by Ann Ripley
“Don’t answer. I think I know why,” she went on. She raised her hands in an imploring gesture, as if asking the gods to intervene. “A girl should listen to her father.” She paced for a moment longer. Finally, she pulled up short in front of him, running a hand through her short curls. “I guess I shouldn’t be so mad. Like, I should have known, the way you took after me at college, and then dropped me. God! That was like a challenge, since no man had ever dropped me.”
“You found lots of other guys during those years—why didn’t you marry one of them?”
“I waited, for you to finish grad school, and then ran after you until I finally captured you. What an utter, complete fool!”
“You did it on your own,” he said, in a low, defeated voice. “I didn’t force you down the aisle of that church.”
She reached over and touched him on the shoulder, and he flinched. “What happened back at NYU, Mark? Between you and Jeffrey? I wish you’d just admit it. I might even forgive you then.”
He looked up at her with pained eyes. “All right. I admit that occasionally I’ve been attracted to—guys. And believe me—it’s not a good place to be, because you’re not welcome in the straight world, and you’re not welcome in the gay world. But don’t be so naive, Sandy. It happens more than you think. Sure I had a thing for Jeffrey. I thought even in your innocence back then you might have recognized it. I still think you did.”
She straightened, angry again. “You were really fried, weren’t you, when he dated me instead of you?”
Mark was cooler now. He gulped once, then decided what to tell her. “I thought he … returned the feeling. But it turned out he was straight after all.”
She stepped back, and he could see she was trying to disguise her shock.
He stood up and confronted her. “You really believed we were lovers, didn’t you? That we had a history together. That he was gay, and so was I?”
“Yes.”
“Well, that’s wrong. And Friday night, what did you think? That Jeffrey and I were back at the old stand? That I sneaked away and went into his room, and …”
“Yes, I did, as a matter of fact. I even saw the two of you—”
“How do you know, Sandy? You may have seen two guys, but not Jeffrey and me—”
“Oh, God, don’t lie to me! How can I believe you?” Her mouth hung open in anguish.
“Sandy, you pushed Jeffrey off that summit, didn’t you? We both know you’re tough enough. It was really no problem, was it?” He stared into space. “Or was it during the CPR …”
She looked at him with fear etched sharply on her face. Then her eyes narrowed. “Wait a minute, Mark. No, you don’t. I didn’t push him off. You did, didn’t you? This is just another bluff. You’re the one who wanted him gone. You and he made love Friday night, and it was like old times, right? And then you realized how dangerous it was. You’d lose everything—because your father-in-law, for one, would never agree to bail out a nearly bankrupt husband of mine who was a complete liar!”
Mark shook his head. “I’m getting the hell out of here. I’ll get a cab to take me back to Stamford. You can take the car.”
“That’s generous of you,” she said bitterly, “seeing as it’s my car anyway. But I wouldn’t leave just now if I were you, Mark. You’re in enough trouble. Do you really need the entire Litchfield barracks chasing you home?”
The Sexual Lives of Plants and the Disappearing Honeybee
PLANTS HAVE INGENIOUS SEXUAL LIVES. In fact, they are so blatantly sexual that some people are uncomfortable with close-up views of male anthers opening to shoot out their pollen, or female stigma lunging out to receive it. Immovable and unable to go to sexual partners, a plant cleverly dresses up, produces flowers in wild colors, stripes, or even polka dots, and lures a go-between—a bee, a bird, a small animal—to fertilize it. Thus, the plant achieves its goal of reproducing itself. Pines, ferns, and other cone-bearing gymnosperms don’t bother with all that gimcrackery: They simply wear their old clothes and expose themselves to the wind to get pollinated. Some plants, failing to obtain pollen from their friends, self-pollinate, even though this is not as desirable genetically for the plant as getting its pollen from another.
But things are going on in the natural plant world that should concern us. One of our great pollinators, the honeybee, is threatened with extinction. Gardeners are beginning to notice and complain that their apple trees or their zucchini is not getting pollinated, because bees seem to be absent. And they are, both wild and managed bees. The beekeeping industry is in jeopardy, suffering a steep decline in the number of managed colonies. (Actually, bees don’t need management—they do very well on their own living in a hollow log. Beekeepers are essentially providers of luxury condos for these valuable creatures.) Man-made and natural forces are responsible for the problem:
Two kinds of mites, which represent a devastating scourge to bees;
Pesticides, which are twice as abundant today as when Rachel Carson wrote the disturbing book, Silent Spring;
Loss of habitat, as more wilderness land with hollow logs and stumps to hold natural hives disappears.
While managed populations are dropping from disease despite the best efforts to prevent it, the wild honeybees have been almost completely wiped out. Other species of wild bees are a separate issue. Their numbers have been decreasing since colonists came to America, and they continue to disappear. When beekeepers lost an occasional swarm of bees, it was a good thing: These strays would “reseed” the wild honeybees—thus keeping a good supply of pollinators in existence. Now, the luxurious quantity of bees that existed in the United States for more than three hundred years is gone.
Some see no way out of the bee crisis until it seriously affects agriculture. Even now, some agricultural growers import masses of bees to pollinate plants. Eventually, perhaps, another pollinator may have to step in and take the place of the valuable bee. That won’t solve the problems, however, since some plants are “bee-specific,” and designed by nature to be pollinated only by this benevolent insect.
Genetic engineering is doing its best, creating new type “BT” corn seeds and cotton seeds that lessen the need for heavy pesticides on crops. (It is estimated that fifty percent of all pesticides are used to treat U.S. cotton crops.) Pesticides, of course, affect not only bees, but the thousands of other plant pollinators as well: birds, butterflies, squirrels, foxes, mice, possums, bats, and lizards.
Many large growers and plant scientists scoff at organic farms and claim they can never fill the nation’s and the world’s need for food. But the price of using pesticides—and they are used heavily in farm fields the entire world over—is beginning to be understood.
Encouraging individual gardeners to raise bees is not considered a solution to the bee problem. Amateur beekeepers often lose their interest after a few years and neglect their hives: This can create a serious spread of disease to other neighborhood hives.
As it is, most of us don’t appreciate plant sexuality the way we should. The creative source is pollen. Great clouds of this life-giving substance swarm over fields of crops and flowers, landing randomly, but often in the right place to effect the beginning of a seed. Pollen is the very basis of our lives. It initiates the seed or fruit or grain, assuring the continuation of plant species, and thus the food we eat. A corn plant, alone, needs pollination in what will become each kernel; this takes an estimated 25,000 pollen grains.
Some plants that used to grow in vacant fields are becoming rarities in the United States, and their existence needs to be cultivated by backyard gardeners. Surely, America’s gardeners are committed, spending endless time and an average of about $400 per family each year. But percentage-wise, there are not that many devoted gardeners in the country. Witness the fact that on any given day at a botanic garden, a person may wander on the paths in complete solitude.
The USDA has a National Seed Storage Laboratory that attempts to preserve plant species. But it hasn’t been abl
e to stockpile viable heirloom seeds. That makes it all the more important for backyard gardeners to raise these endangered plants. Native flowers, in fact, are both desirable and beneficial. They will attract bees back to our gardens faster than any fancy hybrid.
It may not be easy to establish fields or gardens of native wildflowers, but if each backyard gardener keeps a small patch going, there will always be a future supply. Like our grandparents, we should get in the habit of saving that life-producing seed that is another harvest from our gardens.
Chapter 17
“IS THIS EVER COOL,” SAID JANIE, WALKing farther into the deep, tunnel-like pantry. It had a stone floor and was lined with shelves filled with canned and jarred foods and dried goods stored in square tin cans. At the end, where it turned the corner, there was a beat-up green recliner, sitting on a rectangle of gold shag carpet. “This chair is just like the one we got from my great-grandmother.”
Teddy grinned at her. “Probably yours isn’t quite so shabby—but I love it. This place is my lair. It’s actually an old cold cellar that, if you follow it all the way, leads to the river where they used to have an ice house. But that’s closed up now with a good old six-foot-thick Connecticut rock wall.”
Janie examined his little bookshelf and the reading lamp on it. Under the lamp was an embroidered doily. “What a cute doily,” she said, fingering it and casting him a sideways glance, teasing him.
Teddy’s face turned red. “She gave it to me—Miss Seymour. Said it would refine the place. I told her I didn’t need a refined place.” Actually, Teddy thought, Miss Seymour would be surprised at how unrefined it could get down here.
The bookshelves held college textbooks he had picked up here and there. Between the bookshelves and the chair rested a keyboard. “Oh, a musician, too,” his guest commented. Along the other wall, there was a set of barbells. Janie scanned these possessions and then she slid down in the chair, stretching back in it like a pretty yellow cat, and every male fiber in his body was alerted. She said, “Wow, comfort. Bring on a book.” Happy for the distraction, he plucked one out and handed it to her.
“Psych I—so that’s why you’re so clever about understanding people.” She smiled at him. He crouched down beside her and laid a forearm on the chair where there was a little space next to her leg.
“I never took psych—I just read this stuff. There’re more interesting ones there.” He picked out another. “See, History of Revolutionary America. I like that subject—I’d major in history if I ever went to college.”
She cocked her head a little. “Don’t you know the jobs are in technology and science, not the humanities?”
“Yeah,” he said cheerfully, “that’s what they say. And the service industry. Don’t forget the service industry. I’ve got a job I like. I have a future here with Miss Seymour, whether it seems like it or not. I’ll probably run this inn someday.”
She shook her head. “You have more self-confidence than anyone I’ve ever met. Where does it come from?”
He shrugged his shoulders, hoping, perhaps, she would notice how broad they were getting. This was the opportunity he had sought: being near Janie, the magical blond girl from another world. Washington was not so far, really, not too distant for him to comprehend. His thoughts had drifted. What had she asked—about self-confidence, was it?
“Don’t know where I got it. Small-town life. Consolidated county high school. Plenty of good teachers who encouraged me. And I help with the business at home.”
“Your folks have a business?” Janie sounded as if the concept were totally foreign to her.
“Sure, lots of people around here survive on little businesses. My dad and mom have a grocery store at the edge of town. Good one, too, super meat, fresh produce. Competes pretty well with the bigger markets around.” Teddy grinned, and he could see her examining, close up, his face with its crooked, orthodontia-free teeth. Her mind registering his heritage: a grocery store. That made him a grocery boy. So be it. He didn’t have money, yet, to get those teeth straightened. And he couldn’t change what his parents were and what he was—not that he had always been the most exemplary kid, either. But Janie didn’t need to know that.
“That makes it a mom-and-pop store—and kid. Mom-and-pop-and-kid store.” He delivered the line with a wholesome smile on his face, and Janie bought it, just as people always bought it. “I love that store,” he said, really getting into it now, “because I like people—I really do. They don’t make millions, but it gives you a good idea of how this country works. You know, they used to call England a country full of small shopkeepers. Well, New England was somewhat like that, too.”
“So you may go to school one of these days?”
“Yeah. Maybe I’ll go to Yale.” Sure, I’m twenty-one already, wasn’t exactly the valedictorian of my senior class, and I’m going to Yale, he thought cynically. But he knew how to name-drop, and why not drop the best names? He could never impress this girl by saying he intended to matriculate at the University of Bridgeport. “So, what is your friend Chris studying at Princeton?”
Janie rearranged herself in the chair, and he couldn’t help staring at the way the long blond hair hit her cheek. “He’s a science major. I don’t know what he’ll specialize in yet—I don’t think he does, either.”
“So, your mom is a TV garden lady, and a junior detective. How about your dad? State Department, huh?”
Janie looked at him quickly. Was he going too far with that “junior detective” stuff, or was it something else? And what was it with your old man—was he a spy or something?
“Yes, State Department. We’ve lived overseas a lot. My folks may even move there again, but I’ll probably stay and go to college here.”
He leaned in as close to her as he could without having some phony excuse. She was one of the prettiest girls he’d ever seen. “I like it that we’re getting better acquainted.” He smiled. “How about planning a date?”
She laughed. “Oh, but I won’t be back here very soon …”
“I can easily make it to D.C.”
“Well … I suppose you could come around Thanksgiving. Then Chris would be home from college.” Her enthusiasm wasn’t overwhelming.
“I’d love it,” he said, pinning her down on it before she changed her mind.
She narrowed her eyes. “But I wouldn’t call my mom a junior detective again.”
“Gosh, Janie, I didn’t mean—I’m sorry. I was just trying to be funny.”
“I understand.”
“But we’d better go now. I have a feeling Chris is going to be looking for you.”
She reached out her hands and he pulled her out of the low-slung chair, and then she was standing right next to him. Their bodies were almost touching. He wished they could make love right now on the rug, as he and Ginger, the head waitress, had done a dozen times at least—though somehow he knew this wouldn’t happen with Janie. Teddy reached out for second best, a kiss and hug she’d remember until Thanksgiving. Then they heard Chris calling.
“Okay, you two,” called Chris, “I hear you in there somewhere. Come out, come out, wherever you are!”
Teddy grabbed her elbows, which was about as much as he could grab, considering the situation. He hated when people invaded his lair. “Janie, I sure do want to help you and Chris if you go out and do any investigating.”
She looked up at him. Was she as aware as he was that this was a magical moment? She said, “It has to be soon, because in about an hour we leave for home.”
Be sincere, and not too forward, he thought. Don’t blow it now. “Then we have an hour. There’s nothing I’d like better than to help you, Janie. You’re one of the nicest girls I’ve ever met.”
That much was as true as anything he’d ever said in his life.
Chapter 18
AT NOON, LOUISE AWOKE SUDDENLY and realized she was due at the meeting in the library. She got down off the tall bed, ran a quick brush through her long hair, and hurried out to the
hall and down the stairs. As she entered the large room, Janie made a sweeping bow welcoming her, then snapped the door closed behind her. “You’re late, Ma. Let’s get crackin’.”
They took seats on the big leather couches near the fireplace, with Janie sitting next to her mother. As they settled themselves, Hargrave the cat rose to a sitting position in his basket and observed them solemnly, debating whether or not to give up his territory. Finally, he decided to stay, lying back down and resting his green-eyed gaze on Louise.
Louise gave the cat a conspiratorial wink.
Janie looked at her mother, slightly perplexed. “I’ve been petting him while we waited for you to come down from your room. How come he likes you best?”
Louise’s mouth twitched in a smile. “Cats really know people, they say.”
“Hmmh.”
She patted her daughter’s knee. “Just kidding. Actually, it’s because I’ve spent more time with him than you have.”
“If you two would stop discussing the cat,” said Bill mildly, “we can get rolling. I’ll go first. Now, about Jeffrey Freeling’s fall—or push: I corroborated what the kids found out yesterday. Mark Post is roundly hated by his new father-in-law. He appears to be a corner-cutter—which in the computer business means he may have filched someone else’s idea, refined it a little, and then sold it as his own. He has lawsuits against him up the kazoo. Some people think he married Sandy for her money—among them, Sandy’s daddy.”
Louise looked around the group and said, “Let me try a farfetched theory on you. It entered my mind just this morning at breakfast, and it could explain Jeffrey’s death.” She told them all about seeing two men embracing Friday night, and proposed a scenario in which Mark and Jeffrey were secret lovers, with Mark killing Jeffrey to keep this knowledge from the upscale family into which he had just married.