The Language of Cherries

by Jen Marie Hawkins

  The breeze from the sea

  makes it colder on the cliff face than it is in the orchard.

  A perpetual golden glow surrounds me

  like a not-quite-adequate blanket

  so I throw some damp wood

  inside the stone ring

  and light kindling.

  Besides the warmth,

  it creates a billowy smoke mask

  to cover the smell of the joint from Agnes.

  Not that she will leave the barn any time soon.

  She is much too busy cooking and canning,

  replacing what we lost to the quake.

  Keeping her hands busy

  as if that will undo

  all the damage

  we endured.

  I have my own maladaptive coping mechanism,

  and I take a long draw from it.

  Honestly, I never intended

  for this to be a habit.

  I would’ve never tried it

  if Bjorn hadn’t given me that edible

  without telling me about the extra ingredient.

  I should’ve been fucking furious with him

  for using me as entertainment for the group.

  But something happened that night.

  Through the funhouse goggles,

  I finally felt distance

  from the pain.

  I was here,

  but not.

  Gone,

  yet perfectly

  rooted in place.

  Escaped.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Evie

  Though she’d sent instant messages telling them about her new friend—a boy named Oskar!—Loretta and Ben were both ignoring her altogether now. Maybe they were on their honeymoon.

  Evie had brushed her hair, put on makeup, and cleaned her room so that, while in view of the laptop camera, it looked spotless. She waited patiently, chewing her lip as she waited for the ringing to stop on the other end of the line. God, she did not want to do this. But she needed someone on her side. She’d take anyone at this point: even the enemy. When the screen filled up with a picture of her mother’s expressionless face, her stomach rolled.

  “Well hi there, Evie!” She smiled, but it was painted on and didn’t touch her heavily mascara’d eyes. Evie could paint better smiles than that when she was in elementary school. “Happy Fourth of July!” Rhona’s raspy cigarette voice frayed against her ears.

  “Hi.” Independence Day felt like a foreign concept to her right now, in more ways than one. Evie took a deep breath and tried to focus on the task at hand.

  “Your face is looking thinner than last time I saw you!” This was Rhona’s version of a compliment. Hey Evie, you aren’t looking quite as fat today. “About time you called me back.”

  “Sorry.” She shrugged. “Been busy.”

  As Evie racked her brain for a way to bring it up, an awkward silence stretched between them on the line. She couldn’t decide if the connection had frozen, or if Rhona was just that bored to be talking to her daughter. Ugh, forget it. Maybe the call would disconnect and she could do this later. She glanced over at the Wi-Fi router. It blinked green, at full capacity. Such obscene misfortune.

  Rhona flipped bleached hair behind her bare, spray-tanned shoulders. Evie bet she missed the Florida sunshine, where skin was bathed in ultraviolet kisses instead of orange pigment that smelled like surf wax. She stared into her mother’s emotionless eyes.

  Then again, maybe Rhona didn’t miss anything from Florida. She was too busy recapturing the youth she lost when she reluctantly became a mother.

  “I’m glad you’re enjoying yourself,” Rhona said, showing just how little she knew about her daughter. “Your father tells me you have a wonderful collection of paintings to choose from to submit with your application for Magnet Arts. Could I see them?” She craned her neck, focusing on the background behind Evie.

  Ha. No dice. She’d hidden them before she bothered to make the call.

  “They’re drying,” she lied. “Anyway, about that. I’m not going to Magnet Arts.”

  Rhona leaned in toward the screen, thick-lined eyes widening. “I’m sorry, what?”

  Sé valiente.

  “I said I’m not going. I’ll find a way to go to Saint Bart’s. I want to finish there.”

  “Oh, honey.” Rhona’s lips turned downward, but the rest of her face remained emotionless, like a mannequin. “I know it’s hard. But think of it this way—you’d be leaving them all next year, anyway. You just get to do it a year earlier. And New York City!”

  “No, I mean it,” Evie interrupted, though her voice seeped out weaker now. Probably because she’d called her honey, like they were a long-lost mother/daughter duo who actually existed on the same wavelength. Like Rhona was worthy of calling her such a thing. “Papá and I will find a way to pay for it.”

  Rhona’s nostrils flared. “I don’t want to upset you, honey, but it just won’t be possible with your father’s finances. He has to pay for Abuela’s expenses, the mortgage on the house in Miami, his vehicles, and my alimony.”

  Rage bubbled up in the back of Evie’s throat. “Your alimony?”

  Rhona hesitated, then nodded. “Yes, honey—”

  “Please stop calling me honey,” Evie spat. Could she be any more fake? Why was Papá paying her anything? She was the one who left. That money could go toward her tuition at Saint Bart’s. “And what about you? Don’t you have a real job finally? Can’t you help out? You’re my mother, after all. Or so you say.”

  Rhona’s expression betrayed no hurt, which was disappointing. Trying to hurt Rhona was like punching a rock. You can’t hurt someone who doesn’t care.

  “It’s just not possible.” She shook her head and it became a full body shimmy. “It’s very expensive to live in the city. I barely earn enough to make ends meet.”

  So that’s why she wanted Evie there. She’d probably get more money from Papá, child support on top of alimony. It was the same old story. Her mother had always put herself first, and that was never going to change. Not now, not ever. Tears prickled. Evie glanced up at the light in the ceiling, trying to suck the moisture back in her head.

  “Don’t be sad, okay? We’re going to have a lot of fun when you get here.” This whole act of finally trying was just what Rhona had to do to get paid.

  Evie reached over and yanked the cord out of the Wi-Fi router. She was done with this conversation.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Oskar’s Journal

  She’s got a way about her

  Her eyes are like

  Where did she go?

  Every lyric I write

  comes out like a cheap knock-off

  of things already said

  better

  by somebody else.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Evie

  After spending the day trying to drown her anger with paint, she hauled her awkward load over the hill, using her knee to push the canvases up as they slipped from her grip.

  Maybe Agnes would be willing to work with her on this, or maybe she wouldn’t.

  But one thing was for sure: one way or another, Evie’s paintings would be gone when her papá got in from work. She’d been thinking about it since she hung up with Rhona and she had decided. There was no way in hell she was using those paintings to get into a school she didn’t want to attend.

  Wind blew through the trees in the orchard, echoing its emptiness. Her pulse thumped in her neck as she searched around and behind her, welcoming the distraction from her shitty afternoon. Looking for him.

  Ridiculous.

  It wasn’t like an earthquake had made them bond or anything. It was instinct. Survival. She needed to get over herself and stop making it more than it was. Gulping a breath, she opened the front door and prepared herself to see him. Agnes looked up from behind the stove as Evie stumbled in like a flamingo on ice skates, trying not to drop the three canvases in her arms.

  Th
e shop was spick-and-span again, all traces of earthquake gone.

  “He’s outside, lass.” Agnes went back to stirring her recipe on the stove. “Over at the lighthouse.”

  Evie regained her balance and played dumb. “Who?”

  A crinkle pinched Agnes’s mouth. She wasn’t going to play along.

  Evie approached the counter. Maybe her expression conveyed how silly she pretended to believe that was. “Yeah, I’m not here for him. I actually came to make a business proposition.”

  “Oh?” One copper brow rose slightly above the other.

  Evie dropped the canvases on the front counter, then rubbed the sore spot on her forearm where the wood had dug into her skin and left an angry red mark. “I noticed the other day that you have some paintings for sale. I was wondering if you’d be interested in selling mine.”

  A frown pulled Agnes’s mouth into a semi-scowl.

  “On consignment, of course,” Evie quickly added. “You’d get a percentage.”

  “I don’t know, lass. The villagers go to Reykjavik for art. We get lots of tourists here from the Ring Road, but they don’t really come to buy paintings. Those back there have been collecting dust for months.”

  “Oh.” Evie’s stomach sank. “Maybe you could just display them? For a little while? If they don’t sell, I could come back and get them.” She spread them out on the counter, face up.

  Agnes glanced down, and then did a double take. Triple take. She dropped the ladle in the pot and stepped closer to get a better look. The wrinkles around her mouth smoothed out as her lips parted. She stared, wordless, at the three paintings—the little boy in the orchard, the redhead with dirt under her nails, and the one Evie had painted today while she binged on the cherries Agnes had given her: a red-trimmed lighthouse standing bulwark at the ocean’s frothy tiptoes, with the aurora borealis swirling ribbons of green and purple through a glittery night sky.

  Evie had never even seen the Northern Lights, but this morning, she saw them in her head as though she’d experienced their glory hundreds of times. It was the kind of impossibility that made her want to dart behind the counter and retrieve the poem she’d found after the quake—if it was still there—and hold it up to Agnes and demand What does this mean? While cherries tell tales?

  Agnes gawked, clutching the hem of her apron. “These are…” Her thick neck bobbed a little as she swallowed.

  “I’m not a professional or anything. I just do it for fun.” Evie fidgeted, embarrassed, not quite sure how to take Agnes’s reaction. This had been a colossally idiotic idea. She didn’t know what she’d been thinking. Nobody wanted to buy her art. It was forgettable to everyone but Abuela. Maybe she so desperately needed to believe she was good at it that she’d invented this theory that the cherries were telling her how to paint.

  “They’re astounding.” Agnes let go of her apron to trace the canvas. “I’ll display them.”

  “You will?” Hope and surprise sprouted anew in Evie’s chest.

  “I can’t promise they’ll sell.” Agnes cleared her throat. “But I’ll put them up in the sitting area. See what happens.”

  “Thank you!” Evie squealed, clapping her hands and bouncing on the balls of her feet. If she was being honest with herself, knowing Oskar would see them was the most exciting part. Maybe he’d think of her when she wasn’t around.

  “What are your rates?” Agnes asked, grabbing a pen, still looking at the paintings from the corner of her eye.

  “Rates?” Agnes may as well have spoken Icelandic. Evie hadn’t thought that far ahead.

  “What would you like to charge for them, lass?” Annoyance dampened her voice as she cocked her head to the side, wild red flyaways surrounding her sweaty forehead like strawberry sprouts.

  “Oh, that.” Evie bit her lip. “I don’t know. Whatever you think is fair?”

  Agnes dropped her pen and propped her fists on broad hips. “You want to sell your paintings but you don’t know how much you’ll be wantin’ for ’em?”

  Okay, maybe she should’ve planned this better. The thought of actually selling them hadn’t really been the point. She just wanted them to put them out of Papá’s reach. “I don’t know the going rate for things like this here. Maybe you set the price, and keep 10% of the sale.” There was more of a question mark than a period at the end of her suggestion. Agnes peered down at her, irritation at her business sense—or lack thereof—pretty apparent.

  “Okay, lass. Follow me.”

  They gathered the canvases and took them to the sitting area of the store. Agnes rearranged books on the shelves behind the couch. The same couch Evie had crouched behind with Oskar during the quake. Blood rushed to her cheeks and she pushed the thought away.

  Once a space was cleared, Agnes placed a canvas there, under a recessed bookshelf light. She did it twice more for the other two, then stepped back and admired the painting of the little boy in the orchard, then the young woman in the dirt.

  “What made you paint these?” Her voice seemed hoarse and distant, guarded.

  Evie tried to decipher her reaction, to reconcile it with her own suspicions, but Agnes didn’t give much away. “I have no idea. There’s something about your orchard. It inspires me.”

  “Well, then.” Agnes stared at her, lines creasing around her smile. “Check back as often as you like.”

  She returned to her post behind the counter. Questions buzzed on the tip of Evie’s lips. Do you know this little boy? Is he Oskar? Is the young woman you?

  While cherries tell tales… She hadn’t been able to put that phrase out of her mind.

  As much as she would’ve liked to stay and ask, the fear of coming off completely insane stopped her. So she nodded to Agnes as she left.

  When the door shut behind Evie, the alluring pluck of strings slowed her feet through the orchard. The song echoed through the breeze and tapped her on the shoulder. Familiar—the tune she’d heard the first day she visited the shop. Her heart sped like a metronome set to allegro assai.

  She turned and followed the sound around the foggy pond, through the cotton grass, toward the lighthouse, feet crunching softly beneath her. As she got closer to the smoke billowing from behind the painted white brick of the base of the lighthouse, the rise and fall of the song grew louder.

  Evie couldn’t walk away without getting a better listen. A few silent steps through the soft evening shadows confirmed her suspicion: Oskar was playing a ukulele. He sat poised on a rock, his back to her. She watched the muscles around his shoulder blades move under his gray shirt as he played.

  Like a creep, she tiptoed to the side of the lighthouse, hiding in the shadow of it as she listened. He played it like he’d written it. She closed her eyes and smiled as the ting-ting of plucked strings took her someplace else: someplace she actually wanted to be. In that moment, she couldn’t imagine the notes of any song coming from an instrument other than a ukulele.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Oskar’s Journal

  Smoke burns my eyes, so I close them,

  joint dangling between my lips as I play.

  The potency renders me weightless as I strum.

  I play the song I wrote

  like I’ve known it since birth.

  But leave the lyrics here, in my journal.

  I have to put the emotions somewhere.

  Sometimes I wonder if they’re imaginary—

  these feelings trapped inside me—

  until I give them life with ink or notes.

  I write them down to make sure they’re real.

  She’s the reason I finished the song,

  my unattainable muse.

  The way her hair moves on the breeze

  inspired the opening;

  her always busy mouth

  wrote the notes for the bridge.

  The sensation of her body pressed against me

  as the earth shook beneath us

  was exactly what I needed

  to finish the chorus.
r />   What a pathetic bastard

  I have become.

  Something rustles behind me

  and my eyes fly open.

  I twist my body

  and glance over my shoulder.

  There she is,

  frozen on halted tiptoes.

  I stare at her through a self-inflicted haze.

  Her dark hair shrouds her shoulders.

  Red beret hugging

  the top of her head.

  Red.

  Why’s it always red with her,

  like she knows it’s my favorite color?

  Maybe I’m imagining things.

  Or maybe this song conjures desires.

  I nod at her

  try to act nonchalant.

  But underneath,

  I’m chalant as fuck.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Evie

  Evie was so busted spying.

  “Um. Hi.” Squeak. Wave.

  So smooth, Evie. She pulled her beret down over the crown of her head, wishing it would swallow her up and spit her out in Florida.

  Behind Oskar, brushstrokes of pink and purple and orange swirled under a hovering fog of slate, touching the horizon at the sea. She could actually see the ocean up here, and it came as a surprise to her. She’d known it was somewhere beyond the lighthouse, but she’d never ventured far enough to see it was this close, within walking distance of the orchard.

  Flames from the firepit licked the sky, a sort of shaky haze shimmering at the meeting point of orange and gray. The sun never really set here, but it took intermittent siestas behind the dark clouds, creating a brilliant color palette in its shadows. She framed it in her memory, promising herself she’d put it on canvas later.

  With a graceful, calculated slowness, Oskar lowered his ukulele to the ground next to him and pulled the cigarette—or was it a joint?—from his lips, dropping a tattooed arm by his side. His glassy eyes trailed to her feet and then back up to her face.