Minna shrugged. “Go swimming, Agatha.”
“Who do you mean?” From the novel, Claire understood enough that a renaming indicated a change of allegiances.
Minna went into the dining room and came out holding the two silver candelabra that Hanni had brought from Germany and had given to Claire on her wedding day. She dropped them in the deep end.
“What are you doing?” Claire asked, as Minna brought stacks of china and submerged them on the shallow steps. Soon, the two women were throwing in bundled sheets full of clothes. Claire took all her jewelry and dropped it in a pillowcase, tied it off, then plunged the whole thing under the diving board. Minna wrapped Raisi’s samovar in blankets, taped it, and immersed it. They worked feverishly until all the valuables were underwater. Smoke lay heavy all around like fog.
Claire unzipped her shorts and stepped out of them. She waded into the shallow end, past the red, blue, and gold crystal wine goblets, wearing only T-shirt and baggy underwear. Minna came back out of the house wearing the necklace Claire had given her, shorts, and a cropped tank top that showed the hard roundness of her belly. Claire did not point out that if they were in need of rescue, or even if they perished in the fire, Minna would be better served covered to the eyes of the world.
They sat on the bottom steps in the shallow end, knee to knee, as if at a corner table at a restaurant, resting their chins on the surface of the water, alligator-style, enjoying a horizontal view of their fiery world. A curtain of orange flame appeared above the farthest treetops. A dread thrill that maybe the orchard would abandon Claire since she wouldn’t abandon it. Her nose filled with the candied smell of burnt citrus. The last thing she saw was the glint of Minna’s necklace under the water before she closed her eyes against the stinging air. The world shuddered a final contraction. Goldfish nibbled against her ankles as Minna hummed.
“He is coming,” she said.
“Now?” Claire said, thinking of Minna’s distended belly.
“Jean-Alexi. To run the farm.”
Claire’s mind itself caught flame, thinking of the phone calls and the man with the sliding voice like silver coins that she had talked to. The island boy of Minna’s unrequited love. “If there’s anything left,” Claire said, trying not to show her excitement.
“Can I touch it?” She motioned toward Minna’s stomach.
“Yes, Agatha.”
“Why do you keep calling me that?”
“She is the saint that cured you. Jean-Alexi will take her dues.”
Silence, and then Minna guided Claire’s hand underwater. A shudder of electric happiness ran through Claire because new life was joy no matter its source. She put her other hand underneath Minna’s belly, as if she were holding it aloft, as if she alone were cupping a world for safekeeping. Minna was right. No use planning. The future would find them.
* * *
The flames skipped over the ranch.
The wind changed direction, sparing most of the orchards. Famished, they got out of the pool, prune-fingered and stiff, and went into the kitchen to get something to eat. In the arctic light of the open freezer, they spooned mouthfuls of melting ice cream directly out of a gallon container into their mouths.
In the morning, Claire discovered a dozen blackened shingles on the roof, like rotted teeth on a Halloween pumpkin. An acre of citrus trees had turned to ash. Walking down the burnt rows, she found the coaled bodies of parrots.
Chapter 17
They had been alone together so long, had gone through illness and healing, Claire could no longer tell the difference between her white and Minna’s black.
Chapter 18
Claire was Lazarus, come back to cranky life. Health had a slow gestation — she imagined a butterfly breaking wetly, clumsily, from her cocoon. The first glance of insect ugliness until the sails of wings unfurled, a veil of beauty hiding raw, violent birth. If illness was one kind of birth, returning health was another. Each a distinct new incarnation.
Her thoughts floated, both detailed and nonsensical as in a dream. The risk of normal thinking was as daunting as a sheer-faced summit, unapproachable. Concentrating on the mundane — grocery shopping, oil change for the car, fertilizing the orchard, the arrival of the new foreman, Jean-Alexi — beyond her. She dreamed of Raisi, relived her childhood apartment in the most minute detail — the carved armoire with the bear’s mouth open where she used to hide grapes.
Where was that armoire? She would have given anything to look at it now. Why in the barn, why hidden? But then Claire lost herself again in contemplation of the clouds.
Had she pushed too many responsibilities onto Minna’s shoulders, while allowing herself to revert to this childlike state? She felt as if she would split open at any moment and burst into flower. She had a mystical, almost supernatural feeling that something of immense importance was about to happen, either in her thoughts or outside in the physical world. Although the boundaries between the two were becoming less and less separate. Any manhandling on her part would interrupt what was preordained.
The doctor had explained this was chemo brain, this fog, the aftereffects of the drugs, and that she should not become paranoid. All enlightenments written off in one fell swoop as chemical imbalances. She scorned the doctor. Were his conclusions, his “probabilities,” any less fantastic than Minna’s magic figures and her elixirs?
Too, she began to suspect Forster’s motives, his sudden insistence about running the farm. Probably his Katie had talked him into finally selling, and Claire was the last obstacle. She was beginning to see through Mrs. Girbaldi’s perfidy. Hadn’t she been one of the first to sell out? What could she possibly understand about being linked to the land? Neither Gwen nor Lucy would ever be persuaded of the ranch’s value. No, the truth was that she was seeing more clearly than ever before.
* * *
Events were happening around her, unwinding like constellations, that she knew she would have to face. The screaming train of Minna’s swelling belly, the likely paternity, was a fast-approaching future. Nothing like the approach of a child in one’s life to mark time into neat, tidy increments of necessity. Which bedroom would be the baby’s room? Birth a summons, not an invitation. Would that be a suitable excuse to delay selling the farm?
Another part of the constellation — Claire’s emptying house, the implausibility of Minna’s explanations. Why should her beloved things be packed away in the barn? Where, again, was the armoire? She daydreamed the grapes turned to raisins in the bear’s mouth. Woke up in a panic. Why had the roses in the garden been torn out and green beans, tomatoes, ragged ears of corn, planted instead? Were they preparing for some sort of Armageddon? Why no electricity and only intermittent phone? Why had the farm become a place only fit for ghosts? Fruit hardening on the trees; juice distilled into sour syrup; earth turned graveyard. Claire took a pinch of dirt on her tongue but spat it out, the taste turned alkali.
At the time each change occurred, she accepted it, so that all became part of what already was and thus acceptable. The frog who overlooked her own boiling. Chemo fog. Minna so logical and persuasive that Claire accepted that she had been abandoned by everyone: Mrs. Girbaldi away on a cruise; Forster busy with a new business venture. The girls’ calls always came when she was in the tub or taking a nap, which was most of the time. Tiredness such as she had never imagined, and she prayed it was a precursor to health. Minna warned that they would pressure Claire about selling the farm. Paranoia? The only way Claire could gauge how far things had gone off-balance was to imagine the circumstances through Gwen’s eyes. Through her prim, judging eyes, none of this would do.