Lucy sighed and turned back to the house. “I should help with dinner.”
“Be on my side, baby.” Claire hugged her.
“I always was. You just didn’t see it.”
* * *
Alone, the last of the sun on her skin, the moment took Claire back to her early days, peeling an orange as she walked through the rows of trees, dropping a confetti of rind behind her, eating the sun-warmed fruit, the girls small and playful as puppies, running in their coveralls through the trees — seeing eternity down the rows the long way, seeing only the next bushy trees across — yelling, laughing, You’re it! You’re it! You’re it!
She sat on the lawn with Raisi, legs crossed Indian-style, with Josh in a bassinet under the jacaranda tree, purple blossoms floating slowly down like a benediction, landing in their hair, on the baby’s blanket. Jacaranda blossoms fell, or was it the coral tree in the front yard? Roots like a banyan tree’s, orange-red blossoms like sickles, like small crescent moons of blood.
Nothing had changed except time. Lucy was wrong because once it had been a happy place, unhaunted, and they had been happy there. She was sure of it. Time had corrupted things.
It started with Josh’s death, tainting the rhythm of their days in ways not anticipated. In the mornings, she lay in bed, unable to rise, the weight of sorrow pressing her down further and further into her bed. She stopped packing the girls’ lunches, letting them make their own. Forster, too, withdrew, spending less and less time on the farm, less time being a father, no time as her husband. Was their mutual pulling back the reason the girls clung so close to each other, the reason they left home so early and stayed so far away? Could it be that those three men first setting foot on the ranch were catalyst enough to set in motion a chain of events inexorable, not capable of being recovered from? Or was there something brittle and unsound within the family, something diseased, something they could not have known or fixed, something that might never have come to light of day except the fates unkindly exposed it?
* * *
That first night back from the hospital, Forster, Octavio, and Mrs. Girbaldi stayed for dinner, and the table was filled with food as it had been in the old days. Claire loved the feeling of the kitchen filled again with life. She pulled out her lemon cheese pie from the oven, set it on the counter to cool, the scent sharp and healing as sunlight. But she couldn’t eat — a piece of chicken brought to her mouth nauseated her, lying rubbery and repulsive on her tongue, her mind convulsed with the idea of its being dead flesh. Her entire will focused on simply not gagging. The pain drugs ruined taste — like walking around with a mouth full of pennies.
“Pass the salad,” Forster said. “We need to discuss some things. We are all going to have to pull together.”
“Mom’s getting a maid,” Lucy announced.
“Do you want me to talk with Sofia?” Octavio said. “She could come back from Rosarito. Or should I ask Paz?”
“Isn’t she in school?” Claire said.
“It could be arranged,” Octavio said.
“I don’t want anything to interfere with her studies.”
“Finally,” Mrs. Girbaldi said. “This place was always too much to take care of by yourself.”
“I wouldn’t call her a maid,” Claire corrected.
“What else do you call someone who washes your floors?” Lucy said.
“Not your boyfriend,” Gwen said.
The girls’ catting was like the background noise of a television, muffled yet reassuring.
“She’ll do some cleaning,” Claire said. “But also driving me, cooking meals, running errands. A nanny for adults.”
“Still, it’s a stranger.” Lucy had remained quiet while she might have been called on to stay, but now she pouted at not having been asked.
“Unless you have Paz,” Octavio said.
“Usually maids are strangers,” Claire said. “Until you get to know them.”
“Like a man,” Gwen said to Lucy, “before you’ve slept with him. Lucy doesn’t know some of them after she’s slept with them.”
“You just said she wasn’t a maid.”
Claire sighed. “Let’s call her an assistant.” But to assist in what? Illness? A handmaiden for illness.
“You’re not going to like a stranger in your house,” Gwen said.
At that moment Claire wanted so badly to please the girls, to show her gratefulness at their coming. “Here’s the deal. After I’ve finished all the treatments and am healthy again, I’ve decided to put the farm up for sale.”
Gwen’s face lit up. “You’re serious?”
“Yes.” It was as easy as that. Peace would descend for the limit of her treatment, and she would deal with the rest later. She was surprised that deception was so easy and could give such pleasure when truth almost always led to disappointment.
“That’s good,” Forster said. “Really good. I’m surprised.”
Even Lucy gave her a wary yet pleased nod, convinced her mother was finally shaking off the ghosts of the past.
* * *
For days women from an agency came in a long, supplicant line of battered cars, oversize models from a decade or more earlier that Claire recognized from when shy boys had picked up the girls for dates. The women came shuffling in, wearing scuffed shoes, most speaking halting English. A young, sweet-faced girl, Angelita, had good references, but not till half an hour passed did she reveal she was pregnant and would leave early for Mexico. Dolores, a middle-aged, heavyset woman, wanted access to a gym for three hours a day to lose weight. A Scottish nurse, Moira, with purple lipstick, was born-again and insisted on installing religious pictures in the house. A Vietnamese lady wanted to move in with her aunt and three children.
Octavio again suggested that Paz do the job, defer her admission to law school, but Claire refused.
Claire spoke a fair amount of Spanish, enough to get the basics across, but this was more complicated. Many of the women didn’t like driving. Most had to care for their own families at night even though the job description had stated live-in. The younger ones weren’t educated enough to read English, follow medication instructions. Lucy was right. Everyone did feel like a stranger. How to admit that Claire was looking for a kindred spirit in these women while they were sensibly looking at this as a dull, servile, low-wage job?
Claire did not resent the new immigrants the way some of the old-timers did. She didn’t yearn for the old days of Midwestern farmers, polyester-suited developers, bedraggled surfers, Velveeta cocktail-party canapés, and dinner theaters that featured Hello, Dolly! But she needed a real companion for this undertaking back to health.
* * *
After a week, despairing of finding anyone, Gwen wanted to hire a full-time nurse in addition to a cleaning lady. Mrs. Girbaldi, who treated them as a surrogate family, listened to the hiring woes while the girls cooked dinner.
Claire complained that she couldn’t afford to hire two full-time new employees. “Besides, all the attention will make me feel like I’m sick.”
“Why don’t you take Paz once a week just to clean?” Mrs. Girbaldi said. “It would please Octavio.”
“Maybe. Then I could look for an assistant only. Maybe a college student?”
Gwen frowned. “Not such a great idea. They’ll be distracted — boyfriends, going out, future jobs. No way they’ll do grocery shopping.”
Lucy sighed, filing her nails. “I could come home.”
“No,” Claire said. “You’re excited about this Santa Fe job.”