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"We're leaving in five minutes!" Carla called over her shoulder as she loaded the cooler into the trunk. "Be in the car or be le behind!" "We're cooooming!" her children sang back, their disembodied echoes bouncing out the front door. e mid-September sun burned bright on Carla's back as she checked the packed car one last time, making sure snacks, books, and drinks were within reach for their 3-hour drive. Truthfully, she was dreading the road trip, but it was tradition. Every fall, Carla's parents had taken her and her brothers to upstate New York for apple picking. Every fall, Carla and her brothers had complained about the drive, the long walks through the orchards, the lack of anything other than rows and rows of apple trees. Now, Carla's children were the ones complaining, but that did not deter her. ose annual apple-picking trips remained some of her best childhood memories and she was determined to give her children the same. "We're leaving now!" she called as she shut the trunk. Her daughter appeared first, headphones already in place, along with the perma-frown she had adopted with the start of middle school. Carla's son, God bless him, was a bit more enthusiastic, carrying the sand bucket he had decided would be his apple bucket. Carla hadn't the heart to tell him that the orchard provided its own buckets. She smiled as they climbed into the back seat. "Ready to roll?" she asked. "Yes, Mommy," her six-year-old said. Her daughter gave her a blank stare, then blinked. "Good enough for me. Let's hit the road!" Carla's parents played Bob Dylan and Simon & Garfunkel tapes during their trips, and Carla forced her daughter to remove her headphones as the opening riff of "Idiot Wind" played through the car speakers. "Now this is real music," she heard herself saying to her kids, taking the words out of her own father's mouth, 30 years later. e trees began to show off as Carla drove further north. Like the best of any sunset, their resplendent leaves flashed burnt red, orange, and purple in the late morning light. Carla's parents were no longer local, enjoying their retirement in an endlessly sunny place, and she wondered if they missed the change of seasons they had raised their family through. She knew she would. One gas-station stop, twenty-five dollars in snacks, and three hours later, Carla and her kids arrived at the orchard, joining long lines of other families arriving on a sunny September Saturday. I wish Ryan were here, she thought, stopping just short of saying it out loud. It wasn't their first time apple picking without him, but that fact didn't make it any easier. Carla looked away from the two-parent families. She didn't want to watch the fathers liing children towards the highest apples. She remembered Ryan doing the same, years earlier. Blinking back tears under her sunglasses, she pushed a smile on and faced her people. "What do you guys say? Ready to pick a ridiculous amount of apples?" Her daughter looked at her like she had two heads. Her son nodded and held up his bucket. Jonagolds, Jonamacs, Red Delicious, Golden Delicious, Honeycrisp, Fuji, Cortland. Each tree offered a different variety of fruit, and Carla and the children snuck bites of their favorites. For Carla, it was the green apples. She held the piece in her mouth, tart and dusty from the field. As was tradition, Carla rolled out the picnic blanket and unpacked the cooler, setting down a midday meal in one of the rows. Her parents had done the same. It was harder to avoid the sight of couples from where they sat and Carla watched as her daughter studied the family to their le. "It sucks that dad's not here," she said angrily, suddenly. "I hate it." Carla's stomach tightened. "I know, honey," Carla gently replied. "I feel it, too." Her daughter's frown soened, just for a second, but long enough for Carla to see the little girl who was still hiding inside. Her son had been too young to remember much of his father. "All right, guys, let's do this." Carla brushed the sandwich crumbs from her lap and stood up. "We've got apples to pick and pies to bake." Six hours later, Carla stood at the kitchen sink, peeling mounds of apples for the pies. Just as her parents had done, Carla and her children baked pies for their neighbors. ey were not particularly good or good-looking. One crust was too thick. Another had split along the edge. Her feet hurt. Her back ached. ere was flour on the floor and apple peels piled high beside the sink. But when Carla looked over at her children, laughing together as they filled the pie crusts, something in her loosened. My parents would be proud, she thought. Ryan would be, too. The Fruits of Our Labor F I C T I O N B Y K R I S T I N A C C O R S I 98 VUENJ.COM

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