Valley Fever (9 page)

“I'm poor now.”

He looked at me, disgusted. “That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard you say.”

Part of what we all loved about Uncle Felix was his opinions, but it stung when he turned them against you. Somehow we wanted Felix's approval above all others.

He knew I was angry, or that he'd hurt my feelings. Sometimes I can't tell the difference myself. “Forget the money,” he said. “Why don't you just come back here to be close to your family?”

“I am close to my family.”

“You're stubborn. You're set on the idea that anyplace is better than here. Your mother did that to you.” He stopped walking. “Look,” he said, gesturing to the trees on one side of us, abundant with nuts, and the canal just beginning to reflect the orange light. “No place is better than right here.”

I continued walking. It was too distressing to admit that certain patches of that mean little town were, in fact, more beautiful than anyplace else in the world. And I'd looked, believe me, hoping to find someplace. I'd seen all sorts of rural agricultural valleys and hills I wouldn't go back to. I'd looked and looked for someplace that felt more like home than right there. Leave it to Uncle Felix to find the exact spot that was most beautiful of all, at exactly the moment he needed it.

“What would I do here for fun? Who would my friends be?”

“I'm not talking about fun,” he said. We walked on a little. The trees were dense with fuzzy green almonds. “You have Wilson. And that Bootsie. You need more than two friends in this world? You think you've got more than two friends, you're fooling yourself.”

“What would I do on Saturday afternoons, for example?” I asked myself this question as much as I asked Uncle Felix. “My mother has spent her whole life playing cards by herself.”

“That's your mother. You want to be your mother?”

“No, I don't.”

“I've asked you to play golf, but you won't play golf.”

“The club reminds me of how people were mean to me when I was little,” I said.

“You think too much about other people.”

“The older kids used to play ditch 'em and I was always the one they were trying to ditch.”

He laughed. He liked that. “Me, too,” he said. He patted the taut drum of his stomach. “They still try to ditch me.”

“That is just not true.”

“You see anyone else walking with us?”

“You're not understanding what I'm telling you.”

“I understand exactly.” It was true, Uncle Felix had friends at fund-raisers and wine events and at the Vineyard for lunch, but tonight, and every night, he was alone. Even Mother didn't much care to see him anymore.

I said, “No one tries to ditch me in New York, or LA. Or London. Or Paris or Berlin or anywhere else but right here in this sad little town. If I stay here I'll be alone all the time.”

“You have no idea, Inks.”

“Of what.”

He stopped and plucked an almond off Mr. Ellison's tree, as if the almonds were his. We grew up understanding that you never, ever, ever took anyone else's crop. My whole childhood I never took an almond or apricot from Mr. Ellison's trees. That evening, Uncle Felix plucked the green almond and then threw it down the middle of the row, to see how far he could throw. “Of what people are like,” he said.

I had read in
The Fresno Bee
that day about two neighbors, Bill and Emory, with a long-standing dispute about Bill's dog—it kept getting into Emory's yard and digging up the bulbs. It turns out Emory was a florist, and yesterday, having had enough, he kicked the dog (a cocker spaniel called Tutu, the paper said), wounding its hind leg. The two neighbors then engaged in a fistfight, and Emory, ten years younger, got the better of Bill. Minutes later, Bill returned to Emory's house with a handgun to put eight bullets into his neighbor's knees, chest, and head. Bill then drove to the Chevy's at the Riverbend Shops and shot himself in his car. What astonished me the most was that while Bill was firing, Emory never turned his back. And why did Emory open his front door in the first place? Reading
The Fresno Bee
could give you a pretty good idea of what people were like.

 

8.

“You know what Charlie and I talk about most of the time?” Anne said. “Other couples.”

“What about other couples?”

“You know, we judge them. Assess how miserable they are.”

“Are they miserable?”

“They're just bored, most of them. Bored bored bored.”

“Are you bored?”

“I don't think
bored
is the word,” she said.

I waited for the word. “What's the word?” I said, finally.

“I don't know,” she said. “
Lonely
?”

She had driven up for the weekend. Charlie didn't come. I tried not to wonder too much about Anne's relationship with Charlie.

“I'll ask you something,” she said that night.

“Yes.”

“Doesn't lots of casual sex make you lonesome?” We were sitting in the kitchen, in the dark, waiting for the night to cool the house down.

“Who's having casual sex?”

“Sex between friends. It makes you feel loved for a second, but it really just puts an exclamation point on your loneliness.”

“I'm not having sex with any friends.”

“Not everything is about you, Ingrid.”

I went away to school to get away from Anne. Not just to avoid her popularity or her success or her criticisms, not just to avoid being compared with her, but to avoid hearing her voice or seeing her face. There are times when that feeling seems juvenile and distant, and times when that feeling is immediate. Visceral. It's no coincidence that I came back from Massachusetts just as Anne left for college.

“I don't see any sex as casual.”

“But when you're with someone for a long time, like me and Charlie, the sex feels very casual then, too.”

“Please, Annie, I don't want to talk about your sex life.”

“Don't be such a puritan. Let's have drinks.”

She arrived around eight in the evening, having missed the mean heat of the day. She'd come directly from voice-over. (Anne never called the show “the show”; she only ever called it “voice-over.”) “Why don't they have the air-conditioning on in here?” she said.

“It's only me. I don't want to run the air when it's only me here in the kitchen.”

“Well, now it's you and me. Jesus, Ingrid, run the air.”

“Wilson didn't tell me not to worry, you know.”

“Wilson, God. Felix is loving this, I'll bet.”

“He's been kind,” I said. “Sometimes I think you say things just to be ornery.”

“I'm telling you, Felix only cares about Felix. He's probably encouraging the bank to take the land back so he can gobble it up.”

“He's doing what he can. He's buying the juice.”

“He gets a great price, Inky, and it's the best juice in the valley. He's lucky he gets that juice.”

“Well, you know everything.”

“I'm just telling you. You never trust my instincts, and my instincts are always right. What's all this Ararat brandy?” she said, checking in Dad's liquor cabinet, seeing the twelve bottles Mom had had delivered to the house. Emilio at Fiesta Market on Avenue 7 let Mom buy things on credit. I imagined she'd probably have to order the turkeys from him, too.

“Mom has this idea that we're going to have a party. Like Grandma's.”

“And invite whom? She hates everyone.”

“Felix's friends, probably.” Mother didn't mind Felix's friends too much, because they were all a little famous in a farming sort of way, wine people from Livermore and Lodi and all the way up to Napa. “Ask her.”

“Does she know she's going to have to turn on the air-conditioning?”

Mother and Dad had gone to bed early, Mother with a stack of fashion magazines and Dad with his exhausting cough, which we could hear from the kitchen.

Anne said, “I think I might get a dog. Do you think I should get a dog?”

“I'm lonely, too,” I said.

“Well,” she said, still facing the cabinet, “I didn't say that.”

“You said
lonely
was the word.”

“I asked if I should get a dog.”

“People get dogs when they're lonely.”

“Or, no. People get dogs when they want something to distract them from themselves.”

“That's lonely. That's like the definition of lonely.”

“Lonely and selfish are not the same thing.” She started taking bottles from the cabinet: American vodka, French vodka, nice gin and rough gin. She lined them up.

“Is Charlie lonely?” I said.

“He doesn't tell me,” she said. “Look at this Gordon's gin. How old do you think this is?”

“Does Charlie want a dog?”

“Charlie's allergic. Didn't you know that Charlie's allergic?”

“That gin's older than you, I think.” It hadn't even been opened.

“God, it's hot.” She twisted her hair and clipped it all up with her barrette. “How long do you intend to stay here?”

“Did you come to ask me that?”

“No,” Anne said. “Not really.”

“Did you come to wrap me up while I'm sleeping and secret me back to Los Angeles?” I leaned over and pinched her waist.

“Don't, it hurts.”

“You came to steal me.”

“I came because it's cold in LA and all the peaches in Hollywood come from Georgia.”

“Maybe I'll go back with you.”

“I miss you,” she said. “But it turns out it's not a good time for you to come stay with us.”

“Why?”

“Just not right now. I know it's all bad timing.”

“Is Charlie fed up with me?” While it was Anne's duty to come to my rescue, I could understand how for Charlie my breakups could become a tiresome burden.

“Things are stressful for Charlie at work.” She stood at the bar off the kitchen, with the cupboard open, her back to me.

“I'll find someplace to go,” I said. “Or I'll stay here.”

“Also, I guess I am not going to have a baby.”

I stood and joined her. I put ice in two rocks glasses. “What does that mean?”

“I can't have a baby. I guess.” She waved her hand casually, as if shooing away a wasp. Anne doesn't cry or wince or move with emotion. “Anyway, it's funny how you bring everything back to you all the time. And you think I'm the one who's selfish.”

“Who told you this? How do you know?”

“My doctor.”

“How long have you been trying to have a baby?”

She put a piece of ice in her mouth. “Charlie doesn't really like me.” She stroked my wrist. She put her arm through mine. “Do you like me?” she said.

I hugged her, but then didn't want my hug to seem like pity. “Anniekins,” I said.

She crunched ice right in my ear. “He hates when I crunch ice,” she said.

“I like you the best in the world.”

She blew my hair out of her face and pushed me away. “Don't tell Mom and Dad.” She stacked ice on top of her drink in a little pyramid. “I hate brandy. I hate sidecars. I've always thought your coffee is terrible, too, Ingrid, by the way. While I'm being frank. I'm sorry I have to tell you.”

“All right,” I said.

“It's always bitter.”

“It's strong, I like it strong.”

“Great women don't have children. Katharine Hepburn, for example. Or Virginia Woolf. I can't think of any great women who had children. Margaret Thatcher, maybe, but she probably had a barn full of nannies. Alice Neel had children but she totally abused them.” She went on talking, as if to fill the space with something else besides the two of us. “Did Marie Curie have children?”

“I don't know anything about Marie Curie.”

“Or George Eliot.”

“Have you been thinking about George Eliot lately? I've been thinking about George Eliot, too.”

“Because you're lonely,” she said. There was a pause where she looked like she couldn't breathe. “Don't tell them about what the doctor said.” Anne rarely drank anything but red wine. Tonight she drank the vodka so fast it splashed around her upper lip. She crunched and crunched the ice. “They think the whole point of life is to have children.”

“Do you want to have a baby?” I said.

“I don't know. I want to have a puppy.”

“I know how you feel.”

“I've started flirting with Elroy.” Elroy was her childhood toy. “He thinks I am very funny.”

“Stuffed dogs are good to flirt with.”

“They're not threatening and they won't kiss you when you're not expecting it. Elroy is better than a real dog or a husband.”

“Have you eaten?”

“I had sliced turkey and string cheese earlier. Soon I will eat some spinach.” Like me, Anne couldn't eat when upset. She tipped empty the second glass of vodka.

“You want to go into town and get some pasta?”

“Yes,” she said, unwinding herself from the bar. “And let's get drunk, too.”

*   *   *

Fresno is less than ten stories tall. When one outdoor mall gets old, Fresno builds another; for example, the Riverbend Shops, where Mr. Delucci's cantaloupe ranch used to be. Mr. Delucci now grows mushrooms on the ten acres he kept, behind the Office Depot and California Pizza Kitchen. His children have moved to New York and Hong Kong. The McAdamses have an egg farm next to the five hundred acres of cattle ranch they sold to the Prentisses for the new auto mall. The McAdamses' daughter Laura fell in love with a newspaper editor during a trip to England ten years ago and never came home. The Prentisses' younger son has made a career of renovating apartments in farther and farther reaches of Brooklyn.