The Excellent Lombards (26 page)

“What’s the matter?” May Hill said again.

I sputtered something about war.

“There’s always been war,” she said sharply. “War is nothing new.”

I sniffled and tried to dry my eyes.

“Crying is not going to help.”

“I know that,” I said.

She next made a somewhat funny remark. She said, “I wish I could sit around and cry when there are apples to be picked.”

“Oh,” I said. Although May Hill worked hard and was strong by any standards, but especially for a seventy- or eighty-year-old lady, however old she was, and although she was indispensable, she was also upstairs in her own house for great chunks of time probably sitting around reading. Not that I would point out such a fact to her. There that large face was in the window, once again proof that May Hill had none of the typical Lombard grace. Did an elderly person have the need to cry, or was crying something you probably outgrew? I wished something in words that I’d always wished with a feeling, that old situation, a knot, an ache trying to gather itself into meaning and possible action. That is, I wished May Hill wasn’t a Lombard, and more than that, I wished she’d disappear. I stared back at her, my tears over and done.
Go away
, I willed.
Fall over dead.

Her face persisted in the window, that ogre head swelling because—because she was having the same thought about me, that wish engorging her mind. May Hill hoping to erase me as fervently as I wanted her to vanish, our wishes pitted one against the other. That clear fact frightened me so much I scrambled up in order to make sure she hadn’t paralyzed me, that her wish hadn’t frozen my limbs. I wasn’t too old to be that alarmed by her; a person, no matter how grown up, would always be alert to her powers.

I then remembered something my mother always practiced on her unpleasant patrons at the library. A tack that might possibly work, at least a little, on our fake aunt. Mrs. Lombard said that she killed the wretches with kindness, she became simpering with niceness, that being almost unbearably sweet to people who were itching for a fight caught them off guard and defanged them. Therefore, I mustered my strength and I said to May Hill, “I like your shirt.” Admittedly that was not the most believable compliment for a ratty piece of flannel, but it didn’t deserve a scowl.

She muttered a word that started with an
m
. Maybe it was
mercy
. But possibly
murder
. Or
mongrel
. Yes,
mongrel
, that’s what she’d said. She made her pronouncement about me before she turned and went up the sheep path and out the gate.

To mutter like that. The horrid word. And when I was trying to be nice! So the stone of May Hill was again heavy around my neck, all the bad juju of my encounters concentrated in that stone: the interview, the capture in her room, the pronouncement that I, and perhaps each of us, Amanda and Adam and William, too, were people beneath her contempt. Individuals with no breeding. But if there was a leader of the pack it was MF Lombard. I was certain that in her ordered mind I, above all others, was the vermin.

I might not have minded her condemnation so very much if there hadn’t been the matter of her plan. My parents now were often talking about it, a conversation I wanted to understand and also couldn’t bear to hear. We’d been at dinner a few weeks after the World Trade Center attacks when the topic first came up for our benefit. William and I were startled at the way my parents were speaking, as if the plan was common knowledge.

“What are you talking about?” I said.

May Hill was drawing up a document with a lawyer, my father explained, that would allow Philip to buy her out, to purchase the acres she owned on a land contract.

“A land contract?” I said.

He repeated the fact. May Hill was preparing to transfer her assets to Philip.

“Transferring her assets,” William echoed. “Why doesn’t she just will it to him? Why does he have to buy her out?”

“That’s not information I’m privy to,” my father said.

“May Hill is remarkably savvy,” my mother added.

“She can’t do that,” I cried. For starters, we all knew that her property included the right-of-way to the apple barn. She owned that stretch and the half acre the house sat on, but not the house itself. We had always understood that the owner of that strip held power, our great-uncle Jim for his own reasons conferring a certain influence upon May Hill.

“She can do whatever she wants with it,” my mother argued in her cross way.

“Of course she can,” my father replied.

“She considers Philip her heir.”

“That’s obvious, Mother,” William said.

“Someone has to think of the future,” she insisted. “Someone has to take steps to ensure this place isn’t going down the tubes.”

“That is such an insulting thing to say to Papa,” I shouted.

“Oh, he knows what I mean,” she said lightly. “Why Sherwood and Dolly aren’t in favor of Philip’s having ownership is beyond human comprehension.”

“It’s always a slow process, coming around to change,” my father said. He rubbed his eyes. “They’ll get there.”

“It would be ideal if they got there before you men are wheelchair-bound,” my mother said. She then chattered on about how Adam would soon be in college, how the guidance counselor at school had never heard of any of the institutions Adam was considering.

“The farm’s not going down the tubes,” I repeated, interrupting her monologue.

“Repairs are in order, Marlene,” my father said. “Don’t say it, Nellie—don’t.”

My mother started to laugh in that terribly annoying fashion of hers. “Let’s see,” she said. “Two of the barn roofs have gaping holes. How many sheds are on their last legs? Sherwood spent all spring on that contraption to wash boxes and all summer picking garlic mustard? I mean, really?”

“Sherwood works plenty hard,” my father said.

“
I mean, really?
” I mocked my mother.

“Where’s May Hill going to live?” William thought to ask.

“She has the right to live in the house until her death,” my father replied.

Philip actually owning a piece of Volta? I kept asking that question to myself. He had been learning how to spray, studying for the Pesticide Applicator’s Test, something Gloria had never done. But even if he had skills, even so we would always own more of the land than he did and if necessary we could put in a different driveway. We could get to the apple barn without his precious holding. I wondered then about William’s question, why May Hill didn’t just give her nephew her land, why she needed him to buy it. But wait, I thought, would we have to buy our portion from my father?—No, of course not, he would give it to us. But maybe we’d have to buy Sherwood’s shares, something I’d never considered before. How could we possibly find the money to purchase Volta? I very much wanted to ask how William and I would take over, how the mechanics of it would happen. Instead I said, not looking at William, I said, in the spirit of helpfulness and charity and also fear, “Philip is a good worker. And strong.” Ah, I was having an epiphany! “He’ll be like our Gloria, William.” In a snap I’d figured out at least part of the puzzle, Philip always willing to do any task at our bidding.

“Oh, for God’s sake, Francie,” my mother said. “He will not be like Gloria. He’ll have ownership.”

“It’s a dramatic change, Marlene,” my father said soothingly, “but it’s important for him to have a stake—”

“It’s not something you have to think about right now,” my mother butted into my father’s comforting words. “You don’t have to decide your future right this minute.”

“You just said someone has to think about the future,” I cried. “You just said that. But what you meant is, You, MF Lombard, don’t have to think about the future you yourself want. You meant that I only have to think about the future you want for me.”

My father said, “Let’s talk about this tomorrow.
The morning
,” he quoted, “
is always wiser than the evening
.”

“Just sign me up for camp, Nellie,” I said. “Pay an enormous deposit you won’t get back, money that could be used for the farm, just send it off without telling me.”

With that point made, MF Lombard, the winner of the round, went upstairs. I had a momentary satisfaction before I remembered the more significant point, that Philip was going to own a portion of our property.

My mother’s assumption that we would go to college was so stubbornly imbued in her—and probably, to be fair, in my father, too—that there had been little need for her to speak much about it until we were teenagers. Unlike Dolly, who herself only held a high school diploma, Dolly whispering
collegecollegecollege
into her newborns’ ears.

By the time we got to high school my mother had become generally cranky, bent on making her pitch both overtly and subliminally for the colleges of her choice. She served us cocoa in her college mugs. She often related her adventures in higher education, stories that she’d suddenly recall.

There seemed also to be more visits than usual from her best college pals, one of whom was the dean of admissions at one of Nellie’s top ten picks. The dean, over breakfast at our kitchen table, had intimated that when we applied to Swarthmore, as of course we must, we could very likely expect not only the fat envelope but substantial aid. “You’ve got everything going for you,” she said to me. “Brains, naturally, grades, extracurriculars, and let’s not forget, you’ve got the farm card.”

The farm card?

My mother glared,
Do not be rude
.

It seemed to me that the exact minute I’d gone to high school she’d become disapproving of me full-time, a shocked look on her face when I told her I’d joined Future Farmers of America, as if FFA was beneath the station of a girl with a pedigree like MF Lombard’s. And when I’d wanted to sign up for auto mechanics instead of honors biology you might have thought I was throwing my life away by shooting heroin or having unprotected sex. She even discouraged me from continuing on in 4-H. “Oh please, Francie,” she’d sighed, “not another year showing your zucchinis.”

Whereas Dolly’s aspiration for Amanda and Adam was a brag-worthy university that would provide them with a marketable skill, Mrs. Lombard wanted William and Francie to become fully rounded, truly educated, cultivated people. She seemed to think that without Oberlin or Bates or Carleton or Williams we’d not know who Hesiod was, we’d forget to vote, we’d vote Hitler into power, we’d confuse
good
and
well
, we’d not appreciate a symphony orchestra, we’d track mud into museums, and most frightening, we’d admire terribly written thrillers and bosom heavers. College was four short beautiful years, she’d go on, when we could open out, all blossomy, when we could experience new ideas, when we could have the privilege of freedom, a time when we could study whatever interested us, although presumably she did not mean auto mechanics. If she hadn’t met Stephen Lombard, she reminded us, never would she have visited the farm, never married my father, and therefore we would never have been born. In the beginning was Oberlin College, the light, the way, world without end.

Nellie’s friend, the dean of admissions, said to me over breakfast in my own kitchen, “Here’s what I want to ask you, Francie. Do you want to farm anywhere—do you love farming? Or is your love for farming about your love for home?”

The question stank of Mrs. Lombard.

I did my best to remain calm. I did not mention that the Lombard property was historical, mysterious, and productive, that the woods were deep, the soil well tended. I didn’t point out that Amanda and Adam had no interest in the orchard life, and that someone was obliged to honor tradition. I said, “Most farm families would kill for their children to take over the operation. What, after all, is the point of having children if the parents just want them to go away?”

“Oh, honey!” the dean cried. “A parent wants her child to have a rich, full life. We want you to use your talents, to have the tools to be happy. It’s not that we want you to go, not at all! It’s that we have to let you go. This, believe me, is the most painful part of being a mother.” She went on to explain that college would equip me to make an informed choice about my future. I could study chemistry, biology, business, all courses that would help me if I decided to return to the orchard. I could network with other students who were interested in farming, make lifetime friends with people who would be helpful to my venture.

“I already have people in my life who will be helpful to my venture,” I reminded the dean. “I have”—I counted on my fingers, so she could see and understand—“my father and my brother, Sherwood, and also Dolly. And, additionally, Philip.”

The dean said what she had no business saying. “Your father wants you to have an education, too.”

Nellie, perhaps because she’d been omitted from my list, had to have the last word. She said, “You just want to keep your options open, that’s all, Francie. You want to have options.”