Meadowlark

by Sheila Simonson

  Jay, Angie, and Bianca were chatting up a storm at the other end of the table with the two central places vacant. That gap explained itself as Mike entered bearing a tray of steaming soup bowls followed closely by his mother carrying baskets of bread. They served us rapidly, then Marianne joined us. Mike took the empty tray off and returned to the spot on my right. I gave him a smile he was too shy or sullen to return.

  When all the bread and butter and wine passing were over, I took a sip of soup. It was a light oyster stew, almost a contradiction in terms, but full of tiny succulent Shoalwater oysters. Luscious. Learning to cook was teaching me to appreciate other people's cooking--or not, in some cases. Marianne Wallace was not a cook, I decided as I sampled the bread. She was a chef. The wholemeal bread, faintly Tuscan, smelled of rosemary.

  Someone was groping my knee. McDonald--not a difficult deduction. To all intents, he was listening to Del Wallace grouse about something agricultural, but the hand groped, warm through the crinkled fabric of my skirt. I edged my chair to the right.

  Mike said something.

  "I beg your pardon?"

  "Please pass the jam."

  I obliged and took a sip of wine. The groping hand made contact again. At the other end of the table Jay was chewing oblivious bread and looking happy. He bent to hear something Marianne said. I didn't catch his eye.

  Wallace took a gulp of wine and began slathering a piece of bread with butter.

  McDonald's hand was moving up my thigh.

  I said, "Professor McDonald--"

  "Keith."

  "Keith, then. I'd like to share my thoughts with you."

  The blue eyes beamed.

  I kept my voice low. "I have a nice salad fork here which I am about to stab into my left thigh. The odds are good the tines will intersect the hand you finger things with." I picked up the fork in my left hand.

  Face impassive, he withdrew his hand. Del Wallace gave a small snort and caught my eye. He winked.

  I gritted my teeth and turned to Mike. "So. Michael. Taking any interesting classes this term?"

  Mike's mouth was full. He chewed and thought. "Yeah. Anthropology. I like it but it's hard."

  "Cultural or physical?"

  McDonald and Wallace were talking. Wallace kept watching me.

  "Physical," Mike said. "You know, like skulls and stuff. Mrs. Horton, she's the teacher, brought a real skull last week."

  "Fun for you," I murmured.

  "Well, it was. Prof... I mean, your husband says forensic anthropologists are real important in crime investigation these days." Clearly he thought Jay was terrific. I could deal with that.

  Marianne said something and Mike shoved his chair back. "Gotta go." Mother and son went off. I sipped wine and wished the meal was over.

  "You read poetry," McDonald said, supercilious now that he couldn't play his little game. "I suppose you were an English major."

  "I had a double major in English and P.E."

  "P.E.?"

  "I played basketball for Ohio State," I said coldly.

  I think that did startle him. He blinked again. "Your mother's a poet."

  "So I've heard. I'm a little surprised you have." He hadn't come to the signing.

  He gave me an earnest smile. "Lighten up, Lark. I can take no for an answer."

  "What was the question?"

  He looked away.

  I said, "I understand you're a folklorist. Do you study Nekana myths and legends?" The Nekana were a local tribe, part of the great coastal civilization that once ranged from Alaska to the Columbia.

  He shrugged. "What with Marianne here as resident informant, I'd be remiss not to have looked into Nekana stories. They're pretty derivative."

  I thought he was pretty derivative, by Lord Byron out of the Kingston Trio, but I didn't say so. He was keeping his hand to himself.

  Marianne's salads--westerners tend to serve salad as the second course--were as good as her bread, and when I complimented her on the variety of greens she seemed pleased. They came from the greenhouses at this season, she said, nodding toward Angie.

  Mike said, "Hugo grows interesting stuff in the spring and summer."

  Angie apparently heard us. She bent forward and began to tell me about her Belgian endive, a rarity in those parts. Jay and Bianca joined in after a moment, and I had the leisure to take a look at Marianne Wallace. She had grayish eyes and brown, rather than black, hair, but her round-faced prettiness and wide frame seemed Nekana-like. They were a handsome people.

  The entree was lamb shanks and onions braised in beer, a James Beard recipe I thought I recognized. Marianne served Angie an omelet. I managed to keep a foodie conversation going with that end of the table until, thank God, Bianca announced we'd have coffee and dessert in the living room. I felt like flight, but the impulse made me twice as angry with McDonald, so I took my time rising and leaving the room.

  In the living room, however, I stationed myself near Bianca on the theory that her husband would probably not grope me under her direct gaze. He was looking a little surly, and Del Wallace kept watching me with a lurking grin on his red face. I could cheerfully have jabbed him with a fork, too. I almost asked Bianca where she kept her swine.

  She was eager to talk shop and did so, in great detail. I had trouble focusing on her words. Jay seemed to be making an effort, another effort, with Keith McDonald, who was back at the guitar but just fingering it. Got to keep that right hand limber. Del Wallace downed another whiskey.

  Angie eavesdropped on our conversation, yawning from time to time. Outside, sleet beat on the windows.

  "...and all the students should reach the farm by half-past seven that Sunday," Bianca was saying.

  I said okay and watched Jay's jaw muscle knot. Tension rising there.

  Michael brought in another tray--apple crumble with rum sauce, and coffee--and excused himself to go study. Marianne joined us, though. Ordinarily I hate a gathering that separates the men and women, but that night I didn't mind.

  Angie was asking Bianca what kind of floral arrangements she'd want for the reception before the workshop.

  "Do you grow flowers, too?" I said.

  She nodded. "Yes, though the market for organic flowers is limited to edibles for upscale restaurants. People just don't think organic when they buy flowers."

  Bianca said, "All the same, you'll stick with the guidelines, Angie. That label's important to me--to our profits, too." She turned to me. "Organic meat and vegetables can be sold at a higher price than food that's full of pesticides and chemical fertilizers."

  I swallowed coffee. "I imagine the market's limited, though."

  She shrugged. "True. We've got about as many guaranteed sales to the specialized stores and restaurants as we're going to get, but supermarkets will buy limited quantities labeled 'organic' now, and they don't mind buying the surplus at the ordinary price either. They also take our excess flowers."

  I said, "I buy organic tomatoes and lettuce when I can find them at Safeway, but I've never bothered with organic flowers."

  Angie's face darkened. "Yeah, a few insect signs and people will go for a bunch of dusted roses instead."

  "My friend Tom Lindquist grows an organic garden." I spooned the last drop of rum sauce. "I like his flowers just fine. I shake the bugs off and pop the blooms in a vase, but store-bought flowers are so expensive I want them perfect--"

  "Even if they're destroying the environment?"

  Marianne said, "Tom Lindquist's grandmother was Madeline LaPorte. My mother always said Aunt Maddy's gardens were great."

  "Are you related to Tom?"

  She hesitated and glanced at her husband. "Sort of."

  "My brother-in-law is going to marry Tom's cousin."

  Marianne smiled. "That'll be Darla. Everybody says she's real smart." Darla Sweet was on the Nekana Tribal Council.

  Angie had been brooding. "Hugo won't spray for anything, not if he loses his whole crop."

  Bianca said, "He's too smart and
too experienced to let that happen, Angie."

  "And I'm not?"

  "You're smart." Bianca smiled a conciliating smile.

  Angie got up, restless. "But not as experienced as Hugo Bloody Groth. No, and not as hidebound either. The man's rigid."

  Bianca sipped coffee. "What can I say? He sells everything he grows for top dollar. Focus on that. Your bulbs, and your statice and dry arrangements do very well. Forget roses..."

  And they were off on what was clearly an on-going argument. I caught Jay's eye and raised one eyebrow. He nodded.

  I said, "Jay has an eight o'clock meeting tomorrow, Bianca. We really ought to go. The dinner was superb, and I think your center is exactly the way it should be."

  We made our escape after reasonably brief ceremonies of disengagement. In the car, I said, "Keith McDonald groped my knee at dinner."

  Jay's mouth twitched. "And..."

  "What the hell do you mean, and? I had a rotten time, and I'm looking for a little husbandly support."

  "The fact that I sat down at that man's table and broke bread is husbandly support, believe it." He started the engine. "Now tell me what you did to the bastard."

  He laughed heartily when I told him, but I was still steamed. "I suppose he was using me to get at you."

  "You betcha."

  "I am not some goddamn trophy to be passed back and forth between rutting males."

  "Yeah, and old Keith knows it." He was not going to be baited. I had to respect that.

  "Turn on the windshield wipers," I muttered and sank down in my seat.

  We drove homeward in silence, grim on my part, concentrated on Jay's. Sleet and rain pounded down on roads as slick as spit. The wipers swished away. I knew it was bad when Jay stopped turning them off.

  We headed north on the Ridge Road, a narrow ribbon of highway with deep ditches on either side. The headlights probed absolute darkness, wind shook the car, and branches littered the asphalt. Jay was going thirty-five, but it felt like seventy.

  Headlights and those nasty yellow fog lights loomed behind us and passed--a high-wheel pickup. Four-wheel drive or no, its rear end fishtailed. A tall chromed roll-bar gleamed briefly.

  "Damn fool." Jay hunched over the wheel. "Do you want me to tell McDonald to keep off, Lark?"

  "No."

  "Shall I tell him you're a black belt?"

  "I told him I played for Ohio State. No need to lie."

  "He'd believe me. He's a coward."

  I stared at Jay's profile in the dim light of the dash. He does not make a habit of calling other men cowards, having been in too many tight situations himself.

  He rounded a dark curve. "Uh oh."

  I peered ahead. The pickup that passed us had veered into the ditch. Its lights canted up into the evergreens on the left side of the road.

  Jay was gearing down. I could see the driver standing by the vehicle now. Jay stopped the car and waited.

  The driver walked to his side, and Jay lowered the window.

  "Give me a ride to Shoalwater?"

  "I'll call the sheriff's office for you."

  "It's fucking cold out here, man. I want a ride!"

  I glimpsed a high-colored face, red with cold, and a pouty Elvis mouth.

  Jay said, in his most peaceable voice, "Well, sure you can ride with us. I wouldn't leave an expensive rig like that unattended, though. Let me call in for you. I just live down the road here. Won't take long."

  "Oh." The guy--a very young man--straightened to look at his sad pickup. "Oh, well, yeah. Thanks." He stumbled back to his truck and slid down into the driver's seat, though it was clear the door wouldn't close.

  Jay engaged the gear, and we eased away.

  I said, "Liar." Nobody on the Peninsula was fool enough to stop in an ice storm to vandalize anything, not even the local vehicle of choice. I wondered if the pickup had a gun rack. Most did.

  "The kid was drunk." Jay despises drunk drivers. They are lower on his personal totem pole than cowards.

  "Plenty of anti-freeze in his system."

  "College student," Jay muttered. "I've seen him on campus." Jay drove on. He stopped in Shoalwater and talked to the deputy there. I had the feeling the pickup driver would be taking a Breathalyzer test soon.

  We chugged on home. Later, as we twined warmly in bed, Jay murmured, "I'm sorry you had a rotten time, Lark."

  "Me, too." I'd been thinking. "McDonald was pretty obvious and crude. You were right. He was using me, but not to get at you, or not exclusively."

  "Who?"

  "Bianca." I flopped back against my pillow.

  "'S possible."

  "I won't say anything to her about it."

  "And you're going through with the workshop?"

  "Yes. That woman needs help." I thought of Keith and Del with their heads together, smirking and watching, and of the free-floating hostility in the air.

  Hugo Groth had drawn most of the fire because he wasn't there. Bianca was probably partly to blame. She said she had been trying to re-create the commune--or the hotel she'd lived in as a child. If they'd all chosen to live together that would have been different. Bianca's wealth made her naÏve desire to create a community look a lot like coercion. At least Hugo had had the sense to move out.

  Bianca called me two weeks before the workshop was scheduled to begin.

  I had gone in to the store to sort new stock and enter it into my inventory. "Is everything set?" I hoped neither of the speakers had backed out.

  "I think so. Lark, have you seen Hugo?"

  "He came in last week to pay the rent."

  "He hasn't showed up at work for three days." She sounded tense.

  "Has he gone off like this in the past?"

  "Twice, but I traced him easily both times. Now I don't know what to do. Nobody knows where he is, not even his ex-wife. There's no sign of him here, and he doesn't answer the phone, either."

  "Better call the sheriff." The police would not be impressed. Hugo was a mature adult with a bank account. "Where's his bicycle?"

  "I haven't seen it here. Do you have a key to his apartment?"

  "Yes, but I'm not going to barge in on Hugo if he's taking a little vacation. I'll run up and knock, if you like, and look for the bike in the hall."

  "Will you? I'd be grateful."

  "I'll call you back," I said, resigned and not best pleased.

  The bike wasn't on the landing, and Hugo didn't respond to my knock. I tried Mr. Williams, too, but he must have been out. Downstairs, a utility bill addressed to Hugo and a couple of advertising circulars lay in the little basket below the mail slot. Mr. Williams' mail was gone.

  I went back into the store to report my failure. "He hasn't picked his mail up recently."

  At the other end of the line, Bianca heaved an exasperated sigh. "Damn Hugo. He went off before because he got restless, or so he claimed, but he never left me when there was anything crucial to do. I'm going nuts nursing this broccoli, getting his starts ready to set out, supervising the other digging--every one of those huge beds has to be composted and double dug before we can plant. I wish we'd never started that experiment."

  I was trying to envisage Bianca in her vivid designer tunic digging up spadefuls of the Good Earth.

  "It's almost the end of the term," Bianca wailed. "He has to evaluate the interns."

  "Lawsy."

  "What?"

  "That must be difficult for you." I started to ask how I could help and bit back the words. I was already doing the woman a large favor by running the workshop.

  I could hear Bianca gulping at the other end. She said in a muffled voice, "I'm sorry. If I come to town, will you at least let me into the apartment?"

  That was doubtfully legal. I was not a cop, however, and landlords do have rights. I sighed. "Okay, Bianca, but make it snappy. I want to go home." I was fixing boeuf en daube with mixed veggies. The vegetables were organic, the beef just beef. Probably full of steroids.

  "Half an hour?"


  "Okay."

  She showed up forty-five minutes later in jeans, a sweatshirt, anorak, and boots. She looked almost like a farmer--a morose farmer. A man's tweed cap hid the mahogany hair.

  I led her upstairs and we knocked and called. No response. I unlocked the door.

  By that time I was half-expecting a gory corpse in the bathroom. I was relieved not to find one. There was no trace of Hugo, apart from his belongings. We took a good look around the living room, and Bianca headed down the short hall.

  I surveyed the living room with a landlady's eye and decided Hugo was a keeper, even if he was using the front room as a bedroom. A double futon lay flat on its frame, the bedcovers drawn up and the pillow plumped. There was no television, but he had set up an expensive looking CD player and speakers. He had been reading the Zen master. The book lay on the arm of an easy chair. The furnishings had a second-hand look, but they were reasonably tasteful and in good repair.

  I strolled to the small dining table in the corner next to the utility kitchen. It held a placemat with a few crumbs, a salt and pepper shaker, and a bottle of vitamin C. In the kitchen, the counter was clean, but a bowl, a couple of spoons, and a paring knife lay in the sink. Nothing had molded in the clean, well-stocked refrigerator. Even the lettuce looked crisp. Staples--cereal, rice, soup, crackers--stocked the cupboard shelves. Hugo didn't have a lot of dinnerware, but there was plenty for one, and he had stoneware of a good plain design. Altogether a decent bachelor establishment.

  Bianca came out of the bedroom, which he had apparently been using as an office. Her hair was ruffled, and she clutched the tweed cap.

  I said, "Everything looks normal to me. He told me he used dope sometimes. Maybe he just decided to hole up in a motel on the beach with a bong and a book. Don't pot smokers lose track of time?"

  "Not that much time and not Hugo." She ran a hand through her hair. "Hell and damn." She glanced around the 'bedroom.' "The plants look okay."