She would just show up for Lavender, see what she could see.
The morning was perfect. The word “splendid” swayed through her mind, lit from behind with sunshine. The sky was clear as far as she could see, stretching over the rolling green fields like a Constable painting. Ruby started to sing a little, songs she remembered from her grandmother and from a short stint in Girl Scouts between bouts of chemo and from the camp she’d attended twice, full of sick kids who could be normal only with one another. The dogs trotted ahead, sometimes stopping to investigate some fabulous thing in the grass. Ruby strode along a path Lavender must have made over the years.
The direction gave her a different view of the layout of the farm. She passed behind two large greenhouses—not commercial-huge, but big enough for a lot of plants—and remembered when Lavender had lost one to a storm and the other was heavily damaged, about three or four years ago. It had been a crushing financial blow, but as Ruby walked by today, the doors to the first greenhouse were propped open, showing flats of seedlings at various stages of growth. She wondered why they were planted inside, when it was summer, and made a note to ask Noah.
The second greenhouse was devoted to lavender. There were dozens of flats of green and gray-green plantlings, and Ruby wanted to wander over and take a peek but reminded herself the job was to make the rounds, and she kept going.
Her path led around the base of the lavender fields, looking upward to a stand of bushes she thought were lilacs. This would be a spectacular view in the springtime! She imagined armfuls of lilacs, big glass vases of them on every surface. Maybe because she’d been thinking so much about the notes of fragrance in lavender, she wondered if lilacs could be harvested, too. Of course they could, but to what purpose? Was lilac oil viable for perfume? Could you use the same stills for different plants?
The hives were alight with buzzing bee happiness this morning, and Ruby gave them plenty of space. She was still afraid of them. How did you get used to handling something that could, and probably would, sting you, hurt you?
The dogs rushed ahead suddenly, swerving into the trees, and Ruby called out, “Don’t take off, you guys!”
Noah emerged from the forest, a tool belt clanking around his hips. Why was that so sexy? She shook her head at herself. Just horny.
“Good morning,” he said cheerfully, and Ruby’s baby danced inside her as if she was greeting the voice.
She laughed, touching her tummy. “Good morning. And my girl says good morning, too. She got all excited when she heard your voice.”
“Yeah, well, what can I say?” His hair was tamped down beneath a baseball cap this morning. “What are you up to?”
“Um, well, Lavender is still sleeping, so I thought I would do the walk around the farm for her so she wouldn’t have to worry about it later.”
He didn’t speak for a moment. “Really.”
“I know, kinda silly, since I have no idea what I’m looking for, but it seemed like a good idea.”
“Not silly at all. Mind if I join you?”
“Of course not. You can tell me what you see.”
He whistled back over his shoulder and the dogs came bounding out of the trees. Through the trunks, Ruby spied a small cottage. “Is that where you live?”
“Yep. Me and my cats, Jericho and Babel.”
“Whoa, seriously biblical.” She narrowed her eyes, trying to see him as a conservative Christian.
“They’re rescues, a pair of siblings whose owner died. I got them at the pound.”
Touched, Ruby only nodded.
As they walked, Noah pointed to various things. A place where foxes liked to hunt, a spot where murderous raccoons would rinse chickens in the stream. She’d never seen the pasture where the food chickens lived. She had never seen the ginormous compost heaps sheltered beneath a roof, tons of the stuff, rotting away. It didn’t smell, to her surprise, but maybe it would on a hot day.
Noah carried a proprietary tilt to his head as he pointed out all these things, narrating the walk, the things he looked for. “I want to make sure everything is safe and secure, as much as possible. I want to clean up any damage, get rid of any dead animals or deadfall that’s causing trouble. I’m looking at the fences.”
“What’s that?” Ruby pointed to a building much like the meadery, only a little bit larger.
“It’s the slaughterhouse,” he said matter-of-factly. “Just like the meadery—it’s all stainless steel inside.” He stopped, one foot stuck out in front of him. “We kill them as kindly and painlessly as possible. One person holds them, another slits their throats.”
Ruby blinked at the tears in her eyes, and she wiped them away. “Sorry. I respect that, but it’s not my way.”
He spread an arm out over the pasture, where the chickens wandered in the grass, chatting among themselves. “They have good lives and good deaths. It’s the best path to meat on the table.”
“It is,” she said. “But this is not the path for me.”
“I know.”
As they walked on, Ruby realized that she’d been seriously imagining that she might be able to live here, that somehow she might find a good life here. Not an easy life, though it would be easier than the hours of a kitchen. As a mother, she had to consider that.
Not that she had any idea where she would procure the funds for such a buy. Her father had been quite, quite clear that he was tired of financing her whims. The vegan-food-truck idea was his last investment.
It was disappointing that her enthusiasm for that project had been particularly short-lived. Maybe she was as flaky as everyone said.
And maybe this was a flaky idea, too.
“Hey, I didn’t mean to upset you. Are you all right?”
Ruby stopped. “No, you didn’t. I’m upset with myself, with all my … inconstancy.”
He smiled, then swallowed it when she scowled at him. “Sorry, but it’s such an old-fashioned word.”
“I’d love to buy the farm and keep it going the way it is, but I honestly can’t imagine that I could do it, knowing there were animals being slaughtered right on the land.” She shook her head. “I just can’t. I don’t mind the eggs, because I see the hens are happy and it’s not as … visceral, maybe? And I can manage the honey with no trouble, but the—”
He raised a hand. “Can I interject something here?”
“Interject?”
“You could decide not to raise the meat chickens.” He shrugged, hands on his hips. “Easy enough, right?”
“Just like that? Just decide?”
“It would be your farm.”
Ruby looked around, turning in a slow, easy circle. Her hands were on her tummy, and her baby bumped against her palm. She looked at the sky, at the house with its shop and lavender presses, at a pair of hens waddling down the path as if in deep conversation, at the farm buildings, and finally at the lavender fields. “When I stand here, I know I could do this. I see myself with my baby in the lavender fields and collecting eggs and making sure everything is running right in the shops. I see myself making a home, a real home, here.” She turned back sadly to Noah. “But what do I know about any of it?”
“Only you know the truth, Ruby.”
She liked the sound of her name in his mouth, the ever-so-faint roll of the “R,” the resonance of the “B.” “I don’t know where I belong.”
“None of us do, until we find it. Come on,” he said, putting his arm around her shoulders in a companionable way. “Let’s go have some breakfast with everybody and try to enjoy the day. There’s time.”
(Recipes from Ruby, Ginny, Lavender, and Valerie. A celebration of the Foodie Four—running on all four blogs today)
A Blue Moon Menu
Lavender:
Barbecued chicken
Mixed salad from the organic gardens at the farm
Deviled eggs
Ruby:
Seitan chicken wings
Blue moon cupcakes
Watermelon, fennel, orang
e salad
Ginny
Lavender cake with moons
Valerie
Wines from the Willamette Valley
Ales from local breweries
Chapter 33
Lavender took a long hot bath in the claw-foot tub that looked out toward the mountains. Soaking her bones in water scented with her own oils, she thought about being eighty-five. On the one hand, it seemed curiously idiotic that she should have ever grown old, and no one could argue that eighty-five wasn’t old. In her heart, where the real part of her dwelled, she felt the same as always—perhaps not twenty, but not yet forty. Thirty-two or thirty-three, maybe, confident but young and adventurous. At that age, she’d been flying with Ginger, everywhere, all over, getting into trouble, drinking too much, sleeping with the wrong men. And sometimes the right ones.
Just now she sipped ice water, not wanting to muddle her head too soon. And, if she was truthful, the exhaustion that had been dogging her for two days was there in every bone. Her stomach had settled a bit, but she’d barely eaten anything, just in case. She honestly didn’t think it was her gall bladder—she’d had those attacks and they didn’t feel like what she’d experienced last night, that burning indigestion, the sense of exhaustion.
She heard her fretful thoughts and cackled. Taking another sip of water, she said to herself, “Face it, Lavender. You’re old.”
She’d rewritten her will after her nap yesterday. It had not been a difficult decision. Which of her lovelies would take the farm? Not Ginny, who was as filled with wanderlust as anyone could be. Not Valerie, who made do with roughing it but desperately wanted the life of clean elegance she’d grown to enjoy over the years.
Ruby. Ruby loved the land and the honey, and Lavender had the sense that she would care even more as time went by, but she’d been a bit of a flibbertigibbet. And she was still pining for that man, the idiot in New York who couldn’t see what was right in front of him—a girl as suited to motherhood and family-making as a person could be.
Lavender wanted Noah to have the farm, and she’d like to see Ruby sign on, too, the pair of them healing each other’s wounds and making a sweet family built on this good land. She could trust them.
But Noah didn’t want it, or said so. And Ruby was unsettled.
The burn started again in her gut, and she hauled herself to her feet, toweling dry her long, lean body. A good body, one that had served her well for a long, long time. She braced herself on the wall and waited for a wave of dizziness to pass.
Into the buzzing came a sense of vastness and relief, a whisper of something new and familiar all at once. She smiled, pressing her hand to her forehead, as if to press it into her memory.
When it passed, she headed, naked, into her bedroom to get ready for her party. She combed her short hair away from her face and put on the silly tutu—honestly, only because the girls liked it so much, and they would all be such perfect flowers tonight. She might as well have a little foolishness herself. To that end she’d picked up a dime-store crown, and she tucked it into her hair now, then dabbed bits of red lipstick on her wrinkled mouth. When she stepped back from the mirror, she smiled, and her ethereal reflection smiled back. “Silly old thing,” she said, pleased.
Pleased with everything.
Chapter 34
Ginny headed back to her trailer at around five, after spending the day cooking with her friends. The “Foodie Four” had never had such a strong meaning, as they chopped and sang and laughed together in the tiny cottage kitchen. Lavender seemed fine after her long sleep, and she basted chicken on a grill outside the back door, piles and piles of it. Ruby marinated seitan in a heavenly-smelling brew, readying it to be flash-fried in a batter just before being served. Ginny, more of a baker than a cook, did what they told her to do, tearing lettuce and spinach, shredding carrots, chopping pineapple for Ruby’s blue moon cupcakes.
Ginny had not told anyone that she’d invited Jack to the party. She wasn’t sure he would come, and how embarrassing would that be if he didn’t?
No, she thought, opening the trailer door and letting Willow go in ahead of her, that wasn’t true. She knew very well that Jack would arrive. She would be clean and dressed beautifully and she would have all of her makeup on, and he would, sometime tonight, make love to her. To tell herself any other story would be a lie, and whatever choices she was making now, she vowed that was one thing she would not do: pretend.
She showered luxuriously, washing her hair, shaving everything. Afterward, she lovingly spread lotion from one end of her body to the other, making sure to get the back of her thighs and her bottom, her rib cage and breasts. For a moment she looked at herself in the mirror, with her hands on her smallish breasts, which were covered with freckles. Would he find them beautiful? It wasn’t as if there’d been a lot there to get saggy, but she was edging hard toward fifty. Things slipped.
She thought of him, what little she knew, and wondered if this was crazy. If she was a bad woman.
But her internal barometer said no. This was right. For tonight, anyway. She wasn’t leaving home to find some other man to rule her life. She’d left to find herself, and that self wanted sex—hot, fierce, sloppy, vigorous, tender, scratching, luscious sex— in the worst way.
She dried her hair and piled it on top of her head, put on her prettiest underwear, and then donned the peach dress, so delicately colored. The bodice was tight and she had to pull her breasts into position, swelling very nicely above it but not in any kind of slutty way.
On her feet she put peach-colored flip-flops—well, technically they were orange. The sandals had been a gift from Ruby to each of them to match the colors of their dresses, so that they could get to the platform without hurting their feet. Lavender’s were silver, Val’s white, Hannah’s red, and Ruby’s blue.
When she was getting ready to head out the door, her phone rang. She stared at it for a moment, almost certain something bad was happening at the end of that line, something she didn’t want to hear. If it was Christie or Jack, she would pick up. If not, she wouldn’t.
The call was from Kansas but not from a number she recognized. As she held the phone, it clicked over to voice mail, and Ginny waited for the tone that signaled the message was ready to be heard.
She waited.
And waited.
And decided she wasn’t about to take this call or any other. She was going to be herself tonight, without obligations to anyone. Leaving the phone on the table, she slipped outside in her tutu and flip-flops, her dog in her wake. Faintly, she heard the ding of the voice-mail messenger.
Ginny and Willow ran across the fields, dashing toward the lights strung up around the wooden platform. It would be a long time until sunset, but a band had begun to play some bluegrass, Lavender’s favorite, and the cheery sound danced on its own amid the lights and the tree branches.
Ruby was the first on the platform, swaying happily in her new dress, her tummy seeming to grow every day all of a sudden. She was so pretty, so dazzlingly illuminated, that Ginny leapt up and gave her a giant hug from behind. “I’m so glad we’re all here!”
Ruby grabbed her hands and leaned backward, resting her head on Ginny’s shoulder. “Will you be my baby’s grandma? I mean, I know you’re technically too young and all that—”
Ginny squeezed her around the shoulders. “Of course, of course, of course! We all will be!”
Ruby turned. “No, I mean specifically you, like a real grandma. My mom is”—she shook her head—“selfish and far away, and she’ll never even care that I have this baby. You’ll take it seriously. Take her and me seriously.”
“I promise,” Ginny said, putting her hand on her heart. “I promise to be your baby’s actual grandmother, for real, no questions asked.”
“Good.”
Looking over Ruby’s shoulder, Ginny said, “Holy cow. Look at Noah. Hannah is going to keel over.”
Ruby spun around, and her hand on Ginny’s arm tightened. “He is stupidly b
eautiful. Ridiculously beautiful. Absurdly beautiful! It’s not even fair.”
Ginny laughed, watching Noah stroll through the long grass. He wore a crisp, long-sleeved white shirt, black jeans, and an embroidered red vest with a bolo tie.
“Deliciously beautiful,” Ginny said. Noah’s hair had been brushed back from his elegantly boned face and curled at his neck like that of a Spanish count.
“You know what I like best?” Ruby said, leaning close. “When he grins, all the angles go off, and it makes all that perfect perfectness just so normal.”
Ginny looked at her friend. “What’s up with you two?”
Ruby swayed. “Something.” She swished her hands through her net skirt, inclining her head to shoot a coquettish look at him. “Nothing. And something.”
He leapt up on the platform as easily as a cat and came toward them. “ ’Evening, ladies. You both look beautiful.”
“I’m not going to tell you that you look beautiful, because you already know it,” Ruby said, still swaying back and forth. Her shoulders, smooth and clear, caught the light in swoops and swirls, and Ginny saw how Noah’s eyes lingered across all that pretty skin.
“I’m going to see how things are in the house,” Ginny said. “See you in a little while.”
Tables had been set up all around the freshly mowed grass circling the big willow tree, and now Ginny set out plates, a big mix of colors and styles, from pottery to china, along with cloth napkins and silver in the same mishmash. The tables were rented, covered with pretty tablecloths. Valerie came along behind Ginny with candles in hurricane lamps, and Hannah, burning bright in her red dress, lit each one with a long match.
People started to filter in, a few at a time, driving pickup trucks and sedans and a handful of sporty little cars in various styles. It wasn’t a huge crowd—Lavender estimated it would be about twenty or twenty-five above their own core group.
The All You Can Dream Buffet Page 25