Arcadia, the Olitskys’ nursery, still thrives in the pretty town where Fern grew up, tucked back in the Connecticut Berkshires. Her parents are the rare couple living a mutual dream, even if it’s one that made their children subtly resentful: resentful at being crowded into a charming but tiny house in a town where all their schoolmates were richer; where, every summer, they had to work in the family business and wait on those schoolmates’ parents, loading coiled hose and fertilizer into their trunks, digging holes in their lawns for new trees. Fern’s mother, in addition to helping her husband nurture saplings, rosebushes, and hothouse succulents, makes exquisitely tasteful dried wreaths, keeps bees and sells their honey. An almost pagan disciple of Mother Nature, Helen Olitsky named her offspring Heather, Fern, Forest, and Garland. Saying grace at every dinner of their childhood, she would thank God for various minute blessings of the day, then look up briefly, smile at each of them, bow her head again and say to her lap, “Thank you, most of all, for the garden of my heart.”
Gar, the baby, is the one who has stayed to take over the nursery. It’s easy to see that he loves it, that he inherited every green gene his parents possessed, has an inborn feel for the elemental (he will taste soil readily, as if it were wine, and tell you its composition). But he tends to lord it over the rest of them, to wield his old-fashioned fealty like a deed—preparing them, Fern is sure, for getting the most when their parents die. The year Fern went to Europe was the nursery’s worst—drought, gypsy moths, and a random IRS audit. Gar was barely in high school, but even now, he never lets Fern forget that she basically jumped ship. She has long since stopped defending herself.
As if letting his name set his course, Forest moved to Montana, where he preaches a love of nature that requires no cultivation, only protection. He lives in a sparsely furnished cabin at the end of a long dirt road, without neighbors or, to Fern’s knowledge, a lover. The managing editor of a struggling left-wing newspaper, he is a perfectionistic wordsmith. Forest would never refer to Lyme’s disease, Canadian geese, or the Klu Klux Klan—and he would have a hard time not correcting those who do. When Fern and Jonah took a week of vacation to visit him, she was amused to find on his refrigerator an article called “The Endangered Semicolon” (held there by a magnet shaped like the also-endangered red wolf). “Has it made the government’s list?” she asked merrily.
Not that he was humorless or stingy. He took Fern and Jonah on a number of wonderful expeditions, each planned with care. But when she stayed up with Forest one night and tried to discuss the work they suddenly had in common, he said, “Yes, design is very important, but in the end you have to remember: There’s style, and then there’s substance.”
The night before they left, he drove them an hour into Bozeman, to treat them to dinner at a restaurant regarded as Montana’s finest. Coming from New York, Fern and Jonah knew this effort to impress them might be overblown, but they said nothing. Their silence felt to Fern like sweet collusion—when they had had no union of any kind for weeks. In fact the food was very nice, and Fern was thrilled to see her favorite dessert on the menu. “Tiramisu at the Continental Divide!” She touched Jonah’s knee under the table, the wine having filled her with a warmth she longed to share. “Do you know what it means? ‘Hold me tight.’ Isn’t that romantic?” she said to Forest.
To which he replied, with a reticent smile, “Actually, it means ‘pick-me-up.’ I suppose because it contains espresso.”
Embarrassed, Fern removed her hand from Jonah’s knee. She told the waiter she was too full for dessert. She and her husband slept that night, as they did back home, on opposite sides of Forest’s extra futon. Unfairly, she knew, Fern blamed Forest for dousing in her, on purpose, a rare, precious spark of conciliation toward her husband.
With Heather, Fern is the closest and also the most contentious. For their entire childhood, they shared a room. Heather was the athlete: swam, played field hockey, fenced. At schoolwork, she was comfortably mediocre. After high school, she went to a small vocational college where she majored in “leisure studies.” Fern used to look down on her for this—but does not feel so smug since her sister has become the chief U.S. commerce and tourism rep for Tuscany, shepherding elite groups of journalists and merchants to Italy six times a year. Her kitchen is always stocked with extraordinary sweets and cheeses, her closet with sophisticated shoes. She lives on Lake Shore Drive with her husband, a financial analyst, and their two athletic, well-mannered sons. Heather met Eli at her first job, in a travel agency, and likes to say that he gave her a “head start on life.” If Eli is there, he’ll shoot back, like a soaring badminton birdie, “And this lady booked me on the Concorde to Love.”
For the odd weekend, Fern likes to visit, almost more than her sister, her sister’s wondrous life. It’s a small, happy planet on a speedy orbit around its own benevolent sun. Heather is also generous, if myopically so; she always insists on taking her little sister shopping on that Moneybags Mile or whatever it’s called. Fern, who stopped resisting long ago, will return to New York with a silk dress or cashmere jacket, an item she may wear once a year to the rare dress-up lunch with a client.
The problem with Heather is that she’s made herself a junior mother to Fern, though Fern is only two years younger. Ever since Fern’s move to New York, Heather has kept up a constant critique of her sister’s love life (not even sparing Jonah): “Honestly, honey, the boys you pick, they’re all so . . . ingrown or something. Is it that city? Does it just turn everyone into a narcissist or what? I don’t mean you, of course. . . . But look at Eli. Hardworking, civic-minded, wakes up happy every day. Now, Fern, can you tell me that a single one of those broody guys I’ve met wakes up to greet the day with a smile?”
“So introduce me to one of Eli’s happy pals,” Fern has replied, not entirely joking. But Eli’s friends, like Eli, are married, perpetually necktied, and have a small round area at the dome of their skulls where their hair has been subtly, permanently flattened by the yarmulkes they wear so often—like medals for their responsibility and goodness—to all the right occasions.
Had Heather seized on the secret of their parents’ translucently peaceful marriage? Fern feels a wrenching envy at this thought, a sense of having been left behind. Who is the smarter sister now?
“OH MAIZE—BRILLIANT!—OR CORN, yes, that’s what you call it,” says Dennis. Fern shows him how to peel away the husk and silk, twist them off in a single motion. “I’m having an authentically American experience—shucking corn! And here I am in need of tutoring; wouldn’t my students have a laugh?”
Fern asks him what he teaches. They are sitting on the back porch stairs with a bag of corn between them, another for the husks at their feet.
“Cooking, as a matter of fact. I’m a guest instructor at this culinary institute place. Teaching a class titled—not my title!—Trends in Culinary Cross-Pollination. And am I ever the impostor!”
“You aren’t a chef?” asks Fern.
“Indeed I am. I have a little mongrel of a restaurant in France—have you ever been to Aix? These American food blokes—not really critics, more like collectors—happened in last summer when I was having a bang-on day. What do athletes call it—the zone? I was in the zone. So the food blokes stayed till closing time and chatted me up and invited me over for a month. I’m crashing on my brother’s couch and having a fine time pulling the wool over everyone’s eyes. I cook almost strictly French, I’m hardly a basher of traditions, but these chaps heard my accent and imagined haggis provençal or mouton Marmite or some such concoction. Though I do have a ‘trifle française’ using eau de vie in place of sherry, with apricots and fromage blanc.”
She tells him it sounds delicious; he answers that indeed it is. Like Richard, this man has a luster that in itself must make him popular—besides which he’s very good-looking: tall, with straightforward rectangular features (face, torso, hands) and the kind of expressive physicality that women find reassuring. His cheeks are perpetually rosy, sugge
stive, authentically or not, of modesty and sweetness.
“Are we missing out on a four-star meal?” says Fern. “You ought to have told Tony what you do.”
“Oh no. Nothing a chef likes better than being fed, and I’ve been fed quite nicely hereabouts. Though I will confess, I do not begin to comprehend your dairy products. We Brits are backwards in the cow department, except for clotted cream and double Gloucester, but bloody hell, these bricks of yellow rubber! My students force-fed me a thing called Philadelphia, more like a nursery paste . . .”
Fern has settled contentedly into nodding at this banter when Richard comes out of the house bearing a platter. “Hello! I’m here to collect the ears!”
“Hear, hear,” says Dennis.
Fern transfers a dozen from her lap. The corn is yellow and white, the kernels opalescent and well aligned. “It’s so early, but it looks wonderful.”
“Oh this’ll be from way down south, nowhere close by,” says Richard.
“Ah, what the jet plane’s done for the human tastebud,” says Dennis.
Leaving the two men to share their pleasantries, Fern goes inside.
Fenno is setting the dining room table with gold-rimmed plates. She watches him from behind; he moves slowly and deliberately, as if it’s a ceremony worthy of contemplation. She realizes he must be slowed by his grief, by weariness. When she asks if he’d like help, he looks up, startled.
“Napkins.” He nods at the sideboard. “Top left. The purple ones.”
Half the drawer contains antique silver napkin rings, long cellophaned candles, and a stack of the delicate glass cuffs that Jonah’s mother taught her to call bobeches. The other half is filled with fabric napkins, flowered and plain in a dozen colors. “This is someone’s second home?” says Fern.
“Not quite. Ralph’s auditioning for retirement. Next winter will be a dry run.”
“To see if he goes nuts from the isolation.”
“More likely from the cozy, communal drunkenness.”
“Not exactly a dry run then.”
Fenno’s laugh is polite but distracted. He points her toward wineglasses and candlesticks. They circle the table in tandem, taking turns at different places. Across the bowl that Tony filled with roses from the garden, Fern steals glances at Fenno. His face at rest has a mournful set, his nose long and narrow, mouth a downcast crescent. For a gay man on Long Island at the end of June, he is oddly, perhaps defiantly pale. She suspects, approvingly, that he is not part of this scene, of boy-watching with binoculars from Victorian porches, of bringing home charming strangers for candlelit dinners.
Tony leans into the room. “How are we doing, dears? The chicken’s all done and sucking up its juices. Water’s boiling and aching to get at that corn.”
Fenno looks at Tony with pointed indifference as he twists the last candle into its pedestal. “And plates are pining to be licked.”
They have been lovers, she’s certain now, and not in the transient, calculating way that Tony and Richard are lovers. When Tony retreats, she says, “How long have you been here—in the States?”
“Twenty years. More.”
“Here to stay.”
He smiles. “Sometimes I still pretend otherwise.”
The speakers on top of the sideboard emit a faint hum.
“The new Van Morrison, the one who’s seen the light of God,” says Fern after just a few notes. “Tony’s current favorite.”
Fenno raises his eyebrows. “Curious, some of his tastes.” In the look he gives Fern, she sees him guess her history, too. They are even.
Through the doorway dances Richard, holding aloft the platter of steaming corn. Dennis follows, carrying, with equal flamboyance, the chicken and grilled asparagus. They set the platters at opposite ends of the table. Tony comes in last, with two bottles of wine and a loaf of garlic bread swaddled in a linen towel. Fenno lights the candles. The five of them stand back, somewhat shyly, regarding the table like an altar. Tony says, “Little mother at the head.”
“All right, but I refuse to serve,” Fern says.
“Don’t worry, don’t worry. It’s every man for himself, in utero or out.”
To Fern’s left sit Dennis and Fenno, to her right Tony and Richard. The table curves out in such a grand way that it’s hard not to feel like a hostess, like someone in charge of the conversational tides. The men’s faces are orange, their eyes gleaming as they lean in, helping themselves and deferring politely all at once, filling their plates only after Fern’s been coaxed into taking far more than she should eat.
“A notre santé,” says Dennis, lifting his glass.
“Chinny chin chin,” says Tony.
After a round of appreciative murmurs, Richard looks up from his food. “Is this summer or what?” he says, his lips glistening with butter. His plate is heaped with vegetables and bread, no chicken, and he’s drinking only water. Of course, thinks Fern as she bites directly into her meat, such obstreperous health does not come free.
“Well heaven bless the jet plane if this isn’t local fare. And your chicken marinade is magnifique,” Dennis says to Tony.
“So, Fenno’s brother with the fine French accent, where’ve you been hiding?” says Tony.
“He lives in France,” Fenno says primly.
“He hides the lot of us over there, on the other side of the pond. I’m the brave pioneer, the first one to sally forth and visit.”
“I’ve always made it clear you’re welcome, all of you.” Fenno looks uneasy at Tony’s attention to his brother, though it’s not clear whom he wants to protect. Fern remembers, long ago, introducing Anna to Tony, not sure if she wanted them to like or despise each other, seeing safety on both sides.
“After your fashion, yes,” says Dennis.
Tony says wryly, “Oh, I know that fashion. More Helsinki than Milan.”
“Excuse me, but . . . anyone?” Richard’s holding a small object aloft between his fingers. “It’s the real, Rastafarian thing.”
Tony doesn’t answer; Fenno shakes his head. When Richard glances at Fern, she says, “Oh no,” and he grins. “Good girl,” he says.
But Dennis is positively beaming. “My wife would macerate me, but oh yes, I’ll try a bit of that. And my children aren’t around to see how foolish I’ll be.” His hand meets Richard’s over the roses. Fern catches the first whiff of dope. She can count on one hand the number of times she’s tried it—not because she disapproves but because it always scorched her throat and perhaps because she doesn’t like the idea of losing control in some unpredictable way. So the fragrance of marijuana brings her no specific memories, only the general sense that she is refusing a certain kind of intimacy. She feels reluctant, apprehensive, stodgy; she feels flashes of an old indeterminate sadness.
She is contemplating this feeling, even as she tells herself that for once she is in a dissenting majority, when Fenno startles, as if stung or kicked, and reaches into his shirt pocket. He pulls out a compact cell phone and opens it, turns its face toward the candles. He scowls at it, then tucks it back in his pocket.
“Now will you look at that,” says Tony. “Rob Roy girds up for the twenty-first century.”
“Just checking the thing’s on. It’s new; I haven’t actually used it.”
“But you’re on the alert, just in case an order of coffee table books goes astray? Or what? This guy,” Tony says to Richard, “doesn’t even have e-mail.”
“I’m sort of on call, for one of the girls.”
Tony laughs and shakes his head, as if he’s caught his friend at some unsavory scheme. “You mean, at that Lulu’s place?”
“That’s right,” Fenno says agreeably.
Tony turns to Fern. “Now you will love this. Ask the guy what he does with his spare time—I mean, practically does for a living. Go on. Ask him.”
“Oh yes, this is stellar,” says Dennis. He hands the joint to Richard and sits back in his chair.
Fenno leans toward Fern. “What Tony finds so titi
llating, because he’s never got past his pubescent squeamishness about the birds and bees, is that I volunteer at a drop-in center on the Lower East Side for single girls who are pregnant and waiting to have their babies. It makes him squirm to think of me mixing it up with all that conspicuous fertility.”
“No, I love this, I really do,” says Tony. “I don’t think I know anyone who does anything this Good Samaritan and really enjoys it, does it for the fun, not the do-gooder brownie points. I’m being serious here.”
“Wow. Like you’re a midwife?” Richard giggles. “A mid-husband?”
“Vocational training. I teach a class on composition skills and another on desktop publishing. We produce a small newspaper.”
Tony cuts in. “Girl Talk. Soon-to-be-welfare-moms give their opinions on the Mideast peace talks.”
Richard says, “Don’t be catty, I think it’s cool,” but he drapes an arm around Tony’s shoulders. Fern sees Tony pull slightly away.
“Girlspeak,” Fenno says, “and they give advice to other teenage girls on things like health and diet and love. They research subjects like city services for mothers. Some of it’s a little absurd, I agree, but they’re proud of it. We’re up to six pages, biweekly. If we get a grant I’ve gone out for, we can introduce color and distribute to other school districts.” He seems unruffled by Tony’s goading; he loves describing this part of his life, even if that’s what brings it out into the open.
“So what’s with the phone? Breaking stories on birth control?”
“What’s with the phone is that one of the girls I teach asked me to be her Lamaze coach. She’s due a week from today.”
“La-mahz.” Tony’s laugh is high-pitched, the way it gets when he’s drinking too much wine. “So you, what, took those classes and practiced positions and all that? Chanted ‘Push!’ with all the hubbies?”
“I took the classes, yes,” says Fenno.