'Jubilee' by Kirstin Valdez Quade is such a beautiful short story

When Andrea pulled into the dirt lot by the orchards that adjoined the blueberry fields, she saw she’d timed their arrival just right. Where the farm workers normally parked their beat-up sedans and rusting pickups, the Volvos and Mercedes and Audis were lined up, a faint scrim of dust from the dirt drive on their hoods.

Usually Andrea was embarrassed by her mother’s old Chrysler with its missing wood panel, but today she parked it among the luxury vehicles with a sense of vindication.

“Nice rides,” said Matty, nodding appreciatively.

“I told you. They own everything.” She gestured at the trees and at the sky, too, as if the Lowells actually did own the whole wide world. “Like three hundred acres. Practically this entire side of the river. Apples and pears and blueberries, too.”

For several years, the blueberry industry in California had been expanding, and the Lowells had been early adopters.

In honor of their eighth annual blueberry party, the field workers—a few of whom Andrea had known her whole life—had been given this Saturday off, paid. “Wouldn’t want the guests in their pearls to have to pick alongside Mexicans.” She snorted, picturing the Lowells’ friends in their Brooks Brothers chinos and silk skirts and strappy heeled sandals making their way down the rows.

Matty shrugged. “I wouldn’t mind a paid day off.”

“You’d have to have a job first,” said Andrea, then glanced at him, worried she’d offended him. Andrea wished he’d shaved that wormy black mustache or had at least put on a button-down. But whatever, she reminded herself; she didn’t actually care what the Lowells thought.

Andrea had dawdled in a gas station off the highway so they wouldn’t be on time. She’d bought Matty a forty—rather, he bought it with his fake ID and she paid—then lingered, trying to distract him. “Imagine the kind of guy who thinks Sexxx Juice is going to improve his prospects,” she said, flicking a plastic bottle of pheromones. She was always bringing up sex around Matty so she could demonstrate how cool she was with it.

At the magazine rack, she dragged on his arm, trying to look game and easygoing as she pointed out features in men’s magazines. (“Guys really think that’s hot?” “Yes,” Matty said.) Finally, though, Matty had pitched his bottle—still half full—and asked if they were going to this party or not.

Technically, Andrea had been invited to this party. Rather, her parents had been invited. Technically. But she was certain that the Lowells didn’t actually expect them to come. After all, they’d never been invited before. This invitation—letterpress-printed on thick, soft paper—had been a gesture of goodwill, and not even that, Andrea was sure, but something the Lowells had felt they had to do, given that her father would be there anyway, with his taco truck.

The truck was a highlight of this year’s party, according to the invitation: “Tacos provided by our own Salvador Romero and his El Primo taco truck!” And there, instead of blueberries on sage-colored sprigs, was the truck itself: a festive little line drawing debossed in red and yellow.

The taco truck was a recent acquisition. Andrea’s father had saved for four years, plotting, cobbling together loans (including a pretty substantial one from William Lowell), driving the family crazy with his exuberance.

The truck would pay for itself, he said, would give him something to do. All week it was shuttered, parked in the driveway while her father worked as a supervisor in the Lowells’ orchards, and on the weekends (up at four-thirty as usual) he drove it to the park, where he served egg burritos and cokes to young men famished after their soccer games, tacos and tortas to families out for a stroll. Her father never said so, but Andrea suspected from her mother’s strained silence on the subject that the taco truck wasn’t as lucrative as he’d hoped.

“Are they kidding?” Andrea said when she heard the Lowells were hiring her father for the party. “You’d think they’d want something fancy.”

“Oh, you know these wealthy people,” said her mother, shaking her head in bemusement. “They get their ideas.”

Her parents had been delighted to see the taco truck featured on the Lowells’ invitation, and had gushed about how touched they were to have received it. Her mother turned the invitation in her hands and shook her head in wonder. “They didn’t have to think of us, but they did.”

Andrea was hijacked by the image of her mother in her teal dress with the gold chain belt, trailing the Lowells all over their party. “You’re not considering going, are you, Mom?”

Hurt flashed in her mother’s face, and Andrea bristled at the Lowells for causing this hurt. “I work on Saturdays,” her mother said stiffly and dropped the invitation in the trash. Later, in spite of herself, Andrea had plucked it out and squirreled it away in her room, saving even the envelope (yellow lined in red—why was she so impressed with the invitation?—she hated that she was so impressed).

Well, if the Lowells wanted Mexicans at their party, that’s what they’d get.

The day was not ideal for an outdoor party, Andrea saw as she unstuck herself from the driver’s seat.

The leaves of the apple trees were dusty silver in the hot afternoon light, and a breeze stirred the dry soil. “You won’t believe these people,” she told Matty, shutting the car door. And she told him about the framed photograph she had seen in their kitchen: the redheaded brother and sister as children in their green velvet coats, the Eiffel tower lit and snowy behind them. “Can you believe that? Matching coats! And for her, white gloves! What a waste to bring little kids to France. They probably planned the whole trip just for that picture, just for one stupid picture of their kids being adorable in Paris.”

“Annoying,” conceded Matty.

“Tell me about it. They probably read Madeline every five minutes. They probably couldn’t stop themselves.”

Andrea still remembered the children’s expressions: the older boy flashing a showy television-child smile, Parker scowling down at her patent leather toes. This was years ago; Andrea had come with her father when he’d stopped by to pick up paychecks.

She remembered the kitchen, too, large and gleaming, the row of pale green porcelain bowls as thin as eggshells stacked in the open shelves.

Mrs. Lowell had given Andrea three warm ginger cookies wrapped in a napkin, which Andrea had made last for over a week, tasting in the increasingly stale nibbles the calm and security and beauty of this home.

Continue reading on Guernica Magazine.

Kirstin Valdez Quadewas a Jones Fellow and a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University. Originally from New Mexico, she has lived throughout the Southwest. In addition to The New Yorker, her short stories have been published in Northwest Review, The Best of the West 2010, Narrative, and the Colorado Review.

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