The next day it rained, and the old people didn't go for a walk as usual. Doris watched some nature shows on TV, but she couldn't stay interested. She was feeling anxious about the lemons. She could just set them out on the curb and somebody who knew what to do with them would pick them up, and she would be done with the problem. She actually hauled the sack out there, but with the rain falling on the sack she had a bad feeling no one would take the lemons after all, so she brought them right back and set them by the front door.
On Friday at four fifteen, at the post office, she looked at the smooth hands of the woman postal clerk, wondering if she would like the lemons. “Fifty-eight cents,” the clerk said, and Doris stared with fascination at her face, which resolved just for an instant from the general blur, so that she could see the clerk was a soft-skinned woman of about forty, motherly somehow, with chapped lips and long dark eyelashes. As she got out the exact change, Doris lowered her eyes, feeling as though she had been intrusive to look so closely. “Have a good day,” the woman clerk said, and Doris could just make out as she turned quickly away that the clerk was smiling.
Rain gave way to a gray overcast which faded into darkness by the time she finished her supper, and here they came, the old couple, walking slowly past, toward their house. She felt like running out with the sack and giving it to them, but at the same time she had begun to feel very worried about actually talking to them after all these years. What if they were pests, and started coming to her door all the time? She would have to move, which would involve moving men and having her references checked by cold-eyed bankers… These thoughts were very frightening, so she stayed inside, watching them turn into their driveway, watching their lights flick on at the top of the hill, bright in the dusk.
The house had grown cold but she didn't feel like making a fire just for herself. She had her smoke and finished her novel by about seven, and then there was nothing to do. Should she have a hot bath or turn on the TV? Dismayed, she looked around for some activity to grab her and involve her, but it was all so familiar, she had used it all up, seen thousands of programs, read thousands of pages… she stepped outside into the cold night without her jacket and pulled the door shut without locking it, picked up the sack of lemons, and sped up the hill.
No bell or buzzer, a locked screen door. She stood there, waiting, as though they must feel her presence, the loud unseemly emotion rediating from her, but they didn't come, so she rapped her knuckles against the screen. An interior light came on and before she could run away the old lady was standing there surprised as hell and a commotion erupted, with Doris holding out the heavy bag and the old man's face popping up behind the screen and the three of them saying things she was too upset to register.
Then the door swung open and she was drawn inside. She stood in their living room, which was smaller than hers and shocking, so modern and cheerful with its white walls and bright pillows. The first clear thing she noticed was the old man's hat on his bald head, a shapeless tan golf hat he usually wore outside. He was awfully tall; his head seemed to scrape the low ceiling. His wife had put on some slipper socks. She was so close, Doris had to look right into her wide blue eyes, with the wispy eyebrows raised high above them, which made Doris feel dizzy and like running away. “Sit down! Sit down!” the old lady was saying.
“I have supper in the oven and I have to get back in a minute,” Doris said. Or that was what she meant to say, she wasn't sure how the words came out with the roaring in her ears.
“Well, we're…”
“I have a lemon tree and lots of lemons and I thought you might like some.” She offered the bag.
They looked at each other. “We have a tree, too,” the old man said. “Over by the side of the house. Boxes and boxes of 'em. Look!” He disappeared through a swinging door and came out a moment later with a wooden crate. Tenderly, he lifted out a lemon as large and deep-colored as her lemons and showed it to her.
The old lady had taken the paper bag and was holding it uncertainly. “But it's so nice to see you,” she said. They were sitting down on the pretty pillows now, but what Doris wanted was to go. All she had to offer was the lemons and they didn't need them, and she had to get out before they started engulfing her with pity, kindness, all sorts of sticky messy feelings. Just then the phone rang in the kitchen, and the old man pushed through a swinging door to answer it.
“I should have realized you had a couple of trees,” Doris said. “You can see them from the street, but I don't walk that way. I have to go now.” She pushed herself up and smoothed down her skirt. The old man came in and both women looked at him. In a very low and gentle voice he said to his wife, “It's your sister. She's wondering if she can come over with a movie she just recorded, so we can all watch it together.”
“Oh, no! Thank you, but I really couldn't!” Doris said, interrupting in her panic, thinking, now they were starting; they were trying to keep her, and she couldn't endure hours and hours with them; it was too painful and too powerful to feel their closeness. They looked at her, embarrassed.
“I only meant… you understand… just me and my wife and her sister…” he said.
“Oh, of course!” she cried, her cheeks flaming, grinning idiotically, “What a great idea! You really must! And I'll be going…” With such tumult inside her, she could hardly keep track of what she was saying. Her hands kept smoothing down her clothes as if they wished they might somehow erase her horrible gaffe. Including herself where she wasn't invited! She would never forgive herself!
“Tell her no,” the old lady said with surprising firmness to her husband. “Maybe we could come see it tomorrow at her house. Tell her I'm working on a project.”
And now, realizing she had butted in and commanded them to do something they didn't even want to do, Doris felt utter despair. She was hopeless. She had to get out of there quickly, and then she would never see them again.
“You're always working on a project,” the old man said. “When could we go over tomorrow? We've got the laundry, and that church deal in the afternoon.”
“Just tell her,” she said. He disappeared again, and the old lady turned back to her, saying, “We have such a small place. The TV's in the bedroom. We would all have to sit on the bed. It's real inconvenient.”
The old man came back out, this time carrying a plastic sack with frozen muffins in it. “We freeze the juice in muffin tins,” he said. “You should try it. It keeps forever that way. Only problem is, it's hard to pop them out. I tried a hair dryer but that melted them too fast, then after a couple years I tried setting the pan over the pilot light on the stove just for a minute or two. That worked fine.”
“Then they all fell out of the pan onto the floor,” his wife said.
“Got her floor spic-and-span for once. No complaints from the lady of the house that time. Ha, ha.”
They didn't seem disgusted by her, or angry at her. In fact, they hardly seemed to be paying any attention to her. Timidly, she asked, “What do you do with the muffins?”
“Put one in a big glass of orange juice in the morning. Makes it taste better. Do you have a juicer?”
“No, but maybe I'll get one. That's what I'll do. I have so many lemons going to waste in my backyard. All that vitamin C. Since my husband died. Nobody to take care of the tree, and lemons lying on the ground…” A very big and long sigh flowed out of her.
“I know what we'll do with your lemons,” said the old lady brightly. “We'll pass them on to Mrs. Floyd on the corner. She'd like them, wouldn't she, Gus? We'll tell her they're from…”