Текст книги "Nuts"

Автор книги: Alice Clayton

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Текущая страница: 18 (всего у книги 19 страниц)

Chapter 24

We walked home from the market, Clara taking her usual measured steps, Natalie appearing to glide on air, and me plodding. It was already eighty-five degrees well before noon, and would soar into the midnineties. Which in a city made of steel and concrete was borderline ovenlike.

In spite of the heat however, people were out in droves, walking fast and purposefully. I seemed to go left whenever they did, right when they did, and as a result was bobbing and weaving like a boxer. I caught three purses in the chest before I finally started walking behind Natalie, who at almost six feet in her heels acted as a natural crowd breaker.

The city felt like a physical being, wrapping around me warm and thick like a wool blanket. Not exactly what you want in the dog days of summer.

And the smell! It was garbage day, and thousands and thousands of plastic bags were piled onto the sidewalk’s curb, three to four feet high in some places, since the city had been constructed essentially without alleys. And in the heat of summer, the smell could be unbearable.

How much of this could be composted, I wondered as I held my breath walking by the bigger stacks. How much of this could be donated and worked into a nutrient-rich mulch that could augment summer gardens and winter fields?

Leo could figure this out, he would . . . thunk! Dodging yet another person who was intent on getting somewhere five minutes sooner than everyone else, I got shouldered into the wall of garbage, pinwheeling my arms to keep from going headfirst into a mountain of gross.

“Oh my God, Roxie! Are you okay?” Clara pulled me back just in time.

“Fucking dick!” I called after the guy with the shoulder, who didn’t even pause, didn’t check to make sure I was okay.

I was hot, I was sticky with humidity, my nose was filled with the stench of garbage, and I could feel my stomach giving a warning rumble. “Fucking dick,” I repeated to myself. “I’m fine—thanks.”

“Want me to smack him? I can catch him,” Clara said, bouncing lightly on the balls of her feet.

“No no,” I said, pulling at my T-shirt and trying to get some air. Suddenly everything seemed too close: the air, my clothes, the people, even my friends. It was all too loud, too much. My throat tightened, and a curious lump formed in the back of my throat as I realized in a great whoosh that I was . . . homesick. For Bailey Falls.

For the peace and quiet, for the good country air, for nosey gossipmongers, for the swimming holes, and the wind through the trees. For hills covered in funny little chicken coops on wheels, for brown sugar strawberries, and oh my God, I want Leo and every single thing that comes with it. Everything.

“You look like you’re going to be sick.” Natalie swept my hair back from my face.

“What’s the fastest way to Grand Central?” I asked, digging in my purse to find my phone. Dead. Dammit. That’s what happens when you run off to the city without packing a bag. I was wearing Clara’s clothes today, for goodness’ sake.

“Wait, what?” Natalie asked.

“I’m going home. Metro North runs all day, right?” I asked frantically.

“Mmm-hmm.” She raised a hand and grabbed a cab instantly. “Grand Central,” she told the driver.

“Thanks, I gotta go. I’ll send you your clothes,” I said to Clara, getting into the cab, already feeling better. Lighter.

“Where are you going?” she asked.

Natalie patted her hand. “I’ll fill you in.”

Riverdale.

Ludlow.

Yonkers.

As the train sped up the Hudson, it was as though everything was suddenly clicking into place, like a giant game of Tetris tilting on end and every piece found its home.

The moment I decided I didn’t want to be in that big city anymore, my heart cracked open and began to long for a small town—my small town. For mosquitos and sweet tea, for bare feet and gentle hills that led to craggy peaks. For spring-fed pools and glacial lakes. For nosy neighbors and cranky waitresses and sweet former quarterbacks. For flaky hippie mothers who made falling in love seem easy and wonderful, even when it wasn’t, and always made sure their daughters had adequate fiber content.

For a farmer who groaned when he came, and grinned when I did.

For a farmer who wanted me desperately, but came as an already matched set, a set I’d never try to come between, but would be honored to someday join.

Irvington.

Tarrytown.

Philipse Manor.

I began to list all the reasons I had for never wanting to move back home and live a small-town life like my mother.

1. You don’t want to run the family diner. I’ve run the family diner. I don’t want to continue doing it forever, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as I’d always thought it’d be.

2. You think small towns are small for a reason, in scope and in size. The size was small, but I’d found this summer that small didn’t mean limited.

3. There are no opportunities in Bailey Falls for a classically trained chef who doesn’t want to work in a traditional restaurant environment. Zombie pickles. Jam Class. Potential opportunity at Bryant Mountain House. And the idea that’d been percolating since the Fourth of July: an Airstream food truck.

4. If you don’t go back to Los Angeles and redeem your whipped cream disaster, that town wins. This one was tougher. Did LA beat me? Worst-case scenario? Yeah, it beat me. And?

The and was the tough part. I’d never shied away from a fight. But it couldn’t be a fight if one corner wasn’t willing to participate, right? I’d likely always wonder what if, and what would have happened . . . But who didn’t look back, revisit, and wonder about past decisions? The question was, could I live with knowing that Mitzi St. Renee and her Mean Girls had won?

Cortlandt.

Peekskill.

Manitou.

Somewhere between Manitou and Garrison, I had a sudden realization: someone like Mitzi St. Renee always wins. And you can’t live your life fighting against everyone else’s expectations. And sometimes the deck is stacked, and people with power over your career are assholes, and there’s nothing you can do about that.

Excited for the first time in a very long time, I sat forward in my seat, pushing my right foot against the floor as if that would speed the train along faster. The Hudson sparkled blue on my left, sailboats and kayaks dotting its surface. Huge homes high on the ridge and smaller, simpler homes shared the gorgeous view.

Picturesque towns with tiny train stations, within easy distance of the grandest city on the planet, filled with people who chose to live a world away just an hour up the Hudson. The bright lights and the fast pace were close enough if you wanted it, but far enough away that you could never miss it.

My thoughts danced on, seeing endless opportunities that I’d never bothered to see, to an opportunity with a certain farmer and his daughter. I only hoped that opportunity was still available to me.

The train pulled into the Poughkeepsie station.

I got off. And drove straight to the farm.

When I got to Maxwell Farm I parked, raced inside the main barn, and started looking for Leo’s long and lean frame everywhere. I thought I spotted him when a Screaming Trees T-shirt came around the corner, but it turned out to be one of his interns.

People who knew me and knew of my relationship with Leo said hello to me, and judging by the way they said only hello and kept on walking, they knew I’d left him standing in the middle of the road. They were protective. I got that.

I headed into the farm store, but no Leo. I checked the barn, I checked the silo, and I checked the kitchen garden out back. No Leo.

“Looking for my dad?” I heard from behind me, and I turned to find Polly sitting on a wheelbarrow, sorting seed packets.

“I am, yeah. How are you, Polly?” I asked, kneeling down.

“How are you?” she asked pointedly. I reminded myself that she was only seven years old. But based on my actions lately, likely years ahead of me emotionally. “I heard you went away.”

“You did, huh?” I asked, wincing a bit. “I’m back, though. I just went into the city for a day or so.”

“You mean Manhattan?”

“Exactly. Have you been there?”

Shuffling the seed packets, she finally answered, “I have—it’s nice. Grandma’s apartment is pretty, you can see really far up that high! It’s fun running up and down the hallways and riding the elevator, but she was mad when I pressed every single button.”

“Oh, I bet. I did that too once, when I was a kid.”

“And I like going to the museums, especially the dinosaur exhibits. But . . .”

“But?”

“But I like it here lots better. Daddy grew up in the city, you know.”

“I did know that,” I replied, watching her look carefully at me.

“He loves it here. He says we’ll never leave here and live somewhere else.”

I swallowed hard. “It’s pretty great, isn’t it?”

“I saw you kiss my daddy.” She looked at me, unblinking.

I blinked. A bunch. “Um, yes. You did. Was that weird?”

“Yeah, at first it was. But now, I think . . .”

I held my breath.

She laid out some of the packets face up, arranged like a vegetable full house.

Leo was in for it with this kid. I smiled, hoping that I’d get to watch it happen.

The smile from me was what she needed.

She smiled back, her pensive face turning bright. “I’m going to go see the hogs. Daddy’s in the apple orchard.”

And then she was off, running pell-mell across the field.

And I was off to the orchard.

Parking next to Leo’s Jeep, I peered through the rows of trees, looking for him. I thought I saw something moving several rows down, so I entered the orchard and made my way toward him.

As I walked, I became aware of two things.

One, my skin tingled. I was excited to see him! I wanted to see his face and kiss his lips and hold him close and hear his voice in my ear and feel his hands on my skin, after I told him, ‘I’m here to stay if I can still be yours.’

Two, my skin crawled. I became aware of the second thing as I wandered through the Macouns and the Empires, the Honeycrisps and the Sansas. And when I moved into the late-summer peaches . . . that’s when I felt it.

First came a low, droning hum, almost like feedback from a very low bass speaker. I called out to Leo, who I could now see moving a few rows away. My call changed the hum to something more recognizable, a familiar sound that bumped into the corner of my brain. Something familiar enough to make my skin pebble.

And then I saw them.

Bees.

Everywhere.

The droning hum was a collective buzz, which announced itself to my brain in a wave of awful, realization crashing across my body in a cold sweat and an absolute sheer terror. I wanted to run. I wanted to freeze. I wanted to—

“Roxie?” a surprised voice asked, and I saw Leo underneath a peach tree, oblivious to the million-bee chorus announcing that I was here and ripe for the picking. To those who are about to die, we salute you.

“Oh!” was all I could manage—and then the internal screaming began. One buzzed my ear, one buzzed by my nose, and several bopped around my head. Their bee noses must be drunk on the fear coming off me in waves. My eyes flashed to his, and he saw I was surrounded.

But . . .

I came to this orchard to get my guy.

Or at least tell him I’d like to be his girl.

I took a step.

I took another step.

The bees went with me, a cloud of nightmares hovering just inches from me, talking among themselves about how best to torture me. I had a sudden vision of the flying monkeys carrying away Dorothy, her legs kicking in the air. I only hoped that when the bees carried me off, someone would make sure my mother got my chef’s knives.

Steeling myself, I tried to speak. “Hi. Leo.” My voice was cracked and shaky, bordering on panic. “I wanted to talk to you . . . oh! I wanted to tell you . . . shit, that was close! . . . I, I’d like to—”

“Jesus, Roxie,” Leo said, marveling at the sight of me standing in a bee cloud, trying to carry on a normal conversation. “Just breathe, okay?”

“Yeah, trying to do that, not working so well,” I said shakily. “Anyway, I’m here because I wanted to tell you that . . . Motherfucker!” I got stung. So much for the theory that if you ignore them they’ll ignore you. Fucking rogue bee. “Ow!” Annnd there’s another sting. One landed on my shoulder, another landed on my ear, and though I held it together through all of that, when one had the balls to land on my nose, that was it.

I ran. But instead of running away, I ran toward Leo and his shocked face, which finally had the sense to show some healthy bee fear, and the two of us ran through the orchard, high-step running through the tall grass, swiping at our heads and windmilling our arms.

“Left, go left!” he shouted, and I followed, swatting as I went, feeling stings on the back of my calf and my elbow.

In a haze of screaming and twitching, slapping and jumping, we burst out of the orchard and into a clearing. And just beyond that? Water.

We plunged into a deep, cold pond, splashing out into the center where we could submerge, the stings instantly cooling. I grabbed for his hand underwater, and we took turns popping above to grab a breath and see how SwarmWatch was going.

Eventually the bees got bored and headed back to the orchard, to continue gorging themselves on fallen fruit. Leo coaxed me back up to the surface, and we treaded water in the middle of the pond, in the middle of Maxwell Farm. My hair was plastered to my face and a bee sting was swelling up in my eyebrow. I was covered in pond algae, twigs, and sticks, and I was hoping like hell that whatever kept wrapping around my ankle was my shoelace.

“What the hell, Rox—”

I wrapped both arms around him, kissed him until we both went under, and then kissed him again as soon as we popped back up.

“I love you—I love you so much! I want you, I want everything. I want small town and home grown. I want this—without the bees preferably, but if the bees come with this life, then I’ll take the fucking bees. I just want to be your Sugar Snap.”

Leo silently treaded water, one arm still holding me close, not pushing me away but not pulling me closer.

I ached to be closer. I ached to just be with him.

“I want to live here—not just for the summer. I want fall and winter and spring, and hayrides and hoedowns and being bent over a rain barrel on the Fourth of July. I love you, Leo—and—I want it all.”

I grinned, no fear left. It felt so good to tell him this, to tell him everything.

“I want to start a food truck, and cooking classes, and get to know Polly, if you’re okay with that, because I think she’s amazing and I think you’re amazing. And—Jesus Christ, I hope that’s my shoelace!” I pulled my leg up to the surface, slapping at it underneath, splashing Leo in the surprised face.

But the surprise became hopeful. And the hopeful became happy. And the happy became heated. But before the heated could escalate, concern crowded in.

“You sure about this, Sugar Snap?” Butterflies! “Because it’s not just me I have to consider. If you want me, you have to want us both. I can’t have someone temporary in my life. It’s all in, or . . .”

The late afternoon sun shone down, casting a golden light on the landscape, the water, the algae in his beard.

I wrapped my leg around his and pulled him closer with a smile. “I’m all in, Farmer Boy.”

Epilogue

Farmer Boy. She called me Farmer Boy.

I thought about this as I walked through the fall wheat, running my fingertips along the tall grain. The air was crisp today, not quite chilly, but with a hint of the winter that was only a few months away now.

The fall wheat was usually the last crop harvested; the apples already picked and stored for the winter. She’d made apple butter after all.

Polly loved apple butter. She ate it every year, but this year she learned to make it. I smiled as I thought of the afternoons spent in the back kitchen of the diner, jars spread out everywhere, a spicy cinnamony scent heavy in the air, and my girls in matching braids, laughing as they filled containers with the sweet treat.

My girls.

Roxie was adamant about keeping her own place, and rightly so. Once she made the decision to move back to Bailey Falls, she was determined to live away from her mother, but close by. The old farmhouse she found was about halfway between my place and her mom’s, only a few minutes from the town she claimed was too small, but she secretly loved.

When I flew out with her to Los Angeles to pack up her apartment, I noticed there wasn’t a lot there that made it . . . well . . . homey. It was functional, and of course the kitchen was impressive, but there was nothing about it that really said . . . Roxie.

As much as she claimed to have a full life out there, it took us less than a day to pack her up, and less than an evening to say goodbye to her friends. Sure, her Hollywood friends Jack and Grace were sad to see her go, but they assured her that anytime they were on the East Coast, they’d be sure to get together.

Driving back across the country, Roxie seemed excited to be getting home, to her new old life. And quicker than anyone expected, she’d cleaned out the Airstream, equipped it with the necessary items to turn it into a food truck, and Zombie Cakes was born. And killing it. She sold out each and every time she showed up to a farmers’ market, a county fair, or a private event.

I smiled, thinking about her leaning out of the side of the truck, passing a slice of mile-high coconut cake to a happy customer. I smiled wider when I thought about what her tits looked like in her V-neck Zombie Cakes shirt.

I came to the end of the row, satisfied with the feel of the plump grains on the stalks. We’d harvest soon, maybe by the end of the week. When I heard the Jeep roaring up the dusty farm road, I turned, catching the faint sound of U2 through the open windows. Turns out Polly was a big fan of the band as well, and she and Roxie listened to the old albums by the hour while they baked. “It’s good for dancing, Daddy,” Polly had informed me one afternoon, when I caught the two of them busting a move while sifting flour.

I agreed.

As they made the last turn and pulled up beside me, I raised a hand in greeting. Roxie turned off the motor as Polly wrestled with her seat belt, eager to get out and race up and down the rows, like she did every time she came out here.

“Hey, Daddy!” she cried out, as I helped her unbuckle and swung her high.

“Hey, Pork Chop! Did you finish your homework?”

“I did; Roxie helped me. We stopped by the diner after school, and Miss Trudy gave me some pie.”

“A small piece,” Roxie explained with a sheepish look. “And who gives seven-year-olds homework, by the way?”

“I don’t mind, though. I learned all about the difference between cumulus and cumu . . . cumula . . . what is it called?” Polly asked, looking to Roxie.

“Cumulonimbus,” Roxie prompted, and Polly nodded her head vigorously.

“Yeah, cumulonimbles. They’re different types of clouds.”

“I see. And what are those over there?” I asked, pointing at the western sky, watching as she wandered and muttered to herself, trying to decipher exactly what was overhead. I took the opportunity to pull Roxie into me, stealing a kiss.

“Watch yourself, Farmer Boy,” Roxie sighed, the faintest bit of green showing in her eyes. “I’m not above groping you in front of the wee one.”

“She’ll be busy with her cumulonimbles for at least twenty minutes.” I grinned, my heart beating a little faster at having her in my arms again. “At least let me take a peek down your shirt. I’ll pretend a bee flew down there.”

“You’ll do no such thing. Besides, we need to save something for later,” she said, but her breath was coming faster.

“I can’t come by tonight, Sugar Snap. Mrs. Nyland had to go take care of her sister down in Yonkers, so I’ll be on Polly duty tonight.”

To keep things as routine as possible, there’d been no overnights at my place. Roxie was insistent on that. She came over all the time, but she never spent the night. I was hoping to make a change in that department sooner rather than later, but that was a conversation for another day. In a fancier setting.

“Oh no, I called in a few favors. My mom agreed to come over tonight and stay with Polly, so feel free to come stand outside my window anytime after eight. If you’re not there,” she breathed, more green appearing in now, “I’ll start without you.”

“Dangerous,” I groaned, kissing her lips and wrapping my hands around her hips, feeling those curves underneath my fingertips. She got breathy, like my girl always did when I kissed her gentle like this. Her hands slid down the front of my shirt, tugging me closer. As I bumped my hips into hers, her eyes popped open in surprise.

“Are those nuts in your pocket, or are you just glad to see me?” she asked, her soft brown curls blowing wildly around her face.

I dug into my pocket, producing a handful of walnuts, which made her toss her head back and laugh in the way I loved. “Both.” I started to lean back in for another kiss.

“Roxie! I think I found a serious!” Polly pointed excitedly at the sky. “And kissing is gross, by the way.”

“I think you mean cirrus,” Roxie said with a chuckle, squeezing my hand. Then she ran into the field after my daughter, kneeling down next to her and looking up at the sky where Polly was pointing.

My heart felt like bursting as I watched my Pork Chop and my Sugar Snap study the clouds.