by Jane Langton
In the long run, Buddy Whipple took care of Muffy Weatherbee and the Save Our Sites Committee as he had promised, by writing to the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities.
His letter received a prompt reply.
Dear Mr. Whipple,
We are grateful for your letter of July 15, arguing against the request of Mrs. Townsend Weatherbee to include the Heron house of Lincoln, Massachusetts, among the sites we are recommending for preservation. In the light of the information you have provided, we have decided to remove the house from the list of properties under consideration for registration as an historic site.
Yours truly,
Albert Roper, Director
So that was that. But as Muffy retired from the battle, a more formidable opponent appeared on the horizon.
Jane Plankton of the investment firm of Eliot and Janeway was another kind of woman altogether, testing Buddy’s quick wits to the limit, his power of doing battle at the highest level, and his gift for shaping events to suit himself.
Thirty-Three
THE HUMID HEAT CONTINUED. THERE WAS NO RAIN. THE SUN flared day after day in a sky bleached of color. Virginia spent half her time tending the sprinklers, dragging the hoses from place to place, watering the lawn, the transplanted trees, the pots of flowers, the vegetable garden. Crabgrass was springing up in the yard, sending out snaky stalks that lay flat under the mower with rude cunning, then lifted in ugly profusion. Songbirds had given way to vulgar flocks of starlings, waddling and shrieking at the bottom of the lawn.
Virginia was taking her second bath of the day. There was a spider on the steep slope of the tub. She looked at it warily, trying to feel a sporting sense of good will as she stepped into the water. But crouching beside it she was uncomfortable. It sat motionless, august, inscrutable, then cocked a delicate leg as if it were about to rush up her side. Shuddering, Virginia rose dripping from the tub and finished her bath at the sink.
But by the time Miss Plankton drove up to the house, Virginia was grubby again from handling a dusty window sash and chipping out old putty. Jane Plankton sat in her car and giggled at her. “Oh, Virginia, I feel so effete in my town clothes. Positively rococo, out here where things are so primitive, so bucolic, where your very toes, Virginia, are deep in the soil! Look at me! Pearls! Gloves!” With a gallant gesture Miss Plankton tore off her necklace and threw it out the car window. Pearls bounced on the driveway. Then, whisk, whisk, she tossed her gloves after them.
“Oh, Jane, not your pearls!” Virginia raced after one that was skittering into the bushes.
“Now, Virginia, never mind. They’re just plastic pop’em beads.” Jane Plankton got out of the car and picked up a broken strand. “You just pop them in and out, like this, do you see? I bought them at Woolworth’s. So amusing, don’t you think? Pop, pop!”
“Well, I don’t know,” said Virginia, smiling. “I must say, I liked that lorgnette of yours better.”
“Oh, yes, my lorgnette. Oh, tell me! How is the dear woman next door?”
“Mrs. Bewley? Oh, I guess she’s all right. I haven’t been over there lately. But we took care of one crisis, I’m happy to say.”
At the house they met Buddy, rushing up from his new turnip field, his face hot and red. Barbara opened the screen door and looked at him in heavy disapproval. “Well, Buddy, I don’t know if you’ll be interested in this discussion.”
“Well, of course I will. Anything that concerns you people means a lot to me too.” Then Buddy was disgruntled in his turn. “What’s John doing here? Listen here, John, what business is this of yours?”
John flushed and stood up from the table, but Barbara grasped his arm and pushed him down again. “Now, Jane, dear, tell us all about it,” she said. “What you were explaining on the phone.”
Miss Plankton, Barbara, Buddy and John sat at one end of the long kitchen table, while Virginia stood at the other, puttying her window sash on a spread of newspaper. John folded his hands on the table and sat silent, listening, and soon it no longer seemed implausible to him that this funny old woman was actually the pillar of a family firm of bankers, or brokers, or something like that. She was talking briskly about the need for low-income housing in the suburbs, the despair of the urban poor, the spiritual and ethical impoverishment of suburban children who knew only polite communities like their own, the isolation of city children to whom cows were as mythological as unicorns, and open fields as exotic as the landscape of the moon.
Virginia ran her putty knife along one side of a pane of glass. “How much land would you want?” she said.
“Whatever we could get,” said Miss Plankton. “The more, the merrier.”
“Now, Virginia, wait a minute,” said Buddy.
“There’s the lower field,” said Barbara, looking at Virginia.
“Now, listen here.” Buddy’s voice was trembling. He was grinning in a pretense of self-control. “I’m sure this is all very well meant on the part of Miss Plankton. I mean, she is obviously sincere. But I can’t help but raise certain questions. Number one, do people really want to move out here, the hell-and-gone into the country, where everybody else is, you know, different from them? And number two, I question whether they would want to live in a place so far from stores and transportation. I mean, how could they get anywhere?”
“Buses,” said Miss Plankton promptly. “We would provide local bus service between our housing community and the train, and to neighboring towns for shopping.”
“You know, Miss Plankton,” said Buddy, “there’s no law against their coming out here by themselves. I mean, we don’t have a closed community anymore. If they wanted to live here, they would have come out already. I’m just not sure the desire is there. Why manufacture one, if it doesn’t exist, just to make everybody miserable?”
Jane Plankton tossed Buddy’s objection aside with a toss of her head. “They can’t afford it. They need help. That’s where I come in, and landowners like Virginia and Barbara.”
But Buddy had no intention of giving up. His polite objections demolished, he tried another tack. “Okay, I’ll accept that. But I don’t see why Barbara and Virginia should destroy their own lives in an attempt to help somebody else. Because that’s what it would come to. You know damn well you’re not just going to get nice families with cute little kids and harmless old folks. You’ll get crime and vandalism and destruction of property, that’s what you’ll get. You’ll have big hulking juvenile delinquents making the place a wasteland. Drug addicts. Criminals. No matter how nice your housing is in the beginning, it will be dilapidated in no time. Those people don’t have any — you know — middle-class values. They don’t know how to take care of things. And this house, right here, it would be in danger all the time. It would get broken into. And it wouldn’t be just burglary. It might be a lot worse than that. It might be —” Buddy spluttered to a stop and shook his head. The words rape and murder hung in the air.
But Barbara was still looking at Virginia. “There’s that big piece over there near the road, where the blackberries are.”
“The blackberries?” said Buddy quickly. “Where do you mean? You mean over there by Baker Bridge Road? Oh, no. Oh, God, no. You can’t let them have that? For God’s sake, Virginia. Listen, Barbara, you can’t make up your mind without a lot of good sound advice from some really — I mean, be sensible.” He turned furiously to Miss Plankton. “Listen here —”
Jane Plankton stood up. “It’s all right. I have to run along anyway to my music lesson. Brother Wayland is giving me instruction in the harpsichord. Oh, I’ve so enjoyed talking to you girls again. If you’d like another meeting, I’d be delighted.” Beaming, she turned to Buddy and extended her hand. “And of course I hope you will bring along other advisors, anybody! Everybody! Oh, no, thank you, I can find my way out. Good-bye!”
But Barbara accompanied Miss Plankton to her car. So did Buddy, frantic to overhear whatever fool thing Barbara was going to say.
In the k
itchen Virginia was having trouble with her puttied window. Wordlessly John took the putty knife from her and made a neatly chamfered corner.
“You’re good at that,” said Virginia. “Better than me.”
John picked up another dab of putty, rolled it into a narrow snake, and pressed it along the edge of the next pane of glass. In spite of himself he had been troubled by Buddy’s violent warnings. He saw Virginia lying on her back, struggling, her clothing torn, a burly shape throwing itself down on top of her. John’s hand trembled, and the putty knife jerked, tearing a hole in his silken seam. “Shit,” he said.
“It’s all right,” said Virginia softly.
“No, it isn’t,” said John.
Thirty-Four
UNDER THE COLOSSAL SPREAD OF MOOSE ANTLERS IN THE GREAT hall of Buddy Whipple’s house at the top of the hill, the receptionist-secretary’s desk was unoccupied. Buddy stared at the empty chair. Where was the damn girl anyway? And he had expected to find the ex-governor in residence here this morning, but Croney was missing too.
There were noises upstairs, muffled screeches and guffaws. Buddy cocked his head and listened, then shrugged his shoulders. It was common knowledge that Howard Croney had a strong tendency in the direction of miscellaneous lechery. Somebody was always having to call up his wife Madeline and explain that the hectic pace of the campaign had made it necessary for her husband to spend another night at headquarters.
Well, what the hell, thought Buddy, I can type my own letter.
The rented typewriter was superb. Buddy flexed his fingers over the keys and tapped out the name of Hollis R. Smythe, Cabinet Secretary for Public Works, Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
Dear Mr. Smythe,
This is to recommend all possible speed in pursuing Project S-124, submitted for your consideration last month. I repeat that eminent domain will not be necessary in a single property-taking. However, altered circumstances relating to some of the parcels might in the future make the matter far more costly and difficult. You will remember the old saying “Strike while the iron is hot.”
May I remind you that the next governor of the Commonwealth will in all likelihood be ex-Governor Howard Croney? I feel sure that in making new appointments or in continuing those of current office holders, he will select only those candidates whose policies regarding public works projects are as forward-looking and public-spirited as his own.
Yours truly,
Clarence Whipple
Buddy jerked the letter out of the typewriter and decided to take it to the post office in Concord immediately. There was no time to lose. And then he could saunter across the Milldam and buttonhole old Peep in the bank, where Mrs. Bewley’s long-delinquent mortgage account was crying out for attention.
But Mr. Peep almost upset Buddy’s apple cart by going sentimental on him. “Do you think the old lady is competent to understand what the letter says?” worried Mr. Peep. “That we’re putting up her place for auction? You know, it was at my personal advice that she remortgaged the property twenty years ago. In a sense it’s my fault for assuming she was able to take on an obligation of that nature.”
“I’ll tell you what I’ll do,” said Buddy. “I’ll go over there myself and explain it to her gently. It won’t make any difference to her really. I understand she’s going into a nursing home anyway. And of course she’ll get most of the auction money, after you people take out what’s due to you.”
“Poor old soul,” said Mr. Peep, with genuine sympathy. “I remember when she used to help Caroline with the children in days gone by. I expect most of the people who employed her as a domestic servant never took anything out of her wages for social security. And we probably paid her too little besides. In a sense, the people for whom she worked have some responsibility. I wonder if —”
“But they are helping her right now, all the time,” explained Buddy quickly. “They’re paying the taxes that will support her in Ferndale Manor. She’ll be well cared for there. It would really be a mistake for her to stay in her own place. Have you seen it? Well, it’s pretty bad. Ought to be condemned. It will give the fire department something to burn down. You know how the boys enjoy those bonfires of theirs. I mean, when it’s called for by law, of course, and all safety precautions have been taken.”
“Well, I suppose so,” said Mr. Peep. “Sad, this business of old age.” The tragedy of time and tide bore down on Mr. Peep, and he shook his head regretfully. “It’s an awful shame.”
Thirty-Five
PLUCKING THE THREADS OF THE WEB INGRATIATINGLY TO announce his presence, the male spider approached the female with caution. He was a large spider, almost as big as his prospective mate, but instinctively he knew that she might soon forget who he was. In absence of mind and dimness of sight she might confuse him with her ordinary midnight snack. Swiftly, then, he attended to the business at hand, reaching through the threads in which she was suspended to insert his pedipalp into her epigynum and deposit sperm. Then will all haste he withdrew, while the female spider settled once more into a trance of bloodthirsty expectation.
Virginia and John were working together in the round garden. In the heavy languor of the August afternoon they were weeding opposite sides of the circular border. John was squatting on his haunches, Virginia lying on her side.
Virginia reached into the myrtle ground cover for a stalk of the hairlike witchgrass, feeling for the white casing at the root, jerking it out. She was thinking about Miss Plankton. There she was, Jane Plankton, out there in the world doing good. Miss Plankton wasn’t lost in a self-indulgent dream of her own. She wasn’t playing around selfishly with a private piece of landscape. Of course she had been too nice to accuse them of anything like that. Virginia smiled, remembering the way Miss Plankton had clasped her hands at the view and basked among the flowers.
In the motionless air the noise of the traffic on the road was suddenly louder than usual. Virginia and John lifted their heads as a motorcycle roared up the driveway and thundered in a daring turn around the granite post at the end of the stone wall. In a wild slanting swoop it finished the circle, the two passengers leaning into the curve at a crazy angle, then righting themselves as the huge bike careened back down the driveway. On the grassy turf of the round garden it left a deep wheel track.
“Wow,” said John, getting up, staring after the cloud of dust.
“Crazies from Walden Pond,” said Virginia, staring after them too, shaken by the glimpse of the sleeveless leather jacket over the hairy chest, the girl’s pink freckled thighs clutching her boyfriend’s denim pants, the gold-flake helmets, the black insect visors.
Calmly John picked up a rake and went to work on the rutted furrow in the grass, while Virginia turned back to her weeding. She was surprised to find herself trembling. She hadn’t minded the ugly blat of the exhaust nor the hot breath of careless lust and rude power. Yet they had changed the quality of the afternoon. Somehow the violence of the trespass and the raw desire that hung in the air seemed to call into question the stillness and privacy of the weedy garden, the lank droop of her hair, the smallness of her breasts, the skinny angularity of the wrist that was tugging now at the witchgrass. What difference did it make whether one planted this bush or another bush, or didn’t plant anything at all?
When the little red car drew up beside her, it was only more of the same thing, although clenched buttock and excited vagina were less brutally in evidence.
Cherry Peaches Schermerhorn was wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the word JOY. In a single motion she stepped out of the car and kissed John full on the mouth. As a gesture of greeting the kiss was obviously only the brimming over of her cup of health, an impulsive uprush of friendly feeling. John fumbled at his glasses and stepped backward on the rake.
“Oh, forgive me,” chuckled Cherry Peaches. “It was just the kiss of peace. Wasn’t it, Arthur? The kiss of peace, right?”
Arthur Potter, her overlord in Christ, stepped from the car on the other side and gazed at Cherr
y Peaches, grinning, his eyes vaguely glittering under a moist film.
“Listen,” said Cherry Peaches, winking at Virginia, “it’s a song.” Swiftly she pulled a guitar out of the car, knocking it clumsily against the window frame, and strummed a twanging chord.
The kiss,
warbled Cherry Peaches,
The kiss of peace,
The kiss of pea-ea-eace,
The ki-i-iss of peace!
When will you feel it?
You cities?
You nationnnnnns?
You peoples of the wooooooooorld?
When will you feeeeeeel
The kiss of peeeeaaaaace?
“Well, I’m not much of a singer,” she concluded, slapping her guitar and stuffing it in the backseat again. “Say, Virginia, is it okay if I show Arthur the sunken garden?”
Virginia felt gray and pinched, pierced by laser beams of light. “The sunken garden? What for? Remember, I said you couldn’t —?”
“Oh, wait till you hear Arthur.” Cherry Peaches tucked her T-shirt into her gathered skirt, which had been put on inside out. “I’m just going to persuade Arthur, so he can persuade you, to let us bring the kids here for our retreat. And then everybody will be happy!” She threw up her arms to show universal satisfaction. “Won’t they, Arthur?”
Arthur took Virginia’s hand limply and mumbled something, then hurried after his Juvenile Coordinator in the direction of the sunken garden. Cherry Peaches darted ahead of him, her wallowing pumpkins saluting the teeming fertility of the earth, the fruitage of midsummer, the plentiful harvest of approaching fall. “Here it is,” she cried over her shoulder at her spiritual counselor, beckoning him on, twinkling down the steps, sinking to the sun-warmed flagstones of the floor.
