Page 43 of Grounded
“That’s right,” Annie said, and Beulah watched her spread the generous portion of peanut butter over the bread.
“I wouldn’t get on one of those airplanes if my life depended on it.” He blew on the palms of his hands as if they were clammy.
“Really? Isn’t there somewhere you’d like to go?” Annie asked, setting the sandwich down in front of him.
“Noooo, ma’am! Anywhere I want to go, I can drive.” He gulped his sweet tea.
“Don’t you want to go to another country, like France or Italy?”
“I don’t want to go nowhere the people don’t speak English. I like to understand when somebody’s talking to me. I don’t have no use for vacations. I hear ’em talk all the time about saving up for a trip to Hawaii or a cruise to the Bahamas. They get worked up in a frenzy trying to leave, then they come back all wore out and tellin’ about what all went wrong. I did it once and that was enough. I take my vacation every time I get up on my horse.”
Beulah saw Woody was getting worked up and decided to change the subject. “Tell Annie about your farm, Woody.”
His mouth was full of bread and peanut butter, but he tried talking anyway. “Little bit of everything. I still raise tobacco and a little corn. I’ve got goats, chickens, cows and I trade horses here and there. Got several kids too.”
Beulah watched as peanut butter oozed around his loose bridge, likely the only thing holding it in place. Poor Woody needed a wife to advise him on personal care issues, but as amused as she was with his attention to Annie, she knew that would never work.
“How old are your kids?” Annie asked.
“Well, let me think. I had twins two weeks ago and a set of triplets the week before. Last month it was another set of twins and quadruplets.”
Annie’s eyes grew wide with amazement.
“He’s talking about his goats,” Beulah said.
Chapter Seventeen
Annie rubbed her arms, not sure if they were sore from riding the horse, planting more rows of beans and corn, or scrubbing out cupboards, drawers and closets. Either way, the pain reminded her she was making good use of her time here. After sprinkling a generous amount of Dead Sea salts into the water, she eased down into the warm bath and relaxed in the old clawfoot tub.
While her grandmother was in the notion to do it, Annie had gone full force into cleaning and sorting through the stuff in the house. The days had flown by, and it felt good to clean out areas that had not been touched for years.
“This will make things so much easier if you ever decide to move,” Annie had said once when they were both working in the kitchen. Her grandmother had not responded. It had to be considered, Annie decided, with the reality of surgery looming.
More than once she came across a small stash of bills. In the guest room, she found five one-hundred-dollar bills stuck between the Old and New Testament of a Bible in a nightstand. In the kitchen, she found two hundred dollars stashed in an envelope marked “tomato seeds” stuffed inside a Mason jar.
“There’s money in a vase in the corner cupboard of the dining room and tucked between tablecloths in the linen press,” she had said when Annie started working in there. In each case, her grandmother knew about the money and even told Annie where the other hiding places were. And every item Annie pulled out for her to say what to do with it, she knew exactly what it was and where it came from. There was no sign of senility yet, thank goodness.
There had been no new updates from Janice, but a call on Sunday from Prema had made her homesick again for Manhattan.
“Annie, we miss you. The three of us are preparing to go out to an art festival and we decided we must call. We know how much you love this kind of thing,” Prema had said, and then passed the phone around to Evie and Kate.
Annie could imagine them getting up and having brunch together and then dressing for the outing. Annie did love those first outdoor events after a long winter. There was excitement in the air, anticipation of a summer, and a feeling of goodwill in the village.
Despite a few bouts of homesickness, she had fallen into a comfortable routine with her grandmother. Annie was queen of the upstairs now that her grandmother was sleeping on the first floor. It seemed an absurd amount of space to loll about in compared to her small apartment in the city.
She reached for the shampoo and massaged some into her hair. Frequent phone calls from Jake had gone long past her grandmother’s report, going on to books they had read, recent movies, and current events. Annie was a sounding board for him as he analyzed the options and she liked it not just a little. He told her of Camille’s father who wanted to develop a business with him, of the bank’s foundation work and what his job might look like, but most of all he talked of farming.
He even talked about grass. Orchard grass, timothy, clover, fescue, alfalfa, and Johnson grass and the right mix that made the best nutrition for cows and how chickens were good to bring in after cows and how it all worked to make the land produce the way it was designed.
She told him about her travels and experiences, about life in New York and about the men she had dated right up to her relationship with Stuart. Annie had missed him in the two weeks since he went back to Cincinnati. Even that was an odd revelation for her, that she could miss someone after being apart for so many years. But she looked forward to the next weekend when he planned to come down for a meeting with like-minded farmers.
After rinsing her hair, Annie grabbed a towel and stepped out of the tub. She had daydreamed too long in the bath and would not be ready for her dinner in Lexington with Lindy if she didn’t get a move on.
Dressed and downstairs just in time for Lindy’s arrival, Annie called goodbye to her grandmother and was out the door. A sweet aroma assaulted her and she stood for a moment breathing it in. Catalpa, her grandmother had called the tree. Large, white blooms hung in conelike shapes from the branches. It would only be this way for a week or two and Annie took every outside opportunity to let it fill her senses.
Once in the car and on their way, they talked nonstop while green farmland rolled by. When they were just outside of Lexington Lindy said, “Okay, I’ve been dying to ask you: Why did you break up with your boyfriend?”
“Well,” Annie said, trying to figure out how to sum up her feelings. “He wasn’t what I thought he was,” she said, waiting for the sensation of a blade twisting in her gut.It didn’t happen this time.
