Mulch Page 5

  5

  The Swim Club

  LOUISE TRUDGED UP THE HANDSOME WINDING steps, admiring them as she went. Each step was outlined with weathered wood and filled in with small river stones set in concrete. This grand approach was in sharp contrast to some she had seen in Sylvan Valley that were no more than simple Indian-style footpaths.

  The hill was carpeted with ivy. Out of this sturdy ground cover emerged graceful clumps that stubbornly represented the fading summer: pale rudbeckia and globe thistle, fall asters, lamb’s ears, sedum Autumn Joy, and other perennials she couldn’t recognize in the gloom. All planted, it seemed, by an artistic hand. Soaring up behind them were graceful masses of ornamental grasses, swaying in the faint evening breeze. These last remainders of the summer were like separate presences on the hill, many faded to neutral shades of rose, pale blue, tan, gray, and off-white, with an occasional accent of rust or deep ruby.

  Off to the side, but still visible in the waning Virginia evening light, was a picture that in the dimness looked as if painted in watercolor by a Japanese artist: sharp-angled, bony-looking branches of a trio of oakleaf hydrangeas set in front of an evergreen backdrop. An irregular drift of spiky-leaved carex growing low in front added a grassy accent. She noted the large seedheads that festooned the hydrangea branches had changed from the white of summer through the pink of fall, and now were the palest peach-beige. They would hang in there, she knew, all through the worst kind of winter, a kind of assurance that this sturdy plant would do it again next year.

  After climbing twenty-four steps, she reached the house, and realized coming in the front door of this house, though interesting, was really doing it the hard way. The place sat on the top of Sylvan Valley’s highest hill and belonged to Mort and Sarah Swanson. He was a lawyer with Wilson and Sterritt, and she was one of the many neighborhood potters and said to have been a beauty in her heyday, whenever that was; Louise had not yet met the woman.

  She had heard that when it was built, twenty-five or so years ago, the house was featured in Architectural Digest. Probably, she decided, because of indecent exposure. She could see its innards through two floors of floor-to-ceiling windows.

  Sarah Swanson was chairman of Sylvan Valley’s Swim and Tennis Club and was hosting the first meeting of the season. Louise’s neighbor Jan had involved her in this—plump Jan with her pretty blond hair and earnest blue eyes, making her pitch with such disarming grace that Louise’s intended “no” came out “yes.” Not the least of it was Jan’s mention of the location of the first meeting. Louise’s curiosity had been aroused; she couldn’t resist checking out any house in the neighborhood, much less a designer house. She wondered if they led different lives than people in more ordinary houses. As Bill put it, she was just plain nosy about things like that.

  The door opened just as she raised her hand to ring the bell. “And you must be Louise Eldridgre,” said a large woman Louise knew was Sarah. She wore an apricot gauze caftan. Long, curly, graying blond hair was swept back at the nape with an apricot-colored bow, exposing a good check line and handsome, large gray eyes. Her feet were bare. She extended her hand gracefully, and Louise took it but would have shaken it loose again had she dared. It was like a horned beast’s. “I … ah, I’m pleased to be here,” stuttered Louise. “You’re … Sarah.” The woman released her hand and laughed. “You handled that terribly well, Louise. Potters, you know, don’t have the skin you love to touch. I know I shouldn’t shake hands with newcomers, but I do like to touch people. But come.” Then she flowed in front of her up flagstone steps into the living room.

  Louise saw now that the house was glass on not one but two sides. “It is simply beautiful,” she said, staring. Just enough furniture here, all muted gray and white tones, tan wood floors, no interruptions to the eye, so that the forest and the last trails of colored light in the west became part of the room.

  “I love it,” she cried. “It’s as if we’re standing in the forest.”

  “Most people say that,” said a thin balding man with hornrimmed glasses. “I’m Mort Swanson. You must be the new kid on the court down the road.” He grinned a lopsided grin. A $450-an-hour grin, Louise bet. She noted his very clean chinos and deck shoes, just right, she thought, for a swim club meeting. His hands looked soft, the nails manicured and shiny. “You have a nice house in the woods yourself,” said Mort. “Yours is one of the houses that no one has deforested much, unlike some of the properties around here. I think yours has only lost two or three trees over the years. I think, if anything, that adds to its intrinsic value.”

  He beckoned Louise to a chair. She dutifully sank into its womblike design, then struggled to regain a more upright sitting position.

  Mort waved his arm. “Sit back. Let the chair have you. Relax.”

  She leaned back slowly. “That impresses me,” she said to Mort. “To think that you know that much detail about our house. Everyone around here knows everything about everybody else, or at least about their property. It’s like a small town filled with real estate experts.”

  He laughed. “That’s because they all started out like backwoodsmen here. Woodsmen know every tree in the forest. The water pipes and phone lines weren’t even in when the first people moved in in 1958. This was open farm and forestland, of course. The very first settlers—Sarah and I were a bit later—fetched water from a well out near Ransom Road.” He peered at her as if depending upon her for a proper reaction. “That’s damned hard, you know, carrying water in cans in the trunk of your car. So, with no running water and no phones, people were really dependent on one another for baby-sitting, running to the store for groceries, driving others to the emergency room, and just generally seeing that their neighbors were all right.”

  “It must have led to some strong friendships.”

  He gave her an approving grin. “You hit the nail on the head. Need creates close bonds between people. Some of the friendships, in fact, got too close. We received some lousy publicity once in The Washington Post, in the sixties—”

  “It was nineteen sixty-seven,” said Sarah, who was floating through the room, a large, pastel presence, positioning small bowls of nuts on nearly invisible glass end tables. “That was when they wrote that terrible expose; of course, I must admit a lot of it was true.” She laughed and disappeared in the direction of a delicious smell of strong coffee.

  Mort leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees. “Yes, I guess it was nineteen sixty-seven. By that time, of course, we were all settling in. Sarah had set up her kiln and was beginning to sell her pots.” He grinned another crooked grin. “I must say I’m happy she has that—but some women, and some men, just as always, got bored, so a little wife-swapping developed.”

  “Wife-swapping?” asked Louise with a faint smile. “Not husband-swapping?”

  He looked at her levelly. “You have to remember this was before the woman’s movement.” He touched his breast with a hand. “That’s not what I called it. That’s what the Post called it back then: wife-swapping. Here we were, a modern little subdivision, surrounded by acres of traditional colonial houses inhabited quite often by military …”

  He was warming to the subject now, even as others drifted in for the meeting. They smiled at Louise understandingly. Mort continued. “And who were we? Lawyers, doctors, lots of newspapermen, artists … a suspect lot here in conservative northern Virginia. An enterprising reporter decided to extend the metaphor. Modern houses, modern lives, modern morals. Actually, there was only one swap; that was the extent of it.”

  “But it made a helluva story.”

  Louise looked up and saw a tall, rather attractive blond man with aviator glasses staring inquisitively at her, then at her legs. She felt an immediate bond, because he was dressed as informally as she was, in a shaggy old sweater and tan pants, and worn sneakers.

  “Peter,” said Mort jovially, standing and extending a hand. Louise leaned forward, as gracefully as she could in the chair, for the introduction tha
t was coming. “Louise Eldridge, meet Peter Hoffman, neighbor, and slated to be the next deputy secretary of defense.”

  “Hello,” she said.

  “Hello.” He leaned down and took her hand gently in his large one and gave it an imperceptible squeeze. “I see Mort didn’t take long dealing you in on the dirt,” he said, in a voice with a penetrating, rather nasal quality. “I’m a relative newcomer, too, and the first thing I heard when I moved here was all those tall tales about Sylvan Valley.”

  Mort stepped forward and put his arm around Peter and guided him away. “Excuse us, Louise. Peter and I are not part of your committee. We have a little legal work to do tonight while you people talk about replacing the swimming pool. But so good to meet you. So good to talk with you.”

  Peter looked back at Louise a fraction longer than politeness required. “I’ll see you again. The wife’s on the board, too.”

  Ninety minutes later Louise folded up the little notebook in her lap and replaced it in her purse. In the space of that ninety minutes she had become acquainted with nine new people, some of whom she wasn’t sure she liked.

  She had heard in detail about the decayed condition of the Sylvan Valley pool, every last rusty pipe and cracked surface. No one was discouraged by this tale of entropy, however. The treasurer, a quiet man named Bob Wilson, had devised a plan to raise money to rebuild it, amortizing the cost over a span of years. Louise, to her dismay, had been persuaded to become grounds chairman of the club. Jan, again, telling people all about her. But grounds chairman? Is this what she wanted to do? And what would it entail? The club owned six prime acres right in the middle of Sylvan Valley, and like her yard when they’d first moved in, the six acres were rather unkempt. No expensive groundskeepers, they had told her, but just a high school boy hired to mow the grassy sections.

  She brushed her long hair away from her face, and gave the matter some thought. She knew herself to be a fussy gardener. She wondered if they could afford her. If she took over the grounds chairman job, she’d want to improve the whole place: nagging members to get out and help neaten it up, wanting to spend real money on new plants and trees.

  On the other hand, did she have to give way to her gardening lust at every turn? The club did not have an enormous budget, it was quite obvious, and it was all going to be gobbled up in those hideously expensive swimming pool repairs. Maybe this would be a good experience for her—learning to manage a very big garden on a small budget: It might force her, for once in her life, to curb her garden excesses.

  As she attempted to get up from the chair, Sarah grabbed her hand in her rough one and effortlessly hefted her up to her feet. “We should have a pulley to remove people from that one.” She stood close to Louise and looked for all the world as if she would like to hug her. “Don’t look so serious, my dear. People here—including my husband—are actually nicer than they sound; I think they were showing off a little for you because you’re new and you seem especially interested in this place.” She nodded her head as if Louise had agreed with her. “I have difficulty with this Washington preoccupation with houses and neighborhoods, and how much houses are worth. I agree with Yeats.” She laid a hand on her ample bosom; her gaze moved somewhere beyond Louise while she recited, in a low, eloquent voice, “‘I will arise and go now, and go to Inisfree, And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made: Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee, And live alone in the bee-loud glade.’” She smiled with satisfaction. “I memorized that in ninth grade. But we both know life’s not that simple, and, anyway, cabins of clay and wattles must be very drafty. Now, as for grounds chairman”—she made it sound as if Louise had won the lottery—“it’s just great fun. It means no more than getting the troops out next spring to pull weeds and rake leaves. We have a wonderful time, we all catch poison ivy, and then we eat hot dogs, no matter how cold. Later, you pop in a few petunias near the clubhouse door and we’ll all think you’re wonderful.” She squeezed Louise’s arm companionably.

  “Or you could do what some have done—fill large containers with flowers and place them near the pool.” This drawling speech came from Phyllis, Peter’s wife. She was very small and thin, with gold hair falling in a pageboy over green eyes. Dyed, thought Louise. She was wearing beige slacks and top with high, sporty heels and bulky gold jewelry. During the meeting she had said little but had paid close attention to what others said and scanned Louise from head to foot, from her casual jeans skirt to her L. L. Bean suedecloth shirt and worn tennis shoes.

  “Containers of flowers sound beautiful,” said Louise. “Would you like to help me?”

  Sarah laughed and put an arm around her. “You’re a natural. Spoken like a true recruiter.” She turned to Phyllis. “Well, Phyllis, how about it? Will you be part of Louise’s committee?”

  Phyllis had pulled out a brown cigarette and was about to light it. “You don’t mind, do you, Sarah? I have to smoke this before Peter comes back or he will go into a rage.” She lit up, inhaled, and exhaled deeply. Then she looked levelly at Louise. “I’m so undependable, Louise. I’m a decorator and I travel. I have a few special clients I work with and for whom I buy antiques and things. That means I’m running off to shows, or maybe just taking a break with friends….”

  Rich, thought Louise. Rich and restless. Then Phyllis’s eyes grew wary and she quickly tamped out her cigarette in a nearby glass dish—an ambiguous dish, Louise noticed, not quite an ashtray, not quite an objet d’art.

  Her husband, Peter, and Mort had returned. Peter sniffed the air like a German shorthair. “Ah, the smoker’s here,” he said. He walked over to his wife and looked down at her without smiling. “You realize, of course, your smoking is harmful to others, not only yourself. When are you going to put that patch on?”

  “Please, Peter, not here,” she said, and turned to Louise with a hastily mounted smile. “I told you he was a bear about smoking. Forgive him.”

  “Wrong one to forgive. Let’s go home. Louise, do you need a ride?” He turned to her in surprise. “My, you’re a tall woman.”

  “Just the right height, my husband Bill always says.” She did not know why she felt she needed to call up the name of her husband. “I don’t need a ride, thanks. I only live down the hill and over a few steps.”

  Peter looked down at her. “You’re new here.” His voice was concerned. “You can’t be too careful, even in this neighborhood.” He stood so close that she instinctively drew back a little. “There are crazies down there on Route One who could wander over here into our neighborhood—who’s to stop them? I never let Phyllis walk around at this time of night alone. Come on. We’ll drop you off.” He slipped a large but gentle arm around her shoulders and guided both Louise and his wife out of the room.

  At the car, which was silver and low-slung, Louise demurred again, this time more firmly. “I thank you for the offer. But I can’t ride with you. It is just not necessary.”

  His wife said good-bye and slid gracefully into the car. Peter lingered for a moment, looking at Louise. “All right, Louise. But I’ll see you again.”

  Strange man, she thought, as she sauntered home through the oak leaves. But interesting. She liked his directness. It was refreshing, and different from what she saw in a lot of people around Washington, who seemed to specialize in indirection, if not actual lies. She knew about lying: Her husband lived a lie, and she helped him live it. The difficult dance of deep cover. But she wondered if she weren’t growing beyond that.

  6

  Little Things Mean a Lot

  LOUISE STOOD IN THE LIVING ROOM, STARING out at the rainy woods, and experienced a moment of hysteria. She placed her forehead against the glass and closed her eyes for a moment. Would he never leave?

  A few more ordered bangs from the bathroom told her she had not yet won a reprieve. She had been fulfilling a two-month-long sentence with this man. The carpenter. Al Woodruff. Highly recommended by a friend of a neighbor, who used him some years ago.
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br />   “Mrs. Eldridge!” he yelled in a raspy voice. “C’mere. I’ll show you the finished product.”

  She straightened slowly and walked toward the bathroom. Just as she passed the kitchen, the phone rang. She could guess who it would be. “Hello?”

  “Is my husband there, Mrs. Eldridge?” The voice was stretched thin with tension. The carpenter’s wife. She was like a living radar, determined to keep her husband within telephone range. “Please don’t tell me he’s ducked out.”

  “No, Mrs. Woodruff, he hasn’t ducked out. He’s still here … but just finishing. I’ll put him on the line.” She went down the hall.

  Woodruff, a large, balding man in plaid shirt and jeans, the ends of a dozen nails protruding from his mouth, looked at her. His bloodshot eyes asked the question.

  “Yes, it’s your wife.”

  “Christ,” he muttered out of the side of his mouth. He continued removing the nails quickly one by one and pounding them into a prestained molding strip. “There!” he boomed. “I’m finished.” He passed her, trailing alcoholic fumes. “Better take that call before she really gets pissed—uh, ‘scuse me—upset.” He lumbered into the kitchen, and Louise could hear low-pitched combat.

  She wondered how long it had been going on. Al had to be in his midsixties. His wife sounded about the same age. Had he been a drunk for years? The wife obviously didn’t trust him. But then, neither did Louise. He wanted her there when he worked, but he had stood her up at least ten times after he said he would come. This had stretched the job beyond two months. To reduce the aggravation, she continued to improve the yard. With no trouble at all, she found new places to plant things, beyond those that she and Bill had budgeted for when they first moved in.