The Secrets of Peaches

  Rex pulled her to him by the belt loops of her baggy jeans. “I know who you are, Murphy.” He kissed her lips and tugged at her curly hair. He gave her the naked look again, the in-love-with-her look.

  Murphy wanted to tell him she loved him for that. And Rex seemed to be waiting for it. For some sign of love. For her to say the words. But saying she loved him would be like throwing in a good hand. No more pairs, no flush, no full house.

  “I couldn’t take anyone who uses the word hussy seriously anyway.”

  Murphy pasted her mouth into an amused grin and looked away.

  “I mean, unless I lived in the 1890s,” he added. “I mean, maybe trollop, but not hussy.”

  “Trollop’s a much better outdated word,” Murphy agreed.

  He stared at her, turning serious. “My dad likes you.”

  Murphy gave a hardened, one-note laugh, as if she didn’t believe it. But she did, and it scared her somehow. A kid in a ghoul mask bumped into her and kept walking. Rex stuck his hands in his pockets.

  “When I leave Bridgewater…” Murphy stumbled over the words. “I won’t be this…me…anymore. I’ll be something bigger.”

  “Like when a hermit crab moves into a new shell.” He kissed her cheek. “I get it, Murphy. You don’t have to say.”

  Anthill Acres Trailer Park looked especially underwhelming as Murphy shuffled up the dirt walkway toward her house. It was nearly ten o’clock, but only the kitchen light was on inside. Outside the trailer, the remains of Yellowbaby, Murphy’s dead car, sat cold and unused. The parking lot, and the trailer in general, were an accumulation of too many things that no one had taken the time to throw away. That was how Murphy felt about life in Bridgewater. It was an accumulation of junk she couldn’t wait to leave behind. She grabbed the mail out of the black box on her way inside.

  “Hey, Mom.” She nodded to Jodee, sitting at the table, and Jodee, mouth full, waved back.

  Murphy sorted through the mail and tossed all the junk stuff in the recycling bag. Mail at the McGowens’ was usually even steven between junk ads and bills. Once every two weeks, there was a paycheck for Jodee. It always seemed unfair that her mom got so many more bills than checks.

  Spread out on the table, where they’d been for weeks, were the various brochures for colleges they’d received in the mail over the course of the summer and early fall. Jodee had organized them there, in the middle of the kitchen, in an obvious attempt to hypnotize Murphy into applying to schools closer to home. All the in-state schools were on top like a silent accusation—there were so many perfectly good schools in Georgia.

  Jodee hadn’t bothered to change out of her work clothes: a knee-length skirt she’d gotten at Village Thrift and a white polyester blouse. Murphy watched her mom and compared her to Leeda’s. Jodee had lines in her face and glossy lipstick and long, wild, pretty hair. Outside of work, she dressed too sexy for anyone’s comfort except maybe lechy guys. She’d never told Murphy not to drink, or set a curfew for her, or warned her to work hard at school. And she had always tried to look about ten years younger than she was. She had said, more than once, that Murphy’s dad had left her—when Murphy was a baby—because she was getting too old. But as Murphy had grown up, she’d decided that was probably something her mom said to sound like she knew how they’d ended up just the two of them. Sometimes she had wondered if her mom even knew who Murphy’s dad was.

  “How was work?” Murphy mumbled.

  Jodee smiled. “It was good, honey. I got in trouble for yapping too much with the women from accounts payable. But…” Jodee shrugged. “My boss is a nice guy.”

  Murphy’s mom, no matter how bone tired she looked, always had something nice to say about her job at Ganax Heating. She loved the other women who worked there. She loved that after she sorted the mail, she had lots of downtime. She was always trying to get Murphy to apply for a part-time job there. The thought had crossed Murphy’s mind, more than once, that she’d rather have her eyeballs punctured than work at Ganax.

  “You got your applications finished?”

  “Application, for NYU.” Murphy sat down on the plasticky bench seat behind the table. “Singular. I have to send it tomorrow.” She felt like she couldn’t state her intentions to her mom enough.

  Jodee’s face expressed concern. “You’re only applying to one school?”

  Murphy nodded and leaned forward to turn on the kitchen TV.

  “Murphy, that’s just foolish.”

  “It’s only early applications, Mom,” she explained. “Anyway, I’ll get in.”

  Jodee looked at her like she wanted to say more. Murphy didn’t see that there was anything more to say. She had a deep, primal aversion to applying anywhere except exactly where she wanted to be. To go to New York without going to NYU would be like doing things halfway. No other school was part of the picture she’d been holding on to forever. “Do you know Leeda’s mom has this glass egg that Leeda said cost four thousand dollars?” Murphy had always been good at changing the subject.

  “Hmm.” Jodee nodded.

  In her mind, Murphy calculated that her mom would have to work at Ganax for over five hundred hours to buy the Cawley-Smiths’ glass egg.

  “How’s Rex?” Jodee asked.

  “He’s Rex.” It rankled Murphy sometimes that Jodee was so enthused about her boyfriend. It amounted to some kind of pressure. And she was sure Jodee would like nothing better than for her to stay in Bridgewater and settle down. She felt the question always circling the back of her mom’s mind: Isn’t love enough?

  After watching TV for a while, Jodee leaned her head back in her seat and dozed off, and Murphy shuffled into her room to go over her application one last time. On the far wall that came within an inch of butting against the foot of her bed—her room was more of a cubby than a room—hung a bunch of pages she’d ripped out of a magazine once. They were all black-and-white pictures of New York. One aerial photo of the whole city. One of a puddle on a New York sidewalk with a building’s reflection in it. Another of a man sitting outside a shop in Chinatown. Murphy took a deep breath and looked at her application.

  Murphy Jane McGowen.

  Age?

  17.

  She read the two lines over to make sure there were no typos. Nervous excitement coursed through her.

  She hadn’t said it right to Rex. To her, New York wasn’t just leaving behind what she didn’t want to be. It was the chance to have everything that she could never have.

  It was her glass egg.

  Ten

  “You ready?”

  “Yes, Bird.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yes, Birdie.”

  The morning after homecoming, Birdie stood next to the blue post office box on the wide, empty street outside the Bridgewater post office, her brown eyes twinkling, her soft cheeks flushed. She held Murphy’s large white NYU application envelope an inch into the slot.

  Thwuff. Birdie pushed the envelope all the way in and let it go, listening intently as it landed with a muffled rustle. Then she shimmied around the box, kicking her legs out like an elf. She circled it not once but three times.

  “What are you doing, Birdie?” Rex had his arm slung around Murphy’s neck.

  Birdie paused, giving them a “duh” face. “Good luck dance. This is for early admittance….” She did a knee-toe kick all around the box. “And this one’s for getting the moolah…” she said, doing the shimmy.

  “Wow, I didn’t know you were the financial aid fairy too.”

  “Money, money, money,” Birdie sang, rocking back and forth.

  “You’re lucky community college is cheap,” Murphy said.

  Birdie stopped dancing, looking slightly deflated.

  “What do you want to do now?” Rex asked.

  “Vomit.” To have her application out of her hands was both a relief and a new stress. Now, over the next several weeks, she’d have to wonder where it was, who was reading it, what they thought. She envied Leeda, who?
??d turned in her early application to Columbia a week ago. Which was typical.

  Birdie turned worried. “Are you okay, Smurphy?”

  “Murphy Jane does not enjoy handing the controls to someone else,” Rex said, yanking Murphy’s hand to kiss her on the knuckle. He’d seen her middle name on her application this morning. She could kick herself for leaving it lying around.

  “All the name-calling is killing me,” Murphy said flatly.

  “Are you gonna take good care of her in the big city, Rex?” Birdie asked innocently. Murphy rolled her eyes, but then she looked at Rex, a little breathless.

  He smiled at her, easy. “If she’s lucky and she prays real hard.”

  Murphy grinned at him dryly, but inside, she bucked. More and more, she wanted to hear he was coming with her. “Luck’s my middle name,” she said cavalierly.

  Rex laughed. “Okay, M.J.”

  Murphy heaved a dramatic growl, ignoring him. “Let’s go get Leeda and celebrate.”

  Murphy summoned her inner frigid diva, pretended to be Lucretia, and called Leeda out of school, which she herself was already skipping. Leeda appeared in the school parking lot in pink, her blond hair wild and soft, reminding her friends all over again she was, without a doubt, the most beautiful girl in Bridgewater.

  Minutes later, they were stacked in Birdie’s truck heading down Route 75. Birdie crept along in the right lane, staying at exactly the speed limit. From the passenger seat, Murphy watched car after car pass them. “Bird, if you drive any slower Miss Daisy is going to catch up with us.”

  The trees at Mertie Creek drooped over the bar in smooth arches of orange leaves. Rex went in and got them a pitcher of beer. Behind the bar the girls pulled the rough-hewn benches around the fire pit. They cheers’ed Murphy and her application. The trees had started to lose their leaves, and the creek was visible now, snaking behind the bar. Murphy and Leeda flung old bottle caps they dug out of the gravel at each other, trying to make it between the other’s hands. Birdie curled over her civics textbook, which she’d had behind her seat in the truck.

  “Hey, Bird, is Laurens Community College really that rigorous?” Murphy prodded her.

  Birdie looked wounded for a moment. “I’ve just been really busy with work at home.”

  Murphy squinted at Leeda’s fingers, gauging the distance. Leeda wiggled her thumbs mockingly. “Poopie jobs?”

  Birdie shrugged.

  Every time Murphy called Birdie, she was washing the curtains or scrubbing the windows or waxing the floor: all stuff Poopie would have normally done. She’d spread green manure among the new peach plantings and laid out new fruit for the bats.

  “Maybe Poopie thinks now that you’re all grown, you don’t need her anymore,” Leeda offered. “Just tell her you still need her.”

  Birdie had her chin in her hands. “The bats still haven’t come to roost. I even thought I’d put Poopie’s Saint Jude out by the hole, but I can’t find him. I’ve tried everything else.”

  “Maybe you should dress up like Count Chocula,” Murphy said.

  “I’m supposed to do a ribbon cutting at the nature preserve where all those bats are,” Leeda said.

  Birdie looked distraught.

  “Good one, Lee.” Murphy leaned back. “That’s like pouring lemon juice in her wounds.”

  “I kind of like cutting the ribbons.” Leeda scowled at Murphy’s disgusted look. “What. I’m having…a good time.”

  “Blah.”

  “I’m telling you.” Leeda fiddled with her nails, smoothed out the pleats in her knee-length Burberry skirt. “My mom’s…into me or something. Maybe now that I’m leaving. Or that she’s sick. Or something. She calls me, like, three times a day. She’s not so bad right now.”

  “Not bad relative to Satan?” Murphy quipped. Birdie snorted, covering her mouth. And then she stopped laughing immediately and looked around as if lightning might strike her. She always got a little wigged at the word Satan.

  Leeda went stick straight and closed her lips tight. But Murphy couldn’t help it. She had seen the million ways Lucretia had broken Leeda’s heart. It showed in little things Leeda did, like how she spent so much time on her hair or how she went all stiff when everyone around her was relaxing. In Murphy’s opinion, it showed in all the ways Leeda didn’t know how to just be.

  Murphy looked over at Birdie, who was staring up at the sky with her mouth half open, blinking like an idiot. “Counting peaches, Bird?”

  Birdie blushed. “No.” She leaned in, elbows on the table, and held her hair in bunches on top of her head, like mouse ears. Then she flung herself forward dramatically, turning to look up at Rex sheepishly from where she lay. “I’m dying,” she murmured.

  “Here we go,” Leeda said.

  “He’s just so…just…a…”

  “He’s a café con leche love biscuit,” Murphy said. They all knew Birdie was talking about Enrico by the stupid goofy look on her face. Rex let out a short choppy laugh.

  But Birdie just sank deeper against the table. “You know what? I even like the letter E better now,” she said despondently. “I always thought it was a boring letter. You know, not like X or Q. I can’t believe I’m going to see him in fifty-four days.”

  Murphy slumped against Rex, pretending to be passing out. Birdie let her arms flail forward in obvious capitulation to patheticness.

  At four, music started playing from the speakers under the eaves. Rex pulled Leeda up to dance, singing the words to some cheesy song to make her laugh. Murphy lay back and watched them, content. Rex kept stealing glances at her over Leeda’s shoulder.

  And then she felt it. An ache. It was like it fell out of the sky and landed square on top of her. She wanted to know so badly what was going to happen. It hurt how much she needed him. She swallowed and touched the hollow of her throat.

  Birdie sat up and rubbed her eyes.

  “If Enrico wants to go to second base, do you think I should?”

  “Second base?” Murphy laughed. “Birdie, what are you, from the fifties?”

  Birdie bit her lip thoughtfully and shrugged, doe-eyed as usual, her hair in silky tangles from where she’d been pulling on it. Murphy shook her head wonderingly. “Second base,” she muttered, and took another sip of beer.

  “I told Poopie I’d cook Thanksgiving dinner.”

  “That’s frightening,” Murphy replied. Birdie was a notoriously bad cook. Her mind drifted off too much. She forgot things until they started smoking.

  “I think I’m going to name my first child Myrtle so I can call her Mertie for short,” Birdie said.

  Leeda plopped down beside her. “Drat, you beat me to it.” Rex sat down beside Murphy and pulled her close to him.

  “I’m sure Stepford Mom already has names picked out for all your kids,” Murphy joked.

  Birdie snorted. Leeda just ignored her.

  The day felt like heaven on earth. The sun kept peeping at them through the passing clouds, and to Murphy it felt like kisses from angels, though she would never have admitted it.

  “Birdie, your heer, it ees so scruffy, but I loooove it,” Leeda said in a thick Enrico accent, brushing her fingers through Birdie’s hair to smooth it out. She began to braid it and Birdie leaned back against her.

  There was a long easy silence, and Murphy tried to think of something fun to talk about. “Thunderstorms, cool or scary?”

  “Cool,” Birdie answered.

  “Cool,” Leeda agreed.

  “Cool because they’re scary,” Rex said.

  Murphy picked wood splinters off the table, nodding. “Favorite three things about yourself.” Everyone was silent. “I’ll start.” Murphy chewed on a thumbnail glibly. “My curvyliciousness, my taste in music, and how dang funny I am. Bird?”

  Bird rubbed her lips, thinking. “The orchard. Me as a kid. Mmm, my hair.”

  Leeda kept braiding. “I’ll take a skip,” she said.

  “There’s no skipping. Except for boys because they’re not
so interesting.” She pinched Rex. Leeda stared over Birdie’s shoulder blankly. She seemed to really be thinking.

  When several seconds went by without a response, Rex took over, asking if Birdie really wanted to know what all the bases meant. Then he explained them in the gentlest terms imaginable. She listened with half her head tucked into the collar of her shirt, squinting in embarrassment, the visible tops of her cheeks red. Murphy kept her eyes on Leeda, who seemed to be somewhere else.

  The afternoon wore on into dusk, and the temperature started to drop. Leeda wrapped half her cardigan around her and the other half around Birdie as they sipped cold beers. Rex kept his hand on Murphy’s knee under the table. She could feel the warmth of his palm through her jeans. Murphy set her hand on top of his.

  By the time they dragged themselves away, the parking lot was draped in dusk. Wind blew leaves across the back road. On the highway, Leeda fell asleep against Murphy’s shoulder, and Birdie turned the heat on full blast, though most of it escaped through the cracks in the old truck’s dried-out window seals.

  At Anthill Acres, Murphy waved to the girls as Birdie pulled out, and she and Rex crunched up the gravel to the stairs of her trailer.

  She crossed her arms and looked back at her door.

  “Look.” Rex blew into the air. “First mist.”

  Murphy watched the mist rise up and disappear. “Nice,” she said, rolling forward and backward on her feet and rubbing her arms. He stood looking up at her from under his eyebrows for a while.

  Every time they were alone together, the same question came to Murphy’s lips. She rocked back and forth on her feet, fighting with herself about whether or not to ask if he’d reached any decisions yet.

  “I think you should say it,” he said, taking her by surprise.