Valley Fever (20 page)

*   *   *

The midday air smelled of drying Thompsons. The house on the river was, literally, the center of a dehydrator. All over the valley, farmers had decided on raisins rather than harvesting green. I worried with something close to grief that we had made a mistake in leaving all our fruit on the vine. Felix should have started picking by now, at least with the grapes to the south.

That afternoon, sitting in Phillip's little office above the warehouse, I rented out all four caning machines, all four harvesters, and two of the pickup machines. I fielded phone calls from at least six other farmers looking for equipment. By the end of the day I had every machine we owned rented for the next two weeks. I charged what I could see Phillip had charged the previous season, and the farmers and farm managers seemed happy, too happy, at the price. A Mr. Singh came to fetch the harvester eight minutes after we'd hung up the phone, smiling with what I thought might be disbelief.

It hadn't occurred to me that rental prices might vary from season to season, depending on the volume of the crop and how many people were drying their grapes. It hadn't occurred to me until I met the delighted Mr. Singh. “You are very kind!” he said, and waved to me as he drove the machine down Avenue 7. I knew I had done something terrible.

I phoned Bootsie and she laughed at my prices. “Do you know how hard it is to find machines right now? Just about every farmer in the valley has decided to do raisins. The math says lay down your grapes. Lay down thy grapes!” She laughed some more. “I don't mean to laugh,” she said. “Charge double the next time round. At least double.”

“I already made deals for the next two weeks.” In two weeks the raisin season would be nearly over. That year, grapes had to be picked by September 15, the deadline to collect crop insurance.

“Renege.”

“No, I can't do that.”

“Yes, of course you can.”

“No, it's not how Dad wants to do things. He says an agreement is an agreement.”

She took a big, long, daunting breath. “That is why your father is in trouble,” she said. “He is the only person in the whole farming industry who feels that way.”

“Any industry,” I said.

“Yes,” she said. “Any industry.”

I phoned Wilson.

“It doesn't matter,” he said.

“You don't think this is a huge disaster?”

“No, the money from the rentals is never a big deal. It's, like, a pittance. If you really want to make some money, sell the machines.”

“Sell the machines?”

“Sure, sell the machines, sell the vines, sell those useless peach trees. Sell the warehouse and that packing shed. Sell everything.”

“Dad sold the packing shed ten years ago.”

“Oh, yeah. He did? We had some parties in that shed, remember?”

“Where are you?” I said. He sounded drunk.

“Football practice,” he said.

“Listen to me. Uncle Felix made it sound like the truck rentals were especially important this year.”

“I guess so,” he said. “I don't think it's going to make that much of a difference. At this point you just have to wait for the money from the grapes to come in.”

“Then Felix has to pick them.”

“Talk to Felix.”

“Can you talk to Felix, too?”

“You think Uncle Felix listens to me? He thinks I'm as dumb as my dad,” Wilson said. “If you're worried, just call up the guys you made the deals with and tell them you have a different price.”

“No, Dad would not be happy. Dad says that's not how we do business.”

“I'm trying to watch some football, Ingrid. In a minute I'm going to start charging you for this conversation.”

“Thank you, Wilson. Okay.”

“Ingrid,” he said.

I waited.

“Ingrid?”

“Yes. I'm here.” He really was drunk.

“If you married me, none of this would matter at all, you know. Your dad could just retire.”

“Thank you for the offer, Wilson. Dad doesn't want to retire.” Through the skin of dust on the office windows I could see heat shimmer from the street and above the vines. The air was too thick to see the hills to the west. Windy days and days after rain, you could see the hills to the west.

“Ingrid,” he said.

“Yes, Wilson.”

“Who else are you going to marry?”

*   *   *

That evening I heard them come in, the echo of the heavy front door through the rest of the house. I had been in bed watching my room go from bright to bent evening light. I'd been itching and my calves and ankles were raw and bleeding slightly; somehow I'd been bitten by something, fleas maybe, or mosquitoes. I took
Middlemarch
from the bedside table and pretended to be reading. There was the clank of my mother's silver-trimmed handbag on the entry table. My parents rarely used the front entrance.

Mother said, “See how beautiful we made it?”

Dad said something softly, something I couldn't hear.

“We did it all ourselves,” she said.

Across the living room, the light click of my mother's steps and the soft thud of my father's.

She appeared at my bedroom door. “How are you?”

“What happened?”

“Dad had spots on his lung,” which is in fact exactly what I expected to hear her say. I'd imagined it already.

“What's that mean?”

“Little spots.”

“Spots of what?”

“Dr. Epstein is sending him to a specialist.”

“What kind of specialist?”

“I don't know, Ingrid, I don't ask questions.” She stood there. “What are you doing?”

“I'm reading.”

“Is that how you read? In the dark?”

“I'm taking a break.”

“It's so hot,” she said. The heat was always a good excuse. The heat was a good excuse for taking a break or going to the doctor or not driving out to the fields for one day in your entire career. The heat was a good excuse for Dad to have spots on his lung. “I guess we could use the air again tonight.”

“Come on,” I said, “let's have a drink.”

I rolled the limes on the counter with the butt of my palm and squeezed them into a pitcher using a fork as a reamer. I added superfine sugar and ice and the vodka and I stirred and stirred. I poured two into cocktail glasses and we drank them quickly and I poured two more. “Is the lime okay?”

“There's something growing in the pool,” she said. “I don't mind the lime.” With the red nail of her index finger she picked out the thick pieces of pulp settled at the edge of the glass and wiped them on her cocktail napkin. “Wilson's pool boy is going to stun it.”

“Shock it.”

“Right, shock it.” We both waited.

“Where's Daddy?”

“How did it get so green so fast?”

“It's algae.”

Mother said, “It's growing and taking over everything.” A lot of the time we spent our lives wishing things to grow so good and fast. Other times, we wanted them to slow down—not just with algae, not just with spots on the lung.

“Why is Wilson sending his guy?” Wilson never parted with money, never even picked up a drinks tab.

“He thinks it's depressing,” Mother said.

“It is depressing.”

“Too depressing to look at when he sits at this table, I guess.” She said, “It's good you're here.”

“I'm glad I'm here.” I was, sincerely, for once, glad to be home. My ankles burned with bites. I rubbed them, casually.

In the freezer, Mother found the stale end of a yellow cake Anne had brought from Los Angeles.

“Do you know even the garlic couldn't save those peaches?” Dad came into the kitchen wearing his work boots. He wore work boots like they were slippers, because he didn't know what else to wear around the house. He'd never owned any slippers except ones my mother had taken from hotels. “What a waste of garlic.”

We had one peach tree out front that Dad called the Family Tree, and we could pick peaches off it and eat them hot from the sun, because instead of fertilizers or pesticides, Dad used concentric circles of garlic, a technique meant to keep the pests away and the soil fertile, but too expensive for real production. You don't know what peaches are until you eat them hot and jammy right off the tree. I can't eat the hard, cold two-dollar peaches from farmers' markets in Hollywood on Ivar or on Union Square or obviously from Portobello Road. People from central California who've got peach trees in their yards are spoiled when it comes to fruit, and to everything else: prosciutto cured by Mr. Boschetti from his own almond-fed pigs in Firebaugh, raisins still warm and chewy from your grandmother's backyard, cheese made by the Jensen's Dairy daughter just south of Fresno, pistachios oven-roasted from a neighbor's fresh crop. Food didn't taste as good anywhere as it did at the house in Fresno.

“But we have plenty of good garlic,” Mom said. No one had bothered to go out and pick the garlic. It had gone all weedy and grasslike. In the garage, we had burlap bags of onions and garlic from the Matheuses, crops they brought over every summer. We never thought of the garlic in the front yard as actual garlic.

“Did Mommy tell you I've got spots?” Dad said.

“It's dust,” I told him. Fleas, the bites must have been. Fleas in the dust.

“Dr. Epstein can't fix dust,” he said.

“Just go see the doctor, Dad. It's dust and you'll be fine.” I put a plate of cake in front of him. “Who's he sending you to?”

“That awful guy,” Mother said.

“I wish you wouldn't say it like that,” said Dad. He rubbed the back of his hand over his face, over his forehead, wiping away perspiration.

“You know that guy,” Mother said to me. “Jane's doctor.”

“Oh,” I said. “He's fine.” No good could come from seeing Dr. Parker. His patients invariably died. I knew from Uncle Felix and Aunt Jane he had a waiting room that looked like a crowded bus station: not enough chairs, everyone standing against the walls, sick relatives crouched next to sick relatives. It was hard to imagine such an office, where patients were paid so little regard because they were clearly expected not to be here much longer. An office like that could really test your dignity. He got away with this by being the only oncologist in town who took everyone's insurance.

Dad said, “We can't go anywhere else right now.”

I said, “Stanford will see you, or UCLA, those places will see you. Why not go there?”

Mom said, “Daddy has the grapes.”

“Daddy, I love you, but anyone could look after the grapes. I could look after the grapes.” I said this with less confidence than I might have before the fiasco with renting the machines.

Mother said, “Felix should just pick those fucking grapes.” Mother never used the f-word. I had heard her use the f-word one other time in my life, when I was sixteen and she said, “The whole fucking bathroom has flooded!” Now it was into the first week of September. He should have at least picked the white grapes. All the Fiestas and Thompsons around Dad's vines were on the ground or being harvested. Everything from Bakersfield to Selma had been picked two weeks ago. Fresno was picking right now. Even Mello was calling their juice, and Mello waited until the very last minute to call the juice. I scratched beneath my socks until blood sunk into my nails.

We ate the cake, and slowly in the heat the buttercream frosting slid off the half we didn't eat. Anne had brought it from the famous bakery in Beverly Hills where you must stand in line. Anne put a lot of faith in shops where people were willing to stand in line for a product despite being in a capitalist country.

“It's just a cough,” Dad said again. “Everyone's got spots. You breathe in dirt every day of your life.”

“I miss it when we don't have peaches in the ice cream,” Mother said.

“Should we make ice cream?” I asked.

“We could get peaches,” said Dad.

“I don't want ice cream from Georgia peaches. I want our peaches.” She poked at the cake with her fork until it became a neat pile of crumbs.

“Our peaches are the most delicious,” I said.

Mother put both hands around her throat, as if she were trying to keep someone from strangling her. “I wish this hadn't been the year the peaches didn't grow,” she said.

“Bad timing,” I said. “But I rented your machines, Dad.”

“You did,” he said, and patted my hand. “I knew you could handle anything you needed to.”

“Let's use the air tonight,” Mother said, lifting the hair off the back of her neck. “I'll close the windows.”

I said, “When does the note get called from the bank?”

“Which note?” said Mother. “I can't keep track of all the notes.”

Dad said, “They're not going to call my note. Even if they thought about it, Felix would step in.” Uncle Felix was on the board at the Bank of the West. “We're still talking to financers.”

“What if you don't get the financing?”

“Then we're going to have a tough year,” my father said, and chuckled. “We'll get the financing.”

“Every year we worry whether or not we'll get the financing.” Mother held her glass out to me. Her hand was wrinkled, loose: an old woman's hand. “I can't drink this lime juice, darling. Will you get me a tumbler with wine?” At the house we often drank Uncle Felix's old wine, with the labels written out by hand, when we didn't know what else to pull out of the basement. Sometimes these bottles were drinkable and sometimes they weren't.

I emptied Mother's gimlet into the kitchen sink and closed the window. I clicked the thermostat to cool.

“The windows in the dining room and the bedroom,” Mother said.

“She'll get them,” Dad said. “Let's just sit for a minute. It's nice to sit.”