The Ruins of California (19 page)

“I’m so thrilled to finally meet you! My gosh, you look like Whitman!” she said in a robust, throaty voice. She seemed to have Whitman’s exuberance and outgoing spirit—but along with warmth there was a polite distance. Something about her blue eyes and freckles and white-blond hair reminded me of Doris Day.

The farmhouse was cozy but not small, by any means. It was cleaner and more traditionally decorated than I’d expected. White cotton sofas and chairs were placed about the living room along with round tables with batik cloths over them and glass tops. Lamps dotted the room, spreading circles of yellow light upon collections of things arranged beneath them—beach shells, driftwood, the corpses of a few beautiful moths and butterflies. Around the large fireplace, there was a design of blue-and-white Dutch tiles. And on the mantel, and scattered throughout the room, there were
framed pictures of dogs and people—none of whom I recognized, except Whitman. Tall bookcases stretched to the ceiling, loaded with hundreds of oversize picture books, art books, gardening books, and essays on photography. On the walls there were more photographs—Whitman pointed out a few by Edward Weston and some nude torsos by Edward Steichen. I couldn’t remember if I’d ever seen photographs like that before, except in a museum. I’d never really been in a house like Patricia’s before either. In her kitchen there was a deep bain-marie on the stove and another pot of boiling potatoes. “I hope you like vichyssoise,” she said. I nodded enthusiastically. Whatever vichyssoise was, I was going to like it.

Whitman took me to the guest room. Rather than a bunk in some barn or on a moldy futon on the floor—I can’t stress how dingy I’d always imagined Whitman’s and Patricia’s daily lives must have been—he led me to a spacious room with a bright, handmade quilt thrown over the bed, pressed linens, a high ceiling, and its own airy bathroom. There was a bouquet of lavender next to the sink and, on a chest of drawers, a vase of pink flowers with sunny yellow centers. “Those are cosmos,” Whitman said, setting down my duffel on a bamboo luggage rack. I marveled over the flowers—was it the room, or the ceiling, or the sunlight, or my low expectations that suddenly made everything look so perfect?

Cheered by my enthusiasm, Whitman insisted I see the garden. The house was set on what appeared to be a large piece of property. It seemed like a park to me—with no apparent fencing or walls, except for an outdoor eating area with a brick-and-stucco fireplace. Farther back, a large vegetable garden spanned thirty or forty square feet. Had I ever thought about how vegetables were grown or what the plants looked like before the fruit was picked?

Patricia grew everything in raised mounds of earth, more than a foot across and separated by channels where the garden could be watered easily. Whitman explained that there were sections in the garden for different types of plants, which were rotated from year to year to keep the soil healthy. There was an area for melons and squashes and pumpkins, another for beans. There were potato vines and onion stalks. There were shiny purple eggplants and furry okra. The row of tomato plants went on and on. I’m sure I’d never seen a tomato plant before that afternoon. The only edible things that Abuelita grew were avocados. And Marguerite, besides her arbor of sour grapes, had only trees: kumquats and grapefruit and Meyer lemons.

Whitman began collecting ripe tomatoes in a wicker hamper that had been left hanging on a post. Patricia’s plants were almost as tall as he was, over six feet high, and when I touched a leaf, it was sticky and damp and left an intoxicating smell on my fingers. He filled up half of the basket with tomatoes, some yellow, some red, and then stopped to pluck a handful of tiny round ones. “Sweet One Hundreds,” he said, popping one into my mouth. The marble-size tomato exploded between my teeth—warm, sweet—and seemed like eating sunshine itself.

He straddled a raised bed of lettuce and other things—
what was rocket?
—clipping some leaves for a salad. Then he walked across the garden to a composting area where piles of brownish leaves and yard cuttings and citrus peels were stacked between hay bales. Whitman placed my hand near the bottom of the pile to feel how warm it was. “The organic matter breaks down,” he said, “and when it’s rotting and decomposing, the chemical changes cause it to give off heat.”

“Is this the fertilizer for the farm?” I asked.

“What farm?”

“Your commune.”

“What commune?”

“This. Aren’t we…isn’t this a commune?”

“This is our house. My mom’s house.”

“But I—”

“We only lived on a farm co-op when we first moved to Ojala. Mom was just getting the lay of the land and learning about California gardens, western varieties and all that. You know it’s a completely different climate from the East Coast or England. Different plants and an entirely different growing season. It’s really two springs, two falls, a long, dry summer—”

“I thought—”

He went on, a bit defensively, “She bought this house four years ago. It was a working ranch at the turn of the century—and, of course, modernized at some point. Then it was a second home for a propmaster at Paramount Studios. He lived here between pictures. He planted most of the stone-fruit orchards and liked doing all these wild horticultural experiments, grafting a branch of an apricot onto a peach tree.”

Whitman’s eyes were flashing. “Mom’s got—I don’t know—almost twenty acres. We sell only a small amount from the orange groves and the avocados. That goes to independent farm markets to offset the costs of running everything else. But she doesn’t live off the proceeds of the farm—or break even.” He turned away, with his back to me.

“And beyond that barn,” he said, pointing to a brown wooden structure in the distance, “which is mostly empty except for a couple old tractors that don’t work, is Ocotillo Creek. It’s a ways down, and there’s a great swimming hole, if you don’t mind leeches.”

B
y dinnertime we were all laughing about the impression I’d had—and how wrong it had been. We sat down at a small wooden farm table in the kitchen, the three of us, and ate a simple meal of cold leek and potato soup with cream, crusty bread, and a salad from the garden tossed in a fresh mustard and garlic vinaigrette that I’d watched Patricia make, her tan hands holding the small white bowl and a whisk.

“Now I know what they are saying about me in San Benito,” she said. “That I’m a dangerous hippie.”

“It’s not that,” I said, feeling sorry I’d been so candid. Was Patricia hurt or not? I couldn’t tell. “Marguerite only talks about Ojala, never you. She doesn’t say that much about my mother either. I don’t think she likes talking about the past too much.”

“Except she talks about N.C. all the time,” said Whitman.

“And Paul—he never mentions me?” Patricia’s eyes were piercing and strong.

“Not to me,” I said. “Never.”

“Oh, that’s so interesting,” she said. “Maybe I should be relieved. God only knows what he’d say.”

“He talks about you to me, Mum,” Whitman broke in. “Always asks how you’re doing. But I don’t think he really likes to analyze the past or revisit it. He’s too shallow and self-centered for that.”

I was surprised by his assessment—and that Whitman was allowed to openly air such a harsh view. Abuelita and my mother would never have let me say anything disrespectful about my father. But at the same time, it was a thrill to be in a place where brutal honesty was allowed.

“I don’t think that’s it at all,” Patricia said to Whitman, as if reading my mind. “Your father’s much deeper and more complicated than you want to make out. Although I can’t exactly say that I haven’t been tempted, from time to time, to draw similar conclusions.”

Whitman smiled. Patricia chuckled. “He doesn’t say much about his marriages,” she went on, “because it’s the only thing in life that he’s been a total failure at.” She leaned over her bitter greens and looked at me with a quizzical expression. “I mean, don’t you think that’s got to be it, Inez? He hates his failures. It’s certainly not that unusual—lots of people can’t seem to stay married—but I think he was ashamed in a peculiar way, not because of N.C. and Marguerite or any embarrassment he might have caused them. He never cared what they thought. He enjoyed torturing them, in fact. But there was something about our divorce that injured his pride and sense of infallibility. Honestly, I don’t think it occurred to him that I was devastated. I remember a telephone conversation we had one night, after his marriage to Consuela had fallen apart. He seemed so sad, so disappointed in himself. It was as if he were ashamed he didn’t know himself any better—that he’d fooled himself twice, or been fooled by his heart, before figuring things out.”

My mother never had any words to describe my father, aside from the occasional dig that slipped out when she wasn’t careful. A few years earlier, she had decided that she didn’t approve of him anymore—his ritzy boho lifestyle, the cape-and-fedora thing. She’d lumped all his failings into class failings, I suppose. He was spoiled. He was careless. Everything had been too easy. She’d made up her mind about him and didn’t want to know anything more. Sometimes she played dumb when his name was mentioned, as if surprised to learn that he was still alive.

“What didn’t he figure out?” I asked.

Patricia picked up the bottle of wine and poured herself another glass.

“You said that he married twice, made the same mistake twice,” I went on, “before he’d figured something out. What?”

“Oh,” Patricia said, taking a sip. “Monogamy isn’t the problem so much. It’s really about sustaining it. Over time one woman isn’t enough—that’s all. I think at first he thought it was me. That I wasn’t enough. So it was my fault. I’d let him down. And I think he hated me for that. And when he met your mother—my God, he was so in love with her—he figured she would be enough. I mean, just look at her. How could
that
not be enough? She looks like Sophia Loren, for God’s sake. And she was probably a lot nicer to him than I was. And when she got pregnant with you—everything was so different in those days, of course. If you were pregnant, you got married. Maybe Paul knew by then, I don’t know, but eventually Consuela wasn’t enough either. He needed somebody
new.
He needed to be in love—and have somebody wonderful in love with him.”

When I didn’t speak up right away, she said, “What does your mother say, Inez?”

“She doesn’t talk about him too much.”

“No?” Whitman seemed disbelieving.

“Not really.”

“Consuela’s very private,” Patricia said, smiling a little crookedly at her son, as if only part of her wanted to smile. “That’s all.”

“She had trouble making up her mind,” I ventured. “I know that. When I was little, when we left—when she left him. She seemed sorry she had. And then it was like she was waiting for him to come back. But he didn’t.”

“No,” Patricia said. “He’s brilliant at making it look like it’s all your
idea. As if you’re the one leaving, not him. But he’d already found somebody else—right off. There was a graduate student, wasn’t there?” Patricia and Whitman were both looking at me, but my mind was miles away, and my heart pounding. All these things—a revelation. I’d never known people could talk like this.

“What was her name?” Patricia asked me.

“You mean Marisa?” I answered.

Patricia nodded.

“Oh, right,” said Whitman. “We were still in England then.”

“She was his math student,” I said. “Beautiful blue eyes—like yours, Patricia. And giant boobs like Mom.”

Patricia laughed.

“Actually,” I said, “she was really sweet.”

“Of course she was,” Patricia said.

Then I had to say it—the words were on my tongue, pushing against my lips. “I didn’t know they
had
to get married,” I said. “Nobody ever told me that.”

Patricia looked up, casually, almost as if she’d been waiting for it. Almost as if the whole thing had been planned—and it probably was. “Oh, but, Inez—it’s not what you think.
Really.
I didn’t want any more children—one was enough for me. I thought I’d hit the jackpot with Whitman. And it did seem as if your father was excited to have another.”

T
he next morning there was no wind or clouds, and Ojala seemed suddenly like a very dry and hot place. When I woke up and looked out my sunny bedroom window, I saw Patricia moving a hose around the vegetable garden, watering. She and Whitman were talking quietly in the kitchen when I arrived there. After breakfast
it was decided somehow that Whitman and I should take a swim. Curious to see the swimming hole, and trying not to worry about the leeches, I put on a small bikini, some shorts, and a heavy pair of hiking boots that I’d borrowed from Patricia, who was cooking up something for a group of people who were coming by for lunch.

We took a short hike through the woods, and Whitman led me to a sunny area beyond the trees where he had a forest of marijuana plants growing. He walked me around his tall grove of contraband, pulling off leaves and smelling them, examining tops. His mother knew about it, he said—and didn’t disapprove. He pulled a small metal pipe from a pocket of his shorts, pressed some dry buds from another pocket into the snout, and held it out.