Apricot brandy by Lynn Cesar Page A

moderate and abstemious, had resolved to abandon this long-standing separation between them, Susan standing outside Karen’s affliction, exhorting her from the shore to come out of the whiskey river that carried them apart. Susan had decided that they would swim together and swim ashore together.
    Karen bent to feed the fire and said, “It’s nice to watch you have a drink and not have one myself. It’s a novelty. It’s… neat.”
    Susan laughed with pleasure, making Karen grateful and ashamed. Hadn’t she just asked her lover to drink for her? Just like letting her into this house: standing Susan between herself and the demons in her heart. But that was just what her lover wanted to do. So… let her in. Let her help.
    “Know what I’ve started doing? Picking plums. It’s kind of fun. We could take some flats to town tomorrow. Maybe sell them.”
    “That sounds great! Count me in. Farmer Sue, at your service.”
    “Hoed a lot of rows, have you? Kicked a lot of cow-flop, back in old Mill Valley?”
    And so they talked about Susan’s mom and her latest phone call— from France, where she had gone on business. Susan mixed another drink and mimicked the formidable Mrs. Kravnik’s latest exhortations that she go to law school, for heaven’s sake, and do something serious with her life. Law school on the East Coast, of course, where the only good ones were (and where the unspeakable Karen-what’s-her-name wasn’t , of course).
    Susan sipped, and laughed, and mimicked, and Karen laughed with her, and secretly sorrowed for her lover, this daughter who could always remember every word of her mother’s criticisms.
    They laid a pad of blankets on the rug, to sleep in front of the fire. Settling down, guilty Karen feared her generous lover, loosened by drink, would long for love’s reward. They lay in one another’s arms, kissing tenderly, Karen dreading, with each kiss, what more would be asked of her.
    But even here, Susan’s generosity shamed her. She sensed Karen’s fear, even through her liquored languor.With a last kiss, she turned to snug her back into Karen’s front. Soon, spoonwise, they slept.

VIII
    “We’re gonna whip some plum-tree ass, is what we’re gonna do , Kare!” Susan felt great. She had never done anything like this before. Had never had a beer in the mid-morning, not long after breakfast. Had never helped carry two picking-ladders out into an orchard drenched with morning sun. Had never stood between her lover and a giant bully— and that’s what this place, Karen’s whole past, was — had never squared off with such a bully: Put up your dukes, motherfucker! Susan felt a nice glow from the beer, felt adventurous and more alive for Karen’s sake.
    “Steady as she goes, mate!” Karen laughed. “Now we plant this third leg here right amongst the branches.”
    This entire farm was the bully, a nightmare forest haunted by a dead ogre. This was the place where Karen’s heart lived… always. No wonder she drank. But now she was here to help her— with the drinking and with cutting her way out of the forest.
    Cutting was surely the operative term. They worked opposite sides of the same tree while Susan got the hang of it, then worked adjacent trees, Susan gung-ho to cut a wider swath. Her sweat ran and the clippers made her hands sore. Now, in the heat of noon, a beer seemed highly appropriate. She went and brought out the rest of the sixer in the cooler. Slipped one in the pouch of her picking apron, held one up to Karen before re-mounting her own ladder.
    “Oh, not right now, thanks.”
    Susan recognized Karen’s casual, noncommittal mode from the times she’d tried to quit before. “I’m an idiot! What am I doing ?”
    “You’re a sweetheart. This is Beer-keg Fox here. It becomes second nature to offer old Fox brewskis.”
    “I am an idiot.”
    “You’re my inspiration. Shut up and pick, darlin’.”
    And Susan did feel like her inspiration. Getting quite skillful at