“I can think of things.”
Minna rolled onto her stomach, resting her head in her cupped palms. “What about men? I never hear about anyone. Was Forster the only love of your life?”
“That’s all over for me.”
“Why?”
Claire pointed to Minna’s breasts. “I don’t have those two lovelies.”
“A woman is more than her boobs. There’s what’s between her legs, too.” She reached her hand between her own legs and laughed.
Claire said nothing, the deep heat of a blush rising up her body.
“Would you like Don? I mean, he’s a good lover. I could arrange it.”
“Don’t be absurd.” Claire thought of Rochester, how he cast sidelong glances at Antoinette, how sometimes she seemed so alien. She did not like this side of Minna, this coarseness. Was she trying purposely to provoke? “Should I seduce him wig or sans wig?”
“I hate that mop.” Minna wagged her behind back and forth, then carried the glasses inside as a few raindrops spat across the pool. “If you change your mind, he’s yours.”
“I don’t understand you.”
“Minna is Minna, that’s all.”
“I’m going to bed. I’m tired,” Claire said. “If we’re lucky it might rain.”
August rain in California every bit as rare as the necklace around Minna’s neck.
* * *
Dressed in her nightgown and in bed, Claire read. The sheets were crumb-filled and musty and hadn’t been changed for a long time. Minna came in wearing jeans and a T-shirt. Her scalp was tan-colored and smooth, as if she had shaved her hair off, and Claire did a double take before Minna burst out laughing.
“I shaved the hair off,” she said, pulling off the wig that was now a simple latex scalp.
“That was expensive!” But then Claire too, laughed. “Gwen will be furious.”
“Don’s picking me up.”
“The bed needs changing,” Claire said, grumpy, dreading the empty, creaking house overtaking her. She didn’t want to have to go downstairs and languish in front of the TV to avoid the loneliness of early morning. “Have him sleep here.”
“Here?”
“I don’t want to be alone,” Claire said, brusque, as if she were giving something away.
“Are you sure? I can send him home afterwards.”
“No, I want you two here.”
“Even though we are sinning?”
“I’m not that old-fashioned.”
* * *
But Claire went to sleep right away, not wanting to be confronted with Don’s presence after all. Despite what she said, a part of her wanted Minna’s company to herself. Hours later she woke up to noises outside. Rain, a miracle in August. She went to the window to witness it and saw Minna and Don swimming in the murky pool. Quickly she took a step back.
They circled each other, tighter and tighter, and then Donald grabbed her, and she yelled, kicking at him as they struggled, then kissed. Claire stood in the lonely dark, unseen, and felt a molten thread. She had assumed desire was dead inside her. Was Minna testing? Taunting? She remembered those long-ago days when Forster’s and her lovemaking had formed the center of their days and not just its afterthought, and later its memory.
She did not move away, but stood, riveted. Don carried Minna up the steps of the pool and laid her down on the lounge chair. He stood above her, gazing down, and Claire knew that loveliness that he looked upon. Even after all these months, Minna’s beauty still had the power to shock. “Inside?” he asked. Minna shook her head. “Crazy girl,” he said. Minna stayed absolutely still for the longest time so that Claire held her own breath, then Minna smiled and arched and spread her legs apart. Donald lay on top of her, unable to stand the separation any longer.
Claire’s own legs turned liquid. A siren’s call, the knowledge that she should move away quickly, but she didn’t. What was wrong with her own sense of propriety that she stood there like a Peeping Tom? Minna pushed his face away from hers and looked up into the darkness of the window and then … smiled. Knowing and feeling Claire’s watching. Yet another consummation between them.
Minna wrapped her legs around his hips, and Claire broke away, fled into the bathroom and barred a door no one would try to open. She sat on the cold, sobering tile with her back against the door. Of course, she could not stop seeing them, the image burned onto her retina. She turned on the shower, undressed, let the hot water pelt down on her. Tears mixed with water. The sight of them unspeakable and beyond lovely, a perverse, indecipherable gift.
Chapter 14
Minna, voicing alarm that Claire’s weight loss might put the upcoming radiation treatments in jeopardy, went on a campaign to fatten her up. She cursed at her own prior laziness and went into a frenzied bout of cleaning and washing and cooking that lasted a week before sputtering out once again. During that period, she dressed up every day and drove to the grocery, coming back with improbably large bags of groceries for only two people. She cooked island dishes of spicy hot fish, basted pork chops, and baked a delicious dessert of layers of yellow cake, slathered with guava preserves, covered in a thick coating of whipped cream.
None of it gave Claire an appetite, but she couldn’t disappoint her. That’s what Minna counted on; each uptick on the scale was considered a personal victory. Her solicitude touched Claire, thinking no further to its root cause.
* * *
On one of those shopping days, Claire stood in the kitchen, making a stab at the piles of dirty dishes. The more Minna cooked, the more dishes stacked up, and with three or four meals a day being prepared, the place was in constant turmoil like a restaurant. Claire scoured away at the copper handles of the sink, which had tarnished from neglect. When Octavio knocked at the back door, the disruption so startled Claire she dropped a plate against the dish rack.
Embarrassed, she straightened the scarf on her head. No mistaking the look of shock when he saw her up close. She wished there were a porch and screen in between them as at their weekly meeting, or that they were out in the orchards, with open spaces to distract them. Just moments before, she had felt stronger than she had in weeks, but still, health was a relative thing — compared to her former state, she probably appeared forlorn indeed. Her old robe hung on her like a tent; the skin at her temples was so thin and fragile that nets of blue veins were as visible as the lines on a map. Of course, there was the not-hair thing — not only missing from the scalp, but also not eyebrows, not eyelashes. A stripped and boiled look.
“Disculpe por molestarla—” he said.
“No, no. Come in. We haven’t had a chance to visit.”
“Esta ella aquí?”
“No.” Claire knew that as observant as he was, he would have noticed the car was gone, had probably watched Minna drive away over half an hour before.
“There is something you must see. Lo se estas enferma.”
“Let me dress.”
“Apurate, por favor. Before she returns.”
Claire threw clothes on without thinking, dread in her heart, an echo of the first trouble, the one after which nothing was ever the same. After each large trauma, one was never as devastated, or as strong, again. Octavio, she feared, was determined to reveal something that there would be no recovering from.
She dressed and returned to the kitchen, steeled, ready to blame the messenger.
They talked of the recent rain as they headed, inevitably, toward the portion of the farm that was unofficially off-limits. The explanation given to newcomers was not vetted by Claire; she didn’t want to know how he chose to handle it. Sometimes she could tell the workers knew from their eyes, but now that pity could be for multiple causes. Many of the men came from rural areas of Mexico, religious and superstitious in equal parts. The death of a child was seen as a tragic omen. Octavio was too practical to make unnecessary difficulties for himself. Perhaps reticence was chosen as the most productive course.