The newspapers, the celebrity-gossip magazines, the fashion magazines multiplied on the coffee table. When Claire flipped through them, the glossy images depressed her, made her feel beside the point with her balding head and lopsided chest. Alone with Minna, an alternate universe had shown itself, shutting away the outside world. But that world was the medium, the barrage of sensory information, that her daughters lived in, like fish in water, and they thought it eccentric of Claire not to be able to name a single clothing designer, a single makeup line.
“Why can’t we just sit and talk?” Claire said. “When do I have you here?”
“Talk about what?”
“I don’t know. Like in the old days.”
“I don’t remember talking in the old days,” Lucy said.
Gwen looked over and saw the disappointment on her mother’s face. “I remember lying outside at night on the road. Cars never came by. The stars were bright because the city lights were still far away. We had so much freedom back then; my kids have none of that. But all we could talk about was how bored we were, how we couldn’t wait till we were old enough to go explore the world.
“Okay, turn the radio off,” Gwen said to Lucy. The silence hummed. “We were kids. We talked about what we were doing. We never asked about you. We didn’t think about what your life was like.”
“You were my life,” Claire said. “You and the farm.”
“You were a good mother.”
Claire was silent for a minute, savoring the words. “It makes me sad. Living apart. We hardly know each other anymore. Why can’t you make arrangements to come back here and live for a while?”
A different silence now around the table.
“Here?”
“Why not? Plenty of room. I’m still going to sell, eventually.”
“This isn’t where our lives are.”
“Come on, Gwen. You’re always complaining how hard you work. You and Kevin could spend more time together. Time with the kids. Like your dad and I did. It was a good place to raise a family. You just said so yourself.”
“I don’t want that kind of life,” Gwen said.
She looked at Lucy.
“The place feels haunted. I told Minna as much,” Lucy said.
“You did? When?”
“I don’t know. Before we left that first time. I thought she should know about Josh.”
Claire felt a dropping in her stomach. So it had all been an act at the tree. For a moment, just the time it took to inhale a few dizzy breaths, she felt an anger strong enough to sever the relationship. But did she ever, even for that barest moment, believe that Minna actually had powers? Of course not. So she was just as guilty of willful blindness. Wasn’t the truth that they were going through a ritual, enacting it for each other, and themselves?
“I don’t understand why you two want to live like you are from nowhere, unrooted. How many people in this world have that? Minna understands the preciousness of place.”
* * *
Claire retreated into her books, plunged back into the Rhys novel to fuel her imaginings of Minna.
The mineral-hard ocean and the palms and the untainted green of Dominica, the jagged hills that so fascinated and appalled Rochester. Were there brilliant parties at her family’s plantation, an approximation of burned-down Coulibri? Was the isolation of Granbois like that of the Baumsarg farm? Where did Minna meet the handsome boy who broke her heart? She had hinted about him, how he kissed her in a greenhouse on the estate of her pink house. Claire had decided on unrequited love for Minna because after thinking at length about it, she could come up with no other reason for Minna’s friendlessness, her moods, the mournful look in her moss-green eyes, glimpses caught when she was unaware of Claire’s watching. The more she read, the more she thought she understood Minna, and even though her absence had only been days long, Claire could not wait for her return, to compare the imagined Minna against the person made flesh.
Of course Claire knew that this was futile, knew these were sentimental wonderings on her part, that even the smallest, no-nonsense glance from Minna would confirm the vainness of her fantasies. She could hardly see the reality of her own daughters because of the network of memories, loyalties, loves, and jealousies that they resurrected and laid to bed, over and over, during that holiday weekend.
She had wanted family since she was a little girl in the small, dark apartment over her father’s bookstore, and this family had been created through, because of, the farm. She was angry that they didn’t see that. Angry that they didn’t accommodate the high price paid. Valued that life so little they were unwilling to keep it going. What was out there that was more important than what was on the ranch? It was impossible to be in their presence — the undertow of the past was too strong, a constant replaying of some infatuation, some slight. Only with strangers, new acquaintances, could one gauge who one was in the present, try on whom one might become.
* * *
The girls’ behavior was to pretend nothing had happened, that Claire was not sick, that everything was the same. But something had happened — Claire had changed. The experience of the disease had opened her up, made her want to reach out, but they still insisted on the mother who required nothing of them. They were more fascinated by Minna.
Exhausted by the heat, they idled away long afternoons on the porch by conjecturing about her.
“What do you think he sees in her?” Lucy asked. No question who they were speaking of.
“What doesn’t Don see in her?” Gwen said. “She’s a mystery. I’ll give her that.”
* * *
On the afternoon of the Fourth, Tim played morosely with a stick in the driveway. A careful child, not wanting to give away too much of himself, miserly for all his six years due to Gwen’s cautious hovering. It infuriated Claire that Gwen forbade him to go into the orchards. “It’s the safest place a child could be!” But Gwen wouldn’t budge. Claire despaired at her tentative, unsure grandson.
“Are you going to see the fireworks?” Claire asked him when Gwen finally relented long enough to go inside for his sunblock.
He shrugged. Claire had only seen him a few times a year since he was born, and he was still wary of her. Obvious that grandchildren needed to be charmed, unlike one’s immediate children, who were more or less hostages to one’s love.
“Mom says I have to stay here. She says you might go away like Mr. Grumbles.”
“Who’s that?” Claire said, a sinking feeling in her stomach.
“The goldfish.” He wiped his nose with the back of his arm. A moment later he sneezed five times in a row.
“Gesundheit!”
“Mom says I’m allergic to plants.”
“But the world is full of plants.”
“That’s why Mom says I should stay inside.”
“Aunt Lucy is going to take you to the fireworks. Do you know why?”
He shook his head, noncommittal, not willing to risk showing excitement.
“They are going to have cannons there, and I need you to tell me how loud they are, okay?”
He looked cheered but still untrusting. Gwen’s child.
“Tell your mom I am not going down the toilet like Mr. Grumbles.”
* * *
As the week progressed, Claire grew more and more exhausted, a hostage to the activity in the house. Forster came by and surveyed the citrus crop, spoke to Octavio. When he offered to take them all out to lunch, Claire begged off.