Anna Solomon - Leaving Lucy Pear

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They emerged from the gap in a silent swarm, tall and short, in dark, shapeless clothing, their faces and hands pale. Bea could not determine, at first, a leader. They carried ladders, three figures to each, held tight at their sides as they headed for the trees. They were like fairies, Bea thought, until she heard a man’s voice, quiet but clear: “Get off your blasted arses and up those trees.” Bea positioned Aunt Vera’s whistle in her hand. The ladders rose, their tops narrower than their bottoms, and Bea nearly shrieked, thinking of the tiny body, thinking she should have wrapped it in something brighter than Aunt Vera’s shawl, should have set it farther out from the trunk of the tree so it would catch the moonlight, or farther in so it wouldn’t get trampled. She couldn’t remember now at what distance she had set it. She rose on her knees, peering above the wall. She counted eight of them, maybe more. The ladders were planted but she hadn’t heard the baby howl in pain and a new fear struck her — that they wouldn’t find it at all. They would collect their pears and depart in their boats and the baby would still be lying there, sound asleep. Bea would have to collect it, and decide all over again what to do, and feel not only humiliation — that she was used to now — but failure.

She watched the pears fall off the trees. It was like that, as if they were simply falling, so quickly did they disappear down the ladders. The smallest figures — children — stood at the bottom, gathering the pears onto tarps, dragging these out of the way when they were full, then laying down new ones. The entire operation was carried out with an efficiency that Bea’s father, Henry Haven, would have appreciated, the sort of efficiency he spent his days (and many nights) trying to achieve at the Haven Shoe Factory. Astounding, he might say, in the tepid voice he used to deliver praise so as not to please or, heaven forbid, flatter the recipient.

“Clear here.”

“On to the next one.”

“Quickly!”

“My foot!”

“Shut it.” This was said by the man who’d given the first order, in a calm, heavy voice.

“Ow!”

“Shut it.”

“Lay off ’im, Rolly. He’ll shush if you lay off.”

“I’ll lay off when I’m dead.”

But the man was quiet. It was a woman who had reprimanded him, in an accent like the nurse’s, her voice uncommonly deep, and kind, it seemed to Bea. It was the sort of voice, Bea thought hopefully, that could only belong to the sort of woman for whom mothering comes naturally. So unlike Bea’s mother’s voice, which betrayed her unhappiness, or Aunt Vera’s, fluty with distraction.

Bea didn’t think to wonder what her own voice was like. She clung to the woman’s kindness, longed to hear her speak again. She wished there were a way to get her attention without the others seeing. Still the baby had made no noise. This could be a sign, Bea thought, that it wanted her, and no one else. Or maybe she had nursed it too well and sent it into a stupor, knowing what she was doing without admitting it to herself.

“Mum!” A boy’s voice.

“Shh.”

“Over here. Look!”

“What?”

“Come!”

“What.”

“Look!”

“Oh.”

“What is it?”

“A baby,” the child said.

“Christ.”

“Brand-new.”

“I don’t care how new it is. We’ve got work to do.”

“Put it over there now.” The woman’s voice. “Over here.” Bea could see one figure pushing another, smaller one. The taller one, the woman, had a small child on her back. “Set it down there. Let’s finish.”

“What about the baby?”

“Shh.”

The boy left the bundle at the edge of the field, not twenty feet from where Bea hid. She fought a rising nausea. This she hadn’t considered — that they might find the baby and leave it.

She traveled in her mind to Boston, the baby in her arms. She walked down Chestnut Street, up the stairs to her parents’ narrow townhouse, and stared at the brass knocker. She stared for so long that all its facets came forward, intricacies she had not known she knew: three rosebuds arranged vertically, each slightly larger than the one below it; four paisley curls rising from the top, evoking a lion’s mane. To her left was the mezuzah, a slim silver cylinder meant to go unnoticed. Bea in the orchard waited with Bea on the stairs, until her parents’ maid, Estelle, opened the door.

Estelle stared. A visit from President Wilson wouldn’t have surprised her more — that was plain on her face. Also plain was her pleasure. She took the infant in her arms, held the pale face to her dark one, and slapped Bea gently on the cheek.

If Estelle was the whole story, Bea would survive it. She might even choose it. But Estelle was Lillian’s before she was Bea’s — after making Bea a strong cup of tea she would have to take her to her mother, who would be standing in her closet or sitting at her vanity in her girdle and brassiere, rageful with indecision. The sight of Bea and the baby would fell her — within seconds she would be flat on her back in bed, weeping. She had wept when Bea, at ten, came in second in the Young Ladies’ Composition for Piano Competition, wept two years later when Bea’s breasts grew to be “larger than ladylike.” Bea had never grown immune to her mother’s weeping. She had devised an expression, hard as a brick, that made her appear so, but inside she crumpled like a dropped puppet.

Her father wouldn’t come home until late. By then Estelle would have propped Lillian on pillows and helped make up her face. Henry would see her puffiness. He would see Bea and the infant and feel an unscheduled joy unlock beneath his ribs, but he would suppress his smile. Lillian would ask Bea the question she had been waiting for Henry’s arrival to ask. Did anyone see you walk down the street? Bea would say yes, everyone had seen, whether it was true or not, just to get the full devastation over with. Lillian would return to her weeping and Bea would go find Estelle and nurse the baby and begin living like a leper in her parents’ house.

In the orchard, dew seeped through Bea’s nightgown, wetting her knees. She looked up at the moon’s tall, untroubled distance. If she knew how to pray, she thought, she would pray. Instead she held her breath and avoided looking toward the bundle in the grass.

“Clear here.”

“Here, too.”

“Ladders down!”

“Help him with that tarp.”

“This handle’s broke.”

“Poor you.”

“I need a hand on this ladder.”

“Give ’im a hand — let’s go!”

Small mountains of pears began to slide toward the gap. Bea started to cry.

A figure fell off from the group, and another — the woman with the child on her back, and the boy who had found the baby. They walked toward the bundle with high, quiet steps. The woman picked it up.

“Can we call it Pear?” the child asked.

“Hush.”

The woman dropped her face into the blanket, as if sniffing. Bea thought she was trying to decide, but the woman was already decided. She knew the story of Ruth, even if Bea didn’t. A second later, she and the boy and the child and the baby were gone, following the others through the gap and disappearing into the woods. Soon Bea heard the sound of boats being dragged off the rocks. The high, whining creak of oars in their locks, moving offshore. Another whine, coming from Bea herself, a piercing, involuntary sound running from her stomach to her throat: all she could do not to wail. She clamped a hand to her mouth, then vomited into her cupped palm as quietly as she could.

The Stanton Quarry was 230 feet deep and half a mile long, the largest granite operation on Cape Ann, and since the woods around it had been cleared to make room for derricks and cutting sheds and garymanders and the locomotive that hauled the rock down to the piers, a man could now stand in the corner office of the Stanton Granite Company headquarters and see the wide, whitecapped sweep of the Ipswich Bay. On the clearest days, he could see all the way to New Hampshire or, if he squeezed himself against the office’s western wall and looked due north, as Josiah Story did now — his cheek taking on the shape of the wood paneling — the whaleish hump of Mount Agamenticus in Maine. Josiah waited for revelation. On his desk sat an optimistically thick stack of paper, all blank except for one sentence: I did not come to Gloucester, I was born here, just like my dear wife Susannah was born here, and just how our children and grandchildren will be.