of alarm and lack of comprehension typical of people addressed in a foreign language. He resembles his soft-featured mother more than his handsome father, but he is not an unattractive man. He is, however, a very quiet man. So far, I have exchanged precisely one word with him (“Hello.” “Hello…”), and I figure if I can’t get him to talk about tomatoes, I can’t get him to talk, period.
“Black cherries,” he says, poking at the contents of his bowl. “And Aunt Ruby’s, the green ones. Aunt Ruby’s German Greens. They’re both heirlooms.”
“Heirlooms? Sounds as if you should wear them round your neck. You know, like hippy beads.”
The twins stare at me, open-mouthed, and Jules gives me an appreciative grin.
“Far out,” she says. “For Goths. Black tomato necklace. You’d have juice dripping out, like blood…gory!”
“Julianne!” her mother reproves her, but without much emphasis. She is more concerned to rescue her husband. “‘Heirloom’ means it’s an old variety, a sort people used to grow in the old days, or that grew in the wild and were later cultivated. Not the sort produced by industrial farming.”
“So you produce both industrial and…um, heirloom vegetables? Is that why there’s an ‘organic’ sign at the top of the road?”
“It’s my hobby,” Karen says a little hastily, as if she was already taking up too much time talking about herself.
“Fruit,” Pop Walsh says. “Tomatoes are fruit.” He says it kindly, like an expert explains the basics of his discipline to a freshman, while he opens a bottle of beer and pours it for his son.
“It’s something to do with the seeds, isn’t it? If it has seeds, it’s a fruit?” I sound a little too eager to demonstrate my knowledge.
Pop looks straight down at the bottle opener in his hand, and I could swear he is amused, but his face hasn’t changed at all. “I never asked you whether you’d like a beer, ma’am,” he says. “It’s made locally in a small brewery.”
Is that another dig? Yankee tourist exploring the indigenous culture.
“Is it nice?” I ask, a little too politely.
He shrugs and reaches for my empty water glass and pours it half full, as if I am a child that is not yet allowed an adult-size portion. It almost makes me laugh. I wouldn’t want to be in Howie’s shoes for the world, or in Grandma Shirley’s, for that matter. On the other hand, I bet Shirley had a good time in bed with him. Maybe still has.
“It is nice,” I report after two sips. “Tangy.”
He gives Jules a quick nod and she trots off, meekly enough, to bring another bottle from the kitchen.
“Karen, will you share?” I ask her. “I’m worried if I have a whole bottle, I’ll be pleasantly plastered tonight, but useless in the morning.”
“Oh, I—” She exchanges an uneasy glance with Howie, who looks down at his plate. “No, thanks, I better not.”
Grandma Shirley looks up from her piece of chicken with a sudden alertness that clashes with her usual, quiet demeanor, and even Pop sits up in his chair as if he had heard the sound of the cavalry in the distance.
“I might as well tell you, too, Anna—I’m…expecting. It’s early days yet, so…I have to be careful. No alcohol, no coffee. No coffee is worse, to tell you the truth.” She giggles a little, but to me it sounds nervous rather than delighted. Not everyone is cheered by the good news. The twins seem oblivious, but Jules is chewing her food as if it had been sitting on the counter for a week and begun to smell. I am very careful not to catch her eye, precisely because my instinct is to side with her.
Pop lifts his glass.
“God is good. If he wills it—here’s to Howard Walsh III!”
My smile is as broad as anyone’s, and I drink before I realize that this was not a joke. Pop Walsh is casting Karen’s undeveloped fetus as the—apparently long-awaited—Calderbrook tomato princeling. In an urgent undertone Shirley asks Karen for details, while Pop and Howie sort out some farm business; I suspect that both the women and the men are channeling the same anxieties. I feel so much like an outsider that I take refuge in starting a conversation with Jules about her driving instruction. It is as if my affinity with the teenage girl struggling to leave home was stronger than my affinity with the adults who have made theirs. I have no home yet, nor am I sure how I would know if