A Year on Ladybug Farm #1 (12 page)

They loved the deep, claw-foot tubs. Unfortunately, they required so much hot water that only one of them could take a bath per evening. The other two had to be content with a lukewarm spritzing from the shower attachment. A new, higher capacity water heater was the only solution.

“I know,” Cici said with a sigh. “But we’re going to have to go to Charlottesville to get it and . . . I just don’t want to leave, you know?”

The other two murmured agreement as Bridget joined them on the steps, setting the cookie platter between them. Leaving this oasis of timelessness and peace for anything that resembled a city seemed to them all as reckless as trying to breathe water.

Bridget tugged a corner of the throw over her knees, and picked up a cookie. “I called the nursing home, by the way, about Ida Mae Simpson. She’s not there anymore.”

Lindsay helped herself to a cookie and passed the platter to Cici. “Oh? Where did she go?”

Bridget gave her a patient look. “Where does one usually go from a nursing home?”

“Oh. That’s too bad.”

“Well, I guess she was pretty old.”

They sat quietly for a moment, munching cookies, sipping wine, and listening to the rise and fall of crickets’ breath as the indigo twilight deepened to a smoky gray. The cool air, such a delicious contrast to the warmth of the afternoon, carried the promise of dew. Their flesh prickled with cold, but they did not consider going inside.

“What do you miss the most?” Bridget said softly.

Lindsay said, “I don’t know. It’s funny, but I kind of miss school. The kids, you know. What about you?”

“The Internet, maybe. And good coffee ice cream.”

“Eaten right out of the carton,” Lindsay agreed.

Bridget turned to Cici. “What about you, Cici? HGTV? The Sherwin-Williams store? What do you miss the most?”

Cici leaned back on one palm, gazing out over the darkening mountains, and she smiled, lifting her glass. “Not a damn thing,” she said.

Lindsay drew in a deep breath of night air. “Yeah,” she agreed softly, “me either.”

Bridget said, “Who needs coffee ice cream?”

They touched glasses, and drank to wanting nothing.

For Cici, there was little more beautiful than the way the early morning light stretched across the kitchen. It had a rosiness that suffused the ancient bricks and brought out shades of gold and cerulean that were embedded in the mud from whence they came. Yet there was a mistiness to the light, a softness that combined with the sweet, damp air of early summer and reminded her of just how many sunrises this kitchen had seen, just how untouched it had remained. To walk into this kitchen, to see the way the light graced the soft blurred patterns of the Delft tile and the weathered soapstone and the worn brick floor, made her feel ageless.

On this particular morning, Cici came into the kitchen in her pajamas and robe, stretching sore muscles and combing back her hair with her fingers, to find it filled with strawberries. There were bowls piled high with them on the island. A wicker basket overflowed with them on the counter, surrounded by half a dozen tin pails and an enormous galvanized tub, all filled with strawberries. The aroma swelled through the kitchen and seeped out into the corridor: strawberry, strawberry, strawberry. When Cici licked her lips she could taste them.

Cici said, “Let me guess what’s for breakfast. Strawberry blintzes.”

“With strawberry compote, strawberries and cereal, and strawberry muffins for dessert,” added Lindsay, popping one in her mouth as she carried a bowl of freshly hulled strawberries to the stove. “Apparently, it’s strawberry season.”

Bridget was at the sink, washing a sieve full of strawberries. “These were going to go bad if I didn’t do something with them. I just couldn’t stand to let them rot. So I’m making jam!” She shook the water off the strawberries in the sieve, poured them into an empty bowl, and handed them to Cici. “Help me hull these.”

Cici took the bowl, flicked a ladybug off the rim, and went to pour herself a cup of coffee. “There are enough strawberries here to make jam for the whole state.”

“Everything grows so well here,” Bridget replied. “I think it’s the ladybugs.”

Lindsay asked, eating another strawberry, “Do you know how to make jam?”

“There’s nothing to it. It’s just fruit and sugar.”

Cici poured herself a bowl of cold cereal and sliced strawberries over it. Every other slice went into her mouth. They had been enjoying the strawberries for weeks as they ripened, but still every taste was a surprise. Like most consumers in the United States, they had forgotten what strawberries were supposed to taste like. They knew the smell, and the color, but the taste of the ordinary supermarket strawberry out of the carton was like cardboard. The strawberries of Ladybug Farm were so sweet they were a confection unto themselves; they practically melted on the tongue and infused the senses with the taste of sunshine, the essence of strawberry.

“Well, all I can say is that if you can bottle this taste, you’ve got yourself a gold mine.” Cici poured milk over her cereal, then dipped a strawberry into the milk and ate it with her fingers.

Bridget turned from the sink with a happy, speculative look on her face. “Wouldn’t that be something? To bring back the Blackwell Farms jams?”

“Well, I don’t know if we’re ready for a national ad campaign,” Lindsay said, “but it would be a shame to let all this fruit go to waste. Do you have a big enough pot, Bridget?”

Bridget hauled out a stockpot, two Dutch ovens, and a crockpot, and they spent the next hour washing, hulling, and slicing strawberries. Bridget filled the pots, covered the fruit with sugar, and the entire house began to fill with the aroma of strawberries as the fruit came to a simmer.

“Now,” declared Bridget, giving the countertop a final swipe with the sponge, “all we have to do is let the fruit cook down and thicken, and we have jam.”

Cici said, “Shouldn’t we be washing the jars?”

Bridget’s face, for a moment, displayed absolutely no expression. Then she said, “Get dressed. We’re going to town.”

 

 

The little town of Blue Valley snuggled up against the base of a hillside that was awash in deep violet thrift, which made one wonder whether the town had been named because of the flowers, or whether the thrift had been planted to honor the town. It was the latter, in fact. The Mountain Gardenias Gardening Club had planted the thrift as part of the Centennial Celebration ten years earlier and the result had astonished even the originators. The bristly blue-flowered plant had dug in its roots and spread up and down the back side of Main Street, so that the impression, as one first came over the hill into town, was of a French watercolor.

The town was laid out in a
T
shape, with a single stoplight where one could turn right off of Main Street and be on Harrison Street, and left off of Main to be on Riker Street. On Main and Harrison, there was a white clapboard Methodist church with a steeple and a bell. Across the intersection on Main and Riker was an identical Baptist church. On Sunday mornings the cacophonous pealing of the two bells woke everyone within a five-mile radius.

Over the years, locals had begun referring to Harrison Street as “the Methodist side” and Riker Street as “the Baptist side.” The library, for example, was on the Methodist side. The quilt and notions shop was on the Baptist side. Jason’s Grocery was on the Methodist side, and Henry’s Bait and Tackle on the Baptist. Main Street was home to Harrison’s Fine Furniture, which took up two of the four blocks, Dana’s Family Clothing, Johnson’s Pharmacy, the Dollar Store, and Family Hardware and Sundries, established 1901.

Sundries
was one of those ambiguous words that did not begin to describe the extent and variety of Family Hardware—the vast majority of which was not hardware at all. The sidewalk in front of the store was crowded with a display of wooden rocking chairs, porch swings, and hand-carved birdhouses. Inside, the wood floors were dark with age and barely visible amidst the shelves and stacks of merchandise that overflowed every available space. There were galvanized washtubs and vacuum cleaners, new and refurbished, alongside homemade soaps and hand-dipped candles, which were haphazardly displayed next to lantern globes and cotton wicks. There were stacks of cotton dish towels, electric skillets, rabbit hutches, wire traps, rodent bait, and fertilizer. Portable television sets were arranged on a shelf next to wheelbarrow tires. There were decorative crock butter churns, hand-painted flower pots, and plumbing supplies, in addition to light switches, junction boxes, and R-16 cable. There were chain saws and snowshoes, camping supplies, and antique dolls displayed in a glass case. There were music boxes, Burt’s Bees shampoos and hand lotions, and yes, glass canning jars.

“Look at this,” Lindsay exclaimed softly from behind a stack of hand-stitched quilts.

Cici, dragging herself away from the study of a rather nice original oil painting of sheep in a pasture, murmured, “It’s Aladdin’s cave.”

Bridget came around a corner laden with gardening gloves, lip balm, bath salts, and a bizarre-looking white wicker contraption that was shaped like a hoop with a platform in the center and a chain at the top.

“What in the world?” queried Cici.

“It’s an iced tea butler,” Bridget replied, pleased with herself. “It hangs from a beam on your porch, or from a tree limb, and you put your iced tea or lemonade on the platform, with the glasses in the little cup-holders here, and the napkins and teaspoons go underneath. Every cultured Southern lady should have one. And it’s only fifteen dollars!”

“Look,” repeated Lindsay, from the next aisle.

She was caressing an oak cabinet with a brass handle on the side that was squeezed in between an iron baby crib with peeling white paint and a stack of Black Kow garden manure. She moved aside several wicker baskets filled with seed packets and lifted the lid, revealing an old fashioned turntable underneath.

“Oh!” exclaimed Cici. “It’s an old Victrola!”

“Doesn’t it belong in our front room,” said Lindsay, “in that corner underneath the stained glass window? Can’t you just see it there?”

“You’ve got a good eye,” said a male voice behind them. “I believe that’s right where old Mr. Blackwell used to keep it.”

They looked around at a tall, sandy-haired, impossibly skinny man in blue jeans and a plaid shirt. He had a ruddy face and friendly, faded eyes that somehow identified him immediately as the shopkeeper. It did not, of course, explain how he knew who they were.

“Nice old piece, too,” he went on. “My granddaddy used to have one just like it. I remember him and my grandma dancing to it of an evenin’, even after they got their place electrified. That’s the good thing about the Victrola, don’t you know, you can have your music even when your power’s out. Do you want to hear it play?”

Without waiting for a reply, he slid the cabinet out of its cubby on squeaky casters, and opened a side door. “See here, it comes with a couple of records. Extra needles, too. I’ve got another whole box of records in the back somewhere, if I can find them.”

Cici, Lindsay, and Bridget slanted looks toward each other that were a mixture of astonishment and uncertainty. They watched the man place a disk on the turntable and crank the handle. When the turntable was spinning, he lowered the needle arm onto the record and the slightly tinny sounds of Caruso singing
La Traviata
filled the store. Their eyes went wide with delight.

“Did this really come from the Blackwell house?” Bridget asked.

“Sure did. Estate auction. This is the last piece I’ve got left from it. Let you have it for, oh, seventy-five dollars.”

“Sold,” said Lindsay. She held out her hand. “I’m Lindsay Wright. These are my friends Cici and Bridget.”

“Rick Jones,” he replied, shaking Lindsay’s hand and nodding to the other two. “Folks call me Jonesie. Pleased to meet you ladies. Been wondering when you’d be in. Anything else I can get for you? You got your hands full with that old place. Need any nails, shingles, screws? If we don’t have it, we’ll get it for you.”

“Do you have water heaters?” Cici queried.

“What size you need?”

She told him.

“Gas or electric?”

Cici looked at the other two, they shrugged, and she decided, “Electric.”

He nodded thoughtfully. “Well, now there’s three of you ladies, doing laundry, washing hair, and all. Like as not, you’ll have company now and again. If it was me, I’d get two heaters, and make ’em gas.”

Cici, who was quite accustomed to dealing with salesmen, contractors, and other commission-based workers, smiled politely just to let him know who was in charge, and repeated firmly, “One water heater. Electric.”

“Up to you,” he agreed amiably. “I’ll have it delivered for you Thursday morning. Anything else you need?”

“Actually,” Bridget said, “We could use some canning jars.”

“And some rocking chairs,” Lindsay said. And at Cici’s questioning look, she explained, “For the front porch. It’s a rocking chair porch with no rocking chairs.”

“Somebody misses the mall,” Cici murmured.

At the register, they met Mrs. Jonesie, a woman with spiked iron gray hair in a John Deere T-shirt whose name was Rita. She asked Bridget what kind of jam she was making, and when Bridget told her her face lit up.

“The Blackwell Farm strawberries were always the best in the county. It’s got to be the soil. And to think they’re still putting out with nobody taking care of them these last years. You got plenty of pectin? We carry it, on the back shelf.”

No one but her friends noticed Bridget’s slight hesitation, or the almost imperceptible note of shrillness to her laughter. “My goodness, is there anything you don’t carry?”

With two of the rocking chairs snugged against the Victrola in the cargo area, and the third securely strapped to the top of the SUV, the ladies waved good-bye to the Joneses, and Bridget put the car in gear. “Pectin,” she muttered under her breath. “I knew I left something out.”