if you need me. Remember now, be patient with your father.”
Gus didn’t know if he should laugh or cry. He looked at his watch. High noon. His shoulders straightened and his step was firm as he rummaged in the back of the new pickup for the tools he would need.
By one o’clock, Gus had the sign fixed with a new coat of paint. By two-thirty, he had the front steps fixed, sanded, and painted. He jacked up the front porch with a two-by-four and had it back in place by three-thirty. By five o’clock he had the kitchen cleaned to his satisfaction. At six o’clock he was washing bed linens for his bed and was in bed between the clean sheets and blankets by eight-thirty. And he hadn’t seen his father once since coming back from town. He was asleep the moment his head hit the pillow because he knew he had to get up at four, eat and head out to the fields, because that’s what a farmer did.
Chapter Four
Amy jerked awake when Cornelia stirred in her lap. At the same moment, the front door slammed shut.
Her mother was home.
Groggy from the short nap, Amy combed her hair with her fingers, tightened the velvet bow at the back of her head, then knuckled her eyes as she steeled herself for what she knew would probably be an unpleasant encounter with her mother. She waited at the top of the steps to see if her mother would call her name, acknowledge her presence in some way. Such a silly thought. Evidently Cornelia was of the same opinion as she hissed and snarled, circling Amy’s ankles. She bent down to pick up the unhappy cat and descended the steps. She called her mother’s name twice before she entered the kitchen.
Tillie Baran waved airily as she babbled into the cell phone clutched between her ear and her cheek. She was opening a container of yogurt and sprinkling something that looked like gravel over the top. A bottle of mineral water was clutched under one arm as she juggled everything and still managed to sound animated to whomever was on the other end of the phone. Amy thought it was an awesome performance.
She eyed her stick-thin mother. She was, as usual, dressed impeccably. There wasn’t a hair out of place. There never was.
Finally, the call ended. Amy reached for the cell phone and, in the blink of an eye, danced away and turned it off. “I need to talk to you, Mom. Without this stupid thing ringing off the hook.”
“Oh, honey, don’t do that. It’s my lifeline to the world. I have to charge the battery for at least thirty minutes.”
Amy wagged her finger. “No, no. Either we talk or I’m outta here. What’s it going to be, Mom? I sure hope you aren’t going to tell me this is one of your projects that you gave up on.”
“Good Lord, why would you say such a thing, Amy? Everything is ready to go for the Seniors. All you have to do is set things up and make it work. I’m depending on you to pull this off. I’m working on the New Year’s Gala the Rotary is sponsoring. I have so much to do and not enough hours in the day.” All this was said as Tillie shoveled the yogurt and gravel into her mouth. After every bite she swigged from her water bottle.
“What exactly is ready to go, Mom? By the way, did you see that study someone did about people who talk on cell phones all day the way you do?”
“I don’t believe I saw that, Amy?”
“You can get a brain tumor. Go to the library and look it up.”
For the first time in her life Tillie Baran was at a loss for words. “You can’t be serious.”
“I’m serious. Now, what’s there to set up?”
“The Christmas trees, of course. I ordered them. They will arrive on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. I told you I rented the Coleman property.”
“Mom, you rented a piece of land. A corner property on a major highway. Did you give any thought to a structure of some sort? It gets bitter cold around here in November. Who did you hire to work, to make the wreathes, the grave blankets and all the stuff you have to do to get something like this under way? You’re going to need a guard at night so people don’t steal the trees. Where are you going to sell all the extras you told me about?”
Tillie looked puzzled for a moment. “That’s your job, dear.”
“No, Mom, that’s not my job. It was your job. You said you had it ready to go and all I had to do was the PR stuff to get it off the ground. Are the Seniors going to help? Do you know how heavy a Christmas tree is? Who is going to work the chain saw to trim off the bottoms? Who’s going to drill the holes in the trunks? Mom, did you think this through?”
“Good heavens, Amy, of course I did. We had seven different meetings about the trees. You’re overreacting, aren’t you?”
Amy watched as her mother tugged at the jacket of her Chanel suit. She noticed a worried look in her mother’s eyes. “No, Mom, I’m not. Who is going to unload the trees from the trucks when they’re delivered, and don’t tell me the Seniors, because they won’t be able to lift them. I hope you don’t expect me to do it. How about you? Are you going to be helping?”
The worried look was becoming more intense. “I have this gala…there are so many details…hire people,” she said vaguely. “The university…”
“Mom, the kids are studying for finals. They go home for the holidays. No one is going to want to stand out in the cold to sell trees and make six bucks an hour. It doesn’t work that way these days. Kids spend all their time with their iPods.”
“I’m sure you’ll think of something, dear. I really have to go now. Can I please have my phone back?”
“NO!” Amy bellowed at the top of her lungs. “This is where the rubber meets the road, Mother. Either you sit down and hash this out with me or I’m leaving. I’ll leave it up to you to explain how you failed. I won’t be here to scrape the egg off your face either.”
“You’re just like a bulldog. Your father was that way,” Tillie complained, but she did sit down and fold her hands.
“Don’t go there, Mom. Right now I’m pretty damn angry, so tread lightly. Did you pay a deposit to the Colemans?”
“Of course not. We have to pay them $2,000 the day after Christmas.”
“What? Why didn’t you get them to donate the land? This is for the Seniors. Couldn’t you have gotten a better rate?”
“They said they wouldn’t take a penny less. I had no other choice.”
“Did you look for a better place? You didn’t, did you? You took the easy way out. Okay, we’re now $2,000 in debt. What kind of deal did you make for the trees?”
Tillie started to wring her hands. “Well…it’s $40 a tree. We have to sell them for $100 each. Some of the bigger trees will cost more. I ordered twenty thousand and put down a deposit of $5,000.”
“Oh my God! If you don’t sell all of them, you, Mrs. Baran, are on the hook for the balance. You do know that, don’t you? I assume you signed an order for them. Did you sign it as Tillie Baran?”
“I did do that. And the lease with the Colemans.”
“That’s just great
