Leaving Lucy Pear(70)

Her vehemence startled Emma. How had she come to care so much about the pears? She took Lucy gently by the shoulders and began, “Sweet girl, we’re going to be fine, it’ll all be fine, you don’t have to go dressing . . .” She wanted to tell her the money from Sven’s was enough, tell her part of growing up was accepting what you couldn’t change, but Lucy pushed her hands away. “It is not fine!” she shouted, and started to sob.

Emma waited then, until Lucy began to tell her, between choking gulps of air, not about the pears or the quarry but about a trip she had taken a few weeks ago, late at night, while the rest of the family slept. She described a ride in a truck full of whiskey, her near capture, a man’s foot on her back, heavier than her carry bag at the quarry, his foot bruising her ribs. There was some kind of search, lights beaming through the coat that covered her, the man’s foot pressing harder, a deal struck, her nose smashed against the truck floor. Emma hardly breathed as Lucy spoke. Apparently it wasn’t just the job: Lucy had a whole life, a species of courage, Emma knew nothing about. You found a newborn and she seemed blanker, somehow, than the newborns you had birthed, free of any history, exempted from her own ties, more yours. But of course she wasn’t any more yours than they were, which was to say less and less all the time.

Still, Emma did not understand where the story was heading, not until Lucy described climbing out of the truck at the Eastern Point Yacht Club. Even then, Emma could not believe it. How could she? She was late, as usual, with laundry. She had not yet found the torn newsprint with Beatrice Cohn’s likeness in the pocket of Liam’s pants. But then Lucy told her about slipping through the gap in the honeysuckle, walking up through the pear trees, swinging a leg onto the terrace of the house where she had been born.

She looked at Emma and said, with sudden coherence: “I saw my mother.”

“Lucy . . .” Emma started to say, but Lucy went on, not noticing or caring about Emma’s astonished tears.

“She looks just like me! Anyone could see it! Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I—”

“What were you doing working for her?”

“I—”

“How could you not have told me she was right there all this time?”

“Lucy—”

“You take me from her, then you go back and don’t even tell me?”

“I didn’t take you.”

“You did!”

“She left you.”

Lucy glared at Emma. Her breath was ragged from crying, her hair wild, poor Lucy with her wild hair Emma had no idea how to care for.

“Where did she leave me?” Lucy asked quietly. She had started to shiver.

“In the orchard.”

“Where?”

“Under a tree.”

“Which tree?”

“The middle one.”

Lucy shivered harder now. Emma reached for her hands, and when Lucy didn’t pull away, she blew onto them. She rubbed the girl’s arms, but nothing helped. She wasn’t cold, she was inconsolable, she was weeping without tears. “Wait here, don’t go anywhere,” Emma said, and ducked out of the shack. She had forgotten Roland, filling the doorway of the house.

“Excuse me,” she said.

“What’s going on in there?” he asked.

“Later,” she said. She tried to squeeze past him, but he tilted on his leg, blocking her way.

“Now,” he said.

“She found Mrs. Cohn,” Emma said quietly. She was so determined to get inside she only noticed the fact of Roland giving way. She didn’t see the rise and fall of his Adam’s apple, or the color leaving his face. On her way back out, she nearly tripped on him—he had lowered himself to sit on the threshold—but she ran on toward the shack, afraid Lucy would be gone.

She was there, still shaking. Emma, wrapping the blanket around her shoulders, said, “This is what you were bundled in. When Peter found you.”

Lucy looked at the blanket.

“It’s yours,” Emma said.

“Peter?”

“Yes.”

Lucy nodded. She appeared to be thinking hard. The chatter of her teeth slowed. “What is she like?” she asked.

Emma didn’t understand at first. The question was almost bewilderingly obvious. It was so simple, and yet impossible to answer. What was Beatrice Cohn like? She wanted to be kind, for Lucy’s sake, but not overly kind, for her own. She wanted to be truthful, but Beatrice Cohn did not hold still in the mind. She was sensitive, selfish, fearful, overconfident; she was a Jew; she was homely, lovely, ancient, immature; her kindness was helplessly aggressive; she was lonely. “Lonely” would be the word, if one was forced to sum her up. But that did no one any good.

Finally, Emma said, “She means well.”

She would not forget how Lucy’s face sagged with disappointment then. Instantly, Emma regretted the paltriness of her answer. It had been so ungenerous! So sterile and meticulous as to be a lie. Yet Emma could not think how to say anything else. Lucy’s curiosity, however natural, was painful to behold. Emma felt as if a scaffold were buckling inside her.

“I almost died walking home, you know.” Lucy’s tone was heartbreaking in its matter-of-factness. “I thought I was going to die. And then by the time I got here the sun was rising and you hadn’t even noticed I was gone. You were asleep!” She lowered her voice. “I noticed every time you left in that car.”