23. Allison
ALLISON
It takes me days to get in the car, and I’m not proud of any of them.
At first I tell myself I’m waiting for the right moment, like there’s a right moment to tell a nice man no.
Then I keep picking up my phone and putting it down again, because a text would be easier and easier is exactly what he doesn’t deserve.
Finally my mother finds me in the glass office reorganizing a drawer of rubber bands by size.
“Go,” she says.
“I’m working.”
“You’re sorting rubber bands, Allison. Give me the baby.”
So I give her the baby.
Scott’s crew is working the old Hadley orchard out past Titicus, where the family finally sold the house and the new owners want the apple trees saved instead of bulldozed.
I know because he told me about it in December, drawing the rows on the back of an invoice at my potting bench.
Winter’s when you prune apples. The trees are asleep and they can’t complain about it.
The farm road is mud frozen into ruts, and my car hates every foot of it. I park behind his truck at the edge of the first row and sit there with the engine running and my hands in my lap.
He’s up a ladder in the third tree, in his canvas jacket and a knit hat with a pom-pom that Molly definitely picked out.
A couple of his guys are dragging cut branches into a pile down the row.
The trees are old and gnarled, grown every which way from years of nobody caring, and he’s taking a long saw to a branch as thick as my arm with his tongue caught in the corner of his mouth.
I could back out. He hasn’t seen me yet. I could drive home and tell my mother the road was closed.
I turn off the car.
He hears my door shut and looks down, and he lights up for a second, until he sees my face. Then he goes serious. He finishes the cut, lets the branch drop, and climbs down the ladder slowly, pulling his gloves off one finger at a time like he’s buying himself a minute.
“Hey,” he says.
“Hey. Is this a bad time?”
“It’s an orchard in January. Every time is a bad time.” He jerks his chin at the guys by the brush pile, and they find a reason to go work on the far end of the row. “You want coffee? I’ve got a thermos that’s mostly coffee.”
“I’m okay.”
“Yeah,” he says, looking at me. “You’re not, but okay.”
We walk down the row a little, away from the ladder. The ground crunches. Everything smells like cold dirt and fresh-cut applewood, sweet and sharp, and I want to stay here and talk about pruning for an hour so I never have to say the thing I drove out here to say.
I stop walking. So does he.
“I can’t go to dinner with you,” I say. “Not after the divorce, and not before it either. I’m sorry. I wanted to tell you to your face.”
He nods slowly. He doesn’t look surprised, but he does look hurt. He puts his hands in his jacket pockets.
“Can I ask why?” he says. “You don’t owe me. I’d just rather know.”
I thought I’d have a speech ready. I rehearsed them the whole drive, and they’ve all gone straight out of my head.
“Because I’m still in love with my husband,” I say.
“I don’t know if I’m staying married to him.
I honestly don’t. But I love him, and I can’t go sit across a table from you and try to find out what I feel about you while I’m still wearing his ring.
” I touch the chain through my sweater. “I literally wear it around my neck, Scott. It’s right here. I’d be bringing him to dinner.”
He looks at my hand on the chain.
“And there’s Molly,” I say. “She already likes Henry. She already likes me. If I went out with you to see what happened, and then I went back to Gavin, she’d be the one who got hurt.
That’s not fair to her, and it’s not fair to you either.
You’d be the guy I tried out while I figured out my marriage. You deserve way better than that.”
He’s quiet for a while. One of his guys starts up a chainsaw on the far end of the orchard and then cuts it off again, and the silence after is huge.
“Well,” he says finally, “that’s a better reason than ‘you have terrible taste in hostas.’”
I laugh, and it comes out wet. “You do have terrible taste in hostas.”
“I know. I was ready for that one.” He takes his hat off and turns it in his hands, and the pom-pom bobs. “I figured, honestly. I saw his face at the hospital, and I’ve seen yours every time somebody says his name. I’m not dumb.”
“Then why ask?”
“Because I wanted to have asked.” He shrugs, and it’s a little stiff.
“After Claire, I spent a long time not saying things because I was waiting for a better time. I didn’t want to do that again.
So I asked, and you said no, and that’s an answer.
It’s not the one I wanted. I’m not going to pretend it is. ”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. You didn’t do anything wrong. You drove out to a frozen orchard to tell me the truth when you could’ve sent me a text with a sad face.” He puts the hat back on. “That’s kind of the whole reason I asked in the first place, you know? You’re like that.”
My throat closes up. I look at the apple trees until it opens again.
“I’m disappointed,” he says. “I’m going to be disappointed for a while.”
“Are we okay?”
He thinks about it, and I like that better than if he’d just said yes. “We’re okay. I’m still going to fight you on the library courtyard. Molly’s still going to make Henry a card for every holiday, including the ones she makes up. And if your crew’s short in April, you’re still calling me first.”
“You’re going to charge me double.”
“I’m going to charge you exactly what I charge everybody, and you’re going to try to pay me early, and I’m going to be weird about it.” He almost smiles. “Same as always.”
“Same as always,” I say.
I’m not leaving it open for later, and he knows it. What’s left is a friend with sap on his jacket and his daughter’s hat on his head.
He walks me back to the car. At the door he stops.
“For what it’s worth,” he says, “I hope he gets it right. For you, not for him.”
“Me too.”
“And if he doesn’t, I’ll put him in a wood chipper, but that’s a separate conversation.”
“You would not.”
“I’d think about it really hard.” He knocks on my roof, the way you do when you’re sending a truck off from a job, and heads back toward his ladder.
I drive back out the frozen farm road with my eyes stinging and my stomach in a hard twist. I feel terrible. I also feel lighter than I have since the night he asked. Scott wanted me, and I told him no to his face, and I don’t have to carry it around anymore.
My mother is in the retail house with Henry in the carrier on her chest, ringing up a man who wants a truckload of mulch in January for reasons he won’t explain. She takes one look at me coming through the door and finishes his change without counting it.
When he’s gone, she comes around the counter. Henry’s asleep against her with his mouth open and his cheek smooshed flat.
“Well?”
“I told him.”
“To his face?”
“In the orchard. He was up a ladder.”
“How did he take it?”
“Like Scott.” I lean on the counter because my legs have gone shaky now that it’s over. “He said he was disappointed and he wasn’t going to pretend he wasn’t. He said we’re still friends. He threatened to put Gavin in a wood chipper.”
“That’s fair.” My mother kisses the top of Henry’s head, slow, the way she does when she’s thinking. “Are you all right?”
“I feel awful.”
“You should. You liked him.”
“I did.”
“You told him anyway.” She pats my hand on the counter, then takes her hand back to support Henry’s head. “It’s done?”
“It’s done.”
She nods once, satisfied, and starts unbuckling the carrier so she can hand me my son.
“Good,” she says. “Now the other one.”