Local Knowledge

by Liza Gyllenhaal

  Luke stared at him, then nodded slowly.

  “I guess I better be going,” he said, pushing back his chair.

  “So go then,” Paul muttered, lowering his head again.

  “Let me turn the porch light on,” I said, following Luke out of the room.

  “You going to be okay alone with him?” Luke asked, turning to me as he opened the back door. The air was cold and heady after the close dankness of the kitchen.

  “Sure. You know he didn’t mean what he said. Whatever it was he was trying to say.”

  Luke laughed in the dark and I could see his breath puffing in the dampness. I turned on the light.

  “I know, Maddie. Don’t worry about me.” I watched him walk down the overgrown path and cut through the wild, untended vegetable garden, then disappear into the wooded rise that led up to his house. I felt a sudden urge to call after him. To thank him. To tell him I was sorry. I’d been wrong about many things. But I let him go. I heard the snap and crunch of his boots in the underbrush long after I’d lost sight of him. It was the first time I realized that Luke offered Paul and me a kind of ballast, a balancing and leveling off of our still immature and sometimes volatile love. It was the first time I sensed the possibility of a real friendship between us. Two days later all that hope and goodwill came crashing down, like a mirror shattering, like the illusion all of this had been anyway.

  “Lukie! I need you! I know you’re down there. I heard you come in. I’ve got ears like a cat, you know. Now get up here, baby!”

  I stood frozen just inside the Barnetts’ front door, the disembodied voice of Luke’s mother drifting querulously down the stairs from somewhere up above. Though I’d visited Paul numerous times, this was the first time I’d been inside the estate’s main house. I still wasn’t certain why I was there. I’d been studying for my history final in the kitchen down at the cottage, waiting for Paul to come back from his meeting with Luke and the backers in Albany, when the phone rang.

  “Maddie,” Paul whispered my name.

  “Where are you? What’s wrong?”

  “Go up to the big house. Wait for me there.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “Just go. Now.”

  Though it was not yet five o’clock, the November afternoon was already dimming as I cut through the woods and then up the long maple-lined driveway. The stately white house at the top of the rise looked out vacantly over the dry fountain and empty, leaf-strewn basin, the two diamond-shaped perennial beds gone to riotous seed, and the untrimmed forsythia bushes enveloping the portico. The front gray-veined marble steps, hauled by mule from the quarries of western Massachusetts in the mid-1700s, had survived a fire that had totally demolished the original structure, two murderous Indian raids, three devastating wars, and the mercurial and often self-destructive spirit of seven generations of Barnetts. The property’s current state of disrepair—the green-streaked brass-domed cupola, the upper fan window with its two missing panes, the marble urns that were clotted with weeds at the base of the front steps—only seemed to add luster to the mansion’s tragic air.

  “That is you, isn’t it, baby?”

  I looked up the wide stairs that divided in two at the landing and turned up on either side of the main staircase in shorter flights to the second floor. An Oriental runner covered the steps and the spacious landing that seemed to also serve as a portrait gallery. Late-afternoon sunlight from the upper fan window slanted across two dozen or so paintings and photographs, arranged with care despite the film of dust that appeared to have settled on every available surface.

  The downstairs rooms, shadowy in the late-afternoon dusk, contained a clutter of antique chairs and settees, built-in bookcases filled with dark leather-bound volumes, porcelains and other bric-a-brac arranged on delicate end tables and behind glassed-in cases. A tinny, ethereal ding! ding! ding! suddenly broke the silence, emanating from the miniature workings of an elegant clock on the mantelpiece. It was twenty past five by my watch; three o’clock in whatever lost world the clock inhabited. I saw my reflection in the tarnished mirror above the mantel: my round face, pale and luminous as the moon, mottled in the disintegrating surface of the glass. Then I heard the sound of sirens.

  The Barnett estate is situated on River Road, a long, lonely two-lane highway that is the main east-west thoroughfare through town. Though that section of the roadway is straight and flat, for some reason it seems to attract more than its share of automobile accidents, primarily teenagers who’ve been drinking or who take advantage of the road’s even course to drag race. The sirens wailed along that road, growing closer, and then I could see the red lights of three police cruisers flashing through the trees.

  “Who’s there? Who’s coming? What’s going on?” Mrs. Barnett whispered from above. She was closer than before, perhaps even standing in one of the dark corners of the landing, but I still couldn’t make out more than a vaguely defined shadow.

  “It’s just Maddie Fedderson,” I called up the stairs. “I’m a friend of Luke’s and Paul’s. I was down at the house where Paul is staying, and they called and told me to come up and wait for them here.”

  “What’s happening? Is there a fire? What do you want?” I knew panic when I heard it, but I didn’t know what to tell her, or how to calm her down. Then, the wail of the sirens changed direction, and I realized that the cruisers had turned in at the Barnetts’ stone entrance and were racing up the driveway toward the house.

  I heard a sudden scuffling as Luke’s mother ran up the short second flight and down a hallway. A door slammed shut. Her terror, irrational though it might have been, infected me. All at once, I was overcome by the certainty that something terrible was happening. No, had already happened. The sirens wailed. The flashing red lights approached. Strobed through the hallway. And then swept on, into the woods, up the sloping hillside, sirens weeping, north and westward, toward the construction site where Paul had invested his hopes and dreams, where I had made my leap of faith, upward and on to the end of my world as I knew it.

  Part Three

  8

  After that day at the pond, Anne began to wage a forthright campaign to win my friendship. She wasn’t subtle in her approach. She would call me at the office and at home, always apologizing for taking up my time, asking questions about where to find a dry cleaner’s or how best to deal with a wasp infestation. Then, after some aimless chatter, she’d suggest we take the kids berry picking the next afternoon, or back up to the pond for a swim. I was flattered, of course, but I tried not to take her interest too much to heart. Once she got settled and met other weekenders, I told myself, she’d drift away.

  “She’s lonely,” Paul declared one night after Anne phoned. The area had lost electrical power during a thunderstorm, and she called me to make sure it wasn’t just Maple Rise that had gone down. We were already in bed when she called, and I apologized to Paul after she kept me on the phone for several minutes. Though he hadn’t yet met her, I’d told him enough about her so that he thought he understood her situation, and he came to her defense: “Listen, she’s up here all alone all week in that huge house with a couple of kids and she’s probably a little scared. She doesn’t know who else to turn to yet. She’s lucky to have you, Maddie.”

  Paul agreed with my assessment that we probably wouldn’t stay this close for very long. For one thing, the Naylors had made a good offer on Oak Rise, and between them and the two other Polanski listings that Nana had sold recently, the Zellers were soon to be surrounded by wealthy New York second-homers like themselves. But Paul encouraged me to be a good neighbor in the meantime. I think he approved of the fact that Anne appeared to be genuinely interested in what Red River had to offer as a community—shopping at the local farm stands, swimming up at Indian Pond, taking Max and Katie to the Children’s Hour at the town library.

  “I’ve lived in the city for almost twenty years, and I can’t begin to tell you how great it is to wake up in the morning and hear birds singing!
” she told me on the phone one morning several weeks after the Zellers had moved in. “It’s amazing. This is it—do you know what I mean? This is the real thing. I’m actually thinking of starting a vegetable garden. Tell me everything you know about growing tomatoes!”

  “Well, it’s too late in the season to start from seed,” I replied, while running a spell check on an e-mail I’d been preparing for a new client. As Anne usually did most of the talking, I’d found that I could work and chat with her on the phone at the same time. “You’ll need to buy some plants. I recommend you get cherries, as they ripen faster. Taylor Farms usually has the best.”

  “Let’s all meet there after you’re done today, okay? And then you guys can come back over here for dinner, because Paul will be working late, right? As a matter of fact, we’ve got this outdoor gas grill I haven’t even turned on yet. Well, of course you know! You sold it to me.”

  Though we’d visited various places together with our kids, I’d managed to sidestep Anne’s several invitations to the girls and myself to come back with them to Maple Rise. Then, the day before, I’d mentioned to her that Paul, who was starting a new multimillion-dollar McMansion in Covington, would be tied up at work most nights, now that the sun wasn’t setting until nine or so. I’d told her about this because I was so proud that he’d landed such a lucrative job, but now I could have kicked myself. All afternoon I felt apprehensive about the coming evening. I was happy to offer companionship and advice to Anne, but I wasn’t going to be able to reciprocate in kind when it came to entertaining.

  We live in an eighteenth-century farmhouse that’s bursting at the seams with just the five of us. The place was a wreck when Paul and I bought it. For the first three years, we lived on the ground floor, slowly renovating room after room. It still needs a lot of work but, as the family’s grown and Paul and I have both gotten so busy, we’ve let things slide. The kitchen especially could use a total makeover. Day to day, it doesn’t bother me. But I had no intention of letting Anne see my battered wood-veneer kitchen cabinets or the chipped Formica countertops. I’m generous and accommodating to a fault. But I won’t tolerate anyone’s pity.

  I picked up the girls from Kathy’s and met Anne and her kids at Taylor Farms around five thirty. I helped her select eight Sweet 100s and a couple of Golden Pear and Spanish plum tomato plants, all now leggy from being in their pots for too long. We picked out seeds for lettuce, arugula, radishes, cucumbers, and bush beans—things that would get off to a fast start in our short growing season.

  “Oh, can we get some of these, too?” she cried, reaching for the prettily designed packet of morning glory seeds. “My grandmother used to have them climbing up her back porch when I was a girl. I just loved the way they twined and twisted. They’re like something out of a fairy tale—do you know what I mean?”

  She was wearing chinos and a pale blue silk work shirt, her shock of white hair now offset by a rich tan. With her milky pink pedicure and Prada backpack, her adorable blond children in tow, she looked like something out of a Ralph Lauren ad: casually chic and absolutely sure of herself. And she was almost ridiculously grateful to me for my straightforward guidance and advice. As we walked together down the crowded aisles, she would nudge me with her elbow, or touch my arm, as if to reassure herself that I was real, that I was actually there, helping her. Her obvious pleasure in us all being together made me feel sad. Of course, she didn’t know that I’d already decided this would probably be our last excursion.

  “Let’s get some corn for dinner. What do you think?” she asked. “And some of those big tomatoes and that buffalo mozzarella. God, everything looks so good! Should we do steaks, Maddie? Or hamburgers and hot dogs? Though I have to tell you that I’m a little nervous about turning on that grill. I assume you know about that sort of thing?”

  “Don’t worry, we cook out all the time,” Rachel told her as we started to unload the shopping cart. “And we have a gas Weber. There’s no real mystery to it.”

  “So you say,” Anne replied, laughing. “You have no idea what a total loss I am in the kitchen. It’s pretty much foreign territory to me, I’m afraid.”

  The first thing I noticed when we drove up the driveway to Maple Rise was that the lawn needed mowing. Badly. We’d had a lot of rain over the past two weeks and the grass had shot up nearly a foot since the last time I was there. It gave the expensive, architecturally dramatic house an oddly scruffy appearance, like an elegantly dressed man with a five-o’clock shadow and beer on his breath. I suggested that Rachel organize the younger kids to help bring in the groceries while Anne and I transported the plants to her garden plot. I’m not sure what I’d expected. Knowing what I did about Anne, especially her limited experience in rural living, I should have realized that her desire for a garden would not be supported by any practical measures to make it a reality.

  “I was thinking right about here,” she said, stopping a third of the way down the hill in the knee-deep grass about a hundred feet west of the house. “What do you think?”

  “Here?” I repeated, leaning over to set my cardboard tray of seedlings on the grass. I straightened up slowly. “And you were thinking we’d put these plants in today, Anne?”

  “Is it too hot? Are you tired? Of course, we can wait.”

  “No, it’s not that. But I have to tell you that you have a lot of work ahead of you before you’ll be able to plant anything—let alone have a prayer that it grows. You’ll need to have the soil tilled, the rocks removed, and a layer of topsoil and compost worked in, though raised beds might be more efficient. Also, you have to have a fence around the garden, or the deer and rabbits will be using it for a salad bar.”

  “Well, you must think I’m a total idiot, Maddie,” she said with a laugh and then, laughing harder, she flopped back into the grass. “I’m the fool on the hill, aren’t I? Oh, my God! You should have seen the look on your face when I told you where I wanted to put the tomatoes! I’m sorry, but it is sort of funny, don’t you think?”

  “Yes,” I said, sitting down next to her. “You really don’t know a damn thing about any of this, do you? And what the hell happened to your lawn? You can’t let it go like this, you know, or you’ll need to bring in a tractor to mow it.”

  “Yes, I’ve been meaning to call these people someone recommended to Richard, but we’ve just been so busy. I’ll call tomorrow. It will be top on the list.”

  I thought of the several long, late afternoons we’d dawdled away together with our children when, it seemed to me, Anne had all the time in the world. But I kept these thoughts to myself. And later, when we walked back up to the house and I saw that there were still moving boxes lying unopened in the front hall, I kept my surprise in check. Anne didn’t apologize for the lack of progress she seemed to be making, nor did she try to explain away the fact that from all appearances, she, Katie, and Max were dining off paper plates and plastic cutlery. The refrigerator, which I opened to put away the watermelon we’d brought for dessert, was a wasteland of sodas and Chardonnay, salsa, and white foam fast-food boxes.

  I took over. With Rachel’s help, the steak got seasoned, the corn husked, water (once a kettle was unearthed from one of the boxes) put on to boil, the tomatoes washed and, along with the mozzarella, sliced, the table set with Anne’s paper and plastic collection, and finally the gas grill activated.

  “You’re amazing—do you know that?” Anne said, leaning against the deck rail with her glass of wine in one hand and the one she’d poured for me in the other. “When did you learn to do all this stuff? Cooking and gardening, raising a family and running a business, too?”

  “Come on, I hardly run the business!” I laughed. I felt myself beginning to blush. She knew perfectly well my position at the agency. “I’ve only had my license for a year or so.”

  “Exactly! That’s just my point,” she said. “Look what you’ve accomplished in that short period of time. No, I mean it, Maddie. You’re very special, and the incredible thing about it
is that you don’t seem to have any idea that you are. You’re so unassuming. It’s … well, it’s lovely, really.”

  “Anne, honestly … ” I forked a steak for doneness, keeping my head down, hoping she wouldn’t notice that both my face and neck were now flushed. Yes, she was flattering me. I realized that. She was making much too much out of my minor achievements. But for whatever reason, she wanted to see me in that light; she had decided that I was this capable and accomplished person. It felt both disconcerting and emboldening. And what was the point of trying to correct Anne’s impression? Wouldn’t she just insist on seeing it as further evidence of my modesty? I suppose it’s possible to justify just about anything in the end.

  It was a lighthearted, lively dinner; a party atmosphere prevailed. We sat out on the deck around a large teak picnic table, eating corn with our fingers. Anne seemed to encourage her kids to converse with her as equals, though perhaps it was more that she didn’t mind coming down to their level. The three of them, in any case, were chatterboxes, regaling us with stories about their misadventures as transplanted city dwellers.

  “So then Max decided we should have the picnic in this really pretty field … ,” Anne was saying when Katie interrupted her.

  “It had a fence. We climbed over.”

  “Yes, we should have known better—right, Katie-pie? A fence should have been a sort of clue or something that they were trying to keep people out.”

  “No,” Max said. “They were keeping bulls in! Big fat black bulls!”

  “Oh, Lord,” Anne said and began to laugh. “They came snorting and galloping down that hill! And we—we just ran for it! I scooped Katie up in my arms and screamed at Max and we took off, leaving our lovely new picnic basket right there in the middle of the field. I hope those bulls enjoyed our expensive pâté.”

  They were all laughing at this point, remembering their close escape. I thought how carefree the three of them looked, seemingly untouched by the kind of parent-child crosscurrents that are constantly swirling around the girls and me.