Peaches (3 page)

“Well,” she said, backing away. “If you need anything, just let us know.”

She actually couldn’t believe her luck. She had handled the whole thing so gracefully. She stepped onto the threshold, wanting to quit while she was ahead. “See ya.”

Birdie turned to walk out the door, then turned back to give Enrico a little wave. As she turned, her feet caught each other wrong, and she fell backward into the grass. So much for luck.

“M
om, you can’t do this to me.”

Jodee McGowen looked in the rearview mirror of her maroon 1990 Pontiac and smoothed her Wet ’n’ Wild Passionflower-lipsticked lips together. “Honey, you did this to yourself. You know I’ll miss you.”

Murphy rolled her eyes at the hypocrisy of it all. If someone was always “doing it to herself,” it was her mother.

“Judge Abbott made it pretty clear—” Jodee added before Murphy interrupted her.

“You’re ruining my life,” she said, and opened the door quickly to get out. She walked around to the back of the Pontiac and rapped on the trunk with her knuckles. The lock popped open.

Murphy hoisted her green army-issue bag onto her shoulder and then slammed the trunk. She walked back to the open window. “This is worse than jail. Can’t I just go to juvie instead?”

“How do I look?” Jodee asked, moving a wisp of her copper hair away with one fingernail. All of her fingernails were long and had tiny little seagulls painted on them above tiny little
oceans. Murphy and her mother looked nearly alike, but Jodee dressed to accentuate her femininity—low-cut tank tops from Wal-Mart, short skirts to show off her admittedly perfect legs, long nails that her boyfriends seemed to go for.

“You look like a floozy,” Murphy muttered.

Jodee frowned at her. “Watch your mouth.”

But Murphy only shrugged. Her mother was the least intimidating person she’d ever met.

Jodee looked in the mirror again, unsure now. “I happen to think I look very nice. He works at Pep Boys. His name’s Richard. He’s taking me out to dinner. Not bad, huh, baby?”

“Are you going to Burger King or Arby’s?”

Jodee lifted one plucked eyebrow. “I might just never come to pick you up.”

“Tragedy,” Murphy said darkly.

“I’m gonna run off to Mexico and drink margaritas every day,” Jodee threatened.

“That would be fine.”

Murphy backed up and gave a half wave. Jodee blew a kiss to her.

“I love you, honey. See you in two weeks.”

“Not if I die of boredom first,” Murphy said.

The Pontiac pulled away, its wheels crunching in the white dirt of the long drive out of the orchard. Murphy sent up a silent prayer that Richard wouldn’t be that interested in her mother. She didn’t know if she could take another of her mom’s boyfriends. Then she looked around.

Damn.

Murphy dropped her bag and stuck her hands in the pockets
of her cords, surveying the orchard. The house stood directly behind her. In front, stretching back toward the road and to either side as far as the eye could see, were the peach trees, their tops low and dipped in the middle like cereal bowls, rows of white sandy dirt striping straight paths between them. The branches were dotted in tiny spots of fluorescent green where the leaves were sprouting. To her right were two other houses, about twenty-five yards apart, strange looking because they were both sort of sunk into the ground and more run-down than the main house. To her left was a barn, also worn and sunken, its red paint closer to an ambitious brown.

It was different than at night. Murphy felt like the one thing that did not belong in the picture.

“Well, hi,” she heard, and turned. There was Chickie Darlington, cuddling one of her dogs against her chest. The other stood by her heels.

Murphy just stared at her. Chickie seemed to falter, her hands freezing on the enormous ears of her dog. “I’m Birdie,” she said, trying to sound bright in that fake way Murphy hated. Birdie. Chickie. Whatever. “This is Honey Babe.” Birdie held one dog forward, then nodded down to the other. “And Majestic. Welcome to the farm.”

Murphy stared coldly at the dogs, then looked up at Birdie—a picture of innocence with huge brown eyes and softly wavy auburn hair. “What kind of name is Birdie?”

Birdie’s cheeks flushed. “When I was little, I had, uh…these little chicken legs.” She seemed on the verge of saying more but stopped.

“Uh-huh.” Murphy looked her up and down. Birdie was sort of
plump, definitely not chicken-y. Still Birdie but without the legs.

“Dad asked me to come and show you where to sleep.”

Murphy lifted her bag back over her shoulder. “Lead the way.”

Murphy walked behind Birdie, watching the way she walked, self-consciously, like each step was carefully thought out. Yuck.

They made their way across the grass up to the smaller of the two houses. Birdie veered toward the one with the sign at the top of the stairs that said Camp A.

“This is the women’s dorm,” Birdie said, opening the door and leading Murphy into a tiny yellow-walled hallway bordered with a kitchen and then a common room. The whole place smelled delicious and looked like something from an old movie.

“Everyone just had lunch,” Birdie said, hovering in the archway into the common room, which was filled with three old La-Z-Boys, a table with three legs, a worn plaid couch, and the dark-haired, dark-skinned women who occupied these seats.

“This is Emma, Alita, Isabel, and Raeka,” Birdie said, smiling shyly at the women and then back at Murphy.
“Hola,”
she said softly.

“Hola,”
everyone said back absently. Birdie continued down the hallway to the bottom of a set of stairs. “They’ll be picking and packing too. They’re all nice.”

At the top of the stairs Birdie stood back to let Murphy walk into the first bedroom on the right.

“This is your room,” she said, standing back so Murphy could go inside. The room was bare, with an old beat-up desk and bed with a blue mattress beside a window that looked out at a row of trees. By the door was a list of rules: No smoking, no
loud music, curfew 10 p.m. Murphy immediately knelt on the bed and tried to open the window. It was jammed shut.

“This is a fire hazard,” she said, flashing her green slitted eyes at Birdie, who hovered by the doorway looking like a deer trapped in headlights. Birdie held her cheek out to be licked by one of the dogs in her arms. Her pink worm of a tongue darted along her skin twice. “I have rights. I want a window that opens. I could sue you guys.”

“Um. But I don’t know….” Birdie trailed off, looking nervous. “It’s an old house.”

Murphy rolled her eyes. “Whatever.” She tossed her bag onto the bed and started unpacking. She’d figure out how to un-jam the window.

“If you need anything…”

Murphy could think of many things she needed. She needed to be getting stoned outside the Ryman auditorium. She needed a real spring break, one of the few joys of life. Now, thanks to Birdie and her dogs, she had neither.

“Don’t you think that’s hypocritical?”

Birdie shifted her weight. “What do you mean?”

“Well, you’re asking me what I need, but I already told you I need a window that opens, and you can’t do that. And what I really need is to go on break like every other normal person in America, and I can’t do that either. And I have you to thank for that and you, Honey Butt.” Murphy nodded at the one dog. “And you, Ambrosia Salad.” Murphy nodded at the other.

“It’s Honey Babe and Majestic. They’re named after peaches….”

“I don’t know if that’s how you spend all your time, sitting around waiting to bust people’s balls because you don’t have
anything else to do. Guarding your dad’s crème de menthe.”

“Bust balls…but we weren’t…?”

“Yeah, bust balls. You and your fascist dogs.”

Birdie’s bottom lip quivered. “But I didn’t…I…” Birdie blinked a few times, unsurely. Then, to Murphy’s amazement, she simply pivoted on her heel and took off down the stairs.

Murphy came to the doorway and watched her disappear. Maybe she had hit a sore spot and Birdie really was afraid that her dogs were fascists. She imagined them giving each other little Nazi salutes with their paws.

“Chickie,” she called with a giggle in her voice, wanting to apologize. But the sound of the screen door hissing closed announced that Birdie had already gone. Murphy walked to the end of the hall, which was marked with a big square window, and peered out to see her and her dogs rushing across the grass toward the house, still walking self-consciously with no one behind to watch her.

“Damn.”

Murphy’s eyes drifted over the landscape. It was a far cry from Anthill Acres, where the foliage consisted of the kudzu that lined the telephone poles and the moss that stuck up through the cracks in the concrete patios.

Just emerging from one of the rows—on a path to intersect Birdie if she’d been walking instead of run-hobbling—was a figure. Murphy watched it closely, making out a man, well, a guy, in an orange T-shirt and jeans. He was nice to look at, definitely, though he had very little style—his jeans weren’t any kind of hipster blue and his T-shirt looked like Hanes standard variety. Murphy was into style.

Still, she could tell just by the way he walked that he had to be good looking. Guys who knew it had a certain walk that didn’t show off—their looks could do it for them.

Murphy made a mental note of him. And then she slunk back down the hall and forgot about him altogether.

Up on the porch, several people—mostly young Mexican men—were milling around speaking Spanish—sitting on the porch rockers and standing on the stairs, their skin brown and warm looking. Leeda parked her Beemer as close to the house as possible and primly made her way through the crowd.
“Pardone, pardone.”
She wasn’t sure if that was right, though she’d taken two years of Spanish so far. Of course, she’d spent most of that time snapping the split ends out of her hair and being courted via note by ninety percent of the boys in the class and half the girls.

Inside, the house smelled like mothballs and boxwood—the signature scent of Uncle Walter’s. Uncle Walter himself carried the smell with him wherever he went, much like Leeda’s mom carried the smell of Givenchy Very Irresistible, claiming that every woman should have a scent others could remember her by.

Leeda let out a long, nervous sigh. She hadn’t been to the house in over a year. Looking around now, she could see the signs of Aunt Cynthia’s sudden disappearance. Bare spaces where pieces of furniture had been. The dining room table covered in papers, the chairs pulled out and in disarray. Cynthia had always been in Walter’s office, on the phone with some client, solving some issue for the workers, or handling the bills. It felt quiet without her high southern voice lilting through the
rooms. Leeda wished she had Rex with her. Or one of her friends from school.

Poopie came out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on a dishcloth. “Hiya, honey,” she drawled in her weird mixture of Spanish and southern accents.

“Hi, Miss Poopie.” Leeda kissed her on her warm, dewy cheek. Poopie didn’t smell like mothballs. She always smelled like warm cookies.

“You look more and more like a movie star every day. How many boyfriends you have?”

Leeda smiled. “Just one for now.”

Poopie shook her head. “A waste. I hope he’s sweet to you.”

“He is.”

Poopie smiled too, showing three gold teeth. “Well, it’s good to have you, sweetie. We need every hand we can get this year. I’m about to drive the van into town to take the workers shopping. This young man is helping me get everything organized.” She nodded to a cute, dark-skinned guy standing in the archway of the kitchen. He smiled at Leeda. Leeda smiled tightly back, polite. People who didn’t speak her language always gave her the giggly wigglies. “Go on up and see our Birdie. She’s hiding from me.”

Leeda plodded her way up the droopy, lopsided stairs, miserable. She wondered if her parents would have ever sentenced Danay to two weeks with the Darlingtons. She tried to picture it. Instead the picture leapt into her head of the day Danay had left for Emory (the Harvard of the South, as her mom liked to say)—her mom and dad with their arms genteelly looped behind each other’s backs watching her drive away, tears in their eyes. It made a lump rise to Leeda’s throat.

In the upstairs hall, the same dresser held the same knickknacks that had been there since Leeda could remember. The same piece of cinnamon candy had been sitting there for at least sixteen years. Leeda wrinkled her nose. She liked things new and shiny, not old and dusty.

Birdie was sitting in her giant window, flipping through a
Cosmo
and nibbling the chocolate off a Goo Goo Cluster. Aside from the Goo Goo Cluster, she reminded Leeda of a Renoir she’d seen in Paris last summer—soft and full and pretty. Two papillons lay sleeping on each other’s necks at her feet.

“Hi, Birdie.”

Birdie jolted and tucked the magazine behind her, her cheeks turning pink. Leeda scanned the room to the TV, which was playing some Nelly video.

“What are you doing, Birdie?”

“Nothing. Um, hiding from Poopie.”

“She knows you’re up here.”

“She wants me to go into town with the workers and take them shopping.”

“Well, why don’t you?”

“I don’t know.”

“There’s some cutie downstairs, looks like a worker. Maybe you should go anyway.”

Birdie blushed harder, clasping her hands like an old lady. Birdie was more like an old lady than any old lady Leeda knew, and she knew a lot because old ladies loved the Primrose Cottage Inn, their fluffy white hairdos poking over the backs of the rockers on the verandah all summer long.

“What are you reading?”

“Nothing.”

“Well.” Leeda cleared her throat, remembering her posture and throwing her shoulders back. “Where should I put my suitcases?” she asked brightly.

“Dad wants you to sleep in here with me. He said we should pull out the trundle bed.”

Leeda sank deeply into one hip. “Are you serious?”

Birdie nodded solemnly.

“No way. I need my privacy.”

“I told him. I need my privacy too. I said we’re not ten anymore. He didn’t listen.”

Leeda surveyed the room and wondered. It hadn’t changed much since they were ten. The same four-post bed, the same stuffed animals on the shelves.

“Well, it’s just not happening,” Leeda said, stiffening in the way she did when she was resolved. “I’m going to talk to Uncle Walter. I think you should come with me.”

Birdie let out a breath and stood up.

Leeda frowned. Her cousin made her uncomfortable for a couple of different reasons. One was that she didn’t chitchat. She would let long silences drift into a conversation and make no attempt to get out of them or to help Leeda when she tried to fill up the empty space. The second reason was something a little filmier and harder to grasp. There wasn’t any artifice to Birdie—her big brown eyes were always earnest and truthful. Being around her made Leeda feel like she herself was a little bit artificial.