The Jodi Picoult Collection Read online

  “So now what?”

  When she begins to speak she stutters. “We’ll just stay for a little while. Stay and figure out some things, and then we’ll come to a decision.”

  “In other words,” I say, “you have absolutely no idea when we’re leaving.”

  My mother shoots me a look that suggests she still has the power to punish me. “What is this all about, Rebecca? Do you miss your father?”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “I don’t know. You can tell me if you do. I mean, he is your father. It’s natural.”

  “I don’t miss Daddy.” My voice goes flat. “I don’t.” Humidity slides across the hills and hangs on the tree branches. It presses against my throat and makes me choke a little. I don’t miss my father, not even when I am trying to miss him.

  “Sssh,” my other says, pulling me closer. We sit beneath the heavy arms of an old Mcintosh tree that has been grafted to bear Spartans. She is holding me for the wrong reasons and still it feels nice. Far away, I see the Jeep drive up with Sam and Uncle Joley. They get out and begin walking towards where we are sitting. At a certain point, Uncle Joley notices my mother and me. He says something to Sam and points. They stop walking and Sam’s eyes connect with my mother’s for a moment. Uncle Joley continues to walk towards us but Sam turns sharply to the left. He does not follow.

  • • •

  At dinner that night, Uncle Joley tells us about the buyer for Purity, a woman named Regalia Clippe. Although Sam had mentioned her, Uncle Joley hadn’t met her until today. She was five feet tall and weighed over two hundred pounds. She loved gossip and the story today was about herself: she had just returned from getting married at the Church of the Living Gospel in Reno, Nevada. Her brand new husband ran the only sod farm in New Hampshire and (could they tell from the circles beneath her eyes?) she hadn’t been getting a lot of sleep.

  “I don’t know, Joley,” my mother said, laughing. “I think people like that follow you around. You’ve met more than your fair share.”

  Hadley, who had come for dinner, asked me to pass the zucchini. It was more than he’d said to me all day.

  “I met Regalia Clippe. She’s my buyer. It has nothing to do with Joley,” Sam says.

  “I didn’t mean anything by it.” My mother looks at me.

  “The Church of the Living Gospel,” Uncle Joley says, and my mother laughs. He leans his elbows on the table. “You’ve got a really nice laugh, Jane. Like bells.”

  “Church of the Living Gospel Bells?’ Sam says, and everyone cracks up. I try to catch Hadley’s eye, but he’s staring at his food like it’s something he has never seen before.

  “We’ve got to do something about the weeds in the west corner,” Hadley says to Sam. “They’re out of control. If you want we can let the sheep in—now that they’re sheared there’s no reason to keep them penned.” Sam nods, and Hadley grins at his plate. He is pleased, I can tell, to have made that decision.

  “Well, the good news,” Sam says, “is that Regalia Clippe renewed our contract for Red Delicious.”

  “That’s great,” I say.

  Hadley looks up. “Yeah, but how many others is she buying from, Sam?”

  “Sure, Hadley, just knock the wind out of my sails.” Sam is smiling; he is not really angry. “I don’t know. I didn’t ask her. But she was real happy to have us back again and last year we made up Collins’ shipment when the aphids hit him, so that’s that.”

  For dinner we are having zucchini and almonds, fried chicken, peas and mashed potatoes. It is really very good. Sam cooked it all in a matter of minutes. Hadley says Sam always does the cooking.

  “So what did you two do today?” Uncle Joley asks. My mother is about to answer when she notices that Uncle Joley is staring right at Hadley and me. Hadley’s face turns bright red. My mother folds her hands in her lap.

  Sam drops his fork, which clatters on the edge of his plate. Finally Hadley looks up at my uncle. “We didn’t do anything, all right? I had a lot of stuff I had to get done.” He rolls his napkin into a ball and whips it across the room. It misses the garbage pail; instead, it hits the dog. “I’ve got somewhere I have to go,” Hadley mutters. He scrapes his chair back and runs out of the kitchen.

  “What’s his problem?” Sam helps himself to a mountain of potatoes and shakes his head.

  “Sam,” my mother says, “I was wondering why you don’t grow anything but apples here?”

  I kick her under the table. It isn’t any of her business.

  “Apples take a lot of time and effort.” I get the feeling he has been asked this before.

  “But couldn’t you make more money if you diversify?”

  “Excuse me,” Sam says quietly, “but who the hell are you? You come in here and two days later you’re telling me how to run things?”

  “I wasn’t—”

  “If you knew a damn thing about farming maybe I’d listen.”

  “I don’t have to take this.” My mother is near tears, I can tell by the thick of her voice. “I was just making conversation.”

  “You were making trouble,” Sam says, “plain and simple.”

  My mother’s voice gets husky. I remember a story she likes to tell, about when she worked placing classified ads for the Boston Globe as a college kid, and one man fell in love with her voice. He sold his boat the first week but he’d keep calling her to hear her talk. He placed his ad the entire summer just so he could listen to my mother.

  “Sam.” Uncle Joey touches my mother’s arm. She stands up and runs towards the barn.

  The three of us—Sam, Uncle Joley and me—sit in silence for a moment.

  “Want any more chicken?” Sam offers.

  “I think you overreacted,” Uncle Joley says. “Maybe you could apologize.”

  “Jesus, Joley,” Sam sighs, leaning back. “She’s your sister. You invited her here. Look. She just doesn’t belong in a place like this. She should be wearing high-heeled shoes and clicking along some marble parlor in L.A.”

  “That’s not fair,” I protest. “You don’t even know her.”

  “I know plenty like her,” Sam says. “Would it make it all right if I went out there and apologized? Shit. For a little peace and quiet.” He stands up and pushes away his plate. “So much for a happy little family dinner.”

  Uncle Joley and I finish the zucchini. Then we finish the potatoes. We don’t say anything. My foot taps on the linoleum, fast. “I’m going out there.”

  “Leave them alone, Rebecca. They’ll work it all out. They need to.”

  He may be right but this is my mother we are talking about. I have visions of her like a hellcat, clawing at Sam and leaving him with raw scratch marks on his cheeks and arms. Then I picture Sam’s strength getting the best of her. Would he do that? Or is that only my father?

  I hear their voices long before I see them, behind the shed that holds the tractor and the rototiller. Because Uncle Joley may be right, I decide I should not interfere. I slouch down and feel splinters crack through my shirt.

  “I told you I was sorry,” Sam says. “What more can I do?”

  My mother’s voice is farther away. “You’re right. It’s your house, your farm, and I shouldn’t be here. Joley imposed on you. He shouldn’t have asked you to do something like this.”

  “I know what ‘imposed’ means.”

  “I didn’t mean it like that. I don’t mean anything the way you take it. It’s like every sentence I say goes through your head the reverse of the way I intended it.”

  Sam leans against the wall of the shed so heavily I think he may be able to feel me there. “When my father ran this place he was real haphazard about it. A stock here, another stock there. Commercial trees mixed right in with retail. Since I was eleven I told him this wasn’t the way to run an apple orchard. He told me I didn’t know what I was talking about, and no matter how much schoolwork I did on the subject I didn’t have as much experience running the place as he did. How could I? So