The Ladies Farm

by Viqui Litman

  “He’s negotiating price!”

  “That’s why we need to be there. Price being the amount you and I have to shell out.”

  “Now you just sit right down on this step and let Dave handle that. He knows what we’ll pay.”

  Della looked with astonishment at the woman who had seated herself on the wooden step. “I don’t believe this. You’re saying I should let your boyfriend determine how many hundreds of thousands I should pay for a place I’m only half-interested in. As in: Don’t you worry your pretty little head, honey, we’ve got a man to take care of us?”

  “Well, no one said that at all,” Rita countered. “After all, Gladys is out there, and she’s female. But Dave’s kin, and they’re all from Sydonia. It’s home cooking.”

  Della eased herself down onto the step and looked out the back of what would soon be the Ladies Farm. “I hate it when you make sense,” she muttered. Dave would negotiate a good price, probably without having to lead Gladys and Ray over to his truck to display the contents of the red cooler. Della was disappointed. She had enjoyed imagining the Huttos’ reaction.

  “Nothing’s ever as good as you imagine it,” Della mourned. “I rehearsed for this. I practiced my steady gaze for my final offer.”

  “I know, baby, but you can trust Dave.” Rita patted her arm. “Try to keep your mind off it. Think about something else. Tell me what’s up with you and Tony. Tell me what’s in that cooler. Talk about anything else.”

  Kat knows, thought Della. Melissa knows. Hugh Jr. knows. Della leaned back and tilted her head up to the gathering dusk. But not Rita, Dave, or Tony. And maybe not Barbara.

  Barbara knew she looked much worse. It had been less than a week since Della had left, but Barbara couldn’t cover the purple wells beneath her eyes. “I’m feeling a lot better,” she assured Della, but Della looked unconvinced.

  She had wheeled a cooler into the room and Barbara, from her seat next to the window, looked quizzically at the thing.

  “It’s cash,” Della explained. She pushed it right up to Barbara’s feet and knelt before her. “Here.” Della opened the cooler top, reached in, and pulled out a stationery box, setting it atop the wheeled hospital table.

  Barbara watched as Della lifted the top from the stationery box on the table between them. The bills were packed neatly and wrapped in rubber bands. “They were transferring one twenty-five to you yesterday. That’s the official sale, for the record,” Della said. “Did you get it?”

  Barbara nodded. “The bank called.”

  “The rest is here in cash: seven hundred fifty-eight thousand, two hundred and sixteen dollars.” Della said it slowly and methodically and she looked shaken by the sum.

  “Thank you for this,” Barbara said. She took a breath. “For doing it, and for letting me help.” She stopped and gulped for air.

  “Barbara?” Della leaned forward, grasped her good arm. “Should I get someone? Do you need … is there medicine?”

  Barbara waved her off and shook her head. She tried to smile her reassurance, but the cough prevented it. “I’m just short of breath. The morphine helps.” Barbara noted the alarm in Della’s eyes, but knew she would have to depend on the others to explain that the low-level morphine doses were not the pain-relieving doping she would require later. She had to shepherd her strength.

  “Okay,” said Della, “you listen and I’ll talk. I’m taking this money because I have no choice, just as we’re letting you sign over your interest to us. But these are loans. And we—Kat, Rita, and I—will pay you back.”

  Barbara shook her head vehemently.

  “Well, we’ll pay it back to Dickie.”

  Barbara nodded, both to show she understood and to reassure Della that it was proper to plan events beyond her death.

  “This money is far more than I ever expected to need, and the Hutto deal is a luxury. I mean,” Della rambled on, “it’s something we want because it’ll help stop Hugh Junior and Castleburg, but we’ll sell off a good part of it, and get that money to you … or to Dickie.”

  “How much?” Barbara asked.

  “Three-fifty. Don’t ask me how. Mostly because we promised them cash, quickly, so they can retire to the Rio Grande.”

  Barbara nodded. “And Tony?” She didn’t have time for transitions anymore, and Della misunderstood completely.

  “Oh, Tony went back to Fort Worth. It was Dave who negotiated the thing, even though I—”

  Barbara shook her head. “You and Tony!”

  “Me? And Tony?” Della smiled slightly, then shook her head. “Who knows, Barbara? I can’t even make it to a movie with him.” She paused and Barbara let her think for a moment. She really didn’t know why she cared so much, except that dying changed everything and Barbara did have the urge to make that apparent. She wanted Della to understand that death could keep you from setting right the things that needed to be righted.

  Della sighed. “I just don’t know, Barbara. It’s not,” she hesitated, “it’s not like you and Richard.” Della looked startled by her own words, but she continued. “It’s not like one of us did something that the other has to forgive. You can at least understand that.”

  Barbara nodded her agreement, signaling to Della that she understood the difference and didn’t take it as a dismissal of Barbara’s sorrow.

  “It’s just … I don’t know … I’m not sure … after everything … Jamie and all that … I’m not sure I have the energy for that kind of relationship.” Della, sitting on the bed and looking at Barbara, looked baffled, as if this were a new puzzle. “Tony really wants a marriage,” Della confessed. “And I’m not sure I could be married anymore.”

  Barbara smiled a little and started to reach over to pat Della’s hand, then stopped. There was something else to tell Della. “They weren’t really mine,” she said. “The diamonds.”

  “The diamonds?” Della frowned as if she were trying to catch up with Barbara’s thoughts. “You said Richard gave them to you.”

  Barbara nodded. “I mean, I never felt like—”

  “Like they were yours?” Amazement had enlivened Della’s expression, and her eyes sparkled with wonder. “Whose did you think they were?”

  Barbara shook her head. She sat for a moment, gathering her breath. “It was my payoff. Taking them, it was like saying Richard, what he did, was okay. But it wasn’t okay. I took the diamonds, but it was never okay.”

  “Is that why you never wore them? Put them into settings? Rings? Necklaces?”

  Barbara nodded.

  Della’s eyes blazed. “Those diamonds were yours. Don’t you ever think …”

  “Not the big one,” Barbara whispered.

  “The big one? That last one Richard gave you?”

  It annoyed Barbara that Della whispered; Della had breath to spare. Look at that bosom heaving up and down with indignation! What did she know? Fury drove Barbara forward.

  “He didn’t give it to me. I found it.” Gulp. “After he died. In a safe-deposit box.” Another breath. “I didn’t know about the box. I found the key.”

  “You mean, he never gave it to you?”

  Barbara shook her head. “I … I was so upset … I tore the house … up.”

  “Tore the house up? Because he died?”

  “Because he wasn’t there for breakfast.” Barbara got the whole thing out in one breath. “Even out of town … I would call him in the morning, he would be there.” She felt the tears starting, but she pressed on. “I called and called. Then I got home. I didn’t know he was dead, I thought he was … out. With someone.”

  “And you,” Della said, “you thought he wasn’t at home for your call because he was with some woman?”

  Barbara nodded, picturing the mess in her mind: the clothes she had ripped from their hangers, the desk with its papers scattered, even his jewelry box upended into the trash, the gold cuff buttons glittering up from a tangle of old watches and Rotary pins.

  “And the key … you found it going thr
ough his things?”

  Again, Barbara nodded, not bothering to explain that it was actually a small, blue folder bearing an electronically coded plastic card.

  “And you found the diamond in the box?”

  Barbara pictured her own hand, the amethyst sparkling as she reached into the trash and retrieved the small booklet guaranteeing the box holder complete confidence in the bank’s security and integrity.

  “Was there a note?”

  Barbara could barely hear the whisper. She shook her head and looked at Della, but she couldn’t speak.

  “Oh, Barbara! He didn’t live long enough to give it to you,” Della said, reaching over and holding her arm. “Oh,” Della crooned, moving over to the arm of the chair and clasping Barbara in an awkward hug.

  Pain shot through her collarbone, and Barbara stiffened but did not pull away. It felt good to be held by Della, to have shared this awful thing with her.

  “But at least you know,” Della was murmuring now. “At least you know that he loved you, that he wanted you to have diamonds … to have beautiful things. That if he had lived, he would have given that last diamond to you.”

  Barbara stayed in the circle of Della’s arm. She inhaled to give herself enough breath to speak a full sentence. Then, in a very low, carefully paced voice, she said, “Or maybe it was for the woman he was with that morning.”

  Chapter 18

  Della stumbled up the stairs, her steps like thunder and her breathing a rasp against her lungs. She threw herself onto her bed before the door had swung shut behind her. She had left Barbara dozing in the reclining chair, the cooler stowed in the closet. Della doubted she herself would ever enjoy such sleep again, with or without drugs.

  She looked at her own hand, palm up on the bed. The diamond had lain in that hand for only a few moments, and she had failed to grasp its meaning. She blinked and stared some more, imagining it there, imagining Richard putting it there and just as quickly imagining him depositing it in Barbara’s bejeweled hand.

  Should she have told Barbara that Richard had never given her jewelry? Or did that only make this possibility more significant?

  Della rolled onto her back and held her left hand in front of her, modeling her fingers as if that enormous jewel sparkled over them. Other than her wedding band and a modest garnet with which Tony and the boys had surprised her one Christmas, Della had never worn rings.

  Della closed her eyes and thought back to Richard holding her hand across a table at a Chinese restaurant. It had followed a rare weekend together, and she savored every detail in their particularly well-appointed hotel suite: the upholstered chair where she straddled him in the dark, ignoring the lights twinkling up from the city way below their window; the oversized tub where they had sipped vodka and crunched on caviar-covered nacho chips; the joy of starting awake in the middle of the night and finding herself next to Richard, who reached out to her in his sleep.

  It had been Sunday lunch when they finally had left the hotel for the Chinese restaurant. Separated by a table, the greatest distance between them in a day and a half, she rested against the back of the chair and wondered if she possessed a nerve that had not been stimulated, or a speck of skin that had not been caressed. She was teasing him about making her sore when she reached for her fortune cookie, but he stopped her. He had paused a second, she recalled, stroking her fingers. Had he been contemplating her lack of jewelry? Or luxuriating in the feel of her skin?

  Then he had placed the other cookie, his cookie, in her hand, and they had ended laughing, Della remembered, still giggling as they drove off in different directions.

  I collected memories, not jewelry, she thought. I collected moments that couldn’t be redeemed for cash and will never leave me.

  Della opened her eyes. There was another possibility. She sat up and looked at her bedroom furniture: a double dresser, a lingerie chest, a straight-backed chair. She stood up and walked over to the dresser.

  Barbara wouldn’t do that, she told herself, pulling open the bottom drawer. But it was possible, wasn’t it? Maybe Barbara knew all along and made up the story to torture you. Taking the truth to her grave.

  There was a knock at her door. “Della?”

  It was Kat.

  Another knock, then the door opened. “What were you doing in there so long?” Kat demanded as she stepped inside.

  “I wasn’t in there long.” Della turned back to her dresser drawer. She was trying to help you, Della thought. She wouldn’t—

  “Did you tell her?”

  Della felt around under the sweaters until she touched velvet. “Tell her what?” She grunted a little as she retrieved the glove box from the back of the well-packed drawer.

  “What?!”

  “What!” Della repeated with exasperation, closing the drawer and wheeling to face Kat’s scorn. “I told her the diamonds were worth almost nine hundred thousand dollars and that you and Rita and I would pay back every penny to Dickie. I told her we’d sell off some of the Hutto place to raise some cash immediately.”

  Denying Kat had become too enjoyable, Della realized, and she shook her head to rid herself of the exultation of controlling even this one tiny part of the melodrama that had become her life. “No, Kat, I didn’t tell her. And I won’t. And you won’t either. No one’s telling Barbara.” She paused. “Even though—you know—that doesn’t mean she doesn’t know.”

  “I almost wish she did, I feel so dishonest,” Kat confessed. “I thought I could go through with this, but the sicker she gets, the worse I feel. I don’t even mind the smell of Gucci anymore.”

  “I think the time to feel dishonest was back when you and I were sneaking around with Richard. That was dishonest. Keeping our peace now is just …” she shrugged, then looked at Kat again, “maybe barely decent.”

  Kat nodded miserably. “I know. I just needed to hear that.”

  “Well, cheer up,” Della advised. “We’ve got a wedding ahead of us.”

  “Yeah.”

  “And a lot of work on the Hutto place.”

  “And a real nasty lawsuit from Hugh Junior,” Kat contributed.

  “I’m sure,” Della conceded. She had decided not to check with Melissa until after Rita’s wedding.

  “And we’ll always have each other.”

  “I suppose.” Kat smiled a little. “I’m glad for it.” She frowned a little at the glove box. “What’s that?”

  “Oh, I finally remembered where I hid something.”

  “You had diamonds too?”

  “Not exactly.” Della opened the box and withdrew a pair of gloves—worn, white kid that had belonged to her mother. “My fortune.” Holding the gloves by the tips of their fingers, she shook them a little and a slip of paper fluttered out.

  It landed on the bed next to Kat, who picked it up. “It is a fortune!” she laughed.

  Della reached for it, but Kat held on. “He loves you as much as he can,” she read, “but he cannot love you much.”

  Tony kept his promise to help Dave with the shed. They were already at work the next morning when Della threw open her bedroom window to get a glimpse of the hill on the other side of the river. She leaned out over the sill and looked beyond the Ladies Farm barn to the small orchard and the rocky path that led to the Hutto house.

  About halfway up and to one side of the path stood an outcropping of sydonite, and Della knew the view from there beat the one from the Huttos’ back porch. This one hung out over the hill a little, giving you a glimpse of Castleburg’s beyond the bend in the river. And it’s ours, Della thought with satisfaction. Dave did a good job.

  Below her, Dave and Tony were unloading Dave’s truck. They had purchased some sort of prefabricated metal lean-to, which they intended to place over a concrete floor they had poured a few days ago. Next to Dave, Tony looked almost beefy. He was wearing overalls, which she had never seen before, and had a red bandanna tied around his head. Fugitive from the sixties, Della thought, withdrawing from the window but
leaving it open. Welcome to the commune.

  She dressed and made her bed. Then she headed down the front stairs, retrieving the paper from the porch before she headed for the kitchen. She had slept a little, but not well, and she needed a cup of coffee and her horoscope before she had to start breakfast.

  Tony clumped into the kitchen. “Y’all got any coffee?” he asked, zooming in on the coffeemaker as he spoke.

  “In a minute,” she replied. “Try not to make so much noise, you’ll wake the guests. If you didn’t already with all that unloading.”

  “Boy, you sure get demanding when you own the place!” He reached into the cupboard and pulled down two mugs. It didn’t take him long to know where they were, Della noticed.

  Della busied herself with emptying the dishwasher and putting away the remains of last night’s dinner. “I don’t own it yet.”

  “Dave’s sure you will. And you sure own the Hutto place,” Tony said, walking over to her and putting a hand on her neck.

  Della turned to him and resisted the urge to bury her face in his neck. This close, he smelled sweaty, with a tiny bit of soap fragrance left, and she steadied herself by planting both hands on his forearms. “If everything goes right,” she told him.

  He had slipped hands around her waist and now he pulled her a little closer. “We were right,” he insisted.

  “Yes, we were,” she agreed.

  “We were right the other night.”

  For a second, Della couldn’t even remember which night he meant, but then she recalled their date only a few days ago and smiled faintly at the memory of lying next to him. “Tony,” she said, “aren’t you afraid we’re just falling back into this relationship because it’s comfortable?”

  “Della, I’m not afraid of that, I’m hoping for it.” He released her. “What’s wrong with comfort?”

  What was wrong with it? Della wondered.

  Della shrugged and shook her head. “I don’t know, Tony.” Why was her voice shaking? “Maybe I’m beyond comforting.”

  He stomped over to the coffeemaker and poured himself a cup. “You know, Della, you may be smart, but sometimes you act stupid. And if you think you’re … if you think anyone’s beyond comfort …” His voice trailed off. “Or is it my comfort? Is it that I didn’t do it right when Jamie died, so now I have to inch my way back, dance attendance?”