“But there’s no people, no stores, no hair salons, and no Starbucks,” I pouted.17 “What part of that description doesn’t scream Deliverance to you?”
“Would you stop with the movie references already?”
“Don’t talk to me about movies. I bet there isn’t a theater for thirty miles.” One hundred and thirty miles was probably more like it. And from the looks of things, there was an excellent chance it would be one of those wretched dollar theaters that showed Shrek and other, non-first-run family films, seven nights a week. What were we going to do for entertainment? Tip cows? It was time to go for the jugular. “What if we can’t get cable? How will you survive without The Sopranos?”
“We’ll get a satellite dish.”
Hmm. I hadn’t thought of that. A massive satellite dish just might make my death by cinematic starvation a little less painful. “A plain one, right?”
“What do you mean?”
“One without Mary or Jesus painted in the center. You know, like we saw in Pennsylvania.”
“I didn’t see that.”
What is it with men and eyesight? They can’t see dust bunnies. They can’t see billboards. But beer in the back of a packed refrigerator? That they can see. “Then I guess you didn’t see the GOT GOD? signs in West Virginia, either.”
“We passed a sign that said GOT GOD?”
“Four of them.” I paused and looked at my husband, who had finally taken his eyes off the innumerable farm buildings, all of which were painted the same red hue that graced Nate’s Place, the rolling fields, and the huge black cows mooing and pooping wherever they damn well pleased, long enough to look back at me.
“You’re exaggerating,” he said, still smiling like we’d just hit the lotto jackpot or were at a huge party—a huge, people-free party, I should add—in our honor.
“I’m telling you, Toto, we’re not in New Jersey anymore.”
“And here I thought that was the plan.”
This is probably a good time to tell you about The Plan.
After the recession claimed my business, and the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon claimed the lives of thousands, Hemingway and I put The Plan in place.
Phase one involved my going back to work in magazine marketing. Not something I really wanted to do, but since I enjoy feeding my family and prefer not to be on a first-name basis with bill collectors, I took one for the team and accepted the first job I was offered.
I was one of the lucky ones; I landed the position I’ve been bellyaching about at Family Circle because a million years before I was a copywriter, I was a marketing director. 18 People knew me. And for some reason, they liked me. In no time I was commuting into New York City and life was back to normal.
Kind of.
Sure, I traipsed through Ann Taylor on my lunch hour, held meetings over manicures, and ducked out for facials whenever I felt I could get away with it. But I was always looking over my shoulder, jumping at the sound of a truck backfiring, and breaking into a sweat at the sight of a jumbo jet soaring overhead. In short, I was scared.
Phase two of The Plan involved just one thing: selling the house we’d worked so hard to hold on to, and getting our family of four out of what we called the Tri-State Target Zone. There were some parameters, of course: Wherever we wound up had to have good schools for our sons, Internet access, and a Starbucks.19 And so, with those rather broad specifications settled, we began to look around.
Thirty-six months later, we’d researched every facet of every town in every state in the continental U.S. We knew which high schools scored highest on the SAT, and which fielded the best football teams. We knew which elementary schools offered Japanese as a language option, and which actually took kids to the Land of the Rising Sun. We knew if the banking, dining, and shopping pickings in a particular area were plentiful or pitiful, and you can bet I knew its Starbucks status. We even knew which towns had a five-to-one church-to-tavern ratio, and knew we’d never fit in. What we didn’t know was where we wanted to move.
“Earth to Susan,” Hemingway teased, snapping his fingers in my face. “Please tell me you’re thinking how unbelievable it is that there’s a fox practically in front of us.”
He was right. What looked like a small red dog was making its way across the field dead ahead. Studying it, I suddenly flashed in horror at the memory of a fox wrap my brothers and I bought my mother one year for her birthday. I was ten at the time, too young to understand that not only was a dead black fox with rhinestone eyes not the height of fashion; it probably freaked the hell out of the poor woman. In any case, I didn’t think it was related to this fellow. But I didn’t want to find out.
“To be honest,” I said, “I was thinking we should look around a little longer.”
“Three years isn’t long enough?”
“Well, maybe there’s another house someplace else with . . . people . . . and maybe a Panera Bread . . . and a Designer Shoe Warehouse. You know, I didn’t see a single DSW on the way down here. And they say Southern women are so chic.”
“Enough looking. It’s time to pull the trigger.”
“Wonderful. We’re not in the country five minutes and you’re ready to go gun shopping.”
“I’m ready to make a decision, and I say we try it. Just until Doug retires, twenty-four months tops. If we’re not happy then, we’ll move.”
Doug, in case you’re wondering, is Stu’s older brother. Doug is wildly successful, a scratch golfer, and he tells the kind of fabulous, funny stories that make me want to kill myself for not having a life like his. And I don’t mean “Once upon a time” type stories. I mean the kind of stories that start, “So, I was having dinner with [insert name of major movie-studio head here] at [insert name of fabulous four-star restaurant on the East or West Coast here], when suddenly [insert name of famous late-night television show host, hotshot NFL quarterback, best-selling author, or MLB franchise owner here] walks in, joins us, and . . .” And blah, blah, blah. But you get the picture.
Like many of his ilk, my brother-in-law has the where-withal to buy it all. And at the top of his shopping list is land. Lots and lots of land. Which of course has everything to do with how we came to be standing on this particular parcel, staring at Nate’s Place and three additional empty tenant houses, plus the aforementioned innumerable farm buildings, an old grain silo, a spring house, and a smokehouse where I guessed they once cured ham and hoped I wouldn’t be expected to do the same. What Doug wanted was to buy this farm and live on it upon his retirement. But as that was at least two years down the road, and an investment of this magnitude would require full-time management in the interim, he called his little brother and basically said, “Hey, you’ve been looking to move and I have a place that needs moving to. What do you think?”
And so here we stood, considering not just relocating from the burbs to the backcountry, but a whole new career for Stu, who’d be catapulted overnight, sans experience, into the world of farm management of this and Doug’s other, “smaller” estate,20 Oakfield.
“Your brother realizes you’re a writer and not a farmer, right?”
“I’ll learn.”
“And what’ll I do?”
“I don’t know what you will do, but I know you won’t have to commute to New York anymore.”
“Farewell fabulous Family Circle paycheck and 401(k) plan.”
“And two-hour bus rides, occasional anthrax scares, and subways that smell like feces.”
“Please. I wouldn’t use scent in your sales pitch right now. I’m not sure the grass agrees with some of the ‘girls.’”
“I kind of like the smell.”
“You didn’t when you had diaper duty.”
“Did I tell you there’s nearly fifty acres that’s just woods? And the other four hundred and fifty are filled with streams and ponds. The boys are going to love this place.”
For Pete’s sake. Did he actually mean our sons? “You mean the boys who don’t play o
n the quarter acre we have now? Whose idea of open space is an available TV on which to hook up the PlayStation? Casey is going to take one look at Nate’s lonely abode and these rolling hills and hyperventilate. God, I hope they have 911 out here.”
“Oh, come on. I think Nate’s Place is kind of quaint.”
“I guess it does have a certain je ne sais quoi.”21
“It’s a hundred and ten years old.”
“Older than you. Who knew such a structure existed?” I paused. “Please tell me it has indoor plumbing.”
“And an eat-in kitchen.”
Now, this was a surprise, and a plus in the Nate’s Place column. We didn’t have an eat-in kitchen in our house in Ridgewood, and I really, really wanted one. Not because I cook. I don’t. I prefer to order dinner and have it delivered, a little talent I perfected while pregnant with Cuyler, going so far as to call in a three-hundred-dollar order for Chinese take-out Christmas morning, just eleven days after the kid’s birth, and serving it to my very shocked Irish-Italian family for dinner. To this moment, the memory of the “What, no lasagna and meatballs?” look on my three brothers’ faces is one of my favorites. But I digress. I wanted an eat-in kitchen because I was sick of eating every single meal in the dining room. I might not have minded as much if our antique chairs weren’t the world’s most uncomfortable seats this side of the electric chair, but they are. And my heinie has had it with them.
“An eat-in kitchen? Now, that I’d love to see.”
“And I’d love to show it to you. Except Doug doesn’t get the keys until the closing.”
“And of course there won’t be a closing, at least not one that involves him, if you don’t decide to move here and manage the farm.”
“That’s right.”
“And live in this house.”
“You got it.”
“The one I can’t see until after I decide to move into it.”
“That pretty much sums it up.”
Unbelievable. We’d driven six hours to see the outside of a house. Had my husband never heard of photographs? Or did he think a camera wouldn’t quite capture the “magic” of being there to watch a phalanx of turkey buzzards disembowel a groundhog?
I was seriously considering killing him (let’s face it, it’s not like anyone was around to stop me) and tossing his lifeless body to the aforementioned buzzards, when I realized his lips were moving. Fighting my way back from the brink of homicide, I heard words like “good-size rooms,” “two full baths,” and “the perfect spot for a piano,” and it dawned on me that he’d actually been inside Nate’s Place. Not that he wasn’t past making a pigsty sound like a palace, but I knew he knew if he sold me on what was essentially a frat house, there’d be hell to pay.
“OK, OK,” I said, unable to take his telemarketer-on-happy-pills patter a moment more. “The house is habitable. I get it. Just tell me the truth. How much work does it need?”
“Nothing I can’t do myself.”
“Deal breaker.” Maybe he didn’t recall the mess he made installing the Pergo floor in Cuyler’s bedroom, but I did.
“We were close to a deal?”
“Were is the operative word.”
“Alright, we’ll hire a contractor.”
“And who’s going to manage the contractor while you’re becoming Farmer Brown and I’m packing the house, showing the house, caring for the kids, and working?”
“Nancy.”
Bingo! Now I knew Nate’s Place had potential. My sweet sister-in-law had obviously assessed the renovating and decorating situation and deemed it worth doing. This was definitely another surprise plus in the “let’s move to the country” column. What to do? I looked around. There were cows in my future front yard. But look at the size of that yard! The boys could get dirt bikes or ATVs, and I could toss the Play-Station into the huge pond in the corner of the property. The mere prospect pleased me so much, I smiled. And of course, Hemingway caught me.
“We’re going to do it, right? Right?”
I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t speak. A true rarity for me. So my future farmer plowed forward.
“Come on, Susan, you know you want to. We’ll close in October, hire a contractor, and by the time you and the boys arrive in January, the job will be done.”
The final glitch. I mean, who the hell works over the holidays? And contractor types, they work for four hours and then disappear for four days. But it was too late.
“Never happen,” I said weakly.
“It’ll be done.”
“What if it’s not?”
“We’ll spend a few days at Oakfield.”
I should’ve realized right then and there that my husband was born to live on a farm. ’Cause, boy, can he sling the bull.
Suzy’s Top Ten Immediately Noticeable Differences between the Sticks and the Suburbs
1. No traffic. This makes Hemingway happy. To me it just means there’s no place to go.
2. No Catholic churches. No Jewish temples, either. If I discover lion farms, I’m going to freak.
3. Lots of religious signage. Don’t Southerners know there are certain subjects you just don’t discuss? Maybe secession wasn’t such a bad idea.
4. No malls, but a nice big Cabela’s. We’re hurtling down barren Route 78 when suddenly this Mecca for outdoors-men shoots up like the price of a pair of Pradas. Inside there are fully stocked ponds and stuffed bucks, an unsurpassed selection of blood-trailing spotlights, and “camouflage for the whole family!”
5. Santa Claus Syndrome. With their bristly mustaches, full beards, and immense bellies, a good percentage of Southern men bear a striking resemblance to St. Nick. It was Cuyler who brought this to my attention when he attempted to give his Christmas wish list to one of Mr. Ho Ho Ho’s “helpers.”
6. “Honey, there are people on our property!” It’s OK, though; they’re on horseback. And “hacking through” on your pricey steed is totally permissible. It’s shambling across on foot that’ll get you shot.
7. Folks speak really, really sloooooowly to me. Which makes me want to reach out and shake them, and shout, “I’m not retarded! I’m from New Jersey!”
8. No sidewalks. What, I’m supposed to speed walk through the meadow muffin-filled fields? That’s just how I like my $200 cross-trainers; covered in cow crap.
9. Plenty of fireworks stands and adult video stores. Further proof there ain’t a whole lot to do out here in the hinterland.
10. “Yes, ma’am. No, ma’am.” Wham, bam, I’m going to pop the next person who calls me ma’am. How is it that making a woman feel ancient is what passes as Southern politeness?
Chapter Four
LIVING IN (E)STATE OF SHOCK
I’m sure it comes as no surprise that not one, not two, but three weeks go by, and we’re still in Virginia, and specifically at Nancy and Doug’s weekend house, Oakfield. Not exactly the brief stopover somebody (eh hem, Hemingway) promised me, but I’ll get to that shortly.
I’ve never actually lived in a house with a name, though had I given our Ridgewood home a moniker I might have called it, as my former neighbor and dear friend Lois did, Fort McCorkindale. Seems our extensive exterior lighting—comprising front, side, and back-door overhead fixtures, two strategically placed megawatt lamp-posts, and several motion-sensitive floodlights that were tripped on and off all night by raccoons rummaging through our garbage—enabled Lois, her husband, and their three kids to read in bed and find their way to the bathroom in the dead of night without ever flipping a single light switch. What can I say? When it comes to electricity, we’re shockingly generous.
Of course calling my sister-in-law and brother-in-law’s country home a house—weekend or otherwise—is akin to calling a BMW a car. The ultimate driving machine, meet the ultimate living quarters: Oakfield Estate.22
Simply put, Oakfield is like a palace, and my two princes have taken to it like rednecks to rifles. They’ve got their own room, their own bathroom, and a playroom outfitted with comfy
furniture, a fridge, and a brand new flat-screen TV purchased just for their enjoyment. In addition, and as if they weren’t bringing an entire Toys “R” Us with them, my sister-in-law ran out and got them sleds, CDs, DVDs, books, board games, and several supermarket aisles’ worth of snacks. What does she get for her loving largesse? The opportunity to watch her wacky nephews send their brand-new remote-controlled race cars sailing off the landing atop her spectacular spiral staircase, through the middle of the crystal chandelier that probably cost more than we cleared on our house, and onto the imported marble floor in the foyer.
While I beat the boys, Nancy beat it back to McLean, which is where she and Doug reside (and at this point, hide) from Monday to Friday. Hopefully by the time they return next weekend we won’t be here to greet them. Not that I don’t want to see them; I’m just antsy to get my third-class kids out of their first-class house. We were only supposed to be here a week, which turned into two weeks, and now, well, we’re looking at a month, people. With any luck, by Friday we’ll be in the refurbished and fabulous Nate’s Place, which, contrary to my prediction, did not cause Casey to hyperventilate.
Instead he fainted.
We took the kids to see the farm during a driving snow-storm. Maybe not the best idea, but they were desperate to see their new home, and we were equally as desperate to get them out of Nancy and Doug’s (if just for a short while), so we went.
Big mistake.
Everything was white. The trees and bushes and buildings and cattle. And of course Nate’s Place. The only thing whiter was my tall, sweet, thirteen-year-old son’s complexion when he stepped out of the car and saw for himself how far from suburbia we really were.
He looked from the snow-covered house to the snow-covered fields to the cows noshing on snow-covered hay for about ten seconds before he turned to me, mumbled what I think was “How could you do this to me, Mom?” and collapsed into a snowdrift. It was probably hearing his little brother lay claim to the video games that revived him (“If he’s dead, I get the PlayStation, right? Right?”), though it might have been Hemingway pelting him with snowballs that did the trick. To be honest, I was only half paying attention, as I was busy looking around to see if a Starbucks had sprung up since the last time I’d seen the place.
Confessions of a Counterfeit Farm Girl Page 3
