At Home on Ladybug Farm (2 page)

Over the past year, the three women had discovered that neither their budget nor their master plan turned out to have any basis in reality. They worked harder in their retirement than they ever had at the jobs from which they had spent twenty years looking forward to retiring. They had started out with a beautiful old house and had ended up with a flock of sheep and a vicious sheepdog, a yearling deer who thought he was a house pet, a rebellious teenage boy, a cranky, ancient housekeeper—and Cici’s twenty-year-old daughter Lori, who was herself a force of nature. The six-bedroom house, with maid’s quarters, a wine cellar, a spacious attic, and multiple living areas, had shrunk to the size of a beach cabana over the winter, and the effort to blend such widely divergent personalities into some semblance of a functioning household had been, in Lindsay’s words, “slightly more fun than spending the winter with the Donner party.”

Repeated snowstorms had kept them housebound. Lindsay had tried to burn green wood in the fireplace and the resulting soot and black smoke had taken weeks to scrub off the wall. Lori, whose youthful enthusiasm was matched only by her good intentions, kept trying to improve everything. Noah spent most of his time with the animals and, when he was forced to stay inside with the others, seemed to go out of his way to be miserable. The housekeeper, Ida Mae, and Bridget stirred up a familiar feud about the division of household chores. Cici, who spent the winter recovering from a fall from the roof, couldn’t get to her workshop, and Lindsay’s studio was so cold that her paints froze in the tubes. To date, things were not exactly working out as they had planned.

But spring was here. They had survived. Somehow, the old house had become home for all of them, and in truth, none of the women would have traded their lives on Ladybug Farm for those of anyone else on the planet.

On most days, anyway.

“For the last time,” Cici told her daughter, not bothering to try to disguise the impatience in her voice, “we are
not
getting a satellite dish.”

“But for the low introductory price of $99 a month we can have 150 television channels
plus
high-speed Internet!” Lori flapped the sales brochure in front of her mother’s face.

Since Cici was on her hands and knees at the moment, scooping out a shovelful of ashes from the fireplace, her daughter’s gesture had the unfortunate result of sending a shower of white ash over the hearth, the floor, and Cici. Lori stepped back quickly, chagrined, and grabbed the broom. “What I mean is,” she went on, undeterred, “you know how Aunt Bridget is always running back and forth to the library. If we had high-speed Internet, think how much gas she’d save!”

It was generally agreed among those who knew them that Lori got her looks and her charm from her father, and her obstinacy and determination from her mother. Cici, with her long legs, athletic build, and thick, honey-colored hair—not to mention the thousands of freckles, made even more prominent by a year of outdoor work—bore little physical resemblance to the petite, copper-haired Lori. But when the two women’s eyes met in willful conviction over conflicting goals—which seemed to be the only kind of goals they had these days—they were mirror images of each other.

Cici glared at her daughter. “Do you know where they have really good high-speed Internet? At the University of Virginia dorms. Where, I believe we all agreed, you were supposed to be by now.”

Lori returned a hurt look that was noticeably lacking in sincerity. “It wasn’t my fault that my transcripts didn’t get here from UCLA in time for me to be accepted for the spring.”

“They didn’t get here in time because you didn’t send for them in time,” Cici pointed out. “And I don’t think I have to point out that a transfer acceptance is not the same as an enrollment.”

Lori said, “I thought we agreed it would be good for me to take some time to think about the direction I wanted my life to take.”

“And so you have.”

“I’m just not convinced college is the right place for me right now.”

“That makes one of us.”

“It would be a lot easier for me to research my options,” Lori pointed out single-mindedly, “if we had high-speed Internet.”

Cici bit back a reply that she knew would be a waste of breath. After what Lori had termed a “less than satisfactory experience” at UCLA, it had not seemed unreasonable for her to take the winter off while she completed the paperwork for the transfer to UVA. But as more and more weeks passed, Lori grew less interested in returning to college at all. And while Cici loved having her daughter around, this was not a battle she intended to lose.

She simply knew better than to continue to fight it with words.

So she said instead, “I don’t know what you’re whining about high-speed Internet for, anyway. Your father is paying a fortune every month for that fancy Internet phone of yours.”

Cici’s ex-husband was a Los Angeles entertainment lawyer. He had greeted Lori’s decision to drop out of UCLA and return to live with her mother in Virginia with a mixture of outrage and—as the responsibilities of fatherhood had never particularly suited him—thinly disguised relief. His way of dealing with emotions had always been through expensive gifts, and the phone was his way of saying “keep in touch.”

Lori made a face. “Which only works when the moon is in Scorpio and the wind is out of the southwest.”

Cici shrugged. One of the things she loved most about being surrounded by mountains was the limited access to technology. It slowed life down, and took out the background noise. “You can get perfectly good cell phone reception if you go to the top of the hill and face the antenna toward the east.”

“A lot of fun when it’s seventeen degrees outside, Mom.”

“Do you know where they have really good cell phone reception?”

“The University of Virginia dorms, yeah, I know. Listen, I’ve been thinking—”

“Lord preserve us.” Cici coughed and brushed ash out of her air as Lori’s enthusiastic sweeping stirred up another cloud of dust. “Will you give me that broom? You’re just making a mess.”

Lori turned over the broom and dustpan without protest. “We should take a vote,” she declared. “You’re always saying we’re a family, aren’t you? And families decide important things together. I’ll bet Aunt Bridget would love to have high-speed Internet. And where’s that boy?”

Cici looked up from her sweeping with an exasperated look. “Will you stop calling him that? You’ve lived under the same roof for four months and his name is Noah, as you know perfectly well. And, as you also know perfectly well, today is his court date.”

Lori rolled her eyes expressively. “Oh, right. You mean
juvenile
court. Trouble, that’s what his name is.”

“It’s just a traffic ticket, Lori. There’s no need to make it sound like he robbed a liquor store.”

“If I had been cited for driving without a license when I was fifteen you would have made me
wish
I’d robbed a liquor store!” returned Lori smartly. “You all are way too easy on him, if you ask me—and I know, no one did. But maybe you should, now and then. I’m just trying to help.”

Cici finished sweeping the ash into the dustpan with small deliberate movements, and straightened up, regarding her daughter with an exaggerated display of patience. “My beautiful girl,” she said, “light of my life. It’s been a long winter. We’re all a little cranky. But you are standing in a six-thousand-square-foot, one-hundred-year-old house with walls that need to be painted, floors that need to be stripped, windows that need to be washed, and rugs that need to be cleaned, in the middle of a working farm with animals that have to be fed, stalls that must be be raked out, ground that needs to be turned, porches and walks that have to be swept, and gutters that need to be cleaned. And if you don’t find something useful to do within the next thirty seconds I am going to strangle you.”

Lori said meekly, “I think I’ll help Aunt Bridget in the garden.”

Replied Cici with a hard look, “Good plan.”

Lori grabbed the sales brochure as she scurried out of the room.

She cut through the big stone and brick kitchen on her way to the backyard. The kitchen was filled with windows, and every windowsill was filled with flat plastic trays of seedlings that Bridget had been nurturing all winter. The room smelled like woodsmoke and vanilla, and, oddly, like vinegar. Lori wrinkled her nose and glanced around, and that was when she noticed Ida Mae half in and half out of one of the oversize industrial ovens. Her hands were clad in yellow rubber gloves up to the elbow, and she was scrubbing out the oven with a mixture of baking soda and vinegar.

“What is it about the first warm day that makes everyone want to clean something?” observed Lori, snagging a chocolate chip cookie from the jar on the counter.

Ida Mae craned her head around, swept her gaze over Lori’s low-slung jeans and belly-skimming tank top, and scowled. “Put some clothes on, child. You’re a disgrace.”

Ida Mae was a square angular woman of undetermined age with blunt-cut iron gray hair and a habit of dressing in oddly matched layers. Today she wore a plaid wool shirtwaist dress over cotton dungarees and a purple turtleneck, topped by a pink cardigan and a gingham apron. Her face, etched with lines, rarely smiled, and her ears never missed a word that was said in the house—whether or not the words were meant to be heard.

Ida Mae had come with the house, and had been taking care of it, according to some accounts, almost since it was built. That gave her the right—in her own mind at least—to a great many opinions, and quite a few privileges. Lori, whose own grandparents were long gone, had been charmed by her immediately, although it was not entirely clear whether the sentiment was returned.

Lori hoisted herself lightly onto the soapstone countertop, which deepened Ida Mae’s scowl of disapproval. Lori didn’t notice. “Ida Mae, could I ask you something?” Taking silence as assent, she continued, “What’s the deal with that kid Noah, anyway? Doesn’t he have a family or anything?”

“Nope.” Wringing her sponge out in the vinegar and baking soda solution, Ida Mae turned her attention to scrubbing the oven door. “His folks are dead.”

“I know that. But I thought maybe aunts or cousins or something . . .” Lori eased open the lid of the cookie jar and slipped another cookie. “It’s not like I haven’t tried to be friends with him, but he’s just weird. How did he end up here, anyway?”

“Same way you did,” replied Ida Mae without looking up from her work. “He just showed up one day.”

Lori bit into the cookie. “But I’m family. I mean, my mom owns the place. Partially, anyway.”

“Then why don’t you go bother her with your stupid questions?”

Lori sighed, examined the cookie for a moment, and took another bite. “I don’t want her to think I disapprove.”

Ida Mae looked up from her cleaning long enough to determine that the young woman was absolutely serious, and then, with a small shake of her head, stooped to wring out her sponge in the bucket again. She said gruffly, “You’re a big-city girl. What you don’t know about people would fill a book.”

“Well, I don’t mean to seem inhospitable or anything, but don’t you think Mom and the others are a little old to be taking in foster children? And this isn’t exactly a homeless shelter.”

Ida Mae gave a grunt from inside the oven. “You just keep talking, Missy, about what your mama is too old for, and see what kind of shelter
you
end up in.” She wiped down the oven door. “As for this place, it’s been a lot worse than a homeless shelter, I can tell you that much. Back during the forties, it was a boarding house for war brides, and before that, in the Civil War, they turned it into a hospital—”

Lori interrupted curiously. “Civil War? I thought the house wasn’t built until 1902.”

“Rebuilt,” corrected Ida Mae, glancing over her shoulder. “The first place burnt down. What I’m trying to say is—”

“No kidding? Was it burned by the Yankees? That’s cool!”

Ida Mae scowled at her. “How should I know who burned it? It just burned. The point is—”

“Hospitality, I know,” said Lori, hopping down from the counter as she finished off the cookie. “Thanks, Ida Mae, that was really interesting. Mom said I should find something useful to do. Do you want me to help you clean the oven?”

Ida Mae straightened up, bracing a gloved hand against her back, and her scowl only deepened. “The day I can’t keep my own oven clean is the day they put me in the ground, young lady. Now get on out of here and pester somebody else. And put some clothes on.”

Lori grinned at her as she scampered out of the kitchen. “The cookies are great!” she called.

Ida Mae muttered after her, just loudly enough to be heard, “You get fat off them cookies and you won’t look so cute running around half naked.”

Dodging the snapping, lunging attentions of Rebel, the sheepdog who spent most of his days lying under the porch and dreaming up ways to make the lives of the human inhabitants of the house miserable, Lori crossed the scrubby patch of winter lawn toward the back garden. A warm breeze tossed playful shadows across the ground and dappled her skin with a lacework of sunlight. The air smelled like baby grass and daffodils and the flock of sheep, grazing contentedly in the meadow that stretched beyond the house, looked like a painting. Bambi, the pet deer who had followed Lindsay home from a walk one day, grazed along the fence line with his rope harness trailing the ground, plucking up the juiciest blades of new spring grass.