Prodigal Summer: A Novel

by Barbara Kingsolver

  "Go ahead. What do you think I've got here, about eight quarts?"

  Jewel appraised the mound of pitted cherries on the stained cutting board, doing some form of math in her head, Lusa realized. She understood with some chagrin that she'd accepted the family's judgment of Jewel as a child and not a woman, simply because she was manless.

  "Are you doing preserves, honey, or pie filling?"

  "Preserves, I guess, if I don't run out of sugar. I already made eighteen pints."

  "Of preserves?"

  Lusa felt foolish. "It's a lot, I know. When I was up the ladder out there in the tree I was proud of myself for filling up buckets. But now I'm stuck with them."

  "Oh no, you'll be glad to have that jam. They're the sweet cherries, aren't they, off that double-trunked tree above the apple orchard? Boy, those are the best cherries. Daddy must have planted that tree before him and Mommy married. It was already big when we were kids."

  "Really?" Lusa took in her gut the familiar pang of guilt for owning this tree that Jewel had grown up loving.

  "Yeah. They always said it got hit by lightning the winter Cole was born. That's how it got split in two that way--lightning."

  A lightning strike and a jackknifed truck, two unexpected events circumscribing a life--Lusa knew how far down that road her mind could go, so she made herself stop. She wondered instead how old Jewel had been that winter of his birth, whether she'd grown up as Cole's playmate or his keeper. She'd never asked him these things about each of his sisters. She'd expected to have years to untangle those threads.

  Jewel must have sensed her gloom, because she spoke up brightly. "Eighteen pints is enough preserves. Let's can the rest for pie filling."

  "I can't see myself making pies anymore, for just me. Since nobody seems to want to come here for dinner."

  "Mary Edna was a stinker to you over that. There wasn't any reason for her to get so high and mighty. Emaline thinks so, too; she told me. We both wish we still could have Thanksgiving up here at the house."

  Lusa's head swam with this news. She'd never suspected she had allies at all, much less the support of a faction. How had she gotten here, stranded in this family without rhyme or reason? Suddenly she felt so exhausted by grief that she had to sink into a chair and put her head down on the table. Jewel let her be. Lusa could hear the jars clinking gently together, settling into the boiling water bath. Finally Jewel whispered, "I think you've got about six quarts to go, no more."

  "That's still a lot of preserves."

  "Let's make pie cherries, then. And if there's any left over we'll make some pies today. You make the best pie crust of anybody. Better than Mommy's, I hate to say it."

  "God, don't say it out loud. Your mother haunts this kitchen. She used to stand in here stirring up fights between Cole and me."

  Jewel gasped in mock dismay. "Now why would Mommy do that?"

  "The usual thing. Territorial jealousy."

  The boys banged in through the screen door, preceded by their empty bowl like a pair of cooperative beggars. The minute Lusa re-filled it, though, want ceded to possession, and they started to slap and fight. "Ow, Chris won't share!" Lowell howled.

  "Goodness, we've got no shortage of cherries in this kitchen. Here, I'll get you your own bowl." Lusa was careful to find another one the same size and to fill them both equally. When they retreated again to the back porch she felt a flush of pride at having satisfied them, however briefly. Children were not Lusa's element. That was how she'd always put it to Cole, that babies made her nervous. Since moving here, though, she'd had glimpses of how the indulgence of adult despair could yield to children's needs.

  "Five and a half quarts, like I was saying." Jewel laughed. "Excuse me for having pigs instead of children."

  "I think I can bear the loss." Lusa sat down at the table again, facing the army of jars she'd already put up this day, little glass soldiers stuffed with their bright-red organs. Who would eat all this? When she left, would she take her preserves back to Lexington in a U-Haul? "What am I doing this for?" she asked suddenly in a dull, hard voice.

  Jewel was behind her at once, rubbing her shoulders. "For later," she said simply.

  "I should live so long."

  "What on earth do you mean by that?"

  "Nothing," Lusa said. "I just can't picture later. Spending my nothing of a life in this kitchen cooking for nobody."

  "I wish you'd make a pie for my kids once in a while. When I get home from work I'm so tired, I practically feed them hog slop on a bun."

  Lusa wondered whether this was a real request or an attempt at redeeming her empty life. "I could make a pie and bring it down sometime."

  Jewel sat down, brushing a strand of mouse-colored hair out of her eyes. "That's not what I was asking for. I don't know if this is, well, polite to ask. But could they come up here and eat dinner with you sometimes?"

  Lusa studied her sister-in-law's face. She seemed so tired. The request was genuine. "Well, sure. You could, too, Jewel, if you didn't feel like cooking. I could use the company."

  "But I mean, if I wasn't here?"

  "What, like if you had to take the late shift at Kroger's? You know you can ask me that anytime. I'm glad to help out."

  "You wouldn't care to have the kids up here sometimes, then?"

  Lusa smiled. "Of course not." It had taken her a year to learn that when mountain people said "I don't care to," they meant the opposite of what she thought. They meant "I wouldn't mind."

  Jewel held her eye, shy and bold at the same time. "But they said you're going back to Lexington pretty soon."

  "Who did?"

  She shrugged. "I can see why you would. I'm just saying I'd miss you."

  Lusa took a breath. "Would you get this house and the land then?"

  "Oh, no. Mary Edna would, I guess. She's the oldest. I don't even have a man to farm it."

  "So Mary Edna wants the place."

  "It's yours, honey; you could sell it or whatever you want. Cole didn't have any will, so it goes to you. She said they have that law now, a success statue or something where it used to be the family would get a farm back, but now it goes to the wife."

  Lusa felt a rush of adrenaline through her limbs. Only one thing could account for Jewel's acquaintance with "success statues": they were consulting lawyers. "I haven't made up my mind about anything yet," she said. "I haven't been able to think straight since everything happened."

  "You seem like you're doing good, honey."

  Lusa looked at Jewel, longing to trust, knowing she couldn't. She felt dismayed by the complexities of even the simplest of things, a conversation with a sister--not her own--in a kitchen, also not her own. "Probably you all think I'm not behaving like a decent widow," she said, surprised by the anger in her chest.

  Jewel started to protest, but Lusa shook her head. "You see me pushing right along, canning cherries like everything was normal. But when nobody's here, sometimes I have to lie down on the floor and just try to keep breathing. What am I supposed to do, Jewel? I'm twenty-eight. I've never been a widow before. How does a widow act?"

  Jewel offered no advice. Lusa took one of the jelly jars in her hand and stared at its ruby redness, that clear, proud color that she knew she loved, theoretically, but that couldn't touch her just now. "I grew up in a family where suffering was quiet," she said. "My father is a man who's lost everything: his family's land, his own father, his faith, and now his wife's companionship. All for unfair reasons. And he's just kept working, all his life. I was always more of a complainer, but I'm learning to be quiet. It seems like the only grownup way to face this brutal thing that's happened."

  Jewel's eyes were so much like Cole's, so earnest and perfectly blue, that Lusa had to look away from her.

  "I may look like I'm doing all right, but I don't know if I'm coming or going. Whoever told you my plans knows more than I do."

  Jewel put her hand on her mouth--a nervous habit, apparently. "It's none of my business, but there wasn't
any life insurance, was there?"

  Lusa shook her head. "Cole wasn't planning on dying this year. We'd talked about insurance, but with everything so tight, it just seemed like one extra payment we didn't need. We thought maybe we'd do it after we had kids or something."

  "I'll tell you something. Mary Edna and Herb could help with the burial. I would if I could, but they can. Herb and his brother are doing good with their dairy over on Six. That's Herb's family's land, paid off. So they're set up pretty good right now."

  "I can cover the burial, it's done. That was our savings. Mary Edna didn't offer, and I sure wasn't going to ask."

  "Mary Edna's bark's a whole lot worse than her bite."

  "It's not that. You know why. I'm not stupid, Jewel, I know what everybody's saying: here I am living in this house you all grew up in, on your family's land. The so-called Widener place, and there's no longer any Widener on the premises. Do you think I'd feel comfortable asking your family for anything?"

  Jewel gave her an odd look. "Is that true? Lois told me that--that you were going to take your maiden name back now."

  "What? No, I never did..." Lusa wondered how far the misunderstandings went, and whether any of it would be possible to untangle, after a point.

  "Well, anyway," Jewel said, "having a house and a farm's not the same as having money."

  "Tell me. When I hear people hinting I'm a gold digger, I feel like publishing my damn debts in the newspaper. I've got a barn to reroof before winter, and this house, too, probably in the next year or two. And something's wrong with the spring box; I'm just waiting for the day I wake up and have no water. What else? Oh yes, Cole's brand-new Kubota, twenty-two thousand dollars, which won't be paid off for another four years."

  "I didn't know he'd financed the tractor."

  Was Jewel spying? What difference would it make if they knew she was destitute? None, Lusa decided. "He didn't want to. But we had to have a tractor, and he deserved new. That John Deere of your daddy's was older than Cole, I think. He'd been fighting with it his whole life, holding it together with baling twine and fence wire."

  "That tractor was older than Cole. Come to think of it."

  "And now I'll have to pay somebody to mow hay and put it in the barn, and fix the fences and round up the cows when they get over on the neighbors', and mess with the baler, which breaks down every single time you use it. And run and repair the bush hog and the side-arm mower--or am I supposed to learn to do all that myself? I'm sure there are other costs, too; I just don't know enough to see them coming."

  "Lord, Lord," Jewel said softly. Her face was the saddest thing Lusa had seen in a stretch of many sad days. Her forehead was deeply creased, and her eyes looked like an old woman's. At close range she looked much older than Lusa had thought she was.

  "No man to farm it," Lusa summarized. "As you put it."

  "Herb and Big Rickie will help you out."

  "Oh, they've been up here. I guess they're in charge now. Cole's grave isn't yet healed over, and already I'm nobody."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Well, I need help, sure. But help. It would be nice to be asked, instead of bossed around like a child. Do they do that to you?"

  "They don't have any business with me. I don't even plant a garden anymore. I praise the Lord for my job at Kroger's and beg Him to strike Shel dead if that check should fail to keep coming for the kids."

  "What about Emaline and Frank?"

  "Emaline and Frank are officially out of farming for good, they say, and I think they're just as happy about it, to both have factory jobs instead of farming."

  "But I heard Frank complaining at the funeral about losing his tobacco lease. And he complains about commuting to Leesport."

  "Frank would complain about the moon if it looked at him wrong. He makes good money at Toyota, and he likes everybody to know it."

  "So who's still farming, just Lois and Big Rickie? And Herb? How can I live smack in the middle of you all and not know what's what?"

  "Well, because it's not really settled, that's why. About half the time Hannie-Mavis and Joel lease out their allotment to a big grower over to Roanoke, like Herb does. Then the next year, they won't. But Lois and Big Rickie always do their own tobacco, four acres and some. You might not know it, but he and Joel's got land leased all over the county running beef cattle, too. Big Rickie's got farmer in his blood."

  Both women jumped at the sound of a crash and breaking glass from the porch. Lusa started for the door, but Jewel stopped her, holding up a pair of tongs. "You take the jars out of the canner and get the syrup boiling. I'll be back in a jiffy."

  Lusa could hear Jewel scolding and both kids crying or whining on the porch. She tiptoed to look out the high window over the sink. "Jewel," she called, "if it's those jars of green beans, it's a good riddance. They've been out there since I moved in."

  There was no answer, and from this angle she couldn't see Jewel or the kids but could hear a smack and a wail. "That is no way to treat your little brother," she heard. "You keep this up and you're wearing a dress tomorrow. I mean it."

  Lusa frowned and turned to the stove. She measured equal parts sugar and hot water into the pot, hoping three quarts of syrup would be the right amount to cover five quarts of raw-pack cherries. She should put in something acidic to lower the pH, for the canning, but she didn't have any lemon juice. Would vinegar work? She added one tablespoon, a wild guess, then took up the tongs to lift the sterilized jars from the water bath. She lined them up on the counter, a raft of widemouthed birds begging to be fed.

  "It was the green beans," Jewel sighed, coming inside. "I got all the glass. I told them to clean up the rest and throw it out by the creek, and then go play in the barn or something. I don't care if it's raining; they won't melt."

  "That's fine. Truly, I'm glad about the beans. I've been scared to eat them and scared to give them away. My luck, I'd kill somebody of botulism."

  Jewel reached under the sink to shake a dustpan of broken glass like wind chimes into the trash. "She's going to be my death, if I don't kill her first. Lowell's a handful, but he's just little. Crystal Gail's something else. It's time for her to be growing out of this stage, which she's been going through since the day she was born. What?"

  Lusa realized she must look comically confused. "Crystal?"

  "Crys. Oh!" Jewel laughed, waved her hand. "You thought she was a boy. You and everybody else. When she started kindergarten, the teacher refused to let her go to the girls' bathroom until I rushed down there with her birth certificate."

  "Oh."

  Jewel looked earnest. "Don't think it's because of Shel leaving, some child-of-divorce thing. She's always been this way."

  "I don't think anything about it, Jewel; I just didn't realize."

  "You can't imagine. It's been going on since she was a baby. Her first word was no, and her second was dress. No dress. No dolls, no pretty hair bows. I gave in on that haircut because she was cutting it herself. I was afraid she'd poke her eyes out."

  Jewel looked so vulnerable, Lusa could practically see the veins through her skin. She wanted to hug her, to trust her completely. "It doesn't matter," she said. "I'm just glad you told me so I won't keep using the wrong pronoun. I can't believe I've known that child a year and nobody ever set me straight."

  "You and Cole only ever had eyes for each other, honey. You hardly came to family things anyway, and if you did, it wasn't to look at my crazy mixed-up daughter."

  "Ouch," Lusa said, burning her hand slightly on the rim of a jar. "She's not crazy, don't do that to yourself. I wouldn't worry about it."

  "You would if you were her mother. You'd worry yourself sick. She's about half the reason why Shel left. He blamed me--oh, Lord, did he blame me. He said I was making her a little homo by letting her wear jeans and cut her hair like that. And maybe he was right. But it wasn't my idea. I'd like to have seen him try and get her into a dress. That's what I told him: You try putting panty hose on a tomcat!"

>   Jewel and Lusa looked at each other and laughed.

  "And anyway," Jewel asked, a little shyly, "isn't a homo a man?"

  "Jewel, she's just a tomboy. I was exactly like that at her age."

  "You were? But you're so pretty. And you cook!"

  Lusa felt awkwardly flattered, though she was also aware that this wasn't the point. "You should have seen me. I skinned my knees and caught bugs and wanted to be a farmer when I grew up."

  "Careful what you wish for."

  "The syrup's boiling."

  "Do you put a dash of vinegar in it, or not? Oh good, you did, I can smell it. Here, you hold the funnel over the jars and I'll pour--where's your ladle?"

  Jewel knew exactly where the ladle was, and everything else in this kitchen. The question was a gift of respect. Lusa retrieved the ladle from its drawer and closed it with her hip, feeling acutely grateful.

  "Crystal's pretty. The name, I mean."

  Jewel shook her head. "It doesn't look like her. She looks like Beaver Cleaver."

  Lusa smiled. "Meeseh maydel, shayneh dame," she said, her grandfather's promise--which had finally come true, for what it was worth.

  "What?"

  "'Ugly ducklings grow up to be swans.'" Lusa felt frustrated again--this wasn't really her wish, to promise that Crys would grow up straight and feminine, because maybe she wouldn't. Her wish was to tell Jewel that the alternative would be fine, too. But Lusa couldn't imagine having that conversation with Jewel. "Maybe it's not really about trying to act like a boy," she hazarded cautiously, "but just her way of trying to be herself."

  "Let's don't talk about it. Crys is just Crys. Tell me some gossip. Tell me why you're mad at Big Rickie and Herb."

  Lusa poured four cups of cherries into each jar, then held the funnel steady over the mouth as Jewel covered them with boiling syrup. "I'm not mad, I don't guess. I mean I am, but I shouldn't be. I know they meant well."

  "Well, but what did they do?"

  "They came up this morning to inform me that they're going to set my tobacco on Saturday."

  "And?"

  "And, I don't want to grow tobacco."

  "You don't? Why not?"

  "Oh, I'm being stupid, I guess. Farm economics, what do I know? But half the world's starving, Jewel, we're sitting on some of the richest dirt on this planet, and I'm going to grow drugs instead of food? I feel like a hypocrite. I nagged Cole to quit smoking every day of our marriage."