Brick crouched down next to her, and she smiled at him, pointing up at the tree, holding her elbow with one hand. “It wasn’t a green lace curtain. Never a curtain. It was always the leaves above me. Look, aren’t they beautiful?”
He nodded, looking up, too, at the green against the blue sky. It was something he had seen often, the small leaves quiet on a cloudy day, or trembling in a storm. And in winter, he’d watch the bare branches, anxious for the first bit of color that would appear in May.
Mariel scrambled up, her eyes still on the branches over her head. “And all the time I thought it was a room with a curtain.”
“Come into the kitchen,” Julia said. “You need a bandage, maybe a glass of cool water.”
“It’s nothing.” She brushed at her dress. “I would have been too young to climb by myself,” she said slowly. “Someone must have carried me up into the trees.” She stopped, her knuckles up to her mouth. “My mother? Could it have been my mother …”
Brick finished for her. “… picking apples?”
They nodded at each other, as Julia rubbed one of her hands against the other. “We should never have let you go up on the ladder. I thought it was too much …”
“I can do it. Really I can.” Mariel stopped, thinking, staring at the leaves, a few of them tipped with the yellow of fall. “A green lace curtain,” she said, reaching out to touch the trunk of the tree. “I want to talk with Joseph again.”
28
Mariel
Inside Joseph’s little house everything was quiet. Mariel knocked, then pounded at the door. When he pulled it open suddenly, she stepped back, startled. “Sorry,” she said.
“You’re the one making all that noise? You don’t look big enough for that.”
“Will you tell me …,” she said, not knowing how to begin.
“I’ll tell you to sit on the porch there,” he said, “and I’ll fix you a lemonade.”
She shook her head. “You don’t have to.”
“I need it myself,” he said.
She sat on the edge of the old chair waiting for him. Cobwebs were everywhere; a furry brown spider swung from one porch railing to another. She wasn’t afraid of it; she had other things to think about.
She had been there, in one of the orchards in the valley, she was sure of it: her mother picking apples with baby Mariel slung over her shoulder. When the wind blows, the cradle will rock, and down will come …
Mary.
… down will come Mary, cradle and all.
Not Mariel? Mary?
Her heart began to pound against her ribs. The sound of it was so loud, she thought even Joseph might hear her in his kitchen.
Joseph, who might know something that might help her.
He came out, handing her a glass of lemonade. “Warm,” he said. “No ice today.”
She nodded. I was here. I was Mary. “Why don’t the apple pickers come?”
He sipped at the warm drink, making a face. “I don’t talk about that,” he said at last.
She was so close to him, inches away. If she could just see into his head. Her hands fluttered, and her knees trembled under Julia’s dress. “I had polio,” she said. “I was in Good Samaritan Hospital.”
He chewed at his lip. “Were you?”
“I think I was with the apple pickers.”
He rocked back in his chair, raising the drink to his mouth, not speaking for so long that Mariel thought he wouldn’t tell her.
And then he held up four fingers as if it were an effort. “I knew four of the pickers.” He raised his shoulder. “At night they camped in tents along the river, and then all of a sudden they were sick, really sick, all in one night. Polio. First a teenager, then one of the men, and then a young woman named Mary …”
“And her little girl,” Mariel guessed.
He sighed. “Everyone was terrified. How had it come? Who would be next? Mary died here. She never even got to the hospital.”
Died. Her fingers went to her mouth. But hadn’t she really known that? Hadn’t she always known that?
He nodded. “They didn’t want to touch the little girl. She was only four. They knew she was dying. Someone went for the telephone in town to call an ambulance. Someone else took a scrap of paper, pinned it to her so they’d know her name: Mary Elliot …”
Mariel …
“They heard the sirens and scattered. They never came back.”
She had a name. She had a mother.
“I was with them,” he said in a voice so low she could hardly hear him.
“You knew them,” Mariel said. “Knew the mother, knew the little girl.”
“I knew them all,” he said. “I was too old to go with them afterward, too beaten down. There had been so much laughter and singing, and the little girl, always clinging to her mother, such a happy little girl. And then in a few hours it was over.”
He took a sip of his drink. “Sometimes I see a few of them in the next valley.” His face was wet with tears. “It was the beginning of bad luck. Polio, then the orchards going under, people leaving. The pickers never came back.” He sighed. “I buried the mother myself in the corner of the field. No one ever knew. I stayed on here. The house was empty, not belonging to anyone.”
In the corner of the field, the flowers were a patch of soft pink against the long grass. The glass of lemonade in Mariel’s hand seemed too heavy to hold. She reached out and rested it on the railing near the little brown spider.
“You were that little girl then,” Joseph said. “I can see it now, the eyes, the sandy hair.” His eyes were old, faded blue, bloodshot. He blinked, looking at her. “Maybe you’ll bring back our luck.”
“She picked with me on her shoulder, recited nursery rhymes …,” Mariel began, and broke off. “Could you tell me anything else? Even what she looked like?”
He chewed at his lip, trying to remember for her, she knew that. She listened to the sound of the crickets in the field, a tiny part of it her mother’s. She waited for him to tell her something, wanting to see the pictures of her mother that were in her head.
“She wore a blue kerchief and had a sweet face like yours,” he said. “She wore old shoes with the laces knotted.” He leaned forward and touched her arm, a feather of a touch. “She had no family. You were all she had. And I can tell you the only thing that really mattered …”
She knew what he was going to say before he said it.
“She loved you,” he said. “She really loved you.”
Mariel reached out to the railing and pulled herself up. She leaned over to kiss Joseph’s whiskery cheek, then went down the steps and across the field. The grass was high and she could feel it brushing against her legs. It felt scratchy and strange, and there was a buzzing from hundreds of insects, crickets maybe, she thought, as she watched something small and green sail in a wide arc from one lacy wildflower to another.
She came close to the stalks of pink flowers. They stood like soldiers in front of her, and it wasn’t until she was almost on top of them that she saw the masses of small yellow buds that covered the circle they surrounded.
She bent down and gently ran her hands over the tiny petals. “I had a mother,” she said, her voice sounding strange in her ears. “I had a mother who loved me, and her name was Mary. And that is my name, too.”
29
Brick
From the ladder, Brick could hear Red Barber’s voice on the radio. Today the Dodgers were in St. Louis, playing the Cardinals, their biggest threat. He could smell tonight’s dinner, too, beans and molasses, and corn bread in the oven.
It made him think of Mom’s kitchen, empty with the windows closed on this fall day. If she had been home, braided coffee rings with fat raisins would be cooling on top of the stove, and the smell of coffee would be drifting out across the fields.
When Claude went into the barn for something, Brick stepped off the ladder and sank down on the ground to rest for a minute. His arms hurt from reaching up, and he rubbed the
back of his neck.
He hadn’t told Claude how upset Mom had been. “What about Loretta? You just left her? And school? Oh, Brick.” He bit his lip. He hated it when Mom wasn’t happy with him. But Pop was glad, he knew that. And he knew he had done the right thing. When he saw Mom, he’d make her see that.
He squinted down the even row of trees in front of him. He’d never finish, he knew that now. What he could do would be enough to keep Claude going for a little while, certainly not the whole winter. But he had done his best.
He took another breath and stood up, ready to go back up the ladder. The late-afternoon sun slanted through the trees. What was taking Mariel so long? It was a short walk to Joseph’s, and the old man wasn’t that friendly. He should have gone with her.
He walked to the road, but she was nowhere in sight. He thought about it, then called to Claude.
Claude came out of the barn, wire looped over his arm. “Little by little, I can feel the strength coming back into my hands.”
Brick nodded. “I think I’d better look for Mariel,” he said. “It’s been hours.”
“Yes. Go ahead,” Claude said. “Do you want me to come with you?”
“No, I can go alone.” He went through the orchard, climbed the fence, and took the shortcut around the back of his house. As he reached the road he saw her.
She stopped and stood there in the middle of the road.
He looked at her face carefully, trying to see what she was thinking. Her fine hair was blowing a bit, and her eyes were filled with tears, her cheeks wet with them. “I found out about my mother, Billy Nightingale,” she said. “Her name was Mary. That’s my name, too.”
“Don’t cry,” he said. “Please don’t cry.”
“It’s all right to cry for your mother,” she said.
He nodded, thinking of Mom, and took her hand as they walked.
“Tomorrow,” she began. She could hardly get the words out. “Tomorrow I think we’ll have help.” She waved her hand. “Joseph was getting out his old car.…”
“That awful rattletrap,” he said, trying to make her smile.
“He told me it would get him to the next valley.” She swiped at her cheek. “There are pickers who’ll come, Joseph said, when he tells them the end of the story. He’ll tell them that luck changes even in Windy Hill.”
“The end of the story?”
“It will take me forever to tell you that,” she said. “And I’m going to do it, but after I get up on a ladder and look at my green lace curtain, and pick apples the way my mother did.”
30
Brick
It happened the way Mariel said it would. They heard it from the kitchen, at first light, the sound of a car coming up the road. The motor rattled, and as they looked out the window, Brick could see it: an old black Ford, covered with dust, missing the front fender, almost like Joseph’s.
On each side of the car someone stood on the running board, and there were people in the backseat.
He grabbed one of Julia’s warm rolls in his hand. He was the first one outside, ahead of Claude. Three of them were inside the car, two out, the women wearing bandanas, one of them with a baby slung over her shoulder.
They talked with Claude, his napkin still tucked in his shirt, bandages off his hands for the first time. Then one of the pickers brought a pile of bushel baskets from the barn; the mother put her baby under a tree on a plaid blanket. Someone was singing a song about apple blossoms.
They climbed, tossing apples to each other. And by the time Joseph arrived, looking pleased with himself, Julia had come outside to set up a table with coffee and rolls and juice in pitchers.
They picked all that day, even in the darkness as Claude lighted kerosene lanterns to give them an extra hour. They were back the next morning and again the next. Brick watched Mariel, climbing more easily now, stopping to eat an apple, juice running down her chin.
He heard her ask, but none of them remembered Mary. They had known about the year that polio had come to the valley, though, and the little girl who had been lost.
By lunchtime on the third day, bushel baskets towered with apples, and Julia was at the wheel of the pickup truck to make her first trip to the market. “It’s a good harvest,” Claude told the pickers gratefully, “even after the fire.”
That afternoon they were gone, on their way to another farm, still singing.
Brick sat on the back step before supper, his eyes closed, his hand on Regal’s head. He listened to a bee buzzing back and forth under the porch roof, and Mariel talking in the kitchen with Julia. He had never been so tired.
“Brick?”
He jumped. Claude, his hat pushed back, his forehead red with sunburn, stood over him. “One more job?” he asked.
Brick straightened. “I can try.”
Claude leaned on the railing. “We’ll need fence posts. I have them cut in the barn.”
Repair the fence? He was so tired. He wondered how he could do it.
“It’s too big a job for today. But I want to show you where it needs doing. Walk with me.”
Brick stood up, stepping over Regal. They took the path under the trees that led toward his house. He wanted to say that he loved it there, but he was embarrassed to say it aloud even to Claude.
“You belong here,” Claude said, his voice gruff, “not in Brooklyn.”
Brick nodded. “I know.”
“But the girl,” Claude said, “little Mariel. Tough little girl, she’s just finding out how tough and strong she is.”
“She belongs in Brooklyn,” Brick said.
“With Loretta and the Dodgers.” Claude smiled. “She just needs to find it out for herself.” He patted his pocket. “There’s a letter here for her. I have to remember when we go up to the house.”
Claude looked at him seriously. Brick knew what he was going to say: “You’ll have to go back with her, but maybe next year …”
Claude waved one hand. “You see the trees out there …”
The orchard was more yellow than green now and a few leaves were beginning to drift down along the rows.
“After Julia and I came from Normandy, we were really alone. We never had a son.”
Brick felt that ache, wishing for Pop.
“But the night you arrived with Mariel,” Claude said, “Julia and I stayed up talking about all that had happened to us, and how you saved the orchard.”
Brick shook his head. It seemed so long ago now.
“We felt as if we had a grandson, as if we had a family. You, and your mom and dad, just over the hill. It was terrible when you left.” He reached out and put his hand on Brick’s shoulder. “We knew how hard it must have been for you to come all the way home.”
“Mariel got us here,” Brick said, thinking about her standing at the edge of the bridge in Manhattan in her party dress and straw hat, twirling her green-striped umbrella.
“But I want to talk to you about the trees. For now, we’re going to fence off the section closest to your house.” Claude patted his shoulder with his broad hand. “It’s for you.”
Brick began to shake his head. There were as many trees as he and Pop had planted together. A stand of trees large enough to be its own orchard. Rows of trees, straight and green, the marks on the trunks to remind them of this summer. “I can’t …,” he began.
“You can,” Claude said. “You will. What good is all this to us when we see your house empty and know what you’ve done for us? Stay here with us this winter and go to school. I know your parents will agree. And when they come back in the spring …”
“We’ll never have to leave again.” He wouldn’t have to go back to Brooklyn. He could stay right there with Julia and Claude. Stay forever. He could see it all: Mom coming out on the porch, wiping her hands on her apron, listening to the cry of the barn swallows, the crows on the fence; Pop waving from the tractor as the dark earth turned up and over in back of him. There’d be rows of corn coming, tiny shoots of green; and apples, an orc
hard of apples, shiny and new.
They’d stand in a circle in the kitchen.…
“Claude.” It was Julia’s voice.
“She wants me to eat something,” he said, “or drink something, or sit down. She thinks I’m an old man.”
Brick looked up at Claude; his face was sunburned, his hat pushed back. Brick reached out to touch his arm.
“Claude? Where are you?”
Claude winked at him. “I’m coming now,” he shouted. “Have patience.”
“I’m going to my house,” Brick said. “I just want to see the trees …”
“… from your porch,” Claude finished for him.
Brick climbed over the fence then and turned back. “Claude?” he called. “I’m going to learn French so I can read your book. And I’m going to read at school, study. I’m going to learn everything for this orchard.” No more looking out the window in school, he thought. No more dreaming. His orchard.
Claude nodded. “Your mother will be happy.”
“And Pop. Just wait till he hears, Claude.”
Claude stood there for a moment, smiling. “I know,” he said. “I know.”
31
Mariel
Mariel had gone for a walk the next morning, trying to remember something. Something someone had said. Who? It wasn’t one of the pickers; none of them had known her mother. They had just heard stories. At lunchtime, she went up the back steps to the kitchen, still thinking. It must have been something Joseph had said.
Claude and Brick were at the table, the radio blaring the game from the windowsill. In front of them was a crumpled little leaf and a book with pictures of trees and flowers.
When he saw her, Claude picked up a knife and a chunk of cheese. He sliced off a wedge for her, pushed a bottle of root beer closer, and stuck the tip of the knife into an apple. “Apples and cheese,” he said. “There’s nothing better in the world.”