The Excellent Lombards(4)

“I dwellth not! I’m only thinking of the will, and how maybe you could, in that document, jog Sherwood’s memory, for the final tally, this teacup, that teacup.”

“He remembers,” my father said. “Of course he does. He’s grateful.”

“Of course he does! My God, Jim.”

They were blissfully quiet for a while but then my mother had to start it up again. “Anyway, the normal course of action, if you weren’t going to make a sanctimonious gesture to your cousin—wouldn’t it be to give your share into my custodial care until William and Francie could have a crack at it? Assuming they want to inherit the bounty of the ages. And carry on the…cult.”

We recalled what she’d said about the farm. It was true that our orchard was the most important feature of the world.

“Assuming,” she went on, “that the Queen and her right-of-way, and her other well-placed acres, doesn’t ruin everyone.” My mother called Aunt May Hill the Queen, a name that did not suit her.

“Would you stop talking? Please, Nellie.”

Yes, yes, we were absolutely on his side—he should give her an apple to fill her mouth, a gentle stuffing.

“I think what you’re saying, Jim, is that if I had ownership I’d screw Sherwood over. Which, okay, I admit, is sometimes an appealing thought.”

My father was again gazing out the window, as if fields under snow was a landscape that had variation of untold interest.

“You actually,” she said, “you actually don’t trust me.” She said this as if she’d been stricken by awe.

“That is absurd,” he cried. “And you know it.” Jim Lombard went ahead and at that very particular moment made a remark that was out of place in the timetable of the fight. He said, “There’s a rest stop in two—”

When she lurched back against the seat, preparing to be shrill, I finally yelled, “What are you talking about?”

William took up the call, sticking his head between their high-backed seats, as tall as thrones. “You shouldn’t argue.”

“We’re not,” my mother spit, “arguing.”

“It sounds like it,” William pointed out.

My father, who was always truthful, said, “We are arguing.”

“Here’s what I want, Jim.” My mother, for her part, did not like to leave a task unfinished. “I want Sherwood, when you’re gone, to implement every single one of his lunatic ideas. May Hill will have to wrastle him to the ground, think of that! When the whole operation is in complete disarray William and Francie will step in and save them. That,” she snapped, “is my dream.”

We were not only further bewildered by their discussion but, more critically, unsure now about whose side we were on. My father’s for agreeing with us about their arguing or my mother’s for foretelling our marvelous future? I wanted to cry because of their game and also because the conversation reminded me of a secret I had, a sliver of talk I’d once overheard, something awful my mother had said to Gloria, the hired hand. It was a snippet I couldn’t even repeat to William. They’d been in the kitchen maybe a year or two before when Gloria asked my mother if she thought William and I would stay on the farm when we were grown, if we’d want to take it over. My mother said, “Oh, who knows! Don’t you think William’s too dreamy and too interested in other things to be a farmer? And Francie”—she burst out laughing—“is too full of spleen.”

Spleen? What was that? Why was it funny? For the life of me I could not find out what spleen meant; I couldn’t understand the largest component of my character. I couldn’t ask William because what if it was a hideous stain or germ, amusing to an observer, that was soon going to overtake my hands, my legs, my face? The spleen was going to keep me from being a farmer and when I remembered that fact I was very sorry for myself, a sad glum girl.

In the car my father said, “We’re going to get out and stretch.” In order to ensure that his wife take the exit ramp he added that he himself had to use the bathroom.

“Take the ramp or not take the ramp?” my mother considered. “Make you hold it all the way to Minneapolis? Oh, Jim, let me think about this.”

They both then did something we couldn’t stand. They both unaccountably started to laugh. “You’ll be the death of me,” he said to her.

“And then I’ll be stuck with that asinine will. Jesus Christ.”

They laughed again.

“If you croak,” she said, “if you leave me with Sherwood and Dolly and May Hill, I’ll hunt you down.”

We could hardly move, William and I, in the parking area. My father giving the farm to Sherwood? My mother hunting him down—what did that mean? My father dying—no! He wasn’t really going to do that, but the rest of us without a house? Sherwood building a metal home with a marble run? “I don’t have to go,” I said. Their sudden laughter, the way their argument seemed to end, was possibly the most confounding thing of all.

“Yes, you do,” my mother said.

“I don’t.”

William squeezed his eyes shut for her, he bore down, as if he were trying to summon urine for her pleasure. “I’m fine,” he concluded.

When my parents gave up on us and went off to the visitor center on their own I started to cry. We were left, we were left, we were left now and we were going to be left later, left without the orchard. William looked out the window to the cold travelers walking their dogs in the dirty snow. He was crying, too, the Lombard children as good as orphans, might as well start now, brother and sister, hand in hand, abandoned on the highway, an apple each, a favorite book, a few Jolly Ranchers, green only, a song to sing for company, nothing, nothing else, no place to roam but everywhere.