Peaches (9 page)

In 1976, two teenagers were making out to the sounds of Sonny and Cher in an unplanted orchard field when they were struck by lightning. Both survived, but from that time on, the boy, Richard, who went on to work at Pep Boys, claimed to have a mental connection to the airwaves that enabled him to predict whenever “I’ve Got You Babe” was being played on the radio.

T
hough April wandered on into May with heavy showers and scattered thunder and the rain in Bridgewater continued relentlessly for almost fifteen days straight, it was bright and perfect on Danay’s graduation day. Which, Leeda figured, was the only way God would have it, since apparently He too loved Danay best.

The Cawley-Smiths and Brighton’s family, the Wests, ate at Nikolai’s Roof after the ceremony—which had a 360-degree view of Atlanta and a bunch of hot Russian waiters. Leeda sat in a strapless, flowy GSUS dress she’d bought in Buckhead the day before. Her legs had returned to their usual creamy white milk-and-honey complexion, with nary a fire ant scar in sight. Her hair was perfect, and the few freckles she’d picked up working at the orchard a month ago had faded. She looked perfect, but of course nobody, aside from her friend Alicia who she’d brought from Bridgewater, noticed.

While the adults talked with one another, Leeda and Alicia gossiped.

“How’s Rex?” Alicia said, raising her eyebrows suggestively.
Alicia always wanted to talk about him, as if Rex were the most fascinating subject of all time. It made Leeda feel possessive, proud, and bored all at the same time.

Leeda shrugged. “He’s good. Working at the country club and the orchard. I hardly see him.”

“Too bad. He’s worth seeing.”

Leeda smiled halfheartedly. The first few weeks she and Rex had dated, she’d definitely been infatuated with his looks, his body. But she’d sort of stopped seeing that after a while. It was like it had faded into the background. Which was probably what had happened for Rex too. She wondered how he saw her now.

“Alicia, do you think I’m anal?”

Alicia shook her head. “No way. You’re just particular.”

Leeda eyed her friend. Yesterday at Lenox she’d chosen almost the exact same dress as Leeda had after she’d seen Leeda try it on.

Leeda sighed. She was leaning toward mostly bored.

The conversation had turned to the weekend, when the Cawley-Smiths were having a graduation dinner for Danay at their most upscale hotel, the Bridgewater Plantation View. The name Horatio Balmeade drifted across the table.

“You guys aren’t inviting him, are you?” Leeda asked.

Her dad was dipping into a platter of beluga caviar. “Of course we are. Horace is a good friend of mine.”

“Daddy, I can’t stand him.”

“All the more reason to learn to like him. He’s been a good business partner to me.”

Danay was rolling her eyes as if this was the same old crap,
different day. Leeda’s mom was nibbling on the caviar with a glazed-over expression.

“Dad, he hits on me. I hate it.”

Mr. Cawley-Smith glanced at the Wests with embarrassment. “Leeda, that’s enough. You’re exaggerating. He thinks you’re a nice young girl.”

Leeda’s blood began to simmer. She rearranged the silverware in front of her. Next to her Alicia shifted uncomfortably, then excused herself to the bathroom. Danay took the opportunity to sidle up beside her sister.

“So have you started your speech yet?”

Leeda wiggled farther into her seat. As maid of honor, she was supposed to plan a speech for the wedding reception. But she couldn’t imagine having to get up in front of all those people and ooze over her sister, on top of all the people who were already going to be oozing all over Danay.

“It’s coming along,” she muttered.

Danay’s lips parted in an excited smile. “What about the bachelorette party?”

“Um.” Leeda hadn’t even thought about it. In fact, she’d kind of forgotten that was her job as maid of honor.

Danay grinned, squeezing her wrist. “Well, I know it’s supposed to be a surprise and everything, but I think it would be fabulous if we did it here in Atlanta. I’d like to get that Fur Bus around the city.” Leeda winced. The Fur Bus was, as the name suggested, a bus covered in fur, lined inside with strobe lights and disco balls, that tooled around the city while its riders got drunk and rowdy. Leeda hated drinking and motion at the same time. “And I love the desserts at the Ritz;
I love Xavier Salomon. Dancing would be good. I hear Compound is great.”

“But I won’t be able to get in.”

“Oh.” Danay frowned. “That’s right. Damn.”

“And no strippers, Leeda, please,” Mrs. Cawley-Smith added from across the table wryly.

“Mom, don’t be gross,” Leeda growled.

But Danay and her mom were giggling, like they were suddenly women together.

“I don’t even know why you’re having me plan the party if you already have it all planned out yourself.”

“Leeda, really,” Mrs. Cawley-Smith said. “It’s Danay’s night. It should be perfect. Don’t be such a baby.”

“You know.” Leeda put down the spoon she was playing with and pushed her chair back from the table. “Maybe it would be better if I got out of your hair. You’re so
in sync.
I could just spend the whole summer in New York. Or with Uncle Walter and Birdie. I could plan the party on my laptop.”

Lucretia blinked at her a few times. And then she smiled. “I think that’s a nice idea.” Before Leeda could say more, her mom leaned behind Danay’s back to look at their dad. “Leeda wants to spend the summer at Walter’s. What do you think?”

“Leeda, that’s great.”

Leeda was a bug paralyzed by a spider. She wanted to say she hadn’t meant it, but her pride wouldn’t let her. Her chest ached.

She whipped out her cell phone. “Do you have their number?”

That night, Leeda lay in bed thinking about Murphy McGowen. She hadn’t thought of her much since the orchard, outside of the first few awkward days in Bio, when they’d both tentatively established that although they had known each other for a while, they didn’t know each other now.

Leeda wondered what Murphy would have done in the same situation with her family. Not keep her mouth shut. Not lock herself into something she didn’t want to do. But Murphy was this full person. Leeda was mostly empty.

She rolled over and stared at the clock. It was 2:13
A.M
. Leeda wanted to go swimming in the lake. She wanted to do something daring, something that made her feel like she wasn’t this perfectly controlled mess, but a real, messy mess.

A few minutes later, not wanting to wake her parents with her car, she hopped on Danay’s old Trek to ride over to Rex’s.

She’d never ridden a bike through town in the dark, much less through Rex’s side of town, which was empty at this time of night except for the rows of fast-food joints and the lines of traffic lights, blinking aimlessly, red yellow green.

She parked the bike on the edge of Pearly Gates Cemetery and then lifted his basement window open and slid in silently. He didn’t wake up. At home, Leeda had just pulled jeans on under her silky tank top, so now she just slipped out of them and slid silkily into his bed.

Rex started, shrinking back against the wall.

“It’s me,” Leeda whispered, planting a kiss on his warm, soft mouth.

“God, Lee, you scared me.”

“Sorry.” Rex’s body was toasty and relaxed, his hair was
messy, and his body felt more fragile than it usually did—a little defenseless with sleepiness. Leeda snuggled into it like an old T-shirt. “I just wanted to see you.”

She nuzzled up against his neck and kissed him just beneath his jaw. He began kissing her back, first on the top of her head, then on the lips.

Leeda let him pull her tank top off and run his hands lightly over her body. This was all they had ever done. Rex had always been the perfect gentleman.

“Rex,” she whispered, stopping his hands. “You’re working in the orchard for the rest of the summer, right?”

“Yeah, why?”

“Well, I kinda told Daddy I was going to spend the summer there.”

Rex sat up, incredulous. “Why’d you do that?”

Leeda sat up too. “I just don’t want to be around them this summer. And they don’t care if I’m around or not. So I might as well be at the orchard.”

“Oh, Lee.” Rex put his palm to his forehead, laughing softly.

“What?” Leeda frowned.

“Lee, you’re so spoiled sometimes.”

Leeda scowled. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“When did you pull this diva maneuver?”

Leeda frowned. “At Danay’s graduation.”

“I see.”

“Rex, you’re supposed to support me.” Leeda pulled her tank top on. “You don’t understand. They don’t love me like they love her.” Leeda stood up to leave, but Rex touched her back.

“Come ’ere.” He took Leeda’s wrist and pulled her gently
back onto the bed. He kissed her on the corner of her lips and then on the cheek. “Just tell your parents tomorrow that you didn’t mean it.”

“I can’t. I already called Uncle Walter. I can’t take it back.”

“Good one.”

“Rex.”

“Lee, look at your spaghetti arms.” He waggled her wrist, making her skinny arm wiggle. “You weren’t made for picking peaches.”

“I’m leaving.”

“Okay. Bye.”

This was something Leeda hated and loved about their relationship. Other guys who liked Leeda would do anything to keep Leeda from freezing them out, but Rex was never intimidated by her ice-queen routine. He slid back down on his back.

“C’mon. Lie down with me awhile. It doesn’t matter. What were you going to do with your summer anyway?”

“I don’t know. Go to France. Get pedicures.” This was the problem: Leeda didn’t have things she loved doing. Rex loved working with his hands; Danay loved school. Her cousin Birdie loved small dogs and peaches.

“See? Maybe it’s a good thing.”

Leeda relented and lay down. Rex always made her feel better and worse about things. Usually because he told her the truth. She let him pull the covers around her and wrap his muscular arms around her shoulders.

“So will you keep working there?”

“Sure. Whatever.”

“Thanks, Rex.”

She lay beside him for another hour or more until she was in that dreamy trance state where cartoon-like scenes played themselves out in her mind—Danay riding the Fur Bus, Rex sitting with her on Tybee Beach, and the endless motion of Murphy and Birdie thinning the peach trees, plucking the buds and dropping them on the ground.

Birdie laid down her fork and took a sip of sweet tea, smiling at her mom. Cynthia looked fabulous, dressed in a bright red summer set, her hair freshly trimmed in a freshly tinted bob. On the orchard she’d always looked unkempt.

Cynthia made the sign toward the waiter for the check.

Liddie’s Tea Room was one of the most old-school and most popular restaurants in Bridgewater, with tiny round tables that were always full of loud women who sat practically on top of each other. Cynthia had to lean toward Birdie to be heard.

“Don’t worry about it, honey. That orchard’s been dying for years. It’ll be nice for it to have a fresh start. Have you lost weight?” Cynthia fiddled with her red beaded necklace.

Birdie took a bite of the salad plate her mom had ordered for her before she’d arrived and tried to talk herself out of the stomachache that was gathering below her ribs. Hearing her mom talk so casually about the orchard made her feel like it was already lost. And it also made her feel melodramatic for feeling that the whole thing was ripping her in half. Her mom made it sound so ordinary.

“I’ve heard Mr. Balmeade is going to have the man who did Howl Mill do the condos. They’re beautiful. Who knows, in a
couple of years maybe we could move into one on the very same spot as the house!”

Howl Mill was the gated community Cynthia had just announced she was moving into, which had obviously started the lunch off on a low point for Birdie. When she’d told Birdie she was coming into town and asked her to pedal out to Liddie’s to meet for lunch, Birdie had thought maybe she was reconsidering the divorce. Now it seemed it was just becoming more concrete. Cynthia couldn’t stop talking about it.

“No grass to take care of. No anything. The management does it all.”

“That’s great, Mom.” Birdie took another sip of sweet tea, biting lightly on the straw. She was trying to imagine this was the same woman who’d trucked in the mud getting the tractors—which were older, more run-down, and more ornery every year—ready for spraying. When she was a kid, they’d had a huge picnic and a tug-of-war, and Cynthia and Birdie had been on the same side and the last to let go on their team. And then Cynthia had given up, plopping into the mud, and it had just been Birdie, who was no match for the other side. They’d dragged her clear across the middle line.

“And you can move in as soon as I do. It’ll be perfect. I’m planning on August fifteenth, which gives you a couple of weeks to get situated before school.”

“But, uh…”

“You’ll love your room. It’s lofty. And there’s a place for the piano and your cello—like a
conservatory,
” Cynthia drawled.

“I think that’s when Danay’s getting married, Mom.” It was the only protest she felt like she could voice.

“We’ll send a nice gift.”

Birdie sighed quietly. She had no desire to move out of her house. She couldn’t even imagine what her dad would do without her. She just didn’t know how to tell her mom that.

“I’ll bet the place is a mess, isn’t it? I know you’ve got Poopie, but one woman isn’t enough to take care of that man….”

Birdie listened and nodded as her mom went on and on about Walter, then about how she loved having her own place, how she’d gotten into yoga, and how if Birdie could avoid it, she should never get married. She asked her about her schoolwork and the summer and how she planned to spend her time.

On her way over, Birdie had pictured spilling to her mom about Enrico, the way the girls on
7th Heaven
and Tampax commercials seemed like they might do. Several times she started to mention him and then stopped.

After the check came and went, Cynthia swept up and smoothed back her hair. Birdie stood up beside her. “Tell your dad he needs to get those papers back to me, okay, hon?”

Birdie held her hand to her stomach protectively, touching the soft fabric of her nicest shirt. They walked out into the parking lot. “I’ll call you soon, sweetie.”

“Yep.”

When she got home, Birdie went straight to the study, Honey Babe and Majestic trailing behind her and taking up their post by the door. She looked at the piles of papers on the desk, squinting at them as if there were some solution her dad just wasn’t seeing. She shuffled through bills, then looked over the
profit-and-loss statements, getting confused by all the columns and numbers. She wasn’t very good with figures anyway. She wasn’t into things she couldn’t touch with her hands.