“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. The guy looked befuddled.
“Hey, honey.” Her mom suddenly appeared wearing a gray skirt and jacket, slightly too big for her, with a red blouse underneath. “We’re in the lunchroom. Come on back.”
Murphy followed her mom through the gray-carpeted, fluorescent-lit halls of Ganax, winding back to the small, rectangular lunchroom. Her mom smiled back at her cheerfully and handed her a Snickers bar from her lunch bag. Murphy wondered how someone with so many secrets could look her in the eye so innocently.
They sat down at the table near her mom’s coworkers. Murphy had known these women for ages—Lorraine, Carla, and Sandee. She apparently had arrived in the middle of a story, because Lorraine asked, “So what did the people at T-Mobile say?”
“They said they’d be willing to refund me half of the bill,” Carla said. “I was like, ‘That’s fine that you want to give me half, but what about the other half?’ And they said they were sorry, but there was nothing they could do about the other half, and that even though the name of the plan said it was unlimited, it wasn’t actually unlimited….”
Murphy looked at the other women, including her mother, who were all nodding sympathetically. She couldn’t imagine living this life and hearing about this stuff. Did her mom feel obligated to act like the cell phone story was interesting? Couldn’t she just tell Carla that the story made her want to burst her own eardrums? Conversations like this were like a living death.
“What brings you here, Murphy?” Lorraine asked.
Murphy had calculated it all. Arrive at lunchtime. Be surrounded by others.
“I want my mom to tell me who my dad is.”
Jodee choked on her chicken-salad sandwich. Lorraine looked like a bird that’d just flown into a window—dazed. Carla and Sandee shifted awkwardly.
Murphy knew she was humiliating her mom. But she didn’t feel any remorse.
“Murphy, that’s inappropriate,” Jodee said, but without much strength.
“I deserve to know. Don’t you think I deserve to know?” she asked the three other women rhetorically. She turned to her mom. “I saw you at the courthouse. You and my dad and Judge Abbott.”
Jodee looked completely bewildered.
“Murphy, why are you trying to embarrass me like this?”
“Why are you trying to embarrass me?” Murphy demanded. “Don’t you think it’s embarrassing to find out your ex-boyfriend’s sneaking over to your house to see your mom?”
Jodee’s face cracked. Murphy knew how the accusation sounded in front of all her friends. She hadn’t meant it to come out that way. But she kept plowing forward.
“Why was Rex at our house?”
“I’m gonna go,” Carla said. The other women stood up to follow her, and they all trickled out the door with a tangible sense of relief.
Jodee carefully folded the plastic wrap of her sandwich into smaller and smaller squares. “Rex has been helping me with some things.”
“Behind my back?”
“There are just some things…. I just needed help, and Rex has been there.”
Murphy kicked back her chair, furious. “He didn’t even tell me he was in town, but he’s there for you?”
“Murphy,” Jodee said sternly. “Being there for me is being there for you. It’s helping at a distance.”
This boggled Murphy’s mind. She didn’t know how to respond to it.
“Why at a distance? What does that mean?”
“Well, maybe Rex wants what’s best for you, but he can’t be around you.” The plastic wrap had been folded into the smallest square possible. If her mom folded it any more, it would become an atom.
“That’s such a cop-out,” Murphy said, feeling her features harden with bitter disdain.
“Murphy.” Jodee stood up. “That boy would have done anything for you.” She threw her lunch into the garbage can, and Murphy felt the unbearable, infuriating helplessness of being walked away from. “I can’t say you would have done the same for him.”
Murphy couldn’t find a reply. She had expected a mom who was guilty, sorry, and ready to give her what she wanted. But Jodee looked composed, angry, and strong. Murphy clenched and unclenched her fists, staring at her palms. She had expected to walk away with something big and necessary. Now it felt like she was moving a step backward. “What are you trying to say?” she asked.
Jodee tilted her head, studying her sadly, as if she felt bad for her. “Oh, Murphy, I’m saying you want what pleases you, and you won’t stand anything that doesn’t. And that’s why you miss everything important.” And then she pushed her way out into the hall.
One night, years after that summer, Emma Ruiz woke in her own bedroom in Mexico to a strange fluttering. She thought it was her own heart. But when she rose and walked to the window, she saw it was the moonlight itself that was fluttering, dropping light through the trees like tiny white petals. It struck a memory in her of something that she had lost and never grieved for.
Nineteen
Poopie and Murphy cooked a big “Get Well Soon” meal for Birdie, full of her favorite things. Orange soda. Lasagna. Lucky Charms. A couple of the women workers were there, as it was an all-girl affair. After they ate, they sat around the circular kitchen table playing poker.
Birdie’s bandaged foot was propped up on the chair. Majestic sat on her lap, looking at her as if they were survivors of the same kind of trauma. But Birdie was in a great mood. The sprained ankle was a small obstacle. Over the past few, physically useless days, she had been doing her research. And she felt like she had a handle on her house, the farm, and everything in it. She was, in a word, optimistic.
“It’s okay,” Birdie was saying. “I can still totally work.” She stood up as if to demonstrate, grabbing a big bowl of salad off the kitchen counter and carrying it to the table. “I hardly ever use my left leg anyway. I mean, I use it. But for kicking and things like that, I use my right.”
“Birdie.” Poopie frowned. “The doctor said you need to take it easy for three or four weeks.” She slid three more Cheerios, which they were using as poker chips, into the center of the table.
“It’s only really the one foot I have to be off of,” Birdie said brightly.
Poopie shot a beleaguered look at Murphy that was not lost on Birdie. Murphy looked back helplessly.
Birdie, distracted, hobbled around the room like a carpenter sizing things up. Leeda kept having to remind her when it was her turn, and she’d come back and shove some Cheerios into the pile, always the wrong number. “I fold,” she said.
“Then why are you betting?” Murphy asked, putting her hand against her forehead and shaking her head.
Birdie stared at the table. “Oh.” She pulled the Cheerios back. It had been like this the whole game.
“Anyway, I’ve always been good at handy stuff. Ever heard of joists? I read that I can put joists under the whole ground floor.”
She walked to a particularly saggy area and tapped it hard with her crutch for emphasis. There was a crunching underneath her. Birdie’s eyes widened. And then, with a loud ripping sound, the floor simply gave way beneath her and she went plummeting downward. Murphy lunged, but it was too late. Birdie was waist-deep in the hole, with only her hands and arms holding her from sinking deeper.
Pain seared up her leg. “Oh my God, I think I resprained my sprain.”
It took all of them to drag her out. A waft of cavelike, musty odors followed her in. Leaning against the counter, they all breathed heavily. “Are you okay?”
A sound separated itself from the chaos of them talking. It was a tapping on the glass of the window behind them.
They all looked up and around at the same time.
A face was staring at them. Or staring, more specifically, at Murphy.
Murphy froze like the Hamburglar caught with a plate of burgers. Then she turned to Birdie, as if Birdie would know what to do. But before she could respond, Murphy had composed herself, turned, and walked up the stairs. Even though they had just locked eyes, she pretended she hadn’t seen Rex at all.
Murphy was safely in Birdie’s room when she heard them letting Rex in through the front door. She cursed Birdie’s bedroom door for not having a lock and focused on the window, peering out at the overgrown garden. Could she climb out on the lattice?
Immediately she knew it was out of the question. The sad thing was that Rex would probably look for her there. She ducked into the closet instead, hiding behind some of Birdie’s old coats and leaving the door open to throw him off.
She heard two sets of footsteps come into the room, one making more of a limp thudding sound. “Murphy?” Birdie said. “Rex is here to see you.”
Both sets of footsteps came directly to the closet. Rex moved the coats aside and stared in at her.
Then Birdie got an embarrassed look on her face, like she wasn’t supposed to be there, and disappeared.
Rex and Murphy stood for a second, staring at each other. Rex was a full seven inches taller, with a comfortable slouch and an amused half smile he never seemed to lose. But he looked older than she remembered, more filled out. More grown up. Murphy stared at him, humiliated. But there was his smile. And it was hard to look back at him without an unwelcome grin creeping onto her lips.
“Did you think I was a scary monster?” he asked.
“No.”
“You wanna go somewhere? Hang out for a little? We could go to Waffle House.”
Murphy stepped out of the closet. “What are you doing here?”
Rex stuck his hands in his pockets and just looked at her like the answer was obvious. Murphy’s eyes were stuck to him like magnets. It was like spotting a part of herself she hadn’t seen in a while. Something that had been her other half.
“I don’t really feel like it,” she said.
Rex smiled gently, clearly a little hurt. “Murphy, can’t we just catch up? Don’t make me beg. Not in front of—” He nodded to Majestic, who was sitting in the doorway watching them, head cocked to the side, giant ears up and alert.
Murphy sighed, letting Rex grab her fingers and pull her away from the closet. She sat on the box spring of the bed, empty of a mattress thanks to Birdie.
“It’s stuffy in here,” Murphy said lamely, disgruntled.
Rex opened wide one of Birdie’s windows and let in the night air from above the garden. He sat next to her on the bed.
Rex rolled his hands together into one fist, thoughtful. They sat awkwardly for a few moments.
“So how’s New York? Are you happy? Is it what you thought it would be?”
Murphy blinked at him. “Yeah. It’s great. I love it.”
Rex nodded encouragingly. “That’s good, Shorts. I’m really happy for you.” Murphy hated the encouraging nods. It made her feel petty that she couldn’t give him the same good wishes.
“I could never go back,” Murphy said. “You know, to answering to people like you have to do in Bridgewater. New York’s anonymous. It’s free.”
It was like they were speaking in code. And Murphy was trying to say, in every way she could, that she didn’t need him or long for him. They were sitting inches apart, and to her, it could have been miles. It felt like cold metal in her stomach that they were so far away from each other now.
“What’s up with you?” she asked.
“I started making furniture. Out of recycled wood and stuff like that. I’m gonna sell some at this art shop in Austin, once we’re settled out there. We had an offer on the house we had to take, so we’re just living in the hotel till we’re ready to go.”
“That’s great, Rex.” Rex always had been gifted with his hands. Murphy didn’t want to think about his hands, though.
“I think Austin will be cool. I guess. You know I didn’t want to move to a city.”
Murphy knew. Rex hadn’t come with her to NewYork for just that reason. And now he was moving to a city anyway. It wasn’t lost on her.
Murphy felt like Rex secretly being at her mom’s was hanging between them, but she was unwilling to broach it. It felt too intimate.
They got quiet. Murphy couldn’t think of a single thing more she had to say to him. Apparently neither could he. Was this how it worked? You loved someone, and then you couldn’t manage a five-minute conversation with them? Murphy’s gut throbbed with hurt.
“Well,” she said, stretching as if she were tired and relaxed. Inside, her chest felt icy and her mouth had gone dry. “I guess I’ll call you.”
“Yeah.” He sighed. “It’ll be hard without my number, though.” He took a pen off Birdie’s dresser and wrote it on her hand on the web between the thumb and the forefinger. “I’ll hold my breath, of course.” He grinned wryly.
Murphy shrugged as if it were no big thing either way. He glanced at her reluctantly, and then stood up. He looked like he was going to say more, but he just shoved his hands in his pockets, turned, and left. Murphy listened to his truck start up outside and pull away. An image popped into her mind of when they used to lie on his couch in the dark. How close he was and how much it felt like their bodies weren’t there at all, and it was just something deeper in both of them that was touching.
In New York, she had met passionate people, creative people, interesting people. But she had never met anyone like Rex.
Murphy had never longed for her dad. Maybe it was all the paternity stuff, but oddly, she longed for him now. She longed to talk to someone who could tell her she had done the right things, let go of the right things, like he had. Someone who could tell her that giving people up was worth it if in the end it meant you were being true to yourself.
But who she was being true to by letting Rex go, she didn’t quite know.
Eliza Finkle, the mail mistress, was on her way to the ASPCA on Tuesday afternoon to drop off a litter of kittens her cat had recently delivered when she stopped because of a strange popping sound right in front of Darlington Orchard. She got out to check the wheels and found that a jaggedly sharp rock she’d run over had punctured her tire. While she waited for AAA, it occurred to her that she might as well drop the cats off at the miniature pony rescue instead, the one that old mule Eugenie Cawley-Smith had started. It was closer. Whatever they decided to do with the kittens was their business. It was out of her hands.
Twenty
It started with Leeda coming for a couple afternoons here and there. She would hover over Grey’s shoulder to learn a few of the things she didn’t know, and to do some minor things she knew how to do on her own, like feeding the ponies, or tidying up the tack room, or simply sitting with the Chihuahua for a while, giving him attention.
Twice, she had shown up to the cottage to find animals left on the front porch. Once a box of kittens, curled up against each other in a knot, sleeping, and then another dog, this time a hunting dog, so skinny she could count his ribs.
Now Leeda skipped up to the house. She had even started to look forward to seeing the ponies, though she still felt like most of them were strangers. She felt triumphant about Sneezy.
As she opened the door, the Chihuahua came running to greet her like they were being reunited after years torn apart, bouncing like a pogo stick. Leeda tried to keep him at arm’s length, but he shot out his tongue at her palms, kissing her frantically. She grimaced.
The ancient radio by the kitchen door was blaring punk rock. Leeda doubted Grandmom’s radio had been played l
oudly a day in her life. Grey emerged from his bedroom, his shirt off and a bunch of shaving cream on his face, his razor poised in midair. When he saw her, his eyes widened and he quickened his pace toward the radio, turning it down, then turned and disappeared into his bedroom. Leeda hesitated in the doorway, suddenly uncomfortable. She listened to the sound of the sink running.
The Chihuahua continued to fling himself against Leeda’s shins. Finally she picked him up gingerly and tucked him into her arms, cradling him. She had discovered, the last time she’d come, that he liked to be held like a baby. “You smell bad,” she said.
Grey reappeared with a clean face and a dark blue T-shirt on.
“You’re so early,” he said.
Leeda shrugged. She’d found herself leaving the orchard earlier and earlier to come work with the ponies.
“I haven’t eaten breakfast yet,” Grey said.
“Me neither.”
Grey made some eggs and toast, and then they moved out onto the sunporch, which Grey had taken over, throwing blankets on the formal stiff-backed couch to soften it up and putting candles on the side table so that he could read by it at night. He sank onto the armchair as Leeda dropped her purse by her side and fell back on the couch. They sipped coffee and ate.
For now, they were keeping the hunting dog in a pen out back that Grey had put up, and the kittens were staying in Grey’s room until Leeda could figure out what she wanted to do with them. She guessed she’d list them on Petfinder.com as she had the Chihuahua a few days before.
“I’ve named him,” Grey said through a mouthful, gesturing to the Chihuahua, who was curled up possessively beside Leeda on the couch.
“Oh. You know, I can’t keep him. It’s probably not a good idea to—”
“Mr. Barky Von Schnauzer,” Grey interrupted.
Leeda sucked in her bottom lip, gazing at him. “Like from the commercial?”
Love and Peaches Page 11