“Me, too,” I said.
“It’s funny, I’d forgotten you were with us.”
“Understandable,” I said.
He shook his head. “I didn’t mean it like that. I’m tired, that’s the thing. I’ve been tired a lot lately, and so I’m here a lot, you know, in my mind. I just wondered if I could find the farm again. To tell you the truth, I’ve thought about buying the place, just to make sure that nothing changes.”
“Nothing changes,” I said. “Unless you count the conveyor we put in the barn to sort the cherries.”
He shook his head. “I don’t count that.”
“I don’t think my husband would sell,” I told him. I don’t think my husband would sell you the orchard if you offered him the entire state of California.
“Is your husband here?”
I nodded. I would have guessed it would be strange if I ever saw Duke again. I would not have guessed it would be strange in this way. Every sentence that came into my head began with the phrase, Do you remember? but clearly, he did not.
“Maybe I’ll try to find him. Would you mind if I just walk around?” His hair was shining like a Pantene ad and he raked it back with his hand. I was sure that Duke’s hair never looked like that before, but then I don’t think he used shampoo when I knew him. I think shampoo was one of the things he didn’t believe in.
The girls were sitting on the lawn throwing handfuls of leaves in the air and then letting those leaves affix to them with jam. They were laughing like hyenas. “I don’t mind at all but seriously, can you just wait a minute? I haven’t seen you in a long time. Tell me something.”
“What do you want to know?” Suddenly he looked as tired as he claimed to be. Suddenly my mind was blank of questions.
“Is there a person in the car?” I asked. The windows were so dark it was impossible to tell but the motor was running.
Duke nodded.
“Should we invite him out?”
Duke shook his head.
Then I remembered the thing I did want to know, the person I had wondered about for years. “How’s Sebastian?”
His eyes had been wandering but they came back to me then and he smiled. “I always thought you were in love with Sebastian,” he said. “At least at the end.”
“Of course I was in love with Sebastian. Everyone was.” Pallace was, I wanted to say, but I couldn’t say her name without sounding punitive or hurt and I was neither of those things. I was the luckiest person in the world. “Is Sebastian still teaching? Is he still in East Detroit?”
“They got rid of East Detroit,” Duke said. “It’s Eastpointe now.”
“I don’t know why I can never remember that.”
“Sebastian works with me. He runs the production company. No more world history.”
“But he still plays tennis.” It wasn’t a question. Of course he played.
Duke nodded. “We play, the two of us. Sebastian is the constant. Everything is change except Sebastian.”
For a brief, horrible moment I wondered if it was Sebastian in the car, if Sebastian had driven him here, but that wasn’t possible.
He turned and looked at my girls spread out in a pile of red and gold leaves. “Do either of you know where the cemetery is?” he asked them.
Emily sprang up like puppet. “I do!”
“That’s where I want to go. Can you walk around like that?” he asked me, making reference to my stomach.
“I can.”
Duke went down the steps and into the leaves. When he leaned over, Emily held out her arms to him. “Oh, you are lovely,” he said, picking her up. Then he looked back at me. “I should get one of these.”
“Easiest thing in the world,” I said, Maisie climbing into my arms.
I didn’t walk him to the cemetery. I took him in the direction of the barn instead. “We’ll pick up Joe,” I said.
“Who’s Joe?” Duke asked Emily, his eyebrows turned down, his voice suspicious.
“Daddy!” she cried, laughing at his hilarity.
Duke had a look on his face as if he were working a particularly complicated math problem in his head. Then he found the answer. “Jesus. Joe Nelson?”
“Joe Nelson,” I said.
“You married Joe Nelson?”
“Who on the Nelson farm did you think I married?” Maisie put the end of my braid in her mouth and started chewing.
“That’s right. His family owned the farm. I forgot that part. Joe Nelson.” He shook his head. “It makes more sense now. Is he still directing? I haven’t heard his name in years.”
I shook my head. We owed him no explanation, Joe and I.
“Do you live out here all the time?”
“We do,” I said, a decision that was feeling better by the minute.
“Are you coming to live with us?” Emily asked.
Duke started walking again. “I haven’t been invited.”
“I invite you!” she said gleefully. “You can sleep in my room. I have my own room.”
“You have tremendously friendly children.” He bounced my girl up and down on his hip, his walk becoming exactly the kind of exaggerated canter the girls were always begging me to do.
I could see Joe in the distance. He was out in front of the barn, wiping his hands on an enormous dirty rag. I waved. I had never loved anyone more than I loved Joe Nelson at that moment. “Look who’s come to visit,” I called to him.
“As you know,” Duke said to Emily, his eyes two inches from her eyes, “your cherry orchard is to be sold for your debts; the auction is set for August twenty--second, but don’t you worry, my dear, you just sleep in peace. There’s a way out of it. Here’s my plan. Please listen to me.”
The Chekhov wasn’t funny now that we were the ones who owned the cherry orchard, but Duke wouldn’t have known that. Joe was coming towards us quickly now, stuffing the rag in his pocket. “Nelson!” Duke called to him, his voice brimming with joy. “Hail fellow well met.” He was shaking Joe’s hand as Joe was taking Emily from his arms.
It was years later that Joe told me how he’d thought his heart would stop when he saw Duke there in the middle of the road, holding Emily.
20
The way Emily is sitting in the grass, her head against her knees, I wonder if she’s going to be sick. Maisie is on one side of her, Nell on the other.
“Should I have told you this when you were fourteen?” I ask. “Should I have said, Duke isn’t your father but he came to the farm once and thought you were the most beautiful child in the world and swung you around and recited Chekhov to you? Would that have made it better or worse because I’m telling you, I don’t know. Maybe I did exactly the wrong thing.” It’s true that she met him once and was besotted with him, and it’s true that he, at least for those minutes, was besotted with her. Duke had looked straight into her eyes after all. Even if she was only four it left a mark.
Emily pulls up her T--shirt and wipes her face. “I wouldn’t have believed you,” she says finally. “I would have said he’d come to get me and you refused to let me go. I would have gone out of my mind.”