Front Yard (10 page)

13

W
ith the bountiful and cool spring rains finally giving way to warm sunshine, the Fremont backyard gardens sprang to life with a sudden spurt of enthusiasm that surprised even George and Nan. It was as if they were making up for lost time.

The columbines threw out their purple-and-white flowers. The hostas and jack-in-the pulpits that had been mixed in around the edges of the hosta beds were several inches tall and already leafing. So were the pink, white, and blue hydrangeas.

The creeping phlox was out. Good old dependable phlox. And, of course, there were the lilac bushes, which seemed to make up for a late start by being especially lustrous and fragrant this year. Their grape aroma stayed with you like the aftertaste of a good wine.

And, oh, the hibiscus! Last year's hibiscus had lent a carnival gaudiness to the backyard gardens. Big and florid and bright, they pushed out lurid, concupiscent blooms that caught your eye from wherever you were standing or sitting in the backyard.

Like everything else, the hibiscus had engineered wonderful recoveries after being thrashed about by last July's freak hailstorm. But no matter how much mulch the Fremonts piled on them, they could see there was no way these tropical natives could survive even the mildest of Livian winters. So, they dug them up and put them in big pots, which they placed under artificial light in the utility room downstairs. All of the plants had made it through the winter, and were now flourishing in their garish way, flaunting their flowers unapologetically like the extroverts they were.

“Show-offs,” George called them affectionately.

The irises were still up; they were the early season's vertical white-and-lavender beacons. The bridal wreath spirea were big masses of jubilant white. That would last a few more days.

Who knew when the climbing roses would be out? Nan could see the beginnings of buds, but, good Lord, it could be July before they burst out in their full glory. Most of the later-blooming perennials were just now breaking through the ground. Still, at the rate things were going, they'd be bursting out way ahead of schedule.

As for the annuals, my goodness! The backyard was crowded with scores of them, all planted a mere three weeks ago, and going great guns.

There was alyssum, sprouting from among the rocks in one of the sunny spots, and the impatiens, shade lovers that could tolerate dappled sunlight. There was coleus, with its red-and-purple-veined leaves.

The petunias were ever-dependable and vibrant blobs of color, sometimes a bit too vivid for Nan's taste, but certainly better than velvet-textured pansies.

In the far back, halfway between the split-rail fence that bisected the backyard and the thirty-yard strip of woods that formed their border with Jeri and Tom Fletcher's property, was the little flagstone arbor, its small and rustic bench, and a surrounding border of crab apples, a few alpine currants, and paper birches.

The arbor was significant in that they had made it nine years ago, a good two years before their full-bore backyard efforts began. The paper birches and crab apples had grown nicely, all of them well above the height of a tall basketball player by now, though the cement bonding the flagstones in the little path from the fence gate to the arbor was beginning to chip and show hairline fractures. They'd have to call Jerry, their favorite neighborhood handyman, to fix that.

Nan had decided, with George's unenthusiastic blessing, to plant more angel's trumpets. They were already pushing out their trumpet-shaped and seductively scented white flowers. Those flowers seemed to George to be blowguns aiming hallucinogenic darts at him every time he passed within fifty feet of them. Nan cared for them just as lovingly as she did all the other flowers, though George noticed that she always did so with gloves on.

There were some new neighbors back here. Nan prepared a large bed for liatris and rudbeckia in the big, sunny spot between George's rarely turned compost pile and the arbor. But, gosh, didn't the liatris need a lot of water! Heavens, you would have thought you were trying to grow them in Death Valley. George added a bed of his own favorite annual, coleus, to one of the shady areas. He planted at least twenty coleus, and lined the bed with white-flowered browallia, which Nan thought would look odd, but was actually taking on the appearance of a gardening inspiration.

The bleeding hearts arrived late, but still produced their customary profusion of heart-shaped blooms. The clematis were also late, which had George and Nan especially worried since it had been so hard to get them going in the first place. The problem was all a matter of location—keeping the roots of their three clematis in the shade while the tentacle-like vines were allowed to climb the whitewashed trellis in long-lasting sunlight. Last year, their rate of entwining themselves in vertical spirals around the interstices of the trellis was almost magic-beanstalk-like. George had once measured their growth at three inches a day.

Even though they had broken through late this year, the clematis were spreading and climbing so rapidly that George claimed he could actually see them growing.

“Why can't I see it?” wondered Nan, who peered, squinting, at the clematis for ten minutes straight in the hopes of detecting growth in motion. Surely another glass of Sagelands would improve her vision.

It was too early to try to communicate with the clematis, or any of the other perennials, for that matter. They were putting too much energy into breaking through the surface, photosynthesizing, and growing like gangbusters. Try to schmooze with them now and you got what amounted to an earful of gasps and wheezings.

“Here's a riddle for you, George,” said Nan after another glass of merlot did nothing to improve her visual acuity. “How is an approaching storm like a certain climbing flower?”

George grimaced.

“You have five minutes. If you don't come up with the correct answer in the allotted time, I'll subject you to four more riddles.”

George pondered the question, though not very much. Many of Nan's stupid riddles were impossible to answer because a) he was bad at solving riddles and b) the riddles themselves were awful. The exception would be those riddles and jokes she repeated over and over again, which she did fairly often. This one, though, didn't carry the stench of something stale and overused.

“Well, it has something to do with the clematis,” George said.

“You need to answer the riddle, George, not just say what it's about.”

“Hmmm. Okay, is it because a storm is
inclematis
weather; technically,
inclement
weather? That's the best I can do.”

Nan's jaw dropped. For a moment, she just sat there gaping at him.

“Well?”

“How did you know that?”

“It just popped into my head. Maybe the fairies are helping me out. Ha-ha-ha.”

“Well, as promised, you get a reprieve from plant riddles and jokes. At least for now.”

 

Mary and Shirelle were now in front yard maintenance mode.

While smaller in total area than the backyard gardens, the front yard could be counted as every bit as magnificent as a result of the concentration of its stunning beauty into a more compact space.

The hybrid teas were in full bloom. They hadn't turned out to be nearly as snotty as Nan feared, and lent the front yard the sort of lustrous and creamy depth that only a hybrid tea can provide.

“Maybe they were hybridized with something a bit more humble,” Nan joked to Shirelle.

The feathery purple catmint thrust out hundreds of violet flower-covered spikes, and blanketed the sandy-soiled slope all the way from its summit, where the hybrid teas resided, to the curb. The bordering daylilies weren't out yet; it would be another month before they burst out, and probably a few more weeks for the delphinium.

Shirelle and Mary had decided to pull back some on the ornamental grasses, which, though they would provide a nice vertical and wild-looking element to the front yard gardens, would also interrupt the massive display of color. All of this would contrast with a lushly green lawn of rye and fescue, which was already there, and which Mary and Shirelle liberally reseeded and fertilized.

“We'll have to be watering out here quite a lot, more than the backyard,” Shirelle said. “It's so much sunnier, and the soil's so sandy. We can do all the flowers, no sweat, but there's plenty of lawn now, too, that'll need watering.” So, they watered as a dry spell, broken only by widely spaced and gentle showers, stubbornly persisted into late June.

“Can I ask something that might seem stupid to you?” Shirelle asked Nan as they headed toward the patio after a hard day's worth of inspecting and watering, and even a bit of soil amending needed to accommodate a couple of late-addition flowers.

“Sure,” said Nan, wiping her sweating brow with the back of her gloved hand and shooting a few glances at the clematis blossoms, which, though blanketing the trellis, didn't seem to be blanketing it enough. “I'm sure it's not a stupid question, Shirelle. Ask away.”

“What is that a wood carving of? It looks like it got carved out of a tree trunk.”

Nan chuckled. “Oh, are you sure you want to know about that?”

She stole a glance at the beady, sunken eyes of Miguel de Cervantes, the Spanish novelist whose creation
Don Quixote
was a favorite of George's. She hated tree trunk art, and, in a moment of weakness, had let George hire an acquaintance of his to carve up the lower five feet of the old, dying silver maple when they'd cut it down.

Miguel was so creepy-looking with his quill pen and what must have been intended as his manuscript in his hands. That was a lot of detail to get carved into a tree, and Lord knows it hadn't been cheap. Nan scowled at the tree sculpture, which was about eight inches shorter than she was, at least giving her a height advantage. And then he had to have it painted, for crying out loud. Whenever she was sitting on the patio it looked like he was staring directly at her.

“I hate the stupid thing,” said Nan. “Hate it. I wish I had never let George do it, and let the tree guys just cut that old maple down to the ground and grind its stump!”

She made a face, then stuck out her tongue at Miguel. Shirelle snickered. She actually kind of liked the carving. And the new fairy house, too, for that matter. They lent the backyard just the right amount of weirdness. They were so
Fremont
.

“Hmmm,” she said, unable to reconcile her fascination with the carving and her desire to please her mentor. “Well, it certainly is unique.”

“That it is. Maybe when the fairies move in, they'll bring old Miguel to life and we can all work on our Spanish.”

14

“W
ho do we have here?” George said as he lifted the cork out of a fresh bottle of Sagelands.

Nan twisted in her chair to see an unfamiliar car inching its way into their driveway. It was a new American model. Standard sedan with no frills. Spic-and-span and humming along quietly. All in all, a nice, marginally attractive, unremarkable car.

A similarly unremarkable woman, middle-aged and primly dressed, emerged from the driver's side, glanced up in their direction, and made her way quickly up the pea gravel steps.

Nan was pleased to note that, despite the apparent swiftness of her movements, she barely disturbed the pea gravel.

“Welcome!” said George, whose conviviality was heightened by a just-finished glassful of merlot. “Won't you join us? And can I get you a drink? Merlot and gin are the house beverages. We also have Diet Coke, water, and skim milk.”

Their visitor waved off George's offer and, without asking permission, plopped down into one of their patio chairs.

“Hey!” cried Nan. “I know you. You're the woman from the Historical Society!”

“Oh, yeah!” said George, the sudden recognition coloring his face with the flush of remembered anger and resentment.

“That I am,” said Miss Price.

“Well, what brings you here for a visit? Here to play some more jokes on us, Ms. . . . Ms. . . . ?”

“Price.”

“Ms. Price.”

Miss Price turned and twisted several times in her chair, jerking her head this way and that to what seemed like every point of the compass.

“
Miss
works fine,” she said in a distracted way. “I'm kind of old-fashioned about things like that. And, no, I'm not here to play any jokes. Excuse me, please. Do you mind if I walk around a bit?” George and Nan looked at each other and shrugged.

“Why would you want to do that, Miss Price?” Nan wondered.

“This is my old home. I grew up here when it was a farm, before the house right here next to us was built, or any of the other houses around here, for that matter.” Miss Price stood up and indicated with a regal sweep of her hand the surrounding neighborhood.

“That was back in the fifties and sixties,” she said. “We grew vegetables, mostly, a couple dozen acres or so, and trucked them in to St. Anthony for sale. We had three vegetable stands. We did okay. In fact, we always had bumper crops, even in times of drought and deluge. We had a henhouse, some sheep, another five acres planted in sweet corn, a little pasture for my pony. Our little barn was where the third house down is now. Our land stretched all the way over to the interstate.”

Nan and George turned to gaze toward the interstate to get a sense of the scale Miss Price was talking about.

“But it wasn't enough to pay the bills after Father died and Mother got sick. We didn't have much in the way of insurance then, see. And Mother, bless her heart, lingered and lingered. She just couldn't let go.”

She stopped to look at them. They nodded, more out of politeness than anything else.

“We had some pigs and ducks, too. Back then, you know, Bluegill Pond wasn't much more than a slough. An intermittent lake when it rained a lot and when the snow melted. They have that well in it now to keep it filled up.”

Nan and George nodded. They were getting tired of nodding. They were also getting tired of Miss Price's little peroration. What exactly was she getting at?

“This is all very interesting, Miss Price,” Nan said. “But why didn't you tell us that before? Too busy pulling our legs, I guess.” Miss Price laughed.

“Oh, I don't know why,” she said, smiling and waving her hand dismissively. “But I'm telling you now. That's the important thing, isn't it?”

“I suppose it's okay for you to look around, don't you think, George?”

George nodded. Miss Price ambled off into the yard in a sprightly fashion, stopping occasionally to marvel at how the property had been transformed from a working garden to a recreational one.

“My goodness, your gardens are lovely,” she said, turning to address the Fremonts.

“Thank you,” George said.

“Yes,” said Nan. “We've done quite a lot of work over the last seven years. In fact, all of what you're looking at now is our handiwork. When we bought it, it was all dirt and weeds and overgrown shrubs.”

Miss Price smiled, turned, and walked out of easy conversation distance. Yes, she thought, they truly had worked a miraculous transformation on the property. Although Miss Price grew up a farm girl, more sensitive to the productivity of what came out of the earth, she did have an appreciation for beauty. And that was what she beheld here, beauty in one of its showiest and most stunning manifestations. But who was really responsible for all this glorious change, eh? Miss Price walked on. Besides, beauty wasn't really what she was here for.

After walking through the fence gate and toward the edge of the tree-lined arbor, she stopped to look at the strip of woods beyond the backyard. Back then, she thought, this was prairie, that is, prairie with the sod broken and turned for the planting of crops. This whole area would have been open, except for around the farmhouse and the neighboring ones on the horizon, and the lake. Now that she had the lay of the land pictured, she tried to extrapolate even farther back, all the way to the 1800s. That first house and its little store, she figured, stood on the site of the farmhouse that came later and the current house. There was some evidence of that, but nothing certain.

Now, where would they have buried that? And where would he have buried
them?
Though a historian by training and by instinct, Miss Price could always depend on her native intuition to guide her in deciding how human nature often asserted itself. That was tricky, the vicissitudes of the human psyche being what they were, but, more often than not, she was right when she played out her hunches.

Right now, she had her hunch. But what if her hunch was merely a close one? “Close” didn't win the cigar. What if it was under the property next door, or a little ways down the street? All the signs pointed to 4250, but signs could be wrong.

Miss Price kneaded her throbbing forehead. Her joy upon setting foot on her old home ground had vanished, and that rare smile she had worn on greeting the Fremonts was gone. Was the key to the lock she'd never been able to pick being handed to her, or being hidden somewhere in all these beautiful flowers surrounding her?

Her father thought he knew. With his daughter's help, he had searched and searched. He had combed through old archives and documents. What was it that he had found? Tidbits. Tantalizing tidbits, sure, but they were solid clues and nothing more. Lucius Price went to his grave a disappointed man, wringing from her a heartfelt pledge to continue the search.

An only child, Miss Price had taken over the house when her mother's physical and mental health had faltered and she had to go to a nursing home. The St. Anthony suburban boom was by now in full swing. When land prices soared, Miss Price stopped the farm operation, released the manager and other men she had been hiring to plant and harvest, and sold all but the house itself and three-quarters acre of land. Houses connected by new roads began to spring up around her. So did lots of new trees planted by the developers.

Miss Price had continued to live in the home alone to continue her father's research. She read every scrap of paper in every rolltop desk nook and stuffed in every file cabinet. She did three thorough searches of the attic and cellar. She had found nothing. Her mother had never been any help; she had considered her husband's and daughter's quest to be a fool's errand.

Miss Price felt her eyes moisten and her hands tremble. She had been forced to sell the house when her mother lingered so much longer than expected and the bills mounted. She bided her time, writing treatises and teaching snot-nosed idiot high school kids who couldn't care less about the illustrious past.

She made it her second job to bury herself in the lore and legacy of those early Livians, and even those who came before there was a Livia at all. At school, her obsession made her lax in her duties, impatient of the demands of friendship, and abrupt in her dealings with colleagues. Tiring of department politics and rich-kid Ivy League aspirations anyway, she retired from her position four years ago, and took this post with the Historical Society.

Along the way, there had been the occasional, short-lived romance. Miss Price was a not-unattractive, well-presented woman of a regal carriage and prone to sudden and silky passions. She allowed these liaisons to last as long as they didn't interfere with the overriding ambition of her life. The average length of her several affairs was two months.

Over the years, she combed through the real estate listings, hoping to see the old address up for sale again. It never was. She considered making an offer anyway, but backed off. That would have tipped them off, especially if she offered them more than the property was worth. So, she waited. And watched. And waited some more.

These days, it was tougher to stay focused on what few documents there remained to unearth and study. It was also growing too tiresome to nurture the barely flickering hope that she might someday get her old lot back. So, the all-consuming urge had softened into a peaceful dormancy. Miss Price sighed.

It was only last year, however, that, as an armchair connoisseur of zinnias and violets, she was drawn to the story of the Burdick's Best Yard Contest in the
Inquirer
. It was no shock to her to discover that the owners of her old property won the contest, but then suffered through a series of misfortunes. Neither was it any big surprise to discover that they had risen triumphant out of the ashes of destruction.

It was a harrowing yet wonderful story. But a big part of it was left out. The cause of everything that had happened was missing, and only one person in the world—Gwendolyn Price—knew what that was. But she was so tired after so many years of trying. She had wasted so many years of her life. What was the point anymore?

So, Miss Price had reconciled herself to the prospect that she would carry the secret of 4250 Payne Avenue to the grave. Not only her secret, but likely the secret for all. The other branches of the family had ended as withered twigs, then broken off. Accidents. Barrenness. Wars. Disappointments or disinterest in love. They had all taken their toll. She was all that was left.

And then,
they
came in! Inquiring about some . . .
thing
buried there!

“Whap!”

A self-inflicted slap signaled that it was time for action, not all this dwelling on the past.

Miss Price found herself staring at a massive tree thrust out a short way from the edge of the woods. A white oak, no doubt. She walked over to it. It was the same tree she remembered. Back then, it stood almost alone at the boundary between the little farmhouse area and the endless fields. Her father had told her that it was old, maybe more than a century when she was a young teenager. Planted, most likely, by their descendants to remind them of more verdant climes. A good choice in that white oaks can adapt to a number of habitats to which they aren't native.

And what was the other reason for planting the tree? As a windbreak? No, it would have been useless as a windbreak. You planted
rows
of trees for windbreaks, evergreens mainly. As a marker, perhaps? Yes, as a marker! If you buried something, and had to remember where you put it, you'd want to mark the spot with something permanent, wouldn't you? Especially since there were just a few other trees around it, or maybe no other trees at all. What better way than to plant a tree on top of it? What better way indeed! And if you had to dig it up, chances are the tree wouldn't have grown that much yet. Easy to cut down.

“I found it!” Miss Price cried. “I've found where it is! Isn't that wonderful, isn't that wonderful?”

“What's so wonderful?” Miss Price turned to find Nan and George standing next to her.

“That tree, Mr. and Mrs. Fremont! That tree! It's so wonderful, isn't it? Why, back when this area was first settled, this was one of the only trees out here on the windswept prairie. My gosh! That was before those woods over there. There were no woods. Everything had to be planted. Then, the seeds spread and the procreation of trees began. Then, the towns and cities sprang up and trees were planted everywhere. Back then, before we were there, they used trees for markers. It was how they remembered where things were buried without signaling it to strangers who might be out to rob them. That meant valuables and dead people and special pets. This was before cemeteries and safe deposit boxes, you know. It was also a way to get the tree population started. So, you see, they killed two birds with one stone.”

Miss Price placed her hand on the bark of the tree and stroked it.

“This was one of the anchors of our clothesline. Mother tied it between the two trees.” She looked over toward the house.

“Oh, dear, the other one's gone, I guess. Cut down or died, I suppose. You've just got those crab apples and paper birches over there now. I remember all those wet clothes flapping in the wind. Ninety feet of line it took to go from one tree to the next. I remember her saying that. ‘Ninety feet of line. I don't need ninety feet of line. But where else am I going to put it?' I remember her saying that for some reason. Daddy had to screw iron hooks into each tree to hold the line. And, goodness, where's that hook? It must have broken off or something. Oh, well . . . later, there were more trees. And, now, of course, look at it. There are even woods.”

Miss Price clucked her tongue, and looked up toward the spreading crown of the white oak. She stroked the bark again.