Mulch Read online

  Bill had navigated while oblivious to street signs and landmarks, she had just sat and gushed over the scenery—excited as a child about living in the Virginia woods.

  Tears sprang to Louise’s eyes. She felt like stopping the car and having a good cry. Instead, she stiffened her spine against the seat, whipped the wheel around, and sped out of the nameless cul-de-sac.

  “All riiight,” said Janie, admiring the move. Her long blond hair blew in the unaccustomed breeze. After a moment she said, “Y’know, Ma, these woods make the roads seem like canyons, just like Milton said.”

  “Milton who?” asked Louise absentmindedly as she drove.

  “Really, Ma. ‘In this dark canyon of our souls,’ something, something, something. I had it last fall in English.”

  “They do look like dark canyons, don’t they? But Sylvan Valley is a wonderful place—modular homes with lots of glass, and the developers, for a change, didn’t cut down the trees. Interesting people are supposed to live here, too. I bet you’ll like it. And it’s not too far from Bethesda, where you still have friends.”

  Janie agreed grudgingly. “Maybe it’s not that bad. Just creepy and ominous, that’s all. And the street signs are hidden behind trees.” She waved a thin arm out the window as tribute to the greenery and declaimed in a ponderous Carl Sagan voice, “Billions and billions of trees.” Then, in her normal voice: “And all those weird buzzing sounds …”

  “Cicadas. You’ll get used to them.”

  “But I still think Dad should be here when we move into our seventh house.”

  Louise smiled faintly. “Seventh house. That’s right, I guess.”

  Despite the smile, she felt sad. Moving represented advancement for Bill: the next challenge as a deep-cover CIA agent. But so ironic. No one could share those glory moments with them, because he was a spy. The overseas posts, interspersed with assignments to the NSC, the UN, and now the State Department. Each was another step up the ladder. Someday, she thought wistfully, he might climb up into the light.

  For Louise, moving was like having a tooth pulled without novocaine: the sharp loss of familiar people and familiar places. Not that she didn’t bring it off gracefully. As a foreign service wife, it was expected of her.

  Janie was warming to her subject. “And you bought a new house and you can’t find it. You know the moving truck is there by now. Boy, I can see it all now. They’ll be big guys—they’re always big guys with sweaty armpits.” She was waving her arms now, her knees still waggling. “I can see them all standing around, and really mad at us because we aren’t there to tell them what to do with the stuff. And they’re just standing there.” She looked over at her mother to see what effect she was having. “Probably in the sun, and the temperature is about two hundred—and all they really want is booze. They’re living for the end of the day, when Dad’ll give them those beers you bought, and maybe some of the whiskey that you packed—because you guys will be so grateful they didn’t break any of your little knickknacks … your little glass menageries of things.” Janie darted another glance at her mother. Their eyes met.

  The sweat now dripped down Louise’s cheek, the one that faced the 95-degree Virginia morning. She said, “Janie, I have a great reservoir of affection for you, built up over the years. Let’s not tamper with it. I feel foolish enough without you railing at me.” Her voice had edged up several tones. “Now help me find the damned house!” She backed viciously into a driveway and returned the way they had come down the first dark canyon. Even in their confused passage she noted that the neighborhood had a road at the crest of a high hill named after their older daughter—Martha’s Lane. It gave Louise another little twinge of loss; her first baby, gone to college.

  Janie had fallen silent, as children do when they know they have gone too far. Her knees were still. “Ma, I’m sorry I gave you a hard time. I’ll help you find the house. But first, let’s make a deal. We’re in a new place; call me Jane, not Janie. In case you hadn’t noticed, I’m not a little girl any more.” She turned plaintive blue eyes at her mother.

  “Oh, sweetheart, I’m sorry.” Louise reached over and patted her daughter’s bare leg. “I will remember. I will call you Jane. And forgive me. You know it’s not easy to move again, not for any of us.”

  The girl said, “Plus it’s always harder because we move when it’s hot.” She cocked her head. “’Course, I ought to be used to it by now. My father gets transferred and I just tag along like the caboose on a train.” She sighed and dropped her thin shoulders. “Martha was smart. She unbuckled her car from the train before she had to move.”

  “She unbuckled her car? You mean uncoupled her car?”

  “Okay,” said Janie. “Uncoupled.” She turned in her seat toward her mother. “Oh well, that’s enough of that. So, Ma, how’re we going to find the place?” She wrinkled her nose. “Dogwood Court: what a weird-sounding address. Could you have picked it just because the street’s named after a tree?”

  “of course not.”

  “Just speculating, because I know you and gardens. The first thing you’re going to do after you move in is rip up the entire yard and make it all over your way.”

  Louise sighed. “Right now, the point’s moot, since we can’t find the house. I would ask somebody, but it’s so humiliating. If everything in this neighborhood didn’t look the same, we wouldn’t be having this trouble. Our house is tan stain with white trim. It’s one story, just like that one.” She pointed to a flat-roofed house barely showing through the trees. “As opposed to that two-story type there that is like a house of glass. Isn’t it pretty? And it’s somewhere right near that big hill we’re just coming to again.”

  “How about trees?” Janie asked slyly. “Does it have any distinguishing trees?”

  “Oh, how smart of you-that’s it! On the corner is a house with a gnarled old tree, a dogwood, I think. I noticed it because it needs a good feeding and pruning. That’s where we turn!”

  “There,” said Janie, pointing ahead. “Is that what you call a gnarled old tree?”

  “Yes, yes, yes, oh God, yes!” cried Louise.

  As they approached they could see a giant blue van tucked into the shady reaches of the cul-de-sac. Four big men sat casually on the ramp near its open doors. Louise coasted in alongside its long, steel expanse and parked in front of it. The van. The van with their beds. Their chairs. Their antique loveseats. Their excess of books. Their files. Their fossil rocks. Their family photos. All the appendages that had safely crossed state and international borders, oceans, seas. Ready to be set up again in a new place by the resident homemaker.

  Janie had the car door half open when she turned to Louise. “Mother. One more thing.” She only called her Mother when she wished to clothe one of her overarching criticisms with respect. “I don’t mean to be rude or anything, but Dad would never have got us lost like that.”

  Louise removed the key from the ignition and turned to look squarely at her daughter. The youthful dress had given up the fight and submissively turned with her. Louise reflected what a beautiful girl Janie was. Expressive eyes large and blue like her father’s, but with dark lashes and eyebrows like Louise’s. Long, tawny hair. A figure just ready to bud. So why did she feel like giving her a good slap in the face?

  Janie leaned over and kissed Louise on the cheek, resting a gentle arm around her mother’s neck like a softly placed garland. “On the other hand, Ma, you’re fun to be with, and don’t forget that. Some mothers are really boring.” She was gone from the car and sauntering over to the movers. “Hi, guys,” she said as if they were old friends. “Been here long?”

  Louise sat quietly in the car, head bowed. Then she slowly got out and closed the door and leaned against it. She took a good look. Her eye traveled from the top of the hundred-foot forest trees down to the understory of dogwood and shrubs, lit from above with dappled sunlight. The only clues to a house in there were the glints of sun slanting off the panes of large glass windows. Forgetting
the heat and aggravation of the trip here, she stepped under the canopy of the trees for a more intimate look.

  Once her eyes adjusted to dim light, she could see the rangy house—even lower-slung because of the placement of the studio addition close by the front door. A pergola of weathered gray twelve-by-two timbers connected the two buildings and formed a handsome overhang for the front path. She couldn’t believe this was all theirs.

  As she came closer, her imagination went to work and began filling in the empty spots in the landscape.

  The pergola was bare of plantings. A pleasant picture of an Italianate walkway with hanging clusters of grapes invaded her mind. She would put Concord grapes upon it, once she tested with Bill’s light meter to see if there was enough sun to grow them.

  Her gaze traveled to the front of the studio. It cried out for something. Almost instantly, she knew: A group of native rhododendrons, with their delicate, clawlike pink flowers, belonged there. Then, she would place a small grove of amelanchiers—their silvery bark echoing the color of the pergola—on the other side for balance.

  She took in a deep breath. The air was moist and aromatic, redolent of gently rotting leaves. She smiled, enthralled with the place, and continued her way toward the trellised path, not noticing a stubby azalea bush in her way. When she tripped and fell, she found the forest floor quite soft, and for a millisecond longed to just lie there and take a rest. Instead she rose, absently brushed off her wrinkled blue dress, and ambled on until she reached the stone walk.

  It was the kind of walk she had dreamed of as a child. A wet spring and summer had caused green moss to grow on the edges of each flagstone, making it into a path straight out of Hansel and Gretel. She could just picture it edged with groupings of narcissus, dog-toothed violets, parasol-shaped mayapples, and maybe a jack-in-the-pulpit or two.

  But an uncomfortable feeling was beginning to creep into her consciousness: The price tab on her imaginary gardening improvements was growing. With a twinge of guilt, she promised herself at least she could cut costs by forgoing expensive bulbs. Instead, she would buy them in those big bags. With just one exception. She just had to have some of the rarer Hawera narcissus, with their distinctive yellow trumpets.

  She gratefully sank down upon a tree stump, for it was hot here in her forest. The possibilities stretched on and on. Down a bit from the amelanchiers—they were now permanently placed in her mental blueprint—and not too far from the path, she would create another peaceful oasis. This one would have plantings of witch hazel, hellebores, and snowdrops, to delight passersby with their flowers in the last days of winter. And when fall came, the same area would be carpeted with the blue flowers and wine-colored leaves of plumbago….

  “Ma!”

  At first, Janie’s call didn’t quite register. Then the girl found her, sitting on her stump. She reached down and grasped her mother’s arm as if she were a prisoner who might try to escape. “Now, Ma”—her daughter’s voice was softer now, as if talking to someone on another planet—“the men have been waiting to talk to you out at the truck before they start unloading.” The teenager was flushed with heat and her eves were wide with embarrassment. “What’re you doing, anyway? You look like you’re in a trance.”

  “Sorry, darling,” said Louise, brushing her long hair away from her face. “I was just dreaming.” She waved her arm to encompass the woods around them as they walked toward the moving van. “Just look at this place.”

  “Yeah, like I said, billions and billions of trees, but knowing you, you’ll plant more.” The girl turned and faced her mother, hands on her hips. “Just remember, don’t dip into my college funds to pay for them.” Then she danced away ahead of Louise, throwing back, “Just kidding, of course!”

  The leggy teenager ran forward and bestowed a big smile on the moving men. They had been waiting in the hot sun of the cul-de-sac for nearly an hour. Now they were stirring impatiently around the truck, like a bunch of hornets around a nest. “Here she comes,” called Janie, “all ready to answer your questions.”

  To Louise, it sounded as if the girl were doing a selling job on her, the message being, “This person isn’t really the dingbat she appears to be.” That’s what it was, all right. For Janie continued: “And don’t you worry a bit: You’ll find she’s really a very efficient woman.”

  When Louise first entered the house, it was like another world. Silent. Bare. Beautiful, but bare. A strange house—all windows and wood floors. Not much substance. Could they really live here?

  Janie was ecstatic.

  “Wow, what a fireplace! What a great brick wall!” she cried, giving it an affectionate pat. She loped around the living room, then made a quick circuit of the house, returning quickly to her mother.

  “I love it!” she cried, and gave Louise a big hug. “And to think it’s ours forever. It’s so totally modern, but my room even has a nook. You and Dad did real good.”

  “I’m glad you like it, dear.”

  The movers had formed a procession outside the front door, each carrying a dining room chair. Joe, the foreman, a giant of a man, introduced the three helpers. One was a young man. Two were older men with nicotine-stained fingers and stringy muscles who looked as bone-weary as old camels. One was limping a little, she noticed.

  As they brought each piece, Louise and Janie told them where to place it. They followed a plan of the house that identified where everything was to go. Louise had made it to scale and photocopied it so that she, Bill, and Janie each had a copy. She noticed Janie was timing it so she could direct the young man with whatever he was carrying.

  In less than an hour Bill arrived. He looked handsome in his business clothes, clean-shaven, crisp, every blond hair in place. He was carrying a paper bag of sandwiches and drinks for their lunch.

  “Good, you’re home,” said Louise. Her smile was tight. “We missed you on the ride here.”

  He took off his suit jacket and placed it on the counter, then kissed her lightly on the forehead. “What’s the matter … couldn’t you find it or something?”

  Louise crossed her arms over her chest. “As a matter of fact, we did have a little trouble. Is that so strange?”

  He came over and held her by her elbows. “Honey, don’t get mad at me. It’s moving day; we can’t afford to spend any energy on emotions.” The blue eyes twinkled. He gave her a little peck on the lips and moved his body so it touched hers. “I’m getting inside your iron cordon,” he warned, grinning.

  “Don’t try to co-opt me, Bill Eldridge. A person and their emotions are not easily separated.” But she smiled and hugged him. “Honey, I love the house, and the woods—the woods are magical. Thank you so much.”

  At that he kissed her lingeringly on the mouth, until she wished time could telescope and they could just forget the next six hours or so. Finally, he broke away. “And now to our favorite task—moving in.” He rolled up the sleeves of his white dress shirt and pitched in beside her and Janie, putting things in place as fast as the movers could bring them in.

  By early afternoon, the job was well on its way. She and Bill were tiring but holding up; Janie had taken off somewhere. Louise was beginning to feel better. She found it exciting to see how well their antique furniture looked, juxtaposed against the modern lines of the house. “I’m beginning to like it,” she told Bill, her eyes shining.

  “Wait until we hang a few pictures. It will be as if we never moved.”

  She passed by the recreation room and saw the youngest of the moving crew working there on his own. Tall, muscular, but hardly more than a boy. He was pounding together the Charleston bed that doubled as a couch. Out of the fatigue that had already settled in on her she still noticed an inescapable fact: The young man was beautiful. Brown, wavy hair and brown eyes. Why on earth was he in the moving business?

  She stood tentatively near the door. “Earl. It’s Earl, isn’t it? I just was curious…. How did you happen to get into this, uh, moving profession?”

  He
looked up at her from his kneeling position, and the dark handsomeness of his face startled her. The knowing eyes, the shadows behind his high cheekbones—a little American Indian in his past? “It’s hardly what you’d call a profession, now, is it?”

  “Well, maybe not.” Louise looked down at her white tennis shoes, then back at the handsome young man. “You just seem so young, so …”

  Earl set the hammer on the floor, rested his forearm on his knee, and looked up at her. Softly, he said, “Something happened. Last year, when I was seventeen. My dad died after an accident. Fell off a ladder. I was going to go to college, but I’m doing this instead for a while. Money’s good.” He grinned. “I just hope I don’t strain my back. I discovered right away this business makes cripples out of good men.”

  Louise crouched down on her haunches, and her blue skirt puffed out around her. She was on eye level with him. “I bet it does … all this heavy old furniture. But couldn’t you piece together something … there are all sorts of tuition grants and work-study programs. Then you could start school with your friends.”

  “Well, ma’am, you’ve heard of families running out of health insurance, and racking up great big bills at the hospital? We’re one of those families. We owe ‘em about a hundred and fifty grand for taking care of my dad when he was dying.” He looked down. He gracefully picked up his hammer. “Didn’t save him from dying, but sure was expensive. My mom is the type who takes bills seriously.”

  Louise rose up slowly. “That’s such a shame….” She heard the other movers approaching. “I know you want to get back to your work. Nice to talk to you.” She smiled at him. He had an odd expression on his face. Then she forgot Earl and went to find Bill, to see what the next task was on this moving day.

  Joe, the foreman, big, bald, sweaty, and satisfied, sat at the dining room table with Louise and Bill, his giant forearms cuddled protectively around a cold Michelob, a swath of papers in front of him. Around them stood large, opened boxes spewing wrapping paper. It was the time for settling up. Joe, however, was in no hurry.