Devon showered and began to dress. The clothes she was to wear had been hanging ready for a week. She had driven into San Diego to meet Robert’s mother and Robert’s mother had picked the outfit, a brown sharkskin suit a shade lighter than Devon’s hair and a shade darker than her tanned skin. It made her look as though she and the suit had come out of the same dye vat, but she didn’t argue with the choice. Brown seemed as good a color as any for a young woman about to become a widow on a sunny day in autumn.
She went down the back stairs that led directly into the kitchen.
Dulzura was at the stove, stirring something in a skillet with her left hand and fanning herself with her right. She was not yet thirty years old, but her youth, like the stool she sat on, was camouflaged by folds of fat.
She said, without looking around, “I’m making some scrambled eggs to go with the chorizo.”
“I’ll just have orange juice and coffee, thanks.”
“Mr. Osborne used to be crazy about chorizo, he had a real Mexican stomach... You should anyway try the eggs. See how nice they look.”
Devon glanced briefly at the moist yellow mass rusted with chili powder and turned away. “They look very nice.”
“But you don’t like.”
“Not this morning.”
“No Mrs. Osborne, no little dog, I will have to eat everything myself. Obalz.”
It was Dulzura’s favorite expression and for a long time Devon had assumed it was a Spanish word indicating displeasure. She’d finally asked the foreman, Estivar, about it.
“There is no such word in my language,” Estivar said.
“But it must mean something, Dulzura uses it all the time.”
“Oh, it means something all right, you can bet on that.”
“I see. It’s English.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Dulzura was one of Estivar’s so-called cousins. He had great numbers of them. If they spoke English, he claimed they were from the San Diego or Los Angeles branch of the family; if they spoke only Spanish, they were from the Sonora branch, or the Sinaloa or Jalisco or Chihuahua, whichever word suited his fancy if not the facts. At times of peak employment Estivar’s cousins swarmed over the valley like an army of occupation. They planted, cultivated, irrigated; they pruned, thinned, stripped, sprayed; they picked, sorted, baled, boxed and bunched. Then suddenly they would disappear, as if the earth from which such an abundance of produce had been taken had absorbed the workers themselves like fertilizer.
Dulzura scraped the eggs out of the skillet into a bowl. “His mother on the phone, she said I better wear stockings. I only got the pair I’m saving for my brother’s wedding.”
“You can wear them more than once, surely.”
“Not if I have to kneel when I swear on the Bible.”
“Nobody kneels in a courtroom.” Devon had never been in a courtroom but she spoke with conviction because she knew Dulzura was watching for any sign of uncertainty, her eyes dark and moist as ripe olives. “The women will be wearing stockings, and all the men coats and ties.”
“Even Estivar and Mr. Bishop?”
“Yes.”
The phone began ringing again and Devon went down the hall to answer on the extension in the study.
The study had been Robert’s room. For a long time it had remained, like his car in the garage, exactly the way he left it. It was too painful for Devon to go inside or even to pass the closed door. Now the room was altered. As soon as the date for the hearing had been set, Devon began packing Robert’s things in cardboard cartons, planning to store them in the attic — his tennis rackets and the trophies he’d won, his collection of silver coins, the maps of places he’d wanted to go, the books he’d intended to read.
Devon had cried so hard over the task that Dulzura began crying too, and they wailed together like a couple of old Irishwomen at a wake. After it was over and Devon could see again out of her swollen eyes, she took a marking pencil and printed Salvation Army on each of the cartons. Estivar was carrying the last of them into the front hall when Robert’s mother arrived from the city, as she sometimes did, without warning.
Devon expected Mrs. Osborne to be disturbed by the sight of the cartons or at least to argue about their disposition. Instead, Mrs. Osborne calmly offered to deliver them to the Salvation Army herself. She even helped Estivar load the trunk of her car and the back seat. She was half a head taller than Estivar and almost as strong, and the two of them worked together quickly and efficiently and in silence as though they’d been partners on many such jobs in the past. Mrs. Osborne was seated behind the wheel ready to leave when she turned to Devon and said in her soft, firm voice: “Robert always intended to clean up his study. He’ll be glad we saved him the trouble.”
Devon closed the door of the study and picked up the phone. “Yes?”
“Why didn’t you call me back, Devon?”
“There was no hurry. It’s still very early.”
“I’m well aware of it. I spent the night watching the clock.”
“I’m sorry you couldn’t sleep.”
“I didn’t want to,” Mrs. Osborne said. “I was trying to reason things out, to decide whether this is the right step to take.”
“We must take it. Mr. Ford and the other lawyers told you that.”
“I don’t necessarily have to believe what people tell me.”
“Mr. Ford is an expert.”
“On legal matters, yes. But where Robert is concerned, I am the expert. And what you’re going to do today is wrong. You should have refused to sign the papers. Perhaps it’s still not too late. You could call Ford and ask him to arrange a postponement because you need more time to think.”
“I’ve had a whole year to think. Nothing has changed.”
“But it could, it might. Any day now the phone might ring or there’ll be a knock at the door and there he’ll be, good as new. Maybe he was kidnapped and is being held captive somewhere across the border. Or he had a blow on the head the night he disappeared and he’s suffering from amnesia. Or—”
Devon held the telephone away from her ear. She didn’t want to hear any more of the maybes Mrs. Osborne had dreamed up during the long nights and elaborated on during the long days.
“Devon? Devon.” It was the closest thing to a scream Mrs. Osborne ever permitted herself except when she was alone. “Are you listening to me?”
“The hearing will be held today. I can’t stop it now and wouldn’t if I could.”
“But what if—”
“There isn’t going to be a knocking at the door or a ringing of the phone. There isn’t going to be anything.”
“It’s cruel, Devon, it’s cruel to destroy someone’s hope like this.”
“It would be crueler to encourage you to wait for something that can’t happen.”
“Can’t? That’s a strong word. Even Ford doesn’t say can’t. Miracles are happening every day. Look at the organ transplants they’re doing all over the country. Suppose Robert was found dying and they gave his heart to someone else. That would be better than nothing, wouldn’t it? — knowing his heart was alive — wouldn’t it?”
Mrs. Osborne went on, repeating the same things she’d been saying throughout the year, not even bothering any more to make it seem new by altering a word here, a phrase there.
Two clocks at opposite ends of the house began sounding the hour: the grandfather clock in the living room, and in the kitchen the cuckoo clock Dulzura kept on the wall above the stove. Dulzura claimed it was a present from her husband, but nobody believed she ever had a husband, let alone one that gave her presents. The grandfather clock belonged to Mrs. Osborne. Carved at the base were the words meant to accompany its chimes: