George and Nan made their first floats. Why stand on politeness and wait for the first guests to arrive? They then toasted each other on the successful preparations for the fifth annual FremontFest, their neighborhood fete held on whatever Saturday coincided with Nan’s or George’s birthday—July 1 and 7, respectively—or, barring that, on the Saturday that came between those two dates.
Guests were arriving. Here came those wonderful contrarians, Mitzi and Howard “Frip” Rodard. George and Nan chuckled watching them walk up the steps toward the patio, chattering away, contradicting each other, no doubt, at every step. They rose from their chairs to meet their first guests and lifted their frothy-topped plastic cups to them in salute.
“Root beer floats again, no doubt,” said Frip. “Don’t you folks ever change your routine?”
“What routine?” said Mitzi. “There’s no root beer routine. The routine around this place is wine, wine, and more wine, and gin, gin, and more gin. Root beer’s non-alcoholic the last I heard. And at least it gives them a chance to steer away from incipient alcoholism.” George and Nan smiled as they gestured to the tapped kegs of root beer and ice-packed cartons of ice cream.
“What!” said Frip. “Are you implying that George and Nan are alcoholics? Well, that’s not a very gracious way of greeting your hosts.”
“I’m implying nothing of the sort,” Mitzi said. “I’m saying it outright.” George and Nan drained their root beer floats with moans of satisfaction. “See what I mean? Listen to that. We’re consorting with people who are instant-gratification, pleasure-seeking malachites.”
“Malachites?” said Frip.
“Malachites.”
“Ha-ha. I don’t think that’s the word you intended to use. You mean sybarites.”
“It is exactly the word I intended to use,” said Mitzi, turning for support to George and Nan, who just shrugged as they headed back to the kegs for refills. “What’s so funny?”
“You are,” said Frip. “You’re what’s so funny with your malapropisms.”
“My what?”
“Your mal-a-prop-isms. Usage of the wrong words, usually with comic effect.”
“How dare you hold me up for ridicule! How dare you! My own husband! And in front of our dearest friends!” Here came George and Nan charging to the rescue, handing Frip and Mitzi root beer floats smoking and bubbling with foamy goodness.
“Ah, just what the doctor ordered,” said Frip after a long, head-tipping draft. “Do your stuff, magic brew!”
“What magic?” said Mitzi. “No such thing as magic.”
George and Nan sighed contentedly. They were accustomed to this Rodard routine, and, in the presence of the right crowd, it was quite harmless. Frip and Mitzi had been married as long as they had—twenty-three years. They had been married on exactly the same day, in the same year, in the same city, at churches two blocks apart, and had never even come close to divorcing as far as George and Nan could tell. Indeed, each one’s contradictory nature seemed to complement the other’s, strengthening the bonds of their union. Had one of them been cooing, agreeable, and ceaselessly pleasant and deferential, the marriage wouldn’t have lasted three months.
“It’s just an expression, dear,” Frip said. “A manner of speaking.”
Mitzi shook with contrarian ire, then knocked down a big slug of root beer.
“Ah,” she went, wiping the foam off her mouth with the back of her hand. “This has got to be the best root beer float I’ve ever tasted.”
“I would suppose,” said Frip. “Considering how this is the only place you’ve ever tasted root beer floats, and the last time you would have tasted one was right here, almost exactly a year ago, which is to say at this same FremontFest celebration.”
At this point, George and Nan were laughing out loud. Mitzi and Frip, baffled, stared at them. Then, in unison, they took long, Adam’s-apple-bouncing draws from their cups. A couple of car doors slammed shut. George and Nan could see new cars parked along the Payne Avenue curb. Figures were making their way toward the patio. Some of them were approaching in a civilized manner up the pea gravel steps. Others baldly traipsed up the slope of the yard itself. Mitzi and Frip would have to find a new audience for their contrariness now. Within an hour, they would be stomping back down the steps toward home, having offended at least a dozen people and making their continued presence at FremontFest untenable.
Here were the Mikkelsons, warily ascending the steps. Their faces were etched with concerns that trickled up from some deep, unfathomable well of inexplicable woe. Deanne was carrying their ten-month-old, Sievert, Jr., as if he were a bundle of jeweled Fabergé eggs.
The Mikkelsons, modest and quiet folk even in the most engaging of circumstances, approached with solemn deliberation.
“How nice of you to come! And here’s little baby Sievert. How are you, little baby?” Nan cooed and played with baby Sievert’s wrinkled fingers as he did nothing but look down forlornly at the cement patio. A true Mikkelson, thought Nan; no need to worry about true parentage here.
“How’s it going there, Sievert?” said George, pounding Sievert’s shoulder in a show of excessive camaraderie he always thought necessary to bring the shy chap out of his shell.
“Okay, doing okay,” said Sievert with a meek smile.
“Well, that’s great, Sievert, just great. Gee whiz, this is you guys’ first time here at FremontFest, isn’t it? Well, there’s pulled pork sandwiches and lots of chips, and snacks, and some fruit over there. We’ve also got our patented root beer floats, and you’re welcome to indulge yourself. Right over there are the kegs and taps. Plastic cups, spoons, and napkins on the table, and there’s the ice cream. We had to pack it hard in ice on a warm day like this. It’ll stay cold and hard for a couple more hours.”
Sievert nodded, and tried hard to smile. He leaned close to George.
“You don’t happen to have some of that special wine of yours lying around, do you?”
George squinted and knitted his brow. “Special wine? Now what special wine is that?”
Sievert looked distressed. “Don’t you remember?” he whispered. “That special wine made from coast-of-Oregon grapes? So strong that you don’t really notice how strong it is? And the amazing thing, it doesn’t make you sick or act like a complete drunken fool?”
George couldn’t remember how long it had been since the Mikkelsons had asked for their “special wine,” though no one could forget their introduction to it. He smiled at the recollection of that first encounter. The introverted Mikkelsons had become alarmingly drunk, boisterous, and, even threatening on that day he and Nan had invited them up to the patio for a glass of Sagelands. After they’d glugged down three filled-to-the-brim servings, then demanded—yes, demanded!—more, George had been forced to improvise for the sake of everyone’s safety. He had switched them over to Cranberry PowerPressPlus, Cullen’s power drink, and pretended it was wine so potent that it didn’t even taste like ordinary wine. Advertised as having “three times the caffeine and twice the sugar of a regular Coke,” it had made the Mikkelsons rambunctious, but saved them from what could have been an ugly scene that day.
“Hmmm, well, we might have some left. But you know, Sievert, this is a non-alcoholic event. We don’t want you and Deanne running naked through the woods and leaving little Sievert Junior to be eaten by raccoons and opossums. Ha-ha!”
Sievert blushed and looked down at his sneakers, which George noticed were decorated with pictures of babies in cowboy and astronaut outfits.
“You know that wine doesn’t make you do that,” Sievert said shyly. “Otherwise, we wouldn’t dream of taking so much as a sip. What it does is make you more sociable. Don’t you remember? That’s such a good thing for us in a setting like this. And we’d like to get to know some of our neighbors a little better.”
George stroked his chin and pretended to give the matter careful consideration.
“Well, okay, I’ll see if we have some. I’ll just put it
in regular cups for you so the other guests don’t come asking for it. Okay?”
Luckily, there was plenty of PowerPressPlus in the refrigerator. George emerged from the back door with two brimming cups.
“Oh, wonderful!” gushed Sievert. “You have some!”
“Yes, we do,” George said. “But this is all you get. Be very careful about mixing this with the root beer floats. I’d say limit yourself to one each. Otherwise, I’m not responsible for your behavior. And, if people ask, tell them we gave you some grape juice.”
“Yes, George, will do, though that would be telling a lie, and we’re not very good at that. In fact we’re awful at telling lies.”
“A couple sips of that and you’ll get much better. Trust me.”
Sievert marched off with the sloshing cups to Deanne, who was talking very quietly to Nan as Nan played with an unresponsive baby Sievert.
“Our special beverage,” said Sievert, holding up the cup for Deanne to inspect as if it were a gemstone of incalculable value. “You know, the one we liked so much when we used to come here.... Sorry to interrupt, Nan.”
“Oh, no,” said Nan, whose exchanges with Deanne were falling well short of anything you’d worry about interrupting. “Not at all, Sievert.”
Deanne’s eyes lit up.
“Oh, yes,” she cried. “Oh, heavens yes. Would you please hold Sievert, Jr., for me for a minute, Nan, while I take a couple of sips of your wonderful drink?”
What wonderful drink? thought Nan. She took the baby, who looked at her with a witless, uncomprehending expression, and turned toward George, who winked and smiled at her. It took ten seconds for the Mikkelsons to glug down their drinks and sigh almost orgasmically. They looked at George pleadingly.
“Oh, okay, but just one more. Our supplies aren’t limitless, you know.” The refills went down in five seconds flat.
“Watch it now,” George warned.
“Don’t worry about us,” Deanne said. “We can hold our booze, can’t we, dear?”
“Of course, sweetest. Well, newly fortified as we are, shall we go and mingle?”
“Let’s go mingle till the cows come home,” said Deanne, yanking baby Sievert back from Nan. Then, off they went, accosting everyone they came across with a surfeit of bonhomie that had the neighbors talking about them for months.
“Cranberry PowerPressPlus,” said George to Nan once the Mikkelsons had gotten out of earshot. “Turns the meek into the mighty. They needed a booster shot to be able to function here.”
Nan laughed.
“Ah, yes,” she said. “Our special Mikkelson drink. Maybe they ought to start giving that to baby Sievert.”
The yard was starting to fill up with guests. Here were the Winthrops and the McCandlesses, and such lesser, though still considerable, friends as the Davieses, the MacDonalds, the Brittles, and the LeBlancs. Some folks new to the neighborhood—the Spinozas, Jon Warneke and Geoff Beadle, the Rodriguezes, and the Singhs—were here, mostly oohing and aahing over the gardens. Jon and Geoff were showing signs of being future, though smaller-scale, competitors if they expanded what they had growing in their yard. What was there now was already beautiful—especially the resurgent peonies, which had been left in a rather dire state by the previous homeowners—though they used too much Dusty Miller in their borders. And here were the Fletchers, plowing straight through the thick underbrush tangling up the strip of woods. There was the usual complement of neighbors, barely known acquaintances from the world of education, politics, religion, and the Livia Athletic Association, and the occasional complete stranger drawn by the now-well-known glories of the Fremont gardens. In fact, the Burdick’s sign was still up, with one week left before it was to be taken down. Probably as a result of that, the number of strangers in attendance seemed to be greater this year than last.
“Some people must figure this is a public tour-the-Fremont-garden day,” Nan said to George. “I’ve picked out at least a dozen people here I’ve never seen before. Mostly in the front yard.”
“Me too,” said George. “And after what happened last year, I can’t help but get a little nervous about it.”
Nan snorted.
“Oh, don’t sweat it, George. There’s no contest this year. No reason for gardening saboteurs to be casing the grounds like they did last year. I just hope they don’t all discover the root beer floats, or we’re gonna run out pretty quick.”
Nan sauntered off to greet the Boozers, who would stay for one quick root beer float only, then leave. She was soon back at George’s shoulder, surveying the crowded yard to make sure the children weren’t trampling through the flowers, and to spot newcomers who might merit a personalized greeting.
“There’s that idiot, Merle Pressman, on the school board,” said Nan, pointing her float toward a clot of visitors who were standing in one of the hosta beds. “Amazing how people feel that they can just stand right on top of somebody’s hosta as if it were some kind of rubber plant that can spring right back up after you grind it down good. Of course that’s where the stupid politicians are, since that’s where they can do the most damage. I see Richard Mellon and Lucia Everett. Aren’t they running for their House and Senate seats again?”
George shrugged.
“And there’s our idiot mayor. What’s he doing here? Slumming among the middle-class voters, I suppose. George, please go tell them to kindly get off the hosta. Or we won’t vote for them in November. Ha-ha!”
George, fortified by another root beer float, strode off to take on Livia’s political machine while Nan took in the rest of the scene.
There must have been a hundred and fifty people in the backyard now. The crowd took up almost every square inch of lawn, which was probably why some were standing in the hosta beds. Here came another procession of visitors up the steps toward Nan. The Goodriches offered their customary cold, formal greetings. The Buckwalds were perfunctory. The Hoo-senfoots and Mitchells were absolutely gaga over how the gardens looked this year. All moved on quickly to the feeding stations. Then came Marta Poppendauber, all by herself and smiling in the subtle, unself-conscious way that suggested she was basking in the glories of the Fremont gardens. Nan and Marta hugged unabashedly.
“Marta!” gushed Nan. “How nice of you to come!”
“I must say I felt like I’d be intruding,” Marta said. “Especially after what happened last year. I was even reluctant to bring over Dr. Sproot last month to do her penance. But she insisted on having a chaperone. Ha! Imagine that.”
“If we thought you’d be an intruder we wouldn’t have sent you an invitation,” said Nan, ignoring the reference to Dr. Sproot. “You’re always welcome here, Marta, and so is . . . oh, my . . . what is your husband’s name?”
Marta smiled. “It’s Hamilton, but I call him Ham,” she said, giggling. “He really is not very interested in gardening and things like that. Just kind of leaves it to me to tell him what to do and where to put things. It must be nice to have a husband like George, who takes such an active interest in gardening.”
“Ah, yes,” said Nan. She cast her gaze over to where George was lost in conversation with the politicians, who were still standing on the hosta. “Uh, George needs to be told things sometimes, too, but he’s picked up a lot over the last seven years. You know, Marta, Ham doesn’t have to talk about gardening when he comes over. George is always looking for someone to talk Muskie baseball with.”
“Ham is a huge fan,” Marta said. “I’ll tell him that. My gosh, Nan, your front yard is divine. I went over to look at it before coming back here. I know most of what’s there, but not everything. Will you tell me?”
“Of course I will,” Nan said. “Anything you want to know. There are no gardening secrets here.”
“Maybe not,” Marta said admiringly. “But there is gardening talent that puts all the rest of us to shame . . . Uh, Nan?”
“Yes?”
“This might be nothing. It might be nothing at all. In fact, I almost hesitate to bring
it up.”
“Yes?”
“Dr. Sproot might be back on the warpath again.”
Nan gulped down a cold lump of ice cream that almost choked her, suffered through a brief bout of constricted esophagus pain, then forced out a brittle, defiant laugh.
“What!”
“She’s changed back into her old self.”
“What’s that to us? She can gag on all her spite and hatred for all we care.”
“She seems to be out to extract some vengeance. We’re all on the lookout. No one feels safe.”
“After almost going to prison last year for all the havoc she wreaked?”
“Yes. She’s really out of her mind.”
“Marta,” Nan said. “You can tell that woman, if you are still on speaking terms with her, that if she comes over and threatens our property the way she did last year, I will call the police and press charges. Or, if I’m mad enough, take George’s baseball bat and smash her little pea brain in.”
Nan stared at Marta, then spooned another glob of ice cream into her mouth and worked it slowly around.
Marta smiled, remembering how brave the Fremonts were last year, George with his baseball bat and Nan with her butcher knife triumphing during that terrible storm.
“I don’t talk to her anymore, Nan,” she said with a sigh. “I’ve given up on rehabilitating Dr. Sproot. I really hope she doesn’t mean us harm.”
“That stupid old harpy!” cried Nan. “Let her just show her face around here. And she can have her dumb old fairy house back, for that matter. It’s just sitting over there taking up space and acting as an unfortunate conversation piece for our friends, who somehow equate my horticultural communications with a belief in fairies. Oh, Marta, you wouldn’t believe it!”
“Yes, I would,” Marta said. “But I think you should keep the fairy house, Nan. You never know when it might come in handy. Well, I’ll leave you to your other guests.” With that, she slipped away into the crowd.
Nan shivered with a strange, murderous impulse. Tremors of unfamiliar rage shot out through her extremities, threatening her balance and forcing her to clasp her root beer float with both hands. How dare that awful woman so much as think about coming back here to do harm! She began to entertain images of Dr. Sproot entwined and constricted to death by the clematis, or torn to shreds by serrated saws whose teeth were made of hybrid tea rose thorns.
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