by Kelly Harms
I roll my eyes, hoping it’s not too dark for J.J. to see.
J.J. takes me gently by the arm and I’m stunned to realize how close we’re standing. “Listen, Nean. I shouldn’t have pushed you like that, and I’m sorry, truly. You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to. But please don’t lie to me anymore, okay?”
I swallow hard. “Janey’s not my cousin. The only thing we share is a name.”
“I know.”
“I only just met her right before I met you. She and Aunt Midge are letting me stay at their house just to be nice. They don’t know me from Adam.”
“I see.”
“They could kick me out any time. Then I’d be out on my own.”
“Huh,” he says, taking this in stride.
I think back to the whoppers I’ve told him since we’ve met. “I was never a hand model. I don’t have any brothers or sisters. My mom doesn’t really have webbed toes.”
J.J. looks at me openly, a smile bouncing around his eyes. “Well, that’s a relief. Anything else?”
I wrack my brain, knowing there’s no way I’ve gotten it all. “And I’ve never been to Syracuse.”
“Lucky girl.”
“I’ve lied a lot to everyone. Not just to you,” I tell him. “To Janey and Aunt Midge too.”
“You can make it right. If you stop lying now.”
It sounds like so little to ask. “Haven’t you ever been less than honest with me?” I ask.
“Sure,” he says, but doesn’t elaborate. Then he adds, “I’d say we’re about even now,” and gives me a wink. “Come on. We need to get out of here before the Parkerberrys finish their movie.” He takes me by the hand, and the effect is exactly like taking off heavy boots and wet socks and putting your feet by the radiator and letting the feeling come back while you wiggle your toes. My heart wiggles its toes.
We go back up to the road now, but instead of going back toward the house, we walk right and follow the road into darkness. There are no more houses after this, I know. The farm is the last driveway before the road loops around and starts heading back up the cove on the other side. We walk to the bottom of the loop and then J.J. guides me to a trail that’s cleared through the woods, a trail I’ve never noticed in the daylight that now seems crystal clear. He pulls me through the woods and down a steep-ish embankment, then past a stand of evergreens that have lain a thick, soft coating of needles on the ground, mashed on top of one another in layers upon layers.
“It’s slippery here,” he tells me, and holds tighter to my hand.
I stop walking. “And cushiony,” I say, and he circles back to me and looks me straight in the eyes. I can’t help it, something instinctive inside me makes me bite my lip. It’s a little thing, but it’s enough right now, what with all the moonlight and the lapping ocean. J.J. puts his hand under one strap of my yellow sundress and unties it, and then the other. His hands are hot and leave trails on my skin. The dress falls to the ground and then J.J.’s striped tie flutters down beside it. The soft cotton of his shirt becomes a sheet on the forest floor, with just enough room on it for our bodies tightly stacked together. And we say nothing else to each other, true or false, for a while after that.
JANEY
“Use some restraint, but not too much.”
—JASPER WHITE, Cooking from New England
My mind has been taken over by a sixteen-year-old girl. I no longer have the ability to hold a thought in my head without applying it somehow to Noah. I get up in the morning and put on something and think, “Would Noah like this outfit?” If the answer is no, I change. Over coffee I catch myself wondering what Noah is eating for breakfast. While driving into Little Pond I practice talking to Noah in my head. “How are you?” I ask him. “How are things in the garden?”
By the time we actually meet for lunch most days, I have already been talking to him for hours, exhausted every line of conversation and told him everything I’ve ever done, thought, or thought about doing. I can think of nothing further to say to him. Sometimes I repeat myself, only to a live audience, but other times I don’t even bother. Luckily he doesn’t seem put off by my quietude. He excels at companionable silence.
Noah—or rather, the wild crush I’ve developed on Noah—has forced me to dine out on a regular basis. My beautiful kitchen stands unused for hours every weekday while I sit in restaurants and dingy bars and once, when Noah was totally out of new ideas and I couldn’t eat another tiny hot dog to save my life, a McDonald’s.
That food was execrable, let me tell you.
To think I would rather be eating a sandwich with the word “tasty” in its name than home making something that is actually tasty. But I find that I don’t mind at all. Being with Noah is easy. Easier than being alone, even. When I do talk, I like telling him things about me, I discover to much surprise. I like the way he reacts when I tell him something. He has a way of processing without judging—like there’s nothing I could tell him about myself that he hasn’t heard a million times before. It’s like going to a doctor with an embarrassing rash and having him tell you, first, that it will clear up on its own in just a few days, and, second, that he’s seen much worse before. All that angst, it just dissipates so fast that you actually feel the whiplash as it goes.
In one of these bouts of confessional insanity I have told Noah about the full extent of my shyness, the hives and the stuttering and how much trouble I had in my old job because of it. He is sympathetic and kind at the moment of disclosure, but this knowledge doesn’t stop him from introducing someone new to me every time he gets the chance. He calls it immersion therapy. To prove his point, he’s been conducting a scientific study in which he counts my hives after every new encounter. Sure enough, they are getting fewer and fewer in quantity by the week. I am beginning to believe it won’t be long now before I can go out in public without a sweater. And I am so, so glad about this.
So yes, I am falling for him. He is freeing me from long sleeves in the summer, after all.
I meet Noah this afternoon at the same place as always, the parking lot of the shelter. Today he asks me if lunch can wait. “We have an errand to run,” he says. He’s grinning from ear to ear.
It’s not unusual for Noah to wear a tiny smile for no reason. Last week I got a flat on the way back from lunch, and I watched him hop out and put on the spare without the slightest hint of displeasure, though it was raining and he returned to the car sopping wet and covered in road grime.
But when he mentions this errand today it’s not his usual twinkle I see. It’s a silly ear-to-ear smile that makes me smile back at him, like this trip to the drugstore or whatever it is we’re about to do is actually an all-expenses-paid vacation in Belize.
“Where are we going?” I ask. “Someplace exciting?”
“Oh yes,” he says. “Quite.”
“What’s in the bag?” I ask, gesturing to the paper grocery sack he’s nestled between his feet.
“Boots and soap” is all he says back.
He directs me down the main street past the bars and the bank and off onto a side street lined with homes. They are modest and not all in the best repair, but they are clearly lived in, and kids spill out of a few of them, with their Big Wheels and scooters and bubble wands. I see one little girl dressed, inexplicably, in a blue rayon gown, with a tiara on her head and wings strapped onto her back. She is twirling around her driveway with such vigor that I feel dizzy on her behalf.
“Left here,” Noah tells me, and I pull into a parking lot of a boxy brick building with a small plastic sign that reads LITTLE POND RECREATION CENTER.
“Where are we?” I ask, hoping he won’t say “Little Pond Recreation Center.”
“Janey, do you know what a hornworm is?”
I put the car in park and shake my head.
“A hornworm is a nasty little caterpillar that can get out of control in a hurry. It eats tomatoes and peppers faster than you can say DDT. Believe it or not, we are right in the heart o
f Hornworm City,” he tells me, and then hops out of the car before I can ask him what that’s supposed to mean.
Mystified, I follow him to the side door where a sweet-looking young woman is waiting. She’s in her mid-twenties, I’d guess, and looks at ease in her red bandanna and muddy jeans. I’m instantly jealous of her, though I’m not sure why.
“Hi, Noah,” she calls. “I’ve got the jars.”
“And I’ve got the soap,” he replies. “And I brought a trusty assistant. Melinda, this is Janey. Melinda teaches summer school here in town, and the students are doing their own organic salsa garden this year, learning about sustainability and botany and all kinds of good stuff. Janey’s got her education degree too, Melinda.”
“Oh, so you’re a teacher?” she asks me, turning her bright blue doe eyes on me.
I blush red and shake my head no. My skin feels prickly, but I don’t know if it’s the beginning of hives or vexation at Noah forcing another new person upon me without warning.
“Oh no? Did you wise up in time?” she asks with a wink, and then goes on, not waiting for an answer. “The kids were pretty resistant to gardening at first. I think they were afraid I was going to make them grow brussels sprouts. Actually, I was. Growing the ingredients for salsa was Noah’s idea. Peppers, tomatoes, cilantro, onions. All utterly doable and kid-friendly. We’re going to learn about canning at the end of the season. I have a whole mini-unit on botulism all ready to go.”
I am starting to feel like I have botulism. I look at Noah, trying to communicate my mounting anxiety through my eyes.
Maybe he sees it. “You go get the kids, Mel, and Janey and I will get geared up.”
The moment she’s inside again, Noah turns to me. He takes both my hands in his. My mouth gets even drier. “Ten middle school kids so noisy you wouldn’t get a word in edgewise even if you wanted to,” he says. “Melinda, who is probably too busy with them to notice anyone else. And me. Just boring old me.”
“There’s nothing boring about you,” I hear myself say softly.
“You should hear me talk about heirloom tomatoes,” he replies. But he’s wrong. I could listen to him talk about tomatoes all day long. “Anyway, we’ve just got to dispatch some hornworms and then we’re free to go.”
It turns out that Melinda’s students are loud and brash but also sweet and easy. Hornworms are eating huge holes in their tomato plants, and the kids seem bereft about the situation and grateful when Noah tells them eradication without chemicals isn’t as hard as they’ve feared. It’s just slow.
Apparently, you have to pluck the huge green buggers off by hand, one by one, and drop them into jars of soapy water. Until all the hornworms are gone.
I hang back at first, watching the kids listen enthusiastically to Noah’s unappealing instructions. The girls gaze at him like he fell out of a Twilight novel. I see him through their eyes: tall, rugged, well-built, and confident. And from mine—all those things, and also happy to spend his lunch hour showing other people’s kids a good way to grow. I could stand here and watch him do this all day, with his patient way of easing each student into a task, his effusive encouragement at the slightest progress, his skilled hands checking the moisture of the soil, fixing the staking of a pepper all the while.
But once I see teenage girls picking enormous slimy caterpillars off plants with their blue-manicured hands just to impress Noah, I realize I might as well get in the game.
I pick up a jar, add a squeeze of dish soap and a few ounces of water from the hose, and steady my stomach. Noah shows me how to hunt under the bottom-most leaves of the plants, where it’s coolest, and use my fingernail to dislodge the slimy buggers into the soap jar, watching out for their bite. I drown my first hornworm and Noah gives me a heart-melting smile and a thumbs-up and moves off to help a student.
“This takes patience,” he tells him. “And persistence.”
“It’s actually kind of satisfying once you get over the ick factor,” says Melinda. I can’t help but agree. I lose myself in the hunting, the plucking, the drowning.
“Why soapy water?” a boy asks while I am particularly lost in the rhythm of the process.
“Maybe because the soap breaks through the waterproof coating many insects have on their bodies,” someone says. “The coating might be insoluble in water—that means it won’t wash away on a rainy day. But soap bonds itself to things water can’t, like grease on dirty dishes or oil on clothes, making it easy to rinse them clean.”
I look up, startled. It wasn’t just someone talking just now. It was me. I spoke before I had a chance to panic about speaking. I just reflexively answered a question of a student. Like a teacher might.
Noah is looking at me with a bemused expression. I know in an instant that he realizes what just happened, what I did. “That’s right,” he says, after a long second. “Water alone won’t drown them. You need extra ammo.”
The moment passes. We finish the day’s debugging and Melinda takes the kids back inside. We clean our hands, get back in the car, drive to lunch, talk about middle schoolers and garden pests and the best salsa we’ve ever eaten. Noah doesn’t mention my breakthrough at the rec center and neither do I.
But I can’t stop thinking about what it means—what it could mean—for me if I could always talk in front of a class of students the way I did today.
Or that, thanks to Noah, I even believe such a thing is possible.
* * *
As the summer has progressed, Nean, J.J., Aunt Midge, and I have gotten into the habit of regular Sunday brunches together—what Nean calls our “family time,” though it is no secret that what she and J.J. are doing under the table is often not appropriate for families. After a brunch of crunchy French toast made with Nean’s latest bread—a quite impressive challah—and caramelized bacon, I persuade her to join me in the three-seasons room for a postbrunch Bellini. J.J. has skipped off to his own house, where no doubt he will eat another meal as large as the one we just shared, and Aunt Midge is in the living room snoring off her Irish coffee. Her snuffles make for a welcome sort of white noise as Nean and I gaze out on the ocean in welcome silence.
Which of course lasts for mere seconds.
“Just so you know, I have completely and totally lost interest in whatever’s going on between you and Noah,” Nean announces. “So I’m not going to ask you anymore.”
“You have? You aren’t?” This would be wonderful news, if I believed it for a second.
“Yep. I realized yesterday that I’m far, far more interesting than you. So whenever I find myself curious about what is happening between you and Noah, I’m just going to relive my own life in my mind. Like, right now? I’m thinking about the amazing sex J.J. and I had last night. And will probably also have tomorrow.” She closes her eyes and lets her head roll back in mock ecstasy.
Of course she’s off having amazing sex. Maybe I should be asking her for advice on how to get things to the next level with Noah. “So I guess you’re over ‘just being friends’ with him?”
“I’d say so,” she says lightly. “Unlike you and Noah.” She shoots me a supercilious smirk.
“I’m working on it,” I say.
“Whatever. I don’t care about your love life anymore.”
“Is this some kind of reverse psychology?” I ask, perturbed.
She wiggles her eyebrows. “Why, are you feeling the urge to tell me something?”
I shrug. “Maybe.” I turn away from her to look out the great glass windows, where the skies are getting dark and gray for the first time I can remember since we arrived in Maine. The cloudy weather doesn’t make me sad, for once. Instead it feels safe—the same way I would feel so safe when Ned and I would go camping and zip our sleeping bags together into one giant cocoon. It’s like Mother Nature is telling me to zip up inside this snuggly house and stay cozy with my people.
Does that make Nean one of my people?
She sets her champagne flute down with a loud clink on the glass ta
ble and stands up. “I think…” she says as she moves to the padded wicker seat closest to where I’m standing. “I think you’d feel better if you just talked it out. What’s going on? Are you two officially an item? Has he sown his passion seed in your garden of love, if you know what I mean?”
I turn around, showing her just how revolting she is with my grimace. “I know what you mean. A home-schooled seven-year-old would know what you mean. Jeez, Nean, is sex all you think about?”
“Right now it is, yes. You should see J.J. naked. Here, I’ll give you a mental picture: Imagine him mowing the lawn, only with no pants on.” Her twisted little smile grows to beauty pageant proportions and makes me laugh.
But then she turns in her chair and says, “Wait…” and I see the gears turning. “Something’s not right here. You’re dating this sexy unkempt farmer and you can think about something besides sex? Are your girl parts broken?”
“My parts work fine,” I say. “I don’t know about his.”
Nean’s jaw drops. “You mean he’s not … functional?”
“No!” I shout, appalled that I could have suggested that even by accident. “I mean, I haven’t, um, well, we haven’t…”
“Ah.” Nean leans back in the chair and tucks her legs up under her. “Is the woo getting pitched a little on the slow side?”
I roll my lips together, taking a moment to understand what the hell she’s talking about. Pitching woo—who says that anymore? “Right. He isn’t wooing me as fast as I might like, I think.” I prop my butt on the windowsill, turning my back on the building storm so I can focus on Nean.
“How much wooing are we talking about here?”
“Not a lot. Maybe a third of a woo?”
“A whuh?”
“Exactly. Some kissing, some romantic talk. That’s it.”
“What sort of romantic talk?”
“Um, like, he tells me I look lovely, or that I have a beautiful way of expressing myself. That sort of thing.”
“Hardly nine-hundred-number material.”
