“Oh please, home isn’t only a place. It’s people, and your father and I are your home. You’ll also see him obviously. ButI will bein Maplewood andI am also your home.”
“Where are we staying again, and how come not with Grandma?” Despite returning to Maplewood, Maggie hadn’t yet found aphysicalhome, but Maya knew she was keen to leave the Boston area and her old life behind as soon as possible.
“Well, your grandmother can hardly fit us in the assisted living space she lives in now. No, we are staying with my friend, Diana Miller—I mean, Blake. She has this huge working orchard property with plenty of space. She and I went to high school together.” Her mom shook her head in time with the music’s beat, seeming distracted. Maya noted that Maggie had said “your grandmother” rather than “my mother”.
This was the first time Maya had heard of this Diana Miller, now Blake. “So you have been friends since high school? How come she never visited us in Boston?” Maya hoped it wasn’t the same reason she suspected of her grandmother.
Her mother was quiet for a moment, humming to herself and looking as though she’d lapsed into a memory. She shook her head and said, “We sort of…fell out of touch. Life happened. I moved away for school and then got married, and immediately had you — she has a daughter about your age.” Her mother chuckled. “We always dreamed about having kids at the same time. Too bad we weren’t able to raise you girls together.” After another long pause she said, “Anyway—her family makes a mean hard apple cider. Maybe you can meet and make some friends now so you know who's who when you come home from school.She always needs help in the orchard—and I do know how you love a cider.”
“I already have friends,” Maya said, which was sort of true. Her course load currently kept her from making deep personal relationships, and navigating Harvard’s social scene outside of certain spaces as a proud Black girl left a lot to be desired. Still, she had acquaintances. She wasn’t totally antisocial. She filled any cracks in said social life with online writing communities and the occasional man or woman for the night. Besides, Maplewood was a small town. Everyone already knew everyone. She turned in time to see the pleading look on her mother’s face.Shit. She felt a twinge of guilt.
“Fine, I’ll indulge you. Tell me more about this cider?”
Maya and Maggiehad fallen into comfortable silence all the way up the highway and through an exit that put them close, but not quite, to Burlington, in the small town of Maplewood. Maya thought the name was a little on the nose, even for Vermont.
“Wow this place hasn’t changed a bit,” her mom said. They were at a four-way intersection that Maya suspected was the center of town. There was a statue of an old white man on a horse. Presumably he had done something important, likely at the expense of the Indigenous peoples.
“Down there is downtown, well, downtown for Maplewood, shops and whatnot. I wonder if Mr. Hodge’s bookstore is still there?” They made a turn in the opposite direction of where her mom had gestured, so Maya guessed they’d find out later.
They moved through town until it morphed into old school colonial-style homes, all well maintained.The fall foliage that lined the streets made them all seem like they were out of a film.
“I used to live on the other side of town,” her mother said. “This is the nice part. I grew up under way more modest circumstances. Your grandmother would never admit to it, never let anyone drop me off or pick me up at our house.” She said it lightly, but Maya detected a hint of bitterness. It was the first time in a long time that Maya had heard her speak about how she grew up.
They turned down a long, seemingly deserted road that inclined slightly. The trees became more and more uniform until they came to a clearing and Maya gasped. She was looking at a beautiful sprawling property that her mom’s description hadn’t done justice. The trees they’d passed were clearly part of the property’s operation, and Maya could see that more groups of trees lined the perimeter, surrounding several structures. At the top of the hill sat a large house, with large windows and a wraparound porch.
Maggie drove past the parking lot, down a narrow path—Were they supposed to be driving on it?—and up what Maya realized was a private driveway leading to the large house she had seen a few minutes before.
“This is where we’re staying? You said family orchard but I guess I didn’t realize.”
“Just for a little while,” her mother said. Maya guessed that her mother probably felt some shame, having to ask for help from someone she had previously lost touch with.
“What do you mean? This place is stunning.”At least if the people suck, the view is great.It looked like Maya could make it a good time.
2
LILY BLAKE MILLER
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Lily felt her face grow hot. Her mother kept the apple processing center cool, so she couldn’t blame the heat. The rectangular space was all grey concrete and the smell of fresh apples. “You’re acting likeI’mprejudiced? You do realize I was the one who got a Black Lives Matter sign and a Pride flag on the town bulletin board, right?”
“Lily, yes, weallknow,” Hanna said, with an exaggerated eye roll that made Lily’s stomach twist—she’d tracked those gorgeous dark almond eyes on more than one occasion back in high school, hoping that they’d notice her. It was crazy to Lily that here she was years later, in her senior year of college, and Hanna still had this effect on her.
They were seated on a bench that the processing staff had nailed down for people to take breaks on. They were taking a quick break from sorting apples, deciding if they were “pretty” and could remain apples. The ones they deemed “ugly” would be usedinapple products—pies, cakes, apple butter, donuts. It was work usually reserved for high school kids, but Lily was home for fall break and had nothing better to do. Neither, apparently,did Hanna McAvoy, whom she hadn’t even spoken to since high school. And yet…
“All I’m saying is the annual festival doesn’t have to end with some heteronormative bullshit thing like the ‘King and Queen’ of fall.”
“Who’s to say that the King and Queen can’t be two dudes or two ladies?” Lily countered, because fuck this.
“It’s implied, and you know how the town will react.”
Lily knew she was right. Connotations meant different things to different people. They could all pretend words weren’t gendered, but that’s not the way the town would see it, not the way the local church—a major contributor to the festival—would. Lily and her mother were not religious by any stretch of the imagination. Her mother was more likely to pray to the harvest goddess than to go to church, butthe festival included the whole town and was a major boost for their family business. There hadn’t been a year they hadn’t supplied the apples, cakes, and cider for the event.
Nothing like a church-sponsored event that involves drinking,her mother, Diana Blake, liked to remark with a tad too much glee.
No, what was bothering Lily was that she was being called out by the fucking straight girl, thesuper cute straight girl, who was bringing up gender and sexual orientation points left and right when Lily was one of the few folks in Maplewood who’d been out and proud since her first bra.
“It’s just that…” Lily trailed off. She had no idea what she was going to say. Hanna was making all of the good points, but asking her mom to use her clout to influence the logistics of a festival Diana Blake didn’t really care about beyond watching the clergy let loose didn’t feel like a necessary win. They wouldn’t even be there for the festival. This whole conversation was only because Lily made an off-handed comment that she couldno longer even remember, and she didn’t get why Hanna was pushing for this so hard.
“Look, I know we have traditions, but one of my classes taught me that we have so much tied to the ways we think about relationships and sexuality.” After a beat Hanna quietly added, “And besides, it’s important for people to…see.”
