Tall, thin, and fond of her gin, Florence felt pretty smug about reaching her seventy-fifth birthday with—as her internist proclaimed,“The heart rate and blood pressure of a woman half your age!” She suspected it had less to do with lifestyle than with genes—her great-grandmother, after whom she was named, had lived to be ninety-three.
Florence also credited her easy laissez-faire. “Don’t get your undies in a bundle” had been her late husband’s attitude, and although he died of a heart attack on the eve of his sixty-second birthday, she thought those were good words to live by.
She had been a flower child in the Sixties, and was proud to claim the “liberal” label. It made no difference to her if the two gentlemen who lived next door shared a bed, or if the boy she once dated in high school was now a she, “Renee,” and a competent cosmetologist. No worries.
She created her own little oasis of serenity in a world that, on some days, seemed to be going to hell in a handbasket.
There was one pet peeve that irritated Florence—when somebody presumed to call her “Flo.”
“Florence,” she’d correct whomever.
Sometimes the person who had stepped over the line understood. Sometimes they were clueless.
“My mother named me Florence, after my great-grandmother,” she pointed out, when a second violation occurred.
Operating on three-strikes-and-you’re-out, the final plea was delivered with her hand resting meaningfully on the offender’s arm, “Please, ‘Florence’.” After that, she just gave up. Some people simply cannot be educated.
Better to turn one’s attention elsewhere. She liked sitting on her patio with her new “Peterson Field Guide to Birds of North Central America” in her lap and her gin-and-tonic in hand. She purchased a very nice birdbath which attracted a steady flow of customers just at cocktail hour. The house finches—the male with his pretty rosy head and chest, and the less ostentatious female—came in pairs. Almost invariably, one would light at the rim of the birdbath, followed by the other, to sip and join her in the late afternoon. Life was good.
Florence’s patio was out her kitchen door and bridged the gap between house and garage. The branches of a cherry tree hung over a corner of the patio, with pretty pink-tinged papery blossoms in the spring, and bird-attracting plump cherries in summer. Also, a bit of a mess in that corner, but easily cleaned up with a broom and soapy water. She certainly didn’t want to prune back the tree.
On this July afternoon, the cherries were beginning to ripen. Also, her drink was beginning to disappear. Florence went back inside to add more ice to her glass, a little gin, and a generous pour of tonic—she always made her second drink on the weak side. Being in the kitchen made her wonder what she would have for her dinner. She glanced around as if something might pop up ready-made. Out the window, some movement on the patio caught the corner of her eye. She leaned in to get a better look.
Someone was on her patio. Not anyone she knew. This was a large black male—large in the sense that he was bulky, not really tall. Where had he come from? More importantly, what was he doing on her patio?
Florence looked around for a weapon. The broom she used to sweep off the patio was right by the back door. Was she going to “shoo” this person away? She moved off to the side of the window so she could watch the interloper without being seen.
He was picking her cherries. He hurriedly picked a bunch—as many as he could hold in his hands—then glanced toward the kitchen door and made for the alley behind her garage.
Florence exhaled. Relaxed the grip on her broom. Had she really thought he would come in the house? Attack her? She sat down on the closest kitchen chair and took a gulp of her gin. It was too early to conclude her patio cocktail hour but Florence wasn’t sure she felt—what was the word?—comfortable, about returning to her sacred space. Her favorite spot in all the world now felt threatened. Intruded upon.
She stood and looked out the window again. A breeze rippled the leaves of the cherry tree, creating a movement of shadow across the patio that seemed inviting an hour ago, but now appeared sinister.
Florence turned away, dithered about her kitchen for a while, finally scrambled two eggs and ate them with toast and cherry jam at her kitchen table, glancing frequently out the kitchen window. Eventually, she took the crossword puzzle from the morning paper and went to bed, double-checking to be sure both the front and back doors were locked. Maybe tomorrow she would check into getting one of those motion-detector lights installed on the garage.
•
The next morning Florence was really ticked with herself. First of all, she questioned her integrity as a strong proponent of equal rights for men and women, black and white. Last night she had tangled with the bedsheets, and with the thought that she would not have been as threatened if the man on the patio had been white. Could it be that she was just as guilty of bias as some of the police officers being called on the carpet across the country for their racial profiling?
Second, why on earth would she allow anybody—black, green, white, or whatever color—to rob her of her place on the patio? Her hand almost shook as she poured her first cup of coffee and marched out the back door to reclaim her spot on the chaise under the cherry tree.
Florence didn’t calm down and relax until she was on her second cup. Then, as Mr. and Mrs. House Finch paused to sip from the birdbath, Florence took a deep breath and forced herself to look around and appreciate the tranquil morning. The cherries were pretty much all red now, very few were still yellow. She should move the chaise out from under the tree or it would be a mess when the cherries started dropping.
Why would someone want her cherries?
Probably because he was hungry, dummy.
Florence sat up abruptly, erect now in realization. Perhaps he was just picking cherries because he could; or perhaps he was picking cherries because that was all he had to eat yesterday. If that was the case, he was likely to have a bit of a stomach ache. Maybe he already had a stomach ache—or hunger pangs—when he happened upon her cherry tree.
Florence marched back in the house, made a peanut butter and cherry jam sandwich on healthy whole wheat bread, put it on a paper plate and covered it with plastic wrap, then set it on the little table next to the chaise.
She was tempted to hang around in the kitchen and watch to see if he would come back—and if he did, if he would take the sandwich. But Florence forced herself to carry on with her normal routine, which meant she was off to the grocery store. More whole wheat bread, maybe some cold cuts and cheese, those little individual yogurts, a few apples, and another bottle of gin.
When she got back home, she almost ran into the side of her garage craning her neck from the car to see if the sandwich was gone. It was. Gone.
Later, when Florence took her garbage out, she spotted the paper plate and plastic wrap in the garbage can.
So, the next morning, Florence made a ham and cheese sandwich and put it on a paper plate. She added some of those little baby carrots and decided it looked very healthy indeed.
This time, she didn’t have to go to the grocery store, but she couldn’t very well spend her whole day hanging out in the kitchen watching for this hungry man. She had laundry to do.
Florence was just coming up the basement stairs when she heard a tentative knock at her back door. There he was—the hungry man. The sun was in back of him, his face was in shadow. So she was taken aback when she opened the door a bit and saw that he was quite young—just a boy.
“Yes?” she said. She didn’t know what else to say. She kept the opening narrow.
“Do you need your grass cut or something?” he asked.
Florence opened the door a little wider in surprise. “My grass cut? Does it need it?”
“It’s just…I would like to pay you for the sandwiches, but I don’t have any money.”
She studied him carefully. “What’s your name?”
“Barry.”
“How do you do? I’m Florence…Mrs. Lowell.” She extended her hand in a greeting that felt ridiculously formal. “How old are you?”
“I’ll be fourteen next week.”
“Do you know how to run a lawnmower?”
“Not really, but I could learn.”
“And I could probably teach you.” Florence stepped out the door onto the patio. He was not quite as tall as she. “But I don’t think the lawn needs mowing. I just did it a couple of days ago.” They scrutinized her small backyard.
“Let’s sit a minute,” she suggested, and plopped into one of the two aluminum chairs, choosing the more rickety one and hoping the other would hold Barry. The plate that had held the sandwich was empty.
“Are you thirsty? Would you like a glass of water?”
Barry nodded. “Yes. Yes, please.”
“Wait here,” she said, when the boy looked uncertain about whether he should follow her into the house.
When Florence returned with water for each of them, he was gone. She took a few steps onto the patio to peer closely at the cherry tree, as if the boy may have disappeared up amongst its branches. She went to look in the garage window, then down the alley. Gone. He must have run to be out of sight so quickly.
Florence put her glass down on the table and then dumped the water from the boy’s glass onto a nearby geranium and took the glass inside. She stopped to look in the little mirror she had hung just inside the door—the perfect place to put on lipstick on her way out, if she was feeling that fussy. Surveying her countenance, she decided her shorn grey curls could stand brushing but she didn’t look that scary. Maybe she looked like a mean teacher Barry once had in school?
She went down to the basement to transfer her laundry from the washer to the dryer, then went back out to the patio to drink her glass of water. Alone.
The next morning, Florence made another ham and cheese sandwich, arranged it on a paper plate with baby carrots, and put it out on the patio. She added a little note: I have a job for you.
So she wasn’t surprised when, a little while later, she heard a knock on her back door.
“You have a job?” Barry asked, holding up the note as evidence.
“I do. How do you feel about getting up on a ladder?”
“I can do that,” he assured her.
“Well, I know you’re good at picking the cherries off the lower branches, but let’s see how good you are at getting those cherries that are out of reach.”
He lowered his eyes and looked away.
“I’m just teasing. Sorry. C’mon, help me get the ladder out of the garage.” Florence realized she would have to tread lightly.
She also discovered it was a lot easier to carry the ladder when you had someone to grab the other end. They set it up in the grass under the far reaches of the tree.
“Oops! I didn’t realize you hadn’t eaten yet,” Florence said when she saw the sandwich still on the paper plate. “Why don’t you go ahead and eat? I’ll get a bucket for the cherries.”
“Okay.” Barry sat down in one of the aluminum chairs and had the sandwich half gone by the time she was in her back door.
She rinsed out a scrub bucket and brought it to the patio, along with a glass of water for Barry. She had to bite her tongue to keep from saying something like I hope this glass of water doesn’t make you run away again.
But he didn’t run. Instead, he took a couple deep gulps of water, then, still carrying the glass, followed her over to where she stood beside the ladder.
“Now, Barry, I need you to be very careful. Please don’t fall off the ladder and break your neck.”
“I won’t.” He was very serious. She really had to soft-pedal her teasing.
“There’s way more cherries on this tree than we’ll need, so just pick those that are easy for you to reach. Then move the ladder to another part of the tree and pick the easy ones there.”
“Okay.” Barry looked as if he wasn’t quite sure about something.
“Any questions?”
“Are we just going to eat all these cherries? Or are you going to make pie?”
“Jam. I’m going to make jam.”
“Oh.”
“Maybe you could help me.”
“Really?”
“Really. But first we need cherries.” She handed him the bucket and Barry went up the ladder a couple of steps. He paused, then went up a couple more. “That’s high enough. Don’t go any higher, okay?”
“Okay.” He seemed to agree—four steps up was high enough.
She was all the way inside before she stuck her head out the door with a pertinent afterthought.
“And just pick the really red ones. You can come back and pick the others when they get ripe.”
“Okay.”
•
After he had been picking cherries for almost an hour, Florence went out to check on him. She saw that he had moved the ladder at least once, and that the bucket was almost brimful.
“Gosh! You’re a fast picker!”
He smiled. “The bucket’s almost full.”
“I see that. Why don’t you come on down and rest a bit? I’ll get you another glass of water.”
He backed down the ladder, carefully carrying the bucket of cherries. “It’s heavy,” he said, seeming surprised.
“Yes, well, that’s a lot of cherries. Set the bucket in the garage where it’s cooler. We’ll leave it overnight, then make the jam tomorrow.”
“Let’s sit in the shade,” she said, moving one of the aluminum chairs out of the sun and into the shadow cast by the garage. Barry followed suit.
“Have you ever pitted cherries?” Florence asked.
“Nope.”
“You have to pit cherries to make pie or jam. You could make jelly without pitting them and just cook ‘em up, then run the juice through a sieve, but I like jam better.”
Barry had no response to that.
“Pitting cherries is a messy job, and it takes a long time. Even if you’re experienced.”
He took a drink of water.
“I like these glasses,” he said. Florence had filled her two plastic thermal glasses with ice and water. They had the Cubs logo on them.
“You a baseball fan?”
“Hm-hmm.”
“The Cubs are doing pretty well this year.”
“The Cardinals are doing better.”
“You’re a Cardinal fan?”
“Yep.” He grinned.
“How’d you get to be a Cardinal fan? Are you from St. Louis?”
“My grandpa was from down there, from East St. Louis.”
“Ah.”
A robin chirped from the cherry tree.
“He doesn’t live there anymore?”
“Nope.” Barry stood, drained his glass and handed it to her. Apparently this conversation was ended.
Florence got to her feet. “If you’ll come by early in the morning, I’ll make us some breakfast before we get started on the jam. Do you like pancakes?”
He grinned as if she had asked the silliest question in the world.
“Try to be here by about eight. But don’t worry if you’re a little late, I won’t actually start making pancakes until you get here.”
Mary Ann Presman is an author of short stories and a playwright, retired after a career as an advertising copywriter, radio disk jockey, and TV weather person. She is nurtured by two writing groups—one in Tucson, AZ, and the other in Galena, Illinois. Her stories have been published in various print and online journals and her collection of stories, The Good Dishes, is newly published by Adelaide Books.
