The All You Can Dream Buffet (34 page)

“I have to take the ice back to the farm, but why don’t you come to the party tonight?”

“Yes,” he rumbled. “Yes. What time and where?” He pulled out his phone. “Put it in the maps.”

“Dinner is at seven or so, but it’s pretty laid-back.”

As Ginny typed in the name of the farm, he said, “This has never happened to me before.”

She smiled up at him. “What? That you were crazed with lust at the sight of a middle-aged woman with too many freckles?”

“No,” he said. “Just this crazy feeling. Like I know you, like I’ve known you always.”

“Careful,” she said, handing his phone back to him. “I might think you’re nuts.”

“You know I’m not.”

Ginny studied his face for a long moment, allowing whatever she felt to simply be there. A swell of tenderness and gratitude mixed with excitement and with hunger. And, yes, that sense of recognition. Rightness. “I’ve gotta go. Come to the party at around six, I guess.”

“Wait,” he said, and kissed her again, slowly and gently. “I’ll be there.”

When Ruby found out that Lavender was still in bed, she crept down the hall to the two small bedrooms and found Lavender’s door open. The old woman was still buried in her covers, snoring lightly. Ruby left her alone and decided that she would walk the perimeter, as Lavender did every morning. She didn’t know what she was looking for, but maybe the act of doing it would show her.

Two of the dogs peeled away from the porch to go with her, a golden retriever mutt and a collie/shepherd mix of some kind. Ruby didn’t really know dogs; she’d never had one. But these two didn’t seem to need any direction, and she liked the company, so she swished through the grass to walk along the fence line, looking for anything that looked out of place or—whatever.

She would just show up for Lavender, see what she could see.

The morning was perfect. The word “splendid” swayed through her mind, lit from behind with sunshine. The sky was clear as far as she could see, stretching over the rolling green fields like a Constable painting. Ruby started to sing a little, songs she remembered from her grandmother and from a short stint in Girl Scouts between bouts of chemo and from the camp she’d attended twice, full of sick kids who could be normal only with one another. The dogs trotted ahead, sometimes stopping to investigate some fabulous thing in the grass. Ruby strode along a path Lavender must have made over the years.

The direction gave her a different view of the layout of the farm. She passed behind two large greenhouses—not commercial-huge, but big enough for a lot of plants—and remembered when Lavender had lost one to a storm and the other was heavily damaged, about three or four years ago. It had been a crushing financial blow, but as Ruby walked by today, the doors to the first greenhouse were propped open, showing flats of seedlings at various stages of growth. She wondered why they were planted inside, when it was summer, and made a note to ask Noah.

The second greenhouse was devoted to lavender. There were dozens of flats of green and gray-green plantlings, and Ruby wanted to wander over and take a peek but reminded herself the job was to make the rounds, and she kept going.

Her path led around the base of the lavender fields, looking upward to a stand of bushes she thought were lilacs. This would be a spectacular view in the springtime! She imagined armfuls of lilacs, big glass vases of them on every surface. Maybe because she’d been thinking so much about the notes of fragrance in lavender, she wondered if lilacs could be harvested, too. Of course they
could,
but to what purpose? Was lilac oil viable for perfume? Could you use the same stills for different plants?

The hives were alight with buzzing bee happiness this morning, and Ruby gave them plenty of space. She was still afraid of them. How did you get used to handling something that could, and probably would, sting you, hurt you?

The dogs rushed ahead suddenly, swerving into the trees, and Ruby called out, “Don’t take off, you guys!”

Noah emerged from the forest, a tool belt clanking around his hips. Why was that so sexy? She shook her head at herself. Just horny.

“Good morning,” he said cheerfully, and Ruby’s baby danced inside her as if she was greeting the voice.

She laughed, touching her tummy. “Good morning. And my girl says good morning, too. She got all excited when she heard your voice.”

“Yeah, well, what can I say?” His hair was tamped down beneath a baseball cap this morning. “What are you up to?”

“Um, well, Lavender is still sleeping, so I thought I would do the walk around the farm for her so she wouldn’t have to worry about it later.”

He didn’t speak for a moment. “Really.”

“I know, kinda silly, since I have no idea what I’m looking for, but it seemed like a good idea.”

“Not silly at all. Mind if I join you?”

“Of course not. You can tell me what you see.”

He whistled back over his shoulder and the dogs came bounding out of the trees. Through the trunks, Ruby spied a small cottage. “Is that where you live?”

“Yep. Me and my cats, Jericho and Babel.”

“Whoa, seriously biblical.” She narrowed her eyes, trying to see him as a conservative Christian.

“They’re rescues, a pair of siblings whose owner died. I got them at the pound.”

Touched, Ruby only nodded.

As they walked, Noah pointed to various things. A place where foxes liked to hunt, a spot where murderous raccoons would rinse chickens in the stream. She’d never seen the pasture where the food chickens lived. She had never seen the ginormous compost heaps sheltered beneath a roof, tons of the stuff, rotting away. It didn’t smell, to her surprise, but maybe it would on a hot day.

Noah carried a proprietary tilt to his head as he pointed out all these things, narrating the walk, the things he looked for. “I want to make sure everything is safe and secure, as much as possible. I want to clean up any damage, get rid of any dead animals or deadfall that’s causing trouble. I’m looking at the fences.”

“What’s that?” Ruby pointed to a building much like the meadery, only a little bit larger.

“It’s the slaughterhouse,” he said matter-of-factly. “Just like the meadery—it’s all stainless steel inside.” He stopped, one foot stuck out in front of him. “We kill them as kindly and painlessly as possible. One person holds them, another slits their throats.”

Ruby blinked at the tears in her eyes, and she wiped them away. “Sorry. I respect that, but it’s not my way.”

He spread an arm out over the pasture, where the chickens wandered in the grass, chatting among themselves. “They have good lives and good deaths. It’s the best path to meat on the table.”

“It is,” she said. “But this is not the path for me.”

“I know.”

As they walked on, Ruby realized that she’d been seriously imagining that she might be able to live here, that somehow she might find a good life here. Not an easy life, though it would be easier than the hours of a kitchen. As a mother, she had to consider that.

Not that she had any idea where she would procure the funds for such a buy. Her father had been quite, quite clear that he was tired of financing her whims. The vegan-food-truck idea was his last investment.

It was disappointing that her enthusiasm for that project
had been particularly short-lived. Maybe she was as flaky as everyone said.

And maybe this was a flaky idea, too.

“Hey, I didn’t mean to upset you. Are you all right?”

Ruby stopped. “No, you didn’t. I’m upset with myself, with all my … inconstancy.”

He smiled, then swallowed it when she scowled at him. “Sorry, but it’s such an old-fashioned word.”

“I’d love to buy the farm and keep it going the way it is, but I honestly can’t imagine that I could do it, knowing there were animals being slaughtered right on the land.” She shook her head. “I just can’t. I don’t mind the eggs, because I see the hens are happy and it’s not as … visceral, maybe? And I can manage the honey with no trouble, but the—”

He raised a hand. “Can I interject something here?”

“Interject?”

“You could decide not to raise the meat chickens.” He shrugged, hands on his hips. “Easy enough, right?”

“Just like that? Just decide?”

“It would be your farm.”

Ruby looked around, turning in a slow, easy circle. Her hands were on her tummy, and her baby bumped against her palm. She looked at the sky, at the house with its shop and lavender presses, at a pair of hens waddling down the path as if in deep conversation, at the farm buildings, and finally at the lavender fields. “When I stand here, I know I could do this. I see myself with my baby in the lavender fields and collecting eggs and making sure everything is running right in the shops. I see myself making a home, a real home, here.” She turned back sadly to Noah. “But what do I know about any of it?”

“Only you know the truth, Ruby.”

She liked the sound of her name in his mouth, the ever-so-faint
roll of the “R,” the resonance of the “B.” “I don’t know where I belong.”

“None of us do, until we find it. Come on,” he said, putting his arm around her shoulders in a companionable way. “Let’s go have some breakfast with everybody and try to enjoy the day. There’s time.”

(Recipes from Ruby, Ginny, Lavender, and Valerie. A celebration of the Foodie Four—running on all four blogs today)

Lavender took a long hot bath in the claw-foot tub that looked out toward the mountains. Soaking her bones in water scented with her own oils, she thought about being eighty-five. On the one hand, it seemed curiously idiotic that she should have ever grown old, and no one could argue that eighty-five wasn’t old. In her heart, where the real part of her dwelled, she felt the same as always—perhaps not twenty, but not yet forty. Thirty-two or thirty-three, maybe, confident but young and adventurous. At that age, she’d been flying with Ginger, everywhere, all over, getting into trouble, drinking too much, sleeping with the wrong men. And sometimes the right ones.

Just now she sipped ice water, not wanting to muddle her head too soon. And, if she was truthful, the exhaustion that had been dogging her for two days was there in every bone. Her stomach had settled a bit, but she’d barely eaten anything, just in case. She honestly didn’t think it was her gall bladder—she’d had those attacks and they didn’t feel like what she’d experienced last night, that burning indigestion, the sense of exhaustion.

She heard her fretful thoughts and cackled. Taking another sip of water, she said to herself, “Face it, Lavender. You’re old.”

She’d rewritten her will after her nap yesterday. It had not been a difficult decision. Which of her lovelies would take the farm? Not Ginny, who was as filled with wanderlust as anyone
could be. Not Valerie, who made do with roughing it but desperately wanted the life of clean elegance she’d grown to enjoy over the years.

Ruby. Ruby loved the land and the honey, and Lavender had the sense that she would care even more as time went by, but she’d been a bit of a flibbertigibbet. And she was still pining for that man, the idiot in New York who couldn’t see what was right in front of him—a girl as suited to motherhood and family-making as a person could be.

Lavender wanted Noah to have the farm, and she’d like to see Ruby sign on, too, the pair of them healing each other’s wounds and making a sweet family built on this good land. She could trust them.

But Noah didn’t want it, or said so. And Ruby was unsettled.

The burn started again in her gut, and she hauled herself to her feet, toweling dry her long, lean body. A good body, one that had served her well for a long, long time. She braced herself on the wall and waited for a wave of dizziness to pass.

Into the buzzing came a sense of vastness and relief, a whisper of something new and familiar all at once. She smiled, pressing her hand to her forehead, as if to press it into her memory.

When it passed, she headed, naked, into her bedroom to get ready for her party. She combed her short hair away from her face and put on the silly tutu—honestly, only because the girls liked it so much, and they would all be such perfect flowers tonight. She might as well have a little foolishness herself. To that end she’d picked up a dime-store crown, and she tucked it into her hair now, then dabbed bits of red lipstick on her wrinkled mouth. When she stepped back from the mirror, she smiled, and her ethereal reflection smiled back. “Silly old thing,” she said, pleased.

Pleased with everything.

Ginny headed back to her trailer at around five, after spending the day cooking with her friends. The “Foodie Four” had never had such a strong meaning, as they chopped and sang and laughed together in the tiny cottage kitchen. Lavender seemed fine after her long sleep, and she basted chicken on a grill outside the back door, piles and piles of it. Ruby marinated seitan in a heavenly-smelling brew, readying it to be flash-fried in a batter just before being served. Ginny, more of a baker than a cook, did what they told her to do, tearing lettuce and spinach, shredding carrots, chopping pineapple for Ruby’s blue moon cupcakes.

Ginny had not told anyone that she’d invited Jack to the party. She wasn’t sure he would come, and how embarrassing would that be if he didn’t?

No, she thought, opening the trailer door and letting Willow go in ahead of her, that wasn’t true. She knew very well that Jack would arrive. She would be clean and dressed beautifully and she would have all of her makeup on, and he would, sometime tonight, make love to her. To tell herself any other story would be a lie, and whatever choices she was making now, she vowed that was one thing she would not do: pretend.