The Secrets of Peaches (16 page)

L
eeda pulled Murphy out onto the sidewalk by the hand. When they were outside, she linked her arm through hers, not wanting to lose physical contact with Murphy, who was singing Christmas carols. Even angry, she found it hard not to want to steady Murphy.

The snow had stopped, but it had left a thick layer on the ground. They tromped along Main Street through the puffy, muted air and cut through the park to get to the road that would take them to the orchard.

It took them an hour to walk home. Though the rest of Bridgewater had turned gray immediately, the orchard, as they walked up the drive, looked pristine and white. Not a footstep had disturbed the snow covering the fields.

“Doesn't it seem warmer after it snows?” Murphy asked.

“I'm freezing.” Leeda felt vaguely dizzy.

“Let's not go inside,” Murphy said, staring up at the house. She held one of Leeda's hands with both of hers, and she looked, to Leeda, radiant. She looked radiant with hurt, radiantly alive.

Leeda wasn't sure if she'd ever been as alive as Murphy looked. But she felt for Murphy despite trying not to. If she hadn't had those drinks, she would have insisted on heading in. But she felt too loose and unguarded at that moment to say no. “What do you want to do?”

“Let's go check if the lake froze.”

They didn't make it that far. Murphy and Leeda wove through the peach rows, watching their footprints in the snow. They ended up detouring into the pecan grove.

Murphy shook Leeda's arm loose and sat down. Then she let herself fall onto her back with a soft
thwuff
. “I need to make a snow angel in case the snow melts before Birdie gets back.”

Leeda didn't have to ask why. It made perfect sense. “I've never made one.”

“Watch the master.” Murphy fanned her arms above her head and fanned out her legs, then stood up carefully. Leeda copied her.

“Now one for Birdie.”

Murphy lay down in a new spot and made a new one while Leeda lay in the mold of the one she'd already made. Murphy fanned and fanned, and then she just went completely still, staring up.

Leeda went still too. They listened to nothing. It was the most quiet Leeda could ever remember hearing. When she turned her head, there were tears running down Murphy's cheeks. It shocked her how quiet Murphy could be about crying.

She didn't say anything. She didn't even take Murphy's hand. She pretended not to see and looked back up at the dark.

She felt the vibrations of someone walking toward them
before she heard them. She and Murphy popped up like gophers and looked around.

A figure was walking with a flashlight, swinging it around.

“Uncle Walter?”

The flashlight swung toward them and engulfed them in a blinding halo. It got closer and wider as Leeda shielded her eyes and stood up. Uncle Walter lowered the flashlight and put his hand on Leeda's shoulder. “Leeda, honey, your dad's on the phone.”

In 1912, seventeen members of the Divine Grace of the Holy Redeemer were baptized in Smoaky Lake. Sixteen left town to find their fortunes—five as missionaries, seven as steelworkers, two as hobos, and one as an organ-grinder for the county fair. The night before each of them died, they swore they smelled peaches in the air.

The seventeenth stayed in Bridgewater. She married rich. She rescued her first miniature pony at the age of twenty-two. That was also the year she bought her first giant hat.

G
randmom Eugenie—still ruling with her white-gloved fist from beyond the grave—had directed her funeral precisely. Her favorite song—“Blue Hawaii”—was played as her casket was lowered into the ground. The miniature ponies were brought in at the appropriate time and they stood, dutifully, to watch.

In the second row behind Leeda, Murphy, who exuded life in bucketfuls, even when she was trying to be discreet, felt conspicuous and loud—her curly hair insisted on sticking out exuberantly. She watched, once the ceremony had ended, as people drifted up to pay their condolences. She felt rebelliously young and alive. Cold bit at her ears.

Birdie—who had turned brown in Mexico—flanked Leeda's left. She and Murphy were like cold stone lions guarding Leeda from afar, but Murphy didn't know from what. All Murphy knew was that Leeda looked like she needed protecting as she accepted hugs and handshakes, her skin extra pale, so that tiny veins showed at her temples. She had picked a seat away from the rest of the Cawley-Smiths and away from Murphy and Birdie. She hadn't looked back at either of them
once. For some reason, Murphy thought of flocks of geese and how sometimes you saw one flying far behind the V, alone. She waited for Leeda to send her some signal that she wanted them closer, but it never came.

Lucretia stood in the front row, not a hair out of place. Not a twitch in her glossy lips as she accepted condolences. People who seemed on the verge of hugging her as they approached hit some invisible force field at the crucial moment and reached out their hands instead.

Murphy tried not to notice Rex, seated diagonally across from her. She tried to be solemn and focused and not young and alive and wildly hurt. It didn't help that every time she glanced toward him, his eyes were on her. He looked nervous, fidgeting with his hands on the seat in front of him. Fidgeting was not Rex's style. Murphy wondered if it was Leeda's loss making him nervous or her.

When everyone migrated to the parking lot to leave, Leeda walked right past Murphy and Birdie, trailing behind her family like the lost goose she was. Birdie hopped up and trailed along behind her. Just as she caught up, Leeda made a small gesture of waving her off and ducked into her car. Murphy watched Birdie's shoulders slump as she walked back to where her dad and Poopie were waiting and got in the truck.

In only minutes, the parking lot was half empty. Murphy felt the cold and gray in her bones. It was hard to truly remember the heat that had allowed them to run around with almost nothing on all summer.

“Hey.” Murphy turned around. Rex was standing behind her. “Can I give you my coat?”

Murphy looked at the jacket he held out in his hand. He looked freezing. “No thanks.”

“You need a ride?”

“No.” Murphy looked in the direction of her mother, who was across the parking lot talking to Judge Abbott and his wife.

“How are you?” he asked her, looking like he meant it.

“Great. I'm great.”

“Yeah?”

She wanted to say
yeah
again, once more, with feeling. She didn't want to give him any more bits of herself than she already had. But her next words came out of her like air being let out of a tire. “Yeah, except I got deferred.”

He frowned, seriously. “I'm sorry, Shorts.”

Murphy balked at the nickname. She felt her anger rise up. “Maybe I'll be stuck here after all. Lucky you.” She didn't mean it really. She didn't think she meant it, anyway.

“You know that's not what I want,” he said quickly.

Murphy studied him. If it had been her on the other end, she wouldn't have been able to help wanting it. That was the difference between them. Whether Rex loved her or not, she wasn't sure. But she was sure that if he did, it was
less
love. “Yeah. I knew you wouldn't.” She meant it to sting him, but he looked satisfied, like she had gotten it right.

Murphy couldn't think of anything to say after that. Except a slew of biting comments about Dina Marie. Thinking of Dina Marie and Rex made Murphy feel like she would evaporate. It was a physical ache.

They stared at the cars moving out of the parking lot. “I eavesdropped. You should hear all the things people said to
Leeda,” she finally offered. “Like ‘she lived a full life' and all that.”

“It was her time…” Rex added, smiling.

It struck Murphy that Rex would die one day. She wondered if she would hear when it happened. She wondered where they would each be. She couldn't imagine not missing him, ever.

Murphy's darkness, her aliveness, her anger bounced off the cars pulling past them. She felt like Rex could see it. He moved so close to her then that she leaned in slightly. They stood poised like that for a minute, floating. And then she backed away. He leaned back and blew into the air.

“Later,” she said, backing up a few more steps and waving, trying to interpret the intent way he looked at her, if it was love or just sadness. Maybe it was the look of someone who'd become a stranger again.

T
ap tap tap.

Leeda woke to someone knocking at the window. It took her a moment to realize how eerie that was, considering she was on the second floor. Her heart thumping, she slid out of bed and moved to the glass.

Tap tap tap.

Leeda leapt back and held her hand to her rib cage. Then she breathed a sharp sigh of relief. She could see the long, thin branch snapping back and forth in the cold wind. She leaned closer to the window and peered out at the tree it belonged to. And as she did, she noticed something else—an orange glow by the barn.

Leeda slipped her coat over her nightgown and hooked her fingers into her fuzzy boots, tiptoeing down the stairs. It was probably Birdie, unable to sleep. She grabbed her coat from the hook by the door and wrapped up tight. The frigid air hit her in a gust as soon as she opened the door.

Making her way through the dark, Leeda's feet crunched on the fine patches of snow still remaining on the grass, and she
caught her breath at the number of stars that were visible above. She thought, just for a moment, of how she used to stand outside for ages on a cold night to look at the stars. It had been a while since she'd done that.

The fire had been built in the dirt right outside the barn doors, which hung open to let in the heat. Leeda walked up beside it and held her hands out to it, welcoming the warmth as she peered inside, looking for Birdie. Instead she saw Rex.

When Rex worked on something, he lost himself in it. It was one of the first things Leeda had ever noticed about him. Normally his body moved carelessly, but when he focused on something, like he was now, you could see how intent and meticulous he became. He didn't hear her.

“Hey.”

He looked embarrassed for a brief moment when he saw her, and then it vanished. “Hey,” he said.

Leeda walked in beside him and looked down at what he was doing. A birdhouse.

“For Murphy's garden?” she asked.

“I couldn't sleep,” he said, by way of explanation.

“Oh.”

For the first time now, he really looked at her—taking in her boots, her pajama pants below her coat. “What are
you
doing up?”

Leeda didn't know how to answer the question. A tree knocked on her window?

She and Rex had known each other so well, and for so long, that the silence between them was comfortable. Leeda sat on a bench and watched him work, feeling the cold snake its way under her coat and across the silk of her pajamas. She knew Rex
was too proud to ask if Murphy talked about him. But the question was written all over his face.

“Rex?” Leeda had wanted to tell someone. Rex seemed right. He seemed close enough to understand and far enough away that he wouldn't expect anything more from her. “I don't even miss my grandmom.” She rubbed her hands together. Rex didn't say anything. Leeda thought of her grandmother running alongside the float at the parade, sticking up for her. She thought of all the times she'd avoided Eugenie's phone calls and the time she'd left the paper Leeda on the table. The horrible part was, she wasn't sure she would have done it differently if she could have. She ran a hand through her hair, neatening herself up. “I don't even feel anything.”

Silence.

“Do you think…” She danced her fingers on her knees, flittering the tips, as if she were typing. Then she made herself stop. “Do you think if your mom doesn't love you, you don't get a soul?”

Rex stopped mid-tinker and gave her his sudden, undivided attention. “That's crazy, Lee.”

“Sometimes I feel like she just didn't hand one down to me. You know, because she didn't care that much. Like I'm a shadow or something.”

He came and squatted in front of her. “Lee, don't you know how much people love you? You're not invisible, trust me.”

It almost felt like the old Rex. Old boyfriend Rex. When they'd been together, he had always managed to prop her up.

“How are things with you?” she asked, not wanting to go back there. “How are things with Dina?”

Rex stonewalled, giving a little nod. It was hard to tell what was going through Rex's head when he didn't want you to know. He could have been thinking things were good. He could have been thinking Dina was no Murphy. Leeda looked down at her hands. Her fingers began to dance restlessly over her knees again. “Rex, after we broke up, it never kept you up at night. I mean…missing me. Did it?”

Rex looked at her. In his look was what she already knew.

“I love you, Lee. You know I do.”

“Yes.” She nodded.

Silence.

He squeezed her leg. “You okay?”

“I'm fine.” She gave him her million-watt smile. The one she had inherited from her mother. “I don't know what I'm talking about.” She stood up. She could tell Rex didn't want to let her go this way. But she smiled at him again. “I'm really tired. Good night.”

She walked outside and started toward the women's dorm. The fire flickered a shadowy yellow path, pointing her back toward the warmth. But Leeda looked over her shoulder, in the direction of the peach rows disappearing into pitch winter darkness. Leeda pulled her coat tighter around herself and turned in that direction, feeling she shouldn't but crunching through the snow into the crisscrossing lines of trees.

On parent-teacher nights, as a kid, it had always felt odd to be in the school when the lights were off in most of the classrooms. She'd never seen the school closed down like that. The cold, dark peach rows felt the same way. Leeda could only smell ice and, occasionally, mud. There was no feeling that she was surrounded by anything alive.

She came out on the lake, a black absence in the patchy snow and grass, and climbed up the rock where the Barbie had been, sliding her feet carefully so she wouldn't slip. She dawdled at the top, looking up at the stars, looking down at the moon reflecting on the lake. She pictured Murphy in her bathing suit, executing daring maneuvers off the rock: dives, corkscrews, even somersaults. She wanted just a little of what Murphy had. That fullness that Rex had found. That had found Rex.

Instead she felt like a wisp floating over the rock. She wanted to be bold. Wild. True. She wanted to do something to be visible to herself.

Leeda slipped her coat off her shoulders and let it fall at her feet. She untied her boots and slid out of them, pulled off her long-sleeved top, and slithered out of her silky pants so she shivered in her undies. She scooted her feet right to the edge of the rock.

Her breath jangled her chest with nervous shudders. She took in a lungful of air and jumped.

She knew she had made a mistake before she landed. And then it was too late, and her body was racked by the cold. Leeda exploded above the surface, sharp aches shooting through her body. It was beyond cold. It was bare pain.

Sputtering and gasping, she splashed wildly for the edge of the lake. But she couldn't get her limbs to move the way she wanted them to. She flailed in the direction of the shore. And then it felt like her arms were being ripped out of her shoulder joints. She was being yanked hard upward, pulled out with arms around her like metal vises.

Leeda's arms lolled out to the side like a rag doll's and Rex pulled her close to him, wrapping himself around her.

Leeda curled herself in a ball.

“You okay, baby?” he asked, squeezing her tight. Leeda tried to gather her thoughts. She pulled away from Rex and rubbed her arms and her legs and blew warm air on her hands. It was over as soon as it had started. She could feel blood rushing back to her fingers and toes. She tried to compose herself into the right shape again.

Rex sank back, breathing hard, just staring at her wide-eyed.

“Can you get my clothes?” she asked.

Leeda pulled them on while he looked away.

“Don't tell anyone,” she said. Rex hadn't yelled at her or asked her what she'd been thinking.

All he finally said was, “We should go to the hospital or something. Just to check you out.”

Leeda shook her head. “No big deal. I was just being…stupid.” She shot him a sharp glance. “If you tell anyone, I'll kill you.”

He looked at her. Not intimidated. But not arguing.

“I'm fine.”

 

That night in bed, Leeda shivered and shook. Weird thoughts circled her head. She couldn't stop thinking of tiny things she had messed up. Bs on papers. Things she'd said to Murphy or Birdie or Rex or her family that had come out wrong. Her mind kept picking at every single way she could remember she had ever slipped up. But when the sun started to rise, the thoughts vanished. By the morning, she just felt far away.