Peaches (2 page)

L
eeda Cawley-Smith stuck a spoon into the hole of her lobster claw pastry and dug out a giant dollop of amaretto crème. She stuck the spoon in her mouth and sucked on it, watching to see if her mom would say something. Nothing. Leeda dug two fingers in this time, sticking them between her lips and letting them linger there like the mandibles of an insect—a praying mantis. Her mom didn’t flinch. Leeda sighed, removed her fingers from her lips, and dipped them into the lilac finger bowl by her plate, swirling them around irritably.

Every time Leeda’s sister, Danay, came home for the weekend, which was just about every other weekend, their mom spent most of her time gazing at her in awe, like the eldest Cawley-Smith daughter was the second coming of Jesus. Only instead of having risen from the tomb, Danay had driven from Atlanta in the Mercedes their parents had bought her for her high school graduation gift. And instead of bringing absolution for all of the Cawley-Smiths’ sins, she brought black-and-white cookies from Henri’s bakery in Buckhead and her fiancé, Brighton, whose family had a fabulous rock-lined pool
that nobody swam in and threw parties where nobody smiled.

Right now, Leeda’s mom and the messiah were talking about wedding invitations.

“What color and black did you say they were, pumpkin?” Mrs. Cawley-Smith cooed. In reply Danay flashed her brilliant Emory University smile, the one she’d been giving her parents ever since she’d left Bridgewater. Despite the Cawley-Smiths’ money, their huge antebellum mansion, and the three hotels the family owned—posh by Bridgewater standards—they were still small-time in the eyes of the rest of the world, a notion Danay apparently bought into wholeheartedly. She looked at their mom like she thought she was cute. Cute in all of her unsophisticated glory.

“Lehr & Black, Mom. It’s not a color, it’s a brand.”

“Oh.” Mrs. Cawley-Smith nodded. “Well, you sure are on top of things, sweetie. And with classes and all to keep you occupied, I don’t know how you do it.”

Danay smiled graciously. “It’s not that bad.”

Leeda watched both women dig delicately into their matching endive-and-Stilton salads. Danay leaned her elbows on the table, lounging over her food like she might be at a picnic on the beach instead of in a stuffy dining room. Occasionally she reached over and placed her hand on their mother’s wrist, patting it affectionately as she talked.

“I couldn’t believe it when I saw the lights in the rearview,” she said, referring to a story she’d started earlier about how she’d been pulled over last week for going eighty-five in a fifty-five. “Two hundred fifty dollars, can you believe it? He wouldn’t even knock it down to eighty.”

Leeda watched the faces surrounding the table. Everyone, including her parents, shook their heads softly, agreeing with her, wearing amused expressions. It was this—Danay’s demeanor while telling the story, that lazy perfection—that always managed to take Leeda by surprise. Somehow Leeda always forgot it, and when she witnessed it all over again, it sank into her stomach like a lead weight. Danay could screw up (not that she did very often) and absorb it into her perfection, like it was another jewel on her sparkling aura.

Leeda took another bite of her pastry. She’d managed to charm the waiter into bringing her the lobster claw instead of the prix fixe appetizer, pulling out her best eyelash-fluttering southern debutante look. She occasionally glanced at her mother to see if she’d say anything. She didn’t.

Instead the entire Cawley-Smith family sitting at the table moved on to the wedding that would take place in mid-August, talking about the cake (red velvet, boring), the honeymoon (the West Indies, typical), the signature drinks (the Danayrita and the You Brighton My Life Banana Daquiri, no comment), and the wedding song (“From This Moment On,” by Shania Twain, vomit). Chewing loudly, Leeda let her attention drift across the table to Brighton, who smiled at her with his usual kiss-up-to-the-family expression. She frowned back, letting her pink puffy lips droop in disdain, then looked at the space just beyond his head. A giant acrylic painting of a miniature Shetland pony watched them eat, its big brown eyes frank and pleading. Beneath it a white banner read:
Mitzie Needs Your Help.

As usual, Leeda’s grandmom’s annual Shetland Rescue dinner was a rousing success. The Primrose Cottage Inn, a sprawling
Cawley-Smith–owned B & B with enormous white porches and rooms decorated in the style of different states, was packed, despite the hefty price tag of $250 a head. Leeda surveyed the crowd, looking for one cute guy or at least one guy below fifty. One man across the room, Horatio Balmeade of the Balmeade Country Club, locked eyes with her and gave her the old triangle stare: left eye, right eye, chest. Leeda curled over herself protectively.

“Don’t slouch, Leeda. It’s unattractive.” Her dad had temporarily looked up from his papers, which he took any opportunity to shuffle through. Leeda suspected he did it even when he didn’t have to in order to shield himself from the women he was always surrounded by. She straightened up and sighed loudly, hooking a finger into one of her blond starlet curls.

“And honey,” her mom added stiffly, “smile.”

Leeda smiled huge and fakely and rolled her eyes almost undetectably. It was one of her mother’s pet theories that if you smiled, even when you were pissed off or depressed, it made you actually feel happy—which Leeda thought was a load of crap. But she acted like she believed it. With her mother, Leeda acted a lot.

Ever since she’d been little, Leeda had sensed the way her mother’s eyes lit up when Danay entered the room and how when Leeda entered, they glazed over. Leeda had pushed herself into the top of her class while Danay had landed there with ease. Leeda’d tried to develop the same style of jokes, the same fine-line walk between casual and flawless. She had never been able to wear it as well. And maybe that was why her mom never filled her end of the bargain Leeda had secretly struck between them. Lucretia never lit her eyes up any brighter for her youngest
daughter. After telling Leeda to smile, Lucretia let her eyes drift to Danay like metal to a magnet.

Leeda scanned the room, noticing that the waiter who’d brought the lobster claw was glancing at her every so often. Leeda was generally loved by waiters. In fact, she was pretty sure she was loved by just about everyone except her mom. At school, people courted her friendship like they were paying homage to a queen. When she went out, people’s eyes lingered on her. Last summer, when the Cawley-Smiths had visited Tokyo, she’d been so loved by all the guys at the clubs, they kept asking if she was Charlize Theron.

Leeda was like David Hasselhoff. She was loved in Japan.

“Hey,” Danay said, tapping Leeda’s toe under the table and meeting her with a sparkling, perfect gaze of sisterly love. “What’re you doing for spring break?”

“Camping at Tybee Beach. With Rex.”

Danay looked at their mom. “Y’all are letting her go camping with a guy? You wouldn’t even let me go with my girlfriends!”

Lucretia fiddled with the rings on three of her fingers, then scanned the wall for the clock. Leeda’s parents liked to forget that Rex existed since he lived in a crappy brick duplex on the edge of Pearly Gates Cemetery across town, among other things.

He’d been Leeda’s boyfriend since October. He was the hottest guy in Bridgewater, without a doubt. And he adored her. When he’d asked her out, her knee-jerk reaction had been to say no. Her second knee-jerk reaction had been to say yes because it had suddenly occurred to her that dating someone like Rex might make her mom sit up and take notice for once. Only Rex had turned out to be an okay guy. A great escape. And maybe the
one place in her life where she felt maybe she was showing her parents who she truly was after all. She wished he had come; she always felt more solid with her family when he was around.

“Actually, Leeda, your father and I were talking….”

Leeda felt her stomach clench instinctively.

“We think it’d be nice for you to stay with your uncle Walter for the break, help him out with the orchard a little, and spend some time with Birdie.”

“Birdie?” Leeda never saw her second cousin Birdie except at weddings and funerals on the Smith side of the Cawley-Smith family, which her mom mostly wanted to forget.

“Sweetie, you know they’re having a tough time with Cynthia gone,” Leeda’s mom whispered, almost gleefully. She loved being the bearer of personal info, even when it involved her own cousin running out on Birdie and Uncle Walter.

“But I already promised Rex….” Leeda frowned, her perfectly arched blond eyebrows descending rapidly. Though she hated camping, she’d imagined she’d end up begging Rex to stay in some resort overlooking the ocean, somewhere where she could wash the sand out from between her toes. Where she could shop in the lobby and lounge at the waterfall pool bar, a safe distance from the creepy things that lurked under the ocean’s surface—hermit crabs, blowfish, seaweed. Rex liked to catch things like that and stick them on her legs. “You guys can’t.”

“Walter was saying what a nice young lady you are and how he’d like his Birdie to be more like you.”

Leeda rolled her eyes. “Birdie makes me uncomfortable. C’mon. You can’t.”

Leeda felt a familiar helpless lump in her throat. This was the way her parents worked. Requests were never requests; they were just orders all dressed up. Naked orders would be too tacky for the Cawley-Smiths.

“You just don’t want me to spend time with Rex.” Leeda crossed her arms tightly, lilac water from her fingertips dripping down her palms and the pale side of her wrists.

Mrs. Cawley-Smith sighed, a derisive grin spreading itself on her face. “Really, honey, don’t you think that’s a little dramatic?”

“You guys are such snobs!” Leeda said, tossing what was left of her lobster claw onto her plate. A few people at the surrounding tables stared. Horatio Balmeade leered.

Danay stared around, wide-eyed and scandalized, a perfect replica of their mom. “Leeda, you’re being a brat.”

“I’ll leave, then.” Leeda shot out of her chair and stalked out of the room and into the back garden of the Primrose Cottage Inn. She flopped onto one of the wrought-iron chairs, crossed her legs, and whipped out her cell. She was going to call Rex immediately.

He’d rev up his dirty pickup and be here in five minutes flat. That was the kind of guy he was. At times like this, she wanted him more than ever.

People like the Cawley-Smiths, by the way, got buried on
this
side of town, at Divine Grace of the Redeemer—miles from both Pearly Gates Cemetery and Anthill Acres Trailer Park.

B
irdie’s window was wide and broad, with a window seat for sitting in and a view of the garden her mom had planted years ago. Cynthia Darlington had spent tons of money on fancy latticework, gazebos, and exotic breeds of roses—and then left her creation to the kudzu. She had fostered Birdie into the world in much the same way she had fostered the garden. She’d insisted on homeschooling her “because you never know what kind of trash they’re teaching in the Georgia public schools.” She’d insisted on art lessons, French language, and cello, though Birdie wasn’t interested in any of the above.

The only thing Birdie was ever interested in was home. There was nothing Birdie loved more than to curl up in her window seat and watch the orchard. She knew what animals burrowed where, and what flowers bloomed when, and what trees produced the best fruit. She listened to the farm’s rhythms through the screen like the beat of the heart of someone she loved.

Cynthia Darlington had installed the fancy latticework in her daughter’s life and then driven away with her dog. Near
dawn, Cynthia’d been spotted by the Darlingtons’ neighbor, Horatio Balmeade, driving their 1988 green Jaguar onto the on-ramp to Route 75 north. According to Horatio, Cynthia wore a scarf in her hair and Toonsis, a Burberry collar that had seen better days. According to Horatio, they had both been smiling.

She’d left a letter on the table. Birdie had it beside her now.

The first thing Walter had done when he’d realized they were gone was to go out and buy Birdie two papillon pups, the breed her mother had always said she wanted, as an invisible “screw
you” to Cynthia. At least, that was what her mom was saying now.

Birdie had the cordless up to her ear, pinning herself against the molding of her window as if it was connected to a long curling cord. Conversations with her mom made her feel like that. Trapped.

“He’s just rubbing them in my face.”

Birdie had thought of it another way. She’d thought Walter had given
her
the dogs to cheer her up. But Cynthia was already on to another topic.

“Hell on earth. That’s what that place is.” Cynthia was talking about the orchard now. “I started hating it the year we moved in.”

“But you moved in the year I was born, Mom,” Birdie pointed out.

“That’s right. I remember the dirt in that place, scrubbing those floors; that was before Poopie, you know,” Cynthia said, referring to the Darlingtons’ longtime housekeeper. “And then the peach work was endless. You know we only had fourteen hands that year. I thought my fingers were going to fall off from all the work.”

“I didn’t know it was so hard for you,” Birdie offered, feeling guilty somehow. As if the fetus of Birdie could have slacked off just a little less.

“My friend Nancy always said you were my little bad luck charm,” her mom went on. “Of course that’s not true, honey. It’s just the timing was so bad with you and the orchard, and I really stopped loving your father that year. Fell completely out of love. Poof.”

“Wow.” That was all Birdie could think to say. Her ear had started to itch. Really bad. “Mom, I gotta go.”

Cynthia got quiet on the other end. “I’m sorry, honey. I know
it’s not fair for me to tell you these things. I just…ugh. Your dad is such a jerk.”

“That’s okay, Mom. Poopie’s calling me.”

“Okay. Bye, sweetie.”

“Bye.”

“Sweetie?”

Silence.

“I love you.”

Birdie held the phone between tight fingers. “Love you too.”

Birdie laid the phone down and leaned her head back against the molding. She sighed, then reached out and stroked her dog Honey Babe behind her butterfly-wing ears. Majestic stuck her nose in for a pet too and licked Birdie’s fingers. She smiled weakly.

Birdie looked at her bookshelf. Most of it was filled with things other than books—three porcelain clown dolls that Poopie said gave her the giggly wigglies (which meant heebie-jeebies in Poopie-speak), a collection of fairy figurines, a plush Tinkerbell from Disney World, a trillion manifestations of birds (stickers, ornaments, stuffed animals), and a couple of books people had given her.

Last year at Christmas, Birdie’s aunt Gladys had given her a book she’d bought at Wal-Mart titled
Angels Have Feelings Too.
Birdie had flipped through it stoically, looking for something she could comment on to make her aunt feel like she’d read it. She’d finally marked a section about finding an outlet for your emotions, like a musical instrument. Just look at the angels and their harps, it said. She’d managed to convince much of her extended family that she did, in fact, find solace in her cello.

Right now, it was leaned on the wall beside her closet, a thin layer of dust asleep on its surface.

She stood up, the pups leaping off the window seat and following at her heels. She looked at the cello, then looked in the mirror on her closet door. How had she gotten so fat? Oh yeah. She opened her closet and pulled a box of solace off the top shelf.

She gave Honey Babe and Majestic, each named after a breed of peach, a caramel-drenched Girl Scout Samoa, then polished off the rest of the box herself.

“What’re you doing lazing around in here all day?”

Birdie was lying in her bed in a cookiefied stupor watching VH1. There was a fascinating show about eighties Hair Bands.

“Nothing,” Birdie said, sitting up and wincing at Poopie in a pathetic attempt at a smile. Poopie had started working at the house as a cleaning woman some fifteen years ago when she’d come from Mexico to pack peaches, shortly after Birdie was born, but now she mostly cooked and had Birdie clean instead. If Birdie’s mom was the neglectful gardener in Birdie’s life, Poopie was the kudzu. She was hearty and she had staying power.

“You know we don’t have nearly enough help and you’re in here feeling sorry for yourself,” Poopie said, thrusting out a bucket. “Get down there to the cider house and start cleaning up the press. You’ll feel better.”

Birdie slid off the bed and took the bucket obediently from Poopie’s hands. Poopie smacked her on the butt on the way out. Birdie had more cushioning there than she used to.

On the porch, Birdie bumped into Horatio Balmeade, who took off his hat and smiled with straight white teeth.

“Hi, Birdie.”

“Hi, Mr. Balmeade.”

Horatio Balmeade was the Darlingtons’ only neighbor. He owned the country club next door, and he was always looking to expand. Birdie knew a visit from him inevitably meant an offer on the orchard. He’d made offers every year for the past five years, though her dad always made it clear he’d rather throw himself under the wheels of Horatio’s Mercedes than sell his family’s orchard to a golf course developer.

He was like a mosquito that hovered just out of reach as you tried to smack at him, only to sail back the moment you had forgotten him. He wasn’t big enough to do much harm, but he was big enough to itch. He was probably the only person Birdie had ever met that she actually hated. She glanced around the porch, feeling self-conscious about the peeling paint and the wood rot on the banister, the dirtiness of the rag rug at the top of the stairs.

“Can I help you?”

“Oh, just calling on your dad,” Horatio said through his teeth.

Birdie knew Walter’s patented responses to Mr. Balmeade—he wasn’t home, he was busy. “He’s over checking the—”

“Hi there, Horace.” Walter stepped onto the porch behind Birdie. He thrust out his hand and shook Mr. Balmeade’s, a joyless smile on his face. “I’ve been meaning to get over there for that game of golf.”

Birdie looked at her dad, then at Mr. Balmeade.
Horace?
“C’mon inside, Poopie’s just made a fresh batch of sweet tea.”

Mr. Balmeade turned back to Birdie. “Thanks, honey.”

Birdie watched them, boggled, as both men disappeared into the darkness of the house. She stared at the closed door for a minute. And then she walked down the porch stairs.

Birdie lit out across the clearing and over the hill toward the cider house, trying to shake Horatio Balmeade out of her head, the bucket knocking against the side of her ample right thigh, her auburn hair bouncing in its ponytail. Maybe her dad was desperate for friends since her mom had left. The thought that he might actually sell the orchard was too ridiculous for Birdie to even consider.

After a few minutes the movement and the air lifted her mood. She loved the smell of spring. She could predict how and when everything would start blooming. The magnolia by the cider house always unrolled its prehistoric petals later than the ones on top of the hill. Piles and piles of blackberry bushes would flower at the far back of the property near the bridge and ripen around the third week of June, when Birdie would trek across the acreage and go pick them for Poopie to make pie.

Birdie could see a few of the newly arrived workers crisscrossing the grounds, and this made her smile too and give them little waves. Spring meant the return of all of the workers, who were old friends to Birdie and her dad. She looked forward to seeing them all roll in the way other people might look forward to visits from relatives. They were so much family that Birdie couldn’t imagine life without them.

Every year the orchard produced batches of cider to distribute to farm stands in the area and batches to distribute to wineries that would turn the juice into wine. Birdie had been handed
the job of supervising the press two years ago as her first major responsibility. Now it was just one of her many duties.

When she got to the cider house, tugging at the leaves of the nearby magnolia as she passed it, she could hear clanking inside, and she slowed down, wondering if a possum had gotten in. She held the bucket back over her shoulder like a weapon, prepared to throw it if she needed to.

She peered around the corner of the door. But there was no possum in sight. Instead a boy leaned over the press with his profile to her. He had a nice, straight-bridged nose, brown hair, and almond-colored arms, which were stretched over the press, scraping a scrub brush back and forth. Crap. Birdie would have preferred the possum.

Birdie’s hands immediately flew to her sloppy ponytail. She hated talking to strangers. Especially guys her age. Especially good-looking ones. Living on an orchard and being homeschooled, she had the social prowess of the Hunchback of Notre Dame.

“Um,” Birdie began, preparing to say hi, and introduce herself, and ask him if he was the new cider guy. But instead she took one step forward and
squish.
Birdie went flying, her feet sliding forward and up into the air and her butt landing with a thud, followed by her head. A splurt of goo came flying out of nowhere into her face. Another soaked its way through her shorts and onto her butt cheeks.

Birdie had a straight view of the ceiling for a moment before the guy’s face appeared above her, his eyebrows knit in concern and his mouth pursed in an “ouch” expression. He had perfect eyebrows. Damn. He looked good.

Birdie remained lying with her eyes on the ceiling, too
mortified to stand up and a surge of heat racing through her stomach. “I’m okay. I’m okay.” She wanted to wait till the red ran out of her cheeks. But she felt his hands on her shoulders and he was pulling her up, and she felt herself go redder.

Birdie looked around her. She was sitting in a pile of old moldy peach sludge.

“Lo siento,”
he said.

“It’s okay. Not my fault. I mean, not your fault, totally my fault,” she said, trying to climb onto her feet. She was halfway up when she realized that her butt was sticking out and that her boobs were probably looking all lopsided and big.

“I’m Birdie,” she said, reaching out a hand.

“Enrico,” he said with a heavy accent. “Nice to meeting you.”

He took her floppy, halfhearted hand in his strong one and shook once, the rough of his palms scratching against the rough of hers.

“Okay, well, I just brought a bucket down,” Birdie said, wiping the slime off her right butt cheek. “If you need one. Um, if you need anything else…”

Enrico was looking at Birdie with a strange smile. She lost her train of thought. Her voice stuck in her throat and she swallowed. He wiped at his forehead.

“Come se dice…tienes la cara sucia.”
He rubbed harder at his forehead.

Birdie tried to remember what little Spanish she knew. Why had her mom made her take French when they were surrounded every summer by a ton of Spanish speakers?

“You want something for your itchy forehead?” Birdie ventured. Maybe the guy had poison ivy.

Enrico shrugged. “P-pardon me,” he stammered, grinning, “but you have peaches on your forehead.”

Birdie rubbed at her forehead with the back of her wrist and looked at the spot it left on her arm.

“Oh. Thanks. That’s, um, very polite of you.”

Enrico broke into a smile, then started laughing softly. He rolled his pretty brown eyes. “Pardon me, but you have peaches on your forehead,” he repeated, laughing at himself.

The laughter was contagious, especially with Birdie’s nervousness. She giggled.

“Pardon me, but there are peaches on my butt,” she replied, brushing off her rear end with both hands. Enrico laughed a little harder. Then he looked down at her butt. Birdie felt her face flame up again.