Fifty Acres and a Poodle Page 6

  “Poor Betty,” I say. “My angel mutt with the bedroom eyes. How is this collar?”

  “Fine, if you don’t mind electroshock therapy,” Alex says. “Huh, girl.”

  “I’m sorry, girl,” I say. “I know. This is no life for a dog.”

  “Oh, please,” Alex says. “This is one privileged dog”

  “Well, she is a celebrity,” I say.

  The phone rings. I run inside to get it before the machine picks up.

  “Hello?”

  I recognize the voice. I recognize it, but I don’t recognize it. It takes me a minute to catch on.

  It’s … her. It’s her?

  “Fran,” she says.

  It’s her? It’s the lady with the farm. What? What? Why is she calling? We put our bid in over two months ago, for heaven’s sake. I’m done with her. I’m done feeling angry at her for leaving me hanging like that and flicking my dream into the gutter like a piece of trash. But, what? What is she saying? I run outside, start waving my arms at Alex.

  What? What? Farm not sold after all. Oh, dear. Dream still alive.

  Oh, dear.

  She says they took the farm off the market for a time because they got sick of showing it, sick of meeting people who didn’t appreciate it the way they appreciated it. And the truth is, they were somewhat ambivalent about the whole thing. Transplants from New York City, they loved the place, too. They’d followed this dream for a decade and now wanted to go live by the sea somewhere. So yes, they were leaving. They were definitely leaving. And would we still like to buy their farm? Would we like to start negotiating?

  I am waving my arms at Alex, trying to communicate all of this, but he is looking blank. What? What?

  “Well, okay. Okay. Okay. I’ll have to call you back,” I say to Fran. I hang up. I am exploding inside. Oh God, I’m going to start singing something really stupid.

  “It’s not sold!” I shout. “The-farm-is-not-sold!”

  “What? What!”

  He turns to the dogs. “Marley! Did you hear that! Betty! It’s not sold!”

  We pace around the garden. Oh, dear. Dream alive. Dream within reach. Oh, dear. It becomes a question of integrity, of squaring up with the gods. Do you really want the thing you say you want? Do you have the courage to accept it?

  “I need to see the place again,” I say.

  “I don’t think we should wait,” he says. “I think we should snap it up. I should call her back and give her a new number.”

  “No!”

  We seem to be having something of a role reversal here. Now he’s Mister Go Get It. So what’s my problem? What happened to Miss Train Left The Station?

  What happened, perhaps, is that now I’ve got to take charge of my own brakes. When you are in a relationship and someone else has the brakes, you are free to be a runaway train. Of course you are. Because you know, deep down, that the other person is going to keep you safe.

  But when your partner lets go of the brakes, that’s when you really come face-to-face with what you’re made of.

  It’s strange how much you get to learn about yourself when you are not just of yourself.

  “Let’s go down one more time,” I say. “Please.”

  “All right. But call her and tell her. Make sure she knows we’re serious. You want me to call her?”

  “No!”

  “All right.”

  I make the call. Fran says not to worry; they’re headed out of town for a few days, but if we want to come down to take another look, she’ll leave the door open.

  “Open?”

  “Oh, we never lock,” she says.

  Wow. I love the country.

  TWO DAYS LATER ALEX AND I ARE MAKING A BAGEL-and-cream-cheese picnic while watching footage of Hurricane Fran on the kitchen TV. It’s interesting to have a hurricane with the same name as the lady who owns your dream. Alex says maybe this isn’t the ideal day to go farm shopping, what with the hail and the floods. I point out that we are technically only in the outskirts of a hurricane.

  “Right,” he says.

  I have to go, have to see, have to know.

  We pile ourselves and our Eddie Bauer boots and our Lands’ End Gore-Tex rain gear in the car. We head on out through the wall of water. I feel like we’re Gilligan and the Skipper negotiating that storm.

  When we get down to the farm, the rain is even heavier. We pull up to the barn, duck inside, and put our rain gear on. It’s so creepy in here. So creepy and crawly and musty and perfect. Above our heads the rain is making quite a clickety-clack on the metal roof. There are daddy longlegs running by. There is all manner of junk everywhere, gas cans and raccoon traps and empty fertilizer bags and bicycles missing various parts. We find some trash cans to sit on, and a car fender to prop our feet on.

  “Let’s wait until the rain holds up a little,” Alex says, flicking a slow, nearly dead hornet off his knee. “Then we’ll walk up the hill.”

  “Right.”

  We look around. We tap our feet.

  “Hey, did I ever tell you what the difference between a tavern and an elephant’s flatulence is?” he says.

  “Oh, God.”

  “A tavern is a bar room,” he says, starting to laugh. “And an elephant’s flatulence is a barrooom!”

  He doubles over laughing. He slaps his foot on the floor. I can’t believe he finds this to be a major knee-slapper after the four hundred and ninety-seventh time. He’s probably been telling this joke since he was in the eighth grade. Well, I would probably have laughed when I was in the eighth grade. Seeing as I was Wittiest and Peppiest and all. I wish I’d known Alex back then. We would have been such pals. But then, wait a minute, when I was in the eighth grade, he would have been … twenty-eight. Yikes. Well, never mind.

  In most areas of life, it really is never good to do the math.

  We stay in the barn waiting for the rain to stop, which it doesn’t, so we head on out anyway. We climb the slippery hill, feel the hail bouncing off our heads. I can’t believe we are doing this. We pass the apple trees. Poor trees. All wet and miserable. But no bees. We make our way to the woods lining the ridge.

  “Was it here?” he says. “Is this where we went in?”

  “I can’t tell, honey!” I say, yelling through the rain noise.

  “I think it was here!” he yells.

  There is a crack of thunder.

  Oh, jeezus. Now I feel like we’re Lucy and Ethel.

  Eventually, we find the break in the woods and make our way through it. This is so stupid. Was this my idea?

  And there it is. The view. This is why we are doing this. It’s as if we needed to make sure this picture was really here, was true.

  “The view,” I say. Kind of foggy. But the view. I see the hills, the bellies still laughing, as if mocking the storm. We trace the spot for the gazebo with our toes. We stand here a long time. The picture is here. The picture is true.

  “We should get a willow tree,” I say to him.

  “Definitely.”

  THE NEGOTIATIONS BEGIN ON MONDAY, MY BIRTHday, and conclude on Friday. I am officially thirty-eight years old, and our final bid on the farm has been officially accepted—contingent on financing and inspection. To sweeten the deal, Fran and her husband, Bob, threw in their 1984 Chevy pickup and their 1958 International Harvester 350 utility tractor with three-point hitch, blade, lift bar, tire chains, and brush hog.

  “What’s a brush hog?” Alex asks.

  “Actually, I think it’s bush hog,” I say.

  “Well, what’s a bush hog?” he says.

  I have no idea.

  No longer is the talk of sheep-covered hillocks. For weeks, and through much of October, it’s jabber jabber about down payments, portfolio liquidation, interest rates, inspection riders, hand money, survey, title search, barn doors, wood-boring-insect infestation, water tables, agricultural zoning implications, farm insurance, algae control, beefy engineers injecting green dye into the septic system, and other things you nev
er knew you knew how to talk about.

  Everything is happening so fast, tumbling and tumbling. We’re working on the farm deal, and just like that, Alex gets a bid on his house. It’s weird the way his life all comes together. I’m telling you it’s truly weird.

  We’re closing on the farm in a few weeks, and he couldn’t be happier. He’s walking around like a little kid, sort of as he was on the day Marley jumped into his arms. And so naturally, I’m having second thoughts. Third thoughts. Fiftieth thoughts. I guess that’s how it works with couples. You polarize.

  The babes are backing the farm idea a hundred percent. In fact, when I brought them out to see the place, Nancy and B.K. rushed up to the second floor and picked the rooms they intended to spend the weekends in. Ellen said, “I don’t think you realize how serious we are about making this our country place.”

  My mother, on the other hand, thinks I’m out of my mind. (She is a city-person.) She thinks I’ll be isolated out there in the middle of nowhere. She thinks I’m going to stop brushing my teeth like all those other toothless country-folk. (Not her exact words.) My father is polarizing my mother, saying, well, it sure sounds like an adventure. My sister Kristin likewise loves the idea. My sister Claire thinks, “Ew.” But she doesn’t even understand why I would want a dog. “Dogs,” she says, “smell.”

  “Stink,” I say. “Noses smell.”

  “Whatever.”

  My brother John, a physician with a thirty-acre gentleman’s farm near Philadelphia, thinks I’m finally doing something truly wonderful with my life, and he keeps sending me sheep magazines in the mail.

  I have decided not to sell the South Side house, in case I need an escape. In case the country gets too …well, whatever too it might get. And I hardly owe anything on it, so it’s probably a good investment to keep it. Or so I tell myself. The truth is, I love that house and can’t let go.

  I’ve been calling Fran at least once a day with questions. “Um. Does Federal Express deliver out there?” I asked this morning. She laughed. Of course it does. And so does UPS. I asked her about the dirt road. Who maintains it? Are we expected to maintain it? Of course not. It’s a township road. And what about that field across the road? How often do you have to mow it? And, um, how do you mow it? How does the tractor work? How do you turn it on? And how does the well work? How does the septic system work? Where does the drainage off the barn roof go?

  “Why don’t you guys come down here,” she said, “and Bob and I will give you farm lessons. We’ll go over everything.”

  “Great idea,” I said, hanging up the phone, feeling much relieved.

  So here we are again, heading back to the farm, this time in Alex’s Mazda. This time we have the dogs with us. We figure it’s time to introduce them to the property. We stop several times to give Marley and Alex’s upholstery a break. Marley is never going to be a commuter dog; there is no way.

  A commuter dog. I have some vague notion that Alex and I are going to use this farm as a weekend place. Or a place for me to come and write. Alex says no. He says he’s moving. He’s now Mister Get Going. Well, he’s also Mister No Longer Has A House. He says if he could live anywhere in the world, it would be on those fifty acres in Scenery Hill. He’s gotten the bug, gotten it bad. Apparently, his train was on a different schedule. Or his train doesn’t have a schedule. His is a much more magical train.

  “Well, I mean, you’re right,” I say to Alex.

  We have been driving in silence, until this point.

  “What?” he says.

  “I said, ‘You’re right, dear.’”

  “Well, thank you very much,” he says. “But what am I right about?”

  “About moving to the country,” I say. “Because I mean, think about it. Why live in a place where you are forced to shut down your senses?”

  “Oh, no,” he says. “Not the filter bit.”

  “It’s all about filters,” I say. “Isn’t it? Right? I mean, wasn’t I right? It’s about doing away with the need for filters.” I begin gesticulating wildly, for emphasis.

  “Please, honey,” he says.

  “I want to be in a place that encourages my eyes to open wider! My ears to hear an increasingly wider range! My nose and taste buds to go to new extremes! Not a place where I am forced to go numb in order to stay sane.”

  I look at him. I want validation. I want him to say, “Yes! Dear! We are going to live the filterless life, happily ever after!”

  But he has a distracted look on his face. Arched eyebrows. He’s letting out a long sigh.

  “Did I ever tell you about the time I walked into the men’s store and the sign said ‘All men’s pants half off’?”

  “Forget it,” I say.

  When we get to the farm, we open the car door. Marley throws up.

  “Oh, dear,” Alex says.

  Betty hops out of the car, looks around, and immediately starts zooming. She zooms up the hill, and then back again toward us, head low, legs moving so fast they blur. Her tongue is hanging out one side, flapping up and down in the wind. My God! And I’ve been trying to leash-train this dog? Electrify the boundaries of her life? I had no idea there was such fire in Betty’s muscles. Maybe this is the source of her jumping and scratching and chewing and digging and garden destroying. She wanted to zoom. A dog, I think, needs fifty acres.

  Marley is no less enthusiastic. He gains his digestive composure, then trots after Betty. Soon his trot gives way to a prance. He looks like a slow-motion dog in a dog food commercial. He is beautiful. He is so beautiful, you half-expect someone to yell “Cut!” and to lead him back to his trailer and powder his nose.

  I hope Betty isn’t jealous. No, Betty would never do a dog food commercial. Betty is more the foreign film type.

  When we get up to the house, Fran and Bob invite us in. Well, not the dogs. They are definitely not the dog type. In fact, they don’t have a single pet on this entire farm. This is hard for me to comprehend. We sit at the kitchen table, sip lemonade, and share a laugh about Fran having a hurricane named after her. We listen to their plans for a dream house by the sea. We slurp our last slurps, and Fran and Bob begin their farm lessons. Interestingly, the first thing they do is take us into the basement, where they show us … filters.

  Filters. Okay. Soon we are standing before a well-water filtration system that occupies an entire room. “Wow. A lot of filters,” I say. The filters have replacement dates written on them. The chlorinator has a bucket of chlorine pellets next to it, and a scoop.

  “I guess I went a little overboard when I bought this system,” Fran says. “But you never can be too sure about well water.” She talks giardia and cryptosporidium. She talks reverse osmosis and gastrointestinal distress while Bob untwists a four-foot-long casing and shows us how to change a Pall Ultipor N66 membrane. Alex says he needs a pen. He starts taking notes as Fran talks about imparting a positive zeta potential and Bob explains the life span of a chlorinator.

  They get off the subject for a moment as they show us how to prime the pump, how to use the backup generator, the backup kerosene heater, the battery charger for the tractor. They ask us if we want to buy their leaf blower, their snow blower, their 28.0 cc gas Bushwhacker, their sixteen-inch gas chain saw. They ask us if we want to buy their rifle.

  “Rifle?” I say.

  “Oh, we never thought we could shoot anything either,” Fran says.

  It is, apparently, a jungle out here. And among the enemy is an army of raccoons. In the beginning Fran and Bob would catch the varmints in have-a-heart traps, drive them miles away, and release them. But the raccoons would come back. They tell stories about the three-legged raccoon that traveled thirty miles to get back here to home sweet home.

  “So finally we did what everyone else around here does,” Fran says.

  “Kill ’em,” Bob says, shrugging.

  This reminds Fran of a story. “Oh, Bob, tell them about the rat,” she says.

  “Oh, the rat,” Bob says, laughing. The
rat, he says, had found passage into the house via the oven.

  “The oven,” I say.

  “There was a hole,” Fran says. “And I just had had it with that rat. And then one night I heard it. I said to Bob, I said, I know that rat is in that oven. He didn’t believe me. But he gets up, opens the oven, and there it is.”

  “In the oven,” I say.

  Alex has his jaw dropped real low.

  “And so I get this little pistol we had,” says Bob, “and I open the oven and aim.”

  “In the oven,” I say.

  “Well, I missed,” he says. “But I must have stunned it. Because it just sat there frozen.”

  “And so he grabs it by the tail,” Fran says, “and he goes running for the toilet to drown it.”

  “And I have it there by the tail,” he says, “and it’s like waking up or something.”

  “And then the tail,” says Fran. “The tail came off.”

  “Excuse me?” Alex says.

  “The tail came off,” she says. “I guess rats can shed their tails for protection or something.”

  “Rat in the oven,” I say. I have registered nothing past this plot point.

  “So I go running for something to keep the rat down with,” says Fran. “And I grab the fireplace shovel, and Bob, he holds the rat in the toilet with the fireplace shovel, until it drowns.”

  “And it died,” he says.

  “Died,” I say.

  “Oh, it was just a fluke-type thing,” Bob says.

  “Oh, we have such stories about this place,” Fran says.

  I say I’d like to take a walk outside.

  “But what about these filters?” she says. They’re not finished with the filter lecture. I am sick of filters, an image that has officially backfired.

  “And what about the gun?” Bob says.

  Alex says we’re not really gun people, but we’ll look at it. We head outside. Bob brings out the gun. Betty and Marley are romping. They are trying on their new personae as farm dogs. It is taking some getting used to. Marley, with his thick curly poodle fur, is a walking Velcro dog. An impressive sampling of weeds from the back field is now stuck to him. Betty, a very clean city-dog, has discovered an inner passion for dead things. She has discovered that she likes to roll on dead animals, swiping the stench of decay upon her fur. Her shoulders are covered in black goo. She reeks. Which is only part of the problem, as I see it. The other is: Where is she finding all these dead things? How many dead things are out there?