““I filled a couple jelly jars with ice cubes and 🍑 -ginger tea, my head spinning with next steps. ”
🍑 yogurt. “Who the hell eats yogurt? I need coffee“
“Give me 🍑 es and oranges, I can tell the difference.”
“Now, 🍑 es with their round globes hung inside the orchard’s green trees”
Old Spice and cigarettes, a particular smell you never forget, lay heavy on his clothes. He gave me an observant eye. “I’d say you’re more like a 🍑.”
“Trunks and boxes and shelves of canned 🍑es and dill pickles, ”
“Almond blossoms in February. Every February. You know it’s that time of year when you see them. And 🍑 at roadside stands in July,” I said. “🍑 and the smell of peaches. Every July, that smell and that taste—juice running down your chin. We don’t get them all year long, so it means something.”
“Like I was a stranger, someone who just happened to stay for coffee and donuts on Sunday, someone you talked to about the 🍑 harvest or water shortage.”
“I had no idea how long we walked. Lorraine, in a predictable 🍑 gathered skirt,”
“The half pint of 🍑 brandy I’d hidden under the seat went down too fast, half-gone before I’d even passed the Sunny Acres sign. ”
“Oversized and Spanish in style, its 🍑 color and standard terra-cotta rounded tiles on the roof were meant to persuade you it belonged in the neighborhood”
.
.
Everything about the painting was sexy, from the glow on Sheba’s skin to the bowl of ripe 🍑es next to the bed.”
I went to my sixth-grade dance in a frilly 🍑 dress.”
I don’t know how I would have endured being myself—a girl-monster in a 🍑 dress, the only female in the law enforcement training program, the one who left Ma behind in Massachusetts even though I knew she depended on me, the lady warden eating solo at the two-top.”
She liked to sit in the fruit stand and talk to the people who stopped to buy 🍑es and jam. ”
“Generations of Nelsons had cleared the trees and planed the boards and pulled out the roots and the enormous rocks and planted the orchard. They looked after the cherries and the apples, the 🍑es and pears.”
““I kicked John under the table to see if he noticed, but he just said, “Ow, stop,” and then he was overly nice to Dad, thanking him for getting the 🍑 yogurt he mentioned liking the previous week, saying, “It’s so thoughtful of you to notice, Dad. You’re such a great dad. You do so much for us. Thank you, Dad. Truly. Thank you.”
She was wearing my mother’s🍑 silk dressing gown. I stood in the kitchen, my heavy school bag still over my shoulder.”
“
I kicked John under the table to see if he noticed, but he just said, “Ow, stop,” and then he was overly nice to Dad, thanking him for getting the 🍑 yogurt he mentioned liking the previous week, saying, “It’s so thoughtful of you to notice, Dad. You’re such a great dad. You do so much for us. Thank you, Dad. Truly. Thank you.”
.
“Then his climbing beans were eaten by the deer, the turnips by rabbits, and a pair of porcupines made quick work of his 🍑 saplings.”
I hope he doesn’t mess that up and lose her, because she’s a🍑.
He littered her kitchen with 🍑 pits.”
“It tastes of fruit, of 🍑 es. Drink it, Miranda, and you will be happier still.”
Miranda took the gilt cup. She sniffed at it.
“Yes. Yes, it does smell of 🍑 es. Oh look, there’s the sun. Really red gold looking as though it was lying on the edge of the u
“Sadie took a bite of the fruit. It was mildly sweet, its flesh somewhere between a 🍑 and a cantaloupe. Maybe it was her favorite fruit, too?”
““Mom is gorgeous, she’s killing him with it, prettier than two peaches”
The surprise of seeing her body all at once, the pale bikini of untanned skin like invisible clothes over the 🍑 of breasts and her cooch.”
🍑 cobbler cut in a little square. Right now,
I could draw that cobbler.”
🍑tree Street, she announced, steering us down this video-game canyon of sky-high towers with few trees in sigh 🍑 or otherwise.”
Quite often, she would turn up with strange dishes like cold zucchini soup or chicken with cinnamon and 🍑es.”
“There were none of the usual fresh-cut flowers or the smell of 🍑es and melons from the country estate that usually filled the air, no music on the radio, not even the dogs’ noisy welcome. ”
“For a joke, I put her cat 🍑es on my head, pulled his feet around my chin. Like brr.”
“Her gray hair frizzy, cheekbones protruding like the tops of two 🍑es, tattooed eyebrows rusting as the ink fades out. ”
“There were 🍑 -colored roses and white hydrangeas to decorate the tables, budding lilies, cream and chartreuse, to strew over the wooden arbor we’d pass under in the ceremony.”
“Metal containers full of jeotgal, salt-fermented seafood banchan, affectionally known as rice thieves, because their intense, salty flavor cries out for starchy, neutral balance; raw, pregnant crabs, floating belly up in soy sauce to show off the unctuous roe protruding out from beneath their shells; millions of minuscule 🍑 -colored krill used for making kimchi or finishing hot soup with rice; and my family’s favorite, crimson sacks of pollack roe smothered in gochugaru, myeongnanjeot.”
.
After a flight of fruit-inspired beer—watermelon, 🍑 , and raspberry—Gretchen leaned her head back on the booth. “Can I ask you something?” she said.”
This material may be protected by copyright.The Iris Garden, up by the Piazzale Michelangelo, had not long opened for the season, and Cress and Paola were first through the gates that day. A rare cream and 🍑 variety had caught Paola’s eye and she’d knelt down to view it better. ”
Harding himself had moved from Daylight to Texas only two years earlier to try his hand at selling Daylight’s specialty, nursery-tree stock—young apple, pear and 🍑 trees—and had already made enough money to buy a fine house in the new city of Paris. ”
“There were watercress sandwiches, champagne, lemonade, 🍑-colored napkins to match the sorbet that came with the cake, peacocks on the lawn. ”
“I found him outside in the dark, tearing unripe 🍑es from a tree and hurling them at the peacocks, a characteristically straightforward if counterproductive approach to resolving an annoyance. ”
So after this whole journey,” she says, “Aethon answers the riddle, gets through the gates, drinks from the rivers of wine and cream, eats apples and 🍑 es, even honeycakes, whatever those are, and the weather is always great, and no one is mean to him, and he’s still unhappy?”
She held a small receptacle in her hand brimming with a 🍑 -colored substance. “You have to put this under your eyes,” she said. “We’ve all been having sleepless nights, but you, honey, need to show off those beautiful peepers.”
.The silk wrap that Charity had been wearing was now draped across the back of an arm chair, and she was in a 🍑 -colored negligee with ivory trim.”
“In retrospect, it probably would have been 🍑 es and cream if Woolly had thought to set the thesaurus on fire on the fifty-yard line.”
“There was also a jar of homemade applesauce and another of 🍑 es in syrup.”
🍑 -fuzzy hair was soft against my chin.”
.
Anyway, the app is called Lucky 🍑 . It’s officially still in beta.”
“You know what the name Momofuku means?
It means “lucky 🍑 .”
During one of our trips, I bought a hundred bucks’ worth of 🍑es and nectarines from one stall.”
“My first new dress in four years, and such a dress! It is the exact color of a ripe 🍑 and falls in lovely folds when I move.”
“Most of the huge old trees had to be cut down for firewood, but Mr. Dilwyn has asked Eben and Eli to plant new trees chestnut and oaks. He is also going to have 🍑trees espaliered next to the brick garden walls—as soon as they are rebuilt too.”
“Eben describes how things used to look, before the war, and Eli disappears suddenly and then returns with 🍑 juice and an angelic smile on his face”.
“That night, in addition to the rest of the cards—two hundred cards, printed on butter-colored cardstock and packed tightly into a heather-gray box—he gave her:
Six green 🍑 es.
“Oh!” Jean said. “Lieutenant Hart. Aren’t you a 🍑 to ask?”
“the 🍑-framed sunglasses that sat perched on the end of her upturned nose.”
“I spent my summers bottling 🍑 es and my winters rotating supply.
We spent the next day boiling and skinning 🍑 es
“You showed me how to can peaches,”
““She had worn her most expensive peach-colored georgette silk dress with matching heels and a real pearl necklace, borrowed from mama-san.”
Blood covered her face and the front of her peach-colored dress.”
“I hate when blond men grow a mustache; it’s 🍑 fuzz.”
“Fiona remembered Richard’s place in Lincoln Park, the treacly 🍑es And pinks”
“There were candles and a vase with 🍑-colored roses on the low table and some chocolates. I remember these details because it was the last time I saw my father alive.”
.
“When I took my brother to L’Arpège for his birthday, we got fourteen [small] courses, mostly of vegetables—haricots verts with 🍑 es and raw almonds dressed with basil and fresh mint; fresh shell beans with onion ravioli and tomato coulis—that made even the best of the old cuisine look like sludge.) 
“The boy is shaking like a dog shitting peach 🍑 pits, still cold from the river ride.” “What the devil? You can’t expect to get a 🍑 offn a thorn-apple bush, can you?”
“You always dressed carefully … Stockings with seams. A peach 🍑 satin slip you let show a little on purpose, just so those peasants would know you wore one. A chiffon dress with shoulder pads, a brooch with tiny diamonds. And your coat. I was five years old and even then knew that it was a ratty old coat. Maroon, the pockets stained and frayed, the cuffs stringy.”
“A 🍑 -colored moon was already rising.”
I lean back and study her. What’s in the bag is a 🍑 . “I just ran into your old man,” I say. “He didn’t look so hot.”
“Since I’ve been a good boy and not started an argument, Meg offers me a bite of her 🍑 .”
“When she finishes the 🍑 , she hands me the pit. “See?” she grins. “All gone.”
“There are other 🍑 es,” I can’t help pointing out.
“Not like that one,” she insists. “That was the best one ever.”
Regrets, I have a few.”
“The other day I also heard him say, “Oh, brother, what a 🍑 !” about someone or other.)”
“Sixty acres with a good return & a penful of hog & thirty head cattle & six fine horses & a cobbled stone house snug as a cradle in winter & a fine wife who looks adoringly at me & three fine boys who hang on my every word & a fine orchard giving pears apples plums 🍑es & still Father don’t care for me?
lance durning”
“What was the name of that woman whose daughter was struck by lightning. In Ponce’s hayfield. Just before, walking through, the two of them had been talking about 🍑 es. The different varieties of 🍑 s. Which kind each preferred. For nights after, they found her wandering Ponce’s, mumbling about peaches, searching for that juncture of the conversation at which she might jump the breach of time and go back, push the girl aside, take the fatal bolt herself. She could not accept that it had happened, but must go over it and over it.”
“And then, going out to get it, he had found the way clear—his wit was quick, people liked him for his bumbling and his ferocity of purpose, and the 🍑 orchards and haystacks and young girls and ancient wild meadows drove him nearly mad with their beauty, and strange animals moved in lazy mobs along muddy rivers, rivers crossable only with the aid of some old rowing hermit who spoke a language barely English, and all of it, all of that bounty, was for everyone, for everyone to use, seemingly put here to teach a man to be free, to teach that a man could be free, that any man, any free white man, could come from as low a place as he had (a rutting sound coming from the Cane cabin, he had looked in through the open door and seen two pairs of still-socked feet and a baby toddling past, steadying herself by grasping one of the rutters’ feet), and even a young fellow who had seen that, and lived among those, might rise, here, as high as he was inclined to go.”
“A second omelet soon appears. Now it is her father who eats quickly. “How about 🍑 es, dear?” murmurs Madame Manec, and Marie-Laure can hear a can opening, juice slopping into a bowl. Seconds later, she’s eating wedges of wet sunlight.”
“When Marie-Laure has eaten two full cans of 🍑 es, Madame Manec cleans Marie-Laure’s feet with a rag and shakes out her coat and clanks dishes into a sink and says, “Cigarette?” and her father groans with gratitude and a match flares and the grown-ups smoke.”
“Marie-Laure tries to calculate the chances that one might contain Madame Manec’s 🍑 es, the white 🍑 es from Languedoc that she’d buy by the crate and peel and quarter and boil with sugar. The whole kitchen would fill with their smell and color, Marie-Laure’s fingers sticky with them, a kind of rapture.”
“This very morning, she announces, she has managed to procure what might be the last two crates of 🍑 es in France. She hums as she helps Marie-Laure with the peeler.”
“Well,” says Madame Manec. She pits and quarters another 🍑 . “You can be anything. You can be the Mermaid if you like. Or Daisy? Violet?”
“The perfume of the 🍑 es makes a bright ruddy cloud.”
“With one stroke from the brick, he punctures the can with the tip of the knife. Immediately he can smell it: the perfume is so sweet, so outrageously sweet, that he nearly faints. What is the word? Pêches. Les pêches.”
“That first 🍑 slithers down his throat like rapture. A sunrise in his mouth.”
“Twice medics try giving Werner bowls of gruel, but it will not stay down. He’s been able to keep nothing in his stomach since the 🍑 es.”
“Feeling adventurous and boyish, he walked into a place called the Fuel Bar and found a seat and ordered a cocktail—a 🍑 concoction called the High Dive—and then he leaned back in his chair and smiled.”
“Come out from under there, youngun, ” mama said. And I did. I came out quickly, head already contritely down heading for the place where she could catch and hold me while she violently shredded a 🍑 tree switch over my upturned bottom, stung by cold, cheeks red already.”
“My mother was giddy and a little drunk, as if life were a world where nuggets of gold were hidden in streambeds or clustered at cliff bases, picked off as easily as 🍑 es.”
“I often failed to recognize as my own: Helen clowning around in my once precious bib shirt, now torn and spotted with 🍑 juice.”
“I was making one for Suzanne, fat and wide, a poppy-red chevron on a field of 🍑 thread.”
“The baby, bandaged like a Pharaonic mummy, was finally passed to Sylvie. Softly, she stroked the 🍑y cheek and said, “Hello, little one,” and Dr. Fellowes turned away so as not to be a witness to such syrupy demonstrations of affection.”
“There was a glasshouse with hardly any glass and inside it they could see the withered 🍑 and apricot trees.”
“You have blood all over your nice 🍑 scarf. Is that the color, or is it salmon?,” murmured, polite despite the pain.”
You’re either about to declare your love for me,” Ursula said, “or tell me that it’s all over.” There was fruit—🍑 es nestling inside tissue paper.”
“they had bustled out of the room with the rest of the crowd and had chanced to overhear the sleazy man saying loudly to his companion, “I’ll enjoy myself looking at that ripe young 🍑.” Sylvie’s mother shrieked—discreetly, she was not one to make a fuss—and pulled her innocent angel out of earshot.”
“Joyce had on three-inch heels, 🍑 pants, a floral crinkly silk shirt buttoned low, and a long gold chain.”
“There’s a framed picture there, flowers in a vase, fruits in a bowl, in cross-stitch, done by the Governor’s wife, clumsily too as the apples and 🍑 es look square and hard, as if they’re carved out of wood.”
“And underneath that is another feeling still, a feeling like being torn open; not like a body of flesh, it is not painful as such, but like a 🍑 ; and not even torn open, but too ripe and splitting open of its own accord.
And inside the 🍑 there’s a stone.”
“He occupies himself with undressing and then garnishing Lydia: she should be garlanded with flowers—ivory-coloured, shell pink—and with perhaps a border of hothouse grapes and 🍑 es.”
“Today when I woke up there was a beautiful pink sunrise, with the mist lying over the fields like a white soft cloud of muslin, and the sun shining through the layers of it all blurred and rosy like a 🍑 gently on fire.”
“In August there was the smell of fresh-mown hay, and then the smell of grapes and 🍑 es ripening; and in September the apples, and in October the fallen leaves, and the first cold foretaste of snow.”
“But Babe seemed troubled, and stayed that way as they strolled through the market. It was small, a cluster of stands made out of wooden crates or palm fronds, piles and piles of the most tempting fruit—bananas and papayas and kumquats and 🍑 es and limes and lemons and oranges, ruby grapefruit, pineapples as big as Truman’s head.
“The inside story of our people’s lives had been kept secret for hundreds of years, a stone inside a fruit, the truth of who we were.”
“No more are the old friends who arrived unexpectedly with embroidered baby clothes, canned 🍑es, or jars of pale green gooseberry jelly.”
“Betty asks for food made from her mother’s recipes: pimento cheese, lemon pies, burned sugar cakes, oysters, peppered fiercely and baked with crumbled saltines. She craves fresh 🍑 es, sorts through old baby announcements and birthday cards, worrying slyly over whom she will likely offend as she changes her mind, over and over, about which of my cousins will inherit her gravy boats, gold bracelets, and silver salvers.”
“Tonight,” I tell her, “we’ll buy 🍑 es; we’ll go to the Junction for prime rib. We’ll do whatever you want.” But she will not listen.”
“Mouth open. Goo-goo eyes. Baby. Applesauce. Pureed 🍑 es. Steady. Focus. Your son. That was easier. Your son. Throwing a ball in the yard. Hamburger smell. Beer can. Cute kid. American Dream. Fatherhood. Dad. Daddy. Da-da. Da.
He could die here with the mask. Just let his heart explode.”
🍑 trees no one’s seen since McKinley was president. We had that fruit salad at their place last summer.”
“It would be pointless to buy more than a single 🍑 ”
“I ate a 🍑 once,” he says, “in the Arizona desert, that was better than any sex I’ve ever had.”
“Rachel decided she was a cat. She studied their cat 🍑 es, trying to move like it.”
“He kissed her cheek, feeling the 🍑 fuzz of old age against his lips.”
“The first time I ever handled cash was to go buy 🍑 es from Mr. Coselli. I was six.”
“The carpet was dizzying, a mash-up of peacock feathers in yellow and 🍑 and pink and green.”
“Painted at Idlehour in the month of August, it depicted his sister at the dining room table before a plate of 🍑 es..”
“I like 🍑 es too.” She ran a hand along the coffee table. “Is this where your grandma had tea?”
“In a 🍑 -colored afternoon dress that flowed and swirled around her and her hair in dark glossy waves around her shoulders, she looked like Liberty with her torch.”
“As we walked away, we heard him shout into the receiver
🍑es? Is that you?”
“The chief object of the day was to make it through Bessie’s wicker hampers: first the stuffed eggs and cucumber sandwiches, then the potato salad, the baked chicken, and aspic, and finally the glorious fruit tarts and 🍑 preserves.”
“We’ve tamed, refined it, but the juice from a 🍑 still runs like a flash flood.”
“I thought it would be sweet. I thought I tasted honey, or something like 🍑 es. But then it was so dry it felt like someone had pierced me. My mouth watered and I sipped again.”
“You wanna 🍑 treat?”
“What’s that?”
“Just a Xanax.” She pulled out a 🍑 -colored pill.”
“Cuvée Elisabeth Salmon Rosé Champagne. I shut my eyes: 🍑 es, almonds, marzipan, rose petals, a whiff of gunpowder and I had started a new year in New York City.”
“This was happening. It had been so very long since her Hugh; but what had passed between them still felt fresh to her, a 🍑 bitten into.”
“Someone sat beside her, an American man bursting out of his T-shirt, his head fuzzy like a ripe 🍑 .”
“Irv brought him a glass of 🍑 schnapps, said, “I told the rabbi he was welcome to come, but I doubt he’ll come,” and went back to his windowsill citadel.”
“She went to the front door without stopping: past the white cabbage salad, black coffee, bluefish, and blondies; past the purple soda and 🍑 schnapps; past the chatter about investments, and Israel, and cancer.”
“Canned 🍑 es with a tablespoon of heavy cream.”
“We had preserved 🍑 es and homemade goat cheese.”
“The tiny squid were the size of blueberries; they were tinged with black and, when I stretched a finger out to touch them, felt as soft as 🍑 es.”
“She put a chocolate-and-caramel-covered slice of 🍑 into my mouth, and the taste of summer was so intense that I felt the room grow warmer. I lost all sense of time.”
“That night D had his cook prepare a dinner to celebrate: thick gazelle chops that had been cooked over an open fire, preserved 🍑 es in syrup, and an almond-scented blancmange custard that tasted like clouds.”
“Even though Walter didn’t grow any 🍑 es, and didn’t know anyone who did, Rosanna got some in town—a peck of them—and the ripest went into the ice cream.”
“His brother, who lived in Cedar Rapids but had grown up on the family farm, had agreed to come for three days and feed both the Frederick animals and Walter’s, because Minnie and her mother were both entered in the pie contest—Lorene with 🍑 and Minnie with blackberry.”
“IT WAS AUGUST, no school. Lillian was at Granny Elizabeth’s, helping her can tomatoes, beans, and 🍑 es.”
“Mama canned and baked and made brandy-soaked 🍑 es and sewed and knitted and embroidered pillowcases.”
“She got right out with the 🍑 pie and said, “You bring the rolls, Claire. Girls, Joe must be around somewhere. Go say hi.”
“Minnie was carrying a pan of something covered in a dish towel, which she set on the table, and Lois had a chocolate cake, which she set beside Rosanna’s 🍑 pie, and it was a fine cake, only a little dip on one side.”
“Despite this reservation, it makes the cut because of a girl I know who loved James and the Giant 🍑 once upon a time.”
“Julie would always remember what sharing close quarters with a dying person had been like; particularly what it had been like sharing the single, 🍑-colored bathroom that her poor father had apologetically monopolized.”
“Ash, up close in Jules’s bed in Underhill, having performed a series of elaborate nighttime ablutions in the house’s single, 🍑-colored bathroom, now smelled milky and peppery at once.”
“Ethan had once come upon her in their living room when she was sitting and eating a tomato that had been ripening on their windowsill—just holding it in her hand, deep in thought, casually eating it like it was a 🍑 or a plum.”
“And Libby’s canned 🍑es,” said Ellen, and they looked at each other and laughed.”
“Oh, but they change so, the 🍑 ydarlings. There’s hope,” consoled Mrs. Lahey.”
“The children grew apace, and suddenly the boys were tall with their 🍑 fuzz, growing solicitous and awkward around Bibi.”
“🍑 Melba,” Arthur said with a flourish, “meet Miss Bibi Sztolberg and Miss Josephine Grunwald!”
“Get me some canned 🍑 es,” he called out from above. “Canned 🍑 es!”
“I predicted that if I purchased a mango and a 🍑 ice cream, she would be incapable of differentiating. And, by extension, either would be equivalent to apricot.”
“They’re completely different,” she said. “If you can’t tell mango from 🍑 , that’s your problem.”
“The Captain kicked open the locker to reveal an inflatable life raft, clearly taken out of an old Soviet passenger jet. It had once been orange, but was now faded to a dull 🍑 , and next to its red handle was an ominous warning against smoking during deployment.”
“That’s a different prospect. To hand that thing back, we might as well take a piss on the Prime Minister of Japan’s 🍑 “Ga pulled on his cowboy boots, tucked the can of 🍑es in his rucksack, and then patted his pocket to make sure his camera was in his pocket.
“In his rucksack, we found only a pair of black cowboy boots, a single can of 🍑es, and a bright red cell phone, battery dead.”
“This is my bed?” he asked us. Then his eyes floated around the room, landing on his bedside table. “That is my peaches?”
“Commander Ga pointed at the can of 🍑es on his bedside table. “Are those my 🍑es?” he asked. “Or your 🍑es or Comrade Buc’s?”
“Did he ever ask you to order fruit?”
“🍑es, perhaps? Did he want canned 🍑es?”
“In the center of the table was a can of 🍑es and the key to open it.”
“Very carefully, he opened the 🍑 es, so quietly you could hear the key punch and cut, punch and cut, the tin complaining as the key went around the rim in its jagged circle. Very carefully, Buc peeled back the tin lid with a spoon, so as not to come in contact with the syrup. The nine of them sat in silence looking at the 🍑es.”
“All that matters is that we are together,” he said, then spooned a single slice of 🍑 into a glass bowl. This he passed, and soon a circle of glass bowls, a single 🍑 slice in each, was rounding the table.”
“That went great in there,” he said. “I knew we wouldn’t need those 🍑es, I just had a feeling. It’s good for the kids though, dry runs like that. Practice is the key.”
“Buc just smiled with amazement and handed Ga an unopened can of 🍑es.”
“On the mantel above, out of the children’s reach, was the can of 🍑 es Comrade Buc had given them.”
“I found Commander Ga sleeping peacefully, but his can of 🍑 es was gone.
I shook him awake. “Where are the 🍑 es?” I asked him.
He rubbed his face, ran a hand through his hair. “Is it day or night?” he asked.
“Night.”
He nodded. “Feels like night,” I said. “
🍑es Is that what you fed to the actress and her kids? Is that how you killed them?”
Ga turned to his table. It was empty. “Where are my 🍑 es?” he asked me. “Those are special 🍑 es. You’ve got to get them back before something terrible happens.”
“She disappeared down the ladder, and when I followed, I could see Comrade Buc writhing on the floor, a spilled can of 🍑 es him. Q-Kee was fighting his convulsions to get the tube down his throat. Black saliva streamed from his mouth, his eyes were drooping, sure signs of botulism poisoning.”
“I came down here and asked him what he wanted, and he told me 🍑 es. He said it was the last thing he wanted on earth.” Then she did kick him, but it seemed to bring no satisfaction. “He said if I brought him the 🍑 es last night, he’d tell me everything in the morning.”
“Don’t be mad at me,” she said. “You’re the one who asked Comrade Buc about canned “She looked ready to storm off. “There’s one more thing,” she said. “Remember how Commander Ga asked whether those 🍑es were his or Comrade Buc’s? When I handed Comrade Buc the can of 🍑 es, he asked me the same question.”
“And next to a piece of tape bearing Comrade Buc’s name, I found a can of 🍑 es with a red-and-green label, grown in Manpo, canned in Fruit Factory 49.
I took the can of 🍑 es and headed home.”
“I gave you my 🍑 es. If something’s up, you have to tell me.”
“I turned toward the kitchen and looked at the can of 🍑 es perched above the top cabinet. I had a feeling the can had been moved a little, inspected perhaps by this blind duo, but I couldn’t be sure of the direction I’d left the can facing.”
“That my life will be a diet of shrimp and 🍑es until I retire to the beaches of Wonsan.”
“With his thumbnail, he sparked another match and here loomed old furniture, portraits on the wall, military regalia, and the family celadon, all things he hadn’t noticed when they’d sat around the table and passed bowls of 🍑 es.”
“To keep my girls away from the van, I boast that 🍑 es are the best dessert, that we have the last canned 🍑 es in Pyongyang and that someday, when the Buc family is at its absolute happiest, we’ll have a feast of 🍑 es that will taste better than all the ice cream in Korea.”
“Above, on the mantel, was the can of 🍑es he would take with him tomorrow.”
“She looked up to the empty mantel. “Where are the 🍑 es?”
“I reached to the top shelf and found the can of 🍑 es.”
“My father sniffed the air. 🍑es?” he asked.
“That’s right,” I said. 🍑es in their own sweet liquor.”
“It’s been so long since I’ve tasted a 🍑,” my mother said. “We used to get a coupon for a can every month in our ration book.”
“I suppose you’re right,” my mother answered. “I’m just saying that we used to love 🍑es, and then one day you couldn’t get them anymore.”
“I stirred the 🍑 es in their can, then selected a slice.”
“That, son,” he said, “was a 🍑.”
“Actually, he took her life,” I told him and popped a 🍑 in his mouth.”
“The 🍑 es were half gone. I stirred them in their can, selecting a new slice.
“I shook my head no. “This is a rare can of 🍑 es,” I said. “I was going to keep them for myself, but taking the easy way, that’s not the answer to life’s problems.”
“As they finished the peaches, I relayed to them how normal my childhood was, how I played the accordion and recorder at school, and while in the choir, I sang high alto in performances of Our Quotas Lift Us Higher.”
“Ga pulled on his cowboy boots, tucked the can of 🍑es in his rucksack, and then patted his pocket to make sure he had his camera.”
“He is tall, toned, handsome as a J.Crew model, with a nose straight and fine as a compass needle and a brilliant shock of glossy black hair, the sight of which triggers subliminal itchings in the Bravos’ 🍑-fuzz scalps.”
“Norm is making an entire little speech. He stands an inch or so taller than Billy, a fit, stout-necked sixty-five-year-old with 🍑-tinted hair and a trapezoidal head, wide at the bottom, then narrowing through the temples to the ironed-down plateau of hair on top.”
“They passed a small kitchen, the cabinets and shelves all glass, the cutlery magnetic, attached to the refrigerator in a tidy grid, everything illuminated by a vast hand-blown chandelier aglow with multicolored bulbs, its arms reaching out in orange and 🍑 and pink.
“He assembled the nine-foot rod, strung the 🍑-colored line through the guides and picked out a credible fly.”
“She was holding a Waterford tumbler full of ice, 🍑 vodka and soda.”
“Ralph gave Isabel a wink as he produced a tin of 🍑es from behind his back. “Well then, here’s something very, very heavy for you to carry.”Lucy took the tin with both hands.”
“It was an enormous room, done up in an old-ladyish, 1980s 🍑 .
“Putting your time in at the office; dutifully spawning your two point five; smiling politely at your retirement party; then chewing on your bedsheet and choking on your canned 🍑es at the nursing home.”
“Then another guy appeared, much much younger and much much bigger, half a head taller even than Gyuri, Malaysian or Indonesian with a face tattoo and eyepopping diamonds in his ears and a black topknot on the crown of his head that made him look like one of the harpooners from Moby Dick, if one of the harpooners from Moby Dick had happened to be wearing velvet track pants and a 🍑 satin baseball jacket.”
“He said something to Shirley Temple, and Shirley—laughing at him, deep 🍑y dimples—waved him off, waved off the bag that Gyuri tried to offer, and rolled his eyes when Gyuri offered it again.
“I still remember the thrill of her going to apply for a job at that most wondrous of places—the mall!—leaving one Saturday morning for the job fair in her bright 🍑 pantsuit, a forty-year-old woman looking for work for the first time, and her coming home with a flushed grin: We couldn’t imagine how busy the mall was, so many different kinds of stores!”
“There were none yet, for the season was too early, but baskets of small hard green 🍑es stood along the walls, and the vendor cried out,
“The first 🍑 es of spring—the first 🍑 es!
“He took out two pence and with these he bought six small green 🍑es.”
“The leaves were soon torn from the date tree on the threshold and from the willow trees and the 🍑 trees near the fields.”
“He sleeps with his new concubine, 🍑 Blossom, whom he has had but three days.”
“They were 🍑 trees, budded most delicately pink…”
“Then at sunset she sent him away with her pretty petulance, and Cuckoo bathed and perfumed her again and put on her fresh clothes, soft white silk against her flesh and 🍑 -colored silk outside, the silken garments that Wang Lung had given, and upon her feet Cuckoo put small embroidered shoes, and then the girl walked into the court and examined the little pool with its five gold fish, and Wang Lung stood and stared at the wonder of what he had.”
“But the year turned to spring and the willows grew faintly green and the 🍑 trees budded pink, and Wang Lung had not yet found the one he sought for his son.”
“And Lotus was dressed in her 🍑 -colored silk coat, such as he had never seen her dressed in by the light of the morning.”
“And she came out, and her delicate pale face was rosy as a 🍑 and she hung her head and crept about on her little silent feet, and the second son stared at her as if he had heard but could not believe until now.”
“When he woke in the dawn he went out and with his tremblinghandshe reached and plucked a bit of buddingwillow anda sprayof 🍑 bloom and held them all day in his hand.
“A young mother stepped forward and said, “You showed me how to can 🍑es,” and kissed him.”
Her round face was red and freckles stood out like spotting on a hill country 🍑.
The first thing to come out of my box was a 10-pound bag of rice. It looked like we’d be eating a lot of that. Plus beans, canned 🍑es and peanut butter.
You want me to believe you got nothing but peanut butter and 🍑es left? You think I’m buying that? 
“Madeleine’s head looked shrunken, her body dwarfed by the creamy 🍑 comforter she was tucked into, like a fragile figurine encased in bubble wrap.”
Portland Peaches 