500 Acres and No Place to Hide

by Susan McCorkindale

  No, my favorite family memory and the one I wanted most to relive, belabor, and bust a gut laughing over—again—is about my dad. A tale nobody tells better than my mom.

  And she was going to—right up until the moment she remembered promising to babysit for Mr. Let’s Make a Bikini Top out of Band-Aids!177 and my sister-in-law, Saint Dawn. That night. “Susan,” she said, “I’d love to spend the day doing a number on your dad, but I’ve got a train to New Jersey to catch.”

  While I raced to put Hem’s meds, the phone, his reading glasses, a bottle of water, and his book by the bed, get my keys, chain the dogs up outside so they could relieve themselves without risking their lives,178 and check the garden for errant goats, my mom tossed a half dozen cartons of Misty Ultra Lights179 and, of course, her clothes into her big red Liz Claiborne bag.

  Among her things was a navy blue sweatshirt emblazoned with the words “World’s Best Grandma,” and a long-sleeved white tee that announced, “#1 Bubby,” which I read as “#1 Booby” and wondered, Which one? She brought them in a striped canvas tote that told the world “When the Going Gets Tough, the Tough Go to Grand-ma’s” (a trip I’ve considered taking several times since Hem got sick), but she hadn’t worn them.

  “Darling daughter,” she said, when I offered to run in and get the sweatshirt one night when it was nippy and we were outside, once again, relieving Tug of his manure-and-mud frosting, “a sophisticated woman would sooner freeze to death than wear clothes with captions.”180

  The long and short of it is that the bag and its contents sat untouched near a window in the guest room for her entire stay. And my guess is that that carryall carried the Halyomorpha halys 181 home to her house.

  Why? Because the window near which it sat is adorned with thick, pleated drapes that, days after my mom’s departure, I discovered crawling with the ugly shield-shaped insects. In the folds, the hem, and clumped inside the tassels. Obviously when the going got tough, the bugs got going. Right into Dame Joan’s unworn but well-traveled duds. Had I thought to help her pack, I might have discovered them.

  And had I begged and pleaded and promised to never again wear my “Mommy Needs a Cocktail” tank top,182 I might have convinced her to stay. And tell me my favorite story.

  It was midmorning on Christmas Eve, and my dad, who’d yet to get anything for Dame Joan,183 suddenly hit on the perfect gift. He’d give her something she’d wanted forever, or at least since last December. Something he hadn’t had the time, inclination, or motivation to address. Something she probably thought he’d forgotten or hadn’t heard her ask for in the first place. But surprise, surprise! He had heard, and he hadn’t forgotten. And now the time was right. He was ready and this year he’d really put the “merry” in her Christmas.

  Quietly, he gathered his tools and brought them up from the basement. He made a quick trip to the store for a few final supplies and changed his clothes.

  And then he commenced the gift giving.

  It was all going pretty well (read: My mom didn’t have a flipping clue what my dad was doing) until she suddenly said, “Susan, what do I smell?”

  She and I were in the kitchen. She was chopping, I was stirring, and things were simmering. It was a little noisy, so I acted like I didn’t hear her.

  “Susan,” she insisted, sniffing. “I smell something.”

  I lifted the lid on the tomato sauce and practically put my face in, pretending to check it. “It might be Dad,” I mumbled. “He’s—”

  “He’s what?” She looked at me, then bent over and started sniffing things. The broccoli-and-cheese casserole she’d just made. The provolone, tomatoes, and mozzarella I was getting ready to slice, place on a platter, and wrap in Saran wrap.

  “He thought he’d surprise you. . . .”

  Dame Joan stood straight up, turned an interesting shade of Oh, Shit, and rushed out of the room. Seconds later, she let out a scream that would’ve put Janet Leigh and Jamie Lee Curtis out of work.

  When I reached her, she was standing just a few feet away from my dad. And my dad was standing on a ladder, lovingly applying a coat of primer to the one room my mom had been on him about all year.

  The living room.

  You know, the room with the tree in it: the focal point of the festivities. The room where the thirteen guests we had coming the next day would kiss and hug, squeal as they exchanged brightly wrapped packages, take pictures, and drink Asti Spumante and chablis, whiskey sours and Cutty and water. Until it was time for kickoff.

  And then, much to my mom’s dismay and despite her threats to burn dinner, pour the rest of the liquor down the drain, hide the ball, blah, blah, blah, we would commence our annual family touch football game, aka the Costantino Cup, in our spacious indoor arena, aka the living room. Which this year management had seen fit to paint. Could we be getting new uniforms, too?

  But back to my dad.

  After recovering from my mom’s response to his thoughtful but poorly timed present, he painted the ceiling red and the walls white. It looked incredible. Even my mom, who retreated to the kitchen in an effort not to hyperventilate, said so.

  But my dad wasn’t sure. Being a really creative guy with a knack for color, composition, and making my mom crazy, something about the room didn’t feel right to him. It felt off. Unfinished. Flat.

  And so he flipped it.

  In no time, the walls were red and the ceiling was white. The effect was stunning. And again, my mom, who was still rather stunned herself, said so.

  But it was getting late. The walls needed to dry, the room needed to be put back together, and we had to do something to get the paint smell out of the house. Forty years later, we could have resorted to stinkbugs. But in 1973, our only option was to lower the heat, open the windows, and pray we didn’t freeze to death during the night.

  “Gene,” my mom said, “I love it. I really do. But it’s late. You’re tired. I’m tired. Please finish.”

  And he wanted to finish. Really he did. But something was wrong. Something was lacking. The room needed to be livelier.

  Richer.

  Redder.

  And so he covered the ceiling in it, too.

  The result was jaw-dropping. House Beautiful beautiful. Like a room in a designer show house. Or a palace. Maybe even Buckingham Palace.

  Dame Joan, who’d been through at least a carton of Benson & Hedges184 as she cooked, set the dining room table, made ice, and alternately pleaded with God for a) patience and b) the savvy to escape capture should she suddenly snap and kill my dad, was delighted.

  My dad, on the other hand, still wasn’t so sure. Because, well, while he liked the red, he couldn’t decide: Maybe white was the way to go.

  At midnight, when he knocked off to watch A Christmas Carol, the room was indeed white. The walls, the ceiling, the woodwork: all an interesting complement to my mom’s increasingly glacial complexion.

  But somewhere, between the time he fell asleep on the couch in his paint-covered clothes and the time my brothers and I came running downstairs to count the number of presents under the tree, divide by four, then pummel the sibling with the most packages, the whole room turned what we still fondly refer to as “I’m Gonna Puke Pink.”

  Which is almost as funny as “I Pink I’ll Kill Him,” the name my mom gave it when she raced in hollering, “No fighting on baby Jesus’ birthday!” and discovered her favorite room the color of a sick salmon.

  As if the nauseating hue weren’t enough, there was the mess. The mess that my brothers and I ultimately broke out into two levels:1. The mundane, run-of-the-mill, anybody-can-make-it mess: paint cans, pans, and drop cloths congealing in the corners. Flecks of paint on the furniture and smeared on the floor, and, of course, several long, decorative drips down the curtains. Pfff! Pedestrian!

  2. The classic, Only Dad Could Wreak This Kind of Havoc without Help mess: This included the aforementioned run-of-the-mill stuff, plus such very special touches as dried paint stirrers poking out of Chris
tmas stockings, baby Jesus’ swaddling clothes bedecked with red polka dots (and now you know where Target and babyGap got the idea from), and many, many tree branches sporting white specks (“But Joan, it looks like snow!”).

  In case you’re wondering, freezing our asses off hadn’t helped the walls, which were still tacky, but it had done wonders for Dad’s brushes, which had frozen solid while he slept and therefore had to be soaked. We didn’t have a slop sink, so they went where they always went: in the kitchen sink. In turpentine. With my mom’s tomato sauce warming up on the stove, six inches away.

  Tomato sauce and turpentine: a bouquet surpassed only by that of—yes, we’re back to the bastards—stinkbugs.

  Oh, my scarred sinuses. Isn’t it enough my beloved Garden State has to put up with people talking trash about the turnpike—the factories, the smell, and the huge white oil and gas tanks that look like oversize aspirin?

  Honestly. New Jersey needs the stinkbug like Lady Gaga needs to come out of her shell.

  And the worst part is, it’s my fault.

  Sure, I blame my mom. That’s what daughters do.185 But the fact of the matter is, if my mom hadn’t been at our house helping me manage, and I use the word loosely, the five hundred acres I’m now responsible for, none of this would have happened.

  So, Jersey, my sincere apologies and this promise: to never again have my mom here during anything other than butterfly season.

  Or at least check her bag before she leaves.

  Chapter Thirty-five

  THE GUILT IS IN THE MAIL(BOX)

  In all the time we’ve lived on our farm, we’ve never had a mailbox. We’ve had a post office box. This meant that if we wanted to get our mail, which is typically comprised of catalogs, credit card solicitations, Costco coupon circulars, the Ridgewood News—which we stopped subscribing to ages ago but they still insist on sending us—bills, and, these days, “explanation of benefits” statements from our health insurance company telling us what tests, procedures, prescriptions, and specialists they’re not covering, which isn’t really a benefit unless you like knowing you’re about to get calls from collection agencies, we had to go to the post office.

  Of course, we’re not the only people with a post office box. In fact, around here, having one is practically de rigueur: common as camo-print shorts and pajamas and T-shirts that proudly proclaim, “Will Trade Husband for Tractor.”

  (And yes, I own each of the aforementioned articles of clothing. Tractor Supply is closer than Kohl’s, not to mention Nordstrom, and sometimes I just don’t feel like doing laundry. A girl can get tired of finding chicken feathers and animal fur floating around with her undies, you know?) A post office box is one of those things that identify folks in these parts as cattle farmers, horse people, and, most important, locals. From the minute we moved to northern Virginia, Hem insisted it was post office box over mailbox.

  “It’ll force me to get off the farm every day,” he said. I agreed. God knows I’d have no trouble finding excuses to flee our beautiful but basically people-free slice of heaven. But my honey? He’d need a really compelling reason to leave the cows and the hens, the goats and the garden. Having to run to the post office to get his latest Netflix selections and the new issues of The Progressive Farmer and Hobby Farms and, of course, Backyard Poultry provided the perfect pretext.

  These days, though, running to the post office provides nothing but additional angst.

  With Hem sick, I’m the only driver, and having to go into town to get the mail is just one more thing on my never-ending list of things to do. There are days, sometimes two, three, even four days in a row, that I don’t get there at all. Sure, I can ask a friend for help, and I frequently do. But more often than not, I forget. And then, usually when we’re crossing the Key Bridge on our way back from the hospital and it’s late and cold, and I’m tired and I already have a half dozen other stops I need to make before we can head home, I remember the mail. And how it’s been fermenting in our box for about a week. And how it probably contains the bill for our health insurance premium, or worse, the DIRECTV bill, which, if I don’t pay on time, they’ll cut off, and then the next trip to the hospital will be for me.

  And I start to cry.

  So recently I began to contemplate getting a mailbox. I kept my musings to myself, because I felt guilty about racking up yet another failure in the farm-wife department.

  See, right around the time my mom went home (and quite possibly infected the entire Garden State with stinkbugs), Hem went back into the hospital and I neglected to harvest the remainder of his vegetable garden. Tomatoes, cucumbers, carrots, peppers—much of it went to pot. I feel awful about wasting food. Children all over the world are starving. But the children in my house were starving, too. For comfort, clarification, quiet time with Mom. When I raced in at night from Georgetown, I didn’t want to run back out again, even if it was just into the garden. I wanted to snuggle up with my guys, check on their homework, and ask how their day was. I wanted to sniff their sweet, sweaty heads, give them the supertight hugs Hem sent them, kiss their dirt-streaked cheeks, and throw them in the shower. I wanted to keep things as normal as possible. And I did. I just lost a lot of produce in the process.

  And then, of course, there are the chickens. If you know anything about me, you know there’s no love lost between those birds and this blonde. But every day I made sure they got plenty of water and food. My downfall was in egg collection. I was simply too rushed to do it. I kept thinking, Sure, sure, I’ll get to it later, and if by chance some hatch? What’s the harm? What’re a few more hens to hate me? Hell, they don’t lay a lot of eggs anyway! Well, by the time I got around to it, the chickens had developed a yen for their yummy brown orbs, and that was it. Game over in the organic egg game. Not only would there be no new pullets, but I was back to buying eggs at Bloom.

  So you can see why wanting a mailbox makes me feel so bad. Going to the post office is one of the last vestiges of the farm life Hemingway loves, and I can’t manage to maintain it. But he loves me, too, and when I finally mustered the nerve to bring it up, he simply said, “Suz, how long have you been considering this?” Then he took me in the garage, where he had a brand-new black mailbox just waiting to be put to good use.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t think of this sooner,” he said, handing it to me.

  “And I’m so sorry you had to,” I replied.

  It’ll probably go up this week, but when I can finally delete “take Hem for chemo” from my list, it’s coming down. I may not be a great farm wife, but I know that as soon as he’s feeling better, my husband will need to go back to making his daily mail run. And I’ll need to make a trip to Tractor Supply. All their new stuff’s in stock, and there’s a “Keep Your John Deere Tractor Drivin’ Hands off My Honey” tee I just have to have.

  Chapter Thirty-six

  NAILING THE NEW NORMAL

  Cuyler peers at me from beneath his thick brown bangs, bites off a whopping hunk of his sausage McGriddle, and mumbles, “You think Dad will ever be normal again?”

  “I hope so,” I respond, surprised at both the directness of his question and my own stupidity for ordering a sausage-egg-and-bacon biscuit. Breakfasting at McDonald’s is a new thing for us. I don’t really enjoy it, but since it usually tricks Cuy into talking to me—for a whole lot less than the sixty-plus bucks I usually spend on video games to get the same result—we try to go once a week, whether my stomach can stand it or not.

  “You hope so?” he snaps, flipping his bangs out of his eyes so fast his head bounces against the wall behind our booth. Ooh. Even with all his hair, that had to hurt.

  “You okay?”

  “Yes. No. I want Dad to be normal again.” He rubs the back of his head, annoyed. “I want everything to be normal again.”

  “Me, too,” I reply, refraining from offering to get him ice, lest he inadvertently injure another body part in response to such a “babyish” suggestion. “But you know, Cuy,” I continue cautiou
sly, “normal is a relative term.”

  A world-class, Bart Simpson–wicked smile spreads slowly across his handsome face. “You said we don’t have any normal relatives.”

  “Nice one, wise guy. I’ve taught you well. But seriously. Normal can change. Remember when you had really long hair?” About a year ago, my kid was vying with Troy Polamalu186 for who could stuff more hair into a football helmet. Troy’s is curlier and longer, so he won. But Cuy came close.

  “Having really long hair was normal for you, right?” He nods. “And then one day, you got tired of it and cut it. And then short hair became your new normal. See what I mean?”

  He considers his greasy hash brown for a moment and then, much to my relief, returns it to its equally greasy wrapper. Whew. Pepcid Complete I keep in the car. Imodium A-D? Not so much.

  “So if Dad can’t farm,” he asks quietly, “you think he’ll just do work on his computer?”

  “That’s the plan. He’ll do less physical stuff, and more management.”

  He picks at his place mat. I sip my coffee and watch his sweet freckled cheeks turn pink. I’ve learned to wait to acknowledge my younger son’s crying, a true achievement for the woman whose picture graces the Urban Dictionary entries for both “oral diarrhea” and “emotional martyr.”

  “So that’s the new normal then, right?” He rolls his wet eyes and shoots me the trademark ’tude it seems all fifth graders eventually master. “Cancer takes my outside dad, and makes him an inside dad. Just like that.”