by Donna Ball
“Where did you get this?” Lindsay cupped the half-unfurled rosebud that was displayed in a small silver vase in the center of the tray, leaning close to inhale. “Oh, my God, smell that! It’s an Old English rose!”
“They’re blooming in the garden,” Bridget said matter-of-factly, “but you’d better get out there and give them some attention pretty soon or all you’ll have left is a weed garden.”
The exhaustion that had weighted Cici’s arms and stiffened Lindsay’s legs only a moment ago evaporated into the spring air as they spread a quilt on the porch and set out the picnic. They sat cross-legged on the floor around the quilt table while Bridget dished out soup and salad into Haviland china and poured wine into star-cut crystal stemmed glasses.
“Oh, Bridge, your mother’s Baccarat,” Lindsay said reverently, holding hers with both hands. “You don’t even use these at Christmas.”
“First of all, this is a much more important occasion than Christmas,” she said, settling down beside them. “And secondly, that’s going to change. No more saving the good stuff for a special occasion. From now on, every day is a special occasion.” She raised her glass. “To us.”
Cici smiled, and so did Lindsay, and the tiredness ebbed out of their faces as they touched glasses to Bridget’s. “To us.”
There was a whirring sound, a blur of wings streaking between them, and a small yellow bird swooped toward the golden-crusted pan bread, snatched up a crumb, and flew away again. They didn’t even have time to register astonishment before it was over. Bridget jumped to her feet and ran toward the direction in which the bird had flown. She gasped.
“Oh, my goodness, girls, you have got to see this.”
Cici and Lindsay joined Bridget at the corner of the porch, where she was gazing in awe at the poplar tree. On every branch and limb, twittering and hopping from leaf to leaf, were tiny yellow goldfinches. Hundreds of them. Perhaps a thousand.
“It’s like living in an aviary,” Lindsay said wonderingly.
“They look just like the ones people pay hundreds of dollars for and keep in cages,” said Cici.
Bridget laughed and spread her arms. “Name me three other women in this country who get to have dinner with a thousand goldfinches tonight!”
“In this hemisphere,” said Lindsay, still in awe.
“In the world,” agreed Cici.
They grinned at each other again, and clinked their glasses. And they did not go back to the Holiday Inn that night.
6
In Which Help Arrives
Lindsay opened her eyes the next morning slowly, groggily. The three of them had made the best of a bad situation by constructing a pallet on the floor out of their combined bedding and huddling together for warmth, but the night had not passed easily. Her back felt as though it would break in two, Cici’s elbow was digging into her ribs, and a big man wearing a ginger-colored beard and camouflage gear was staring down at her, holding a soda can. She blinked. He was still there.
Lindsay punched Cici in the arm. Cici muttered something and punched her back. Lindsay hissed, “Cici! Bridget! There’s a man in our living room!”
Cici groaned, “Don’t listen to her, Bridge. She sees ghosts.”
Bridget opened her eyes, gasped, and sat up straight, hugging her pillow to her chest. “Cici!”
Cici turned over, rubbed one hand over her face, and opened her eyes. She looked the ginger-bearded man in the eye, and didn’t move another muscle.
The man spat a stream of tobacco juice into the soda can, and said, “It’s a boy.”
Bridget said hoarsely, “Wh-what?”
“Maggie said to tell you it’s a boy.”
A beat of silence, and then Cici said, still not moving, “You must be . . . Farley.”
The huge man gave a curt nod of his head, and spat again into the can. “Said I was to come see what you needed.”
Slowly, carefully, Cici stood up, bringing the blanket with her. She cleared her throat, ignoring Lindsay’s efforts to tug the blanket away as she wrapped it around her shoulders. “Do you mean besides a phone, electricity, hot water, and our furniture?”
The man spat again. “Ain’t got no phone on me.” He walked over to the light switch beside the front door, and toggled it upward. The brass-filigreed drop pendant in the foyer immediately sprang to life, as did the chandelier on the stairway.
The three women stared at each other. “But—the power was off. We tried every room in the house.”
Said Farley, “Where’s the water heater?”
Within the hour, Farley had replaced the pressure valve and the fixtures in the kitchen, and had patched the water heater with parts from the dusty, dented pickup truck he had parked at their back door. Bridget had made coffee with her French press and was flipping strawberry pancakes on her iron griddle. Apparently the entire cargo area of her SUV had been filled with the contents of her kitchen, a fact for which they all had reason to be profoundly grateful.
“I’m sorry we can’t offer you a seat, Mr. Farley,” Lindsay said, handing him a mug of fresh coffee. “But our furniture seems to have been delayed somewhere between here and Baltimore. We have evaporated milk for your coffee.”
“Take it black.” He spat tobacco juice into the can and sipped the coffee. “Mighty fine coffee, ma’am, thank you.”
Bridget and Lindsay exchanged a look that reflected a kind of dread curiosity about the commingled tastes of chewing tobacco and coffee, and suggested that neither one of them would feel entirely comfortable drinking from that mug again.
“I wonder if you could recommend a good plumber and a good electrician,” Cici said. “In case of emergency, you know.”
“I do plumbin’,” he said. “Do electric, too. Carpentry. Build about anything you want.”
“That’s wonderful,” Cici said, looking relieved. “And you live near here?”
“Down the road a piece.”
“Have you been here long?” Bridget asked, sliding pancakes onto a plate.
“All my life.”
“So you knew the Blackwells?”
“Yep.”
Lindsay encouraged, “You probably have all kinds of stories about this place the way it used to be.”
He sipped his coffee and appeared to consider that. Finally he said, “Nope.”
The three women looked at each other a little uncertainly. Bridget placed a plate of pancakes on the island before him. “Won’t you have some, Mr. Farley? If you don’t mind standing to eat, that is.”
“Can’t.” He finished off the coffee. “Thank you kindly, though.”
He started toward the back door. Cici said quickly, “Thank you so much for your help. How much do we owe you for your work?”
He stopped, and for a moment she thought she had insulted him. “Ten dollar,” he said.
Her eyebrows shot up. She couldn’t help it. “Ten dollars? But that wouldn’t even cover the cost of the parts!”
“Ten dollar,” he repeated.
She hurried to get her purse.
While she was gone, Lindsay said, “I don’t suppose you would know any high school boys looking to do some yard work, would you? We sure could use some help cleaning up this place.”
He thought for a minute. “Nope.”
Cici returned with a ten dollar bill in her hand. “Thank you again, really.”
He removed a worn leather wallet from his back pocket and carefully tucked the bill inside. “Be back with my ladder to fix your roof,” he said.
“But—we don’t have the tiles,” Cici said.
“Cost you ten dollar.”
“Oh. Well, yes. Okay. Thank you very much.”
He touched the brim of his camo cap, nodded to them, spat into the soda can, and left.
They waited until they heard his truck rumble down the drive before observing, “Strange.”
“But nice.”
“And cheap.”
“Strange.”
“I think this is good
news,” Cici decided, picking up the plate of pancakes and spearing a bite with a fork. “A plumber, an electrician, and a carpenter.”
“All for ten dollars,” Bridget said, and put another plate on the island.
Lindsay dug into the pancakes. “At least we can shower now.”
“We still have to replace the water heater.”
“Yeah, but now we know who to call to install it.”
Cici toasted them with a forkful of pancakes. “Things are looking up.”
No sooner had the words been spoken than they heard a loud rumble and screech coming from outside, followed by what sounded like the gunning of a heavy engine and the whine of tires. Cici went to the back window but saw nothing. She went to the front of the house, and Bridget, shrugging, dished up more pancakes.
Cici had a bright, if rather strained, smile on her face when she returned. “Well,” she said, rubbing her hands together, “the good news is our moving truck is here. The bad news is, it’s in the ditch. And,” she added, with a shrug of wry resignation, “so is our sign.”
Lindsay finished off her coffee, set the mug on the counter, and squared her shoulders in determination. “Okay then. Let’s go start carrying boxes to the house.”
Bridget paused with her first taste of the strawberry pancakes only inches from her lips. “Good times,” she murmured. “Oh, yeah.” She gulped a bite of pancakes, put her plate aside, and hurried to help.
Their beds were made, the kitchen unpacked, and the Ladybug Farm sign was restored, albeit rather crookedly, to its place beside the drive. The remainder of their possessions— boxes, furniture, lamps, wardrobes—were huddled in random corners throughout the enormous house. Even deciding what belonged to whom was a task so daunting that it seemed to hover on the edge of impossibility. One by one, they wandered out onto the porch and sat there on the steps, drinking up the cool, sweet taste of the night air and sharing the silence of utter exhaustion until slowly, in stages, the ache in their muscles and the fuzziness in their heads were replaced by a kind a wonder, a still and reverent awe.
“I never knew,” Lindsay said softly after a while, “that it got this dark anywhere in the world.”
“Or this quiet,” agreed Bridget, almost in a whisper.
The light that spilled from the uncurtained windows behind them illuminated the porch in a pale yellow glow, cast their silhouetted shadows on the steps, and was swallowed up in the blackness that was the lawn. Overhead, the sky was a network of stars, more stars than any of them had ever imagined existed before, a hundred million dancing globes suspended in the viscous liquid of space, a three-dimensional spectacle of near and far, small and large, brilliant and muted. There were no stars in the suburbs. There was no darkness, and there was no silence. To sit there, suspended in the midst of such a rare and unanticipated gift, made them feel almost guilty, as though if they breathed too deeply of the sweet-smelling air or lost themselves too totally to the mesmeric canopy overhead they might take more than their share, and leave less for those less fortunate.
“It makes you think,” said Cici after a time, “about how the first men must have felt, hundreds of thousands of years ago, squatting outside their caves, looking up . . . dwarfed by all this.”
“It must have been terrifying.”
“Makes you understand why they worshiped the sun.”
“Funny thing though,” Cici said. “In the city, the dark was something to be afraid of. You know, dark alleys, dark parking garages, dark corners. Out here it just seems . . .”
When she floundered, at a loss for words, Bridget supplied, “Magnificent.”
“Yeah,” agreed Cici with a slow smile. “Huge, and magnificent.”
“Kind of like what we’ve just done,” said Lindsay.
“It was huge all right,” said Cici. “The magnificent part . . . I don’t know yet.”
“It’s not like we moved to Africa,” Bridget pointed out.
“Africa, Virginia . . .” Lindsay shrugged. “I’ve slept in the same room for twenty-three years. Tonight when I get up to go to the bathroom, I won’t know where it is. My doctor, my dentist, and my grocery store are in another state. The guy at the mini-mart doesn’t know me. There is no mini-mart. The air smells different. This isn’t home.”
Bridget released a slow, soft breath, and agreed, “Yeah.”
Cici leaned back on her palms, gazing at the stars. “It’s scary, what we’ve done.”
“Yeah,” agreed Lindsay.
“The world is a scary place,” Bridget said, in a moment. She slipped one arm through Cici’s, and the other through Lindsay’s. “I’m glad you guys are in it.”
The other two smiled tiredly, and leaned inward, and they sat like that in a silence that no longer seemed quite so deep, until it was time to go to bed.
7
Settling In
Lindsay loved lists. She liked to make plans, write them down, check them off. Doing so gave her a sense of order and accomplishment. And in a project as big as this one it made her believe, however temporarily, that accomplishment was actually possible.
So, on the morning of the tenth day, she sat at the breakfast table with Cici and Bridget, a pot of coffee and a fragrant plate of blueberry muffins between them, contentedly going over her list. At a yard sale before leaving Baltimore, they had found a battered white wicker dining room set, which, with a little spray paint and a cheerful daffodil-patterned tablecloth, was perfect for the side porch off the dining room. Wrapped in warm terry robes against the cool mornings, they had breakfast there each day, watching the mist rise off the meadow and the chickadees and indigos and goldfinches hop from branch to branch, gathering their own breakfasts. Sometimes a hummingbird would zip across the table between them with a sound like a giant mosquito, which had prompted Bridget to put up the bright red feeders she had brought from home. They got into the habit of lingering over coffee and watching, with a kind of stultified awe, as blue and green iridescent-winged creatures darted back and forth to feast on sugar water.
The first item to be checked off Lindsay’s list had been “telephone service.” As it turned out, it had been connected on time and as promised by the telephone company, but, for reasons unfathomable to anyone, all the telephone wiring inside the house had been disconnected and wound into a neat coil that hung on a nail inside the cellar door. When Cici had made that discovery a mere two days previously, it had taken less than an hour to reconnect the wiring to the telephone box, thread it back through holes in the walls and floors, and connect it to the one land line phone they had had the presence of mind to bring with them.
After being deprived of communication with the outside world for so long, they were like starving women at a feast. They called Paul and Derrick, who laughed at their stories about communication woes in the country and promised to visit soon, but both of them sounded rushed and busy. They called friends and neighbors, most of whom were at work. Cici called Lori, who was in a hurry but said she would call her right back.
That was when they all realized that no one had remembered to ask the telephone company what their new telephone number was.
Lori said, “So you have a phone, but no actual phone number?”
“Directory assistance will look it up for you,” Cici replied impatiently. “The important thing is, you can call any time! Gosh, I’ve missed you! It seems like forever since I heard your voice.”
“It was only a couple of weeks ago.”
“When are you coming to see us, sweetie?”
“Mom, I was just home.”
“I’ll have you know that was last year, and it wasn’t to this home.”
“Well, that’s just it, isn’t it?” replied Lori blithely. “That’s not exactly my home. It’s yours.”
Cici opened her mouth to answer, but didn’t know what to say.
“Mom, I’ve got to get to class. Was there anything else?”
“No,” Cici said in a moment. “I just wanted to check in. And do
n’t forget you promised to fly back here for your birthday.”
A hesitation, and Cici compressed her lips.
“About that . . .” Lori had the grace to sound abashed. “I might have to change the plans . . . maybe we can talk later?”
Cici set her teeth and began to count to ten.
“Mom? You there?”
She forced a smile that she hoped softened her voice, although it hurt every muscle in her face. “Sure, sweetie. I know how hectic college life is. You just let me know.”
“Thanks, Mom. I love you.”
“Love you, too, baby.”
Cici replaced the receiver with firm and careful deliberation. Bridget glanced up from her diligent search through the telephone directory in the hope that their telephone number might be listed there.
“Everything okay?”
“Five thousand four hundred and eighty-three,” Cici said without turning. “That’s how many lunch boxes I packed. Sixty-eight thousand, nine hundred and eight Flintstones vitamins, seven hundred fifty soccer practices, sixty-two crepe paper costumes . . .” She turned, and made a sweeping gesture toward the telephone before she stalked away. “The telephone,” she declared, “is yours.”
Bridget called Kevin at work. “You should have seen the place when we got here,” she reported happily. “The shingles were falling off, there was a dump truck load of fallen branches in the yard, and it took two days to get through the first layer of dust! Cici says we’re going to have to replace the wiring before we can install the central heat and air, and we haven’t even started on the barns and the landscaping. Sometimes we can get the news out of Roanoke, but mostly we don’t have any television reception and absolutely no Internet. It’s like going back in time!”
Kevin said seriously, “I’ve consulted with a couple of my colleagues here, and I think we have cause to challenge your agreement with Lindsay and Cici. In fact, I’m not at all sure your purchase contract was bulletproof, so it’s entirely possible that you all could get your money back if you want to.”