At Home on Ladybug Farm (9 page)

“No,” agreed Bridget, “it’s certainly not. But that’s not all profit, either. You have to pay the sheepshearer, for one thing. There’s a lot of research to be done before we start counting that money.”

“Maybe one of the things you could research is how a girl who spent a whole year and a half at UCLA doesn’t know the difference between twenty-five hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars,” Cici said.

“What I’m trying to say,” insisted Lori, deliberately ignoring her mother, “is that this could be the start of a real business. You already have the setup, and a small flock. If you expanded . . .”

“Well now, we’d
really
have to research that,” Bridget said.

“We should get started right away. To get a good price, you want to be the first to the market.”

“Well, I don’t know about that . . .”

Lindsay said, “Cici, are you sure you can handle that thing by yourself? It looks awfully big to me. We’ll be glad to help.”

“It’s fully automated,” Cici assured her. “Couldn’t be simpler. I don’t need any help.” She leaned the big boxy machine back on its rollers and positioned it for action. It made a sound like a train clattering across a trestle in the empty room, even before it was turned on. “It’s even got three speeds.”

“But won’t your arms get tired?” Bridget said. “Shouldn’t we trade off turns?”

“Thanks,” Cici said, and her smile tried to soften the hint of condescension in her voice, “but you can really do some damage if you don’t know how to operate one of these things. Really, I don’t need any help.”

Ida Mae stood in the open doorway, her hair in a scarf, her hands on her hips, and a sour look on her face. “She don’t have the first notion how to work that thing,” she observed, as much to herself as to anyone.

Cici looked at her sternly. “There is really nothing to it,” she assured her.

She pulled a sporty baseball cap over her own hair to protect it from the dust, arranged a paper respirator mask across her mouth and nose, and, taking a firm grip on the handle, flipped the power switch. Everyone backed away.

Nothing happened.

Frowning, Cici lowered her mask and toggled the switch off, then on again. “That’s funny.”

“Is it plugged in?” offered Bridget helpfully.

Cici checked the plug in the wall outlet, then came back and toggled the switch again.

“Maybe you have to put it in gear or something,” suggested Lori.

“Or hold a button down,” Lindsay said, “like with a weed whacker.”

“Is there an instruction book?” Bridget wanted to know.

“Maybe it’s broken,” said Lori.

Cici bent down and played with the switch some more.

Then Noah crossed the room, found the end of the extension cord that was not plugged into the wall, and connected it to the cord from the sander. The big machine roared to life.

Cici sprang back just as the machine lurched forward, screeching across the floor with the fury of a turbocharged demon, leaving a ten-inch-wide gouge in its path. The sounds of their horrified cries were drowned out as it crashed into the opposite wall and fell sideways amidst a shower of plaster dust and broken lathing.

Noah rushed forward and pulled the plug. The silence resounded. Cici stood still in the middle of the room, her hands clasped to the side of her head, looking from the scar across the floor to the hole in the wall.

No one spoke for a very long time. Then Lindsay said, timidly, “I guess you don’t want us to help, huh?”

Without turning, Cici shook her head.

“Maybe you’d like us to just get out of your way.”

Again without turning, Cici nodded.

Lindsay beckoned to Noah with an expression that clearly indicated they should go while the going was good, and they hurried away

Bridget lifted a finger as though the idea had just occurred to her, and said, “Lori, how would you like to go to the library with me and do some research on sheep ranching?”

They left so quickly that Bridget had to return to the house by the back door to get her car keys.

The stone dairy barn was one of the property’s most charming features. With skylights, clerestory windows, a loft for storage, and easy-maintenance stone floors, Lindsay had quickly seen it as the perfect place for her art studio. There was room for twenty or thirty students, when she got her classes going, as well as space for her own work, an office, and even a gallery if she chose.

Like most of the women’s ambitions for the place, Lindsay’s plans had diminished in scope since they’d actually moved in. Noah had spent most of the autumn last year dragging out rotten timbers, squirrels’ nests, and other accumulated debris, and Cici had patched windows and holes through which various forms of wildlife had been making their way in over the years. Eventually Lindsay had been able to scrub down the floors and windows, slap a coat of paint over the plank walls, and call it good. There were still randomly placed half walls throughout the building that indicated where stalls once had been.

The downside of having such an enormous space was that it was virtually impossible to heat, which made it unusable in the winter. Lindsay’s grand plans for having a bathroom installed had fizzled when she discovered that the main water line that led to the building was broken, and instead of the twenty or thirty easels she had envisioned, accompanied by eager art students, there were two worktables: one for her, and one for Noah.

She believed in keeping regular classroom hours and a regular classroom space, even though Noah was only in school three hours a day. She had chosen the art studio because it was neutral territory, the place in which they were both comfortable. It smelled of linseed oil and pastel dust, and on its walls were drying paintings and charcoal sketches. Cici had made a moveable partition out of two-by-fours and plywood to enclose their classroom—and also to conserve heat during the winter—and that was covered with thumbtacked photographs and pages torn from magazines that represented potential subject matter for future art lessons. There was also a whiteboard, which Lindsay used instead of a blackboard, and a bookshelf that held texts. But no one walking into the space would suspect that its main function was as anything other than an art studio.

Noah slouched over his worktable, working algebra problems with a chewed-up pencil, and glancing a little too often at the clock—which was shaped like a color wheel with paint-brushes for hands—on the wall behind Lindsay. He had learned the rules the first day and, after one or two false starts, had learned to abide by them: The art materials did not come out until all of the day’s assigned schoolwork had been completed to his teacher’s satisfaction. At last he tore the sheet of math problems out of his notebook and stretched across the table to hand it to her, waiting impatiently until Lindsay checked it.

“Very nice,” she said, after what seemed like a very long time. “You transposed your variables here on number six. Try it again.”

He erased, recalculated, and handed it back to her before she had resumed her seat. Lindsay lifted an eyebrow. “Learning comes easily for you, doesn’t it?”

He shrugged. “Jonesie down at the Hardware says I can have a job when I get my GED. Pays nine dollars an hour.”

“Good for you.”

“Why can’t I take that GED test now?”

“One, because you’re not old enough. Two, because you don’t know enough. You wouldn’t pass.” She handed the paper back to him with a
100%-Perfect
scrawled across the top.

He stuffed the paper in his notebook without looking at it and began to stack his schoolbooks out of the way to make room for the tabletop easel and paints.

“Hold it, hotshot,” Lindsay said. She reached behind her to her own worktable and took up another stack of papers. “I read your report on the French Revolution.” She turned up the first page, which was a sketch of a man in eighteenth-century costume with the caption “Robespierre was a jerk ” and the second, which depicted a woman in jewels and powdered wig jumping out of a cake—“let them eat cake”—and the third, a drawing of the guillotine and the single line “Off with their heads.”

“Very amusing,” Lindsay said.

He grinned. “I thought you’d like it.”

Lindsay gave him a stern look. “I should make you do the whole thing over.”

His grin vanished. “Ah, come on—”

“Except for the fact that you’ve obviously read the material.” She shook the papers at him. “Otherwise you couldn’t have made such a joke of it.”

“It
is
a joke,” he returned, scowling. “Who cares about a bunch of dudes who’ve been dead three hundred years already?”

“The French Revolution was a pivotal point in world history,” she insisted. “It changed a nation’s destiny and overthrew an entire tradition of government. It was important!”

“It’s
over
,” he replied, sounding bored. “Why do I have to study history anyhow? They’re not going to ask me about Frenchies on the GED.”

As always, Lindsay chose her battles. “We study history,” she explained patiently, “because it tells us who we are. Because it gives us continuity from one point in time to the next. Because if we didn’t know what the people who went before us had been through, we would have to do everything in the world all over again with each new generation. And because when we study history, we understand that we are all part of something much bigger than ourselves—a story that goes on and on.”

“Are we gonna have a drawing lesson today or what?”

She hesitated, then said, “Come up in the loft with me.”

Noah followed her up the ladder, and she dragged forward the box of photographic plates she and Cici had discovered earlier. Holding one up to the light, she said, “This is history.”

He squinted at it, trying to make out the faded shapes. “Looks like this house.”

“It is. It’s this house, the way it used to be a long time ago, and the people who lived here. They’re dead now, too, but without them we wouldn’t be living in this place, having this conversation. Do you understand?”

He was rummaging through the box. “What are these things anyhow?”

“They’re photographic plates from an old camera. I’m going to try to have them developed.”

“They worth anything?”

“I wouldn’t be surprised. People pay a lot of money for pieces of history. Why do you suppose that is?”

“Because they’re dumb?”

She smiled patiently. “Your homework assignment is to answer that question with a five-hundred-word essay.”

He groaned out loud.

“And, because I know how much you like to illustrate your work,” she added, “we’re going to start your art lesson by choosing one of these plates for inspiration. You’ll be interpreting it in charcoal, monochrome oil, and multimedia using an acrylic base, so choose one you like.”

Now he looked interested. “What’s monochrome oil?”

She smiled and dusted off her hands as she stood. “And while you’re choosing, you can wrap each one of those plates in newspaper so they don’t break, and bring the box downstairs.”

He was deeply absorbed in the task when she left him, pulling out the plates, holding them up to the light, wrapping them in newsprint, putting them back in the box. He kept out a few that he liked for drawing practice. And he kept out a few more, hiding them under his shirt, because she’d never miss them.

And who knew? They might be worth something.

When Bridget walked into the Blue Valley Public Library, with its speckled linoleum floors and dark-paneled walls and curved oak circulation desk, she paused for a moment to breathe in the smell of old books and printer’s ink. It smelled like home to her. Lori, on the other hand, headed straight for the Internet station.

Bridget’s childhood had been spent in libraries like this one, and in such places she had discovered the world had no limits. She always liked to take the time to examine whatever was on display behind the glass case as she came in the door; this month it was a collection of artwork entitled “My Favorite Place” by fifth graders at the local school.