Abra Bacon and Aron Trask

Abra Bacon and Aron Trask meet as children when Abra's family, caught in a sudden downpour, takes shelter at the Trask ranch. Abra is ten years old, going on eleven, and the twins are eleven, going on twelve. She immediately takes control of the encounter, dismissing Lee's explanation that the boys are fraternal twins because their mother had two eggs. "Which one of you is fried?" she asks, "and which one is poached?" The boys are stunned by her inexorable logic. Aron is captivated from the first moment. When Abra puts her hand on his arm, he shivers under her fingers. He gives her the rabbit he shot, wrapped in a cardboard box tied with string, and tells her he wants to marry her. She throws the box out of the buggy before the first turn, but the seed of attachment has been planted.

Childhood Courtship and the Willow Tree

After the Trasks move to Salinas, Aron waits for Abra outside the schoolyard gate on his first day. She emerges surrounded by girls, but he follows patiently, three paces behind, unembarrassed by their taunts. She leads him to a willow tree beside a pumphouse, where the long skirts of the branches form a tent-like enclosure. There they sit on the ground, and Abra tells him they can pretend to be married while they wait. "You will be my husband and you can call me wife," she says. Aron tries the word under his breath and then aloud: "Wife." When he asks if they can pretend she is his mother, she agrees, draws his head into her lap, and strokes his cheek. Without warning, Aron begins to cry and cannot stop. He weeps quietly while she wipes the tears away with the edge of her skirt. The sun sets behind Tollot's house, and Abra kisses him on the open mouth before running home. "I love you, husband," she says.

The Strain of Aron's Idealism

As they grow older, the relationship becomes strained by Aron's increasing rigidity. He decides he wants to be a minister and speaks of celibacy and retreat. Abra, who has never been jealous before, finds herself instinctively hating the Reverend Mr. Rolf. When Aron tells her he might never marry, she gets "spitting mad," throws his fountain pen on the sidewalk, and tramples it. She tells Cal she has wasted half her life on Aron. Aron, for his part, does not fight with her; he simply becomes quiet and feels awful. Abra begins to realize that Aron does not see her as she is. "He doesn't think about me," she tells Lee. "He's made someone up, and it's like he put my skin on her. I'm not like that—not like the made-up one." She describes the made-up girl as "pure—just absolutely pure. Nothing but pure—never a bad thing." Lee tells her that nobody is like that, but the insight does not ease her loneliness.

The Revelation and Its Aftermath

When Aron goes to Stanford, he writes Abra passionate love letters that she finds are not really addressed to her. "It's like they were to—himself," she tells Cal. She burns all of Aron's letters in the incinerator end of the gas stove. When Cal, consumed with guilt after showing Aron their mother Kate, confesses what he has done, Abra responds with calm clarity. She tells him she has known about Kate for a long time, having overheard her parents talking. More importantly, she admits that she had stopped loving Aron before he left. "When we were children we lived in a story that we made up," she explains. "But when I grew up the story wasn't enough. Aron didn't grow up. Maybe he never will. He wanted the story and he wanted it to come out his way." She recognizes that Aron's enlistment in the army and his flight from Salinas are the same pattern: when reality did not match his story, he tore up the world rather than revise the tale.

Abra's Turn Toward Cal

After Aron's departure and death, Abra attaches herself to the Trask household. She finds she trusts Adam more and loves Lee more than her own father. She sits in the kitchen with Lee, helping him string beans and slip peas from their pods, and tells him only true things. When Cal, in his despair, tries to run away and asks her to enter the willow tree with him as a retreat, she refuses. "Not if you're running away—no, I don't," she says, and she makes him go back to his father's house. She tells Lee she loves Cal, and when Cal protests that he is not good, she answers, "Because you're not good." The relationship that began as a childhood game under the willow tree ends with Abra choosing the brother who is capable of facing reality over the one who could only live in a story.