Harvest Home

important that she not get overly excited or emotionally upset, either of which conditions was likely to induce another attack. Her last, a week ago, had come as a result of her disappointment about the horse. There was a tantrum, followed by a seizure, and the doctor had to be called over from Saxony.

“It was in the attic.” Beth came in with the picnic hamper. “Kate, open the window over the sink, can you? It’s such a beautiful day out, a real New England day.” She set the hamper on the counter and turned. “Kate! Rocky Road ice cream? For breakfast?”

“It’s just eggs and milk, Mom, just breakfast food.”

“And condensed-milk sandwiches for lunch. You’ll be breaking out in pimples again, and none of the boys will-”

“-look at me. Who cares.”

After making an issue of the ice cream, Beth now chose to ignore it. Anything to avoid a scene; but while the rod was spared, the child was spoiled. I had long since given up protesting.

“What are you going to wear today, dear?” Beth asked brightly.

“This.”

“Blue jeans and a T-shirt? Wouldn’t you like to wear a dress? Something pretty? For the fair?”

“What’s so special about the fair, anyway? Honest, it’s all anyone talks about. Yokels.”

“Kate…” Beth remonstrated gently.

“Do you know they go crazy?”

“Who?”

“The villagers. Moon madness. When the moon’s full, they go dancing in the fields and do crazy things.”

I looked up from my puzzle. “Do they turn into werewolves and vampires?”

“Well, it’s true.” Kate banged her spoon for emphasis. “And there’s a ghost, too.”

“I haven’t heard anything about ghosts,” Beth said.

“There’s a ghost out in the woods-”

“Who told you?”

“Missy Penrose. It comes out at night and eats babies and goes riding down the road on a headless horse-”

I decided Kate’s sense of drama had confused local superstition with Washington Irving. From conversations with Robert Dodd, I had learned that Cornwall Coombe tended to be slightly mythic in its lore, but I had not heard anything about a ghost.

Beth tried to calm Kate, who was prancing around the table making wild moaning sounds and generally imitating a spirit. “Darling, don’t go getting excited now. Go up and put on a dress, please? You’ll look so pretty.”

When she had gone, Beth gave me a brief look and I knew what she was thinking. What are we going to do about her? It was the one thing troubling our existence, and the thing we both felt guilty about.

I could hear the creak of the wicker as she filled the Hammacher Schlemmer picnic hamper. Across the hedge Professor Dodd’s sun-porch window slid open. In a moment a voice called, “Anyone up over there?”

Beth crossed to the sink and leaned to our window. “Morning, Robert. Lovely day for the fair.”

“Yes, it is.”

“Good morning,” Maggie Dodd called. “Marvelous day Just listen to that bird.” Maggie was enthusiastic about everything, as if she took it as a personal responsibility that we should like everything about Cornwall Coombe Yet it seemed to me that though her touch was light, in her own bantering way she was always putting the village down. “How’s the picnic corning?” she asked.

“Just finishing.”

“I think you’re crazy, doing the whole thing yourself. I could have done the dessert, at least.”

“I wanted to. It’s chocolate mousse. How are the martinis doing?”

‘I’m just going to fix them. Ned doesn’t want martinis?”

“Doesn’t like them.”

“I’ll put in some Scotch, then. See you later. I’m going; to get Robert’s breakfast.”

Beth turned off the tap, dried her hands, and began wrapping the chicken breasts in foil. Beyond the hedge I could hear Maggie speaking to Robert, then silence, then another voice:

“D’Artagnan trembled.

“‘Certes,’ said Aramis, “I do injustice to the beauties of this thesis; but, at the same time, I perceive it would be overwhelming for me. I had chosen this text-tell me dear D’Artagnan…’”

I recognized what we had come to call the Invisible Voice; the man who had recorded Robert’s talking- books. It was a daily sound that we had become accustomed to, and through the summer I had caught portions of the remainder of Great Expectations, followed by Madame Bovary, and this week The Three Musketeers. Robert was reading his way through the classics.

“Darling, did you say you were going out to sketch?”

“Mm.”

“You’d better hurry; it’s getting late.” I finished the puzzle, tossed the paper aside, and went from the bacchante room into the kitchen, then started out the back door.

“Wait, Ned.” Beth went to the cork bulletin board, referred to a penciled slip of paper and did a few rapid calculations.

“Have you got some cash? Stop at the Widow’s and pay her five dollars. We owe for eggs and honey. And here-” handing me a paper sack-”take her the rest of the cinnamon buns.” She gave me an uncertain look.

I took the bag, at the same time drawing her into my arms.

“Mm?”

“Kate-?”

“I know.”

“You don’t know…” Her frustration put an edge to her voice that I seldom heard. “

“You’re not a mother. You don’t know.”

I held her for a moment, then released her and said, “Don’t worry It’s going to be O.K.” But I said it with an assurance I scarcely felt.

4

When the great back-to-the-land movement began Beth had suggested we make a clean break with the past. By mutual agreement we decided that no New York friends would clutter up our guest room, at least until Christmas. Consequently we were both isolated geographically and cut off from our old acquaintanceships as well. Which was not a problem- our parents all were dead, and what friends we might elect to have come and visit could well wait.

Still, though I had never confessed my doubts to Beth, at times I worried. Where were we to fit into this yesteryear place? Apart from the Dodds, whom would we have for friends? How was Kate going to fare at Greenfarms School? Were we crazy, burying ourselves in a one-horse town, where it was necessary to drive way out to the turnpike to find a shopping center or to see a movie, where people still believed that what was good enough for their fathers was good enough for them? How could they talk to me of painting, or I to them of corn?

Therein seemed to lie the answer. When in Rome… Though I had never been intimate with nature, next year I would plant corn. I would plow up the field at the foot of the property and put in corn and beans and tomatoes and early peas. I would get gardening books; I would learn about the soil and how it might produce, even for a city dweller. Formerly a lover of the pavements, now I would be a lover of the earth. There, at the corner of Penrose Lane, on this bright morning of the Agnes Fair, I laid claim to the land, swearing fidelity to it. I felt it was as Beth