Tatjana Soli - The Forgetting Tree

“Sorry, but I can’t find it.”

“I’ll show you,” Lucy said. “How about I make you a snack in the kitchen.”

“Lovely, I’m starving.”

“I can’t believe how you are acting,” Lucy hissed as she left the room.

Mrs. Girbaldi hiccuped. “A beautiful girl.”

A few minutes later, Minna returned, gathered her purse and sweater. “I’m leaving now. Why don’t you give me a call in town once you’ve decided.”

“Could you wait in the entry for a minute?” Claire said. Then she faced down Gwen. “I want her.”

“You shouldn’t rush—”

“Why not? How much better do you think we’ll know anyone else?”

“What about references?”

“She worked in a coffee shop.”

“I wonder,” Mrs. Girbaldi said, as she poured herself a glass of wine, “how well she’ll adapt to life here. It certainly isn’t Cannes, or Cambridge, or even Berkeley.”

“Well?” Claire pushed.

“It feels funny,” Gwen said.

“She’s very smart.”

Gwen frowned, threw her hands up in defeat. “It’s your decision.”

“Tell her to come in,” Claire said.

And just like that, opposition to Minna crumbled like a house on a false foundation. Or perhaps, the resistance had been halfhearted; already Gwen and Lucy were making plans of escape. Even Gwen seemed satisfied that she had put up an honorable fight. A release of tension, a giddiness, enveloped them now that a solution had so propitiously fallen into their lap.

* * *

The next morning, Claire woke to the smell of coffee. In the kitchen, Minna was dressed in white polo shirt, white jeans, and white tennis shoes. True, the girls’ intuition had been correct in that it felt odd to have a stranger living with her. The habit of solitude was entrenched. This was a shotgun decision — her only way to get what she wanted. Still, she felt a sense of astonishment and relief that Minna was made flesh, not a dream, despite the evidence the previous night when the girl went to Lucy’s car and pulled out of the backseat all her worldly possessions packed in two cardboard liquor boxes. Her sudden appearance as companion so improbable that it distracted from Claire’s preoccupation with her illness, a welcome relief. She poured coffee.

Minna was frowning. “Sorry, but where do you put your trash?”

“Trash? There’s a can under the sink. For big stuff, there’s a bin in the garage.”

“I couldn’t find it anywhere. You Americans, always hiding everything ugly away.”

Claire gave a polite shrug.

“I walked in the orchard this morning. So beautiful. On Martinique we grew sugarcane and bananas mostly, but we had some avocados and citrus for the local markets. It reminds me of my island here. I squeezed a pitcher of juice for us.”

“I thought you said your plantation was on Dominica.”

“We had plantations on different islands.”

“That’s what I recognized in you,” Claire said.

Minna looked up then, embarrassed.

“You appreciate the land.”

“Your daughters are unhappy with my staying here?”

“Unhappy with me,” Claire said.

* * *

Claire backed out the ancient Mercedes from the old carriage house that served as garage. Forster’s family had insisted on buying American cars, starting during the war — a succession of Fords, Chevrolets, and then with Forster’s generation Thunderbirds and Mustangs. But despite their vehement patriotism during that period of the forties and fifties, fruit with the Germanic Baumsarg name did not sell; the produce had to be sent to a middleman, who relabeled the source, at a significant discount. They were krauts, enemies no different from the Japanese. Hanni had told stories to Claire about the deprivation suffered while she was a young woman, when the only butter available was lard colored with food dye.

Since the eighties, the choice had centered on the most economical. The diesel Mercedes belched a black cloud when Claire gunned it and shuddered at stoplights from its worn shock absorbers. The odometer had clocked over 250,000 miles, and the car still had its original, albeit peeling and fading, silver paint job.

Minna sat behind the wheel and ran her finger over the lacquered-wood dash. “Nice.” She had put on a headscarf and large hoop earrings for the outing to the airport.

“Hardly nice,” Claire said. “I hope you’re good on freeways.”

“I love to drive. I’ve driven cross-country five times. Up to Alaska once. Down to South America.”

“Where to?”

Minna looked at her feet, suddenly shy. “Colombia. And Costa Rica. Peru, of course.”

“You drove to South America?” Claire asked, incredulous, and Minna blinked, but before she could answer, the girls came out with their luggage. By the time the car was loaded, there was no room left for a fourth person. Lucy’s suitcases took up most of the backseat, piled high with tote bags, so that Gwen had to squeeze in.

“Aren’t you coming?” Gwen asked when she saw Claire hesitating in the driveway.

Minna sat behind the wheel, humming to herself as she checked her earrings in the overhead vanity mirror.

“Hurry, I’m tight on my flight time,” Lucy said.

“Where will I fit?” Claire asked, waving her hand at the car.

“Maybe let your mother rest?” Minna said.

It was miraculous, the speed with which the barely accepted fact of Minna’s caretaking was taken for granted and even relied upon.

The girls piled back out of the car to say their final good-byes, and for the first time Claire felt their imminent absence. The fear surprised her. She thought she had conquered it during the years of their college, the shorter and shorter visits, the growing distance of their adult lives. Had she made a terrible mistake in not selling the farm, not following Gwen’s advice? Was Lucy right, had she stripped out all the happiness to be had from this place? But if she admitted to a mistake now, then she would also have to admit her earlier mistake in staying all those years before.

Panicked, Claire stood rooted to the spot, unhappy. She came within a breath of calling the whole thing off, revealing her cowardice.

Minna watched, two sharp lines like incisions forming between her brows. “The sun is making you dizzy,” she said, and pulled Claire away from the car and into the shade, the girls following.

Perhaps Minna was right, perhaps the white noon sun was making her light-headed. Under the shade of a fig tree next to the front door, she tried to relax into the feeling of protection. Beyond, the sun still scalded, firing the fine dust in the air. It lit up Minna’s headscarf, with its garish yellows, greens, and reds, cheap and harsh in the burning light. Who was this girl and why had Claire been so impulsive, so starved and willful, as to insist on her company? Standing in the shade, doubt shook her.

Minna had left the driver’s-side door open, and the buzzing sensor made an anxious, insect whining in the background. Ignoring it, Minna folded her arms under her breasts and watched the leave-taking for a moment.

“I want you two to know that I will treat Claire as I would my own mother.”

The girls teared up. Mollified, they pulled out Kleenexes and dabbed their eyes. They embraced Claire. Minna excused herself and went into the house. The girls drifted back toward the car as they traded final good-byes, admonitions, promises, encouragements, schedules. They would take turns visiting home.

When Minna came out, she was carrying a book. “This is for you.”

Claire looked down at a first edition of Wide Sargasso Sea . She opened it to the title page and read the faded, spidery blue autograph. “This is too much.”

Minna shrugged. “It was meant for you. Maybe I am superstitious, but sometimes I think certain people come into our life for a reason.”