Free Blue Mercy: A Novel. by Orna Ross Page B

not to disturb her, my fingers clutching the mattress. If it wasn't for her, I told myself, I'd give up, throw in the towel, quit for good. What that meant, I wasn't quite sure, but I knew that what pulled me through my days was having to get up when she cried, even if I was exhausted; having to produce healthy food for her, even if I didn't care what I ate myself; having to dress her up pretty and brush her hair, though any old clothes did me and though my own hair looked -- in Doolough parlance -- like I'd been dragged through a bush backwards.
    Nothing in my life had prepared me to be both carer and provider. My choices were limited. I had a couple of part-time stints: stuffing packs to redeem coupon offers; calling telephone owners to offer them complicated discounts; sitting at a table in a dark hotel basement, asking people what they thought of a chocolate advertisement or an unnamed brand of margarine. For the most part, though, I cleaned and I served, the untrained female's fallbacks.
    The worst thing about that kind of work is the managers. Bartenders and waitresses serve, cleaners scrub, pot-boys fetch and carry but all managers do is try to rein in staff or raise profits, usually through getting petty about ketchup bottles. There's not much that's wholesome in work like that, even before you add the personality failings. The ones who think you're available for a grope. The ones who act like your pay-check comes out of their pocket. The ones who get a kick out of making your evening a little bit tougher than it needs to be.
    And it was hard to keep an apartment and a car and a child on such jobs. It meant scrimping and saving, recycling and salvaging, and help from friends, which always has a price, no matter how kind they are. It could actually be done but I did it, didn't I, Star? I got you your schooling and your violin lessons and your summer camp. I carved out a good life for us in the gentle town between the mountains and the ocean.
    The Golden State has the highest mountain in the US, the greatest bird, the biggest vineyard, the plumpest oranges, the hottest desert, the tallest waterfall, the oldest living trees...It's a waking dream of noise, smog, beach, sky, mountain, fog and open, golden light. It's a nostalgia even while you're living it. Never was a place more put upon by fantasy but for me, for us, it delivered. The ever-present ocean, the spectacular sunsets, the Redwood pines, the mountains wrapped in raiments of snow or mist, dependable. I made them ours.
    At weekends, I would take you on the back of my bicycle out to the wilderness, to enjoy the gift of year-round sunshine. Coming from Ireland, a country that often did four seasons in a day, I loved the consistency of Santa Paola's climate. Two seasons, wet and dry, with subtle variations that arrived, on schedule, each year. We moved there in November and those first sunny winter days will always stay with me. Wind full of dust and dried-up leaves and the parched land seeming to listen for the rain that, when it came, was nothing like an Irish downpour but more a gentle baptism, wafting in from the sea in mild and mellow veils, followed by days of softer sun and cooler air. Quickly, in a matter of days it seemed, the brown hillsides turned to green.
    I didn't know it that first year but this was Santa Paola's false spring, tricking plants into budding -- or even blossoming out of season -- and people into throwing off their clothes. In January, the real rains came: in torrents, not from the ocean this time, but from the clouds directly above cracking open like eggs. Around us, dry river beds and arroyos raced with water but, unlike Ireland, between each downpour we had blue skies and warmth again.
    By the time the last rains came in April, in fitful squalls, real spring had arrived with its blaze of color. Then it was the long, hot, dry season, greens gradually bleaching again. In May, the first desert winds came sweeping down the canyons, like