Lillian brought three gifts. First, a trio of rings her own mother had given her, not the finest pieces but they would mean something, she hoped, and they sparkled like a young girl should want, one ruby, one emerald, one sapphire, each with a tiny diamond at its center. The bands were gold and skinny, good for young fingers that didn’t puff or swell. When Lillian’s father had given them to her mother after she closed her shop, Lillian had thought, Why bother now? Why not give her something when she could still appreciate it, wear it out to parties? She was partially right—her mother had lived only two more years—but mostly wrong, she understood now, not only because her father hadn’t had the money before that time but because he hadn’t yet felt the need to give them. Last week, in the office of her analyst, Dr. M., Lillian had come to the realization that gifts were mostly for the people who gave them.
During her first session, lying on his couch, Lillian had waited for Dr. M. to tell her something. She had grown impatient. It seemed he should have answers. But by now, her fourth visit, she was used to the fact that he mostly asked questions, which she then tried her best to answer. It turned out she knew a lot about her own life, which shouldn’t have surprised her, she supposed, but did, which was another thing, perhaps, to discuss with Dr. M. But for now she was agonizing over what to give the girl. It was nearly her first thought when Henry told her. A granddaughter! The details about pear trees and robbers slipped right past her. A gift! Might a dress be more appropriate than jewelry? Or maybe a beautiful box, to hold trinkets? Dr. M. interrupted her to ask, “Is it possible with these gifts that there is something else you mean to say?”
She could not think how to answer his question. She went on to describe her mother’s rings, and in describing them to decide they were right. But later, it struck her that Dr. M. was wrong. She didn’t mean to say anything. She meant to change the girl in some way, leave a trace of herself, a mark.
This was the sort of thing she wasn’t sure she even wanted to know about herself. It led to all the dresses she’d given Bea, the hairpieces and stockings and assorted undergarments she likely never wore.
Lillian had not told Henry about Dr. M. She was fully clothed on his couch, of course—though she had wondered, the first time, she could not deny wondering. She was a woman, he was a man, here was a couch, he gestured for her to lie down. It was impossible to know what was expected of her! But that was not the point. The point was money, or rather Henry’s way of thinking about money: Either you bought a thing with your money or you saved it. If you paid for a service, it should be necessary, or at least measurable in some way—school for Bea, Fainwright for Bea, the hair salon for Lillian, who was too old for all the rest. If Lillian wanted to fix her nose, as she’d been talking about since the war, Henry would pay for that. But how could she argue that going to Dr. M. was necessary? She wasn’t clearly troubled. What proof would she have that it had worked? In Dr. M.’s office on Clarendon Street, amid the heavy furniture, behind the heavy door, reclining on his couch, Lillian forgot to hold her stomach in. She entered a loose, woozy state, as if she could be anywhere, anyone. This sensation crept up on her outside their sessions, too, Dr. M.’s baritone singing into her thoughts, But why? Why did you lie to the women at the club? Is that really so? And what is it you dream?
The second gift was from Estelle. Estelle had been unsurprised that Lillian and Henry weren’t bringing her to meet Bea’s baby, but not unhurt. She had given a twenty-dollar bill to Lillian that morning, and asked her to please pass it on to the girl. Lillian had protested—it was nearly a week’s wages—but Lillian held firm. So Lillian had that, too, though she’d stuck it in a little box with paper and a bow to make it look less crass than paper money.
The third gift was a doll. In the car with Henry and Albert, on their way to meet the girl, clutching her gifts, Dr. M. asked, Are you sure? The doll had been Bea’s, one of many Lillian had given her, though Bea had never especially liked dolls. This one had been sitting for years in her old bedroom, looking at the window. It was a collector’s doll, more valuable perhaps than the rings, with pale, porcelain cheeks, rosebud lips, blue eyes, yellow hair. For the trip to Gloucester, Lillian had put it in a white dress and tied back its hair with a pink ribbon. She held it in the crook of her elbow. But as the car neared Niles Beach, she started to doubt the wisdom of her choice, not just now but twenty years ago, when she’d given it to Bea. Not only did the doll look nothing like Bea, it was the very opposite of her, in every respect.
Lillian looked at the side of Henry’s face. His cheeks had slackened since the news about the girl. Even his chin looked more relaxed. He tapped his fingers on his leg. The worst gift Lillian had ever given Bea came back to her now. It was the day of Bea’s discharge from Fainwright. In a new mink coat Lillian waited, torn between satisfaction and alarm: Bea was done with this; but what would she do now? What could she be? At last Nurse Lugton appeared at the door to the reception lounge, holding Bea’s hand, and Lillian led Bea out to a waiting car as darkly tinted as the limousine that had disappeared her to Gloucester. Bea did not look at her. She looked out her window. Lillian applied lipstick, which cracked at once—it was deep winter by then. As the car left Fainwright’s grounds and pressed toward the city, she said, “Don’t worry. Estelle made you soup. I bought you a new robe.” She paused, looking out her own window, at black trees half etched with snow. There had been a storm, but the sky was blue. The robe waited at home on Bea’s bed, wrapped in tissue and ribbons. It was long, and mauve, and made of cashmere—Lillian had spent a full week shopping for it. She had missed her last visiting hour with Bea so she could find her the perfect robe. Outside the car, the trees began moving fast. She rested a hand on her daughter’s leg and urged, “Darling, it’s from Milan. It’s soft enough to wear all day.”
What did you want from her?
I must have wanted her to stay.
Now, again, a car. Trees. Hedges. Then they had turned up Ira’s drive and Lillian, reaching automatically into her handbag, realized she had forgotten her lipstick.
“I don’t have my lipstick,” she said. “I left it in my other purse. I planned to wear that purse but then I changed my dress. I’m so stupid! How could I have forgotten? I never forget. How do I look? How do I look?” And Henry, looking at her carefully—always, he looked carefully, when other women’s husbands glanced or ignored—said, “Beautiful.” And Albert, turning in the front seat, said, “He’s right.” But Lillian didn’t even know why she’d asked because she could never believe them.
Why not? Why can’t you?
“I can’t get out of the car,” she said. “I won’t, I can’t. I can’t look like a dead lady when I meet her. She’ll be frightened! She’ll hate me. How could I forget? I had days to prepare. . . .” And so on, until the driver pulled the car to a stop and Lillian, seeing her granddaughter’s face, so like her daughter’s face had been at one time, childish and bare, inquisitive and brave, waiting for her life to begin, was quieted by her own tears. The doll was wrong, she understood, because it symbolized a baby. When Albert opened the door for her, she left the thing in the car.
• • •
Lucy had not seen a grown woman cry openly, but that was what her grandmother did now. At last week’s piano lesson, Mrs. Cohn had taken her aside to say, “My mother means well, but she can be a little standoffish,” so Lucy, once she figured what standoffish meant, had prepared herself for that. But not for this: the woman’s shoulders jumping under her coat, tears dripping from her chin. Most disconcerting, she didn’t bother to cover her face with a handkerchief. (Lillian had left that, too, in the other purse, with the lipstick.) She stared at Lucy as if hungry for her. Lucy might have yelped had soft hands not enveloped hers then—Mr. Haven’s, cupping and smoothing Lucy’s hands as if they were rare jewels. She had never known a man to have hands like her grandfather’s. He murmured something about pleasure, then disappeared, leading Mrs. Haven away from the group, then Mr. Cohn was introducing himself with a warm, easy smile. He did not refer to their first meeting on Leverett Street—instead he began to ask Lucy entirely normal questions about school, which had started up again. And what grade was she in, and who was her teacher, and what was her favorite subject? Mrs. Cohn had said Mr. Cohn was not her father but Lucy couldn’t help searching his face for some evidence to the contrary. His features were sharp, his ink-black hair combed into neat waves, his eyelashes dark as a woman’s, his cheekbones tall. Lucy wondered if her own cheekbones could be described as tall, if maybe this was why she had succeeded as a boy in the quarries for as long as she had.
“I’m very good in math,” she said hopefully, but Emma’s clear disapproval—at Lucy’s boast, at her secret, deep hope, which shamefully Emma could see—made Lucy close her mouth, and Mrs. Cohn, who had been standing next to Lucy all this time without saying a word, appeared to be in some kind of shock, and the four of them stood around in a stunned sort of shyness for a moment until Emma asked Mrs. Cohn how Mr. Hirsch was doing and Mrs. Cohn answered that he was well. Actually—emerging from her daze—he was very well. He was walking again, not far but walking. He was up on the terrace, eager to meet Lucy. And to see Emma, she added. She took Mr. Cohn’s hand, as if for balance. At last Mr. Haven led Mrs. Haven back into the circle. Her eyes smudged with makeup, her hands trembling, she held out a blue velvet box to Lucy.
Lucy looked to Emma, who nodded.
Inside the box were three golden, sparkling rings.
“They’re lovely,” Lucy said. And they were. Janie or Anne or Maggie would gasp. They would flap their hands on their wrists, commanding everyone to ooh and aah. But Lucy’s thought was that the rings must be worth something—maybe a lot. “Thank you,” she said.
Mrs. Haven drew a ragged breath. “You . . .” She paused. Lucy waited. But her grandmother said nothing more. She handed Lucy another box, wrapped in a satiny, dark blue bow, then closed her mouth, swallowed audibly—a wet click—and, almost as if unbeknownst to her, began to smile. It was a tight smile at first, but soon her lips parted to reveal her teeth, and then her tongue, and then her obvious delight.
• • •
Lucy would wait to open the second gift. She was being ferried up to the terrace, where Mr. Hirsch sat, a lumpish man with a blanket on his lap. She felt tired suddenly, walking toward him. So many people to meet, and for what? She had wanted to come, but wasn’t sure, now that she was here, what was happening. Did they expect she would visit regularly? Be part of the family? She couldn’t tell what that would mean, or even what sort of family this was. There were no other children, as far as she could tell. Cousins had been mentioned, but weren’t to be seen. The brothers’ surnames didn’t match, nor did their appearance: Mr. Haven had a thatch of coal-colored hair, Mr. Hirsch one white wisp winging at his ear. They were rich. Richer than anyone Lucy had ever met. And they were Jews. Lucy had never met a Jew, though apparently, at least somewhat, she was one.
Ira stared at her with such wonder that she flinched at first. He reached for her and she bent, relieved when his kiss was dry, quick, and stubbly. “Ahhhh,” he said, holding her away again. “Henry’s granddaughter.”
What could Lucy say to that? The entire situation was strange enough—why did it need saying, and with such drama? She felt at once overimportant and tiny, as if the adults were playing a game whose rules she didn’t know, and she was their little checker.
• • •
Sometimes a change changes everything that came before it, too. For Ira, this was like that: it was as if a new color had been thrown across the past ten years, as if the energy he felt now, the optimism, was retroactively applied, so that when he looked back, his mood was better than it had in fact been. He felt expansive. The baby had not been drowned. Bea had not drowned it. She had left it in the care of the pear thieves! Henry was here, and Lillian, who for the first time since Ira had known her had nothing to say. And Emma, whom Ira had missed. She was drained of color, but of course.
Lucy Pear. What a name. Found amongst Ira’s Braffets, imagine that! How horrible he’d been, to think Bea capable of drowning her. She looked so like Bea Ira felt a chill run through him—but her character, he thought, her essence, the pit of her, was different: if Bea was made of compartments, separated by doors that rarely opened, the girl was all one piece. Yet Bea had been like that, too, at this age, when she was Bea-Bea, running around with Julian. Seeing Lucy made that time vivid again. But Lucy wasn’t Ira’s, and he felt surprisingly fine about this—he had no desire whatsoever to rescue her, or even to know her particularly, only to know that she was.
Ira had his own granddaughter now, and perhaps that made a difference. Marlene Aimée, born to Julian and Brigitte on September 15 in New York City. It seemed a very serious name for a baby, but that would sort itself out.
But it wasn’t just the babies. It was Bea, too, who had started playing again, who as she watched the girl now seemed to have slipped from her fortress, forgotten all self-censorship: her mouth hung open, her eyes were clear. And it was Vera, who had at last—quite abruptly—lost her solidity inside Ira, meandered into something else, a gentle, scintillating wind through his limbs, waking him up, pushing him on. A staggering relief. A blessing. Finally, he was giving them back.
• • •
Bea knew Henry’s speech would fail from the start. She had never seen him so nervous, picking at his sleeves, shifting from one shiny Haven shoe to the other. “On this lovely autumn day . . . I must confess I never imagined . . . a pleasure and an honor . . . befitting, to overlook such a prosperous harbor . . .” He was trying to welcome everyone but was uncertain of his terms—it wasn’t his house, after all, and what was he welcoming them to? He was used to speaking, but about matters he’d already pronounced upon, meetings he’d already run in some other incarnation, versions of versions of the same speech. He ended abruptly, with a perhaps involuntary bow: “We are so very pleased to meet you.” But he forgot to address this to Emma or Lucy—instead he looked at Bea, who looked back, aware suddenly that her father had aged. His large hands shook at his sides. The shaking was drastic. It appeared oddly celebratory, almost musical, like his fingers were sending off little fireworks. He looked happier, she thought, worn to a soft patina.
“Anyone for tea?” asked Lillian. She had stopped crying and stood awkwardly, not knowing what to do with her hands now that she had given up her gifts. When no one answered, she said brightly, “I do. I need a cup of tea. I’ll just say it. I’m saying it. Henry, come. Help. We don’t want to protrude.”
Bea saw Emma bite back a grin. She smiled, trying to catch Emma’s eye, to tamp down the thumping at her clavicle: Please, look at me! It was so childish yet powerful, her longing for Emma’s attention, for some sort of acknowledgment. Each Saturday Bea went to Leverett Street to play piano with the children, but Emma barely looked at her. She stayed out on the porch with Lucy, acknowledging Bea only to say a curt “Good morning” and “We’ll see you next week.” Even when Bea had brought Cousin Rose to look at Emma’s wrist, Emma had thanked Rose heartily yet said little to Bea. She had spoken to her plenty back when she was working in the house, but Emma had had her secret then, Bea supposed—it had been a thing she held over Bea. She had pretended to be kind but now she could not.
Still, Bea liked the visits to Mrs. Greely’s house. She liked the disorder, and that no one ever remarked on it, liked that Mrs. Greely was so straightforwardly batty, which somehow did more for Bea than any treatment ever had to convince her of her own basic sanity. She liked teaching, too. It had been far simpler than she had imagined, to begin to play again: with Janie sitting beside her and the other children waiting, she had had to do it, to set her thumb upon the middle C and feel the ivory give as easily as water, and then it was done and she was doing it, just as she had begun speaking again, once upon a time, after her muteness. It was surprisingly easy, to make a different choice. It was easy to remember. She liked teaching the Murphy children. She liked seeing Lucy Pear, even if the girl shied from her and didn’t want her lessons. Bea brought a check each week, enough to cover groceries and more, which she handed to Emma inside a bag of something else, bread or sometimes chocolates, and Emma was cashing the checks now—so there was that. Bea had not managed to raise the issue of Lucy’s wound, or Mr. Murphy, though each time she passed the house on her way up the road a slickness rose at her neck. He didn’t want to meet her, clearly, and Bea didn’t especially want to meet him. She couldn’t imagine what she would do with her eyes—look at where his leg had been? Not look? Would she apologize? Would she ask him what he had to do with Lucy’s leg? And if she didn’t, wouldn’t she fail again, as she had failed from the beginning, to protect her? But Lucy’s injury was hard to categorize, and relatively minor—you could not go leaping to conclusions about such things or even asking questions without seeming hysterical. She could raise it with Emma but feared Emma would take it badly, as if Bea were accusing her, if not of inflicting the wound then of turning the other way. So she’d said nothing, only handed Emma the bag with the check tucked discreetly inside. She behaved in the most appropriate way possible, she thought, given the circumstance. She tried not to intrude. Protrude.
She could not expect Emma to like her. So what was it she wanted, when she stood here trying to chase down Emma’s eyes? What was it Bea wanted her to acknowledge?
Bea couldn’t have said exactly, but Emma knew. Even as she avoided Mrs. Cohn’s eyes, she understood that the woman now grasped what she had done, and that she was sorry, and sorrowful, and grateful, that she felt she owed Emma her life. Mrs. Cohn couldn’t say this, which was fine by Emma. For her part, she would not tell Mrs. Cohn that she had seen how she suffered. She would not tell her she was forgiven. There were certain things—simple, yet immeasurable things—that could not pass directly between two people without seeming false, even crass, and these were among them.
“I’m happy to make your tea,” Emma said to Mrs. Haven. “But first . . .” She squeezed Lucy’s shoulder. “Tell Mrs. Cohn where you’d like to go.”
Lucy stared at Emma. She had said nothing about wanting to go anywhere.
“It’s all right. Tell her.” Emma tilted her chin toward the end of the terrace, where the stairs led down into the trees. “You’d like to see the orchard.”
Lucy’s cheeks flushed the color of plums.
“Oh!” Mrs. Cohn cried, a beat too late, as stunned as Lucy. She smiled. “Of course!”
“It’s all right,” Emma said again, giving Lucy a tiny, invisible push. “Go on. I’ll be in the kitchen, then I’ll be right here. I’m not going anywhere.”
• • •
The orchard was not as Lucy had understood it to be. In the dark, it had seemed to her vast and pungent, a whole country of pears. But it wasn’t an orchard so much as a field with a few pear trees in it. They were bare and gray. The middle one—Lucy’s tree—looked no different. The ground was splotched with rotting fruit and overgrown with thorns. Mrs. Cohn talked about how the soil was this and the pears were that and then she started to say that she wasn’t actually sure about anything she was saying because she’d heard it so long ago, and from Uncle Ira, when Lucy, unable to listen any longer, broke in to ask, “Will someone clear it? Before it’s back to brambles?”
Mrs. Cohn stopped walking. “I don’t honestly know.” She pointed. “That’s the old fish pond my aunt Vera used to keep.”
“Did she die?”
But Mrs. Cohn was looking up, at the tree above her, or the sky. Lucy caught a low branch and started to pull it back and forth as she watched the long stretch of Mrs. Cohn’s neck, its slight undulation as she spoke. “I told you, before, that I forgot about the pears this year. That was untrue.”
Lucy said nothing. It seemed to be a mild lie.
“I thought you should know.” Mrs. Cohn looked at her. “I don’t forget.”
Lucy nodded. “Okay.”
“Shall we sit?”
Lucy sat. A look of regret came over Mrs. Cohn’s face. “Are they painful? The prickers?”
“Not really.”
Slowly, Mrs. Cohn knelt next to her, taking care to tweeze the brambles back with her fingers, though once she was seated in her little clearing, they popped back into place, surrounding her. She smiled an effortful smile. A gull called. From the slide of its shriek, Lucy could tell it was diving. She watched a caterpillar crawl onto her mother’s skirt. It was the black and gold kind, so fat and furry its progress was barely perceptible—Lucy knew it moved only because its colors rippled, and because after a little while it rounded Mrs. Cohn’s knee and began the long trip up her thigh. For a long moment Lucy allowed herself to imagine that this was her life, that there was no Emma or Janie, no quarry, no hoarding of pennies, that it was just Lucy and her mother sitting in a field together until they decided to walk back up the hill to their enormous house. She imagined piano lessons in her own living room, trips to Boston, marble floors in department stores, plush red seats in theaters.
“Lucy. Remember when you showed me the wound on your leg?”
The caterpillar paused. It lifted its fat head and swung it around.
“Was it your . . . Was Mr. Murphy responsible for that?”
Woolly caterpillar, Lucy remembered. Peter had taught her that. Also, Peter had shown her how the gulls got their meat. Look, he’d said, pushing her cheek to make her turn, focus: he wanted her to see how one gull dropped a mussel from the sky and another gull stole it before the first could fly down.
“Lucy?”
She didn’t like how Mrs. Cohn said her name. Loo-See. The syllables were too distinct, the thing broke into pieces. Lucy had shown her. But that didn’t mean she wanted to talk about it. She wanted it to be solved, wanted it to stop. There was a new blister on her other side now, in the crease where her leg joined her hip. But it, like all the others, didn’t look so bad. It could be from banging into a chair at school. It could have happened in any number of ways. It could be that Roland never meant to hurt her. It could be he couldn’t stop himself. He loved her. She knew he loved her. She felt shame roll through her, a black, heavy sludge through a small, small space.
“Lucy. I don’t mean . . . What I’m saying . . . I want to help you.”
Lucy jumped up. She was sure she should run, and equally sure that she had nowhere to go. The field seemed private, the road hidden, but Lucy had walked from here to Lanesville—she understood now that neither was as it appeared. Any distance could be closed, any secret stolen. Everything she’d had for herself—the quarry, Emma’s nighttime wanderings, Roland’s punishments, Lucy’s own beginnings—had been taken from her, or exposed.
She hoisted herself into the lowest notch of the middle tree and began to climb. Up, the sky blue, open wide. But the tree was short, the trip over too quickly, and from the highest branch she couldn’t see anything she hadn’t been able to see before. Mrs. Cohn looked up at her and Lucy saw that it wasn’t easy for her to watch Lucy up there, balanced, no hands, and so she stayed, the sun hot in her hair, and called down: “You want me to come live here, with you? That’s what you’re saying?”
“No! No.”
Mrs. Cohn’s vehemence was startling. “You wouldn’t want me. . . .”
“Of course I would! I would. But Emma . . . What I’m saying—”
“She would never.”
“Never.”
“Plus you don’t want me.”
“Lucy.”
Loo-See.
“What I’m saying . . .”
“Why don’t you just say it!”
Lucy waited. She wanted to be scolded, punished, but she didn’t know this—she knew only that the sun was hot and her throat full with the shame. Then she saw that Mrs. Cohn was standing. She wasn’t looking at Lucy anymore but at something ahead of her, something Lucy couldn’t see. She noted the top of her mother’s head, the pale part amidst the dark, kelpy hair, how much paler it was than the rest of her. Lucy had the urge to curl up in that narrow place, protected and unseen.
“Lucy. Come down.”
This was said firmly, by Emma. It had been her job from the beginning, to enter quietly, and now she had done it again, she had found she couldn’t not do it, she had placed the teacup and saucer in Mrs. Haven’s lap and excused herself, followed them, heard everything.
Lucy stayed in the tree.
“This is what you were trying to tell me? He’s done something to her?”
Mrs. Cohn’s voice was a threadbare string. “You couldn’t have known.”
“Of course I could. I’m her mother.”
Lucy crouched in the branches. She stared at her shoes, which Emma had polished for this occasion.
“You’re not to blame,” said Mrs. Cohn.
“We’re all to blame.”
They were silent. The gulls, having moved on, called gently. Lucy watched as Mrs. Cohn discovered the caterpillar crawling up her arm and did not scream but—surprising Lucy, and comforting her, and breaking her heart all over again—took the thing and cradled it in her hand.
“Lucy. Come down.”
But she couldn’t think how to go down, not with Emma knowing what she now knew. Not the motions of it, feet, arms, hands, and not what she might do once she was there. She couldn’t imagine meeting their eyes, or letting them touch her.
They waited.