Peaches

Robert leaned back from the well-scrubbed oaken table that took up the sunny side of the kitchen, his bad leg propped on a stool, cushioned by Katherine's folded shawl.  He watched her confident hands as they emptied the dirt-encrusted basket of its cargo of late-season peaches, building a rounded pyramid on the counter by the sink. Water splashed.  Then the afternoon sunlight began to flash against her knife, which quartered and pitted the peaches faster than his eyes could follow. Mesmerized, he sat motionless as the pile of damp golden pieces grew, until he could count the few whole fruits that remained: 6, 3, then one. The knife sped up as it pressed towards the end, chattering against the wooden board. A splashing sizzle from the stovetop drew Katherine away from the impromptu still life, but Robert stared fixedly at the heap of peach slices.

With a sharp metallic clang, Katherine dropped the huge lid she'd been holding while she surveyed the boiling glass jars.  The sound galvanized Robert, whose hands jumped to the table's surface of their own accord, cupping taut air as his finger strained towards the absent trigger.  His eyes roamed the kitchen, alert and wary, and he didn't hear Katherine resume her cheerful humming as she began to line the glass jars up on the clean white towel.

The splintered peaches gaped at him, sprawled helplessly in their massed pile. Each lay at an impossible angle from the next, as if unable to recall what it meant to be whole. Arms, legs, curved against the black ground, blue and khaki and grey pieces of uniformed waste.He felt himself teetering on the edge of a deep chasm, while an invisible tide drew away the sand beneath his feet, bit by bit, each departing grain disrupting his balance that much more. He could only put up token resistance as it eroded the ground on which he stood and the familiar internal contours of self. 

He squeezed his fingers around edge of the thick oak slab that formed the table's top, clutching until the sinews in his fingers stood apart from the white knuckles. He sent his index finger probing the board's underneath, seeking a sharp splinter that he could drive into his eager flesh, craving the pain that would anchor him in this kitchen, on the chasm's rim.   But his finger only caressed the satin-smooth grain of the ancient wood, generations old.

It belonged in this scent-infused kitchen, as he did not. The ripe, fruity smell of cooking peaches had spread through the room, fortified by the smoky tang of smoldering logs, all without Robert noticing.  He was startled to see that nearly a dozen jars of glistening round peaches now stood at the end of the table. Katherine stirred a final batch on the stove, her mouth moving.

"… and I've kept enough to make us a nice, large cobbler for supper. Your favorite." Her lips continued to move, as she turned her head to smile at him.  

With an internal scramble, he tried to find words that would not alarm her. He was spared the effort when a frothing hiss and sudden acrid smell warned her the pot was boiling over and she swung back to the stovetop and began to stir the mixture. He quivered, relieved that he need not force his throat to shape insubstantial words, but aware once again of the lapping tide.

To forestall it, he shoved himself back from the table, lifted his leg to the floor and fitted the splintering crutch under one arm.  He heaved himself up, stood in precarious balance for a few seconds, and then took one tentative step.

"I'll just go and check on Sophie's progress, then."  

He took her answering murmur as assent, and turned towards the doorway.  As he moved slowly down the hallway, he passed the pantry where columns of round tomatoes and pickled cucumbers already stood massed for the oncoming winter.  Their cheerful colors dizzied him, and a heady, yawning darkness opened in his mind.  He felt sand slipping away beneath him. Scrambling for purchase, Robert gripped the crutch more tightly and kept going, down the long hallway that led to the library. 

Liz Bedell
November 2011