The Lemon Orchard (23 page)

“What?” his father asked.

“Nothing.”

“You’ve got a good joke? Tell me.”

“Not a joke. Just a memory.”

“Of what?”

Roberto wanted to tell him. He was bursting, but he knew to keep it inside. His father would warn or belittle him, tell him to stay away from Julia, did he want to lose his job, what if something went wrong and she told her uncle? Roberto knew his father well. He didn’t like to lie, but he knew the truth would cause a fight.

“Just thinking of Rigo, my old teacher,” he said.

“Ai ai ai,” his father said. “My mother still talks about that, you standing in front of everyone as if you were Juan Gabriel.”

“No, I didn’t think that,” Roberto said. Better to concentrate on the bricks. He had sketched out a better plan: a small wall, perfectly round, four bricks high. It would look pretty for Esperanza, and not be too high for her to lean over.

“Juan Gabriel is good,” his father said, making peace. “‘Amor Eterno’ is one of his best songs. I wish I had been there when you sang.”

“I know,” Roberto said. His father hadn’t even had to say that. Roberto knew how much his father regretted missing so much time, the years of Roberto’s childhood. He was jealous of teachers like Rigo, who’d had the chance to influence Roberto and teach him good things.

“You were my best teacher,” Roberto said. “I learned the important things from you.”

He glanced at his father and saw his eyes wet and his moustache drooping with sadness. There was so much about Mexico to make a person cry. The fact they loved it so much and had to leave it, and the reality of all they had left behind. Roberto thought of Rosa and, for the first time since leaving Julia that morning, felt his insides clench.

The two men worked side by side in the afternoon heat until the wall was built. They talked a little about work—Roberto in the orchard, his father doing a job for Feng. Roberto had often helped his father work for Feng, a Chinese businessman who specialized in the demolition of swimming pools. Feng had customers who bought houses in the Valley, and the first thing they wanted was to demo the pool—smash the concrete, fill the hole with soil, plant grass.

Less maintenance, fewer expenses. Water cost a lot in Southern California, and heating the pool was for rich people. But after last night, Roberto would never understand demolishing a pool again.

They finally finished the wall. Roberto took a quick shower and trimmed his beard and moustache. He put on clothes he thought would be right—dark jeans and a black T-shirt. He didn’t have much choice, but these were what he would wear to a Mexican party and he hoped Julia wouldn’t be disappointed. The wall between his apartment and his father’s was so thin, his father smelled the Polo cologne he patted on.

“Where are you going?” his father called through the wall.

“Nowhere special,” Roberto answered as he walked into the room.

“You look nice!” Esperanza said, smiling so wide her gold tooth showed.

“You seeing a woman?” his father asked.

“Maybe,” Roberto said.

Now his father smiled, too. He nodded approvingly. “Good, son,” he said. “Find a wife.”

Roberto laughed and shook his head. His father said the same thing every time Roberto went out on the town. Walking onto the street, he realized he should have washed his truck. The black finish was covered with road dust and tree pollen, and he felt a jolt of shame realizing he’d be pulling up in front of an art gallery with a dirty truck. But there was no time to clean it—he had told Julia he would see her there at five—so he just got on the road.

The art gallery was called Found Objects, and it was located downtown, in the shadows of the tall buildings, next to El Pueblo de Los Angeles and La Iglesia de Nuestra Señora Reina de Los Angeles—Our Lady Queen of the Angels Church. He found a parking place in front of Union Station and was glad he didn’t have to pull up right in front of the gallery. He approached La Placita Olvera and located Found Objects.

The building looked historic, built from adobe bricks. Julia stood just outside the door waiting for him and waved when she saw him coming.

He could barely breathe. She looked incredible. She wore a short black dress, black boots, and red lipstick. Her long hair was swept up, held in place with a jeweled clip.

“Hi, Roberto,” she said.

“Julia,” he said. “You’re the most beautiful woman in the world.”

She laughed, embarrassed, but he meant it.

He wished they were back at his cabin. Seeing her dressed up this way, all he could think of was taking off her clothes and making love to her. Other people walked past, and he barely noticed.

“Ready to go in?” she asked.

“Sure.”

They paused in the doorway. He hardly knew what to think—she cared about how he felt about something as minor as seeing trash from the desert. In his world nothing was easy, and there was pain in life. You just went through it the best you could. The look in her eyes was so full of love, as if she had just laid a hand on his heart.

“Gracias, Julia. It’s fine,” he said.

So they walked in. The air-conditioning hit him, and it felt good. Mexican music was playing, but slow and sad, like something from church. A few people were in the large room. No one spoke. The light was dim, and he smelled candle smoke. Votive candles were burning in small alcoves throughout the space. This was an art gallery, he thought. But it felt like a shrine.

Everything here was from the desert. Jackets faded from the sun, shirts stained from sweat, a hat brown from blood. Many shoes, some in pairs, all beaten-looking except for one almost brand-new pair of Pumas.

There were wallets and Mexican and Guatemalan ID cards. Fake U.S. papers. A coloring book of the Disney characters Roberto and then Rosa used to love. A child’s notebook with a pink cover. Jeans and belts and hair ties and a toothbrush. Men’s underwear, a razor, some knives.

Roberto and Julia walked slowly, taking everything in. Roberto’s skin felt clammy, and he no longer smelled the candles—his senses were full of the desert. He smelled dust, dirt, sweat, fear, and death. Everything here made him remember the crossing.

“Are you okay?” she asked, as if she’d seen right through him.

“Bien, gracias,” he said.

This wasn’t art. It was people’s lives. Were they alive or dead? Had they made it or not? He glanced around. A Mexican couple stood across the room, and the woman was crying quietly. What were they looking at? It didn’t matter. Roberto knew that they were remembering their journey, just as he was.

The woman who had collected these things had arranged them in piles, but with no apparent order at all. But then he noticed a sign on the wall, in both English and Spanish. He and Julia stopped to read it.

Everything here was collected on trips I made to the Sonoran Desert with Salvation, a group that maintains water stations for migrants crossing the border.

Although the objects were spread out over many miles, I have placed them in roughly the same patterns in which I found them.

If you recognize anything, or know who it belongs to, please speak to the person at the desk and sign the register. I wish to return everything possible to the families who lost them.

“Wow,” he said. “That’s nice.”

“I wonder how many times it’s happened,” Julia said. “How often someone will come here and find something they left behind.”

“No one,” Roberto said.

They walked into the next room. Roberto stared at everything. Crushed plastic water jugs, just like the kind he had carried. Maybe he and Rosa had drunk from one of them. Rosary beads carved from black wood, like the kind his grandmother had given him and he had given Julia. She squeezed his hand when she saw them. Bracelets woven from once-colorful thread, now bleached by time and the sun. White socks discolored with blood and dirt, holes where toes had poked through.

A yellow skirt, a New York Yankees sweatshirt with the number 2 and the name
JETER
on the back. A teddy bear. Mickey Mouse sunglasses. Aviator sunglasses. A woman’s purse woven from fine black thread and decorated with pop-tops from soda cans. A pink baby carrier.

Roberto could barely breathe. He thought of the parent carrying that baby girl. Had the carrier broken and had the father carried the infant in his arms? Had they made it to wherever they were going together? Or had the baby been lost along with the carrier? He wanted to touch it, to feel the pink floral fabric, as if it could tell him the story of the family it belonged to.

He felt afraid yet excited, as if he would look in the next pile of items and find Rosa herself. Her beautiful thick black hair, her twinkling eyes, and her thin brown arms reaching up to grab his neck. He would carry her right out of here, and he would love her and never let her go. His head swam, the way it had in the desert, when the heat had knocked him down, when it had made his little girl so sick she couldn’t go on. He felt confused, a little crazy.

“Roberto!” Julia said.

And then he saw what Julia saw—and Rosa
was
there, and Roberto was reaching for her, clutching her to his chest, the smell of her filling his nose, and he buried his face in her shoulder whispering her name. Only it wasn’t Rosa, it was her doll, Maria, and the gossamer wings his grandmother had sewn on were still there, tickling his neck, and he was saying his daughter’s name, “Rosa, Rosa, Rosa,” over and over.

chapter eleven

Julia

They had driven separately, and he followed in his truck back to the Casa. Entering the kitchen, Julia saw that Roberto had brought Maria inside; she lay on the table. Whatever color the doll had once been, she had faded to dun, the same shade as desert sand. She had long black yarn hair, most of which had been lost. Her eyes were black knots, her mouth a smile stitched with red thread. She wore a flowing dress, and had sheer wings.

“My grandmother told Rosa that Maria could fly,” Roberto said, holding the doll. “I think Rosa believed it. She kept saying so in the truck, and when we were walking. I think she thought Maria would fly us away.”

Had Rosa thought that in the desert after her father was gone? Julia wondered. She took Roberto’s hand and led him through the house, toward the wide staircase. The thick walls held the cool air inside, and when they got upstairs the breeze through the windows fluttered the curtains.

This room had always felt magical to her. In spite of the heavy, carved wooden Mexican furniture, it seemed to float on air above the coastline. The view took in the canyon and surrounding peaks, and the blue ocean spreading west, interrupted only by the dark and mysterious Channel Islands, and passing ships whose running lights looked like stars fallen into the sea.

Roberto walked up behind her. He put his arms around her, kissed her bare neck. Outside the window a vine of night-blooming jasmine climbed the wall. The sun had not quite set, so the white flowers were closed tight. Bees twined around the blossoms, legs coated with golden pollen. Julia watched them, hypnotized by their dance and the feeling of Roberto’s lips on her skin.

“I can’t believe we found her there,” she said without turning around.

“Rosa’s doll?”

“Yes. The exhibit sounded powerful to me, but I never would have thought . . . I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“The shock. What you must feel to have found her. What does it mean?”

“No se,” he said. “But I feel glad, Julia. This is the closest I’ve felt to Rosa in five years. I held Maria just the way she did, and I feel Rosa with me again.”

Julia turned. “You do?”

“Yes. So much.” He stopped talking, tried to hold the emotion inside. “Rosa held this doll, and carried her and loved her. My grandmother made it for her.”

“It’s how I feel about Bonnie,” Julia whispered. “Jenny touched her.”

“I know. And now I have Rosa’s doll, and you brought me to her.” His voice broke, and he couldn’t hold back the tears. He turned his face away, but she leaned close, kissed his cheeks, crying quietly herself.

Outside, the bees were gone. The sun went down behind the western mountains and the sky turned red and gold. The wave crests were amber, and the ocean darkened to deep purple. The jasmine began to open, releasing its seductive fragrance.

Roberto and Julia walked to the bed. She wasn’t sure who was leading whom. They undressed each other and slid under the covers. Her aunt’s Anichini sheets seemed obscenely decadent in light of where they’d just been. She wanted to apologize for everything, and realized that that was her default mode—she’d been saying she was sorry for five years.

For so long Julia had felt she’d fallen from grace, but here she felt forgiven. Roberto’s feelings for her washed it all away. His hand gently stroked her shoulder, moving softly down the curve of her back, pulling her body against his.

There was eloquence in their silence, the way he entered her with silken heat, his eyes never leaving hers. He hovered over her, thrusting faster and faster, and she lost herself somewhere between his skin and hers. They were beyond time, everything but sensation obliterated, no past and no future, just this feeling of being lifted into heaven.

They slept together that night. The bed, the house, this life, was theirs. She woke around three and watched him sleeping beside her. Her skin looked so pale next to his in the cool blue dark. The night had turned chilly, so she reached down for the peach satin comforter, pulled it over them. He didn’t stir. He slept with abandon, just giving himself over to unconsciousness.

She wished she could do that. Most nights she paced. She sometimes wondered what it would look like if her sleep was filmed, the way they did in sleep studies, with the images sped up. Tossing and turning, then out of bed, around the house, back to bed, lights on, lights off, TV on, TV off, go to the kitchen, look in the refrigerator, drink water, pee, back to bed, try to sleep, out of bed, around the house.

Roberto was breathing deeply and steadily, the way she’d wanted him to in the pool, when he was learning to let go and float. Lying beside him, she tried to imitate his breath. Their legs were touching, so reassuring. Her breath deepened and she began to relax. They were floating together, in this big warm bed, and she closed her eyes and went back to sleep.