Anna Solomon - Leaving Lucy Pear

“Where did she leave me?” Lucy asked quietly. She had started to shiver.

“In the orchard.”

“Where?”

“Under a tree.”

“Which tree?”

“The middle one.”

Lucy shivered harder now. Emma reached for her hands, and when Lucy didn’t pull away, she blew onto them. She rubbed the girl’s arms, but nothing helped. She wasn’t cold, she was inconsolable, she was weeping without tears. “Wait here, don’t go anywhere,” Emma said, and ducked out of the shack. She had forgotten Roland, filling the doorway of the house.

“Excuse me,” she said.

“What’s going on in there?” he asked.

“Later,” she said. She tried to squeeze past him, but he tilted on his leg, blocking her way.

“Now,” he said.

“She found Mrs. Cohn,” Emma said quietly. She was so determined to get inside she only noticed the fact of Roland giving way. She didn’t see the rise and fall of his Adam’s apple, or the color leaving his face. On her way back out, she nearly tripped on him — he had lowered himself to sit on the threshold — but she ran on toward the shack, afraid Lucy would be gone.

She was there, still shaking. Emma, wrapping the blanket around her shoulders, said, “This is what you were bundled in. When Peter found you.”

Lucy looked at the blanket.

“It’s yours,” Emma said.

“Peter?”

“Yes.”

Lucy nodded. She appeared to be thinking hard. The chatter of her teeth slowed. “What is she like?” she asked.

Emma didn’t understand at first. The question was almost bewilderingly obvious. It was so simple, and yet impossible to answer. What was Beatrice Cohn like ? She wanted to be kind, for Lucy’s sake, but not overly kind, for her own. She wanted to be truthful, but Beatrice Cohn did not hold still in the mind. She was sensitive, selfish, fearful, overconfident; she was a Jew; she was homely, lovely, ancient, immature; her kindness was helplessly aggressive; she was lonely. “Lonely” would be the word, if one was forced to sum her up. But that did no one any good.

Finally, Emma said, “She means well.”

She would not forget how Lucy’s face sagged with disappointment then. Instantly, Emma regretted the paltriness of her answer. It had been so ungenerous! So sterile and meticulous as to be a lie. Yet Emma could not think how to say anything else. Lucy’s curiosity, however natural, was painful to behold. Emma felt as if a scaffold were buckling inside her.

“I almost died walking home, you know.” Lucy’s tone was heartbreaking in its matter-of-factness. “I thought I was going to die. And then by the time I got here the sun was rising and you hadn’t even noticed I was gone. You were asleep!” She lowered her voice. “ I noticed every time you left in that car.”

Emma’s face grew hot. She filled with rage — how dare Lucy? — swept quickly under by shame: instinctively, she glanced toward the house. But Lucy had been quiet, careful, protective of Emma even as she confronted her, and Emma recognized the more essential crime of her affair: each time she had disappeared in Story’s Duesenberg, she had left Lucy lying awake and alone in the night.

Her throat burned. “O Lord. I am sorry.”

“Will you take me back?”

Emma felt relief bloom inside her. She thought Lucy meant one thing, until she saw that the girl’s eyes were bright with tears. Determined to hide her disappointment, Emma held her gaze. “We’ll see,” she said. It was a thing she said often to her children, a seemingly innocent way to put off their requests, but she heard now the trickery in it, for it implied a helplessness on her part. It belied — and therefore strengthened — her power over them.

“Please,” said Lucy, who rarely begged for anything, but Emma was too full of feeling to think, too overcome to promise anything. She didn’t want to promise anything. “We’ll see,” she said again. Then she went to help Roland up from the stoop.

• • •

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.