Anna Solomon - Leaving Lucy Pear

Maybe it was his longing for his bride that made him turn to watch the Murphy boys depart. Maybe it was the steaming line, his exhaustion, his feeling that the men might rise up at any moment, light torches, run shrieking through the sheds. Generally, as a boss, Caleb did not abide doubt — in another era he would have gone on to the next man without hesitating. But he hesitated, and turned, and saw what he must somehow have sensed: that Johnny Murphy’s cap was bulging in the back, and that there, just above her collar, one dark curl had escaped.

• • •

Emma’s first thought was that the car sounded almost but not quite like the Duesenberg. Her second, seeing the small man she recognized as Caleb Stanton jump from a Rolls-Royce in her yard, was that the boys had been involved in some way with the strike. Watching Liam and Jeffrey climb out of the car, she felt a seam of pride, thinking of her father nailing up his Land League posters along the main road in Banagher.

She wasn’t expecting another boy to follow them, and she didn’t understand, at first, why the boy’s hair was so long, or why someone else’s child had been brought to her, until it struck her that Lucy Pear wasn’t standing with Janie and the others, who had come out of the perry shack to watch. Emma had arrived home from Sven’s half an hour ago — she hadn’t checked on the children yet.

Mr. Stanton pushed Lucy toward the house. “The quarry’s not a place for a girl,” he said as he deposited her in Emma’s arms. His voice was gentler than Emma would have guessed, nothing like his cold blue eyes.

“Emma?” Roland called.

“Everything’s fine!” she called back.

“Her father should know,” said Mr. Stanton, striding for the door, but Roland was already there, on his one leg, the first Emma had seen of him in sunlight in the month since he’d come home. His beard, she saw, had grown to be wider than his ears. Bits of crumbs stuck to his shirt. He was out of breath from hopping. “What’s going on?” he asked, but no one answered. He stared at Lucy in her costume. “Get inside!” he shouted. “Get your arse inside this house!”

It was shameful, how glad Emma was that Roland could not climb down from the step. She said, “I’ll bring her in, Rolly. Go sit.”

“What the fuck’s been going on?”

“Rolly! Boys, help your father get back to his chair.”

“I don’t need help getting anywhere,” sneered Roland. He would not move from the doorway, Emma saw, and no one could move him — even on one leg, he was like a mountain.

Mr. Stanton said, “Mr. Murphy, if I may…”

“You may not,” Roland mocked back.

“Thank you,” Emma said to Mr. Stanton. “Thank you for bringing them home. We’ll manage from here.”

Mr. Stanton took off his hat. His eyes were wet, Emma saw. “It’s not such a crime,” he said, “a girl wanting…” Then he trailed off, got into his car without looking again at Roland, and drove back down the hill.

“Was there leather on the seats in there?” asked Joshua.

Liam and Jeffrey nodded, but their eyes were on their father, who stared at Lucy as if repulsed.

“Is like a galloping sofa!” Joshua cried.

“Here,” Emma said, taking pennies from her pocket and giving one to each child. “Go down to the store, buy a piece of candy.” She led Lucy into the perry shack, where she sat her down on the potato bin, sat herself down on the “turnip bin,” and took Lucy’s hands into her own. It was a way of comforting the girl and steadying herself. Emma was frightened by Roland, in the doorway. And she didn’t know what to make of Lucy in her brothers’ clothes, an old cap in her grip (and now in Emma’s), her curls in a plantlike tangle around her head. Emma felt closer to understanding something about Lucy’s behavior all summer — her itchy glances, her pleas for Emma to go back to work — but also farther, because why? Why would the girl want to do such a thing?

Before Emma could speak, Lucy started to cry. She shook silently, then let out a soft wail, her mouth opening to a raw, shocking size, her fingers pulling away from Emma’s. The cap dropped to the floor as she hid her face in her hands. Emma leaned forward, taking the girl into her arms. “It’s all right,” she said. “Shhh. You don’t have to explain.”

This was true, she realized — she didn’t need to know, if it meant having Lucy back, the way she’d been. But Lucy was already explaining, through her tears: “I wanted the money… I thought the pears… but then I… This year… I just wanted…”

Emma put the snotty, broken parts together. The pears. Lucy was falling apart over the pears, the change of plans since the Mendosa, the neglected Schedule of Ripeness pinned to the shack wall. The children played jacks in the perry shack now, or marbles — they passed time here to avoid Roland. The fruit they had harvested was nearly pressed and there would be no more — despite Roland’s urging, they had been too rattled by the Feds to go out again. But not Lucy, Lucy was saying. Lucy was not afraid of those men! Lucy wanted to finish what they had started. They had made a plan and they should stick to it!

Her vehemence startled Emma. How had she come to care so much about the pears? She took Lucy gently by the shoulders and began, “Sweet girl, we’re going to be fine, it’ll all be fine, you don’t have to go dressing…” She wanted to tell her the money from Sven’s was enough, tell her part of growing up was accepting what you couldn’t change, but Lucy pushed her hands away. “It is not fine!” she shouted, and started to sob.

Emma waited then, until Lucy began to tell her, between choking gulps of air, not about the pears or the quarry but about a trip she had taken a few weeks ago, late at night, while the rest of the family slept. She described a ride in a truck full of whiskey, her near capture, a man’s foot on her back, heavier than her carry bag at the quarry, his foot bruising her ribs. There was some kind of search, lights beaming through the coat that covered her, the man’s foot pressing harder, a deal struck, her nose smashed against the truck floor. Emma hardly breathed as Lucy spoke. Apparently it wasn’t just the job: Lucy had a whole life, a species of courage, Emma knew nothing about. You found a newborn and she seemed blanker, somehow, than the newborns you had birthed, free of any history, exempted from her own ties, more yours . But of course she wasn’t any more yours than they were, which was to say less and less all the time.

Still, Emma did not understand where the story was heading, not until Lucy described climbing out of the truck at the Eastern Point Yacht Club. Even then, Emma could not believe it. How could she? She was late, as usual, with laundry. She had not yet found the torn newsprint with Beatrice Cohn’s likeness in the pocket of Liam’s pants. But then Lucy told her about slipping through the gap in the honeysuckle, walking up through the pear trees, swinging a leg onto the terrace of the house where she had been born.

She looked at Emma and said, with sudden coherence: “I saw my mother.”

“Lucy…” Emma started to say, but Lucy went on, not noticing or caring about Emma’s astonished tears.

“She looks just like me! Anyone could see it! Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I—”

“What were you doing working for her?”

“I—”

“How could you not have told me she was right there all this time?”

“Lucy—”

“You take me from her, then you go back and don’t even tell me?”

“I didn’t take you.”

“You did!”

“She left you.”

Lucy glared at Emma. Her breath was ragged from crying, her hair wild, poor Lucy with her wild hair Emma had no idea how to care for.