Chapter 36
Once the show is open, a deep calm sets in.
We got here. It’s good. People like it. Nothing else needs to burn down.
Audiences infuse the whole show with new energy: All this time we have performed only for each other.
Now there are reactions, now there is laughter.
Now there are collective inhales and shared discoveries. Now it’s a play.
The run is two weeks: Thursday to Sunday, twice, with a three-day break in between.
The first week is a little frenetic as we figure out last-minute tech changes in real time, but it’s a happy relief to finally be in motion.
We sell out each show and, after, greet people in the lobby.
It’s sweet to see the excitement. Glory’s whole aquafit class has come out to see her.
They let out a wild cheer when she appears in the lobby, sashaying like she’s Vivien Leigh.
The older guy who plays Wall has a flock of grandchildren pressing flowers into his arms. My first thought is cynical—it’s a lot of fuss for such a tiny role—but I watch as he hugs them with tears in his eyes, and I wonder if maybe I have it wrong.
Will has to work most days between shows, but I have been hanging out at his place, lingering in bed or the bath, taking walks in the orchard, venturing out to the back vegetable garden and making simple salads with my findings.
It’s quiet in the mornings, and I like to sit in the window nook in the upstairs bedroom and watch the sun rise.
I could never fully see it in the city. Here, there is wide-open sky.
When the cidery opens and people trickle in, it builds to a roar by midafternoon and the place is buzzing.
It is, I’m starting to realize, really successful.
Will’s cider is on tap in many local bars, and I know he’s talking to someone about selling bottles more widely, provincially, even.
I like to watch him down there: He’s the boss, but he helps out the servers, stops to chat, brings a cold pint to whomever is playing guitar in the corner.
He is attentive, aware; he sees everyone and is beloved for it.
When our first week of the run ends, we have three days off.
Despite my quiet daytimes, doing the show each night is exhausting, and I am looking forward to some deep rest before we open again for four more shows.
Will and I have another canoe ride planned, a “paddle,” he calls it, and I am actually looking forward to it.
We spent the first day as planned: The cidery is closed, and we sleep in, watch movies in bed, go for a long walk down a trail off a side road, and it’s lovely.
It’s easy. We are good together. I like him.
We wake up the next morning to a rattling on the roof, and Will jumps out of bed and looks out the window. “Fuck!”
I sit up in bed. “What?”
“Hail.” He peers farther out.
“It’s August!”
“It happens.” He starts to pull his clothes on. Outside is a veritable tempest, rain and hail and howling wind. Hailstones bounce off every surface, and I can already see the branches flailing in the wind. “I’ve gotta go.”
I sit there in bed, not sure what to do.
He clearly has farm things to do. I don’t know about farm things.
Should I stay? Should I leave? I don’t want to be in his way.
It’s not my farm. Not my orchard. Somehow this storm is challenging my whole identity.
What am I doing in this man’s bed? I look out the window, and he is already out there in giant rubber boots and a raincoat.
There is a storm, and he has run into it.
That’s who he is. There is a storm, and I am cowering in bed. What does that say about me?
Five minutes later, I find him in the barn, hitching a trailer to the small tractor. I am sleeping with a man who owns multiple tractors. I’m half soaked just from walking from the house to the barn, the giant raincoat I found in his hall closet hanging on me.
“Hey.”
He looks up, surprised. “What are you doing?”
“Um, I mean, it felt rude to leave you in a storm by yourself, so . . .”
“Thanks.” He’s smiling, but I see he’s stressed.
“What’s happening?”
“I’m about to lose a ton of my crop, that’s what.”
“What’s going to happen?”
“The apples aren’t ready.” He rubs his face.
It’s not time to ask him about the ins and outs of apple farming.
I know harvest is in the fall, and I know the apples on the trees are bitter, a lesson I learned the hard way when I plucked one on one of my walks, taking a bite, then spitting it out instantly.
“They have low sugar, which yields low alcohol . . .”
“Which yields bad cider?”
“Yup.”
“What do we do?”
“You don’t need to do this, Mira, honestly.” The idea of going back in and running a bath is very appealing right now.
“No. Tell me what you need.” The rain sounds like thunder on the steel barn roof.
“Okay, well, the wind and hail are knocking the apples off the tree. I need to collect what I can, as fast as I can, before the hail damages them. I can find a way to use them later.”
I jump in the trailer, and he fires up the tractor, pulling us out of the barn and into the rain.
Mud flies up and splatters us as we barrel through the wet orchard.
Will stops when we are among the trees and hops out, points at the fallen apples, and starts gathering the good ones and tossing them into the trailer.
It’s too loud to talk, and I am already soaked, but the air is surprisingly warm underneath the wind and the rain.
It’s uncomfortable; I’m dirty and wet, but as we make our way up and down the rows of trees, as the trailer starts to fill with salvaged apples, a sort of satisfaction starts to set in, a strange sense of purpose.
I’m gathering fallen apples in a storm, in the hope that Will can still make something from them, and I barely even know how cider is made, but I know I’m helping, I know being here is good, I know working next to Will feels good. I know he steadies something in me.
We work for hours, taking a couple of quick breaks for food and dry socks.
We save several loads of apples, bringing them back to the barn to sweat in large bins before Will presses whatever juice he can from them later, something about starches and sugars.
Then we head back out in the rain for more.
It’s awful out, and I’m sure Will is worried about the crop, about the damage.
I’m sure this has implications on how his whole next year is going to go financially, but he just keeps working.
There is no outburst, there is no meltdown. In my line of work, that’s surprising.
When the wind and rain have finally subsided and we have gotten as much of the crop off the ground as we can, when the hail has melted into the mud and the sun has even ventured out, we collapse inside.
My body feels wrung out, and my brain is empty, but I feel clear—proud, even.
We shower together, shivering, not speaking, other than the kisses Will drops onto my bare shoulder. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”
Will makes a fire in the woodstove and we bundle up. I throw a frozen pizza in the oven, and we find a mindless murder mystery, then lean into each other, some sweet, new, easy thing landing in us.
Over the next couple of days, I venture out more when the cidery is open.
I run flights of cider out to the picnic tables and light the little candle lanterns on the indoor tables.
I chat with the customers. It’s nice, the moving, not thinking too hard, having casual, pleasant interactions with people who are gone in an hour.
I get to know Mark and Jenny, the bartenders, even lingering for a drink with them after we close.
I keep meaning to leave, but I like it here. It’s this or my parents’ house, and the more time I spend here, with Will, the less I want anything else. The more plausible it seems that I could just . . . stay.
And that absolutely terrifies me.