start pruning, Fergus growled and barked down the driveway. His warnings had come in handy lately, giving her a few minutes to duck out on would-be company.
Today she wasn’t swift enough and a familiar voice intruded. “Rose.” Not from down the drive—he’d come from the east, directly through the fields. Her neighbor Brown, the young one, Perry. He stood embarrassed and determined, clean young face slipped over his father’s, the Old Man’s ears holding up shiny dark hair. Genetics. DNA. A crazy thing.
“Hello, Rose. How are you?”
“Fergus,” she said. “Quiet.” Fergus, proud of himself for giving a warning, settled into a spot on the porch to lick his balls.
Behind the young Brown she saw a flash of yellow in the hayloft window. The girl again, Sill, Perry’s daughter, sneaking in where she wasn’t wanted. Both of them—no, the whole damn Brown family—coming around individually and collectively. They didn’t mean her well.
Perry shifted from one foot to the other and tried again. “How are you?” That question! She could live the rest of her life without hearing it.
Red blooms, white blooms, climbers, crawlers; heavily-scented, with new buds always pushing up. They were as bad as weeds. Rose used to like them. Stella once put them in vases every morning. The trunks were young then, almost spindly. Now they were as thick as her leg. No more playing around—she took her shears and sent one flying. Take that!
“Have you thought about what I said?” he was asking. “Rose?” There was his Old Man, in the greedy eyegleam, apple not far from the tree.
“Perry.” She knew how to handle him. “How is your father?”
The clean face reddened. A rough hand clenched the paper that he’d pulled from his pocket and then rolled up like a newspaper to swat a dog.
A few years ago Lance had set fire to a bag of steer manure—just for fun and high spirits—and left it smoldering. Barnburner, Old Man Brown had called her son, and threatened legal action even though the thing had only smoked, harmless. Never, she’d said to Lance. Promise me, no matter what happens to me, you’ll never let the Browns have this land.
“…My father,” Perry was saying, “he’s mellower, Rose, since the lightning. He was hit out on the east acres in ‘97. You remember?”
“Of course.” The bowl flickered overhead, restless. She remembered. She shook her head, noticing a few new shoots already sprouting. Up in the hayloft, that yellow flash again. Fergus licked himself on the porch, rhythmic and soothing. Brown the Younger was still red, still talking, his voice lower now, like gravel. Did he know where his daughter was? People go missing all the time.
“I can offer you a fair price,” he said. “And with Lance—” Fergus stopped licking and raised his head. Rose snatched the paper from Brown’s hand and tossed it into the well. She turned and slammed into the house, Fergus close at her heels. Brown retreated.
Something clattered in the pantry, probably the mice trying to get to her bag of rolled oats. A shoot busily worked its way up the kitchen drainpipe, blooming in leggy insistence from the sink. She grabbed an old boot lying by the door and hurled it toward a gray mass—got you!—but missed, cracking open one of her jam jars. Goddamn it. Lance loved her preserves. He was always underfoot in the kitchen, the first place he came after school, eating her out of house and home. A hollow leg, that’s what Theo used to say.
Why did the chicken cross the road, Ma? Not waiting for her to guess. To lay it on the line. He’d grabbed a thick slice of bread, knife dipping into the jam. She’d swatted the dishtowel at him and he swiveled out of the way, reporting that he’d seen Stella in town and then pausing for her reaction. His t-shirt had had a rip near the neck. Strange, the details you remember. What had she said to him that day?
She left the jam jar where it lay shattered, went to the mantel, and considered the airmail envelope—but instead picked up Stella’s letter. The peach envelope, unstamped, had appeared in the mailbox like all the others from Stella. God, what a pain in the ass her stepsister was. Stella’s spindly purple ink looked like crisscrossing lines on a map of underground streams. It took awhile to decipher: Dear Rose, I know you don’t want to hear this, but I think about you and our Lance so often, and it is my deepest wish that you will let me come visit. Rose, we are still family, much as you might like to forget—I have forgotten. I would. If you didn’t keep reminding me—We need to talk—
Rose threw the crumpled letter into the cold fireplace and blew her nose into the hem of her skirt. An image came, burning into the back of her lids as she clamped them down: herself and Stella sitting and rocking on a porch together, fingers busy making something, flying in a blur, a bright yarn stretched between them and mist rising through the branches above. Stop it, Stella!
Rose had a tall cup full of premium old pens on a shelf in the kitchen, with a few cheap ballpoints rolling around, leaking on everything. She took a ballpoint and a paper grocery bag and went to sit on the back porch, her feet propped on the rickety stairs, the brown paper crinkly on her knees.
Listen, Stella. He’s not yours anymore—She wrote a few lines and scribbled them out, ink smearing, and started again an inch down. Listen, Stella. I am much too busy to visit with you. My roses are shooting up gangbusters. Lots of pruning, like always. There’s corn to manage and I don’t have—Plus, the well is acting up, and Fergus needs his shots. A new well may need digging.
Stop bothering. However, have this jar of sour berry chutney, I found it in the pantry and thought of you.
Your stepsister, Rose.
P.S. Stop it, Stella.
P.P.S. The Browns are circling.
A patch in back of the house still smelled like Stella. She’d seeped into the ground like spilled oil. Flowery perfume that cost too much, bought on credit. Dandelions dappled the green with splashes of bright yellow. They used to put Lance’s little blow-up swimming pool in this spot and sit with their drinks and watch him splash around. The two of them, her and Stella, sunk in lawn chairs, watching Lance. Black hair with a straight part, red hair sticking up—that was them. White marble legs next to ruddy freckled legs, ice cubes clinking in old-fashioned glasses, lime wedges, red toenails, calluses. Sister sister, mother mother. Blood. But not quite. What were they? Lance: little birdwing boy, in the blue circle of his wading pool. Did he see it, splashing around in that plastic tub, his face already full of piss and vinegar—a fountain cherub come to life and making the most of it. Look, he’d yelled, watch me!
The softness of the air, the softness she saw in Stella’s gaze, watching Lance, the softness in her own bones in that one lit moment. The pink and gold light of dusk fell, covering the branches and brambles, still manageable back then, covering them, their skin, eyes, hair. The grass under their bare feet reached up, soft and scratchy. “Fireflies,” Stella said, running her finger along the rim of her thick-cut glass. Watch me! Lance spat upward like a fountain. They’d laughed hard, encouraging him. He pissed a loopy arc over the edge onto a blackberry bush and they were laughing too hard to stop him or say much other than, “Lance!” and “Boy, you’d better…” The light was too beautiful for anything more, and fading by the minute.
Rose remembered that day over others, over times they’d laughed harder or said more. Certain moments hold you in their palm. And later, when a different moment shakes you in its fist, it’s that moment you were cupped in so gently that you think of. You have to bear them both. All the time between them falls away and they press together, intricate sketches on two sheets of onion paper held together up to the light. See what new shapes they make? See the people, now and then? Happy sad. Love hate. God shakes and tosses, yells, Snake eyes! It’s just how it goes.
Rose touched her forehead. Enough of remembering. What had that ever gotten anyone? Several dozen freshly picked dandelions were in the apron spread across her lap. She began to knot the flowers into a chain. That far off phone was ringing. He’s not yours anymore.
The truck remembered the drive to town, even if Rose didn’t. She’d done it a