Love and Peaches

  “Your mother doesn’t think it’s good for you and that you don’t need to hear this. But it’s really important to me—”

  Rex was suddenly down the stairs. “Leave it alone, please,” he said, standing in front of Murphy. Judge Abbott looked at him, confused, and then he went on.

  “I ordered a paternity test about three months ago. I knew you’d be coming home from school—”

  Rex’s fist shot out of nowhere. He got in one good punch before Jodee yelped and ran forward to grab his arm. Murphy couldn’t believe her eyes. It was like a cartoon. Rex Taggart fighting Judge Abbott in the parking lot of Anthill Acres. Jodee’s touch seemed to bring Rex back to his senses, and the two men pulled away from each other, panting.

  “Murphy,” Judge Abbott said between labored breaths, “I’m your dad.”

  Murphy didn’t know why, but the only thought that went through her head was of Darth Vader in Star Wars. She tried to imagine Judge Abbott saying, “I am your father,” all breathily. She thought he must be joking.

  But this was no joke. She could tell, because Judge Abbott was no joker. And because everyone was looking at her as if they were waiting on her next move.

  Murphy took a deep, frantic breath. She felt what she imagined a person would feel if they’d just walked in on someone cheating on them. Utterly shocked. Utterly betrayed.

  Her eyes wandered to Rex.

  “You knew?” she asked.

  Rex, still breathing heavily, looked too distraught to speak.

  Murphy didn’t look at Judge Abbott. She didn’t care to look at him. She looked at her mother and at Rex, back and forth between them, seeing something in both of them she’d never imagined.

  And then she got on her bike and took off.

  Thirty-one

  Leeda hung up the phone in the kitchen and stared at it, relieved. In a few short days of nonstop work, she had finally managed to do what she hadn’t been able to do all summer. She had found a place for the ponies.

  It was going to take a while to sink in. It was a place in Tennessee. She’d have to make three trips with the trailer. But it was a done deal. It felt like the day she’d finished her last exams at school in the spring. Like she couldn’t believe all that stuff she’d pored over was suddenly off her hands.

  The other animals were a different story. Leeda felt buried. She hadn’t found a place for them and didn’t know how she would. She had talked to the people at the ASPCA, but they couldn’t vouch for the future of the animals or whether they would be put to sleep or not. So she was holding on to them, hoping for some lightbulb to go off in her head.

  The animals were all wide awake and talking to each other. Leeda had almost gotten used to the constant barking and meowing and antics of the most rambunctious ones. Minxy the cat—like most of the animals, named by Birdie—liked to do little rolls on the carpet, showing her belly to get Leeda’s attention whenever she passed her pen. Tufty howled as if his life was ending, until Leeda stopped and pet him for a few minutes, resuming the moment she walked away.

  Leeda ducked upstairs amid the clatter and into her grandmom’s room. She was half packed, busy clearing out all the things that had migrated over the summer from the orchard and from her parents’ house to the cottage. She hovered in front of her grandmom’s open closet, trying to pick out what was hers among the stuffed clothes bulging from the hangers. Her eyes wandered up to the box of letters on the shelf. She still hadn’t decided what to do with it.

  A commotion downstairs distracted her. She hurried down to the living room. One of the cats had snuck out of the cat room and was hissing, his back arched, at the dogs, who were going crazy in their pens trying to get at her.

  Leeda groaned and put her back in the cat enclosure that she’d made out of Eugenie’s dining room. “Bad cat,” she said, looking at Minxy sternly. “How are you getting out?” Then she got to work.

  First there were the indoor animals. Leeda took all five dogs out on their leashes, letting herself be dragged along as they sniffed at this rock, trotted to that tree, and wrestled with one another exuberantly. She smiled, watching them. They were like clowns. Constantly ridiculous. Once she managed to drag them back inside and foist each dog into its pen, she filled all the food and water bowls. She cleaned the parrot cage and managed not to feel like gagging. She rubbed the parrot on the back of his head, which she’d discovered was his favorite spot. She thought about Birdie catching impetigo from her chicken. She could see now how one might not be totally disgusted to kiss a bird. The parrot looked at her with such human curiosity. Birdie had named him Chiquito and had nuzzled her nose to his. Now Leeda tried it, half afraid she’d lose her nose. But Chiquito nestled into her and made a low sound of contentment in the back of his throat.

  Outside, the weather had shifted. The edge was off the heat. Leeda could feel it on her way to the corral.

  The ponies looked mopey today, their ears down with no signs of friskiness. It was as though ennui had caught them all like a cold. They needed feeding, watering, brushing, cleaning. Leeda lugged bucket after bucket from the spigot to the water troughs, the muscles behind her shoulder blades pulling and stretching. She shoveled the manure out of each stable, occasionally swiping at her brow. Still, the ponies only stared pensively at her from their knot by the fence.

  Sneezy especially seemed melancholy and needy. She broke away from the others and shadowed Leeda’s every move—through the dusty stables and out to where the farthest trough sat under the shade of the trees. Leeda absently stroked her muzzle from time to time during her work. She fell into the rhythm of the shoveling, the carrying, and the pouring. It was almost meditative, like picking peaches. She felt her hands on the metal of the buckets and the wood of the stable doors. She felt Sneezy’s breath as she petted her and breathed in her smell. Time boiled down to her immediate surroundings, and she forgot about Grey, Eric, New York, the future, and the upcoming day when she’d take the ponies to Tennessee.

  She stopped only at midday, when the sun was at its highest, for some shade and a sandwich. Then she tackled moving one of the feed troughs out from where it had been catching rain. She tried to drag it. No luck. She tried to push it from the back. Still nothing. She fell back in the muck, exhausted. Sneezy eyed her, looking half amused.

  She stood up again, tried again. Frustration pulsed through her body. Finally she fell forward with a grunt. And then she lost control. She started kicking the trough and jumping up and down. When she ran out of breath, she sank down cross-legged on the hay. Sneezy walked over and stood next to her, sniffing her cheek.

  “I didn’t tell him to leave,” she said ruefully, with a sense of how comically sad the whole thing was. She was on her own, and inept, and her entire body was covered in mud. How had she gone from a year at Columbia University to this?

  Sneezy snuffled. Leeda smiled and pressed her nose against the pony’s. And then, from the direction of the house, she heard a bloodcurdling scream.

  She was at the porch in an instant, taking the stairs two at once and rushing through the open front door, then skidding to a stop before she slammed into her visitor.

  Lucretia was planted in the middle of the living room, gaping and grasping for words. All she could do, it seemed, was point. Point at the Oriental rug covered in feathers and fur and mud and bird poo. Point at the metal crates full of barking, meowing, whining animals. Point at Minxy, who had managed to get out again, lounging across the back of the piano like a songstress from the forties.

  Feathers flew through the air. There was a mysterious trail of small muddy prints that could have belonged to any of the animals.

  “Mom, I can explain.”

  “Ruined!” Lucretia said. “You’ve ruined your grandmother’s house.”

  She turned to Leeda, and Leeda was shocked to see tears in her eyes. “My mother’s house! Oh, Leeda, how could you? How could you show so little respect?”

  Leeda swallowed. Never, in the whole time she’d been t
aking in the animals, had she even considered she was doing something that would hurt her mother. But now, looking around, she could see why she was so upset.

  Thelma Lou let out a yip.

  “Mom, I’m so sorry. I didn’t think.”

  Lucretia shook her head in awe, devastated.

  “What is this? Why?” she asked.

  “I was just trying to help,” Leeda said.

  “Help who?”

  “The animals.”

  Lucretia nodded, clearly collecting herself and becoming reasonable. “Leeda, this is out of control.”

  “I know.”

  “They need to go—immediately.”

  “I know.”

  “Within the week.”

  “It’s taken care of, Mom.”

  “And then you need to fix this.”

  Leeda nodded. But Lucretia was raising a finger, pointing to a place on the shelf across the room.

  “Where’s your grandmother’s egg?” she asked.

  Leeda looked at her. She bit her bottom lip, and tiny tears welled up in her eyes. “It’s broken, Mom. I’m sorry. I broke it.”

  Lucretia stared at her for another minute, and then walked to the door, shaking her head.

  “I don’t want to see this place again until it’s perfect.” She looked incredibly disappointed.

  “Okay.”

  Leeda watched her mom leave, then closed the door behind her. She sank against the wood.

  After a few minutes, her eyes drifted to the stairs. She suddenly stood up and walked to her grandmom’s room.

  She looked up again at the letters on the shelf. She thought about the messy, chaotic feelings they held. She had the wild urge to protect her grandmother, especially the parts of her that hadn’t been perfect or pristine. She pulled the box down and poured its contents into the mesh pocket on the inside of her suitcase.

  She would be the keeper of Eugenie’s secrets.

  Thirty-two

  Birdie ran around all morning, getting the workers ready to go. There was so much to do that Birdie hardly had to think about the actual leaving. Before she knew it, the bus was pulling in.

  She felt the moment upon her suddenly. And then she was wrapped up in hugs and te amos and Dios te acompañas. God be with yous. Within five minutes, they all had squashed themselves into the bus and the door was closing behind them. Birdie looked over. Poopie was crying, with Birdie’s dad’s arm wrapped around her, waving.

  The bus pulled out, its passengers looking like a group of kids leaving an amusement park. There were loud shouts, songs, and a radio playing. They pulled to the end of the driveway, slowed for a second, turned right, and they were gone.

  Poopie turned, sucking in great gulps of air between her tears, and walked into the house. Birdie felt her dad’s hand on her shoulder.

  They didn’t say anything to each other for a few seconds; they just watched where the bus had been. Birdie’s dad gave her shoulder a squeeze. And then he turned and followed Poopie inside.

  Birdie stood aimlessly for a moment, and then she wandered into the peach trees, walking until she came out on the other side at the lake.

  She clambered up onto the rock at the edge of what used to be the water. The hot summer had almost dried it up. Murphy had jumped off this rock when they’d first gone swimming together. Leeda’s mother had lost a Barbie in the deep crevice that nearly split the rock in half. Birdie sat, looking at the muddy grass, twirling her ring around her finger.

  She had been to a church once where someone had laid their crutches at the foot of a statue of the Virgin Mary. The story went that the person had been healed and had walked away, free of the thing they’d been bound to for so long. She pulled her ring off, staring at it thoughtfully. And then she held it over the crevice and dropped it in.

  She wanted to leave a piece of herself here. Maybe that would be enough.

  At the house, she stood at the bottom of her tree, staring up at it. She climbed up the ladder and unmade her bed. She grabbed an armful of books and started to carry them down.

  Slowly she took the house apart, piece by piece.

  Thirty-three

  “Do you think they want this?” Murphy asked, holding up a cookbook with a French guy wearing a beret and holding an armful of pastries. “I mean, I think it’s from 1960.”

  Leeda looked up from where she was crouching in front of the pantry, her hair pulled back in a thin white scarf that was tied at the nape of her neck, her face freckled from the sunshine but pale white underneath, like she hadn’t slept. She shrugged.

  Murphy gazed at the book then loaded it into the open box in front of her, next to the rest of the contents of the shelf. Little by little, they were packing up the Darlingtons’ house.

  “What did they do when they saw how many you had?” Murphy asked.

  “The lady at the front desk was speechless.”

  Leeda had taken her animals to the pound the day before. She looked like someone had punched her in the stomach. Murphy had never seen her looking quite so empty. She moved like a piece of string.

  They heard the clatter of Birdie upstairs, packing her room.

  “I’m sorry, Lee.”

  Leeda laid her hands on her knees, chasing her breath. She couldn’t seem to catch it, though.

  Murphy loaded the last cookbook into the crate and picked it up. She carried it to the door, dropping it on the porch and dusting off her hands.

  Her eyes drifted to the driveway.

  “Crap.”

  Judge Abbott’s car was parked next to Leeda’s. He walked toward the dorms and disappeared around the corner. Murphy debated running back into the house, but she decided on making a break for the endless peach rows instead, running across the yard into the trees far enough to be hidden from sight.

  From where she crouched, she had an obstructed view of the yard. She saw the judge walk across the grass to the house and poke his head through the open door, reluctant and polite. Leeda appeared a moment later and shook her head, her hands in the pockets of her shorts. He looked around then started walking, to her surprise, into the rows toward her. Murphy hit the deck, lying belly down on the grass. He disappeared into some trees to her left. Murphy laid her cheek on her hands and waited, watching an ant walking up and down a blade of grass. The smell of dirt tickled her nose. She could hear the judge’s distant footsteps. And then suddenly a pair of shiny brown loafers was in front of her face, and she realized the distant footsteps must be Walter’s. These shoes belonged to Judge Abbott.

  Murphy looked up, shielding her face from the sun, and then stood.

  “Hey, Judge.”

  “Murphy.”

  “What’s going on?” She stuck her hands in her pockets and looked around, her face stone.

  “I was wondering if you’d like to go to a movie with me tonight. Maybe have dinner. Talk a little bit.”

  “No thanks.” Everything about Judge Abbott annoyed Murphy. The way he looked at her so intently. His loafers. He reminded her of her third-grade teacher.

  The judge looked nervous, sheepish, and deeply sad. “I called you.”

  Murphy just tugged absently on a nearby branch.

  Judge Abbott looked distinctly uncomfortable. “I…I’ve been wanting to give you these.”

  He put a little box into her hands.

  Murphy took the box and stuck it in her back pocket, expressionless. If she had been hurt or angry with him, she would have thrown them back in his face. But she wasn’t angry. She just felt kind of bad for him. “Okay. Thanks. Well, see ya.”

  “Murphy, I always wanted you. I wanted to be your dad. I talked to your mom about it when you were really small, after I’d figured it out. But I had gotten married by that point. And she said she didn’t want you to be second to anyone. And she didn’t want to do the test then to make sure. I respected her wishes.”

  “Please.” Murphy held up her hand in a stop motion. “I don’t want to know. I don’t care. It’s water under
the bridge.”

  “I promise you, Murphy, I never would have made you second. When my wife died…it felt like enough was enough. But Jodee didn’t feel…”

  Murphy started walking. She walked straight down the row, across the grass, and into the house, closing the door behind her.

  “Ballerinas.”

  “What?” Jodee McGowen stood in the kitchen looking lost. She stared at the ballerina earrings Murphy had laid on the counter.

  “Ballerina earrings. That’s what the judge just gave me.”

  “Murphy, I know you’re mad. But Miller has always looked out for you. All those times you got in trouble? You know that. And he’s always wanted to be part of your life, but I always resisted. And then he was married and, you know…”

  “I’m not mad about any of that.”

  “Then what is it?”

  Murphy looked down at her fists, clenched on the counter. “Why did it have to be someone like that, Mom? Why does it have to be him?”

  “What are you talking about? Why not him?”

  “He’s so…awful! He wears loafers. He’s got a house in a subdivision. He’s a sellout. Just an ordinary, boring sellout.”

  Her mother looked bewildered. “Sellout?” She leaned a hand on the counter and narrowed her eyes, her words coming out twangy with emotion. “You’d rather he be someone who skipped out on you. That’s better than somebody reliable? Somebody…good? Someone who tried to be there for you. That’s what you’re saying?”

  Murphy didn’t know. She felt all twisted up inside.

  “Murphy, don’t you expect more for yourself than just…being unencumbered?”

  Murphy wanted to respond bitingly, but everything she thought of sounded too dramatic. She was free. She didn’t owe anyone. “I can do anything I want,” she said.

  “What about the things that matter more?” Jodee asked.

  Murphy bit her bottom lip, unconvinced, angry.

  “I don’t want these,” she said, handing her mom the earrings. “And I don’t want him. Can you please just give these back and tell him that?”