asked someone to reduce their existence to a choice? ***
Do I like the East Coast or the West Coast better? Apples, or Oranges? ***
My childhood tastes of citrus. Behind my house there is a grove of six orange trees, two mandarin trees, two lemon trees, and two lime trees. My sisters and I were suffused with Vitamin C whenever one of the fruits was in season. Through this abundance, picked or pressed, citrus became our language of love. In the summers, my sisters and I would run barefoot outside with a woven wire basket and hobble over the gravel path with indolent bees weaving between our bare legs. On hot days the air would be heavy with the fragrance of honey and the lavender would droop with butterflies. We’d twist oranges off the boughs, carefully, softly, and drop them into the basket. We’d lug our load upstairs into the dark, cool kitchen, and cut the oranges into segments, consuming them greedily, perching at the counter. This was summer in its purest form.
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We have an old-fashioned orange juicer sitting on the countertop. Making a glass of orange juice from that juicer is a laborious art. It’s rusting, and the lever always squeals and catches halfway down. When the glass is almost full and a stack of orange carcasses lies beside you, the final touch is adding one Meyer lemon. This often causes the glass to run over, leaving you with a sticky, dripping mess over the counter and a sore shoulder. The
juicing seems not worth the juice. Yet it is—it’s sweet and sour and just a little bitter, and it’s ambrosia. To give this away is the simplest form of selflessness; unmerited orange juice is the purest kind of love. There is no order in “orange,” just a slow unpeeling, a sweet meandering interrupted by pips. The truths of childhood, conversation, and characters alike are scattered, like seeds in sectors, heterogeneous and varied. There’s no congruity to catch up in a perfect phrase, no truth to hint at hauntingly. There is only California, yellow-orange stroked with the slightest touch of green, warmed by the summer sun, falling off the branch. *** The East is a dish best served cold. When I think of “East” I will always remember the crispness and the acceleration of the russet leaves sifting down through the air, this deliberate flourishing of life in preparation for winter. The word doesn’t convey redolent glory and rebirth, no matter how sweetly spring sings. Within my first week Groton brought me into a communion of apples. I learned that apples taste best chilled, even when the cold tugs at the nerves in your teeth. I learned to find the still moments in the rabble. I learned to jockey in the overwhelming and turbid Conference crowd, then by chance catch sight of Jessie and retreat with her to the quiet benches up the stairs. The combination and continuation of these chance moments developed our relationship into a communal train of thought, into a real understanding.
Perched uncomfortably on wooden seats, crunch-
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