The Lemon Orchard (4 page)

She heard the clang, clang of Roberto’s sledgehammer. She hesitated for a minute, wondering whether she should go in the opposite direction, not bother him, let him continue with his work. She stood in the shade of a wind-sculpted pine, watched him putting everything he had into the hammer strikes. He wore a white T-shirt and baggy blue jeans, a heavy silver key chain looping into one pocket, and scuffed boots. Just before she would have walked the other way, he looked toward her.

It took him a moment to smile, but when he did, she saw how beautiful he was. He had worry in his face, and it killed her a little to see relief fill his eyes, as if she had provided him with sudden solace. His brown-black hair was close-cropped, and he had a neatly trimmed moustache and a fine two or three days’ growth of beard. His face and arms were light brown, his muscles long and lean.

He had some lines around his eyes and mouth, but she realized that he was younger than she’d first thought. He might have been in his thirties, but no more. She walked toward him.

“Hola, Julia,” he said.

“Hola, Roberto. How are you?”

“Bien, bien. How are you? Hi, Bonnie . . .”

She watched as Bonnie bumped against his legs and he bent to pet her, running his hands through her fur.

“Thank you for fixing the guard rails,” she said. “Jenny and I used to . . .” She stopped herself.

“Of course,” he said. “I want it to be safe for you. No one else walks here very much.”

“Sorry for taking you away from the orchard, though,” she said. “I’m sure you have lots to do there.”

“That’s okay. Serapio and the others are on the job. I’ll get there soon enough.” He stood erect, holding the sledgehammer instead of leaning on it, but then he laid it down and wiped his brow with the back of his hand as if deciding to take an official break.

“Are you thirsty? Do you want me to get you some water?” she asked, then felt like an idiot because she should have just brought it as she had once done for Tonio and Ricardo, his predecessors.

“No, I’m fine,” he said.

“So, you’re running the orchard now,” she said.

“Yes,” he said.

“You obviously do a great job,” she said. The sun had risen over the mountain and the lemons glowed with white light. Canyon dust coated the glossy green leaves, making them look like tarnished silver.

“Thank you. I’m lucky your uncle hired me. This is good steady work.”

She nodded, struck by the choice of words: “good steady work.”

“And you live on the property?”

“No,” he said. “I stay here sometimes, but I live somewhere else.”

“Like where?” she asked, a little surprised—Tonio and his family had lived in the cottage; it had been a perk of the job.

He looked startled, and for a minute she wanted to take back the question, wondering if somehow it was rude or forward.

“In East L.A.,” he said.

“Oh,” she said. She didn’t know Los Angeles well, but everyone knew the stereotype of East L.A. and its tough reputation—gangs and drug dealers. She thought of his daughter, if he really had one, and wondered who was taking care of her. He didn’t wear a wedding ring.

“I was thinking about our talk yesterday. Your daughter . . .”

“Rosa,” he said.

“Does she live with you?”

“No,” he said. “She lives in Mexico.”

“Oh.” Maybe that explained why he’d seemed so evasive. “Do you see her often?”

“I can’t,” he said.

That seemed incredible to her, made her second-guess her own first impressions of him. The idea that he could have a child in this world and not see her as often as he could instantly changed her opinion of him. “Why not?”

“It’s not that easy,” he said.

“You must miss her terribly.”

“Yes,” he said.

“Don’t you get along with her mother?”

“That’s not why I don’t see Rosa.”

She already knew. It was hardly a secret—in many ways it was the story of L.A., or at least of the workers who kept it running. “You don’t have papers,” she said. “You can’t cross the border.”

His gaze was proud and steady; his silence let her know she was right. Her uncle had always hired illegal workers; although the circumstances were different, as an immigrant himself he honored the desire to find a better life. She loved her uncle’s compassion but right now she judged Roberto for valuing his job and life in the States over his daughter. Still, when she looked into his eyes, she saw despair so dark it scared her.

“Why don’t you see Rosa?” she asked.

“Something bad happened,” he said.

“When?”

“Five years ago,” he said.

The coincidence punched her in the chest. She backed up just slightly, stepping off the dry dirt path.

“Who is Jenny?” he asked. The sound of her name scraped Julia’s skin, like a peeling sunburn. Roberto said it again: “Who is Jenny?”

“My daughter,” she said. She turned away from him. Bonnie lay in the shade, but seeing Julia move, she rose creakily and headed off down the path. Julia followed her around the bend, without another word to Roberto.

Lion

Lion Cushing lived on a steep driveway, twisting and turning straight up a mountainside off Old Topanga Canyon Road, and had been there so long some people called him the Dean of Topanga. They came to him for tales of Jimi Hendrix partying at Moon Fire Temple, rumors of Charles Manson living in his barn before his days with the Family, rampant legends of UFOs using the canyon for navigation, takeoff, and landing in clouds of green haze, tales of who was doing whom in the Malibu Colony, and decades of gossip and memories from Lion’s Hollywood days. Those good old days.

At one time they had come for weed. Back in the day, Lion had had the best on the Westside, and everyone knew it. It made him rather sad, standing on his stone terrace amid a great and ancient stand of eucalyptus trees, to realize that so much of his life was in the past. Back then pot was part of something bigger—a life even Lion couldn’t believe he’d led. Now a joint was just a joint.

How quickly life had sped by. He had had one of the best managers in the business, who’d kept him from squandering his money, so even though he was ancient and mainly retired, he could still live an appallingly decadent life. He’d somehow kept his looks—good genes was the only explanation—by the standards of most seventy-five-year-old men, but that was a far cry the days when
Variety
had described him as having been “chiseled from the same granite as the mountains in his home state.” New Hampshire. That was a lifetime ago.

The gong rang, a relic from a Tang dynasty Buddhist temple. The sound pleased him, not just because it meant he had company, but also because it reminded him of filming
Two for the East
on the Yangtze River, with his co-star Graciela Crawford Riley. He went to the door and there stood Graciela’s niece Julia.

“Welcome, my darling,” he said, kissing her on both cheeks before wrapping her in a hug. “You made it up the mountain without incident!”

“Well worth it to see you,” she said.

“I’ve got a crumbing castle and a private road the county would like to close and condemn, but having a beautiful dinner companion lie to save my feelings makes life worth living another day.”

“Oh, Lion . . .” She smiled.

“And not just any beautiful companion—you.”

He’d known her since she was a little girl; Graciela used to bring her up here to ride his horses. Grief had washed over her, given her the soft aspect of a watercolor, aged her—not beyond her years, but he missed the bright spark in her eyes, the ready-for-anything enthusiasm she’d had for life before Jenny’s death. He missed the quick rush of emotion that had been her trademark, whether she knew it or not.

He led her inside, through the baronial living room, and onto the terrace. The house sat on the top of Topanga’s highest peak, and he took deep pleasure in seeing her drink in the wraparound view—the Pacific, Catalina and the Channel Islands, the Palos Verdes Peninsula embracing the southern end of Santa Monica Bay, four mountain ranges, the lights of downtown Los Angeles. The sight seemed to relax her, and that pleased him even more.

“Join me in a martini?” he asked.

“Not lemonade?” she teased.

“You remember,” he said, laughing. As a little girl, she would arrive with Gracie and, when unavoidable, John, bearing lemons she’d picked from the orchard. While the grown-ups drank gin, she would have fresh-squeezed lemonade.

“Of course,” she said.

“Well, did you bring me a basketful?”

“Not tonight,” she said, and he watched her smile drift away so completely it jarred him.

He mixed drinks in a silver shaker, poured them into fine-stemmed crystal glasses. They sat on the terrace watching the light change from blue to tangerine, the sky’s unearthly glow coating the ocean and hillsides with amber, folding shadows into the canyons and valleys.

“Tell me everything,” he said.

“You always say that,” she said.

“Because I want to know! Every single thing.”

“Well, I’m here,” she said. “That’s the big news.”

“Indeed it is,” Lion said. This was her first time in California since the accident. He had seen her back East—for the funerals, and when he’d done
Agamemnon
at Hartford Stage. She hadn’t attended the show, but each day the theater had been dark during the six-week run, he had driven down to Black Hall to stay with her and force her into pretending to be alive at least for the duration of his visits.

“And how is Casa Riley?” he asked.

“Dreamy as I remembered,” she said. “Bonnie is loving it, too.”

“Bonnie! Why didn’t you bring her tonight?”

“She seemed content to stay home. She’s getting old, Lion.”

“Aren’t we all, darling? I’m the oldest man in Hollywood.”

“You never get old,” she said. “When I was little, I thought you were my friend more than theirs.”

“Thank you, love, but one can be both immature and antiquated,” Lion said.

They chuckled, sipping their martinis. Lion studied her over the misted rim of his glass. She was every bit as lovely as Graciela had been at her age—but where Gracie had black hair and her mother’s Latina dark fire, Julia’s beauty was pale, Irish, understated: freckled skin, gray-blue eyes, high cheekbones, small mouth. While Gracie had the need of every actress Lion had ever known to be noticed and adored, Julia had always seemed quiet, more introspective, with a secret smile that never begged for attention.

“What do you hear from your aunt?” he asked as offhandedly as possible.

“They’re having a great time,” Julia said. “The house is good, John’s work tracing his namesake is going well.”

“How thrilling,” he said.

“You don’t
sound
thrilled,” she said, and there was that secret smile. He gazed at her without expression; he’d always wondered how much she knew or had guessed about his feelings for Gracie.

“They’ll be gone for so long,” he said. “One gets lonely without one’s best friends. How will I amuse myself with the Rileys abandoning me for Ireland?”

“You’re never bored,” she said. “I know you go out every night; I’m lucky to have you all to myself tonight. Everyone is in love with you.”

“Well, that’s true,” he said. “But I’d rather spend the evening by the fire playing canasta with your aunt than at some red-carpet thing on the arm of whomever.”

“Whomever,” Julia said, scoffing. “I saw you in
People
with that girl from the Shady Lake movies.”

“Ah, yes. Bee Sting, I call her. Those lips everyone wants now. As far as I’m concerned, they broke the mold with your aunt—and you. Simple elegance is far sexier than pillow lips. Womanhood is a lost art.”

Julia shook her head, laughing and—finally—beaming with a real smile. Good, Lion had succeeded at something tonight. She slouched down in her chair, comfortable at last. Her gaze swung round to the twinkling lights of downtown. Poor Los Angeles didn’t have a real skyline; all its buildings clustered in one small area, more like a sky lump.

Ana Guzman, his housekeeper, had cooked and left sitting on low heat
mole poblano
—one of the specialties passed down from her mother—and the delicious odor of ancho chilis, cloves, tomatilloes, cumin, all together with turkey and deep Mexican chocolate, wafted temptingly through the open doors. Lion loved the smell. But one glance at Julia, still looking east, showed that trouble was back between her brows.

“The lights of downtown offend you, my love?” he asked.

“No, they’re beautiful,” she said.

“Graciela calls them our galaxy. Our own collection of nighttime stars.”

“That’s romantic,” Julia said softly, and Lion’s heart skipped. After all these years he still wanted to talk about his beloved, have people recognize their connection. But Graciela had always been so discreet—while other actresses wanted gossip to push their careers, even in the old days, no matter what the studios said—and had wrapped them in a secret.

“Do you know Roberto?” she asked.

“Rossellini? He was a little ahead of my time, but I did know Ingrid. In spite of her love for him, and the cost to her career, he couldn’t keep it in his pants.”

“No, Roberto at Graciela and John’s. He runs the orchard.”

“Oh,” Lion said, taken aback. “I thought Tonio did that.”

“Tonio left. Now it’s Roberto.”

“Why would you ask?”

“I just wondered if you knew his story.”

Who knows the stories of help? Lion wondered. You cared about them, they became part of the family, but their tales of poverty and coming to the States in search of a better life where they wound up getting paid thirty dollars a day, if that, were uniformly too much to bear—he had learned early, especially living in L.A., that one couldn’t save the world, it was a heartbreak even to try.

“No, I don’t,” Lion said.

“Why would he live in East L.A. when the cottage on the property is so nice? It seems such a long way for him to drive back and forth each day.”

That explained it: her long, worried gaze across the great expanse of hills and valleys to the light grid of greater Los Angeles. She was staring toward East L.A., and for what? Lion saw no smile on her lips or in her eyes—so it wasn’t that she had a crush on the orchard manager. Perhaps he had offended her somehow.