His terrible accent hangs in the air.
Anna looks at him with contempt.
“Well,” he says. “Both of you wash your hands and come help Mother set the table.”
“Shut the door behind you,” Anna says.
* * *
—
It must be early. Thin rulers of gray light stripe my bedspread through the slats of the Venetian blinds. A mourning dove is calling for its mate. I lie in bed listening to its sad, hollow song. Anna is asleep. Low voices are coming from the kitchen. I climb out of bed and walk quietly across the linoleum floor. Our door is ajar. My father is at the kitchen table with his head in his hands. Granny Myrtle stands at the kitchen counter making a piecrust, her back to him. I watch her cutting butter into flour, trickling ice water in.
“There’s an eleven twenty bus on Friday morning. I looked up the schedule. It connects in New Haven.” She opens a cupboard and takes out a bag of sugar.
“Anna’s so angry with me.”
“Well, what on earth do you expect, Henry? She’s a fifteen-year-old girl who barely knows her own father. She’ll need a tennis skirt. We can drive into Danbury tomorrow.”
“Mother, tell me how to fix this.”
“There’s nothing to tell. You made your bed. Now you’ll just have to figure out how to un-make it.”
Through my bedroom window I watch my grandfather, already down the hill in the vegetable patch, kneeling in the moist earth. He is weeding the rhubarb, a full basket of sugar peas next to him. A screen door slams shut. My father walks across the lawn toward him. Granny Myrtle pulls a wooden rolling pin out of a lower drawer.
I pull on my jean shorts and a T-shirt and go in to breakfast. There’s half a grapefruit laid out for me on the table, its pink triangles carefully cut away from the skin, a sprinkling of brown sugar forming a sweet crust. Next to it is a silver spoon on a linen napkin. I kiss my grandmother on her soft duck-fuzz cheek, sit down at the table.
“I thought I would take you and Anna for a swim in the Wesselmans’ pool later.” She kisses the top of my head. “You need to wear a hat, Eleanor. Your hair is so bleached by the sun, it’s almost as white as mine.”
“Hats make my forehead itch.”
“Afterward we can take out some new books at the library. I’m making lamb chops for dinner. And you can help me pick asparagus from the patch.”
“I don’t want Anna to leave,” I say.
“Asparagus isn’t easy to grow, you know. Your grandfather was worried the deer and the rabbits would eat all the shoots this spring.”
“I won’t have anyone to be with.”
“There’s no reason your sister should have her summer ruined simply because your father chose to marry that god-awful woman.” My grandmother hands me a pile of buttered white toast and a mason jar of homemade crabapple jam. “Your father is a good man, but he lacks backbone.” She sits down beside me. “Now you, Eleanor, you have backbone. Anna is tough as a bull’s hide, heaven knows, but you are a stoic.” She pours herself a glass of buttermilk. “I blame myself for your father’s weakness. I pampered him.”
Behind us a floorboard creaks. My father stands there. Above the stove, a wall clock ticks the seconds. I stare down at my toast, mortified for him, wishing I could disappear, save him from his embarrassment.
“Elle and I were just talking about a swim,” my grandmother says to him, as if nothing has happened. “I’ve put in a call to the Wesselmans. Joy tells me their blueberry bushes are positively groaning.”
“I’d like to take the girls for a swim at the quarry today,” my father says.
“I’ve already made a pie crust.” She gets up, opens and closes a few cupboard doors. “I know I put those plastic berry buckets in here somewhere.”
I wait for my father to push back, but he stares out the kitchen window, hands in his pockets. “The black walnut Father and I planted last year has really taken off,” he says.
“Actually, Gran, I’d rather go to the quarry with Dad. We can pick blueberries for you after.”
My father stands up straighter, turns to me, his face smiling so broadly I feel stricken.
“Well, of course, dear,” my grandmother says to me. “If that’s what you would like, then I think it’s a perfect plan.”
* * *
—
The quarry is hidden in the fold of two hills that rise up behind the Straights’ farm. I’ve convinced Anna to come with us. Now that she knows she’s leaving on Friday, her mood has lifted. The three of us climb the slope, towels in hand, following a cow path toward a wide swath of pasture. At the flat top of the hill, black-and-white cows graze, tails flicking flies from their hinds, udders drooping with grassy milk. Everywhere the field is dotted with cow pies—some dry enough to burn, others steaming wet. Across the field, shaded in a copse of trees, is the quarry: a deep, clear watering hole, its granite sides slippery with moss and drip, its roughhewn ledges perfect for leaps into the bracing cold. But first we have to make it past the cow-pies.