Local Knowledge

by Liza Gyllenhaal

  I squatted down next to Kathy. I took her hand. It was flaccid—and also surprisingly hot and damp, as though she were running a fever. Her face was flushed as well. She wouldn’t look at me. I knew there was no point in saying that she should have called, she should have told me. Kathy never asked for attention. I honestly believe that she felt she didn’t deserve it. She had come to her marriage so full of love and high hopes. She’d wanted Bob so badly and for such a long time, she told me when they first got engaged, that when he proposed marriage to her she felt that she could never ask for another thing in her whole life. She’d used up all her wishes on the first round, and now the genie was gone, and the spell could not be reversed. When I first knew her she’d been a little bit more forthcoming, but now she very rarely talked about her real feelings.

  “How far along are you?” I asked.

  “Only five months. I already look like a tub, don’t I?”

  “How are you feeling?”

  “Oh, like hell, but then I always do.”

  “I’m sorry that I’ve been so busy. Is there anything I can do? Are you guys going to be okay?”

  “Oh, sure. We’re good. We’re great.”

  “Were you … was this planned?”

  “You know what? I’ve kind of stopped thinking about it that way. Life isn’t something you can plan. It happens. You adjust. You learn to be grateful for what you get.”

  “Yes, but with Danny … I mean, you went through a pretty tough time with him. I hate to think of you having to go through that kind of thing again.”

  “Well, you know what? You don’t have to worry about me. I’m fine. We’re doing good.”

  “Okay,” I said, letting go of her hand and standing up. “We came to get you for supper. Paul and Lia are saving us all a table.”

  “No. I can’t.” She looked up at me, and with my eyes now adjusted to the dimness, I could see that her face was all swollen and splotchy. She’d obviously been crying. Hard.

  “Oh, Kath—”

  “No! Don’t you dare look at me that way! Leave me alone! I told Bob you probably weren’t coming this year. He’s busy anyway. Dealing with everything.”

  “Okay,” I said. There was a time, and not that long ago, when my concern would have been welcome. I felt helpless. And sorry. I couldn’t bear to leave on that note. So, struggling to find something else to say, I told her, “It’s great that BlueFest is doing so well. Bob told Paul about the advance ticket sales.”

  “And what exactly did he say?”

  “Just that you were way ahead of last year, and you’d turned a profit then.”

  “Is that what he’s saying?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know what?” Kathy said. “I bet Paul is beginning to wonder what happened to you and Beanie.”

  It was a beautiful night. Moonless and clear. The stars were brilliant against the black sky. We picked out the summer constellations: the Little Dipper, Cassiopeia, fleet-footed Pegasus, roaring Big Bear. The warm night air smelled of newly mown grass—as well as the freshly rolled kind. Many in the crowd were old hippie types, with graying beards and balding heads, black leather vests and biker tattoos. Luckily, the food tent had been crowded and noisy, and we were forced to share a table with another family, the Ludlows from Framingham, who came every year. We could hear the “Dinner Hour Jamboree” behind us on the main stage: five different banjos going full tilt at “Foggy Mountain Breakdown.”

  “I do a little banjo picking myself,” Al Ludlow had told Paul. “To me, bluegrass is the real country music. It’s pure, authentic. I wouldn’t miss BlueFest for the world.” When Al heard that the farm had been in Paul’s family for generations, it seemed that he would never stop talking. His family had sold their farm forty years back, and he’d always regretted it. I chatted in a desultory way with the wife as we fed our kids. But I was grateful that the Ludlows were there, serving to distract us from the fact that others were not. Paul had merely nodded when I told him quietly that Bob was busy and Kathy not feeling well. He could tell by my expression that something was up. That we’d talk about it later.

  “These old farms. They’re what New England’s all about. It’s great to come back here summer after summer. So I guess the festival helps keep things going, right? I hear a lot of farmers are doing this kind of thing now to help make ends meet.”

  “That’s right,” Paul said. “My brother was one of the first ones to try it. He struggled with it for a while, but now it’s turned into a revenue source.”

  “You used to be a dairy, too, right? I noticed the old milking sheds.”

  “We were. Biggest one in the county at one point. Bob’s got a plan to move into manufacturing goat cheese next. Chev-rah. He’s got a lot of irons in the fire.”

  “We should get going,” I told Paul as I began to gather up our used paper plates and napkins. “We don’t want to miss Mr. Johnnycakes.” In fact, I couldn’t listen any longer to my husband’s optimistic talk about his brother’s plans. How were things really with Bob? Bad, I thought. No, I think I knew. The Ludlows would not be coming back to BlueFest next summer.

  Underneath it all, summer is really sort of a sad time, I think. It can never live up to everything you want it to be. And then, too, it comes freighted with so many memories. Seeing one firefly brings back a hundred lost nights of fireflies blinking like thousands of tiny white Christmas tree lights in the darkness. The voice of a child calling—Hey, everybody, wait up for me!—was one’s own once, or that of a grandmother, long gone now. I watched Lia and Beanie listen with rapt attention to that silly one-man band and felt my heart breaking. It wasn’t fair that such belief in an old clown’s talent—such admiration for his red sponge nose and orange fright wig—would turn into boredom in another few years. We stayed for the sing-along afterward, then walked back to the food concessions and bought ice cream cones. Marie Bisel was on the main stage. She was singing “Don’t Fall in Love with a Rambler” in her haunting contralto, backed by her husband on the mandolin.

  “River City isn’t on until nine thirty,” Paul said. “Let’s take a quick look at the contra dancing.” Bob always hired a good caller and a first-class fiddler from Buffalo. The tent was crowded and hot—I think everybody had the same idea as we did—but we managed to slip in anyway and were soon digging for the oysters, digging for the clams. Shoo fly, don’t bother me. I feel, I feel, I feel like a morning star.

  I saw them before I realized who they were. They were dancing alone, off in the corner of the tent, to their own music. The way Luke had done with Leslie years ago. But this was nothing like that, Luke had told me. It’s a whole different universe. And it’s true that I felt they really did exist in another dimension, one where the regular rules didn’t apply. Though they were being foolish, of course. Anyone could have seen them there, could have started rumors flying. Though no one did. Except me. I would glance over from time to time to see them moving together in the shadows. Until, when I looked again, they were gone.

  28

  I thought it was clever of Owen Phelps to decide to hold the meeting in the old town hall. For the last fifteen years or so, in order to accommodate our town’s growing numbers, we’ve moved these bigger get-togethers to the old high school gymnasium, where there’s a lot more room to spread out. But this meeting was about the town hall, after all. We were going to discuss and vote on the possibility of nominating it for inclusion in the National Register of Historic Places, the first step in Owen’s long-percolating plan to restore the building to its former glory.

  When it was built just before the Civil War, the two-story white-clapboarded structure was probably considered pretty standard for its day, and it still retains a certain utilitarian air that aptly reflects its no-nonsense Yankee roots. Its wide pine floors are dark and scuffed with age, and the twenty-foot second-floor ceilings are a patchwork of stopgap repairs. But the upstairs meeting room is beautifully proportioned, its row of four arched windows tell
ing of a time when public spaces were built with civic pride in mind—and little thought for fuel prices. In fact, during the middle decades of the nineteenth century, smoke from dozens of active charcoal kilns drifted over the hills surrounding the town.

  For most of the last century, the rooms downstairs housed the police and town offices. But the upstairs has always had a more social function: lectures, teas, dances, plays, even, briefly, a series of basketball games were held there. Paintings and photos of these and other town events line the walls: graduations, marching bands, church suppers, Fourth of July parades, large groups of somber-looking men in three-piece suits and heavy mustaches, standing at attention for some long-forgotten ceremony. It always strikes me as shortsighted that so few of these carefully framed photographs are labeled, that we’ll never know the names of these shyly smiling children in front of the single-room schoolhouse.

  Glassed-in cases against the north wall display dust-covered exhibits: the electrical hand generator model created in the mid-1800s by our local inventor; a neatly folded but fraying Union flag; a grouping of badly moth-eaten taxidermy experiments; arrowheads and flints left behind by the Mahican Indians. If our history is to be found in any one place, it is here. Though the room was crowded and stuffy—the town had never found the funds to replace the old ceiling fans with air-conditioning—it felt appropriate to be deciding the building’s future in the very place that had been witness to so much of our past. By eight o’clock almost every folding chair was taken, and a number of men, out of politeness or dislike for the hard metal seats, were leaning against the back wall. Paul was there, talking to Carl and Bob, though he’d be joining Owen and the other selectmen at the dais when the meeting was called to order.

  I was sitting between Janie Hibbert and Nina Clymer, both longtime residents of the town, friends, fellow mothers. I served with Janie on the school committee. I’ve helped organize numerous Girl Scout events with Nina.

  “Haven’t seen you at the pond all summer,” Nina was saying to me, “though Rachel and her crew seem to be there every time we are. Who are those cute little blond children she’s taking care of?”

  “Max and Katie Zeller. The family bought the big place that Paul helped Nicky Polanski put up.”

  “Oh, right,” Nina said, exchanging a quick glance with Janie. “You mean the people who had the fireworks this year. The place above Luke Barnett’s, right? Didn’t someone tell me that you brokered that?”

  “Yes,” I said. “And the other big one farther up.”

  “That’s what I heard,” Janie said “And I say good for you. That’s really sticking it to him.”

  “No, honestly, I didn’t—” I began to say, but Nina waved me off.

  “Hey,” she said, “I think it’s great, too. He’s only getting what he deserves. That family always expected special treatment. And that’s just how he acted during that whole big flap. Like laws weren’t meant for him.” They were talking about Luke, of course, and they thought they were doing me a favor by running him down.

  “Okay, I’d like to get the ball rolling here,” Owen called from the front of the room, banging his little gavel on the tabletop. “I just love doing that! Takes me right back to kindergarten and old Mrs. Ebert. Now, come on, everybody, let’s settle down. Find a seat if there’re any left back there.”

  Owen has an easygoing, irreverent manner, and, according to Paul, a very salty humor around the men. He was born and raised in Red River, but had gone up to Williams on a scholarship and then on to Harvard for a law degree. After a successful career in the Hartford area, he retired back in Red River, buying and restoring the old Thornstein house and farm, and taking up the reins of local government. Both Paul and I believe we’re all pretty lucky to have him. He likes to affect a kind of hayseed folksiness, but underneath that lies a sharp intellect and an often ruthless determination. In many ways, the meeting tonight was just a lot of window dressing. Owen had already decided that we were going to restore the town hall. In fact, Paul told me that Owen and his ad hoc committee had been holding lengthy discussions with historic preservationists and architects and were homing in on a contractor. But Owen was smart enough to know that the townspeople needed to feel that they had given the project their blessing. Or better yet, that it had actually been their idea from the very beginning.

  “Okay, then, shall we move to dispense with the reading of the minutes from the November eighth meeting? Do I have a taker … ?”

  It went pretty much as Owen had planned it. He had one of his preservation specialists, a Mr. Ingers from Northhampton, address the meeting and read from his report on the significance of the building, how it “epitomized the pre-Civil War Greek Revival tradition, once seen throughout rural New England but now sadly disappearing from our architectural landscape.” Then Owen gave a slide show he’d put together of “great moments in the town hall’s history,” which included a good sampling of historic prints and photos, but as many shots of people presently in the room, even one of a skinny young Bob Alden, getting pinned with a second-prize ribbon for some 4-H project. Owen gave a humorous running commentary to go along with the show. The whole room was laughing by the time the lights were switched on again. The proposition was read and a vote taken immediately after that. It passed unanimously.

  “Okay, then, moving right along here,” Owen said, looking over his half glasses at his notes. “We have a few more pieces of business to address before we can launch our headlong attack on the Greater Years refreshment table …”

  I looked around the room for Richard Zeller, and I noticed Paul scanning the audience as well. We’d both admitted on our way over that we worried about what Richard would say—and how the committee might react. Luke didn’t have many friends left in Red River these days, as Nina’s and Janie’s comments attested, and the town’s attitude toward the Barnett legacy in general had turned distinctly negative over the years. That the Barnett and Hughes families had originally settled the whole northern half of the county, had worked for generations to clear the forests, help build the first churches, underwrite the militia, pay for the first teachers—all this had been forgotten in light of the family’s more recent history. What people remembered was Howell driving drunk through town. The debts he’d left behind. What people talked about was Mrs. Barnett’s drug taking, her years in and out of mental institutions. And, of course, they remembered Luke, the golden boy brought down by tragedy who refused everybody’s pity. Who had been as arrogant and isolated in poverty as any Barnett had been at his wealthiest and most secure. Who had brought shame to what was left of his family’s reputation—and scandal to the town. And who, for a good part of the last decade, had appeared to relish the role of outcast and iconoclast, thumbing his nose at propriety and appearances and becoming a thorn in the side of local government.

  “The other day I tried to get Owen’s reading on the Luke and Zeller thing,” Paul told me in the car. “But all he would say was that he’s sick and tired of the whole issue. It’s been worrying me, though, that he’s letting Zeller go public with it. It might mean Owen’s finally ready to take some action.”

  Of course, I had plenty of reasons of my own to be worried about Luke and Richard Zeller. I knew from Rachel that Richard had been delayed in the city and hadn’t been expected at Maple Rise until early in the evening. I was hoping that Anne had decided to tell him right away that she wanted out of the marriage. And that he’d been blindsided by her news. With something so catastrophic to deal with, I hoped he would have forgotten about the town meeting altogether. Distantly, I heard Ellie Warden’s reporting on the Labor Day picnic preparations. I’d only been half listening to other people all day, it seemed. I’d been thinking about Anne instead. Trying to imagine her waiting to greet her husband and tell him that their marriage was finally over. I found myself mentally willing her: Do it now. Tonight. As soon as he walks in the door.

  “Thank you, Ellie,” Owen was saying. “Sounds like you ladies have things we
ll in hand for next weekend. Okay then, we have one more item on the agenda. Richard Zeller would like to say a few words. I think a lot of you know him from his open house on July Fourth.” Owen looked up and around the room, then waved to someone in the back by the stairs and said, “Why don’t you come on up here where folks can hear you, Richard.”

  We don’t usually see many second-home owners at our town meetings. They don’t have voting privileges, the meetings are often held on weekday nights, and the issues raised probably seem pretty mundane to most of them. I think, though, that Owen had scheduled this special meeting for a Friday night, hoping he might be able to entice some of the wealthy weekenders to join us. He’d had some flyers about the purpose and importance of the gathering run off and posted around town—at the general store, post office, True Value—places where second-home owners might see them. After all, Owen would be needing their money when he started fund-raising for the renovation campaign. He may even have hoped that by giving Richard Zeller a hearing he’d be able to extract a little quid pro quo from him in the near future.

  Richard lumbered up the center aisle, a heavyset man with a business jacket tossed over his shoulder and a well-worn leather satchel slung across that. He wore suspenders in a rich paisley pattern. The cuffs of his pale raspberry pink shirt were rolled halfway up his forearms, a midnight blue tie was loosened at his neck. He looked powerful in every way a man who’s not handsome can: both physically imposing and emotionally confident. Owen made a move to get up and give him his seat and access to the microphone, but Richard waved him back down. His voice could be heard in the back of the room without him straining. It was clear that he was accustomed to speaking to large groups, and that he was comfortable on his feet, talking as though to friends. He was good at using his hands to include people in his thinking.

  “Thank you for giving me this opportunity. It’s good to see you all again, and I’m glad I could make it. Though I just did—the Friday night traffic was awful. My wife and kids and I feel very fortunate to have a home in this beautiful and welcoming community. We’ve been very happy here. We really enjoyed so many of you coming to our house to see the fireworks. But I’ll tell you, a kind of sad thing happened after that. That man who lives down at the end of our driveway complained, actually called up Tom Langlois here”—Richard nodded to the chief, who was sitting in the second row—“and made a stink because someone had bumped into one of the tacky so-called sculptures he insists on displaying on his lawn.”