As the fire trucks pulled up the driveway, Claire saw in the beam of their headlights a figure running away through the trees. In the false dawn of the fire, the dark figure seemed to hesitate, wave an arm, to look backward in adieu. The figure grew smaller and smaller, a dark heart beating in the darker night. Then Claire lost her.
Chapter 3
The day had been long, first Paz’s chaotic church wedding, with so many people that the overflow ended up standing outside on the sidewalk and into the street, then the even bigger celebration at Claire’s house. All of Octavio’s married sons with their families, all of Sofia’s extended family; Gwen and her family; Lucy reunited with Javier; Forster and Katie; Mrs. Girbaldi; practically the rest of the county. The rooms hardly allowed movement, and people took their plates of food out onto the cooler veranda, the pool area, across the lawn, and some sat under the shade of the lemon trees.
Octavio motioned Claire with his head, and they both carried their champagne glasses to his pickup and jumped in.
They stopped at the end of a neighborhood cul-de-sac, and Octavio came around and opened the door for Claire as she struggled in the new long dress she had bought for the wedding. The first dress in years. They walked through the late-afternoon light to the fringe of the remaining orchard that had been left for decoration around the outer edge of the new development: Baumsarg Estates. After the fire, the ranch, minus a ten-acre set-aside, had been sold.
They walked down the rows, Claire trying not to look through at the lines of houses. The trees were left unpruned for privacy; the oranges went unpicked. The fruit was small and yellowish. Neither of them could bear to taste one.
Claire had gone away after the sale, when they wrapped the ranch in chain-link fence and then withheld water till the trees slowly died of dehydration. Claire had seen such things in the past — long rows of trees petrified to kindling. Only Octavio understood the physical pain of witnessing this as she did. Each tree was an individual, with a personality, and this treatment seemed a desecration of nature. When the trees were dead, dried out, bulldozers came and tore their roots from the earth, piling them into a big heap, from where they were trucked away to be shredded for compost.
The family’s legacy now shrunk to a remaining ten acres devoted to organic lemons, with a small, Spanish-style house built in the middle for Claire. On her veranda, she could look out in each direction and not see the houses that crowded all around her. With the money from the sale, she had given a generous retirement to Octavio, although at that point they had not spoken in a year. To her surprise, he had asked if he could work the ten acres. The pace would be leisurely; much of each day spent on the veranda, discussing crop yields, exotic graftings, dishonest packers, and selling direct. This work gave them a deeper pleasure than anything else.
Old friends again, they talked freely of everything except Minna. She remained inexplicable and Claire’s alone.
Claire returned to see the land, denuded of orchards, being recontoured, lines of small plastic flags to denote streets that had not yet been named. The original rootstock tree, the Agua Tibia, cut down, the root ground out of the earth. Each time Claire walked by, she could swear the air was still fragrant where it had stood.
Octavio and Claire sat on a bench in the shade to rest.
“It was a beautiful ceremony. Paz looked like an angel.”
Octavio grunted, pleased. “Can you believe that’s my baby? Where did the time go?”
“My friend, you’re asking the wrong person.”
* * *
Hours had turned to days turned to months. Each moment, Claire had prepared for Minna to burst through her door, regal as a queen in diamonds and satin, while a man in sunglasses waited for her in a sleek, foreign car. Her arms would be spread wide in riches. Where have you been? Minna would cry, as if they were the ones who had not been there all along, waiting. She flattered them that they had more in their lives than her. Or else she would show up straggly haired, with dark circles under her eyes, shoulders bent, the marks of a hard world on her. Her hand holding the tiny hand of a shy, sniffling toddler. It would make no difference to Claire.
A year after her new house was built, Claire picked up the telephone to crackling reception, accepting a collect call. She could not understand the language other than a few French words sprinkled here and there, but she thought the voice was very like Minna’s.
“Is it you? Is it you?” she yelled, but the voice went on, unintelligible, crying, then abusive. Claire stood and listened till her ear grew numb from pressing the receiver so hard, but finally she replaced the receiver in its cradle, gently, knowing how it would pain the hurting soul on the other end. Although she had no regrets over what had happened, still she wanted Minna to come and prove to her that she had done the right thing. Claire could not say with certainty that she ever knew the real Minna, though even if Claire had been made aware of each and every fact of her life since birth, it would not change the essential mystery of her. Claire would be loyal to that mystery to the end of her days, because it was identical to the mystery of life, which one loved without ever fully comprehending it.
Although there was beauty in rootedness, Minna had taught Claire that another kind of beauty lay in being free.
* * *
As the sun began to set, Octavio drove Claire back to the wedding party. The serious drinking and dancing had started. Tired, Claire in a lawn chair, relaxing, when she saw her. Minna walked up the driveway slowly, her smile so big and calm it was as if she knew every detail of the farm and the family during her absence, predestined, and she only remained out of sight long enough for its fruition.
She wore the black dress with the gold and bloodred flowers that made her look so regal. On her feet were the golden, high-heeled sandals with her toes hanging slightly over, and around her neck was the necklace Claire had given her. Since years had passed, Claire was surprised by the lack of change in her, but then she reasoned Minna wore those clothes specifically for old times’ sake, for memory, for her.
Her face took Claire aback: a face not only unchanged during this absent time, not only the same, but younger, more vibrant, more the ideal Minna who had already passed by the time they met. No getting around that they were both already damaged by the time their lives intersected. Instead of asking Minna any of the more pressing questions, Claire wanted to ask about that—what fountain of youth did you find, and was it worth it, and are you happy? Minna’s happiness haunted her. But the questions, of course, died on her lips. She could do nothing but go on staring; how her eyes hungered for that face. There were things she wanted to whisper—you are among the loved, you are remembered, in my heart you cannot perish. But the look of tenderness on Minna’s face as she looked at Claire did not fool her. She was not there.
* * *
Claire had never before allowed herself the possibility that Minna was no longer of the world. That Minna was one of the lost, and her attempt at rescue had failed.
Claire needed to believe that out there somewhere, the enigma of Minna remained and kept being added to, so constant and palpable was her presence in Claire’s blood, behind her eyes, in her breath. Surely this vision was not a leave-taking, a sign that she had passed over. Surely it was a product of Claire’s overheated day, too much champagne and wedding cake. Without country, without kinship, without name, how could Minna survive? Claire was brokenhearted as she at last closed her eyes in good-bye, certain Minna would be vanished when she reopened them.