The next morning, Tom worked in the garden, moving from row to row as he planted tomato seedlings and marigolds. He had a two-month vacation because he was changing jobs, and he was determined to stay ahead of things in the garden this year. It was a very carefully planned bed, more like a well-woven rug than like a vegetable patch. Jo was on the porch, reading
He was flattered but also slightly worried that she wanted to make love every night. The month before, on her thirty-fourth birthday, they had drunk a bottle of Dom Pérignon and she had asked him if he was still sure he didn’t want to have a child with her. He told her that he didn’t, and reminded her that they had agreed on that before they got married. He had thought, from the look on her face, that she was about to argue with him—she was a teacher and she loved debate—but she dropped the subject, saying, “You might change your mind someday.” Since then she had begun to tease him. “Change your mind?” she would whisper, curling up next to him on the sofa and unbuttoning his shirt. She even wanted to make love in the living room. He was afraid Byron would wake up and come downstairs for some reason, so he would turn off the television and go upstairs with her. “What
“I always feel this way about you,” she said. “Do you think I like it the rest of the time, when teaching takes all my energy?”
On another evening, she whispered something else that surprised him—something he didn’t want to pursue. She said that it made her feel old to realize that having friends she could stay up all night talking to was a thing of the past. “Do you remember that from college?” she said. “All those people who took themselves so seriously that everything they felt was a fact.”
He was glad that she had fallen asleep without really wanting an answer. Byron puzzled him less these days and Jo puzzled him more. He looked up at the sky now: bright blue, with clouds trailing out thinly, so that the ends looked as if kite strings were attached. He was rinsing his hands with the garden hose at the side of the house when a car came up the driveway and coasted to a stop. He turned off the water and shook his hands, walking forward to investigate.
A man in his forties was getting out of the car—clean-cut, pudgy. He reached back into the car for a briefcase, then straightened up. “I’m Ed Rickman!” he called. “How are you today?”
Tom nodded. A salesman, and he was trapped. He wiped his hands on his jeans.
“To get right to the point, there are only two roads in this whole part of the world I really love, and this is one of them,” Rickman said. “You’re one of the new people—hell, everybody who didn’t crash up against Plymouth Rock is new in New England, right? I tried to buy this acreage years ago, and the farmer who owned it wouldn’t sell. Made an offer way back then, when money meant something, and the man wouldn’t sell. You own all these acres now?”
“Two,” Tom said.
“Hell,” Ed Rickman said. “You’d be crazy not to be happy here, right?” He looked over Tom’s shoulder. “Have a garden?” Rickman said.
“Out back,” Tom said.
“You’d be crazy not to have a garden,” Rickman said.
Rickman walked past Tom and across the lawn. Tom wanted the visitor to be the one to back off, but Rickman took his time, squinting and slowly staring about the place. Tom was reminded of the way so many people perused box lots at the auction—the cartons they wouldn’t let you root around in because the good things thrown on top covered a boxful of junk.
“I never knew this place was up for grabs,” Rickman said. “I was given to understand the house and land were an eight-acre parcel, and not for sale.”
“I guess two of them were,” Tom said.
Rickman ran his tongue over his teeth a few times. One of his front teeth was discolored—almost black.
“Get this from the farmer himself ?” he said.
“Real-estate agent, three years ago. Advertised in the paper.”
Rickman looked surprised. He looked down at his Top-Siders. He sighed deeply and looked at the house. “I guess my timing was bad,” he said. “That or a question of style. These New Englanders are kind of like dogs. Slow to move. Sniff around before they decide what they think.” He held his briefcase in front of his body. He slapped it a couple of times. It reminded Tom of a beer drinker patting his belly.
“Everything changes,” Rickman said. “Not so hard to imagine that one day this’ll all be skyscrapers. Condominiums or what have you.” He looked at the sky. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’m not a developer. I don’t even have a card to leave with you in case you ever change your mind. In my experience, the only people who change their minds are women. There was a time when you could state that view without having somebody jump all over you, too.”
Rickman held out his hand. Tom shook it.
