At least the mortgage was paid, but that was just the first mortgage. George had taken out a second, and thank God Nan was such a trusting soul and had signed off on it. Borrowing money was such a mystery to her. It was almost as if she saw it as a gift to be paid back at leisure, or maybe even not at all. And, as always, God would provide.
Banish these thoughts!
And these thoughts were now being rather easily banished by the root beer float, which had a Novocain-like power of deadening his every trouble.
George moved through the gate, then toward the fence so he could keep a discrete watch on the angel's trumpets. It simply would not do to have children wandering around back there, testing out the pretty flowers and seeds and ending up wandering around in psychotropic trances. Of course, he had forgotten to post
DO NOT TOUCH
signs on the plants.
What's this? he thought, his attention drawn to activity far beyond the angel's trumpets and at the very edge of the woods. Who the heck was that checking out the white oak? Why, what an unpleasant surprise; it was Miss Price. What was it with that tree that seemed to attract her like iron filings to a magnet?
As George approached the tree, he noticed, shocked, that it had taken a dramatic turn for the worse. Not a single crinkled leaf remained on its branches, which now had appeared to wither and blacken. Even the trunk itself appeared charred black, as if it had just been cooked in a forest fire.
“My God!” cried George, his eyes lifted to behold the spectacle of a tree dying before his eyes. “Look at it! Ah, and look who's here. It's Miss Price. You decided to come back for some more tree gazing. Why is that, Miss Price?”
“The tree must come down,” Miss Price said portentously.
“Huh?”
“I said you must have this tree cut down.”
“Well, yes, Miss Price, but you've already told us that. What business is it of yours?”
“The welfare of all trees in this community is my business, Mr. Fremont. As I've told you, I grew up right here, almost exactly on this spot. I knew this tree quite well. I do not want to see it in misery. Put it out of its misery, Mr. Fremont.”
“Uh, sure, sure. I'm sure Nan and I plan to do that. It's just that I didn't realize its condition was so far advanced. I mean, wow, look at it!”
“So far advanced that in the matter of weeks, maybe even days, it will fall. When it falls, it will probably wreck either this nice privacy fence, or worse, as far as your wife is concerned, her beautiful flower beds over there, to say nothing of your little shed.”
George gulped. He certainly didn't want that. But the cost! Where would they get the money to do that?
“You're thinking about the cost, aren't you, Mr. Fremont?”
George stared at Miss Price, astonished.
“How'd you know that? Well, I'm not sure my thoughts are a matter for you to concern yourself with, Miss Price.”
“I know how you can get that tree cut down, get the stump taken care of, and the site cleaned up, and have it carted away, dirt cheap,” Miss Price said. “I know someone who's just getting into the business and needs to get the word out. What better place to start but here?”
George frowned. He was torn between the appealing prospect of paying virtually nothing to clear up a backyard problem and the nagging suspicion that there was a huge catch lurking somewhere in Miss Price's offer.
“Well, we'd want references,” he said. “We don't want just anybody learning on the job with a big tree like this. We'd want somebody who's experienced, with references.”
“Sure,” Miss Price said. “And those kinds of people cost a lot. But I must repeat myself. You must cut down this tree, Mr. Fremont. Don't let the poor thing suffer.”
George bit his lip. He fought back an urge to throttle Miss Price.
“Can I help you to your car, Miss Price? Or you're certainly welcome to stay for a root beer float. But you'd better hurry because the ice cream's melting fast.”
“Thank you, Mr. Fremont, but I'm quite capable of making it back to my car on my own.... And, please, don't do anything to that tree without contacting me first.”
Before George could warn her never to return, Miss Price bounded across the north end of the yard and down the hill with an agility that would have put him to shame.
“George!” It was Nan, whose voice he could barely hear above the cacophony of the root beer-enlivened crowd. “George! What are you doing over there?”
George sauntered back toward the patio as Nan threaded her way toward him through the knots of guests. She regarded him with concern.
“Why are you being so antisocial, George? And could that have possibly been Miss Price you were talking to?”
“It was. She wants us to cut the tree down.”
“What is the deal with her anyway? I want to cut the tree down, too. But what's her big stake in all this is what I want to know.”
George shrugged.
“She knows the tree from when she lived here,” he said. “She wants it put out of its misery. She said she knows someone who'll cut down the tree, remove the stump, the whole kit and caboodle for dirt cheap.”
“That so?” said Nan. “Well, I'm getting sick and tired of all these busybodies trying to tell us what to do with our property. Why, you should have seen that awful Dr. Brockheimer! George, sheâ”
George made bug eyes at Nan and gestured with a quick nod to a point over her right shoulder. She turned to see Shirelle and Dr. Brockheimer standing rigidly behind her. Shirelle looked pale and sheepish. Dr. Brockheimer had obviously been crying; she daubed at her eyes and puffy cheeks with a wadded-up Kleenex.
“Time for us to go, Nan and George,” Shirelle said. “Dr. Brockheimer wanted to say something to you first. Dr. Brockheimer?”
After some more daubing and a few false starts at making what was obviously a little mini-speech she had been preparing, Dr. Brockheimer finally spoke.
“Nan, I can't tell you how sorry I am to have treated you and your gardens so cavalierly.” Here, Dr. Brockheimer paused to sniffle and apply the Kleenex to her misting eyes. “I was very rude to you and to your husband.” She turned to face George with a meek, solicitous smile. George smiled forgivingly while having no idea what she was talking about. “In absentia, of course. I hope you both will forgive me. No one's ever stood up to me like that, Nan . . . and . . . I admire that. I truly do. I'd like to consider you my friend.”
Dr. Brockheimer stretched out her arms toward Nan. Nan, moved to tears herself, opened her arms to enfold the smaller woman.
Watching this act of repentance and forgiveness unfold, Shirelle found herself transformed. An hour ago, she was a shame-faced apologist for Dr. Brockheimer, seeking to ingratiate her with the Fremonts, yet mortified by her arrogant and boorish behavior. Watching the two women embrace, she became a cherubic angel of hope. The sun appeared to have gotten the message. It chose that very moment to peek out of the clouds and cast a beam directly onto her rosy, freckled cheeks. She started to cry.
George was taken aback by this showy manifestation of womanly emotions. His first impulse was to about-face and hightail it back to the root beer stand, or maybe it was time for another pulled pork sandwich. But George was bigger than his base prejudices. In a burst of genuinely inspired yet artificial goodwill he, too, thrust out his arms for a hug from Dr. Brockheimer. By then, though, Dr. Brockheimer and Nan had unclasped, and Dr. Brockheimer had turned to head down the steps to the driveway. That left George embracing millions of air molecules that had come within the range of his grasp. He sheepishly drew his arms back in and dropped them limply to his sides. Dr. Brockheimer wheeled around to face Nan.
“I'm sorry we had our differences today,” she said, her voice having lost its tremor and regained its bite. “Maybe I came on a little strong. I do that sometimes. I still want to talk to you about plant whispering. I also want to see you in action. This could be big for me
and
for you! When can we do it?”
Nan recoiled briefly, then perched her fingertips delicately on her sternum, a sign of what everyone there except Dr. Brockheimer knew to be of temporary confusion and speechlessness.
“Well,” said Dr. Brockheimer, “you'll hear from me later, probably through Shirelle.”
Dr. Brockheimer wheeled to her right with military precision, then loped clumsily down the steps, kicking up pea gravel with every footfall. Shirelle, still misty-eyed, hugged George and Nan.
“Thanks for the wonderful time, Mr. and Mrs. Fremont,” she said. “The food was great and the floats were dreamy. See you next week.”
She had to quick-step it to catch up with Dr. Brockheimer, who was already striding purposefully down the driveway and toward the street.
“Well, that woman is quite the enigma,” Nan said. “One minute she's coming on like a freight train and the next she's a blubbering puddle of helplessness. Then, back again. How am I supposed to teach her how to
talk
to flowers? Or why should I even try?”
“We don't need to worry about that now,” said George, extending his arms to embrace her. “Our guests are leaving. Let's be good hosts and bid them all adieu with smiles on our faces and laughter in our hearts.... By the way, what happened to you right before Shirelle and Dr. Brockheimer arrived? You had the shakes pretty bad there for a minute.”
“That? Oh, it was Marta talking about Dr. Sproot. She said to watch out because she's on the warpath again. I guess I got a little mad.”
George chuckled. “Hmmm,” he said. “Maybe Shirelle ought to go get her shotgun after all.”
Clinging to each other like two strands of a clematis vine, George and Nan toured the yard and made as many stops as it took to say thanks and good-bye to their guests, even waving to the Jerlicks, who, as usual, dropped their napkins and empty cups right on the lawn, as unabashedly as if they had just deposited them in the garbage can.
After another fifteen minutes, all that remained were the McCandlesses and the Winthropsâwho stood looking at George, awaiting his annual post-party announcement. George cleared his throat and broke free of Nan's embraceâa little too abruptly, she thought.
“Your attention, please,” he said. “It appears all the riffraff have blown away. Time to break out the hard stuff.”
Â
As the sun dipped into its summer evening zone, and the Muskies wrapped up their 12â3 laugher over the Starlings, the Winthrops and McCandlesses got up listlessly from their chairs and began to move toward the steps. The McCandlesses were already halfway to the driveway, with Steve Winthrop right behind them, when the slowpoke of the group, Juanita, finally rose from her wine-induced semi-stupor, turned toward the back, and stopped abruptly, staring at the woods.
“What is it?” wondered Nan, gaping. Her third glass of merlot had apparently unhinged her jaw.
George laughed. “Better close up,” he said. “The male wrens are looking for homes again, and your mouth is just about the right size.”
“My gosh! Your tree! It's like the Leaning Tower of Pisa.”
All heads turned toward the back, and there was the dying white oak, only not nearly as vertical as it was when George stood next to it with Miss Price. Now, it had tipped precipitously toward the west, part of its root system unearthed, and leaning at a sixty-degree angle like an arboreal sword of Damocles over the shed and Nan's new bed of brilliantly flowering liatris and rudbeckia. Only the bracing effect of its massive branches had apparently prevented it from toppling over, and several of them had cracked and broken.
“Good Lord!” cried George. “When did
that
happen?”
“Must have been in the past, what, fifteen minutes?” said Nan, whose mouth opening had returned to its customary aperture. “We must have been too besotted by wine to notice.”
“Well, good grief,” said Steve, who was now standing there, along with the Winthrops, staring at the tree. “You'd think it would have creaked or groaned. The lowest branches look like they snapped. Wouldn't we have heard that?”
“I heard a groan,” said Jane. “I thought it was just Alex. Tee-hee-hee.”
“Why do weird things always happen in your yard?” Jane said. “You poor Fremonts. Haven't you had enough drama in your backyard to last you a lifetime?”
“Apparently not,” said Nan with a sigh. The couples exchanged another round of hugs and farewells, then the Winthrops and McCandlesses picked their way down the steps, careful even after three glasses of wine not to disturb Nan's pea gravel.
“George, on to the Internet, chop-chop. There's gotta be a twenty-four-hour-a-day, seven-day-a-week tree service around here somewhere. That tree has to come down, and I mean right now.”
George disappeared into the house and emerged, downcast, a few minutes later. He pretended to watch the unsteady clot of Winthrops and McCandlesses passing out of view in the course of their stop-and-start transit down Payne toward their homes.
“George?”
“Okay, Nan-bee, but there's one little problem. It's called family finances. We can't afford it. We're either going to have to get Jerry over here with his chain saw, or we're going to have to take Miss Price up on her offer.”
Nan shuddered, then picked the last wine bottle up off the table, put it to her lips, and glugged down the remaining contents.
“I'm not sure I trust Jerry with a project that big. Besides, he'd charge us, of course, and I'm guessing more than we'd want to pay. Looks like Miss P.'s our only option.”