A Big Storm Knocked It Over (12 page)

Teddy's mother's house was so unlike anything Jane Louise had grown up with. Her mother, Lilly, was an urbanite. She liked cut flowers and vegetables that were delivered from the local greengrocers. In her house the idea was order and comfort in a formal setting.

As for Eleanor, her old garden boots were always in the hallway. She had a mud room—the sort of space Jane Louise's mother had never heard of—where she kept wooden boxes of seeds, neatly marked, trowels, unopened bags of chicken manure, garden catalogs. A smell of earth and must rose from this room, which also contained a very old washing machine. Eleanor hung her washing on a line and only washed when the sun was out.

Teddy's mother was a traveler, not a domestic being. Her tiny library, once a pantry, was filled with travel books, which, when opened, threw out a rich aroma of mold, and her kitchen was not messy but minimal. She herself lived on tea and salad. Even in the winter the little greenhouse provided her with lettuces.

While Eleanor preferred not to cook, she had her stand-bys.
For the library bake sale she made her chocolate loaf. For the annual garden society fund-raiser she sold her bread-and-butter pickles and rhubarb-and-strawberry jam. And for entertaining she made curry as it was served in New England tearooms, with little dishes of coconut and peanuts and raisins. The note she left for Jane Louise said: “Dear Jane Louise: Use anything you like and throw out anything that looks frowzy—you know I can't bear to pitch anything away.”

So Jane Louise, happily taking up Eleanor's invitation, would rummage through the cupboards throwing out musty bags of unlabeled spices that had no taste or smell.

In the mornings she let Teddy sleep, and while the water was boiling for coffee, she put on Eleanor's battered old straw garden hat and went out while the dew was still on the leaves and picked vegetables for lunch and dinner.

In back of the house behind a stone wall Eleanor grew beans on poles, and English peas. Her tomatoes ran up an arched trellis. She grew garlic, onions, chard, and celery. Along the stone wall in back of the garden was the blackberry and raspberry patch. In a sunny corner near the potting shed was the asparagus patch, now green, fuzzy, and full of ferns. Her rhubarb was forty years old.

Jane Louise went out barefoot. The coolness and softness of the lawn gave slightly beneath her feet, and from the misty earth rose up the smell of grass, air, and the deep, rich smell of soil.

She shook the bags of human hair Eleanor hung on the fence post to keep the deer away, and she scattered fresh mothballs under the lilies. The deer loved Eleanor's lilies and especially liked to nibble the young buds. She emptied the dead slugs from their saucers of beer into the compost heap and put fresh saucers out. Then, before the sun broke through the mist, she did a little hoeing and went inside to make coffee, thinking about her husband and this house.

What had made her so brazenly barge in on Teddy, so entirely sure that he was waiting for her? The boldest thing she had ever done in her life was to knock on Teddy's mother's door with the sole intention of getting Teddy into that big ornamental bed. When he had answered the door she could see he had been waiting for her. She remembered how restrained they had tried to be. Had Teddy asked if she would like a cup of tea? Had she said yes, and had they had a cup of tea? Or had they simply rushed into each other's arms and then proceeded to that beautiful bed where the afternoon light had speckled them?

She climbed the stairs to the guest room, remembering. Teddy was awake and lying like a child, on his back, watching the sun make patterns on the ceiling. Down the hall from this room was Eleanor's study, where she kept her garden books, her endless correspondence with the Cottage Garden Society, and her voluminous notes on the Marshallsville Garden Club, of which she had been president for years. She was on the board of the Hopkins County Botanical Organization and the secretary of the Agricultural Resource Center. She was the person you called if your next-door neighbor, whose vegetable garden bordered yours, began spraying with pesticides while you tried to garden organically. She was a master of diplomatic persuasion. When things got rough, and sprayers were intransigent, Eleanor hoisted her big guns—her presidentship of practically everything—and leaned mercilessly on the culprit until he or she gave in. She was remarkably successful in her methods and had gotten the sod farm in Hopkinson to stop using chemical fertilizer and had organized a compost center at the dump. She fit into her society like a foot into a well-made shoe.

Jane Louise put his coffee on the night table. Teddy opened his arms, and she crawled into them. Teddy took an hour or so to wake up. He was unshaven, and he looked unfocused and very young.

“You smell of digging,” he said.

“I got some baby carrots and tiny little beets. The saucer was full of the most enormous slugs,” said Jane Louise.

Jane Louise's heart expanded. It smelled so wonderful in the country. The curtains fluttered in a mild morning breeze, filling the room with the scent of chamomile, which grew wild on the lawn, and thyme, which grew between the cracks of the marble slabs leading to the front door, and lavender, which Eleanor grew in profusion in her two front gardens: one for cuttings, one for herbs. Jane Louise stretched back against the pillows and felt she could stay here forever.

She felt liberated not only by the country air, but by the fact that she was now free to be pregnant without worrying that Sven was going to hang around the office checking out her body. Her stomach was not as flat as it had been, and she felt herself to be almost chemically tired. She turned groggily to Teddy, who was going back to sleep. She curled up next to him and drifted off.

When they woke it was raining.

“That's funny,” Jane Louise said. “When I got up this morning it was sunny. That was an hour ago.”

“Berkshire weather,” said Teddy. “It'll go away. What are we doing?”

It occurred to her that they had not planned to do one single thing.

“Let's go to the Hopkins diner and eat a huge breakfast,” Jane Louise said. “Let's get some of those biscuits. Then we could go get some eggs from Mr. Kossuth and some corn from the Deans. Maybe by that time it'll clear up and we can go swimming.”

“We should drop by and see Peter and Beth,” Teddy said, yawning. “They were away visiting Beth's mother, but maybe they'll come for dinner.”

“This time next year,” Jane Louise said, dreamily, “we'll be here with a baby. It'll be five months old. Can you imagine?” She sank back into the pillows, imagining. She remembered the first time she had met Beth Peering, who had jumped down from her van and unloaded her three girls, who all wore white shorts and shirts and white socks. Beth had looked ruddy and freckled, her face glowing. Jane Louise remembered how dark and diminished she had felt. I am a New Yorker, mother of no one. I will never emerge from a van with three little girls. I will never have that maternal confidence. If I have a baby, it will be a treat, a good luck charm, a piece of magic, not something I expected and got in the normal course of things.

Jane Louise thought of Beth's middle child, Birdie, whom she loved with all her heart. Birdie loved her back. She had none of her mother's bounciness and all of her father's seriousness. She and Jane Louise drew together—that was Birdie's skill. In the summer Jane Louise gave Birdie art lessons—that was how Beth saw it. Jane Louise did not think of what they did as lessons. The two of them sat at a table by the lake and did watercolors together. This connection was precious to Jane Louise, who often wanted to snatch Birdie up and claim her.

“Hey!” Jane Louise said. “Is that the telephone ringing? It sounds like an insect.”

Teddy sprang out of bed and ran downstairs.

He called up a moment later, “It's for you. Martin Barlow. He says we're supposed to come for lunch, and you're supposed to bring him some pages.”

“Oh, Christ,” said Jane Louise. “Tell him to hang on.” She went downstairs, still not quite awake.

“Hello, Martin,” she said.

“Welcome to the country,” Martin said. “I hope you haven't
forgotten that we're supposed to see each other today. We'd like you to come here for lunch, and then we can go over the pages together while the others go for a walk.”

“The others,” said Jane Louise.

“I mean my wife, my child, and your husband,” said Martin.

“You're very well organized,” Jane Louise said.

“We're vegetarians,” said Martin. “Does that bother you? Nicolette is an amazing vegetarian cook. We'll expect you at about twelve-thirty.”

“But Martin—” said Jane Louise, but the receiver was dead. Martin had hung up.

“My life,” said Jane Louise in the car. “Pregnant, on vacation, and I have to go see some paradigm of self-congratulation and hold his hand while about five words are cut from his precious anthology.”

“Watch out for Route 18,” Teddy said. “It's around here somewhere. We want Greenhaven. What do the directions say after Greenhaven?”

“It says three miles exactly to a fork in the road—Frozen Dog Lane, can you believe it? It's the right fork. Then two miles through the town of Candlebury and the first right at the general store. Their house is the third on the left, and it has a dead tree in front of it.”

“Dead Tree Lane,” said Teddy. “Did you check the map?”

“I thought you thought maps were for twinks,” said Jane Louise.

“Maps are for geniuses,” Teddy said. “Asking at gas stations is for twinks.”

Martin and his wife, Nicolette, lived in a restored farmhouse near an historic village. The big dead tree stood in front of their salt-box, a ghostly yellow-white, full of holes.

“What happened to it?” said Jane Louise.

“It was struck by lightning,” said Martin. “We keep it for the woodpeckers.”

Jane Louise felt sure she had just heard the titles of his next two books.

The Barlows' baby, Lucy, spent her time in a backpack being carried around by her mother, who had long, curly hair worn Pre-Raphaelite style and wore a gauzy long skirt. Jane Louise tried not to evince too much interest in the baby—it was none of Martin Barlow's business that she was pregnant—but her attention constantly wandered to this creature, blond and curly haired, who once out of the backpack sat on the floor playing with a collection of rubber pigs.

Nicolette fed them a vegetarian lunch, and then it was arranged that Nicolette and Teddy would walk Lucy down the road to visit their neighboring farm and visit the farm wife who grew her own indigo and spun her own wool. Martin and Jane Louise would go over the final proofs of
The Literature of Nature.
By the time they came back, Martin and Jane Louise would have finished their work, and Lucy would be ready for her nap if she hadn't passed out in her back carrier.

Jane Louise watched them from Martin's study as they walked down the road. Except for the gauzy skirt and the curly hair, that was a vision of her future: Teddy and Jane Louise and an unknown baby in a yet-unpurchased conveyance walking slowly down a country road.

Martin's study at the back of the house was so flooded with light that it was almost impossible to see. Jane Louise could not
figure out how he got any work done between twelve and three in the afternoon.

She was wearing a yellow sundress and green sandals. As she had put on her dress that morning, she had realized it was starting not to fit. In a few weeks it would be unwearable. She also knew that she would doubtless feel Martin Barlow's bare hands on her back.

As she squinted over the proofs, what she had known would happen happened. She was spun around. Martin Barlow pressed his hands against her back and kissed her.

“Go away, Martin,” she said, as if to an annoying dog, although for the moment she felt as if she could have stood in that spot kissing him for hours. He was as hot as a high school boy—an earnest, hungry kisser. What did this mean? After all, she had spent part of the morning kissing her husband, another extremely accomplished kissing partner. “Go away,” she said, giving him a little shove.

He did go away. He retreated to the one dark corner of his study like a punished child.

“I'm horribly sorry,” he said. “Really I am, but I just was dying to kiss you.”

“I was dying to kiss you, too,” said Jane Louise before she could stop herself.

“Really?” said Martin. “You don't suppose—”

“I only said that to make you feel better,” Jane Louise lied.

“Being a writer and everything,” Martin said, “sometimes I feel I need more experience.”

“That's why God gave people imaginations,” said Jane Louise.

“Did God give them?” Martin said. “I don't know. Nature. Manhood. There's more somewhere.” He looked extremely sad and ridiculously young.

“Try oceanography,” Jane Louise said. “Skydiving. Hot-air ballooning.”

“You're making fun of me, but you don't understand because you're not a writer or a man.”

“True enough,” said Jane Louise. “And you're not a designer or a woman.”

“Sometimes I feel so ambitious I think my head's going to explode,” Martin said. “I feel consumed with power.”

“Gosh, how scary,” said Jane Louise.

Martin grabbed her hand. “Listen,” he whispered. “You're a great designer. I feel totally connected to your sense of design. I just feel we have a bond.”

“Authors sometimes feel that way about a nice-looking book,” said Jane Louise.

“Please, please,” said Martin.

“Get a grip, man,” said Jane Louise.

From downstairs came the sound of a slamming door.

“Martin! Martin!” called Nicolette. “Lucy can say ‘sheep'!”

“I can't say what I feel,” Martin whispered hoarsely. He grabbed Jane Louise's hand again and kissed it. “Thank you,” he murmured.

“And thank you,” said Jane Louise.

That night was the night of a meteor shower, according to the newspaper. Jane Louise was apprehensive. She was not keen to peer into the void. Sven had sent her a postcard, as was their custom: “Don't forget to contemplate the Almighty as you watch the stars fall down. Very scary. Hot up here. Good for the dream life.”

Teddy was more than happy to be her guide to the heavens. The sky had cleared, and his mother's house had an upstairs deck on which you could take a sunbath, hang the towels to dry, or
bird-watch. Eleanor used this deck to set out her seedlings in the early spring. It was a perfect viewing spot.

Teddy was enraptured by the thought of fatherhood. It held no terrors for him that Jane Louise could detect. Her pregnancy had unfettered his spirits. This made Jane Louise occasionally feel awful. She felt she should have gotten pregnant the instant they met, although as Edie pointed out, Teddy had delayed being a father for about as long as she had delayed being a mother, so it was obviously the right time for both.

He read birth books in which he discovered that in not too long this creature would begin to move around, and he would be able to feel it. How he longed for this day! Meanwhile, the thought of motherhood was not so clear a path for Jane Louise.

How would this child be brought up? What sort of a school would it go to? What would happen if Jane Louise was too old to run after it, if when this baby was ten she was an old wreck? At night in bed she worked a kind of mother-math in her mind: When this child is
x
I will be
y,
and when it is z perhaps I will be dead or decrepit. What sort of a mother would she be, a person who allowed Martin Barlow to put the make on her, and who tolerated a lizardlike Sven waiting under a rock to get her?

At eleven o'clock Teddy set out the chaise longue. He carefully read the bottle of insect repellent—even though it was entirely herbal—to see if it was safe for use on pregnant women before painting Jane Louise's arms with it. Jane Louise had made a pot of tea and set it on a little metal table.

Teddy wedged himself in back of Jane Louise, performing the service of a back rest, and handed her her mug of tea. He put his arms around her waist.

“Look!” he said. “Over there!” Jane Louise leaned back against his chest to see a star—or something like a star—blaze across the
sky, and then another and another. At a corner of the horizon, lights flashed. There was not a sound. Above her the sky was as mute as black velvet, sprinkled with rhinestones. It covered the whole planet. It was everywhere. So this is the universe! Jane Louise thought with a shudder.

The night sky, like the God of Moses, was unending, incomprehensible, full of enormous, indecipherable messages. Who wouldn't be anxious in the face of this?

Teddy breathed happily. It was all science to him. He knew the constellations as familiars and often pointed them out to Jane Louise, who could recognize only the Big and Little Dippers. To Teddy the sky was as readable as a face. Teddy knew what he believed, and therefore the incomprehensible did not throw him into a swivet.

“These mosquitoes are treating me like French toast,” Jane Louise said. “Anywhere there's no repellent, they're having a picnic.”

“Look!” said Teddy. “There's more!”

Jane Louise lifted her face from his shoulder. She realized she had turned in her seat and was clinging to him. This really
was
some big deal. Above her was the amazingness of outer space, and meanwhile, she was a container for the miracle of inner space. The enormity of it made her tremble.

The sky flashed. The comets blazed.

“Martin Barlow made a pass at me in his study,” Jane Louise said.

“What nerve!” Teddy said. “I hope you made him cringe like a dog.”

“I did, actually,” said Jane Louise. “Teddy, I think I've had enough of these Perseids. They're sort of giving me the creeps.”

“Okay,” said Teddy. “Let's go and give Little Catherine or Little Heathcliff a rest.”

How simple it could be! The answer to the problem of being anything was
being
it. How admirable Teddy was! From the ashes of his broken childhood he had formed a decision to be a cheerful person, a do-gooding scientific type with a knowledge of English literature. That he had undercurrents of sadness as long and deep as a river was not the point. He had claimed a territory for himself and did not think too much about the complications. People settled on what they were going to be and
were
it, like Erna Hendershott, exemplary mother, wife, and editor, board member, needle-worker, superperson.

Maybe being a mother, Jane Louise thought, would somehow make her immune to edges, snags, surprises, having passes made at her in sunlit studies by overzealous writers. She would have a baby and be all of a piece. The world would fall, gently as snow, into an attractive shape. She would find her place in the celestial order and no longer feel even the remotest twinge when insects like Sven crept around.

“I'm freezing,” said Jane Louise.

“I'll warm you up,” said Teddy. He opened the screen door, and they walked slowly into the guest bedroom, where everything had happened with such apparent simplicity so long ago.