Chapter 24
Twenty-Four
“Let me get this straight. You brought me to a museum on our day off from our job at a museum that you don’t even like?”
“This isn’t a museum,” Efraín insists. “It’s a historical site.”
Standing on a red-brick corner just south of downtown Santa Rosa, I can’t help giving Luther Burbank Home and Gardens a skeptical
side-eye. A museum dedicated to the guy who pioneered plant hybridization was not on my potential date hot spot bingo card.
Of course, our museum is already overshadowing Efraín’s and my first date. I stayed up late drafting my email for the zap, fell asleep at
my keyboard, and woke up just in time to type “thank you for your time and consideration” before Efraín was set to pick me
up.
He was late, but only by two minutes, which was enough for me to see that the union came through. Efraín tried to distract
me on the drive by making me read one-star NSX Yelp reviews aloud.
“Historic things happened on Kane’s ranch,” I argue, on principle. “What makes this a historical site instead—”
“The city of Santa Rosa,” Efraín interrupts. “They declared it a historical site. It’s a park, too. Does it matter?”
I squint up at him. He’s a vision with his messy half bun, sun-bleached tank, denim cutoffs, and his favorite cherry Docs.
“It matters to you, doesn’t it?”
He looks down at me through his aviators. “What?”
I know what Efraín looks like when he cares about something just a little bit more than all the other somethings he cares
about. If he won’t tell me upfront, I’ll figure it out myself. “Nothing. Do lead on.”
He leads me into a stark white building, a converted carriage house. He confirms the tour is free with an enthusiastic girl
who looks younger than Naomi and, when prompted by Efraín, tells us her entire life story, leading up to the decision to volunteer
here.
Efraín keeps her talking about how the museum operates. I walk around the gift shop until a grizzled docent arrives. Thanks
to Efraín, I learn that Kate is a retired biology teacher who’s been volunteering here for twenty years, originally tending
the gardens, then guiding tours after her knee replacement.
Kate leads us through Luther Burbank’s house, the bottom story of which looks as it would’ve when Burbank’s family lived here.
Kate shows us relics such as the 1927 GE Monitor Top refrigerator and Burbank’s Wells Fargo desk with hidden compartments galore; heirlooms like his wife’s glass collection and his parents’ Staffordshire wedding dog statuettes.
Photos of family and friends adorn the walls.
This early-twentieth-century house makes for an achingly familiar museum.
Then Kate takes us to the greenhouse. Surrounded by blooming marvels, we’re standing in the original structure, which was
built in 1889. When the 1906 earthquake devastated downtown Santa Rosa just a few blocks away, not a single pane of glass
in this greenhouse broke.
Then we’re off on the “and Gardens” leg, traipsing past roses, cacti, and the sensory garden.
Efraín asks so many questions I’m afraid Kate is going to kick us out. I’m just along for the ride, thoroughly delighted by
Efraín’s enthusiasm. I think Kate gets a kick out of it, too, because she hangs out with us until her next tour.
I follow Efraín along the winding brick paths, each one leading to more vibrant, verdant delights. “You didn’t just want to
come here because it’s a museum, did you?” I ask as we pass a famed Santa Rosa plum tree, bright burgundy bulbs dangling from
the branches like ornaments. “This isn’t a research field trip to get new ideas for the community garden or compare working
conditions—”
“This place is run by volunteers,” Efraín corrects me, perfectly pedantic.
“Does that make it more ethical? If they’re doing the same work—or more,” I add, glancing at a volunteer crouched in the dirt, “for free?”
“They’re here because they love it.”
“I love NSX.” I can feel his skeptical gaze. “I do,” I insist because, in spite of everything, it’s true.
He lets out a single, silent laugh. “I never told you why I interviewed at NSX, did I?”
I asked myself that incessantly those first few weeks, and I asked him outright during our mock one-on-one. I’m so used to
the cadence of the question that I’ve forgotten to expect a response.
We round a bend back to the rose garden.
“You won’t like it,” he warns me.
“I’m not going to judge you.”
“I’d judge me. Spoiled rich kid teenage rebellion shit—the kind I’d hate hearing from anyone else.”
“Guess it’s a good thing I’m not you, then.”
“I made a deal with my mom. I thought I was going to Madera this summer, like I have every summer since the divorce. My dad
manages a vineyard just north of Fresno. It’s not a formal custody thing, just routine. But after I spent Christmas there,
she told me I had to get a job or an internship this summer. Something that would look good on college applications.
“I guess I thought she was bluffing? That my dad could talk her out of—” He does that single-laugh thing again. “When she realized I hadn’t applied anywhere, my mom called in a favor. She got me a gig at the Grove.”
“Shit,” I say, reflexive and definitely judgmental.
“Yeah,” Efraín agrees.
The Bohemian Grove is the exclusive, scenic wine country retreat where former presidents, tech moguls, all breeds of one percenters,
and their pet Supreme Court justices gather to get drunk and plot world domination.
“I said I’d burn it down before I worked there.”
Yeah, that sounds about right.
“She told me to find something else if I didn’t want to take the job. So I figured I’d get the shittiest summer job I could
find, somewhere she’d be embarrassed to tell her friends. Egan’s Creek doesn’t have McDonald’s, but maybe I should’ve looked
into one of those dozen Taco Bells.
“I asked Lola about the body shop—it’d piss my mom off if I came home with grease stains—but Lola laughed, said someone who
hates cars shouldn’t work with them. Besides, even she wasn’t working for her dad this summer—she told you about the breakup,
right?—she couldn’t work with Curtis, and she’d heard you talking about openings at NSX. And that—”
“Fit your definition of ‘shitty’?”
Efraín grimaces. “I warned you.”
“Believe it or not, it’s not shocking that you thought working at NSX would be shitty. I never understood why you took the job anyway.”
“Now you know.”
“Not quite.” I hesitate. Efraín may have cracked open the door on his family drama, but that doesn’t mean I should barge in.
“You said it was a deal, but you didn’t say what you got in return. Because if you’re working here, you’re not in Fresno.”
“Winter vacation. Bad trade, right? Three months doing whatever she wants for two weeks with my dad.”
“That doesn’t seem fair.”
“Fair’s not part of the conversation when your mom’s a successful business owner, and your dad—” He looks up at the cloudless
sky. “What do you remember about my dad?”
I remember Mr. Juarez as a bear of a man with Efraín’s pitch-black eyes, twin braids under a Panama hat, and a hand-carved
walking stick that he used to behead a baby rattlesnake on our third-grade field trip. In retrospect, I can’t believe Efraín
didn’t cry serpenticide, but Mr. Juarez explained that adolescent rattlesnakes are more dangerous than the adults because
they haven’t learned how to control their venom yet, and with six children under his care, he wouldn’t take any risks.
“He was kind,” I say softly.
“He is.” Efraín nods. “Too kind for his own good. He met my mom the summer after her sophomore year at Princeton. She was interning for a state senator and living with her parents, where my dad was a grape picker without a green card. Her dad came this close to disowning her.”
I’m trying to follow the thread, but it takes me a minute to untangle the strands. “Your dad was an undocumented agricultural
worker.”
“That’s the least interesting thing about him. I could tell you about how he started hybridizing grapes to breed more drought-resistant
strains or how he ran a food pantry out of his truck while his church was fumigated. He lobbied the town council to start
a community garden every year, and they shot him down every time. But it’s not even that he’s a good person who does good
things. He’s a good person who sees the good in everyone and trusts that people will make good choices if they’re given the
chance. That’s rare; that’s hard—”
A good person would know how to reassure Efraín that he is that kind of person, too, but I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what to do but listen and touch his arm in a way
that hopefully feels reassuring rather than weird. “Your dad used to take you here, didn’t he?”
Efraín nods. He takes my hand and guides us out of the rose garden, back toward the carriage house. “This is my favorite.”
The spineless cactus doesn’t look like any cactus you’d see in a Western or a succulent on a windowsill. Larger than a truck, all tangled fronds, it could stand in for the monster-of-the-week on an overbudget sci-fi show any day.
“Thank you for bringing me here,” I say. “For sharing this with me.”
Efraín settles his arm around my shoulders as we pay our respects.
It’s a strange plant in a strange place. A garden full of mutants. A beautiful place built from hard work and bold ideas.
Then again, isn’t that how all beautiful places are built?