by Viqui Litman
Copyright ©1999 by Viqui Litman
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Published by Crown Publishers, 201 East 50th Street, New York, New York 10022. Member of the Crown Publishing Group.
Random House, Inc. New York, Toronto, London, Sydney, Auckland www.randomhouse.com
CROWN is a trademark and the Crown colophon is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Litman, Viqui.
The Ladies Farm / Viqui Litman. — 1st ed.
p. cm.
I. Title.
PS3562.I78246L34 1999
813′ .54—dc21
99-13508
eISBN: 978-0-307-81549-1
v3.1
In Loving Memory of Martha Harris Litman and Fred Litman
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Acknowledgments
Special thanks are due to the Every Other Tuesday Night Writers Group: Steve Copling, Deborah Crombie, Dale Denton, Jim Evans, John Hardie, Diane Sullivan, Rickey Thornton, and member emeritus Aaron Goldblatt—who slogged through this manuscript many times with patience and insight; our guiding light, Warren Norwood; the sustaining members near and far of the Ladies Lunch—Karen Brachman, Rebecca Isgur, Judi Preston, Sylvia Weiner, and Edie Yentis; my editor, the delightful and highly skilled Ann Patty; and my agent, the late Jane Cushman, whose judgment, guidance, and obstinancy made this book a reality.
Chapter 1
Oh, joy! thought Della Brewer when Barbara Morrison pulled her red Thunderbird up to the curb in front of the Ladies Farm. My lover’s widow come to disturb my life in the country.
Della held her seat on the squeaky glider and concentrated on the Times editorial. She had a deal with Dave Eleston, who was kind of a Methodist ringer, singing in a Fort Worth church choir for their televised early service even though he lived in Sydonia and had never been a Methodist. Della prepared the ads for Dave’s Quick Stop, which ran weekly in the Sydonia Tribune. In exchange for this service, Dave brought the New York Times and the Washington Post back from Fort Worth every Sunday morning.
Della thought Dave drove the hour from Sydonia to Fort Worth and back again every Sunday just for the chance to catch a glimpse of Rita, his ex-wife, who operated the hair salon at the Ladies Farm and lived in the room over the solarium. Since divorcing Dave, she had remarried her first husband and only recently re-divorced him. Dave drew encouragement from this and spent as many hours as he could Sunday mornings after church sitting on the Ladies Farm porch, hoping Rita would spend a few minutes with him. But Sunday, as Rita reminded everyone, was the only morning she could sleep late without someone showing up with a hair crisis.
So after Dave had come and gone, Della lounged on the front porch with a carafe of coffee and several pounds of newspapers. Meanwhile, Rita slept, and the others—Pauline and Kat—having awakened early and breakfasted wisely, were out doing something useful. Which meant that Della would have to greet Barbara when she reached the porch.
She didn’t care, really. Richard had been dead over a year and, even when he’d been alive, Della had stopped hating Barbara. He stayed with Barbara because he wanted to, Della reminded herself. He wanted to be married to her more than he wanted to be with you.
Okay, maybe she hated Barbara a little.
But who wouldn’t? A rich, fat bitch, waddling up the walk in some sort of bronze silk pajamas, the sun glittering off her gold chains. She hadn’t even caught on that it wasn’t chic anymore to gold-plate the trim on your car. Let alone that really rich people drove a Lexus or BMW, not a Thunderbird, and that those cars were silver or white, not bright red. How could you not hate her?
Barbara looked up at Della on the porch and smiled. “Della, you look gorgeous. How do you do it?”
Della just hated her more. Why shouldn’t Barbara be kind? She had everything: the money, the house, the jewelry. She was Richard’s widow. Della was only his secret love.
Della smiled and leaned even further into the glider cushions. “Must be the clean country living,” she said as she did a quick inventory. Barbara was right about one thing: Della knew she looked much better than Barbara. I’m way thinner, she thought. My skin’s smoother. My eyes were always better. And I have the good sense not to make myself up like a circus performer. “Certainly not anything I do on purpose.”
Barbara waved her hand to dismiss the comment as false modesty, causing her bracelets to clank. She mounted the two steps and settled with a small groan into the cushioned rattan chair that, with the glider, formed one of the three conversation groupings on the porch.
Tiny eyes, Della thought. Glittering brown buttons surrounded by flesh. In younger days, Barbara’s porcelain skin had been set off by a head of shimmering chestnut hair, but even that subtlety had been abandoned for a mass of flaming orange, creating a vivid halo even on the shaded porch. Della rested the paper in her lap, but she did not speak again and a few seconds passed while Barbara settled in.
She’s staying, thought Della as she smoothed her denim skirt. She’s burrowing.
“So,” Barbara resumed the conversation. “What’s new with you?”
Della could not remember Barbara visiting the Ladies Farm. She must have visited Pauline and Hugh long ago, Della mused, when Hugh was still alive. But after Hugh died and Richard, in the role of concerned friend, asked Della and Kat to see if they could help Pauline turn the struggling bed and breakfast around, Barbara had not visited Sydonia. Of course, that was when Della and Richard became more than the coupled-up, PTA and Cub-Scouting friends they had been when their children were young; maybe Richard had discouraged his wife in some way from intruding upon this good deed that he and Della were performing together.
“Nothing’s new,” Della said evenly, warming with her memories. “That’s why I live out here. So life can go on undisturbed, day after day.” She smiled. Richard used to tell her that her smile lit up her eyes. Even now, especially now, she knew they were her best feature.
Annoyance flickered across Barbara’s face, then she returned the smile. “Life here agrees with you,” she said. “How’s Pauline? And Kat?”
“Out and out. But fine, of course.”
Barbara sighed, closed her eyes, and leaned her head back until she faced the porch ceiling. Della sneaked one more look at the horoscope. Richard had been a Gemini and she invariably checked his as well as those of her two children, a Leo and an Aquarius. She glanced last at her own, but Barbara started to speak before Della could ascertain whether or not she was having a good day.
She remembered finishing a meal at a Chinese restaurant with Richard once, and picking up a fortune cookie. Richard had stayed her hand and gently opened her fingers to take the cookie. “Here,” he had said, picking up the remaining cookie from the plate. “This is your true fortune.”
His coo
l, smooth hand on hers, his eyes almost moist behind his glasses, the studious expression: All those were as real to Della as Barbara sprawling on the porch. Della saw the blasted pieces of the fortune cookie crumbling onto the tablecloth, she saw his forehead furrowing in concentration as she read aloud, she heard him laugh, and felt the warmth of her own blush as neighboring diners turned to stare.
But the fortune eluded her. Surely she had tucked the slip of paper into the tin box that held her most precious Richard Moments. Surely, in the packing and moving, her single apartment, her townhouse, and finally here to the modest bedroom and sprawling, windowed office of the Ladies Farm, surely in all that moving and cleaning out and discarding she had preserved her fortune. She just didn’t know where.
“You have a room for me?” Barbara jolted Della from her reverie. “You can check me in, can’t you? I want a room at the Ladies Farm.”
Chapter 2
“Well, how long is she staying?” Kat demanded.
Pauline, pouring coffee, glanced quickly at Kat, then back to Della before she finished filling the third mug and set the carafe down on the oak tabletop. They were huddled in the kitchen, where Kat and Pauline had spread out the buttons they had collected in a morning of yard-sale shopping.
“How should I know?” Della said, sliding the red mug toward herself. The business end of the kitchen, with stainless steel appliances and track lighting, lay behind her. She and Kat, who settled next to her, faced the uncurtained windows overlooking the side yard. There was a view of the carport, filled with their utilitarian vehicles—an aging Accord, a dented Suburban, a hail-pocked pickup (they used the insurance money to erect the carport)—and a sliver of the lawn that led down to the river.
“Maybe because you checked her in. You did check her in, didn’t you?” Kat, even on Sunday morning, sounded like a businesswoman. Without looking at her, Della knew that her crisp camp shirt stayed neatly tucked into her sharply creased jeans and that the hand that clasped her coffee mug was perfectly manicured, with artificial nails trimmed to the proper dress-for-success length.
Della sighed. “Yes, Kat, I checked her in. I ran her credit card through the reader, I got her signature on the guest card, I even pulled the room number in the availability tracker.”
“So how long is she staying?”
“She took the room for a month.”
“A month!” Pauline’s whisper annoyed Della even more than Kat’s cross-examination.
“A month,” Della repeated. She leaned back in the chair. She’d picked the one that rocked, and it jolted her lower back as it settled onto the left back leg. “Dammit,” she muttered, then motioned at the chair in explanation. “She’s in Governor Ann.”
Originally they had envisioned naming the rooms, like the streets of Sydonia, after heroes of the Texas War of Independence. Then they’d decided on Texas women and named the largest room—a suite, really—after Ann Richards.
“For a month?” Della could see Kat adding up the revenue.
“Full treatment, too,” Della continued. “Meals, makeovers, classes.” After Hugh’s death, when Della and Kat were recruited to revamp the bed and breakfast Pauline and Hugh had run as Sydon House, they concluded that there was no way the enterprise could ever make money. Specialize, they had advised Pauline, who was determined to hold on to the property. Offer classes, beauty treatments, all the things women love and pay for. You can rent to men, they had said. Just cater to women.
It had made perfect sense for Kat, who maintained a medical practice consultancy in Fort Worth, to live at the Ladies Farm. In exchange for her residence, Kat managed most of the business aspects of the rather specialized bed and breakfast.
Della’s move to Sydonia had not approached Kat’s well-considered and rational solution to managing the challenges of mid-life at the end of the century. I fled, Della reminded herself for the thousandth time. Richard died and I thought the loneliness would kill me and the only one I could tell was Pauline. And Pauline offered refuge.
“Is she in her room?” Pauline whispered now. Della ignored her own irritation and smiled indulgently.
“No, she’s gone for a ride on our country roads,” Della whispered back. “But she hopes we’ll serve lunch upon her return.”
“Cut it out!” Kat snapped. “We need the money and she’s entitled to lunch.”
“Appropriately lean and tasty,” Della rejoined in her whisper. While guests often checked in on Sunday afternoon, the Ladies Farm almost never had guests for Sunday lunch, and the four proprietors had come to regard it as the meal they enjoyed with each other. Seeing Pauline’s forlorn look, Della placed a hand on her friend’s shoulder. “It’s not so bad, babe. We’ve got lots of pasta salad. And gazpacho.”
“I just don’t know what she could do for a month,” Pauline said, shaking her head.
“She asked about jewelry classes.”
Kat snorted.
“She’s good with her hands,” Pauline recalled. “And she knows color. And style.”
Della remembered the extraordinary needlework that had adorned the walls, the sofas, and even the chair seats in Richard’s home.
“And she needs more jewelry,” Kat said. She gave her head a vehement shake and Della, as always, watched with fascination as Kat’s glossy hair rose away from her head and then settled perfectly into place. Until living with Kat, Della had thought that taffy color could come only from a bottle and that kind of hold only from a can that would destroy the ozone layer.
“I thought you’d be overjoyed,” Della observed. “The Governor Ann paid up for a month. Shoot, we could hire her a full-time trainer for that.”
“She doesn’t want the aerobics?” Pauline ventured.
Kat set her mug down on the table. “Pauline, we’ve stopped whispering!” Then, turning to Della, “She doesn’t want aerobics, does she? Because our insurance premiums will go … they’re already sky-high!”
Della knew why she herself resented Barbara and she thought, considering Pauline’s role as her confessor, she understood Pauline’s gentle terror. But why was Kat so edgy?
“Well, much as I’d love aerobics for the entertainment value, I really don’t think she’s here for the workout. I think she’s here for the same reasons as the rest of us. She wants a little peace and quiet. She wants to paddle a canoe on the Nolan River and take a walk through the woods on the Highlands Trail and get a facial and a new hair style in her spare time. That’s all.”
“And the jewelry class?” Pauline asked.
“Oh, I suspect she wants whatever crafts we’re offering. Buttonology or whatever. I don’t see her in ‘Journals as Spiritual Journeys.’ Maybe ‘Tarot Reading.’ But you can work her into your regular schedule.”
Pauline frowned at Della’s dismissal of the crafts. In fact, the classes Pauline taught in the barn netted more than the makeovers and aerobics. “You’re right,” Della attempted appeasement. “She’s probably great with her hands.”
A sudden picture of those puffy, manicured fingers on Richard’s body made Della draw a breath in alarm. Hand job? Surely not, thought Della, watching the others to see if they noticed anything. Damn! When did it stop?
“I know she’s good with her hands,” Pauline was saying, her own hands resting atop her mug as if she were trying to warm them over the coffee. “It’s her mouth that frightens me.”
Oh, great, thought Della. There’s a picture.
Kat was sliding the buttons into groups. Her coffee stood untouched. She looked up. “Let’s just concentrate on the program. Della’s right; you can work her into your regular classes.”
“And if she’s too much for you, I’ll make her a reporter for the Silver Quest,” Della said, smiling. She loved being the even-voiced, level-headed one about whom Kat would never guess the truth.
Pauline relaxed a little, then looked up behind her. The shuffling along the oak floor could only be Rita, dragging her butt down for breakfast. She stuck her head into the kitche
n. “Dave gone?”
“Hours ago,” Della said. “Why does a night watching rented movies with your granddaughter make you look like a hooker who’s just worked both sides of the street?”
“Della!” Pauline protested. “She just got up.”
“We all just got up at some point,” Kat said. “We don’t all look like …” She paused.
“Like a hooker who’s just worked both sides of the street,” Rita finished for her. She shuffled over to the cabinets and pulled down one of Pauline’s handmade mugs, then shuffled over to the table and rested there a moment, mug in hand, before she poured her first cup of coffee.
“It’s just habit,” she said. “There’s no beer and no cigarettes and no men in my life, but when I get up in the morning, I still feel like I got to watch out for the wet spot.” She squinted at Della as she walked around the table and pulled out a chair. “You know what I mean?”
Her lavender robe, a Christmas gift from the three of them designed to discourage her from appearing before the guests in her lace nighties, gaped as her shoulders slumped forward, exposing an alarming amount of cleavage. “Who’s the guest?”
“How did you know?” asked Pauline.
“Gucci,” Rita sighed, lifting the full cup to her face and inhaling dreamily. “Gucci in the hallway.” She sipped. “I had a boyfriend once who used to bring me Gucci. Turned out his wife worked at the perfume counter at Nieman’s.”
“What happened to him?” Kat never had patience for Rita’s stories.
Rita looked up, shrugged. “Oh, you know, that was Larry. Between our marriages.”
“You mean,” Pauline asked, “even when you were married to other people, you still were … seeing him?”
Sometimes Della didn’t know how she had ever confided in Pauline. Even now, married and widowed, facing her guests’ most intimate secrets daily, Pauline seemed far too innocent to bear the weight of her friends’ confessions. But she had been a faithful confidante, with never even a disapproving silence.