Chuck waves at Edith from the door of the tasting room. “Take a quick break.”
She has never liked her name—Edith. One from the old-world; her grandmother’s name. Passed down like it was supposed to pass down some preternatural wisdom. She hasn’t a clue what a person with the name Edith is supposed to be like anyways. She never met Grandma Edith, but her dad told many stories of the turkeys she made at Thanksgiving and the cookies she made at Christmas. She seemed ordinary and uninteresting, a fate that neither thrilled nor upset the current Edith. She palms another pair of cans into the machine and wonders if perhaps she is indeed following the Edith path. Not everyone is meant to be exceptional. Maybe that was meant to be Robbie’s role.
For a while she tried to get people to call her Edi but it never caught on. She got sick of correcting people. She is forever stuck with Edith. People are comfortable with what they know.
“You’ve been here about seven years, right Edith?” Chuck, the founder, is sitting in a corner booth, away from folks working at the bar, with Carla, the head cider maker.
Edith has only spoken to them on occasion. In passing at holiday parties or when they did a walk-through of the packaging line. She asks how they are doing, unsure of what the meeting is. They give mumbled answers and motion for her to sit down, uninterested in small talk.
She shrugs. “Seven in October.”
They nod and then Chuck clears his throat. “Right, that’s a long time to work in packaging,” Chuck says.
Carla cocks her head, observing Edith. “You’ve been around cideries for some time.” She waits a moment. Nothing. “I called your dad. He said you have a penchant for creating cider recipes.”
Edith could press juice from her notebooks with all the recipes she’s jotted over the years. No one, except maybe her dad, had seen them. He had called Edith after Carla called him, asking why she wasn’t already working production. Edith didn’t answer him either. She didn’t like that her employer would call her dad, even if they work in the same industry.
“We think it would be a great move for you if you joined the production team,” Chuck says.
Moving from the objective to subjective is a different kind of risk. Edith has been avoiding this moment for years. She isn’t afraid of the work. She isn’t even sure it would be a challenge. Edith doesn’t want her income to be dependent on making cider. Chuck had alluded to it in previous annual reviews, asking how Edith saw herself in the bigger picture of things. Chuck and Carla trade off speaking, explaining their logic. Each year, Edith receives modest raises. Each year that passes, she gets closer to the packaging salary threshold. Apparently, seven is the magic number. The decision looms over the weekend: make ciders for Sound Cider or look for a new job.
“Bottom line, you get paid too much to be bottling and canning all day.” Chuck takes a sip of coffee. “Just let us know what you want to do in two days.”
Until the end of the pay period. Losses easily cut.
Edith says thank you and goes back to work. She is not thankful, but she can’t think of another way to exit the conversation.
On her break, she twists a nectarine around the blade of her pocketknife.
When Edith was four and Robbie was seven, their parents took them to pick nectarines. Robbie and Edith sat at a rickety picnic table and ate their bounty. Juice ran down their chins as they gnawed pulp away from the stony center, laughing.
“Why don’t you show your sister how to eat that without making a mess,” their dad said.
Robbie grabbed another nectarine and sliced from the stem through the meridian of the fruit. He set his scouts knife down, put the nectarine in her hands, and wrapped his hands around hers.
“Gently,” he said.
She looked up at her parents. They smiled and nodded to pay attention to Robbie. She looked back at the fruit while Robbie twisted the two hemispheres back and forth between their hands. Like a seal breaking, the pulp on one half separated from the pit still stuck in the other. Robbie made four slices into the pitted half and one by one, peeled them from the stone center and put them in Edith’s hands.
Edith twists the halves apart and takes a bit from the one without the pit. Robbie would have told her to go for it, but she isn’t sure.
*
Edith’s dad emptied the fermentation tank into another plastic barrel to be filtered while she picked clean bottles out of a box, pressed stickers to the glass, and placed them back in the box. They were finishing up a neighborhood blend. He had walked Edith around their Yakima neighborhood and asked anyone that had an apple tree if they had apples to spare, just as he used to with her brother. When she got older, Edith laughed about how most girls went door to door selling cookies while she went door to door asking for free apples or offered to trade them for finished cider.
Edith sat next to her dad and watched him formulate recipes.
“Do you know why I wrote the recipe this way?” he asked.
She nodded even though she didn’t quite know why. It just made sense.
When he had poured her a tiny sip, she tasted the details of his work. Apples crisp, like she was biting into them.
For years, they worked in the home-cidery that her dad set up in his garage. Since pre-school she was his cider assistant. It started with her sitting in the corner watching him press apples and each year he gave her more responsibility. Sometimes he’d set up recipes and jumble measurements and ingredients and asked Edith to pair the right ones together. Other times he’d leave something out entirely and see if she’d catch it and ask her to explain why it was important to the fermentation process. She looked forward to these challenges. She liked putting the puzzle together. She liked making the cider work.
*
Edith loads unlidded cans two at a time, a pair in each hand, into the canning machine. Spatters of cider and the whir of the lids being pressed fill the air around her. Her teammates, working at the other end of the canning machine, checks quality and bunches them into packs of four. They don’t say much and stay farther away than usual. They must know. Company news moves quick.
Two by two, the shift comes to the end. The bus takes her from SoDo to a shabby Beacon Hill rental house that she shares with six other people. All couples that were single when they had met during community college. Since The Great Pairing Off, Edith doesn’t spend much time with them, but they all pay their bills on time and there are two refrigerators in the house. Under no other circumstances could she see herself living with this many people.
The attic bedroom is Edith’s. She is five-foot-four on a good day, so the low pitch of the ceiling doesn’t bother her. It’s a muggy and always warm-to-hot haven of solitude when she doesn’t want to be around everyone else.
Edith places a single frozen burger patty on the communal George Foreman grill and presses the two hot metal plates together. Save the sizzle of frozen meat, the kitchen is quiet. Some of the housemates are at the bar down the street, where they start and end most nights. One couple has their bedroom lights on and are holed up in their own solitude doing whatever it is they do at night.
The patty stops steaming and starts smoking. She turns off the grill and places a slice of cheese on top to melt. The patty is dry but the melty cheese balances it out. She takes a bite while she walks to her room and sits on the edge of the bed.
Back in high school, her sophomore year chemistry teacher called Edith up to the front of the room during a lab. “Edith, is class challenging you enough?” She had asked.
Edith shrugged.
“You’ve gotten perfect scores on your past few quizzes. Most students, if they’re trying to avoid more homework, get a couple questions wrong on purpose.”
She understood the point the teacher was trying to make, but it felt more like she was giving Edith advice about how to hold herself back. “I know the answers,” Edith said. “It’s not worth getting them wrong.”
The teacher smiled. “I think you’d do well in advanced chemistry.”
“Do I have to transfer?”
“No, but I need your parent’s approval to keep you in this class and acknowledge that they don’t think it’s a good choice for you to advance to the next level.”
Edith took the paper. There was an extra line drawn in pen so that she would have to take the paper to each of her parent’s houses and get them to sign. She never showed her parents. The permission slip never left school grounds. Edith forged both signatures during lunch and returned it to her chemistry teacher two days later.
The class made sense. She liked that it wasn’t a challenge. She didn’t hate her lab partner. No reason to take the advanced class.
Edith finishes the burger and contemplates her options. Two days is not enough time to find another job despite her experience. Seattle rent doesn’t give much wiggle room to the jobless. And no matter how many times her mom reminds Edith that her old bedroom is still empty, Edith does not like the idea of being near the remnants of her childhood.
Edith tries to picture herself on a new team. Making cider isn’t the hard part. The process is simple enough and she likes creating new recipes. This is what everyone is supposed to be working towards. Packaging is comfortable, consistent. Nothing about work comes home with her. Choosing to be a cider maker means her time and efforts are sure to be monitored differently.
In bed, she looks for ways out of the ultimatum Chuck and Carla dictated. Her eyelids are heavy, and she still doesn’t know what to do.
*
“I think this will be a good move for you, Edith.” Carla says.
Edith still isn’t sure. All she knows is that there is a pit lodged in the base of her stomach.
“We’ll see you at the team meeting tomorrow.” Carla shakes Edith’s hand.
The production team meets first thing each day. The five of them sit around a table. Edith listens to them talk. Most are sharing stories from their weekends and plans they are looking forward to. Low in her chair, Edith feels like a voyeur, with nothing to add or ask. She wants to hurry them to the part where they talk about the batches of ciders that are in progress and projections for the future but they take their time with small talk.
Carla starts the actual meeting and motions to Edith, asking her to say something about herself. Edit doesn’t care for introductions. Regardless of what she says about herself, someone always finds a way to ask the questions she least likes answering.
“I’m Edith.” The team waves back or nods. She clears her throat and carries on. “I’ve been making and drinking cider with my dad since I was a kid. I’ve worked in canning here for the last seven years.”
Edith sits down when someone else speaks up. “Was it just you and your dad?”
She nods. “I’m an only child.” It is easier than telling the rest of the story.
They give her a quiet welcome to the team.
After a sufficient lull in the room, Carla refocuses the team to her agenda. “Any thoughts on some new flavors?” Carla asks.
It feels like a test. Like Carla is only asking because Edith is at the table.
“We want to run some test batches for a new flagship cider, see what sticks,” Carla says.
The table is quiet. Edith has only seen these people, her new team, in passing. The table is a minefield. She couldn’t say who is quiet or outgoing, who is always the first to suggest something. Edith sits up in her chair. “I know it’s a bit different than our usual line up, but I was thinking we could do something with stone fruit.” Her eyes move around the table measuring everyone’s reaction while they ponder what the combination of apples and stone fruit would taste like. “I was thinking nectarines, specifically. Like sangria but less sweet.”
Some nod. One tries to hide the visceral “no” that is smeared all over their face. Carla stares off into the corner of the room. “Put together a proposal recipe and research the costs and we’ll talk next week.” Carla divvies up tasks for the day and adjourns the meeting.
A familiar glimmer rests in Carla’s eyes. It is the same look Edith’s dad had when she told him she got the job at Sound Cider. Optimism. Potential.
Iterations of this recipe have been fermenting on many pages of many different notebooks over the years. She can’t stay away from it. When Edith was bored with their cider lineup, she considered submitting it to Carla, even though she was still working packaging. New ideas mean new and different work, different expectations. But that’s the job, now. Edith figures she’s already doing the thing she didn’t plan on doing; might as well have some fun with it. For the first week, Edith is paired with Auggie. She is meant to follow him around and see how things are done. In time she notices, it’s not that different from what her dad taught her.
Cherry blossoms bloom throughout the city. Pitted fruits will be ripening on tree branches in no time at all. Easy enough to get the amount needed for test batches. Carla accepts Edith’s proposal after a few minor changes. The team tries a few small batches and tweaks the recipe some more.
When they pick the final recipe, Carla puts a hand on Edith’s shoulder. “I hope you’re good with the name Nectarine.” She says with a bit of a chuckle.
In her notebook, it has long been named Robbie’s Gold. Sound Cider, however, keeps the naming simple—just one word. Nothing cutesy. Something Edith doesn’t usually mind. She doesn’t say anything to Carla.
When they were young, Robbie had called her Grandma Edith. She would chase him around the yard or the playground yelling, “I can’t be your grandma! I’m younger than you!”
“I bet you can’t push me on the swings, you old lady!”
She posted up behind the swing the best a four-year-old could and started pushing. He didn’t get far off the ground. He started pumping his legs.
“Watch me jump,” he yelled from above.
Edith moved out of the way and watched him soar with the birds. Her eyes were glued.
Just as the swing started towards the ground, he launched himself from the swing seat, over the wood chips, over her head. He flailed his arms around and hollered like he was riding a roller coaster, equal parts fear and excitement, until he wasn’t.
Robbie did not land on his feet like he planned.
His body looked as if it had melted with concrete sidewalk. The nearby woodchips were dyed red.
A neighbor sent her son home to call for help while Edith sat with Robbie, waiting for him to get up.
*
Cans are filled, lids sealed, packed in fours. Edith stops by packaging and watches her idea get canned. Her chest swells; pride, maybe. Something she never felt canning. The feeling throws her for a moment before it turns to tightness.
From the top, the cans look like every other cider they made—Puget Sound blue with the white logo at the top. The rest of the can is white like the Rainier peak and an illustrated orange nectarine with two green leaves. Just like the ones she picked with her brother. At the base in yellow-pink block letters, Nectarine.
She palms a four-pack and tucks it under her arm. When she gets home, she covers the simple name with masking tape. In black Sharpie, Edith writes Robbie’s Gold. She sets it on top of her dresser. A can that will never be emptied. Edith cracks the seal of a second can and taps the crowns of the two cans. The sweetness of childhood topped with the slight bitterness of later years cover her tongue and the carbonation tickles the back of her throat.
Three years after Robbie had fallen off the swings their parent’s divorce was finalized. They didn’t do custody hearings. The judge asked Edith what she wanted.
“For things to stay the same.” That’s how the court record read.
They couldn’t do that completely. Their parents, Edith’s parents, moved into separate places, her mom into an apartment, her dad into a small house with a garage, but in the same school district, in almost the same neighborhood. Her bedroom was decorated the same at each of their houses—painted yellow with a plain twin bed, a blue comforter, and movie posters on one wall which she bought two at a time and changed over the years. She had the same teachers as her friends and went to the same restaurants until she was eighteen. It wasn’t until Edith moved to Seattle with her mom that she felt parts of herself start to heal.
*
Nectarine is delivered to bars and small grocery stores and Edith carries on with the production team, producing more batches of the other flagship and seasonal ciders. In her down time, she finds herself researching ingredients and testing flavor combination more than she has in the past. She got a new notebook and wrote recipes ideas during lunch breaks. The first few weeks after Nectarine is released, she wants the distraction. She hasn’t told her parents that Sound Cider produced one of her recipes. That they could taste something she made, see it in stores. She promised herself she would tell them if it becomes a flagship flavor.
Carla is sitting at the bar before the tasting room opens. Edith figures that at three weeks, enough time has passed to ask about sales.
“It’s okay in bars. A little slow in stores.”
Edith’s lips take a shallow turn downward.
“Not concerned. It’s slow to start with new flavors sometimes.”
Her chest deflates.
Later in the week Carla adjusts the production of Nectarine.
“Just for now.”
Edith nods. Just a slight decrease.
“We don’t want to get too ahead of ourselves. It’ll pick back up.”
The others don’t have the same optimism as Carla.
“Good effort,” one of them says. “Not all of them take off.”
“I tried to make watermelon cider. Sounded refreshing.”
Edith’s nose wrinkles at the thought.
“That’s what everyone else thought too,” they say.
Another three weeks of flat sales. Carla doesn’t say anything. Production hasn’t changed. The team doesn’t comment on it again. They make the ciders on the production list and leave after eight hours each day.
At the next team meeting, Carla pulls Nectarine completely.
“We’ll sell what we have left, but it’s not selling enough to warrant making another batch.”
The team seems unphased, having predicted the outcome weeks ago.
“Not every recipe is a winner with the general public.” Carla’s voice is matter of fact, all business. She moves on and asks for other recipes.
Edith sinks into her seat. Whatever was left holding her chest up deflates. She is anchored to the chair. Robbie vanishes again for a second time.
Edith can’t say what else is discussed at the meeting.
After everyone leaves the table to go back to work, she stops Carla.
“I know you and Chuck wanted me to be good at this-”
Carla interrupts. “And you will be.”
“But I won’t right now.” Edith places her ID, warehouse keys, and safety glasses on the table. “Tell Chuck I said thanks for the seven years.”
She walks to the bus.
It’s strange to think of her days with Sound Cider as the past. Something she’s done, something that’s behind her. The good old days is a phrase she’s never cared for—people say it ignoring what could be, as if there won’t be other good days. Maybe there won’t be. But it’s not as though nothing bad happened in days past. Yet, the days long past put people on a path.
Edith passes a few breweries and distilleries on the way to her stop and thinks of what might be.
Alli is a queer prose writer with a Masters in Creative Writing from University of Glasgow. Her work is featured or forthcoming in Whiskey Tit, Papeachu Press, Allium Magazine, Farside Review, Passengers Journal, The Bookends Review, and others. She lives in Seattle with her partner and dogs.
