by Anna Solomon
• • •
An hour later, a different car drove up the hill. A different man got out, taller and leaner and darker. Not since Roland first arrived home a hero had so many people come to the Murphy house in one day. Everyone came to see, except for Lucy, who after her conversation with Emma had climbed down through the turnip bin into the perry cellar. With the blanket Emma had given her wrapped around her shoulders and a large stick in her hands, she crushed pear pulp, not with any of the techniques described in the PEAR VARIETIES pamphlet but in a way that made as much sense and was far more satisfying: again and again, with all her might, she drove the stick into the pulp.
Were they expecting him? Albert sat a minute in the car, taking in the Murphy family, all lined up in the yard. Emma’s children looked just like her, but she did not look like herself—the moment she locked eyes with him, her usual warmth faded. Her jaw locked. Her husband tilted in the window like an enormous broom, not saying a word. Albert recognized the danger in him—he saw that he was not always silent, saw that he exacted silence as Teddy had, as warning. Driving up Leverett Street, Albert had been hopeful, for Luis Pereira’s wife had accepted the cash he had brought there, but when he saw the Murphys his hope lost its shine.
“Mrs. Murphy!” he called, striding toward the line they made, reminded for the first time since childhood of the game Red Rover.
“Mr. Cohn,” she said.
“Albert Cohn,” Albert said to Roland Murphy, braving his scowl. Albert nodded at the children in turn, working to appear lighthearted. “I don’t mean to bother you,” he said to Emma. “I only came to bring you this.” From his vest pocket he produced the envelope. The heat had not broken, but Albert was a banker, used to wearing a three-piece suit in any weather. He was used to impressing people in this way, used to getting what he wanted.
Emma peered in the envelope. “Thank you, Mr. Cohn, but we don’t need it.”
“Don’t need what?” asked Mr. Murphy.
“Mrs. Cohn’s sincerest regrets,” said Albert.
“We’re grateful,” Emma said. “Please tell her that we’re grateful. But we can’t accept.”
“But she insists. You haven’t deposited her check.”
“What check?” Mr. Murphy asked.
“I have no idea,” Emma said flatly, staring at Albert. “I never got any check.”
“I don’t know what happened,” he said. “I’m very sorry, as is Mrs. Cohn. Please.” Again, he held out the envelope. “It’s the least we can do.”
“She was a good employer,” Emma said. “She paid me well.”
Albert said nothing about the fact that it was Josiah Story who had paid her—or that Bea suspected the two of an affair.
“We don’t blame her,” Emma said emphatically. “Tell her that.”
Mr. Murphy spoke. “Emma, take the money.”
“We don’t need it,” she said without turning to look at him.
“What makes you think you won’t lose your job at Sven’s tomorrow?”
“I won’t lose my job,” Emma said.
“Do you know something I don’t? Has the world changed in a remarkable way since I last saw it?”
“We’ll talk about this later. Mr. Cohn, your generosity is much appreciated, but please, you should go.”
He put the envelope back in his pocket. What could he do? Emma was not Luis Pereira’s wife, Rosalva, ready to eat Albert’s handsome face. But Albert could not give up. He would fall onto his knees if it would help. Mrs. Cohn needs you to have it. I need you to have it! He needed her to take it so that Bea would calm down. He needed Bea to calm down because he loved her, and because he was ready, at last, to divorce her. Albert was still sleeping with Lyman Knapp. He wanted to keep sleeping with him. Perhaps divorce should not matter—why should a real divorce be necessary to end a sham marriage? Yet it did matter. He wanted to leave, officially. But first Bea had to be leavable. He looked once more to Mr. Murphy, hoping—awfully—that the man might shout at Emma, make her take the money. But Mr. Murphy was looking beyond Albert now, his expression altered. It was softer, somehow—Albert glimpsed fear in it. He turned to see a girl walking out of the small shack. Lucy had left the blanket in the cellar but its furs clung to her sweaty face. She was red from her crushing. She hollered, “Time for your bath, Joshua!” before she saw the assembled crowd, and stopped.
“Lucy!” The littlest boy ran to her, and hugged her by the leg. “It’s Mr. Cohn! The husband of the lady who wrecked the ship!”
“What were you doing in there, Lucy Pear?” In the doorway, Mr. Murphy folded his arms. His voice singsonged, as if teasing, but he squinted like a bully. “Building a nest?”
She didn’t answer. She was looking at Albert. She was Bea in miniature, he saw, the resemblance so plain he barely registered his shock—he thought of the bosomy nurse, at his office door, telling him how she and Ira had found Bea asleep among the pear trees. But the pears, Bea kept saying, but the pears . . . Even if he hadn’t heard the girl’s middle name Albert would have known this was Bea’s daughter. Her question, as she stared at him, was clear. Was he her father?
He was sorry not to be. He was sorry he couldn’t take her away, right then, and tell her the story, what he knew of it. Lucy Pear! But she was not his to take. His question, as he stared back at her, was how quickly he could get back to Bea and assure her she wasn’t crazy. The money in his vest was immaterial now. The point was to apologize, bid them adieu, jump in the car, ta-ta! The point was his rising heart.
Thirty
It had rained only once in August and the track to the cove was dry, without grass to cover the middle berm where the children usually walked. They carried sticks and fishing line and worms dug up from Emma’s scrap heap. They walked fast, wanting to secure their favorite spot on the seawall, but Lucy’s feet had grown soft from wearing shoes at the quarry and she fell behind, picking on her toes across the gravel. She moved slowly enough to notice colors in the crushed stone, to see lizards poke themselves onto the path, then dart back into the brush. She stopped to inspect the painful bottoms of her feet. Not so long ago, Lucy had had a child’s sense of her body, which is to say she was unaware of it as such. She moved, it moved, she was, it was. Lately, though, she found herself watching it, noting a hardness beneath her nipples as if pennies had been sewn in there, noting hair in places it had not grown before. She was divided from herself, a spectator. And she was divided further from the family, too, for Janie did not seem to be undergoing any of these changes yet and Lucy knew the reason: Janie’s mother was like a ruler, while Lucy’s was not. Seeing her mother had confirmed Lucy’s sense that she was alone. And it fed a fantasy that maybe she didn’t have to be.
She sat on the track so she could rub both feet at once. The pale skin under her toes was red, the pads of her feet howled. How had she gone so soft in only a couple months? Still, her feet weren’t as bad as the welt on her right hip—if she concentrated, she could feel it there, the blister chafing against her skirt. Last week, after Mr. Stanton brought her back from the quarry, after Emma had heard Lucy’s story and promised her nothing in return, Roland had called her to where he sat, in his chair. Lucy went bravely—everyone was watching. Maybe all he wanted was an apology. Even when he pulled her onto his lap, she remained hopeful. She was helpless not to hope: maybe he would only tickle her, rub his knuckles against her head a little too hard, then let her go. Maybe she had imagined the times before. She worked to keep her balance on his one leg. She started to say, “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have gone . . .” but Roland put his hot, moist palm over her mouth. “So you made a mistake,” he said. “We all make mistakes, Lucy Pear.” His voice was reasonable—she believed he meant to be kind. Even his hand over her mouth she forgave, for his smell was familiar, comforting. Meanwhile with his right forefinger and thumb he began squeezing at the back of her leg, near her buttock, his hand under her
and well hidden, squeezing first and then twisting, twisting her skin until she blinked back tears. Meanwhile she sensed Roland stirring under her, a man’s stirring. This was new. This was terrifying. Still, she withstood it—her tears were easily interpreted by her audience as remorse—until Joshua, blessed Joshua, whined for his bath. Roland released her. Only as she scrubbed Joshua’s back did Lucy peek behind her and inside her skirt and see that her blood vessels had burst, that Roland had twisted a circle of skin the size of a pencil clear off.
Lucy picked up her fishing stick and began to walk. She was so focused on shaking off the memory, and on watching where she set her feet, that she barely registered the woman in a long, dark dress, sitting on a boulder at the side of the track.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.”
Lucy stared.
“I would have come to the house . . . I went to the bottom of the street. My husband drove . . . Somehow I knew you would go swimming today.”
Beatrice Cohn was visibly shaking. I knew. Emma would call that a boast, but Lucy liked that her mother had known (even if she did have the sport wrong). She wondered at the woman’s boniness, wondered, if she were to go closer, if she were to reach out to touch her, would her hand go straight through? Had the others not seen her, in her weird dress? Was Lucy dreaming? She felt as if her blood had been replaced by boiling water. “You’re here,” she said tentatively.
“My husband saw you. I saw you, at my house. But no one would believe me.”
Lucy blinked slowly. The woman had not disappeared. There were Lucy’s thick eyebrows.
“You’re very brave.”
This is my mother, Lucy told herself. This is your mother. This was her mother, praising her. Surely she was meant to feel grateful. Perhaps she should move closer. But her limbs might have been rubber. Her feet held to the berm. The longer she looked at Beatrice Cohn’s face, its familiarities seemed to recede and the fact of her utter strangeness came forward. Lucy knew nothing apart from what the paper said. She didn’t know what this woman liked to eat, or what her laugh sounded like—did she laugh?—or whether she drank tea. And the woman had kept it that way. She had not come looking for Lucy. Lucy had been the one to look—she had stowed herself in a whiskey truck to find this woman who sat so stiffly now, with her stiff face and her stiff hair in its bun and her hands in her lap like she was waiting for Lucy to tell her what to do. What did she want, for Lucy to say, Thank you, you’re brave, too? Emma taught the children to always repay a compliment but Lucy couldn’t make herself do that now because it just wasn’t true and the longer she looked at the woman’s face, the less true it seemed. Lucy felt an excruciating loneliness. Why hadn’t Janie and the others come back for her? Did they think she had gone back to the house? Did they think she had run off again to the quarry? She heard herself say, with a firmness that belied her confusion, shored her up against tears: “I’m ten now.”
The woman’s face changed then. The parts she’d been holding seemed to give way. She covered her eyes with her hands. “My husband told me your name,” she said pitifully, and Lucy’s pride withered. She crouched down, trying to see beneath the woman’s hands. “Would you like to see my perry shack?” It was the only thing she could think to say. “I built it. I was the boss. We can wait there, for my mother.”
Slowly, Mrs. Cohn lowered her hands.
“I have to tell my mother you’re here,” Lucy said, using the word purposefully now, watching it hit Mrs. Cohn. It was like watching wind hit a sheet—the sheet’s flailing gave away the strength of the wind.
“Of course,” Mrs. Cohn said at last. “Emma.”
“Yes. But not my father. Not yet. He’ll be angry.”
Mrs. Cohn nodded. “I don’t know if today . . . I don’t know if I should . . .”
Lucy filled with despair. “Please!” she begged, feeling fizzy, frantic. She should not have said my mother, not twice. She would drive the woman away, lose her all over again. “I’ve been asking her to take me to you. I’ve been asking and asking. Come on. We’ll wait in the perry until she’s back from Sven’s. I’ll show you everything. Come on.”
When the woman still didn’t move, Lucy took her hand—and she didn’t disappear, and it was just a hand, after all, bony but soft, and oddly cold on such a warm day—and dragged her like a stray toward home.
Bea followed the girl’s instructions: racing across Washington Street, high-stepping up through the woods instead of on the road, watching the ground for roots. She was grateful for the precision mimicry demanded, antidote to her mind’s flailing. Run away, run away! her mind cried, though of course she had known she would wind up here, known since Albert ran in calling, “You were right! You were right!” He had ignored Ira and Henry, dropped to his knees by the sofa, shaken Bea hard by the shoulders. “Sit up! You were right. It’s her. I saw her.” Bea rubbed her eyes. Was he mocking her? She doubted, again. Perhaps she had dreamed the girl, and Albert was only trying to placate her. “Where? Are you sure?” Albert cupped her face in his hands. “I couldn’t be more sure.”
He was crying, she saw. Birds winged in her chest. She began to tremble. Her father said, “Oy mein goht,” the first Yiddish she’d heard him speak, in a bare, strange voice. “Where?” she asked again. “Lanesville.” Why had Bea assumed the girl had gone so much farther? She had been to Lanesville. She could be there within an hour. She stood. “You’ll drive me.”
That was when Albert let his hands fall away from her face. “She’s been raised by Emma Murphy,” he said, and Bea sank back onto the sofa.
She had needed a few days after that, to wallow in shame, to work up to her courage. “You have no choice,” Albert kept reminding her. She thought of sending a letter to tell Emma she was coming, thought of driving to the house when Emma would be home, going to Emma first, falling at her mercy. But she did not, finally, have the courage for that. She was too afraid that Emma would keep her from seeing the girl. So here she was, behind her daughter, her very brave, very fast daughter, struggling to catch up, to step where the girl stepped, even as her mind hissed, Run away!
But now they tiptoed into the yard, now they ran into the shed so the father wouldn’t see, now Bea caught a glimpse of the house and realized she had been here before, on a diaphragm mission. Her hand clapped to her mouth—she must have shoved the thing at Emma! How humiliating, how crass! She had not connected the address she had sent the check to with this house—how could she have? The Ladies did not go by addresses, they went by the look of things. They went to the places that looked poor.
“She’ll be home at three,” Lucy said, and again Bea’s mind told her to run, but the girl told her where to sit and Bea sat, on a low pine box, and tried to listen as Lucy explained, in a loud, excited whisper, the box’s trick. Lucy’s hands flapped. Her eyes shone. “The bottom drops out and there’s a ladder! Do you climb ladders?” Bea moved her head in a noncommittal way, struggling to pay attention. She was thinking of Emma, who surely remembered Bea coming to this house, moralizing, scolding. She had been thinking of Emma constantly: Emma washing Ira’s sheets, bathing him, caring for him so well while she cared haphazardly for the rest of the house, scattered Bea’s shoes, disappeared her pens. She had been wearing a mask, Bea understood, in every moment, every time she smiled or nodded or spoke. Bea remembered making Emma ask her questions over Pinkham’s. She remembered her own stupid, lonely bossing, and Emma’s reluctance, almost a truculence as she complied. How superior she must have felt to Bea. And what about children, Mrs. Cohn? Did you never think to have any? She was not purely kind, as Bea had thought—nor should she have been. It had been her voice, low and calm, that had soothed Bea in the orchard. It had been her hands that changed Lucy’s diapers, fed her, bathed her. Ira, too. All Bea’s duties—Emma had done them.
“The trouble is,” Lucy was saying, “it takes a full year for the perry to come right, so you have
to wait.” She folded her arms, looking suspiciously at Bea. “You don’t approve, I know. I read about it in the paper.”
Bea realized her expression was grim. She smiled, as much as she could smile. “I don’t care, really, not anymore,” she said, but the girl was already at the window, peering out. Her face caught the light and Bea saw, in her profile, the lieutenant’s long jaw. She took in the curve of the girl’s nose, the particular flatness of her forehead—she tallied these in her mind as her own. The girl turned to face Bea. “He’s probably sleeping,” she said—meaning the father, Bea understood. “He sleeps a lot now. He’s getting fat.” Lucy giggled, revealing the lieutenant’s tall, straight teeth. She moved carelessly, her arms jumping as she spoke. Bea had the thought that if Lucy had grown up with Bea, in Lillian’s house, she couldn’t possibly have been like this, her eyes full of mischief, her cheeks ruddy, her hair poufing plantlike around her head. She imagined Lillian, the first thing she would notice that jaw. Good for her, she would say, ignoring history, her vision singular and bitterly optimistic. It won’t droop.
“What time is it?” the girl asked.
Bea checked the piece around her neck, taking the opportunity to close her eyes for a little bit, fix the girl’s face in her mind. “A quarter to three.”
“She’ll be home soon.”
Fresh panic bloomed in Bea’s stomach. She said, “She doesn’t expect me. Maybe I should come back when—”
“You can’t go!” Tears pooled in the girl’s eyes. She stood flat-footed, arms at her sides, just as Bea stood—Bea knew because Lillian had always instructed her otherwise: close your legs, do something with your hands, you’ll frighten them away. Bea saw now how the stance could be imposing, how completely Lucy blocked her way. Bea’s cowardice hung between them in the dark shed like fly tape.
She sat.
Emma did not come at three. Bea watched as Lucy showed her how the scratcher worked, where the pears went, how to turn the crank, how the pulp, when you hooked up the chute Lucy had devised, slid down through the turnip bin to the press. She wanted desperately to entertain Bea, to keep her—her desperation made Bea ill. She tried not to think of Albert, waiting for her in the little village. Was there anywhere to go, she wondered, other than the coffee shop? And it was closed now, according to Lucy. So where was Emma? Lucy pulled Bea to the scratcher, urging her to try. Bea was astonished at the crank’s weight. She managed to produce a mere fistful of pulp before she had to stop—it fell into a bowl beneath the scratcher with a slimy thud. She had an urge to feel the girl’s arm, touch the muscle there, touch her at all. But Lucy was already off in the corner, gathering up more pears. “I was trying to make enough money to go to Canada,” she said. “But we had to stop, after the boat wrecked. These are all that’s left.”