The Ladies Farm (20 page)

She fished around in her closet for sandals with heels, then wobbled out to check the mirror again. It would do, she thought.

Tony arrived early, a sure sign of nerves. Rita talked and joked and fluttered around them until Nancy finally called her into the kitchen. “Now don’t you bring her back too early!” Rita sang back over her shoulder. Della shrugged, but Tony laughed.

It didn’t surprise her that they went to Wendells, but it disappointed her. Maybe there are no surprises left for us, she mourned. On a hill by the highway about thirty minutes out of Sydonia, it was the only restaurant in the county that sported both tablecloths and a wine list. She could remember driving out here from Fort Worth on Mother’s Days past, the boys whispering in the back seat about the present hidden in the trunk.

They chatted politely, and Della surprised herself by remembering to focus the conversation on him. Men were easy to talk to, really. They could probably go the whole night without a single question about the Ladies Farm, or Barbara or Kat or Pauline.

Tony ordered wine, and she tried to be impressed; it was a new skill. They both had opted for the herbed chicken, and Della had to stop herself from offering to split one dinner. Men, she reminded herself, don’t like it when you imply they can’t afford a good meal. She wondered how he’d feel about doggie bags.

“Looked like you had a full house in the dining room,” Tony said.

“We’re doing all right,” Della conceded. “Are your shops busy?”

“Pretty much. It always lags a little in midsummer, but I’ve come to expect it.”

“Remember how terrified we were?” she recalled. “That first summer, when the schools closed and we didn’t know how we’d make the rent?”

“You think much about back then?”

Della nodded. “More than I thought I would. It does make me happy sometimes, to think about the four of us back then.”

He nodded, but didn’t say anything.

The waitress had brought their salads, but neither of them had touched the food. “Tony,” she said. He looked at her. “Tony, back then, did I ever, did you ever think I just joked my way through?”

“What do you mean?”

“You know: all that sarcasm. Did you think I refused to face things? That all I did was make fun of things?”

Tony considered a moment. “What’s this about?” he asked cautiously. “Someone say something to you?”

It made her wince just to remember Kat’s words:
Professional smart-ass. Can’t face the truth in anything. Certainly can’t tell it
. “Oh, Kat and I had a spat.”

Tony studied her, then grinned. “Well, I always said you were a smart-ass.”

“And nobody likes a smart-ass,” she concluded. Tears filled her eyes, and she saw herself alone, isolated by the edge of her own attitude.

“God, Della, I just said you were a smart-ass.”

“Oh.” She shook her head. “It’s not that. I’m sorry.” She dabbed her eyes on the cloth napkin, then stared at it. “I’ve been buying mascara since I was fifteen and now I’m fifty-five. Forty years of mascara, all of it waterproof, and I never found one that didn’t smear.”

“You look fine,” he said so automatically that it stimulated a torrent of fresh tears.

“I mean it,” he insisted, but she just shook her head from side to side as he glanced nervously around the dining room to see if anyone noticed he was with a sobbing woman.

“I’ll wear a sign:
Not his fault,
” she said. “Okay?”

“You know, you are a smart-ass,” Tony said.

“I had a fight with Kat,” Della said. “Hugh Junior got an offer from Castleburg—the dairy next door—and we have to meet it or lose the Ladies Farm.” Not the whole truth, but all true. “And he’s buying out the Huttos too, and the only way we’ll keep ourselves from being the center of the gravel pit is to buy them out too.”

“So why is Kat mad at you?”

“Oh, I think we’re just both upset. All we’ve learned since Pauline died. Since Barbara showed up!”

Tony doesn’t know, Della thought. And Tony won’t know. But she was seduced by the idea of telling him, by the dream that there would be one person to whom she could tell everything.

“Is everything all right here?” It was the waitress, bearing their dinners.

“Not much of a date,” Della said as the waitress moved away.

“It’s fine,” he said. “Why didn’t you just tell me all this in the car?”

“I thought I could wisecrack my way through.”

“Seeing the humor in things isn’t a vice.” He smiled a little. “I always thought your wit was one of your charms. At least when it wasn’t directed at me.”

“But it always is, sooner or later, isn’t it?”

“Taste the wine,” he advised. “Tell me how sophisticated and urbane I am.”

She sipped, glad that there was no edge to the full, mellow taste. “Ultra-urbane, I’d say.” She held the glass up to him in tribute, then sipped again.

Tony started to eat his dinner, and Della set the wine glass down and picked up her own knife and fork. The chicken was standard, bland middle-America chicken, the vegetables overcooked, and the potato wrapped in foil. Poor Tony, Della thought. This is as glamorous as it gets for him.

She remembered dinner on a patio between Taos and Santa Fe, with the stars blazing in the sky and the crunch and flavor of each grilled vegetable a delightful surprise. Fresh trout perfectly sauced, bread baked in a wood oven, the sights and sounds vying with the aroma of piñon and the flicker of a real candle on a simple, woven tablecloth. Of course, thought Della, the man who took you there was cheating on his wife. Whereas this man’s fidelity became a joke to his friends.

Tony caught her looking at him and he smiled. “It’s good, isn’t it?” “Yes,” she replied.

They didn’t talk much during dinner, but Della didn’t mind. He accepted her suggestion that they split dessert, and she let him eat most of the pecan pie.

“You want to take a walk?” he asked her, taking her arm.

“Sure,” she said. The stone walkway led to an overlook above the Nolan. It was already dark, but small lights illuminated the path, and the overlook, when they reached it, was deserted.

They sat on the bench and looked out into the darkness. With the lights from the restaurant obscured by trees, the stars that hung over the small valley sparkled in the moonless sky. “I always liked it here,” said Tony, putting his arm on the bench and then, with no resistance, around her shoulders.

“Me too,” agreed Della, though she couldn’t remember ever coming here without the boys, who occupied themselves hurling rocks into the trees on the hill below the retaining wall. They would fight over who took the longest turn at the giant binoculars that cost a quarter for three minutes, and then they would howl when she and Tony insisted it was time to leave.

Tony always made Robbie give Jamie a head start in their race up the hill, and she had gladly yielded the front seat to the race winner for the ride home.

“What?” Tony squeezed her shoulder a little.

“You’re a good father,” Della said. “Did I tell you that?”

“I believe you did,” Tony said. “Though I don’t mind hearing it again.”

“You’re a good father.”

“We were okay together,” Tony granted her. “We had two nice boys. And our one son now … he’s fine, isn’t he?”

She nodded. “He got an education, he has a good job, he married someone nice, they have a nice kid.”

“You think they’ll have more?”

“Who knows?”

“You think he’s afraid? Like maybe two would be bad luck?”

“Robbie?” Della asked. Maybe Robbie was afraid to subject Katie to the possibility of losing a sibling. She recalled Robbie standing in the middle of the living room, home from his first year of college in
the middle of a school week to attend his brother’s funeral. “Where is he?” Robbie had asked, his shirt hanging out of his pants, his car keys still in his hand. “I want to see him.”

“Maybe he is afraid, and maybe he’ll get over it. Maybe Laura will insist on another baby. Who knows?” She turned slightly toward him. “Are you going to make a move on me, or what?”

“Well, I was,” said Tony, drawing her close. “But then we’ll have to walk back up to the car and that might break the mood. So how about if we walk back up to the car and I drive to a secluded spot and kiss you and then we can see if we want to go to a motel?”

“Do I get the right to say no?” Della asked.

Even in the dark she could see a grin. “I’ll take my chances.”

In some ways, thought Della as she followed him up the path, he takes more risks than Richard ever did.

The spot he chose was the Boy Scouts’ roadside park where Barbara had told Della she was dying. Della didn’t even try to conceal it. He listened patiently, his arm around her as they sat side by side atop the picnic table next to the highway.

“Poor Tony,” she said as she wound down the tale. “You can’t get away from the difficulties of the Ladies Farm.”

“Because you can’t.”

“Well, the Ladies Farm is pretty much my life.”

“Why is that?” he asked. “I always thought you’d find someone else and get married. I can’t believe you’re still single.”

Because when you were courting Suzanne, I was entertaining Richard with cozy, late-night dinners. While you were adjusting to stepchildren, I was flying off to meet Richard in Phoenix and Portland and New Orleans. You were filing for divorce and I was still looking over my shoulder while I drove to our tryst at some Hill
Country retreat. I was hiding and lying and totally consumed by my secret passion. There was no time for making a suitable match.

Della took a deep breath, then shrugged. “Maybe there’s just no such thing as Mr. Right,” her voice as offhanded as she could make it. “I don’t know, really. At our age, all the good men are married.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“Well, you were married.”

“I was the only one in the relationship who seemed to notice.”

“You think you’ll get married again?” she asked.

“I don’t know. What about you?”

“I doubt it. I’ve just been on my own too long, Tony. You know, you get used to it after a while, and someone sharing your life seems like an intrusion.”

He pulled her close to him. “Don’t you miss … you know … having someone to be with?”

“I miss screwing,” she said. “I miss sleeping with someone.”

“Me too,” he whispered, nuzzling her ear.

It wasn’t subtle, but it was effective. She squirmed a little and leaned into him. When he finally did kiss her, there was such sweet comfort in the taste of him that Della simply clung.

The motel, an inn at Lake Whitney, was predictable and the things he whispered to her were all the things she remembered from before. Della closed her eyes to hear him better. There was a thrill in knowing what came next and then having it happen exactly the way it should.

“Are you okay?” he asked her as she lay quiet in his arms.

“Yes,” she said automatically. She didn’t know if he meant okay with what they had done, or okay about the Ladies Farm or okay about Barbara dying or okay with the arrangement of pillows and blankets. But I’m okay for going to sleep in bed with Tony, Della thought.

Barbara dressed carefully. The diaper gave her a little more confidence, but she had to choose baggier clothes to conceal the bulk. She selected two pills from the bottle atop her dressing table and set them next to the glass of water. She wanted to wait until just before she left; it would give her a few extra minutes of eased breathing.

Resting in the upholstered chair next to the window, Barbara looked over the slope down to the narrow river and then up again at the opposite bank. The early morning sun illuminated the tops of the cottonwoods that dotted the hill, turning their feathery silhouette from black to gray to a silvery green. She thought about Richard, about the way he was always up before she was. She would awaken to hear him humming to himself as he shaved, or, on weekends, to the coffee and toast he would bring on a tray.

Morning was always their time. No matter how late he came in the night before, no matter how angry her accusations, how ludicrously vehement his denials, Richard had always managed to make her early mornings a time when she felt treasured and protected, loved and desired.