The Farm

by Scott Nicholson

  The Farm

  Scott Nicholson

  Scott Nicholson

  The Farm

  Chapter One

  Lilacs.

  The scent drifted from the cupboard and crossed the kitchen as if riding a late spring breeze. Katy Logan sniffed and frowned. It was late September, too deep in the Appalachian autumn for any flowers but goldenrod, jewel weed, and hummingbird plant. She hoped Gordon wasn't the type of man who believed in packaged deodorizers, those little plug-in things that looked great on a television commercial. The kind featuring a fashionable mom who could clean the house, build a career, raise three kids, and still manage to be dynamite in the sack, all without rumpling the pages of Cosmopolitan.

  Katy had no doubt the scent was lilacs. Her mother, Althea, was a gardener, though her Floridian climate was eight hundred miles and four thousand feet of elevation removed from the North Carolina mountains. Mom had a string of blue ribbons from flower shows across the panhandle. Katy's green thumb had turned a sickly shade of chartreuse somewhere at the age of six, when she'd dumped a bucket of mud on a prize species of two-tone rose. Sent to bed without supper, Katy had fantasized about ripping Mom's flower garden up by its roots, starting with the lilacs.

  She let the pot she was scrubbing slide into the soapy water. The scent came again, stronger. It wasn't a pure smell. The lilac had a faint musky undertone. Like old fish.

  God she shouldn't have cooked Gordon swordfish last night. At least the heady lilac disguised the odor a little. She was as hapless in the kitchen as she was in the garden. She had always resisted the petty tyranny of the kitchen, its perfect order and shiny regimen, the confusing array of spices. Did tomato-based sauces need basil or garlic? Was it cinnamon or was it cloves that dominated a pumpkin pie? Did swordfish demand a freshly squeezed lemon or a splash of soy sauce?

  Katy had gone with both lemon and soy last night, determined to be a good wife for Gordon. A textbook wife. An Old Testament wife, if necessary. She'd been the other kind of wife and didn't have much to show for it.

  Except Jett.

  Katy dried her hands. A door slammed beyond the kitchen. Jett must be coming in, ready to hit the books and prepare to wow the sixth grade teachers at Cross Valley Elementary tomorrow.

  "Jett?" A smile slipped across Katy's lips, and she could practically feel the furrows in her forehead smooth out. Like a Cosmo mom. No stress. Wrinkles were for those who succumbed to gravity.

  Katy waited for the footsteps of her daughter. Jett was on the threshold of blossoming, getting swells on her chest, and the subsequent adolescent turmoil made her unpredictable. She was as likely to break into tears over an imaginary slight as to crawl on her mother's lap for a good cuddle. Her first expression would reveal the mood of the moment.

  Katy was glad to be done with the kitchen, anyway. That lilac smell had given her a headache and she was going to thaw some pizzas for dinner. Last night's swordfish experiment had taught her that she'd better take it easy on becoming Supermom. Simply slapping an S on her chest hadn't eased today's stink any. She sprinkled baking soda into the trash can, hoping the odor would fade before Gordon came home.

  "Jett?" she called again, closing the freezer.

  Foot stomps, not steps.

  Her daughter was in a mood that could only possess a twelve-year-old. Anger, anger, anger with fat leather heels. A hard day in the classroom, no doubt. Or a boy. Probably both, since those went hand in hand when you were in your first year at a new school and real boys were just starting to rival Goth bands and horses for your attention. Except Jett had made an art form of being an outsider. Black wardrobe and attitude to spare.

  Katy left the kitchen without a backward glance, the lilac-and-fish aroma and the whirring microwave occupying the room. Even after four months here, she still hadn't become comfortable with the layout of Gordon's house.

  No, not Gordon's house. Our house. Until death do us part, just like I promised.

  For the second time.

  The front door of the two-story farmhouse opened onto the living room, with a foyer that was barely big enough for dirty shoes and damp umbrellas. The kitchen stood off to the right, interrupted by a stretch of hardwood floor that contained a dining table. Four chairs. Gordon must have always been an optimist, even during those last five years of bachelorhood.

  Katy almost called for Jett again, but stopped herself. That might be construed as nagging. Katy had dropped the two of them into the middle of this new situation, so she owed her daughter a little slack. If Katy were compelled to be honest with herself, something she desperately avoided, she would admit Jett had endured the tougher transition.

  Katy had done nothing more than say "I do" and turn in her resignation at Wachovia Financial Services. Sure, she'd hated Charlotte anyway, and a small town called Solom in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina seemed like the perfect escape from the thirty-two years that had given her nothing but a beautiful child and a bottomless well of insecurity. But for Jett, this move had been the equivalent of an emotional tsunami.

  Not only had Jett left her father behind, she'd said good-bye to a small private school and a number of friends she'd known since diaper days. The two-bedroom apartment on Queen Street had been traded for a restored wooden-frame house on thirty acres of slanted land. Jett couldn't even get a decent cell phone signal out here, a point she'd drilled into Katy at every available opportunity. So Katy didn't completely blame her for storming up the stairs to her room.

  As a mother, Katy had the duty to go up and tap quietly on Jett's door. On her way, she made a halfhearted swipe at the dust that covered a curly maple coffee table. How could dust collect so fast? As a wedding present, Gordon had hired a professional cleaning service to perform a top-to-bottom wipe-down. But already the weight of domestic responsibility had settled in Katy's heart as heavy as the dampness from the stream that ran behind the house.

  As she climbed the stairs, she expected to hear the floor-shaking beat of industrial Goth, music that Katy dared not criticize lest it gain a permanent slot on her daughter's playlist. Katy had helped Jett shop for her first studded dog collar, a possibly scarring experience for them both. Since then, Jett had eschewed the collars as part of her black leather-and-vinyl outfits, along with the occasional denim complement, and Katy had withheld fashion advice. Katy didn't relate to the Goth look, but she recalled her own youthful experiments in hippie chic, frayed bell-bottoms and paisley blouses worn without a bra. She shuddered to imagine herself in such a costume now, and figured Jett had the right to make her own choices she would later regret. Except the choice to do drugs.

  Katy paused at the top of the stairs. Below, the footsteps crossed the living room, headed for the kitchen.

  "Jett?"

  A snack. No adolescent's afternoon was complete without an apple or a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich. They were growing, after all, pushing toward adulthood, shoving aside the generation ahead.

  Swordfish, for God's sake. What had she been thinking? Katy knew swordfish was loaded with mercury, but figured the toxicity wouldn't do any lasting damage upon first exposure. She'd been trying to impress Gordon, plain and simple. Jett liked it okay, she barely ate dinner these days anyway, what with all that after-school snacking and chronic dieting. Gordon had taken a first bite, lifted his eyebrows, then shifted his attention back to the book he was reading. He'd turned the page before wiping his lips and saying, "Honey, you've outdone yourself. I've never tasted such exquisite brook trout."

  Katy had smiled, sipped at her glass of white wine, swallowed the lump in her throat, and said what any newlywed would say. "I'm glad you like it, dear."

  Instead of going back downstairs in search of her wayward daughter, Katy went down the hall to her and Gordon's bedro
om. She opened the walnut door with a creak of century-old hinges. The room was always dark, even now with me five o'clock sun at the windows. The room was thick with Southern Appalachian history, outsider sculptures in seven native woods, stacks of tapes from old evangelical radio stations, dozens of family Bibles arrayed in rows across the shelves. Gordon's work was his life, had apparently always been. She wondered if he would ever be able to change. She'd married him on the off chance that he'd be one of the very few men to pull it off.

  No, that wasn't entirely true. She'd married him for a number of reasons that were as shallow and tangled as the roots of a black locust tree.

  A rustling arose from inside the closet on Gordon's side of the room.

  Had Jett hidden in there, playing hide-and-seek like a four-year-old? The closet was barely big enough for a person to stand inside, and was filled with the regalia of an academic's profession: black and blue suits, white shirts, polished shoes, and a tuxedo. The closet was open, the ancient door handle missing its knob.

  Jett wasn't in there.

  Nobody home.

  She'd heard no footsteps.

  Stress.

  From slapping the old S on the chest.

  The noise came again from the hollow of the closet. Mice. A house developed holes over the years, especially in a rural setting. Generations of mice had the opportunity to search for crevices, to explore the corner boards and probe the openings where utility lines entered the walls. Supermom would have to learn to set traps. Smith mice for the Smith house.

  She'd mention it to Gordon. Maybe he was the type who would insist on taking care of the problem. He'd never been much of a traditionalist in other gender areas, though. He'd let her keep her maiden name of Logan. Katy had said she wanted to remain a Logan for sentimental reasons, because her grandmother had died a few years before. In truth, changing her name back after her divorce had been so troublesome she never wanted to endure it again. Not that she was planning to get divorced again. Of course, she'd also said she'd never get married again, and here she was, in Gordon's house, her Supermom cape already in need of a good dry-cleaning.

  The front door swung open and banged closed. "Mom, I'm home."

  Katy frowned at the closet, wondering if she should peek inside and scare the mice away. No, might as well let them get comfortable. Made them easier to snare. She hurried from the room and called from the top of the stairs, "Honey, what's going on?"

  "Nothing. I just got out of school. I caught a ride from Mrs. Stansberry up the road. You know, the math teacher."

  Katy was halfway down the stairs when Jett came into view. Freckles like Mom, but black hair instead of red, cut short in bangs and the back spiked with mousse. The darker hair was one of Mark's genetic contributions, along with a gangly frame, though Jett had dyed it a shoe-polish black for dramatic effect. Jett had taken to slumping so she wouldn't tower over the sixth grade boys. Jett smacked her gum, a habit she'd picked up in Charlotte and clung to with all the defiance and resentment of a quarantined goat.

  "I haven't met Mrs. Stansberry," Katy said. "I'd rather you not ride with strangers."

  Jett let her book bag drop to the floor. "She's not a stranger. She lives up the road. She knows Gordon."

  Gordon. It was odd to hear Jett call him by his first name, as if he were an acquaintance instead of her stepfather. But "Dad" wouldn't do. Mark, for all his faults, deserved the sole right to that title. Even if he'd done little more than squirt a seed invisible to the naked eye, then roll over and snore.

  "You could ride the bus."

  Jett was already headed to the kitchen, heels clopping on the floor. Just like the footsteps Katy had heard minutes before. "The bus is lame," Jett said. "That's for third graders. Bethany's getting rides from a high school boy."

  Katy descended the rest of the stairs, following into the kitchen. "This Bethany, she's in your class?"

  Jett pulled her head from the refrigerator. "Mom, she's in, like, seventh grade already. And he's only a sophomore. He flunked a grade, plus he's on the football team."

  "I hope you have better judgment than that."

  Jett kneed the refrigerator closed, hands full with a yogurt, Diet Sprite, celery, and a microwave burrito. "Jeez, Mom. I'm not a kid anymore, okay? Remember last month?"

  The period. Even after all the mother-to-daughter talks about what it meant to be a woman, how puberty came earlier to females than males, how blood was all part of being a woman, Jett had still panicked when she'd awoken to find a red splotch on her sheets. Gordon had been in the bathroom, suiting up for the commute to Westridge University, so they'd both been spared an awkward moment. Katy had helped her daughter clean up and choose an appropriate feminine hygiene product.

  "Okay," Katy said. "Just because you can have a baby doesn't mean you're ready to date high school boys."

  "Mom, don't get in my face about it. I haven't done anything wrong." Jett leaned against the counter, set down her snacks, and peeled back the lid on the yogurt.

  "Sorry, honey." Katy went back to the sink and the never-ending demand of dirty dishes. "I know the move has been hard on you."

  Jett shrugged. "One place is as good as another."

  "Do you smell lilacs?"

  "All I smell is stinky fish. That swordfish was so not right. I mean, it tasted good and all, but there's not enough Lysol spray in the world to hide it."

  Katy plunged her hands into the dishwater. "I'm sorry you had to give up Charlotte. I know you had a lot of friends there and-"

  "We talked about it, okay? Jeez, you wouldn't even get married until I gave my permission."

  "Please stop saying 'Jeez.' You know Gordon finds it disrespectful."

  Jett looked up, gave a theatrical lift of her arms, and said, "Do you see Gordon? I don't see Gordon. In fact, you never see Gordon. He's practically a ghost in his own life."

  "He works hard, honey. He has a lot of responsibilities at the university."

  "Assistant vice dean of continuing something-or-other? Sounds like a job he could do over the Internet."

  "He also teaches."

  "Like, what? One class this semester? A seminar on obscure hillbilly cults?"

  "He's well known in his field."

  "What field is that, exactly?"

  "I don't know. Appalachian religion, I guess."

  Jett dug into her yogurt. The Yoplait painted her lips a milky green. "So how are you handling giving up your career?"

  "I have a career. I'm your mother and Gordon's wife."

  "I meant one where you make money and get to dress up and do stuff. Get out of the house."

  "I'm very happy, honey." Katy glanced at the orange rings of greasy suds floating on top of the dishwater. She forced her focus through the window, to the barns outside and the barbed-wire stretch of meadow. Gordon had seven head of cattle, two of them the black Angus variety. Gordon said that was where the breeding money was. Breeding money. Sounded a little obscene to Katy, like a prostitute's tip. But the goats were his real pride. She could see a few of them, young bucks separated from the rest because they would try to mount anything that moved, including their mothers.

  "Maybe you can be happy enough for both of us." Jett had bottomed out on the Yoplait and popped the tab on the Sprite.

  "It will get easier for you."

  "Sure. In two years, when I start high school. By then, nobody will know I'm the new kid and I'll lose these Frankenstein wires." Jett grimaced, flashing her braces.

  "They go fine with your studded bracelet."

  "Cute, Mom."

  "Solom isn't so bad. I kind of like the peace and quiet."

  "That's the problem. It's as quiet as a graveyard. And what's with that creepy tabernacle up the road, with the steeple that looks like a KKK hood?"

  "Gordon said it's a family tabernacle, charismatic Baptists."

  "Did Gordon get baptized there or something? What do they dunk you in, goat's milk?"

  "Honey, Gordon is taking good care of u
s. He opened up his home and heart. I know he's not your dad, but he's trying his best. Let's give it some time, okay?"

  "Time. You're already old and over with and you've got all the time in the world. I'm only twelve and every second counts." Jett walked her burrito to the microwave.

  "Don't get too full before dinner. I'm planning spaghetti."

  "From a can, I hope."

  "Jett."

  "Sorry, Mom. I'm on a diet, anyway."

  "Girls shouldn't be on diets." Katy wished she had canceled her subscription to Cosmopolitan. Katy had never been able to measure up, and Jett had often thumbed through those same magazine pages. The Buddhists said desire was the cause of all suffering. But Buddhists occasionally set themselves aflame to prove a point.

  "It's okay," Jett said, then began reading aloud from the burrito wrapper. "Calories, three fifteen. Grams of fat, fifteen. Serving size, two ounces." She turned the wrapper around. "Apparently this single burrito contains three servings, so I won't have to eat again until lunch tomorrow."

  "You'd better be hungry in time for the spaghetti or I'll start serving up goat meat."

  Goats had become a joke between them because half the local farms raised the animals. Beyond Gordon's cow pasture was a hillside dotted with the stunted white creatures, their heads constantly down as they gnawed the world to its roots. They preferred to browse in the forest, only coming down at dusk when Gordon fed them grain or hay. Gordon's breeders had been fruitful this fall, and the herd seemed to have doubled in size since the wedding.

  "Do goats smell worse than swordfish?"

  "Depends on which end you stick your nose in."

  "Gross, Mom." Jett gathered up the remnants of her snack, leaving the empty yogurt cup on the counter. "I'm going upstairs to study. If the phone rings, I'm not home."

  "Expecting a call?"

  "Not from anybody you know." And Jett was out of the room, leaving Katy with a kitchen that had too many items out of place. She glanced at the clock. Gordon might be home soon. Or maybe not. This was Tuesday, and the departmental staff often went out together on Tuesdays. Something about celebrating almost getting through half a week.