Peaches (19 page)

“Here you go,” he said, tossing it at her. Murphy caught it against her stomach. It was completely perfect, not one bug. She rubbed the fruit against her shirt, then took a bite.

“Thanks, Rex.”

“Yeah.”

But Murphy could hardly chew.

“Is it bad?” Rex asked, looking concerned.

She shook her head. “No…”

Rex stepped up close to her. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. Don’t look so freaked out.”

She blinked at him several times, then twisted her lips toward the shelter of a sarcastic grin. But the grin hadn’t made it all the way onto her face before Rex reached out and put his hands against her shoulders. Murphy’s heart leapt into her throat. In another moment his lips pressed into hers, forcing the smile away completely, fitting like the nectarine had, like the ripest softest sweetest thing in the world. His tongue found its way inside her mouth, pressing against her nectarine-covered tongue. And then he pulled away. She realized his hand was on the back of her hair, and he kept it there, stroking her. The way he looked at her was thoughtful, gauging. Not excited or passionate, but like a friend’s gaze, trying to figure her out.

She let herself feel his fingers there for a moment, overwhelmed with joy.

And then the thought of Leeda hit her like a hammer. And all of the joy was replaced by ugly, heavy dread. She nodded forward and pulled out of Rex’s grasp.

They stared at each other. Murphy had the feeling of being in a dream and out of control, the kind where you woke up and hoped you hadn’t just done what you thought you had. But Rex was real, standing in front of her. He looked exhausted, his eyes directly staring into hers, unashamed.

“Leeda’s my
friend,
” Murphy said low.

Rex was silent. It was all the fuel she needed. She felt her
anger drumming up so that it almost felt like it was real and that it was really him she was mad at. She met his gaze with all the disgust she could muster.

“M-Murphy,” he stammered. “I’ll tell her. Leeda and I shouldn’t even be…”

Murphy squinted at him as if she had no idea what he was saying. Like the whole moment was a foreign concept to her. She shook her head. “I don’t even
like
you.”

“Murphy…we have this…thing….”

“Thing?” Murphy searched the sky, faking astonishment, disgusted with her own insincerity. “You’re crazy.”

When she looked back down, Rex’s confidence had flickered. She could see it in his eyes. Murphy felt her own hurt was too naked, and she looked away, and her eyes lit on the house. A movement drew her eyes to Birdie’s window.

A silhouette—Birdie’s silhouette—stood there for a moment, the shadow hand flying up to the shadow mouth. The whole figure swayed slightly and then slid to the left, vanishing out of sight. Murphy felt the blood drain out of her face and a sick thudding in her abdomen.

Rex reached toward her waist, touching it gently. It felt like a lifeline to her. “I want to be with you.”

Murphy pulled back and glared at him. She was panicked now, her head spinning. She tried to harness the misery she felt and direct it toward him. Her voice came out strangled and hateful. “I don’t want you. Don’t you get it?”

Rex finally took a step back, and this broke Murphy’s heart. He looked at the house, then back at her, confused and dazed. He shook his head, grinning ruefully, painfully. “I’m an idiot. God, I’m sorry.”

Murphy felt tears springing to the edges of her eyes. She balled her fists, twisted them in her T-shirt, and croaked, “Leave me alone.”

Rex nodded and stuffed his hands into his pockets. He turned and walked down the trail.

Murphy looked up at Birdie’s window desperately, but her silhouette didn’t show up again. Murphy ran her hand hard through her frazzled hair. She could still see Rex walking down the path, not looking back.

In helpless rage she hurled her nectarine at his heels, but it missed, bouncing along the ground and disappearing into the underbrush.

Honey Babe and Majestic met Murphy halfway down the stairs, jumping at her legs and licking her hands as she bent down to pet them.

“Birdie?”

She could hear VH1 burbling softly out of Birdie’s room but no other sound.

“Tweety Bird?”

She’d already been back to the dorms to splash her face and calm down enough to talk to Birdie. When she’d gotten there, she’d seen that Leeda’s door was open, and the thudding inside had gotten worse. Walking over to the house, she felt like she had a fever. She kept on sending up one thought.
Please don’t let her tell Leeda. Please please please.

Now the rag rug on the landing slid slightly under her feet and Murphy pushed it back, swallowing. She padded to Birdie’s door and looked inside, feeling her skin start to prickle all over,
hot and cold. There were Birdie and Leeda, sitting on the bed facing each other, one of each girl’s legs hanging off the side of the bed, the other tucked up under them.

They both stared at Murphy. Birdie, with a half-open mouth and big, unsure eyes. Leeda’s eyes were red around the edges and ice cold. Murphy felt both looks like a slap.

“Hey, guys…” she murmured.

“Hey, Murphy,” Birdie muttered, picking at her quilt.

“Uh, what are you…what are you guys doing?”

Murphy slid around the edge of the door and leaned against Birdie’s wall.

Birdie’s eyes darted to Leeda. Murphy felt a wave of nausea. “We’re just…watching TV.”

“Oh.” Without meaning to, Murphy looked down at her shirt, noticing how much cleavage was poking out of her tank top.

Suddenly Leeda stood up. “Well, see you, Birdie.” Without looking at Murphy, Leeda started toward the door. Murphy felt herself wince, and tried to iron her face into a cooler expression. But Leeda seemed to have the monopoly on iciness. She breezed right by Murphy into the doorway.

“Leeda, wait…” Murphy said, reaching her hand toward Leeda’s waist. Leeda jerked away, fast as a rattlesnake.

“Don’t touch me.”

Murphy’s mouth dropped open. For the first time in her life she was speechless. Her heart began to thud in her ears, her toes. That was where Leeda’s words hit her. They hit her everywhere.

Leeda looked wounded too for a moment, and Murphy swallowed, trying to regain her composure enough to string a few words together. She wanted to deny it had happened at all,
which would have been the way she used to do things; a few months ago she could have slid out of anything, usually by turning it on the person who’d accused her. But this was too important to lie about.

“Leeda, I didn’t kiss—”

She’d been about to say she hadn’t kissed Rex back, but Leeda cut her off.

“It’s actually sad that you have to do so much for attention. Rex
said
you were all show.”

Rabbit punch. Murphy hadn’t seen it coming.

“Do you think it’s all that hard to turn a guy on? Anybody could dress like you, and walk like you, and get a guy’s attention eventually. You walk like you’re easy. Any girl could do that. I could do that.
Guys
are easy, Murphy.”

Leeda glared at Murphy. Murphy had seen jealousy a million times before in other girls, but jealousy was only part of Leeda’s look right now. The other part was Leeda’s mother’s look—disgusted, bored, condescending. It made Murphy back up against the wall harder. “But I didn’t mean…I tried not to give him the…”

Leeda rolled her eyes and waved one palm in the air like she was brushing away a fly. “Please. Even Birdie noticed the way you were flirting with him at the engagement party, didn’t you, Birdie?”

Murphy looked, flabbergasted, at Birdie, who sat on the bed giving them the fish eye and looking like she might pass out. Murphy tried to see herself through Birdie’s eyes, and she could see how wrong the vision was—Leeda the wronged saint and Murphy the painted floozy—and it twisted her. She fought back the tears that rose up now because she felt like everything good was crashing around her.

“I thought you were my friend.” Leeda’s voice cracked, but her eyes stayed cool.

Murphy tried to keep her voice calm. It was a break in Leeda’s armor, and a wave of relief washed over Murphy. It was a million times better for Leeda to look at her like she was a human being and not an insect.

“Lee, I
am
your friend. Rex…” She wanted to tell Leeda that her loyalty had been tested, and passed, and how much that meant. But the words got stuck in her throat. She didn’t know how to say it. She had done the right thing! She, Murphy McGowen, had done the right thing!

She almost smiled.

“You’re gonna end up just like her, you know, begging guys to love you, sleeping with other people’s husbands….”

Murphy swayed on her feet. The almost-smile felt slapped away.

She held up her hands as if to shield her face, feeling her blood come to a simmer. “Leeda, you should stop talking now. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Oh, I do, believe me.” Leeda seemed on the verge of leaving the room, but she stopped and looked at Birdie. “Birdie and I want you to leave.”

Now in anger, Murphy couldn’t keep her tears back. They popped out on her eyeballs and hung there, but she wouldn’t let them drop. She looked at Birdie, who had pulled her covers over her head and curled herself in a fetal position facing the other way.

Then she looked at Leeda.

“If I leave, you won’t get the secret.” Murphy smiled, reeling Leeda in, slippery as an eel.

Leeda looked flustered. Her gray eyes fluttered. “What secret?”

“The secret of what I have that you don’t.”

Murphy pursed her full lips, put her hands on her hips.

“I’m dying to know,” Leeda said sardonically, but Murphy could tell by the way her eyes grew big and a little soft, she really wanted to know.

Murphy shrugged, as if the answer was obvious. “I’m just more than you. More person. More life. You’re boring and uptight. Anybody who really gets to know you…Anybody who is around long enough will find out you’re just…bleh.”

Leeda took off down the stairs two at a time and slammed out onto the porch. Murphy stood in the doorway, dazed, hurt more by the things she’d said to Leeda than the things Leeda had said to her. Birdie sat up on the bed, watching her, in shock.

Murphy looked at her and felt the sting of her betrayal, of them ganging up on her, and glared at her. “Thanks, Birdie. Thanks a lot. Have a nice life, wherever you end up.” Murphy knew how to twist the knife, dragging herself to the ugliest level possible.

A few minutes later, her stuff packed into the trunk, Murphy peeled down the gravel drive, her car clunking along, the orchard passing by on either side. She didn’t look in the rearview mirror to see it fall away.

B
irdie was lying flat on the kitchen floor. She’d never done it before, and it seemed like a good diversion. Her dad had gone out, and she couldn’t take the quiet. No workers outside, no work to do. After all the stress of rushing around trying to keep everything running, the downtime felt empty and useless. And there was no hope of Murphy or Leeda or Enrico showing up on the porch.

The only sound was the phone ringing. It had rung like this once every ten minutes for the last hour. Caller ID announced it was her mom. Birdie was studiously trying to ignore her. She didn’t have the energy today to navigate her mom’s feelings while simultaneously protecting her dad. Or deal with the idea of moving in with her.

The phone went silent, then rang again, and Birdie’s guilt finally got the best of her. She watched her feet as she walked and lifted the receiver blindly.

“Hey,” she breathed.

“Hey, Birdie, it’s Leeda.” Leeda’s voice was high and lilty, like someone trying hard to sound great. Birdie breathed a sigh of relief. She wanted to reach through the phone and hug Leeda.

“I’m sorry I haven’t returned your calls. I’ve been so busy. Getting ready for the wedding is hell. And we had the bachelorette party last night.”

“Oh? How was it?”

“Danay
loved
it.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah. She was completely happy. Stupid happy. She got so wasted. She puked on the marquis at the Fox Theater.”

“What were you doing at the Fox?”

“It’s her favorite bathroom. She wanted to puke in there.”

Birdie laughed. “Didn’t make it, huh?”

Leeda laughed back, but her laugh sounded forced.

“So I guess you knew better after all,” Birdie offered.

“No, I didn’t.” Leeda paused. “I used your ideas. I mean, I used your idea to use Danay’s ideas.”

“Oh. That’s good.”

“Yeah.”

They both let the awkward silence stretch out.

“Birdie?”

“Yeah.” Birdie swallowed the lump in her throat.

“I miss you. I miss the orchard.”

It was such a relief to hear Leeda say it. Birdie smiled into the phone. “I miss you too. Life is so boring here right now.”

“Yeah. I wish you were coming to the wedding. It would be a lifesaver.”

Birdie’s mom had gone through with plans to move into her condo on the same day as Danay’s wedding, and Birdie hadn’t been able to wiggle out of it. She hadn’t even had the heart to try. Birdie swallowed. “I wish that too.”

Another long silence.

“Have, um, have you talked to Murphy?” Birdie asked.

“I don’t want to talk about her.”

“Okay.” Birdie’s voice came out guilty. She still felt somehow responsible. Like if she hadn’t looked out her window, Murphy and Rex wouldn’t have kissed. She had read somewhere, in one of the books her aunt was always giving her, that cells behaved a certain way when they were being observed, a way that was different than they would behave normally. Maybe Birdie was responsible for all the ills of the world just by somehow being around to hear about them and watch them on TV.

“Anyway, Danay was so damn grateful she invited Rex to the wedding. Last minute.”

Birdie figured she wasn’t supposed to ask about that either.

“That’s great, Leeda.”

“Well, listen, I’ll call you after.”

“Okay.”

“Okay.”

The receiver went dead. And Birdie lay back down on the kitchen floor.

In the family’s penthouse suite at the hotel, Leeda tugged at the straps of her dress and stepped out onto the balcony. The temperature had reached ninety-nine degrees in the limo on the way from the church and Leeda felt every degree of it making her bridesmaid dress, which was strapless, salmon, and not half bad, stick to every centimeter of her.

“Hey, Lee. They want you downstairs.”

Leeda turned to see Rex standing in the wide living room
with his hands in his pockets, looking at her seriously under his dark eyebrows. Rex had given her this look many times since the last day in the orchard. Every time he saw her, he acted like a lead weight. And Leeda always reacted in the same way.

“Okay, sweetie.” Leeda swiped at the sweat under her armpits and turned a full-watt smile on him, linking her fingers through his.

In the elevator they fell silent. Leeda played with her fingernails so the silence wouldn’t feel like the kind that was asking to be interrupted. But Rex interrupted anyway.

“Lee…”

Leeda looked up at him. “Please, Rex. Not today.”

Rex’s shoulders fell, but he obliged her. When the elevator doors opened, Leeda felt like she’d made a narrow escape.

The room was packed with over five hundred guests. Leeda grinned and touched a few on the elbows or shoulders and smiled at them as she made her way through. In the center of the dance floor Danay and Brighton and the wedding party were dancing to the wedding song.
Oh crap.
Leeda was supposed to be dancing with her in-law Glen. She scoped around the room for him, but he was hitting on one of the waiters. Thank God.

Unfortunately, her eyes then immediately found her mom, who made a beeline for her.

“Leeda, we were looking all over for you.”

“Yeah, I couldn’t find Glen, though,” Leeda fibbed, scanning the opposite side of the room as if she were looking for him.

“Honey, this is your sister’s day. Remember that.”

“How could I forget?”

Leeda watched her mom walk to join her dad, king and
queen of the party. Leeda wasn’t interested in taking anything away from Danay at the moment. She just wanted to make it through the day in one piece and do what she needed to do. And that was going to take some effort. She felt like her whole being was being held together by Jell-O.

Through a loose gaggle of people Leeda made out a familiar face. Horatio Balmeade was staring at the breasts of her cousin Margarita. Rex had drifted away to the side of the dance floor, where he stood darkly, nursing a glass of champagne, which she knew he hated.

Leeda wanted to go stand beside him. It would make her feel safer, like it always did. But she held herself back, because in a way it was
less
safe too, now. There was too much danger in talking with Rex—they hadn’t talked about Murphy and she didn’t want to. She circulated among the guests instead, smiling at everyone the way she was supposed to, making small talk, being the perfect daughter, and giving off the impression that nobody’s life was as seamless or as sweet as hers.

Ding ding ding.
Leeda turned to see Glen standing at the front of the room. “Now we’ll hear from the maid of honor.”

Leeda’s pulse spiked instantly.
Oh God.
She had totally forgotten she was supposed to write a speech. How could she forget something like that? As everyone looked at her, she pasted a smile on her face, but her stomach throbbed. She was so unprepared. She walked up to the bridal table and took the mike from Glen.

“Um…” The room of five hundred people stared back at her. “Uh, my sister, Danay…is…my sister….”

Oh God. The whole feeling of the room seemed to be urging
her to pull it together. She said the first thing that came into her head. “She’s, um, pretty perfect.”

There were a few chuckles. “It’s easy to be jealous of a sister like that,” Leeda added, and then regretted it. She spotted Rex across the room. And instead of making her feel safe, it reminded her of Murphy. “But the thing is, I’m stuck with her.” A murmur from the audience. “Oh, c’mon, that’s not such a bad thing.” Leeda started this sentence irritably, but as she finished it, she felt her body relax. There was a long pause, and then what she wanted to say came to her, like she was riding a wave. “Maybe it’s lucky when we’re stuck with someone we love. Because it gets hard, and then it gets easy to give up on someone. And I guess that’s what makes a marriage…” Leeda searched for the words “…so special. Is that you choose to be stuck with somebody, even through the hard times. It’s like a pact. It means the good times are just so good, and it means you love that person so much that you’re willing to stay through all the bad.” Leeda scanned the faces for Danay. Tears were glistening in her eyes. Leeda cleared her throat. “I guess what I’m saying is we’re lucky to be stuck. I’m glad I’m stuck with Danay, and Brighton—” All eyes in the room looked at Brighton. “I’m glad you’re stuck with her too. I hope you don’t forget how lucky that makes you. She’s perfect.” Leeda stopped herself abruptly, embarrassed.

Brighton shook his head. “I won’t let him,” Danay said loudly, grinning through her tears.

Everyone looked at Leeda expectantly. “That’s it.” She smiled.

Amid the applause she felt a hand on her back. She turned to look—Rex.

He hugged her, tight. She sank into him and let go.

Murphy and Gavin lay crashed out on the couch, Gavin’s head against Murphy’s chest. A few minutes ago he’d tried to unzip her shorts, but Murphy had shut him down, and now she could tell he was wondering why he was here at all. Murphy thought it was nice to have a warm body just sitting next to her. It didn’t really matter who it belonged to.

“You got anything to eat?”

“You can check in the kitchen,” Murphy said, keeping her eye on the TV.
A Hard Day’s Night
was playing on VH1. This was the twenty-sixth time she’d watched it. Same as the number of letters in the alphabet. That was worth celebrating. Murphy cheers’ed herself with her can of Dr. Thunder and took a sip.

Outside, a car pulled into the driveway.

“All right, Gavin, you gotta go. My mom’s home.”

“Really?” Gavin looked shocked and disappointed. He had just found a bag of Combos and was holding it to his chest proprietarily.

“Door’s that way.” Murphy pointed with a limp wrist.

“Okay. See ya, Murph.”

“Murph-y,” she shouted at the screen door as it hissed closed.

A moment later it hissed again, admitting Jodee and Richard.

“I never knew I was your meal ticket,” Richard was saying.

Jodee turned to Richard and touched his shoulder gently. “You know I don’t see you that way. I don’t think it’s too much to ask for you to pitch in for groceries.”

Murphy pulled her arms over her stomach protectively. She decided to count the number of seconds it would take Richard to plunk down beside her on the couch and change the channel. It took seven.

Jodee disappeared in the bedroom for a moment, then started puttering around, tidying up the mess that Murphy and Richard had left behind.

Murphy sat up stiffly so that no part of her body would be touching Richard’s. She watched her mom cleaning up with a pinchy feeling of guilt.

“Well, what’re you gonna do with yourself?” Richard asked. “Two whole weeks off?”

Murphy shook her head. She didn’t know. Go back to the usual. That was what you did, right? You stretched out your life, then realized life wasn’t stretchable, and so you went back to the way things were before.

“Are you gonna keep in touch with the girls from the orchard?” Jodee asked.

“They hate me.” This was a rare intimacy for Murphy. She waited for her mom to ask questions. She wanted for the two of them to go into her mom’s room alone so she could pour the whole thing out and hug her mom and cry and have her get her a tissue and some hot tea. But her mom waved a hand at her lightly.

“Oh, honey, they don’t hate you. Girls are just hard to be friends with in high school. It gets easier when you’re older.”

Murphy wondered what women friends her mom actually thought she had. Women all over Bridgewater were probably breathing a sigh of relief Jodee wasn’t single anymore so that
they wouldn’t have to lock up their husbands and boyfriends.

“Right.”

Murphy watched Richard’s stupid football game until the light outside started to fade. Then she just couldn’t stand being indoors anymore.

She got in her car and turned the engine. Ever since Rex had fixed it, it had been starting fine. She stepped on the gas and turned left out of the development, not sure where she’d go. She knew she should call somebody, there were tons of people who would be around to hang out with, but she just couldn’t think of anybody she wanted to see.

Finally she turned toward the orchard.

She parked the car near the railroad tracks and walked along the perimeter of the property so that nobody would see her, sneaking into the garden from behind it, approaching it from the side coming toward the house. She looked up at Birdie’s window, but the lights were out. For all she knew, Birdie had gone to live with her mother. It didn’t matter.

At the garden a few weeds had crept toward the roses, and Murphy yanked them out, surveying the area for more weeds, more threats to her precious flowers. It would all be bulldozed eventually anyway. Finally she gave up.

She sank onto the bench and ran her fingers along the wood, tracing the little patterns that Rex had carved into the armrests. He hadn’t had to do these little delicate patterns. He could have made her a normal bench, and it would have been more than enough.

Murphy knew she was feeling sorry for herself, and she also knew that she wasn’t going to cry. She refused to be a victim.
Murphy, the martyr. Murphy, the wronged. Murphy, who’d thought she had friends.

A figure appeared beside her on the bench and sat down.

“Hey, Birdie.”

Birdie looked around, plucked one of the dead flowers off a branch, and started picking it apart, all the while staring at Murphy with her doe eyes.

“I was just checking on stuff,” Murphy said, nodding toward the garden.

“I know. I figured.”

“I hope you won’t report me for trespassing.” She couldn’t help throwing it in.

Birdie sucked in her breath. “You know, they’re calling for a tropical storm?” she said quietly. “So much of this summer without any rain. But peaches taste sweeter when there’s less rain. Rain dilutes the sugar.”

“Huh.”

Birdie folded her hands on her lap.

“I thought you were going to live with your mom.”

Birdie sighed. “I’m kind of straddling houses at the moment.”

Murphy didn’t reply. She knew how hard that had to be for Birdie, but she was too angry to offer any kind of sympathy.