And anyway if you were Gideon, would you rather have a perfected operation to rule, one that you would never own? Or would you rather, by marriage, possess the property, a place that, yes, was a little bit of a catastrophe, but a place that was crying out for your organizational skills and your brawn, a place where the institutional knowledge meant the apples were truly delicious? Of course he would choose the Lombard Orchard, saying I do to Mary Frances and her entire family.
So in that period I supposed, one way or another, that my future was fairly secure. I always avoided Gideon at the market but I considered him slantwise; in the abstract and from a distance he was my betrothed. In my own room at night all alone I’d think haughtily to William, Gideon and I will do thus and such, outlining all the orchard improvements we would make. I did that even though in my mind Gideon was like an Amish doll with no face. Still, I was the only middle schooler that I knew of who had a firm proposal of marriage, no small accomplishment.
Late
17.
In Which We Play Euchre
Many events, some that were logical, and some that were not, took place in the next few years. In my school career I was in several plays and was for a time in love with Mr. Dronzek, the lord of drama who taught at both the middle and high schools. Mrs. Kraselnik remained the best teacher I was sure I’d ever have but she was not long for our particular world. She and the doctor got divorced when I was in seventh grade and they both moved away from the dream house. Brianna probably was responsible for all their unhappiness, but as with so many things, that was my secret. My father continued serving on the commission to study farmland preservation. Sherwood built an apple sorter that for the most part worked, a machine that incorporated Adam’s and Amanda’s baby blankets as cushioning for the fruit. At the library Nellie Lombard as always coerced young people to read quality literature and charmed babies to a stupor with lap-sit story time. We outgrew Cart Drill and without us it fizzled. Once William got to high school he scored many awards, including a cash prize for his robot up in Madison. No one told him he shouldn’t win.
It was after the four–five split that Amanda and I had stopped spending so much time together, depending on each other only when no one else was available. After the Geography Bee I had briefly assumed that our association was over but when she lost at the county level we were equal in our way again. There was no feud that divided us, no concrete before and after. It was funnily enough geography that changed our habits. Once I was in sixth grade we were in different buildings, the universe of the middle school a block away from the elementary school. Also, she had become interested in chess and Russia, her goal to be a diplomat and grandmaster stationed in Moscow. Whereas Coral and I, and our friend Jay, were busy writing plays together and learning lines for Mr. Dronzek’s productions, and going to vintage clothing shops in the city with Mrs. LeClaire, Coral’s mother. Because Coral had a tremendous singing voice and often spoke in a British accent, because of her general theatricality, my father referred to her as Sarah Bernhardt. To her face he’d say “How are you, Say-rah?” and “Have a good show, Say-rah,” which she pretended to be outraged by, calling my father Slim. “’Ey, Slim,” she’d say in her Cockney accent. It was extremely hard to stomach, their cornball. My mother sometimes called him Slim, too, which also was not terribly funny.
Although I was interested in the theater, at the end of eighth grade, in that summer, it was against my will that I went to drama camp. My mother forced me to do so, my mother starting The Four Rivers Camp Warfare.
The battle started in the spring, a few months before camp, on the day the yearlings went to slaughter. I was fourteen, William fifteen. The lambs had just been shorn, their sturdy musculature plain to see, and without the wool on their faces their watchful brown eyes were nakedly soulful, philosophers, you might think, all of them. Or anyway they were filled with life even though we knew they were terrifically brainless. William and I got up early on that April morning to help with the loading. When my father appeared in the lower yard with the grain bucket some of them did their twisting and popping jumps, joy—you could not call their feeling anything less than joy. It was still dark, which made the whole scene even worse. For as many times as we’d been through this exercise, as hardened as our hearts should have been, we were downcast. In the upper yard The Old Sheep came to the fence to pay her respects, her wool ragged over her sharp hips, her knees bald, her baaing guttural, a useless warning. There was always one in her position, a ewe in her last spring.