ransacked your orchard and cut off the happy, slow time between
flower and bees on warm, quiet hillsides. Driving your victory
to a market filled with more hands that would grab and toss and
paw every ripened worth. Then came Marcello in his white shirt,
white-teeth smile, grinning like a groom on the Friday before a
wedding, his wedding, and seeing perfection in your sequestered
sunshine and knobby pulp. Yes, he’ll marry Clara and begin life
like his poppa and aunties, and like Bernardo living proud next
door, still full of that family he lost in the war, but now has
again with his new houseful. Oh, Marcello will be lemon-big to
his children. He’ll squeeze them like fruit when he comes home
rolling them over the floor to tickle them happy before they’re
bigger and won’t laugh as much. And isn’t this lemon as big as
his hand? No, as big as his head! And full of that sour-sting
only a cook can tease into joy. He is that cook and he’ll pull
the seeds and sweeten the juice with hands clenched strong. He
won’t let them see him wince as it soaks in every labored crack
that scuttles over his palm and into the bark-brown fingertips.
He’s learned how to soften pain with a generosity of sugar that
he’ll scoop and plunge with both big fists into the slurry mix.
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