All You Get Is Me (11 page)

“I’ve imagined you sleeping here.” He leans over and smells the pillow. “It smells like you.”

I sit next to him on the bed and we swing our legs in unison like children. Forest puts his arm around my shoulders. We both laugh. I hope he can’t tell how nervous I am. I’ve never had a boy in my bedroom and I’ve never even come close to feeling this way. I feel like I could do anything right now if Forest did it with me. It’s exhilarating and it’s also a bit scary.

“Hey.” He points to the photos on the desk. “Is that your mom?”

“Yeah.”

He walks over and picks up a framed photo. The best one, I think.

“Wow. You could be sisters. She’s so beautiful.”

“I know.”

We hear a rumbling outside and I walk over to the window and look out to see Miguel driving the tractor into the yard. Tomás is riding in the trailer filled with tools that follows behind. Forest stands next to me.

“Which one is Tomás?” he asks.

“He’s the one in the trailer.”

“He’s so young. I never expected him to be so young.”

“Neither did I.”

We stand there for a moment, side by side, watching, as Tomás jumps out of the trailer and walks next to Miguel toward the bunkhouse.

Back downstairs, Jane is rinsing a bunch of green grapes under the faucet and putting them in a bowl.

“Hey, Forest, can you go outside and make sure Steve didn’t burn the place down? Tell him that the food’s almost ready. He should tell Tomás and Miguel too. And he needs to cut some weenie sticks.”

“Weenie sticks?”

“Yeah, to roast the hot dogs on, or veggie dogs if you prefer.” She holds up a package.

“Sure, okay.” He looks at me.

“I’m gonna help Jane carry the food out. I’ll see you out there.”

We wait for the screen door to wheeze shut before we say anything.

“So?” says Jane, eyebrows arched.

“So what?” I grin at her.

“So, he’s pretty cute,” she says, wiping her hands on a dish towel.

“He is, isn’t he?”

“And nice. He’s a nice boy.”

“Did Steve tell you who his mother is?”

“He did. But luckily I don’t believe in guilt by association. I go primarily on my spidey senses and I like him. Now, can you pull that corn out of the pot and wrap it up in foil?”

I find the tongs and pull the foil out of the drawer. “So, I guess you heard about what’s going on around here.”

Jane leans against the counter and grabs her wineglass. “More or less. Do you think your dad’s going to go ahead with a lawsuit?”

I shrug. “Probably. He’s not likely to leave this alone.”

Jane muses, “No.”

“You think my dad’s nuts?”

She takes a sip. “No. He’s not nuts. I’m not sure how all of this will play out, though. Are you worried about it?”

“Yeah, I guess I am . . . a little.”

“Well, you know, the thing about people like your dad is that you can’t stop them from doing what they think is right, and it’s probably a damn good thing that they don’t think twenty steps ahead like some of the rest of us or they’d never try to change the world.”

“Yeah, I know. It’s just that it’s my world too, you know? He dragged me out here, against my will, and now that I’m finally settling in, he’s going to turn the entire town against us.”

“Well, maybe not the entire town.” She smiles. “C’mon, sweetie, let’s not be glum, let’s have fun tonight.”

Jane and I work together to get all the food for our cookout into containers. I gather up forks and knives and plates and napkins and cups and condiments. Cat Stevens sings “Here Comes My Baby” as we head out the door, our arms piled high.

The light stays with us until the last hot dog is eaten. Rufus is only too happy to lick the plates. Darkness closes in around us and the stars appear. The fire turns everyone’s face a warm golden brown. Jane explains how s’mores work to Miguel and Tomás. They’ve never seen them before but they seem to like them a lot. Jane’s Spanish is pretty good and Steve can fill in whatever she misses. Forest is a bit of a rookie to this whole campfire concept too. Apparently he never went to camp. His first two hot dogs ended up as charred husks that even Rufus wouldn’t eat and then I showed him how to brown them slowly, rotating the stick like a rotisserie over the very top of the flame.

Steve disappears from our circle for a couple of minutes and returns with a guitar. He plays around for a while, banging out bits of songs, and then he sings “Me and Bobby McGee,” playing along while Jane sings harmony on the verses. He and Jane are experts at this; they camp all the time. They have a whole repertoire of campfire songs that they know. Reynaldo’s wine is flowing and everyone has a glow to their cheeks. I pick up my camera and take some close-ups of Forest and then of Jane and Steve. When I take a photo, I try to catch the person in an unguarded moment. This isn’t always easy. You have to be very patient but the result is worth it. Sometimes I pretend to take the photo and then I take the real one later when the person has forgotten about the camera. I ask Steve to ask Tomás if it’s okay if I take a photo and Tomás nods shyly. I take a few of him and then a couple of him and Miguel. They have matching straw cowboy hats and Tomás is wearing a T-shirt advertising a toxic fertilizer company. Steve hands his guitar to Miguel, who fingerpicks a beautiful Mexican folk song. They call them
corridos
in Mexico. Miguel sings in that mournful way that Mexican folksingers have. Steve and Jane get up and slow dance in the grass next to us. Tomás sings along softly and I notice that Forest can’t keep his eyes off of him. He seems to be watching his every move, studying him, memorizing what he looks like. After Miguel sings a few more songs, he hands the guitar over to Tomás. While I’m cursing my parents once again for never giving me music lessons, Tomás starts in on a heartbreaking love song in a voice so heavy with sadness that we all gape at him. Jane and Steve sit back down on their log and lose themselves in Tomás’s voice. I forget to breathe. I brush away the tears that start to roll down my cheeks and I glance over at Forest. He’s crying too but he’s not wiping his tears away. He doesn’t care if I see him. I take his hand in mine and squeeze it and we watch Tomás tell his sad, sad story, not understanding a word he’s singing but understanding everything.

Chapter 10

T
he morning sun in my eyes wakes me. I forgot to close my curtains last night. I lie there listening to familiar voices floating in through my open window. The clock on my bedside table says seven fifteen. My bedroom already feels warm. We’re in for a hot day. Rufus has vacated the rug next to my bed, where he was passed out the last time I saw him. I kick off the covers and make my way to the window, yawning and scratching. The first thing that strikes me as bizarre is Forest’s car. It’s parked on the driveway in virtually the same place that it was parked yesterday. I did say good-bye last night and he did leave, didn’t he? The voices I heard belong to Forest and Steve and Tomás. They appear to be loading the pickup for the local market today. Forest is carrying a box of beets over to the truck, his pale, lean arms straining. He and Tomás are laughing about something, which is also strange since they don’t even speak the same language. I watch Forest hand the box off to Tomás. I am absolutely lovesick for this boy. As I watch him, I relive the kissing, the
real
kissing we did late last night when I walked him to his car. When he finally left I was dizzy for him.

And then he looks up and he sees me and he smiles.

I pull on my grass-stained jeans and a clean T-shirt and brush my teeth in four seconds. My hair is hickory smoked and tangled and my lips are pink around the edges from Forest’s kisses. I yank my hair back into a ponytail and run down the wooden steps and out the front door as though the house were on fire. The boys watch me, amused.

“Hey, sleepyhead, nice of you to join us,” says Forest.

“That’s pretty big talk for someone who says that he never gets up before ten.”

“I just thought I’d come over and help out. It’s such a beautiful day.”

I look from Forest to Steve, who shrugs. He looks a little bleary-eyed, possibly from polishing off half a case of wine between the four of them last night.

“Whaddya mean ‘help out’? You came here voluntarily?”

“Well, yes, but a coffee would be nice.”

“Okay.” I’m mystified. Why would Forest just show up here, wanting to work? Does he need something to do or is this some sort of male bonding thing that girls aren’t supposed to understand? It also occurs to me that this could be some form of penance he’s serving on behalf of his mother. To sweat alongside Tomás might somehow make him feel better about everything.

“Where’s Jane?” I ask Steve.

He heaves a box of Early Girl tomatoes into the back of the truck. “She went back to bed when Farmer Forest here showed up. She’s a little under the weather.” He mimes drinking wine.

“I’ll bet.”

“She’ll be up shortly. That tent turns into a solar oven as soon as the sun hits it. You could roast a chicken in there.”

I automatically glance over at the chickens. As a rule I don’t like them to hear stuff like that. They’re busy mumbling and pecking, oblivious.

“Okay, well, I’ll go make that coffee.” I glance at Forest again, confused.

I pull open the screen door and go back into the house and fire up the espresso machine. The machine was already used this morning and the remains of breakfast sit next to the sink. How did I sleep through people eating breakfast in my kitchen? I grind the espresso beans and fill the little cup with fragrant grounds, click it into place on the machine, and yank the heavy handle all the way to the right. Thirty seconds later, thick, foamy coffee sputters into the mug below the spout. I fill a metal pitcher with cold milk from the fridge and open up the steamer knob, frothing the milk to three times its original volume. As I’m doing this, I watch out the kitchen window. Forest is following behind Tomás, pushing a wheelbarrow toward the zucchini and eggplant patch. Tomás seems rather amused by all this.

As I’m spooning the hot, foamy milk onto the coffee, I notice Forest’s book bag slumped on a chair. I glance out the window. Forest is busy in the patch. My curiosity gets the better of me. I walk over to the book bag and flip it open, peering inside without touching anything. There are five notebooks, identical to the one I saw him writing in that day at the tar pits. I carefully slide one out. It’s thick with writing. I slide it back into place, too overcome with guilt to open it. I also think for just a second about that scene in
The Shining
where Jack Nicholson has spent every day typing his “novel” and every line on every page of a huge stack of paper reads: “
All work and no
play makes Jack a dull boy.
” I look behind me. No crazy person with an ax.

Next to the notebook there’s a paperback:
Ham on Rye
by Charles Bukowski, Forest’s email address, I get it now. I open it to the first page and read the opening sentence:
The first thing I remember is being under something
. I close the book and put it back in its spot. There’s also a thin, white, official-looking book in there. I slide it out and look at the cover. It’s a class schedule for NYU, New York University. Clear across the country, a million miles away. You don’t carry class schedules around with you for nothing. He must be thinking about applying there. He hasn’t said anything to me about it, but then why should he? Maybe this thing we have is just a summer fling to him; maybe if it weren’t me it would be some other girl. After all, he’s only here for the summer and then he’s back in L.A. so it’s not like a big commitment or anything. But then why would he be in my garden picking zucchini right now?

I dump a couple of spoons of brown sugar into the coffee and stride outside with it. On the way over to Forest, Steve tells me that he and Jane are going to do the market today so I’m off the hook. It’s been ages since I’ve had a Saturday off. I wonder if Forest wants to do something with me or if he’s planning hard labor for the rest of the day, or the rest of his life.

I catch up with Forest and hand him the mug.

“Caffeine at last.” He takes the mug and sips it eagerly. A foamed milk mustache appears on his upper lip. He licks it off but doesn’t quite get it.

Tomás tips his hat a bit and wishes me a good morning. “
Buenos días
, Aurora.”

“
Buenos días
, Tomás. How are you?”

“
Muy bien
, very good.” He says the English words quietly just as I do with my Spanish words.

I turn my attention back to Forest. “So, I have the day off. Jane’s taking my market shift. How long till farm life loses its appeal for you?” I notice that his pale skin is starting to turn slightly pinkish. I poke him in the arm with my index finger. It leaves a white dot. “You’re burning, by the way.”

“Let me just finish loading the truck and then I think I’ll have a whole new appreciation for farmwork, okay?”

“Sure.” I walk away as Tomás has a good laugh at Forest’s expense. He doesn’t need to speak English to know what’s going on here.

After I put Band-Aids on Forest’s blistered palms and loan him a long-sleeved T-shirt, we’re ready to go back outdoors. Jane and Steve are long gone and Miguel and Tomás are off with the tractor somewhere.

“Where are you taking me? You know I’ve already put in a good day’s work so let’s not get carried away,” says Forest, following me.

“It’s nine a.m., you worked for exactly two hours.”

“Really? It’s only nine a.m.? I could use a nap.”

I roll my eyes at him. Out behind the greenhouse, I look for a sort of trail where I’ve tamped the grass down. I finally find it and set out. Forest walks behind me. Rufus quickly loses interest. He trots back to the house to pretend he’s a guard dog.

We walk along in silence. I don’t ask him about why he came over this morning to work. If he wants to tell me, he will; otherwise, it’s his business. I’m more concerned with prompting Forest to talk to me about NYU and his plans for the future but I’m afraid he’ll think I want more than he’s prepared to give. I’m also afraid that if I say anything, he’ll know I went through his things, which I’m feeling a little ashamed about.