Backyard (14 page)

“Well, nothing else has worked, and you won't let me get a gun.”

“Please dispose of that rabbit back in the woods, if you don't mind.”

But that was then. Now, as they stood there staring at the stark evidence that the angel's trumpets were being nibbled, wonderful new animal control possibilities came immediately to mind. Just to make sure the rabbits got the point, they would lay out a feast for them.

“I guess we can cut off one seed pod . . . okay, two, if it makes you happy, George, and lowers your angst level a little bit,” Nan said. “Maybe a couple of leaves, too. But I gotta tell you, I don't think it's the rabbits. Otherwise the population would have been wiped out by now. I'm thinking maybe deer up from the river valley, and too big to be killed by the stuff. Still, if there's a chance of it going to the greater good of diminishing the rabbit population hereabouts, I guess I'm for it. We'll need gloves for this kind of work, and goggles.”

The goggles, Nan explained, because it just wouldn't do to have some poisonous seed juice or powder come blasting out into their eyes when they cut them.

“What we need to do is cut off the seed pods and put them on the ground so they can't miss them. Then, we'll mix in some basic rabbit goodies to make sure they take the bait.”

When Nan and George emerged from their garage, they looked as if they were preparing to shear off the end of a steel I-beam with industrial plasma cutters. They had on welders' face shields, thick gloves, and leather aprons that Nan bought, along with an expensive electric grinder, back when she dabbled in tool sharpening through a continuing education class at Livia Community College.

The operation, using loppers to cut the flowers and the seed capsules and a few leaves from the plant, was a delicate one that mostly involved Nan trying to figure out where on the stems to cut. It lasted a half hour. Once the delicate surgery was performed, George and Nan inspected their gloves yet again for any sign of rips, tears, or holes that might allow the smallest speck of dust or drop of liquid to enter. Finding none, then adjusting their goggles, and lifting them up to get rid of any condensation that might impair vision, they gingerly placed the seed pods at the one of the plants' base, and surrounded them with baby carrots and a five large leaves' worth of shredded iceberg lettuce.

“Now, we wait,” said Nan through her visor, which had been fogging up from her breath and the high humidity.

“What?” shouted George, unable to hear the normal range of a speaking voice when it was being blocked by a piece of plastic.

“Now, we wait,” said Nan, lifting up her visor. “In the meantime, now that we're appropriately attired, know of any tools that need a little touch-up work?”

15

A Midsummer Fete

N
an's birthday fell on July 1, and George's, July 7. So, they decided three years ago, as their backyard began to assume the role of a neighborhood landmark, to hold a midsummer fete-cum-birthday party event on whatever Saturday happened to coincide with either of those two dates or, barring that, the Saturday that came between them. They called it FremontFest in a burst of public relations inspiration, and the name stuck.

They still mailed out the invitations two weeks in advance, but, at this point, that was only to note the date. For many of their friends and acquaintances in the Bluegill Pond vicinity, the Fremonts' midsummer party was now a firmly established companion celebration to the Fourth of July.

It wasn't just the neighbors who came. There were friends from other parts of the city, and acquaintances from church and Livia Athletic Association sports. A few low-level politicians and school board members, who had identified FremontFest as a golden opportunity to garner votes for the coming fall primaries and elections, made cameos, or sometimes worse. There had even been, over the past two years, a modest turnout of teachers from Kelley High, for whom the Fremont brood had proved to be an active (Ellis had been the star pitcher on the baseball team, and Cullen, the senior class president and Homecoming King; while Sis was one of the school's standout musicians) and academically accomplished family continuum.

Highlights of the afternoon would be the usual FremontFest menu—root beer floats, hot dogs, deli-prepared sandwiches, pop, and potato chips—and the private tours of the backyard, which was now bursting with blooming day lilies, clematis, roses, and cup and saucer vine. Interested parties would have to return in a couple of weeks for private showings, when the balloon flower, monarda, and purple coneflower hit their stride.

As a special surprise treat this year, Pat Veattle promised, via gilt-lettered card hand-delivered to the Fremonts' mailbox, to sing, for the first time ever, her new composition.

It was a satirical piece. She called it “The Men of Livia Are Drunken Wife Beaters.” George and Nan wondered whether Pat had been hitting the hooch pretty hard when she came up with that title, because she certainly had been when they called her to firm up the details on her special appearance. There was some cause for alarm here. They had drifted away from Pat over the past three years or so, put off by her artiste's airs and boisterous mannerisms. They hadn't seen her at all in at least six months. Rumor had it that she was turning into a drink-addled fool and lapsing into debilitating mental illness. For the most part, she had disappeared from public view, even disbanding her sextet, “The Vignettes (featuring Pat Veattle),” which she always used as the vehicle for introducing her latest compositions. The “reclusive artist,” Nan and George figured.

But there was always a small place in their hearts for Pat Veattle. It was Pat who brought them their only housewarming gift basket when they first moved in, and Pat who gave them the skinny on the new neighborhood. It was Pat who was there to offer loud and effusive encouragement when their backyard efforts began in earnest.

But what really distinguished Pat in their minds was her exquisite taste in wine. It was Pat, after all, who introduced them to Sagelands merlot. For that incomparable act of kindness alone, George and Nan might be willing to cut her some slack.

After giving the matter much thought, and finding that a glass and a half of Sagelands did nothing to lessen their concern, they decided to call Pat again and set some ground rules. They asked deferentially if they could get a sneak preview of the song just in case there might be something in there that wouldn't quite work as well at an all-ages-invited neighborhood gathering as it would at, say, a brothel or a gathering of Ripple Pagan Pink–soused frat brothers. Pat demurred with a couple of hiccups, citing artistic integrity.

“I'm an ar-thist,” she slurred over the phone. “An ar-thist . . . a-r-t-s-z-c . . . ar-thist. Ya don't preamble with an ar-thist. I will perform . . . preform . . . I will perform preform. Itsh my song, and I'll cry if I want to. Thou wilt not wilt on me.”

Nan and George figured that was probably okay, given the fact that whatever she had written probably wouldn't be that much different from her other songs, which were either only marginally funny and perhaps occasionally just a tad risqué, or utterly innocuous. Besides, their audience was mature enough to handle a little adult humor that their kids wouldn't understand anyway.

But that title! They asked her if she could change it.

“Not in a trice,” she said after a loud belch forced Nan to yank the receiver away from her ear. “Not in a smidgeon. The show goes on. Itsh good for all ages . . . young, old farters, young. Hic . . . hic . . . That whash the hiccups that never came.... Never . . .” She mumbled something else Nan couldn't understand, but, on the whole, sounded reasonably agreeable. But would she be sober?

“She'll be one soused sister,” said Nan after hanging up and indulging in what for Nan was an unusually active and prolonged exercise in hand-wringing angst. “I'm going to call her back and cancel right away.”

“Hang on there before you do that,” George said. “Pat's never been drunk at a performance that I've seen, and, besides, she's our big featured act. Everyone knows she's coming . . . even though it's supposed to be a surprise.”

Nan relented against her better judgment. They rented a microphone and a little thirty-watt amplifier for her, and called Pat back to offer their own Sis Fremont as accompanist on the trombone.

“Nuttin' doin',” said Pat with an explosive belch that rang in George's ear for twenty minutes afterward. “I's sholo, shtricly sholo. Got that? Sholo as shit . . . Dun need no acupit-nist.”

From what George was able to cull out of the aural assault of slurred and garbled English that followed, Pat would accompany herself with a “juice herp” (Jew's harp) and “cushy tits” (castanets). She also said she would charge $15,000, which she quickly burbled was actually 15,000 “shents.” George calculated that to be $150, which still came as something of a shock, seeing as how Pat had been a friend of theirs for years.

 

The guests arrived as they always had: the early birds came early and the latecomers came late. The in-betweeners came in between.

The Boozers stayed for a couple of diet Cokes, looked around the gardens, then cheerfully departed at three thirty p.m., in accordance with their plan. Mitzi and Frip came fifteen minutes into the party, talked up a storm, knocked a few things over with their wildly flailing appendages, and managed to offend at least six people with their loud and ridiculous contrariness. Steve and Juanita Winthrop, whose kids and theirs grew up together and remained best friends, were already on their second round of root beer floats; they'd stay until closing time. Alex and Jane McCandless, dear friends with no particular qualities good or bad to distinguish them, were off on vacation to the Canadian Rockies, and had offered their regrets two weeks ago. The Fletchers were hit-or-miss. George hoped for a miss this year as he had no intention of revisiting his outdoor pit-stop episode, which Jeri no doubt would spend the entire afternoon hectoring him into doing. He was reasonably certain Jeri had already recited every detail of the unfortunate episode to every homeowner within a four-mile radius.

The Grunions would
NOT
be there, though Old Man Grunion was always a threat to call and yell at them to stop all that racket. They would ignore him sweetly, with an invitation to “come on over and join the fun.” He would call the police, who by now knew that if they drove over to investigate, they would find assistant police chief Fred Face (whose kids had played L.A.A. baseball with Ellis and Cullen) enjoying the festivities, and would be directed to bugger off and move on to the next call.

Lots of neighbors used the occasion to get a firsthand look at what the Fremonts had been up to in their yard. Nan and George were always happy to oblige them with individualized commentary on whatever segment of the yard they wanted to talk about, although George occasionally had to turn to Nan, the true gardening expert of the family, for help. The Fremonts met the effusions of praise that were heaped on them with a false humility befitting their Midwestern roots.

What came as something of a surprise to the Fremonts was the buzz Burdick's Best Yard Contest had created. At least a dozen of the earlier arrivals mentioned it. After quick inspections of the yard, they assured the Fremonts that their efforts were nonpareil and that they were shoo-ins for the grand prize. But one, a bizarre, middle-aged, noisily opinionated nuisance of a widow named Earlene McGillicuddy, warned them not to get too cocky about their chances for success.

Earlene was a former neighbor who had moved to the Murphy Lake neighborhood and whose passions were roses and the literature of the Maldive Islands.

“In my roses club are two women whose gardens will put yours to shame,” she said. “One is Vanessa Stevenson. Remember that name, because it might come back to haunt you. The Stevensons are in the southwestern part of the city, near the new Lampkins grocery store, just off Carstens Avenue.

“The other is Yelena Diggity. She and her husband, Kaldo—isn't that an odd name, ‘Kaldo'?—live on that long cul-de-sac near Idylwild. They will do anything to win. Believe me. They're not spending their Saturday afternoons having a party, like you folks are; they're working, working, working every minute to make their backyard better. Beware! I'm telling you. There are folks who know who you are and they've been checking out your grounds, without your permission. I assume that because they're doing it on the sly. I know; I've seen them. Just remember, they'll do anything to win.”

“That's just ridiculous,” Nan said. “That's about the silliest thing . . .”

“Don't you want to win?” said Earlene, shoveling one spoonful after another of root beer float into her maw of a mouth.

“Sure, I want to win.”

Earlene leaned closer, spattering Nan with an ice cream spray that came flying out of her mouth like liquid grapeshot whenever she talked. She held out a strong, grasping hand as if to grab Nan by the lapels of her blouse and fling her with a sudden, amazing burst of strength over the house, over Sumac Street, and into Bluegill Pond, and poked a thick, long-nailed finger at Nan's bosom.

“Then you'd better get crackin' 'cause the Diggitys will do whatever it takes to beat you, and you're sitting around here on your rear ends. You've got to take action, young lady! You need help! You could hire me as your consultant. I only charge fifty bucks an hour and you would get half your money back if you don't place in the top thirty. How's that for a deal? I hate Yelena Diggity. I hate her for reasons I don't care to disclose right now. But how 'bout it? Fifty bucks an hour for one of the best gardening consultants this side of St. Anthony?

“And ask yourself this question.” Earlene moved her eyes shiftily from one side to the other. “Do you know everyone here? Huh? There could be strangers here . . . strangers you don't want prowling around in your backyard, strangers who mean to do mischief.”

Nan took a sip of Sprite and pondered Earlene for a moment. She was not one to be stampeded into anything, not even by a human hurricane named Earlene McGillicuddy.

In spite of her resolve not to do it, Nan peered stealthily over one shoulder. There were a couple of strangers examining the clematis. Then, she peered over the other. More strangers. These were bending over a bed of something that hadn't even come up yet. But so what! Strangers showed up every year for FremontFest. Why should this one be any different? She chuckled to herself at the thought of being called a “young lady,” especially by someone her own age, then wondered who that might have been running around snapping photos of their yard. She asked Earlene.

“Oh, that's Phyllis Sproot.
Doc-tor
Phyllis Sproot. Or maybe it's someone associated with Phyllis Sproot. Of course! How could I forget Dr. Sproot? I have seen her grounds.
Im
pressive! Yuccas and coreopsis-salvia-hollyhock blend . . . those are her gardening passions. Yuccas and coreopsis-salvia-hollyhock blend. Strange choices if you ask me, but I've seen stranger. Not in Livia, of course. That Sproot's another one who wants to win at all costs. I've heard that she told someone if she didn't win life would cease to have meaning for her.

“So, she heard about your place, and decided to do some research. She's got a pal, too. Marta something. Popcorn? Nice woman. Kind of quiet and furtive, though, if you ask me. One of those still-waters-run-deep kind of people, I bet. Speaking of whom, gosh, you should see
her
gardens! Magnifico! She could easily run away with first prize. She's another one of that cul-de-sac crowd.”

“So,” said Nan. “This Phyllis Sproot, or one of her buddies, has been trespassing on our property like some criminal while we were away?”

Earlene chuckled.

“These are high stakes we're talking about here,” she said. “People will stop at nothing to win this.
Nothing!
Which is why you need my help. Not only will I consult with you on your gardens and what they need, and from what I can see at first blush, they need quite a lot, but I'm also an expert garden spy, and I've dabbled in gardening sabotage.”

“Sabotage!”

Earlene drained her float hastily, as if she needed to fortify herself for what was to come, then beckoned Nan to lean closer. Nan held back, not wanting to be assaulted with another shower of airborne root beer and melted ice cream molecules.

“We don't need everyone to hear this,” she said in a hoarse, frothy whisper. “But I have what's needed to, shall we say, take a garden
down
big-time! Whaddya say, fifty bucks an hour to have Earlene on your side? I've got to warn you, dear, that if you don't hire me, others might, but I like you, and I know you need help, so you get the early bird discount.”