“I call him gorgeous,” I said. Ed may have been seventy but he looked around fifty-five. He wore a silk handkerchief tied around his neck sort of like a cowboy except the scarf was shorter than a cowboy scarf. His hair glistened bright silver, catching what light there was in the smoke-filled room. He wore charcoal-gray trousers with a crease, no cuff, and his shirt was a pale-peach.
“Is he married?” Mother saw no reason to waste time.
“Widowed. Last year. Poor darling, he worshipped her. My mother always says that women can live without men but men can’t live without women.”
“Your mother is right, but then, just because we can do something doesn’t mean we have to.” Mother stood up and thrust her bust forward. “Verna, introduce me.”
“Julia, we’re about to play the champagne glass game.” In this bingo variation, the lines started at the two top corners, ran to the free space, and merged in one line to the bottom of the card, just like a champagne glass.
“Your children can play. Come on.” She yanked Verna out of her chair—no easy task, since Verna tipped two hundred pounds. Verna’s salvation, if not a strict diet, was navy-blue.
However, Mother was fast enough because Louise, with steel in her backbone, had propelled Mr. Pierre right over to Ed Tutweiler Walters. If Ed found Mr. Pierre’s lilac hair unusual he didn’t let on and he spoke with rapt interest to Louise. Then he did something that froze Julia to the floor. He picked up a green dab-a-dot off one of the tables and dabbed a green dot right on the tip of Louise’s nose.
“Color contrast.” He laughed.
Louise laughed, too, and then went on luridly to tell him about her unstable older (yes, she said older) sister who lost her temper over something as trifling as a bingo game. Worse, she pointed out Mother and remarked that she looked as though she had leprosy with all those blue dots covering her. At least Louise, with the red dots, only looked as though she had measles.
Ed appeared charmed. Fuming, Mother returned to her seat and played out the evening with grim resolve. Louise never left the bar. Mr. Pierre came back to sit across from Mom.
“She’s telling him that Mutzi has the thirty-eight to stop burglars like you.”
“I’d like to serve her pork tartar.” Mother could barely concentrate on her card. Maybe Louise was at first base but she wasn’t going to cross home plate. You could see the wheels spinning in Mother’s head as she schemed how to get even with her sister but, even more important, how to meet Ed Tutweiler Walters.
As Thacker BonBon had ten kids, a wife, and Ed to carry home, he couldn’t take Louise to her door. I drove Mom and Aunt Louise home in silence, which was a relief.
I let out Louise first and Mother hissed, “Judas.”
Louise was busy humming to herself, so she didn’t notice.
4
MORE LEG
SATURDAY … 28 MARCH
A heavy frost coated the ground. Fox-hunting season ended a week earlier, which was a pity because the day was good for scent. Fox-hunting suffers from an erroneous reputation. Pictures of aristocrats in pink coats flash through people’s minds. That’s like believing that everyone who plays tennis was born with a silver knife in her back. Working at the Clarion had taught me that people believe what they want to believe—don’t disturb them with the facts. I no longer rose to the defense of fox-hunting in particular and equine sports in general.
Kenny, my aging gelding, stood still while I brushed him. Pewter, purring madly, rested on his back. Cats love horses and horses love cats, or at least that’s been my observation. Pewter meowed with delight whenever the Jeep turned into the small stable, Darby’s Folly, where I kept Kenny. Lolly liked horses but she wasn’t rapturous about them unless I took her on a trail ride. Lolly was rapturous about the bits of bran and grain scattered on the floor. She licked the center aisle clean.
“Hey, girl.” Regina came into the stall and rubbed Kenny’s chin. “Kenny, wish I had a dozen like you.”
“Me, too, except younger. You know, I don’t know what I’m going to do when this guy’s too old to go out, and that day approaches.”
“The day of the thousand-dollar field hunter is over. You’ll have to pay, mmm, seven thousand at least. You could do better, Nickie, if you’d take a chance on a two-year-old and start working with him.”
“I haven’t got the time, and truthfully, I’m not that good. Muffin should do it.” Muffin was the stable’s trainer.
“Got time for a quick spin? Half hour, forty-five minutes?”
“You bet.”
I tacked up while Regina generously waited. For a well-coordinated woman I still fumble with my tack. Pewter bitched because she knew she was going to be left in the barn. Her swishing around my legs and Kenny’s didn’t help, because Kenny didn’t like it when Pewter became upset. In warm weather or even crisp weather Pewter would come out too. She’d run along until she’d had enough of it and then she’d crawl up my leg—my chaps on, thankfully—and sit in front of me on the saddle or she’d head back to the barn. But today was downright cold and Miss Pewter hated it. By the time I was ready to go, Regina had warmed up in the ring.
Also in the ring were Ursie’s daughters, two unsavory specimens, Harmony, sixteen, and Tiffany, fourteen. Muffin Barnes shouted at them: “Sloppy, you’re so sloppy! That jump was awful. You did everything wrong! Think of a jump as an interruption in your flat work. Now do it again, Tiff. You too, Harmony. You’ve done nothing to brag about today. Keep your eyes up. More leg, Tiffany. Leg! Leg! Leg!” Dutifully the girls broke into a trot and jumped again. It wasn’t that Harmony and Tiffany were bad kids as much as they were unable to cope with anything except success and money. When you buy children $60,000 show horses you’re bound to destroy their initiative. Tiffany and Harmony had specially made tack trunks in their favorite colors, with their initials emblazoned on the front and the top. Blue and white were Tiffany’s colors and red and gold were Harmony’s, which pissed me off because red and gold are my colors and Ursie well knew it too.
As Regina and I walked away from the ring, Muffin’s voice faded in the background. The rolling hills of Maryland, slick with the cold, beckoned.
“I never get tired of seeing this, do you?” Regina asked me.
“No. What surprises me is that there are millions of people who can live without it.”
“Be thankful. What would happen if they all left the cities?”
“Make the developers happy.”
“They’re happy enough.” Regina scanned the skyline. “Dante?”
“Dante and Dad.”
With that we cantered down into the little valley and back up the hill on the other side. We’d really made a semicircle around Darby’s Folly, because the road below us would lead us back to the stable if we wanted to go on the road, which we did not. High on the hill was Runnymede’s cemetery. Celeste Chalfonte, beloved friend and employer of my grandmother, was buried there at the very top with the biggest monument I’d seen this side of the Washington Monument, that unfortunately shaped memento to our founding father. I guess they wanted to emphasize the father idea. My father was buried there, as were Grandma—Cora Hunsenmeir—and Dad’s parents, the Smiths. I could walk through these stones and find ancestors dating back to the late 1600s. Someday I’d be resting up here, too, but no time soon, I hoped. Regina’s family, the Clavells, as well as her husband’s people, the Frosts, slumbered here. But what had fascinated us since we were children together was the beautifully carved white marble monument to Dante, the firehorse of South Runnymede and beloved of all. He was born in 1878 and died in 1907, having lived a long and useful life. Dante had a bigger stone than my father, but then Dante, at the turn of the century, benefited from lower prices. Besides, the firehouse gang took up a collection. Dad had only Mother and me to pay his final bill back in 1961. I was still in high school. I figured Dad would understand.
We dismounted to give our horses a break from our weight and to give Lolly a breather too.
“Kids are still bringing Dante flowers.” Regina smiled. “Remember when we used to do it?”
“Maybe it was how we learned about death. And Dante’s birthday is an annual firehouse celebration, so we were reminded of him, his heroics. Anyway, kids love animals, even dead ones.”
“To what do I owe this burst of analysis?”
“I don’t know.” I shrugged.
“Paper?”
“Uh-huh.” I’d told her about Charles’s impending sale. What I didn’t tell her about was my other preoccupations, preoccupations closer to home. Hers and mine.
“Has Wheezie recovered from her party?”
“Pretty much.”
“Do you know that was one of the few times I’ve been in your esteemed aunt’s presence when she didn’t try to convert me to Catholicism.”
“Mother and I want to put her on rosary methadone.”
“Good luck.” Regina remounted. “Let’s get back before Ursie comes to pick up her munchkins. She’ll start on me about our annual Tri-Delta alumnae horse show.”
“That’s months away.” I stood on a tombstone to get up on Kenny, who was sixteen hands and too big for me to leap up on. Regina, much taller than I, could gracefully swing her leg over any animal this side of seventeen hands. I envied her that. I envied her other things, too, namely that she was our Master of Foxhounds—that and Jackson.
“You know how compulsive she is. I swear Ursie has lists and then lists of her lists. She also wants to talk hunt club business—the newsletter.” Regina rolled her eyes.
“You should never have given her that job.” I pushed Kenny onward.
“Given it to her! I begged you to take it.”
“Come on, Gene, we’ve been over this ad infinitum. My doing the newsletter is like taking coals to Newcastle. I’m on the breakfast committee.”
“You’re rather bad at that.”
“I am?” This surprised me. Lolly stopped for a tantalizing sniff of something. “Lolly Mabel, come on.” She lifted her leonine head and hurried after me.
“You don’t care much about food, Nickel, and while you’re a wonderful organizer—don’t get me wrong—you’re terrible with menus.”
“But it’s not my job to plan the menus. It’s only my job to get people to sponsor breakfasts after our hunts.”
“Yes and no.” Regina patiently continued. “You should supervise the menus to make certain there are no duplications and that the food is good.”
“Let Verna BonBon do it.”
“Verna’s not a member of the hunt club.”
I knew that. I also knew that Regina was right but one of the great advantages of having an old friend is that you can be childish and irrational. It refreshes both parties.
“Bet Ursie was the first to bitch, too, wasn’t she?” I had advanced from kindergarten to junior high school in my approach.
“Actually, no. She was the second.”
We trotted a bit. The frost flew from under our horses’ hooves. Their breath, our breath, and Lolly’s breath escaped from our mouths like billows of creamy cumulus clouds. When Regina pulled up for a walk my nose was no longer out of joint.
“I’m sorry.”
“I accept your resignation. You are now appointed to the newsletter.”
“Gene! What a sneak you are, a real sneaky pie. Ursie will never stand for it.”
“Ursie is now head of the breakfast committee and all entertainments, assuming you will take over the newsletter. She thinks she has more power in the club because of it.”
“Does she?”
“Of course not. Whoever controls the information and the purse strings runs the show in any organization. You know that.”
In fact, I did. “Ursie’s not dumb. She wants something.”
“She wants to run for County Board of Supervisors and she figures if she entertains people handsomely for a year she’ll be a shoo-in.”
My mouth was on my chest. “You lie.”
“Have I ever lied to you?”
“Give me time. I’ll think of something.”
“Or you’ll make it up and then accuse me of a faulty memory if I don’t recall the incident.”
We headed toward the barn jabbering excitedly about Ursie’s hidden agenda. Ursula Yost, well-heeled and well-educated, would make a good public servant in many respects. She was conscientious, hardworking, committed to no-growth, which meant she was a deadly foe to any real estate developer or chain store—a mixed blessing, but I was more with her than against her on that one. Her girls would soon be at college and she was looking for a new career, I guess. I’d vote for her, of course, when the time came. Just because I couldn’t stand the ground the woman walked on didn’t mean I was blind to her virtues. Politics makes strange bedfellows. The word bedfellow in this context gave me a shudder.
5
BUMBLEBEE HILL
SUNDAY … 29 MARCH
Sunday was blissfully quiet, in part because I refused to answer the telephone. If I did I would be the victim of either Mother or Aunt Louise recounting her sister’s sins back to Year One. I loved my weekends because they were usually quiet. People focused on their families, which left me to focus on my little farm or my next deadline.
Today I surrendered myself to serious literature, writing checks. Why was there always so much month at the end of the money?
Money began to occupy my thoughts almost exclusively. I’d spoken to Charles about wanting to buy the Clarion and he didn’t laugh, which was a beginning. He said he couldn’t stop negotiating with the Thurston Group and Mid-Atlantic Holding Shares but that he’d help me any way he could. I suggested we have a meeting with Foster Adams at the Runnymede Bank and Trust the next week and he agreed. He also told me that John Hoffman was shocked at the news but took it with good grace. So far we were all behaving like reasonable adults. I wondered how long it would last.
Outside, a silver net enveloped us. It was as though the earth exhaled its atmosphere, like a huge beast breathing in its sleep. The earth showed no signs of waking up; there wasn’t even one crocus above the ground. We’d already run three stories with meteorologists since December and I didn’t want to run another one. Our staff was small and the next weather article would land in my lap. Fair was fair, and that attitude kept the two young reporters who worked for the Clarion happy.
When I was a kid and the weather turned peculiar, Louise would say it was the result of atom bomb tests. Lately she’d revived this opinion because of the nuclear accident at Chernobyl. My own explanation was that winter lingered out of pure D ugliness. If people could personalize God, I saw no reason why I couldn’t personalize winter.
I personalized my farm, but then, it was personal. Cora, my grandmother, was born and raised here, as were Mother and Louise. I inherited the farm through Mom. I had to pay off Louise. Her share’s value increased dangerously until Mother put her in her place. Still, I paid the going price in 1977. Louise shopped for bargains but never gave any.
Bumblebee Hill was the name of the farm and the hill on which it was built. The elevation, seven hundred feet, afforded me views of the land, and if I walked out on my front porch I could see Runnymede twinkling below me due east.
The house, built in 1834, although simple, was a good example of Federal architecture: four rooms off a center hall, upstairs and downstairs, each room with a fireplace. Electricity was added in the 1920s and indoor plumbing arrived in the late 1940s.
I put in new pipes—copper in, PVC out—in 1980, as well as rewiring. That was an expensive year. Apart from that, if Cora came back to life she’d recognize her home instantly.
The kitchen, with her butcher block in the middle of the room and a trestle table in the small nook, was as she left it. Only the appliances were new. I’d bought a red enamel stove. Why, I don’t know. I can’t cook but it sure was pretty.
Grandma’s furniture, sturdy country pieces, dotted the vario
us rooms. Kenny took up whatever discretionary income I had, so I never bought furniture. I made do with Cora’s pieces and a few that Mother donated to the cause. I was, however, good with color and the living room was pale-peach with white trim. The kitchen was red and white. The wainscoting in the dining room was a clear, deep cream. Above that, instead of using wallpaper, Grandma had hand-painted stencils of stylized birds, silver birds on a blue background. For my thirty-third birthday, Mother repainted them for me. Like Cora, Mom was artistic and good with her hands. I was neither but I was good with my head, so things evened out.
The phone rang. I sighed. It continued to ring. I gave up and answered it.
“Why didn’t you pick up your phone this weekend?” Mother went on the offensive.
“Slipped my mind.”
“Oh, balls. How am I supposed to know if you’re all right? I hate it when you go off into one of your moons. Anyway, I need you to do my books. End of the month.”
“I’m not moony. I just wanted to be quiet, which is a virtual impossibility around you.”
“You, of course, never open your mouth.” She inhaled. “Despite you being an ungrateful brat, I’ve been thinking about the Clarion.”
“Yes.” She had my attention.
“Well, what if you wrote a memoir of Runnymede and sold it? You know, in the town. Mojo’s would carry it and so would the bookstore. That money could go toward buying the paper. Maybe even a big publisher would want it.”
“Mother, that’s a wonderful idea but I don’t think I could write such a book and get it on the stands in time.”
“How long would it take?”
“At least a year. Think of the research it would take.”
There was a pause on the other end of the line. “Just ask Louise—she’s two years older than God.”
“Goodyear must be out of the room.”
“He’s upstairs on his hooked rug with a chewy bone.” Her voice was light. “I have forgiven Lolly Mabel.”
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