Mulch Ado About Nothing (14 page)

Stefan Eckert looked as if he were dreaming, his eyes half-closed with contentment. Even Ursula was impressed. "This is what I'd like my yard to look like," she said, quietly for once.

Dr. Eastman said, "Fine work, Miss Winstead. How long has this garden been here?"

“Only five years come fall," she replied. "Not counting the two years I spent figuring out where I wanted the walls and walks and hedges."

“That's the true measure of a real gardener," Dr. Eastman said. "The patience to wait, the planning ahead…"

“And the pure mean-spiritedness to rip up anything or anyone that doesn't work out," Miss Winstead said.

Dr. Eastman paled, but didn't respond.

Eighteen

"Boy, that
was
scary,"
Jane
said as she hoisted? herself into Shelley's station wagon.

“Aren't you glad her remarks weren't aimed at us?" Shelley said, making a little shiver. "If I'd been Dr. Eastman, I'd be installing a new security system right now. We better hurry home. I've got to take the girls to their cooking lesson. They're starting a couple days late, but they can catch up in the next round of classes. The teacher says she covers the same thing the first day of each session, but after that it's different recipes."

“Does this mean they can take lessons the whole rest of the summer!" Jane exclaimed. "And by the way, what did this first group of lessons cost? I need to reimburse you."

“Only five bucks a day," Shelley said. "But we had to pay for the days they missed.”

After she'd pocketed Jane's check, Shelley abandoned her and gathered up their daughters and drove off to fetch the third girl, Katie's best friend, Jenny. Jane was glad she had a good excuse not to drive a summer car pool. As soon as Todd was old enough to drive, she'd be through with car pools, except for blind kids she drove to their special school once a week. She'd once filled in for one of the other women who'd broken her arm two years earlier and was getting time off in kind until she could drive again.

Enough of thinking about the distant future. The immediate future loomed.

She was going to have to do some work before the nursery guys delivered her "instant" garden. She went out the back door to find the pooperscooper in the garage. She left it by the patio table and spent a full fifteen minutes nudging along the trash bin onto the patio. She'd always figured poop scooping was somehow inherently a male job. She'd always made Mike or Todd do it. But today neither of them was around. And even Katie was gone. Not that Katie would acknowledge such a request.

In her travels around the yard, she got the tip of the crutch stuck in a chipmunk hole, and put it down once on a fallen branch that rolled away under her. But she managed to stay upright while she quartered the grass. Max and Meow, fresh from hunting mice in the field behind her house, abandoned their favorite activity to hang around with her.

“You guys are good cats. You do your business somewhere else.”

Max tried to rub against her leg in appreciation,but she moved the crutch accidentally and he fled for his life.

She'd barely wrestled the trash bin back in the garage when a big truck pulled up in front of the house. The first guy out of the truck lowered a plank and dollied off a huge box. "Where do you want this thing, lady?"

“Is it my fountain? In the middle of the yard, I thought."

“It takes electricity. Have you got a really long cord?" he said.

She wondered if this was sarcasm or a really stupid idea that sounded all right to him.

“Oh… no, I don't. I guess it'll have to go on the patio. I think there's an outlet by the back door. I never thought about what makes a fountain work.”

The next guy off the truck was her son Mike. He was grinning. "Show-off," he said as he passed her with a pot of purple and white impatiens. "Where does this go?”

Jane, as always, had made a list of what she'd ordered. She was an inveterate list maker. The kind of list maker who, when doing something not on the list, adds it so it can be crossed out. But her map of the yard was pretty awful. It had come out like a trapezoid instead of a rectangle.

“The big pot goes at the left end of the patio. The little one goes on the table. You do have the new umbrella for the table with you, right?”

She gave Mike the map and went to watch the man installing the fountain. It came in a lot of pieces that didn't look as if they'd all fit together. There was a pump (at least she assumed that was what it was) and tubing, clamps, and screws. The guy who was putting it together didn't even look at the directions. He must have done a lot of these before. He had a level and set the bottom basin in place, nudging small flat rocks under it until he was satisfied it was sitting properly. That was something she'd have never thought of.

This was the sort of thing, like scooping poop, that men were designed for. But she was glad once again that she had the cast and crutches as a good excuse for not being useful. Being a temporary invalid had a few benefits.

Apparently the man assembling the fountain hadn't noticed, however, and said, "Bring me a hose. We'll fill her up and see how she works."
Why do men always consider appliances feminine?
Jane wondered. The repairman she'd had in to fix the dishwasher two weeks ago did the same thing.

Jane stumbled to the reel where the hose was wound up, got drips on her sleeves while disconnecting the sprinkler, and dragged the hose to the patio, water dribbling down the side of her shorts and into her cast.

But it was worth the effort. Once the fountain starting circulating, it was delightful. The outlet at the top was concealed, and a slow, clear stream of water burbled out from it, trickling down into the first basin, filling it up and cascading into thesecond. Such a pleasant thing to hear water running so sweetly.

While she'd been watching the fountain installer and hauling around the hose, Mike and another young man had set out planters crammed with flowers where she'd indicated on the crummy map. She turned away from the fountain and was astonished at how nice the patio looked. So colorful and crowded with flowers in lovely pots. She had the awful feeling that she'd convince herself that she had to keep it all instead of renting it. It made the patio so inviting. She found herself looking at the table and thinking hard about getting some drinking glasses and little luncheon plates that would pick up the color of the flowers.

Show-off,
she said to herself.

The workers were almost ready to leave in half an hour. When one of the other summer helpers who was aimlessly sweeping fallen petals off the patio asked how she had hurt herself, she told him she'd fallen off a runway while doing a fashion show. Mike overheard this and gouged her shoulder, laughing. He'd raided the box of doughnuts that Shelley had brought earlier and shared them with the other guys.

“Mom, this really does look nice. I'm glad you did this," Mike told her. "Are you going to spring for keeping the planters?”

Jane nodded and said, "I'm afraid so. It's going to cost the earth, but it looks so nice. You'll mow the lawn tomorrow evening, won't you? I'd hate to lose someone out there.”

When the doughnuts were gone, and plants watered, the fountain guy gave Jane a wad of printed instructions about maintaining the fountain.

“Could I maybe put a few really tiny fishes in it?" she asked, thinking how the flash of goldfish would improve the looks of the fountain.

The man looked at her as if she'd lost her mind. "Fishes get it dirty, have to be fed, and what would you do with them in the winter?”

He had a good point.

“Mom, try not to get carried away," Mike warned. "Remember what happened to you when you tried to cartwheel down the runway at that fashion show.”

The crew departed, strengthened by Jane's doughnuts. Only then did the cats reemerge from hiding in the field. They were roaming around cautiously, sniffing everything new to determine if these pots of stuff were friends or enemies. Jane levered herself down onto one of the patio chairs, leaned back, and looked around with an enormous smile. This wouldn't fool the real gardeners in the class, but it was so pretty she didn't care.

As she sipped at her soft drink she'd laboriously brought outside in her waistband, she thought about the tour that morning. Miss Win-stead's garden was magnificent. It would be pure joy to have a garden like that. But an enormous amount of work, because Jane couldn't imagine having or spending the money for rocks and workers.

Her mind drifted naturally to the end of the visit, when Miss Winstead had made that remark about being able to tear out anything or anyone who didn't satisfy a gardener. Meaning Dr. Eastman and his late wife. And she thought about Shelley's remarks about getting a security system. Jane didn't really believe Miss Winstead was a physical threat to Dr. Eastman, but she was a substantial psychological threat. She tried to imagine what horror it would be to have someone hate you so much that she went around to all your speeches just to make a fool of you and make nasty personal remarks. Especially around other people.

She put both feet up on another chair, carefully balanced the crutches on a third, and closed her eyes halfway — trying to picture her garden looking like Miss Winstead's.

Jane was sound asleep in the patio chair, a bad crick in her neck, when Shelley dropped the girls off. She was embarrassed by being caught sleeping, much less slumped inelegantly in a patio chair.

“Mom!" Katie said. "We learned to make chicken cordon bleu! We're fixing it tonight for you. Mrs. Nowack stopped at the grocery store and let us buy the stuff. You owe her twenty-three dollars and six cents.”

The girls went in the house, giggling with the shrillness that only teenaged females could stand to hear. Shelley strolled into Jane's yard. "Sleeping? You really are turning into a sloth."

“How did you know I was sleeping?"

“You have a print of the top edge of the chair on the back of your neck. It's a nice waffle look."

“Okay, okay. So I took a little nap. How do you like the yard?"

“It's gorgeous. You even got a shrubbery over by the fence. What is it?"

“A burning bush. Mike threw it in with the rest because he said I'm going to like it. It looks pretty boring to me."

“It'll be fantastic — if a bit small — in the fall," Shelley said. "It's one of those things Suzie Williams has in her side yard."

“Oh, those are great bushes. I had no idea what they were called. I understand I owe you more money."

“No, the shopping today was almost the same cost as that pork roast you picked up for me last week that I've never reimbursed you for."

“Do you really think the girls can make chicken cordon bleu?"

“Only if I supervise. Which I intend to do. Denise tried to make scrambled eggs a while ago and managed to use five bowls, three forks, and about sixteen whisks. And left them all out on the counter to congeal. Three inexperienced girls could destroy your entire kitchen.”

Jane struggled to her feet and, in getting the crutches, nearly knocked the flowerpot off the patio table. "I'm not getting much better at this," she said.

“You will," Shelley said as she went in Jane'sback door, leaving Jane to make it inside by herself and carry her own empty soda can as well.

Shelley's voice from the kitchen drifted over her. "Denise! Don't just abandon that bowl. Rinse it and use it again!”

The chicken dinner
was
only
a
moderate success,
at least in Jane and Shelley's view. The girls had opened the oven so often to check on the progress that the chicken itself was ever so slightly underdone when they cut into it.

“Poultry needs to be fully cooked," Jane warned them. "At least pop it in the microwave for a minute to finish it up."

“Microwave?" Katie exclaimed as if her mother had said a dirty word. "The French don't use microwaves. It makes meat like leather.”

Jane replied, "The French were among the first countries to develop fabulous dinners with microwaves. I thought everyone knew that.”

Jane had made up this statement on the spur of the moment, but she felt she'd delivered it with great style and conviction.

“You lived in France, didn't you?" Shelley's daughter, Denise, asked.

“Off and on for several years," Jane said. One vote for her.

“That isn't what our teacher said," Katie countered. One vote against.

“Ask your teacher if she's ever eaten in France," Shelley suggested.

“I don't mean to discourage you girls, but birds really need to be well done. Put them back in the oven for a little bit if Katie feels so strongly," Jane advised.

“But the broccoli will be cold and soggy if we wait."

“I love cold soggy broccoli!" Shelley said. "Me, too," Jane added.

The girls did as they were told and the dinner turned out well enough even if the chicken got a bit too well done. They had to gnaw it rather than simply eating it. But the taste was good. And they could honestly praise the girls for this without alluding to the texture.

Jane sat back from the table, making her crutches, propped behind her chair, crash to the floor. "Sorry," she said, gathering them up. "Now it's time to clean up."

“We'll put everything in the dishwasher," Katie said. "Then we're going to a movie.”

Jane shook her head. "Not until the dishes are done and put away. That's part of cooking.”

Shelley took her aside and whispered, "If we want them to learn to cook, we need to give them a little leeway on the icky parts of the process. At least at first.”

Jane laughed. "Who was making them wash and reuse the bowls? Not me."

“But…" Shelley stopped herself and grinned. Then said to the girls, "You could hand-wash and dry them faster and still get to the movie in time.”