Valley Fever (7 page)

“Ingrid, this is Debby.” He'd brought the manicurist. She had tiny rhinestones glued to her nails, and her orange lipstick had already left a mark on her water glass. You could see halter-top tan lines above her strapless dress. My mother was doing her best not to look in Debby's direction.

“Welcome, Debby.”

“I'd like a drink,” said Wilson.

“They're bringing my wine,” Uncle Felix said.

“I'd like a real drink.” Wilson hailed one of the young girls carrying a tray. “Can you bring me two Plymouth martinis, both with olives and both with twists.” Wilson's drink requests never ended with a question mark. Most everything Wilson said came followed by an exclamation point.

I had that feeling of emptiness so real that any slight movement or a deep breath might cause unbearable physical pain. I sat as still as possible. Sounds came at me as if through a tunnel. Outside the glass-walled dining room, the sky turned orange and red all around us, and the color reflected off the shallow river, a river so full in earlier years that one spring, recently, the water had flooded the entire fourth hole.

“Ingrid,” Uncle Felix said, “you look like you're choking.”

“I'm not choking.”

He poured wine in my glass to the very top.

“Drink your dinner,” he said. “It's good for you.”

“That's what he says to me, too,” said Debby. She smiled and laughed at her own funny joke. Her teeth were straight and overly, artificially white, what Mother would call socially aspirational middle-class teeth. I smiled back at her, but couldn't think of a response. No one said anything for a moment, so Debby laughed again.

My mother focused on the menu as if she had never seen it before.

“The fettuccini alfredo,” Dad said. “It's the only thing that doesn't kill my stomach these days.”

“It'll kill you in other ways,” said Uncle Felix.

Wilson's martinis came and he handed one to me. He drank his quickly and ordered two more. “Country drunk,” he whispered, nudging me. Poor Wilson. Despite his small gestures of defiance—not changing his shirt, not drinking the wine—he craved nothing more than for Uncle Felix to nod in approval, to give Wilson the Griffith wink.

The girl came over to take our orders, and I ordered the wedge salad all chopped up and tossed together, which is what I'd been eating at the club since I was eight. The San Joaquin Country Club made its wedge salad with romaine.

“Where's the roast turkey?” Mother said. “When did they stop serving the roast turkey?”

Dad pointed to the bottom of the menu, where the roast turkey had always been.

“Wilson,” said Uncle Felix, “you drink like a slob.”

“Oh, Felix, you're mad I don't want to drink your wine.” Wilson sloshed his drink from one side of the glass to the other. “Some of us are sick of wine. Are you sick of wine, Debby?”

Mother started speaking before Debby could answer. “There's Hilda Sorensen,” she said, nodding toward the other side of the dining room. “She's seeing Greg Kappas again, isn't she, Felix? She's after him to get married.”

“Is she?” Dad said. “Seeing him, I mean.” We didn't even bother to lower our voices. There are no acoustics in the dining room. The club has the same d
é
cor it had when it was built in 1961: wood paneling, shag carpet, one wall made entirely of local Oakhurst stone. In a more humid climate, this is the sort of building that would reek of mold.

“I'm not supposed to know that. Bootsie Calhoun told me. They go in there all the time.” Mother gestured when she spoke, so that no one in the room would miss the oversized diamonds on her tennis bracelet.

“When did you speak to Bootsie?” I said.

“Bootsie misses you,” Mother said. “You weren't so kind to her either, Ingrid. Also she makes this mojito with liquid nitrogen I think you'll like. It freezes into a sorbet.”

“They can't get married,” Uncle Felix said. “He can't get a divorce.”

“Greg and Arlene?” Dad said.

“He's Greek Orthodox,” Mother said. “He can get a divorce. They get divorced all the time.”

“No, it's impossible,” said Uncle Felix. “The riparian rights are in Arlene's name. They belong to her family.”

“Arlene has the riparian rights!” my mother said, absolutely delighted, clapping her hands together. Mother didn't like the young, perky Hilda Sorensen, a rich cotton farmer's widow who'd turned much of her late husband's land into pink stucco malls and who Mother thought had a habitual liking for married men. Kurt Sorensen had been married when Hilda met him. It was true that, years ago, she had made an obvious and embarrassing play for Dad, for a period phoning him whenever Mother had left town and one time showing up with an arsenal of elaborately wrapped electrical tools for his birthday, with me and Anne and Mom all present. Now Hilda was seeing Greg Kappas, the late Kurt's married best friend. When my mother makes a judgment about someone, that person often lives up to her expectations. “Who told you that, Felix?”

“Wilson.”

We all looked at Wilson, now on his third dinner martini. “Gossip is my business,” he said. “The Mastersons are getting remarried. Your friend Bootsie is fucking her bartender. What else do you people want to know?”

Uncle Felix said, “Steady, Wilson.”

“A lot of money in gossip,” said Wilson.

“The Mastersons are getting remarried?” Mom said.

“Evelyn, voice down,” said Dad.

“Arlene's riparian rights!” Mother said again, shaking her head and laughing. “Don't worry, Ingrid, you've got riparian rights.”

“I'm not worried.”

“You don't have to be,” she said.

“Thanks, Mother.”

Wilson started humming quietly. He'd done this since we were children, humming at dinner, in the middle of conversation. He turned to Debby and whispered, “Do you know Lionel Ritchie is the only musician who owns all the rights to his songs?” He looked at her, waiting for a response. No response came. “All of them,” he said.

I said, “Uncle Felix, when do you pick the syrah?”

“Which syrah?”

“Dad's syrah.”

“Dad's syrah's not ready yet. Do you think it's ready yet, Ned?”

“It's not quite ready,” Dad said. “It's on the young side.”

“It's on the young side,” Uncle Felix said, nodding toward me. “I like my fruit ripe, Inks.”

“It'll get too sugary,” I said. “It's been so hot.”

“Oh, Ingrid!” said Wilson. “Ingrid knows about wine now!” He was just on the edge of getting mean, I could tell. Soon he might say cruel things he'd pretend not to remember the next day.

Uncle Felix said, “When are you coming to work for me, Ingrid?”

“Not going to,” Mother interrupted. Mother's worst nightmare was for either of her children to get stuck in Fresno. We ought to take our riparian rights and live comfortably in Los Angeles or Berlin. In case of financial emergency, we could take our knowledge of California grapes and move to France.

I said, “I've been fired from every job I've ever had. You don't want me to work for you, Uncle Felix.”

“I do want you to come work for me, Inks. You can tell me what it is you want to do.”

“You'll make me scrub tanks.”

“Never would do that.”

“You say that now,” I said.

Mother said, looking at the menu, “Pick the grapes, Felix.”

Wilson said, “Pick the grapes, Felix.”

“What grapes?” said Felix.

“At least pick those Thompsons,” I said.

Dad was quiet and drank long gulps of his wine.

Debby sat throughout the rest of dinner without speaking and kept sending hopeful unrequited glances at my mother.

*   *   *

After dinner, we went back to the house to eat baklava and to drink the cognac I'd brought from France and taken from Howard's house.

Cognac always winds everyone up. An hour after Dad and I had gone to bed but were each lying awake in the hammering heat, while Mom was still up in the kitchen with the dessert plates soaking, playing solitaire, the doorbell rang.

“Get the guy with the tractor,” Uncle Felix told Mother, his cashmere vest missing, shirt untucked, buttons off by two. “My car went into the ditch.”

“Oh, God, Felix,” Mother said casually, dialing the foreman. “Chappaquiddick.” It was not the first time since Jane died that Mom had come to his rescue in one form or another, towing cars from canals or playing hostess for his business dinners or fetching dry clothes from his house after Felix's drunken swims in the river.

Miguel came with the tractor and pulled the car off the side of the canal. Mother took Debby back to town. When I made my way out to breakfast later that morning, I found Uncle Felix asleep at the kitchen table, his head on his arms. It wasn't altogether uncommon to find Uncle Felix sleeping at the kitchen table. I started coffee for two.

“Some night,” he said, woken by the faucet and the clink of the kettle. His shirt was still done up the wrong way.

“I guess you'd better apologize to Miguel.”

“I'll write him a check.”

“And Mother.”

“Oh, your mother,” he said, half starting to laugh. “Your mother lives to save the day.”

“You did tear her away from her cards.”

“Your mother,” he said, patting his chest, as if just now realizing his vest was missing, “is wonderful,” he said.

“Debby seems nice.”

He looked at me, skeptical. “She's up for fun,” he said. Then, “Where did I leave my shoes?”

“Uncle Felix, I like to see you having fun.”

“It's not fun,” he said, lighting a cigarette. I handed him a dessert plate to use as an ashtray. “It's goddamn lonesome.”

“You have us for when you get lonesome.” I patted his shoulder, kissed his wet forehead.

“I do.” Smoke came out of his nostrils, like a bull. He nodded down toward the table, kept nodding. “Yes, I do have you.”

“And Wilson,” I said.

“Wilson.”

I sat across from him at the kitchen table. “Wilson's afraid girls like Debby will take advantage of you and break your heart.”

He shook his head. He winked at me, the Griffith wink, so quick you couldn't be sure it had happened. “My heart's already broken.” I looked at him and felt a flush of humiliation, which he surely must have seen. “You told me that story a long time ago,” he said.

“Which one?”

“Your friend Gil, with the fungus underneath his nails that grew after he found his dead mother.”

I plunged the French press. “I don't remember telling you that.”

“The fungus of grief,” he said. “I remember everything.”

I stirred sugars into our coffee. I said, “How many broken hearts do you think a person can endure before the heart is just permanently broken?”

“Don't worry, Ingrid, you won't end up like me.” He tapped ashes onto the plate. “You're far too pretty.”

“That's not what I meant,” I said.

He tapped salt out of the shaker and began to eat it off the table with the tip of his finger. “You should have married George Sweet. But your mother put a stop to that, didn't she?”

There had never been a boyfriend Mother had approved of. When I pointed out to her that she had never liked anyone I dated, she said, “So far I've been right about every one.”

Uncle Felix stood up. “I don't know what happened to my sweater.”

“Do you want some grape pie?”

“Midsummer pies are the best.” He sat down again. “We're acquiring more acres,” he said.

“Do you want a big piece or a little piece?” Even our plates—my grandmother's plates—had grapes and vines painted on them. “How many more acres?” Uncle Felix already had more vines than anyone else in the valley.

“You already know everything you need to know to work in this business. I wouldn't have to teach you much.”

“Why are you pushing this so hard?” I said. “I don't want to move back here, I don't want to make wine.” I sliced the pie. “I'm giving you a big piece.”

“It's a good living.”

“If I want to come back, I'll work for Dad. And I'll make you give me a higher price for that juice, or I just won't sell to you.”

He laughed a closed-mouth laugh. He tapped more salt on the table. “I'm too big not to sell to, sweetheart.”

 

6.

My mother had been coloring her hair herself.

In the past, there had been bad years for farming, years with no vacations, cars with bad radiators, a year Mom sold two paintings given to her by Francesco Clemente (he fell so in love with her the January they met in Rome that he followed her and Dad all around the middle regions of France; she'll tell you that story if you give her six minutes), and one season bricks fell from the disintegrating fireplace. There had never been a year that the pool had gone green, though. Never a year my parents couldn't afford to pay the cleaning lady. Never a year my mother colored her hair herself.

“Go gray, or go to the hairdresser,” I said.

“Gray,” my mother scoffed. She had black dye all over her face and her hands and the bathroom sink. She had no idea what she was doing. “You cannot imagine how gray I am. The whole head.”

“If you'd been nicer to Debby, she might have done this for you.”

“She's a manicurist,” Mother said. “And a slut.”

“It's too dark, that color.”

“This is my natural color!”

I sat on the edge of the tub, far away from the sink and Mother's explosion of black hair dye. She was still very beautiful, in spite of the mess, in spite of the hair color. She had big, deep cartoon eyes. She and Anne had the same wide cheekbones. Skin never wrinkles on wide, high cheekbones. “You're so short with me,” I said. “Why are you angry?”