“We don’t talk of it,” Claire whispered, as if their words might bring down the sky.
Minna’s eyes were bright with excitement. “This is why you stay.”
Claire turned away, aware now of footsteps and the sound of low voices. Five of the workers stood at the head of the road with their pruning tools, ready to begin the day. Like thieves, Claire and Minna stood and stumbled past them, Claire whispering, “Buenos dias” and “Discúlpeme,” covering her poor, exposed head with one hand.
When they reached the house, Minna pulled two lemons from her pocket. One lemon was rounded, with a deep cleft running through it so that it was like a crenellated heart, or perhaps two lemons that grew into each other’s space and conjoined. The other was blackened and hollow, a victim of hanging unpicked from the previous years.
“What are you doing?” Claire asked, horrified by the sight.
Minna shrugged.
“You can’t bring those in the house.”
“It’s only fruit.”
“Get rid of them.” Claire was enraged that Minna would defile the tree, disinterring the fruit, and at the same time shamed at her own irrational reaction. “How did you know?”
“Places are marked by what happened there. Sometimes they are cursed by bad luck, sometimes they become sacred, but either way they are marked.”
They did not speak for the rest of the afternoon. On schedule, the tule fogs rolled back in at sunset and blanketed the hot fields, cooled over Claire’s temper. They pretended, unsuccessfully, the blaze of the day and its events had never been.
Chapter 9
Syringes of Adriamycin the deep color of cherries or blood. Claire dreamed in red and woke with dry heaves. Methotrexate the deep yellow of egg yolks. Whole cocktails of medicines — mix the Taxol with the cisplatin, shake the Cytoxan with the fluorouracil. Face reddened and bloated, chest and arms rashed.
She woke with the conviction, like a toothache, that if she went in for her treatment that day, she would be weakened beyond the point of recovery. She picked up the phone and called Mrs. Girbaldi.
“Nan, tell me about that clinic.…”
Minna came into her bedroom, busy, hardly looking at her as she laid out Claire’s clothes and went back out. She was talking about saints and symbols she had looked up in a book to paint on her walls, walls that had long ago been filled. “Coming for breakfast, your ladyship?” Claire heard the slap of her bare feet down the hall and was still under the covers when she returned.
“Come on, sleepyhead.”
“I’m not going today.”
Minna stopped. “It’s not an either/or proposition.”
“I’m serious. I can’t do it today.”
“I’ll have to call the doctor. I’ll have to call Gwen.…”
“Please.”
“It’s my responsibility. My job. It’s your life we’re talking about, doudou. I would be negligent.”
“If I go today, it’ll kill me.”
“What if they don’t believe me…”
“You believe me,” Claire wheedled, grabbed Minna’s hand. The girls had pulled similar stunts when they were little, and she never once gave in. But she knew Minna was inexperienced. Claire schemed she could trade on Minna’s changeable heart.
Minna hesitated, stroked Claire’s hair. “I’ll say we had car trouble. I’ll reschedule.”
“Not this week.”
“Don’t be greedy.” Minna stood thinking. “Get dressed for breakfast before I change my mind.”
They sat in the kitchen. Claire obediently stirred syrup into her oatmeal, drank her coffee, and poured more.
“I want to try a clinic in Mexico Mrs. Girbaldi told me about.”
“What’s going on with you?”
Claire sagged down into her chair. “I’m starting to forget what I’m living for. I want to go away somewhere exotic and forget … this.”
“Oh, che, exotic is on the inside. Back home, we sat around bored to death with all the green of the jungle, all the blue of the ocean. Each last one of us would have cut off our right arm to be in California.”
“But you could have left at any time.”
Minna drank her coffee. “Someday I will take you. A place very far, with steep mountains and waterfalls. Where the flowers open only at night. Their perfume is so strong you forget all the pain in your life.”
“If I make it that long.”
“You will make it. I’ll take in enough life for both of us. We are like those plants — I can only survive if you survive.” Minna got up to clear the dishes. “Now I have to go tell lies.”
* * *
Claire, giddy at her temporary freedom, did not question what Minna told the doctors. When the phone rang, Minna shook her head and let it ring. Then she made her own calls. An hour later, Claire saw Don’s car pull into the driveway, and her throat caught, thinking Minna would leave with him, but this time he drove all the way up to the house and wrestled three straw beach hats out of the trunk. Mrs. Girbaldi was in the backseat ready to go.
“What’s going on?”
When Don saw Claire, his face broke into that smooth, movie smile that revealed nothing. “Let’s go have some fun, little sweetheart.”
Mrs. Girbaldi patted her hand. “We’re going to go get a miracle.”
* * *
After they crossed the border, traffic moved quickly through Tijuana, and soon they were on a desolate, winding road, burnt tan fields on either side, the land dropping away to the empty blue ocean. It was hard to remember a time when the land around the farm had been equally bare, the possibility of not having to look through a barricade of houses crowding out any glimpse of distance — mountains or water. But it was not as barren as on her previous visit all those years ago. Was it a coincidence that she always found herself in the desert at low points in her life? She wondered if that trip had turned out differently, if they had somehow come together again as a family, would the future have turned out better? Now Baja had aspirations — half-finished stucco developments everywhere, like a blight, trying to replicate the urban sprawl north of the border.
“Did you know I came to Cabo in the fifties?” Mrs. Girbaldi said. “It was just a little fishing village then. We all drank in a bar on the sand. Sinatra, Crosby, later on Bobby Mitchum.”
“You met Robert Mitchum?” Don asked, turning around so that the car swerved.
“Hey!” Minna said.
“I danced with Mitch on the beach many times. He said I was as pretty as Lana Turner, if you can believe that.” One could tell by the way she said it that this memory had nourished her through long decades.
Minna turned around and squinted at her. “He’s right. Most definitely.”
“Silly.” Mrs. Girbaldi laughed, delighted. “You don’t even know who she was. Anyway. He was a charmer. He died of lung cancer.” Realizing what she said, she looked guiltily at Claire.
“It’s okay,” Claire said. “I haven’t forgotten. People die.”
“Yes, they do. Problem is, sometimes they forget to live,” Minna said.
* * *
They passed two beer breweries and then a donkey pulling a wagon of mud bricks. When they stopped for gas, Claire got out and stood looking up and down the broken sidewalks. A three-legged dog nimbly picked his way down the road. A place one could lose oneself in. She fantasized that if she ran away, if she bargained not to return to her old life, the cancer would vanish in trade. This hardscrabble town was not a place that accommodated sickness. Death, yes. Decay was visible everywhere — the bleached signs, the unsold dusty cans and bottles in the cashier’s window, the trash-clogged gutters.