The Good Fortune Harvest
The next morning, I drive over to Laura’s shop and catch her setting up a display of fall dresses. Each one is a jewel. There is a plum-colored satin dress with a wide black velvet belt tied up in a large bow, a cherry red velvet smock with white scallop stitching on its edges, and a navy overcoat with a hood all finished in red piping.
I cannot stop praising each one of these miniature pieces.
“That’s enough!” she says. “You’re embarrassing me.”
“It’s just that they are so….”
She holds her hand up to stop me from going further.
“What brings you by here so early?”
“I thought I’d run some errands. I have a package coming this afternoon, and I want to be home for it.”
“A package?” she asks curiously.
“Some tests I am running on the soil in the field.”
“Tests? What kind of tests?”
“Just to see what its composition is,” I say. Then thinking I don’t want to divulge anymore, I change course. “I met David last night.”
“Big whoop!” she says.
“He seems nice enough.”
She clears her throat and says, “A no brainer.” Then she changes the subject. “I heard you and Andy had a nice lunch.”
“Yep. And by the way, I saw Map at the feedstore. How is it he knows my business?” I ask her.
Laura continues to fuss over the display and doesn’t turn around, but still I can see red race across her face to the tips of her ears.
“Don’t know,” she mutters.
I’ll let this pass, as if unnoticed. She and Map wouldn’t surprise me. His wife, Faith, has tripled in size since high school. I saw her in the back of the shop the other day. Her face peaking out through the darkness of the back office; a face transformed into a flat disk with a lump of a nose and several uncomfortable chins as the only visible contours.
No, it wouldn’t surprise me at all. Laura has a knack for usurping other people’s lives. She makes herself at home in her friends’ and lovers’ families, always embellishing the parts of her that conform so fluidly into these people’s history, environment, and language. But when their surface lives fade into their everydayness, and their inevitable human flaws begin to poke through, then she is quite masterful in her ability to erase herself and transmute, like a chameleon, into a new and different life.
I have witnessed her metamorphoses too many times to remember them individually. Her encounters leave me uneasy because it seems she gives up too much. This is where her and I are opposites. I am the hoarder of all life experiences, each one has left its mark on me somewhere, each one is indelible.
Even so, in some contradictory way, I admire my sister’s ability to shed her skin. Even if her omission is her own. I leave Laura to her discomfort and drive over to see Jack. Although he is my brother, I have no strong attachment to Jack, barely even an undercurrent of love. But Jack is the executor of my Father’s will, and the money that was put aside for me, which I have left untouched these many years, I now want to claim.
Jack’s office building has been expanded, the lettering on his sign enlarged. I walk in and instantly feel as if I have entered a morgue. Down the hallway I can see where each windowless office is closed off from the other, and the receptionist sits behind a glass window under a cold counter of black marble. I buzz and tell her who I am, then take a seat on the black leather chair next to the door.
As I shuffle through Forbes, Money, and The Economist, I hear Jack’s voice speaking over a box on the receptionist’s desk. I am motioned in and walked down the long hall by a woman with ten perfect red fingernails, who does not turn around to see if I am following her, not even once.
“Mr. Behar is in here,” she states formally, looking at me for the first time as she guides me into the double doors at the far end of the hall.
I nod and enter. I take a breath and hold it in. The office is an amazing amalgamation of masculinity – dark leather, dark wood, thick glass, dull metal, all poised in sharp angles. I perch on the edge of a straight-back leather chair in front of Jack’s oversized desk. The fingernail lady disappears down the long hallway. Jack is on the phone; I don’t think I have ever seen him without a phone attached to his profile. To his credit, he did look up once when I walked in and acknowledged me.
“Constance!” he greets me unnaturally as he recradles the phone. Jack has never been one to say anything that would necessitate an exclamation point. His mastery of business has hinged on his being dispassionate under any circumstance.
“That’s me,” I answer.
“What brings you back to this area of the world?” he says, leaning forward with his elbows on the desk and his hands stretched out in front of him.
“Oh I don’t know,” I say evasively, “Time to come home, you know.”
“Well good. Mother says you’re staying with her. That’s good,” he says, leaning back into his large leather chair and clasping his hands in front of him approvingly.
“It’s good,” I say. “And how’s Margo and the kids?”
“Great. Really great. Margo’s the local tennis champ. She’s even got the girls playing tennis. Hell, they’re so good, I can’t even beat them. The girls are fine. Eva graduates this spring, Rosie and Haley are coming up right behind her, and let’s see, Kate’s playing soccer, no, Lisa plays soccer and Kate is playing basketball. Yes, they are all growing up so quickly. Time passes so quickly, doesn’t it?”
Time appears to be the last of Jack’s worries. His thick hair is slicked back gracefully. His chin bears a hint of facial hair. He wears a nice dark Italian suit and his wrist boasts a gold chain watch which slides easily as he moves, looking very expensive. He shakes his head thoughtfully.
I observe him as if he is a stranger. (And he is.) I try not to stare at the photos on his desk of his other daughters, nameless to me, but not to Margo who has accepted his indiscretions as easily as one accepts any other kind of flaw in their mate. He can’t help himself is how she explained it to my mother. My mother not even broaching the subject with her.
“I’d like to have my money,” I say to him.
“Your money?” he sits up and leans forward into the desk. “Why sure.” A slow smile spreads across his thin lips. “Would you mind telling me what you plan to do with it?”
“Yes,” I say. “I would mind.”
He laughs, as if to set me at ease, when in fact I am at ease.
“Constance,” he says, looking straight at me with his shiny black eyes, straightening his hands into a power steeple, index fingers touching slightly, “as Executor, one of my duties is to make sure your inheritance isn’t pissed away. I didn’t make these rules, Father did. I am just honoring his wishes.”
I look at him carefully and say, “I am going to start a produce farm.”
He moves his hands down flat and says, “I see,” then after a long pause he adds, “Here? In town?” “I am checking out some places right now, but yes, here in town.”
“Constance,” he says, drawing his fingers back up into their steeple, “do you know how to farm?”
“I know enough,” I say. “What I don’t know, I’ll learn. I’m quick.”
He moves his lips thoughtfully as if inside his mind he is examining my farm from all its potential shortcomings. He places his hands flat down on the desk again and says, “What about the competition?”
“There is none,” I say. “I am starting an organic farm.”
“Organic?” he says half-mockingly. “I see.”
But he doesn’t see. The word organic is probably as foreign to him as the sound of Tibetan bells moving in an eastern wind. Still he makes no argument about my taking out my money. He presses a button on his desk and speaks into a box, “Bring me my black check book and my sister Constance’s file.”
The fingernailed lady comes in and places the black leather checkbook in front of him within seconds. He reads through some papers in the file, then writes a check and hands it to me. “Ann will give you copies of your paperwork when you leave,” he tells me, then nods at her.
The check is much larger than I had expected. I stare at it speechless for some time, thinking to myself that this money my Father so miserly pinched and saved when he was living has enabled each one of us to come alive now that he is gone. His legacy has manifested itself into a fine clothing store, a line of children’s clothes, the goodwill my mother and brother can afford to practice, and now I will add to it this town’s first organic farm. We all do what we can’t turn away from. I wonder what Jack’s legacy will be?
I thank him repeatedly and nod agreeably as he makes overtones of my coming to the house. I accept the open invitation for any future dinners even though I know I will not go. When I get down the hall, Ann holds the door to the reception area open for me and hands me my paperwork. I walk outside into the sunshine and the air and birds welcome me back into a world in which I am more familiar.
I get home just in time to receive my package. Unable to wait, I open it outside on the steps. The report states that the soil is basically good, a little acidic but that can be worked out, but there are no toxins lingering in it. I scream out a “yahoo” just to hear myself. Archimedes said, “Give me a place to stand and I will move the earth.”