Sweet Hush

by Deborah Smith

  “Need to cut back, start pruning,” I overhead myself say out loud, as I stood at the kitchen sink.

  “Pruning what?” Smooch asked from the table. She looked at me suspiciously. “You all right?”

  I turned around and she frowned at me. “Just working in my personal orchard,” I said.

  I wandered my dark house like a sleepwalker that night and finally headed down a short foyer into a living room of soft leather couches and little end tables with glass apples for feet and a big stone fireplace mantel decorated with Davis’s academic plaques and sports trophies, beneath a portrait he had paid some artist to paint. It had come from a photograph of his father and me at a country club dance a fruit wholesaler had sponsored down in Atlanta. Davis had been so proud to give us that portrait for our wedding anniversary one year. In it, his father looked down at the world like a handsome and successful family man, dressed in a tuxedo. I looked glamorous and happy in a green silk ball gown. What a lie.

  But in the wall of a corner, half hidden behind a peace lily in an old clay pot on a primitive pine washstand that had been Mama’s only family heirloom, hung an old black-and-white photograph of her and my daddy on their wedding day. They looked dirt-poor and run-down. Mama was fourteen and pregnant with me. Near that picture was a framed snapshot of me, pregnant, with Davy Senior and the beat-up, juiced-up Impala. A scrawny teenage girl with auburn hair and gunslinger eyes, next to the gunslinger. I’d hung both those pictures in my fine living room near the big portrait so I’d never forget the truth.

  I turned on a lamp and halted, startled. Davis and Eddie were asleep on the couch with her head on his shoulder, oblivious to the lessons learned from two generations of young marriages and hard times. Just . . . happy.

  “Here,” Jakobek whispered. He had followed me. He had a crocheted throw in his hands, trying not to look whimsical with yarn apple trees blooming under his callused fingertips. I nodded, and together we gently covered the grown children before us, then slipped out of the house.

  Desire is warm and pulsing, a living, invisible force with tendrils as tough as the ivy that had taken over one side of the house. It had already latched itself to my skin, and to Jakobek’s. Something we’d just have to deal with, but I didn’t know how. I grew into wanting Davy over years of childhood friendship. By the time we had sex we were carrying more baggage than most teenagers and then the next year we were the parents of a baby son. Since Davy died I’d never met a man I had trouble forgetting. Until now.

  JAKOBEK AND I drank apple wine at a campfire near the goldfish pond, sitting carefully on opposite sides of the fire, but watched the stars together.

  I dreamed that night about a soldier I killed in a place I won’t name. It’s enough to say my men and I wiped out a small group in hand-to-hand combat, bloody and personal. It was one of the last missions I took part in before Al announced his campaign for President and I left the army. After the fight we limped among the bodies, retrieving any I.D. we could find. I staggered over a dead boy—he couldn’t have been more than fourteen—and when I felt inside the pockets of his Russian-made camo jacket I found a mangled snapshot of a pretty girl with the hood of her cloak pulled aside and long, black hair streaming around her smile. Her name and a word that meant ‘my betrothed’ were written on the back.

  She’ll always wonder how he died, I thought. I stood there, holding that picture in my bloody fingers and feeling like my heart would empty all my life onto the ground and no one would know, either. An enemy was made up of forces too strong to be left alive—men who dealt in death, who did harm to innocent people. That boy had only been their slave, not one of their kind. I thought about him and his widowed girl for weeks after that. To be in love so much that you carried a picture of her with you when you fought. And when you died. I tracked her down at her family’s home and sent the photograph through a local man I could trust. I included this anonymous message: He was brave. He was a soldier. He thought of you.

  When I woke up from that dream I searched my duffel bag for the folded picture of Hush in her orchards. I took out a fat leather passport wallet I carried on me wherever I went, and tucked her photograph among the cards and credentials that told every country in the world who I was.

  He was brave. He was a soldier. He thought of you.

  On Sunday evenings, after the hard work of the weekend was over, we often built a bonfire in a clearing of the orchard and sat around, a dozen or so of us—employees, family, and me, all tired and dusty and smelling of apples, while a huge kettle of stew or chili simmered on the fire. We’d eat and sip coffee and discuss the weekend’s profits and problems. Hold our post-game debriefing, like a football team. Sometimes, someone would play a guitar. Sometimes we’d sing—mostly old Appalachian hill music, twangy and almost Celtic in its rhythms, comforting in its basic philosophies.

  At first, everyone was shy around Eddie at the camp fire. Then one Sunday she suddenly burst into an off-key rendition of Staying Alive, while Davis stood solemnly and did a John Travolta disco move. Everyone fell over laughing. Even Jakobek smiled.

  “She’s a good girl,” one of my cousins whispered.

  I nodded.

  One by one, everyone drifted away until only Jakobek and I were left by the fire. I watched with helpless appreciation as the shadows and firelight played across his face and body. He stood and looked down at me, then gauged the privacy of the surrounding night around us. “I have something for you. I’ll be back in a minute.”

  I SAT FORWARD ANXIOUSLY on an old wooden bench and hugged myself inside my wool jacket. He disappeared into the darkness. He was gone a long time, and when he returned he carried a soft leather briefcase. Its sides bulged. He sat down on the earth next to my feet, opened the briefcase, and pulled out a thick file.

  “These are Al’s medical and financial records. No one outside the family ever sees these. No one. You want to know about his prostate trouble? His bad investments? Read it here.” He laid the file on my lap, then pulled out another. “Edwina. Anti-depressants, anger management counseling, plastic surgery.” As I sat there in speechless silence, he pulled a third, smaller folder from the briefcase. “Me,” he said, and laid that file atop the others on my knees. “Documents on every assignment I’ve ever had in special operations, including some in places our government swears we never go. Hand that file to the right journalist and international relations would never be the same.”

  “Why are you doing this?” I finally managed.

  “Because it’s the only fair thing. You feel violated by Edwina’s tactics. You’re right. Here’s a little bit of payback.”

  “Jakob, I—”

  “Read the files. What else you do with them is up to you.”

  Trembling, I gathered the files in my arms, stood, and went to the fire. One by one I burned them. Jakob moved close beside me. I felt his gaze on me. I watched his file go up in smoke. “I know all I need to know about you from the bees,” I said.

  It took me a few days to get my equilibrium back after the file incident, though I doubted I’d ever really get both feet balanced on ordinary earth again, not with TV vans parked at the end of the farm’s driveway and people still jumping ass backwards in excitement over Eddie, and my deep problem with being the center of scrutiny, not to mention my bad relationship with Edwina. And of course, what was happening between me and Jakobek.

  Smooch still disliked him, and the rest of the family remained wary. Davis said little but clearly considered Jakobek bad news—and a threat to his father’s place in my life. Sons don’t deal well with their mothers’ other lives as women, no matter how much they claim to be at ease with the idea, and no matter how good a man the mother picks out to replace the father.

  Jakobek was a good man—kind, strong, funny, and smart. He read thoughtful novels, he sweated well, and he was apt with the blue-collar rituals of the men in my fami
ly, yet there was an elegance about him, the hint that he is comfortable in the company of fine things and ideas. He was old enough to appreciate the sanctuary of me and the farm, young enough to take me away from it if he wanted. He had a prime man’s body, fleshed out, hard but cushioned, going craggy in the face, his skin burnished with a patina of textures, his hair still thick but coarse. I didn’t want a smooth piece of fruit; I liked my apples unpolished, more sensation for the lips. When I’d kissed him he’d tasted full and rich and able.

  Not that I could let myself take another bite of that forbidden fruit.

  I swore it. I swore. I really did.

  “Have you seen Jakobek?” I called to people out the window of a white-and-red Sweet Hush pick-up truck. They shook their heads. Everyone in town knew him, just as they knew Eddie. I swung the truck into a space in front of Dalyrimple Hardware and Garden and called out the window to other passersby as they came out of small shops around the square. “Have you seen the Lt. Colonel? He came up here with Davis and Eddie to go shopping.”

  To act as Eddie’s bodyguard, but I didn’t mention that. Eddie hated being trailed by Lucille And Crew. So instead, sometimes she was trailed by Jakobek. At least he didn’t dress like an off-season golfer. I chewed my lower lip and watched puffs of my own breath in the chilly October air.

  Where was he? I hated when people didn’t carry cell phones.

  I sat there in the truck muttering to myself (“The irony, Jakob, is that you’re never off my mind but I can’t get you on the phone. Why can’t you be psychic? Oh, yes, that’s what I need—a man I can’t stop thinking about who’s psychic,”) as he walked up from behind the truck, so I didn’t see him until he suddenly stood by the open window, watching me quietly with a small smile. It was one of those moments when you catch someone from the corner of your eye and instantly form your mouth into a fake shape, as if you were just flexing your jaw, not holding a one-woman conversation about him. I feigned looking in the rearview mirror and checking my lipstick, except I don’t wear lipstick to the hardware store. Those days, I barely had the wits to remember deodorant. I wanted to sniff my armpits quickly, but there was no delicate way to fake that.

  “I heard you thinking,” he said. “Anything wrong?”

  “There’s a tractor trailer in my yard. From Washington. Filled with wedding gifts for Eddie and Davis. A tractor trailer, Jakob.”

  He frowned. “It’s Edwina’s work. She’s trying to make nice with Eddie and rub your nose in it.”

  “Well, she did a good job.”

  Just then, Eddie and Davis walked out of a shop called The Baby Boutique, their arms full of packages. They saw me, and smiled. I looked at Jakobek. “I gave Eddie a shopping spree at The Baby Boutique.” I paused. “I should have given her the entire store.”

  I WAS RIGHT TO feel upstaged. Inside the tractor trailer was (among hundreds of other forwarded gifts) a sterling-silver, elephant-shaped soup tureen with ruby tusks, from the king of Thailand. A major movie star had sent an entire twenty-piece place setting of the finest monogrammed china. The CEO of a multi-national conglomerate sent a small, framed sketch of some scraggly olive trees. By Picasso.

  And let’s not forget the presents from Edwina and her rich relatives. Silver services and crystal stemware and fine linens and heirloom furniture and more. And a secretary—human, that is, not the wooden kind. She recorded all the gifts and managed hundreds of thank-you notes, while Smooch, Eddie, and Davis prowled through stacks of beautifully wrapped boxes and crates. Smooch routinely clutched her chest and squealed. Eddie’s own gasps of delight made a steep contrast to Davis’s deepening silence.

  Jakobek and I stood outside the trailer’s open back. “This isn’t good,” I whispered.

  He nodded. “It’s never good when a man realizes it would take him a year’s salary to buy his wife the solid-gold teapot her aunt gave her for fun.”

  “Look what my Aunt Regina sent me,” Eddie said happily, coming to the trailer’s open back door to hold up that gleaming, gold teapot. “Isn’t this just—” she looked at Davis, and her voice trailed off, then—“isn’t it just so ostentatious? I love my Aunt Regina, but this thing is absurd.”

  Davis eyed her with pensive gallantry. “Maybe we can install a special simulated wood grain shelf for it when we can afford our own house trailer.”

  “The teapot really is hideous,” Eddie insisted, trying very hard to look sincere. “And most of this other frilly accoutrement—well, it goes back, you understand? Mother will have it stored, donated to charity, whatever. Some of these items definitely qualify as political gifts, and they have to be accounted for—”

  “No. It’s all yours, honey, and you shouldn’t feel odd about it.”

  “It’s ours, Davis. Not mine. Ours.”

  He shook his head. Stubborn pride had set in. Eddie’s face began to color. I leaned close to Jakobek and whispered, “We have to do something.”

  “Lock it up,” he called. Everyone looked at him, startled. He nodded. “Lock it up in storage. Send the thank-you’s, then decide what to do with everything, later.”

  Eddie nodded. “That’s a wonderful idea, Nicky. Very practical.”

  Davis shrugged. “Yes. I just need some time to think about this. Absorb the idea of it all.”

  “Sweetie, I understand,” Eddie crooned.

  He took her in his arms. “If you want the teapot, you keep the teapot. We’ll get a real pine shelf for it.” She laughed. Davis and she kissed.

  Jakobek and I looked at each other with grim relief. “Damn Edwina,” I said.

  Chapter 14

  EDWINA WASN’T DONE. She had allies.

  Jakobek and I came in from the front barns one cool, golden October afternoon to find Smooch and Gruncle staring as several Japanese gentleman unloaded crates from a delivery truck parked near my goldfish pond in the backyard.

  “They’re bringing you gifts from the Emperor of Japan,” Smooch whispered. “Lucille cleared them for delivery. But I don’t know—”

  “Goddamn sneaky, murderous Japs,” Gruncle said, and Smooch had to lead him inside the house before fifty years of Asian-American diplomacy went up in the flames of an old fighter’s memories.

  The spokesman of the Japanese contingent bowed to Jakobek and me. Not quite knowing the protocol, I followed Jakobek’s lead and bowed back. “Let me go get my son and his wife—”

  “Oh, no, ma’am.” The man spoke perfect English with a charming Japanese accent. “These are presents for you, Mrs. Thackery—you are the much admired mother of the groom, a business lady of immense respect. The Emperor has been reading all about you. He and his wife would be so grateful if you would accept this token of their esteem.” He opened a packing container and I looked down into water containing two daisy-yellow koi fish. I knew enough about koi to recognize championship markings. “They’re beautiful. But I can’t—”

  “They need to swim freely in their new home, Mrs. Thackery. What a shame to leave them and their friends in these cramped containers much longer. Not healthy for them.”

  “Accept the fish,” Jakobek whispered.

  “I am most grateful,” I said awkwardly, and bowed again. “But they wouldn’t be safe here. I lose about five fish a year.”

  “Lose?” the Japanese spokesman said, frowning.

  I leaned close to him, as if the fish might overhear. “To hungry raccoons.”

  “Oh!” He brightened. “Mrs. Thackery, my men and I can build an excellent anti-raccoon fence around your pond.” He paused. “But if I may—what is a raccoon?”

  JAKOBEK AND I STOOD in my downstairs guest bath, a tiny space containing cast-off marble tile I’d found at a quarry up in North Carolina, a sparkling white commode, good oak cabinetry burnished by my housekeeper’s weekly waxing, a white porcelain sink, antique apple botanicals in applewood f
rames on green-apple flocked wallpaper, and now, on the back of the commode, a small ceramic statue of a monkey wearing a fedora and an overcoat. Edwina had sent it. “A mother-to-mother gift,” her card said. “Enjoy.”

  “She sent me a statue of an ugly monkey dressed like Humphrey Bogart at the end of Casablanca,” I said. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  Jakobek rubbed a trace of a smile off his mouth before he answered. “I think it’s a special piece made by an African sculptor she likes. Probably worth a lot of money.”

  I looked up at him quietly. “This is the artistic equivalent of giving me the finger. Jakob, there’s a raunchy old saying among country folk. ‘Either shit gold or gild your turds.’ This is Edwina’s way of saying her world is filled with treasures, of saying to her daughter and my son, ‘Look what you can have if you’ll just come over to the other side of the fence.’ Or worse, ‘Eddie, look at the world you could have if you leave your husband.’”

  Jakobek looked at me with quiet confidence. “So what will Hush McGillen Thackery do to set the record straight?”

  I knew a challenge when I heard one.

  “THIS IS GOING OVERBOARD,” Davis yelled above the rumble of a dozen two-ton, open-air fruit trucks. Eddie pressed her hands to her throat. Dressed in a Gucci sweatshirt and overalls, with her pregnant tummy beginning to show, she looked so young and vulnerable. “Hush, you don’t have to send an extravagant gift to my parents! My mother was just trying to provoke you!”

  Well, it worked, I thought as I climbed to my feet atop a mountain of apples feeding into soft beds of wood shavings padding the trucks. I surveyed the storage bins in our main barn. Nearby, Jakobek guided a conveyor belt filled with red apples into the next truck. “These apples aren’t just a gift,” I called down to Eddie. “They’re messengers. They’ll remind your mother that you are the fruit of her womb. Now, here’s my question to you: Are you willing to go along with the apples?”