The Immigrant’s Daughter (33 page)

“And May Ling?” Barbara asked her.

“She's wonderful. Barbara, I'm so proud of that lady. She's the one thing I did right. She's taking it all on her two feet, no weeping, no anger at Freddie. She won't hear a word said against him. She was with me here for a while, but then Eloise begged her to come back to the house at the winery. Well, it's her house. She moved back in with little Danny. Freddie came back to the winery a few days ago, got into words with Cándido, and Cándido decked him —”

“Decked him?” Barbara exclaimed. “What does that mean? Did Cándido hit him?”

“Cándido must be sixty-five if he's a day, but he has the strength of an ox and he clipped Freddie on the jaw and knocked him over. Thank heavens he didn't break Freddie's jaw. Then he helped Freddie up, and from what I hear did a lot of apologizing. Joe looked at Freddie and says it was a piece of luck his jaw wasn't broken. They shook hands. Adam doesn't know about it.” As always, when she became excited, the words poured out of Sally, and again, as so often in the past, Barbara reflected on what a remarkable woman Sally was, one-time published poet, film star and other things, a tall, lean, sinewy woman, still beautiful in her middle fifties, still vibrant with a sense of the unexpected. “How can I be angry at Freddie? At first, I wanted to kill him, but I couldn't stay mad. Now it breaks my heart, the condition he's in. Barbara, have you ever thought about what a small family we are?”

“I certainly have.”

“And that makes it even worse, doesn't it? I mean being so close. May Ling is out at Higate up the Valley, and it's like her refuge, her nest, her wall against the world. Her house sits between Grandma Clair and her Uncle Adam, and she is there with the child and perfectly content — or at least that's the way she appears to be. And Freddie's rented himself a house, the old Skagaway house — oh, you must have seen it a dozen times, because you can see it from the road, a silly stone house — and he drives to the winery every day and goes into his office there and does his work. You know, he installed a new computer system and apparently he's the only one who understands it, and Adam was trying to find someone to replace him but never did, so you can just imagine the confusion around the place when Freddie walked out without so much as a by-your-leave, and Adam doesn't speak to him.”

“Not at all?”

“Not a word. Oh, I suppose it will ease up in time, but now no word passes between them, and Eloise is out of her mind with the situation.”

“Does Freddie see the child?”

“Every day, and he and May Ling act perfectly civilized and cordial to each other, and where it goes from here, heaven only knows. But since it's Freddie, I can expect anything, and I do.”

“And your mother?” Barbara asked her.

“Mom's dying. It just doesn't seem possible. I know she's past eighty, but it seems like only a moment ago that she was this strong, beautiful woman, with that great mop of red hair, and Pop was that indomitable tower of strength. Life can be so damn shitty. Pop's dead all these years, and she's dying. You know, Joe's her doctor, and we drive up there almost every evening now. She won't go to a hospital, and Joe doesn't want her to. But she won't have a nurse. She says she can't abide the thought of a nurse around the place. But she has María. You remember María, big, strong Mexican lady who's been with Mom over thirty years?”

“Is Clair in great pain?” Barbara asked. “I know how painful it can be.”

“Joe keeps her sedated. She hasn't long, and you know Mom. If she's in pain, no one else is going to know it. She wants to see you, Barbara, so don't leave without seeing her.”

“I wouldn't dream of it.”

“I know how people are about a dying person. I don't mean you, but some people — some people can't bear to be with anyone who's dying.”

Barbara had to stay for coffee and sandwiches, and for another hour she sat and listened to her sister-in-law. Sally, Barbara decided, was the ultimate sentimental romantic. If Barbara was a romantic, it was at least structured, and she could look at herself critically; but for Sally, the whole stretch of her life was like a film in which she was writer, director and star.

Out on the porch of the big, old-fashioned house, Sally clung to Barbara. “I just don't see you enough,” Sally complained. “And I do love you so.”

“Freddie's back.” The first thing Eloise said to Barbara.

“I know.”

“It's strange,” Eloise said. “May Ling is living in their old house and Freddie has rented that weird stone château outside Napa. He had a fight with Cándido, but I really don't know what happened, because no one, Freddie included, will say word one about it, except that his face was swollen to twice its size. Adam's not speaking to him, and I'd hardly blame Freddie if he threw up everything here and got a job somewhere else — which heaven knows he doesn't need, after the inheritance. You haven't seen Mother yet?”

“No.”

“Well, she wants you to have dinner with her — just the two of you. If you go off on that Salvador assignment — it is an assignment, isn't it? You wouldn't just go down there on your own. Is it Carson and the
L.A. World?
Are you seeing him again?”

“I saw him in Los Angeles, Eloise, yes.”

“Well, you're both old enough to know what you're doing. I was thinking that if you go down there for how long? Two, three weeks?”

“About three weeks.”

“Then you may not see Mother again. Joe says it's very near the end.”

“Then I'm glad I came today.”

At the door, Eloise took her hand and said, “Dear Barbara, listen to me. I know I'm nervous and neurotic, and I always have been. But we have three men here, pickers and ground men, who are from El Salvador. I've spoken to them. The stories they tell of the death squads are too terrible. They have been beaten and tortured beyond belief, so please, darling, be very careful.”

“I won't mention it to Clair,” Barbara told her. “I'm sure she has other more important things to talk about. You can tell her tomorrow if you think it's necessary.”

Clair was in bed, in her room in the old stone house that she and Jake had lived in since they bought Higate in 1919. The room was spacious, the ceiling beamed, the walls hung with magnificent serapes and Clair herself propped up in an old Spanish four-poster bed — bringing to Barbara's mind a memory of her own mother, also propped up in bed and dying of the same cursed disease. They were alike in other ways, two women once tall, handsome, proud and purposeful.

María had brought up a tray for Barbara, setting it on a small table next to the bed, some chicken mole and saffron rice. Barbara went to Clair and kissed her, and Clair took Barbara's hand, clinging to it for a moment or two. “I want you to eat, darling. María made the mole for you. It's the best mole north of the Valley of Mexico.”

“You must eat something.”

Clair shrugged. “Why? I had a glass of milk. I eat very little, Barbara, and I don't enjoy people who make an impossible thing out of being with a dying woman. Believe me, it's bad enough to die, and so much worse to do it alone. So please eat, and we'll talk, and, María,” she said to the square, stolid Mexican woman, who stood near the door like a Zúñiga sculpture, “bring us a bottle of wine. I have six bottles of our own Mountain White in the fridge. Bring us two of them. And a glass for me.” When María had gone, Clair said to Barbara, “She is my rock. The full Indian blood. They understand about death. Now tell me about yourself. You were in Los Angeles?”

“Yes. Actually at Malibu, an odd place to look for something of myself.”

“Writing? Were you looking for yourself or something to write? What are you working on?”

Barbara had to smile. “Always that question is asked a writer. All my life people ask me, and you know, Clair, I never know how to answer. No, I'm not doing anything. I try to write, but since Boyd's death all my attempts wash out.”

“That's no good,” Clair said, rather severely. “You must work, today, tomorrow, right up to the end, even if that's twenty years ahead of you. I get so angry when they try to cut me off from what's happening here at Higate. We have become an enormous institution. Would you believe that we do five million a year?”

María returned with the two bottles of wine and a silver cooler. She opened one of the bottles and filled two glasses, large eight-ounce stem goblets. “Shall I stay?” she asked Clair in Spanish.

“No, señora. We must be alone to speak of things close to the heart.”

How beautiful and proper it sounded in Spanish. You couldn't say such things in English without sounding mawkish.

“I understand,” María said. “You will call me if you need me.”

When she had left the room, Clair said, “Freddie was here before you came. I sent him away. Of course, I scolded him first.”

“Poor Freddie. Everyone scolds him.”

“We'll have a toast,” picking up her glass. “This is our nineteen seventy-six Mountain White. No fancy French imitation — just our own name, Higate Mountain White. It is very dry with a sort of knife-edge cut to it, like the very best Sicilian. Well, my dear Barbara, this is to you, to the living. You have been a wonderful friend and companion on this short and somewhat silly journey we call life.”

Barbara drank without demur. Her eyes had begun to brim with tears, and she fought it, wiping the tears and trying to pretend that she was simply wiping her mouth with her napkin.

“You like the wine?”

“It's beautiful,” Barbara managed to say.

“Funny, how wine has become a sort of religion to all of us in Napa and Sonoma. Looking back, it seems like an odd way to spend one's life. You know, Barbara, as this cancer eats its way on, your brother Joe shoots more and more drugs into me to kill the pain. But it also messes with my mind. I hallucinate. I see Jake and we have long talks. Oh, I don't really see him. I know that. It's a kind of dreaming, except that he always has more sense about things than I do, which makes it a bit puzzling. Have you ever thought much about death?”

“Yes, when it touched those close to me, people I loved. But in terms of myself— well, not too much, no.”

“God — or whatever it is that we call God. Do you ever wonder about it?”

“I'm afraid so,” Barbara admitted. “I don't give him too many points.”

“No? Well, when you think of this poor old gentleman sitting up there on a cloud and watching the lunatics he created kill each other — well, you can't give him many points, only a little sympathy. But when you lie here with a sore back, waiting for the drugs to wear off so that you can yell about the pain, and telling yourself that at age eighty, you've lived enough — well, under those circumstances you do brood over the mystery. It seems so damn pointless. Yet with all the misery, I've had such a good life — but that doesn't ease things. It makes going away so much worse.”

Barbara felt that it was becoming increasingly difficult for Clair to carry on the conversation. Clair's hand groped for the switch that would summon María, and when the Mexican woman appeared, Clair whispered to Barbara, “I'm sorry, darling.” She spoke with great effort. “It's all I can manage tonight.”

Barbara bent over the bed and kissed her.

“God bless you,” Clair said. “Thank you for coming.”

Outside, in her car, Barbara sat at the wheel and wept.

The following morning, at about eleven o'clock, when Barbara was trying to put together a proper assortment of wearing apparel for El Salvador, Freddie and Sam appeared as a judgmental deputation. Barbara had already absorbed what information she could find about the climate, summed up in the
Encyclopedia Americana
as follows: “The year is divided into two seasons — the rainy months being those from May to October, the dry months from November to April. Low coast lands are hot and unhealthful; a comparatively cool and agreeable climate is to be found in the highlands of the interior.” Since the dry season was almost over, this information made Barbara decide on two white cotton blouses, two blue denim shirts, two pairs of blue denim pants and two blue denim skirts. To these, she added a raincoat and sweater and a suit she would wear on the plane. Experience had taught her that for such an assignment she was best provided with a single small piece of luggage, which she could carry with ease. She was packing when the doorbell rang, and she went downstairs to greet her son and her nephew. She embraced both of them. “Too late for breakfast and too early for lunch. Coffee and toast?”

“Mother,” Sam said firmly, “this isn't a social call. This time, thank heavens, we know where you intend to go. We have both taken time off from our work, which should mean something.”

“You mean you don't want me to take this job,” Barbara said. “That's very thoughtful of both of you, either an indication of love or a reflection of my increasing incompetence and furtive senility.”

“Please, Mother, don't be angry.”

“I don't know whether I'm angry, but I am provoked. The moment you use the word
Mother
, Sam, I raise my defenses. I am Mom until you suspect lesions in my mind. I find it just a bit insulting.”

“Oh, no, no!” Freddie cried. “My God, Aunt Barbara, you have two people here who think you're the greatest woman we've ever known. Only, we do feel that you have a sense of invulnerability, and you're not —”

“Young?” Barbara asked. “Neither are either of you, so stop behaving like children, and suppose we all have a cup of coffee. And not another word on the subject.”

“Mom,” Sam said, “I am a doctor, and I know something about age and bodily resistance, so—”

“Not another word,” Barbara said.

“Thin ice, Sammy,” Freddie said. “Drop it. Can we have that cup of coffee, Aunt Barbara?”