The Ladies Farm

by Viqui Litman

  Della flopped down in the grass and reached a hand out to touch the stone. “Oh, Richard!” she said. There was no place for her on that brass plaque, no acknowledgment that she had ever had a place in his life.

  Della had supposed that the grave would stimulate memories and that she would be overwhelmed with warm feelings toward the man who had brought her so much joy at a time when joy had seemed impossible. Instead, she felt the distance between them and her nostalgia gave way to aggravation.

  “Now look what you’ve done!” she scolded. “You had to be the great protector. Your money wasn’t enough? She had to have perpetual access to my only home?”

  Somewhere beyond her sight someone was mowing, and the drone only emphasized Richard’s failure to respond. Della didn’t know what she had expected. She had avoided the cemetery because a single encounter there with Barbara might give her away. Now, knowing exactly where Barbara was, she was safe from discovery. But maybe discovery hadn’t been her only fear. Maybe it was silence.

  He can’t help that he died, she reasoned. But he could have prevented this mess. And he at least could have mentioned that dalliance with Kat!

  “You thought you were being gallant!” Della accused.

  But that meant, Della hoped, that Richard hadn’t said anything to anyone else about his relationship with her. “Is our secret safe?” she asked. Then, in the next breath, “And what am I supposed to do with Barbara?”

  Maybe he forgot all about it, Della thought. But how could you forget that you owned half a bed and breakfast? Or maybe he just figured that Barbara would never really move out there. Or maybe, Della thought, maybe that’s why it was so urgent to save the place. All those hours you coaxed from me, she addressed the stone, figuring how Pauline could eke a living from it: Were you just protecting your investment?

  Della remembered plunging in, taking the lead. She and Kat had assembled all the Sydon House records, performed a statistical analysis of guest profiles, competing bed and breakfasts, area attractions, and even aesthetic comparisons. Then they had written the business plan, she and Kat, huddled in the office almost till dawn, when they both had left for their jobs in Fort Worth.

  “I can’t believe I did all that while I was still working full time,” Della addressed Richard. “I don’t think I could do that again.”

  Now, though, a chunk of the mystery fell into place. Kat and I, she thought. We both worked nonstop because Richard had asked us. It wasn’t really for Pauline. And then, no matter his intentions, we ended up contriving a place where we both wanted to live.

  Still, none of this solves anything, she thought. Surely, when Hugh died, Richard must have remembered who owned what. Of course, when Hugh died, he couldn’t possibly have asked Pauline to buy out his interest. And Pauline would never have let him simply give it to her.

  And, Della’s mind raced now, he probably thought Barbara—no, make that he and Barbara, since he was planning to live forever—would never want to live at Sydon House. So he just let it ride, thinking they’d work it out down the road, when Pauline was stronger, when Sydon House was in better shape.

  He was just doing what he thought was best for Pauline, Della told herself. Even after Kat announced she was moving down there, he never imagined Della would end up there.

  And he was right. Once the Ladies Farm got started, Della had retreated back to her townhouse in Fort Worth. After all, she had to live alone to be available for him.

  They had been careful, of course. Richard had given her money for a nondescript Buick that he parked at the Fort Worth Club building. He drove his own car to the building, went upstairs to the club, then took the Buick over to Della’s and parked it inside her garage. For out-of-town trips, they flew to two separate cities, then caught second flights to their destination.

  “How was San Francisco?” people would ask, and she would smile wistfully and say there was nothing more dramatic than the fog rolling in over the Golden Gate Bridge, all the while recalling the pristine sky over Vancouver Island.

  She shifted around so that she was sitting cross-legged and leaned forward to stretch out her lower back. I’m too old to be sitting on the ground, she thought, but then, her back had been stiff for years.

  Della had thought that being here with Richard might give her a clue about what to do, or maybe a clue about what he would have wanted her to do. But she remained uncertain. And angry.

  Besides Kat and me, who else was there? Her rational side told Della that her anger was overblown. He married Barbara, she lectured herself, had a brief affair with Kat and then, years later, had a long affair with you. That doesn’t mean there was ever anyone else. And it doesn’t mean that anyone, even Barbara, meant more to him. But what if there were others? Della glowered at the stone.

  Beloved husband and father. And, she told herself as she had told herself throughout the four and a half years of their relationship, you knew that from the beginning.

  Maybe she could adjust to Barbara living at the Ladies Farm. She’s not so bad, Della thought, remembering how Barbara had shooed them out of the kitchen while she stacked the dessert plates in the dishwasher. “I’ve given you girls a lot to talk about; go talk.” That had ended in Kat berating Pauline until she cried, whereupon Rita announced that if Kat didn’t stop her tirade and if they didn’t welcome that nice woman in the kitchen, she was going to marry Dave and move her shop over next to his gas station.

  Kat had finally apologized to Pauline and they had agreed to take a time-out and work on it at their regular Tuesday-morning meeting. Della doubted they could do anything to change the fact that Barbara was moving in with them. Instead, she had to decide if she could stay with Barbara.

  “I never once asked you to do anything that would have harmed Barbara in any way. I never asked for a holiday with you, I never demanded your attention in the middle of the night or sulked because I had no escort when you were squiring Barbara to dinners and dances. She was your wife and I wasn’t. But I don’t want her for a roommate. I don’t care how good you were to her; I don’t have to be.”

  Carefully, she unfolded her legs and stretched them out in front of her, bracing herself with her palms flat on the grass. She tilted her head and studied the grave marker. What did you want from him? she asked herself.

  She supposed it was permission to move out of the Ladies Farm. She’d rent a duplex in Fort Worth and edit the newsletter there. She’d have to find a job, of course. The newsletter itself would never support her, but she could probably freelance for the Convention Bureau or the Chamber of Commerce. Someone could use an expert events planner.

  There would be no river and no canoe; there would be no oak floors or high ceilings. But some things wouldn’t change much. Instead of the demands of guests, there would be the demands of clients. Instead of Flops, the bounding retriever–shepherd–setter and something they weren’t quite sure what, there would be a demure and dignified cat.

  “Who knows?” she asked aloud. “Maybe back in Fort Worth, I’ll meet a man.”

  Richard had worried about her loneliness more than a meddling mother would. “Do not,” he had said, holding her by both shoulders and stooping slightly so that they would be eye level, “do not leave yourself lonely over me.”

  Well if I did that, it wasn’t because of you. It was because that’s how I wanted it. And maybe I want to live alone again now, maybe I’m just not cut out to live with four other women and a bunch of narcissistic guests.

  I’ve adjusted to the idea that you’re not coming back, Della said silently. I don’t need the Ladies Farm to distract me anymore.

  She pushed herself sideways onto her hip, then rolled up onto her knees. Leaning forward, she touched the grave marker with her outstretched fingers. She had thought about bringing him flowers, but it seemed a foolish risk to leave something that, even days later, could raise questions.

  Della stood. She had two pictures of Richard; one was of the two of them on a sailboat in the Gulf C
oast, and the other was a close-up of him taken in a motel room they had shared in Toronto. The first picture resided in a safe-deposit box; the second was tucked between the pages of a paperback stored beneath her sweaters.

  She used to take that picture out and look at it because she feared forgetting how Richard looked. Now, she looked at men his age and wondered if that’s how he looked now, in some other place. Photographs did not help at all.

  Turning, Della looked down the narrow drive that led to the older part of the cemetery. There were some irises she had cut at the Ladies Farm and she took those out of the car before she started down the hill.

  She did the same things she always did: tugged a few weeds, laid down fresh flowers, traced the raised letters on the bronze marker. She and Tony, in what must have been the final joint effort of their marriage, had bought a stone bench under a stand of live oaks above the grave, and she seated herself there.

  She didn’t need photos here either, though she had hundreds. The angry adolescent with those aching moments of sweetness in his eyes, the boy tossing the football to his brother in the living room, guzzling milk from the carton in front of the opened refrigerator, shutting her out behind his closed bedroom door in favor of hours on the phone with friends she no longer knew; the dirty laundry on the floor, the stammered introductions to new girlfriends, the angry thrashing of musicians who used their guitars like weapons: All that was there in an instant and everything else was gone. “Oh Jamie!” she wept. “Oh Jamie!”

  No resident of the Ladies Farm was allowed to go to Fort Worth without taking a shopping list with her. Even Kat, who still consulted three days a week, called home before starting back to Sydonia.

  So Della stopped at the Kroger on her way out of town, picking up enough milk, eggs, and yogurt to tide them over till their next delivery. She passed up the California peaches—their own would be coming in soon—but she indulged in some South American pears. There was always a chance they could coax Pauline into making a pear tart.

  That’s the least she should do, Della thought as she lifted herself back into the car. Motor vehicles were one of the shared resources at the Ladies Farm and this one, a Suburban, had a large, cracking, leather bench seat that snagged her jeans as she settled in.

  It was no joy to drive the thing through city traffic, but it did afford a certain right-of-way. Smaller vehicles simply yielded to her lane changes, enabling Della to return to her personal concerns. By the time she hit the farm-to-market road that wound back to Sydonia, she was mulling Kat’s suggestion that the two of them simply buy out Barbara.

  Della shook her head. “I doubt she’s looking to sell.”

  The road crossed a gorge cut by the Nolan River; she crossed the river three or four times before reaching Sydonia and the green, wooded hills of this part of the drive reminded her how much she wanted to live here.

  “Damn!”

  If only it weren’t Barbara. “If it were some stranger,” Della told herself, “you’d adjust to it.”

  But it is Barbara. And you can’t share a house with her. You can’t sit across the breakfast table every day, or coax her to do articles for Silver Quest or show her how to use the registration software. It’s too much to ask anyone.

  This would be a lot easier, she thought, if Pauline had been up front in the beginning. But it was easy to see why she wasn’t.

  Barbara probably wouldn’t let Della and Kat buy her out. But she might agree to Pauline buying her interest if she thought it meant a lot to her. “After all,” Della posited, “wasn’t Pauline’s well-being one of Richard’s most important concerns? Wouldn’t Richard approve of ensuring Pauline’s security in her home?”

  “You don’t have to sell out,” Della imagined herself posing the situation to Barbara. “You could stay here. But really,” Della paused, “really, Barbara, don’t you think … wouldn’t it give Richard pleasure to think … that you could give Pauline her peace of mind?”

  Della sped by Castleburg Dairy on the right. Even with the windows closed, Della could smell it, but she smiled, even so.

  “It’s a long shot,” she announced. “But we have a plan.”

  I’ll talk to Pauline, thought Della. If she’ll let Kat and me fund this attempt and let us do the talking, Barbara might agree to it.

  The Holsteins stood in groups by the road. Della imagined them discussing the weather, critiquing the quality of the pasture, comparing the progress of their calves. She wondered if they missed the ones who were no longer among them. The luckiest, she knew, were the ones whose daughters simply grew up and remained with the herd.

  Some days she thought that after Jamie, there wasn’t any loss she couldn’t stand, any sorrow she couldn’t bear. But most days, she felt that she had carried more than her share and it infuriated her when trouble imposed itself on her routine.

  I feel like a Holstein, Della thought. I just want to chew my cud and watch the traffic roll by.

  She crossed the Nolan one more time, then rumbled up the hill into Sydonia. She wanted to get home before Pauline started her Monday pottery class, but she took her time through the intersections around the courthouse. Even the high school kids had started drifting down to the square now that so many shops had been renovated, and no one looked before crossing the street.

  Della waved to two blue-hairs who she knew were on their way to the pottery class, then turned onto their block.

  The Ladies Farm had been built by Ora and Isaiah Sydon after they sold most of their farm to the Castleburgs and became residents of the town. By then they had found more prosperity in banking than in farming, and the house reflected a turn-of-the-century substantiality that people sought in banks. It sat alarmingly close to the street, and Della often imagined the four daughters flirting their youth away on the deep porch while young men maneuvered first carriages and then automobiles down the rutted dirt road.

  By the time the road was paved, Ora and Isaiah had died and their useless sons-in-law had sold the bank. The house passed through a series of owners who began renting out rooms. When Hugh and Pauline saw it on one of their weekly excursions out of Fort Worth, most of the house was boarded up and the front two rooms were occupied by a family whose house-sitting prevented further vandalism while the owner, a widow who lived in a trailer near the Rio Grande, tried to sell the place.

  It hadn’t been called Sydon House when Ora and Isaiah were alive, but then, Sydonia had been called County Line until a group in the early fifties decided that advertising their location in a wet county was no longer becoming and succeeded in having the town renamed. Della pulled the Suburban into the drive and around to the back of the house.

  She wanted to find Pauline, but she needed to get the groceries inside. No one around to help, of course. Nancy, their daily maid, would be attacking the upstairs rooms; Rita was in the salon, Kat in Dallas; and—she hoped—Pauline would stay in the barn, where Della could talk to her without Barbara.

  She lifted two sacks into her arms, then judged a third to be safe to carry by an edge and grabbed the top of it; then, in a desire to finish the task, she grabbed the top of the fourth and last sack too. Mercifully the back door was hanging open and it yielded to a push of her hip.

  “Hello?” Della called, but she expected no answer and was not disappointed. Almost doubled over by the awkward way she grasped her packages, she waddled across the kitchen to the cabinet next to the refrigerator, then let two of the packages slide onto the floor as she deposited the other two on the counter.

  I’ll just get the cold stuff into the fridge, she thought, then I can find Pauline. Della was closing the refrigerator door when she heard the heavy, determined step that preceded Nancy’s arrival at the back staircase.

  “Oh God! I’m glad you’re here, they didn’t know what to do, they all had to go with her—”

  Della felt her stomach lurch. “Her who?”

  “Pauline,” Nancy said. “Pauline, she passed out or something in the barn and that la
dy, that guest?—”

  “Barbara,” Della supplied.

  “—Barbara comes screaming up to the house, screaming so loud they heard her in the salon, and Rita goes running down there and she screams for me to call for help, so I call Dave, and he thinks to call the rescue squad, and meanwhile this lady Barbara’s running around screaming and screaming and the lady under the dryer runs down to the barn where Rita is, and Dave shows up with the rescue squad finally, but no one can do nothing.”

  “Nothing? What do you mean nothing?”

  “They tried. They gave her oxygen and everything.” Nancy’s pale eyes grew wide with the memory. “But finally, that one boy, the one who’s working on his paramedic, he just pulls back and shakes his head and says she’s dead. Just like that.”

  Chapter 5

  There was more, of course. There’s always more, thought Della. She hurried over to County Medical to find Barbara and Rita huddled with Dave in what looked like a room just for grievers. It was decorated in dove gray and mauve and, in addition to several sofas and upholstered chairs, there was a small table to accommodate people who had lists to make and plans to draw.

  We aren’t ready for plans, Della quickly surmised as both Rita and Barbara threw themselves on her. Rita gave a sharp hug and whispered, “Oh, baby. What are we ever going to do without Pauline?”

  Barbara locked Della in a bear-like embrace, and sobbed huge, bosom-heaving sobs that left Della’s neck and blouse soaking wet. “Here,” Della said, gently disengaging Barbara’s arms from around her torso, “let’s sit over on this couch.”

  “Oh my God,” Barbara kept whispering. “Oh my God, oh my God.”

  Della peered around Barbara, who was burrowing into her shoulder, and looked at Rita, who had settled herself on the sofa arm next to where Dave was seated. “What happened?”

  Rita shook her head and motioned at Barbara, who was releasing clouds of Gucci scent with every quake. “She just came screaming up the hill: She’s dead, she’s dead! So I run down there and Pauline—oh, God, Della, I’ve had car wrecks and kids with broken bones and even my old Granny dying in her bed in my house with all of us right there, but I’ve never had anybody just up and die like that, with her eyes frozen open and this sort of vomit-like spit running out one side of her mouth—and she’s just lying there, deader than doornails, and this one’s screaming, and Nancy’s called Dave, and he gets there and the rescue squad gets there, but nobody can do anything. Oh, God! Della, it was awful.”