The Rules of Love & Grammar (18 page)

Mitch gives me a skeptical look. “Why would the world be a better place?”

“Because things would move more efficiently, more quickly.”

We stop at Thistle Lane to let a man walking three Irish setters cross the street. Mitch rolls down the window and rests his elbow on the sill. “Don't you think the world moves fast enough already?”

“Maybe it's fast enough, but it's not
orderly
enough.”

“So you think there should be order for its own sake,” he says, stepping on the gas again.

“Well, sure. We need rules. Rules are the mark of a civilized society. Without them, everything collapses.”

“Look, I'm not advocating anarchy here. I'm just…Well, haven't you ever heard that saying
If you obey all the rules, you miss all the fun?
”

“Of course I have. Katharine Hepburn said it. I thought you didn't like Hollywood.”

“She's different. She was her own woman. She was never the Hollywood type. You know, she lived in Connecticut, not that far from here.”

“Sure, I know.” Any self-respecting resident of Dorset knows where Katharine Hepburn lived.

“Anyway, she was right.” He glances at the floor, where I've somehow managed to find a place for my feet amid the clutter. “So if the van's a little messy, well, okay. And if the workroom's a little messy—”

“A little? The workroom's more than a little messy. Maybe you just don't see it, but if you guys kept that place neater, I guarantee you'd get a lot more done.”

Mitch doesn't say anything. He turns onto Plum Ridge, and as we head away from Dorset, it feels as though the temperature in the van has dropped a few degrees.

“Look,” I say, “I didn't mean to criticize.”

He stares straight ahead. “It's fine.”

But I know it's not. I can tell by his voice. “Okay, I guess I
did
mean to criticize. I'm sorry. Sometimes I get a little carried away.”

“So you said the day you corrected the flyers.”

I feel my face getting warm.

“But,” he adds, “I accept your apology.” He's quiet for a minute, and then he says, “In fact, I wanted to apologize to you for last night. At Ernie's.”

I didn't expect this.

“I was out of line,” he says. “I know that. I was just frustrated. My dad loaned money to someone yesterday, and I know he'll never see a penny of it. People take advantage of him because he's such a good guy. But that didn't have anything to do with you. I shouldn't have said what I did.”

“It's okay.” I roll down my window. “And you're right. Your dad is a good guy. I can see why you'd want to protect him.”

The breeze catches my hair, sending it dancing around my face. The road narrows, and we cross an estuary, where water snakes through tall, yellow-green marsh grass. A giant white egret takes off in front of us, wings extended, long legs dangling beneath its slender body. I grab my handbag and hunt for my phone so I can take a picture, so I can remember what an egret looks like when I'm back in the city. By the time I find it, the bird is gone, a speck against the sapphire sky.

We leave the bike with Mrs. Rudolph, a woman in her forties who bought it for her twelve-year-old daughter. On the way back, Mitch makes a detour to Miller's Orchards so he can get a peach pie for Scooter. As we turn into the driveway, the van wheels rumbling over dirt, I try to remember the last time I was here—five or six years ago, maybe. I came with my parents to get their Christmas tree, something we always used to do when Renny and I were young.

Mitch parks in front of the store, a long, red building with white trim. Clay pots, bursting with purple and white impatiens, form a border along the wall. Behind the store are one hundred and fifty acres of apple trees, row upon row of assorted varieties.

We step inside the store, and I stare at the long tables packed with bushels and crates of corn and cucumbers, tomatoes and string beans, peppers and zucchini. There are endless boxes of strawberries and nectarines and packages of rhubarb. And there are pies—cherry and blueberry and peach and raspberry, with flaky, golden crusts—and freshly baked coffee cakes with crumbly toppings.

Shelves crammed with jars of local honey in varying amber hues, and glass bottles of dark, mysterious-looking maple syrup, catch my eye. There are cupboards overflowing with fruit butters and jams and jellies and boxes of fudge. Framed prints of country scenes—red barns, covered bridges, horses in fields, hills of sunflowers—adorn the walls, along with an assortment of painted signs for sale:
No Whining, It's Good to Be Queen, Grandpa Knows Best, Bad Decisions Make Great Stories.
I don't remember the signs or the prints or the other home-decor items I see, but everything else looks pretty much the same.

Mitch selects a pie from the table and carries it to the counter. A woman with plump, pink cheeks packs the pie in a box and wraps the box with red and white checked ribbon. Outside, Mitch puts the pie in the van, but he doesn't get in. Instead, he stands quietly, gazing at the sloping hills of the orchards.

“It's pretty here,” he says finally.

I nod. “It sure is.” Somewhere behind us, a bird sends a three-note song into the air, and another bird answers.

“You know, only two different families have owned this property during the past two hundred years.”

“Really. That's amazing.”

“During the Revolutionary War, the owners had two sons in the militia, and both of them were killed.”

“You're quite the local historian.”

“Not really. Just bits and pieces. Arcane stuff.” A man walks out of the store carrying a grocery bag, corn husks peeking from the top. “Do you want to take a walk? Up there? See the view from the top?”

“Yeah, sure,” I say. “I haven't been in the orchards in a long time.”

We make our way across the parking lot to where the grass begins, and after a hundred feet or so, we enter a wide path between two rows of trees, where the land starts to slope gently upward. Green leaves and tiny, yellow-green apples cloak the trees' branches, and fallen apples lie scattered on the ground. Most are no bigger than acorns, but I know in a couple of months, maybe sooner, some of the apples will be ripe enough to pick.

“We used to come here a lot,” I say. “When I was little.” I reach out and touch a branch as we walk by. “Apple picking in September, pumpkins in October, Christmas trees in December. Did you come here as a kid?”

“Yeah,” he says. “My dad used to bring me.”

“I liked apple picking the best,” I say. “When the fall weather was crisp but the sun was still warm.”

He nods, and we continue up the slope. Birds chatter, their songs piercing the blue silence. I think about Renny and myself and my parents, riding over these hills in the hay wagon, a long, red cart with rails on the sides and hay on the floor, pulled by a throaty tractor. The driver, an old, whiskery man with a red cap and a plaid shirt, would stop at each orchard where the apples were in season. Riders would jump off to pluck apples from the trees and scoop them from the ground and walk back to the store or catch the wagon on its return trip. McIntosh, Macoun. Honeycrisp, Red Delicious. Cameo, Jonagold. Renny and I used to study the people in the hay wagon and ask each other,
If they were apples, what varieties would they be?

Mitch stops and turns and looks down the path. I stop as well. “I used to love the hay wagon,” he says, as if he's read my mind.

“Me too.” I gaze down the hill at the rows of trees, and I can almost see the wagon making its round, almost hear children laughing.

“I remember coming here once on a school field trip,” Mitch says. “I think it was third grade.”

“Where did you go to school?”

“Howe Elementary,” he says.

“Oh my God. You went to Howe? Me too, but I don't remember seeing you there.”

“I don't think our paths would have crossed. Don't forget, I was in fourth grade when you were in kindergarten.”

I have a sudden flash of myself as a kindergartener—straggly hair and a couple of crooked front teeth—and I give a sheepish smile. It's doubtful any boys would have wanted to hang out with me. “So then, you were at Baxter Middle School,” I say as we start up the hill again.

He nods. “Oh, yeah. Was Mrs. Hawes still the principal when you were there?”

“Yes. She was nice. But I couldn't stand Mr. Sulio.”

“The assistant principal?” Mitch asks. “He was mean. Maybe they had a good cop–bad cop thing going.”

I laugh and watch an oriole hop across the path ahead of us, its bright-orange plumage a beacon in the grass. “You must have gone to Dorset High, then.”

“No,” Mitch says. “Actually, I went to Thatcher.”

“Thatcher?” This surprises me. I didn't realize his connection to the school ran so deep. “So you were a student there, too?”

“Yeah, my aunt wanted me to go. She paid for it.”

“That's very nice.”

“Well, she kind of felt she needed to step in.”

I wonder what he means by that, but he doesn't explain, and something about his tone tells me I shouldn't ask.

“My sister, Renny, loved this place,” I say as we walk through speckled patches of shade cast by the trees. “When we were kids, she used to run up and down the hills for what seemed like hours. My father wrote a poem about it.”

“I'm sorry about your sister,” Mitch says. “My dad told me.”

“Thanks.” I pick up an apple from the ground. There's a dark spot on one side where it looks as though it's starting to rot.

“How old were you when she died?”

“Sixteen.”

“What happened?” he asks, startling me with the directness of his question. People usually couch the query or wait for me to share something more on my own.

“She died in an auto accident. But I guess your dad probably told you that.”

“Yeah, he did.”

I wonder if he can sense how much it still hurts me to talk about it this many years later. That there's a physical ache in my chest. I picture her on that last night of her life, sitting on her bed, the movie poster from
Titanic
on the wall behind her. I remember thinking how ominous that poster looked—Jack and Rose, the movie characters, oblivious to the approaching tragedy. That was moments before Renny and I began arguing, just before she went out the door for the last time.

“It happened on Crestwood,” I say as we climb higher into the hills.

Mitch looks at me.

“The accident. That's where it happened. On Crestwood, close to Middle Road.” I hear a tractor in the distance, and I listen for the sounds of children, but the only noise is the sputter of the engine. “The kids from school left things at that place for weeks afterward. Flowers and teddy bears, crosses and letters.”

“That's so sad,” Mitch says.

I run my finger over the dark spot on the apple and think about being in my room that Saturday night, trying on clothes, deciding what I was going to wear to see Peter the next day. The doorbell rang, and when I walked into the hall and looked down the stairs, I saw my mother open the door. It was dark outside, but the lanterns were on and the moths were fluttering. I could make out his blue uniform through the screen.
Mrs. Hammond, I'm Lieutenant Belforth, Dorset Police Department. May I come in?
I knew right away something had happened. It was right there in his voice.

I toss the apple as far as I can, over the trees. A cloud drapes itself against the sun, turning the June afternoon gray, the air still.

“I lost someone, too,” Mitch says. “I lost my mother. When I was four.”

I stop walking. “She died when you were four?”

“No, she didn't die. She left us—my father and me.”

I watch the breeze ruffle the grass ahead of us. “You mean she moved out?”

“Yeah, so she could be with another guy.”

I feel as though I've just kicked a rotted log and let loose a thousand bugs. “That's terrible. I'm sorry.”

“I'm not,” he says, his voice empty of emotion. “My dad told me years later that she said she was hoping for a different life.”

“What kind of life did she want?” How could a mother leave her four-year-old child?

“I don't know. The guy she ran off with was some small-time soap opera actor from New York. That's all I know about him. He wasn't any big deal, but I guess she thought he was something special.”

“I can see why you're not a fan of people in show business.”

“That's part of it.”

“Did you see her after that?”

Mitch bends to pick up a branch from the ground. It looks brittle, like something left behind by the winter. “No,” he says.

“Not ever?”

He shakes his head.

“And you never heard from her?” I ask. “No phone calls? No letters? Email? Anything?”

He snaps a piece off the branch and tosses it to the side of the path. “There were some letters. They started when I was older. Fifteen, I think.”

“What did they say?”

“Oh, you know. What you'd expect, I guess. She wanted to see me.
I was young, I was immature. I don't expect anything from you. I'd just like to meet my son.
That kind of thing.”

“And what did you say? What did you tell her?”

He looks straight ahead, up the hill. “Nothing.”

“Nothing? You mean you didn't answer?”

“No. Why should I? She had her opportunity to be my mother, and she gave it up.”

“I don't know. It's just—it's not every day people ask for another chance. Or get one. Maybe you should give that to her.”

“She doesn't deserve another chance.” He flings the stick across the grass. “I used to think I missed having a mother. But you can't miss what you never had.” He looks away, and I wonder if that's how he really feels.