The Ladies Farm

by Viqui Litman

  So she smiled indulgently at Barbara’s concern and reminded her to be sure to make up the Babe, since they rarely used it. Barbara reached out a hand to take the photo on Della’s desk.

  The clank of her bracelets, cloisonné bands in blue and silver, drew Della’s attention from her expression. When she looked back up, Barbara was crying softly.

  What now?

  “That was the night,” Barbara said, without Della having to ask the question. “That was the night!”

  “The night?”

  “That night. With Hugh.”

  Della considered telling Barbara that she was on deadline and couldn’t play confessor this moment, but instead, she saved the image on her screen and closed out her scanning program. Why not wallow a little in Barbara’s guilt over one night with someone else’s husband? Besides, she had some questions.

  “Barbara, did Pauline tell you she knew about this?”

  Barbara shook her head and clutched the photo to her breast.

  “Here,” said Della, reaching for the photo. The kids might not want it, but she did. And she didn’t want it soggy.

  Barbara looked down in confusion, then released the picture.

  “Even when she … when she had the heart attack,” Della pressed.

  “Did she say something to you … you know, about that amethyst or something?”

  Barbara shook her head even harder. She backed away from Della until the back of her knees touched the loveseat, and she sat. “She knew.”

  “What makes you so sure?” Della asked. The doctor had told them that Pauline had had an undetected heart condition and that she could have died at any time. Yes, it could have been a sudden shock, he had answered Della. But it didn’t have to be anything. Heart attacks are caused by heart conditions, not traumatic events, he had assured her as if she were the one with a guilty conscience.

  “I just knew,” Barbara said. “That’s why they moved down here. It was right after that.” She had stopped crying, but her face was stained with runny mascara.

  “When she looked at me,” Barbara continued. “I knew when she looked at me.” The button eyes pleaded for understanding. “That she knew.”

  “You knew that she knew? Even though she never said anything?”

  Barbara nodded.

  “Do you think Hugh told her?”

  “Maybe. That’s what I like to think.” Barbara shook her head. “No!” Her conviction grew. “I just think she knew. I think women, wives … they know when there’s someone else.”

  “How?” Della could barely whisper the question.

  Barbara looked out the windows that faced the river. “I knew even before Richard told me.”

  “Richard told you?” That damn doctor was wrong, thought Della, feeling her own heart pound. I’m keeling over any second.

  “It wasn’t a week after Hugh. And he had a meeting, just like all the meetings he had. Except there was just something about him.”

  “Perfume?” Della suggested. “Lipstick on his collar?”

  “No, no,” Barbara said. “Nothing like that. Just the way he was so affectionate. He started to bring me presents: silk negligees, perfume.”

  Della thought she should ask the obvious question. “Who was the other woman?” She closed her eyes a second as Barbara continued to stare out the window.

  “She was just some real estate agent with an office in his building. Commercial leasing or something. She had a house over on the west side. He used to park right in her driveway!”

  The tears had started to roll again, and Della took advantage of the moment to let out a long, slow breath and draw in fresh oxygen. Another one! She looked out the front windows and saw Kat bidding the appraiser good-bye. Well, thank God it wasn’t Kat! she thought with the next breath. Thank God it wasn’t either one of us! But she did wonder how many more even as she glanced back to Barbara.

  Barbara pressed her lips together and raised her chin as if collecting her scattered composure. “Finally, though, he confessed to me. And he promised he would never do it again.”

  Again, Della forced herself to ask the obvious. “And did he?”

  Barbara turned her head and looked at Della. “Oh, of course he did! He never got over what I … what happened with Hugh.” She smiled apologetically. “He didn’t ever know how to forgive.”

  “Richard?” This came out before Della could stop it. “He always seemed so indulgent,” she suggested feebly.

  Barbara shook her head. “Not about the big things.”

  Della remembered her job as consoler. “Barbara, you spent one night with someone and your husband couldn’t forgive you. And you’re supposed to forgive a lifetime of infidelity?”

  “It wasn’t a lifetime!” Barbara defended her husband. “Until that real estate agent, he was as faithful as any man, as faithful as Tony even!”

  “Tony?”

  “Oh, you know how the boys always teased Tony, he was such a straight arrow.”

  “Tony—my husband?”

  “Of course. Richard and Grant and the others … they were always teasing him, the way he would call you during halftime, the way he never even would look at another woman.”

  “Tony looked at other women,” Della said, but then she tried to remember. At least, she always assumed he did, and that good manners made him keep his adulterous desires to himself.

  Barbara was shaking her head. “Not that any of us ever heard about. And he had his chances, too!” Now she was smiling with the memory. “Marjorie Schulkey, remember her?”

  “Short blonde, kind of dumpy?”

  “She was all over him.” Barbara nodded at the photo Della had placed on top of the scanner. “At that party? Don’t you remember her asking him to dance? And he said he had to go help you in the kitchen?”

  How does she remember all this, Della wondered. “Marjorie Schulkey? Well,” she said briskly, “she wouldn’t have been his type, she was way too heavy. Tony liked tall, slender women.”

  Barbara eyed her quietly, and Della felt sorry she had mentioned Marjorie’s weight. She rushed to fill the silence. “He sure didn’t waste any time finding someone once I was gone.”

  Now Barbara tilted her head and furrowed her brow. “Why did you leave him, anyway? None of us could ever figure it out. Even Pauline.”

  Della sighed. “I don’t know,” she said, shaking her head. “We just wore each other out,” she said. “We were exhausted from crying over Jamie, and we couldn’t—I don’t know—neither one of us could get enough energy to even care if things fell apart.”

  “Do you think you’ll get back together?”

  Della stared at Barbara. “We don’t want to get back together.”

  “You might change your mind. Tony might,” Barbara said, ignoring Della shaking her head no. “He sure seemed happy to see you at the cemetery.”

  “Well, we still have Robbie; we have to be civil.”

  “He was a lot more than civil. Maybe you should give it a try.”

  Who is this woman? Della wondered. Where does she live? Certainly not in the same world as the rest of us. She shrugged and turned toward the computer.

  “Are you keeping that picture of Pauline?” Barbara asked.

  “Yes. And here,” Della reached over to her desk, “I found these, too,” handing over the photos of the Morrison family from Pauline’s album.

  “Thanks,” Barbara said, and wandered off.

  Della did not let herself recall the conversation with Barbara until she had finished the newsletter, saved it to disk, and headed into Fort Worth to the printer.

  So even Kat wasn’t first, thought Della. And maybe the real estate agent wasn’t the first. There could be hundreds! And Barbara knows about others. So maybe she knows about me.

  Della shook her head. She was leaving Sydonia and she gave the Accord a little more gas. With the sun roof open and the air conditioner turned to high, she reveled in the day’s sunshine, amazed that it was only early afternoon. />
  On her left, there was heavy equipment up on the crest of the Castleburg hill, but Della shrugged it off. I’ll ask Kat when I get back, she thought, but she knew there wasn’t anything too drastic. That field was the one that backed onto the end of their street, but she hadn’t heard anything about any construction, so it was probably just some kind of well or stock tank venture. No one’s building high-rises or factories, Della told herself. You can go back to worrying whether Barbara’s planning to poison your food or smother you with your pillow.

  She drove straight to the printer, where they took her disk and promised to call if they saw any problems.

  Della had her list of groceries, of course, but she put off her visit to the Kroger and instead drove over to West Seventh, on the fringe of downtown. A bell tinkled when she walked into the shop, and a bright-eyed young man behind the counter asked if he could help her.

  “Is Tony here?” Della asked.

  Chapter 8

  “I wanted to bring you these pictures,” Della said after the clerk had led her back to Tony’s office. If Tony was surprised to see her, he gave no indication, and he smiled his thanks as he took the pictures from her.

  “Don’t you want them?” he asked.

  “Actually, I was hoping you’d volunteer to have copies made for me and for Robbie. I was going to do it, and I don’t mind dropping them off, but, barring funerals, I might not get back to Fort Worth until next month’s newsletter.”

  He nodded, waved a hand to demonstrate his acceptance of the task. “You really like it out there?”

  Della nodded. “You would too. It’s quiet, friendly. And I have a river in my backyard.”

  He waved a hand at his desk—a platform, really, supported by file cabinets at either end of a windowless wall. “You don’t think this is quiet and friendly?” His eyes were green with dark flecks in them, and they crinkled at the corners but stayed quite round when he smiled.

  She noticed he had put on glasses to look at the photographs, but quickly laid them back down on the desk when he finished.

  She was about to answer him when the clerk stuck his head in the door. “Here’s your sandwich,” he said, handing over a white paper bag.

  “It’s two-thirty,” said Della. “Haven’t you had lunch?”

  “I was at the downtown shop,” he explained. “Want half?” He pulled a sub from the bag and set it next to his French fries.

  “I’ll just steal these,” she said, taking one of the fries. “Any ketchup?”

  They occupied themselves with eating and exchanging bits of news about people they knew. She told him about Hugh Jr. and Melissa’s visit, and he told her about their former next-door neighbors, who were moving to a condominium outside of Austin.

  “How’re you and Barbara getting along?”

  Della felt her face grow warm. “Barbara? Fine. Why do you ask that?”

  He shrugged, put one of the French fries in his mouth. “She’s a little hard to take, isn’t she? She used to hover over Richard like a helicopter. Not that it did her much good.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Oh, come on, you know about Richard.”

  “I don’t think I do,” Della muttered.

  Tony was silent for a second. “I guess that was mostly after we split up. He used to like to get together for drinks, tell us all about it.”

  “Us?” She couldn’t keep the alarm out of her voice.

  “Oh, you know: Grant, Hugh, those guys.”

  “How come you never told me all this before?”

  He looked at her, considering. “You never asked, I guess. I mean, it was after we were divorced, and we haven’t really talked much, except about the … about Robbie.”

  He was right. They never spent time together. She didn’t know why she was doing it now. “Did Marjorie Schulkey ever make a pass at you?”

  She expected a blank look, and his grin stunned her. “That Barbara’s a talker.”

  “How do you know Barbara told me?”

  “Because she rescued me,” he said, still grinning. “That woman had me pinned against the wall in the kid’s room.” He held his right hand in the air. “I swear it, she just cornered me.” He shook his head, laughed a little. “I guess she had a little too much to drink. I just hate it when women drink like that. Anyway, she wanted to dance, and I kind of fled, and then, I was coming out of the bathroom, she just grabbed me and tried to kiss me. That’s when Barbara comes down the hall calling ‘Tony! Tony!’ ” He mimicked her in falsetto. “ ‘Tony, I need your help to get these dishes down for me. No one else is tall enough!’ And she just drags me out of that woman’s clutches.”

  “Saved by Barbara Morrison,” Della said. “That’s scary.”

  Tony nodded, took another bite of his sandwich. Della looked around the office, remembering the times they had used the long table to collate copies, the nights she had puzzled over the mysteries of binding equipment and the terrors of accounts payable. I could’ve just dropped the pictures at the photo place, Della thought, then called Tony and asked if he’d pick them up. Or asked the photo place to hold on to them for a month. Or asked Kat or Rita to get them next time they were in town.

  “You ever hear from Suzanne?” she asked finally.

  He shook his head no while he finished chewing. “Nah. She wrote me once, asked if I’d mind sending a few things she’d left, that was about it. Adios.” He studied her a second. “You seeing anyone?”

  She chuckled. “I don’t know anyone to see. I guess I’ll live out my old age surrounded by women.”

  “That’s kind of what I always dreamed about.”

  They both laughed and Della stood to go. “I’ve got to be getting back,” she explained. “I’ve got this shopping list, and someone has to keep an eye on Barbara before she kills off someone else.”

  He walked her out to the front. “The shop looks good,” she said.

  “Thanks.” They stood for a second, letting the clerk watch them. Customers milled around the card displays and the self-serve copiers, and along one side several people sat at the computer stations. Della wondered if Tony would have had the fury to expand this business if Jamie had lived, but it was far too treacherous to consider.

  “You take it easy,” she said, and she felt herself leaning toward him.

  He moved a little, pulling her into a clumsy hug. “Take care, Della,” Tony told her. Then they pulled away from each other and she walked out.

  She went to the grocery, then proceeded home, stopping only at Dave’s to fill the tank. “How you holding up?” Dave asked.

  “Oh, we have our good days and our bad.” Della signed for the gas and tried to think of something sarcastic to say about his cemetery romp, but her sarcasm failed her. The convenience store smelled like gas and oil and Dave, in his coveralls, looked odd behind a counter featuring fountain drinks and sandwiches. Still, his resourcefulness impressed her.

  He changes with the times, she thought.

  She tried to explain that to Rita when she got home, but Rita was preoccupied with the news that Melissa was coming back to get her hair cut.

  “Her hair cut?”

  “Here we go again,” muttered Kat. “Melissa is getting a haircut. What is so earth-shattering?”

  “Her hair’s like Pauline’s,” Della made an attempt at explanation.

  “It’s an odd time to be preoccupied with your appearance,” Kat acknowledged.

  “It’s downright unnatural,” Rita declared. “Not that that girl couldn’t use a fresh look. That long, straight, bouncy stuff with the Farrah Fawcett fluff on top went out with … well, Farrah Fawcett.”

  “It’s a way for her to visit us,” Barbara said.

  Della started. What was it that made her forget Barbara’s presence until she spoke?

  “What do you mean?” Kat asked. “You think she’s cutting off the hair she’s been growing her whole life because she needs an excuse to come to the Ladies Farm?”

  The
color rose in Barbara’s face, but she stayed calm. “I think when someone … when we lose someone, we just want to try to stay close to them in any way. Maybe she just wants to be where her mother was. Where she remembers her mother being.”

  Well, that sure chilled the conversation, Della thought as the room grew silent. They were in the big office, with Rita draped over the loveseat and Barbara perched on the typist’s chair. Kat was at her own desk and Della remained in the doorway, leaning against the doorpost.

  “It’s just a haircut,” Kat said finally. “If it’s a mistake, she can let it grow back. Did you know they’re mining gravel at Castleburg’s?”

  She directed the last at Della, who caught the doorpost to steady herself. “Gravel?” She recalled the equipment up on the hill.

  “The appraiser mentioned it.”

  Della shrugged. “I guess we’ll have a few more trucks through here.”

  “I hate those heavy old things,” Rita grumbled. “We can close every window in the house and we’ll still all be covered with dust. How long’s it take to get all that gravel out?”

  “Oh, I don’t think it’ll be over quickly,” Kat said. Then to Della, “He was asking who owned the mineral rights here.”

  Della frowned. “I’m sure Pauline and Hugh did,” but she wasn’t sure at all. “Why wouldn’t they? Nobody’s ever worried about mineral rights around here.”

  “Well, now, that’s not really true,” Rita countered. “Mrs. Myerhoff is friends with Dave’s great-aunt, Gladys Hutto, and she says old Gladys ’bout killed that husband of hers, Ray, when she found out Ray gave away … and I mean gave … the rights to this nephew of his, Earl, who wanted to get in the gravel business. And of course they’ve got that big old place, nearly as big as Castleburg’s if you count where the warehouse is, and all those cows and sheep, and that nephew just starts digging up everything, holes everywhere and never finds a thing. And it’s a good thing, too, because Mrs. Myerhoff says old Gladys might just have shot Ray if that nephew had come up with something and Ray had signed it all away.” Rita finished with an expansive wave of her arm in the air before her as if encompassing the vastness of the presumed Hutto mineral empire.