Murphy’s feet slowed down despite herself.
“I was crying hysterically and then I just stopped and kind of went numb. They sent a maid to get me.” Leeda shrugged, trying to downplay it now.
“That sucks,” Murphy finally said, sounding contrite.
“It really did,” Leeda agreed, and after meditating on it for a few seconds, she added, “I hate trees.”
A few minutes later they emerged along the property line, where there was a rusted, wildly crooked fence lined with bushes marking the end of the property.
The girls sidled up to the bushes and peered over.
On the other side, it was a different world. A huge, rolling lawn, neatly and tightly trimmed, was punctuated with sand traps, bottlebrush, and imported Italian pines. In the distance was a huge clubhouse, lined on either side with enormous, identical stucco houses.
“Where did that come from?” Murphy asked, sounding shocked.
“It’s the Balmeade Country Club,” Leeda answered. “The owner’s a friend of my dad’s. Well, business friend. Rex works there, busing tables,” she said proudly, wanting badly to prove to Murphy that she wasn’t a snob.
Up until a few years ago she had spent much of each summer at the country club pool with Danay, drinking chocolate malts out of huge frosty glasses. The houses were exclusive, overlooking the eighteenth hole of the club’s golf course, and Leeda’s parents owned one. But she’d stopped going when Danay had left home. And now, with her feet planted in the thick grass of the orchard and the lake water still dripping from the ends of her hair, looking over the fence at the country club was enough to drain something right out of Leeda.
“The owner’s such a creep. He tried to feel me up at Steeplechase last year.” Leeda thought back to how Horatio had woven up to her last spring, a stirrup cup full of Jack Daniel’s in his hand, and stood so close to her that his knuckles kept grazing her chest. He was one of those guys who tried to touch you without you finding out he was touching you. It was also common family knowledge that he had long had his eye on the Darlingtons’ property, though Walter and Birdie skirted the name Balmeade like the plague at dinner every night. Around the Cawley-Smith dinner table the opinion was that Uncle Walter was selling himself short by holding on to a relic like the orchard, and Leeda had always believed it must be true.
“Horatio Balmeade?” Murphy murmured.
“You know him?” Leeda asked, surprised. She didn’t think somebody like Murphy would.
Murphy was staring across the bushes like she was looking at a snake. She crossed her arms over herself protectively. “I hate him.”
Leeda was about to press further when Rex gave her a meaningful look and interrupted. He pulled Leeda tight to his body and spoke to Murphy over her shoulder.
“I think the Darlingtons hate him too. He wants the farm.”
“Uncle Walter would rather die,” Leeda said, not sure if she was criticizing him or not. She stared out from the shelter of Rex’s chest at the carefully controlled, carefully maintained grounds of the club and tried to imagine that same landscape being where the shaggy pecan trees and the budding peaches and the lake now stood. “But I don’t know if he’ll have much choice.”
Murphy laughed. “So Horatio Balmeade’s gonna take up farming?”
Rex shook his head. “He wants to put in townhouses. And extend the golf course.”
“You don’t know that,” Murphy said, frowning at Rex. Rex eyed her, equally annoyed, even though Rex was rarely annoyed with anyone.
“Well, that’s what Horatio Balmeade says. Over drinks. To people,” he sputtered.
Looking around, it was hard for Leeda to imagine the orchard in financial trouble. It was practically brimming with life. But dinner conversations at the Darlingtons’ told a different story. So did the sinking floors of the house and the outdated machinery. “Things are pretty bad,” she murmured, agreeing. It was sad, really. Leeda had lived in the same town her whole life, but she realized that having the orchard there had always made her feel like she had some kind of root planted in the ground.
“This place has been here forever.” Leeda knew the orchard was one of the oldest in Georgia. While most had either died completely or survived by tacking onto bigger, consolidated orchards (there were four major ones in the state), the Darlington peach orchard had somehow managed to survive. “Maybe they should just declare it a historic landmark or something.”
“You think everything’s so easy, Lee,” Rex said doubtfully.
“It’s toast,” Murphy said, actually agreeing with him.
Leeda looked at her, thinking about Danay in Atlanta. She would never be tromping around with Murphy McGowen in an orchard. She wondered if the orchard gave Danay that rooted feeling too and figured probably not.
“This is where I leave you,” Rex said, tugging Leeda toward him with one hand and giving her a chaste peck on the lips. Murphy watched the kiss curiously and gave Rex a halfhearted wave when he nodded at her before he turned and walked off.
They were standing at the north side of the pecan grove, the dividing line between the orchard and the country club about thirty yards behind them. As they watched Rex disappear into the darkness, Murphy toyed with the idea of asking Leeda what the kiss had been all about. She’d never seen two extremely attractive people kiss with such lackluster abandon. Maybe they weren’t into PDA. Maybe Leeda didn’t have anything else in her. Murphy was pretty sure that Rex must, but she made her imagination stop at that.
The girls walked toward the dorms in silence, the glow of their dip in the lake fading behind them. The talk about the Balmeade Country Club had been a buzz kill. Murphy had always had a deep distrust for things that were perfect and sterile, like the view over the fence had been, and the fact that that view was connected with Horatio Balmeade was an added down note. The thought that it could spread and envelope the orchard was almost sadistic.
They came at the dorms from the far side of the Darlington house, and Murphy’s heartbeat picked up again as they made their way across the front of the house, skirting the circle of the porch lights. Murphy looked at the cloud-dipped moon. It was probably two. Maybe three.
“What’s that statue?” Murphy whispered as they passed the stairs of the porch and the railing where Poopie had left her little figurine.
Leeda smiled. “That’s one of Poopie’s saints. She has one for everything. If you want to sell a house or if you want to get pregnant or if you’re in trouble for evading your taxes. Everything.”
“Is that a…Mexican thing?” Murphy whispered, surprised she’d be asking Leeda a question about a foreign culture.
Leeda shrugged. “I don’t think so. Poopie’s into everything. New Age. Meditation. Saints.”
“Well, which saint is that?” Murphy asked.
Leeda squinted at it. “Actually, that’s Saint Jude,” she said, obviously proud she knew the answer. Murphy had heard of Saint Jude. Her mom had dated a deacon once. The meaning of Saint Jude was just on the tip of her tongue.
“What’s it the saint of?” she finally asked, caving.
They looked at each other, then Leeda bent to brush at her leg. Murphy’s eyes followed her hand to the crawling black blotches all over her legs. She gasped at the same time Leeda let out her first piercing scream.
“Oh, damn.” Murphy watched Leeda jump up and down on the lawn, slapping at her legs, flabbergasted, then chased after her, trying to slap at the fire ants too.
The lights in the house flared up.
“Yip! Yip yip!”
The door flew open, and the first one out to see what was wrong was Honey Babe, followed shortly by Majestic. And then there was Poopie Pedraza hurrying across the grass in a pink nightdress.
Murphy considered running. She scanned the porch as she looked for the best route. The house lights flicked on and created a wide circle around the statue of Saint Jude, and suddenly Murphy found her answer.
Saint Jude was the patron saint of lost c
auses.
When Cynthia Darlington was renovating the Darlington house in 1989, she accidentally plastered her birth control compact behind a wall. It was five and a half weeks before Cynthia squeezed out the time to visit the gynecologist, and then it was only to find out that her prescription wouldn’t do her much good for the next eight months.
Chapter Eight
Birdie hoisted her suitcase down the stairs, and the papillons followed her to Camp A, where all three moved onto the couch in the common room.
Birdie had a little thrill running through her as she unpacked her stuff into the bureau that held the TV, though she hadn’t felt this when Walter first announced that he wanted her to stay down at the dorm so that she, Majestic, and Honey Babe could keep an eye on Leeda and Murphy McGowen.
The other night, when she’d come downstairs to see what all the noise was about and found Poopie irritably rubbing Leeda’s legs with alcohol, the first thing she’d felt was hurt. Birdie had ducked out of sight, feeling embarrassed and left out. It was embarrassing that Leeda—her cousin, whom she’d known her entire life—had snuck out with Murphy, while she, Birdie, had gone to bed at ten o’clock after watching a rerun of Dawson’s Creek. It made her feel like a freak of nature, an eighty-year-old trapped in a fifteen-year-old’s body.
And then Walter had made it worse by sentencing her to the dorms, tearing her out of her comfort space. And here she was. Only between then and now Birdie had realized that sleeping in the dorms also meant sleeping approximately fifty feet away from Enrico, and that was what made her a little breathless. She looked out the window toward the men’s dorm, wondering which was Enrico’s window and if he kept his blinds open.
She was leaning onto the windowsill, still looking, when Murphy came in from the field, covered in white dirt, with dry leaves in her hair as if she’d been taking a nap in the grass. Murphy came to a dead stop in front of the couch.
“Hey,” Birdie said quietly, forgetting Enrico and blushing slightly.
“What’re you doing here?” Murphy asked, her full lips parted as she waited for Birdie to stammer out an answer.
“Um—uh, my dad wants me to stay down here to, um, stay for a while.”
Murphy sank onto one hip. “To spy on us, right?”
Birdie swallowed, avoiding Murphy’s eyes. Her gut sank. “Um, not spy on you, just to…” Birdie searched her head for a euphemism for spying. She looked at Honey Babe, then Majestic, as if they could supply one. Her excitement of a moment before had completely vanished. “I’m going to help….”
Murphy held up her hand in a stop motion, smiling sardonically. “Yeah, okay. Whatever.” She scowled at the dogs, at Birdie, then trudged up the stairs.
Murphy had just vanished onto the upstairs landing when Leeda walked in and closed the front door behind her, looking puzzled when she saw Birdie and the blanket-strewn couch. Her trepidation was thinly veiled—very thinly.
“Are you sleeping over?” she asked.
“Dad wants me to stay down here for the rest of spring break.”
Leeda’s shoulders actually heaved in disappointment. She looked around the room, apparently trying to think of something to say, and then finally realized she had nothing. Leeda walked up the stairs too. Birdie could see the backs of her legs covered in brutal red bumps.
Birdie went back to unpacking. Deflated, she shoved her things irritably into the little bit of space left in the bureau and then put her toiletries into the cabinet under the sink.
Birdie felt humiliated. Did Leeda think “keeping an eye on them” was her idea of a good time? But the most humiliating part was that Birdie had never snuck down to the lake with anyone, and she lived here. Life was chugging along, and Birdie had never even gotten on the track. She was stranded at the station while people like Murphy and Leeda were actually living, moving forward, looking back at her like she was some kind of alien spy.
The thing was, she didn’t know how to get out of herself. She just didn’t know.
“I don’t know,” she said to the dogs, who obviously thought she was fabulous either way. It was in their eyes.
She went into the bathroom and saw they were out of cotton balls. Birdie sighed. She made a mental note to get some for Leeda the next time she and Poopie drove the workers to town.
Once she ran out of unpacking to do, Birdie cleaned the kitchen. A few minutes later the women started trickling in, fiddling with the radio and clucking over Birdie’s new living arrangements. Birdie sat with her legs together, unnerved by the commotion that she was supposed to live in for the next five days. When Leeda floated down the stairs to grab a snack from the kitchen, they all gave one another meaningful looks until Leeda’d gone back up. Then they started in on Birdie and what a good girl she was, and on how lazy other people could be. Emma raised her eyebrows in the direction of upstairs and squeezed Birdie’s knee affectionately as if they—the women and Birdie—were older and wiser and Murphy and Leeda belonged to some other generation entirely. Someone switched the radio to weatherband, which they were all addicted to, though it was all in English.
The radio buzzed with static as they chatted and waited for the Southeast forecast. When Florida was mentioned, everyone quieted down.
Farmers in Florida, Georgia, and Alabama are gearing up for a late frost, scheduled to descend on the Southeast later this week. Temperatures are expected to drop to twenty-eight degrees, a level that for the season’s early crops could mean…
Birdie pulled her knees up to her chest and rubbed her opal necklace between her fingers. When she looked up, the women were all staring at her. She let out a ragged breath, smiled her grimace smile, and walked out onto the screen porch. There she sank onto the decrepit wicker rocker and rocked back and forth, sweating from the heat of the indoors and trying to quell the rising panic in her belly.
“Por qué tan triste, Birdie?”
Birdie looked up. Enrico had his face pressed against the screen so that his nose was flattened back against his face. Birdie could imagine, with his nose smushed up like that, that he wasn’t so cute after all and that she didn’t want him.
She wiped at the sweat on her upper lip and smiled. “Heugh.”
Enrico stared at her. Birdie had meant to say “hi” but then at the last second had decided “hey” was more casual, and it had come out “heugh.” She blushed. “Um. Estoy muy bueno.”
“Muy bien,” Enrico corrected.
“Muy bien.” Birdie beamed at him.
Enrico smiled back, not warmly but only politely. He seemed to be staring at something near her mouth. She wiped at her upper lip again.
“I try to find your dad. Do you know where the label maker is? I thought I start that early, for bottles.” He was very earnest and all business, his brown eyes steady and not at all sparkly like they’d been last week.
“Oh.” Birdie patted her ponytail. After a long day of work she was covered in a gritty layer of sweat and dust. “I think we still need to order them,” she said.
“Okay. You let me know when they come?” Enrico smiled tightly. He could have been smiling at her dad.
“Yep. Will do.”
As soon as Enrico walked away, Birdie trudged to the bathroom to peer in the mirror and get a glimpse of the Birdie Enrico had seen. She let out a groan.
Where she had wiped at her upper lip, she had wiped a swath of dirt over her mouth so that she had a thick dirt mustache. The only thing missing was a sombrero.
She turned to peer through the rectangular window that looked out from the bathroom onto the path toward the house, where Enrico was still visible for a moment before he veered toward the cider house.
Who could blame him for not wanting to flirt with a chubby girl with a mustache?
She watched him walk away, holding her hand up to her neck, letting her pulse thrum against her fingers.
Over the next few days Leeda’s wounds, inflicted by the thirty-seven fire ants that had swarmed on her legs, formed zit-like pus bumps
that she tried to fastidiously dry with the rubbing alcohol Poopie gave her. She hid from Rex whenever he was around, ducking back into the trees whenever she saw him walking across the property, which made him laugh while he pretended not to see her. It was just too gross for a guy to see his girlfriend’s pus bumps. Leeda knew her mother would agree.
Birdie was like an angel, checking on Leeda constantly in her quiet way, turning the fan on above the couch when Leeda was crashed out watching TV, taping little bags of cotton balls to her door. But whenever Leeda thanked her, she couldn’t get her voice to sound sincere. The cotton balls didn’t make up for not being able to sneak out anymore, since after dark had been the only time when Leeda had gotten to spend any real time with Rex anyway, and now it was the only time she was willing to let him get close to her at all.
Out in the field that Friday, Murphy and Leeda drifted by each other like they had every morning since the lake—awkwardly, muttering hellos but nothing more. Today they moved down the row in the same slow unison.
Leeda kept glancing at Murphy sideways as she took up her station a few trees away. Whatever strange mood had stolen over Leeda at the lake had vanished the moment she’d seen Poopie in her nightdress and hadn’t come back since. She cringed thinking that Murphy had seen her swimming in her skivvies and then cringed harder thinking about the way she’d told Murphy about her weird thing with trees. It was the same feeling she’d had a few times after getting drunk at one of her friends’ parties, when she’d wrapped her arms around people, planting sloppy kisses on their faces, begging them to tell her if they really liked her or not. Only at the lake she’d been completely sober.
Murphy, who’d gotten too lazy to hide her laziness, let Leeda catch up with her.
“How’re the bites?” she asked.
“Ugly,” Leeda said, pointing down to her legs, which had started on a new phase yesterday of itching like crazy.
“Too bad.”
Leeda nodded. “Yep.” She looked at Murphy’s slouch and the way she swatted at the peaches. She tried slouching a little bit too. And then she saw Rex.
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