Peaches (7 page)

When Cynthia Darlington was renovating the Darlington house in 1989, she accidentally plastered her birth control compact behind a wall. It was five and a half weeks before Cynthia squeezed out the time to visit the gynecologist, and then it was only to find out that her prescription wouldn’t do her much good for the next eight months.

B
irdie hoisted her suitcase down the stairs, and the papillons followed her to Camp A, where all three moved onto the couch in the common room.

Birdie had a little thrill running through her as she unpacked her stuff into the bureau that held the TV, though she hadn’t felt this when Walter first announced that he wanted her to stay down at the dorm so that she, Majestic, and Honey Babe could keep an eye on Leeda and Murphy McGowen.

The other night, when she’d come downstairs to see what all the noise was about and found Poopie irritably rubbing Leeda’s legs with alcohol, the first thing she’d felt was hurt. Birdie had ducked out of sight, feeling embarrassed and left out. It was embarrassing that Leeda—her cousin, whom she’d known her entire life—had snuck out with Murphy, while she, Birdie, had gone to bed at ten o’clock after watching a rerun of
Dawson’s Creek.
It made her feel like a freak of nature, an eighty-year-old trapped in a fifteen-year-old’s body.

And then Walter had made it worse by sentencing her to the dorms, tearing her out of her comfort space. And here she was.
Only between then and now Birdie had realized that sleeping in the dorms also meant sleeping approximately fifty feet away from Enrico, and that was what made her a little breathless. She looked out the window toward the men’s dorm, wondering which was Enrico’s window and if he kept his blinds open.

She was leaning onto the windowsill, still looking, when Murphy came in from the field, covered in white dirt, with dry leaves in her hair as if she’d been taking a nap in the grass. Murphy came to a dead stop in front of the couch.

“Hey,” Birdie said quietly, forgetting Enrico and blushing slightly.

“What’re you doing here?” Murphy asked, her full lips parted as she waited for Birdie to stammer out an answer.

“Um—uh, my dad wants me to stay down here to, um, stay for a while.”

Murphy sank onto one hip. “To spy on us, right?”

Birdie swallowed, avoiding Murphy’s eyes. Her gut sank. “Um, not spy on you, just to…” Birdie searched her head for a euphemism for spying. She looked at Honey Babe, then Majestic, as if they could supply one. Her excitement of a moment before had completely vanished. “I’m going to help….”

Murphy held up her hand in a stop motion, smiling sardonically. “Yeah, okay. Whatever.” She scowled at the dogs, at Birdie, then trudged up the stairs.

Murphy had just vanished onto the upstairs landing when Leeda walked in and closed the front door behind her, looking puzzled when she saw Birdie and the blanket-strewn couch. Her trepidation was thinly veiled—very thinly.

“Are you sleeping over?” she asked.

“Dad wants me to stay down here for the rest of spring break.”

Leeda’s shoulders actually
heaved
in disappointment. She looked around the room, apparently trying to think of something to say, and then finally realized she had nothing. Leeda walked up the stairs too. Birdie could see the backs of her legs covered in brutal red bumps.

Birdie went back to unpacking. Deflated, she shoved her things irritably into the little bit of space left in the bureau and then put her toiletries into the cabinet under the sink.

Birdie felt humiliated. Did Leeda think “keeping an eye on them” was her idea of a good time? But the most humiliating part was that Birdie had
never
snuck down to the lake with anyone, and she lived here. Life was chugging along, and Birdie had never even gotten on the track. She was stranded at the station while people like Murphy and Leeda were actually
living,
moving forward, looking back at her like she was some kind of alien spy.

The thing was, she didn’t know how to get out of herself. She just didn’t know.

“I don’t know,” she said to the dogs, who obviously thought she was fabulous either way. It was in their eyes.

She went into the bathroom and saw they were out of cotton balls. Birdie sighed. She made a mental note to get some for Leeda the next time she and Poopie drove the workers to town.

Once she ran out of unpacking to do, Birdie cleaned the kitchen. A few minutes later the women started trickling in, fiddling with the radio and clucking over Birdie’s new living arrangements. Birdie sat with her legs together, unnerved by the commotion that she was supposed to live in for the next five days. When Leeda floated down the stairs to grab a snack from the
kitchen, they all gave one another meaningful looks until Leeda’d gone back up. Then they started in on Birdie and what a good girl she was, and on how lazy other people could be. Emma raised her eyebrows in the direction of upstairs and squeezed Birdie’s knee affectionately as if they—the women and Birdie—were older and wiser and Murphy and Leeda belonged to some other generation entirely. Someone switched the radio to weatherband, which they were all addicted to, though it was all in English.

The radio buzzed with static as they chatted and waited for the Southeast forecast. When Florida was mentioned, everyone quieted down.

Farmers in Florida, Georgia, and Alabama are gearing up for a late frost, scheduled to descend on the Southeast later this week. Temperatures are expected to drop to twenty-eight degrees, a level that for the season’s early crops could mean…

Birdie pulled her knees up to her chest and rubbed her opal necklace between her fingers. When she looked up, the women were all staring at her. She let out a ragged breath, smiled her grimace smile, and walked out onto the screen porch. There she sank onto the decrepit wicker rocker and rocked back and forth, sweating from the heat of the indoors and trying to quell the rising panic in her belly.

“
Por qué tan triste,
Birdie?”

Birdie looked up. Enrico had his face pressed against the screen so that his nose was flattened back against his face. Birdie could imagine, with his nose smushed up like that, that he wasn’t so cute after all and that she didn’t want him.

She wiped at the sweat on her upper lip and smiled. “Heugh.”

Enrico stared at her. Birdie had meant to say “hi” but then at
the last second had decided “hey” was more casual, and it had come out “heugh.” She blushed. “Um.
Estoy muy bueno.
”

“Muy bien,”
Enrico corrected.

“Muy bien.”
Birdie beamed at him.

Enrico smiled back, not warmly but only politely. He seemed to be staring at something near her mouth. She wiped at her upper lip again.

“I try to find your dad. Do you know where the label maker is? I thought I start that early, for bottles.” He was very earnest and all business, his brown eyes steady and not at all sparkly like they’d been last week.

“Oh.” Birdie patted her ponytail. After a long day of work she was covered in a gritty layer of sweat and dust. “I think we still need to order them,” she said.

“Okay. You let me know when they come?” Enrico smiled tightly. He could have been smiling at her dad.

“Yep. Will do.”

As soon as Enrico walked away, Birdie trudged to the bathroom to peer in the mirror and get a glimpse of the Birdie Enrico had seen. She let out a groan.

Where she had wiped at her upper lip, she had wiped a swath of dirt over her mouth so that she had a thick dirt mustache. The only thing missing was a sombrero.

She turned to peer through the rectangular window that looked out from the bathroom onto the path toward the house, where Enrico was still visible for a moment before he veered toward the cider house.

Who could blame him for not wanting to flirt with a chubby girl with a mustache?

She watched him walk away, holding her hand up to her neck, letting her pulse thrum against her fingers.

Over the next few days Leeda’s wounds, inflicted by the thirty-seven fire ants that had swarmed on her legs, formed zit-like pus bumps that she tried to fastidiously dry with the rubbing alcohol Poopie gave her. She hid from Rex whenever he was around, ducking back into the trees whenever she saw him walking across the property, which made him laugh while he pretended not to see her. It was just too gross for a guy to see his girlfriend’s pus bumps. Leeda knew her mother would agree.

Birdie was like an angel, checking on Leeda constantly in her quiet way, turning the fan on above the couch when Leeda was crashed out watching TV, taping little bags of cotton balls to her door. But whenever Leeda thanked her, she couldn’t get her voice to sound sincere. The cotton balls didn’t make up for not being able to sneak out anymore, since after dark had been the only time when Leeda had gotten to spend any real time with Rex anyway, and now it was the only time she was willing to let him get close to her at all.

Out in the field that Friday, Murphy and Leeda drifted by each other like they had every morning since the lake—awkwardly, muttering hellos but nothing more. Today they moved down the row in the same slow unison.

Leeda kept glancing at Murphy sideways as she took up her station a few trees away. Whatever strange mood had stolen over Leeda at the lake had vanished the moment she’d seen Poopie in her nightdress and hadn’t come back since. She cringed thinking that Murphy had seen her swimming in her skivvies and
then cringed harder thinking about the way she’d told Murphy about her weird thing with trees. It was the same feeling she’d had a few times after getting drunk at one of her friends’ parties, when she’d wrapped her arms around people, planting sloppy kisses on their faces, begging them to tell her if they really liked her or not. Only at the lake she’d been completely sober.

Murphy, who’d gotten too lazy to hide her laziness, let Leeda catch up with her.

“How’re the bites?” she asked.

“Ugly,” Leeda said, pointing down to her legs, which had started on a new phase yesterday of itching like crazy.

“Too bad.”

Leeda nodded. “Yep.” She looked at Murphy’s slouch and the way she swatted at the peaches. She tried slouching a little bit too. And then she saw Rex.

“Oh, crap.” Leeda ducked behind Murphy as Rex cut a diagonal across the row. He looked their way, rolled his eyes and shook his head, and kept walking.

When Leeda stood up to her full height again, Murphy looked at her quizzically.

Leeda shrugged. “I don’t want him to see my pus bumps.”

Murphy’s lips twisted into an amused grin. “You’re not letting your boyfriend see you until your pus bumps go away?”

“No.” Leeda knew it sounded stupid, but suddenly it sounded really stupid with Murphy looking at her like she was. “I’m just particular,” she offered airily.

Murphy was shaking her head and swatted at the peaches, though Leeda knew she knew they weren’t supposed to swat.

“Nah. That’s anal,” Murphy said matter-of-factly.

Leeda was too tongue-tied to retort. Murphy blinked at her frankly, twirling the bottom of her T-shirt around her fists until two workers walked by and they both turned to watch them. Some of the men and women came to the farm in couples, and these two were holding hands as they walked and talked. They snuck a kiss before separating to their different trees.

“They were talking about the frost,” Murphy said. “Sounds like it’s definitely coming.”

“I know.”

“Are they talking about it?” Murphy asked, nodding back toward the main house.

“Kind of.” Leeda considered telling Murphy about the long silent dinners. She wished she could explain to someone how Uncle Walter had looked smiling up at her from his desk with his office falling apart all around him. The orchard had broken up his marriage, it had turned him gray, and now it was making him broke. “Maybe it’s better for him to get out of farming,” Leeda added finally.

Murphy eyed her critically. “It’s never better to be forced out of something that’s your whole life,” she said in a superior, knowing tone that got under Leeda’s skin.

“Well, people get what they deserve,” she retorted. “If Uncle Walter wasn’t so stubborn about selling…”

Murphy laughed. “Of course you can say that when your family’s loaded.”

Leeda opened and closed her mouth, feeling stupid. Then she sucked her bottom lip into her mouth and bit it irritably. Murphy shook her head, annoyed, and walked down the row, leaving Leeda standing there feeling like an idiot.

Leeda scanned the rows for Rex and then walked out onto the grass. She found him kneeling beside one of the tractors with a rag spread out, his old tools laid out on top of it.

She crouched beside him. His skin smelled like tractor grease, which made her scrunch up her nose, but she put his hands on her bumpy calves, and, when he turned his face toward her, she kissed him on the corner of his lips. She was well aware it wasn’t like the other couple’s kiss at all. Their kiss had been secret, stolen, special. The kiss she gave to Rex was sweet but flat—like a Coke without the bubbles.

Murphy usually knew why she was miserable. She could enumerate the reasons proudly, like a kid counting out birthdays on his fingers, and she liked to enumerate them often. But Friday afternoon she had to search herself for why she felt so dark, and it didn’t come easy. With two nights left on the orchard, she blamed it on the fact that her spring break had just about ended and she could never redeem it. Coming to the closing point was a fresh reminder that two weeks had been stolen from her. That was what she told herself, but it didn’t ring quite true. It kept nagging at her that since the weeks of hard labor were over, she should feel like a jailbird spreading its wings. And she didn’t. She felt like she was about to fly into a window.

She thinned trees that afternoon, hardly noticing she was doing it at all. After her run-in with Leeda she steered clear of everyone altogether, feeling like a menace to society. Before she knew it, the workers were straggling in ahead of her instead of behind her like they usually did. She lingered in her row, watching them disappear, and continued to thin the trees here and
there, feeling the emptiness of the rows around her. She finally walked out to the edge of the trees and stood there, looking toward the dorms. She couldn’t deal with the sad, worried faces of the workers as they listened to the radio, like they had at breakfast and lunch. They shook their heads at the radio as if they were trying to will the frost away, and it just made Murphy darker. So instead of walking up the stairs of Camp A, she turned right and walked alongside it. There was low brush behind here, Murphy knew, but now that she got close, she noticed a tiny overgrown footpath. She followed it.