5

5

In this summer which can at times be mistaken for the end of the world, we are the ones who pick the fruit and send the fruit to the processor and tie up the branches and take the goats out to eat the weeds. We work from the moment we wake until we close our eyes at night. Sometimes one of us says something about how it would be fun to watch a movie but it never happens. We fall asleep with books in our hands. I fall asleep with a threaded needle in my hand, sewing face masks out of pillowcases. And then in the morning the whole thing starts again and we are standing between the rows of trees, telling stories to pass the time. Oh, how we miss the people who have worked on this farm year after year, generation after generation, the kids who went to school with our kids for half the year, every year, from the time they were little, always leaving and coming back, until they come back with kids of their own.

Emily’s future, the one in which her father and I grow old and she takes over the farm, has been decided. Maisie’s veterinary classes at Michigan State are online but she finds no shortage of practical application for her education in this neck of the woods. She takes all comers: helpfully administering deworming paste on one farm, castrating the spring kids and lambs on another, and giving Hazel a multitude of physicals. Neighbors a mile away call in the middle of the night to ask if she can turn a breeched foal, and she does, then delivers it. “Turns out I’m better than nothing,” she says, walking in the back door the next morning, bloody and reeking of afterbirth.

But Nell has no such opportunities, no breeched foal equivalents. She spent her last spring of college picking cherries and reading plays in her childhood bedroom. She and her friends balance their laptops on stacks of books and practice monologues for one another. Because they want to act and to learn about acting any way they can, she begs for my stories even though they are wildly out of date. Even though they wind up depressing the hell out of her.

“What was it like?” she asks me again.

It was like being a leaf in a river. I fell in and was carried along.

Nell begins for me. “So you left Los Angeles and went to Tom Lake,” she says.

We are back on our feet again, back to work. “I went to New York first. New York and then Tom Lake.”

Emily shook her head. “Los Angeles, Tom Lake, and then New York.”

These girls are so certain about the things they do not know. “New Hampshire, California, New York, Michigan, New Hampshire, New York, Michigan. I promise you.”

When three years had passed and the movie still wasn’t finished, I wondered if it wasn’t time to stop relying on the charms of my unpierced ears and take some acting classes.

Ripley shook his head. “You’ll ruin yourself,” he said.

It had been a long time since we’d seen each other and I’d called him up, looking for advice. We were sitting out by the pool behind his house, our teak lounge chairs shaded by a giant red umbrella. It was a Tuesday or a Saturday, March or October. That was the problem with L.A., I could never remember. “You’re telling me no one here takes acting classes?”

“You’re fresh, unspoiled,” he said. “That’s your thing. People take acting classes to learn how to do what you’re already doing.”

“So by studying acting I’ll spoil my unspoiledness?”

“Exactly.” He was drinking Perrier with crushed ice and lime. A Hispanic woman came out of the house to put a bowl of kumquats on the table between us, then went back without a word.

“I just want?.?.?.” I began. But I had no idea what I wanted. All I knew for certain was that the day was hot and the pool looked like heaven.

“What?” Ripley asked. “To be a movie star?”

I smiled. “Swimming pools, movie stars.”

Ripley felt some responsibility for me, I guess, having brought me there to be in a movie that was sitting in a can. Still, he offered up his next sentence with hesitation. “I know a guy,” he said. “They’re starting to put together a production of Our Town.”

Just that fast I felt the words rise up in me—-clocks ticking and sunflowers and new--ironed dresses. They were always there, like some small animal hibernating in my chest. I said nothing.

“You could try,” he said, making it clear that my impending disappointment would not be on him.

“Where?” I popped a kumquat in my mouth the way bored girls in L.A. will do. The sourness was akin to being electrocuted but I betrayed nothing. Maybe I was a better actress than I thought.

“New York.” Then, a kumquat later, added, “Broadway. They’ve signed Spalding Gray for the Stage Manager.”

“No!” Nell says.

“I didn’t get the part.”

“You tried out for Our Town on Broadway with Spalding Gray!”

“Spalding Gray wasn’t there when I auditioned and I didn’t get the part.”

Emily lifts up a branch and peers beneath it, trying to decide if it needs to be tied. “I’m starting to understand something here,” she says, and all of us think she’s talking about the tree. “Every thing leads to the next thing.”

Maisie stops to look at her sister. “That’s called narrative. I guess they don’t teach you that in hort school.”

“I understand narrative, idiot, but when you see it all broken down this way, step by step, I don’t know, it’s different.” Emily looks at me. “Your grandmother asks you to register people for a play and you wind up starring in the play, which gives you the nerve to try out for the same play in college, which means that Ripley gives you a part in his movie, but the movie doesn’t come out, so you wind up in New York to try out for the play again—-”

“But you don’t get the part,” Maisie says.

“And so you go to Michigan,” Nell says, “which is how you get to us.”

“It’s just that I thought this was going to be a story about Duke,” Emily says, her dark braid down her back, the bill of the Michigan State cap shading her eyes. “And then I thought you were just taking us on some wild--goose chase to amuse yourself.”

It’s still there, though you have to tune your ear in order to hear it: the last hissing ember of Emily’s bygone rage and desire.

“It is a story about Duke,” I say, taking in a deep breath of northern Michigan in the summer, the smell of the trees, of these three girls. Nothing will ever be like it.

“It’s about Duke and it’s not,” Nell says.

“That’s right,” I say, nodding. “Yes and no.”

I went to New York expecting to win. There was no George at the audition. An assigned reader sat to the left of the director’s table and read George’s lines, Mrs. Webb’s lines, the Stage Manager’s lines. When they called me back the second day, a few other actors were loitering nervously, though not Spalding Gray. We read scenes together, testing our chemistry. I had never felt so comfortable, so certain that I was an actress. The next time I saw Ripley I would thank him for talking me out of acting classes. I wore barrettes to keep the hair out of my face so the casting director could see my lovely little ears. I wore my UNH sweatshirt. When I went to leave the second day, the five men in the audition studio all stood to shake my hand. The last one double--checked to make sure he had the name of the hotel where I was staying. I went back to that hotel room to wait by the phone, and two hours later it rang. A man was asking if I could meet him at the Algonquin the following afternoon so that we could discuss the play.

I said sure. I asked when.

“What you need to remember is that everything’s a fix,” he told me at our little table in the corner of the very dark bar. His name was Charlie. Gray suit, a white shirt, no tie. I remembered the suit from the audition. He had a good tailor—-a scant quarter--inch of shirt cuff showed beneath his jacket sleeve. “They say they want someone new but you’re too new. If the movie was out, you’d be a shoo--in. Ripley says you’re terrific in it, by the way. We certainly thought you were terrific in the audition.”

I’d been formulating a brief acceptance speech in my head in which I expressed my excitement and gratitude, but Charlie seemed to be telling me I wasn’t going to need it. Is that what he was telling me? I refused to believe his message was clear. Then the waitress arrived at our table and I stumbled over my choice of beverage: a Coke would make me look young, but a Jack and Coke would make me look even younger, a kir might make me look like an actress but maybe one who was trying too hard not to care. In my sudden panic I defaulted to Perrier with crushed ice and lime, which made me look like a Californian, which was the last thing I wanted to look like. “The movie will be out by the time the play opens,” I said, my voice small.

Charlie shrugged, by which he meant what did I know about release dates? He was right, of course. That’s when it occurred to me that I was supposed to sleep with him. He’d brought me to a dark hotel bar to talk about getting the lead in a Broadway play, which, sorry as he was, he wasn’t going to be able to give me. Or maybe he could. I imagined the key was already in his pocket. I went through my options quickly, a feeling not dissimilar to my drink order: I could be indignant or offended, or I could just follow him to the elevator. Didn’t everybody have to sleep with somebody eventually in this business? Would I sleep with him if it meant I’d get to play Emily on Broadway opposite Spalding Gray?

Yes. Yes I would.

“Listen, you’re great,” he said, resting his hands on the white tablecloth just in front of our flickering candle. They were nice enough hands—-no wedding ring—-at least I would be spared that additional guilt. “But there’s too much money involved. You’ve got to be able to sell tickets.”

“Spalding Gray sells tickets.”

“Well, you’ve got to be able to help out Mr. Gray.”

I put my hands on the table as well. I kept them on my side of the candle but I thought they made my intention perfectly clear without looking like I was hosting a seance. He was twice my age, give or take. I looked at him the way Jimmy--George used to look at me. The way he used to look at Veronica. “Tell me what I need to do.”

Then Charlie laughed, not a nervous laugh but a great, unexpected guffaw. Into that moment the timely waitress returned with his Diet Coke and my Perrier. He wiped his eyes with his thumb, then took a sip of his drink to calm himself. “I’ve known your uncle since before you were born,” he said. “Did you know that? Ripley and I used to play racquetball together at the Y out in Hollywood Hills. Fierce backhand, that guy. Nearly broke my goddamn nose once.”

“It was always his game.” As nice as it was of Ripley to safeguard my honor in absentia, it would have been even nicer had he remembered to tell me.

“I’ll get to the point.” Charlie tapped the table lightly and then took his hands away. “I’ve done some work with Tom Lake over the years. The artistic director is an old friend.”

“You have a lot of friends,” I said stupidly because, god, I was so stupid.

“You know Tom Lake?”

I nodded. I did not know.

“They’re doing Our Town this summer.”

“Seems like everyone is.”

“They just lost their Emily. She did the first table read then got a call from her agent telling her to pack up. It’s a big film, and the studio is covering her cancellation clause. My friend asked me to keep an eye out since he knew we’re auditioning. They’re going to need someone who can step right in.”

“That would be me.” Why was I only now remembering that Perrier tasted like salt?

“I think it is you. That’s why I asked you to meet me. I’m sorry if I gave you the wrong idea.” He allowed himself one final chuckle—-this crazy business!—-then brushed the smile off his face with his hand. “You’d have to go immediately. Can you do that? Do you have anything else going on?”

I shook my head. Having played easy to get, I forfeited the chance to play hard to get.

“Go to Tom Lake for the summer. Send me a postcard and thank me. Have you ever been to Michigan? Christ, you won’t believe how beautiful it is. Do the play. Once you see all the people who’ve come through that place you’ll realize what a break this is. Everyone needs at least one season of summer stock under their belt, I don’t care who you are. Do the play and then, who knows? They’re starting rehearsals now and we’re at least a year out. Obviously Emilys vanish, or they get bad reviews and wind up needing to be replaced. You, in the meantime, will be impressive. And you’ll be seen. They’ve always got theater scouts there. Then your movie will come out. You never know where you’ll wind up after that.”

He had a way of making it sound like things had gone my way after all. I would play Emily at Tom Lake, renowned summer stock theater, and I hadn’t had to go upstairs to get the part. One more lucky day.

He paid the check and asked if I wanted him to get me a cab. I shook my head. “Go back to the hotel,” he said. “Order room service and wait by the phone. I’m going to have them call you.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“You’re very good, Lara. Really, you are. I think Michigan is going to mean big things for you.”

We walked out to Forty--Fourth Street where it was just getting dark. Traffic was at a standstill and I was glad I’d forgone the offer of a cab. Then, because he was a friend of Uncle Ripley’s, Charlie kissed the top of my head and said good night before turning in the opposite direction.

I would go on but Joe arrives on the Gator to collect the lugs. “Sorry to break up a party,” he says. “But I’m going to need at least one of you to help in the barn.”

Sweets don’t hold up in the sun once they’re off the tree. We field run the cherries, which means sorting them on the conveyor belt and pulling any fruit that’s spotted or cracked, then sending them to a packing plant in the lugs, stems and all. He needs Emily but he won’t say it, fearing the appearance of favoritism. Joe would swear in front of a firing squad that he has no favorite daughter, and while there may be no favorite, one of them is indisputably more useful than the other two. Emily is faster than the rest of us put together. Maisie checks her phone and says it’s time for her to go back to the house anyway. She has a conference with one of her professors and the cell reception is better there. “Drop me,” she says, shifting a couple of lugs so that there’s just enough space to climb onto the flatbed of the Gator, the way we never let the girls do when they were young. Even now I want to tell her no.

“Go slow,” I say to Emily as she gets behind the wheel, her father sliding in beside her.

“I’m not going to risk the cherries,” Emily says. When she puts the thing in drive, Hazel leaps up and Maisie catches her. Who knew?

“Don’t tell anything good while we’re gone!” Maisie calls, removing the hat from her head and tossing it to me.

“Don’t tell anything at all!” Emily shouts.

“Where’s the story now?” I hear Joe ask Emily, and Emily says, “Michigan.”

“Ah,” Joe says. “The good part.”

I watch until they’ve crested the low hill, Maisie waving like the Cherry Queen on her float, Hazel safe beneath her other arm. That’s another thing we’ve lost this year, the Cherry Festival. Any of our girls would have looked smart in a tiara.

“Two--thirds of my audience gone, just like that,” I say to Nell as we wave goodbye.

“Three--fourths if you count the dog,” she says.

“I should count Hazel.”

Plenty of empty lugs remain and we’ll leave them in the grass once they’re full. Emily will drive back later to pick them up.

For a while we say nothing. I’m tired of talking, and of the three, Nell is the best at being quiet. The thing about picking cherries is that you can look only at the tree you’re on, and if you have any sense, you’ll just look at the branch you have your hands in. The peekaboo ladder is up, waiting for us to clean off the top. We won’t look down the rows at what seems to be an unbroken field of red dots, a pointillist’s dream of an orchard. If we opened our minds to all the cherries waiting to be picked, we’d go home and back to bed.

“You weren’t really going to go to bed with him,” Nell says after a while. It is not a question.

But I am here again, back on the farm, and for a minute I have no idea what she’s talking about. “Who?”

“The guy,” she says. “Charlie.”

To be able to play younger is a great and fleeting gift. I had it once. I could play fourteen at twenty--four. Part of it is in the way you carry yourself, the pitch of your voice, but part of it is pure physiognomy. Nell has that in spades. At twenty--two she is slender and small, and in her faded smock dress that had once belonged to all of us in turn, she could pass for thirteen.

I shake my head. “No. I was just acting, or I had no idea what I was doing.”

“But what would you have done if he’d taken you up on it?” Her face is tilted up and the sun is lighting her eyes and her eyes are the sun.

“I would have run, and he never would have caught me because he would have had to stay and pay the check.”

She turns back to the tree in front of her, giving it fierce consideration. “We talk about these situations in school all the time, about how no matter who you are, there’s always going to be someone with more power than you. They want us to think it out, you know, go through all the scenarios in advance of anything happening so we’ll be ready.”

“Nothing happened to me,” I say. Things happened to me, but not on that day, and not like that. “And for the record, Charlie was a prince.”

She nods but she’s still looking at her hands. “It’s terrifying,” she says quietly, and now I see the tears in her eyes. “The idea that in order to get to do this thing you really, really want, you might be told you have to do the exact thing you’d never want to do.”

I wish I could tell her, Oh, my darling, that’s all behind us now. Those are very old stories about things that don’t happen anymore, but instead I take her in my arms. I want to tell her she will never be hurt, that everything will be fair, and that I will always, always be there to protect her. No one sees us but the swallows looping overhead. She puts her arms around my waist and we stand there, just like that, casting a single shadow across the grass.