wasn’t fast food.
“HEY, MARIA,” PAUL CALLED FROM ACROSS the greenhouse.
She looked up from the plant she’d been inspecting. “Yeah?”
“Time for a break.”
She waved him off. “I’ll take one later. I’m busy now.”
“It’s lunchtime. Later’s no good. You have to take it when it’s your turn.”
She glanced at her watch. Twelve-thirty. She would have sworn she’d only been there an hour, and the morning was gone. Now, with her concentration broken, she realized she was hungry. Before she left the table she’d been working on, she picked up a rock and laid it on the edge to mark her spot.
She’d tossed an apple, water, and package of cookies in her purse on her way out the door that morning, and now wished she’d taken the time to make a sandwich. “Where do we go? Is there a lunchroom?”
“For you, today is Fred’s Place. It’s a tradition around here that Andrew takes you to lunch on your first day. That way you can ask him any questions you’ve come up with after working here a couple of hours.”
“Seems to me it’d be better to wait until I’d been here a couple of days.” She made her way toward him, holding her hands above her waist to keep from accidentally bumping one of the plants along the narrow pathway.
She tried not to look directly at him. She’d already seen enough to know he was someone she wasn’t interested in. Men with blond hair and blue eyes had never appealed to her, not even when they had a body like Ricky Martin’s and a smile like Brad Pitt’s. And it wasn’t just his looks that turned her off. It was obvious he came from money, his parents the kind of people who lived in the hills
in Oakland. Her kind lived in the flats. He worked for pocket change. She worked for sustenance. The two didn’t mix.
Paul chuckled. “Not everyone makes it a week. Some don’t come back from lunch.”
“Tryin’ to scare me?” she asked.
“Now why would I do that?”
She stopped in front of him, wiping her hands on her shorts, then folding her arms across her chest. His eyes weren’t blue, they were brown–with gold flecks. Challenging. And … sexy.
He was looking at her as if he could read her mind, almost as if her assessment of his looks was his due. She didn’t like that. Instantly, she decided she didn’t like him either. “Maybe you think it’s funny.”
“To scare people?” He shook his head. “Yeah, that’s me all right. I live for that kind of stuff.” He grabbed the handle and slid the door to the side. Instead of opening it just wide enough for them to go through, he pushed it all the way open.
She gave him a questioning look.
“For the chip on your shoulder.”
“And here I thought it was your ego.”
She expected him to be angry, but he seemed to toss it off. It was on the tip of her tongue to say something, to push a little harder, when she remembered he was her ride to work in the mornings, and it would be stupid to mess that up. She went for something neutral. “How long have you been working here?”
“A couple of years, off and on. Full-time in summer, but when I’m in school I only come in when there’s a big order or Andrew’s shorthanded.”
They left the greenhouses and walked thirty yards to the nursery’s main office, a converted three-bedroom house. “Must be nice.”
“What’s that?”
“To work when it’s convenient.”
“Actually it’s a drag. But my folks won’t pay the speeding tickets I get in my BMW, so it’s either work or walk.”
Before she had a chance to answer, Andrew looked up and motioned for them to join him. He shifted the phone from one ear to the other and held up a finger asking for one more minute. “Call me back when you’ve hired someone who knows what they’re doing.” He paused. “No, I’m not kidding. I told you in the beginning that I’m not wholesaling to anyone who can’t or won’t take care of the plants. If you want cheap plants that you can toss, get them someplace else.”
Another Summer Page 20
