Apples and Oranges by Marie Brenner

Author:Marie Brenner [Brenner, Marie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-374-17352-4
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Published: 2008-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

29

Time unspools. It takes forty-eight hours for the Breck Girl to leave the orchards, with him kissing her good-bye, calling her darlin’, and promising her he’ll be back in San Antonio just before Thanksgiving and that he’ll stop by and have her special pumpkin soup the night before. I make it without cream! she says. Just a little chicken stock and the rest is pureed pumpkin! He’s handled it all well, deftly, with no one getting hurt feelings and no harsh words.

We’re going along fine, talking about Silverio, his favorite picker, who knows how to manipulate the ladders in the orchards. He has me race to OfficeMax to make up more signs for the pickers’ houses. He puts up a grid of rules for the crew: NO BEER! NO WOMEN IN THE SHED! PUT THE TOOLS AWAY AT NIGHT! He is worried about the bins, that the pickers will not monitor them, will not take proper care of his fruit. He knows that after they have worked apples, they will pack their boom boxes and their hoodies and move south, looking to harvest nectarines.

We are in the truck, loaded with Galas, headed for the Pateros farm. Suddenly, the dark sounds of Smetana fill the air. Carl pulls over to a cappuccino stand. When you plan the memorial service, I want Smetana, he says. I want his MáVlast. My Country. Are you listening to me?

This is ridiculous, I say. You are not dying. Dying people do not eat two desserts. You are up every morning at four, running up and down these hills like an athlete. But he was right. I was spinning. Sometimes all that is required is the ability to listen.

At night, I go to the movies and come back to see him in the lobby, staring in the blue light of the computer screen, the swirl of clinical trials dancing in front of him. Adenocarcinoma. The survival rate is 11 percent. We’re all dying, I say, when he quotes this number to me. It’s just a question of when. Or I say, “I don’t believe in numbers. Numbers are just numbers. They do not mean anything.” I continue on as I have been.

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