Natural Enemy

by Jane Langton

  Dear Mrs. Bewley,

  After inspecting your home and upon consultation with the Board of Health, I have obtained an order from Dr. Rosenberg, committing you to Ferndale Manor in Waltham on August first. I am happy to inform you that a place is being held for you there. Ferndale is an up-to-date and comfortable nursing home, with the best of facilities and medical care. You will have your own room with upholstered lounge chair, bed, dresser, coffee table and TV. Proper disposal of your home and its furnishings can be made at some future date. We are all anxious to see you comfortably settled in the hygienic surroundings of Ferndale Manor as soon as possible, in the interest of your health and general well-being.

  Sincerely yours,

  Dolores Leech, Lincoln Town Nurse

  “Oh, hell,” said Barbara. She shook her head with disgust and handed the letter back to Mrs. Bewley.

  “MINE, MINE.” Mrs. Bewley waved her skinny arms at her rubber plant, her chickens, her TV, her living room, her house, her weedy yard, the earth below and the sky above, all of the world that was hers to possess.

  Barbara put her hands on Mrs. Bewley’s shaking shoulders. “IT’S ALL RIGHT,” she said. “I’LL TAKE CARE OF IT. YOU DON’T HAVE TO GO TO A NURSING HOME IF YOU DON’T WANT TO. DON’T WORRY ABOUT THAT OLD LETTER.”

  Reassured, Mrs. Bewley beamed at Barbara, discovered John for the first time, shrieked with pleasure at the sight of two women weeping on her television screen, and allowed her visitors to depart.

  “What was all that about a nursing home?” said John, picking his way carefully in the scrubby undergrowth along Route 126 as cars sped past them around the blind curve.

  “Oh, the town nurse is trying to get Mrs. Bewley out of her house and into a nursing home.”

  “Oh, say, that’s too bad.”

  Barbara shook her head gloomily. “I’ll do what I can. I mean, I’m a nurse too. But I don’t know if I can stop them. The letter mentioned hygiene. They’re thinking about the chickens. You know —”

  John nodded his head wisely. “Chicken shit.”

  “She should keep those birds in a proper chicken house outside.”

  “Say,” said John, “there’s a little shed behind the house. Did you see it? It would be just right.”

  “We could fix it up for her,” said Barbara, looking at John. “Build a fence around it.”

  “I used to keep chickens,” said John. “You know, those bantam hens of hers are really nice.”

  Barbara was pleased. “That’s good, John. You could fix up the shed for the chickens, and Virginia and I — oh, God — we could clean up her house. Then we could call in the nasty-neat hygiene-and-health people and the Universal Cleanliness Is next to Godliness Society and let them take another look. How about it?”

  “Fine,” said John. “That would be great. Say, Barbara, I see you’ve still got that brush thing in your pocket. What was it for, anyway?”

  Barbara took out the bottle brush. “That proves how upset she was. It was just a polite gesture on my part, bringing her something to snatch. She didn’t take it. She was so miserable she even forgot her natural instincts. The poor old soul!”

  Twenty-One

  BARBARA LOST NO TIME IN WRITING A LETTER TO THE TOWN nurse.

  Dear Dolores,

  I’ve just seen the letter you wrote to Mrs. Alice Bewley, committing her to a nursing home. I hope you’ll reconsider your decision. She is deeply distressed. As her neighbor and friend, I’ve decided to take some responsibility from now on for helping her maintain her house in a healthful condition.

  I hope you’ll make another inspection before you remove her from her home.

  Yours truly,

  Barbara Heron, RN

  Opening the galvanized iron jaw of the mailbox, she put her letter inside and reached for Virginia’s bucket. “Here, I’ll take it,” she said.

  “No, no, I’m all right. You’ve got enough to carry, with the mop and broom. Where’s Buddy? I thought he was going to fix Mrs. Bewley’s front porch.”

  “Oh, I don’t give a damn where Buddy is. The front porch doesn’t matter. It will be enough to clean out the inside.” Barbara swung her mop over her shoulder and marched down the crumbling driveway. “Oh, God, I don’t know how we’re going to live through this. But we can’t let Mrs. Bewley’s life be wrecked like that, can we?”

  “Of course not. Besides, you know what they’d do next. They’d come in with a bulldozer and knock her house down to raise the tone of the neighborhood.” Virginia picked up a couple of beer cans and dropped them in her bucket. “And I like the tone the way it is now, a little seedy, don’t you? Look out!” Virginia jumped back as a large shining car whipped between the brick gateposts and shot up the hill.

  “Who was that?” said Howard Croney, craning his neck to look back. “Rather attractive, the blonde one. Real class, you can see that. What are those women doing with those buckets and mops?”

  The car swayed up the bumpy driveway. Buddy made an instantaneous decision to keep Virginia to himself. “Neighbors,” he said briefly. “That reminds me, I said I’d do a little job for Barbara. Oh, well, it can wait.” Buddy grinned to himself, comparing the humble task of replacing Mrs. Bewley’s rotten porch floorboards with the exalted wheeling and dealing that now took so much of his time. He would explain to Barbara that something had come up. After all, he was on the phone all the time, and all over the map, trying to run Croney’s suburban campaign, not to mention all the work of keeping track of his own personal affairs. There were just so many things he had to keep on top of. Some things would just have to wait their turn. First things first.

  The car pulled up in the great courtyard of Buddy’s house, and he climbed out, feeling serenely competent to handle everything. At times like this it amused him to remember how his senior advisor at Harvard had kept telling him he was irresponsible and sloppy about detail. “Whipple, the overarching master plan of this paper is superb. Congratulations on the grand design. Look at this sweeping statement, magnificent! But the whole thing is resting on air. Detail is what’s needed here, man. You’re sloppy about the nitty-gritty. When you get out there in the real world, you’ll discover that what separates the men from the boys is attention to small detail. You hear that, Whipple?”

  Well, so much for his nitwit senior advisor. Buddy had already been on the way up, right then in senior year, with a girlfriend who just happened to be the daughter of a top-management guy at Cabot and Childs, and before long Buddy had been a member of the firm himself. Of course, things had kind of gone to pot after a while and he had quit before he got fired. But then one thing had led to another, and look at him now! Right in the middle of all this really big stuff.

  Howard Croney walked ahead of Buddy, swaggering into the great front hall of his campaign headquarters. Buddy smiled to himself. You could almost see the mantle of ducal splendor descend on Croney’s shoulders from the high dark spaces of the surrounding balcony, from the sweeping antlers of the moose, from the glossy eyes of the ten-point buck, even from the cheery greetings of the volunteers at the addressing machine. It pleased Buddy to see how much this borrowed grandeur meant to Croney. His debt of gratitude to Buddy was growing bigger all the time.

  Settling down at the telephone to call a list of big-name contributors, Buddy remembered the way his father had always told him to start at the bottom and work his way up. Poor old Pop. If there was one thing Buddy had found out for himself, over and over again, it was to start at the top and go higher still.

  Barbara and Virginia found Mrs. Bewley talking at the top of her lungs to John, as he worked on her outdoor chicken yard. John was nodding politely, unrolling chicken wire, stapling it to his new stakes. He had made a hinged flap for his new chicken-sized door in the side of the shed.

  Virginia and Barbara admired the work in progress, then went indoors and marched bravely into the living room. “Oh, Lord,” said Barbara, putting down her mop and broom. “I don’t know if I can stand it.” />
  Twenty-Two

  BARBARA’S LETTER TO THE TOWN NURSE BROUGHT A PROMPT reply.

  Dear Barbara,

  Thank you for your thoughtful letter about Mrs. Bewley. Of course I will make another inspection of her house. I’m glad to hear she has good neighbors to look after her. You are certainly correct in thinking that it would be a serious step to remove a woman of Mrs. Bewley’s years from her own home.

  We would never do such a thing without good cause, you can be sure of that.

  Yours truly,

  Dolores Leech, RN

  Mrs. Bewley was restless.

  She walked around her clean house.

  She stared through her lorgnette at her polished rubber plant

  She turned on the TV. It was on the fritz again. All it would do was make wiggly lines.

  Mrs. Bewley went to the window to watch her bantam hens step daintily around their little yard.

  They were so cute. Just look at Maxiel A bright picture bobbed up in Mrs. Bewley’s mind, a memory of a happy childhood on a poultry farm deep in the back country of rural New Hampshire. She had been the youngest of five children. Now she was the only one left.

  Mrs. Bewley made up her mind. She opened the back door, marched down the porch steps, undid the hook of the chicken wire gate, snatched up Maxie and hurried back into the house. She would just take Maxie inside for a while, to keep her company.

  But then, thinking it over, stroking Maxie’s golden feathers, she decided to go outside again for Margie. She would just take the cutest ones back indoors. Just Margie and Muriel. And Minnie, of course! Minnie was so darling!

  Twenty-Three

  GLITTERING GREEN JAPANESE BEETLES WERE HEAPED UPON EACH other, copulating on the Boston ivy vine that clambered over the foundation of Amelia Farhang’s greenhouse. Under the brick coping, Polistes fuscatus, the house wasp, was building new layers of cells.

  Mrs. Farhang was unaware of the wasps and the Japanese beetles. She was lifting a hammer high over her head and bringing it down with all her might to crush the stems of a bundle of calla lilies from the florist.

  Her hair was tumbled. There was a pencil in her teeth. She was glancing again and again at the open pages of a book. In a fit of total absorption, she was trying to copy a seventeenth-century Flemish painting of masses of flowers in a glass vase: gigantic cabbage roses, parrot tulips, lilies. There were butterflies poised among the blossoms in the picture, a caterpillar inching his way along a leaf, a bee on a petal, an ant on a shining stem. Abundance, proclaimed the painting, the fertility and variety of all created things.

  Picking up a rhinestone butterfly, Mrs. Farhang pinned it to the stem of one of her calla lilies. Then she fastened an enameled tietack in the shape of a ladybug to the bud of a Peace rose and stepped back to muse over the result.

  Something more was needed.

  A horsefly was buzzing against the glass roof of the greenhouse. Mrs. Farhang brightened. Just the thing! Snatching up a handful of sphagnum moss, she trapped the horsefly cleverly against the glass and skewered it with a corsage pin. Then with nimble fingers she glued it delicately to the magenta petal of a spray of gladiolus.

  Perfect. She was finished. One knew when one was finished. There was that look of calm serenity; that harmony that comes with the balance of opposing forces, lines, textures, colors; that satisfying sweep of curve answering to curve. Amelia picked up her flower arrangement, carried it to the living room and set it down dramatically in front of her husband.

  “It’s too bad to waste it on the church,” she said. “It’s got Best in Show written all over it. Well, of course, it’s good practice for the big competition in October. You know, Putnam, everybody says I’ll get the top creativity award. You know what Effie Fawcett said about my flowers for the church last Sunday? She said she stopped listening to the sermon and just listened to the flowers. There’s something cosmic about my arrangements, Effie says. ‘You know what, Amelia?’ Effie said, ‘Your posies, they really make you think.’”

  “You’ve got a dead fly there,” said Putnam, reaching over to brush it off.

  “Fooled you!” giggled Amelia, delighted.

  Putnam stared at the dead fly. “Well, if you ask me, I think it looks terrible. Just terrible. My God, Amelia, why don’t you girls just leave the flowers alone?”

  It was an old family argument. Amelia closed her eyes in silent self-pity. For the thousandth time she told herself, I am married to a philistine.

  The doorbell rang. Putnam jumped to his feet. “I forgot to tell you, Buddy Whipple is coming over.”

  “Buddy Whipple?” Amelia was surprised. “What does he want with you?”

  “You’ll never believe it. He wants me to support ex-Governor Croney’s nomination.”

  “You must be kidding.”

  “Nope. It’s a fact.” Putnam swung open the door and gave Buddy a hearty greeting. Amelia dodged out of sight, just peeking around the corner to see if Buddy would notice her flowers. He didn’t. Snorting in silent contempt, Amelia gathered up her collecting basket and went outdoors to see what she could find. You just never knew what interesting accessories might turn up along the road.

  “Now, Buddy,” said Putnam Farhang good-humoredly, “what’s all this about Croney’s nomination? You must know how I feel about Croney.”

  Buddy grinned at him. “Well, I can imagine what you think you think. But wait till you hear what I’ve got to say. You may change your mind.”

  Putnam brought two cans of beer from the kitchen. By the time they were half drained he was leaning back in his chair, dizzy with the sense of a once-in-a-lifetime triumph, trying to adjust his mind to the scale of this tremendous coup, feeling like whatsisname when he gazed at the Pacific with a something-or-other surmise. “You say a new Croney administration might be genuinely dissatisfied with the Commonwealth’s long association with our competitor, the Benjamin Franklin Insurance Company? They might want to switch to another outfit? All the insurance contracts in the state of Massachusetts? Now, see here, Buddy, I must be absolutely certain this is entirely above-board and without hint of any suggestion that I might be acting in my own self-interest, or anything like that. All you want me to do is to encourage an Independents for Croney movement in the western suburbs? I certainly see no harm in that. Good heavens, Amelia, what in Christ’s name have you got there?”

  His wife was standing in the doorway, dusty, disheveled, jubilant, dragging a rusty chain. “I found it by the road,” she said. “It’s just what I’ve been looking for. A really powerful accessory. You know, something really strong and virile. Only it’s too long. How do I cut it in half?”

  “My God, Amelia, that would take a blowtorch. Who ever heard of arranging a bunch of God’s own flowers with a blowtorch?”

  Twenty-Four

  BARBARA WHIZZED PAST THE WALDEN POND PARKING LOT, HER car full of groceries. There were seven brown bags on the back seat. If Barbara and Virginia had been living by themselves they would have subsisted on air and the vegetables from the garden. And of course the addition of Buddy Whipple to the household made no difference either — Buddy could cook his own food. Barbara frowned, remembering that Buddy had promised to take his turn at the cooking once in a while — he had this fabulous spaghetti sauce, he said. Well, so far he hadn’t gotten around to it. And he was often absent from meals without warning in a careless way that infuriated Barbara, even though she was always relieved by his absence, by the buoyancy of lifted spirits when he was not present at the table, not crowding them with the broad-shouldered ferocity of his good humor, not looming over the table with his great sunburned face, not throwing his muscular arm over Virginia’s shoulders. The worst times were the days when Virginia responded to his heavy-handed kidding. Yesterday — Barbara winced, remembering — Virginia and Buddy had been standing close together at the kitchen counter, and he had been chaffing her as she made a pile of sandwiches. He had put out his hand to her hair. Virginia had turned to Barbara. “Wh
ole wheat or rye?” she had said, but with a flushed, distracted look, as if she hadn’t really focused on Barbara at all, as if she felt only the physical presence at her side.

  No, the seven bags of groceries were not for Buddy. They were for young John. John was a growing boy. He ate with the careless greed of youth. He needed solid square meals: meat and potatoes, fresh zucchini, early corn and tomatoes, Virginia’s clever desserts. He needed to come back for seconds and thirds.

  The groceries swayed in the back of the car as Barbara made a quick left turn in the middle of the sharp curve on Route 126. As she jounced into the potholes at the bottom of the driveway, she caught a glimpse in the rearview minor of a car pulling up beside Mrs. Bewley’s house. A woman was getting out of the car, a plumpish woman in a white uniform and white shoes.

  Dolores Leech! The town nurse was making her promised inspection. Barbara smiled, imagining her surprise at the immaculate living room, so recently cleaned and vacuumed and aired out to the summer breeze by two grim women breathing with difficulty through their mouths. With John’s help they had dragged all Mrs. Bewley’s furniture outdoors, washed it with brushes and warm soapy water, dried it with rags and left it to bake in the sun. Then they hosed down the rubber plant and spent the rest of a repulsive afternoon scraping up the guano and scrubbing the floor.

  Dolores would certainly be surprised and pleased.

  Later in the day Barbara finished planting her rooted euonymus cuttings around the base of the barn foundation. She put away her garden fork and dropped all the little plastic pots in the sink. Then she washed her hands and picked up the phone.

  “MRS. BEWLEY?”

  “WHO’S THAT?”

  “THIS IS BARBARA HERON. THE TOWN NURSE CAME TO SEE YOU TODAY. WHAT HAPPENED? WHAT DID SHE SAY?”

  “OH, SHE WAS REAL NICE.” Mrs. Bewley giggled noisily. “SAY, YOU WANT TO KNOW WHAT TIME IT IS? JUST A MINUTE. IT’S QUARTER PAST FOUR.”