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She returned with a second basket and filled that as well. She and little Ian had planted this sapling the spring Edward was born. They had dug the hole with good-quality sand shovels; it would always be her baby tree. The variety was 'Moonglow,' and she had told Ian about moonlight that day, how it was all reflection, and for years when he saw the moon he wanted the story again. Now the tree grew past the second floor and filled the windowsills with petal snow in June.

So much fruit! Allen had great words for these tints. He had mixed his own colors in art school. Cadmium, chartreuse, celadon, viridian. Was that tinge around the stems ochre, or gamboge. The ripest fruits were more translucent, waxy, with apricot or rose splotches on the west side. The blossom ends were puckered, like gathered cloth, with the tiny star-like floral remnant. Pears smelled like herbs and honey, Dorothy noticed, however astringent or sandy they might taste. These were juicy though, making her hands sticky. They would make great preserves--just pears and sugar, her secret recipe, maybe a splash of lemon juice.

Milagro, the Jamaican lady from the elder hostel, walked by. "So beautiful the fruit," Milagro said, fanning out her long cinnamon hands, nearly the same color as the finished marmalade would be.

"I'd love to give you as many as you want," Dorothy said, feeling her spirits rise as she spoke to the older woman. She could not imagine Milagro telling her to let go of her sons.

"Oh lovely," Milagro said, enthusiastic and gracious. "My son, he will come back with his car." It was like a picnic, the way an abundance of fruit made people social. Dorothy filled another basket, and another. Milagro did come back. Dorothy had known she would. They picked and filled three cardboard boxes and drove away.

The lower half of the tree was still hung with fruit. Dorothy realized she could not finish picking them today without more help. Her hands were tired. All those years when she was so robust and could only wait for the tree to bear. Now there was more fruit than she could pick. She climbed down, rolled up the sheet with the drops. She would compost them later. Dorothy brought everything in and locked the door. She would rather not be out when the commuters paraded through.

Dorothy was tired. She was glad she didn't have to pick up anyone from practice. She was thankful the evening stretched ahead with no 23-piece uniform to wash and replace in the bag, from the mouth guard in the bottom corner up to the socks on the top, always put in the same order, so that she would check as she packed, and Edward would know as he dressed, if anything were missing. Then he put the helmet in the carapace with the faceguard sticking out the neck for the handle, and would carry that in his left hand like a basket. Maybe Maureen was right. Maybe it was over. Maybe football, with its unnatural risks and complexities, had just prolonged the letting-go.

Dorothy put Mama's lace cloth over the sideboard, and then filled the eggshell-porcelain bowl with the best pears. She poured a glass of rose, pink wine she called it, and sat down by the window. Allen knew about grapes, domains, corks, the worth of a vintage. In the end it was another perfume, you could only describe it, how it kept, whether you liked its taste, a word for the color, stories about it. She might put a little in the jam tomorrow, this year's secret ingredient.

Tonight, she would read, look at the classes in that catalog. Nancy thought she would make a good ESL teacher. Dorothy looked at the pears in the bowl again, the full baskets inside the door. Maybe everything would be okay. Allen would find a hobby to keep them from going nuts. The boys might live at home one more summer. The war had to end.

Dorothy looked out at the pear tree and noticed for the first time a split in one of the big side branches. You always had to stand way back from a tree to see what needed pruning, she thought. But the wood was bone white and the torn bark was green. Surely a new branch would grow back. You could count on trees to grow.

As the day drew in, the sunlight moved steadily down the wall of the room, lighting up the bowl of fruit, making the pears glow, as luminescent as green Luna moths. You could only go forward, Dorothy thought, sure of that now. She just wished Allen would come home in time to see this gorgeous color.

This light, she realized, this light falling on the pears like this, surely this must be the flood.

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