Shenandoah Summer

by John Muncie

  Just above them, in the tree’s lower branches, a bossy cardinal hopped around making scolding noises, possibly complaining about being upstaged by the bright colors. From his bird’s-eye view, he had the same vantage point that Brueghel took for his painting The Wedding Dance. And if Alyssa’s invitation had called for aprons and codpieces, Brueghel would have felt right at home at Finally Farm’s celebration. He would have recognized the boisterous eaters and tipsy laughter; he would have delighted in the sinuous steps of the dancers.

  Among the dancers that evening were Alyssa and Tug, but theirs was a negative choreography. As requested by Alyssa, they kept scrupulously apart, avoiding eye contact, each pretending the other was just a piece of the red, white, and blue kaleidoscope. This waltz of avoidance was enabled by party duties. While Alyssa played hostess, Tug and Rick, a tropical landscape artist, kept busy painting faces at a table on a side lawn.

  Abbi stopped by around seven, to get an American flag painted on her right cheek. She was wearing red-and-white-striped pants and a purple tank top.

  “Is it driving you crazy?”

  “Is what driving me crazy?”

  She put her hand on Tug’s cheek and turned his face toward the front of the house. Behind a long table, stocked with bottles of sparkling cider, pitchers of lemonade, a keg of beer, and rows of plastic glasses, stood Alyssa and Darryl, smiling, laughing and serving drinks.

  “That,” Abbi said. “Ozzie and Harriet.”

  Tug looked at the host and hostess and for the first time that night caught Alyssa’s eye. She half smiled and quickly turned to talk to a woman Tug didn’t recognize.

  “Of course it’s driving me crazy, ” he said, snapping at Abbi as if it were her fault. And he was in just enough of a bad mood to think it was. If Abbi hadn’t suggested the horse lessons, none of this would’ve happened. He’d be sipping beer, having a great time.

  For a moment they both watched Alyssa and Darryl.

  “They look happy together,” said Tug. “I thought you said they didn’t get along.”

  “Just remember, she’s an actress,” Abbi said. “Look, as soon as you finish up here, come meet us in the back. We’ll be eating and drinking and solving the world’s problems. We’ll cheer you up.”

  “Right,” Tug said glumly as he painted red and white stripes on Abbi’s cheek.

  A few minutes later a short, slender woman sat down at the table. Her royal blue T-shirt was emblazoned with a white nautilus and the words “Catch your dreams at Emerson.”

  “You must be Tug,” she said as she presented her cheek to him. “Liss says your farm drawings are amazing.”

  Her words lifted his mood a little. At least Alyssa had been talking about him.

  The woman reached her hand out. “I’m Carol Richman. Liss and I teach at”—she pointed to her T-shirt.

  “Oh. You’re the Sculpey lady. So how’re things with the Shrike?”

  “Worse than you can imagine,” she said. And as Tug painted red and white stripes on her cheek, Carol began a blow-by-blow-by-blow account of the school’s woes and Justine Shriker’s latest actions, then veered off into a history of her own career as artist and art teacher, eventually touching on her friendship with Alyssa. “Isn’t she amazing? She’s like a national treasure.” And she ended it all with, “Can I join you for the fireworks show?”

  Before Tug could sputter out an answer, Odie Watkins rang the triangle. Rick leaned over to Tug and whispered, “Talk about being saved by the bell.”

  “Food,” Tug said to Carol, pointing to the barbecue line. “I’ll be over in a few minutes. We just have to clean up here.”

  Rick and Tug hung back until Carol had safely gone through the line, then they got their food and joined the other Limeys in the grotto.

  Alyssa had created it years before in a rocky outcrop between the house and barn. She’d fashioned old tree stumps and leftover boards from the barn into primitive tables and set them by the rocks, creating an elfish outdoor dining spot. A faded sign nailed to the canopying mulberry tree (which precluded tea parties in berry season) announced: “Lady Rosalind’s Royal Tea Room.”

  Sitting on stumps and boulders were Marius, Nattie, Don, Charisse, and Rudy Thomas, a new fellow from Washington who had taken an immediate liking to Nattie when he arrived six days before. Where Roz had long ago pretended to serve tea to the Queen, the Limespring group now ate blackened chicken and potato salad from starred paper plates.

  As the sky grew darker, the pop of firecrackers punctuated the proceedings, including a monologue by Marius, who, by arguing for the virtues of racial profiling, was creating some fireworks of his own among the grotto group. Rudy, a documentary filmmaker, and himself a victim of racial profiling, made an impassioned case against the idea, while a half dozen others simply shouted Marius down.

  At 8:45, a switch was flipped and the mimosa tree and the rooflines of the farmhouse were suddenly outlined by strands of tiny twinkling lights. The noisy cardinal, surprised by these fallen stars, flew off for the night. Some of the partiers oohed and ahhed, practicing for the bigger display to come. Somebody on the porch began to sing the first verse of “Slip Slidin’ Away.” The fireworks were scheduled to begin in less than an hour.

  By then, the grotto conversation, fueled by bottles of Budweiser, had hopped from politics to love to college and landed on ex-mates. Abbi told the story of a former lover who’d asked her to donate an egg so he could fertilize it and implant it in his wife. Boos and hisses. Charisse told of her ex-husband who sued for custody of the dog. And lost. Laughter. Nattie told of her ex-husband’s new wife. “He wanted frugal? He got it. She rations the towels.” More laughter. Then Rudy told of his ex-wife’s new living arrangement. “Her new mother-in-law just moved in with them.” This brought a whoop of delight from everybody.

  Everybody but Tug. He’d been stewing about that evening’s Tug-and-Alyssa dance when the raucous reaction jarred him out of his daze. She said lay low, not disappear, he decided. I can say hello to her. How could her husband object to that?

  He grabbed his beer and stood up.

  He looked down at Abbi. “I’m going to get another beer, you want one?”

  “You bet,” Abbi said. Then, seeing that his bottle was three-quarters full, she added, “I think she’s around front.”

  Just then, Charisse stood up. “Oh, I could use another beer, too,” she said.

  Abbi put a hand on her arm. “Charisse, wait a second. I want to hear more about this dog custody case. I’ve got to put it in a book sometime.”

  Tug stopped by the drink table, which by then was untended, and scanned the front yard. Nearby, Jackie Burke stood with a group of the monogrammed-oxford-shirt crowd, potential Limespring benefactors. Tug could see that Jackie was working the crowd, in full charm mode, probably hoping they had their checkbooks with them that evening. She caught Tug’s eye and winked, then surreptitiously pointed to the fence by the side of the house. Alyssa was there amid a cluster of five other women.

  Was there anyone at Limespring who didn’t know who he was looking for? If Abbi had been next to him, he’d have throttled her—she had a mouth like a sieve. But he’d have to deal with that later. First he had to think of something clever to say as he approached the group of women.

  Surprisingly, he was rescued by Alyssa. She saw him approaching and called out, “Just the person I was talking about.” She waved him over. “Come here. They all want you to draw their horses.”

  The women were from the Markham area, and like Alyssa, none of them had recovered from the horse fever of their childhoods. When Tug joined them they were fussing over Roy, Theo, and Poli, who were standing on the other side of the fence.

  Alyssa introduced Tug to the women, who soon introduced him to one of their favorite topics: riding injuries. Betsy Parker, a pretty woman in her mid-thirties and the horse editor of the local newspaper, had been in a coma for two weeks after a crash on her steeplechase horse. Laura Jenkins, a tall blond
, was once medevaced to the emergency room after a horse kicked her in the head; Louisa Woodville’s arm was in a sling after she’d separated her shoulder from a trail-riding fall.

  When Nina McKee started talking about her cousin in the wheelchair, Alyssa held up her hands and said, “Enough. I’ll never get Tug back on a horse if you guys don’t stop.”

  By then the sky had turned from deep lavender to India ink. Flashlight beams cut through the darkness above a small rise in the front pasture where Darryl and two other men pulled fireworks from cardboard boxes. The horsewomen decided to make a stop at the drink table before the show started, leaving Tug and Alyssa standing by the fence alone.

  “How’d the face-painting go?”

  “Lots of satisfied customers,” Tug said. “This could be my new career.”

  Suddenly he turned away and faced the pasture. “Uh-oh, it’s your friend Carol. I think she wants to watch the fireworks with me. Look, no offense, she’s a little, uh, chatty. Is there another place to watch them?”

  “Sure. The roof,” Alyssa said.

  “Are you serious?”

  “It’s the best view at the farm.”

  Tug glanced back over his shoulder, scanning for Carol; Alyssa looked over the pasture, scanning for Darryl. “Follow me,” she said.

  She led him to the house, chirping out scheduling information to each little knot of people they passed. “The show’s going to start soon,” she said brightly, or, “Fireworks in five minutes.”

  Inside, she started up the stairs ahead of him, then stopped and reached her hand back for his. “This way,” she said. Her fingers felt warm and slightly damp. He expected her to let go when they reached the top, but she didn’t. They kept their tentative intimacy as they walked through Roz’s room to a set of open windows.

  Alyssa fiddled with one of the screens and pulled it aside. “Come on. Out here.” She ducked down and stepped through to the roof.

  Tug followed and found himself above the porch. The roof was made of tin, and was nearly flat; they were in no danger of sliding off to the lawn below. From that vantage point, he could see the pasture where the men were huddling around the boxes of fireworks. Behind them, lights twinkled on the roofline. Below them from the porch came the sound of a single guitar and somebody singing Dave Alvin’s melancholy version of “Border Radio.” In the middle of the lawn, three kids were swordfighting with sparklers. Laughter and the hubbub of conversation rose up to them like an evening mist.

  “Wow,” said Tug. “It’s perfect.”

  “Roz and I used to lie here and watch the shooting stars.”

  Tug sat down in front of the windows and put his arms around his knees. A Roman candle shot off from the rise at a low angle and sizzled along the grass for twenty or thirty yards before it sputtered out.

  “Looks like they’re about to start,” said Tug. “Come on, sit down.”

  “No—you and—no—I—” Alyssa fumbled out her answer, changing her mind three times in the same sentence. “I better go mingle,” she finally said. “After all, I’m the hostess with the mostest and this is the big moment.”

  She turned to the window, but before she could duck back inside, Tug rose up and caught her arm. “Wait a second,” he said. “Before you go, I just wanted to tell you something.”

  He took both of her hands in his. She pulled back. But only a little, as if she were more surprised than disturbed.

  “Well, I just wanted to tell you how much your farm means to me. And your kindness. You know, letting me come here every day to draw and letting me bother you with all my questions. And your generosity.” He stopped. What idiotic words, “kindness” and “generosity.” He sounded like he was about to give her a Ruritan award. He looked into her face and began again.

  “Alyssa—”

  “Tug,” she interrupted him. “What are you trying to say?”

  This time he was more articulate. He pulled her to him until they were inches apart. And when she didn’t shout or struggle or laugh in his face, he kissed her.

  To his relief and joy, she kissed him back. Suddenly, he was encircled by her; her lips and her body were pressed against him; her heat penetrated his skin. He tasted her mouth.

  Then, just as suddenly, she pulled out of his arms. Shaking her head, she took two quick steps backwards toward the open window. “This can never happen again. Never. Do you understand? It just can’t. We can’t. Never. No matter what I want or what you want. And if you care anything about me, you’ll go back to Limespring and forget about the farm, forget about me. Find another farm to draw. Please.”

  She ducked into the window and disappeared.

  Out at the pasture, three Roman candles blazed upward in a shower of fire. As Tug turned, two more big red bursts exploded over the pasture. The fireworks had begun. Down on the lawn the crowd began oohing and ahhing in earnest. Atop the porch roof, Tug stood alone, lost in the star-spangled night.

  CHAPTER 30

  At 11:45 that night, there was a knock at Tug’s cabin door. His heart jumped. For a sliver of a second he knew Alyssa had come to her senses and was standing on the other side of the door. Then reality took control. Alyssa would never leave her party; she would never come to his cabin. She had never lost her senses in the first place. It was probably Abbi, wondering what had happened to him.

  He was right. He opened the door to his old friend, standing there with a bottle of beer in her right hand and a tiny flag in her left.

  “Thought you might need this,” she said, holding out her left hand. She looked down and saw herself handing Tug the flag, then laughed.

  “Oops. I meant this.” She switched hands, offering him the beer.

  “Things didn’t go well, I take it.” She walked into his cabin, her words trailing behind her, slightly slurred from the night’s partying. “First I thought you and Alyssa had gone off together, but when I saw her talking to Jackie and couldn’t find you, I figured you’d be here stewing.”

  She moved a coffee can full of pencils from a chair and sat down. Then she noticed the walls of his cabin. The empty walls. Where sketches of horse heads, barn doors, hay bales, and the face of a pretty blond had once hung, there was now just knotty pine paneling. On the floor, near her feet, lay a pile of drawings and crumpled pieces of torn paper.

  “It’s over,” Tug said. “Alyssa, the farm, the farm drawings. All of it. It’s just over. This is the stupidest goddamned thing I’ve ever done in my life. I should be in New York getting ready for my show in October, instead of, instead of . . .”

  “Falling in love?” Abbi said.

  “Don’t start, Abbi, I’m not in the mood.”

  He clamped his lips together, folded his arms over his chest, and sat there. All that could be heard was the metallic chrr of cicadas. Abbi knew Tug well enough to wait it out, because the wait was never more than a minute.

  “Okay, yes,” he said after twenty seconds. “Instead of falling in love, instead of thinking I should ‘rediscover myself,’ instead of drawing. Instead of all of it. It was fucking ridiculous to come here in the first place. I’m out of here. I’m going back to New York tomorrow.”

  Abbi leaned down and picked up some of the torn paper. She saw part of a nose, the side of a neck, half an eye. “She didn’t know you’d drawn her,” she said, trying to fit a couple of the scraps back together. She started to add something, then paused, grappling with her conscience. She’d promised Alyssa she’d never tell Tug about their conversation the day after the Follies. But it was a stupid promise about an even stupider resolution. Alyssa was fooling herself and Tug was about to give up. This called for intervention. She probably should have grappled longer, but the urge to play Cupid quickly steamrolled her vow of secrecy.

  “She’s in love with you, too,” Abbi said. “I wasn’t supposed to tell you, but since you’re going back to New York tomorrow, it won’t matter.”

  Tug stomped over to her and grabbed the scraps. “That’s bullshit. If she’s s
o in love with me, why’d she push me away when I kissed her?”

  “Oh, so you kissed her? What’d she do, slap your face? Scream for help?”

  Tug looked at the pieces of Alyssa in his hands. “No,” he said. “In fact, she kissed me back. I mean, really kissed me back. But then all of a sudden she pulled away and told me to leave her alone. She told me to never come back, ‘If I cared anything about her.’ Well, shit, of course I care about her. I’m screwed, it’s hopeless.”

  “Funny you should use that word,” Abbi said. “That’s exactly what Alyssa said the morning after the Follies.”

  Alyssa had talked to Abbi after the Follies? Tug made Abbi tell him everything. And she did, from Darryl’s threat to sell the farm to Alyssa’s vow to fight her feelings for Tug. Finally he understood the week of the Big Freeze.

  “So how come she changed her mind and everything was great again?” he said.

  Abbi gave him the look she usually reserved for children or slow grocery baggers. “Jeez, Tug, for someone who’s been with as many women as you have, you don’t seem to know anything about them. You were telling her good-bye, bonehead. That’s the last thing she wanted, then or now. Of course she welcomed you back. Doesn’t that tell you something about her feelings? And it’s no surprise she told you to buzz off tonight. She’s married; she has a kid. This is incredibly hard for her. But staying away from you seems to be harder. Not that she should, her life with Darryl stinks. She needs you, Tug. But you can’t convince her if you’re banished from her farm. We need a plan to get you back there.”

  The two fell silent. Abbi studied the carpet and started tapping her left shoe against the leg of the chair. At one point she snapped her fingers, said, “I’ve got it.” Then a second later, “Never mind.”

  Meanwhile, Tug lay on his side on the bed, running ideas through his mind, each one stupider than the next. When he actually considered calling Alyssa’s friend Carol, asking her to visit Limespring and bring Alyssa along, he threw a pillow against the wall.