Solomon's Oak (36 page)

He laughed. “A hussy? Where the heck did you learn that word?”

“Lorna.”

They locked eyes and giggled, then laughed nervously, then full out, until they both had tears in their eyes that were an equal mix of sadness and happiness.

From that moment forward, every time he looked at her there was more bare skin to explore. He admired the gentle rounding of her breasts, her flat, muscular stomach, and the sharp hip bones to either side, which were the warmest parts of all. As first-time lovers they were clumsy, bumping heads, saying “Ow” and “Sorry,” and his stupid back limited their positions. Every time he grimaced, she moved a few inches and asked, “How’s this?” and he could not help laughing. So much to be learned, when all parties were willing. “Hussy,” he said again, then he was inside her and nothing else mattered.

A Farewell Dinner Party Menu

Spaghetti

Romaine salad with blue cheese dressing

Diet Vanilla Coke over crushed ice

Red-velvet cupcakes with chocolate buttercream frosting

Vanilla pudding/flan

Glory broke the news to Juniper over dinner. “Your father wants to see you,” she said, holding on to Joseph’s hand under the table.

Impatient, sarcastic Juniper put down her fork and listened until Glory finished the particulars, then said, “What if I don’t want to see him?”

“Well, it doesn’t really make a difference,” Glory said. “Legally, he’s still your father, and he could go to court to make sure everyone knows that.”

Juniper looked from Glory to Joseph. “Do you think I should give the loser a second chance?”

Joseph said, “Whatever happened in the past, he’s still your father.”

Of course he didn’t want her to meet with the man. In the short while Joseph had known Juniper, the teenager had grown as fast as the baby goats. She was developing curves and her voice was kinder; she asked questions now, before blurting out her opinion. In their homeschooling, she put herself out there a little more each day. She made educated guesses and spectacular mistakes, but she was so excited about learning he wanted to write John Holt a fan letter, only to remember that the man died in 1985. On the other hand, maybe the father didn’t deserve her, but family was family. He thought of Rico’s kids so often. What they would give to see their father again. “You should see him,” he said.

“What if he wants me to move back in with him?”

“Let’s see how the meeting goes,” Glory said.

Juniper looked down at her favorite dinner, but didn’t move to pick up her fork. From that angle someone might think she was praying. Joseph took the opportunity to study that bluebird tattoo on her neck. The artist was professional. It was good work, not a cartoon, yet not entirely realistic. He knew that armed with a photo he could track down the guy who did it in hours—three at most—and smack him around for taking advantage of a young girl who’d spend the rest of her life trying to forget it.

“May I be excused from doing the dishes tonight?” Juniper asked.

“Sure.”

She scooted her chair back, then stood. She pushed the chair back in until it touched the table. She folded her napkin and set it alongside her plate and headed for the back door, Cadillac behind her.

“Where are you going?” Glory asked.

“Out to the barn to check on Nanny. I want to pet the babies.”

“That’s a good idea,” Glory said, forcing cheer into her voice that wasn’t fooling anybody. “It’s cold, so take a jacket.”

“I’ve got one in the barn.”

They listened to the screen door swing shut and looked at each other. Sex made a person absolutely crazy, Joseph thought: the goofy looks they tried to hide, the way he cherished muscle aches in places he didn’t normally feel anything, and the heat her skin gave off when they came within five inches of each other. It blotted out common sense. When he thought of her face, inches above his, he was pretty much useless.

“I feel guilty,” Glory said.

“We didn’t do anything wrong.”

Glory looked away, and when she looked back, her eyes brimmed with tears. “I can’t help it. In my heart I feel like I cheated on Dan.”

“Come here.” Even though it wasn’t comfortable, Joseph held her on his lap. He leaned his head against her breast and listened to her pounding heart. “Right now in New Mexico, the lilacs are blooming. For a few short weeks, the smell in the air is spellbinding. Then on its heels comes the blasted juniper pollen. The UPS driver has to wear a dust mask to make deliveries. Every day the sun shines a little longer; the sky is a little bluer, and the clouds that scud across the prairie are prideful and never the same twice. On my dad’s farm, the onions are in. He’ll stay outside so long my mother will threaten to give his dinner to the dogs if he doesn’t come inside.”

“It’s your home and you miss it,” Glory said.

“Just a week. I meant what I said, I won’t touch you again if that’s what you want. Come for one week. Perspective. It’ll clear your head.”

It was a long time before Juniper came back into the house, and by then Glory had retreated to her own chair. Without a word Juniper headed to her room, Cadillac right behind her.

JUNIPER

When Mrs. Solomon woke me, Joseph was with her. I figured, here we go, I’m gonna catch hell for oversleeping again. But something about the way they stood next to each other—almost touching—made me wonder if he’d spent the night.

Mrs. Solomon said, “Today is all ours. We’re going to drive the back road to the coast, have a picnic, and take photographs and beachcomb. There will be no talk of fathers. We’re going to live in the moment.”

“Can Cadillac come?”

“All the dogs are coming. Now go take a shower and get dressed.”

I washed my hair, and when I looked at it in the mirror, I thought maybe I’d get it cut short so the brown and black didn’t look so stupid. Mrs. Solomon trimmed Ms. Proctor’s hair, so she could do mine. But with my hair cut short, my tattoo showed, and I hated when people asked me why I got it, what it meant, did it hurt, and do you have others and in what places?

The minute I came out of the bathroom I smelled chicken frying. Mrs. Solomon wrapped it in foil while it was still warm, and even though it was early morning, I wanted to eat it right then. That apple, carrot, and raisin salad I loved was already in Tupperware. We put on T-shirts, long-sleeved flannels, sweatshirts, and packed raincoats and hats, because the coastline here is always foggy.

Joseph brought the cameras.

Edsel had to wear a coat. I hoped he didn’t have a seizure at the sight of the waves. Cadillac and Dodge loaded into the back of Joseph’s Land Cruiser all excited because dogs are clairvoyant when it comes to going somewhere. I brought towels, a gallon jug of water, and two bowls because when it comes to food and water, Cadillac doesn’t like to share.

Joseph drove. When Mrs. Solomon found something interesting, she read out loud from a book on marine mammals. Before we drove through the oak trees, we passed the road where my family once lived in a green house with white trim and a gray shingled roof. The houses were torn down as part of the Dragon Lake planned development, but other than a billboard saying how great everything would eventually be, there weren’t any houses. G18 is an old road, cut in 1971, way before I was born, and paved only a while back. It travels through microclimates, like oaks and scrub to ferns and rain-forest kind of plants before it ends at the Pacific Ocean. I guessed Joseph didn’t know that this route took us past the place where my sister’s trail ended. Mrs. Solomon was busy staring at the book in her lap when we passed it, reading elephant-seal facts so we could pretend this was homeschooling, not some last best day before my dad came to get me and ruined everything.

“One bull weighed a record eleven thousand pounds,” she said.

“Wonder how they convinced it to get on a scale?” Joseph said.

Mrs. Solomon laughed at that, but today, she was laughing at pretty much anything he said. How could she, when he was leaving? Whenever I thought of never seeing Joseph again, it felt like someone was stabbing me.

A jay flew across the front of the car and I thought of Casey’s blue sweater and felt sick to my stomach, but I kept it to myself because I could tell Mrs. Solomon needed this day to go perfectly.

“
Animalia, Chordata, Mammalia, Carnivora, Pinnipedia, Phocidae, Mirounga
. Hey, listen to this. Elephant seals molt every year, but instead of growing new fur on the same old skin, they grow
entirely new skin,
pushing cells from the blood vessels through the blubber and outward. That has to hurt,” Glory said.

“Probably not if you grow up that way,” I said. “Probably you get so used to it that it feels like peeling after a sunburn.”

The drive seemed to take forever, but when I checked the odometer, it turned out we’d only gone about twenty miles before we reached the sand and surf and so many seals lolling on the beach that I said, “From here they look like a box of spilled cigars.” A simile.

“Six-thousand-pound cigars made for a giant’s fingers,” Joseph said.

A metaphor.

The dogs wanted more than anything to jump the chain link and give the seals the business. Edsel barked the most of anyone. I pulled up the hood on my sweatshirt and tucked Edsel inside the pocket for my hands, his head peeking out to make sure nothing good happened to anyone else unless he was a part of it.

“Is anybody going to eat my chicken?” Glory asked.

Joseph ate two pieces, then said, “This is the best chicken ever. Of course, you haven’t tasted my green-chile chicken
ench-i-la-das
.”

Inch-ee-la-thas.
He said each syllable distinctly, just like our Spanish dialogues. Mrs. Solomon pretended to smack him, but at the last minute her hand was more like a pat. “All these mythical recipes. I have yet to see proof.”

“Turn me loose in
cocina
Solomon and I will prove it to you. But first I need to go to New Mexico for provisions.”

“A likely excuse.” Then she asked me, “Juniper, want a cupcake?”

I took three. Joseph said, “
Chica!
That means I only get two cupcakes. Glory makes you cupcakes all the time. Have mercy on the cupcake-deprived.”

“If you’re such a good cook, you can make your own,” I said, eating one, and saving the other two for later.

Mrs. Solomon said, “Yeah, chef. I’m sure you have a superior recipe. Here’s the keys to my kitchen. Show us your stuff.”

In a story, that’s called
double entendre
, when a thing can have two meanings at the same time.

The hours went by so fast.

On the beach to the right of the elephant seals, the dogs ran up and down the sand, barking. I threw the tennis ball for Dodge while Mrs. Solomon and Joseph sat on a blanket pretending they weren’t dying to kiss. I wondered what it felt like, falling in love. Cadillac herded Edsel for a while, then the little dog turned on him and chased him all the way back to the car. I laughed so hard my stomach cramped.

Joseph said, “That dog needs a new name.”

“What’s wrong with Edsel?” Mrs. Solomon said.

“Look at him,” Joseph said. “Since I started taking him outside, he’s
varonil
, manly. It’s insulting to call him
chatarra
.”

“What’s that mean?” she asked, and he said, “A car that’s scrap iron, a beater,” and then they both started laughing so I walked to the water to watch Cadillac and Dodge rush at the crashing waves, barking as if they thought that would make the waves stop.

I stayed there long enough that Mrs. Solomon and Joseph could kiss.

Later, he had the mammal book and began pelting us with facts. “An elephant seal can outrun a human, though they don’t run, they more or less ‘locomote’ along with their flippers.”

“Locomote?”
Mrs. Solomon said. “Like a train?”

“I don’t know. They have thirty spiky teeth and four sharp canines. They eat small sharks and octopus and skates, hundreds of pounds of fish a day. In the late 1890s, they were hunted to near extinction, but today, they’re doing fine and occupying some prime real estate, aren’t they?”

One of the bulls flopped across the sand up to the fence, flung his proboscis upward, and brayed. Not only did it sound horrible, but the smell made me gag. Joseph said, “He’s protecting his harem. They dive over five thousand feet deep and can hold their breath underwater for two hours. They depend on their whiskers the way cats do—”

“Enough facts,” Glory said, pulling the book out of Joseph’s hands and running down the sand with it, him limping after her. “You’re under arrest for grand theft library!” he said.

I got a chill that made me shudder.

Pretty soon, Joseph would be hundreds of miles away forever. Mrs. Solomon would be back on the ranch, training a new dog. Cadillac would go back to sleeping in his kennel instead of by my bed. At that moment I realized that I loved Joseph like a dad, and at the same time I realized that now he belonged to Mrs. Solomon in a way I never would.

No matter how well you rub a dog down with a towel, plenty of water is still left in his fur to shake all over you. When you drive home in a car stinking of damp dog, even with your face windburned, and when you’re so hungry you could eat two whole hamburgers without bothering to take off the pickles, when the best teacher you ever had starts singing along in Spanish with the radio even though he has a terrible singing voice, all those things together is the moment you know you have a family.

Every moment after is realizing it will be taken away.