The Ladies Farm (2 page)

“How should I know?” Della said, sliding the red mug toward herself. The business end of the kitchen, with stainless steel appliances and track lighting, lay behind her. She and Kat, who settled next to her, faced the uncurtained windows overlooking the side yard. There was a view of the carport, filled with their utilitarian vehicles—an aging Accord, a dented Suburban, a hail-pocked pickup (they used the insurance money to erect the carport)—and a sliver of the lawn that led down to the river.

“Maybe because you checked her in. You did check her in, didn’t you?” Kat, even on Sunday morning, sounded like a businesswoman. Without looking at her, Della knew that her crisp camp shirt stayed neatly tucked into her sharply creased jeans and that the hand that clasped her coffee mug was perfectly manicured, with artificial nails trimmed to the proper dress-for-success length.

Della sighed. “Yes, Kat, I checked her in. I ran her credit card through the reader, I got her signature on the guest card, I even pulled the room number in the availability tracker.”

“So how long is she staying?”

“She took the room for a month.”

“A month!” Pauline’s whisper annoyed Della even more than Kat’s cross-examination.

“A month,” Della repeated. She leaned back in the chair. She’d picked the one that rocked, and it jolted her lower back as it settled onto the left back leg. “Dammit,” she muttered, then motioned at the chair in explanation. “She’s in Governor Ann.”

Originally they had envisioned naming the rooms, like the streets of Sydonia, after heroes of the Texas War of Independence. Then they’d decided on Texas women and named the largest room—a suite, really—after Ann Richards.

“For a month?” Della could see Kat adding up the revenue.

“Full treatment, too,” Della continued. “Meals, makeovers, classes.” After Hugh’s death, when Della and Kat were recruited to revamp the bed and breakfast Pauline and Hugh had run as Sydon House, they concluded that there was no way the enterprise could ever make money. Specialize, they had advised Pauline, who was determined to hold on to the property. Offer classes, beauty treatments, all the things women love and pay for. You can rent to men, they had said. Just cater to women.

It had made perfect sense for Kat, who maintained a medical practice consultancy in Fort Worth, to live at the Ladies Farm. In exchange for her residence, Kat managed most of the business aspects of the rather specialized bed and breakfast.

Della’s move to Sydonia had not approached Kat’s well-considered and rational solution to managing the challenges of mid-life at the end of the century. I fled, Della reminded herself for the thousandth time. Richard died and I thought the loneliness would kill me and the only one I could tell was Pauline. And Pauline offered refuge.

“Is she in her room?” Pauline whispered now. Della ignored her own irritation and smiled indulgently.

“No, she’s gone for a ride on our country roads,” Della whispered back. “But she hopes we’ll serve lunch upon her return.”

“Cut it out!” Kat snapped. “We need the money and she’s entitled to lunch.”

“Appropriately lean and tasty,” Della rejoined in her whisper. While guests often checked in on Sunday afternoon, the Ladies Farm almost never had guests for Sunday lunch, and the four proprietors had come to regard it as the meal they enjoyed with each other. Seeing Pauline’s forlorn look, Della placed a hand on her friend’s shoulder. “It’s not so bad, babe. We’ve got lots of pasta salad. And gazpacho.”

“I just don’t know what she could do for a month,” Pauline said, shaking her head.

“She asked about jewelry classes.”

Kat snorted.

“She’s good with her hands,” Pauline recalled. “And she knows color. And style.”

Della remembered the extraordinary needlework that had adorned the walls, the sofas, and even the chair seats in Richard’s home.

“And she needs more jewelry,” Kat said. She gave her head a vehement shake and Della, as always, watched with fascination as Kat’s glossy hair rose away from her head and then settled perfectly into place. Until living with Kat, Della had thought that taffy color could come only from a bottle and that kind of hold only from a can that would destroy the ozone layer.

“I thought you’d be overjoyed,” Della observed. “The Governor Ann paid up for a month. Shoot, we could hire her a full-time trainer for that.”

“She doesn’t want the aerobics?” Pauline ventured.

Kat set her mug down on the table. “Pauline, we’ve stopped whispering!” Then, turning to Della, “She doesn’t want aerobics, does she? Because our insurance premiums will go … they’re already sky-high!”

Della knew why she herself resented Barbara and she thought, considering Pauline’s role as her confessor, she understood Pauline’s gentle terror. But why was Kat so edgy?

“Well, much as I’d love aerobics for the entertainment value, I really don’t think she’s here for the workout. I think she’s here for the same reasons as the rest of us. She wants a little peace and quiet. She wants to paddle a canoe on the Nolan River and take a walk through the woods on the Highlands Trail and get a facial and a new hair style in her spare time. That’s all.”

“And the jewelry class?” Pauline asked.

“Oh, I suspect she wants whatever crafts we’re offering. Buttonology or whatever. I don’t see her in ‘Journals as Spiritual Journeys.’ Maybe ‘Tarot Reading.’ But you can work her into your regular schedule.”

Pauline frowned at Della’s dismissal of the crafts. In fact, the classes Pauline taught in the barn netted more than the makeovers and aerobics. “You’re right,” Della attempted appeasement. “She’s probably great with her hands.”

A sudden picture of those puffy, manicured fingers on Richard’s body made Della draw a breath in alarm. Hand job? Surely not, thought Della, watching the others to see if they noticed anything. Damn! When did it stop?

“I know she’s good with her hands,” Pauline was saying, her own hands resting atop her mug as if she were trying to warm them over the coffee. “It’s her mouth that frightens me.”

Oh, great, thought Della. There’s a picture.

Kat was sliding the buttons into groups. Her coffee stood untouched. She looked up. “Let’s just concentrate on the program. Della’s right; you can work her into your regular classes.”

“And if she’s too much for you, I’ll make her a reporter for the
Silver Quest
,” Della said, smiling. She loved being the even-voiced, level-headed one about whom Kat would never guess the truth.

Pauline relaxed a little, then looked up behind her. The shuffling along the oak floor could only be Rita, dragging her butt down for breakfast. She stuck her head into the kitchen. “Dave gone?”

“Hours ago,” Della said. “Why does a night watching rented movies with your granddaughter make you look like a hooker who’s just worked both sides of the street?”

“Della!” Pauline protested. “She just got up.”

“We all just got up at some point,” Kat said. “We don’t all look like …” She paused.

“Like a hooker who’s just worked both sides of the street,” Rita finished for her. She shuffled over to the cabinets and pulled down one of Pauline’s handmade mugs, then shuffled over to the table and rested there a moment, mug in hand, before she poured her first cup of coffee.

“It’s just habit,” she said. “There’s no beer and no cigarettes and no men in my life, but when I get up in the morning, I still feel like I got to watch out for the wet spot.” She squinted at Della as she walked around the table and pulled out a chair. “You know what I mean?”

Her lavender robe, a Christmas gift from the three of them designed to discourage her from appearing before the guests in her lace nighties, gaped as her shoulders slumped forward, exposing an alarming amount of cleavage. “Who’s the guest?”

“How did you know?” asked Pauline.

“Gucci,” Rita sighed, lifting the full cup to her face and inhaling dreamily. “Gucci in the hallway.” She sipped. “I had a boyfriend once who used to bring me Gucci. Turned out his wife worked at the perfume counter at Nieman’s.”

“What happened to him?” Kat never had patience for Rita’s stories.

Rita looked up, shrugged. “Oh, you know, that was Larry. Between our marriages.”

“You mean,” Pauline asked, “even when you were married to other people, you still were … seeing him?”

Sometimes Della didn’t know how she had ever confided in Pauline. Even now, married and widowed, facing her guests’ most intimate secrets daily, Pauline seemed far too innocent to bear the weight of her friends’ confessions. But she had been a faithful confidante, with never even a disapproving silence.

Rita frowned a little, and her forehead furrowed. “I do believe that Dave and I were divorced by the time Larry came back around.” Dave was Rita’s husband between her two marriages to Larry. He often told Della that he persisted in his pursuit of Rita now because she had married Larry twice, a sure indication she would do the same with Dave.

“I think I was dating that boy from Dallas,” Rita continued, “the one with the car lot.” She looked to Della again. “You remember him?”

“The art lover who used to come get you in an Eldorado with longhorns mounted on the hood?”

Rita nodded solemnly. This past spring she had abandoned her Texas Big Hair for punk. She had dyed her yellow hair jet black, sheared it down to a spiky cap, and highlighted it with a changing rainbow of iridescents (this weekend’s was teal) that blended oddly with her loopy earrings and mostly denim and rhinestone wardrobe. Della thought Rita’s bizarre fashion sense succeeded only because, even surrounded by morning puffiness, the depth of Rita’s blue eyes overwhelmed whatever ludicrous hair color or plastic bauble she sported.

Rita shook her head again, as if to clear it, then fixed those eyes on Della. “So who is she? The guest?”

Della shrugged. “Just a friend of ours from Fort Worth.”

“A widow,” Pauline said. “Her husband died last year.”

“Last February,” Della amplified before she could think. “A year and three months.”

“She have a name?”

“Barbara Morrison,” said Kat. “Mrs. Richard Morrison.”

“Is that someone I should know?” Rita, in her years in Fort Worth, had developed a clientele that included well-known names, some of whom still drove out to Sydonia on a regular basis for her ministrations.

“Richard had a medical supply business,” Della said.

“Until he saw the impact of computers on practice management,” Kat hurried to add. “He started repping software along with his cotton swabs and syringes and parlayed his nice little business into the biggest practice management program in the Midwest.”

“And his wife—Barbara—worked with him in the office for a while,” Pauline said. “They have one kid, in medical school in Dallas; Barbara lives in Fort Worth.”

“I don’t recall Barbara working in the business,” Kat said.

“Early on,” Della replied. “Probably before you knew them.” She grinned. “Boy were we young then! I still remember her driving car pool with that van full of medical supplies. The kids just piled in the back. No seatbelt laws, I guess.”

“Who got the business?” Rita asked. She had begun to glance around in a distracted way that signaled her interest in grazing.

“We’re about to fix lunch,” Della said quickly. They had baked yesterday for the purpose of filling the freezer with breakfast muffins, and Della dreaded another Kat-versus-Rita shoot-out over Rita’s raiding.

Kat, however, was occupied with other matters. “They cashed out, sold it to a software house in Boston. So all they had to split was piles of cash.”

“Nice life,” Rita said. “What’s her hair like?” She brushed a hand over the top of her own hair.

Della watched the black spikes spring back into place while Kat described Barbara’s appearance. I never told Rita about Richard, she thought, watching Rita’s eyes go wide at Kat’s narrative. Week after
week, year after year, she was cutting and combing and styling for Richard’s pleasure, and she didn’t even know he existed.

Della hadn’t told anyone except Pauline, and that wasn’t until Richard’s death, when she couldn’t control her grief. Pauline had listened and clucked and sighed and patted, pronouncing no judgment, shooing guests away as they sat at the table by the river and watched the turtles in the unexpected warmth of a February sun. Della supposed Pauline feared that the Ladies Farm wasn’t big enough for Barbara and Della together, but Della would assure Pauline that there would be no scenes.

It’s a good thing Rita doesn’t know, Della thought. When she was done being pissed at me for not telling her, she’d be disappointed that there aren’t any fireworks.

“What are you smiling at?” Rita asked her as they all rose to clear the table and get the late lunch ready.

“I’m imagining Barbara with your haircut,” Della said, stepping aside to let Pauline scoop the piles of buttons into little Baggies.

“Well, I’m going to sharpen my scissors,” Rita retorted. “And change my
shmate
.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Kat and Della grumbled in unison. One of Rita’s favorite customers was the Jewish wife of a man who owned a sportswear factory. While their guests were either puzzled or tickled to hear Rita drawl Yiddish expressions, her housemates had grown so used to them that they barely noticed her language. What they did notice was that she was carrying off two frozen muffins and that, once again, she was avoiding kitchen duty.

“We have got to talk to her,” Kat muttered, yanking soup bowls from the cabinet.

“Oh, why start trouble?” Pauline said. “She does her share.”

“Just not on schedule,” Della added. They worked without speaking for a while. Della imagined the others were reliving the part Richard and Barbara had played in their lives. Because their sons had been the same age, the six of them—Richard and Barbara, Pauline
and Hugh, and Della and her then-husband Tony—had acted as one extended family from Cub Scouts through high school. Kat and, for a while, her husband Grant, had joined them later, right after Richard practically set Kat up in the consulting business.

He was in all our lives, Della reflected. Kat could barely spell practice management before Richard started referring clients to her. And Pauline had long ago confided that it had been Richard’s and Barbara’s money that had kept Sydon House going after the oil bust.