peachy

by Wesley R. Bishop

[Zoom screen: “You are muted.” “Speaker: TERRY MARSH.” “Recording has started.”]

The screen showed fifteen faces. Some cameras were off. Some names were just initials.

Terry Marsh wore a blue sweater and sat in front of a plain wall.

He cleared his throat. “Thank you for being here,” he said. “Even though we can’t be together in person, we’re together in spirit. That’s what Charlotte would have wanted.”

A pause.

“She loved this town. She loved the store. She loved you all. She always said the same thing when people asked how she was doing. She said, ‘Peachy.’ Every time. Rain or shine. Peachy.”

He looked down at his notes.

“Charlotte was born in 1954. She worked at the store for 34 years. She raised one daughter. She had one granddaughter. She liked crossword puzzles, oatmeal cookies, and hummingbirds. She was kind. Quiet. And steady.”

Terry looked back up at the camera.

“We have a eulogy sent in by one of Charlotte’s close friends. Bev couldn’t be here live, but she sent these words for us to hear.” He smiled slightly. “I’ll read them on her behalf.”

He adjusted his glasses. Read from the page.

He glanced down again, cleared his throat.

“When I first met Charlotte, she offered me a cup of instant coffee and told me she was doing just peachy.”

He smiled. A few rectangles nodded.

“Charlotte had a way of making you feel welcome. She listened. She remembered your name. She always had a little joke, and she always said she was peachy.”

He looked up. On the screen, the granddaughter smiled.

Terry paused, then leaned into the page, a little brighter.

“Even when things were hard—when the store lost power, when shipments were late, when the break room flooded—Charlotte just laughed and said, ‘Still peachy.’”

He chuckled, inviting others in.

“One time, she’d just slipped on a patch of ice out back. Her knee was bleeding. I said, ‘Charlotte, are you alright?’ And she said—” (he looked up, with timing) “Peachy.”

A few camera tiles flickered. One face laughed, muted.

He kept going, emboldened now.

“When customers were rude? Peachy. When the manager forgot her birthday? Peachy. When she broke her wrist bagging groceries? Still—peachy. I mean—who else could pull that off?”

He laughed again, louder this time. The granddaughter's smile was still there. Frozen now.

“Charlotte was more than a coworker. She was the spirit of the store. She was, honestly, peachier than the rest of us put together.”

He grinned. Read faster now.

“I’ll miss her. We all will. But I know what she’d say. If we could ask her how she’s doing now, wherever she is… She’d say it loud and clear.” He looked straight into the camera. “Peachy.”

This was going well.

He could feel it.

Charlotte’s granddaughter had smiled. That meant something. People needed a smile today. That’s what Charlotte would have wanted—something light, something warm. Not all crying and whispering. She wasn’t that kind of person.

He looked at the screen. The names. The little faces.

Some were crying. Or maybe it was bad lighting.'

Hard to tell.

He kept his tone steady, a little upbeat.

This was important.

He was doing it for Bev, too. She’d been so nervous. Said she couldn’t do the tech, didn’t like seeing herself on the screen. So he’d said, I’ll read it for you. Happy to. He’d meant it. He was happy to do it. He didn’t even like funerals. Never knew what to say. But this—this was something. People were listening. They were nodding. He was giving them a memory. A catchphrase. Something to hold on to. He was doing it right. He felt sure of that.

He looked at the little square that said “Bev H.” It was blacked out.

Muted. Camera off. But he pictured her there, nodding too.

“Charlotte faced everything with the same word. When the register jammed—peachy. When her basement flooded—peachy. When she chipped a tooth on a stale granola bar during inventory—what’d she say? That’s right. Peachy.”

He grinned. Let the silence stretch.

“It wasn’t just a word for her. It was a philosophy. Life threw her curveballs, and she’d smile and say ‘Peachy.’ It didn’t matter what it was—traffic, taxes, toothaches—Charlotte was peachy. The world could be on fire, and she’d still hand you your receipt and say, ‘Have a peachy day.’”

He laughed a little at that last one. Let the rhythm hang there.

“And I know this is a hard day. But maybe the best way to honor her isn’t just with sadness. Maybe it’s to be a little more… peachy.”

Bev sat alone in her living room, the laptop propped on a TV tray.

The sound came from the small speakers. Terry’s voice. Louder than it should’ve been.

He was still saying it. Peachy. Over and over.

That wasn’t how it was supposed to sound. She’d written it carefully. Charlotte wasn’t a joke. That word—Peachy—it was complicated. Sometimes a shield. Sometimes a little wink. Sometimes just a way to end a conversation.

It wasn’t supposed to be a punchline.

She looked at the screen.

Her own camera off. Muted. Like always.

She should’ve just read it herself. Fumbled through. Stared at her own face and done it anyway. Terry meant well. He really did. He thought he was helping. Thought he was giving comfort. And maybe he was. People were laughing, a little. Smiling. Charlotte’s granddaughter smiled, at least. But Bev knew that look.

That wasn’t a real smile. That was the smile you give when you don’t know what else to do.

She reached for her tea. Cold.

Death is uncomfortable. It makes people say and do stupid things.

She didn’t blame him.

He was trying to bring balm to a wound that had no cure.

That’s why we forgive the stupid things. Because we know they come from love.

But it didn’t make it less stupid.

She turned down the volume. Let the screen flicker and blur.

Terry’s voice was still going. Peachy this, peachy that. Charlotte would’ve rolled her eyes. Bev pressed her lips together. Terry had always thought he was funnier than he was, thought Charlotte thought he was hilarious. Mostly she found him annoying, but was too polite to say so when he came into the store.

Bev had also heard Charlotte say Peachy when it wasn't true.

It was after the robbery. Two local boys, barely seventeen. Everyone knew who they were. Their mother worked at the gas station. They wore ski masks like cartoons, drove their actual car, left the plates on. The whole thing was over in eight minutes. But they had a gun. And one of them shoved her. Charlotte went down hard behind the register. Broke her hip. She used a cane after that. Bev had brought her soup the next day. Parked out front. Knocked. Charlotte had answered the door herself. Braced in the frame like it was nothing.

“Hi, Bev,” she’d said. “I’m just peachy.”

She had smiled like someone clenching their jaw.

Bev had said nothing. Just handed her the soup and touched her elbow.

They didn’t talk about it again.

Peachy meant “I’m still standing.”

It meant “Don’t worry about me.”

It meant “I’m hurt, but you don’t get to see the part that’s broken.”

Bev blinked at her screen now. Terry was still going. Jesus Christ.

Still saying it like it was a slogan. Like it had no weight at all.

She wanted to type something in the chat.

Just one sentence.

“That word meant something. Its how we hide our pain. We all have a word like that.”

But she didn’t.

She just sat with her tea.

Terry cleared his throat again. The granddaughter was still smiling.

That was all the fuel he needed.

“Charlotte,” he said, “was always—always—PEACHY.”

A few people chuckled, unmuted too slowly.

He grinned. “Even when she was furious with me, she’d say it.”

He glanced at his notes, but didn’t need them now.

“I met her when I was sixteen. First job. Delivery boy. She ran the front of the store like a battleship. I used to sneak in the back and swap the labels on the soup cans. One time, I replaced all the peach jam with marmalade.”

A small pause. More smiling squares. Terry was flying now.

“She caught me. Of course. Told me, in front of everyone, ‘I will end you, Terry Phillips.’
Then smiled. Said, ‘How are you today?’ And I said, ‘Fine, Miss Charlotte.’ And she said—” He raised his hand, palm open like a magician about to reveal the trick. “Peachy.”

He let it hang. Smiled.

The granddaughter wiped her eyes.

He felt like he’d stuck the landing.

“She was like a second grandmother to me. She acted mad, but never stayed that way. She called me a pest. A rascal. Once, when I brought her flowers from the corner market,
she said, ‘Stealing from the graveyard again, are we?’”

More laughter, or the sound of it, echoing and tinny. Terry sat a little taller.

This was going so well.'

This was going perfectly.

Sonya wasn’t listening.

Not really.

The words floated past—“Peachy,” “steady,” “kind”—like echoes through a hollow room. Sonya sat back on the bed, the laptop balanced on the messy dresser. Her room smelled like old laundry and dust. She wore the same sweatshirt she’d had on for two days.

They all expected her to smile. To nod. To laugh softly when Terry made the word peachy a joke. So, she laughed. Not because she felt like it. Because it was easier than crying. Easier than sitting with emptiness. She hadn’t been alright since Grandma died. Living together on Social Security and late rent, barely making it, and now with the shutdown, no work, no escape. She wanted to scream. To break something. To disappear. But instead, she laughed. A little, quiet, tight laugh. It was the only thing that kept the tears from falling. She stared at the screen. Saw her own face reflected back in a small box.

A mask.

“Peachy,” she thought. It was the word Grandma always said.

But it wasn’t true.

Not now. Not ever.

            Leon used to come to the store every Saturday. Charlotte would greet him with a smile, or a quiet nod, sometimes a joke about the weather. It was the one place that felt steady, like a small island in a storm.

He hadn’t cried in years. Not since he was a boy.

When he cried, his parents sent him to stand in the corner. No questions. No comfort. Just the cold wall and silence. It didn’t matter what made him cry. Boys don’t cry. So he learned to hold it all inside. Tight. Quiet. Like a fist clenching against the dark.

Now, alone in his house, Leon was afraid. Afraid of COVID—the empty streets, the silent phone, the missing handshakes. He hadn’t left the house in weeks. Every cough outside made his heart race. The virus felt like a shadow, closing in, making the world smaller and lonelier. He watched Charlotte’s face flicker through the pixelated squares on the screen. He heard the eulogy, the repeated word, the forced laughter.

But it wasn’t the words that broke him. It was everything else—the silence after the words, the distance between them, the months of empty rooms and lost chances. His throat tightened. He swallowed hard. The tears came, slow and steady at first, then faster. He didn’t reach for a tissue. He didn’t try to stop them. He stood up, unsteady, and the old ache beneath his ribs pressed harder. Without thinking, he walked to the corner of the room. The same corner he had stood in as a boy. The corner where no one could see him. He leaned his head against the wall and let himself cry. Not loud. Not messy.

Quiet and steady. Like grief finally finding a place to rest. Like a long-held breath finally letting go. Part way through a sob he realized this was all wrong. He should not be alone in the corner. But he could not bring himself to go back to the computer. Instead, he walked to the couch in the living room. There it looked out through the big bay window. If someone were to walk up on the porch they could see him. Laying down he continued to cry.

And for the first time in a long time, he was not afraid to be weak.

[Zoom screen: “Thanks everyone for coming.” Recording has ended. Blip. Host has ended the meeting.]

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