Tatjana Soli - The Forgetting Tree

“Which is better — butter or romaine?” Lucy joked.

Claire lay back, and the cool water did soothe her. Her insides felt settled for the first time since Minna had left, as if her very presence healed.

“Don’t leave again,” Claire said, then, sensing the desperation in her request, added, “Until I’m better.”

“She needs you.” Puzzlement was in Lucy’s eyes. “She’s never needed anyone before.”

“How about a smoke? For the appetite?” Minna asked.

“How about just for fun?” Lucy said. She looked at Claire and clapped her hand over her mouth.

“It’s fine this once. A little pot for medicinal purposes.”

* * *

Minna went to her room, and Claire worried about their trespassing. Would she notice, and if she did, would there be tantrums? But she returned with no sign of having seen anything changed, a joint pinched between her elegant, long fingers. The two girls sat cross-legged on the floor on either side of the tub and passed the joint back and forth. Ashes floated on top of the water and stuck to the lettuce leaves, now giving the impression more of a rain-sodden, muddy pond. Claire wasn’t above using her scar, her illness, to coerce Lucy into staying. In a way, wouldn’t it be healthy to force an adult-size responsibility on her? Both of her girls seemed to have kept a certain childishness. Had she spoiled them, protected them too well? She felt remorse for her behavior with Don — had it really been interest for Minna’s welfare, or had it been possessiveness?

Lucy whispered to Minna the new protocol after the emergency-room visits. Claire heard white blood cells, impaired organ function, toxicity . Instead, Claire would simply take the daily injections. During this time, she would have to be kept isolated, with a minimum of people.

“I wish I could stay,” Lucy said. “But Javier promised to take me to Tampa. We planned it forever.”

“Who’s Javier? Who goes to Tampa?” Claire asked.

Lucy looked hurt. “You never listen.”

Minna smiled and took a puff of the joint.

“Of course I want you to go.” The words did not sound convincing, even to Claire herself.

“I’ll come back and visit.”

“Tampa in the summer should be nice,” Minna said, and started to giggle.

Lucy burst out in a laugh. “Okay, okay. It’s a business trip, but you never know.”

“Maybe you could come stay longer next time?”

“I promise,” Lucy said.

Claire fantasized about cool, white foods — milk shakes and ice cream, creamy French Brie cheese with water crackers. “Can someone make me a grilled cheese?”

But neither girl heard her as they sat on the tile floor, leaning back against the wall.

“Donald seems taken with you,” Lucy said.

“Oh, Don. That’s nothing. I just magicked him.”

“Why don’t you teach me how to magic a man,” Lucy said, laughing but serious. Claire understood with a pang that her baby girl was lonely.

“That’s easy,” Minna said. “Problem is, it doesn’t get you what you want. In fact, it almost guarantees the opposite.”

“I want lunch,” Claire said, and both girls laughed.

“She hasn’t kept anything down in two days,” Lucy said. “And now she has the munchies.”

“Let’s go cook you something.”

They sat in the kitchen watching Minna cook.

“I’m so hungry,” Claire wailed. “Hurry.”

Lucy reached up to the cabinet above the refrigerator and pulled down a chocolate bar. Claire had forgotten all about that hiding place when the kids were small. When Josh had discovered it, he used a chair to reach it, then stole the whole supply and ate it in the orchard so he wouldn’t have to share with his sisters.

“I didn’t know chocolate was still stashed up there. Please, my dear baby girl, bring that here.”

* * *

Lucy packed to leave. She hugged them both good-bye. Minna had become indispensable, and not the paintings on the walls of her room, nor the nights spent out with Don, dissuaded them from the belief that they had come across someone true and genuine, to be treasured and held on to.

Claire didn’t know what the words on Minna’s walls meant, didn’t understand if her relationship with Don was about love or money, didn’t have a clear idea of her past, but Minna fed her, sometimes bite by bite, when needed. Although she did not love Claire, had not known her long enough except for a superficial affection, was not her daughter, Claire received more understanding at Minna’s hands than she dared ask for from her own children, more kindness than she could ever have hoped for from a stranger, perhaps more than she deserved. If that disinterested tenderness was not some kind of love, she didn’t know by what other name to call it.

For Claire the time after the girls’ second leaving held a kind of perfection. The awkwardness of new acquaintance past, Minna and she settled into a companionship that was in ways as satisfying as her early days on the farm. All the songs and poems of the world focus exclusively on carnal love, which in many ways is the frailest and most fickle of bonds. Maternal love, familial caring, friendship, are all less overwhelming to the senses, but capable of greater steadiness due to that reticence. But the two relationships had an obvious difference: Forster and she had created an ever-widening circle of people — family, friends, workers, children — while Minna’s and her new world was ever contracting.

* * *

After a few weeks of cheerfulness, Minna promptly sank into one of her dark moods. If Claire had called them blue earlier, now they verged on soul-crushing, funereal black. More dissatisfied with things than ever before, she was lethargic to the point of immobility most of the day, but when Claire asked her what was wrong, she waved her off: “Some of us have to struggle in this life, che .”

“Tell me what it is.”

Minna scowled.

“If not me, can you talk with your family?” Claire prodded.

“The answers aren’t comforting. They use money like bait, see, to get me to do what they want.”

“And what is that?”

“They are disappointed that I didn’t marry the man they had picked out. But he left me.”

“I knew it.” Claire slapped her hands together.

Minna looked at her oddly but did not elaborate. “You think I’m one of those characters in my great- grand-maman ’s books. I’m disinherited. That’s why I was working at the coffee shop when I met Lucy.”

* * *

In this brooding mood that continued for days, Minna accused Paz of stealing one of her gold bracelets from her room. Things had been moved around and were out of place. “I warned her to stay out of my room,” Minna said. Claire confessed that Lucy had gone into the room to retrieve her belongings. Perhaps she had moved things.

“Well, she didn’t steal my bracelet, did she?”

“No.”

Paz, confronted, broke down in tears.

“Tell her to empty her purse,” Minna said, her order a tyrant’s.

“Are you sure it’s missing?”

“It’s in her purse,” Minna said.

Claire paused, at an impasse. She knew that if she stood up against Minna, a price would be paid in moodiness and bad temper. “No, I won’t ask,” Claire said. “I know it’s not there. I trust her.”

“She stole from me!”

Paz snatched the purse before Claire could stop her, dumped the contents on the kitchen table. Of course it was filled with only the most innocuous of things, no jewelry to be found.

Claire nodded. Paz quit anyway.

Claire begged her to reconsider, but she refused to listen, waving Claire’s words away as she gathered her belongings. “I can’t stand working here.” As she walked out the door, she whispered, “Be careful. She is a mujer malvada .” Claire felt a sinking guilt but could think of nothing to remedy the situation. Soon Octavio, Forster, and Mrs. Girbaldi would hear of this, and then there would be an even bigger outcry.