But all that was a diversion. Claire’s real attention was focused inward, on her own resurrection, the swell of health tending her toward the mystical. Hadn’t she been healed by magic, after all? She broke down in tears at the sight of returning golden, downy hairs on her forearms. The tissues in her mouth healed, and she could again chew. So unexpected, so delightful, the fading of the specter of death. As if it were a thing that could be overcome, denied, and forgotten for all time.
She looked with benevolence on the sun rising, the smell of sage scrub in the air, the shush of new leaves on the trees. Even Minna’s strangeness, her lack of joy at the new life within her, could not blemish Claire’s happiness. Her own pregnancies had been the most contented times of her life. Although she could not shake the light feeling inside her head — a constant vertigo that kept her from moving too quickly — she was able to sit for hours, caught in the sounds of birds, wind, caught in stillness. How to explain that each vestige stripped from her revealed itself to be less? As if she could finally take flight. She knew she would have to return to the mundane, but just not yet.
* * *
Minna broiled a large piece of steak in a roasting pan, and the smell of its cooking drove Claire into a frenzy, a sure sign she was getting better. She stood at the sink, turned on the KÄLTE faucet, drank deep gulps of the icy water, the only thing she could fill herself with freely. They sat at the bare kitchen table across from each other, the sole light from candles, the flames flattening with each breeze. Minna poured herself a large glass of red wine. Dark rings shadowed her eyes; she looked weary.
“Are you sure you should drink that?”
“Why not?” The flame’s light contorted Minna’s features, making her beautiful one moment, ugly to the point of fright the next.
“Your condition.”
“I don’t know what you’re meaning.” Minna plopped a large cup of the elixir in front of Claire so that it splashed on the wooden table.
“I’d like a little wine tonight.”
“That’s up to me.”
“Please,” Claire said, a stab of impatience. But she nodded, drinking the mixture down, already grown faint and tired from the coming effect of it. Hadn’t Minna already led her so far, didn’t it seem clear she knew better?
“What will you do, eventually? Go back to your family?”
“Don’t know.”
“Back to Berkeley?”
“Ready for me to clear out already? Want to wipe away all traces of me now?”
“No, no. I’d like you to stay here for a while. With the baby.”
Minna rose and slammed the roasting pan down on the table. “Don’t think that’s likely. Gwen will throw us both out on our ears soon.”
“The steak smells good,” Claire said.
“Doesn’t it?”
Minna speared the piece of meat, then attacked it with a hefty cutting knife, slicing a large piece and putting it on one plate, cut-ting a smaller piece and placing it on another. Claire knew better than to expect any vegetables on the side or salad or even bread. Again, a flash of impatience. She would broach the subject of taking over the cooking now that she was getting stronger. Maybe even insist on inviting over Mrs. Girbaldi for a meal when she returned from her cruise. But all in its time. When Minna was in a good mood. If it came to that, would Claire know how to deliver a baby?
“I’m so hungry,” she said.
Minna set down the two plates on her side of the table and began to cut the meat, stuffing pieces in her mouth and chewing as she glared at Claire.
“I suppose you want some?”
Claire nodded, weak from the meat aroma and her hunger. So tired from the elixir it was an effort to keep her eyes open, keep her head from rolling on the table. “The carved armoire? The dining room table. Can we put them back in the house? I’ve changed my mind.”
Minna cut more pieces, chewed them down and swallowed, following each with a gulp of wine. “You must’ve eaten like this all your life.”
Claire’s head, so unbearably heavy, rocked back against the wooden rung of the chair. “Forster used to make barbecue on Sundays. For a while the girls ate only vegetarian, then fish.…”
Minna let out a long, slow chuckle. “Quite a luxury — imagine choosing not to eat.”
“You know how kids are…” Claire said, on the verge of tears. “About the armoire…”
Minna put her fork down and leaned close to her. The flame stretched her face into a long mask. “Do you know what real hunger is? I want you to feel it.”
If only Claire could focus, she knew that Minna was revealing her own biography through the body.
“Oh, che, I’m afraid that medicine has gone to your head and made you sick. Best not eat just now. Vomit make me a lot of work.”
Claire laid her head down on the table, willing herself back into the escape of sleep.
“I might just finish both pieces,” Minna said. “Eating for two, after all.”
Claire’s impatience burst into flame, hunger making her reckless. “What do you mean? Two?”
Minna gave a broad smile, her mouth full of food. “Eating for you and me, che, what else?”
“There’s someone else here. Why don’t you speak it aloud?” Claire felt utterly helpless.
“You are just beginning to understand how it is,” Minna whispered.
* * *
Claire staggered to her bed, which Minna had moved inside again. She now insisted they sleep separately. A nightmare woke Claire near dawn. She was being pursued, but her legs were so heavy she could not move. She banged on a door to be let in, but no one would answer. Then she was inside a house, struggling with a door to be let out. It was unclear whether she wanted in or out, but all the time the pursuer was catching up with her. She woke with a cry in her throat and lay on the bare mattress, wishing the nausea away, the stabbing of her stomach, the flutter and cramp of her intestines. Minna had urged her to wear a scarf, wrapped tight around the abdomen, so that she would not feel this pain she claimed was a spirit, but that Claire recognized was simply starvation.
Like a thief, she limped down the steps to the kitchen, opened the refrigerator, and pulled out a large round of cheese.
Sitting on the floor, paring knife in hand, she cut off hunks and shoved them into her mouth. But the cheese was too thick, too creamy. Starvation had dulled her taste buds. She gagged, then heard the soft pad of footsteps stopping behind her. It seemed Minna never slept anymore.
“What do we have here? A little mouse?”
Claire shrugged, past explanation. Guilty, dirty. As if she had let Minna down somehow.
Minna crouched down, stroked her cheek. “Is my doudou getting better?”
“I’m hungry.”
“What about I make us some toast and eggs to go with that cheese? Would you like that?”
Claire nodded, ashamed, wondering if she had made the whole thing up, as Minna helped her up into a chair.
“The world is a hard place, my doudou, without mercy. But I will take care of you. I will be merciful.”
* * *
The next day passed without incident, Minna feeding her so that she grew strong enough to walk around the house and then outside on the lawn and into the garden. She was ashamed of her doubts, her suspicions. With new energy, Claire took an interest in the orchard. What she saw hurt her — trees that had been nurtured for years now overgrown, the unpicked fruit going to ruin. She tried to see the farm in its new state as not necessarily a bad thing, but rather a regression to its former state of wildness.