by Marlene Lee
“Does she have her own money?”
“I’ll turn some funds loose,” said Rebecca’s father.
The fiancée looked deeply into his eyes. “A woman needs money to stay as well as to leave.”
The old man smiled, turned, and began thumping his way back along the floor of the garage.
Rebecca and Tom left quietly by the door to the circular drive.
“The bastard,” said Tom, quivering with rage. “Scheming and talking to my fiancée behind my back.”
***
“I’ve been thinking, Becky,” her father said a few weeks later. His color was good; he took fewer pills. “A motor home sounds like a good idea.”
“Wonderful, Daddy,” said Rebecca. “Does this mean I can have some of my trust fund early?”
“We’ll see,” said her father. “In the meantime, I’ll buy it for you, with the proviso that I can use it if I ever need to.”
“Then it will be yours, not mine.”
“You’re beginning to understand the world.”
“Am I? Then I don’t like it.”
“That’s precisely why your mother and I kept it from you.” He left the room, flinging the walker about with abandon.
***
Tom found Rebecca in the kitchen where she was making tea.
“I’m getting the feeling she doesn’t want to marry me,” he stammered. He put both hands in his hair and pulled. He was pale and haggard. “I get the feeling she thinks I’m immature.”
Rebecca dunked the tea bag up and down, faster and faster. “Prove to her you’re mature,” she said in a low, intense voice.
Tom hung his head. “How?”
Rebecca glanced rapidly around the room. “Take her away. Make arrangements for a home of your own.”
“You mean leave?”
“Leave.”
“I think she likes to make her own arrangements.”
“Fine. The point is to show her you can make arrangements, too.”
“But where?”
“Some place in town.”
“It wouldn’t be as comfortable as home.”
“Nowhere is as comfortable as home, Tom. We’ve wasted our lives being comfortable.”
“I like being comfortable,” Tom said into his hands. Rebecca pulled his arms down to his sides and smoothed his hair as he talked. “I loved it when Mother made hot chocolate in the evening, and we all watched television together. On Sunday night she would ask how much money we needed for the week. Our clothes were always dried on the right cycle and folded . . .”
Rebecca felt the familiar rash climb from her throat up into her neck and face. “It would be easy to stay,” she said. “I admit it’s more comfortable here than anywhere else. But it’s a trap.”
Their father entered the kitchen at a fast clip. “It’s hard to believe Mother left us”—he looked at his watch—”just four months ago today.”
“You’re looking well, Daddy,” said Rebecca.
“Your mother wanted me to lose weight,” he said, jogging slowly in place. The walker had been stored in a corner of the garage. “She wanted me to regain my health and vigor.”
“And what would she have wanted for us?” asked Rebecca. “For Tom and me?”
“Tom’s place is with the peaches. He knows every aspect of the business.”
“And me?”
“Our little girl,” said her father.
“You can’t be a little girl when you’re fifty,” Rebecca snapped. “It doesn’t work.”
“Settle down.”
“I hope I don’t settle down,” she said. Her voice was growing shrill and unpleasant.
“If you don’t wish to be a little girl,” said her father crisply, “perhaps you can be a lady.”
“I can’t be a lady, either!” shouted Rebecca. “I’ve tried that!” She swung the wet tea bag over her head and hurled it into the dining room by its string. Then she went to the kitchen sink, dampened a towel, and pressed it to her face.
“. . . unstable,” she heard her father say.
“I’m not unstable!” she screamed, her face wet and mottled. “I’ve been far too stable! That’s been my trouble!”
Her father stood with his first two fingers at his pulse, eyes on the second hand of the kitchen clock.
“I’m leaving,” Rebecca said.
Her father jotted down his heart rate and looked up from his notebook. “What will you do?”
“There are all kinds of jobs in the classifieds. I’ve been reading them for years.”
Tom stepped forward. “You’ve never held a job, Becky.” But she’d dropped the towel and was already running to her wing of the house, flying through the kitchen, the screened-in porch, and out across the lawn, her long, knock-kneed legs flailing out to the side. Tom ran after her and stopped her at the doorway to her rooms.
“I’ll lend you money,” he said, “until you find something suitable.”
“Thank you,” she said, “but you’re going to need it yourself.” They were both breathing hard.
“Some day Father will release the funds.”
Rebecca’s inflamed eyes narrowed. “I think he’ll cut me out altogether.”
“He can’t do that. It’s not in the terms.”
“I would have been better off without a trust in the first place. I would have been forced to develop myself.” Her shoulders gave way like hinges under too much weight.
Tom returned to the house. Sobbing, calling their mother’s name, she followed him back across the lawn.
“Tom,” the fiancée said when he reached the screened-in porch, “you and I need to talk.”
“Right now?”
Rebecca watched her take him by the arm and pull him through the porch and into the den where they stood beneath shooting trophies and the head of an elk Father had bagged in ‘53. Rebecca sank into a hall chair near the door.
“Your father and I have been talking, Tom. We don’t think you’re ready for marriage yet. And while we both love you and care for you, we—”
“ ‘We’?” said Tom.
“—we think marriage is not the answer.”
“Not the answer?” said Tom. “What is the question?”
Rebecca leaned sideways in her chair and looked into the den.
“The question of—your father and this house.” Tom’s fiancée put her hands in the pockets of her well-cut slacks and looked into the cold fireplace. “The question of—your father and me.”
The weak blue wash of Tom’s eyes darkened.
“I hope you and I can remain friends,” the fiancée said. “Family friends.”
Tom thrust his head forward on his long neck. The deepened color of his eyes faded until they were once again pale blue and watery with doubt. “I’m not afraid to leave home,” he said without conviction, “if that’s what’s worrying you.”
“I’ll be staying here, Tom.”
“I thought you didn’t want to be engaged.”
“Your father needs looking after,” she said, sounding a little sad.
Tom coughed up phlegm. He looked at the woman, then at his yellowed handkerchief. “Does he want you for himself? Did you agree to it?”
“He can’t live forever, Tom.”
“Go to hell,” Tom said softly and threw the stained handkerchief at her high-heeled shoes. The fiancée picked it up by one corner and saw Rebecca seated in the hall chair.
“I’ve heard about the motor home,” she said as Tom slammed the front door behind him. “Buy it.”
Rebecca’s face was a battleground. “With what?”
“Your father has decided to release your money.” She fluttered the handkerchief in the direction of the outside world.
“What about Tom? What’s going to happen to Tom?”
“Oh, your brother won’t leave. You’ll see. When he realizes that I’m holding the family together, he’ll get used to the situation.”
“Our family belongs to us,” said Rebecca, her v
oice fluttering like the soiled handkerchief. “It’s my mother’s family, not yours.”
“But she’s dead,” said the fiancée. “I’m alive. So are you. Go have a good time. You don’t think opportunities grow like peaches, do you?
Emerging from the orchard where she’d been begging Mother to come back from the dead, Rebecca reached the front row of trees. Not far from the window to Mother’s bedroom, she had a fit. Her head flew back. She cried out. Disoriented, she whirled and pitched forward. When she came to, her face was buried in dirt. She lay there, glad to be in the ground, too.
From the wrought-iron chair on the screened-in porch, the fiancée saw Rebecca lying face-down at the edge of the orchard.
“What in the world . . .”
Rebecca stirred. She pushed against the ground, got to her knees, and crawled toward Mother’s window. Hand over hand up the wall of the house she hauled herself to a standing position, turned her streaked face toward the woman on the porch, and moved closer. “How old are you?” she asked.
“Thirty-seven.”
Rebecca coughed and spat. With the back of her arm, she pushed a clump of hair off her gritty forehead. “Thirty-seven becomes fifty.”
“I can count. Trust me.”
“I trust my mother,” Rebecca said.
“You shouldn’t. Look at yourself. Look at your brother. Still babies.”
“Dearest?” Rebecca’s father called from inside the house. “Dearest?” he repeated from room to room. “Where are you? Dearest!”
“That’s you,” Rebecca said through the wire mesh.
“Go have some fun,” said the fiancée.
Rebecca scratched at the dirt and tears in her eyes. “What about my brother?” she asked again. “What will happen to my brother?”
“Relax. He’s not going anywhere. I’ll hold down the fort while you’re gone. When you get back, it will be my turn to travel.” She winked. “Your father and brother will be so glad to see you, they’ll treat you like the princess you are.”
“I won’t be back,” Rebecca said.
“Dearest,” her father called from inside the house.
The fiancée turned toward the sound of his voice. “Keep us posted as to your whereabouts,” she said to Rebecca over her shoulder. “You’ll want to know when the terms of the agreement change.”
2
The Long Black Cadillac
“You want me to mourn forever?” her father yelled after her.
“She only died three months ago!” Rebecca shouted back. “Do what you like! I won’t be here!”
“Mother spoiled you!” His voice carried down the stairwell and out to the drive where Rebecca had already planted one large foot on the retractable step of her new motor home.
“Stop!” He ran out of the house, his new fiancée teetering on high heels close behind—such ridiculous shoes, Rebecca thought, to wear in orchard country north of Sacramento. She grabbed the chrome handhold beside the door to the motor home, ready to haul herself up and begin her trip across America.
“Come down from there!”
But she hung from the handhold, a fifty-year-old woman swinging above the circular drive like an unsupervised child. Rebecca still expected Mother’s long, black Cadillac to come purring up the peach-tree drive and that beautiful woman with white hair and comprehensive make-up lean out the window to cry, “What are you doing, Beck? Come down from that thing and see what I’ve bought you!”
Tom strolled out the front door.
“Can’t you get her to stay?” their father pleaded.
“I guess she’ll stay if she wants to,” said Tom.
“What?” Daddy cupped his ear.
“He said she’ll stay if she wants to, he guesses,” the fiancée repeated. Rebecca waved good-bye with one hand, swung even farther out over the pavement with the other, and let her head roll forward. The fall of dyed red hair, gray at the roots, closed over her face in a parody of a curtain call.
“If you think that’s funny!” Daddy cried. He tried to free himself from the fiancée’s grip. Slowly, as if moving through water or coming back from the dead, Rebecca lifted one large foot toward her father and the woman beside him. The leg of her walking shorts flapped about her white thigh.
“Let her leave since she wants to go so bad,” said the fiancée.
***
“You can’t take a trip across America by yourself,” Daddy had said to her one evening when they were eating dinner on the screened-in porch. A light breeze carried the rustling of peach trees through the wire mesh. “You’ve never been away from home before.”
“She went to Girl Scout camp once,” Tom said, “in the Sierras.”
“That was forty years ago!” Daddy laughed and helped himself to another of the flour tortillas the Mexican cook served every night. “In any case, she shouldn’t spend the trust fund on a motor home. Both of you should invest Mother’s money.”
“It’s my money,” Rebecca said. “Mother left it to me.”
Tom’s allergy suddenly flared and he pulled out a large white handkerchief. The only sounds on the porch were the crickets in the orchard and Tom’s coughing. Daddy slid his glass of iced-tea down the table.
“He can’t drink anything during an attack,” said Rebecca.
Tom sneezed.
“I don’t care what the doctors say. No son of mine is allergic to a peach orchard.”
“It’s not the peaches,” Tom said in a phlegmy voice, eyes streaming.
“It’s not the peaches,” said Rebecca.
“It’s”—Tom was overcome by another fit of coughing.
“It’s your fiancée’s perfume, it hangs in the air.”
Tom went to his room for an antihistamine tablet.
“Perfume!” Daddy leaned forward. “If he’s allergic now, why wasn’t he allergic when she was his fiancée?”
“It’s not the perfume, per se,” Rebecca said. “You stole her away from him.”
Her father stopped eating. Bugs knocked against the screens and left the wire mesh humming.
“You don’t know the first thing about love, Becky,” he said softly. Even in the near-dark his eyes penetrated hers. Laid open her whole life. Fifty years spent on one orchard. No experience. For a moment Rebecca heard the pulse of Mother’s Cadillac. She rose to her feet.
“Rebecca!” Daddy ordered. “Come back here!”
But when she was climbing the stairs to Tom’s quarters, the engine stopped. She took one step and listened, then another, and listened again: the only sound was the pulse of the grandfather clock on the landing. She knocked on her brother’s door. He opened it, gaunt and red-eyed.
“Don’t suffer so,” Rebecca said, beginning to weep quietly. “The fiancée doesn’t love Daddy. She doesn’t love anyone.” They stood there for a while, tall, thin, knock-kneed, absently patting each others’ shoulders.
***
From her handhold Rebecca looked out over the orchard one last time, then pulled herself up into the motor home. She retracted the metal step and slid behind the steering wheel. Through the windshield she saw the fiancée tug at Daddy’s sleeve once, twice. But Daddy didn’t notice. He was staring off down the drive. Rebecca knew he heard Mother’s long black Cadillac, too, and didn’t have the courage to wait alone.
3
Con
Rebecca stepped down from her fine, forty-foot motor home, the recreational vehicle in which she had not yet experienced recreation, and looked out to sea. But Mother was not in the vastness of the Pacific Ocean hundreds of feet below; she wasn’t up here in the San Francisco Ocean Breeze Motor Home Resort, either; nor was she back home on the stately, fragrant orchard walking slowly among the peach trees in the cool of the morning.
Rebecca wanted to run forward to the edge of the cliff, to run backward to the Sacramento Valley orchard: to run anywhere until she spotted Mother’s white hair and regal face. She was turning this way and that in the asphalt parking lot, unsure what to do, when
someone came up from behind.
“How do you do?”
The woman couldn’t have been less like Mother. If she wasn’t a gypsy, she dressed like one. Full skirt pinned in a swag above a bright underskirt, velvet vest, flowered scarf drawn tight and knotted at the nape of a plump, white neck. Somewhere under all the layers of cloth, Rebecca felt the presence of heavy breasts and stomach and hips, fruit in the last stages of ripeness. “My name is Madame Bradley, but you can call me Betty.”
“I’m Rebecca Quint,” said Rebecca. She was almost as old as this Madame Bradley, but, except for a broad pelvis, she was as thin and stringy and sinewy as Madame Bradley was soft and wide. Rebecca wanted to lose herself in the silver clink of bracelets, the sway of fabric, the scent of skin cream and powder. Madame Bradley’s lipstick was a beautiful shade of red, shiny as an oil slick.
Mother might have found Madame Bradley interesting. Still, she would have tightened her little pearl earrings and turned away. And now that Mother was gone, Rebecca must be careful to avoid gypsies, small, rusting trailers—in fact, all unfamiliar contacts which might introduce danger into a life that Mother had made safe. Buying a motor home was the first and last risky act she would ever perform. Her trip across America, which hadn’t quite started yet, would be the first and last adventure. At the end of the trip she would sell the coach, or maybe just park it. In any case, she would return to safety, though without Mother she wasn’t quite sure where safety lay.
Rebecca tossed back her hair and tried to feel superior. But the snobbisms, the conventions she’d learned from her prominent old peach orchard family seemed irrelevant standing here on the pavement at Ocean Breeze Motor Home Resort. Sacramento Valley class distinctions didn’t protect her in the trailer court. They didn’t protect her from public shower rooms, sparks crackling at the ends of jumper cables as tired men helped each other start their derelict vehicles, or from the dark, luminous eyes of Madame Bradley.
“You’ll like being so near San Francisco,” Madame Bradley said companionably. “I, myself, have lived here for years.” A sudden gust of salty wind slammed coach doors shut all over the park and whipped Rebecca’s lank red hair about her face. It tore Madame Bradley’s scarf off her head. “Of course, it’s a bit windy,” she added philosophically, shaking out the scarf and retying it with small, soft hands. Gulls screeched overhead, tossed like litter by the wind. “Care for a cup of coffee?”
