The Excellent Lombards

by Jane Hamilton

  By the time we got to high school my mother had become generally cranky, bent on making her pitch both overtly and subliminally for the colleges of her choice. She served us cocoa in her college mugs. She often related her adventures in higher education, stories that she’d suddenly recall.

  There seemed also to be more visits than usual from her best college pals, one of whom was the dean of admissions at one of Nellie’s top ten picks. The dean, over breakfast at our kitchen table, had intimated that when we applied to Swarthmore, as of course we must, we could very likely expect not only the fat envelope but substantial aid. “You’ve got everything going for you,” she said to me. “Brains, naturally, grades, extracurriculars, and let’s not forget, you’ve got the farm card.”

  The farm card?

  My mother glared, Do not be rude.

  It seemed to me that the exact minute I’d gone to high school she’d become disapproving of me full-time, a shocked look on her face when I told her I’d joined Future Farmers of America, as if FFA was beneath the station of a girl with a pedigree like MF Lombard’s. And when I’d wanted to sign up for auto mechanics instead of honors biology you might have thought I was throwing my life away by shooting heroin or having unprotected sex. She even discouraged me from continuing on in 4-H. “Oh please, Francie,” she’d sighed, “not another year showing your zucchinis.”

  Whereas Dolly’s aspiration for Amanda and Adam was a brag-worthy university that would provide them with a marketable skill, Mrs. Lombard wanted William and Francie to become fully rounded, truly educated, cultivated people. She seemed to think that without Oberlin or Bates or Carleton or Williams we’d not know who Hesiod was, we’d forget to vote, we’d vote Hitler into power, we’d confuse good and well, we’d not appreciate a symphony orchestra, we’d track mud into museums, and most frightening, we’d admire terribly written thrillers and bosom heavers. College was four short beautiful years, she’d go on, when we could open out, all blossomy, when we could experience new ideas, when we could have the privilege of freedom, a time when we could study whatever interested us, although presumably she did not mean auto mechanics. If she hadn’t met Stephen Lombard, she reminded us, never would she have visited the farm, never married my father, and therefore we would never have been born. In the beginning was Oberlin College, the light, the way, world without end.

  Nellie’s friend, the dean of admissions, said to me over breakfast in my own kitchen, “Here’s what I want to ask you, Francie. Do you want to farm anywhere—do you love farming? Or is your love for farming about your love for home?”

  The question stank of Mrs. Lombard.

  I did my best to remain calm. I did not mention that the Lombard property was historical, mysterious, and productive, that the woods were deep, the soil well tended. I didn’t point out that Amanda and Adam had no interest in the orchard life, and that someone was obliged to honor tradition. I said, “Most farm families would kill for their children to take over the operation. What, after all, is the point of having children if the parents just want them to go away?”

  “Oh, honey!” the dean cried. “A parent wants her child to have a rich, full life. We want you to use your talents, to have the tools to be happy. It’s not that we want you to go, not at all! It’s that we have to let you go. This, believe me, is the most painful part of being a mother.” She went on to explain that college would equip me to make an informed choice about my future. I could study chemistry, biology, business, all courses that would help me if I decided to return to the orchard. I could network with other students who were interested in farming, make lifetime friends with people who would be helpful to my venture.

  “I already have people in my life who will be helpful to my venture,” I reminded the dean. “I have”—I counted on my fingers, so she could see and understand—“my father and my brother, Sherwood, and also Dolly. And, additionally, Philip.”

  The dean said what she had no business saying. “Your father wants you to have an education, too.”

  Nellie, perhaps because she’d been omitted from my list, had to have the last word. She said, “You just want to keep your options open, that’s all, Francie. You want to have options.”

  I remembered my proposal of marriage from Gideon Hup, which naturally I had long since stopped considering, and yet I would have liked to add that offer to my talking points. Nellie Lombard, I didn’t say to the dean, had little idea how many options for her venture a girl such as MF had at her disposal.

  21.

  MF Lombard’s Fears, Part Two

  Another slow blink and time passed. I went to drama camp for a second summer when I was sixteen. It was my decision. I wanted to go. The jar of lake water from my previous year, the jar sitting on my desk, spoke to me. To my surprise I was cast as Rosalind in As You Like It, even though I was not your typical ingénue type. But I’d gotten tall and gamine-like, I guess. I was complimented on the quality of my skin, the typical adjectives, poreless, porcelain, and a greeting, Oh Milkmaid! Fine, I had lovely skin, which was not an accomplishment. Some people in the show were not in favor of my being the lead, including the boy who played Orlando, a person with pillowy lips that he believed were irresistible. It required all of my skills to pretend I was in love with him, and he made it clear that he, too, had to muster his forces. Coral was not in my cabin and was involved in Annie Get Your Gun. And so I very much felt on my own, trapped in the Forest of Arden, no one but a character for my friend, Rosalind the person I spoke to and drew comfort from.

  When my parents and William drove up for the performance I couldn’t let them know how miserable I was. It made me unbearably sad, their driving seven hours one way in order to see me. They probably thought I was having the most wonderful experience, that I’d gathered a few campers to my heart for lifetime friends. That’s what my mother wanted more than anything, and as we walked the wooded paths she kept asking in a hushed way, “Who was that girl? What’s that boy’s name?” I was almost too sad to be angry with her. She supposed that because I had the lead I was popular, but no, my only real friend in the cast was an imaginary person.

  My father said, “It’s amazing you learned all those lines, Marlene. It’s something to think of, having that heroine in your bloodstream.”

  William said, “You were prettier up there than I remembered, Imp.”

  My mother laughed.

  Each Lombard made other nice comments about my talents and then Mother, Father, and William got in the car and drove away, leaving me for one more week, one last show, The Miracle Worker, MF Lombard a blind girl with one short scene. When I got home I was more than happy to have that Four Rivers Camp session dissolve as soon as possible into nearly nothing.

  Most of the time thereafter, when I was leading my school life, writing another play with my friend Jay and acting in Mr. Dronzek’s masterpieces, all that time doing my extracurriculars and studying, enjoying the company of Coral and a few other theater enthusiasts, keeping my options open; even so there was the other real life beneath all of that surface activity, the real life rife with terror—an apt word although if I’d said it out loud I would have been chastised. But terror for anyone’s information was not reserved for religious zealots blowing up themselves and others in marketplaces. Terror also existed in a black night and an early morning. It could exist at lunchtime in a crowded cafeteria stinking of fish sticks. No escape from that crush. With no warning it beat in you when you opened your locker to the jumble of notebooks, torn assignments, gym clothes, petticoats not yet returned to the costume closet. It could come upon you walking up the hill in the back field, out of the blue feeling as if you were standing on the lip of the world, alone. Also, it, the terror, could occur right before a school dance.

  In the fall of my junior year I saw May Hill for the first time in months when Coral and I were posing for homecoming pictures by the apple barn, the two of us in our steampunk finery, our garters and relatively tasteful purple bustiers, bodysuits underneath, lit
tle flouncy skirts, our lace-up boots, our thick black eyeliner and long curly black wigs. Jay, Gayjay he’d dubbed himself, was taking the pictures. Coral and I were going together for the sole purpose of wearing our costumes in public, as if the dance were a Halloween party. I was still flat-chested so that my wearing a bustier was Kleenex-filled hilarity. We laughed until we fell over, Coral and I, at her bust size and my bust size, the Mutt and Jeff of bosoms. My mother said periodically that any day now I would require the pads that had been in my closet for at least two years. She said so as if she were a cheerleader, as if she were rah-rahing for my eggs. In her mind I was apparently not just a slow bloomer but a stunted, stalled girl—which did sometimes worry me, the possibility of a medical condition. For the most part, though, I was perfectly happy without that particular monthly nuisance.

  As far as the egg situation went, a week before the dance Mrs. Lombard had come into the exam room with me for my checkup. In my presence she’d asked Dr. O’Connor if I should be put on birth control pills or if I should have a battery of tests to see what was happening with my ovaries. The state of my reproductive equipment was something I had no interest in discussing in a nearly public forum. And even if Dr. O’Connor had thought I had cancer or had injured myself or—truly hideous—didn’t have a large enough opening, I would not have the tests, and most certainly I was not going to take birth control pills. It was to my great satisfaction that he told my mother I was not abnormal, and that in the fullness of time I would menstruate.

  “You’re saying I am not a freak,” I said to him.

  He laughed. “I assure you, Mary Frances, you are not a freak.”

  “Okay then,” I said, looking at my mother. “Thank you.”

  At any rate, I saw May Hill before the homecoming dance when I was dressed as a Victorian call girl, bust size 32A. I’m not sure she as much as glanced my way, walking quickly past Coral and me, her head down. Amanda, who had become willowy and beautiful, her dark hair in a French twist, had already left with her date. William was going to the dance, too, with Charlotte Meuweesen, a sweetly bland girl he couldn’t possibly like in any significant way.

  While we were doing the photographing William had driven into Volta, to the apple barn, in order to get a gallon of cider for Charlotte to take home after the event. He was wearing a sport coat and, to distinguish himself, a bow tie. May Hill walked past him, too, but she may, in spite of herself, have noticed Charlotte sticking her long leg from the car, noticed the black gown that to May Hill would have looked like a slip rather than a formal garment. May Hill stopped walking. She appeared to be thinking. She glanced at the leg once more, she looked at the gravel, she then walked on. All my pleasure in my getup and hair and stockings just like that was gone, the Shadow of May Hill not simply casting a pall over the evening, but destroying it. She disappeared into the basement. That was the extent of the May Hill episode. And yet a great buzz suddenly was in my ears. I couldn’t hear. It was difficult to breathe.

  To complete the feeling Philip happened by, Philip coming up the path from the sheep shed. I believed he shouted, “You look fantastic, you guys! You are so meta! Homecoming with an attitude. Homecoming from beyond the past and beyond the future.” He may also have said, “Have an awesome time.”

  “That’s enough pictures,” I was able to say to Jay.

  Coral giggled, instantly becoming idiotic, thanking Philip and simpering. I got in the car and slammed the door.

  In theory, and in theory only, it had by then occurred to me to consider marrying my cousin. If I had to. I was not serious on the one hand, but also on the other, it was a real idea. All the way to the school, to the gym for the dance, I couldn’t stop shivering. May Hill walking across the driveway was the Queen of Darkness. Philip was her minion. The notion of my marrying him made me ill, the old man and the maiden, plus the crone keeping watch, and additionally we were related and would have the moronic children. Working alongside my husband would be like playing Rosalind to that dope of an actor at camp, not for a mere four performances, but for literally eternity. We’d be buried next to each other in the family plot.

  “What’s the matter?” Coral said to me.

  “I think I might be sick,” I replied.

  There was, however, the matter of Philip’s girlfriend, a woman named Natasha. My father referred to her as the Countess Rostova. My mother called her The Gorgeous One. Natasha was the reason the awful idea stayed in my mind. Once there’d been the talk of succession, of the land transfer, I’d realized that Natasha through marriage might someday own May Hill’s dirty little right-of-way to the apple barn. It was then that I’d felt remiss, that I tried to turn over the idea of the union with Philip in my mind. But it, the extreme altruism of my act, and he, the flesh-and-blood man, always repelled me, so that it wasn’t possible to concentrate on the concept of our business relationship.

  The morning after homecoming my mother asked me how the dance was and if we’d had fun. I didn’t know. I couldn’t remember anything that had happened except for the moment on the driveway with May Hill and Philip.

  For quite some time there had been no talk of the transfer of assets and I had come to believe that May Hill had changed her mind. Or anyway, surely the decision was far off. Certainly she would never make any legal alterations in apple season, not when we were all caught up in the harvest. It was something so futuristic and far-fetched there didn’t seem any need to try to bring up the subject with William. When you thought about it in a realistic way it made no sense that Philip “Plato” Lombard, the Renaissance man, was going to commit to a lifetime in our burg and our home.

  I therefore wasn’t prepared down at the library one afternoon when Dolly came through the door. She didn’t so much approach the checkout desk as march up to it, the color in her cheeks unusually high. No doubt there was going to be a news flash about Adam, our cousin now at Pomona College in California. He’d gotten a full ride including a travel stipend. Surfing had become an interest. And whales. I was sitting at a nook nearby cleaning DVDs with a shammy cloth. Never had I seen Dolly look so well and so pretty. There was the girlish flush and the tinsel effect of the shiny threads of silver in her dark hair. I smiled eagerly at her but she paid no attention to me, standing firm at the counter.

  “How are you, Mrs. Lombard?” my mother as always said so cheerfully to the relation.

  “I’m not going to say my opinion.” That’s what Dolly said. No Amanda or Adam reports, no Muellenbach intelligence, nothing about the sisters’ diets or one of the husbands shooting his foot accidently.

  My mother understood the topic. She spoke quietly. “I’m not sure anybody realizes how much of his strength Jim has lost in the last few years, Dolly. We need this change. We need it to be legally binding.”

  Dolly began to hum. She had perhaps come into the library to complain and maybe hadn’t expected my mother to have a point of view.

  “I’m saying something,” my mother said. Never before, as far as I knew, had she spoken to Dolly in that warning tone. “I’m telling you an important piece of information, Mrs. Lombard.”

  “May Hill has no right to give up her property to that boy,” Dolly cried. “That boy could go off tomorrow, for all we know. He could sell it to someone else. He could lose interest. For all we know he could ruin us.”

  Yes, yes, it was so.

  And yet my mother said, “May Hill has every right to transfer her acres to Philip. She has every legal right.”

  “No one cares about my opinion.” Dolly looked as if she might burst into tears. “No one. I’m nothing. All these years and no one listens to me.”

  “That’s not true—”

  “You sit up here in the library. What,” Dolly asked, “do you know?”

  My mother was startled.

  “You sit up here,” Dolly repeated.

  “Excuse me?” my mother said, a foolish question, a nothing question.

  Dolly muttered, “You don’t work in the business
.”

  That was a fact—what could my mother say?

  “I know I don’t, Dolly,” she nonetheless said. “But that doesn’t mean I don’t understand the dynamics.”

  “I’ve killed myself on that cold floor in the sorting shed. Standing for ten hours, day after day, season after season. Pret-near killed myself.”

  “Everyone appreciates your work—”

  “You,” Dolly said fiercely, “have no right to an opinion.”

  My mother pressed her hand to her lips. Dolly wiped her eye.

  “I do have rights,” my mother said then in a very calm voice. “We all do. We have rights, you and I, for some of the same reasons. Because of marital property, for one. Because of family feeling, and there are different reasons, too.” Her voice was lulling, smooth, so quiet. “For instance, for my part, the chunk of money that came to me at my parents’ death, most of it has gone into the farm. You might not know that. I’m guessing you don’t.” My mother pulled her thin graying hair into a ponytail with one hand and held it there. “I didn’t mind the contribution, but don’t tell me I know nothing, or have no rights, or that I’ve just been sitting around. Please don’t do that.”

  Money was involved? My heart was doing its pricking, my hands cold. The buzz in the ears. Dolly was the stunned one now, staring at my mother. She looked as if a poison dart had pierced her breast; she looked that stricken. My mother, though, seemed not to notice the wild hurt expression shaping up, the little gimlet shine of Dolly’s narrowed eyes and the bit-by-bit collapse of the doughy face.

  “I never wanted,” my mother went on—

  Stop! I wanted to scream.

  “—it to cause bad feeling, our putting cash into the operation, Jim and I.”

  SHUT UP!

  “I only say so now because it’s my sitting around over here that has made some of the capital improvements possible.”