Photo by Joanna Stołowicz on Unsplash
“Taking a Pass on Garbage Patch.”
The subject line from Hambley House, my publisher, doesn’t look good. In the pit of my stomach, dread. I click open the email; scan.
Jessica Cho Kayaks Around the Great Pacific Garbage Patch has “too many multi-syllabics,” and a “downer ending.” It needs “major re-work.”
Justified dread.
I email back pronto. “I took out the part about the dead fish.”
Half an hour later, Hambley. “Take out the part about the birds choking on plastic.”
Furious key striking on my end. “What about the plastic bottle references? Do you want those gone?”
Ten minutes later, Hambley. “Yes.”
“What’s left then?” I hit send.
An hour of nail biting later, I receive a “You figure it out. You’re the writer,” punctuated with a smiley face emoji.
I fire back. “Jessica Cho Chapter Books are supposed to educate.”
“You’re giving kids nightmares.”
“Fine. I’ll stick it in a blog post.”
“Do it under a pseudonym.”
I want to shoot back a sarcastic face emoji, but head out to Chocolatto’s instead. I need a double tall.
Sonny, our neighbor on the corner, is outside watering her roses. “Hi, Mitzy!”
Uh oh. Sonny is a talker sans off button, but it’s too late to redirect my steps.
“There’s a lot of pears this year.” Sonny sings the words. She shifts her weight to her good hip (old rodeo injuries), then aims her water wand at another rose. She has about a million kinds of roses, so watering is a sunup to sundown affair. “Margy and me used to can and make jam, but that was before the Arthur-ite-is. We’ve been laying off the pear crumbles since Margy’s diabetes diagnosis.” Yadda yadda. I tamp down my impatience and try not to roll my eyes. I’ve heard Sonny’s song and dance before.
She wobbles up between a gap in the rose bushes; glances right, then left. “Want some?” She lowers her voice. Her eyes go wide, like she’s offering me something illicit. “They blew down in yesterday’s storm.”
“Want some what?” I ask. I’m still thinking “pot.” Didn’t our state already legalize that?
“Pears,” Sonny explains.
“Oh.”
“Can I twist your arm?” Sonny winks.
“Yeah. Sure.” Why not? What else do I have going on besides a whole lotta crying into my Chocolatto latte.
We collect the pears in a garbage can lid. Jessica Cho can wait. I’m settling into my new pie maker persona. Tonight I’ll surprise George with fresh-baked pear pie.
My pies are cooling on the counter when I spy Sonny listing down the sidewalk towards our house. “More pears!” She’s glowing. Her permanent’s poodle dog gray curls are glowing.
I answer with a cheery “Be right down!”
The plastic bin is loaded with Bartletts. Hundreds. Maybe a thousand. My heart lurches. How many pies is this? My abacus doesn’t count that high. “This is more than I bargained for,” I say.
Sonny’s brow furrows. Maybe she misunderstood my commitment. “Hmm.” She chews on her upper lip, pondering. Her arm jerks out and her index finger shoots upward. “You can dry them.”
“How?”
She rears back on her New Balances, slaps the rivets on her Wranglers. “With a de-high-dur-a-tor! Margy and me used to dry fruit all the time, but since the Arthur-ite-is and Margy’s diagnosis … .” She looks at me expectantly. My enthusiasm isn’t matching hers. The dehydrator talk is making me nervous.
Sonny’s lips knot. “You don’t have one?”
“It sounds like an investment. It sounds like a learning curve.”
“It’s easy!” scoffs Sonny. “You can have ours! Hey, Margy! We’re giving Mitzy the Excaliber!”
I hear a muffled “OK,” followed by shuffling, banging, and thudding.
“I’d better go help.” Sonny winks, then eases her rickety frame down the steps to Sonny and Margy’s back door. A minute later, she and Margy emerge, triumphant, with a large metal box.
* * *
A blur of sorting, peeling, paring, coring, and de-worming begins.
Pick up a pear.
Pare it. Core it. Quarter it. Set it on the tray.
Cha. Cha cha cha.
Pick up a pear. Pare it. Core it.
Cha. Cha cha cha.
My feet pound out the pear rhythm. My hips sway.
Maybe I won’t be turning in a revised Jessica Cho Kayaks Around the Garbage Patch to Hambley at month’s end, but Jessica Cho, Fruit Preserver. How’s that for positive spin!
The doorbell startles; the knife slips in my pear juice-slickened hands.
“Coming!” It could be the Norpro Food Mill I ordered yesterday. I race to the door. I paid extra for express delivery. My wound care can wait.
An old woman with a bad combover—are they ever good?—leans on a walker. Her sweatshirt is festooned with “Have a Nice Day,” and “Smiley Face” buttons. She wheezes out a “Hi. I’m Gerda.”
Fine, but where’s the Norpro? Gerda probably wants to talk to me about God. I don’t have time for that.
She wheezes that “the lady on the corner gave her a sack of pears. Can she have our prunes?” She takes one hand off the walker, gestures at the Italian prune tree growing on our sidewalk strip.
“Sorry. We’re not doing a fruit give away.” I shut the door and return to work. The nerve! That tree’s ours. I planted that tree. Go harvest at Costco, Gerda.
Blood trickles from my palm as I realize I just denied a senior citizen with mobility issues. I wonder how Jessica Cho would handle this. Raj and Dubuque! The food posers next door! R and D drink craft brews and nibble appetizers from Whole Paycheck. Their prune tree umbrellas out over the alley with branches so fruit-laden they drag on the ground. Yet—for the past three years?—they’ve let the prunes drop and go to waste.
I rush back and fling open the door. “Gerda!”
She’s lurched to the birch tree two doors down.
I tell her about Raj and Dubuque’s tree. She steers her walker around and clomps toward Raj and Dubuque’s. I staunch my wound with paper toweling, rinse the blood off the pears, and get back to paring.
* * *
Schtick Publishing has taken over Hambley House. Schtick has zero interest in Garbage Patch. They like “feel good, crowd pleaser” stuff. I’ve got the perfect solution: J. Cho, Fruit Preserver.
* * *
It’s about a week later. I don’t know exactly. I’m measuring time in terms of pears canned, jammed, and dried.
George pours himself a seltzer. “You getting ready for me to beta-read Garbage Patch?”
“Soon.” I haven’t told him about the Hambley House buy-out. I focus on the four puny pears nestled in my palm. I’m down to just punies now. Paring and coring these little guys is too much trouble. Maybe pear sauce instead? I can plop the pearletts in the cooking pot, then, after they’ve softened, crank them through the Norpro. There’ll be no need to pare and core. The Norpro will spit out the cores, stems, and peels. Easy peasy.
“Are you coming to the movie?” George asks.
“Movie?”
“Tonight’s our date night?”
“I can’t. I’ve got the pears.” I gesture with my knife at my preemies piled in the sink.
* * *
George returns from the movie. We kiss.
“How was it?”
“Good.” He surveys the pears simmering on the stove; the pears I’m sieving through the Norpro; the buckets and bowls full of pears I’ve yet to attend. “What about composting those?”
I need a moment before I can answer. Of all people, I thought George would understand. “You want me to abandon them?”
“They’re embryonic. You’re not responsible for every fallen piece of fruit. You’re not a fruit orphanage.”
“I didn’t say I was.”
He waits. I continue peeling.
“How long are you going to be?”
“I don’t know.”
He shakes his head.
“Can we agree to disagree on this? OK? Can we just do that?” I ask, borrowing from one of his argument tactics.
He heads upstairs to bed and I stay up till midnight, pear-sitting.
* * *
Schtick is discontinuing Jessica Cho. The entire series—Jessica Cho Sews an Apron, Jessica Cho, Soap Maker, Jessica Harvests Clams—nixed.
* * *
I set up a Next Door account to alert me about neighborhood fruit deals. Less than 24 hours later, I get my first response. Free prunes!
George is less than enthused. “Doesn’t Hambley want “Garbage Patch” in a couple days?”
“I’m working on it.”
He waves his hand at the heaps of pears in various stages of processing. “How is this helping?”
“It’s research.”
George frowns.
“For a new story. Jessica Cho, Fruit Preserver. Jessica becomes this super homemaker. She builds this hugely successful cottage industry processing neighborhood fruit.”
* * *
We arrive at eight the next morning at the Next Door prune place. Hundreds of fine-looking prunes greet us—a fruit harvester’s paradise! Everything’s perfect, except for a pair of seventy-something gleaners in faux peasant clothing. A raffia basket pends from the male gleaner’s arm. Laughable. How many fruit can it hold? Six?
They look like they’ve lost their way to a Joni Mitchell concert. We, on the other hand, have come prepared with buckets, paper grocery sacks, and ladder.
“Did you really have to hiss at them?” George asks after our competition clears off.
“I didn’t hiss.”
“Jessica would have invited them over to make prune jam.” He’s smiling, trying to tease me.
“Not funny. They were dilettantes. Nosing in on our prunes. I haven’t time for niceties, George.”
In the afternoon, Sonny trundles down the sidewalk, all smiles. “More pears!”
“I’ll bring the wheelbarrow!” This is perfect! I can add it to this morning’s Next Door bounty.
The latest pickings are in Sonny and Margy’s basement. Margy blushes as I take in the fortresses of cat food and kitty litter, towers of Reader’s Digest Condensed, mountains of satin Western shirts and sequined cowboy hats— Sonny’s rodeo wardrobe from1980 through 2000.
Our basement will never fill with such junk. Pears are completely different from chaps and chapeaus.
* * *
“I can’t get anything in the freezer,” George says.
“Maybe we should get a second one,” I snap.
“I think you’re going overboard.”
I slam the stainless steel bowl on the counter. “I’m standing here up to my knees in pears, my wrist is about to snap, my nails are broken, my thumbs are nicked, I’m running out of dehydrator trays, about ready to pass out from pear fumes, and, to top it off, my pear jelly didn’t set, and you’re telling me I’m going overboard? I can’t rest until all the pears are pared! OK? Got that?”
“When are you going to get back to Hambley?”
“Soon.”
“The deadline’s Friday.”
“They know how I work.”
* * *
One a.m. I can’t sleep. Every last jar has been filled with pear jelly or sauce, every Ziploc bag has been jammed with dried prunes or dried pear; the storage room is full, the new freezer is half-full with processed pears and prunes, but Raj and Dubuque’s prune tree is mocking me. All those perfectly ripe prunes dropping to the alley. All the jam, pies, and dried prunes I could make! The raccoons are feasting on prunes I could be turning into valuable foodstuffs!
I slide out of bed and creep down to the basement. I stuff my pajama pockets with Hefty bags, then carry the ladder out to Raj and Dubuque’s tree.
I peer up into the leaves. Even in the neighborhood’s semi-darkness, I can see that the tree is loaded. I climb the ladder. Each rung I ascend strengthens and affirms my prune rescuer righteousness.
Cigarette smoke. Footsteps. I freeze behind a screen of branches.
The smoker goes back inside. Safe! I harvest from ripe prune clump to ripe prune clump, stripping the fruit from the tree methodically and efficiently. My palm is curled around a fat, firm prune when a dog walker approaches. Again, I freeze.
“Is that your tree?” he asks.
I remain mute.
“What are you doing up there?”
“I thought a raccoon might be up here. Trying to chase him off.”
“Do you live around here?”
“Yes,” I blurt. The fat prune throbs in my palm, demanding I pluck it, but his pit bull is making ominous huffing noises.
“This ain’t cool.” The pit bull owner whips out a phone. A light flashes. My vision blurs.
“I’m a neighbor,” I say.
“You’re taking Raj and Dubuque’s fruit.” He snaps another picture.
“Yes. But—” The pit growls— “They said I could.”
He punches his phone’s keypad.
“What are you doing?”
His thumbs go into overdrive.
* * *
The next morning George scrolls through Next Door. “Here’s one. Someone posted about a fruit stealer.” He laughs heartily.
I chime in with a weak “ha ha.”
“It could make a good Jessica story.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” He takes another sip of coffee. “‘Jessica Stops the Fruit Stealers.’”
Raj and Dubuque march out from their house, open their gate, and march up to our house. My fake laughter curdles. Raj runs a boutique manicure and pedicure empire. He might be harmless, but Dubuque is a trial lawyer.
I mumble something about checking the pears leathering in Excaliber, then listen from the bottom of the stairwell.
Dubuque talks, not pissed off and blustery like a clueless person, but calmly and professionally, like someone who files lawsuits and wins.
George tries to soothe. “I’m really sorry. Yes. I agree with you. She’s going a little overboard. Heh. Heh. Struggles with her publisher.”
This is followed by more calm professionalism from Dubuque.
“And the ones that drop in our yard? Those, too?” George asks.
The exchange ends. Raj and Dubuque exit. I creep back upstairs.
“They’re filing a restraining order,” George says.
“For pears—I mean prunes? What if I send over some wine?”
George is shaking his head.
“A pear kuchen? A boxed set of Jessica Cho Chapter Books?”
“I think a restraining order means they’re not talking to you.”
I bite down on the inside of my cheek.
“I know about the buy out,” George says.
My heart drops. “You do?”
“I talked with Schtick.”
The bottom falls out of my bottom. “You did?”
* * *
I can’t get to the second freezer. I can’t get to the clothes washer. I can’t get to my bicycle, so I bus it to Suds Your Duds. “PRUNE PILFERER” notices have been taped to the lamp posts and stapled to the telephone poles. I peer at the grainy image of the pajama-clad woman. This is Dubuque and Raj’s handiwork. Yesterday Sonny told me that Raj and Dubuque are circulating a petition to ban me from the neighborhood.
“Stay strong,” I whisper to the alleged “pilferer.” “Frances of Assisi was misunderstood, too.”
At Suds, a gray-haired woman with a walker clomps towards me: Gerda. “Pilferer!” She hoists her walker and shakes its rubber-tipped feet at me. I duck, certain she’s going to hurl her walker at me.
On the walk home, I smell smoke. Fire trucks speed past, horns blaring and sirens wailing. From our roof, orange flames rise.
* * *
Our house is a total loss. Insure Corp. says our kitchen use was “unauthorized”. They’re refusing to pay us a cent.
* * *
We set up camp in Boehauser Park. Sonny and Margy donated their ancient camping gear to us, gear that smells of cat pee.
George presents me with a composition notebook, pen, and Chocolatto gift card. “You’re a writer, Mitzy, not a fruit harvester. Pears don’t have to be your life.”
I nod. It makes so much sense when George says it.
“You write books about Jessica Cho. Books kids all over America look forward to reading.”
I nod again. “Yes.” George’s de-programming is working. “I write books about Jessica Cho.”
Over a supper of hotdogs and roasted marshmallows we work out the new plan. I’ll write at Chocolatto from eight to eleven every morning. In the afternoon I’ll do tai chi. George’s job will be setting me up with a new publisher.
Night comes; we bed down in the bags.
My nose twitches, not from cat pee, but from something far more delicious. Why wasn’t I smelling it earlier?
I nudge George. “Smell that?”
“What?” he asks, groggy.
“Ripe apples and blackberries!” I feel completely vindicated. We’ve been led here for a reason.
“You mean the—no!” George’s wail is loud and long. “Mitzy! Nooooo!”
I wiggle out of the cat hair-infested bag; unzip the tent fly. The night sky is inky and star-filled. I center Sonny’s headlamp on my forehead, grab a bucket, and get to work.
Kathy McMullen’s short stories may be found at Meat for Tea, Mobius, Free State Review, Bridge Eight, Gravel, The Maine Review and Second Hand Stories. She often writes about the inhabitants of upper crusty Odin’s Neck and its lower-brow counterpart, The Cinderblocks. These two communities comprise the two “arms” of Pleasant Arms, a fictional town north of Seattle, Washington. At present Ms. McMullen is busy on Killing Clifford Gray, a novel about a teenage girl who murders her rapist.