“Sounds like a deal,” Nan said. “Though you’re welcome to continue leeching off our supply. Hey, speaking of leeches, it’s the McCandlesses. They look lost. Yoo-hoo! Yoo-hoo! Over here!”
The McCandlesses had just branched off from the driveway and were starting to head up the steps toward the backyard patio. They turned to face the familiar welcoming voice.
“We really don’t know where to go anymore,” said Jane McCandless. “Now that you’ve got your front yard going like gangbusters and started hanging out on the front stoop there. So, we just put ourselves on automatic pilot and head where it feels familiar.”
“That’s all right,” cried Nan. “We’ve had enough quality time with the front yard for the time being. We’ll be headed over there in just a minute with the wine and some glasses. We haven’t forgotten the chardonnay, since I’m guessing you’re still drinking that swill.”
Alex McCandless balled a fist and shook it in triumph.
“George! George!” he cried. “Get the radio. We’re headed out back. Muskies playing afternoon game today?”
“Yep,” shouted George, who was just passing out of sight around the north side of the house. “Home against the Deerticks. God-Awful pitching.”
George’s voice trailed off as he continued walking around the house, mumbling doubts about Kurt Gottaufal—christened “God-Awful” by Muskie fans because of his performance to date. He stopped briefly at the edge of the arbor and gazed again with disbelief at the white oak, whose leaves were now all crinkled and brown. Many of them had broken loose and were drifting through the still air toward the ground.
“Amazing!” he muttered.
As the game headed into the fifth inning, the Muskies were getting walloped, 14–3. God-Awful had fully justified his moniker, giving up nine earned runs in four innings before the bullpen came in to try to stop the hemorrhaging. They were only partially successful, and the men gathered on the patio wondered aloud whether last year’s run at the playoffs was just a fluke.
“Well, at least Smokestack’ll hit number 500 soon,” Steve said.
“Yeah,” said Alex. “He’s at, what, George, 487?”
“He just hit 491,” said George, who spent a fair amount of his indoor spring and summer time watching baseball games and poring over the game’s voluminous statistics. “But he’ll be coming off the bench more from now on. They’re already platooning him with Goodhue. It’ll be September before he notches number 500.”
The women paid a little polite attention to all this baseball gab, which the wine had heightened into a thin patina of genuine interest, then went on to talk about the subjects they were really interested in: their children, most of whom were now matriculating at various colleges and universities throughout the land; the new antique store on Robertson Drive, where Bayle’s supermarket used to be; and the sudden drop-off in activity next door.
“You know, George . . . George!”
Encumbered with baseball-loving husbands, the women sometimes found it difficult to break into conversations when their spouses were locked in discussions with like-minded friends about who held the record for most wild pitches thrown, who played shortstop for the Marmots back in their inaugural season—which was 1962, for those who have to be reminded—and how many ways there are for a pitcher to commit a balk. It got even harder when “Bad Dog” Simpson launched into his customary off-key rendition of “Yonder Comes That Mud Dauber Special,” as was customary after the seventh-inning stretch. When that happened, fans throughout the St. Anthony metro—at home, in bars, or at the ballpark—sang along, usually mimicking Bad Dog’s execrable delivery.
This backyard rendition, fueled by enough alcohol to make it particularly boisterous, constructed what amounted to a sound barrier as impenetrable as a cinder-block wall encased on both sides with a foot of insulation and sprayed with a film of clear soundproofing epoxy that hasn’t even been invented yet.
But Nan was well versed in methods of interrupting male-bonding rites. She stuck the forefingers of both hands into her puckered mouth, and, as both Juanita and Jane covered their ears and opened their mouths to equalize the air pressure, let loose with a shrill whistle that left Livia residents as far as six blocks away scanning the clear skies for any signs of approaching tornados.
The three men jumped out of their chairs. Miraculously, they didn’t spill a drop of their wine.
“Attention! Attention!” barked Nan. “George, what’s going on next door? We’ve been so busy with our garden preparations, and spending so much time now creating the front yard, that we haven’t noticed that there are no cars in the Grunions’ driveway. And when was the last time you saw or heard any sign of activity over there?”
“They’re old people,” said George, still stunned from the effects of Nan’s aural blitzkrieg. “They don’t do much. How often do we see them anyway?”
“Well, their kids and grandkids are usually over there once a month, aren’t they? When was the last time you remember seeing them?”
“Come to think of it . . .”
“Maybe the old guy croaked. He wasn’t faring so well, you know.”
“We heard the Grunions were in some serious financial trouble,” Juanita said. “Made those big improvements to the house, then couldn’t foot the bill. We heard they carried three mortgages on their house.”
“At their age!” cried Nan.
“Gambling debts,” said Jane knowingly. “I’ve heard, and this is only fourth-hand, mind you, that Marva Grunion piled up hundreds of thousands of dollars in gambling debts at the Little Rabbit Casino, and that Ben loses money at the track every week.”
“No!” said everyone in unison.
“Which means, what, they’re getting foreclosed on?” said Nan.
“Precisely,” Jane said.
“Couldn’t happen to a nicer couple,” said Nan. “They were the sourest, rudest, slowest, most un-neighborly people in the neighborhood.”
“Isn’t that the truth,” said Jane. “When we went to the door last year campaigning for Pete Beinderschmidt, they just stood in front of the window staring out at us like that couple in the American Gothic painting. Then, unlike the couple in the American Gothic painting, old Grunion flipped us the bird. Can you believe it!”
The women tittered as the men almost instantly lost interest in the Grunions’ problems and resumed their baseball chatter.
“I can believe it,” Juanita said. “When the kids went trick-or-treating there once, they’d posted a sign on the door. It said, ‘Trick-or-Treaters: Go to Hell!’ Ha-ha!”
“And you know, now that I think of it, I haven’t seen any lights on over there in weeks,” Nan said. “Just hadn’t really noticed, we’ve been so busy with our yardwork.”
What followed was the typical detour into gardening talk that always happened around this time of year. Mostly, that involved Jane and Juanita fawning all over the Fremonts’ latest efforts, which they could only hope to reproduce as poor facsimiles on a much smaller scale. George opened another bottle of Sagelands, which he duly poured out with that little twist of the wrist. Smokestack Gaines came off the bench to deliver a three-run, eighth-inning jack in a losing effort.
As the postgame analysis droned on, Nan brought out the ice water, and the men settled into their semi-silent disgust at having to digest another galling Muskies loss. The midsummer dusk began to settle over the backyard in its dawdling way. A few lightning bugs flickered. A cardinal perched on the telephone wire, delivered a few loud chirps, then settled in at the backyard feeder for a late-evening snack. Then, came the hems and exchanged glances that signaled it was time to go.
“Before everyone leaves and before we lose our light, we want to show you something,” said Nan. “This is truly weird.”
Never averse to seeing something truly weird before heading home for a late dinner and early bedtime, the McCandlesses and Winthrops rose slowly to follow Nan and George, who were striding purposefully toward their white oak.
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“Oh, what’s this?” said Jane, stooping over to examine the new fairy house as they approached the gate through the fence, and, in doing so, bringing the whole procession to a standstill.
“Why, yes,” said Juanita, kneeling to study the model structure. “Isn’t that precious! A little bit of gardening potpourri you just added this year?”
The men, afflicted by various knee and back ailments, and generally unwilling to test out their muscular flexibility to indulge the odd points of interest so beguiling to the feminine eye, remained standing, silently shifting their weight from one leg to the other.
“Oh, ha-ha, that’s our new fairy house,” Nan said. “Yes, a fairy house.”
“These are quite the trend these days,” said Jane. “I read an article on them in the Inquirer’s variety section a month or so ago. Where’d you get it?”
“It was a gift from Dr. Phyllis Sproot,” said Nan tartly. “You might remember her as the fomenter of some of our troubles last year.”
Jane and Juanita laughed. “You’re hoping to attract fairies this year?” Jane said.
“Yes, to keep your talking flowers company?” Juanita added.
Nan chuckled. “For the record, I do not believe in fairies, or any similar superstitions. We are good Lutherans, and don’t subscribe to most pagan beliefs. Flowers and other plants, however, are living, sentient beings. Making contact with them is nothing more than trying to communicate with any other non-English speaking organism . . . somebody from Portugal, for instance.”
Juanita and Jane smiled. They supposed someone as adept at the craft of gardening as Nan Fremont was allowed some idiosyncrasies, even as they wondered whether it might be a sign of incipient mental illness. They had both pledged to watch Nan carefully for any telltale signs of any further deterioration.
“Well, if it’s from that Dr. Sproot, you’d better watch out,” Juanita said. “It might be put here to collect little midget demons instead of fairies.”
Now standing at the foot of the white oak, the Fremonts, McCandlesses, and Winthrops stared up into a blizzard of falling, swirling, crinkled brown leaves.
“Musta been hit by lightning,” Steve said. “One strike is all it takes. You might not have even heard the storm. Man, that’s a huge scar. Good thing you guys weren’t standing here when that happened.”
“Well, then, that would have been the quietest thunderstorm in recorded history,” Nan said. “I always wake up to thunderstorms.”
“Me too,” said George. “Only thing I can think of is it happened last year. We’ve only had showers and gentle rains this year. Or maybe even the year before. But I would have noticed that a long time ago.”
“Yes, George notices things like that,” said Nan. “Well, we’ll have to cut it down. Can’t be letting a dead tree spoil all our gardening efforts. Look at it this way: It’s going to let a little more light in on the grass back here. Though I hope it won’t let too much light in on the astilbes and Virginia bluebells. I just planted those this year. They like the shade.”
As they walked back toward the patio, George was worrying about the cost of cutting down a tree, dragging it down to the street, and disposing of it. Why, for a big tree like that so far from the street, it would probably cost $2,000, conservatively. And where would he come up with that kind of money? George glanced at Nan nervously. Too bad she didn’t have the acumen to handle the family budget. About the only skill she had with money was spending it. And once he filled her in on the latest dire straits they were in, she would light into him like a lacewing larvae into a mealybug.
The ugly fact of the matter was that the Burdick’s first-prize money was running out fast and the Fremont family finances had once again turned precarious.
George and Nan still had a few unreliable sources of income. George authored greeting card doggerel, with a special emphasis on deaths, terminal illnesses, and the loss of favorite pets. His work tended to rise and fall with the mortality rate. That would be supplemented on occasion by the need for something fresh and contemporary for the busy holiday seasons.
He was also an occasional inventor. His once-in-a-lifetime success was the Whirl-a-Gig Bubble Blower, which had a brief fling with fame in the last decade before being recalled because of a defective part that could painfully pinch a child’s pinkie. No problem for George; he had already been paid $350,000 by Dum-de-Dum Novelties for the rights to the toy, which made a minor comeback once the defective part got glued on better.
That bonanza had allowed Nan and George to quit their jobs as an assistant librarian and suburban shopper editor, respectively, to concentrate on their gardening. That money was now gone.
As for Nan, she was a knitter of some note when she wasn’t coaxing her little darlings up through the earth and into displays of floral magnificence. She knitted her own handbags, mostly in the winter as the gardens slept under a blanket of snow. She sold them through two major department stores—Cloud’s and Deevers—which paid her a commission of 10 percent of their profit on the handbags. As Nan readily admitted, it was more a labor of love than anything else.
That $200,000 Burdick’s first prize that was sustaining them now wouldn’t last forever. In fact, it was in peril of barely lasting through another year.
The problem was the absence of anything approaching thrift in the Fremont family. There were the shopping expeditions immediately following the presentation of their check right there in the backyard by gardening mogul Jasper Burdick himself. Nan had considered their purchases to be restrained, but that word had a particularly subjective meaning when employed by the Fremonts.
There had been Nan’s new blouses, skirts, pants, pantsuits, and shoes. This sudden interest in fashion baffled George, seeing as how he and Nan mostly dressed in an informal way suited for garden toil and patio lollygagging.
Then, there was the new garage, a real necessity considering they only had a one-car tuck-under. That had meant three cars had to be parked on the curb or on the little concrete slip that angled out from the driveway; not the sort of setup that was ideal when you had fabulous gardens to display. The new garage meant they could now hide Cullen’s sunset-orange Camaro and Ellis’s corroded Duster.
Mary now had to have transportation. George and Nan bought her a Ford 4x4 after she successfully argued that her newfound interest in gardening required a certain amount of hauling capacity. Then, they had splurged and bought the Avalon—brand new—for themselves.
Paying off their mortgage and its late-payment penalties cost another $30,000, but that almost didn’t count because it saved them money in the long run.
There were college tuition payments for their eldest, Ellis, at Augustus-of-the-Prairies, which, though a nice college of a slightly-better-than-average reputation, still cost a bundle.
Now, there were Cullen’s Dartmouth expenses. Another daunting financial prospect was on the horizon: Mary was headed to Stanford at the end of the summer.
Nan set Shirelle’s stipend at $200 a week, which had made George cringe, but, heavens, wasn’t she worth it?
Not counting forthcoming college payments, which generous scholarships had whittled down somewhat, that left them about $20,000 out of their original prize winnings.
There had been some extra money that George sometimes forgot to add to his haphazard and often inaccurate calculations. That was the $25,000 they had just earned for two garden-product endorsements. That lifted their total to $45,000, good enough for a year, George figured, especially with the mortgage paid off. Best case scenario: maybe even a year and a half.
Then what?
“One week till FremontFest,” said Juanita, as the two visiting couples began their descent down the pea gravel steps toward the driveway, then the street. “Can’t wait!”
“We wouldn’t miss it for the world,” Jane said.
“Yeah, what is this, George, the fifth year?” said Alex.
“Something like that,” said George, without enthusiasm, as he and Nan wa
ved the Winthrops and McCandlesses into the gathering twilight.
“You have made all the arrangements for next week, haven’t you, George? I mean, everything’ll be ready, right? I’d kind of lost track of it. You sent out the invitations, didn’t you? Ordered all the food? Root-beer-float fixin’s? Extra chairs and all?”
“Of course,” said George, who was now adding the cost of the Fremonts’ annual neighborhood bash to that of cutting down a dead tree and pumping the equivalent of the Caspian Sea on to their flowers and lawn over the course of the summer. “That’s not the problem. The problem is, how the hell are we going to pay for it?”
“Oh, no,” moaned Nan, her shoulders sinking into a deep slouch. “Not again.”
“Yes, I’m afraid so, Nan-bee. We might actually start having to look for real jobs again sometime soon.... Oh, and Nan-bee?”
“George?”
“Next time you’re by the tree, look about twenty feet up the trunk. There’s a little protrusion there that kind of blends in. It’s not part of the tree. It’s the old, rusted clothesline hook Miss Price assumed broke off when she didn’t see it lower down. She forgot to take about forty years of vertical growth into account.”
16
Fremont Fest
There’s nothing like a good root beer float to perk you right up. Or to take your mind off an approaching insolvency crisis. George and Nan were never quite sure what it was that set Peter Sunset’s Brew apart from so many other plenty-tasty root beers.
There were three varieties—Honey Calm, Greased Wheels, and Yellow Jacket. George and Nan stocked up on all three, though their personal favorite was Yellow Jacket. It had that bite that left you shaking your head and extremities involuntarily after each quaffed draft. Toss in a couple of gobs of Sandy-town coffee/vanilla ice cream, and the buttery-rich semi-soft chocolate chunks mixed with nuts made locally by the Wasserman sisters, and you had a confectionary delight that would send you soaring heavenward.
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