the muscles in his arms straining as he reached up to pull down a branch. Even with the branch bent, Lily still couldn’t reach the chokecherries, and he’d shake the branch, and she’d try to catch them as they rained in front of her. Because of the sandburs that stuck in Lily’s socks, her father would carry her back across the pasture. She’d lay her head on his shoulder and press her lips against his neck, touching her tongue to the salt of his sweat.
“Do you think our mother knows?” Lily said, dropping a chokecherry into the Manhattan that Jordan shook together for her. “About why Daddy did it?” It was a question Lily and Mabel had passed back and forth between each other for years, a question worked smooth like sea glass.
Mom must know something was Mabel’s usual answer, but tonight she simply said, “No.” Mabel took a ribbon of frosting from the cake and ate it, then sipped her Manhattan, cringing from the bite of the whiskey. “What could she know, really?”
“Seems to me,” Lily said, “she’d have some thoughts.”
“He had children too young,” Mabel said. “Married too young. He was as young as you are now.”
“This isn’t so young,” Lily said, though she couldn’t imagine having a baby to look after. She could still remember taking baths in the kitchen sink, her mother washing her hair with a bar of soap. Her own childhood was still fresh in her mind. “How old were you that one birthday?”
“Eight,” Mabel said, knowing exactly what Lily was talking about.
“You ever hear about Mabel’s eighth birthday?” Lily asked Jordan, and though he nodded, Lily talked about it anyway. Lily put her bare feet up onto Jordan’s knees, and crossed her ankles. “Grandpa had died not too long before, but Grandma still had a bull in the pasture. Daddy had helped her sell it, so he put it into the back of the pickup, and me and Mabel and Mom all crammed into the front with Dad to take it to some farm down the road.”
“There were tall railings up the sides of the truck,” Mabel said, “and the bull broke through them and ran away.” They followed the bull as it ran into town trampling through somebody’s backyard tomato plants, disrupting a picnic in a park, tearing down Chinese lanterns and a badminton net. Mabel always denied it, but she had cried as the night dragged on, the bull ruining her birthday. But Lily had loved watching something from her tiny life shake awake the whole sleepy town.
“I forget how you caught him,” Jordan said.
“We forget too,” Lily said. “We think we may have lost him somewhere.” It tired her to fill in all the details. She liked how she could just merely suggest something to Mabel, and she could watch the recognition in her face. There hadn’t been much of anything that they hadn’t seen together.
Lily reached over and tugged a bit on the sleeve of Jordan’s suit coat, covering his wrist. She’d have to do something about that scar if she was going to show him off to her mother. “I need to find that last letter Mom wrote to us,” Lily said.
Mabel just looked at Lily over the top of the Manhattan she only barely sipped. “Why?” she finally said.
“I need the return address.” Lily was tempted to invite Mabel along on her journey, but she knew better. Mabel, her mother, everyone, needed to understand that Lily needed no mothering. They would all see that, in spite of everything, Lily had turned out a good, capable person.
“I was just reading in the paper,” Mabel said, “of a woman in Mexico bitten by a brown recluse spider. They had to cut off her arms and her legs and part of her nose.”
Lily straightened up in her chair, ready to tell Mabel of her plans. “Mabel . . .” she started, pushing her glasses down on her nose so that everything blurred. She nervously pulled at a loose string at the hem of her dress. “Mabel.”
“I already know that you’re going to see her,” Mabel said. “If that’s what you’re about to tell me. Jordan told me already. About the two of you going to find Mom.”
Lily pushed her glasses back up to see Mabel scowling and concentrating on picking her chokecherry from where it had sunk to the bottom of her Manhattan. Lily looked over at Jordan who couldn’t even meet her eyes; he fussed with the end of his necktie. The cool demeanor Lily had practiced all afternoon turned into a migraine headache and tiny bolts of colored light in the corners of her vision. Was everything intimate just gossip to him? He wanted Mabel’s attention too much of the time, and it was beginning to make Lily too sick of it all. “Fuck you,” Lily said, lifting her feet to kick Jordan’s knee. “I could fucking beat the crap out of you,” giving him a whack at the side of his head with her open palm.
“Could you not,” Jordan said, drowsy-sounding, cringing, “not, you know, slug me?”
“Jordan,” Mabel said. “Maybe you should leave us alone for a few minutes.”
“Fuck off, Mabel,” Lily said. “He’s my boyfriend, I’ll tell him when he stays and when he goes, all right?”
Jordan started, “I should just tell you . . .”
“Oh, just get the fuck out of here, Jordan,” Lily said. “I mean, I have so fucking had it with you right now.” She immediately regretted having said it, and she stumbled over the last few words of her outburst. Tranquility, Lily thought, hearing the useless recitation she had found in some self-help paperback someone had left behind in the bakery. Peacefulness. Serenity.
As Jordan stood, shaky as if on new legs, Lily wanted to grab the lapel of his pathetic suit and demand that he ignore her and her fits.
“If you’ll excuse me, Birthday Girl,” Jordan said, brushing his fingers against the cheek of the always-quiet, always-collected Mabel. The whole bus creaked as Jordan headed toward the door, the slow tap of the high heels of his fake-alligator cowboy boots echoing. Lily lowered her head, again disgusted by her own tears, which always welled up when she most wanted composure. She lifted her glasses from her cheeks to wipe at her eyes.
“Lily,” Mabel said softly, reaching across the table to touch at her elbow. Lily wished she didn’t always bring out the sugary sweet pushiness in her sister. Lily had planned for it to be the other way around that night, for Mabel to be angry over Lily’s decision to go find their ungrateful mother and for Lily to remain distant and consoling. Mabel, Lily would have said, gently taking her hand.
Lily thought of again reminding Mabel of that day their mother left them. Mabel had screamed and bawled, stumbling along the front walk of the antique shop, grasping at her mother’s quick scissor-stepping legs. “Don’t,” their mother said, pushing at Mabel’s head. Mabel grabbed the back strap of her mother’s sandal, and she slapped Mabel’s hand away. “Goddamn it, don’t. I’m going to trip.”
Lily had stayed on the front porch, not fully understanding. Her mother had not announced her departure, had only suddenly appeared in makeup and brushed hair, freshly ironed skirt and blouse, a small suitcase packed. As her mother rushed through the shop, her eyes to the ground, Lily sneezed from the breeze of heavy perfume. Mabel looked up from her comic book.
Mabel had known right away and had fallen suddenly into a fierce fit of crying. When their mother finally reached her car, she tossed her suitcase into the backseat, and Mabel reached in and tried to grab it back out. Their mother wrestled it from Mabel and tossed it back in. Mabel tried to get it back, but their mother held on to Mabel’s sleeve in order to close the door.
“Give
