At Home on Ladybug Farm Read online

  “Oh, yeah. That dude that painted on the ceiling.”

  Bridget gave the bottom corner a final once-over with her sponge, and stepped back with her bucket of soapy water. “There’s no signature,” she pointed out.

  “Traveling muralists were commissioned, just like any other craftsperson,” Lindsay said. “They rarely signed their work.”

  “Wow,” said Lori reverently. “A real work of art, right on our walls. It’s like one of those stories you hear about people finding Picassos in their attics. Should we have it appraised?”

  Lindsay had to smile. “Hate to disappoint you, sweetie, but without a signature it’s not worth much. Besides, even if it were valuable, how would we get it off the wall?”

  Lori’s sigh was wistful. “It just makes you wonder, though, doesn’t it? About who painted it, and when, and why?”

  “And why anyone would cover up something so beautiful,” added Bridget.

  “There’s something odd about it,” Cici said, scrutinizing the painting from the opposite doorway. “It looks out of place, somehow.” She shrugged. “Maybe that’s why they covered it up. Ida Mae, are you certain you don’t remember this alcove ever being here?”

  Ida Mae, whose curiosity over all the racket had finally gotten the best of her, had come to watch the final stages of the unveiling and remained to polish away the soap and water with a collection of old towels. She straightened stiffly from gathering the last of the towels and pointed out irritably, “I can’t be expected to know everything, can I? Used to be paintings and whatnot all over these walls. Years pass, things change.” And that appeared to be all she was going to say on the matter.

  “That must mean it was walled over before . . .” Here Cici paused delicately. No one had ever been able to persuade Ida Mae to reveal her age, or even to pin her down on when she had first come to work in the house. And when Ida Mae made no sign of clarifying the point now, Cici merely concluded, “Well, not long after it was painted.”

  “Peoples’ tastes change,” Bridget pointed out. “Maybe someone brought in a new bride, and she didn’t like murals on the walls.”

  “Or alcoves,” Lindsay agreed.

  “I still say it looks odd,” Cici said. “Off center or something. Maybe it’s because it’s opposite the windows. It’s like an optical illusion.”

  “I see what you mean,” Lindsay agreed hesitantly. “It’s a little disorienting.”

  “Which is probably why they covered it up,” Bridget said.

  “But we’re not going to, are we Mom?” Lori insisted. “I mean, this is just the coolest thing ever!”

  “It is kind of cool,” agreed Cici, grinning. The other women chimed in, “Of course we’re keeping it!” and “We’ll never cover it up!”

  Lori darted forward and hugged her mother impulsively. “I really understand why you love this place now! Every day is like a treasure hunt. Why wouldn’t everybody want to do this?”

  Cici hugged her back, but her smile faded into a shrug of helpless resignation as she looked over Lori’s shoulder at her two best friends.

  As dusk fell, all three women peeled back the dust covers on their living room furniture, sitting out on the porch, and settled themselves in to watch the sun set. Cici inched between two wing chairs and an armoire to find a place on the sofa, swinging her feet up to rest on an end table. Lindsay sprawled on a cushy hassock with her feet resting on the arm of the sofa, and Bridget curled up in one of the armchairs.

  “Ida Mae is going to have a fit if we leave this furniture out here another night,” Bridget commented.

  “I thought she was going to start moving it back in, stick by stick, all by herself.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Cici said, stretching back. “I kind of like the furniture out here. It’s so . . .”

  “Trashy?”

  “I was going to say ‘rustic.’ Anyway, she’ll have to get used to it. I can finish the sanding in the morning, and we should be able to get the stain on tomorrow if everyone pitches in. But it’s going to take three days for the finish to dry hard enough to put furniture back.”

  “Just as long as everything is in place in time for company,” Bridget said.

  “Not a problem,” Cici assured her. “Once we get started, it’s just a matter of waiting for it to dry.”

  Somewhere in the distance, a bird began a funny little song. A pink glow outlined a cloud behind the mountaintops, giving it the illusion of being surreally white, lit from within. They turned as one to appreciate the sight, and Lindsay murmured, “This may be my favorite time of year. Right before the leaves come out to clutter up the view with all that green, the light is so vivid. The colors are so pure.”

  Bridget replied, “I don’t know. There’s nothing prettier than apple blossom time.”

  “Face it,” Cici said, “we live in the most beautiful place in the world, no matter what time of year it is.”

  No one could argue with that.

  Then Lindsay said, “I’m afraid we lost a little ground today in the battle to deromanticize this place for Lori.”

  Cici gave a half-smothered grunt of laughter. “I’m not sure it’s possible to deromanticize anything for a twenty-year-old girl.”

  “Be warned,” Bridget said. “Another business plan is in the air.”

  “Sheep?” inquired Lindsay.

  “Sheep.” Bridget was thoughtful for a moment. “The thing is, it’s not a bad idea . . . if we were thirty years younger.”

  “Neither is the bed-and-breakfast,” Cici said, “if we had the time, money, and energy to spend developing it.”

  “I just don’t want to spend my declining years dipping sheep and carding wool.”

  “The lanolin is really good for your hands,” Lindsay pointed out.

  “But the very thought of having to learn a whole new set of skills,” Cici objected, masking a small shudder, “an entirely new trade . . . what is ‘carding wool,’ anyway, and why would I want to learn how to do it? I don’t use half the things I know as it is. Why do I have to know more?”

  “Hear, hear.” Bridget sighed. “The older I get, the more I’m convinced life is a game for the young.”

  “What I hate,” said Cici, “is being constantly reminded how much smarter they are than I am.”

  “They’re not smarter,” Lindsay protested. “They can just think faster.”

  “Think faster and learn better,” qualified Bridget. “I used up my last brain cell learning how to operate my microwave oven.”

  “I can’t even program my voice mail,” admitted Lindsay.

  “But show me one techno-geek who can recite the periodic table and knit a cable stitch sweater.”

  “At the same time.”

  “Yeah, and I’d like to meet one person under twenty-five who knows how to operate the Dewey Decimal System.”

  Cici looked at Bridget. “Do they still use that?”

  Lindsay said, “Actually, I don’t think kids are really smarter or faster than we are. We just have a lot more stuff in our brains to sort through before we come up with the right answer. If you’re under thirty, all you have to know these days to do almost anything in life is how to push a button.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Yeah.”

  Lindsay slanted a glance toward Cici. “But you could have checked to make sure the sander was plugged in.”

  “Wasn’t it you who wanted to call 911 to help us get out of the dining room when all we had to do was crawl under the piano?”

  “I think Lindsay is right,” Bridget said. “We’d all be a lot smarter if we didn’t have so much on our minds.”

  Her pronouncement was met with stares. “I mean, I read somewhere that we’ve actually lost something like two percent of our brainpower over the past century. We can’t solve problems because we’re used to technology solving them for us. And the very technology that was supposed to make life easier has actually made it more complicated. The average caveman used to spend four hours
a week providing food and shelter for his family. The average American spends over a hundred hours a week doing the same thing. How has life gotten easier?”

  They thought about that for a moment. “Clearly, that caveman did not live in a hundred-year-old house with an adolescent boy and a college-age girl,” Cici said.

  “Which is just one more way in which his life was simpler.”

  They sat in silence for a moment, listening to the distant bird, watching the sky turn ever-deepening shades of cobalt.

  Lindsay said, “We should make a display case or something for the things we find here.”

  “Like a piece of old chain?”

  “Well, maybe not that. But someone used that tool one time, to work on this house. I think he should be remembered. And maybe someone wore that ribbon in her hair, a long time ago, or hung a brooch on it, or used it to tie up a bouquet of flowers. It would be nice if it had a home again.”

  “You,” said Cici, with a small shake of her head, “are the most romantic person I know.”

  “There’s not a thing wrong with that,” Bridget pointed out mildly.

  When the front door opened, and the screen door creaked, no one was surprised to see Lori standing there. “Mom,” she said excitedly, “I’ve got it! I’ve figured it out!”

  Cici pretended polite interest. “A new business plan?”

  “No.” She shook her head impatiently. “The alcove—the painting. I know what’s wrong with it. Come inside, I’ll show you.”

  Curious, the three women threaded their way through the furniture to join Lori inside the main living area. “Look,” she said, gesturing grandly to the opposite wall, as though the answer should be obvious.

  The only light, since all the lamps had been removed from the room, came from the grand chandelier over the staircase, and the smaller one in the foyer. The fireplace wall, with its recently uncovered muraled alcove, was in shadows. Even if it had been obvious, they could not have seen the answer in the dark.

  “Don’t you see?” Lori prompted. “It’s uneven! There’s got to be another one—one on either side of the fireplace! So,” she added happily, “I measured the same distance from the fireplace on the other wall, and sure enough—it’s hollow. Do you want me to go get the sledgehammer? Can we open it up tonight?”

  Cici looked at Lori, then at Bridget and Lindsay. The other two women shrugged. Cici went forward to the place Lori had indicated, and rapped the wall with her knuckles. Sure enough, it sounded hollow.

  “Damn,” she said, straightening up. Hands on hips, she surveyed the wall. “Why didn’t I think of that?”

  “We’re going to open it, aren’t we?” Lori insisted. “Don’t you want to get started?”

  “We are not going to start swinging sledgehammers this time of night,” her mother said firmly.

  “But it’s not even dark!” Lori protested.

  Cici’s tone brooked no argument. “Morning is soon enough.”

  Lori’s disappointment was replaced almost immediately with a grin. “Well, I guess I can wait. See Mom, I told you I’d be good at this! This is just the best job in the world!”

  When she had skipped back up the stairs again, Cici drew in a long breath and released it through pursed lips.

  “Too much energy,” Bridget said.

  “Too little impulse control,” added Lindsay.

  “Too damn smart,” Cici concluded with a final mournful shake of her head.

  6

  In Another Time

  Pearl, 1863

  The next day Mother did go to the house with teas and medicines, and she went the day after that and the day after that, which made Mama Madie mad. They whispered about it in low harsh voices whenever Mother came back to the cabin at night, all pale and worn-out looking, but in the end Mama Madie would make Mother sit down and drink some broth and she’d wrap Mother’s feet in warm flannel. And then Mother would ask Pearl to show her how the quilt was coming, but sometimes she would fall asleep before Pearl could unfold the portion of the square she had finished that day.

  Pearl worked on the quilt all day, because she was not allowed to leave the cabin while the soldiers were there, and after a time she came to understand that was why Mother thought the quilt was such a good idea, so that Pearl would have something to occupy her days while she sat in the cabin waiting for the soldiers to leave. Pearl did not mind staying in Mama Madie’s warm cabin, because outside was an ugly, scary place. All the chickens were gone, eaten by the soldiers. Once she heard a heart-stopping sound, like a woman screaming, and she rushed to the door to see a pig—Mama Madie later said it had had the bad sense to wander up near the house looking for scraps—running crazily around the yard with a sword sticking out of its neck and blood flooding everywhere. Later that day the smell of roasting pork was so sweet it made Pearl’s stomach hurt, and her mother brought back a big hunk of it wrapped in a napkin, plus a slab of bacon big enough to last more than a week. Pearl couldn’t eat very much of it though, because she kept seeing that pig running around screaming with the sword in its neck.

  Mostly the smells that drifted across that yard and down the little trail that led to the cabin weren’t so sweet as cooking pork though. They were outhouse smells and horse corral smells, and another, a sickly rotting smell that Mother whispered was because there weren’t enough men left with the strength to dig graves. Every day they carried uniforms, and sometimes Mother’s good bedsheets and feather pillows, out of the house and lit a bonfire with them. They made a choking black smoke. Pearl was glad to stay inside and sew and sew.

  Then one night as Mama Madie was dishing up dried-pea stew made with an onion she’d found growing under the house and the last of the fatty bacon, the captain came knocking politely on the door of the little cabin. Madie went to the door with a formidable look on her face and her hand on the hilt of the sewing scissors she kept in her apron pocket, and he said a few quiet words to her which Pearl couldn’t hear. But she did hear Mama Madie scream at him, “May God Almighty above curse your black and murderous soul to the fires of hell!”

  She slammed the door with a terrible look on her face and opened her arms wide to Pearl, crushing her to her bosom. “We got to pray, child, we got pray,” she said. “Your mama’s took the fever, and we got to pray.”

  So they did. During the daylight Pearl sewed and prayed, and at night when she came back from tending Mother, Mama Madie got down on her knees and prayed, swaying with the rhythm of her prayers. But in the end it was to no avail. The captain came knocking one pink dawn with a face as long as the grave, and all he said was, “I’m sorry.”

  Mama Madie started to wail, and Pearl clung to her skirts, wrapping herself in them as if she were a little girl again. And then the captain grabbed Mama Madie’s arm and held it sternly and said with a grim face, “Ma’am, you need to take that child and go. It’s the cholera, and it will kill us all if we don’t burn everything it’s touched.”

  Mama Madie gave him a look of purest hatred, and she jerked her arm away and spat on his boots. She slammed the door shut, and started bundling up cook pots and dried beans and cornmeal in a blanket that she knotted at four corners and slung over her shoulder, and Pearl rolled up her threads and her needles and her sewing scissors in the quilt square with the flying horse in the center, and she tied it around her waist under her dress. Mama Madie grabbed hold of her hand and they left the cabin for a murky gray dawn that smelled thickly of smoke.

  But it wasn’t until Pearl looked back and saw the only home she’d ever known collapsing to the ground in a shower of orange sparks and crackling flames that she began to cry.

  7

  Sheepshearing

  Lori was right, of course, about the second alcove’s location on the opposite side of the fireplace from the first. It, too, contained a mural that depicted the sheep meadow, only this version was framed by bare winter branches rather than blossom-covered ones, and the rolling pastureland was covered in snow. A cardinal, rather
than a blue bird, was perched on the fence post.

  When the last of the dust was swept away and the buckets of dirty water were emptied, everyone gathered around to examine what had been uncovered.

  “The technique itself isn’t bad,” Lindsay said, appraising both paintings, “but the approach is pretty generic.”

  “Kind of like a greeting card,” supplied Lori helpfully, and Lindsay gave her an annoyed look.

  “Some of the illustrative art used for greeting cards is quite good,” she pointed out. “And a lot of successful commercial artists sell to greeting card companies.” She struggled briefly to erase the scowl from her face. “The point I was trying to make,” she said, rather stiffly, “is that I don’t see anything here to make me think these were painted by an artist of note. The homeowner probably told him exactly what to paint and paid him by the hour.”

  “Is there any way you can tell how old it is?” Cici asked.

  Lindsay shook her head regretfully. “I can’t. Maybe an expert in antiques could, or an art restorer. The colors look custom mixed, but a lot of artists mix their own pigments, even today. If the paintings were less generic—if the artist had included something we could date, like a car or a wagon or even a person—it would be different.”

  “What about the barn?” Noah asked.

  Lindsay looked at him. “There’s no barn in the paintings.”

  “Right,” he said.

  “Oh!” Bridget exclaimed suddenly. “But you can see the barn—or a part of it—in this view of the sheep pasture today!”

  “Which means these must have been painted before the barn was built.” Cici turned to Ida Mae, who was wiping down the arched frame of the alcove with a damp cloth. “Ida Mae, do you know when—”

  Ida Mae spoke before she could finish. “You’re gonna have to repaint this trim.”

  Lindsay said, “The artist might have left it out for aesthetic purposes.”