by Jodi Picoult
I walk over to where Joley’s sister is rubbing her back up against the split rail. She’s doing everything she can to keep from touching the stuff. That does it for me; I laugh in her face. She smells awful; even her hair is encrusted with manure. ‘Tough break,” I say. What I really mean is: I’m sorry.
She looks so out of place and incredibly miserable that I rediscover my conscience. I’m about to tell her who I am, and how I didn’t really mean for this to happen, when she undergoes this transformation. It’s a physical thing—her shoulders square up and her chin lifts and her eyes get very dark. All of a sudden she has this attitude. “I’m sure this isn’t appropriate behavior for a field hand,” she tells me. “When I tell Joley about this, he’ll report you to the person who runs the place.”
“I’m not too worried about that,” I say dryly and I tell her who I am. I hold out my hand, and then on second thought, take it back. The girl introduces herself. She’s laughing, which makes me think she’ll turn out all right. “Come on,” I say. “You can get cleaned up at the Big House.”
I show them their rooms, figuring it’s the least I can do after that fiasco, and tell Jane she’s welcome to the clothes my mother left in her closet. They’ll be big, but she can figure it out. She near about slams the bedroom door in my face, and I walk downstairs to Rebecca again, who’s peeking into each of the drawers of an antique apothecary chest that came from my mother’s mother. “Nothing in there,” I say, catching her in the act.
She jumps a few feet into the air. I’m sorry,” she says, “I didn’t mean to be doing that.”
“Sure you did. It’s okay. This is your house now. For a while, anyways.” I pull open one of the drawers myself, and take out an Indian head penny, 1888. I wonder if she knows that means good luck.
Rebecca starts to wander into the other rooms: the parlor and the blue tiled kitchen and the library, with wall-to-wall books, mostly on exotic places, that I’ve picked up over the years. “Wow,” she says, lifting a coffee-table book on the Canadian Rockies. “You’ve been to all these places?”
I walk into the library behind her. “You know what a mental traveler is?”
“It’s what I was before this summer.” She smiles at me, real open, like she’s got absolutely nothing to hide. I like her.
“I’m just going to sit outside. You can check out anything you’d like.” I leave her staring at an antique sextant propped over the mantel. “It’s for navigation,” I say, on my way out. She moves closer after I turn away, the old floorboards sigh under her weight.
It’s warm out, but not oppressive: it’s been that kind of a summer. I stare at my watch, impatient, which isn’t fair. It’s only been about four minutes since I left Joley’s sister, and she has to wash off anyway, and when you get right down to it it’s my fault she’s filthy. I glance over the orchard, which you can pretty much see in total from the Big House, trying to find Joley or Hadley or someone else who can take them off my hands. I’m not much good with visitors; I never know what to say. Especially in this case; I don’t expect a California woman to understand my life any more than I could make heads or tails of hers. My eyes run over the roads that separate the different stocks in the orchard, noticing which groups of trees need to be sprayed, which need to be pruned. I’m staring at these even rows, but I keep seeing her. Standing in the closet, pulling off her shirt. I jam my hands into my pockets and start to whistle.
When she comes downstairs, she’s wearing my mom’s madras sundress. It’s all these crazy peach colors, like a hot muggy sunset, and Dad gave her so much trouble about it being an eyesore she left it behind when she moved. It’s true, it looked too showy across her wide hips, but on Joley’s sister it’s almost elegant. It pinches at the waist where she’s wrapped it with an old handkerchief-can that possibly fit around her? Her arms, which are kind of thin for my taste, peek out pale from the too-big cap sleeves. And those peach colors show up again in her cheeks, which makes it all seem to match.
She’s holding all the dirty clothes. “What should I do with these?”
My voice is not my own. It’s hoarse and it comes out uneven. “Wash them,” I say, and I turn and walk down the path before she notices the way I sound.
They catch up quick enough, and I try to keep from holding a conversation by telling them about the orchard. As Lake Boon comes into view at the foot of the orchard, I tell Rebecca it’s great for swimming, and just in case she fishes, I let her know there’s bass. I catch Jane looking around at the thick older trees in this section of the orchard—the Mcintosh stock—and then taking note of the pond. When I walk past her I can smell lemons and fresh sheets. Her skin, even this close, reminds me of the inner edge of a crab apple blossom, flawless.
“Hadley!” I say. He steps off a ladder behind a tree he’s been pruning. When I introduce him, he does everything I didn’t do at the barn. He takes Jane’s hand and pumps it up and down; he dips his head towards Rebecca. And then he gives me this look, like he knows right there and then he’s already outdone me.
He immediately drops behind to talk to Rebecca—it figures, Hadley’s a pretty quick judge of character—leaving me to hold a conversation with Jane. I think about just walking the next ten acres without saying a word, but I’ve been rude enough today. Well, Sam, I tell myself, they’ve just come from across the country. Surely you can think of something pertaining to that. “So,” I say, “I hear you’ve done quite a bit of traveling.”
She jumps, just like Rebecca did when I caught her looking in the apothecary chest. “Yes,” she says, sort of guarded. “All across the country.” She looks at me as if she wants me to evaluate what she’s said, and then that look comes over her again, that haughty I’m-leagues-beyond-you look. “Of course I’ve also been to Europe and South America with my . . . my husband’s research.” That’s right, Joley’s told me about the whale guy, and why Jane left in the first place. “Why?” she asks, “Do you travel?”
I smile and tell her I’ve gone all over the place, at least in spirit. But I can’t tell what she thinks of that, until she asks me flat out why I don’t just take a real trip. I try to explain why running an orchard is different from running any other business, but she doesn’t understand. Not that I’d expected her to.
“Where would you really like to go?” she asks, and right away I have an answer. I’d love to go to Tibet, just because of what I could bring back. I know technically it takes months to import agriculture products, and I’d never clear customs with a tree, but if I got a small enough series of grafts I could hide them in my luggage without a problem. Can you imagine what it would be like to bring back an original Spitzenburg, or an even older stock, and make it come alive again?
I realize I’ve been doing way too much talking, and I turn to find her staring right at me. I’m caught off guard, and like an idiot, I say the first thing that pops into my mind. “Joley tells me you’ve run away from home.”
All the blood goes out of her cheeks, I swear. “Joley told you that?”
I mention I think it had something to do with her husband. I don’t mean anything by it, but her eyes get violent, all the light parts filling in black like a cougar’s. She straightens up and tells me it’s none of my business.
God, she has some attitude. It’s not like I’ve mentioned some big secret. I’m just retelling what her own brother told me. If she wants to get all pissy, she should take it out on Joley, not me.
I don’t have to take this, not on my own land. I should have known better to begin with. Nothing’s changed between the likes of her and the likes of me: certain trees just cannot be grafted; certain life-styles just do not mix.
She folds her arms across her chest. “You don’t know anything about me.”
“You don’t know anything about me,” I say, almost hollering now. “Let’s just leave it at that. You want to come here to visit your brother, that’s fine. You want to stay a while, okay.” I can feel the sweat starting to run down the sides of my
face. “Let’s just say I’ll do my thing, and you can do yours.”
She jerks her head, so a strand of her ponytail lands across her mouth. “Fine.”
“Fine.” That settles it. I have a policy with Joley and Hadley: whoever they want to bring up here as a visitor is their business, and they’re more than welcome. So if Joley wants his sister to stay a while, I’m not going to cross him. But I’m sure as hell not going to babysit her.
“I want to know why you didn’t help me up back there.”
“In the manure?” I say, and then I grin, satisfied. Because of all the times your friends pointed at me when I was in high school. Because of that party, where I was just a kid and a girl just like you was using me. Because I could look but I wasn’t allowed to touch. “Because,” I tell her, “I knew exactly who you were.”
Triumphant, I walk off in the direction of the commercial section. Then I hear her voice, fluted like a cardinal’s. “Joley!” she cries. “It’s Joley!”
It’s remarkable to watch them from this distance, this guy I’ve come to trust like a brother and this woman who has done nothing but give me grief from the moment she’s arrived. Joley doesn’t hear her at first. He’s got his hands pressed around a tree he’s been grafting; his head bent almost reverently, willing it to live. A second later, when he lifts his head in that way he has, kind of dazed, he sees Jane and jumps off the high rungs of the ladder to meet her. He picks her up and swings her around and she wraps her arms around his neck and clings to him like she’s been drowning and just found a sure call for safety. I’ve never seen two people so different fit together so perfect.
Hadley and me and Rebecca are all watching this and getting kind of uncomfortable. It’s not just like we’re intruding; it’s as if everything-the orchard, the lake, the sky, God Himself—should be giving these two a little privacy. “Why don’t you take the rest of the afternoon off, Joley,” I say softly, “on account of you never see your sister.”
I start to walk back in the direction of the barn, figuring I can clean up after the shearing. I need to separate that last ewe’s wool, and tie the bags and get them into town sometime this week. I leave Hadley in charge of Rebecca, figuring the two of them are getting along all right. And then with the sun burning against the back of my neck, I make my way across my orchard.
I have never disliked someone so much so quickly. I’d say I wasn’t being fair to her, with the shearing accident and all, but I certainly gave her plenty of chances to see that I didn’t mean it on purpose. Ten acres back to the barn is a long ways, and the whole time I’m thinking of Jane Jones, and her face flushed to the same color as Ma’s dress, and the way one minute she could act so self-righteous, but the next minute she needed to cling to Joley for support.
I try to do a few things back at the greenhouse, but I’m not concentrating well. I keep remembering stupid things from high school—dumb incidents with city girls who, most likely, Jane used to hang around with. I seemed to always go for that type: the ones who looked like they’d just scrubbed their faces so hard they’d turned pink at the cheeks; the girls who had straight shiny hair that, if you came close, gave off the scent of raspberries. I went crazy over them at first sight, my heart going a mile a minute and my throat getting all hollow until I got up the nerve to go over and try one more time. You never know, I used to tell myself. Maybe this girl won’t know where you’re from. Maybe she won’t be the kind who cares. Eventually I knew better. They didn’t have to say it outright; their message came through loud and clear: stick to your own kind.
So that was my first mistake with Jane Jones. I should have just let her go her own way. I should have pointed her in Joley’s direction and I shouldn’t have asked her to help out with the shearing in any way, shape or form. I started out just doing it for a laugh but that wasn’t right. She’s not like us. She wouldn’t get the joke.
I realize then that I have left the greenhouse without noticing, and I’m standing in front of a dead apple tree, staring at Joley and his sister. Joley notices me and waves me over. From the other direction, Hadley and Rebecca approach. “Where have you guys been?” Joley says. “We were getting ready to have lunch.”
I open my mouth but nothing comes out. “We were down by the lake,” Hadley says. “Rebecca was telling me all the stupid things you did at family Christmas parties.” He’s got a gift for situations like this. He can take knots and unravel them, smooth the kinks, put everyone at ease.
“Sam,” she says. She’s talking to me. “Joley says you have a hundred acres.” She looks directly at me, bright and friendly.
“You know anything about apples?” I say, too gruff. She shakes her head, so that her ponytail bounces on her shoulders. A ponytail. You don’t see many grown women with one; that’s what it is about her. “It really wouldn’t interest you.”
Hadley looks at me, as if to say, What the hell’s gotten into you?
“Sure it would. What varieties do you grow here?”
When I don’t say anything, Hadley and Joley go through the rigama-role of reciting all the stocks and varieties at the orchard. I walk up to the dead tree, within inches of her, and pick at the bark of a branch. I pretend that I’m doing something important.
Jane walks to a nearby tree. “And what are these?”
She picks a Puritan, holds it up to the warm noon sun, and then presses it up against her lips, getting ready to bite. I see this from behind, and I know what she is about to do. I also know that this section was sprayed with pesticides this morning. I move quickly on instinct, throwing my arm over her shoulder so that her back presses against me, sharp and warm. I manage to swat that apple out of her arm so it rolls out of her tight hold, settling heavy, like an overturned stone.
She whirls around, her lips inches from my face. “What in God’s name is your problem?”
I am thinking: Get in your car; go back where you belong. Or else leave your big ideas behind and let me run my place the way I know it should be run. I am thinking: Here, I am the big fish in the pond. Finally I point to the tree where she picked the fruit. “They were sprayed today,” I say. “You eat it, you die.” I push past her, past the catch of perfume that hangs about her and the warm outline of air that hovers inches from her skin. I brush her shoulder as I pass, and I step on the goddamned apple with the heel of my boot. I fix my eyes on the Big House; I keep walking. I don’t look back. Out of sight, I tell myself, is out of mind.
51 JANE
Because the Big House was built in the 1800s, all the plumbing’s been restored-Naturally, they have bathrooms but not many. Everyone upstairs has to share one master bathroom, one claw-footed tub with a pull-around shower curtain, one ancient toilet with an overhead chain-pull tank.
Today, I get up so late I’m sure that everyone else has already gone down to the fields. There’s no one in the bathroom, so I just walk in and turn on the shower. I let the room fill up with steam and then I’m singing the melodies of doo-wop songs, so I don’t hear the door open. But when I peek my head out to reach for a towel so I can wipe soap out of my eyes, I see Sam Hansen standing in front of the mirror.
He’s rubbed a little part clear, and he’s got shaving cream all over his face. I’m so shocked that I just stand there, stark naked, with my mouth hanging open. There’s no lock on the bathroom door, so I could understand him walking in. But actually staying? Shaving?
“Excuse me,” I say, “I’m taking a shower.”
Sam turns to me. “I can see that.”
“Don’t you think you should leave?”
Sam clicks his razor three times against the porcelain of the sink. “Look, I’ve got an appointment in Boston this afternoon, and a meeting in Stow in three-quarters of an hour. I don’t have time to wait for you to finish your three-hour stint in the bathroom. I needed to get in here to shave. It’s not my fault you picked such a goddamned inconvenient time to take your shower—practically afternoon, now.”
“Wait just a minute.” I tu
rn off the water and pull the towel into the bathtub. I wrap it around myself and then I throw back the curtain. “You’re intruding on my privacy. Do you always walk in on people who are in the bathroom if you’re running late? Or is it just me?”
“Give me a break,” he says, running the razor down his cheek. “I told you I was coming in.”
“Well, I didn’t hear you.”
“I knocked, and then I told you I had to get in there. And you said ‘Mmm-hmm.’ I heard it with my own two ears. Mmm-hmm.”
“For God’s sake, I was humming. I wasn’t inviting you in here; I was singing in the shower.”
He turns to me and holds up the razor, making a point. “And how was I supposed to know that?” He stares at me, his mouth surrounded with white foam, a perverse version of Santa Claus. Almost imperceptibly, his eyes flicker, just quick enough to take in my body, shrouded in its towel, from head to toe.
“I don’t believe this,” I say, and I open the door to the bathroom. A cool blast of air rushes in and makes the skin on the back of my neck prickle. “I’m going into the bedroom. Please let me know when you’re through.” I stomp away, leaving wet pressed footprints on the Oriental runner in the hall.
I go to my bedroom and lie down on the bed, unwrapping the towel and spreading it out underneath me. On second thought, I rewrap it. With my luck, he’ll just walk in here. There’s a loud thud on the heavy wood door. “It’s all yours,” Sam says, his voice muffled.
Shaking my head I go back into the bathroom and this time I push the barrel used as a clothes hamper in front of the door. It isn’t heavy enough to keep someone from getting in, but I’d be sure to hear it fall over. I step into the shower and wash the shampoo out of my hair. I finish my song.