I look down from the hill until I can see Emily in her green Michigan State cap, and a minute later I see Maisie and Nell walking out to the barn. Hazel picks up the distant scent of Maisie in the breeze and darts off to thank her again for her life.
Benny Holzapfel had long professed his faith in fresh--market sweet cherries as part of a healthy system of cash flow. He was still a sophomore in high school when he talked my husband into pushing out the plums at the east end of the upper orchard and putting in forty acres of dark sweets. I hadn’t been in favor of taking the advice of our fifteen--year--old neighbor at the time. I said we needed more trees like we needed more goats, which had also been Benny’s idea. You can’t shake sweet cherries mechanically. You have to take them by hand and they have to come off perfectly, as if every last one was employed by the Michigan tourism board. Tarts are frozen and later boiled down to juice or jam or sold for pies. They’re dried into sturdy cherry--raisins and no one cares what they looked like. The problem with tarts is that distributors make a down payment on delivery and don’t pay the balance until they sell them, and because the cherries are already frozen or dried, there’s never any rush. You could work yourself to death bringing in tarts in July and not see your profit until December, or next July. Sweets, on the other hand, don’t freeze. Early in the summer they last two weeks in the cooler, and by the end of the season when the sugar is high the turnaround is considerably faster. Of course the brines become maraschinos, and some other sweets wind up in yogurt, but most of them we sell through an agricultural co--op for cash, and the co--op in turn sells them to grocery stores and CSAs. The money we make off those pretty cherries put Nell through the University of Michigan and is now subsidizing Maisie’s veterinary education.
Thank you, Benny Holzapfel.
“So, Mr. Ripley has asked you to audition for a film,” Emily prompts once the four of us are in a row of trees picking cherries, buckets hanging from our necks. Emily is tall like her father, strong enough to hoist full lugs all day long. Maisie is smaller than her older sister, though by no means small, and her curls give her extra stature. Nell is like me, or Nell is like I was. It’s as if the genetic material from which these girls were made diminished with every effort, so that the eldest daughter is strapping and the middle is middling and the youngest is a wisp. They might as well have been three bears. I flick away a tiny green inchworm. “Why am I telling you this part?”
“Because you’re putting together the whole picture,” Nell says. “Telling us everything you previously kept from us.”
“You need to go back and get a hat,” I say to Nell.
She touches the top of her head, surprised. She was still half--asleep when she left the house. “I will at the first intermission.”
What Ripley wanted to convey on that phone call, which cost me seven dollars and eighty--five cents in change and made me late for American History, was that he was worried about his niece finding out that he was asking me to audition. “My sister doesn’t know about this particular movie. She wouldn’t be happy to find out a part for someone Rae Ann’s age had been given to the girl standing next to Rae Ann onstage.”
Had he given me a part? I didn’t ask.
“So when you leave town it would be better if you said you had a family emergency, a funeral or something. Tell her your grandmother died.”
I felt like he had stuck me with a pin. “I’m not going to tell her my grandmother died.”
“Think of someone else then.” Ripley’s voice was incapable of concealing boredom.
Ripley--Believe--It--Or--Not asked for my parents’ phone number, which I gave him, and while I was adding up how many skirts I’d have to sew to pay for the trip, the production company bought me a ticket. I was twenty years old but Ripley’s assistant made the arrangements with my parents because I didn’t have a phone. My parents assumed Ripley had told me that, but Ripley wasn’t a man to deal in itineraries. When I called my grandmother and asked if I could borrow the money from her, I found out the problem had already been solved. My family thought it was a wonderful idea for me to leave school in the middle of the semester to go to California at the behest of a man I didn’t know. I thought it was pretty swell myself, not because I dreamed of being an actress—-that part of the equation was still inaccessible to me—-but because it felt like I finally had a direction to go in, and that direction was west. All of New Hampshire sinks into despair in March anyway so no better time to leave. As soon as my grandmother heard the news she kicked her sewing machine into overdrive, putting together what she referred to as my ingenue’s trousseau: dresses, skirts, a swimsuit coverup to match the swimsuit she ordered me from L.L. Bean. She saved this from being the chapter in which I arrived at LAX in a pair of duck boots and my dark--green Loden coat with the barrel toggles.
The buckets around our necks hang from canvas straps, and when they’re full we empty them into the lugs. When we have filled enough lugs, Joe heaves them onto the flatbed of the green John Deere Gator and drives them to the barn.
“So, California,” Nell says, nudging. This is the part of the story she’s invested in.
I worry she’s getting too much sun and give her my hat, which she tries to bat away. “It’s too late for me. Save yourself.” I drop it on her head.
Nell accepts it because, unlike her sisters, she doesn’t like to argue. “I want to hear about the audition and then I want to hear about the movie.”
She thinks I have something to teach her but I don’t. Nell doesn’t dominate a room or stand on a chair to sing. She is the one who watches. She has the kind of naturalness Ripley often accused me of having, an ability to be so transparent it’s impossible to turn your eyes away. She works at her craft constantly. Even picking cherries, I swear I can see her thinking about how other people might pick cherries. And that is the difference between us: I was very good at being myself, while Nell is very good at being anyone at all.
“It wasn’t interesting,” I say.
“Humor us,” Emily says. “We’re working.”
I try to explain. “I learned how to act from a State Farm agent in New Hampshire when I was in high school. Other people did too much, so by doing very little I stood out. Mr. Martin needed an Emily because all the Emilys were awful. By not being awful, I looked pretty good. I think Bill Ripley was in a similar situation. Every actress he’d auditioned had been acting up a storm and he needed someone simple in the part. Simple was my specialty.”
“Why are you selling yourself short?” Emily asks, throwing a cherry at me. Maisie leans over and parts the grass with her hands, and when she finds the cherry she pops it in her mouth. We do not waste sweet cherries. “If one of us said that you’d smack us in the back of the head and make us do positive affirmations in front of the mirror.”
“I made you do positive affirmations one time, one time,” I tell her, “and it was good for you.”