“Of Withered Apples” January 1953

Lori is disturbed from her reading by a tapping at the windowpane. When she opens the window, a leaf blows in. She puts the leaf in her pocket and it starts to cut into her skin in a description that is somehow at once erotic and weirdly pantheistic. The experience calls her away to a place she has been before. She asks permission to leave from her husband and her father-in-law––cranky patriarchs who agree to let her go, provided she is home in time to make them dinner. She goes to a remote farm where just one apple tree remains living. It tries to draw her to it, but she resists (with mixed feelings) saying she cannot come back again. There has clearly been some sort of erotic relationship between them. She runs away, and an apple from the tree tumbles after her. She nibbles on it on the way home. Later she is awakened by severe abdominal pain. She is taken to the hospital but dies there. The doctor believes it was appendicitis, but he does not conduct an autopsy. Months later, Lori’s husband and her father-in-law go to place flowers on her grave. There is now an apple tree growing there, and the fruit is already red though it is only October.