The Bucolic Plague

by Josh Kilmer-Purcell

  As both Brent and I grew tired and bored, it became harder to hide the tension between us. My cheerful extemporaneous dialogue was growing more transparent.

  “Hey, Brent,” I’d say. “Did you notice that you left the barn door open again even though I’ve told you a thousand times not to?”

  When the director and cameraman took a break to change the camera batteries, Brent pulled me off to the side of the porch.

  “What are you doing?” Brent hissed through clenched teeth, covering the tiny microphone clipped to his collar. “You’re going to ruin it.”

  “Look, I’m getting tired,” I said, sighing. “If they don’t have enough sizzle after six hours of shooting, they never will. Maybe we’re just not all that sizzly.”

  “Just stop being such a dick,” Brent said. “That’s not our brand.”

  “Our ‘brand’?” I echoed, laughing. “You just called us a brand?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Yes, I know exactly what you mean,” I said. “You mean that not only have we turned our weekend getaway into a second job, and not only have we been arguing about absolutely everything for the past two months, but you’ve now reduced our relationship to a marketing term.”

  “Look,” Brent said, “it was your idea to—”

  “If you say that one more time, I’m leaving you.”

  I’d crossed the line. The line I promised myself I’d never cross. Brent’s father had died when he was only eleven years old, and I knew within moments of meeting Brent that he had a fear of abandonment, even if he didn’t know it. I also instinctively knew that I should never ever exploit it. But I just did.

  At that moment all I wanted to do was escape everything. I was sick and tired of the Beekman. It had completely taken over our lives. The Brent and Josh that so giddily crossed over the threshold just over a year ago were as dead as Mary Beekman and the rest of the ghosts. They’d been replaced by a brand. Two smiling gentlemen farmers sharing picture-perfect snapshots of their picture-perfect lives with the rest of the world.

  As Brent kept repeatedly pointing out, it was my idea to find a way to leave advertising behind me to live full time on the farm. But what he didn’t realize was that his chronic Martha Stewart–like quest for perfection had done nothing more than turn the Beekman into another job.

  Now I wanted to quit two jobs.

  “Okay. We’re ready,” the director said. “We were thinking that maybe we’d shoot you two separately for a while. Josh, you first.”

  I realized that the director had heard every word of our argument through his headphones. They’d probably use it in the sizzle tape backed by ominous music and B-roll footage of storm clouds. I could honestly have cared less.

  Brent asked the soundman to take off his microphone. As soon as he was free, he disappeared inside without even looking at me.

  “Okay,” the director started with his interview. “Why don’t you start by telling us how you and Brent came to buy the Beekman.”

  “Because we thought we were something we weren’t,” I answered.

  “I’m sorry,” the director said. “Because my question won’t be in the edit, I’ll need you to say that again as a full sentence.”

  “Brent and I came to buy the Beekman because we thought we were something we weren’t.”

  “Can you elaborate on that a little?” the director probed.

  “Brent and I came to buy the Beekman because we thought we were something we weren’t. We thought we were the perfect couple with perfect taste who were perfectly suited to a life of happily ever after.”

  “Would you say that your relationship is in jeopardy?” The director asked.

  “Maybe,” I answered.

  “Again, I’ll need you to repeat that as a full phrase,” the director said.

  “Maybe our relationship is in jeopardy because we keep putting ourselves in situations where people expect us to be perfect…Say, for instance, on a reality show where the director would like our relationship in jeopardy because it would help him create the perfect sizzle tape to sell to a network, which would then put even more stress on us to be the perfect couple.”

  “You can’t refer to the show in your answers.”

  “I think I want to end this now.” I unbuttoned my shirt to take off the microphone.

  I wasn’t just referring to the interview. I wanted everything to just be done. Over. Somewhere along the way my reality had become a nightmare of a fantasy, and I wanted someone to yell “cut.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  “Ha…ee…urth…ay.” The voice was crackly and broken on the other end of the phone.

  I stepped outside on the porch to see if I could get a better signal. Not much, but a little better.

  “Happ…birth…ay,” Brent repeated.

  “Thanks,” I answered. I didn’t know what else to say. He was clearly calling me on my birthday as a formality. As long as we still shared a mortgage—two, actually—it probably seemed like a good idea to celebrate the fact that the person who shared half your debt was still alive.

  Then, either because he was calling from Martha’s jet or because the Beekman never had a strong cell signal, the call dropped. Either way, it was a relief to both of us. We’d fulfilled our respective obligations. His: to go through the formalities of our relationship. And mine: to turn thirty-nine with a respectable amount of dignity and forced good cheer.

  Since my birthday fell on Labor Day weekend, I came upstate alone to celebrate on the farm. While I wasn’t thrilled about being alone to celebrate the first moments of my thirty-ninth year on the planet, I was happy to have the farm all to myself. Even though Brent was scheduled to return to the city on Friday night, he’d decided that he’d be too tired to make the trip up—even for my birthday. For a change, we didn’t argue about it.

  As always, there would be weekend chores for me to accomplish from sunup to sundown. But at least no one would be waiting for me at the end of the long day to tell me what I did incorrectly, or finished too slowly, or had forgotten about completely.

  Brent’s call came just before dinnertime. Most likely he and Martha would soon land in whatever city they were heading to and be whisked away to the fanciest restaurant in the area, where they’d meet up with other interesting and famous people. They’d pass the evening with special dishes being sent to their table by the chef, and bottle after bottle of the cellar’s best wine. It would be, of course, picture perfect.

  My birthday evening would be somewhat different, although I considered Bubby the Barn Cat and the goats as pedigreed of guests as any. I was going to enjoy my thirty-ninth birthday feast in the garden—just Bubby and myself—at the potting table, with a couple of candles and a few late-season fireflies for ambiance.

  While Martha and Brent were riding in their limo to wherever, I gathered the ingredients I’d prepared for my self-celebratory dinner, including a few items I’d already cooked earlier in the afternoon. I loaded up a tray with the ingredients, food, wine, and utensils I’d need, and headed outdoors.

  As I crossed the yard with my loaded tray, a surprisingly cool breeze came across the pasture, cutting through the humid late-summer air like a piece of ice being dropped in warm tea. It was the first gentle reminder that summer was nearly over. Looking back, I couldn’t believe how much of summer I didn’t have. Between the soap, Web site, magazines, television show, and my day job, it didn’t feel like I’d sat down once, let alone enjoyed an entire lazy summer afternoon. I didn’t allow myself to dwell on this. If I started listing regrets, my thirty-ninth birthday would certainly deteriorate quickly.

  This will be the last year in which I could deny, with any sort of credibility, the fact that I am middle-aged. Thirty-nine has the thinnest remaining veneer of the potency and possibilities of youth. It’s when the best I could hope for in the future was looking good for my age.

  The clouds had been gathering throughout the afternoon—not threatening rain—merely dulling
the day and erasing the shadows. Farmer John finished his afternoon chores early to attend a picnic in the next town over. I was officially by myself. I set the tray down on the potting table and spread out my dinner ingredients.

  I was going to make myself a completely improvised salad. I’d baked a crusty baguette earlier in the afternoon, which I now ripped into small cubes and threw into a large bowl. Next I took the thick steak that I’d briefly seared on the kitchen fireplace grill and sliced it on the diagonal, paper thin.

  It would be my first taste of “Cow.” We’d eventually gotten around to butchering him after John got his new desk job. With John’s limited time, Cow was simply too much to take care of, though we’d put off his butcher date repeatedly because we thought it looked good to have a cow on the farm. “Cow” was “on brand.” At least his brand appeal kept him alive a good seven months longer.

  I wasn’t the least bit emotional about eating Cow. Being overly sentimental about his life would be an insult to both him and ourselves. We did our jobs as responsible and humane farmers, and he did his job as a responsible and healthy farm animal. Even though we have a close relationship with our animals, at the end of the season it’s still primarily a professional one.

  I added the slivered steak to the bowl of crusty bread. Then I circled the garden, snipping off whatever I fancied directly into the bowl: A little parsley. A couple of thinly slivered celery leaves. Some purple basil. Chives. The endive heads, though small, were crisp and a beautiful pale white-green that almost glowed. I took a satisfyingly bitter bite of one before adding the rest of its leaves to the quickly filling bowl. I picked and tossed in some early blossoms from our fall pea planting and some peppery bright orange nasturtium flowers. The lemon squash blossoms tore like wet tissue paper as I plucked them, along with some of their tiniest fruits. The purple scallions filled the air with a biting pungency the moment I pulled their reluctant roots from the earth. I sliced them so thin they were translucent.

  The bowl was brimming with every color imaginable, and when I added a drizzle of olive oil, the colors seemed to magnify even more. The salad was so bright and cheerful that it actually made me smile for the first time in weeks.

  It was my birthday party in a bowl. I tossed the colorful streamers and tiny balloons with a little of our own homemade apple cider vinegar.

  I saved the main ingredient for last. The true guest of honor: the summer’s first Cherokee Purple heirloom tomato.

  The Cherokee Purple had become almost mythological for Brent and me. Dark burgundy with green shoulders, it was the centerpiece for the very first meal he and I had prepared together as a couple. Nearly ten years ago, we were walking through the Union Square Greenmarket on one of our first dates, when we spotted a wooden crate with the largest, most luscious tomatoes we’d ever seen. The sign read CHEROKEE PURPLE. The farmer at the stand explained that they were rediscovered in the early 1990s when a gardener received a mysterious envelope in the mail containing seeds. An accompanying note claimed that the seeds had been passed down for generations, and were originally grown by Cherokee Indians.

  Thinking back, our Cherokee Purple tomato story was probably why I was so insistent about putting in such a large heirloom vegetable garden.

  Brent and I bought half a dozen that day, and took them home to my small apartment on Twenty-third Street. We brought the tomatoes and a saltshaker out onto my rickety fire escape, six stories above the sidewalk, and ate all of the tomatoes, one after another, like apples. The juice and seeds dripped from our chins down to the street below. It’s probably one of my most vivid memories of summer in New York City, and one of my favorite memories with Brent.

  Naturally, Cherokee Purple was one of the first plants to go into the Beekman garden. Because of an early frost our first year, we hadn’t had any ripen. But last weekend, after I’d sent the television pilot crew packing, I spotted the first Cherokee Purple tomato nearing perfect ripeness tucked away in a leafy giant bush. It had barely the first blush of burgundy red on its cheeks. I knew that it would reach perfection just in time for my birthday.

  The tomatoes had been planted in the back row of the garden beds so that the towering plants didn’t shade the rest of the crops. I wound my way through the paths to the bush that held the hidden treasure. I walked past the black cherry tomatoes that were Brent’s favorite, and the pure white globe tomatoes that always fascinated our dinner guests. I shunned the Pink Brandywines, long considered to be the best-tasting tomato, as well as the heart-shaped German Red Strawberry variety. The Wapsipinicon Peach tomatoes, with their fuzzy yellow skins, were as sweet as apricots, but they were not my target tonight. The Green Giant tomatoes with their lime green skins hung heavily from spindly vines, as if all of the plant’s vitality had been expended on producing the huge two-pound fruits. I walked straight past the over two dozen varieties of tomatoes we’d planted, each with their own charms and temptations. I would not be distracted.

  There, in the farthest corner of the garden, stood my target. An immense, verdant bush that stood over six feet tall and wider than I could wrap my arms around—which I would, if possible. I’d waited a full year for this moment. The Purple Cherokee tomato is beyond mere tomato-dom. It’s as if the taste of six tomatoes were squished together into one. The fruits are larger and more perfectly round than any other heirloom variety. There are frequently small scars or cracks around the stem, and the skin in that area has a deep green tinge, almost black. The flesh inside is mottled with deep purple and burgundy streaks, not unlike Cow’s. Even more so than other heirlooms, it’s a finicky plant, with little pest and disease resistance bred into its genes. Many gardeners avoid the Cherokee, since it isn’t a very prolific plant. We’d be lucky to get a good half dozen in our short growing season. And of the ones that do ripen, they need to be picked at exactly the correct moment. In the course of one hot afternoon they could go from underripe to rotting on the vine.

  Hopefully, I’d timed my treasure just right.

  I stooped over to search through the leaves in the general proximity of where I remembered spotting the jewel last weekend. I caught a whiff of the peppery smell of the tomato leaves, something I love nearly as much as the tomatoes themselves.

  It was there, huge and impressively round. I hefted it in my hand before picking it. It was heavy, full of water from the week’s rain. I carefully twisted it clockwise to loosen the stem, which separated easily, as if I’d picked it mere seconds before it would have dropped to the earth on its own accord.

  Holding it in my hand I marveled at how many things had to go right for such a perfect present on my thirty-ninth birthday. The serendipity went beyond an adequate seasonal rainfall, correct temperature range, or the nitrogen in the goat manure used to fertilize the beds last spring. It extended all the way back to the chance envelope that arrived in a gardener’s mailbox all those years ago.

  While the line connecting my rural Wisconsin youth to my drunken drag queen nights to my fledgling goat soap empire might not seem obvious, at that moment I was convinced that it led directly to the simple, decadent fruit I now held in my hands.

  Like the slowly ripening tomato, I seemed to embody far more excitement and possibility during the years leading up to this quiet evening. Also like it, perhaps the kindest label for me in the coming years will be “overripe.” I don’t subscribe to the “fabulous at fifty,” or “sexy at seventy” philosophy espoused by our daytime talk-show hosts and aging celebrities. I don’t buy it, well, because I sell it. After this many years in advertising, I know the art of deceiving marketing speech even better than a sixty-year-old underemployed actress touting that she’s sexier than ever. It’s just not true. I see it in my face. I see it in my hands. I see it in my thoughts, desires, and goals. And I see it in this perfectly ripe Cherokee Purple tomato. It will only have one perfect moment on its vine, and then it will be plucked and savored, and ultimately it will be gone.

  I might have just slipped past that moment in m
y own life, I thought. But that’s fine. That’s how things are. Flowers don’t blossom then disappear into thin air. They fade. Then the plant drops its leaves. Then the stem browns. And then the whole thing topples over. I figured I was lucky to have been as colorful a bloom as I had been, and, if all goes well, I’m still several decades from toppling over. My own personal Peony Party might be wrapping up, but there’s still a little summer left before the fall.

  I sliced up my prize and added it to the bowl before tossing all of the ingredients together. I forewent the plate I brought out and decided to eat my dinner directly from the large bowl.

  The first Cherokee Purple bite was everything I expected and remembered it to be.

  Last year at this time Brent and I were at our happiest in the chaos of building our new farm. It was pure Wabi Sabi. But then—seemingly so naturally—the chaos turned orderly…and demanding…and destructive. We didn’t even notice how it happened. But somehow the Beekman had brought out the worst traits in both of us, which were also the very same traits we once respected and admired each other for. His drive and perfectionism. My love of a good time and true experiences.

  In short, he was Martha.

  And I was Oprah.

  It was the growing realization of the half of my life that was gone that was making me so determined to enjoy the half that was left of it. What wasn’t obvious was whether I had the patience to include Brent in it. He had his own Martha goals to achieve. My years with Brent represented the happiest, healthiest, sanest years of my life. And I think he felt the same. Before Beekman, when we had our separate lives and jobs, the two were complementary. Now that we were trying to merge our lives into one life at the farm, the differences in our approaches toward living were becoming insurmountable.

  He was Martha Stewart Living. g

  I was Living My Best Life.