Chapter 26 #2
Harmony nods. “That’s something I live with always, with everything I write.
But my songs are snapshots of what I was feeling in the moment.
With your brother, as sorry as I am for the hurt I’ve caused, that’s what I thought and felt when I met him.
I’ve had more than one guy in my life turn out to be an actor—including but not limited to the ones who actually are actors, professionally—who treated me like an audience to play off of.
I’ve dated guys who treated me differently when we were alone than they did when other people were watching them.
So when Griffin and I had … a special moment …
and I found out later that he was the ‘Grind My Gears’ guy, maybe you can imagine what was going on in my mind. ”
Rachel frowns, but seems to consider this.
What would she think of me if she didn’t know me personally?
How would she see me if she didn’t know what I was like behind the scenes?
I’ve heard her criticize Timber Jack and even Corbin Crawford for misogyny and for “perpetuating tired old tropes.” Were she ever to meet them face to face, she’d probably give them a piece of her mind.
“Oh.” Rachel grimaces. “Oh shit.”
My mom covers Ari’s ears a second too late. No one bothers with Jackson or Lily because Garrett’s their dad, so they’ve probably heard it all whenever he’s working on one of his ongoing home reno projects. (Power tools are not his friends.)
Grandpa listens calmly like there’s nothing strange going on at all.
“Again, I’m not excusing myself,” Harmony says.
“I misjudged Griffin. I hurt him. There’s nothing I can say that will undo that.
But maybe I can explain in a way that at least helps you understand where my head was at.
” She wrings her hands for a second, then goes to the back of the Bronco and removes a small black case shaped like a guitar. A tiny guitar.
“When did you pack that?” I ask.
My siblings exchange looks.
“I can sing it better than I can say it,” Harmony tells my family, as though this is an explanation to me as well. “Is it okay if we sit?”
My grandpa gestures to the chairs on the porch and we all take seats while Harmony unpacks the ukulele I didn’t know she had.
Has she even played that since her Lucky Stars audition?
She’s trembling when she positions her fingers on the tiny frets, pressing down the strings. Then she starts to strum a melancholy chord.
“‘Leave it open ended,’” she sings, “‘and I’ll fill in the blank, with something that you didn’t mean, although you far outrank the ones before, couldn’t ask for more, you’re everything they weren’t … but I’m a little burnt.’”
Harmony picks up the tempo for the chorus but it’s more emphatic than upbeat:
He walked all over me ‘cause I gave him an inch,
Well, I know this much is true:
If you get hurt enough, it’s hard not to flinch
When somebody touches you
Oh I’m sorry for making you pay
For somebody else’s mistake,
You’re picking up the pieces of
A heart you didn’t break
And it still aches …
But you make it better,
You make it better
Her voice is soft and breathy, grazing the high notes while she lays it all out.
“‘I had a different set of rules, you didn’t know the score. My head said that it wasn’t fair, my heart prepared for war.
But I caught myself, yeah I’ve taught myself to put away my blade … ‘cause I don’t have to be afraid.’”
She sings the chorus once more, then does another little strum pattern and finishes by plucking each string of the last chord until … silence.
The adults sit still, pensive, but the kids clap and so eventually the adults do too.
I embrace her, not knowing what to say. She planned this, prepared for it, and … totally killed it.
I love that she’s humble enough to have been nervous, but confident enough to stand up for herself, and she did it in a way that suits her, in a way only she could or would.
Rachel is visibly holding back tears.
Then my mother stands up and walks into the house.
Everyone gets quiet.
Harmony pulls back and looks at me with a line between her brows. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset her ...”
My dad stands up like he’s about to go after her, but holds back. “I’m sure she’s just … a little emotional. She’ll be fine.”
Half a minute later, the front door swings back open and out comes my mom with one of the old guitars she keeps in the den.
She’s holding it to her chest, face out, and tuning it as she walks.
Dad steps aside so she can get back to her seat, at which point she says, “Would it be too much to ask you to play that again?”
Gaping, Harmony replies, “Um. Yeah. Of course.”
I give her a nod of encouragement.
Once again, she starts to play.
As she strums, my mom picks up the rhythm, hums where she doesn’t know the words but still follows the melody. Mom apparently remembers a few phrases during the chorus and sings them in a harmony she’s worked out, while also playing individual strings on her guitar.
This is surreal, hearing Harmony and my mom making music together.
What started out cautious finishes strong, and nobody hesitates to applaud this time.
Harmony’s eyes are bright with admiration. “That was amazing.”
“Oh, it was nothing,” my mom tells her. “It’s your song. It was just so beautiful, I wanted to try it out.”
“You’re very talented,” Harmony tells her. “Griffin told me you used to play small gigs all over the Southwest.”
“I did. It was a good time, but I much prefer this kind of playing. Quiet, with people I know. No pressure. Don’t get me wrong, I admire what the two of you do out there, filling up arenas and all that. It wasn’t for me though.”
Harmony leans into me. “Well, I’m grateful Griffin learned music from you. I love working with him.”
“We can see that,” my dad says. “So I think we can let bygones be bygones”—he glances at my sister pointedly—“and enjoy the fact that you two are here with us.”
Rachel sighs. “Fine.”
“Thank you,” I say. “Can we pick oranges now or what?”
I get why Rachel has reservations, but I don’t see why my story with Harmony is so bad.
Most couples have easier beginnings and fight when things go stale; Rachel knows that well enough as a single mom.
Harmony and I got a lot of our fighting out of the way already, so now we can focus on the good stuff.
And I’m not saying we won’t have more fights down the road, but if I’m going to fight with anyone, I sure as hell want it to be her.
Fifteen minutes later, we’ve all got canvas picking bags strapped to our fronts—except the kids because they’ll put oranges in their parents’ bags.
Walking past several rows, we see dozens of workers perched on aluminum tripod ladders, deftly filling their own bags. Those with full bags head over to the big square field bins that line the ground between trees, unlatch the flaps at the bottoms of their bags, and let the oranges tumble out.
I tell Harmony that when the bins are filled with a good thousand pounds of oranges, other workers will come in with a bin loader that looks like it’s got a giant claw-machine arm, and pick up the bins and dump them into a trailer.
“Do you pack and ship the oranges from here too?” she asks.
“No, once we get them loaded we send them to a Sunkist packing house. Most of them anyway. We set aside a few bins’ worth for local buyers too.”
We find an untouched row and the rest of us set to work looking for oranges that are either small, blemished, or otherwise less aesthetic (the kind that aren’t good to sell) amid the tick of leaves brushing in the delicate breeze.
“Twist, don’t pull,” I say, showing Harmony the way we pick oranges.
She tries it. The orange resists for a second, then snaps off.
“Perfect.”
Harmony smiles at me. She looks cute with her sleeves rolled and a pair of work boots on. The afternoon sun puts catchlights in her eyes.
“You’re different here,” she says. “More at ease.”
I shrug. “It’s one of the few places where I feel like I fit in without trying.”
While we pick, we spread out. Different members of my family end up in conversation with Harmony, asking about her work, her background, her daily life.
Lily asks, “Do you get to shop at Prada? Do you get to shop at Gucci?”
My sister-in-law is fighting a losing battle with this budding fashionista, trying to keep her down to earth now that she occasionally gets to meet famous people.
“Sometimes,” Harmony says. “As long as I don’t have to go to Rodeo Drive. I hate that whole area. I’d rather shop online—but I do like designer clothes.”
Garrett teases her about being with a knucklehead like me. My grandpa shares his favorite things about picking season. Ari informs her that we have special honey in the pantry (from our bees that get nectar from the orange blossoms in the spring).
At some point my mom tells her, “You know, Hank and I didn’t like each other at first either.”
“No?”
“No, I thought he was cocky. Turns out he was just quiet, but it came off like he thought he was too good for everybody. It took me a while to realize he was actually very nice. When I figured that out, I felt like an idiot.”
Glancing over at me, Harmony says, “I know the feeling.”
Harmony asks about my mom’s music and what it was like to grow up out here, their voices fading as they ease down the row. Jackson follows, prattling on about something, probably agricultural factoids he thinks Harmony will like, but I can’t hear them well anymore.
I end up picking next to Garrett, so I ask how he’s been.
“Good. Nothing too much out of the ordinary. Although, Brianna started an Etsy shop selling polymer clay jewelry, so … that’s all over the house.”
“She any good at it?”