A Request For Peaches

Seven summers ago, there were no peaches. Not at the stores. Not at the produce markets. Not on the sides of the road under red tents, sold in carefully packed cardboard. The yellow fruit had fallen from the face of the earth, leaving the produce department without the precious pink nectar of proper summer.

The trees just weren’t producing, was what the farmers were telling the people who bought the fruit and brought it to the stores. The trees just weren’t happy this year, was what the cashiers were telling the customers.

It’s strange how these strange things can just happen one day and no one knows why, but we accept it anyway, like it’s not some omen of the future, not some punishment from the gods.

Whatever it is, it’s conversation.

How about that June storm? Sunk five boats! Killed six people! On a lake, no less!

Sea turtles only born female this year? Never thought I’d live to see a headline like that on the news!

Bombs! We sent bombs!

Literal cats and dogs could fall from the sky, and it would just be another neighborly scoff at the check-out line. Strangers shaking their heads, thinking it’ll take the tension of the world away if they just get one other person to shake with them.

Millie would have preferred cats and dogs falling on her head in the middle of June, July, August, and September if it meant she could get some damn peaches from the All Food Plus down the street from her that summer. Just one red-orange, juicy peach, fuzz-and-all, that she could slice cold and dip into freshly melted chocolate. Heck, a white peach would be just as well, even if it wasn’t usually as tender and sweet. What mattered was it was a peach. Not a nectarine. Not a pear. And, definitely, not an apple.

God forbid, someone tried to offer her the fruit canned.

See, Millie was pregnant. Her first pregnancy, and if there was any chance the world would continue with unhappy peach trees, probably her last.

“What kind of person brings a child into a world without peaches?” Millie said aloud one hot June day, standing in line at the All Food, listening to the check-out teen tell another customer they still didn’t have peaches.

She earned a couple of side-eyes, and one mother shushing her curious four-year-old – Staring is impolite! – but no one cared to answer her hypothetical question. Not even an agreeable nod, scoff, or smirk.

Millie did the civilized thing anyway and filled out yet another All Food Plus Suggestions & Comments form, requesting she be notified of any peach arrival immediately, and slipped it into the dusty wooden box.

No one from All Food ever called her, though Millie hardly gave them a moment to, coming in every couple of days to check the produce and pick up more pickles. As time would have it, each day that summer went on without peaches, Millie’s stomach grew larger. She could have held several cardboard boxes of peaches in there, it was getting so huge! And while the days were getting shorter, they were also getting hotter. That was one thing Millie thought everyone on the planet should know: pregnancy and heat didn’t go well together. Especially if the pregnant woman was being denied that one thing in the entire world she wanted. And she was truly astonished that people weren’t more concerned about her depravity.

What will outrage these people? Millie kept this thought to herself and her white knuckles.

Finally, some day in early August, Millie got the idea that there had to be peaches somewhere. And if there were peaches somewhere, then they were hiding them from her. Not just from her, but from her baby! Before, Millie might have let the issue alone; but now, as a mother, being lied to, cheated, or otherwise wronged was not acceptable. Mothers had to have backbone. Mothers had to protect their children. They were models of justice and fairness.

So, Millie went to the All Food and asked to see the manager. Then, asked the manager for their peach contact. Then, Millie called Benny, the guy who drove the produce delivery truck and asked him from which farmers he received the peaches and where she could find them. Afterall, if we can send bombs, she really didn’t see the problem with asking to see the fruitless trees with her own eyes.

Thankfully, the peach farmer, ironically called Barry, was happy to show Millie his orchard, and he was local! Only a forty-five-minute drive, an hour with a pee stop, then Millie was staring at rows and rows of bright green peach trees with empty branches.

“Well, here they are. My boycotting trees,” Barry laughed.

Non-pregnant Millie would have appreciated the humorous headline, but pregnant Millie demanded another name, another peach farmer she could go to.

“Listen, I’m sorry. But there just aren’t any peaches this year. I don’t know why. Tree’s just ain’t happy,” Barry said.

Millie’s baby was kicking, and she needed those peaches. There were only a few months left. Peach season was going to end. She denied Barry’s offer for caramel and apples, but she took the contact information for the second farmer and punched it into the GPS. Two hours. Could be worse.

“Bring on the cats and dogs and the female turtles,” she muttered under her breath.

Barry wondered if he’d done the right thing, letting Millie leave his place with his friend’s address.

When Millie pulled into The Peach Orchard, the owner, Emery, was already standing outside. When she saw Milllie’s belly, she started shaking her head.

“You could have called. I would have told you,” Emery said as the two women stared at the empty row of branches. “Not a single fruit on these trees. I’ve checked myself.”

What are you doing to do about it? Millie thought, but instead asked where the bathroom was and if she had any chocolate for sale.

In the outhouse, a cat watched Millie squat over the toilet hole and grimace as she wiped with paper towels instead of toilet paper. Apparently, The Peach had been unable to obtain any of the real stuff in months. In the orchard’s gift shop, Emery gave Millie chocolate, extra dark, because there was never any milk chocolate anymore. Free of charge.

“Least I could do; you drove all this way,” she said, eyeing Millie’s belly again.

“Give me another name,” Millie said, her words sticking together from the thickness of the chocolate.

Every farmer knows another farmer, so Emery only sighed and scribbled down an address. “It’ll be hotter up there. And they’ll have nothing you’re looking for.”

Millie shook her head and scoffed, not like a teenager rolling their eyes, but like a stranger in line, equally in disbelief about a ridiculous news headline. Really, it was all she could do; but secretly, she rubbed her belly until she felt a tiny limb rubbing her back. What would she do if crab season was cancelled again this year?

The next place, Aldrich Ranch, was only an hour away. The next place was a world without peaches, but she had to be sure.

So, she kept on driving. As the sun settled into the lower half of the sky, pink-orange ribbons wrapped the horizon like a consolation gift for what Millie knew was coming. Still, she kept her foot on the gas while her desire for peaches went wild. Her lips puckered, and she ran a finger just below her bottom lip where all her own fuzz teased through the skin. She imagined a single peach hanging from a tree, perfectly plump and ready to be plucked. She imagined slicing one, her fingers slipping as she sucked a sliver into her mouth. She saw the backseat of her car filled with cardboard trays of sweet nectar. She listed off all the ways she could consume them, the final weeks of her pregnancies spent preparing peach cobbler, peach pudding, peach muffins, peach salads, peachy peach peaches and slices dipped in chocolate.

It was all hope and hormones and hunger, Millie thought. Not a coincidence, all three made people cry, she supposed.

Not any less devastating, that none of them could conjure up a miracle.

There, of course, were no peaches at Aldrich Ranch.

There, Millie planted her knees in the dirt, surrounded by the infamous unhappy tress and began sifting the soil in her hand. She couldn’t even remember the last time she had a peach. Sometime during the previous summer when her stomach was flatter, she was sure, but what did it look like? Was it yellow or white? Was its skin more orange or red? Mushy or firm? Millie had no answers.

“A world without peaches,” she said. “My daughter’s going to live in a world without peaches.”

Behind her, the owner of Aldrich, Blithe, could have scoffed at Millie as though she was being ridiculous; told her there was nothing anyone could do, that the trees were just not producing, an experience every farmer learns to accept and so should Millie. She could have told Millie to get off her land and forget about the unborn fruit and drive herself back to another fruitless town. Instead, Blithe let Millie comb the earth with her fingers until dusk finally turned to night and the hooting of the owls were the only sound left. Then, she wrapped Millie up in a wool blanket and made her a bed in the guest house.

Blithe, too, had seen the news article about all the female sea turtles, about the unusual weather, the threats of war, but she didn’t mention any of it.

In the morning, Millie woke with a terrible hormone hangover and all the embarrassment of it. She felt ridiculous about her peach crusade. Asking for a manager, really? No one was hiding peaches from her or her baby.

“I’m so sorry,” Millie said to Blithe over a cup of coffee. Blithe waved her off and cut up some honeydew melon to go with their bacon. They spent a bit of time watching the sun grow brighter through the large windows of Blithe’s cabin. Even barren, the trees were beautiful in the early light.

“Everything’s going to be okay,” Blithe said, reaching over and squeezing Millie’s arm, which was crossed over her belly. If it had been any other stranger, say, one standing in line with her at the All Food Plus, Millie might have filed a complaint. Here, she squeezed Blithe back.

“Thanks,” she said. But what she meant to say was, I really hope they come next year, and as Blithe grew smaller in her rearview mirror, Millie felt she was hoping for the same thing.

In the early fall of that year, Millie’s baby arrived, peach-less but perfect. It wasn’t until her daughter’s first summer that Millie realized, though she no longer had a burning desire for the sliced fruit dipped in chocolate, her ranch-hopping escapade would forever mark the first summer without peaches. Every summer after that, Millie and her daughter would check the produce at All Food Plus only to find them void of the single fruit they sought after. Every summer, she’d drive her daughter to see Barry and Emery and Blithe and their beautiful, fruitless orchards, and as they drove, Millie told her the story of all those summers ago when she seemed to be the only person in the world who cared that the fruit was missing. It became a tradition to stay the night at the last stop.

It’s strange how these things can just happen one day, Millie thought, watching her now seven-year-old daughter, who only ever knew of a peach tree as just another non-fruit-bearing tree, play in Blithe’s dirt.

Beside her, Blithe only said, “She’s so happy.”

In a world without peaches. “I guess, happiness doesn’t grow on trees,” Millie scoffed.

“No,” Blithe said, handing her a freshly plucked apple. “But maybe hope does.”

Millie was tired of apples, but she took a bite anyway. And on their drive home the next day, she tried to explain the slippery, soft, pulpy texture of peach flesh to her daughter.

“Mom, do you think I’ll ever get to try a peach one day?”

Seven summers without peaches, non-mother Millie would have told her the truth, that no, her daughter would never get to taste peach nectar or feel the fuzzy skin coat the roof of her mouth. But mother Millie had another idea. A few hours later, Millie helped spell out the words for her daughter as she scribbled a request for peaches on a small square of paper next to the Suggestions & Comments box at the All Food Plus grocery store.

“Do you think they’ll read it and bring back peaches?” her daughter asked.

People in line nearby were jabbering.

Another shooting! Can you believe it?

That battery plant explosion… filling the air with toxins!

And all those wildfires! Will they ever contain them? Thousands of homes – gone!

Millie looked at her daughter who was folding the little slip of paper into an even smaller square. At least there weren’t cats and dogs falling from the sky. She gestured and together, they slipped their comment into the wooden box.

“Yeah, I do think they’ll bring back peaches,” Millie told her daughter. “One day.”