Scott Nicholson: The Farm

The scent drifted from the cupboard and crossed the kitchen as if riding a late spring breeze. Katy Logan sniffed and frowned. It was late September, too deep in the Appalachian autumn for any flowers but goldenrod, jewel weed, and hummingbird plant. She hoped Gordon wasn't the type of man who believed in packaged deodorizers, those little plug-in things that looked great on a television commercial. The kind featuring a fashionable mom who could clean the house, build a career, raise three kids, and still manage to be dynamite in the sack, all without rumpling the pages of Cosmopolitan.

Katy had no doubt the scent was lilacs. Her mother, Althea, was a gardener, though her Floridian climate was eight hundred miles and four thousand feet of elevation removed from the North Carolina mountains. Mom had a string of blue ribbons from flower shows across the panhandle. Katy's green thumb had turned a sickly shade of chartreuse somewhere at the age of six, when she'd dumped a bucket of mud on a prize species of two-tone rose. Sent to bed without supper, Katy had fantasized about ripping Mom's flower garden up by its roots, starting with the lilacs.

She let the pot she was scrubbing slide into the soapy water. The scent came again, stronger. It wasn't a pure smell. The lilac had a faint musky undertone. Like old fish.

God she shouldn't have cooked Gordon swordfish last night. At least the heady lilac disguised the odor a little. She was as hapless in the kitchen as she was in the garden. She had always resisted the petty tyranny of the kitchen, its perfect order and shiny regimen, the confusing array of spices. Did tomato-based sauces need basil or garlic? Was it cinnamon or was it cloves that dominated a pumpkin pie? Did swordfish demand a freshly squeezed lemon or a splash of soy sauce?

Katy had gone with both lemon and soy last night, determined to be a good wife for Gordon. A textbook wife. An Old Testament wife, if necessary. She'd been the other kind of wife and didn't have much to show for it.

Except Jett.

Katy dried her hands. A door slammed beyond the kitchen. Jett must be coming in, ready to hit the books and prepare to wow the sixth grade teachers at Cross Valley Elementary tomorrow.

"Jett?" A smile slipped across Katy's lips, and she could practically feel the furrows in her forehead smooth out. Like a Cosmo mom. No stress. Wrinkles were for those who succumbed to gravity.

Katy waited for the footsteps of her daughter. Jett was on the threshold of blossoming, getting swells on her chest, and the subsequent adolescent turmoil made her unpredictable. She was as likely to break into tears over an imaginary slight as to crawl on her mother's lap for a good cuddle. Her first expression would reveal the mood of the moment.

Katy was glad to be done with the kitchen, anyway. That lilac smell had given her a headache and she was going to thaw some pizzas for dinner. Last night's swordfish experiment had taught her that she'd better take it easy on becoming Supermom. Simply slapping an S on her chest hadn't eased today's stink any. She sprinkled baking soda into the trash can, hoping the odor would fade before Gordon came home.

"Jett?" she called again, closing the freezer.

Foot stomps, not steps.

Her daughter was in a mood that could only possess a twelve-year-old. Anger, anger, anger with fat leather heels. A hard day in the classroom, no doubt. Or a boy. Probably both, since those went hand in hand when you were in your first year at a new school and real boys were just starting to rival Goth bands and horses for your attention. Except Jett had made an art form of being an outsider. Black wardrobe and attitude to spare.

Katy left the kitchen without a backward glance, the lilac-and-fish aroma and the whirring microwave occupying the room. Even after four months here, she still hadn't become comfortable with the layout of Gordon's house.

No, not Gordon's house. Our house. Until death do us part, just like I promised.

For the second time.

The front door of the two-story farmhouse opened onto the living room, with a foyer that was barely big enough for dirty shoes and damp umbrellas. The kitchen stood off to the right, interrupted by a stretch of hardwood floor that contained a dining table. Four chairs. Gordon must have always been an optimist, even during those last five years of bachelorhood.

Katy almost called for Jett again, but stopped herself. That might be construed as nagging. Katy had dropped the two of them into the middle of this new situation, so she owed her daughter a little slack. If Katy were compelled to be honest with herself, something she desperately avoided, she would admit Jett had endured the tougher transition.

Katy had done nothing more than say "I do" and turn in her resignation at Wachovia Financial Services. Sure, she'd hated Charlotte anyway, and a small town called Solom in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina seemed like the perfect escape from the thirty-two years that had given her nothing but a beautiful child and a bottomless well of insecurity. But for Jett, this move had been the equivalent of an emotional tsunami.

Not only had Jett left her father behind, she'd said good-bye to a small private school and a number of friends she'd known since diaper days. The two-bedroom apartment on Queen Street had been traded for a restored wooden-frame house on thirty acres of slanted land. Jett couldn't even get a decent cell phone signal out here, a point she'd drilled into Katy at every available opportunity. So Katy didn't completely blame her for storming up the stairs to her room.

As a mother, Katy had the duty to go up and tap quietly on Jett's door. On her way, she made a halfhearted swipe at the dust that covered a curly maple coffee table. How could dust collect so fast? As a wedding present, Gordon had hired a professional cleaning service to perform a top-to-bottom wipe-down. But already the weight of domestic responsibility had settled in Katy's heart as heavy as the dampness from the stream that ran behind the house.

As she climbed the stairs, she expected to hear the floor-shaking beat of industrial Goth, music that Katy dared not criticize lest it gain a permanent slot on her daughter's playlist. Katy had helped Jett shop for her first studded dog collar, a possibly scarring experience for them both. Since then, Jett had eschewed the collars as part of her black leather-and-vinyl outfits, along with the occasional denim complement, and Katy had withheld fashion advice. Katy didn't relate to the Goth look, but she recalled her own youthful experiments in hippie chic, frayed bell-bottoms and paisley blouses worn without a bra. She shuddered to imagine herself in such a costume now, and figured Jett had the right to make her own choices she would later regret. Except the choice to do drugs.

Katy paused at the top of the stairs. Below, the footsteps crossed the living room, headed for the kitchen.

"Jett?"

A snack. No adolescent's afternoon was complete without an apple or a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich. They were growing, after all, pushing toward adulthood, shoving aside the generation ahead.

Swordfish, for God's sake. What had she been thinking? Katy knew swordfish was loaded with mercury, but figured the toxicity wouldn't do any lasting damage upon first exposure. She'd been trying to impress Gordon, plain and simple. Jett liked it okay, she barely ate dinner these days anyway, what with all that after-school snacking and chronic dieting. Gordon had taken a first bite, lifted his eyebrows, then shifted his attention back to the book he was reading. He'd turned the page before wiping his lips and saying, "Honey, you've outdone yourself. I've never tasted such exquisite brook trout."