All the Way Home (14 page)

He was glad their own orchard was hidden beyond the house. He’d hate to look at the blackened stumps, the twisted shapes that would never grow apples, never even grow green leaves. Pop’s words on the day they planted came into his head.
“We’ll have a harvest. We’ll never have to leave this house. We’ll stay here forever.”
He thought of Mom dancing, humming along with the radio music.

He heard the uneven step and turned. Mariel was coming up to the fence she couldn’t climb. She still wore the same dress, and she hadn’t combed her hair yet. But she was wide awake even this early.

“There’s a gate,” he said, “halfway down.” They walked together, one on each side of the fence, until he opened the rusted iron gate for her and they crossed the field to his house.

He wanted to run now, he was so anxious to feel the kitchen doorknob under his hand, but he waited for her.

“Go ahead,” she said, waving her hand. “I know you’re in a hurry. I’ll catch up.”

He shook his head and made himself walk slowly,
thinking of her waiting at the end of the bridge for him in her straw hat with the elastic band. He’d never forget it.

And then they were in the living room. It had a closed-up, unused feeling, and there were dead flies on the sill the way he had pictured them when he left. “I’ll open a window,” he said, banging on the sash to ease it up.

He pulled out the movie dishes to show her, and with the air blowing in the open window the room began to feel the way it usually did. Mom would have had a vase of daisies on the table, and maybe a bowl of apples, but even so, it was almost as if he hadn’t been away at all.

It seemed as if Mom would be coming down the stairs to start breakfast, and Pop trudging in from the barn, kicking the mud off his shoes against the step.

Mariel watched him, her head turned to one side.

“What?” he asked.

“I was wondering what you were thinking.”

He grinned at her. “Wondering where your hat is this morning. Wondering if that band under your chin hurts. Wondering …”

“The hat’s on the dresser. I’ll let you try it on, snap the elastic, see what you think.”

He smiled, picturing a straw hat on his head, then led her outside again onto the porch. Their feet were loud on the board floor, and he stopped to watch the rocker with the broken leg moving gently in the wind that had come up.

Mariel caught her breath as she saw Claude’s orchard spread out in front of them. “Lovely,” she said.

He thought so, too. It was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.

“I’m going to pick,” Mariel said. She looked fierce.

“We have to put ladders under the trees,” he said, not wanting to tell her how hard it would be. “We have to climb up to get most of them, and reach out to …”

“… pull off the apples,” she said.

“Right.”

She went to sit on the rocker.

“Wait!” he said, but a moment later, she was sprawled on the porch floor, looking horrified as the chair lay collapsed under her.

He let her worry for a moment, holding in the laughter, before he told her. “That happens at least once a week. We have to put the whole thing together again.”

She rubbed her elbow, looking up at him. “Loretta says I can do anything.”

He looked at her uncertainly.

“We’re going to find out if she’s right,” she said.

He bit his lip. He and Mariel would be up in the trees, and Julia below with the baskets. Could they do it? “I’ll tell you something, Mariel,” he said. “If it can be done, we’ll do it, you and I. We’ll do the harvest, and find out about your mother.” He swallowed. “We have to try.”

He bent down then to knock the rocking chair back together. “Let’s go to see Joseph. Maybe he’ll help.”

24

M
ariel stared at herself in Julia’s mirror. Julia’s shapeless dress actually looked nice on her, she thought. The skirt covered most of her knees, and the rosy color made her cheeks look pink.

Julia was outside waiting for them, and they went to town sitting in the back of her dusty pickup truck. Mariel looked carefully at the little main street, the feed store, the ice cream parlor, and then up at the hospital on the hill. She had expected to recognize something.
There, she’d say, that’s where I got sick.… But before that …

All of it was strange. Not a street, not a building seemed familiar to her.

Julia came inside with them. “I must talk to your parents,”
she said. “They must know that you’re with me, that you’re safe.”

The phone was on the wall, waiting for them. And then, suddenly, Mariel couldn’t wait to talk to Loretta, couldn’t wait to tell her she had gotten herself all the way to Windy Hill. “All because of you,” she’d tell Loretta. She caught her breath. Suppose Loretta was angry, really angry.

“Number, please,” the operator said.

“In Brooklyn,” Mariel said. “On Bedford Avenue. Jordan’s candy store.”

The phone rang in the dark booth in back of Jordan’s store, seven, eight, ten times. Mariel remembered sitting at the counter one time, watching Jordan as he counted out change, never hurrying as the phone rang and rang.

At last he was there, sounding as if he were standing next to her.

“Please, could you get Loretta Manning for me?” she asked.

“Is it Mariel?” Jordan said. “Oh, Mariel. Stay there, girlie. Don’t move.” She could hear him calling to someone: “She’s on the phone. It’s all right. I think she’s all right.”

It took forever before Loretta picked up the phone. Mariel counted off in her mind: Jordan sending one of his kids along Bedford Avenue, turning into Midwood, up the block, ringing the bell.

Loretta’s voice was breathless. “Mariel?” she said. “Is it you?”

Mariel could hardly talk. “Yes, it’s me,” she said.

“I ran all the way,” Loretta said, “every step.”

“I knew you would.” Mariel pictured Loretta’s hair flying, lipstick crooked. She held the phone tight to her ear.

“Are you all right?” Loretta began. “And is Brick with you?”

“Of course,” Mariel said. “I want to help with the apple harvest.”

“The apple harvest,” Loretta said as if she couldn’t believe it.

“And I want to find—”

“Where are you? Good grief, Mariel. Tell me right this minute.”

Mariel blinked. “I’m in Windy Hill.”

“It must be two hundred miles!”

“At Claude’s farm.”

“Claude,” Loretta said.

“Brick’s friend who has an orchard.”
There must be something wrong with the phone
, she thought. Loretta kept repeating everything. “I told you in my note.”

For a moment Loretta didn’t answer. “A note?”

Mariel closed her eyes. The bag of food on the kitchen table. Scooping everything up: peaches, sandwiches. The note? Her hand went to her mouth. “Oh, Loretta, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” She broke off. “Listen, maybe you shouldn’t tell Ambrose I’m gone.”

“What do you think? That I’ve been sitting around,
not looking for you?” Loretta stopped and then went on. “Do you think no one cares about you? The whole Seventieth Precinct is looking for you. And everyone you know. Benny, blaming himself. Jordan. Ambrose up all night.”

Loretta really was angry. Mariel bit her lip.

“And Geraldine Ginty. On her roller skates, up and down early this morning, street after street, and Frankie McHugh searching through Prospect Park, even though Benny said you were in Manhattan. How could you do that?”

Looking for her. Everyone. She leaned back against the wall, trying to think of what to say. “I miss you so much, Loretta. It’s terrible without you.”

Loretta sighed. “Shall I come get you?”

“I think I can do this,” Mariel said slowly.

Just as slowly, Loretta answered. “Mariel, there’s nothing you can’t do. I knew that from the first day in Good Samaritan.”

“I want to find my mother.”

She could hear the sound of Loretta’s breath. “Oh, Mariel.” She was silent. And then, “Now listen, I’d come up in a minute. I’d come and get you and take you home.”

“But …,” Mariel began.

Loretta sighed. “You have to do this yourself. I know that.”

“Don’t be mad, Loretta.”

“If you were here …”

“Would you throw me in the sink like the burned pot?”

Loretta laughed. “I love you, Mariel.”

Mariel swallowed. “Julia, Claude’s wife, wants to tell you everything’s all right. She lent me her dress, and, oh, Loretta, I’m sorry you didn’t know.” She looked down at her fingers, tapping on the thick rubber of the phone cord.

“Will you send me a letter every day? Will you …” Loretta stopped. “We’ll catch up with school when you’re home.”

“Ambrose. What will Ambrose say if I’m not in school?”

“Send Ambrose a letter, too.”

They both laughed, and then Julia was on the phone, speaking in her high fast voice, saying, “I know, I know,” over and over, and then the money dropped, and Loretta was gone.

Loretta was gone and she hadn’t even told her about the two-dollar bill.

But then it was Brick’s turn. She heard him say something, and then the muffled voice of his mother on the other end. She half listened as he said it was all right, that Loretta knew, and Claude knew, and as soon as it was all over, he’d study in school, study forever if she wanted him to. Mariel didn’t listen to Julia talking next. All she could think of now was Loretta, and Ambrose, and even Geraldine Ginty looking for her.

They left the post office, Julia to shop, and Brick to show her the way to Joseph’s old farm. It was easy to see the path the fire had taken. The fields to one side were black and ruined. A burned smell still hovered in the air. But the other side was untouched. Butterflies hovered over the tall grass, and stalks of pink gladioli marked off a small garden.

Joseph’s house had been saved: a shack without paint or a chimney, with cracked windows and a rickety porch. Inside, the walls were papered with old newspaper, and the only furniture was a cot in one corner and a table near the door. Joseph sat there, whittling at a piece of wood with a pocketknife. “The Tiernan boy, isn’t it?” He squinted at Mariel. “Know you, too?”

“My friend, Mariel,” Brick said, leaning forward to look at the small figure of a dog Joseph was carving. “We’ve come about Claude’s harvest.”

Joseph raised one shoulder. “No harvest this year.” He looked through the open door, across the field, his eyes dim. “The last orchard is going under.”

“There are two of us,” Brick said, talking through him. “Mariel and I. We’re going to do it. We just need …”

Joseph’s eyes narrowed as he glanced at Mariel. “Not with those legs.”

She felt a quick flash of anger. “They’re the only ones I’ve got.” She straightened up. She had never said anything like that before, not to Geraldine Ginty, not to anyone.

Joseph’s lips went back against his teeth; maybe it was his way of smiling. “Spunky,” he told her, “but it won’t help.” He leaned forward. “Claude’s old. I’m old. My eyes are going. Claude’s hands …” He shook his head. “The heart went out of the pickers years ago. It’s a hard-luck valley. Empty houses, empty barns.” He ran his hand over the gray stubble on his cheeks. “What’s the use?”

“I’m going to pick,” Brick said. “Every apple on every tree, even if it’s winter by the time I’m finished.” He stood up and stamped across the room and down the wooden steps.

“Please,” Mariel said, her hands together. “Please.”

He shrugged, and looked down at his carving, blowing away the shavings. “Have to think about it.”

She put her hand on the table. “We have to start soon,” she said.

She backed away from him and went down the steps after Brick. When she looked over her shoulder, Joseph was still at the table, knife in his hand, turning the little dog over. It seemed as if he had forgotten about them already.

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