“We do dat already. Want Elmo!”
“I know—I’ll sing the ABCs backwards.” I’d once tried this, on another car trip, and found it spectacularly difficult. But that was fine, because I’d also discovered that making a fool of myself was something for which Wylie and Jasper had a boundless appetite. In order to enter the town of Gannett with both eardrums still intact, I was willing to take one for the team.
I sang. “Z, Y, X . . . uh, W, V, T!” I took a breath. “U . . . Crap!”
Wylie giggled.
“No, Mama. Like this.” Jasper took a deep breath and began to sing. “Z, Y, X, W, V, U, Teeeeee.” He took another breath. “S, R, Q, P, O, N, M, L, Kayyyy.” Not only was he in tune, but he didn’t seem to have to think about the letters.
“Jasper!” I gasped. “That’s amazing.”
He beamed.
“Jasper,” Luke asked, taking a quick peek over his shoulder into the backseat, “where did you learn that?”
I thumped Luke’s leg. “He’s a prodigy.” I’d always known it.
Jasper gave me a funny look. “I learned it in the playroom. With Sadie and Bryan.”
Our neighbors’ names made me frown. “Emily’s kids? But Sadie is just a baby.”
Jasper shrugged. “She can mostly sing it. Forward and backward. Also in Spanish. Only, she thinks its all one word.”
Luke burst out laughing so violently that I checked to make sure that the road wasn’t about to make any hairpin turns. “Really? Sadie and Bryan can do the alphabet forward and backward? In Spanish?”
Jasper had already lost interest in the subject. He looked out the window. “It isn’t that hard. Sadie’s mama has these cards she holds up if you get stuck. And then Sadie and Bryan get fruit punch if they do it right.”
“It’s because Sadie has an extra-special mommy,” Luke snickered.
“Luke!”
He was still laughing. I felt a prick of irritation. “Hey—fruit punch? In the playroom? Isn’t that against the rules?”
“Bonnie said so,” Jasper replied. “But Emily said the rule is no eating. And fruit punch is a drink.”
Luke’s phone rang just then. He took it out of his shirt pocket and flicked his eyes at its digital display. “Speaking of mommies,” he said, flipping open the phone. “Hi, Gayle! You’ve caught us in the car on the way to the house.”
“Why’s she calling you?” I whispered. It was bad enough that my mother left messages on my own phone every other day.
“You say she’s avoiding you?” Luke snuck a glance at me.
I shook my head vigorously. I wasn’t in the mood to be quizzed by my mother.
“Oh, I’m sure she isn’t. But her phone doesn’t always ring when it’s supposed to. Would you like to ask her yourself?”
I took the phone from my husband. At least my own quirky phone knew not to throw me under the bus with my mother. “Mom, I’m not avoiding you. I’ve been busy.”
“Honey, busy is your permanent condition. That’s no reason not to call your mother.”
I let it slide by. I would not become ensnared in our usual pointless discussions. This time I would try to be very Zen and hold my tongue and get off the phone as quickly as possible. “What’s going on?”
Before she could answer, Wylie howled again for Elmo.
“One second, Mom.” I fished in the glove compartment for the car charger. I handed the DVD player back to Jasper and plugged it in. It worked as long as I remained leaning forward, jamming the plug into the car’s lighter socket.
“Your father and I have decided to accept your invitation to come up for Thanksgiving,” my mother said. “And I’d better make those airplane reservations now. It’s almost October.”
“Oh . . .” My mind whirled like a disc drive as I attempted to recall any previous conversation about the holiday. It took me a minute to realize that the invitation was just one more of my mother’s machinations. I opened my mouth to argue but managed just in time to bite back the words “but I didn’t invite you.”
During the pause, my mother added, “Unless you’d like to bring the family here instead.”
I hesitated again, sensing a trap. But there was my own distaste for the South Carolina golf community where my parents had retired. And flying with Wylie was still a bit like dog years—the flight segment seemed to last approximately seven times longer than it should. “No,” I said through gritted teeth. “You should come here.”
“That’s what I thought you’d say. I’ll call the airline next week. I should probably get going now—the potluck is in an hour, and I’m not ready.”
A snarky question leapt onto the tip of my tongue, and this time I didn’t hold back. “What are you bringing to the potluck?” I’d seen her contributions before, and it wasn’t pretty. She made “pizza” out of refrigerator crescent rolls with cream cheese spread on top. She also made a casserole with canned beans, canned cream of mushroom soup, and freeze-dried onion rings on top.
My mother is the only person I know who wears out her electric can opener every year or so. But today she surprised me.
“I’m bringing the most darling spinach and feta turnovers, and a fresh leek tart.”
I tried to imagine my mother crimping the edges of phyllo dough or fanning the layers of a leek at her kitchen sink. “You’re making all that? You might need more than an hour.”
“No—Olga next door made it for me, and I’m heading over there to give her a French manicure beforehand. We have a deal.”
“Oh.” It made so much more sense now. The Earth’s rotation had not, indeed, reversed course. “Is that a fair trade, Mother? Leek tarts are quite a project.”
She sniffed. “Olga’s hands could really use the help.”
I’ll bet they could, after all that effort in the kitchen. I looked down at my own. My nails looked like I’d hacked them off with a bread knife. “Well, Mom, the phone service gets pretty choppy up here. I should say good-bye.”
“But you didn’t tell me—how are my boys?”
“They’re great. They’re . . .” I craned my neck. In the backseat, I saw two slack faces, two sets of eyes focused on a tiny DVD player slung into the opening between the front seats. “The boys are anesthetized. By Sesame Street.”
“Ooh! I can’t wait to pinch their cheeks.”
She could pinch them all she wanted to while they were staring at that screen. I doubted they would even feel it. “You’ll get your chance in November. Talk to you later, Mom.”
“Bye, honey.”
I handed Luke’s phone back with a sigh. “My parents are coming to New York for Thanksgiving.”
“Then I’ll have to whip up a batch of martinis.” Luke chuckled.
“Luke! You wouldn’t.” My mother doesn’t handle hard alcohol very well. We’d learned one Easter that martinis seemed to encourage her to criticize me even more freely than usual.
“Sweetie, the martinis will be for you. We’ll keep her on weak white-wine spritzers.”
With a sigh, I straightened up, letting go of the DVD cord to save my back.
“Elmo!” Wylie yelled.
I was suddenly depleted. “Oh, Wylie. Let’s look out the window. We’re almost there.” It was just a few more miles up the little two-lane highway running west toward Gannett. Then one more mile up a dirt road to our house.
Wylie shifted tactics. “Pease Elmo,” he begged.
I reached my arm behind Luke’s headrest and into the backseat to take his hand. “Wylie, we’re getting out soon. I promise. At the house.”
He took my hand in his two small ones. “Where house go?”
“Just up the road. See? There’s the farm stand. Hey! It’s pumpkin season! And look! There’s a horse. On Jasper’s side of the car.”
And on the other side, there’s the ugly new subdivision, I could have added. A local developer by the name of Randy Biden had been busy building McCabins around Gannett. Ever since our local ski mountain expanded three years ag
o, Randy had been raking in the cash selling faux-rustic four-bedroom log homes with Sub-Zero refrigerators.
Luke turned the car onto our dirt road, leaving the subdivision behind. The trees arching overhead were just showing the first tinge of yellow. He rolled down the window as the car climbed the hill. “I love that smell,” he said. When he reached our road, Luke always rolled down the window—no matter what the weather—and declared his love for the smell of Vermont. I inhaled. It was especially lovely today. The September air was still rich with the perfume of flowers, with just a tinge of decay, as summer began to give up the fight.
“Where smell go?” Wylie asked.
I turned to him and took a long, exaggerated breath. “Smell it, Wylie? The trees and the flowers and the cool Vermont air?”
He began to breathe in and out, very fast. I listened with growing concern, hoping he wouldn’t pass out from hyperventilation.
At the top of the hill the road made a lazy curve to the left. Our petite little house, in the style of honest-to-God rustic, sat on the left. Behind it rose ten wooded acres beside a little pond, which an entire community of frogs called home.
On the other side of the road was the Barker Farm—or rather, the farmhouse, where the widow Barker still lived with her two grown children. Behind their old white house, forty acres of farmland rolled along the hilltop.
And twenty of those acres were now mine.
When Mr. Barker died, about a year and a half ago, his widow sold off their little herd of dairy cows. Jasper and Wylie missed seeing their tawny forms grazing across the road, but, aside from the loss of our pastoral view, we hadn’t thought much about it.
Then last summer I’d opened a piece of registered mail from the Town of Gannett. The letter informed me that in one month’s time the town’s Development Review Board would hold a hearing on whether to allow the subdivision of the parcel for a forty-unit condominium to be built. Abutting property holders were to consider themselves notified.
“Oh, shit!” had been my reaction.
The developer, Randy Biden, had offered the widow Barker fifty thousand dollars for her back acreage. “If I can get the town to approve a condo subdivision, that is,” he’d hedged.
It was to be called Lincoln Lodge, with log construction for the condo units and post-and-beam carports in the parking area. I was horrified that our quiet gravel road might become a superhighway.
Luke had stroked his whiskers thoughtfully. “I suppose we could fight it,” he said. “It’s within our rights to object to forty new condos across the street. But Mrs. Barker probably needs the money.”
I was sure that was true. I had another idea, but I hesitated to make such an expensive suggestion. At the time, I had just borrowed the first ten thousand dollars from our brokerage account to start Julia’s Child. “Luke,” I said carefully, “what if we bought the farmland instead?”
His eyes opened wide. “I was just thinking you’d look cute in a milkmaid dress. And then we could roll in the hay.”
I swatted him with the envelope. “This is your chance to become a redneck.”
He caught the envelope and pulled me close. “I love our Vermont place too, just the way it is. Let’s talk to Ida Barker when we go up there next weekend.”
As it turned out, we weren’t the only people who objected to the Lincoln Lodge Condos. “It’s Junior and Kate,” Mrs. Barker said from across the fence. “My kids are upset. They don’t want to see their father’s farm become a rich people’s playground.” She sighed. “They have it in their heads to farm some organic pumpkins instead. Maybe open a U-pick operation. But them kids . . .” She shook her head, declining to finish the sentence. Junior and Kate were twentysomething twins who still lived at home.
“And that Randy Biden!” she added. “He’s such a slick fellow, I feel like washing up right after I shake hands with him. But if I don’t sell now, he might go find himself another twenty acres. That kind of money could do a lot for us. New roof on the house . . .”
That was our cue. “Mrs. Barker,” Luke said casually. “What if Julia and I bought the land instead? And didn’t develop it.”
“And,” I jumped in, “your kids could still try their hand at vegetable farming. I need organic produce for my new business. I’d be willing to lease the land back to the kids for a song, so they could give it a go. If it doesn’t work out, I’d find somebody else to grow vegetables there.”
At first Mrs. Barker looked at us in disbelief. Her mouth actually fell open, revealing a lot of what Luke called “summer teeth.”
“Because some are teeth and some are not,” he’d once explained.
When Ida Barker regained the ability to speak, she climbed with her slippered feet onto the lowest rung of the cow fence to throw her arms around me. I stepped forward to accept the embrace, praying that they’d turned off the electric current since selling off the herd.
Everybody lived. The next day we called a lawyer in town to handle the sale of the property. And I’d felt a swell of satisfaction just looking at that shaggy hilltop ever since.
I was thrilled when Luke swung into our gravel driveway and cut the engine. The sudden silence was beautiful. My window still down, the chorus of the birds was the first sound I heard. I spun around in my seat to unclip the kids from their car seats. “Who will race me to the barn?” I asked.
“Me!” was the enthusiastic answer from both. After the long ride, it was just what the doctor ordered.
We hopped out of the car and took off toward the distant red structure. The meadow grasses were waist high. Junior had mowed a path through the greenery and wildflowers to the barn, leaving a narrow canyon of meadow rising up around my boys. They barreled down the path, and I jogged behind. Grasshoppers leaped out of our way, and the breeze felt lazy in the late-afternoon sun. At that moment the three-hour trip seemed like a bargain.
As I watched my boys run up the path in front of me, I experienced a moment of absolute certainty that they were the most beautiful children in the world. Wylie trucked along in a toddler’s run, as heavy as a linebacker, soft elbows thrust out to the sides. There was a zero percent chance that he could beat his brother to the barn, but he gave it his all. And he laughed as he ran.
Jasper was ahead and gaining margin, thanks to the suddenly leggy frame he’d acquired in the short time since his fifth birthday. His roly-poly toddlerhood was all but invisible now. Even though he kept looking over his shoulder to smile at us, he handily won the race. He threw up his hands in victory as his little blond head disappeared around the corner into the open barn doors.
Then he gave a bloodcurdling scream.
Chapter 5
“Don’t touch it, Mama! It’s poisonous,” Jasper warned as I came panting around the corner. My cautious son pointed at something black moving through the hay on the floor.
“Honey, that’s only a garter snake,” I wheezed. I put my hands on my knees to catch my breath. “There aren’t any poisonous snakes in Vermont.”
“Well,” said a soft voice from the barn’s other open door, “not many poisonous ones, anyway.” I looked up to find Kate Barker standing there in a long, flowing skirt and bare feet. She tossed her head, rippling her straw-colored hair like a river. “If you hike the cliff trails, it’s possible to find a rattler.” She glided into the barn, the many bracelets around her wrists and ankles jingling lightly.
“Hello, Kate,” I said cheerily. “Do you want to see the little garter snake we found?” Work with me here, would you? “It’s so cute! Look, boys. When the snake sticks out his tongue, it’s bright red.”
“Where tongue go?” Wylie asked.
“Come here and watch,” I whispered. Sure enough the snake, encouraged by our lack of motion, held still, its head in the air. It flicked its bright red tongue intermittently.
“Cool!” Jasper said at last. “Now I’m going to see the goats.” He went past Kate, out the side door of the barn, into the slanting afternoon sunlight. Wylie follo
wed him without a word. If big brother went, then so would he.
I turned to Kate, preparing to broach the sensitive matter of her vegetable production. I needed a tactful way to ask if she could do better than forty pockmarked eggplants and eighty scrawny zucchini.
“So, what are you up to now that your harvest is finished?” I began. It was something I’d long been curious about. What would a young, single woman find to do in this tiny town?
“The earth and I are resting,” she explained dreamily. “Until the living soil is ready to receive the rains again.”
I nodded with what I hoped was understanding. It was fine with me if Kate wanted to play the role of earth goddess, although it left the role of the shrill businesswoman to me. “Excellent,” I said. “How best do you think we could . . . diversify the output next year? It seems like . . . if we planted more than two vegetables, we’d have a greater chance of . . .” I was trying to avoid the word “success.”
“I believe the southern soil is asking for legumes,” Kate said, tracing a pattern in the hay with her big toe. Then she stopped and stared with a squint into the rafters. “Yes, I can see green shoots, and a vine.”
“Okay,” I said, encouraged. “How about sweet peas? I could use those. They have a lot of natural sugar, which works well for toddlers.”
Kate thought about it. I mentally begged her not to suggest lima beans. There were some foods that couldn’t be sold to children in any form.
“Sweet peas. I like it,” she said finally.
“Great!” I clapped my hands together. But there were other serious matters to attend to. “Now, we also need to nail down our organic certification. You haven’t heard from Kevin Dunham, have you? We really need to get a hold of that guy. And quick.” Kevin was the organic inspector I’d hired to help process my certification with the USDA.
“No,” Kate answered with a shrug. “I haven’t seen him. But look!” She moved closer to the open barn doors.
I hurried to the door. I saw the goats in their pen and the children walking toward them. That’s all I saw.
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