“But wasn’t there barbed wire?” Beanie asked. “They usually put barbed wire up when there’re bulls. Or an electrified fence.”
“Oh?” Anne said, wiping her eyes on a paper napkin. “Maybe there was. I guess we didn’t notice. We just wanted to sit in the field with all those pretty wildflowers. Silly us! So who wants some watermelon?”
“Rachel, why don’t you and the girls clear?” I suggested.
“Sure, Mom,” she said, getting up and starting to stack the plates.
“And you guys help, too,” Anne suggested. Like the Pied Piper, Rachel led the children into the house.
Anne and I sat in silence for a moment, listening to our kids moving back and forth behind us in the kitchen. A drawer opening, Rachel saying something. Fireflies drifted over the uncut field, blinking lazily in the humid night updrafts. Above the tree line the first stars burned blurrily through the haze. Somewhere, from down below, I heard a high, persistent whine.
“What’s that?” I asked Anne.
“What?”
“That sound. Like a buzz saw or something. Don’t you hear it?” But even as I was asking her, I realized that the noise was coming from the direction of Luke’s place. He must be working in his basement workshop, the windows open, soldering one of his pieces. I was surprised the noise carried so clearly through the trees and up the hill.
“Yes, that’s your friend. Luke Barnett, right? I hear him just about every night down there. He seems very driven.”
“I hope the sound doesn’t bother you,” I replied, wishing I hadn’t said anything. I still felt uneasy discussing Luke with Anne. He represented so much about the past that I would prefer to be forgotten. The more I got to know and like Anne and, yes, feel flattered by the way she seemed to view me, the more I felt the threat of Luke’s proximity growing. “And he’s not a friend. He’s really a total loner these days.”
“That sounds so intriguing!” she said, tipping back in her chair as she drained the last of her white wine. “The misunderstood artist, working away till all hours in his lonely garret.”
“Basement,” I corrected her. “He works in his basement. And I wouldn’t romanticize him. He’s not a particularly pleasant person, really.”
“Okay, okay! I’ve been duly warned!” She laughed, sitting forward again. But I didn’t relax until, as though what we’d been discussing was entirely unimportant, she abruptly changed the subject. “Oh, Maddie, damn it. I’m sorry about that stupid vegetable garden! You went to all that trouble for me. I really do feel like an idiot. Maybe I can find someone to plow and put in a fence the way you suggested. Who should I ask? Do you know of anybody?”
I did, of course. I knew of half a dozen guys who made their living doing lawn work and land design for wealthy second-homers. I grew up with most of them. They’re all locals, like me. Friends, husbands of friends, brothers-in-law.
“Let me think about it,” I said. But I’d already leapt ahead in my mind, the way we all do at times, embracing what seemed to me suddenly an ideal solution to a problem I didn’t understand then was insolvable. Because I decided that Anne didn’t need or want me to reciprocate her hospitality in my house. She needed me to help her, right there, in hers.
“Do you think Bob would have time to rototill a garden plot for Anne Zeller?” I asked Paul as we were getting ready for bed that night. “She wants to put in some vegetables.”
“Wow. She really is getting into this, isn’t she?” Paul replied, pulling off his T-shirt. He has a farmer’s tan, stopping abruptly halfway up his biceps, following the curve of his neckline and forming a vee over his chest. Though he’s put on twenty pounds or so over the years since high school, he still carries himself with the purposeful grace of a natural athlete. “Sure. I don’t see why not. He could always use the extra money.”
“Oh, no,” I said, tossing all but one of the throw pillows into the corner. Paul had patted my backside as I climbed up the stairs in front of him before. It was one of his signals. “I don’t want us to charge her for it. I’d like us to do this as a favor.”
“Us?” Paul asked, balling up his T-shirt and throwing it into the hamper. “Bob is not us, Maddie. He’s already working his tail off and has shit to show for it. Anne Zeller is your friend. You can pay him for whatever he does for her, otherwise I’m not asking him. And I don’t want you asking him on your own, either, understand?” Though I’m used to Paul’s sudden flare-ups, they’re very rarely directed at me. And I felt unfairly charged. Hadn’t he been encouraging me to lend Anne a helping hand? Wasn’t this just the neighborly thing to do? He was working too hard, I knew, and was having some trouble with the large crew he’d assembled for the new construction job. But it didn’t seem right to let him take his frustrations out on me.
“Honestly, Paul, what’s the big deal?” I said, jerking back the sheets. “I don’t mind paying, of course. But you don’t have to jump all over me about it.”
“Right,” he said. “You’re right. I don’t know, Mad. I just don’t want you ever getting confused about who we really are, okay? We’re not in the Zellers’ league, or anywhere near it. I guess I don’t understand why you couldn’t just recommend Bob—and have her pay him directly. Why make it a favor? Oh, fuck it. Don’t listen to me. The truth is, I’m bone-tired.”
I turned off the bedside light and we turned to each other. Paul, dear Paul. He doesn’t miss much. Somehow, in his burst of anger, he’d exposed what I’d intended to keep hidden. He saw it, he questioned it, and then he backed away from it. We know each other so well. Too well, really. We share each other’s weaknesses and strengths. It feels sometimes that I can almost read his mind. But I can’t, really, can I? I’ll never know for certain what fears wake him at night and cause him to roll over on his back and stare at the ceiling for hours. When we make love—as we did then, with bruising passion—I can almost believe that the millimeters of skin and the filaments of thought that separate us are permeable. That we’ve broken through. That we’re one. But we’re not. We never will be. Because I was able to lie to myself, and he didn’t know.
9
All Bob’s ever wanted to be in life is a farmer. He’s most at ease on a tractor, most himself in his worn flannel work shirt and jeans, a dark blue Agway feed cap shadowing his eyes. Sometimes I think he loves his goats and cows as much as he loves Kathy and the kids. Or perhaps it’s just easier for him to express his affection for them. When I hear him whispering sweet nothings to one of his yearlings, I sense a wellspring of patience and concern not evident in his taciturn dealings with humans.
“Yep, sure,” he replied to my request that he put in the Zeller garden the following Saturday morning. He didn’t ask why I was the one setting up the job or, after we’d settled on what I considered a more than reasonable price and told him I’d drop off the check with Kathy, why I was the one paying for it. Perhaps he thought it had something to do with my brokering the house sale, but, more than likely, he’d just decided it was a matter that didn’t concern him. Like the rest of his family, Bob’s very big on minding his own business. He expects the same in return, so I had to restrain myself from going over the details of what was needed more than once.
“You’ll want to have split rails for about a thirty-by-twenty plot. And a gate, of course. And a truckload of topsoil or compost. Plus enough one-by-two coated wire to fence it all in.”
“We’re talking about a vegetable garden, right?” he asked. “I know what they look like.”
When Bob and Paul and the rest of their siblings were growing up, the Alden farm was a going concern. Though a DAIRY OF DISTINCTION sign still hangs near the empty milking shed, the farm Bob took over from his father a few years before old man Alden died was already on its last legs. The large cooperatives upstate had been squeezing out the smaller local dairies and, after a few money-losing years, Bob finally threw in the towel and sold most of the herd. Since then, he’s scratched out a living growing feed corn and raising cattle for
slaughter. In the summer, he rents out the long hill and haying fields for a three-day folk festival and contra dance. Kathy’s day-care business helps pay some of the bills, and Bob picks up odd jobs here and there, like the one I was giving him. But it seems a shame to me that he can’t make a living out of doing what he loves. The only time I hear him string more than one or two sentences together is when he’s talking about the farm—and plans he has to get it back on its feet. His latest scheme is the goat-cheese-making operation that he’s plowing every extra dollar back into.
“Stuff sells in the gourmet markets for four, five dollars for six ounces. Think of that! The herd is building itself at this point—I got eight newbies this spring—so’s all I’m going to need is another milking machine and the right refrigeration system, and I’m ready to go commercial.” Paul listens to his plans for hours on end, though Bob tends—like the true farmer he is—to go over the same ground again and again.
Despite the fact that I think Paul’s a lot brighter than Bob and far more social and ambitious, the two of them have always been very close. I used to believe that Paul felt primarily protective toward his baby brother, and I recall that he was very concerned when Bob decided to take over the farm. He still worries about him, I know, especially about how he’s going to find a way to put his four kids through college—the Holy Grail of fatherhood, as far as my husband is concerned. But I also sense that Paul gets something from Bob he doesn’t really find anywhere else these days—a connection to the Alden past, perhaps, the tradition that Bob is carrying on in his own hapless way. It’s probably not as straightforward as that. Sibling relationships—all that love and jealousy, hero-worship and rivalry—are a tangle of needs and wants I’ll never be able to sort out. But I won’t ever forget that it was Bob who didn’t waver in his support of Paul when he most needed it, didn’t ask a single question when everyone else was demanding explanations and answers. That was years ago, of course, but those bad times cut deep into Paul’s being, and, like bark that’s hardened around chiseled initials, I believe those scars will always be there.
I wasn’t surprised when Paul volunteered to help Bob that Saturday morning. I sensed he was feeling bad about how he’d reacted to me the other night and was trying to make up for it. I think he might have been a little worried, too, when he learned that I was planning to take Lia and Beanie to sign up for their swimming lessons that morning, leaving Bob to fend for himself against the Zellers. Paul will never admit to me directly that he feels most of his clients need to be “handled,” and that many weekenders wouldn’t know what to make of Bob’s monosyllabic, if not downright dismissive, approach to strangers. I’m well aware that my husband’s gotten ahead in construction where many others have failed because he’s not above making nice when the situation demands it. I’ve learned a lot from listening to him on the phone, talking down an outraged client or belligerent coworker. And when he heard that Anne had asked Rachel to babysit Katie and Max that morning so that she could “finally get a few things done,” his decision was sealed.
“I’ll drive Rachel over there when I meet Bob. Why don’t you and the girls swing by when you’re through? Maybe we can all drive up to Clearwater, have some lunch, and rent a couple of canoes.”
“I’d love that,” I told him. It felt like years since we’d done anything so carefree and spontaneous as a family. “You don’t have to go over to Covington?”
“Oh, screw it for one Saturday,” he said as he and Rachel headed out the door.
As it happened, Lia, Beanie, and I turned into the Zeller driveway two and a half hours later right behind Anne’s Volvo. Rachel was beside her in the front seat, the two kids in the back, and a large trellis, handmade from willow wands, jutted out of the trunk. I pulled up beside her in the turnaround.
“What do you think?” she asked, after we’d unbuckled our offspring from their car seats and gathered around the open back of Anne’s car. “Isn’t it a beauty? I saw something like it in a book I have on French country vegetable gardens called Potagers. They all seem to have these kinds of whimsical decorative items in the middle of them, with peas or whatever climbing up them. Anyway, Rachel helped me pick it out at Taylor’s. Have you seen what they’re doing down there? It’s just incredible! Your husband is amazing.”
“No, we just got here,” I said, noticing that both Rachel and Katie were wearing straw hats with elaborate arrangements of cloth flowers decorating the rims, and that Katie was holding fast to my oldest daughter’s right hand. “Cute sun bonnets.”
“Oh, yes, I forgot! Where did we put them, Rachel? We got so many things.” Anne pulled out a couple of plastic bags that had been stuffed in around the trellis and had soon unearthed four more hats. “Your husband told us that if we’re going to be working outside in this heat we’d need to have some sun protection. So we got these in that sweet little clothing store in Northridge. The new one on High Street, you know the one I mean? Aren’t these great? Here, Lia, Beanie—everybody gets one!”
The hats were made of finely woven straw, soft and supple as felt, with silk flowers, enameled berry beads, and long satin fringed ties. Someone had removed the price tags, but I knew they had to be expensive. I felt momentarily uneasy accepting them from Anne, until I remembered how pleased and surprised she’d been when I insisted we were putting the garden in as a favor.
“Oh, it’s nothing. Bob does this kind of thing all the time. Think of it as a housewarming present, if you like.”
“Well, Maddie, honestly. What can I say? I never meant for you to do any of this on your own. It’s totally unnecessary. But, okay, for heaven’s sakes, I don’t want to appear ungracious, do you know what I mean? Thank you. I’m touched. Really.”
As I helped Lia put her hat on, her round gray eyes gazed up at me through the shadow cast by the brim. Lia hates any sort of headgear, but she stood patiently still while I tied the bow under her chin. I sensed she was torn between wanting to rip the thing off and longing to be a part of whatever the older kids were doing. Even Max was sporting a straw boater. I realized that I felt torn, too, as Lia and I followed the others down the hill. Were the hats Anne’s way of thanking me for the garden? Did I owe her again now? How much? How to pay? Did our friendship really have this kind of debit/ credit balance, or was I just being overly scrupulous because the Zellers had so much more money than we did? I disliked my tendency to constantly analyze my relationship with Anne. She would probably be shocked to learn how much time I spent worrying about these niggling details.
As we approached the fenced-in area, I saw that Richard Zeller, dressed in shorts, a polo tee, and leather sandals, was talking to Paul beside the newly installed garden gate while Bob silently raked a layer of manure over the topsoil.
“Jesus, what is this?” Richard asked. “A tea party? Where the hell have you been? I thought you were just running into town for the papers. You’ve been gone half the day!”
“I decided to ask the Aldens for lunch,” Anne said, walking right up to Richard and giving him a kiss on the lips. “So I needed to buy a few things in Northridge, okay with you?”
“The Aldens?” Richard asked, taking us in over Anne’s shoulder. Beanie and Lia were still in their bathing suits, and I was wearing cutoffs and a halter top. The hats probably accentuated our motley appearance.
“Paul and Maddie and their girls. The Aldens, dummy,” she said, nudging him with her shoulder in a way that had grown familiar to me. Anne had a catlike quality in her need to rub up against those whose attention she sought.
“Oh, but we can’t—” I began to protest.
“Yes, you sure can!” she insisted. “In fact, you have to. Rachel and I bought enough sandwiches to feed an army. And we hope you’ll stay, too,” Anne called over the fence to Bob. It was apparent to me that she’d forgotten his name, if she’d ever really registered it. But Bob heard her, stopped raking, and leaned over to pick up a stone.
“Nope,” he said, tossing the stone into the ba
ck corner of the garden onto the pile that he’d dug up. There was a silence while we all waited for him to say something else, add an excuse, perhaps, or his regrets. But he returned to his raking without saying another word.
“Thanks,” Paul said instead. “That’s very kind of you. We’ll be happy to stay.”
“Hey, listen,” Richard said, turning back to Paul. “I bet you could help me out with this. I’ve been trying to get some straight answers on the best places to fly-fish around here. Last weekend I tried that stretch near Route Eight I’d heard so much about, but it was a total washout. What, is it like a state secret where to go? I used to surf cast out on Montauk and it was like some kind of cabal—all those local guys talking in code about where the striped bass are biting. I hate that kind of crap. Do you fish at all?”
“Don’t have the time,” Paul said. “But I have a friend who swears by that stretch south of the overpass in Northridge. Do you know where I mean?”
“Yeah, but it’s a zoo down there. Pickup trucks parked for half a mile along the roadside. There’s got to be some quiet hot spots. I had this picture in my head when I bought this place—me casting out across some sweet little lake or other. I’ve got to show you my equipment. I just bought the most incredible new lures over the Internet, hand-tied by this blind guy down in Islamorada. And I’ve got that new Abel Super Five reel. Do you know the one I mean? It’s a beauty.”
“Like I said, I don’t have the time—”
“Come on in and take a look,” Richard said. “I’m keeping my rods downstairs for now—though we’ll probably be turning that area into a play space for the kids. I’ve got quite a collection. And you’ve really got to see this Abel Super Five—Trout and Stream said it could just about change your life.”
“You okay here, Bob?” Paul asked.
“Yep,” Bob said, without turning around. We all followed Richard up to the house, entering through the sliding double glass doors below the deck that led into the enormous unfinished basement. I caught a glimpse of twenty or so rods stacked along the back wall and shelves full of fishing equipment before I climbed up the stairs to the first floor behind Anne and the kids. As I was reaching the top step, I heard Richard saying to Paul, “This is the wine cellar, for the time being anyway. You know Dan Osserman by any chance?”
Local Knowledge Page 10
