The Ladies Farm

by Viqui Litman

  “Has anyone called Kat?”

  “I tried her pager, but she’s got the damned thing turned off, I’ll bet. I tried the mobile, too.”

  “Try the pager again. If you try two or three times, she’ll know it’s urgent.”

  Dave cleared his throat and Della looked at him for the first time. “I’m thinking they had a son. Hugh Junior.”

  “Well, of course,” Della said, trying to sound as if she hadn’t forgotten Pauline’s actual family. “And a daughter. Melissa and Hugh Junior. We’ll just have to wait till we get back to the Ladies Farm so we can go through Pauline’s address book. We’ll call him just as soon as we can.”

  Rita busied herself with the telephone on the table next to the sofa and Della, who had been stroking Barbara’s back, looked down at Barbara’s flaming hair. “Barbara? Honey?”

  She didn’t look up but her shoulders stopped quaking.

  “Barbara?” Della tried again. “Why don’t you tell me what happened.”

  Barbara pulled back a little. Her face, red and swollen, had no makeup left on it.

  “She was just l-l-l-lying there,” Barbara shuddered. “Just curled up on her side and then she started sp-p-pit … vomiting.” Barbara collapsed once more into Della’s arms.

  “She was on the floor already when you went to the barn?”

  Della felt the sobbing stop long enough to permit a nod. Della shifted her gaze to Rita, who seemed to be dialing her fifth call. “Are you leaving her the number here?”

  Rita nodded. “We can’t leave yet. They called Dr. Pfluger, we need to talk with him. And we have to get hold of Hugh Junior, have him call the ER so they can call the funeral home.” Suddenly she put down the phone. “I just can’t believe this,” she said, her face crumpling into tears before she could cover them with her hands.

  “Oh, come here, honey,” Dave said, half-standing to reach over to her. She went willingly, Della noticed, and was glad. She thought Rita should give Dave another chance. He was certainly an improvement over Larry. He was even a better father and grandfather than Larry, and those were Larry’s kids.

  Della returned to Barbara. “Barbara?” she tried once more. “Barbara, did Pauline say anything?”

  “She was already dead,” Rita answered. “Didn’t you hear her?”

  Poor Pauline, dying alone with her pottery! The image was so distressing that it took her a second to notice Barbara’s wriggling. Again, she pushed back from Della’s soaking bosom.

  “Hugh,” Barbara whispered. Her button eyes had a dull tone, totally flat.

  “She called for Hugh?” Della asked.

  “She just said it. Hugh. Hugh. Just like that. Then she started choking, and she rolled flat, and her head fell back, and she was spitting up, and I knew I had to get help,” Barbara recounted.

  “Her head fell back while she was spitting up?” Della repeated. She wanted to grab this woman by the shoulders and shake her. You left her with her head back while she vomited? Have you lost your mind? She choked! She choked to death and all she needed was someone to tilt her forward!

  But she said nothing as Barbara nodded her confirmation.

  Della breathed hard and unwound herself from Barbara. She stood up. “Rita’s right,” she announced. “We have got to call Hugh Junior. Why don’t you all stay here, and I’ll go back to the Ladies Farm and track down his number. That way, if Kat calls, someone’ll be there.”

  Rita looked up from the comfort of Dave’s embrace and nodded in a dreamy way that irritated Della. She didn’t bother looking at Barbara, but hurried out to the Suburban. She didn’t trust herself enough to think until she had gunned the engine and lurched out of the parking lot.

  “Oh God! That bitch! That stupid, hysterical bitch killed Pauline.” She reminded herself not to close her eyes while she was driving and she fought her impulse to head for the highway. You have to call Hugh Junior, she thought. You have got to make that call before you do anything else.

  Pauline’s cloth-covered address book lay atop her desk in the office behind the registration counter. The book’s cover, a floral print in spring-toned pastels, had been hand-stamped by Pauline during one of her book-binding classes. There was a whole set of these things: journals, birthday books, purse-size reminder books, calendar covers.

  Both home and office numbers for “Hugh, Jr.” were written in Pauline’s flowing hand. Typical of Pauline, all the entries were in peacock-blue ink and all had been inscribed carefully, with calligraphic flourish.

  Della had dialed the number and it was ringing before she even realized what she was doing. What will I say? she panicked, but someone was already singing out the name of Hugh Jr.’s law firm and she found herself stammering out a request to speak to him regarding a family emergency.

  “Hello?” The voice was so much like his father’s that Della could not speak for a moment. Stupid! You were expecting the ten-year-old with the drippy nose who was always crying because the other kids picked on him?

  “Hello?”

  “H-h-hugh?” she finally stammered.

  “Who is this?”

  Della took a deep breath. “Hugh, honey, this is Della Brewer at the Ladies Farm.”

  “Is something the matter?”

  “Hugh, I’m so sorry, there’s been, your mother had an, ah, a heart attack and she died early this afternoon.”

  “Oh, Jesus.” Now this was the voice of the ten-year-old. “What happened?”

  Della related the story as quickly as she could, omitting the vomiting and emphasizing the lack of any previous symptoms.

  “I just saw her last week. She was fine.” His father’s voice returned.

  “I know,” Della said. “She was so happy to see you and the kids. And Melissa called just last night.”

  “Oh, Jesus! Melissa! You haven’t called her, have you?”

  “No, you’re the first one, really.”

  “I’ll have to call her. And my uncles.” Della felt she could see him starting to scribble lists, his face scrunched in earnest wrinkles, his pen flowing in that same even, though more masculine, hand that Pauline had instilled in him. Even in crisis, Della guessed, maybe especially in crisis, Pauline’s children would tend to the details of order, harmony, and seasonal grace.

  They agreed that he would contact the funeral home in Fort Worth to make arrangements to transport the body, and that she would fax him a list of friends that she and Kat would call from the Ladies Farm.

  “This is Monday. The funeral will have to be Wednesday,” Hugh Jr. said.

  “Yes.” She had not even thought about a funeral and she wanted to tell him no. Not for a few weeks, she would say. Give us a few weeks to get used to this.

  You’re losing it, Della told herself, and made herself sit back in the chair, an old mahogany banker’s chair that Hugh had refinished and Pauline had recovered in a nubby mauve fabric that still smelled of her woodsy perfume and hand-milled soap.

  “Hugh,” she said.

  “Yes?”

  “Hugh, your mother, Pauline, she was … we’re just lost, Hugh, your mother was so …”

  “I’m so sorry,” he was saying. “I know you and Mom were friends all those years. This must be so hard on you. And you were a friend to her,” he encouraged. “If you and Kat hadn’t gone out there after my dad died, she couldn’t have kept the farm.” He paused. “I guess you know that.”

  Della had seen enough deaths to know that it was easier to console than to be consoled. “You’re a good boy, Hugh. You made your mother so proud.”

  “Yeah. Well.”

  They fell silent for a second and again she pictured him, with his father’s large hands and his mother’s sensitive mouth and this terrible discomfort connecting him to Della.

  “Well,” she said briskly. “You call Melissa. I’ll fax my list and I’ll tell the hospital that they’ll hear from the funeral home. And you’ll let me know about the funeral.”

  “Yes,” he said. Another pause. “A
nd of course, you ladies—Kat and what’s-her-name? Rita? and you—you’ll sit with the family, won’t you?”

  “Of course,” she said, wondering if he knew about Barbara. There’s time for that, Della thought as they said their good-byes. She hung up the phone and burrowed into Pauline’s chair. Make a list, Della thought. People to call. Guests. Women enrolled in Pauline’s classes. Della closed her eyes and pictured names and phone numbers in peacock-blue ink on pastel paper. She pictured loaves of fresh-baked bread, cooling in the kitchen. She pictured a work table covered with unfired ceramics and a rafter hung with bunches of herbs drying in a cool breeze. I can’t make a list, thought Della, feeling the tears begin to flow. She rubbed her cheek against the chair back.

  “Now look!” she sobbed to Richard. “Your stupid wife’s gone and killed Pauline!”

  “Well, God knows I would love to blame her for Pauline’s death,” Kat assured Della, “but you know as well as I do Pauline was vomiting because she had a heart attack and it wasn’t vomiting that killed her.”

  “I know she had a heart attack,” Della said. “But people survive heart attacks every day if they don’t choke to death.”

  Kat took both Della’s hands in her own. “Della, give it up. What difference does it make anyway?”

  They were sitting in the canoe near the far bank of the river, where they had paddled to get away from Barbara. In all the excitement, they had forgotten they had guests checking in Monday afternoon and it had taken the two of them, with help from Barbara, Nancy, and Rita, almost every minute through Tuesday lunch to see to their guests’ needs. Now, with Rita leading an excursion to the outlet mall and Barbara wandering through the empty house, the two of them were finally able to talk.

  “Look,” Kat said, “I’ve got a crafts lady coming over from the junior college who thinks she can take everything but the journal-writing class. You could teach that, couldn’t you?”

  Della blinked. She was still picturing Pauline on the concrete floor of the barn, head back, mouth open. “Journal writing?”

  “Come on, you write Silver Quest, you write ads, you can write journals.”

  “When is it?”

  “Tuesdays and Thursdays, ten to eleven-thirty, and a mini the first week in August.”

  “Twice?” The weekly classes drew from the local population, with several women driving out from Fort Worth once or twice a week. The minis attracted guests who wanted week-long programs. This week’s had been counting on “Domestic Magic: A Houseful of Distinction from Everyday Discards.” Thankfully, the four women from Houston were easily satisfied by a substitute curriculum of day trips, beauty treatments, and serious credit toward another week at the Ladies Farm.

  “Come on, Della, we’ve got too much going on to waste time on this.”

  “This is what’s going on,” Della countered. “This is what made the Ladies Farm. We’ve got to maintain it; not just anyone can teach these things.”

  Kat looked smug. “My point exactly. Say yes.”

  “Yes.” Della didn’t know why she ever argued with Kat. It was a whole lot easier to concede immediately.

  “We need to put together an offer for Hugh Junior and Melissa,” Kat said now.

  They drifted a little, but there wasn’t much breeze or much current and Della, even in her sunglasses, squinted against the sun on the water. “What kind of offer?” She dipped a hand in the green water and dribbled it over her bare arm. When she looked back at Kat, Kat was staring at her.

  “What do you mean, what kind of offer? Hugh Junior and Melissa now own half the Ladies Farm. They can sell this thing out from under us.”

  “They wouldn’t do that. Besides, that’s still only fifty percent. You need more than half to sell.”

  “You don’t need more than half to ask a court to force a sale.”

  “Kat!” Della watched water dance off her fingers as she waved her hands in the air. “How did we go from mourning for Pauline into a court battle? These are Pauline’s kids, not total strangers. We’ll have the place appraised and buy out their interest.”

  She paused a second, looking at Kat’s lacquered nails and crisp cotton shirt. “If they could sell to us, they could sell to Barbara.” Della shook her head to clear the confusion. “You don’t think she’d do that, do you? Bid on the Ladies Farm?” Only a few days ago, she had been planning to move away, but now, Della couldn’t imagine anything more painful than Barbara buying the Ladies Farm out from under her.

  “I don’t know,” Kat replied. “I’m counting on the kids accepting our bid. Then we’ll own half.”

  “And then we can buy out Barbara.”

  Even in the rocking canoe, Kat’s gaze was level. “Exactly.”

  Della felt a little tingle run through her, then wriggled a bit with conscience. “Of course,” she said, “Pauline wanted her to stay.”

  “And look where that got her. Do you want her to stay?”

  Della sighed and looked downriver. Cottonwoods overhung the bank as far as the little bend at Castleburg’s, and they could hear the burble of water rushing over Little Sydonia Falls beyond that. There were turtles—at least eight of them—on the thicket of tree roots just before the bend, and Flops, the retriever, was eyeing them from the bank.

  “We must have the only retriever in Texas that won’t go in the water,” she complained.

  “Della,” Kat issued a warning.

  “I don’t know,” Della said. “Okay? I think she killed Pauline, and I really can’t stand her. But she did get those Houston ladies to agree to the program. And she did offer to teach a needlepoint class.”

  “And for that, you’re asking me to share my business and my home with my lover’s widow?”

  Oh, shit! Della started to laugh, then stopped herself. “I wish Pauline were here to talk to,” she said wistfully. She imagined herself telling Pauline about Kat and Richard and, without any trouble at all, imagined Pauline telling her she already knew. Pauline always knew, Della thought.

  “How about talking to me?” Kat demanded, and beneath the anger Della heard a longing that matched her own.

  “I can’t deal with this now,” Della said, and found herself crying by the end of the sentence. “It’s all too soon.”

  She took a deep breath. “Look,” she said, “let’s talk to Hugh Junior and Melissa and tell them we want to meet with them before they do anything. The end of the week, say. They’ll probably be happy to sell out. The Ladies Farm isn’t exactly a cash cow.”

  “This won’t be any easier at the end of the week,” Kat warned, but for once she didn’t sound resolute.

  “I know,” Della said. “But I’ll be more rational. Maybe by then I can figure out where I’ll get the money to buy anyone out.”

  “All right,” Kat said, and Della just stared. The easy abdication was far more frightening than Kat armed for siege. “Let’s talk about dinner. Can we heat up one of those turkey pies?”

  ***

  As it turned out, Rita kept the foursome at the outlet mall until closing, and their biggest worry Wednesday morning was maintaining their composure as they left Nancy in charge while the five of them—Kat, Della, Barbara, Rita, and Dave—left for the funeral in Fort Worth.

  Hugh Jr. had asked Della if she wanted to speak at the funeral, and she had talked it over with Rita and Kat, but finally declined. “The minister’s speaking. Hugh Junior and Melissa are both speaking. And her brother, Edward, is speaking. I hate long funerals.”

  “Amen,” Rita said, and that had ended it.

  Now, though, filing into the chapel and eyeing the closed casket, Della felt a little guilty. In all ways, she imagined herself saying in suitably measured tones, Pauline was a friend.

  Della had a method for getting through funerals. First you read everything there was to read. Depending on the denomination, this could be a prayer card, a hymnal, a desk-top-published summary of the deceased’s life, or just the manufacturer’s name on the chair back. Then you thought
back to the absolutely best time you ever had with the deceased. And you stayed there, reliving the thing in as much detail as necessary, until it was time to rise for the final hymn or prayer.

  At that point you’d be overwhelmed with sorrow but the singing kept you from breaking down, and you could file out with your dignity intact. At the grave site, you just concentrated on whoever was collapsing closest to you, providing whatever comfort and support was needed. Before you knew it, you were back in the car.

  As Della paged through the hymnal, she was surprised to hear that Pauline had once entertained dreams of performing great choral pieces. And when Hugh Jr. recounted how his parents had met at a workshop preceding a civil rights march, Della herself remembered how she had met Pauline at a PTA bake sale. Della had made brownies from a mix; Pauline had made six loaves of banana nut bread with whole wheat flour.

  Barbara’s sniffling interfered with Della’s recall of Pauline’s long hair. The hair had been her greatest vanity. It seemed to have turned silver overnight, but even then, Pauline continued to adorn it with jeweled barrettes.

  A glance to her right showed Barbara dabbing at her eyes with a hankie. Beyond her, Della saw Rita rolling her eyes and patting Barbara’s back. Kat, straight-backed and eyes fixed on the speaker, sat to Della’s left and Della couldn’t help thinking about Richard.

  She imagined that seeing the three of them lined up this way would bring a smile to Richard. She could remember dozens of parties at Richard and Barbara’s with Richard playing the genial host, welcoming Tony and Della with hugs and kisses, escorting her to the bar with his arm around her shoulder. He told her later that he had always envied Tony, had always been attracted to her.