Love and Peaches

What mattered was stil there. That was what they all felt, and what surprised them all. What mattered couldnt be shaken.

what mattered was still there. That was what they all felt, what surprised them all. What mattered couldn't be shaken.

But the last time they were all at the orchard together, Birdie only found one lone blossom, drying up. She took it with her and tucked it in her hair. What mattered was still there. That was what they all felt, and it was what surprised them all. What mattered couldn't be shaken.

First there were the indoor animals. Leeda took all five dogs out on their leashes, letting herself be dragged along as they sniffed at this rock, trotted to that tree, and wrestled with one another exuberantly. She smiled, watching them. They were like clowns. Constantly ridiculous. Once she managed to drag them back inside and foist each dog into its pen, she filled all the food and water bowls. She cleaned the parrot cage and managed not to feel like gagging. She rubbed the parrot on the back of his head, which she'd discovered was his favorite spot. She thought about Birdie catching impetigo from her chicken. She could see now how one might not be totally disgusted to kiss a bird. The parrot looked at her with such human curiosity. Birdie had named him Chiquito and had nuzzled her nose to his. Now Leeda tried it, half afraid she'd lose her nose. But Chiquito nestled into her and made a low sound of contentment in the back of his throat.

Tufty, a recently arrived border terrier, jumped up on her lap, licking her face. Leeda pulled him close, suddenly, and held him, sinking her face into his ears, feeling the warmth of his body against hers, feeling guilty that he wasn't Barky but also feeling happy that he was there. She couldn't imagine holding another person that way. It was love at its simplest.

Inside, the animals greeted her. A parrot that had arrived that week, cage and all, squawked at her. The dogs---four of them now---launched into happy yips. One of the cats that had shown up on the porch rubbed itself against her legs. "Oh God, I'm Dr. Dolittle," Leeda said out loud.

As a child, Leeda Cawley-Smith had had a natural attachment to animals, and they had had a natural attachment to her---cats and dogs were constantly following her home and even squirrels let her get close enough to feed them nuts.

Murphy biked circles around the courthouse parking lot like an evil newspaper boy from one of her favorite movies, Better Off Dead. She and Judge Miller Abbott didn't have a great history. Since she'd hit puberty, he'd seen her through two shoplifting convictions, countless underage alcohol issues, a few streaking episodes, and the time she'd mutilated the Bob's Big Boy "Big Boy.

Maybe figuring it out is... I don't know, what it's all about. Constantly deciding. And you're true enough not to decide anything before you're ready, and you don't want to lock yourself up in a box. Maybe it's the sure people who are missing out.

They emerged into the sun again, covered in dust. Birdie took deep breaths, relieved to be back out in the open. She looked at Grey, unsure what she wanted to communicate but sure that it was huge and that she was powerless. But Grey seemed to recognize fear when he saw it. And he simply reached forward and pulled Birdie to him. She sank against his chest. It felt different than Enrico's body. Taller and firmer. It felt safe.

Barky was at her heels, and he let out a low, plaintive growl. She scooped him up and held him to her face the way Birdie had held the kitten---so naturally. They sniffed each other's noses. It felt kind of good.

Some people can predict whether it's going to rain or sense when something bad is going to happen. Murphy had a sixth sense about people hitting on her. She could see it from a mile away, the way a spider can see the movements of a fly. As she approached the counter of Ganax Heating, she tried to look as uninterested as possible. "Is Jodee here?" she asked. She stood at the counter, digging her toes into the linoleum floor. The receptionist was a young guy about her age. "Hey, Murphy." She suddenly recognized him. He'd been in her high school English class. He'd occasionally tracked her down at her locker and had used complex vocabulary words while he talked to her, trying to impress her. "I had a huge crush on you. You were really smart." Murphy sighed. She was incredibly bored. "Precognitive, actually." He blinked at her for a moment. "Yeah, you were really good in English." Murphy's usage of SAT-level vocabulary usually halted the moment she got out of class. She had a thing against big words. In her view, they were superfluous. And she hated the word superfluous. "I don't like being liked for my brain," she said.

Compared to northern woods, which Leeda had seen on a trip up the Hudson River Valley, the Georgia forest felt primeval. Northern trees seemed picturesque and petite to Leeda, their leaves small in soft, bright greens. Georgia forests were loaded with tall, drooping trees covered in kudzu and smothered in deep greens that seemed like they could swallow someone up. Leeda had never noticed it before.

Ooh, look." Birdie swerved out of line to a bushy plant full of purple flowers. She plucked a few delightedly. "Lilacs." She thrust them toward Leeda's face, and Leeda smiled, sniffing. Birdie could make something exciting out of anything on the orchard. She knew all the flowers, the species of birds, how much rainfall they could expect, where moss was likely to grow, which mushrooms were edible, and how long many of the trees had been in the ground. To walk across the property with Birdie was never just to walk through unnoticed space.

Leeda moved down the row slowly, picking expertly, doing a touch test on the fruits whose ripeness she doubted. If she picked them too soon, they wouldn't taste sweet enough because they wouldn't have time to draw in enough sugar. If she picked them too late, she knew, they would have already started producing ethylene, a chemical that ripened them, and they'd be overripe by the time they were sold. Their first summer on the orchard, Birdie had revealed to them that the world of peaches was more intricate and varied than they ever imagined. Clingstones, the ones that clung to their pits, ripened earliest, then semi-frees, and then freestones. Each variety was like a different dog breed with vastly different characteristics---the texture of the meat, the fuzziness of the skin, the strength and sweetness of the flavor.

The peaches, abundantly nestled in their leaves, were fully grown, but they had a greenish tinge to them, with just a pale blush covering each one in soft pink. Bobwhites and finches were flitting in and out of some of the branches and through the rows. There was a rapping somewhere far away, probably a woodpecker. And lots of buzzing. "Not ripe yet," Murphy said. "Second week of June," Leeda replied. They knew it all by heart---which varieties ripened when, even which trees ripened faster than others because of where they sat; on a hill, in a dip, in fuller sun, closer to water. Murphy had forgotten what so much green looked like and how alive everything felt. Life even had a smell. Flowers and grass and the smell of wood.

Your baby would be better looking than that Brad Pitt kid, Moses or Shiloh or whatever. Hard on the rest of us tadpoles." Leeda rolled her eyes. "Yeah, and your babies would be total slouches." When the two were out together, it was Murphy who had the freakish ability to make random guys approach her out of nowhere. Once she had been hit on by a Hare Krishna while they were eating ice cream in the East Village. She could bend spoons with the sheer force of her curves. "Do you ever want a boyfriend again?" Leeda mused. "I have boyfriends." "You have boys. Not boyfriends. Heartbreaker.