The Ladies Farm (6 page)

Turning, Della looked down the narrow drive that led to the older part of the cemetery. There were some irises she had cut at the Ladies Farm and she took those out of the car before she started down the hill.

She did the same things she always did: tugged a few weeds, laid down fresh flowers, traced the raised letters on the bronze marker. She and Tony, in what must have been the final joint effort of their marriage, had bought a stone bench under a stand of live oaks above the grave, and she seated herself there.

She didn’t need photos here either, though she had hundreds. The angry adolescent with those aching moments of sweetness in his eyes, the boy tossing the football to his brother in the living room, guzzling milk from the carton in front of the opened refrigerator, shutting her out behind his closed bedroom door in favor of hours on the phone with friends she no longer knew; the dirty laundry on the floor, the stammered introductions to new girlfriends, the angry thrashing of musicians who used their guitars like weapons: All that was there in an instant and everything else was gone. “Oh Jamie!” she wept. “Oh Jamie!”

No resident of the Ladies Farm was allowed to go to Fort Worth without taking a shopping list with her. Even Kat, who still consulted three days a week, called home before starting back to Sydonia.

So Della stopped at the Kroger on her way out of town, picking up enough milk, eggs, and yogurt to tide them over till their next delivery. She passed up the California peaches—their own would be coming in soon—but she indulged in some South American pears. There was always a chance they could coax Pauline into making a pear tart.

That’s the least she should do, Della thought as she lifted herself back into the car. Motor vehicles were one of the shared resources at the Ladies Farm and this one, a Suburban, had a large, cracking, leather bench seat that snagged her jeans as she settled in.

It was no joy to drive the thing through city traffic, but it did afford a certain right-of-way. Smaller vehicles simply yielded to her lane changes, enabling Della to return to her personal concerns. By the time she hit the farm-to-market road that wound back to Sydonia, she was mulling Kat’s suggestion that the two of them simply buy out Barbara.

Della shook her head. “I doubt she’s looking to sell.”

The road crossed a gorge cut by the Nolan River; she crossed the river three or four times before reaching Sydonia and the green, wooded hills of this part of the drive reminded her how much she wanted to live here.

“Damn!”

If only it weren’t Barbara. “If it were some stranger,” Della told herself, “you’d adjust to it.”

But it is Barbara. And you can’t share a house with her. You can’t sit across the breakfast table every day, or coax her to do articles for
Silver Quest
or show her how to use the registration software. It’s too much to ask anyone.

This would be a lot easier, she thought, if Pauline had been up front in the beginning. But it was easy to see why she wasn’t.

Barbara probably wouldn’t let Della and Kat buy her out. But she might agree to Pauline buying her interest if she thought it meant a lot to her. “After all,” Della posited, “wasn’t Pauline’s well-being one of Richard’s most important concerns? Wouldn’t Richard approve of ensuring Pauline’s security in her home?”

“You don’t have to sell out,” Della imagined herself posing the situation to Barbara. “You could stay here. But really,” Della paused, “really, Barbara, don’t you think … wouldn’t it give Richard pleasure to think … that you could give Pauline her peace of mind?”

Della sped by Castleburg Dairy on the right. Even with the windows closed, Della could smell it, but she smiled, even so.

“It’s a long shot,” she announced. “But we have a plan.”

I’ll talk to Pauline, thought Della. If she’ll let Kat and me fund this attempt and let us do the talking, Barbara might agree to it.

The Holsteins stood in groups by the road. Della imagined them discussing the weather, critiquing the quality of the pasture, comparing the progress of their calves. She wondered if they missed the ones who were no longer among them. The luckiest, she knew, were the ones whose daughters simply grew up and remained with the herd.

Some days she thought that after Jamie, there wasn’t any loss she couldn’t stand, any sorrow she couldn’t bear. But most days, she felt that she had carried more than her share and it infuriated her when trouble imposed itself on her routine.

I feel like a Holstein, Della thought. I just want to chew my cud and watch the traffic roll by.

She crossed the Nolan one more time, then rumbled up the hill into Sydonia. She wanted to get home before Pauline started her Monday pottery class, but she took her time through the intersections around the courthouse. Even the high school kids had started drifting down to the square now that so many shops had been renovated, and no one looked before crossing the street.

Della waved to two blue-hairs who she knew were on their way to the pottery class, then turned onto their block.

The Ladies Farm had been built by Ora and Isaiah Sydon after they sold most of their farm to the Castleburgs and became residents of the town. By then they had found more prosperity in banking than in farming, and the house reflected a turn-of-the-century substantiality that people sought in banks. It sat alarmingly close to the street, and Della often imagined the four daughters flirting their youth away on the deep porch while young men maneuvered first carriages and then automobiles down the rutted dirt road.

By the time the road was paved, Ora and Isaiah had died and their useless sons-in-law had sold the bank. The house passed through a series of owners who began renting out rooms. When Hugh and Pauline saw it on one of their weekly excursions out of Fort Worth, most of the house was boarded up and the front two rooms were occupied by a family whose house-sitting prevented further vandalism while the owner, a widow who lived in a trailer near the Rio Grande, tried to sell the place.

It hadn’t been called Sydon House when Ora and Isaiah were alive, but then, Sydonia had been called County Line until a group in the early fifties decided that advertising their location in a wet county was no longer becoming and succeeded in having the town renamed. Della pulled the Suburban into the drive and around to the back of the house.

She wanted to find Pauline, but she needed to get the groceries inside. No one around to help, of course. Nancy, their daily maid, would be attacking the upstairs rooms; Rita was in the salon, Kat in Dallas; and—she hoped—Pauline would stay in the barn, where Della could talk to her without Barbara.

She lifted two sacks into her arms, then judged a third to be safe to carry by an edge and grabbed the top of it; then, in a desire to finish the task, she grabbed the top of the fourth and last sack too. Mercifully the back door was hanging open and it yielded to a push of her hip.

“Hello?” Della called, but she expected no answer and was not disappointed. Almost doubled over by the awkward way she grasped
her packages, she waddled across the kitchen to the cabinet next to the refrigerator, then let two of the packages slide onto the floor as she deposited the other two on the counter.

I’ll just get the cold stuff into the fridge, she thought, then I can find Pauline. Della was closing the refrigerator door when she heard the heavy, determined step that preceded Nancy’s arrival at the back staircase.

“Oh God! I’m glad you’re here, they didn’t know what to do, they all had to go with her—”

Della felt her stomach lurch. “Her who?”

“Pauline,” Nancy said. “Pauline, she passed out or something in the barn and that lady, that guest?—”

“Barbara,” Della supplied.

“—Barbara comes screaming up to the house, screaming so loud they heard her in the salon, and Rita goes running down there and she screams for me to call for help, so I call Dave, and he thinks to call the rescue squad, and meanwhile this lady Barbara’s running around screaming and screaming and the lady under the dryer runs down to the barn where Rita is, and Dave shows up with the rescue squad finally, but no one can do nothing.”

“Nothing? What do you mean nothing?”

“They tried. They gave her oxygen and everything.” Nancy’s pale eyes grew wide with the memory. “But finally, that one boy, the one who’s working on his paramedic, he just pulls back and shakes his head and says she’s dead. Just like that.”

               Chapter 5

T
here was more, of course. There’s always more, thought Della. She hurried over to County Medical to find Barbara and Rita huddled with Dave in what looked like a room just for grievers. It was decorated in dove gray and mauve and, in addition to several sofas and upholstered chairs, there was a small table to accommodate people who had lists to make and plans to draw.

We aren’t ready for plans, Della quickly surmised as both Rita and Barbara threw themselves on her. Rita gave a sharp hug and whispered, “Oh, baby. What are we ever going to do without Pauline?”

Barbara locked Della in a bear-like embrace, and sobbed huge, bosom-heaving sobs that left Della’s neck and blouse soaking wet. “Here,” Della said, gently disengaging Barbara’s arms from around her torso, “let’s sit over on this couch.”

“Oh my God,” Barbara kept whispering. “Oh my God, oh my God.”

Della peered around Barbara, who was burrowing into her shoulder, and looked at Rita, who had settled herself on the sofa arm next to where Dave was seated. “What happened?”

Rita shook her head and motioned at Barbara, who was releasing clouds of Gucci scent with every quake. “She just came screaming up the hill: She’s dead, she’s dead! So I run down there and Pauline—oh,
God, Della, I’ve had car wrecks and kids with broken bones and even my old Granny dying in her bed in my house with all of us right there, but I’ve never had anybody just up and die like that, with her eyes frozen open and this sort of vomit-like spit running out one side of her mouth—and she’s just lying there, deader than doornails, and this one’s screaming, and Nancy’s called Dave, and he gets there and the rescue squad gets there, but nobody can do anything. Oh, God! Della, it was awful.”

“Has anyone called Kat?”

“I tried her pager, but she’s got the damned thing turned off, I’ll bet. I tried the mobile, too.”

“Try the pager again. If you try two or three times, she’ll know it’s urgent.”

Dave cleared his throat and Della looked at him for the first time. “I’m thinking they had a son. Hugh Junior.”

“Well, of course,” Della said, trying to sound as if she hadn’t forgotten Pauline’s actual family. “And a daughter. Melissa and Hugh Junior. We’ll just have to wait till we get back to the Ladies Farm so we can go through Pauline’s address book. We’ll call him just as soon as we can.”

Rita busied herself with the telephone on the table next to the sofa and Della, who had been stroking Barbara’s back, looked down at Barbara’s flaming hair. “Barbara? Honey?”

She didn’t look up but her shoulders stopped quaking.

“Barbara?” Della tried again. “Why don’t you tell me what happened.”

Barbara pulled back a little. Her face, red and swollen, had no makeup left on it.

“She was just l-l-l-lying there,” Barbara shuddered. “Just curled up on her side and then she started sp-p-pit … vomiting.” Barbara collapsed once more into Della’s arms.

“She was on the floor already when you went to the barn?”

Della felt the sobbing stop long enough to permit a nod. Della shifted her gaze to Rita, who seemed to be dialing her fifth call. “Are you leaving her the number here?”

Rita nodded. “We can’t leave yet. They called Dr. Pfluger, we need to talk with him. And we have to get hold of Hugh Junior, have him call the ER so they can call the funeral home.” Suddenly she put down the phone. “I just can’t believe this,” she said, her face crumpling into tears before she could cover them with her hands.

“Oh, come here, honey,” Dave said, half-standing to reach over to her. She went willingly, Della noticed, and was glad. She thought Rita should give Dave another chance. He was certainly an improvement over Larry. He was even a better father and grandfather than Larry, and those were Larry’s kids.