The Excellent Lombards

by Jane Hamilton

  Stephen then occurred to me, Stephen himself standing in the door of the granary, watching us. Studying us no doubt for quite some time. Had he taken the photographs as a way to insert himself, just for a minute, into our childhood? Wanting to be us, to have us, trying somehow to—what? Could a grown man have such a hopeless wish, trying to get back there? Once I had that thought I scrambled to get out of the hole. I didn’t want to grow up. I didn’t want to someday have the hopeless wish, trying to get back, taking pictures—and longing. Longing, I couldn’t bear all the longing that was already in me. And to come, all of it to come. I was running at first and stumbling. As much as I knew our woods it was still possible to go astray in the thickets and so I went in circles.

  As I walked and walked other questions came to mind, one prompting the next and the next. What if soon we were unable to pay the taxes on the four hundred acres? What if a multimillionaire bought the woods, the houses, razing the apples trees for piano key subdivisions? That little tin cup we’d once found long ago, the cup we’d discovered and reburied, cemented over for a garage, never again found by a boy and girl? I wouldn’t think of it, would not imagine the classic and lugubrious farm auction scene turning into our real and saddest of memories, the closing of the door for the last time, getting into the car, turning back to look. One more look. I had to bend over, couldn’t walk—one last look and going down the road. Nothing left but the Stephen Lombard photographs.

  I don’t know how many minutes or if it was for hours I wandered like that. When I got back to my camp the light was fading. Was Philip our savior? Was it true, what my mother had said, that May Hill was providing for our future? I felt as if my mind might rupture—how long, how long was it going to take William to figure out where I was? I could already hear the scratchings of nighttime, voles scurrying, deer delicately making their way along their narrow routes, the plaintive cry of a little lost bird who had foolishly stayed behind in winter. And always, in the woods, there must be the call of the owl, the demanding Who who?

  Really, how long would it take William? It should not have been so difficult for him. If he wanted to go to Minnesota that badly he should think carefully about where MF Lombard was with the car keys. It made me so angry, again, that I’d had to resort to this kind of tactic. It should not have been necessary! And why had Gloria left us years before? She should start calling for me now, coming to find me, rather than living on Cortez Island with her own baby, a girl named Sophia.

  Four o’clock had passed and five o’clock and six o’clock. Where was he? How dare he not find me. How dare he keep me waiting in the cold, doing the taxing job of holding my ire at the boiling point. It should have been a cinch to find me—how stupid could he be?

  At six thirty I crawled out to do my business—look what you’ve reduced me to. Once again I tried to get comfortable, tried to get back the warmth I’d lost, and when I was sick, too, when I’d been so sick. But I would stay, I would stay the night, I’d stay for two nights if I had to, if William was so brainless he couldn’t find the car keys right in the hole in the woods. I was making my resolve when finally I heard the bushwhackers. Ten minutes past seven o’clock. It was my father who was calling. “Mar-lee-een. Mar-leeeeeeen! Are you out here?”

  Maybe I was and maybe I wasn’t.

  “Marlene!” A big sharp shout.

  They were drawing closer. I burrowed deeper into the duvet. What was going to happen?—that secretly delightful question. Before I could entertain it further they were on the lip of the chasm, their headlamps blinding me.

  “Jesus Christ.” William spit the name.

  “It’s okay,” my father said to him. “Come on out, Marlene.”

  Ho-hum, I acted as if I didn’t see them, as if they were not present. I opened my book since their headlamps were now providing me with perfectly adequate light.

  “Frankie—!” William was too angry to say more.

  “Oh, hallo,” I said.

  “It would be considerate—” He was so worked up he was starting to cry, my brother. “It would be—” Not only had it taken him forever to find me, he also couldn’t manage to speak in complete sentences. How in the world did he think he was going to conduct himself at college? “Nice,” he hissed. “If you could give us the car keys.”

  “Marlene,” my father said, “we’re all pretty tired.”

  That was their problem, not mine. They wanted to be rested and happy, they had only to get a basket and come into the woods.

  “Ma’s out of her head with worry,” my father added.

  William just then began to pound, with his bare hands, on the gigantic upturned platter of roots and earth. Very melodramatic for anyone but for William especially surprising. Was he crying or choking? I couldn’t tell.

  “So go away,” I remarked. To tell the truth, it was frightening, his display. I said, “Would you please just leave.” I meant it in a local way.

  At that he sprang into the hole. “Ow!” I yelled. “Get off me! Stop it!” As I said, the hole was considerably smaller than it had been when we were five and six.

  “GODDAMN IT, Imp!” He seemed to hover before he came down upon me. I suppose it happened quickly. The press of him, a darkness in my mind, my brother smothering me. Such weight, the boy himself in his padded canvas jacket. Before you knew it you could be snuffed out, you might surrender, one bright bloom in your head, the last flowering firework, almost a happiness to have everything over and done. I heard him cry out, “YOU ARE SUCH A—BABY.”

  BABY like an ugly word, like the worst curse. It was close to me, that word in the hole, and yet it didn’t matter, the canvas like an old chapped hand, William’s jacket covering my face and in my mouth. Before I could try to struggle, even as I was thinking to, my father was yanking William, my father with all his strength pulling his nearly grown son up out of the hiding place. All at once the light was back in my eyes, I was gasping for breath. There was noise, my father I think talking to William, maybe he was saying something, a confusion even though the main action had already taken place. I thought, Okay, I am now going to climb out. I could see that there was no reason to stay put. They had found me, I wasn’t dead from suffocation, perhaps my point had been made, time to go home. I couldn’t exactly think in the moment what the point was. But before I could get out, before I realized what was happening my father had also dragged me up and next I knew he somehow had hauled me over his shoulders. Wait! The duvet had fallen away, my father, as old and as tall as I was, my father adjusting me as if I were a sack of grain, as if he thought I wouldn’t come home with them, as if he thought I’d try to fight. I could still feel the weight of William, the jacket, that stuffing, in my mouth. I should tell my father that he could let me down but I couldn’t think of the words. Baby. That’s what I kept hearing.

  We set off down the path. William was running ahead probably. I couldn’t hear him, didn’t think he was with us. I was not easy to carry, my father faltering. I imagined I was going to say Let me down and so I must have because he stopped. I was then walking beside him. He smelled of apples, the fragrance thick and sweet, the smell bonded deeply into his jacket and his coveralls, his hair, his skin. Even though I was no longer slumped over his back I felt as if I were being carried along in a dream, the night, my father, the two of us maybe walking forever. Where was William?—Oh yes, in the dream, remember he is gone? On we went until we came out of the woods. We walked down the dark drive of Volta and crossed the road to Velta.

  Just inside the door at home my father was good enough not to turn on the hall light but nonetheless I at once remembered my part. I tossed the keys on the floor in the hall, Fine, there they are, what you wanted. And then I ran up to my room and I locked myself inside.

  It wasn’t until I was in my bed that I began not merely to tremble but to shiver in an uncontrollable way. I wasn’t even all that cold. As usual I wondered if I was losing my mind. The shivering was not, I thought, prompted by William’s unnerving, unique
histrionics or my inability to speak to my father on the path. No, my teeth were rattling because of the resemblance that was occurring to me: Gloria. Long ago Gloria had stood in the door frame of the stone cottage, forced by my father to produce Stephen’s passport. Had I become Gloria? Had I become a person going insane? There were moments, I could now see, when it was understandable to completely go off your rocker. The easiest and most reasonable and maybe proper thing to do in the world, to lose hold of yourself. What were my parents doing downstairs but probably trying to figure out how to commit me. They were discussing the fact that I was certifiable. So the question before me: Was I indeed crazy?

  Yes or no.

  MF Lombard driven mad by a departure?

  I wasn’t sure. I didn’t know. Before I could make a determination the Stephen photographs leapt to mind. I hoped they were going to be all right out in the hole for the night. I loved those pictures. I loved them so much I could hardly stand it, but not, it seemed, in an insane way. Loving the pictures simply did not feel like lunacy. Loving the pictures, there was nothing to be done but lie quietly at the mercy of the suffering.

  After some time I got out of bed and went into William’s room. My heart sped up, the thin hum in my ears as I approached the threshold. Had the woods been a dream for him, too? Would the correct approach be to laugh, to cry, to do nothing but sit down and lean against his shelf? He was at his desk playing Posse. His fine wispy hair was long enough in the back so that a wind might make it tickle his neck. I loved his neck, which he may or may not wish to know.

  “Um,” I said.

  “What,” he said.

  “Are you going?”

  “Early tomorrow morning.” He kept playing his game.

  I managed a great summoning of my courage and I said right out, “What are you thinking you will do when you get out of college?”

  He turned in his office chair to face me. His eyes were bloodshot, I guess from the crying. He looked older than usual, circles etched under his eyes, the brown of them faded. His face was somewhat drawn. “I don’t know, Frankie.”

  “You don’t?”

  “No.”

  I stared at the floor. How could he have no idea?

  “I want,” he began.

  “What?”

  He moistened his lips. He shut his eyes tightly, he opened them and looked hard at me. “I want to make hay.”

  “Hay,” I repeated stupidly.

  “I want to make hay,” he said again. “And the rain is coming.”

  “The cloud is hanging over our heads?”

  “But,” he said, nodding, “the rain doesn’t fall. It doesn’t fall yet.”

  “Because we don’t have all the bales in.”

  “Because—” He suddenly did a lightning spin in his chair. “It’s going to wait until we’re done.”

  “Because Papa is there.”

  “Yes,” William said. “Because Papa is there.”

  We both looked at the floor. “Oh,” I said.

  “Now would you please get out of here?” He abruptly turned back to his game.

  “Okay,” I said. I went out into the hall. I was satisfied with his answer.

  Maybe it was the best possible answer for the time being. I stood at the top of the stairs, very still, holding as still as I could. William, I knew, was capable of playing Posse until morning. It was well past the dinner hour but I could hear my parents at the table in the kitchen. I could see the light downstairs. By the smell of it they were having my mother’s famous pork-and-turnip stew and probably she’d whipped up mashed potatoes with buttermilk. Librarian by day, chef by night. I heard her laugh. “Jim, Jimmy, my God.” My father had been working all day out in the cold and afterward he’d had to go into the woods to find me. Probably he was holding a cup of tea in his enormous knuckly hands, telling her the story of the search. It occurred to me that I, too, could stay right where I was, holding on to the newel post, until morning. “How did it get so late?” I heard my father say. My mother replied as if it was a real question. “In the usual way,” she said. I thought I might stay on the top step, in the darkness, holding to the post, stay awhile longer, but I also knew that in just a minute I’d go downstairs.

  Acknowledgments

  Thank you to Libby Ester, Mrs. V, Elizabeth Weinstein, and the Wonder Women. My gratitude, also, to the Hedgebrook Foundation. Not least, thank you to Deb Futter and Amanda Urban.

  Reading Group Guide

  for

  The Excellent Lombards

  by

  Jane Hamilton

  Discussion Questions

  The Lombards comprise a sprawling, complicated family, and the relationships among them are even more complex. How is the concept of family portrayed throughout the book?

  What effect does making Frankie the narrator have on your perception of the plot?

  One might describe Frankie as being both surprisingly mature and immature for her age. Why do you think this is? How else would you describe Frankie’s character? Use examples from the text to support your claims.

  How does a rural setting lend itself to this sort of familial, community-based story? What role does the landscape, which Jane Hamilton describes vividly, play in the Lombards’ tale?

  In many ways, this novel can be viewed as a coming-of-age story. What are some key moments in which Frankie “comes of age”?

  The question of who will inherit the farm is one of the main conflicts in this book. Do you think that the matter of inheritance is emblematic of some other issue?

  The relationship between Gloria and the Lombards is very complicated. What do you think prevents genuine feelings between the children and Gloria? Between Nellie and Gloria?

  “We weren’t just bored with the world; we were bored with ourselves, or we were hardly in our selves anymore. It was hard to tell what was going on. Maybe, if we could remember one little trick about how we used to be, we could get there, get back, as if we ourselves were a country we’d left.” How does this quote relate to some of the book’s main themes?

  Frankie often has incredibly strong feelings and opinions toward those around her. Analyze Frankie’s relationships with other key characters, such as William, her father, Amanda, and May Hill.

  How does the bond between Frankie and her brother, William, evolve throughout this book?

  How does Frankie view love? Does it change throughout the course of the book? If so, how?

  What do you think makes the Lombards “excellent”?

  A Conversation with Jane Hamilton

  What was your initial conception of The Excellent Lombards? Has it changed much?

  I wrote many versions of this novel. I have a friend who writes crime fiction. She is often understandably shocked at the inefficiency of my process. “You had another failure?” she once lovingly said to me, when I was explaining that yet another version of the novel hadn’t worked out. At the start I knew the situation of the orchard family but I kept superimposing ridiculous plots onto the basic structure. For instance, there were several versions involving a nun and the lesbians in the neighborhood. The nun drowns in the marsh. I read Catholicism for Dummies and went to Mass. That version was six hundred pages.

  How did your own experience of living and working in a Wisconsin orchard farmhouse inform the content of this book?

  I certainly couldn’t have written this novel if I hadn’t lived the life I live. I suppose that could be said for any novel in relation to the novelist, but for this book and my life that statement is especially true. My business associates have for some time been suggesting that I write a memoir about my farm life, but I can’t seem to muster enthusiasm for nonfiction. The pleasure and requirement of writing a novel is living in an invented world. There is the basic material that is the novelist’s life, the marble, clay, the canvas, and as the work progresses the invention becomes entirely separate from whatever real-life events or situation inspired it. So this book lives in an altogether different plane from m
y own life and times.

  What was your greatest challenge in writing The Excellent Lombards?

  I had the voice of the girl at the beginning. I knew the situation of the family. But situation is not the same as plot. How was I going to organize all the material? How was I going to make a contained narrative with material that is close to me, and ongoing? What should the time frame be? In several of the many different versions Frankie—whose name was once upon a time Nina—is in college. In one version she is well out of college. In one version her father and Sherwood die, a double accident in snow. Chain saws are involved. At a certain point I realized it was better to limit the passage of time. Also, there are specific challenges in an episodic novel. There needs to be connective tissue from chapter to chapter. The whole thing has to flow and cohere through the episodes. I didn’t want to write an eight-hundred-page, intergenerational book with a family tree but rather a book that was relatively short, the girl’s narrative a story that is a distillation of her family history, that history contained, you could say, in her body.

  In her essay “On the Art of Fiction,” Willa Cather said, Art, it seems to me, should simplify. That, indeed, is very nearly the whole of the higher artistic process; finding what conventions of form and what detail one can do without and yet preserve the spirit of the whole, so that all that one has suppressed and cut away is there to the reader’s consciousness as much as if it were in type on the page. I’m not a poet but that goal of condensing and being precise—that trick!—was my impossible goal. All that to say, I wanted to write a short novel about time passing.