“You just said someone has to think about the future,” I cried. “You just said that. But what you meant is, You, MF Lombard, don’t have to think about the future you yourself want. You meant that I only have to think about the future you want for me.”
My father said, “Let’s talk about this tomorrow. The morning,” he quoted, “is always wiser than the evening.”
“Just sign me up for camp, Nellie,” I said. “Pay an enormous deposit you won’t get back, money that could be used for the farm, just send it off without telling me.”
With that point made, MF Lombard, the winner of the round, went upstairs. I had a momentary satisfaction before I remembered the more significant point, that Philip was going to own a portion of our property.
My mother’s assumption that we would go to college was so stubbornly imbued in her—and probably, to be fair, in my father, too—that there had been little need for her to speak much about it until we were teenagers. Unlike Dolly, who herself only held a high school diploma, Dolly whispering collegecollegecollege into her newborns’ ears.
By the time we got to high school my mother had become generally cranky, bent on making her pitch both overtly and subliminally for the colleges of her choice. She served us cocoa in her college mugs. She often related her adventures in higher education, stories that she’d suddenly recall.
There seemed also to be more visits than usual from her best college pals, one of whom was the dean of admissions at one of Nellie’s top ten picks. The dean, over breakfast at our kitchen table, had intimated that when we applied to Swarthmore, as of course we must, we could very likely expect not only the fat envelope but substantial aid. “You’ve got everything going for you,” she said to me. “Brains, naturally, grades, extracurriculars, and let’s not forget, you’ve got the farm card.”
The farm card?
My mother glared, Do not be rude.
It seemed to me that the exact minute I’d gone to high school she’d become disapproving of me full-time, a shocked look on her face when I told her I’d joined Future Farmers of America, as if FFA was beneath the station of a girl with a pedigree like MF Lombard’s. And when I’d wanted to sign up for auto mechanics instead of honors biology you might have thought I was throwing my life away by shooting heroin or having unprotected sex. She even discouraged me from continuing on in 4-H. “Oh please, Francie,” she’d sighed, “not another year showing your zucchinis.”
Whereas Dolly’s aspiration for Amanda and Adam was a brag-worthy university that would provide them with a marketable skill, Mrs. Lombard wanted William and Francie to become fully rounded, truly educated, cultivated people. She seemed to think that without Oberlin or Bates or Carleton or Williams we’d not know who Hesiod was, we’d forget to vote, we’d vote Hitler into power, we’d confuse good and well, we’d not appreciate a symphony orchestra, we’d track mud into museums, and most frightening, we’d admire terribly written thrillers and bosom heavers. College was four short beautiful years, she’d go on, when we could open out, all blossomy, when we could experience new ideas, when we could have the privilege of freedom, a time when we could study whatever interested us, although presumably she did not mean auto mechanics. If she hadn’t met Stephen Lombard, she reminded us, never would she have visited the farm, never married my father, and therefore we would never have been born. In the beginning was Oberlin College, the light, the way, world without end.
Nellie’s friend, the dean of admissions, said to me over breakfast in my own kitchen, “Here’s what I want to ask you, Francie. Do you want to farm anywhere—do you love farming? Or is your love for farming about your love for home?”
The question stank of Mrs. Lombard.
I did my best to remain calm. I did not mention that the Lombard property was historical, mysterious, and productive, that the woods were deep, the soil well tended. I didn’t point out that Amanda and Adam had no interest in the orchard life, and that someone was obliged to honor tradition. I said, “Most farm families would kill for their children to take over the operation. What, after all, is the point of having children if the parents just want them to go away?”
“Oh, honey!” the dean cried. “A parent wants her child to have a rich, full life. We want you to use your talents, to have the tools to be happy. It’s not that we want you to go, not at all! It’s that we have to let you go. This, believe me, is the most painful part of being a mother.” She went on to explain that college would equip me to make an informed choice about my future. I could study chemistry, biology, business, all courses that would help me if I decided to return to the orchard. I could network with other students who were interested in farming, make lifetime friends with people who would be helpful to my venture.