“They look like cartoons.”
Birdie smiled sappily. “I know, aren’t they cute?”
“Damn yippers,” Murphy said. She glanced at Leeda, embarrassed about her little breakdown by the phone. But Leeda seemed to have forgotten it, and already she felt she was recovering impressively. With her mom, mental distance was best. Sometimes her guard went down, but it never took long to resurrect it.
It helped to have a distraction.
“We have bichons,” Leeda whispered, “because they’re non-allergenic. Danay’s allergic. I don’t like dogs because they lick.”
Murphy and Birdie both looked at Leeda quizzically.
The orchard smelled thick, even thicker than it had in the day, maybe because what little breeze there had been had died. Murphy felt like she could get a toothache from breathing the air, it was so sweet. Leeda, who’d insisted on going back to the dorms for a flashlight this time, shone her Maglite on the trees and the ground, searching for danger. It looked to Murphy like a disco.
“Can you stop with that thing? You’re gonna get us caught.”
“Hey, look!” Leeda hissed.
The beam had paused on one of the trees, lighting a section of it in a big white circle. A tiny brown bird sat on the branch, but it wasn’t moving. They all stepped closer.
“Is it dead?” Murphy asked.
Birdie laughed. “It’s sleeping.”
“Sleeping?”
They all crept right up to the tree, Birdie leading the way. The bird was perched on one foot with the other tucked into its belly, its eyes closed.
“Shouldn’t the flashlight wake him up?” Murphy looked at Birdie. She felt like she had to be careful—like a thin thread was holding Birdie with them and she didn’t want to break it.
Birdie shook her head. “They sleep through noise and light but not motion. So if a snake or something comes after them, they wake up.”
“Wow.” Murphy’s hand shot out and shook the branch slightly. With a squawk the bird shot off the branch and flapped away. Birdie and Leeda looked at Murphy, who looked between both of them for a moment and shrugged. “Sorry.”
Murphy skipped ahead of them toward the lake, peeling off her tank top and then stopping to take off her shorts. She felt like she hadn’t seen the lake in a hundred years. She hadn’t realized that it had become epic in her mind.
“Ah, it’s great.” Leeda quickly stripped down too, to her silky hip-slung boy shorts and demi-bra, and walked up to the edge to dip a toe in. Birdie hovered self-consciously behind her.
“Watch this,” Murphy said, climbing the tree from before.
“Oh, Murphy, please…”
Murphy ignored Leeda. There was nothing she could do to hold her energy back. The feeling of the lake she’d gotten the first time she’d come seemed to have intensified exponentially in the heat of summer, and Murphy couldn’t contain herself. And maybe it was partly that all the energy of being angry had to be transferred somewhere.
She cannonballed.
Birdie walked up beside Leeda, making sure not to compare herself to either her willowy cousin or curvy Murphy, who had surfaced onto her back, breathing hard.
“Thank God. This feels incredible.” Murphy sighed.
“Did your feet touch the bottom?” Leeda asked. “Is it slimy?”
“Was it slimy last time?” Murphy asked. Leeda frowned at her.
Underneath her clothes Birdie wore a tankini she’d changed into at the dorms. She pulled off her shirt, then shimmied out of her knee-length dungarees, glancing at Leeda and Murphy shyly.
She felt dazed and hopeful and happy. Birdie couldn’t believe that she had just foisted herself on her cousin and Murphy, and that it had been so easy, such a nonevent. She had sought them out once she’d seen Leeda sneak out of the dorms, with her pulse pounding. And now she couldn’t understand why it had seemed so risky.
She looked around to make sure Honey Babe and Majestic were settled and accounted for (Honey Babe was itching his back on the grass, Majestic was biting at invisible bugs), and then she jumped in.
When she popped up again, spitting water, Murphy was doing laps, and Leeda was sitting on the edge of the lake, letting her legs loll so that the water was up to the bottoms of her knees. Honey and Majestic had both come to the edge of the lake and were sniffing at the water.
Honey put a paw to the water gingerly, then pulled it out and shook it.
Murphy paddled up and rested her elbows on the grass beside Leeda’s thighs.
“Come on, Leeda.”
“Mm, I don’t think so…. If Rex were here…”
“Are you guys together?” Birdie asked, feeling left out. She knew Rex was the guy her dad had hired part-time for odd jobs. She knew he was very meticulous and very easy on the eyes and that was about it.
Honey Babe whimpered.
“Yeah,” Leeda said casually, swirling her feet in the water, seeming a world older than Birdie.
“So, Bird, do you ever bring guys down here?”
Birdie shook her head. “Nah.” In the silence, it hung in the air. “My mom and I used to have picnics down here. I come down here alone a lot.”
“My mom would never be caught dead eating sandwiches where the bugs might get on them,” Leeda said.
“She sounds like you.” Murphy splashed water onto Leeda’s knees.
Leeda scowled, but Birdie knew Murphy was right. Leeda was the spitting image of her mom in a lot of ways. She had the same habits and manners. But it always seemed to fit a bit awkwardly on Leeda, like the wrong pair of clothes.
Murphy drummed on the ground with her hands. “Being with my mom is like watching makeover TV. Every time she meets a new guy, it’s like she’s looking in the mirror and they lift the curtain and she goes, ‘Ooh, I’m beautiful!’” Murphy did the imitation, clasping her hands. “And then she cries a lot. Then the guy dumps her and she’s back to the ugly duckling.”
Leeda cleared her throat uncomfortably. So did Birdie. Murphy’s face fell for a moment.
“You know, she dated that guy Horatio.” Murphy looked from Leeda to Birdie, blinking. “Balmeade?”
Birdie nibbled her lip. She remembered her mom and dad talking about some woman Mr. Balmeade was seeing on the side. They’d talked about her like she was a joke.
“He told her he was getting divorced. My mom wouldn’t date a married guy. Well, a married guy who was happily married…” Murphy looked unsure. “I mean, that’s bull probably. She’d probably hook up with anybody with two legs and a heartbeat. Of course,” she continued, “he dumped her eventually.”
Birdie didn’t know what to say. Apparently neither did Leeda. Murphy tugged out tufts of grass from beside Leeda’s leg. “The difference between me and my mom, I guess, is that she gets used by all these guys. For me, it’s the other way around.”
“Well, whatever works…” Birdie ventured. She felt in her heart it couldn’t work, but maybe she was just naive.
“Oh my God.” Leeda pointed to the water. Honey Babe had come around to where the shore angled into the lake at its lowest and was pushing away from the shore, paddling his minuscule legs.
“Honey!” Birdie laughed. Majestic, always the follower, was creeping in after him.
Murphy and Leeda both chuckled. “That is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever seen,” Murphy said, deadpan. “I didn’t know your dogs had it in them.”
Honey Babe and Majestic were now side by side, paddling slowly toward Birdie, their giant ears bobbing in rhythm above the water. They looked like tiny synchronized swimmers.
Birdie laughed, loud and long. For the first time in a long time, she didn’t have the sense that life was passing her by. Whatever had been building up in her didn’t disappear. It also didn’t explode. It stayed the same. But inside, Birdie felt like she expanded. For now, she was big enough to hold it.
Chapter Thirteen
Murphy wiped the sweat off her forehead and reached up to pick another peach, t
ightening her grip around it and plucking it off its branch with a tiny snap, then lightly pressing it in her hands before dropping it into the basket harnessed to her front. It had been a couple of days since the girls had snuck out to the lake, and since then she’d been working harder. Not for Walter or for Darlington Orchard, but because of Birdie.
She could see her through the trees, talking to a pair of workers by the house, looking unsure of herself as usual, her big eyes thoughtful. Murphy ruminated that she might be the first really nice person Murphy had ever met and actually liked. It was something about the way she was so sweet but so rugged when it came to the farm stuff—knowing all about the farm and the animals, like with the sleeping bird the other night. Yesterday she’d driven by in a rusted-out red tractor, spraying the trees. She was sweet. But she wasn’t soft. Murphy could respect that. And she had the uneasy feeling that she didn’t want to let her down.
Leeda, just down the row beyond two men, seemed busier too, though it was pretty comical watching her work. She liked to put each peach to her nose and sniff it, then wipe off the fuzz, then look at it as if it were a work of art, then drop it into her basket. Freckles had popped out lightly on her pale shoulders and across the bridge of her nose, and her hair was a sweaty mess, which she constantly tried to straighten out. It made Murphy smile.
Emma stood on Murphy’s left side, picking steadily and expertly, passing up the less-ripe peaches for the ones that were ready for harvest. Murphy hadn’t gotten the hang of that yet.
She tried to watch Emma sideways to get her technique. When Murphy actually put effort into something, she liked to do it right. But Emma caught her and smiled. It was quite a switch from the coolness with which the women had treated her at spring break.
“The trees are so crooked,” Murphy said, dumbly trying to cover up why she was staring. “It looks like someone wrestled with them. Estan”—she searched her mind for the word for ugly—“feo.”
Emma smiled bigger. “We clipped the branches for the new branches to grow.”
“Oh.” Murphy stared.
“New peaches no grow on old wood, you understand?”
Murphy looked at the tree anew and traced the branches with her eyes. She could see how it was sort of beautiful, all the places the tree had been sliced for the new bits of it to grow, creating awkward, stooped angles in the limbs.
“Doesn’t it seem like trees should be able to grow on their own, without all our help? You know, Mother Nature and all?”
Emma just shrugged and went back to work. Murphy looked up at her tree again. Rex was standing on the other side of it, grinning at her.
“You have a problem with Mother Nature now, Murphy?” His eyes danced, amused. She hated his constantly amused expression.
“Well.” She hoisted her basket tighter against her. “I always pictured Mother Nature as this wise, nurturing woman, didn’t you?”
Rex shrugged.
“But now she sort of sounds like my mom. Scattering trees that won’t grow right on their own, and spending the rest of her time eating Mallomars on the couch and going to Chili’s Bar & Grill to smoke and meet guys.” Murphy had actually come up with this comparison a couple of days ago, when she’d meandered back to Cynthia Darlington’s garden for the first time since being back on the orchard. The weeds she had pulled had already re-rooted and grown back, and Murphy had tackled them again, as a kind of vendetta. She’d gone back yesterday to do more work. She’d probably go back today. It would bug her if she didn’t.
“Well, you know we’re all doing our best,” Rex said.
Murphy rolled her eyes. “Right.”
Rex raised his eyebrows. “Don’t think so, huh?”
Murphy scowled at him. “You know what, actually.” She tugged on a twig. “I really don’t care. People want to believe they’re one thing and really they’re another. My mom thinks she’s Aphrodite and she’s really Medusa. It’s not worth thinking about.” She felt like she came off really well saying this.
But Rex’s eyebrows remained raised. “Then why are you so pissed off?”
Murphy shot back. A million reasons came to her mind in her defense. “Because—”
“Because if you didn’t care, you wouldn’t be so pissed off,” Rex interrupted.
Murphy blinked at him. He was still smiling.
“I loved Darth Vader, by the way,” he said. “It was classic.”
Already he was backing away with a relaxed lean in his step. Down the row he leaned to whisper something into Leeda’s ear, who’d been watching them, and she slapped him on the thigh.
For some reason, it made Murphy’s spirits sink.
Leeda caught Murphy’s eye and gave her a bit of a tentative look—as if she was wondering if they were really friends yet or strangers again.
Murphy didn’t have an answer for her. She didn’t know.
Midafternoon, Leeda hauled her second bushel of peaches toward the bins outside the supply barn, where Birdie and Poopie and most of the other women sat in the square of shade cast by the small droopy building, sorting the peaches into two categories: flawed and flawless. Leeda opened the bottom of her harness gently, which released the peaches into the bin, and then sank forward against the table with a sigh, resting her palms on its cool surface. The air wafting out of the barn was blessedly chill, stale, and sickly sweet with the smell of old metal and old wood. Coming from the white-hot rows between the trees, it felt like being doused in a cold drink.
“Do you guys mind if I come and sort for a while?”
She waited for Birdie to gloat, but of course she didn’t. Her eyes lit up, and she simply pushed over on the bench beside Poopie so Leeda could have a spot. Leeda looked at the two of them side by side. Birdie. Poopie. Birdie Poopie, which was what her grandmom called bird crap in her thick southern accent. Leeda was still too unsure of Birdie to let her in on the joke. She watched her cousin out of the corner of her eye. The past couple of days she and Birdie had crossed paths a lot and Murphy too, but it was hard for Leeda to tell where she stood with them. This was something Leeda was always gauging. She wanted to know where she stood with everyone, all the time.
She listened as Birdie explained to her that the flawed peaches got rolled to one side of the huge table, while the flawless ones went to the other. The flawed ones were sold in local markets and the flawless ones were shipped north.
“Why do the northerners get the good peaches?” Leeda asked.
“They’re all good,” Birdie said, slicing into one and examining its insides, surprising Leeda with her confidence. She seemed more relaxed around Leeda than she ever had.
“They’re just not all pretty,” Poopie finished, answering Leeda’s quizzical expression.
“What’re you doing, then, Birdie?” Leeda asked, watching Birdie slice open another peach and search the inside.
“Looking for brown rot.”
“Oh.” Leeda guessed that meant the farm wasn’t yet out of the woods.
Following the others occasionally with her eyes, she started sorting the peaches, moving slow, looking them over, then rolling them to the proper area—occasionally pulling one back from one pile when she felt she’d made a mistake, and assigning it to the other. After a while the rest of the workers tapered off for quitting time, but Leeda remained with Birdie and Poopie, lost in the repetition of the sorting. Eventually Murphy walked up with her final basket full of peaches, dropping them gently into the bin.
“Hey, Murphy,” Birdie chirped. Murphy looked at her vacantly for a second, like Birdie was a different creature than the one she expected her to be.
“Hey.” She looked at Leeda. “You tired, princess?”
“Shut up,” Leeda said sarcastically. She followed Murphy’s eyes to where they’d rested behind her. Poopie was staring at Leeda’s hands, shaking her head.
“What?” Leeda asked, examining her fingers, which were covered in juice and peach fuzz, her nails ragged.
“Well, I’ve never
seen a girl more useless with peaches. Look, you’ve thrown several good ones into the flawed pile. What’s wrong with this one?” Poopie leaned over the table and pulled one back, holding it out to Leeda.
“It’s too pointy on the bottom.”
Murphy let out a guffaw, and that made Birdie giggle.
Leeda looked at both of them, frowning.
Murphy scooted in beside Birdie, and Poopie sank down beside Leeda, so slowly Leeda thought she could hear her bones creaking.
“Honey, this is the perfect peach.”
Leeda looked at it. “It looks like all the other ones.”
Poopie held it up. The peach was completely round except for the little curved point at the bottom. It was flushed red all over with just a little hint of yellow. Poopie traced the cleft that led down to the point with her pinky.
“Poopie, should we leave you alone with that peach?” Murphy asked.
Birdie snorted. Poopie gave her a wry smile and smacked her on the knee.
“Have you ever eaten a perfect peach?”
“I’m not much of a fruit person,” Leeda answered tightly.
Poopie rubbed the peach against her dirty shirt and held it out to Leeda, her brown eyes dancing. “Darlington Orchard has the most delicious peaches anywhere on this earth. Try it.”
Leeda raised her eyebrows, looked at Poopie’s shirt, then took the peach and rubbed it on her own shirt. She bit into the peach, her teeth sinking into the flesh and the fuzzy skin running up between her two front teeth like a sail. She dug it out with her fingernail and swallowed quickly without chewing. The juice ran down her fingers. Leeda stuck them in her mouth meticulously so it wouldn’t run down her wrist, and sucked it off, then tried another bite, cleaner and neater.
“Oh, you girls don’t know anything. You don’t know how to enjoy.” Poopie shot up from the table, muttering in Spanish. She pounded away, talking to herself, leaving all three girls staring after her.
“Here,” Murphy said, looking for a peach from the flawed pile. This one actually did have a little brown mark on it. “Watch the master.” Murphy made sure to bite into that area first. The juice dripped right down her chin, landing on her shirt just above her right breast. “I call these babies my juice catchers,” she said through slurping.