Love and Peaches

  She couldn’t imagine holding another person that way. It was love at its simplest.

  Twenty-eight

  Long ago, Birdie had gotten into the habit of having to walk to think, like moving her feet could supply power to her brain. So now, when she needed to sort things out in her head, she launched into a long hike around the perimeter of the farm.

  Birdie had never been all that conventional, but she’d always been steady. She had never been one of those people who did things they couldn’t explain. Those people had always seemed glamorous to Birdie—mysteriously complicated. But now she was one of those people, and it only felt foggy and ridiculous. She had done so many things, one on top of the other, that she didn’t understand or have any reason for. Leaving Enrico. Living in a tree house. Kissing Grey. It was like she had separated from herself, and the part of her taking charge was a little crazy.

  Up at the northwest corner of the property, there was a hollow oak where Birdie used to play as a little girl. She walked in that direction. When she saw legs poking out of the hole, she started. For a moment, she thought the dainty feet belonged to the ghost of her little self. And then she saw the tiny, almost imperceptible scars that marked the time Leeda had been swarmed by fire ants.

  “I thought this was my tree,” Birdie said, kneeling down and peering inside. Leeda was on her back, staring up into the hollowness above. Two of the newer dogs from the cottage, Tufty and Thelma Lou, lurched out to kiss her face.

  “I heard your crutches coming,” Leeda said. She shimmied out of the tree and sat up, bark and dirt stuck to her back.

  “Why aren’t you with the ponies?”

  Leeda brushed the debris off her lap, looking around like someone who’d been sleeping. “I just wanted to be here.” She picked up a piece of bark and oddly, Birdie noticed, stuck it in her shorts pocket.

  She moved around to prop herself against the tree, and Birdie plunked down next to her, the bark digging into their backs and the roots pushing up under their butts.

  “Bird? Grey left for Alaska.”

  Birdie squinted, an odd mixture of disappointment and relief running through her at the same time. “Really?”

  Leeda nodded, staring toward the house. They could just see the back of the roof from here. It was like being in a different country than the peach rows—all grass and rolling hills, with only a scattering of tall, spindly trees, many of them draped in kudzu.

  “I wonder if I have halitosis or something,” Birdie mused. “Maybe I scared him away.” She had read in a fashion magazine that if you licked your wrist and let it dry and then smelled it, you could tell if you had bad breath. She licked her wrist then looked over at Leeda, and the strange look on Leeda’s face made her forget about it.

  “Are you upset he’s gone?”

  Leeda quickly shook her head, her lips tightening. Birdie gazed at her for a moment. And something hit her.

  “Lee.” She tapped her hand against her forehead. “Oh my God.” She rose up on her knees, slapping them animatedly with her hands. She sank back down, staring at Leeda’s face, which was impassive and far away. “You like him.”

  “No.”

  “I mean…” Birdie rapidly put little pieces together. “I guess I could tell he liked you. I just never thought about it much because you…didn’t seem…and Eric and all. Ugh. I mean, Lee, he’s not interested in me. I’m not interested in him. I don’t even know why I kissed him. It was like…” Birdie waggled her hands in the air like a TV evangelist. “It was like a compulsion.”

  “It’s not that,” Leeda said, giving Birdie a smile that was both hurt and forgiving.

  Birdie sank back, confused.

  “Then why do you look like that?” Leeda’s face was usually smooth and calm even when, Birdie knew, she was suffering. But right now, she had a raw, confused expression, as if something had been peeled away from her.

  “I don’t know what’s wrong. I feel…like I have something important. Like I can see something about myself better than I ever have or something. But when I try to focus on it, it disappears. It’s like when there’s a song on the tip of your tongue but trying to remember it only makes it get lost in your head.”

  Birdie stared at her, not sure she understood. “What is it?” she asked.

  Leeda rolled her hands together, kneading them against each other. “I don’t know. I just…I’m not ready to go back to the city. And that’s crazy.”

  Leeda looked down at her tiny red slip-on shoes and pulled at the elastics.

  “Do you think it’s normal, Birdie, to love a piece of the ground? I just love this piece of ground we’re sitting on.”

  Though Leeda’s question came out of the blue, Birdie understood it deeply. “Poopie says everything has a soul. Even a brick. Even a piece of grass or a place. I think when they take down my house, it’ll be like when Honey Babe died. It will be like losing someone. Maybe I’m crazy, but that’s how it feels.”

  Birdie gestured helplessly with her left hand then let it loll on her lap. Leeda stared at where she was still wearing her ring.

  Birdie followed her gaze. “It’s pretty nice to think of something being forever.” She looked toward the roofline of the house, and then took in the rest of the area with her gaze. “I kind of thought this was. You know, home and everything. But I guess it’s not.”

  She glanced back down at her ring. And for the first time, it felt completely real that in three weeks’ time, they wouldn’t be here anymore.

  “Hey, Lee?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Will you take me somewhere?”

  Twenty-nine

  Birdie stared at the Departures board at Atlanta’s Hartsfield Airport, clutching her luggage tote, which contained her teddy-bear suitcase and a giant plush peach she’d just bought at the gift shop. She’d had two Frappuccinos, savoring every sugary mouthful, and now she wondered how she was going to manage to spend the next several hours sitting still on a plane. She suspected that she might have to hop up and do a jig in the aisle, sprained ankle and all.

  Birdie loved planes. She loved airports. She loved people with luggage. She loved knowing she was going somewhere.

  It had been easy to slip away from everyone. She’d told her dad and Poopie she was staying at her mom’s. She’d told her mom she was going away camping with Murphy. She had dipped into her school savings for the second time in her life. Granted, last-minute flights to and from Mexico didn’t exactly make a small dent. But Birdie figured this was life-and-death. So it was worth it.

  On the flight she watched two movies, but her mind kept drifting to Enrico. His easy laugh. His concentration when he was reading a book. The way it felt when she laid back against him while they were watching TV and he wrapped his arms around her.

  Birdie fiddled nervously with her ring, her thumb moving over the tiny diamonds, one-two-three, one-two-three. She stared out the window, looking down at the clouds, wondering what part of the earth they were over, what tiny island, what ocean, and were there sharks directly beneath her somewhere? Or a whale?

  Finally her sugar level crashed, and her brain stopped running a mile a minute. She held her giant peach—a present for Enrico—to her like a pillow and tried to sleep to make the hours pass.

  By the time Birdie landed in Mexico City, seven hours after she’d left, she felt like she’d lived a lifetime on the plane. She hobbled along to the baggage claim to get her suitcase and emerged into the hectic stand of taxis and cars and buses in the queue outside, noticing the change in the air immediately. It was hotter and thicker in Mexico City.

  She awkwardly crammed herself and her stuff into the backseat of a cab, flopping onto the giant peach like a sloth and directing the driver to Enrico’s family’s village. When they’d last talked, that was where he was spending the summer.

  She watched the now-familiar highway roadside sweep past the cab, rushing her to her future. Again the ride went on endlessly. It was a full hour and a half’s drive to En
rico’s house. Her heart picked up its pace when they finally pulled off the main road onto a bumpy side street and Enrico’s neighborhood came into view.

  Birdie tottered out of the cab, paid the driver, and hoisted her peach into her arms. All the way across the grass, she kept dropping it and having to pick it up, which with her crutches took about a minute each time.

  She found the family around back. Apparently all of Enrico’s relatives, including second cousins, were over for a barbecue. Several of them looked up at her curiously.

  Enrico was standing over the grill with his back to her. But his mom, seeing Birdie, tapped him on the arm. He turned, and when he saw her, he looked like he was happy to see her and at the same time not quite sure she was real.

  Birdie nodded and smiled unsurely at everyone as Enrico crossed the grass toward her. He looked her up and down, taking in her crutches, and then leaned forward stiffly to give her a tiny, awkward hug. He glanced over his shoulder at the grill, where his mom had now taken over, and then at his relatives, self-conscious. They were still watching them, but it was only between talking and chewing mouthfuls of food.

  “What are you doing here?” Enrico asked, his gaze turning back to Birdie.

  Birdie smiled widely. “Enrico,” she whispered excitedly, looking him square in the eye and ignoring the onlookers. “I want to get married.”

  Enrico jerked slightly. He looked back at his relatives again as if he hoped they hadn’t heard, and then back at Birdie, whose heart was beating wildly. She forced herself to go on.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said. “I got scared. But I’m ready now. I know this is how it’s supposed to be.”

  Enrico’s Adam’s apple bobbed as he leaned closer. He took her hand and stared at it. “Birdie…I think we should go inside and talk.”

  “I’m saying yes.” She beamed at him, waiting for it to sink in and for the relieved smile to spread over his face. He tugged her hand gently, trying to pull her toward the house, but Birdie only wobbled and stayed put. She felt like it mattered that she didn’t move. She wanted to stand her ground.

  Enrico finally realized she wasn’t budging, and his shoulders dropped, resigned. He smiled at her and spoke very quietly.

  “Birdie.” He wrapped his fingers around hers tightly. “You don’t want to marry me.”

  “I do.” Birdie nodded. “I do!” She had never been so sure of anything. It was like everything that had happened suddenly meant something. She was supposed to be here. That made all the other things okay.

  But Enrico’s expression wasn’t happy. It wasn’t even getting close.

  “You don’t want to marry me,” he pressed, sounding sure of himself, like this was something that he couldn’t be dissuaded from. “You only want something to be sure.”

  Birdie swallowed. She felt like she was taking a hit. She shook her head. “That’s not true.”

  “It’s okay, Birdie. I…” He shook his head slightly. He looked up at her from under his eyebrows, like he was very sorry. “I don’t want to get married either.”

  Finally, too late, it occurred to Birdie that this whole grand plan could fail. She could walk away empty-handed. And now the possibility loomed up, huge and real. And not just real—suddenly likely.

  She swallowed and, with a sick feeling, glanced over at Mrs. Fiol tending the barbecue. Then she looked back at Enrico.

  “But…you asked me?” she said, numb.

  “I thought it was what you wanted. And what I wanted too. You seem to need…to know things. I understand this about you.”

  Birdie’s throat ached. “You think I’m a coward.”

  Enrico shook his head furiously.

  “That’s what you’re saying.” Birdie’s feet felt floaty. She felt like she could drift into the air like a balloon.

  “I thought a lot this summer,” Enrico said. “I never gave up hoping that you would come back. But I still thought that we are so young. We have all this space to be free.”

  He was so calm. How could he be so calm?

  “Free,” Birdie echoed. It seemed like a small consolation next to being loved and safe. It seemed like nothing to her.

  Birdie focused, suddenly, on the relatives across the lawn. Was she imagining it, or did they look like they felt sorry for her? The drifting feeling intensified, and she suddenly felt as if she were floating above her own body. Who was that girl with the crutches looking like a total idiot? And why was she holding a giant peach?

  Birdie needed to get away immediately. And she needed to leave with whatever dignity she had left.

  “That’s fine,” she said, nodding. “I hope freedom keeps you from…being cold,” she spat. She’d been reaching for a “keeps you warm at night” line she’d heard on Days of Our Lives, but it hadn’t come out right. “You know, in the winter!” She could feel her cheeks flaming and turning red. She lifted her chin, as if she were above it all. “Well, gotta go,” she said airily.

  She turned to leave and started to hobble away. She could hear the sounds of the barbecue continuing without her. She tried to ignore the sudden thought that a minute ago, Enrico’s family had seemed like they would be her family too, and now they were strangers who probably thought she was a huge loser.

  Out on the front lawn, she suddenly stopped short and goggled at the empty road. It took a minute for her to realize what was missing and why. And then, when she realized it, she wanted to kick herself. How could she have forgotten?

  She threw her peach on the grass, waggled her arms a few times in silent rage, and then leaned on her crutches and hobbled around to the back of the house again. She didn’t look left or right to see where Enrico had gone, she merely spurred herself toward Enrico’s mom where she stood by the grill.

  Mrs. Fiol turned with a spatula in her hand, surprised.

  Without looking her in the eye, Birdie forced the words out. “Um, can I have a ride to the airport?”

  Thirty

  From where Murphy, Leeda, and Birdie sat in the tree house, the bonfire looked like a small burning sun, casting orange light and shadows onto the white siding of the dorms. To Murphy, it appeared as though the workers were having some kind of pagan ritual.

  All around the orchard that week, people had been saying their good-byes. Picking had slowed to a crawl. The workers pulled peaches from the trees as if it were an afterthought, distractedly daydreaming, talking to each other in low voices that still carried through the rows as tiny murmurs.

  Murphy hadn’t exactly realized she had favorite trees, but she did, and she imagined the others did too because she sometimes saw them running their hands along certain trunks or holding branches in their fingers gently, like hands.

  The girls had hung back from the bonfire, as if going would make tomorrow—when the bus came to gather everyone up for Mexico—come faster. From here the crickets were extra loud, talking from all their little homes in the tree’s branches. Leeda was stretched out next to Birdie’s mattress with her arm dangling off the side of the platform, as if she were in a boat and letting her fingers loll in the water.

  A few tiny lights began to blink below.

  “Hey, Bird,” Leeda murmured. “Aren’t those the synchronous fireflies?”

  Birdie nodded.

  “Don’t you think they’re magic or something?” Murphy asked.

  “I don’t know,” Birdie said. She fondled the foamy top of one of her crutches, which she had stopped using when she’d gotten back from Mexico.

  “I’m hungry,” Murphy finally said. “C’mon.”

  She jumped up then turned to pull Birdie up by both hands. Leeda disappeared down the ladder ahead of them.

  The group around the fire welcomed them with smiles. Poopie forced a giant plate of food into Murphy’s hands: rice wrapped in corn husks, peach chutney, mashed black beans in a spicy brown sauce. She sat on a log next to one of the guys and dug in.

  It was obviously a party that would last long into the night. Stories were exchanged,
some in English so Leeda and Murphy could understand better, although by now their Spanish was passable. Everyone had a story about the Darlingtons or the orchard, some that even made Walter laugh from where he sat, tucked between Poopie and Luis.

  About an hour after they’d sat down, Murphy went to the house to use the bathroom, because it was easier than making her way through the crowd to the door of the dorm. When she came out, she got to the edge of the driveway before she stopped. She took in the scene before her, everybody laughing and occasionally wiping away their tears.

  She suddenly decided she didn’t want to sleep near the others tonight. She wanted to remember everyone like this, when she could still picture them sitting at the fire enjoying each other. She pulled her bike off its kickstand.

  Orchard Road smelled like honeysuckle and was full of frogs warming themselves on the concrete that still held the sun’s heat. Murphy swerved to miss them as she rode home and pulled into her driveway.

  She immediately hit the brakes with her heels, staring at Rex’s truck, which was parked in front of her trailer.

  There were people on her front stoop, and she took them all in at once: her mom, Rex, and Judge Abbott, in the process of parting. Murphy could only blink at the scene, trying to make sense of it. They were talking in tense tones.

  “…won’t help anything. She doesn’t need…”

  Murphy couldn’t make out more. She climbed off her bike and stepped forward, her insides swirling.

  The three on the stoop turned in surprise. Her mom’s look of anger turned to one of guilt. Rex’s brow furrowed, and he met her eyes directly.

  “Hi, Murphy,” Judge Abbott said first. There was a strange tone in his voice. “We were just talking about you.”

  Murphy didn’t say anything. She knew it was coming whether she asked or not now. Judge Abbott came down the stairs. Murphy had the strangest feeling. She didn’t want to know anymore. She knew that whatever he was going to say was going to hurt.