The Second Place Winner
UNH Magazine Spring 2010 Fiction Contest
(Contest judged by Alice McDermott '78G)
"When the Pears Are Ripe" seeks to say "something profound and complex about life, aging, grief and joy," says McDermott, "and I admire it most of all for being so ambitious." The story, one day in the life of a middle-aged woman, was written by Rosalie Davis '79, a freelance copy editor, who earned a bachelor's degree in English from UNH. A former editor and writer at Horticulture magazine, Davis has also written for The Old Farmer's Almanac Gardener's Companion, the UU World Magazine, Gardens Illustrated and The Wall Street Journal, among others. She and her husband, Scott Payette, and sons Pierre and Jack '09 live in Jamaica Plain, Mass. This is her first short story.

Dorothy awoke to the birds in the pear tree. Then she heard squirrels, shaking branches and chattering as they tried to leap back to the light-pole with the fruit, and dropping them on the sidewalk. By afternoon, she knew, middle school kids would be shaking them down too, and yellow-jackets would be on the bruised fruit.

An NPR correspondent was talking on the radio. More bombings, at a market in Afghanistan. Dorothy imagined pomegranates exploding, their bright red juice everywhere, the pity of people blown up while food shopping. She wished Uncle Boris wasn't going to Kabul for business. She doubted anyone would hire an architect there now. Ian and Edward were upset about it, naturally, but Dorothy knew it was worse when they were quiet; she hoped they might be opening up a little. It had been a nasty surprise when she had first learned 18-year-olds had to register for the Selective Service. She wasn't sure her boys would ever trust her information again.

Dorothy sat up. Rain might be on the way, the weather said, but the hurricane was heading out to sea. She must pick the pears today. Pears could rot on the tree, better to start when some were still green. Her feet touched the floor and she slowly stood. Since she turned 50, she was less sure-footed, and her feet hurt in the morning, too. The doctor said it was probably arthritis, but ordered cancer screenings anyway.

And all these things after Papa died, two years ago last Easter. When the lid of his coffin had closed, a swarm of ills had come out of hiding. Strange things that stunned and stung, like her sister Judith selling the land, the carpenter cutting up his hand fixing the roof, Edward getting hurt, Mama dying for no reason, the shooting at the Park last spring. It made her feel her age.

Her friend Nancy had told her grief brings grief, but eventually, the bereaved is flooded with happy memories of the lost. It signaled the end of mourning, a promise that life goes on. Nancy made it sound like a package you could track online. Dorothy was skeptical, but she admired Nancy's certainty, and it made her smile. Of course she would welcome a happy flood of something.

For a while, Dorothy had seen herself as that cripple in the pink dress in the Wyeth painting, lying on the ground looking at a distant home, faded and empty, an old crab-shell. Dorothy used to think Christina was crawling back. Now, she felt sure the woman was leaving, perhaps wondering why she had waited so long or if anyone missed her. If only these bad eggs would stop hatching and chewing away at what good was left, Dorothy thought, she could gather what it took to move forward. It wasn't healthy, identifying with that woman.

Mama always said, "If something bad happens, tell yourself, 'today isn't so different from yesterday, and I already made it through yesterday.'" Her mother had stopped believing in God near the end, Dorothy thought, had traded church for something else. Judith said, "No, her faith never wavered," and the subject remained closed. Dorothy stepped into her wool slippers, a splurge gift from Judith, who said it was the least she could do to make her feet feel better. It was the nature of faith, like a tree in a storm, to waver, Dorothy thought as she went downstairs.

There was no coffee. Allan must have bought a cup with his newspaper before he got on the Pike. He had left early to go Worcester, thought he would be back just after lunch. Dorothy interpreted that to mean before dinner. Allan was rarely on time, for her. But he worked hard and made great coffee. She filled the machine with four cups of water, then two scoops of grocery-store grounds and two scoops of gourmet, as he did. As she was alone, she sprinkled cinnamon in the coffee.

Dorothy opened a window. In the North Country, you looked outdoors while you washed dishes. In Boston, folks considered it a waste to put a sink in front of a window. She liked to keep a picture tacked up over the faucets--a European kitchen, a landscape, a still life. Allen might tolerate it for a while, but then take it down when he was cleaning. She wondered, did he tear them off, or did he get a spray bottle and a palette knife and pick away like a conservationist. Sometimes pieces of plaster came off the kitchen walls in humid weather; it reminded Dorothy of broken china. They seemed unable to tackle renovation, the disruption, the expense, choosing designs and colors. This room would never be done; they had wasted too much time deciding.

Dorothy scrubbed the pans until the copper bottoms shone. This set was their best wedding present. They used it every day, and it was still good as new. Only the stockpot was scratched, from that time she had sterilized the breast pump and then had fallen asleep nursing Ian. The smoke alarm had waked them, but not before the plastic parts had melted and stuck fast to the pan. She had scraped them off with a paring knife, but the irony remained. The marks looked like a wild gesture-drawing. She called it "Mother and Child Awaked."

She might put up a fresh picture today. Sticking it with school paste was particularly satisfying, as was writing a caption on the wall. It was childish and irked Allen, she knew. In return, it bothered her that he did not make time for a hobby. If he could get back to painting, he would surely ignore her little transgressions. Somewhere, Dorothy had a lovely picture of a mother nursing a baby in a quince orchard in Armenia. She wouldn't leave it up too long. She didn't want to irk Allen.

Dorothy dressed and took her coffee to the back porch. The air was mild, fragrant with that aromatic dust of fall, like the scent of apples starting to go by. The autumn clematis was blooming on the fence. A pair of cardinals called to each other in the privet, joyous red chirps among the thick clusters of berries. Yesterday a yellowthroat had passed through. Surely, it was sinful not to enjoy such a day. Without kids, an hour seemed added to the morning. Driving the carpool to the Academy all those years had been awful. She would not miss it. It reminded her of soldier stories, the sandwiching of tedium and terror into unpalatable bites of existence. You survived. It was not the same as thriving. She believed those drives might have damaged her heart.

Her neighbor Sonya came down the alley in jogging clothes, a bull terrier running ahead. Since the shooting, people had gotten dogs. Why that should make people feel safer, since the worst crimes were between people who knew each other, Dorothy would never understand. It wasn't random, Allen said, so people accept it. But many moved away, especially those with kids. Better schools, they said. Sonya and Martin had no children. There might be time to make friends.

All the playground equipment at the Park had been taken away too, and the fountain shut off. Just the sandboxes and the hopscotch court left. The shade trees were big now. Twenty years ago when Dorothy and Nancy took their turn with the playschool cooep, they would run water down the metal slides to cool them off in summer; there was no shade. Now, people put kids in afterschool during the week, and drove them to other playgrounds on the weekends.

Annie did that. She was a good mother. She was coming out of her house now with two of her brood and waved to Dorothy. She had a government job and signed her kids up for everything: before- and after-school, service groups, children's theatre, soccer, Sunday school. Dorothy wondered if Annie had learned from her generation's mistakes. In any case, the mommie wars were an inner struggle; Dorothy was certain of that. What other mothers were doing was just context.

By half-past seven, the SUVs and minivans were charging up the street in earnest, going too fast. Too many driveways, too many kids, and inevitably, some knucklehead taking a wrong-way shortcut to the Parkway. People said, "Someday somebody is going to get hurt." But people moved away, so if that happened, God forbid, it would be not be their kid. Dorothy looked up at the bright yellow "Slow Children" sign. It should be on her resume, she thought, if only people realized the effort it had taken. Her resume needed dusting off. She should finish that Master's, or find work.

Dorothy went back indoors, brushed her teeth, and put on lipstick. "You wear lipstick for other people," Mama would say, "Paint on a little smile so they don't worry about you." Dorothy put on mouth-color lipstick, "Rose of Windsor," like Mama wore. She sat down in her tiny office at the top of the stairs to make a to-do list. With caffeine and a little make-up, she could face anything.

Such a beautiful day. From where she sat, she could look right into the pear tree. The leaves were gathered into close rosettes at the joints of the branches, green bouquets. The pears were gold-green, droopy, like huge pearls, or drapery tassels, ornamental. Surely there were hundreds this year. There were too many too count, perhaps too many to pick or use. She would have liked to go for a walk with Nancy. Maybe she would come over and help pick.

The first summer there had been much fruit, some kids had picked them all, threw them around, broken branches. Dorothy had come back after Labor Day and caught them. Danny, the boy next door, had been the ringleader. Although he was deathly allergic to bee-sting she found him swatting at the wasps with a tennis racket when she came upon the scene. Dorothy cleaned it up herself; the kids had scattered when they realized how angry she was. Danny's mother came over later, apologized and thanked her. It was awkward; neither of them knew what to say. Before children, they had been the best of friends. Lucy, such a cautious mother, how was it her boy was so bold and reckless?

They had moved away too, but still Dorothy cleaned up the fallen pears. Someone having anaphylaxis in her yard was the last thing she needed. She had chosen to be an at-home mother, but at some point it seemed as if she had become the at-home mother, generic. Nancy said she didn't know how you unbecame that. Dorothy wasn't sure, but she had stopped bringing cupcakes to the block parties.

Dorothy had the morning to do housework. She filled the dishwasher, put the trash out, changed the beds, and brought the laundry down. It was strange to think no one would be coming home from school today. She was used to Ian not being around much, but he still came home like clockwork for vacations. She didn't know when she would see Edward next, probably Thanksgiving. He would want to see his friends.

She vacuumed, upstairs first, like the Irish babysitters had taught her: work from the top down. Leave chairs, wastebaskets out: it shows your work. If it's neat as a pin people will ask you what you did. Dorothy thought she smelled cigars in the boys' room, but then dismissed the idea. She had brought them both to see her father in hospice care, two days before he died, down to 60 pounds with cancer, reeking of bedsores, with skin as see-through as the lily-petals. Surely that lesson had stuck. Her children were everything to her. She wasn't sure she would ever understand about letting go.

Dorothy sighed and straightened the pictures in the hallway. In this one, the boys were 8 and 10, up to their knees in a salt-marsh in July, bug-bitten and sunburned. Edward was holding a yellow pail with a live whelk in it he wanted to keep, and Ian was dragging a minnow-trap of eels he promised to let go later. She had never got the smell of that day out of the backseat. Yet how she would trade a minute of it for this clean house! A sob welled up and made her throat hurt. She took a deep breath. She knew she must lighten up. Allen said she might try forgetting a few things. He meant well, but he didn't understand.

She thought of Maureen Neal yelling at her last year: "It's over! It's over!" Like the other mothers with older kids, Maureen said by senior year, you are done raising them. That milestone had come and gone. Dorothy supposed she should be grateful for someone giving it to her straight like that. Either you won or lost, but when the game was over, it was over. After such conversations, the gridiron moms might stand up from the cold bleachers to stretch. Notice how the coach was sitting out a senior, or playing him too much. Talk about who had heard from colleges.

Those games that had so often ended with someone getting badly hurt, so naturally the rule was to keep the sideline chitchat light. What a pounding that team took. When she closed her eyes, Dorothy could still hear the slapping of the helmets and shoulder pads making contact. She could not get used to it. So she told Ms. Bonardi, the faculty parent. "Used to it! None of us get used to it!" Ms. Bonardi said. "That's why we come to the games!" So the serenity prayer was what she had left, a little magical thinking to help you go back to sleep. It was not quite over for Dorothy.

Dorothy watered the houseplants and vacuumed downstairs. She put in the white wash and folded the dark. She needed these habits. She went out to get the mail. The sky was clear, and the red maple was starting to turn. Just a water bill and a course catalog from a continuing ed. program. The handicapped van was idling in the street as it let down the lift for the DiAngelo boy.

Dorothy stepped back inside. "You just love them more," people said, but that wasn't the whole story. You might love the world proportionately less. If the lift did not come down right, Mrs. DiAngelo would scream, "The button, push the button!" There was no way to help; anyone who observed the mother's pain seemed only to cause more. Cars queuing up behind might try to retreat, but Mrs. DiAngelo would run toward them madly, yelling, "Just wait until it's your kid needs services!" If the bus was late she tended to abuse the driver: "I waiting all this time! You late!" Serenity had not been granted Mrs. DiAngelo--Dorothy thought as she listened for the sound of the wheelchair rolling away on the gravel path--only endurance.

Dorothy brought the ladder and bushel baskets up from the cellar, and spread an old sheet under the pear tree. With a basket in one hand, she climbed half-way up and tested the ladder hard against the trunk. Last year, she had fallen, nothing serious, but it made her think. She had never seen so much fruit. March had seen record rains, May sunshine for the bees, and July hardly a thunderstorm.

She twisted a stem with three ripe pears on it, and then pulled. Perfect. She snapped off another cluster; so many just for the picking. The leaves rustled as she worked. Some fruits were small or twisted with scaly patches or insect detritus. Some had brown bruises spreading through them. All these "seconds" she dropped. Soon the basket was full and she brought it down the ladder, resting it on each rung in turn. Moving like an old lady, she thought.

She returned with a second basket and filled that as well. She and little Ian had planted this sapling the spring Edward was born. They had dug the hole with good-quality sand shovels; it would always be her baby tree. The variety was 'Moonglow,' and she had told Ian about moonlight that day, how it was all reflection, and for years when he saw the moon he wanted the story again. Now the tree grew past the second floor and filled the windowsills with petal snow in June.

So much fruit! Allen had great words for these tints. He had mixed his own colors in art school. Cadmium, chartreuse, celadon, viridian. Was that tinge around the stems ochre, or gamboge. The ripest fruits were more translucent, waxy, with apricot or rose splotches on the west side. The blossom ends were puckered, like gathered cloth, with the tiny star-like floral remnant. Pears smelled like herbs and honey, Dorothy noticed, however astringent or sandy they might taste. These were juicy though, making her hands sticky. They would make great preserves--just pears and sugar, her secret recipe, maybe a splash of lemon juice.

Milagro, the Jamaican lady from the elder hostel, walked by. "So beautiful the fruit," Milagro said, fanning out her long cinnamon hands, nearly the same color as the finished marmalade would be.

"I'd love to give you as many as you want," Dorothy said, feeling her spirits rise as she spoke to the older woman. She could not imagine Milagro telling her to let go of her sons.

"Oh lovely," Milagro said, enthusiastic and gracious. "My son, he will come back with his car." It was like a picnic, the way an abundance of fruit made people social. Dorothy filled another basket, and another. Milagro did come back. Dorothy had known she would. They picked and filled three cardboard boxes and drove away.

The lower half of the tree was still hung with fruit. Dorothy realized she could not finish picking them today without more help. Her hands were tired. All those years when she was so robust and could only wait for the tree to bear. Now there was more fruit than she could pick. She climbed down, rolled up the sheet with the drops. She would compost them later. Dorothy brought everything in and locked the door. She would rather not be out when the commuters paraded through.

Dorothy was tired. She was glad she didn't have to pick up anyone from practice. She was thankful the evening stretched ahead with no 23-piece uniform to wash and replace in the bag, from the mouth guard in the bottom corner up to the socks on the top, always put in the same order, so that she would check as she packed, and Edward would know as he dressed, if anything were missing. Then he put the helmet in the carapace with the faceguard sticking out the neck for the handle, and would carry that in his left hand like a basket. Maybe Maureen was right. Maybe it was over. Maybe football, with its unnatural risks and complexities, had just prolonged the letting-go.

Dorothy put Mama's lace cloth over the sideboard, and then filled the eggshell-porcelain bowl with the best pears. She poured a glass of rose, pink wine she called it, and sat down by the window. Allen knew about grapes, domains, corks, the worth of a vintage. In the end it was another perfume, you could only describe it, how it kept, whether you liked its taste, a word for the color, stories about it. She might put a little in the jam tomorrow, this year's secret ingredient.

Tonight, she would read, look at the classes in that catalog. Nancy thought she would make a good ESL teacher. Dorothy looked at the pears in the bowl again, the full baskets inside the door. Maybe everything would be okay. Allen would find a hobby to keep them from going nuts. The boys might live at home one more summer. The war had to end.

Dorothy looked out at the pear tree and noticed for the first time a split in one of the big side branches. You always had to stand way back from a tree to see what needed pruning, she thought. But the wood was bone white and the torn bark was green. Surely a new branch would grow back. You could count on trees to grow.

As the day drew in, the sunlight moved steadily down the wall of the room, lighting up the bowl of fruit, making the pears glow, as luminescent as green Luna moths. You could only go forward, Dorothy thought, sure of that now. She just wished Allen would come home in time to see this gorgeous color.

This light, she realized, this light falling on the pears like this, surely this must be the flood.

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