Amity Gaige - Schroder

We were halfway across the field when the door to the farmhouse opened and a woman with a low-hanging bosom stood watching us, her face half in shadow. I nodded and pressed on, but two small dogs had been released from the house and were now darting around my ankles amongst the knotted stems.

“Doggies!” cried Meadow. “Daddy! Can I pet them, please can I pet them?”

“No, sweetheart.” I glanced over at the woman. “We really should forge ahead.”

“Please, Daddy, please! Look how cute and tiny .”

I stood there while Meadow sank into the grasses petting the dogs, and I tried not to acknowledge their owner watching us. We were trespassers, and I was determined to avoid all imbroglios or anyone who might demand to know who we were and what the hell we were doing. Besides, she looked like the shotgun type. I heard her garbled shouting.

I feigned deafness. “Excuse me?”

“You looking for me?” the woman shouted again.

“No. At least I don’t think I am. No.”

“Because we got cabins.” The woman had stepped off the porch with some effort and down the single stair to the edge of the meadow. “I thought you were looking for our cabins. I rent them. I rent the cabins.”

I nodded. I gave Meadow’s back a little push.

“Sometimes people just kind of come wandering through. Because they’ve heard about me in town. That’s why I ask.” The woman put her hands on the small of her back. She was, I could see now, a rather old woman, her gray hair cut short like a man’s. “Because I only want the kind of people who hear about me in town. People who come recommended.”

“Sure,” I called. “That makes sense.”

“All righty, then,” she said, and clapped her hands. The dogs ran off, glancing back at us. The woman turned and labored back toward her porch. I once again surveyed the view — the splintery farmhouse, the lake, my daughter, dew netted in her hair.

“Excuse me!” I called, scything my way toward the old woman, until I managed to rip myself free of the field. I swatted the grass from my pant legs. She blinked back at me with opaque blue eyes. “Pardon me for being so slow to respond. My daughter and I—” The field spat forth Meadow, looking impish with thistles in her hair. “My daughter and I are taking a little road trip together and we do, actually do need a place to stay. For a day or two before we head on.”

The woman’s eyes shifted vaguely in Meadow’s direction. “How did you hear about me? Someone in town?”

“No,” I said. “No, to be honest. I don’t even know which town you’re talking about. We’ve been driving all night.”

The old woman looked disappointed. “The thing is, I like people to come recommended. You never know. It’s just me out here. You never know.”

“Oh, I totally understand. But we’re just a dad and his little girl, who needs a place to change out of her pj’s. She could use a nice little cabin to rest and change.”

The woman nodded, but I could tell now she had no idea Meadow was wearing a nightgown. Aha. She was perfect; she couldn’t even see . I redoubled my efforts.

“This might sound like a whole lot of hooey to you,” I said, “but I believe we were recommended. By the land. We were drawn to it. Sorry—” I squeezed my eyes with my fingers. “I’ve been driving all night. I completely understand your policy. Come on, sweetheart.”

“Well,” the woman said, as if I hadn’t spoken at all, “you can come and have a look at Cabin Two. Cabin One is rented, so you don’t get a choice. I don’t know”—the woman spoke to the ground as she walked—“the other one is rented to someone else who wasn’t recommended.”

“The economy is terrible,” I said, taking Meadow’s hand. “We’ve all lost so much.”

“I don’t offer breakfast or any conveniences,” the woman continued. “I don’t have innerweb. Hell, I don’t even have a phone. But most guests, to tell the truth, seem to get a kick out of that. Where you from?”

I squeezed Meadow’s hand, gave her a wink. “Canada,” I said.

Meadow’s eyes widened, then narrowed with conspiracy.

The old woman led us down a gravel path that ended at the lake in a small horseshoe beach with hard gray sand. On either side of this beach stood what looked like two refurbished tool sheds spruced up with a little latticework. The chocolate brown structures were so small that they appeared as two dollhouses standing in the woods. The old woman grappled for a key ring on her belt and shouldered open the door. Meadow ran inside and bounced upon one of the narrow, iron-framed beds. The room was musty and unswept and smelled of wet wool. An oval rope rug lay on the floor, and a dozen small apothecary bottles lined the sill of the cabin’s single window in the dimness.

“Well?” the old woman waited. “What do you say?”

What did I say? What should I have said? Should I have said no — no, we’d better turn around and go home? I failed to save my marriage, and I failed to protect my rights as a father, and I failed in my resolve in so many ways, and now my exceptionally intelligent child must return to Our Lady of Chronic Fatigue and her deadening education, and her conventional grandparents, and her merciless mother, and we must never speak of this, and must never wonder what we would have gained if we had just said yes? And I! Should I have said, Actually, I’m needed back at my rental on New Scotland Ave. so that I can spend another evening in the shower stall scrubbing the soap scum off the sealant with a toothbrush, a glass of Canadian Club nestled in the soap basket?

I stepped inside the tiny cabin and sneezed from the visible allergens.

“Thank you,” I said, pumping the old woman’s hand. “We love it.”

They say the recession made people look inward. Out of work, folks suddenly had time on their hands to contemplate the fabric of their souls. People who had driven themselves into the ground for decades were suddenly baking bread, reading poetry, creating sand mandalas, and asking probing questions of their priests and rabbis. I’m not saying it was good for us. I’m just saying we tried to make the best of it.

As for me, I guess history will count me among the legions of promising young Realtors whose careers were in ascension when the real estate bubble burst. Throughout 2006–2007, I had been selling properties at a steady clip. Just ranches and bungalows in North Albany, condos in refurbished multifamilies in Pine Hills. Small-fry, starter homes, but lots of them. Not bad for someone who was barely trying. At my best, I was representing ten to fifteen properties at a time, all of which vanished from the market before the next insert in the Sunday paper. I was doing so well that I simply stopped taking calls. My success — albeit in a field for which I had little respect — appealed to my latent exceptionalism. And so, although it was the recession that brought me low, I was well into the process of subverting my career when it struck. In fact, it was probably at the pinnacle of my career (Clebus & Co. Realtor of the Month February 2007) when I lost interest. Having proved myself so handily, it was my nature to grow bored and look for a new challenge.

The moment Meadow was born, I knew she was exceptional. First of all, she didn’t cry. Although I understand that a newborn crying is a sign of life and of vigor , I dreaded the cliché of it. To be honest, I had little interest in her until that moment. I never really wanted children. That is, I never really wanted children, but I wasn’t prepared to take a stand about it. I didn’t not want children. But Meadow didn’t cry when she was born, and this piqued my interest. I peered at her in the silver scale as she punched at the emptiness, and I thought, I’ll be damned, there’s something in this.