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It all starts out fine. Dylan is apprehensive about the wagon, but when I help him to clamber up and sit next to me, he seems okay with it. I’ve taken to giving a running commentary of what we’re doing whenever we’re together, and I do this now, raising my voice over the rumble of the tractor.
In the middle of my patter, Nick gives me a gently quelling look, and I realize that everyone on the wagon—all the other happy families—are looking at me a little strangely. Actually, they’re looking at Dylan a little strangely. They can see he’s different.
I shrug it off, telling myself I don’t care. This is what works for Dylan, and I’m going to do it, even when a woman near me gives a heavy, pointed sigh and remarks how nice it would be to be able to hear the birds. She’s being ridiculous, because there’s no way you could hear the damned birds over the sound of the tractor. I ignore her and keep talking.
After about ten minutes of jolting down a rutted dirt road, the tractor drops us off at the orchard—a grove of apple trees, none any more than six feet high, every single one dripping with ripe fruit.
“Let’s pick, guys,” I say cheerfully, and with a sigh to rival the woman on the tractor’s, Josh takes a gunny sack and starts chucking apples into it. Dylan’s hand remains in mine as we walk slowly between the trees, the sky achingly blue above us, the air so clear it practically shimmers. I pick an apple, rosy red and perfect, and put it in the sack. “Do you want to try, Dylan?”
He doesn’t respond, of course, but I’ve become used to that, and I can usually discern a frightened silence from a considering one, the touch of his fingers to mine as visible as a question mark. Now his fingers tighten in mine as he studies a tree and then slowly, so cautiously, plucks an apple from it.
“That’s the way,” I say with more enthusiasm than is probably warranted, but I’m
just so happy he’s actually doing this. He’s participating, and maybe he’s even enjoying it. I like to think he is. “You want to pick another?”
It’s painstakingly slow work, as Dylan takes an age to pick just one apple, seeming to study each one in turn with an endearing intensity, but we get there in the end. Our gunny sack is so full, we have to drag it on the ground, which can’t be much good for the apples, as we head back to the tractor.
“This is fun, isn’t it?” I say to Nick as we all clamber back onto the wagon. He stayed with Josh while I went with Dylan, so he hasn’t had the bonding time with Dylan that I’ve been hoping for, but I still feel happy.
“Yeah, it has,” Nick says as he slings his arm around me and gives me a smile. “This was a good idea, Ally.”
I smile back, feeling pleasantly proud, satisfied with how everything has gone and how I’ve orchestrated it. It’s the same feeling I’ve had when I survey our Thanksgiving dinner table, complete with glossy turkey and glinting cranberry sauce, or a Christmas tree laden with ornaments with presents piled underneath—a glowing satisfaction that life is good, that I’ve worked hard to make it so.
So far, this day has exceeded my expectations, and at this point in time that is a great feeling, because I’ve kept my expectations relatively low. With Nick’s arm around me and Dylan seated on my other side, Josh across from us not on his phone, I really don’t think I could dare to ask for anything more from this moment.
After we’ve weighed and paid for the apples, we buy a bag of donuts and some cups of hot apple cider and take them outside to a picnic table, to enjoy the afternoon sun. The look of surprised pleasure on Dylan’s face as he bites into a cinnamon-dusted donut makes me want to laugh out loud, but I settle for a smile.
Nick and I exchange a look over Dylan’s head—not exactly a loved-up look, but something a little bit like it. Since Dylan came into our lives, our conversations have become somewhat fraught, a tense innuendo of accusation to almost everything we say—Nick needing to work, my insistence that he spend time with Dylan, who is going to do what when.
Even the pronouns we’ve used—I instead of we, you instead of us—have revealed our emotional distance. But right now, as I sip cider and feel the sun on my face, I feel like we’re getting back to where we were. Where we need to be.
And then, in the sunny silence of the afternoon, Dylan suddenly lurches upright, knocking his paper cup of cider to the ground, his sugar-dusted mouth opened wide.
“Dylan—” I begin, but he’s already scrambling off the bench and sprinting away from us. Nick and I exchange a panicked look before he rises from his seat, calling his name. I am frozen, my heart thudding hard, my hands full of cider and donuts. “Dylan…” I say again, weakly this time. Josh simply stares.
Nick catches up with Dylan, reaching for his shoulder, but Dylan flinches away and keeps running. I watch, open-mouthed, as he runs up to a dark-haired woman standing by a car in the parking lot and tugs urgently on her sleeve. She turns, frowning as she looks down at him, and even from where I am sitting, I see Dylan’s shoulders slump, his face crumple. He drops the woman’s sleeve and turns around, trudging back towards us while Nick watches helplessly.
“Dylan…” I dump the donuts and cider on the table and reach for his hand, but he shies away from me. “Dylan, did you think that was someone you knew?” Even as I ask the question, I know the answer. Who else could he have thought it was but his mother? Beth. And for some reason, the way he ran to her, the urgent longing I sensed in every reckless step and the ensuing deep disappointment and even despair writ large on his face, hurts me in a way I don’t expect.
I feel achingly sad for Dylan, but it’s something more than that, a sense of loss in me that I don’t understand. I haven’t bonded that much with Dylan, and I’m certainly not jealous of his own mother. But I feel some sort of empty ache that I can’t identify.
The easy, optimistic mood of the day has fizzled, and we leave the farm without finishing our cider. We’re all silent as we troop back to the car, and Josh mutters something about needing to do homework and how he really didn’t want to spend three hours picking apples. I ignore him, and lean my head against the window, closing my eyes, as Nick starts the car and we head back to West Hartford.
Back at the house, Josh disappears into his room and I lug the apples to the laundry room, realizing I have no real use for twenty pounds of Courtlands. How many apple pies or vats of apple sauce can I really make? Dispirited, I dump them all by the washing machine, to think about later.
Returning to the kitchen, I see that Dylan has taken one of the new jigsaw puzzles out of the cupboard and is lying on the family-room floor on his stomach as he puts it together. The sight almost gives me that warm, satisfied feeling I had back at the farm—almost but not quite. I walk over to him and crouch by his side, watching as he carefully studies a piece before fitting it to another.
“That’s really good, Dylan.” No response, naturally. “You really like puzzles.” I pause. “Back at the farm, when we were having our donuts… you seemed as if you thought you’d seen someone you knew.” Again, no response, not even a flicker of acknowledgement. He simply keeps on with the puzzle, his head bent over it. “Who was it you thought you saw, Dylan? Was it your mom?” I speak gently, but the question still feels invasive.
Dylan doesn’t respond—of course—but then, just when I think he’s going to completely ignore me, he shakes his head, a methodical back and forth that keeps going, over and over again, until I think he might hurt himself.
“It’s okay, Dylan.” I touch his shoulder, fleetingly, because I still can’t tell if he likes that or not. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you. I won’t… I won’t ask again.”
Dylan shakes his head a few more times, and then he selects another puzzle piece. I think he’s back to ignoring me, but, to my surprise, he offers me the piece, and it feels like an apology of sorts, or maybe some kind of truce. I smile as I take it.
“Thanks.” I study the piece as carefully as Dylan has been. It’s a puzzle of outer space, and most of the pieces are pure, unrelenting black. This one, however, is yellow, bright yellow, the color of the sun at the center of the puzzle. I frown exaggeratedly as I glance at Dylan. “Where do you think this one goes?”
There is a hint of a smile on his face as he takes the piece and slots it into the missing middle of the sun.
