The Probable Future (25 page)

The phone rang, but Will didn’t answer it. His stomach felt like hell now. It might be Henry Elliot calling him, or, worse still, his brother. He wasn’t ready to talk to anyone. He needed a moment before he could admit what a mistake he had made. Now whoever wanted to find Stella would have something far better than a map. He would have a model, and it wouldn’t take long before he managed to find the real thing, the address where the forsythia was not made of felt, but of flowers, tumbling into bloom. Before long he would be at the front door that was full-size, where the hedge of laurel was so tall this season no one would ever see if someone were hiding there, breathing in the scent of laurel, surrounded by the hum of bees.

IV.

I
T HAD BEEN MORE THAN
thirty years since the last dinner guest had been invited to Cake House, that colleague of Saul’s who had arrived late, so that even before it began, dinner had been ruined. Their guest had been attractive, with chestnut hair and arched eyebrows, black as crows.
Who can find these little towns?
Their guest had laughed, not bothering to make excuses for her tardiness. She’d been overdressed, lost without a map; while Saul went to the parlor to fix them drinks, their guest watched Elinor finish up the salad. She’d asked too many questions about Saul: what his favorite foods were, did he work in the garden on Sundays, watering the seedlings, wearing a straw hat? Or did he take the paper up to bed, and was it
the sports page he looked at first or was it the news? Their pretty dinner guest wasn’t lying, not exactly, which made her especially difficult to read. She just wanted to know Elinor’s husband better; she just wanted him for herself, that was all.

For thirty years there had been no visitors other than Dr. Stewart occasionally stopping by for a bowl of vegetable soup or some gingerbread near the holidays. Why, the silverware had grown tarnished in its velvet case and needed to be polished, the decent china was dusty and had to be rinsed, the ashes were swept from the fireplace, and a new fire was lit, for although it was April, and the fields were filled with trillium and trout lilies, although jonquils were blooming in the lane, the dining room was as cold as a tomb.

“You don’t have to be involved,” Jenny told her mother. Elinor prowled about the kitchen, useless, as Jenny cut up leeks and onions for a chicken dish she’d decided upon, not too fancy, not too plain, a recipe that wouldn’t reveal how hard she’d been working simply because Matt was coming to dinner. In fact, she’d been up at six, planning the menu, before rushing off to North Arthur to the farm-stand where the vegetables were always so fresh.

“Of course she has to be involved,” Stella called from the scullery. She’d reached behind the bottles of pond water for the oldest cookbook in the house, the one that had belonged to Elisabeth Sparrow, and was now thumbing through the grainy pages stained with suet and jam. “Gran and I are making dessert. I found it!” Stella declared as she returned to the kitchen. “Bird’s-nest pudding. Isn’t that perfect?”

“Perfectly awful,” Elinor replied.

“Actually, I have to agree with your grandmother.” A shock for them both, a first, perhaps. All the same, Jenny was pleased by Stella’s interest. Anything other than stomping out of the room was a definite movement forward. Here they were, three women from the same family in one kitchen, and trouble had managed to stay away, at least so far.

“It’s custard poured into apples.” Stella tied back her hair and set to work coring the apples. “We can make vanilla or butterscotch. Elisabeth preferred vanilla,” Stella informed her grandmother, whom she’d set to work beating eggs. “I wish Juliet could see me now. She wouldn’t believe I could cook.”

“Juliet?” Jenny’s radar went up.

“My best friend,” Stella reminded her mother. “Ever hear of her?”

“Well, well,” Elinor said, not exactly pleased by the obvious rift, but glad to see a chink in Jenny’s alleged perfection, grateful for human nature. “So you don’t know her best friend.”

“I know her. I just don’t think Juliet is the right sort of person for Stella to spend time with.”

“At least Juliet’s mother went to college. She went to Smith. She didn’t give up her whole future to support some man’s education.”

“That man was your father. And are you comparing me to the woman who poisoned her husband? You don’t have to go to Smith to do that.”

Elinor noticed that the custard was cooking too fast on the back burner of the stove, boiling over, in fact. In no time, the filling for the bird’s nest would be singed, a faint rubbery skin formed at its edges.

“Well, now I have a parent who’s been in jail, too. Does that make my friendship with Juliet all right, Mother? Is she good enough for me now?”

“You take everything I say and turn it around.”

“I don’t need to! You turn it around yourself! You always think you’re so damned right!”

“Well, I am about some things! Not that you can ever admit it!”

They faced each other across the table, the cored apples turning brown between them, the leeks cut to pieces, the pudding boiling over.

“Everything was perfect until you got here,” Stella declared. “Everything was absolutely fine.”

“This is clearly none of my business, but the pudding is on fire,” Elinor announced.

Stella grabbed a tea towel and ran to lift the heavy pan from the flame. In the old cookbook, Elisabeth Sparrow had recommended stirring for fifteen minutes, but this pudding was ruined, scorched beyond use.

Stella threw up her hands and ran outside, so it was Elinor who placed the pan in the sink and ran the cold water. Billows of steam rose and fogged up the kitchen window. In the reflection of the old green glass, thick as a bottle, Elinor could see that Jenny had sunk into a chair, her head in her hands. The chopped leeks and onions made the room smell like spring, a sweet, rainy scent. Elinor stayed where she was, by the soapstone sink. A long time ago she had known how to comfort someone, she had rocked her baby in her arms, but she had lost the knack for consolation. She really hadn’t a clue of what to do next.

“Don’t worry about the pudding,” Elinor said briskly as she scoured the burned pan. “Everyone in town knows Matt Avery doesn’t eat desserts. He’s a bread-and-butter man.”

“He used to love sundaes. I guess he gave them up.” Jenny blew her nose on a paper towel. “Good old easygoing Matt.”

“Somebody had to be.”

To Elinor’s surprise, Jenny laughed. Elinor felt a tinge of pride at having cheered her daughter when Jenny went back to fixing the meal; at least her daughter had the ability to get on with things, to pick up the pieces, to adhere to the task at hand. By the time Matt’s truck pulled up, the casserole was browning in the oven, the rice was made, the salad was on the table.

Matt had brought along a bottle of wine and some caraway cakes, the kind his mother had liked for him to pick up at Hull’s Tea House.
On the porch, Argus woofed at him and ambled over, back legs dragging due to arthritis.

“Hey, old man.” Matt patted the dog’s head, then opened the white bakery bag. He took out a caraway cake, freshly baked. “Don’t tell anybody about this,” he said as the dog gratefully gulped down the cake.

Stella had watched the encounter from the garden, where she’d been sulking. She smiled when she saw her uncle dust crumbs from the wolfhound’s beard.

“You made it,” she called as she walked over through the damp grass. Little frogs skittered out of her path, leaping into the bushes.

“I did, but I’m not sure I’m really welcome.”

“My grandmother might put a curse on you and my mother might poison you with her casserole, but if you’re not afraid of them and you don’t mind vegetables, come on in.”

“Did you say casserole?”

“Oh, yeah, she’s been cooking all day.”

“Really?” Matt thought that over, pleased by her interest, yet reminded of the time when the women in town filled his freezer with turkey-noodle lasagne and lima bean pie. “A casserole, you say?”

Stella was already through the door.

“Are you coming in?” she said when he paused.

Matt had stopped so he could take the time to look around. He might never be invited back, and he wanted to experience Cake House. The only other time he’d been inside was the dreadful day when he’d sneaked in to defend Will against Elinor.

“I saw you when you were born,” Matt told Stella. Argus, usually standoffish and dignified, followed along, nose twitching, in the hope another caraway cake might be tossed his way. “Actually, it was three days after you were born. I brought my mother with me, your grandmother, Catherine. We both agreed that you were the most beautiful baby in the world.”

Stella smiled. Her uncle was the sort of person with whom it was easy to feel comfortable. “I made you bird’s-nest pudding, but I burned it.”

“My loss, I’m sure. Although honestly, it sounds revolting. Were there beaks and feathers?”

Stella laughed. “Pudding and apples.”

“Equally bad. I hate sweets.”

Elinor had come into the hall. Although she looked displeased to see a guest in her house, she accepted the bakery bag, into which she peeked. “Your mother’s favorite,” she said.

Matt was impressed that she would have remembered. Though he’d worked for Elinor for years, he couldn’t say he knew her, and when people in town asked what she was like, he kept mum. All he knew was that she refused to pave the driveway, which he often suggested, and that she didn’t want to bother leveling off Dead Horse Lane.

Now, standing here in the hall, Matt realized that although he’d only been in the house once before, he’d dreamed of it many times. In his dreams, it was always the original house, before the additions were added on like frosting. It was a house made of wood and mud and straw. Everything smelled like smoke and water lilies in his dreams, and he thought he detected the scent now, although it was quickly replaced by the aroma from the pan of rolls Jenny brought out of the kitchen. The rolls were from a package, but Liza Hull had advised that if sprinkled with butter and a few sprigs of rosemary, they’d appear to be homemade.

“Well, here you are,” Jenny said cheerfully. She fanned herself with the tea towel; holding on to the pan of rolls must be causing her to burn up. The scent of rosemary made her feel somewhat intoxicated. “Our first guest ever.”

Matt had recently read in Emily Hathaway’s household journal that some fools in love used to believe that the mere act of buttoning
a shirt could reveal whether or not they had a chance with their beloved; evens and odds would predict the outcome. The same was true for plum stones found in a tart. Odd meant sorrow. Even, love.

“You can take your wine home with you. We don’t drink,” Elinor said.

“Some of us do,” Jenny said as she took the bottle of Chardonnay from Matt. “Of course, if Will were here he’d insist upon whisky. And only the best. Johnnie Walker, isn’t that what he drinks?”

Once it was said aloud, Will’s name sat there on the carpeting, an unwelcome toad.

“Good old Will,” Matt Avery said.

In studying her uncle, Stella saw that he was her father’s opposite in every way. If the brothers were placed facing each other, it would be as though one were shadow and the other substance. Only which was which?

“Aren’t genetics fascinating?” Stella said as they proceeded to the table. She was wearing the silver bracelet her father had given her and the bell chimed softly as she reached for the salad to pass to Matt. “The variations. The mutations. That’s why I’m going into medicine,” Stella informed her uncle. “Anything’s possible.”

Matt was seriously impressed. When he was in ninth grade he was too busy dreaming to think about his future. His idea of a plan had been to walk over to North Arthur to the movie theater on a Sunday afternoon.

“What are you into?” Stella asked.

“You’ve seen what I do. I cut down trees. I also mow lawns. Plow driveways when there’s snow. Try to talk your grandmother into paving her driveway and trimming back some of that laurel.”

“Never,” Elinor said.

“And he studies history,” Jenny added. “He’s an expert on Unity.”

“Oh, really?” Elinor put down her salad fork. “Tell me something I don’t know.”

He could tell her that her granddaughter looked nothing like the other Sparrow women, with her gold eyes and hair the color of snow. She looked like the women in the Avery family, however, like Catherine and her sisters and her aunts, although no one among the Averys smelled like water lilies. Instead, he told Elinor that her grandmother, Elisabeth Sparrow, was said to be unable to taste, a lucky trait during the Depression years, since she could make do with next to nothing. This trait was said to be the basis for her excellent cooking.

Elisabeth Sparrow, Matt went on, made a soup out of water lily pads that was surprisingly filling. Some of the other women in town at the time, including Lois Hathaway, had noted that Elisabeth also made a supper of local ingredients, water parsnip, parsley, and a few secret items, that she called nine-frogs stew. Before long, people in town who were out of work lined up on the porch of Cake House, too hungry to be prideful. Eventually, Elisabeth set up a kitchen in what was now the community center, and some people say that over the years she served over twenty thousand meals to those in need, including the men who’d been hired to build the train station. Liza Hull’s grandmother had eaten there nearly every night when she was a girl.

“That’s how Liza managed to get hold of Elisabeth’s recipe for lemon chess pie,” Matt said.

Stella ran to get Elisabeth’s cookbook. “It’s the original,” she told Matt, who was clearly impressed. Stella flipped to the last page and there it was, written down, the recipe for nine-frogs stew. “Ooh. It says to strain the water to get out all the mud and mosquitoes. Yummy. But there are two ingredients I can’t read.”

Matt took a look at the cookbook. “I can’t make out the first one.” The handwriting was slanted, and the lettering was a pale orange, as though the ink had been made from lilies. “The last item on the list looks like sage.”

Jenny applauded Matt’s knowledge of their family. “I told you he knew everything.”