Pigeons cooed and warbled as they courted in the barn. A sweet breeze tugged at my hair, and a cow lowed contentedly far out across the pasture. I was crossing the yard to the back door when Earnest pulled up in his truck. The parking brake ratcheted and he stepped out grinning.
“What a day!” he called to me. “This is what you live for up here. Makes it all worthwhile.” He went around to the tailgate to rummage in the bed.
When he pulled in, I had stopped, paralyzed, unable even to say hello. Still smiling, Earnest turned and started toward me carrying a pair of red toolboxes. “So how’re you doing up there, Pilgrim?”
At the sight of his broad smiling face and solid, square body, I burst into tears. In my pursuit of self-punishment, I had never let his simple kindness and camaraderie fully penetrate, I’d kept them out because they were at odds with my goal of feeling rejected by the world, suffering universal disapproval. Another shameful thing. I exploded now. Tears sprayed from my eyes, I coughed on sobs. And crying was yet another shameful thing. I was a cliché, the classic fragile woman with no recourse besides emotional breakdown.
Earnest looked alarmed. “Is everything all right? Is Diz okay? Where’s Jim? Jesus, Ann, what—”
“I have to leave. I’ve totally screwed up. Shit, shit, fuck! I’ve screwed everybody up!” Choked out between wrenching sobs.
“Whoa! How?” He set down his toolboxes but didn’t come any closer, as if I had something that might be catching.
“By doing everything! By being who I am! By being stupid my whole life.”
Earnest looked toward the house, then came forward and took me by the arm and led me back to the other side of his truck. He propelled me toward the rear fender, where I leaned, moaning and burbling.
Eventually, I got to the money stuff.
“Oh, man.” He peered over the hood at the back door again, and I realized he was worried that Diz would see all this. “Jesus.”
He hovered uneasily while I cried and snarled at myself and leaked. After a bit, he opened the cab door and found a rag and gave it to me. I blew my nose in it and smeared my eyes with the oil on it. I was nearing empty, moving beyond caring what happened next.
“I don’t know if anybody can totally fuck up,” he said. “Not totally. Even me, and I’ve done a better job than most.”
“Well, you’ve met someone now.” I looked up at him and felt suddenly impatient with him. “I’ve just screwed your best friend! You should be mad at me! What’s the matter with you?”
“I guess I must be fucking up again.” His face became impassive for a moment, but then his eyes widened suddenly. “Here’s Diz,” he said. And there she was, coming out of the barn. Not in the house after all. We were in full view. My heart began to pound, my terror instantly renewed.
“Earnest! What are you doing to that poor woman?” she called. She chuckled and came toward us. When she got closer and could really see what a mess I was, she gave a resigned sigh and lifted her eyes heavenward. Still being sardonically funny.
“What now?” she asked.
That was a hard day.
When I told Diz, she was speechless, aghast, before the fury hit. Rage filled her face. She spun away, then turned back: “How could you? How dare you! When we went out on a limb to give you your little exercise in self-pity? Your little masochistic haven? I told Jim we shouldn’t do it! I told him you were a narcissistic twit without the character, the sand, to follow through on anything in your whole spoiled yuppie life! But I never, never dreamed it would be our money—our money!—you’d flake out on.”
“Diz—” Earnest began.
“No! She needs to hear it! Who does she think she is? We’re running a farm here, not a rehab spa for troubled orphan girls! We need the damn money! That’s why we sold the goddamned property. It wasn’t optional!”
She stopped there, literally sputtering, unable to find words adequate to the task.
I didn’t say anything. First, I deserved it. Second, I was stunned at how well Diz had scoped me.
Earnest took Diz’s arm, and though she tried to jerk it out of his grip, he forcibly turned her around and led her back toward the barn. He didn’t let go as he bent his head toward hers and made her listen. Eventually, she answered back. They conferred, Diz vehement, Earnest steadfastly calm, determined.
After a minute or two, Diz went over to the pasture fence, kicked it, then leaned on the topmost rail and looked out over the fields.
Earnest came back to me. “It’s bad timing for them. I told her we should wait till Jim gets home, try to talk it over and figure out what to do so it’s not a disaster for everybody.”
I nodded.
We waited. Diz went into the house. Beautiful day, getting hot. I held myself and shivered, waiting for Brassard to get home.
Chapter 12
So, paradoxically, my financial nosedive was what kept me there.
One day, I was on the verge of quitting—giving Brassard the last ten grand from my inheritance, then putting the land up for sale and heading back to Boston. The next, I was broke and a debtor who owed money to good people who needed the cash I’d promised and who had no wherewithal to take up the slack. I couldn’t just walk off and leave the Brassards ten grand in the hole. Even putting the land up for sale wouldn’t help: Earnest had said it had been on the market for two years before I came along—too hard to get to—and with the economy the way it was, nobody had the liquid capital to invest in marginally useless land. Not in time to get money to Brassard anytime soon.
I considered calling Cat and other
