Kirstin Valdez Quade - Night at the Fiestas - Stories

Claire realized she’d already known this, but as soon as Patsy spoke the words, she was afraid.

Patsy put her wet forehead against Claire’s, and though she wanted to, Claire didn’t step back. It seemed only the pressure of the water surrounding her kept her on her feet. “You and I have a bond here that is really special, Claire. You may not recognize it now, but you will.”

In Patsy’s lopsided smile, her misty eyes, her affection, there was a ripple of something dangerous that Claire hadn’t noticed before.

The Fruit Coolers.

“Patsy,” she said. “I need to tell you something.” Claire took a deep breath. “My father is an alcoholic. My real father. He screams and breaks things. Once when he was drunk he kicked the dog and she threw up blood.” In Claire’s mind her voice was strong and clear, but when they came out, the words were small and whimpered in the dripping vastness of the baptismal. “I need to tell you that the Word of Wisdom is right.”

A shadow passed over Patsy’s face. For a long moment she regarded Claire. Then she drew away and set the current swirling. She rose grandly up the steps, water flowing from her nightgown, and wrapped herself in a towel. “Of course it is.” Her shape loomed black against the orange glow from the windows. “I know that.” Patsy held open the door. “Get out,” she said sharply. “It’s bedtime.”

Suddenly, Claire didn’t want to leave the pool. “I want to go home.”

Patsy laughed harshly. “Oh, you’re going home. Tomorrow first thing.”

In the dark bedroom Claire peeled off her soaking pajamas, hunching to hide herself while Patsy watched. She didn’t have another pair, so she pulled on a t-shirt and shorts, shivering.

In ten days, Claire was scheduled to fly to San Diego. Six weeks would stretch on as if forever. She would have to relearn how to be careful, how to call him Papa, how to smile when he was in a good mood and make herself small when he wasn’t. She would have to gauge how much he’d had to drink, to pretend not to notice when he raged. And all the while she would carry the vast darkness inside her. Meanwhile, life at home would go on. Emma would continue her Little Guppy swimming lessons at the Y, her friends would become more and more adult, more and more the ladies Claire would never be. Her mother and Will would do puzzles with Emma, their three heads bent together. Safe in their ignorance, her family would close around the space she left, and when Claire came back in August, she’d be a stranger to them.

Patsy patted Morgan’s bed. Morgan breathed open-mouthed, her neck angled so that it looked almost broken. “Lie down.”

Claire looked uncertainly at her own bed, but obeyed. She tried to read Patsy’s expression, but the moon had shifted and her face was in shadow. Morgan rolled in her sleep, her body hot and soft against Claire’s own, and Claire felt ill.

“You needed this time with us, Claire. A child drinking wine. Disgusting.” Patsy tucked the blanket under her chin and pushed it hard into her throat, then lifted Morgan’s heavy arm so it lay across Claire’s chest. “Sleep tight.”

Patsy crossed the dark room, stood for a minute at the threshold, and then shut the door.

WHEN ANDREA PULLED INTO THE DIRT LOT BY THE ORCHARDS that adjoined the blueberry fields, she saw she’d timed their arrival just right. Where the farmworkers normally parked their beat-up sedans and rusting pickups, the Volvos and Mercedes and Audis were lined up, a faint scrim of dust from the dirt drive on their hoods. Usually, Andrea was embarrassed by her mother’s old Chrysler with its missing wood panel, but today she parked it among the luxury vehicles with a sense of vindication.

“Nice rides,” said Matty, nodding appreciatively.

“I told you, they own everything. Like three hundred acres.” She gestured at the trees and at the sky, too, as if the Lowells actually did own the whole wide world. “Not just blueberries, either. They grow practically every stone fruit ever invented. Even the dumb ones, like nectarcots.”

For several years, the blueberry industry in California had been expanding, and the Lowells had been early adopters. In honor of their eleventh annual blueberry party, the field-workers — a few of whom Andrea had known her whole life — had been given this Saturday off, paid. “Wouldn’t want the precious guests to have to pick alongside Mexicans.” She snorted, picturing the Lowells’ friends in their Brooks Brothers chinos and silk skirts and strappy heeled sandals making their way down the rows.

Matty shrugged. “I wouldn’t mind a paid day off.”

“You’d have to have a job first,” said Andrea, then glanced at him, worried she’d offended him. But it wasn’t even clear he’d heard; he was looking, as usual, at something that wasn’t her. Andrea wished he’d shaved that wormy black mustache or had at least put on a button-down. He looked so good in a button-down. But whatever, she reminded herself; she didn’t actually care what the Lowells thought.

Andrea had dawdled in a gas station off the highway so they wouldn’t be on time. She’d bought Matty a forty — rather, he bought it with his fake ID and her cash — then lingered, trying to distract him. She flicked a plastic bottle of pheromones near the checkout. “Imagine the kind of guy who thinks Sexxx Juice is going to improve his prospects,” she said. Andrea was always bringing up sex around Matty so she could demonstrate how cool she was with it. At the magazine rack, she dragged on his arm, trying to look game and easygoing as she pointed out details in men’s magazines. (“Guys really think that’s hot?” “Yes,” Matty said.) Finally, though, Matty had pitched his bottle — still half-full — and asked if they were going to this party or not.

Technically, Andrea had been invited to this party. Rather, her parents had been invited. Technically. But she was certain that the Lowells didn’t actually expect them to come. After all, they’d never been invited before. This invitation — letterpress-printed on thick, soft paper — had been a gesture of goodwill, and not even that, Andrea was sure, but something the Lowells had felt they had to do, given that her father would be there anyway, with his taco truck.

The truck was a highlight of this year’s party, according to the invitation: “Tacos provided by our own Salvador Romero and his El Primo taco truck!” And there, instead of blueberries on sage-colored sprigs, was the truck itself: a festive little line drawing debossed in red and yellow.

The taco truck was a recent acquisition. Andrea’s father had saved for four years, plotting, cobbling together loans (including a pretty substantial one from William Lowell), driving the family crazy with his exuberance. The truck would pay for itself, he said, would give him something to do. All week it was shuttered, parked in the driveway while her father worked as a supervisor in the Lowells’ orchards, and on the weekends he drove it to the park, where he served egg burritos and Cokes to young men famished after their soccer games, tacos and tortas to families out for a stroll. Her father never said so, but Andrea suspected from her mother’s strained silence on the subject that the taco truck wasn’t as lucrative as he’d hoped.

“Are they kidding?” Andrea said when she heard the Lowells were hiring her father for the party. “You’d think they’d want something fancy.”

“Oh, you know these wealthy people,” said her mother, shaking her head in bemusement. “They get their ideas.”

Her parents had been delighted to see the truck featured on the Lowells’ invitation and had gushed about how touched they were to have received it. Her mother turned the invitation in her hands and shook her head in wonder. “They didn’t have to think of us, but they did.”