Mulch Ado About Nothing (7 page)

He glanced down fondly at the desk where his pink marigolds were sitting. "These, by the way, have been registered with the patent office and will be grown over the next two years before release to the public. I have contracts already signed with hundreds of nurseries and mail-order plant firms."

“In other words, you're going to get very, very rich?" Ursula piped up. "I hope you'll consider using some of the money for good causes. I could suggest some to you."

“Thank you, but I have good causes of my own," Dr. Eastman said stiffly. "As I was saying, five: A well-planned full-scale introduction of the plant to the public is the only way to go. Certain companies will act as agents for you on a sliding scale of royalties. The first year is the most expensive. As much as forty percent of your royalties on the plants shipped."

“Forty percent for an agent?" Stefan Eckert exclaimed. "Golly! I'm writing a textbook on educational management and I'd heard that agents only charged ten to fifteen percent."

“I have no knowledge of literary agents," Dr. Eastman said as if he were proud of this fact. "As I was saying, six: You should know a lot about your triallers. They should have experience in the plant type, be known as efficient and prompt in reporting results, and have a solid reputation for keeping confidential testing quiet.”

Only Stefan and old Arnold Waring were taking extensive notes of the lecture, but freshly pressed Charles Jones and his neighbor Miss Martha Winstead were paying very close attention and seemed extremely interested.

“Now we'll take a break for about five minutes, and come back and let Mrs. Nowack order us around and assign drivers and passengers." This might have been insulting, except that he said itwith a sincere smile at Shelley. "And we'll be off then to see my garden and Mrs. Appledorn's."

“Ms. Appledorn, if you don't mind," Ursula said.

Shelley drove
Jane and
Miss Martha Winstead.
"Do you know the way?" Miss Winstead asked.

“Approximately," Shelley said.

“I can show you the house."

“Oh. . you knew Dr. Eastman before this class?" Jane asked.

Miss Winstead turned slightly in the front seat and said to Jane in the seat behind her, "All too well.”

There wasn't time to question this remark before they arrived at a small white colonial home with clipped hedges and lush grass in the front yard, but no flowers at all.

“Isn't that odd," Jane said. "I'm seeing so many more front-yard gardens in the last few years. You'd think a professional in the field would have lots of gardens."

“It's a contagious thing," Miss Winstead said. "In the fifties and sixties you never saw gardens in front yards. Flowering shrubs like forsythia and dogwoods were barely acceptable. For some reason most homeowners thought gardens should be private. But when I put a garden along my driveway, the next year there were two small garden window boxes on either side of me, and some trees that had hostas and impatiens around them. The year after that, two of my neighbors made nice raised beds of begonias and dracaena. Now nearly every house on the block has something flowering in 'public,' so to speak. But there are still whole blocks where nobody has started the trend. Mrs. Jeffry, may I help you get out of the back of the vehicle?”

With Shelley at the wheel, Jane expected that they would be the first to arrive. But Dr. Eastman was already at home. He must be an even faster driver than Shelley. A horrifying thought.

“No, thanks," Jane said. "I'm getting the hang of it." She was afraid she'd fall out the door and crush Miss Winstead, though on second thought, Miss Winstead looked quite durable.

Dr. Eastman was standing at a gate at the side of the house to welcome the class, but didn't appear to notice Miss Winstead. Instead, he spoke pointedly to Jane and Shelley.

“Go right on back and take a look. This is, of course, only a part-time home for me and nothing like my house and garden upstate.”

Jane was prepared to be disappointed after this warning. She hobbled down the side yard, which had a wooden fence with a few hanging pots of ivy and begonias. It was cool and dark and restful. Instead of a sidewalk, there was a wooden walkway with ferns here and there along the sides.

Nothing was spectacular, but the begonias were in full bloom and the ivy and ferns were spectacularly well kept. Not a spot or hint of yellowing on a single leaf. Entering the backyard behind Shelley and Miss Winstead, Jane was surprised. There were several large pines at the back of the lot where the yard sloped upward that were quite large and almost entirely concealed the house behind. In front of the pines were small islands of color and scattered, delicate-looking small plum trees. And there were quite a few Asian-looking ornaments.

But the garden was an exercise in restraint. Watching her step carefully, she limped along to a flagstone patio with a pair of old ceramic Foo dogs guarding the entrance. Shelley and Miss Winstead had abandoned her and were looking at something under the pines that appeared to be a sort of miniature teahouse.

The lawn was cool and green and so thick and evenly cut that it looked very like a fine carpet. The paths were made of tiny round stones embedded in a dark background that must have been dyed cement. Not the thing you'd want to walk on with crutches.

A Japanese woman came out the back door. "Hello," Jane said. "Dr. Eastman has invited the class to see his yard. Are you Mrs. Eastman?”

The woman's face crinkled into a smile. She pointed to herself and said, "Housekeeper. This my grandson, Joe.”

A bright-eyed but serious-looking boy with black hair as tidy as the lawn had joined them. "Grandma has never learned much English, I'm afraid. What did you do to your leg, miss?”

Jane couldn't make up a lie to this nice, polite, solemn child. He looked about twelve years old — a very composed twelve-year-old. "I just fell off a curbing. It's a boring thing, but true."

“Would you like to walk about or take a chair?" he asked. His grandmother was standing behind him now, her hand on his shoulder, bobbing her head in a half-nodding, half-bowing manner.

“I'll walk about a bit, thank you," Jane said with the same formal tone.

She got her crutches lined up and started out to follow Shelley around. Sensing movement behind her, she turned slightly. The boy was stooping along behind her and brushing up the round dents her crutches made in the grass.

“I'm so sorry," Jane said, "but I'm afraid to walk on the round stones."

“No problem, miss," he said. "Perhaps you'd be more comfortable sitting in the shade, however.”

Jane reconsidered and took his advice. His grandmother rushed inside and got a very pretty embroidered pillow to put behind her back as she sat down on a teak bench. "Thank you so much," Jane said, and couldn't resist a little pleasant head bobbing in return.

The rest of the class followed quickly and all of them walked obediently along the stone paths, examining small sculptures and little mounds of subtly shaded flowers. Lavender and pale blue and light yellow mounds with perfect foliage. From Jane's vantage point she couldn't tell what they were.

“It's a very pretty yard, Joe. Do you help take care of
it?"

“
Yes, miss."

“You do a very good job."

“Thank you, miss.”

Polite conversations with polite children were hard on Jane. She gazed about, murmuring things like, "Oh, how pretty the paths are" and "Isn't that a lovely flowering bush?”

The garden was too perfect for her taste. There wasn't a thing wrong with it except its exactitude. Everything was precisely round, or oblong, or gently curved with great precision. There didn't appear to be a weed anywhere or a blade of grass out of place. Or a single object misplaced by an inch. It was soothingly bland. Nothing to excite or disturb the senses. She wondered whether this represented Dr. Eastman's taste or that of the housekeeper and her grandson.

Shelley and Miss Winstead wandered over to where Jane was sitting, and the housekeeper provided them with pillows as well. Her bobbing presence was daunting, but once the two chairs and bench were filled with sitters, she backed away and disappeared into the house. A moment later, she reappeared with an armload of fragile-looking folding chairs for the rest of the guests.

Joe was following Dr. Eastman and Stefan Eckert as they approached the tall, dense pines. Eastman pulled down a branch and was apparently telling Eckert something about it. Ursula was on her own, bending over to smell every clump of flowers. She was the only one with the nerve or insensitivity to actually touch any of the plants or ornaments. Arnold Waring was also on his own. Jane hadn't realized how barrel-chested the older man was until she saw him moving about. He carefully studied each area of the yard, as if mapping it in his mind.

When he got near Ursula, she all but grabbed him by the lapels to pontificate about something. He nodded several times and eased himself away from her, but she pursued him, still talking. Finally, in desperation, he simply turned his back on her and walked away.

Geneva Jackson, who hadn't been in the class this morning, had joined the group now, and she and the cardboard-stiff Charles Jones were chatting over a Hindu-type sitting stone figure.

“Julie Jackson must be getting better," Shelley said, "or Geneva wouldn't be here. I'll have a word with her.”

Left alone with Miss Winstead, Jane asked, "How long have you known Dr. Eastman?"

“Since a year before he married my cousin Edwina."

“Oh, you're related then."

“Barely, I'm glad to say.”

Jane was fascinated by these mysterious hints. "Miss Winstead, Shelley and I were talking about going to a late lunch together after the tour. Would you like to join us?"

“That would be lovely. You two young women seem to be old friends."

“We've lived next door to each other for twenty years.

“That surprises me. Someone told me you grew up in a diplomat's family. I thought you'd be used to moving from place to place.”

She and Jane chatted a bit about Jane's childhood, and Miss Winstead contributed that her family had traveled to some of the same cities when she was young. By the time they'd exhausted the subject, the rest of the group had finished their tour of the yard and were moving toward the side yard where they'd entered.

Ursula was approaching Jane, who feared she was coming to help her or ask how she'd enjoyed her dinner last night. Jane fairly sprang to her feet and said to Miss Winstead that they'd better get a move on.

“Certainly," Miss Winstead said, with a know' ing sparkle in her eyes.

ursula's
garden was
next.
Jane dreaded seeing
it.

As they pulled up to Ursula's house, Jane was once again surprised. The front lawn was ratty, with some almost bare spots, but Jane's own front yard was nearly as bad. Her son Mike claimed it was because she'd overwatered and caused a fungus. He was bringing something home from the nursery to treat it. Maybe she'd share that information with Ursula. Or maybe she'd be better off keeping quiet. Ursula would probably see another dangerous conspiracy in chemical treatments of lawns.

The house itself wasn't too bad either, a single story that sprawled a bit. The greenhouse at the west end, which looked distinctly homemade with "found" materials, was something of a blight. But the house itself was painted a pale green with navy trim around the windows and doors and a deep magenta front door. A fairly popular color combination lately. The windowpanes themselves were dirty and streaked, the front door had a small hole in the screen, and the door itself showed dog scratches. But all in all, it wasn't the tumbledown hovel Jane had expected.

They arrived even before Ursula and waited in the minivan for the other car pools to arrive. "I've invited Miss Winstead to join us for lunch," Jane said to Shelley.

“I know, so did I," Shelley responded. "Where shall we go?”

By the time they'd settled on a restaurant, the rest of the group had pulled up and were getting out of their cars. Ursula was really excited and not even bothering to pick up the items that were falling out of her bags. Shelley picked up a handheld calculator and gave it back to her as they went around the side of the house. Miss Winstead rescued an invitation to some sort of community meeting and likewise returned it.

There was a big wooden door to the backyard that was a little crooked on its hinges, which Ursula had to struggle to open. "I don't usually come around this way. Sorry," she said. The door finally creaked back and she made a grand entry gesture that dislodged a butterfly hairpin, which Arnold Waring picked up, grunting with the effort of finding it under an overgrown spirea bush.

When they got to the backyard, there was a cacophony of barking from inside the house. Ursula opened the back door and shouted,
"QUIET!"
The barking subsided.

The "garden" was much like Jane imagined it would be. Completely wild and disorderly. Someflat rocks that looked suspiciously like tombstones lay about, forming rough paths. Somewhere genealogists were wondering where their great-great-aunt Mildred's final memorial had gone.

There was no grass at all, just a jumble of plants and trees and bushes. Mostly too dry. There were holes in the ground where apparently useless plants had been yanked out. And there was an overpowering smell of decay.

“That's the compost pile you smell," Ursula said proudly. "I'm surprised I didn't see one in your yard, Dr. Eastman. It's the heart of garden- ing.”

just couldn't smell it," he said. "It's hidden behind the pines. And compost piles should never have an odor like this unless you're putting pet waste in it.

Jane wasn't going to risk breaking her other foot taking the full tour, and looked around for a place to sit down. There were two iron benches near the house, but they were white with bird droppings. There must have been about fourteen bird feeders hanging from the eaves. Most of them were empty or had an inch or two residue of mildewed seeds. Only the hummingbird feeder looked fresh, but it didn't have any customers. Jane propped her armpits on the crutches and looked around. She noticed that here and there, dusty electrical wires emerged from the ground and led into one of the areas. Probably some sort of lighting Ursula could turn on at night.