“Where are you taking me?”
“To see our wards.”
The lawn was filled with collapsible pens. Two dozen dogs from the shelter had been bathed, fluffed, perfumed, and beribboned, then put in one per pen to be adopted. People walked through the maze of fences, stopping to offer a pat on the head or a biscuit. The attention combined with the confinement wound the dogs up to a fevered barking that rolled in waves through the evening air.
“Whose dogs are these?” Minna asked.
“They’re strays. Hopefully some will get adopted tonight.”
“Why don’t you take one? Save a life.”
“I used to have five at one time. But now, no new responsibilities.”
Minna studied the pens. “All prettied up and then maybe to have their hopes dashed.” She stood close to a pen with a chow mix in it. His fur had been shorn, and his body was small and whitish, his red-tufted head looking oversize in comparison. She reached her hand in to give him a pat, but the dog grew impatient and leaped up against the fence. Minna grabbed his snout, clamping down the jaws, then pushed him back and let go.
“Are you all right?” Claire asked.
“Couldn’t be sure what he’d do.”
The people around them, realizing nothing had happened, chuckled, and Claire couldn’t help a smile.
“Where’d you learn to do that?”
“In Dominica you need to be able to handle yourself around dogs. Some can be mean. Anyway, he leered at me.” Minna smiled, making a face.
“These have all been checked out for temperament. Fostered.”
“But you never can trust them totally,” Donald said. He had followed them outside. “Claire has been trying to keep us apart.”
Minna looked into her drink, stiff and prim as a schoolgirl, and Claire was embarrassed for the poor impression she was making. Now she was as eager for them to like each other as she had formerly been reluctant for them to meet.
“Minna’s studying at Berkeley,” she said.
“Really? My daughter’s a freshman there. Where do you live?”
“I just started PhD work there. I did undergrad at Cambridge.”
“Too smart for me,” he said.
“Actually, Minna is the great-granddaughter of the novelist Jean Rhys.”
Don looked blank.
Minna leaned on one leg while droning off the whole recitation in a bored, singsong voice. “Her best-known book, Wide Sargasso Sea, was a postcolonial answer to Jane Eyre.”
Don still looked blank.
“You know … Rochester?” she said.
“Oh, Rochester, sure. I’m not a totally illiterate actor. So you’re an intellectual?”
“That was great-granny. I’m just a simple girl.”
“I’ve been rereading the book,” Claire said. “Rochester’s obsessed by money and lust. A perfect role for you.”
Don laughed. “What are you doing with boring old Claire?”
Stung by the insult, Claire debated what to tell him. She wasn’t ready for full public disclosure.
“I’m a friend of Lucy’s. I’m staying on the ranch for the summer.”
“Dear,” Don said, taking Minna’s arm as he led her away, “come give me your sage advice on a dog I’m considering adopting. I want to name him Heathcliff.”
She looked over at Claire, and they both realized they had been played.
“Sometimes first impressions are deceiving,” Don said.
Claire waved them off. “Go. Tell him to take the dog. Save a life.”
Minna gave Claire a strange smile. After she disappeared with Don, Claire went back inside and sagged down into a sofa, exhausted. The interaction had served as distraction, but now, alone, reality came down on her even more heavily than before. She didn’t like lying about her cancer, but maybe it was better than suffering those pitying looks that the soldier had endured. She wanted to escape her own life. It had been a mistake coming, she thought, and just as she was contemplating sneaking out, Mrs. Girbaldi made her way over.
“They’re all eating and drinking up a storm, but no donations or bids,” she said. “Wrong type of crowd.”
“Don’s taking another dog.”
“Good,” Mrs. Girbaldi said, eyeing a potential donor at the cheese table. “He seems to have made a new lady friend, too. Be right back.”
Claire ate and talked, drank and listened, constantly checking for Minna’s return, ready to leave. Over an hour passed before she came back.
“Where’ve you been?”
“We took the dog to his house.”
“I want to go home.” Claire grabbed her purse and said curt good-byes.
Mrs. Girbaldi looked unhappy as Claire pecked her cheek. “Leaving so soon?”
“Nerves about Monday.” In the car, alone, Claire turned to Minna. “You drove to Don’s house?”
Minna looked straight ahead, out the windshield, petulant as a teenager. “Yeah. We put the dog in the yard and then we fucked on his couch.”
Claire shook her head as if the girl’s words had blurred meaning. “What are you saying?”
“I thought that’s what you wanted. You threw me at him.”
“What I wanted? I don’t even know what that means. That you’d do something like that if I wanted?”
“Which part?”
In that moment, Claire knew she was in over her head. As much as she liked Minna’s iconoclasm, she realized she was habituated to the opposite — people, including herself, who offered no surprises. Was Minna’s wildness the right thing for her now?
“I enjoyed it if that’s what you’re asking,” Minna said.
“How will I face him? This is a small community, everyone will know. He’ll want to see you now.” Then a new thought occurred to Claire. “Are you quitting me?”
Minna leaned over and rubbed Claire’s arm up and down, rough and comforting as if reassuring a child. “I explained to him I don’t want a romance now, okay? It was just recreational.”
“Jesus.” Claire looked at her. “You slept with him?”
Minna giggled, and then they both broke into roaring screams of laughter, a shredding, incredulous kind of hilarity that tore up the animosity between them.
“For your information,” Minna said, when they could at last breathe again, “he doesn’t know who Rochester is. Had him confused with Heathcliff. He said he could read our reactions, and he played us. He’s very small.”
Claire screeched, choking, and covered her ears. Her chest and stomach ached with the heaves of laughter; it was the first time she had laughed since her operation. “No more. No more, no more, no more, you bad girl.”
* * *
That night Minna walked into the kitchen wearing pale blue cotton pajamas, face washed smooth, hair pulled back in a bun. It felt like going back in time to when the girls were in their teenage years. Claire heated milk in a pan, and they talked about the logistics of the coming week. Already, the events of the evening were fading, and they had eased into a routine of familiarity that was out of keeping with the short time they had known each other.
“Not to hurt your feelings, but I like you much better now that your daughters are gone. You seem … more yourself.”
Claire laughed. “They’re good girls.”
“I love Lucy. She saved me.”
“You’re too young, but when you settle down and have children … you love them more than your own life. But they grow up to be your jury. All the judgment of how you raised them, the mistakes you made. It’s a lifelong sentence.”
“You’re a good mother.”
“I don’t think they see that.”
They drank from their mugs.
“Can I tell you a secret?” Claire said.
“Of course, my sister.”
“All I want, all I’ve wanted since … a long time, was to stay on this farm.”