Tatjana Soli - The Forgetting Tree

“You should spend time with your family,” Minna said. “You don’t need me.” As part of her leave-taking, she prepared one of her herbal drinks, which Claire had become addicted to, full of hibiscus flowers and mysterious herbs that dissipated her nausea. When Gwen asked for her own, Minna went back into the kitchen to make a new batch.

“I didn’t mean for you to go to so much trouble,” Gwen said, but did not stop her either.

Minna showed Gwen how to give the injections, frowning at her work on the orange, correcting her till she was satisfied. “More gently, otherwise you’ll bruise her skin.”

“You know the oncologist won’t treat Mom because of Mexico,” Gwen said.

“She was sick before Mexico.”

“Not for you to decide.”

“Nor for you.”

Gwen sighed. “I appreciate your friendship with Mom. It’s made a big difference.”

Minna nodded.

“Maybe we were wrong to insist on her selling. If this place is that important to her. She’s halfway through her treatments.”

“I’m aware of that.”

Before Minna left, she gave Claire a massage with special oils to ease her aches and pains. They sat on the bed afterward, enjoying the evening breeze through the window.

“Where are you going?”

“Santa Barbara. Don’s idea. To see the land he’s buying for the elephants.”

“Of course, you’re going away with him.”

“He thinks he loves me.” Minna giggled. “Drink up.” As Claire finished the last thick, green sludge from the bottom of the cup, Minna got up and straightened things on the dresser. “I don’t want to mention it, but I must. Gwen talked to me. She wants me to convince you the farm should be sold.”

Claire put the cup down hard. “She never quits.”

“Should you think about it?” Minna studied herself in the mirror. “Don has mentioned me moving in with him.”

“Is that what this is about? You want to leave me?”

“I want you to make the right decision for yourself. I worry that you might stay here just for me.”

“I’m staying until I’m well. With you or without you.”

“As long as it is what you want, che .”

That evening, Don’s car pulled up the long driveway, and he kissed the girls on the cheek before he drove Minna away. They watched wistfully as the car departed.

“Some girls have all the luck,” Lucy said.

“Just happens that all lucky girls look like that,” Gwen said.

* * *

Claire had forgotten the routines, how much noise and activity she used to accept as normal: the television always on, phones ringing, music thrumming at all hours in the house, and since the girls’ tastes rarely matched, competing strains of Bach and the Stones. The children scattered toys all over the floor, and Claire had to pick her way around in order to not slip. They cooked or ate out, went shopping, to the playground, beach, and movies; every day was a long, exhausting series of activities. Sometimes it seemed to her they were afraid to ever be still. Had that been her life before?

The newspapers, the celebrity-gossip magazines, the fashion magazines multiplied on the coffee table. When Claire flipped through them, the glossy images depressed her, made her feel beside the point with her balding head and lopsided chest. Alone with Minna, an alternate universe had shown itself, shutting away the outside world. But that world was the medium, the barrage of sensory information, that her daughters lived in, like fish in water, and they thought it eccentric of Claire not to be able to name a single clothing designer, a single makeup line.

“Why can’t we just sit and talk?” Claire said. “When do I have you here?”

“Talk about what?”

“I don’t know. Like in the old days.”

“I don’t remember talking in the old days,” Lucy said.

Gwen looked over and saw the disappointment on her mother’s face. “I remember lying outside at night on the road. Cars never came by. The stars were bright because the city lights were still far away. We had so much freedom back then; my kids have none of that. But all we could talk about was how bored we were, how we couldn’t wait till we were old enough to go explore the world.

“Okay, turn the radio off,” Gwen said to Lucy. The silence hummed. “We were kids. We talked about what we were doing. We never asked about you. We didn’t think about what your life was like.”

“You were my life,” Claire said. “You and the farm.”

“You were a good mother.”

Claire was silent for a minute, savoring the words. “It makes me sad. Living apart. We hardly know each other anymore. Why can’t you make arrangements to come back here and live for a while?”

A different silence now around the table.

“Here?”

“Why not? Plenty of room. I’m still going to sell, eventually.”

“This isn’t where our lives are.”

“Come on, Gwen. You’re always complaining how hard you work. You and Kevin could spend more time together. Time with the kids. Like your dad and I did. It was a good place to raise a family. You just said so yourself.”

“I don’t want that kind of life,” Gwen said.

She looked at Lucy.

“The place feels haunted. I told Minna as much,” Lucy said.

“You did? When?”

“I don’t know. Before we left that first time. I thought she should know about Josh.”

Claire felt a dropping in her stomach. So it had all been an act at the tree. For a moment, just the time it took to inhale a few dizzy breaths, she felt an anger strong enough to sever the relationship. But did she ever, even for that barest moment, believe that Minna actually had powers? Of course not. So she was just as guilty of willful blindness. Wasn’t the truth that they were going through a ritual, enacting it for each other, and themselves?

“I don’t understand why you two want to live like you are from nowhere, unrooted. How many people in this world have that? Minna understands the preciousness of place.”

* * *

Claire retreated into her books, plunged back into the Rhys novel to fuel her imaginings of Minna.

The mineral-hard ocean and the palms and the untainted green of Dominica, the jagged hills that so fascinated and appalled Rochester. Were there brilliant parties at her family’s plantation, an approximation of burned-down Coulibri? Was the isolation of Granbois like that of the Baumsarg farm? Where did Minna meet the handsome boy who broke her heart? She had hinted about him, how he kissed her in a greenhouse on the estate of her pink house. Claire had decided on unrequited love for Minna because after thinking at length about it, she could come up with no other reason for Minna’s friendlessness, her moods, the mournful look in her moss-green eyes, glimpses caught when she was unaware of Claire’s watching. The more she read, the more she thought she understood Minna, and even though her absence had only been days long, Claire could not wait for her return, to compare the imagined Minna against the person made flesh.

Of course Claire knew that this was futile, knew these were sentimental wonderings on her part, that even the smallest, no-nonsense glance from Minna would confirm the vainness of her fantasies. She could hardly see the reality of her own daughters because of the network of memories, loyalties, loves, and jealousies that they resurrected and laid to bed, over and over, during that holiday weekend.

She had wanted family since she was a little girl in the small, dark apartment over her father’s bookstore, and this family had been created through, because of, the farm. She was angry that they didn’t see that. Angry that they didn’t accommodate the high price paid. Valued that life so little they were unwilling to keep it going. What was out there that was more important than what was on the ranch? It was impossible to be in their presence — the undertow of the past was too strong, a constant replaying of some infatuation, some slight. Only with strangers, new acquaintances, could one gauge who one was in the present, try on whom one might become.