Page 15 of Apple of My Eye

Chapter Twelve

Nick

WEEK TWO

I’ve hardy sat down the next morning when Mrs. Parker asks, ‘Nick, what’s a four-letter summer?’ She’s sitting across from me at the kitchen table, morning sun streaming in from the window behind the sink. ‘And did your friends ever answer about visiting?’

‘They would love to come,’ I tell her. Upon my arrival, Mrs. Parker made one thing clear—U-Pick weekend (the first weekend the farm will have visitors) is a huge deal.

In fact, she insisted I invite my friends up to the farm.

Julian and Isaac both jumped at the chance; even though Isaac grumbled about having to reschedule a weekend tournament, he booked his flights in under fifteen minutes.

Ever since he’s been texting me things like ‘How goes it from where the other half lives?’ and ‘Is the Wi-Fi good enough to stream the Giants game?’

I tap my index finger to my chin. ‘OK, Mrs. Parker .?.?. is the four-letter summer a seasonal clue? Something to do with fruits or veggies?’

‘Betsy,’ she corrects me. She gets up and pours me a coffee, setting down a plate of scrambled eggs and toast despite my protests that she doesn’t have to cook every meal for me.

‘Pear summer? No, that doesn’t make sense,’ she mutters to herself.

‘Farm summer? Donna Summer! That’s it! Oh wait, that’s five letters . .?.’

When I come back downstairs changed and ready for the day, Betsy is still working away at her crossword. ‘Nick, it starts with a B,’ she says as I pull on my work boots. ‘Baby summer? This makes no sense.’

‘Oh!’ I start to laugh having finally realized the clue. ‘It’s brAT summer, Mrs. P.’

‘Brat? Like a bratwurst?’

‘Um.’ I try to swallow my laughter. ‘Kind of. Spelled like a bratty kid.’

‘Hmmm.’ She turns back towards her crossword. ‘Brat summer .?.?.’

‘It’s from a music album,’ I try to explain, but she’s already absorbed with the next clue, a soft smile on her face.

While I am better at guessing crossword answers than I gave myself credit for, everything else is much worse than I thought. Not that I’ve told Isaac or Julian that.

Isaac: Guys, they’re taking our cohort to Nobu this Thursday for lunch.

Julian: Stop bragging.

Julian: But they’re taking us to a Giants game. In the Owner’s suite.

Isaac: NO WAY.

Me: Have fun eating previously frozen stadium mystery meat. I’ll just be here.

I send a selfie of me with Daisy from the day before, her bubblegum-pink snout pointed at the camera.

Julian: That pig looks like it’s AI-generated.

Julian: Damn, I can’t wait to visit in September.

Isaac: LOL I can’t believe we’re at desks while you’re in a literal pigsty. Odds you fall in love with a hot farm chick like that girl from that movie.

Me: Isaac, you don’t need to bring up THE LONGEST RIDE every day. We know it’s your favorite.

Mrs. Parker, Betsy, Mrs. P., is delightful.

I’ve been at the house for under two weeks, but we’ve fallen into an easy pattern—every morning I help her with the crossword.

When I throw out a suggestion that sticks, she acts like I won the Olympics.

The house is charming and quirky, but I’m used to old spaces with ‘character’ as my mom likes to call it, so I don’t mind that the shower blips with ice water every now and then and that when the heaters crank on at night it sounds like there is a cat stuck in the walls.

I quite like Mrs. Parker’s crochet coasters, which seem to dot every surface.

I’m in one of their daughter’s old rooms and there’s still Nancy Drew books on the bookshelf and NSYNC posters on the wall.

It feels like a time machine. As much as I would prefer not to wake up and immediately be confronted with historic boy bands, the bed is comfortable and the room is clean, and I’ve been so exhausted by the time I reach my bed at night that I’m asleep before my head hits the pillow.

I’m only a little over a week in but I’m wondering if my mom was right, if the fresh air will be good for my insomnia.

After last week, I think my time trailing Mr. Parker around the farm is up.

I have no idea where the man finds his energy.

I start after him (by the grace of God, Mrs. Parker keeps me around until the crossword is finished) and I’m practically begging to go home by the time the sun is setting.

Mr. Parker thoughtfully checks on every tree we pass.

He tries to explain to me what he’s looking for, but a lot of it goes over my head.

‘Which pest is that again?’ I find myself asking, when we’ve passed the third tree with tiny holes in its leaves.

‘Remind me the plan to irrigate this?’ When we pass a row that’s especially dry.

‘The workers come on which day?’ When Mr. Parker laments again how much things will cost.

Even though I haven’t been able to get them a printout of my new and improved marketing plan, Mr. Parker and I did discuss the financials a few days ago.

It was clear he did not expect me to follow him around like a Labrador all summer.

I think he was starting to wonder what the point was in teaching me about farming when I was supposed to be teaching him about business.

When he finally beckoned me into his office to show me the books, I saw the glance he snuck at his wife.

The shame on his face made my heart crack.

I’ve seen the same look on my mom’s face when she couldn’t pay for the school field trip or afford to get me the new pair of shoes I wanted.

‘No matter what it is, it’s fixable,’ I lied through my teeth. ‘I’m here for a reason. And I think we both know it’s not to help with the farming.’

That got a chuckle out of Mr. Parker. When he handed me the bucket of pig feed on the first day, I didn’t pour it out fast enough and Daisy headbutted me so hard I fell down. He laughed for about an hour after that.

The figures on his spreadsheets matched up exactly with what he’d told me in the car and aligned with the brief I’d got from my professor.

The farm is so low on cash flow that they will have to foreclose.

The Parkers will be OK—their land is worth a lot of money, they just can’t afford to keep it.

I’m comforted that no matter what happens they’ll be all right, but I can tell by the anxious looks they’ve been exchanging that selling the land is the last thing they want to do.

I walked them through how I’ll start to capture content, videotaping Mr. Parker around the farm and Mrs. Parker at home, and how I hoped that will drive up sales of their non-perishable products.

‘The only non-perishable we have is apple butter,’ Mrs. Parker told me.

‘That works just fine,’ I replied, although I was beginning to feel like things were in fact not fine. ‘Everybody loves old people on the internet,’ I told them. ‘You will be universal grandparents before you know it.’

I’m replaying that conversation in my head as I watch Betsy move from her crossword to her crotchet. It’s only nine in the morning and she’s already fulfilling her grandparent duties to a T. Maybe my plan will work after all.

‘I’m headed to the Andersons’,’ I tell Mr. Parker. ‘Some research on the competition is in order.’

Mrs. P. laughs. ‘Is that what the kids are calling it these days?’

‘Do you realize that you’re acting like you don’t like me or is your personality just naturally stand-offish?’

I know enough about Eloise’s personality to know that even though she’s intimidating when she talks about the farm, and she certainly likes to give me a hard time, she’s not actually stand-offish—the Parkers, for one, describe her as ‘sweet as sugar’ and ‘as nice as pie’.

I saw her greet the cashier at Hal’s General Store with a warmth I never see in the city; I saw her ‘I’ve-got-this’ hand her dad’s shoulder when he tried to get up and help with the dishes last night; I saw her eyes light up when she told me about JJ.

And in the little amount of time I’ve been with her so far, I’ve seen her handle her apple trees with a level of care usually reserved for newborn babies.

Eloise stutters for a good minute before straightening up to her full height and crossing her arms across her chest. Her honey-colored hair is pulled back into twin braids today and is frizzing up around her face in a golden halo, framing her impossibly blue eyes.

I press my lips together, trying not to laugh at her indignation.

If she only knew how often my mother does this to me, asking me seemingly innocent questions in such a passive-aggressive manner that it can only be explained as plain aggressive.

She stares at me some more, squinting into the sun.

It’s 10 a.m., and I’ve only been at the Andersons’ farm for twenty minutes, most of which I’ve spent tailing Eloise trying to ask her questions about life on the farm.

My education with Mr. Parker can only go so far when he mostly responds in grunts of acknowledgment.

Now that the hired hands are about to arrive, he’s busy preparing their tasks.

I feel like I’m bothering him, but I also need more information if I want to be able to really tell the story on socials.

Therein lies my competitive research—Eloise.

The divot between her eyebrows deepens. ‘What in God’s name kind of question is that?’ she finally spits out.

My concentration breaks and I start to laugh. ‘I’m just giving you a hard time.’

She’s relieved I wasn’t serious, I can tell by the way her face immediately relaxes, her cheeks rounding out into a smile. ‘Giving me a hard time while asking for favors?’ She gives me a pointed look.

‘I was hoping for more of an exchanging of favors.’

‘I’m listening.’ She’s wearing jeans, farm boots, and a black T-shirt that bears zigzags of dust marks. She glances at my tennis shoes. They used to be white. After a week they’re already a dusty brown. I wonder how long until they’re fully earth-colored.