In the Age of Love and Chocolate (Birthright)

by Zevin, Gabrielle

  “Wherever did you get a kiwi?” I asked.

  “I have my ways,” he said.

  * * *

  And then he brought me an enormous peach—pinkish orange and perfect, without a single bruise. He took a knife from his pocket. He was about to cut it, but I put my hand on his. “I think I’ll eat the whole peach, but promise not to watch me. I can tell it’s going to be messy.”

  “As you wish,” he said. He took out his book, and he began to read.

  The juice ran down my chin and hands, as I had expected. The peach was pulpy and so good I almost felt emotional as I ate it. I laughed for what felt like the first time in months. “I’m so dirty,” I said.

  He took his handkerchief from his pocket and handed it to me.

  “Was this from your mother’s orchard?”

  “Yes, it seemed a particularly good peach, so I saved it for you. But as for the rest, I take Natty, and we trade my mother’s crops at the other farms.”

  “I didn’t know this many kinds of fruit could grow in the same season?”

  “See for yourself. You could come with us,” he said. “It would mean leaving this chair, though.”

  “I am attached to this chair, Win. We have a relationship.”

  “I can see that,” he said. “But Natty and I wouldn’t mind having your company if the chair could spare you. Your sister is worried about you.”

  “I don’t want anyone to worry about me.”

  “She thinks you are depressed. You don’t eat. You don’t much want to go anywhere. You are so quiet. And of course there’s the matter of this chair.”

  “Why doesn’t she say this to me herself?”

  “You’re not the easiest person in the world to talk to.”

  “What do you mean? I’m easy to talk to.”

  “No, you’re not. Once upon a time, I was your boyfriend, or have you forgotten?” His hand was hanging over the side of his chair and his fingertips grazed mine. I moved my hand.

  Suddenly, he stood and offered me his hand. “Come with me,” he said. “I want to show you something.”

  “Win, I’d like to but I move pretty slow now.”

  “It’s summer in upstate New York, Annie. Nothing moves very fast.” He offered me his hand.

  I looked at the hand, then I looked at the boy attached to it. I was a bit scared. In those days, I didn’t like to go places I hadn’t been before.

  “You still trust me, don’t you?”

  I grabbed my cane from under my chair and then I took his hand.

  * * *

  We walked maybe a half mile, which was a long way when your foot did not move without a reminder.

  “Are you sorry you asked me to come with you yet?” I asked.

  “No,” he said. “I am sorry for quite a few things when it comes to you, but not this.”

  “Sorry you ever met me, I suppose.”

  He did not reply.

  I was out of breath. “Are we almost there?” I asked.

  “Only about another five hundred feet. It’s in that barn right up there.”

  “Is that coffee I smell?”

  Indeed, Win had taken me to a coffee speakeasy. On the back counter, an antique espresso machine steamed and chirped, blithely unaware that it was in the process of manufacturing a drug. The top of the machine was a dented copper dome that reminded me of a Russian cathedral. Win ordered me a cup, and then he introduced me to the owner.

  “Anya Balanchine?” the owner said. “Naw, you’re too young to be Anya Balanchine. You’re a bona fide folk hero. When are you going to do for coffee what you did for chocolate?”

  “Well, I—”

  “I’d like to stop running my coffee shop from a barn someday. Free coffee for Anya Balanchine. Hey Win, how’s your dad?”

  “He’s running for mayor.”

  “Give him my regards, would you?”

  Win said he would, and the owner led us over to a wrought-iron table for two by the window.

  “People are impressed with you in these parts,” Win said.

  “Listen, Win, I’m sorry if I’ve ruined your vacation. I didn’t know you’d be here. Your dad said you’d only be staying for a couple of days in August.”

  Win shook his head, then stirred cream into his espresso. “I’m glad to see you,” he said. “I hope I’m a little helpful to you.”

  “You are helpful to me,” I said after a while. “You have always been helpful to me.”

  “If you wanted more, all you would have to do is ask.”

  I changed the subject. “You are a senior next year, and then medical school?”

  “Yes.”

  “So you must have taken premed. What’s my prognosis?”

  “I’m not a doctor yet, Anya.”

  “But looking at me, what do you think? I would like an honest opinion of what a person sees when he or she looks at me.”

  “I think you look as if you’ve been through something unimaginably terrible,” he said finally. “However, I suspect if I met you today, if I were walking into this coffee shop, having never seen you before, I’d walk across this room and if no one was sitting across from you and maybe even if someone was, I’d take off my hat and I’d offer to buy you a cup of coffee.”

  “And then you’d meet me, and you’d find out bad things about me, and you’d probably walk right out the door.”

  “What things could I possibly find out?”

  I looked at him. “You know. Stuff that sends a nice boy in a hat careening off in the opposite direction.”

  “Maybe, maybe not. I’m still stupid when it comes to dark-haired, green-eyed girls.”

  On the way back, it began to rain. It was difficult to maneuver my cane on the moist and loamy ground. “Lean into me,” he said. “I won’t let you fall.”

  * * *

  The next day, I went back out to the deck. I had found an old copy of Sense and Sensibility on the bookshelf in the office, and I had decided to read it.

  “You read a lot these days,” Win said.

  “I’ve taken it up now that I’m a shut-in.”

  “Well, I won’t interrupt you,” he said.

  He lay down on the chair next to mine and picked up his book.

  His presence distracted me from my reading. “How is school?” I said.

  “You always ask that. We spoke of it yesterday.”

  “I’m interested. I didn’t get to go to college.”

  “You could still go.” He put his hand over my face to shield it from the sun. “You should get a sun hat, by the way.”

  “It seems too late for that.”

  “Which? College or sun hats?”

  “Both. I meant college, though I’ve never been a hat person,” I said.

  He took off his own hat and set it on my head. “I’ve never known a girl who needed a hat more. Why wouldn’t you want an added layer of protection from the sun and everything else? By the way, you’re only twenty.”

  “Twenty-one next month.”

  “People go to college at different times,” Win said. “You have the money.”

  I looked at Win. “I’m a shadow crime boss. I run nightclubs. I don’t see college in my future.”

  “As you like, Anya.” He set down his book. “No. Do you know what your problem is?”

  “I suppose you are going to tell me.”

  “You have always been far too fatalistic. I’ve wanted to say that to you for the longest time.”

  “Why didn’t you? Get it off your chest. It isn’t good to keep your feelings inside, I should know.”

  “When I was your boyfriend, I had an interest in avoiding conflict.”

  “So you let me think I was right?” I said. “The whole time we were together?”

  “Not the whole time. Sometimes.”

  “Until that last time, and then you were out the door.” I tried to make this a joke. “For a couple of days, I thought you might come back.”

  “So did I. But I was so angry wi
th you. Besides, wouldn’t you have hated me if I had come back? That’s what I told myself. If I relent, she won’t love me anyway. So better to have some dignity.”

  “High school relationships aren’t meant to last forever,” I said. “It seems like we’re talking about other people. I don’t even feel sad anymore when I think of it.”

  “Aren’t you the most fantastically evolved young adult on this deck?” He picked up his old paperback book.

  “What are you reading anyway?” I asked.

  He held up the book.

  “The Godfather,” I read.

  “Yes, it’s about an organized-crime family. I should have read it years ago.”

  “Are you learning about me?”

  “Indeed,” he said with mirth in his voice. “I finally understand you.”

  “So?”

  “You had to open that club and you had to do everything you could to make it succeed. All that had been decided long before I ever met you.”

  * * *

  In August, the weather turned miserable. I could not wear my long dresses and sweaters anymore, which meant showing more of my skin than I was comfortable with. Win’s mother suggested that we go swimming in the river. She insisted that swimming would be good for my recovery. She was probably right, but I didn’t know how to swim. I had been born in New York City in 2066, the summer the pools had been drained to conserve water. “Win could teach you,” Ms. Rothschild said. “He’s an excellent swimmer.”

  Win gave his mother a look that was a pretty close approximation to what I was feeling about the idea of him teaching me to swim.

  “Jane, I would rather not,” he said.

  Ms. Rothschild shook her head at her son. “I don’t like it when you call me Jane. I’m not clueless, Win. I know the two of you were romantic once, but what difference does that make? Anya should learn to swim while she is here. It will be good for her.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t even have a swimsuit.” I had never needed one.

  “You’ll borrow one of mine,” she said.

  In my room, I put on her swimsuit, which hung on me. The swimsuit was pretty modest in cut, though I still felt incredibly exposed. I threw on a T-shirt, but you could still see a bit of the scar that was below my collarbone.

  If Win noticed it, he did not say.

  Not that he would have. The boy had always had manners.

  When I got into the water, he didn’t say much actually. He told me to get on my stomach. He held me up. He demonstrated how to kick and how to move my arms. It took me no time to catch on. I was good at swimming, which was easy compared to walking.

  “It’s too bad they didn’t have a swim team at Trinity,” I said. “Maybe I should say it’s too bad there weren’t any pools in New York City.”

  “Maybe your whole life would have been different.”

  “I would have been a jock,” I said.

  “I can see that. The famous Balanchine aggression would have been useful in athletic competition.”

  “Right. I wouldn’t have dumped that lasagna on Gable Arsley’s head. I would have had productive channels for my anger.”

  “But if you hadn’t dumped that lasagna on Gable’s head, how would I have known where to come and meet you?”

  I swam a bit away from the deck. After a minute, he swam after me. “Not so fast,” he said. “You’re still a beginner.”

  He grabbed my arm and pulled me to him so that we were facing each other in the water.

  “Sometimes,” he said, “I think my mother is as manipulative as my father.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “My mother, with her absurd and transparent notion that I should teach you to swim. And my father … I think he has the idea that if he can get us back together, then he’ll have redeemed himself for 2082.”

  “Ridiculous man,” I said. “It was really 2082 and 2083.”

  “But one must ask the question: Is the only reason that stupid boy ever liked you because his ambitious father objected? Isn’t that what you always told me? My point is, maybe Dad’s plan is faulty. Because maybe those cute young people need obstacles, you and me. Maybe once the star-crossed become unstar-crossed, Romeo gets bored with Juliet.”

  “Well, there are still a few obstacles,” I said. “I was married, and no matter how you look at it, it was basically a marriage of convenience.”

  “You’re saying I should consider the fact that you are a person of low morals, ethics, and character to be an impediment.”

  “Yes, that is what I’m saying.”

  He shrugged. “I knew that about you a long time ago.”

  “And I killed someone. In self-defense, but still. And my body is broken. I’m pretty much like a fifty-year-old woman. I move about as fast as my nana.”

  “You look okay,” he said. He tucked a curl behind my ear.

  “And the timing is wrong. I want to come to you when I am strong and beautiful and successful.”

  “Do you want me to say that you are all those things still, or will you roll your pretty green eyes at me?”

  “I will roll my eyes at you. I have a mirror, Win, though I try to avoid it.”

  “From where I am, the view is not that bad.”

  “You haven’t seen me naked,” I said.

  He cleared his throat. “I’m not sure how to respond to that.”

  “Well, it wasn’t an invitation, if that’s what you’re thinking. It was reportage.”

  “I’m”—he cleared his throat again—“I’m sure it’s not so bad.”

  “Come closer,” I said. I thought I’d settle the matter. I lowered the scoop neck of my T-shirt to show him the large, bumpy pink scar from my heart surgery and the one from where the sword had gone all the way through.

  His eyes grew wide and he inhaled sharply. “It is a bad scar,” he said in a subdued voice. He put his hand on the scar that ran below my collarbone, which was dangerously close to my breast. “Did it hurt?”

  “Like crazy,” I said. He closed his eyes and looked like he might kiss me. I pulled my T-shirt back up. I swam over to the dock, my heart beating just short of an attack, and I climbed up the ladder as quickly as I could.

  XXIII

  I BID FAREWELL TO SUMMER IN A SERIES OF UNCOMFORTABLY EMOTIONAL VIGNETTES

  “I HATE WHEN SUMMER ENDS,” Ms. Rothschild said, waving her hand in front of her face. I had found her crying in the farm’s library. “Don’t mind me, though. Come sit for a spell.” She patted the place on the couch next to her. I returned Persuasion to the shelf—I’d worked my way through all of Jane Austen that summer—and then I sat down. Ms. Rothschild put her arm around my shoulders. “It has been a good summer, hasn’t it? You look a tiny bit plumper and rosier, I think.”

  “I feel better,” I said.

  “I am glad to hear it. I hope you have been happy here. It has been delightful having you and your sister. Please come back anytime. I am thankful to my ex-husband for thinking of it. I always liked you, you know, even when Charlie was so dead set against the match with Win. We argued about it quite a bit back then. He insisted it was just a high school romance, and I said, no, that girl is special. But these many years later, Mr. Delacroix has come to the opinion that I was right, which he always does, by the way, and I know we both have had our fingers crossed that you and Win might find your way back together.”

  “It’s not to be.”

  “May I ask why, Anya?”

  “Well … I was widowed less than a year ago, and I was so badly hurt. It’s hard to imagine a relationship with anyone until I feel more like myself. And, the truth is, romantically, I question a lot of the choices I’ve made. I’ve made so many mistakes while thinking I was doing exactly the right thing. I think I need a break from relationships.”

  “That is probably sensible,” Ms. Rothschild said after a pause.

  “Besides, I think what Win truly feels toward me is nostalgia, and he is good to me because of our shared past,”
I said. “You raised the world’s most decent boy, so congratulations for that.”

  “I had help,” she said. “Win forgets, but Charlie was a pretty good father most of the time, too.”

  “I can believe that,” I said.

  “Can you? Most people look at me like I’m insane when I defend that man…” She shook her head. “Do you know what? I am done listing Charles Delacroix’s attributes. I’ve been defending him nearly my whole life. To my friends. To my parents. To our son. I am done.”

  “We spoke of you quite often in Japan. He still loves you, you know.”

  “Yes, but that isn’t enough. I’ve been disappointed in him for twenty-five years. I am finally done with that, too,” she said.

  “I think Mr. Delacroix has changed.”

  “But then the election will happen and he’ll go right back to the way he was before.” She nodded to herself, then she took out her phone. “Have you ever seen a picture of Win’s sister?”

  I shook my head and looked at the screen. She had light brown, wavy hair, and blue eyes like Win’s. In the photo, she was rolling those eyes. Aside from the expression, I didn’t see a resemblance.

  “The problem with meeting new people is not that you might not like them, but that you will like them too much. Now that I know you, I’ll worry about you in the city, Anya,” Ms. Rothschild said. She clasped my hand in hers.

  “I’ve been on my own for years. I’ll be fine.”

  She looked at me, then she brushed my hair away from my forehead. “I’m certain you will be.”

  * * *

  When I went back to our room, Natty wasn’t there so I went outside to look for her. I found her crying in the gazebo. “Please, Anya, leave me alone.”

  “What is it, Natty? What has happened?”

  “I love him,” she said.

  “You love who?” I asked.

  “Who do you think?” She paused. “Win. Of course, Win.”

  I considered this information. “I knew you had a crush on him when you were a child, but I had no idea you still did.”

  “He is so good, Annie. Look how he has been this summer, trying to make you feel better, even after so much time has passed.” She sighed. “He still sees me like a kid, though.”

  “How do you know? Have you spoken to him?”