Daddy by Emma Cline

Author:Emma Cline
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2020-08-31T16:00:00+00:00

ARCADIA

“THERE’S ROOM FOR EXPANSION,” OTTO said over breakfast, reading the thin-paged free newspaper the organic people sent out to all the farms. He tapped an article with his thick finger, and Peter noticed that Otto’s nail was colored black with nail polish, or a marker. Or maybe it was only a blood blister.

“We draw a leaf or some shit on our label,” Otto said, squinting at the page. “Even if it just kind of looks like this. People wouldn’t know the difference.”

Heddy simmered slices of lemon at the stove, poking at the pan with a chopstick. She’d changed into a sweater dress and her legs were rashy. Every morning since she found out she was pregnant, she’d been drinking hot water with lemon. “It corrects your pH levels,” she’d explained to Peter. She had a glass to wash down all her prenatal vitamins, big dun-colored capsules that smelled like fish food, vitamins that promised to soak the baby in minerals and proteins. It was strange for Peter to imagine their baby’s fingernails hardening inside her, its muscles uncoiling. The unbelievable lozenge of its heart.

Heddy pursed her lips sideways at her brother. “That’s kind of stupid, isn’t it?” she said. “I mean, why don’t we just get certified, the real way?”

Otto fluttered his hand. “Got a few thousand lying around? You’re certainly not contributing.”

“I’m broadening my mind.” She was starting her first semester at the junior college in town.

“You know what broadens after that?” Otto said. “Your ass.”

“Fuck you.”

“Yeah, yeah. I had to hire more people and that costs.”

Peter had seen these new workers: a bearded man and a woman, who’d moved into one of the trailers a few weeks ago. They had a young boy with them.

“It all costs,” Otto said.

Heddy narrowed her eyes but turned back to the pan, intent on fishing out the lemon.

“Anyway,” Otto continued, “we can still say ‘natural’ and all the rest.”

“Sounds good,” Peter said, trying to be enthusiastic. Otto was already shuffling the pages, on to something new. He seemed to like Peter as much as he liked anyone. When he found out that Peter had gotten Heddy pregnant, it was his idea that Peter move in and work for him. “I guess she’s eighteen,” Otto had said. “No longer my worry. But if I see so much as a bruise, I’ll end you.”

Heddy put her hand on Peter’s shoulder: “He’s teasing,” she said.

Peter had moved into Heddy’s childhood bedroom, still cluttered with her porcelain dolls and crumbling prom corsages, and tried to ignore the fact of Otto’s room just down the hall. Otto managed the hundred and fifty acres of orchard surrounding the house. The land was near enough to the coast that great schooners of fog soaked the mornings with silent snow. When it rained, the creek outran its banks, a muddy, frigid surge that swamped the rows of apple trees. Peter preferred it up here, the thousand shades of gray and green instead of Fresno with the sameness of heat and dust.

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