The Excellent Lombards

by Jane Hamilton

  Like every other facet of the Sykes operation the hiring of Gideon, a dedicated, strong young person, was a genius business move by the gentleman farmer. Gideon, which means “Feller of Trees.” He had studied ag science for two years at the university before he’d dropped out to live his dream. In addition to his other gifts he was disciplined about waking at dawn, he was unsentimental about nature, and he knew chemistry. As much as Tommy’s grown children may have wanted to keep the farm in the family they had no interest in running it or even in living nearby. The understanding was that Gideon would make a life on the orchard, that he would not own the property but when Tommy eventually retired he would be the person in charge.

  In July, at our first market, I wandered down to Gideon’s stand. I stood looking at his red blushy apples, varieties that were bigger than ours and shinier. “Did you spray for maggot flies this week?” I asked him.

  He looked startled, I suppose because most people didn’t begin a conversation or an acquaintance with that question.

  “Yep,” he said, “and for codling moth.”

  “We did, too,” I said importantly. I said, “We’re trying that new disruption technology, the CM Flex.”

  Maybe he laughed; it’s possible he was chuckling. “Good stuff.” He nodded. “It’s pretty effective.”

  “I know it.”

  Gideon was undeniably cute even though he was old, a man hardly taller than William, a pixie with soft-looking brown hair and pale-blue eyes. All at once I was aware of my knobby knees, my skinny legs, my shorts, my plain yellow T-shirt, my drab hair, my ragged fingernails. I had occasionally wondered what it would be like to kiss a boy and even though he was old, as I said, you couldn’t ignore Gideon’s upper lip, which had a freckle smack in the center, right below the philtrum. The other thing in addition to kissing, the thing I’d learned that was very different from the business of the ram and ewe, the tomcat and pussycat, the thing that President Bill Clinton and his intern had taught us—I had blocked that from my mind. Kissing Gideon’s freckle, the idea of it, made me feel sick enough. He was about to say something else to me when a woman butted in on us, blaring her righteous question: “ARE YOU ORGANIC?”

  My new acquaintance began to explain the Sykes Orchard spray program, the Integrated Pest Management, a system designed to keep chemical applications to a minimum, the farmer spraying in relation to the pests’ life cycles. We used IPM, too, and like Tommy were in close contact with the university entomologists, running trials for research, trying to wean ourselves away from pesticides where possible. I had been at market before when those mothers assaulted us. The Crones Against Cluster Cancers. That’s what William called them. They were women who never wanted to know the hard science of your practice. They weren’t interested in parts per billion or the rate of breakdown or the lab results of residue, statistics that, if they’d just listen, would lower their blood pressure and maybe make them reasonable. Those mothers only wished us to know that we were the individuals poisoning their children and Gaia.

  I said two things in front of Gideon just then. I said to the lady, “Do you like biting into a worm when you eat an apple?”

  “I beg your pardon,” she said to me.

  To the pork and beef guy right next door I asked, “How do your animals fare after their surgeries?” Really, that’s the kind of inane question those women were likely to ask.

  Gideon stopped talking. His pale eyes seemed to spin. He said to the mother, “You should check out the Lombard Orchard. I think you’ll like their program and their apples better.”

  The woman walked away. Gideon burst out laughing. He said, “When you’re older do you think you might consider marrying me?” He laughed again. “You are hysterical.”

  His question made me run as fast as I possibly could back to our own stand. I got in the van that was parked by our stall and locked the doors. My first proposal of marriage, my very first proposal—Gideon, I thought, had maybe, in a certain way, meant it. Which made me feel dizzy and warm and pleased and distressed all at once—that freckle on his lip, for one thing.

  What did it take to fall in love? That was a ridiculous question to have to ask when I’d seen Gloria topple over and when I myself had been in love with Mrs. Kraselnik. That is to say, you didn’t ask for it, you didn’t plan, but the spell was cast upon you anyway. Abracadabra: swoon.

  Or maybe Gideon Hup and Mary Frances Lombard would have an arranged marriage, our union on the order of the House of Hanover and the Stewarts commingling. My father thought very highly of Gideon. And if William was too dreamy to farm, if he was going to be a Posse player for the rest of his life, then I’d have to make do with Gideon. We at the Lombard Orchard would steal Tommy Sykes’s manager, Tommy’s hope, steal him away in a blaze of duty to our enterprise, Gideon and me, with our expertise and enthusiasm impressing Sherwood and even May Hill. William would realize too late that what he’d wanted after all wasn’t for the having.

  And anyway if you were Gideon, would you rather have a perfected operation to rule, one that you would never own? Or would you rather, by marriage, possess the property, a place that, yes, was a little bit of a catastrophe, but a place that was crying out for your organizational skills and your brawn, a place where the institutional knowledge meant the apples were truly delicious? Of course he would choose the Lombard Orchard, saying I do to Mary Frances and her entire family.

  So in that period I supposed, one way or another, that my future was fairly secure. I always avoided Gideon at the market but I considered him slantwise; in the abstract and from a distance he was my betrothed. In my own room at night all alone I’d think haughtily to William, Gideon and I will do thus and such, outlining all the orchard improvements we would make. I did that even though in my mind Gideon was like an Amish doll with no face. Still, I was the only middle schooler that I knew of who had a firm proposal of marriage, no small accomplishment.

  Late

  17.

  In Which We Play Euchre

  Many events, some that were logical, and some that were not, took place in the next few years. In my school career I was in several plays and was for a time in love with Mr. Dronzek, the lord of drama who taught at both the middle and high schools. Mrs. Kraselnik remained the best teacher I was sure I’d ever have but she was not long for our particular world. She and the doctor got divorced when I was in seventh grade and they both moved away from the dream house. Brianna probably was responsible for all their unhappiness, but as with so many things, that was my secret. My father continued serving on the commission to study farmland preservation. Sherwood built an apple sorter that for the most part worked, a machine that incorporated Adam’s and Amanda’s baby blankets as cushioning for the fruit. At the library Nellie Lombard as always coerced young people to read quality literature and charmed babies to a stupor with lap-sit story time. We outgrew Cart Drill and without us it fizzled. Once William got to high school he scored many awards, including a cash prize for his robot up in Madison. No one told him he shouldn’t win.

  It was after the four–five split that Amanda and I had stopped spending so much time together, depending on each other only when no one else was available. After the Geography Bee I had briefly assumed that our association was over but when she lost at the county level we were equal in our way again. There was no feud that divided us, no concrete before and after. It was funnily enough geography that changed our habits. Once I was in sixth grade we were in different buildings, the universe of the middle school a block away from the elementary school. Also, she had become interested in chess and Russia, her goal to be a diplomat and grandmaster stationed in Moscow. Whereas Coral and I, and our friend Jay, were busy writing plays together and learning lines for Mr. Dronzek’s productions, and going to vintage clothing shops in the city with Mrs. LeClaire, Coral’s mother. Because Coral had a tremendous singing voice and often spoke in a British accent, because of her general theatricality, my father referred to her as Sarah Bernhardt. To he
r face he’d say “How are you, Say-rah?” and “Have a good show, Say-rah,” which she pretended to be outraged by, calling my father Slim. “’Ey, Slim,” she’d say in her Cockney accent. It was extremely hard to stomach, their cornball. My mother sometimes called him Slim, too, which also was not terribly funny.

  Although I was interested in the theater, at the end of eighth grade, in that summer, it was against my will that I went to drama camp. My mother forced me to do so, my mother starting The Four Rivers Camp Warfare.

  The battle started in the spring, a few months before camp, on the day the yearlings went to slaughter. I was fourteen, William fifteen. The lambs had just been shorn, their sturdy musculature plain to see, and without the wool on their faces their watchful brown eyes were nakedly soulful, philosophers, you might think, all of them. Or anyway they were filled with life even though we knew they were terrifically brainless. William and I got up early on that April morning to help with the loading. When my father appeared in the lower yard with the grain bucket some of them did their twisting and popping jumps, joy—you could not call their feeling anything less than joy. It was still dark, which made the whole scene even worse. For as many times as we’d been through this exercise, as hardened as our hearts should have been, we were downcast. In the upper yard The Old Sheep came to the fence to pay her respects, her wool ragged over her sharp hips, her knees bald, her baaing guttural, a useless warning. There was always one in her position, a ewe in her last spring.

  My father carefully spread some grain in the feeder, making sure to leave spaces between the portions so the lambs wouldn’t crowd as much as usual, so they could be peaceful during their final meal. When they were finished he walked backward, tapping the bucket, toward the pen we’d made for them, a hemmed-in space that went right up to the back of the truck. We hoped we could get them up the ramp, get them loaded without any of them spooking, the whole mob then stampeding over each other, trampling the weaker stock to death. That’s how dim-witted they were.

  Because they trusted my father and because William and I were at their heels they followed him, thinking, More of our favorite and most delicious Sheep Formula? And so early in the morning? Honestly? You’re going to give us more? When the last was inside the vault of the truck I brought down the door. The clang, and another bell tolling with the latch. No childish plea for mercy, no spider weaving words into a web, no last-minute stay of execution. “I’m sorry,” I whispered. “So long, Dandelion,” I said, the runt I’d bottle-fed. At the slaughterhouse no one would care anything for them, already pieces of meat while still living. They would wait jammed together in a low tight room and be yanked one by one to the death slab.

  My father crawled from the back through a small opening into the cab. It was cold but even so he unrolled the window. He raised one hand, the farewell. We waited by the gate while he adjusted the mirror. When he was ready he turned the key in the ignition and with the beeping that signaled “reverse,” those solemn notes, the truck moved slowly out of the yard.

  We were still thinking of the lambs, still downcast after dinner. It was my mother who suggested we play Euchre, the ideal game for us, four persons, a game that requires some concentration and strategy but allows for sociability. This would cheer us up, she’d decided.

  At the table William and I as usual insisted on being partners. There was no other way to match ourselves up even though we, as a team, made the game laughably uneven. The truth was my father became spacey over cards. We played Euchre several times a year and he couldn’t ever remember the rules. Each time we had to explain all the details again, what trump meant, what the left bower was, the right bower, who started when, how you kept track of points. My mother, however, in her own way was worse. She more or less remembered the basics but she was like an idiot savant, not knowing what was going on at a fundamental level, and yet sometimes not only managing to do the correct thing, but blowing us out of the water. William and I, therefore, could not have either one of them as partners, neither the oldster nor the wild card.

  We sat diagonally from our partners at the kitchen table, William dealing in his suave high school style, a flicking of the wrist, throwing out the cards two and three at a time.

  “Wait,” my father said, “how many should I have?”

  “You have five,” William explained.

  “Is that the right number?”

  “Yes. Yes it is.”

  “Five? It doesn’t seem like enough.”

  “Papa!” I cried. “We each get five cards.”

  “Five,” he repeated.

  “Good Christ,” William muttered.

  My mother didn’t even scold him. It went to me to make the pronouncement, to order up the suit. I said, “Trump is diamonds.” William reiterated, “So, diamonds is trump.”

  Exactly half a second later my father said, “What’s trump again?”

  “Diamonds,” my mother said. She laid down the first card, an audacious play.

  “Whoa, tiger,” William said. “Good move.”

  “Thank you.”

  “What’d you just do?” my father said.

  “Papa!” I cried again. William blazed at me. I telegraphed to him, He’s deranged! And Mama is, too. She is even more. You wait.

  When she put her card down two tricks later William said, “You know that’s trump, right?”

  “Oh!” she giggled. “I forgot.”

  I snorted and did the glance at William, See? To forget that the left bower is still trump after playing for decades really is mental retardation.

  “I always forget that,” my father said.

  “You should not admit it,” I instructed.

  “What is wrong with you people?” William couldn’t help asking.

  My mother glared at her cards. “We’re just old,” my father explained. “That’s all.”

  “Well, snap out of it.” Softening, William added, “Do you want me to review the rules again?”

  “I think we’ve got it.”

  We paused between rounds for the making of cocoa, the milk simmering, the woman of the house busying herself at the stove. She said, with her back to me, “I was talking to Coral at the library today about the drama camp Mr. Dronzek has been recommending. Up in Hayward.”

  What was she doing talking to Coral? “I’m not going to camp,” I said.

  She came to the table with a tray. “Why not?”

  “Because.”

  “May I inquire because why?”

  “Because I love summer at home. Because I want to do the market with Papa. Because I don’t want to miss hay making and apple picking. And because, for your information, I’m helpful and useful and maybe, just maybe I’m indispensable.”

  “No one is indispensable,” she said, on her high horse. She set out our mugs and sat herself down. “Except May Hill. I’ll give her that.”

  William was dealing.

  “I like this,” my father said, looking at his hand.

  “It’s four weeks,” my mother continuing her campaign.

  “Good for it,” I said. I tried to appeal to my father. “You need me, Papa.”

  “I always miss you when you’re not here,” he said somewhat absently. “But you should have your adventures.”

  “I don’t need adventures.”

  “You’re a teenager,” my mother observed. “What teenager wants to stay home with her parents? Honestly, Francie, sometimes I wonder if you are a freak of nature.”

  “Freak of nature?” I repeated.

  “Nellie,” my father said in his warning voice.

  “Are you serious, Mother?”

  “Forget it,” she said, as if that was an apology or explanation.

  When she played her second card William said, “Hmmm. Why—why on earth would you do that?”

  She hissed in his face. “Do you want to see my cards?”

  “Easy, old girl, easy now.” He’d been talking that way to her, when necessary, for about a year.

&nb
sp; She slapped her hand down, destroying the round. “This is what I’ve been dealt. See? Do you see? Or are you just going to pronounce me a stupid idiot?”

  “Or freak,” I said. “Let’s say you’re a freak.”

  “Simmer down there, Old Betsy,” William said to her. “Simmer down. It’s all right.”

  “You did the only thing you could.” My father supporting his wife.

  It was as if my mother hadn’t spoken to me in that way, as if her question, her wonderment about my freakishness, now existed only in my ear, everyone else excusing her.

  When the dealer was again William, when he was shuffling the cards something untoward occurred. Possibly my mother had been hypnotized without our knowledge. Or she was having a stroke. Whatever the cause, she began to declaim on the most peculiar subject possible. “I remember,” she said slowly, “when we lived with Aunt Florence in the manor house. And we were trying to have a baby.”

  “Oh, please,” I said. We all knew that when my mother was very young and first married she’d lived with the ancient aunt and my father, who at that point was also old, sixteen years Nellie’s senior; none of that was news.

  “Florence,” she went on, “used to come into the bathroom to wash her teeth, her dentures. Do you remember, Jim?”

  “Let’s play the game,” he said.

  She went on, “We were in the bedroom that connects to that bathroom, downstairs, you know, the room that’s Sherwood and Dolly’s now.” She was studying her cards as she spoke. “It was so generous of such an old lady to allow me to live in her house with her nephew. Especially when she’d been living with you already for years, Jimmy, the two of you in your way like a married couple. So generous. I don’t know what I can do here, with this hand. Anyway, I used to have the feeling—it’s crazy, I admit it—but I used to think that the noise of her teeth in the glass, the clinking of those dentures as she brushed them next door, right by our headboard? Was the sound that sperm and egg make as they collide, as they become one.”