Influence and money, he thought. Someone with both had done this.
He walked up the narrow steps to the front door of the house and raised his hand to knock, but the door opened at his touch. He knew the layout of the house well; years ago, he and Rick had forced a window open in the kitchen and often played inside. Also, he used to spend time alone in the house. But then one day he’d found the broken window repaired, and he couldn’t find a way in. He’d told his mother that someone had done some repairs on the old Hanley place, but she hadn’t had the time to be interested.
“Hello?” he called as he stepped inside. “Anyone home?” When he stepped into the big living room, his eyes opened wide in shock. He’d always seen the house in a state of filth and disrepair. To see it clean and filled with furniture startled him. What was more, he liked the furniture. Most people in Calburn went to the local furniture discount store and bought “sets,” whole rooms full of furniture that matched.
“Nice,” Matt said, as he ran his hand across the chintz-covered sofa.
It was at that moment that he smelled food cooking—and the aroma almost made his knees give way under him. In the last months, Matt had found that after being away from his hometown for so many years, he’d become a little particular. He no longer liked food that had “helper” in the name, such as Hamburger Helper and Tuna Helper. Patsy said he’d become uppity, and maybe, when it came to food, he had.
“Oh, hi,” said a woman as she walked into the living room through the doorway that he knew led to the kitchen. She was pretty, he thought. She was small and curvy, wearing light-colored trousers, tennis shoes—real tennis shoes, not those great, hulking running shoes—a T-shirt that didn’t seem to have any writing on it, and an apron. Her apron was white and covered with food stains.
“You must be the contractor,” she said as she held a wooden spoon out toward him. “Would you mind tasting this? I’ve tried it so many times that I can’t tell anymore.”
There was a yellowish gel on the end of the spoon that Matt wasn’t sure he wanted to taste, but the enticement of a pretty woman on the other end of it was more than he could pass up. He couldn’t help giving her a look to let her know that he knew she and his sister-in-law had been discussing him and sex.
When Matt’s tongue made contact with the substance on the spoon, he forgot everything else. “What is that?” he asked, taking the spoon from her and licking it like a child.
“Apple jam with ginger,” she said over her shoulder as she went back to the kitchen.
Matt followed her like a puppy on a string. The sight of the kitchen made his eyes widen.
“I know,” she said, looking up from a pot she was stirring. “It’s awful, isn’t it?”
He had to blink a couple of times as he looked in wonder about the place. The walls had holes in them where someone had ripped the overhead cabinets down. And the lower cabinets looked as though someone had taken a . . . “Chain saw?” he asked.
“The gardeners,” she said as she stirred another pot. There were six burners on the big, professional range, and each one had a pot of something bubbling on top of it. Now that he was closer, he could smell cinnamon, cloves . . .
As though he were a cartoon character following his nose, he let it pull him toward the big pots. “What’re you cooking?” he asked, trying to sound merely polite, rather than desperate.
“It’s too much, isn’t it?” she said with a sigh. “I always do that. When I have a problem, I cook.”
“Was this a big problem or a small one?” There was something red in the pan nearest him.
“Big. This is only half of what I bought today. A funny thing happened to me today. I—” She stopped and looked up at him. “I’m sorry, I’m being rude. I’m Bailey James.” She wiped her hands on her apron and held one out for him to shake.
“Matthew Longacre,” he said, holding her hand, but looking over her head into the pot behind the one filled with something red.
“Are you hungry?” she asked. “I made myself dinner, but I haven’t had time to eat anything. Maybe you’d like to share it.”
Matt pulled his eyes and his nose away from the food and looked down at her. Was this a trick? he wondered. Had Patsy told her he was coming over so that she could cook something to lure him? “Depends on what you’re having,” he said, with as much I-don’t-really-need-food in his voice as he could manage. He had, after all, had one of Ruth Ann’s “special” hamburgers.
“Pigeons. I got them from a man down the road.”
“Old man Shelby,” Matt said, looking at her with wide eyes. The cantankerous old farmer raised the pigeons and sold them to a fancy restaurant in D.C. As far as Matt knew, no one in Calburn had ever cooked a pigeon.
“Yes, that was his name. Lovely man, and so helpful.”
“Shelby,” Matt whispered. The man frequently chased people off his property with a loaded shotgun.
“Do you like pigeon? You’re not a vegetarian, are you?”
“That depends on what Patsy puts in her meat loaf,” he said, but she just looked at him with a polite smile, not understanding his joke. “Yes,” he said at last. “I like pigeon.” I guess, he thought.
“Good,” she said as she went to the huge stainless-steel-fronted refrigerator and pulled out a porcelain platter covered with plastic wrap. “I’ll just finishing grilling the livers, and dinner will be ready.”
“Okay,” he said faintly. Livers. “What can I do to help?”
“Would you mind if we ate outside? This house is . . . ” Trailing off, she waved her hand.
“Dark and gloomy,” he said, smiling down at the top of her head. Grilled livers? Pigeons? Apples and ginger? And what was it that Patsy had said? That “the widow” had said she wouldn’t have sex with him? If this wasn’t sex, then—“I beg your pardon?” He hadn’t heard what she’d said. His taste buds were on such overload that his ears were shutting down.
“In there, in the dining area, are utensils. Could you get them out, please?”
“Sure,” he said, then nearly ran into the next room to the sideboard and opened drawers to remove knives, forks, and cloth napkins. He opened a door to get out a tablecloth, candlesticks, and candles. With his arms full, he walked through the kitchen, then halted as he looked at what she was doing. She was putting some small, juicy-looking red things on the plates with what looked like slices of chicken. “What are those?” he whispered.
“Pickled grapes. If you’d rather not—”
“No!” he said sharply, then when his voice squeaked, he cleared his throat. “I mean, no, I’m sure they’re delicious. I’m sure I’ll love them. I’m sure they’re the best pickled grapes that—I mean, well, I guess I’ll put these things outside.”
Once he was outside, Matt had a talk with himself. “Okay, Longacre, calm down. You’re making a fool of yourself,” he said as he spread the cloth on the ground, then set the candlesticks on top of it. “Stay cool. Stay calm. Get hold of yourself. You’re selling yourself out for some chopped liver.” That analogy made him laugh a bit.
“You do that too,” Bailey said as she set two full plates down on the cloth.
Matt could hardly take his eyes off the food. It looked as though she’d made a paste out of the grilled livers, smeared it on toast, then put the sliced pigeon meat on top, with the pickled grapes sprinkled about. There was salad on the side, and it wasn’t that tasteless, colorless white lettuce that Patsy and all of Calburn served, but dark green and red, curly and straight lettuces. “I do what?” he managed to whisper. He was on his knees, in a posture usually reserved for worship.
“You talk to yourself.”
“Oh, yeah, sure,” he said. A hypnotist’s subject had never stared so unblinkingly as he was staring at that food.
“Go ahead, dig in,” she said as she sat down on the opposite side of the tablecloth and put her plate on her lap.
Slowly, with hands that he hoped weren’t trembling, he picked up the plate, sat dow
n on the cloth, and lifted his fork. Moving as though in slow motion, Matt put a piece of toast with liver and pigeon on his fork, then carefully, reverently, brought it to his mouth. When the flavors touched his tongue, he couldn’t keep his eyes open. It was divine. It was heaven. Ethereal. Never in his life had he tasted anything better.
Her soft laughter brought him back to reality. “Like it?” she asked.
“Mmmm,” was all he could say.
“So do you have any ideas about how to go about remodeling this place? Did Patsy talk to you about money and the fact that I don’t have much?”
Matt couldn’t have talked about money at that moment any more than he could have walked away from that plate.
After a moment, when she didn’t say anything, he looked up at her and saw that she was smiling at him. She wasn’t eating much. “There’s more, if you want it,” she said softly.
“I’m sorry,” he began. “It’s just that . . . ” He didn’t know how to explain the fact that he was eating as though he’d not eaten in a month.
“You’re tired of fried fish and fried shrimp and pizza?” she asked softly.
All Matt could do was nod and continue to eat.
After a while Bailey put her half-finished plate down on the cloth, leaned back on her hands, and looked up at the big tree overhead. “That’s a mulberry tree,” she said. “An old one. Did you know that even when it’s five hundred years old, a mulberry still bears fruit? She’s a true woman. I mean, to be fertile at that age.”
His plate was nearly empty, and he looked up at her. Was she trying to tell him something? “Before, you said that something funny happened to you today.”
“Oh,” she said, “it was nothing. Not important, really. I just . . . ”
“Go on, tell me,” he said. “I could use some conversation that has nothing to do with business.”
“I—” she began, then looked at him as though trying to decide whether or not to tell him.
Matt understood her hesitation. She was a widow, a recent widow, according to Patsy, and it hadn’t been long since Matt’s divorce. His marriage hadn’t been much, but he did know what it was like to have someone to tell about the trivial happenings of the day. “I had a flat tire today” doesn’t seem like much, but when there’s no one there to tell it to, it can feel very big.
He didn’t say anything, and he hoped that his silence would make her talk.
“Do you know how your life can change in a minute?” she said after a while.
“Yeah,” Matt said, and his voice was full of feeling. He sure did. If he hadn’t thought he was having a heart attack . . . “I know,” he said.
“This morning, I awoke feeling . . . well, really, feeling useless. My husband left me this house and his . . . estate, I guess you’d say, cleaned it and furnished it for me. But from now on, I’m on my own. I have to support myself, but what talents do I have?”
At that Matt choked. As he was coughing and recovering himself, he pointed with his fork at his nearly empty plate.
“I know,” Bailey said, “I can cook. I’ve had some great teachers in that area, but what can I do with cooking?” She put up her hand when he started to speak. “I know, I could open a restaurant, but I can’t think of anything in the world I’d less like to do. Cooking the same thing over and over, dealing with customers and employees. Not for me.”
“So what then?” he asked as he used a bit of bread to clean his plate.
Bailey held out her half finished plate to him, silently asking if he’d like the rest of it. “Today I went to a grocery store, a big one up the road. I don’t know where I was. Took a left on the pavement.”
“Sure?” Matt asked, and when she nodded, he took her plate. “What happened at the grocery?”
“I guess, really, I had an idea. Of something that I can do, that is. I like to preserve things. Canning, you know?”
Matt nodded. Now that he was getting nearly full, he could listen to her.
“Jimmie—he was my husband—said that he thought I was trying to preserve time, make it stay where it was and not move.”
She looked at him as though she expected him to say something to that, but he was silent. He didn’t know enough about her to make a comment.
“Anyway, I was in the grocery, and I saw a display of so-called gourmet foods. There were tiny jars of jam selling for seven dollars each. I thought, I make more interesting jams than this. And that’s when it hit me: I could sell my jams and pickles.”
“Sounds like a good idea,” Matt said as he finished what she hadn’t eaten. “Know anything about operating a factory?”
“Nothing, but I was thinking along smaller lines. Mail-order, maybe. Posh stores. You wouldn’t know anything about selling jam, would you?”
“Nothing whatever.”
“Mmmm,” was all she said, then leaned back to look up at the mulberry tree.
“So what was the funny thing that happened to you today?” he asked as he wiped his hands on a red-and-white checkered cloth napkin.
Bailey smiled. “I was filling my basket with bottles of vinegar for making pickles, when a woman came up to me and whispered that I shouldn’t buy it there. She said that if I was going to buy in bulk, then I should go to the Cost Club. I told her that I was new to the area and had no idea where that was, so she tore off the bottom of her grocery list and drew me a map. ‘And get your fruit at a local fruit stand,’ she said. ‘But bargain, don’t pay what they ask. Those farmers—especially the ones over near Calburn—will take everything you’ve got.’ I told her thank you very much and she said—” Bailey paused, eyes twinkling. “She patted my hand and said, ‘That’s all right, dear. I knew by your accent that you were a Yankee, and they’re always so helpless, but you looked like a nice one, so I didn’t see any harm in helping you.’ ”
They laughed together at the story.
“What’s especially funny is that I grew up in Kentucky,” she said.
“You don’t sound like it.” Matt was looking at her speculatively, but she didn’t comment further, just kept looking up at the tree. “More good teachers?” he asked in curiosity.
“The wine!” she said, then jumped up. “How rude of me. I completely forget to get anything to drink, and I have a lovely bottle of chardonnay.” Before Matt could ask another question, she’d run back inside the house.
“Interesting,” Matt said into the silence as he stood up and stretched. She’d very neatly managed to evade answering his personal question.
Minutes later she returned with two glasses of chilled white wine and handed him one. “I have peach cobbler if you want some.”
Matt’s first thought was to yell, “Yes!” but he controlled himself. Taking the glass of wine, he looked past the mulberry tree. “This place has been abandoned for years, but when my brother and I were kids, we used to spend a lot of time here. It looks different now.”
“Yes,” Bailey said, standing near him, but not too near, he noticed, and sipping her wine. “The workmen did a marvelous job. I have no idea how I’m going to maintain all of this, but until the weeds start to grow, it’s beautiful.” When she glanced up at him and saw that he was looking at her expectantly, she smiled. “Would you like the tour?”
“Very much,” he said.
“Since I’d never seen the place before two days ago, you probably know more about it than I do, but I’ll show you what I’ve seen.”
“Lead on,” he said, moving to follow and letting his eyes wander up and down the back of her. Trim, he thought. She was built, that was for sure, but more than that, she had a body that he recognized from his ex-wife and her friends: cared-for. This woman had spent a lot of time in gyms. There wasn’t much of her skin showing, but he was willing to bet that cream-laden massages were part of her life. Or had been, he thought.
He was quiet as he watched her and listened while she gave him a tour of her garden. She knew a lot about plants. She talked about trailing blackberries versus erect bl
ackberries, then the two kinds of raspberries. “And they all have to be pruned differently,” she said, smiling up at him.
If he’d just heard her and not seen her, he would have thought she was a farm wife. But what farm wife makes a meal worthy of a four-star restaurant? He knew good home cooks, but that usually meant chicken-fried steak, or catfish and hush puppies. He didn’t know home cooks who mixed pigeon livers and pickled grapes.
She was showing him the pond and talking about koi fish that hibernated over the winter, and how she’d have to put nets around the pond to keep out the raccoons.
On the far side of the house, she talked about gooseberries and currants, neither of which Matt had ever eaten.
And the more she talked, the more he was puzzled by her. Sometimes she pronounced words oddly. She said “extra-ordinary” instead of “extraordinary” the way an American did. And she said “dale-yuhs” rather than using the American pronunciation of dahlias.
“You learned all this in Kentucky?” he asked softly as he followed her past the barn and into the wooded area beside the house. “Did you grow up on a farm?”
“No,” she said. “I didn’t. Just suburbia. Look at this. Isn’t it lovely?”
She was looking at the old fire pit set in the clearing in the woods, and he was aware that yet again she’d not answered his question.
Turning, he looked at the pit and smiled. “My brother and I nearly set the woods on fire here one night.”
“Tell me,” she said.
“Nothing to tell. Just stupid kid stuff. Rick and I gathered some fallen wood, doused it with lighter fluid, then threw a couple of lit matches onto it. It exploded.” He shook his head in memory. “It’s a wonder we weren’t killed. If it hadn’t started raining, I don’t know what would have happened.”
“Your parents must have been angry.”
“My mom never knew about it. She worked long hours, so we were on our own a lot.” He paused, waiting for her to ask the question that everyone did, but when she asked nothing, he continued. “My father walked out when I was five and Rick was three.”
The Mulberry Tree Page 8