Fifty Acres and a Poodle

by Jeanne Marie Laskas

  More family started to roll in. My sister Kristin, from New York, and Katie, her six-year-old daughter, my flower girl. They brought their dog, Nala. Nala is Wilma’s sister; they were born in the same barn in Philly.

  Nala chewed about a hundred dollars’ worth of mums. She did this at night, while we were all asleep. I woke up, saw all those chewed mums, and yelled at Nala, taught her to stay away from the mums, and while I was at it, I lectured Betty and Marley and Wilma again, too.

  Peter arrived with his dog, Quentin. Quentin is no relation to Wilma or Nala. Quentin chewed fifty dollars’ worth of mums. He did this while we were all up at Tradesmen’s, having wings. I came home, saw all those chewed mums. I considered yelling at Quentin, I considered howling into the night air at all the dogs that ever lived.

  Instead, I put the surviving mums on the roof of the garage.

  The next day I climbed the ladder to check on those mums. Oh, dear. Half of those mums had baked in the sun. I watered the survivors, about ten measly mums. I headed out in the pickup and bought six hundred dollars’ worth of more mums. Now I water them religiously, two and three times a day.

  There will be flowers on this farm on my wedding day, if I have to kill someone.

  I like taking care of these mums. I like it up here on this roof. Away from all those dogs and all those people and all that noise. It’s a way of focusing. A bride needs to focus. There are purple mums and yellow mums and white mums and pink mums with yellow centers.

  The water shuts off.

  “Hey!” I shout, and walk over to see who’s down there at the spigot. No one. “Hey!” I yell.

  Riva pokes her head out the kitchen window. “Hey!” she shouts. “I haff no water!”

  Water.

  I climb down the ladder and find Alex in the barn. “What happened to the water?” I ask. “Water?”

  We go into the basement. He primes the pump a few times. Riva comes down. We stand here, waiting for the news. “It’s dry,” Alex says. “We are out of water.”

  Oh.

  Apparently, the well went dry from all the water I used on the mums.

  “Whoops,” I say, wondering how I can separate myself, how I can step out of myself, how I can stand here and put the blame on my stupid inner princess. She ain’t no rocket scientist. She knew there was a drought emergency.

  “Whoops,” I say, hearing a little chirp in my head. A peep. An inner princess in crisis over her next shampoo.

  “Hey!” Peter says, coming down to the basement. He has a towel wrapped around his waist, his hair is covered in suds. He’s holding the cordless phone. “The phone is dead, too.” The phone? Water? Drought? Shampoo? Is there a connection?

  I go out to the car, get the cell phone, call the phone company.

  “Hello?”

  “Is this the phone company?”

  “Speaking.”

  “Well, our phone is dead.”

  “All right. When Tom comes in, I’ll tell him.”

  Tom? The same Tom who was on the pole the last time this happened? I am beginning to suspect that there is no Tom, there is no pole. When did Tom plan on coming in?

  “He’s in a ditch, so I don’t know.”

  The phone lady says no, she doesn’t know of any connection between phones and water and shampoo. “I’ll send Tom out,” she says.

  No phone. No water. No usable toilet. No shower. Seven people here. Four more arriving tomorrow. Five dogs here. A wedding in a week. No tractor. Long grass. Brown grass. Place looks like hell. Mums need water. Inner princess needs to exfoliate again. “Shut up, inner princess. Take a nap.”

  I am glad Screech is here. There is nothing like a new baby in the house to get people’s minds off death and drought and sewage problems.

  Riva and Amy have been fawning all over Screech, and so has Katie, my niece. Oh, Katie loves that little kitten. That little kitten has given her life meaning. She has drawn pictures of Screech. She has them hung up on the basement walls surrounding his little kitten bed. She has asked me if she could please take Screech home with her. She has begged me. I haven’t quite known how to handle this question. I want to explain to her the symbolic nature of Screech, want to explain to her who Screech is to me, where Screech really came from, but I don’t know where to begin.

  “Why don’t we go to the Humane Society and get you a little kitten of your own?” I said to her this morning.

  She gazed up at me with her intelligent green eyes. She just as quickly looked away. Her hair was in braids, with purple barrettes at the end of each, and she had a loose tooth in front. She held the kitten up to her cheek. “My baby Screech,” she said. “Come on, Screechie, let’s go outside. You’re the only one that understands.”

  I looked at Katie and saw myself, and not for the first time. I wondered if she had a place she went to, a secret place to separate, to differentiate herself from the world. I wondered what God has ever said to her, and if she believes in animal souls.

  And now I am back up here on the roof of this garage. It is easier to be here than deal with the water situation, the tractor, the drought, the phone, the toilet that won’t flush. Because I need to think. A bride needs to think. Well, no she doesn’t. But a bride does need to bathe. I can only hope that I get an actual bath on the morning of my wedding.

  I like it here on this roof. I have a clear head here. I wonder how Sassy and Cricket are. I wonder how Billy is. I wish he would go back to his doctor. I wonder how he will fix Sassy’s hair for the wedding. He did find a lilac mule halter, right? Yes, he did. So that’s good. And on the morning of the wedding, Nancy is going to deliver the flowers to him for their hair. Nancy is a trouper. Nancy is having a normal wedding. A nighttime service in a beautiful old mansion, with a deejay and dancing and no worries about drought or phones or tractor parts.

  It seems so simple, her life.

  It’s hot up here on this roof. It’s hot, but I don’t mind. The roof is red. Tin. I am standing on a hot tin roof. I am a person on a hot tin roof. So naturally, I mean, of course I think about Bob. In my quietest moments, I think he sent Screech to me because he couldn’t make it to the wedding, couldn’t last. He tried, but his little body would not hold on. He sent Screech as his lieutenant. Or no, he sent Screech because he knew my grief was too much for me to bear. In my quietest moments, I think he sent Screech to help get me through.

  My quietest moments. Up on the roof of this garage, I have my quietest moments. The roof is red. The garage is next to the barn. The roof is red just like the shed was red. The shed at the farm behind our house on Lorraine Drive. The shed I would escape to as a kid. The place I would go to cry, to think, to form opinions, to draw pictures and write letters to God.

  I am back at the shed. Back at that place of solace, of solitude.

  Only now I am on top of the shed instead of inside it. That’s how far I’ve come.

  That may not sound like very far. But I’m telling you, it is. Because I am learning something about sheds. About solitude. About inward and outward. The self is like a shed, a thing you enter and exit. At first that’s about all you can do, like a turtle going in and out of a shell. And maybe that’s enough. Maybe you can go your whole life only knowing inward and outward, inward and outward.

  But I have discovered above. And above has led me to suspect that maybe there is a below, too. A beside and an in front of. The self is like a shed. A thing you enter and exit. But a thing with many other dimensions, too. I am just beginning. I am on top of the shed. Knowing the self is knowing how to climb and dig. And maybe how to do a headstand, too. I am on top of the shed. Someday maybe I’ll do a headstand behind it. Someday maybe I’ll bounce a ball on it, paint a picture of it, train a morning glory vine to grow all over it.

  The self is like a shed. There may be infinite ways of relating to it, infinite perspectives, but I don’t know. I am just beginning. I am on top of the shed.

  Alex comes out of the basement. He has his overalls on again, and hi
s cute little tool belt. I know; men don’t like to hear that their tool belts are cute, but this one is. He sees me sitting up on the garage roof. “You up there again?” he says. “Why don’t you come down here with me?”

  “I have to watch the mums,” I say.

  “I know,” he says. “But just take a break with me, and we’ll come back and watch the mums together.”

  I consider this. “You promise?”

  “I promise.”

  This is one of the good things about marrying a shrink. He doesn’t ever regard you as crazy, not even if you are sitting for hours and hours on a garage roof, baby-sitting mums. He can talk you down.

  I climb down the ladder. “Let’s get out of here,” he says. “Let’s go to the mailbox.”

  A wonderful idea. Let’s run away from drought and tractor parts and sewage problems. I could use a walk. I could use some time alone with him.

  We sneak away so even the dogs don’t see us.

  There are all new weeds on the side of Wilson Road. This week’s feature: purple. The brightest purple. They’re like feathers sticking up, lacy feathers set against the deepest, bluest green. And because Mother Nature has an eye for flower arranging, there are orange speckles reaching out of the green, adding dimension. I wonder what these orange things are, what these purple things are.

  I have to get a weed book.

  I have to get a wildflower book.

  I have to get a mule book and a horse book, too.

  Alex and I hold hands and wander without purpose into the late summer sun. Our feet make a crackling sound on the bed of red dog. Red dog. What a funny name for a road surface.

  “One week,” Alex says. “In one week we will be married. You scared?”

  “Not about marrying you,” I say. “Are you?”

  “No,” he says. “The hard part is over.”

  “Well, the hard part will be over in a week,” I say. “My inner princess is, like, totally exhausted.”

  He smiles. “She’s been through a lot,” he says.

  “She still hasn’t even figured out which shade of self-tanner to use.”

  “Poor thing.”

  “And your inner prince?” I ask.

  “Um,” he says. I can tell he hasn’t even thought about his inner prince.

  “My inner prince has one request,” he says.

  “Oh?”

  “A waltz,” he says. “On our wedding day.”

  “All right,” I say, thinking: Oh God, I have to get a waltz book.

  “You promise?” he says.

  “I promise.”

  “But you have to learn how to waltz,” he says.

  “One more thing to do,” I say. “Do, do, do.”

  “I’ll teach you right now,” he says.

  “Here?”

  “Right here in front of George’s sheep.”

  “Baaa,” I say, to no one sheep in particular, to the scenery, to the view. The view. The beautiful postcard view we first fell in love with a year ago. The place where I met the hunters. The place where we saw the dead deer hanging off the tree.

  “Baa,” I say. The sheep are separated from a cornfield by an electric fence. The corn is planted in a wave pattern; I wonder if that’s to make it look prettier, but I doubt it.

  Baa, the sheep say back. Only it’s more like mehh.

  Alex gets a rock. He carves a line in the red dog, draws a square. “Waltzing starts with a box,” he says. He draws little ovals in the box. “Feet,” he says. “These are your feet.”

  “All right,” I say. “But I take a size seven and a half.”

  He makes the ovals bigger. He begins a somewhat lengthy explanation of the movement of one’s feet when one does a waltz.

  “It sounds kind of science-y,” I say. I’m more of a do-your-own-thing dancer.

  He stands in the box and holds his arms in the air, as if holding on to me. In this moment, he looks exactly like I imagine Arthur Murray to look. Except in overalls. And with sheep behind him.

  Mehhh. Mehhhh.

  “It’s okay, sheep,” I say. “He’s okay. But thank you for your concern.”

  “Rut ta ta,” Alex says. “Rut ta ta. Rut ta ta.” He dances with the air. “Do you see the pattern?”

  “Sort of,” I say. “I think I need to feel it more. Let me in, coach.”

  He takes my waist in his right hand. No, left. No, how do we do this?

  “Let go,” he says. “I’m in charge. You follow.”

  Oh, dear. But I am a train. I am a train who is used to chugging on her own power.

  “Let go!” he says, holding my wrist, shaking it, wobbling it. “Let your muscles relax. I’m in charge.”

  “Gotcha,” I say.

  Mehh, the sheep say.

  “Quiet, girls,” I say to them. “This is important.”

  He holds me close, so close that he can whisper in my ear. “Just follow,” he says. “One two three, one two three.” One two three, one two three. Our feet crackle on the red dog. The sheep watch. The hills stretch out onto the horizon, as if cuddled beneath quilts of corn, quilts with a pretty swirling pattern.

  One two three, one two three. He holds me. He moves me. I step on his toes.

  One two three, one two three. He holds me. He moves me. He sings gently in my ear. “Can I have this dance,” he sings. “Rut ta ta … for the rest of my life …”

  “You can have this dance,” I sing, as I watch my feet, work on the box pattern. “And I’ll be your wife.”

  “Rut ta ta,” he sings. “And we’ll eat steak with a knife.”

  “Rut ta ta,” I sing. “And we’ll meet Barney Fife.”

  Soon we are doing our box step out of the box, into the grass, faster, and faster, until my foot lands in a groundhog hole, or a possum hole, or a muskrat hole, or just a hole hole, and we both go tumbling like Jack and Jill.

  We laugh, get grass stains. We lie back and howl. He says let’s not eat dinner with the whole gang tonight. He says let’s have a picnic on the garage roof with the mums.

  “I’m glad I’m marrying you,” I say.

  “I was just about to say the same thing,” he says.

  “You were?”

  “I was!” he says.

  “Well, I said it first,” I say.

  “But I was thinking it,” he says.

  “But I think I thought it first,” I say.

  “Well, did you know corn grows at night?” he says.

  “Huh?”

  “I’m changing the subject,” he says. “It’s the only way.”

  “All right.” I smile, rubbing my ankle, hoping the tumble has not threatened my ballroom dancing debut. “So corn grows at night?” I say. I wonder if I’m being set up here for another dumb joke. Another all men’s pants half off. Another elephant’s flatulence.

  “It does,” he says. “George told me. George said corn grows when it’s hot out, especially at night.”

  “I love that,” I say, gazing out over the fields.

  “George said sometimes he walks up here and he can hear it happening. He can hear the stalks creaking.”

  He looks at me. In his soft brown eyes, I can see the promise. My same promise. Next summer, and every summer after that, we will come up here on the hottest nights, do a waltz, and listen to the corn grow.

  EPILOGUE

  TWO DAYS BEFORE THE WEDDING, THE RAIN FINALLY came, the well filled up, the mums got a good long drink, the phone company discovered yellow jackets in the box—a huge nest—which Tom, the phone guy, removed.

  The tractor parts didn’t come in on time. Billy came over the day before the wedding and brought a trailer with three tractors and two extra guys. They mowed the whole place in a day. Billy said it was a wedding present.

  Up at the Century Inn on September 13, the butterfly larvae in the white boxes did, in fact, hatch, at least most of them did. But it was kind of chilly out for butterflies. So when the wedding guests opened their boxes at the appointed time, most of the but
terflies dove right down to the ground.

  My mother looked at hers and said, “Oh. A moth.”

  Nancy thought the butterflies were beautiful. The rest of the babes seemed at a loss for words.

  Alex and I did our waltz, at least a brief one. It developed into a spirited free-for-all, ending, somehow, with Alex and me on chairs lifted high into the air by some very exuberant wedding guests.

  Cue the mule. Back at the farm, after the reception, the mule was cued. Clippity-clop. Clippity-clop she came, up the driveway. Billy was riding her. Her hair was in little braids, flowers woven in. Billy had flowers in his hat. Tom was behind his dad, on Cricket, who looked so pretty in her purple halter. Tom had flowers in his hat, too. Everybody laughed. Alex laughed. Alex got on the mule, and due to his slippery tux pants, he slid off the other side.

  I forgot to say my line.

  Forgot until later that night, when we were all sitting around a bonfire, singing show tunes. Well, that’s what Alex’s people were singing. They had beautiful voices. They were doing five-part harmonies.

  My people sang campfire songs. We had terrible voices.

  My sisters and the babes and I eventually took over the singing with the loudest voices of all. We sang The Brady Bunch. We sang Gilligan’s Island. We sang Green Acres. In the middle of the song, it hit me, and so I stood up, and still dressed in my beautiful gown, I shouted, “Don’t look a gift mule in the mouth!” and no one knew what I was talking about.

  The next day Alex and I went to Barbados, and my inner princess slept in a hammock for ten days.

  Alex got me a willow tree for a wedding present.

  My sister got Katie a kitten for her seventh birthday.

  Riva went back to Israel, where she has a pet-free life.