Forster went and spoke a few words to them, while Claire imagined a current of glances and nudges passing among the men. Suspicion always lurked in her mind now — which of these men might be related to the ones in jail, however distantly? Might there be recriminations against the long sentences, revenge, however undeserved? The day changed for her — the trees cast a pall, the sky cloudless yet without sun. When they came to the path that led up the hill, they had to pass the lemon tree. Forster grimaced at his oversight — he should have taken them another way. He didn’t blame a particular spot of land for their tragedy; rather, he felt the land, too, had been violated. Claire turned the girls around and marched them back home.
* * *
Essential to take care of Gwen and Lucy during this time, and Claire threw herself into a confusion of activity. She started by repainting their bedrooms, letting them pick their favorite colors. Gwen chose yellow, and Claire sewed matching curtains and counterpanes. Transforming Josh’s room was the hardest. At Forster’s insistence, Josh’s things were boxed up again and moved out into the barn, to be donated to charity. Lucy was given his room, and she insisted on purple walls. After much negotiation, they compromised on lavender and planned to add a canopy bed for Christmas. If Forster had let Claire, she would have ripped up the floorboards, taken the walls down to the studs. Even so, with each brushful of paint, she felt guilty of erasing the past.
With the same fervor, she cooked breakfasts of French toast and pancakes, omelets, and scrambles, freshly squeezed orange and grapefruit juice. The breakfasts were so big and involved that the girls were frequently late for school. When it got too late, Claire allowed them to play truant. It was safer to stay at home anyway. Then she would let them watch movies while she brought them hot chocolate and caramel popcorn, treating them like invalids.
Isolated by what they had suffered — neither teachers nor counselors were willing to reprimand — the girls, so pale and tentative, got away with more than the wildest rebels. Gwen was caught smoking in the girls’ bathroom. Lucy got caught necking with a basketball player during homeroom. While Gwen would eventually straighten out to the point of primness, Lucy plunged deeper into bad behavior. Caught with cigarettes, then alcohol, then marijuana. With the years, the power of her intoxicants grew.
“Aren’t you spoiling them?” Forster asked. “They’re going wild.”
“They deserve spoiling.”
One night they sat down to a roast, creamed corn, biscuits, salad, roast chicken, and a pizza. The table was so full, the counter held the extra dishes.
As the girls sat down at their places, Lucy looked around and saw the extra place setting. “Who’s coming to dinner?”
Claire looked at Forster uneasily, and when he smiled, they both started to laugh. The strain wearing them thin.
“Just us.” Claire took up the place setting, dumped it into a drawer, and went to the stove, hoping no one would see tears. Still not adjusted from the habit of thinking in fives.
“Can we go on vacation?” Lucy said.
No, thought Claire. She could not stop the irrational panic that they would be gone when Joshua returned. Fact helpless against maternal instinct.
Forster smiled. “That’s the best idea I’ve heard in a long time.”
* * *
They couldn’t afford the money for the trip or the time spent away from the ranch, but even she saw escape was demanded. It was decided — a week down the Baja peninsula. It was perfectly acceptable that they needed “time away.” If Claire said “vacation” to the neighbors, it would have sounded crass and unfeeling. So escape was labeled retreat. It irked her that she worried what others thought when no one knew her suffering, the depth of which justified any action with the ability to ease the pain. No one could know the middle-of-the-night agonies, waking up before remembering, and then having the knowledge invade the body with the force of a hammer blow. She didn’t care for herself, but she resented a judgment of the girls. They should be affected by the tragedy, but not too much. Anything inappropriate, self-pitying, melodramatic, would be blamed on Claire, but a lack of emotion was blamed on her also.
* * *
The night before they were to leave, the Santa Ana winds, commonly known as devil winds, howled through the canyons, made the shingles slap down on the roof, the windows and doors moan. Claire dreamed Joshua was a baby again, and she had misplaced him somewhere. Laid him down on a bed or a couch or a pillow. Placed him in a reed basket or a wooden orange crate. She searched and searched, frantic. It was way past his feeding time, her breasts ached with milk, and he was nowhere in sight. Finally she heard him and rushed out into the orchards, following his cries until she found him beneath the lemon tree. As if he had been tending there from birth. Claire woke, her body in a sweat.
* * *
She left Forster in bed, worried in her rocking chair till daybreak pulled her out into the fields, the winds tugging against her nightgown, the humidity dropped so that she could hardly spit.
It was really too easy. The gasoline can in the barn. Matches from the kitchen. The long, dizzying walk down the dirt road, rising sun blinding her. Whispers in her ear that could have been wind. She forgot the mechanics of lofting the can — watching the loop of gasoline sparkle in the air and wet the lower leaves, dousing the brush underneath, staining the trunk dark, but still leaving the container only half-emptied. Thinking the lower limbs the most promising place for the flames to gain purchase, she threw on another loop just as the wind gusted, carrying the loop backward, raining on her. Face and arms stung as if attacked by a swarm of bees. Forgotten, as well, that the first three matches were blown out, how not until the driven fourth did a brilliant flower of light ignite, kindling of tumbleweed blossoming like a shard of sun. No, in her memory, the tree simply self-immolated.
She staggered back, too slow, heat singeing hair and eyebrows. Burning her cheeks raw as if from sunburn, as if from blood stroke. That was the moment she heard the high scream and came to herself. She could no longer separate sleep from waking or this zombie state in between. Heart stopped, her small boy ripped away from her like in birth. What had she done? She swatted at the fire, wanting to put it out, reverse time. Anything so that she could solve the conundrum of destroying what you love for the pain it has caused you. Heartsick, nightmared, she saw a rabbit wobble out from under the burning brush. His fur scorched away on one side, the other side untouched. He staggered, stopped, ran. “Survive,” Claire whispered, begged. “Please survive.”
Black smoke fanned itself into the unforgiving blue sky. A single, wide lick of flame reached from ground to topmost branch, a reversed lightning. Leaves dried out, then curled to gold, then black ash. The rinds of lemons grew rigid and tight, then burst, releasing a thick blood of juice.
The siren at the barn finally clanged. Pickups rattled to life. Footsteps and the calling of Forster and the girls. Claire, Mother, Mom. Where are you? Where have you gone?
Octavio roared up in his pickup with a crew, not looking at her but unrolling the faded fireman’s hose, cranking the water. Another rescue. Forster ran to Claire.
“Thank God you’re okay.” He held her, then pushed her away, smelling the gasoline on her. Incredulous, he stepped back, the muscles in his jaw clenching.