Beloved (18 page)

They stepped out onto the sagging front porch together. The overhanging hollies, like dancing teachers nudging their students to waltz, forced them uncomfortably close to each other.

"
See?
"
Jane said in an edgy voice.
"
There isn
'
t room for both of us on the porch.
"
There isn
'
t room for both of us on the
planet, she thought, catching her breath at the nearness of him. What was it about him? He emanated a kind of strength that she found almost threatening.
"
They
'
re just too big.
"

McKenzie stepped down two steps and looked up at the majestic hollies.
"
Someone probably dug up a couple of wild seedlings and just stuck
'
em in the ground on a whim, never considering their ultimate size.

"
I grew up with this pair,
"
he added with obvious affection.
"
When I was a kid the first thing I learned to watch for were the boy holly, and the girl holly with the bright red berries; they marked the turn home.
"

"
Yes, but now they
'
re too big for the site they were planted on,
"
she repeated, feeling like the other side of a custody battle. They were her trees, after all, to do with as she wished.
"
I wanted to get a quote from you for cutting them down.
"

His look turned instantly dark.
"
Are you
kidding?
"

"
Or,
"
she added quickly,
"
cutting them way back. You could kind of take out a semicircle from the inside half of each one. On each side of the porch. Do you know what I mean? Kind of like
...
this,
"
she said, gesturing with her arm in a wide semicircle.

But her shoulder wasn
'
t up to the task.
"
Ayy
ii"
she said, gasping from the pain.

He gave her a sideways look, as if she
'
d dribbled tea down her chin.
"
Did you ever get that scratch looked at?
"

"
Yes, yes, yes,
"
she said, wincing and rubbing her shoulder through her jacket.
"
The blood tests, whatever they were, all showed normal.
I
think it might be Lyme disease.
"

"
They would have tested for that.
"

"
Okay, then it
'
s the curse of the Cursed Rose,
"
she snapped.

"
If you
'
re talking about the rose I saw you moping over a little while ago, I guess you
'
ve got the wrong rose. That
'
s a rugosa rose on Judith Brightman
'
s grave. God only knows how long they
'
ve been around—
England
had them two hundred years ago from
Asia
. People make tea and jellies from their hips, which are full of vitamin C. It
'
s not a real dangerous rose,
"
he said in his deadpan way.

She made a face.
"
All I know is that I was fine before I scratched myself on its thorn, and now I
'
m not. In any case, it
'
s
my
problem, isn
'
t it?
"
she added sweetly.
"
And so: Will you cut the hollies down, or will you prune them?
"

"
Neither.
"

Neither. Of course.

"
Do you run a landscaping service, or not?
"

He sighed and said,
"
Let
'
s try this another way. A holly grows very slowly. These hollies are irreplaceable. They
'
re also a valuable asset to your property, whether you realize it or not. Last but not least, that pair has overseen a fair amount of
Nantucket
history. I know that doesn
'
t mean much to you nomadic types. But around here it counts for a lot.
"

"
They
'
re not appropriate for their location,
"
she said, digging her heels in.

"
Appropriate, my
ass!"
he said, his patience exploding.
"
I
'
m sick of the word
'
appropriate
'
! That
'
s all we ever hear:
It
'
s not
appropriate
.
A tree farm
'
s not
appropriate
.
The noise from a chipper-shredder
'
s not
appropriate.
The tractor
'
s too noisy, the roo
ster crows too loud for a
residential neighborhood,
"
he said, spitting the last two words out with contempt.
"
Well, I
'
ve got news for you and yours, lady. The farm was here before half these houses, and those holly trees were here before
you.
And if you don
'
t
like
it
—
"

He brought himself to a screeching halt and
glared
at her with an absolutely furious expression on his face, as if she
'
d been some jaywalker who ambled onto the highway as he was rolling through in his Mack truck. Then, just as suddenly, he shifted down to a lower gear and continued quietly on his way.

"
Look
...
Miss Drew
..
. I was way out of line, there,
"
he said, taking a deep breath.
"
Obviously there
'
s a solution to this problem.
"

"
I should think so,
"
she said, wide-eyed and breathless, stunned by his vehemence.

"
Just move the front door.
"

"What?"

"
Sure. The porch is rotten anyway. Have your contractor move the doorframe to the east and rebuild the porch there; it
'
s not that big a deal.
"
McKenzie
'
s face took on a relaxed, almost joyful repose; he
'
d solved the problem, at least to his satisfaction.

"Mister
McKenzie. In the first place, I haven
'
t found a contractor I can afford
yet. And in the second place ...
in the second place,
I want the hollies out.
"

McKenzie pulled out a small, battered notebook from inside his shirt pocket.
"
Here
'
s someone you can afford,
"
he said, ignoring her demand.
"
His name is Billy Butkowski—Billy B., everyone calls him,
"
he said as he scribbled the name and phone number.
"
His wife just had their second kid; he
'
s hungry for all the work he can get.
"

He tore off the sheet and handed it to her with a neutral look.

Obviously they were at an impasse. Jane stared at the slip of
paper
. Then a thought occurred to her. She said,
"
What if we dig them up and move them? Could that be done?
"

"
With enough time and money, anything can be done,
"
McKenzie said. He stepped down and around the trees, gauging the distance between the roots and the house.
"
It
'
s iffy. I don
'
t know that I can get a tree spade in there.
"

"
So how much would it cost for me to have them dug up and planted nearer the road?
"
she asked, pleased that the damn issue of his heritage, or whatever it was, could be resolved without bloodshed.

"
It
'
s early in the season
...
they
'
re still dormant
...
if you do it now, before the spring rush
—
say, five hundred
dollars a tree.
"

"
Five
?  Oh.
I can
'
t afford that. Really.
"
Her tone was calm, dignified, and final.

He seemed, at last, to understand.
"
All right,
"
he said after a pause.
"
Then what about this: I
'
ll remove one of them, for nothing, and keep it to plant on my own property.
"

"
Done,
"
she said at once, relieved to be finished with the subject. They shook hands on it
—
she was surprised by the calluses on his palm, and the way his hand engulfed her own
—
and he left after setting a tentative date to begin removal of the tree.

"
He
'
s exhausting,
"
Jane said after he was gone. She sat back on the sheet-covered Empire sofa with her eyes closed and her feet up on a milk crate, recovering from this latest military skirmish. She wondered whether McKenzie had been like that with his wife. Of course he had.

We
'
re all the enemy to him—every one of us who
'
s had the misfortune to go to college or, God forbi
d,
had parents who did.

And yet, to see his hostility as town versus gown seemed oversimplified. Jane began to think it was subtler than that. Mac McKenzie wanted things kept just the way they
hap
pened to be when his mother gave birth to him: women in the kitchen, men in the field. He felt threatened by progress of any kind, whether it was the cutting down of trees, or a wife with a law degree.

Granted, Jane didn
'
t know him very well
—
he was the kind of man who would let only one or two people in his life do that
—
but if she had to guess, she
'
d say he put everyone he met in one of two camps: those who were out to preserve the world, and those who were out to rearrange it. Maybe that explained his obvious contempt for Phillip. He wouldn
'
t think much of a developer.

She tried to put McKenzie
—
and the headache he
'
d given her
—
behind her as she dragged herself back to work. Maybe she
'
d been going at the house too hard: twelve- hour days, almost three weeks without a break. She needed a night off, a little fun and laughter. She needed Bing.

So after she couldn
'
t push herself any longer, Jane wandered over to his house, at the risk of being mauled by Buster, to borrow some coffee from Cissy and to find out when her brother was due back on
Nantucket
.

"
Tomorrow,
"
Cissy told her.
"
He called a couple of hours ago, hoping you
'
d be here. But I told him you never break away for anything but food and drink. And,
"
she said, holding up a can of Folger
'
s,
"
I was right.
"

"
Well, considering how hard I
'
m supposed to be working, the house doesn
'
t seem to be getting anywhere,
"
Jane said, discouraged.