The Lemon Orchard (16 page)

She and Bonnie drifted in the current and were lifted by the waves. The rip ran swiftly along the beach. It carried her and Bonnie parallel to the sand, all the way to the next lifeguard tower. Because it was off-season, the guard stations weren’t manned. But Julia was a strong swimmer, and she loved being in salt water more than anywhere else on earth. It restored her.

The ocean and sun brought Julia back to herself. As she swam hard, then let go and floated, face up toward the blue sky, she wondered what objects Roberto had to remind him of Rosa. She wondered whether he’d found her doll, Maria, when he’d gone back to the rock months later.

She and Bonnie climbed out of the ocean fifty yards along the beach from where they’d first gone in. Julia walked back to her towel but didn’t pick it up and just stood there drying in the sun. She had a long day ahead of her, and she wanted to hold on to this bright feeling of stepping out of the ocean.

She drove home and got ready. Sprayed Bonnie with the hose, combed out the worst tangles of seaweed, dried her with a towel. Then she stood under the outdoor shower—such a luxury—standing in the sun as she rinsed all the salt water off. She washed her hair with her aunt’s lemon shampoo—the label said
Casa Riley,
and Julia knew she’d had it made with blossoms and fruit from the orchard.

Inside she changed into a blue cotton shift and threw a navy sweater over her shoulders. She slipped her feet into a pair of ballet flats, momentarily wondered whether to take an overnight bag. She packed one, just in case.

She looked at Bonnie, debated on whether to take her, too. She knew she’d be busy, and didn’t want to chance neglecting her. Although she might have asked Roberto to feed and walk Bonnie, he’d gone home for the long weekend. She picked up the phone.

“Darling, you missed a delicious dinner,” Lion said when he answered.

“I know, I’m sorry,” she said.

“It’s appalling you got stuck with that pompous ass. Did he really drive you away?”

“No. Honestly, Lion—Thanksgiving was such a Jenny holiday . . .”

“Say no more. I completely understand.”

“Actually, I’m calling to ask a favor.”

“Hmm?”

“I have to drive down to San Diego. I have a project in mind, and I’m not sure how long it will take. Would you mind feeding Bonnie?”

“Not at all, love. I’ll drop by the Casa soon and give her lunch and a walk. Will, um, someone be going with you?”

“Roberto? No,” she said.

“Sweetheart, a solo road trip can be just the thing. Do you have some thinking to do?”

“Maybe,” she said, and laughed. “But I’m fine, Lion—I promise. And thanks for Bonnie-sitting. I won’t be gone long.”

“Whatever suits you,” he said. “Consider her fed. Two old dogs—she and I will have a lot to talk about.”

“Thanks,” Julia said, and they hung up.

Bonnie, worn out from the excitement of the beach and her swim, was lying in the shade on the terrace. It overlooked the canyon and sea, and Julia saw Bonnie watching the red-tailed hawks ride the thermals. Julia leaned down and kissed her goodbye.

“I’ll be back soon,” she said, knowing Lion would soon be there to take her on a midday walk.

Bonnie gave her a baleful look. They understood each other. Living alone for so long, they’d developed a language between them. She let out a small but not overly protesting bark.

As Julia backed out of the driveway, she saw Roberto in the orchard—he’d come back after all. He was on a ladder, pruning branches. Their eyes met and they waved. She braked, and for a minute thought of telling him where she was going. But instead she stepped lightly on the gas and kept going.

Roberto

Wherever Julia had gone, Roberto hoped she would return soon. He thought of her nonstop.

Señor Riley always gave him and Serapio Thanksgiving weekend off, but Roberto needed to work. The orchard ate up hours, and while he stood on the ladder he kept picturing Julia back from the beach, walking into the outdoor shower. Roberto, on his ladder, had been unable to tear his eyes away.

She stood behind the latticework, so he couldn’t see much except squares of sunlight on her bare arms and shoulders, but his imagination did the rest. He heard the water spray onto her skin, saw her raise her lean arms to lather shampoo on her head, could almost feel the warm water running down her smooth body.

He had planned to wait till she dried off and got dressed to go to her, take her into the orchard, kiss her again, tell her what last night had meant to him. But she had driven away before he could climb down from the ladder.

Around noon, when the sun blazed a path across the Pacific, he heard a car coming up the drive. For a moment he thought it was Julia and he couldn’t wait to go to her. But the car engine was too powerful to be her Volvo, and when the maroon Jaguar XKE skidded into the turnaround, he saw it was Mr. Cushing, who then walked into the house without knocking.

Roberto wondered if something was wrong. After rinsing his hands under the hose, he hurried to the kitchen door and looked inside. No sign of anyone. He knocked loudly.

“Hola!” Roberto called.

He heard Bonnie barking from somewhere inside, maybe on the big circular seaside terrace. Then footsteps, and Mr. Cushing and Bonnie entered the kitchen at the same time.

“Señor Cushing, Julia has gone out,” Roberto said.

“Yes, Roberto. She told me. Call me Lion, for godsakes.” He rummaged around one of the lower cabinets. “Where the hell does she keep the dog food?”

“I’ll get it,” Roberto said. His stomach dropped—why hadn’t she asked him to feed Bonnie?

Roberto went into the pantry, knelt by the cupboard beside the sink. He had carried the groceries in, placed Bonnie’s food here himself—a case of canned beef and a three-pound bag of dry food.

“Oh dear,” Mr. Cushing said. “What does Julia give her? Half wet, half dry?”

“Yes, that is right. Is she coming back soon?”

The old actor looked at him with kindness. “Um, I don’t know, Roberto. She didn’t seem to know herself.” He stuck a can under the electric opener and zapped the lid off.

“But she will stay away tonight?”

“Yes. Meanwhile, she asked me to feed and walk Bonnie.”

“I would happily do that for her,” Roberto said. “Since I am here anyway.” He felt stabbed that she hadn’t asked him, that after last night she would leave without saying goodbye.

Lion seemed to be watching him with a glint in his eyes as Roberto took the can of food from Lion’s gnarled old hands and mixed it in an aluminum bowl with a handful of kibbles.

“That’s very nice of you,” Lion said. “Thank you. I’ll let her know you’re on dog patrol. Will you take Bonnie out tonight and in the morning?’

“Sí, for sure,” Roberto said.

“Muchas gracias,” Lion said.

Roberto and the old actor watched Bonnie eat. He had the sense Lion felt the same emotional current he did; they knew what Bonnie meant to Julia.

“Did she say anything about why she left?” Roberto asked.

“Not really.” The old actor’s eyes gleamed. “Something about a project. But I’ll tell you one thing, Roberto.”

“What?”

“She was driven mad by Jenny’s death. Did she tell you about what happened?”

“Sí,” Roberto said.

“It practically destroyed her. You can imagine. But I see a difference in her in the last few weeks. A real transformation.”

“What is that?”

“She’s alive again. She feels happy.” Lion clapped Roberto on the shoulder. “And it’s because of you.”

“Me?” he asked.

“Yes. She likes you and you make her happy.”

Lion walked toward his car and climbed in. The motor started with a lusty roar. “The least we can do is take care of her while she’s here,” he said.

“We can do that, Mr. Cushing,” Roberto said, forgetting.

“Call me Lion!” he said. “You make me feel even more ancient than I am.”

“Okay, Lion,” Roberto said.

“I’m the oldest man in Hollywood, but I don’t feel it!” Lion called as he tooted the car horn and sped down the driveway.

Julia

The Reunion Project facility was in La Jolla, adjacent to Scripps Institution of Oceanography, far removed from the U.S.-Mexican border. Juan Rios had told her they would be open Friday and all weekend, and for her to come anytime. The building had a glass door but no windows and looked exactly like what it was: a morgue. That it was used for research, and for reuniting families, couldn’t take away that fact.

She parked her car in the lot next door, walked to the tall glass doors, and buzzed. The receptionist had her name on a list and told her Dr. Rios would be with her shortly.

He came out a few minutes later. Short and compact, he had graying black hair and tortoiseshell half-specs were dangling from a cord around his neck. He wore a rumpled blue oxford shirt and khaki pants, and he greeted her with a hug, like a long-lost friend.

“Chris speaks so highly of you!” he said.

“And of you,” Julia said.

“We go back a long way,” Juan said. “Grad school, when we did our field study together.”

“Chris tends to make work fun,” Julia said.

“You worked with him at the Uto-Aztecan mound, didn’t you?”

“Yes, eleven years ago,” she said.

“Well, I’m glad you got in touch.”

“I know you’re very busy.”

“Not at all. That’s what we are here for,” he said. “But if you don’t mind, let’s grab a bite before we get down to work.” He patted his belly, which was spilling over his belt. “Small, frequent meals. That’s what my wife keeps telling me.”

They climbed into his vehicle, an old Jeep that looked as if it spent more time in the mountains and deserts than on the well-kept roads of La Jolla. He drove her past the ocean, waves breaking on the rocky coast, and past Children’s Pool, a seawall built in 1931—he told her—to create a protected place for kids to swim.

“It’s been taken over by seals,” he said. “That’s Seal Rock, just offshore, and they seem to think Children’s Pool is a good place to birth their pups and keep them safe from what’s out in the ocean.”

She stared down at the glossy creatures, their pelts gleaming in the sun. No children were in the swimming area. They drove a few miles and parked in front of Rimel’s—a tiny restaurant, warm and cozy and filled with beautiful paintings.

“Everything is good,” Juan said as they sat down. “It’s all fresh, the catch is right off the dock, and if you like fish tacos . . .”

“Done,” Julia said.

They drank iced tea and talked about Chris and Maxine, how Julia had wound up studying with Chris at Yale, how Juan had gone into anthropology because he was Mexican and wanted to study the layers of culture and movement that gave his country and its people their identity.

The food arrived, and Juan was right: the fish tacos were delicious—fresh halibut, salsa, and crisp white cabbage in a corn tortilla. They ate quietly and drank iced tea in the gentle daytime darkness of the small restaurant.

“The Children’s Pool,” she said. “Did you show it to me for any reason?”

“No,” he said. “It’s just a La Jolla attraction. Why?”

“I was thinking about fences and walls, and how they don’t really do the job, and how they relate to your work now.”

“Very perceptive,” he said. “Fences and walls.”

“Keeping out the unwanted.”

“Unwanted—that’s a good way to put it.”

“Tell me about your work now, Juan. It’s called the Reunion Project?”

“Yes,” he said. “But in general, not happy reunions. I work on border-crossing deaths.”

“What do you mean?”

“We collect bodies and bones from the desert, try to match them with dental records, DNA, even clothing and belongings, and let families back in Mexico know the fate of their loved ones. Six hundred to a thousand deaths a year, mostly in the hot months.”

“How did you go from papers and fieldwork on cultural anthropology to studying border-crossing deaths?”

“It’s still anthropology, but applied in a very specific way. The border has changed drastically since I was young.”

“How?”

“There has always been migration. That goes without saying when you have a rich country like ours sharing a border with a country as poor as Mexico.”

“It’s a given,” Julia said

“Yes,” he said. “The U.S. wants to protect the border—Operation Gatekeeper and the fence. The first phase took place just a few miles south of here—from the Pacific Ocean into San Ysidro—the border between San Diego and Tijuana.”

She listened intently.

“That’s when migrants began heading east, crossing through the Otay Mountains and the desert beyond—and dying in great numbers.”

“That made you change your focus?”

“Yeah,” he said. “The sheer numbers. Fresh skeletons. And then we’d go into town and see families walking around with pictures of their sons and daughters and husbands and parents—it got to me.”

“It would get to me, too,” she said.

He nodded. “Some Mexican and Central American families say goodbye to their children, parents, expecting to hear from them when they arrive in Phoenix, L.A., New York, wherever. But they never hear. And I couldn’t imagine how they felt, and how they lived with it year after year. I’d seen the bodies in the desert, and I knew there had to be a way to match them with their families. So I joined up with other anthropologists working on similar projects in Texas and Arizona.”

“Do you think we’ll find out about Rosa?”

“I’ve already started trying,” Juan said. “Let’s go back to my office.”

He paid the bill and they walked into the shaded parking lot, climbed into the Jeep, and headed back to the morgue. Julia closed her eyes because she had a picture of smiling, dark-haired Rosa in her mind, from Roberto’s stories of her, and she wanted to hold on to it as long as she could, before they entered the building of bodies and bones.

After walking through the reception area, they came to a locked door with a sign that said
THE REUNION PROJECT
. Juan punched in a code and they entered. The hallway smelled of pine and lemon, but the scents didn’t quite cover the chemical odor beneath.

When they got to Juan’s office he dragged a second chair beside his and invited Julia to sit beside him at his desk.