AUGUST WAS MANY THINGS. One of them was raspberry season.
With their own bushes fruitless till next year, Isabelle had to buy the berries at the farmers’ market. She was determined to make something delicious and intoxicating for Finn. She didn’t know what his family would think, but she wasn’t too worried about it. The family was firmly for change at the top, and Roosevelt was running on employment and repeal in the November election—not necessarily in that order.
To get enough raspberries to make a decent amount of moonshine, Isabelle cleaned out the berry sellers at the Rye market, the twins Pug and Mitch. “Are you making jam?” one of the sisters asked her, possibly Pug. “They spoil in three days if you don’t eat them or cook them, especially in this heat. You don’t plan to eat twenty pounds of raspberries, do ya? They’ll give ya a stomachache something wicked.”
“Pug is right, that’s a fuckload of raspberries, pardon my French,” Finn said when he saw her placing the overfilled wicker baskets in the well of the passenger seat and sitting above them with her legs tucked under her.
“Hmm,” she said.
“And excuse me, but aren’t the tubs you bought for these twenty pounds of berries only five gallons each? Math, anyone?”
“You don’t think a five-gallon tub can fit ten pounds of berries?” She crossed her arms. “How much does gallon of milk weigh, Mr. Banker?” He looked stumped. She tried not to laugh. “If you don’t know answer to such basic thing, math whiz, how can you be mocking me?” He looked even more stumped. “Instead of trying to be funny, you should think up explanation to tell your family for drink I’m about to make you.”
“Do they need an explanation? They’re not very observant.”
She glanced at him. “Aren’t they?”
“Not very, no,” Finn said, avoiding her gaze.
Before they began mashing, she had to make an airlock. She pierced a small hole in the lid, stuffed a cork into the hole so it fit snugly, and snaked in a metal wire through the middle of the cork to make an opening. She inserted the rubber tubing into the cork. One end of the tubing dangled inside the container, and the other end was immersed in a jar of water outside.
“What do we need an airlock for?” asked Finn.
“To release gases in raspberries.”
“Raspberries have gases?”
“When they ferment, yes.”
His eyes twinkled so brightly Isabelle wanted to kiss him. “We’re fermenting the raspberries?” he said, his grin from ear to ear. He almost looked as if he wanted to kiss her!
“What kind of pointless beverage would it be otherwise?” Isabelle stepped away slightly in case he could read female Ukrainian minds if he stood too close.
Finn rolled up his sleeves. “I’m ready for some mischief,” he said.
“Didn’t we already make all the jams we need?” said the practical Olivia, who had come out on the patio with her book to see what they were up to.
“In June we made strawberry jam, Mother,” Finn said. “This is to make raspberry juice. Or compost, as Isabelle likes to say.”
“Don’t tease the immigrant, darling, it’s not polite,” said Olivia.
“Then I am not very polite,” Finn whispered.
Isabelle disagreed. He was very polite. Exceedingly so.
“Will it store through the winter, son?” Olivia asked.
“Yes, Mother. Isabelle knows an excellent Ukrainian method for preserving the raspberries.”
“Oh, I’d like to hear about it,” Olivia said. “But from a distance.”
“Yes, it’s much messier than making jam,” Isabelle said. “We have to use our hands to make mash. Now, who wants to help?”
“Me, me!” said Junie.
“Me, me!” said Mae.
“Me, me!” said Finn.
How could you not laugh?
“No, no,” Olivia said. “Not on our back patio. We’ll be stepping in loose raspberries for weeks, and they stain. Please take your venture elsewhere.” She waved them to the far side of the house. “Do it around the corner in the shed area, Isabelle. You’ll be out of the way, and it’s right next to the shower in case you need a quick rinse. Back there, you can swim in them for all I care. I’m out on this patio far too often for such a mess.”
“You heard your nana, girls,” Isabelle said, lifting the heavy berry baskets. “Follow me. Olivia, do you want to come help?”
“Heaven forfend.” Grabbing her book, Olivia darted back inside.
Isabelle made Mae, Junie, and Finn wash their arms up to the elbows like they were doctors. She herself wore a sleeveless wraparound dress, but Finn, as always, was enclosed in a linen shirt with long sleeves. “Finn, come on.”
“What? I rolled up the sleeves.”
“No part of clothing can touch raspberries,” she said. “Berries will stain shirt permanently.”
“You’re asking me to take off my shirt,” he said, lowering his voice.
It was the dog days of August. Every day was boiling hot under the blinding sun. It made everybody’s language a little hot and dirty because the desires that pushed the words out of throats were hot and dirty also.
“I didn’t say that,” she said, pretending she didn’t know what he was talking about. “You do what you like, of course.”
“You want me to do what I like?”
“I didn’t say that. I said do what you like.”
“Do you want me to do what I like?”
“Finn.”
“Isabelle.”
The children were still rinsing their little arms under the spigot nearby.
“If you want to help, your arms need to be uncovered to the biceps one way or another, is all I’m saying.”
Finn unbuttoned and threw off his shirt and stood before her in a white tank top. His strong, sweltering arms, his chest, his neck all glistened. Six months of outdoor work had done wondrous things to his body. He was a lumberjack and a bricklayer all in one.
“Is that better?” He was all teeth. His light eyes were dancing.
She cleared her throat. “You’re not going to get yourself blood-red messy, so yes, I suppose.”
“You’re wearing a yellow dress, Isa,” he said, looking her over up and down. “How clean do you think you’re going to remain?”
“I’m not going to swim in the raspberries.”
“No?”
Isabelle was having a hard time meeting his teasing gaze. He was just teasing, right? The heat was ruinous. It made liquid of her brain.
She poured one basket of berries into the girls’ container and the other into her and Finn’s. She left the girls’ tub on the ground, put theirs on the table, and showed Mae and Junie what to do. “Use your little hands to squeeze the raspberries as hard as you can to release the juices. Don’t be afraid to make a mess, girlies.”
“Do you want me to use my little hands to make a mess, too?” Finn said.
“Silly Daddy, your hands aren’t little, they’re yuge!” Junie said.
“Dad is joking, June,” said Mae. “Learn what a joke is.”
“Your dad is trying to joke, girls,” said Isabelle. “Important difference.”
She stuck her hands inside the container. He stuck his in after her.
Immersed up to their elbows, tilted toward each other across the worktable, they pureed the berries with their occasionally interlocking hands. Isabelle’s gaze was aimed down into the soft warm red pulp. She didn’t know where his gaze was because she didn’t dare raise her eyes to him from this close. His head was less than a foot away! His face, his mouth less than a foot away. And what if he could read her mind from this distance? Isabelle fervently hoped not.
“How are we doing?” squealed Junie.
“Yes, how are we doing?” said Finn.
“Go check on your children,” Isabelle said, trying in vain to thin out her thickened voice.
“What would I even be looking for?” Finn said. Was it her imagination, or was he working to control his voice too? “I don’t know what I’m doing. How will I know if my kids are successful?”
“If berries are smooshed together in smooshy smoosh is how you know.”
Walking over, he glanced into the girls’ container. “Looks pretty smooshy smoosh to me.”
Isabelle applauded the girls’ efforts and sent them to the well on the other side of the house to thoroughly wash and then go upstairs and change before dinner. But after they ran off, she told Finn they would have to redo the girls’ mash. It was still too solid. “They’re little, they have no strength.”
“Not like me, right?”
“Let’s finish ours, we’re almost done.” She poured in half a jug of sugar and a gallon of water and told Finn to continue mixing the mash with his hands until it was blended.
“It doesn’t seem like juice,” Finn said. “It’s so squishy. You can’t drink solid chunks.”
“Squish it until there are no chunks left.” Their hands circled the tub, blending the sugar and water with the liquified berries.
“You’re telling me we’re going to put a lid on this thing and in a week it’ll be alcohol?” Finn said.
“Depending on how hot it’ll be, but yes.”
“It’s pretty hot, Isa.”
She kept her gaze firmly on the raspberries! “It won’t be particularly strong alcohol. To make it stronger, I’ll need to boil it and then distill it.”
After a moment of silence he nudged her head with his.
“What?” she said. But she didn’t look up.
“You’re going to distill this in our kitchen?”
She was very focused on her hands inside the bucket—and on his big, bare, tanned forearms pressing against her bare arms. “You’re right, maybe I should cook it on firepit outside instead.”
“Good idea,” he said.
“Shame, because boiling mash is one of best smells you’ll ever smell.”
“But not the best, right?”
She mustn’t look at him! “I said one of the best. Finn, you’re not mushing. You’re just . . .”
“What am I doing, Isa?”
“Nothing remotely helpful is what you’re doing,” Isabelle said, lifting her hands out of the bucket and shaking off the excess juice. Some of it landed on Finn’s white tank top.
“I wouldn’t play that game if I were you,” he said, lifting his own hands.
“No, stop!” She grabbed his forearms. “You’re going to get me filthy. Put lid on it.”
“Excuse me?”
“On tub. Put lid on tub and move into pantry. I’ll switch out containers. We need to hurry. We have evening watering to do and eggplant to pick.”
“Ah, yes,” he said, lifting the heavy container. “Watering. Eggplant. The farmer’s work is never done.”
They spent extra time methodically pulping the mash in the second container. Isabelle didn’t want it to stop. They were quiet until Finn spoke. “When Travis and I were fifteen or so,” he said, “I had a mad crush on a girl at the park, and I didn’t know how to tell her.” His gaze remained lowered.
“Oh yeah? So what did you do?”
“What do you think I should have done?”
“Told her, I suppose. Unless she already knew.” Her hands were near his, mixing, mixing. “Did your girl know you were in love with her?” she asked, staring at his lowered blond head.
Finn was silent. His gaze was on the raspberries. Presently he raised his eyes and stared into her face. Their gazes locked. “I don’t know, Isabelle,” he said in a deep low voice. “Does she?”
Isabelle! Your lover stands too close. Yes, the fields are burning, but you haven’t yet christened all the stars in the sky with his name. Be brave and run before the scales fall from your eyes. Or does his true heart remind you that you are still alive, that you want to live, that no matter how near the ground you eat and sleep, you still want a fairytale to make you fly through hoops of flame?
She couldn’t even raise her raspberry-soaked hands in surrender. “Finn, please,” she whispered.
He leaned forward and kissed her. Her arms trembled. His hands were still immersed in the raspberry mash, her wrists encircled in his clenched fists. He kissed her until she moaned.
“Finn, we can’t.”
“I’m well aware.” His mouth was on her. “But I can’t not.” His panting lips traveled to her throat, to her neckline. He rubbed his face into the swell of her breasts.
She tipped toward him, wobbling. “Don’t touch me.”
“You don’t want me to touch you?”
“With those hands?”
“Yes, Isabelle. With these hands.” He raised them out of the tub and held them splayed open in front of her, dripping with berry juice.
Everything was forgotten. Her red hands slid around his neck. She pulled him to her and kissed him madly. He threw his arms around her, clutched her, rent her wraparound dress apart, fondled her, her bare breasts cupped in his intense hands drenched with berries. Gripping her ribcage, he lowered his lips to her nipples, sticky with red hot pulpy sweetness. There was no control or order or cleanliness, no pretense or courtesy. There were no manners. There was no civilization. They tore at each other. His tank flew off. He pulled her around to his side of the table and rubbed his sticky chest against her sticky breasts, against her red hard nipples. She fumbled with the drawstring on his trousers, pulling them down, pulling him up into her avid hands. They both groaned. He hoisted her up on the table, sat her at the edge, and opening her hips, tugged her forward. She threw her legs around him. They couldn’t stay quiet. “Finn, wait, wait, we can’t!” They were out in the open. Anyone in the house, old and very young, could walk around back and find them on the worktable, flagrantly exposed.
Still coupled together, his hands under her, he carried her into the shower enclosure, hidden between the outside shed and the root cellar, and pushed her flat against the wooden stall.
“Bozhe Mii,” was all she could say.
“Oh my God,” was all he could say.
Her colt legs around him quivered but never faltered. She clasped him into her thighs as they tried desperately to suppress their noises except the panting, and the sloshing pulp of their hands, and their bodies crashing against one another. To dampen the sound and to smother the fire, with one hand still underneath her, Finn spun the lever with the other and forced the pump down to release a few gallons of hot August water from the shower head, drenching them. He pushed the pump down again. And again. And again. There came a flashpoint so extreme, he let go of her, delivering himself to her under a flood, just before she cried out for the world to hear. His hands holding her up lost their strength for a moment. Her legs, wrapped around him, never lost theirs.
The liquid slowed to a trickle, then to a drip. They stayed slammed against the stall with his lips at her throat. The only thing Finn whispered before he set her to the ground was, “Oh, Isabelle.”
They washed their red hands, their red steaming bodies, scrubbed soap on their throats, on their faces, between their legs. She was still wearing her yellow dress like a soaked, flung-open robe. He kissed her deeply, kissed her hands, threw on his clothes, still on the ground where they’d left them, and walked away.
Isabelle heard the squealing laughter of his children greeting him as he came around the house. To regain her composure, she pumped out the remaining water and stood under it for a few moments. Everything inside, from her soul to her loins, was on fire. Holding the wet dress to herself, she tiptoed, dripping, to her dusky little room and fell to her knees, pressing her face into her dress.
Afterward she dried herself as best she could and dressed, though it was so humid, her skin was wet before she tied the sash around her waist. She rinsed out the stained yellow dress under a spigot, hung it up, performed other rituals of organization to calm her hands and her nerves, and then stood in the side yard, smoking a cigarette, looking up at the sky, saying why why why.
She knew why.
But my God.
It was nearly five on a Saturday afternoon. He planned to grill some chicken and hamburgers, she planned to make a salad with potatoes, they planned to sit with eight other people, two of them his children, one of them his wife, and serve and spoon and sit and socialize, pass the peas, pass the beans, pass the beets, in between their impossible gestures all their dreams and screams smothering their pointless questions. The fields burned and they were left in the dirt. That was the answer.
She tamped out her cigarette and sealed the criminal mash that overrode all reason, that compelled her to negate all sense, that drove her to enter a new dimension of time and space—a realm where she wasn’t half destroyed.
She tried so hard to be circumspect and good, to be vigilant and proper, but her love for him poured out, flooding the fields and rivers.
It started with bloodshed, she thought, walking through the pantry to get the cucumbers and tomatoes before entering the kitchen.
Would it end with bloodshed?
Isabelle didn’t know how she got through dinner. Through sitting, chatting, smoking, cleaning up, making conversation. It was excruciating. She didn’t look at him, nor address him. She spoke no malapropisms and responded to no teasing. That was easy because there was no teasing coming from Finn. She cleaned and wiped and got ready for tomorrow. She wouldn’t even go into the fields for her usual last check for fear he would follow her. When it was almost dark, they listened to the Jack Benny Show, and she said goodnight and went up with the girls, where she stayed all night on their hard floor. She and Finn didn’t even have their ritual evening smoke! She stayed upstairs because she was terrified that he would come into her room, come inside without even knocking.
She was terrified that he wouldn’t.
On Sunday she barely dragged herself up and out at eight in the morning, as if she had pneumonia.
He’d already made a pot of coffee and was out in the fields. For reasons unclear, Vanessa sauntered into the kitchen. What was worse, facing Finn or facing Vanessa? Isabelle was about to find out.
“You’re up early,” Isabelle said.
“I don’t know what was wrong with Finn last night,” Vanessa said. “He tossed and turned nonstop! Usually he sleeps like a fallen tree. I barely got any rest because of him. I thought if I’m up anyway, I might as well have some breakfast. It is so hot, Isabelle.”
“I know.”
“Finn said he wanted to take the girls to the ocean to cool off. Will you go with him?”
Isabelle made some unintelligible noise.
“Maybe my parents and his will want to go too.”
“Schumann may be coming today,” Isabelle muttered. “And Lucas. I don’t know if they’ll want to go to beach. They probably don’t have any swimwear. I certainly don’t.”
“They still come only once a month, don’t they?” said Vanessa. “They were here just last Sunday. Remember Finn, Earl, Lucas, and you went fishing? I’ve been picking pike bones out of my teeth all week.”
Isabelle grunted.
“By the way, the girls told me you made thirty dollars yesterday selling eggplant—and then spent it all on raspberries?”
“Not all on, um, raspberries.”
“Thirty dollars is very good,” said Vanessa.
Isabelle shrugged. It was a lot of work for thirty dollars. She’d rather appraise a horse for a hundred. “Olivia’s eggplant is talk of town. Line was forty people before we even set up at our table.”
“Yes, Junie told me. I wouldn’t mind having some of those raspberries, though. Maybe with some whipped cream like you made at the party?”
“We don’t have any cream. Or raspberries. I’ll get you some next week.”
“What do you mean we don’t have any raspberries? You ate them?”
“We used them.”
“On what? And who is we?”
“Me—and your girls—and Finn.” Isabelle made sure to position two innocent children in the words between herself and her lover. “We’re making brew for winter. That compote we’ve been talking about.” Isabelle never looked at Vanessa as they spoke, pretending to search for a frying pan, a log for the fire, an egg. She wasn’t hungry, and she could barely drink her coffee. It kept coming up in her throat. The throat he had kissed so forcefully that her breath couldn’t escape her lungs. Even now, when his lips were no longer on her and she was chatting with his wife, she still couldn’t breathe.
In the fields, she went straight to Eleanor to help her pull the zucchini off the vine without ripping out the entire plant. “Gently, gently,” Isabelle said. She talked to Earl about his insect worries. The tin cans and chimes kept away the birds, but the aphids and locusts cared nothing for noise and were eating the leaves off his beloved tomatoes. “They come during day,” Isabelle said. “Most bugs are not nocturnal. In summer, we need to remove ripe vegetables at first light, definitely before eight. Bugs won’t eat green tomatoes.”
“You think I’m not here early enough?” Earl said. “It’s Sunday. Is there no day of rest on the farm?”
“Bugs unfortunately do not know Jesus,” Isabelle said. “But other thing we used to do in Ispas is leave two or three ripe tomatoes on vine for bugs to feast on. Insects are herd creatures. They follow first offender and leave rest of tomatoes alone.” Earl agreed this was a good idea.
Olivia kept digging up potatoes that weren’t fully grown. She was using the shovel, but she needed to crouch and feel for the potato with her hands and leave it if it wasn’t big enough. “Girls need to help you with this part, Olivia,” said Isabelle. “You mustn’t dig them yet. They are not ready. Mae, Junebug! Come here! Your nana needs you.”
Monty had gone fishing with Walter. They were out by the river, trying to catch another pike for a Sunday feast.
Finn was in the corn.
She pumped the water out of the cistern into the channels by the beds. She hoped it would rain soon. The reservoirs were dangerously low on water. The shower tank was bone empty.
She felt him before she saw him or heard him.
“Isabelle.”
“Don’t say my name like that.” She could hardly look at him, could barely speak, for how could you hide the truth? I need you inside me was truth. Everything else was a dirty lie.
“Like what?”
“Please . . .”
“Where were you last night?” He lowered his voice. “I looked for you.”
“Up with your children. I fell asleep.” She barely got two hours.
“Isabelle . . .” he whispered.
“We’re going to lose everything.”
“What’s everything?”
She swirled her arm to the field and farm.
“No, we won’t,” he said. “We’ll hide like we’ve been hiding.”
“It’s one thing to hide your heart . . .”
“Is this not also your heart?” He tilted his head to peer into her face. The expression in his eyes was imploring, adoring, overflowing.
“Finn!” Her legs were buckling. “If anyone catches glimpse of us speaking right now, they’ll instantly know what it means.”
“It can mean a thousand things.”
“No,” she said. “Some things can only be understood one way because they have only one meaning.”
He continued to gaze at her as if the rest of the world had fallen away.
“Finn, don’t do that . . .”
“Don’t do what?” he said huskily.
“Someone will see.”
“See what?”
“The way you’re looking at me.”
“How am I looking at you?”
She nearly moaned. “Before yesterday, I had some control over myself.”
“Not me.”
Her head was down. She took a stumbling step away from him. One more word and he might take her then and there in full sun in the dust by the well.
And what was even worse, one more word—and she would let him.
“I need to go help your mother,” she said hoarsely. “She is going to ruin our potato harvest. She needs to wait.”
“I can’t wait.”
She took another shaky step back.
He reached for her. His hand circled her wrist and squeezed. “Come with me to the barn.”
“Finn, you’re crazy!” She didn’t even pretend to pull away.
“Crazed, yes. Come with me behind the corn crib. For a cigarette.”
“That’s what you call it?”
“The hay inside the stables needs fixing. One of the gates broke. It’s an emergency. Come.”
“Some emergency. We have no horses.”
“We do, and they’re all about to get out. All of them, Isabelle.”
“My God, what are we going to do?”
“I’ll show you. Come.”
And so went the scorched-earth dog day afternoon when the world caught on fire.