Valley Fever (14 page)

Marianela's old red Toyota pulled into the carport.

“Oh, good,” Mother said. “More eggs.”

Marianela, still slender, always looked so glamorous in the printed cotton shirtwaist dresses she sewed herself. Her long black hair had gone wiry with veins of gray, but she fixed it as she always had, pinned up on the top of her head like a countess. She still wore the low-heeled pumps she insisted were the only type of shoe that didn't hurt her back. Marianela had four children and worked for the Madera school district and looked after the chickens and farmed twenty acres of vines almost entirely by herself, with little help from Miguel, who was busy enough with my father. And yet she never seemed as if she were in a hurry. She moved like a river, slowly, unbothered, deliberate. Marianela had an ease and a calmness about her that seemed almost spiritual. She had the kind of maternal beauty that felt soft, tactile.

She rang the kitchen bell with her elbow, a box of eggs in each hand.

“I heard you were here, little one,” she said through the screen door.

“I would have come to you,” I said. “I still will.” I opened the door and hugged her before she had a chance to put her boxes on the counter. When I was little, Marianela provided all the hugs my mother couldn't.

“We have too many eggs to eat,” she said. “You come home in time for harvest, Inky?”

“Marianela, this is too much for us. We haven't finished the last batch,” I said.

Mother said, “We'll eat the eggs.”

“I can't give them to the workers, I don't have enough for all,” Marianela said. “You know, I have no one at home anymore. Just me and Miguel.”

The last time I had gone to see Miguel and Marianela, only their oldest had gone away to college. That was six years ago, at least. Eight? Ten? “Where's Emily?”

“Emily is taller than her father,” Mother said, balancing a tiny spoonful of egg on a toast soldier. “And so beautiful, Ingrid, with these wide cheekbones. Marianela, do you want a soft-boiled egg?” There was nothing to offer her but eggs and condiments and pie.

“No eggs,” said Marianela. “She plays soccer, little one, like you. They gave her a scholarship to Stanford. But listen,” she said.

“Why does no one tell me these things?” I said. “God, Marianela. Stanford. Emily must be brilliant.”

“Like Ellie Prentiss,” Mother said.

Marianela said, “Who's Ellie Prentiss?”

“Ingrid's old friend,” Mother said. “Sit down. Do you want toast? Or I think we have cake.”

“Nothing, nothing. You talk to Ned?” Marianela asked my mother.

“Talk to Ned when?”

“You know about Phillip?”

“What about Phillip?” said Mother.

“Phillip quit,” Marianela said. She sat right down at the table, her circle skirt folded neatly beneath her, one red pump crossed over the other.

“Quit what?” said Mother.

“The job.”

“Which job?”

Marianela looked at me, as if I should translate.

“What happened?” I said.

“You know, they're doing the equipment check,” said Marianela. “I go down there to bring some doughnuts, but Miguel's not there. Where's Miguel? Some trouble at the office, the boys said. So I'm nervous, I call, but no answer from Miguel. So I drive to the office. They're there, you know. I see them through the glass door before they see me. Before the harvest, he leaves them like this.”

Mother said, “He left them where?”

“Mom, he quit. He quit his job.”

Mother looked dazed, as if she'd been slapped. “Why?”

“I didn't stay,” Marianela said. “I thought maybe you spoke to Ned.”

“Ned hasn't called,” Mother said. “He comes home for lunch.”

“Lunch, yes, I remember,” said Marianela.

“No, Ned didn't call. I didn't speak to him.”

“No,” Marianela said.

“Was Phillip there?” I said.

“No, Phillip, no. Miguel and Jefe. And they were quiet, so quiet. Call him, Evelyn. Call now.”

“No, no,” Mother said. “He'll call me. He'll tell me when he gets home for lunch.”

“Okay, no no,” Marianela said. She took the eggs from the counter and put them in the refrigerator. “He leaves them now. For what? For another job? He has no other job, he told them so. He told them he's going to farm himself now, farm his own ground.”

I laughed. “He can't do that without Dad's accounts.”

Marianela shrugged. “Maybe he's stolen enough,” she said quietly, carefully, as if stating the obvious might inflict pain.

“He thinks it's enough now, but wait,” I said, dipping my spoon into the lukewarm egg. “It's not enough. He needs too much water. He's got bad ground. The math doesn't work.”

“Low water table,” Mother said, getting up to fetch her cards from the drawer in the kitchen. “And rocks! And an impossible slope. He bought that land after he started working for Dad. After!” she said, pointing her finger at no one, at God.

“We all knew then what we know now,” Marianela said. “
Víbora
.”

“What else did he say?” I asked.

“I said too much. I wanted to come by because I thought you would know already, and you might know more,” she said. “You look beautiful, little one. Lovely like a string. Like a dancer.” She held my fingers as if in a waltz.

“Too skinny, no boobs,” Mother said.

“No,” Marianela said, bringing me in, hugging me. “Just right.”

“Thank you.” I meant thank you for the hug, not the compliment. Mother hadn't hugged me since I arrived two weeks ago.

Marianela turned to the screen door. “I hope I didn't bring in bad news.”

“No, no,” Mother said. “Someone has to bring in the news.”

“Come see me, Ingrid.”

“I can't believe Emily's left,” I said to her. “You're too young.”

She laughed. She squeezed my hand with those strong, bony, vine-pruning fingers of hers. “Come see me and say that some more.” Her pumps kicked up dust on the concrete between the doorstep and her old red car.

Mother flipped cards onto the breakfast table.

“Do you want another egg?” I said.

She pulled up the cards and shuffled again.

I said, “I think you should have another egg.” I filled the pot with water.

“She loved that,” Mother said, flipping the cards with velocity. “She loves knowing more than we do, and she loves telling us so.”

“I think she just likes to gossip,” I said, in defense.

“That, too.”

“Marianela's not against you, Mom.”

“I didn't say she was against me. I'm just saying she's a bitch.”

“All right.” It was useless to defend Marianela. Any kind words about Marianela would be perceived by Mother as taking the wrong side. Marianela's affectionate nature outweighed her pettiness, in my opinion, but Mother had no use for affection.

“Do you want to call Daddy?” Mom said.

“Let's wait for lunch.”

“Yes,” she said, and looked for the right card to place on top of another. “But why wait for lunch?”

“Because he's distracted and he'll call you.”

“Yes,” she said. She slid cards around the table, one on top of the other, with fighter pilot attention.

I put fresh eggs in the pot. They were warm; Marianela must have taken them right from the coop. “I think you should have one of these, Mother. It's good for the brain.”

“Does my brain seem deficient to you?”

I could hear the gas from the stove, the buzz of the refrigerator, the menacing conversation of crows from up and down the river. “Phillip has something lined up,” I said. “Thick people like Phillip don't just quit to be entrepreneurial. They don't get inspired like that.”

“I'm glad he's quit.”

“But not right before the grape harvest, Mother. And not without giving notice. There's no point. It's the easiest time of year for him.”

“Look at that,” she said, tapping one of the royals, and quickly stacking one card on top of another. “Everything is working out.”

*   *   *

The industry predicted a grape glut, so many farmers were culling their vines, leaving fruit on the ground. On certain days that summer, the air would catch the stink of rotten, fermenting fruit, and that smell would go on all day, from one end of the county to the other. This was one of those days.

Dad had the pale look of the office. “You know they're planning to push Wabnig for the Heisman,” he said, pulling a chair from the table, the screen door hanging open behind him.

“Wabnig?” Mother said. She stood at the counter, layering papery slices of ham on bread in fanlike folds.

“Our quarterback, Sherman Wabnig. Wilson says the coaches think he's something this year.”

“You talked to Wilson?” she said.

“It's a little early to think about the Heisman,” I said.

“What else did he say?” Mother asked.

“Oh, I don't know. I saw Miguel. He says we're looking at high yields, even higher than we thought. Some of the smaller guys are culling the shoulders and wings.”

“You don't cull anymore?” I said.

“Too expensive. The labor's too expensive, it's not worth it.” Dad leaned back in the chair, hands on his thighs, more defeated than relaxed. “Harder and harder to find labor, Inky. You have to pay up.”

There was a silence. Mother wouldn't look at either of us. Dad wasn't going to tell us about Phillip.

The heat was all mixed up with dust and the smell of ripening fruit. There are no cool parts to a Fresno summer. The heat doesn't dissipate the way it would in a desert. In a way, the heat felt familiar, like a relief. The windows were open but nothing moved.

“Marianela came by,” I said.

“Ah,” he said, leaning forward, unbuttoning his cuffs, rolling up the sleeves of that smart white shirt. “I thought she might.” He nodded. We all listened to the kitchen for a moment: the refrigerator, the ice maker dropping a clank of ice into the bin. What was there to say about Phillip, really? “It doesn't make much sense. I guess he figured we'd get rid of him at some point anyway.”

“At some point,” said Mother.

“There's just a lot to catch up on now.” The timing seemed cruel—to leave Dad, after twenty years of employment, right before harvest, when Phillip knew Dad wouldn't have the time or the focus to catch up on all Phillip was leaving behind: managing the vehicles, monitoring the chemicals, wrapping up the post-harvest duties.

“Did you ask him to stay through October?” I said.

“He insisted he had to leave now. He'd packed up his desk already. He must have done it late last night.”

“It's a relief,” Mother said.

“It will be,” said Dad. “It's just one more thing, you know.” His boots were clean. His scalp had started to sweat in the hot kitchen. “Can I get some water?”

I filled a glass from the bottle on the counter. Fresno tap water causes cancer, which the city denies but everybody knows. Mother handed him his sandwich, and Dad picked out the arugula.

“You don't want the arugula?” said Mother.

“My stomach's weak,” he said.

“Would you like an egg?” she said.

“I'd like this sandwich,” he said.

I ate the arugula from the side of his plate with my fingers, piece by piece. “I love you, Dad.”

“You want a job?” Dad said. “I have one that just opened up.”

“Maybe,” I said.

“Do you?'

“No,” I laughed. “I wouldn't know where to start.”

He took very small bites of the sandwich. “I don't know where to start most of the time, either,” he said.

“Don't torment your father,” Mother said. “Leave him alone, you'll get his hopes up.” She brought a paper towel to the table, folded it into a triangle, and dabbed the sweat from Dad's hairline. “You wouldn't have told us at all if Marianela hadn't intervened, would you?” she asked him.

“I don't know,” he said. “But I knew when I saw her that she'd come straight over here. Did she bring eggs?”

“Two dozen eggs,” Mother said.

Dad laughed a little. “I knew she'd bring eggs.”

“Why keep a secret like that, Ned?” She sat next to him at the table.

“It's not a secret. I want to protect you.” He rubbed the orange dust further into his forehead.

“I'm already protected. I can protect myself.” She touched his shoulder and found his neck. “This shirt is wearing a bit on the collar, Neddy.”

“I don't want any new shirts.”

“I don't want people to think I don't take care of you,” she said. “When people see that shirt, they'll think I don't care.”

“I like a shirt that's worn in,” I said. I could see the orange ring on Dad's collar from where I was sitting. When I was tiny, television had me believing that ring-around-the-collar was the worst tragedy that could befall a person or family. Worse than any illness or car crash or war, ring-around-the-collar was something so awful, it could only be alluded to on TV. Later, the danger of ring-around-the-collar would be replaced by terror of something called acid rain. Even now, I don't know what acid rain means.

“Ingrid likes it,” Dad said.

“You think I'm so fragile you can't tell me Phillip quit?” She sat gracefully at the table, deliberately as if to demonstrate she had a plain happiness inside.

“I know you're not fragile. I'm tired. I'm just tired.”

“Don't torment my father,” I said.

“Ingrid, would you go to Daddy's closet and find him a new shirt?”

“This shirt is fine.”

“Please, Ned, change your shirt for me.”

“Daddy can find his own shirt,” I said.

She forced herself to be calm, I could see. The line appeared in the center of her forehead. She folded and unfolded her hands, as if waiting for cards to shuffle. She said to Dad, “How was your sandwich?”