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“Dollar-fifty.” Zoe took the bills the girl handed her, made change and handed over a recipe card.
“They’re not all the same size.” The lettuce woman was still checking things out. “You should charge less for the smaller ones.”
“Or more for the bigger ones.” Zoe imagined hurling an overripe tomato. Splaat. Like a caste mark, right in the middle of the woman’s forehead
“Typical Seacliff,” Roz muttered as the woman walked away.
Zoe grinned. Seacliff might be one of the most picturesquely located farmer’s markets, but it had the lion’s share of patronizing, demanding customers. Not surprising, really. Seacliff was one of those chichi California coastal communities where you either were very rich, or you worked for the very rich. Phillip Barry’s family was very rich, old family money. Until they were thirteen and fifteen respectively, Zoe and her sister Courtney had grown up in a cottage on the Barry family’s oceanfront Seacliff estate, where their mother, Janna, worked as the housekeeper for Phillip Barry’s family.
These days, Phillip, the oldest of the four Barry sons, was a hotshot surgeon at Seacliff Medical Center, while she grew vegetables that she sold at farmers’ markets and occasionally delivered in fancy wicker baskets to oceanfront houses where people like Phillip Barry lived.
Although she didn’t live in Seacliff anymore—wouldn’t want to even if she could afford to—her son Brett…trumpets and fanfare please…attended school there, the same elite private academy that Phillip Barry’s daughter, Molly, now attended. Brett hadn’t been thrilled about changing schools, but the classrooms at the high school were overcrowded, the teaching impersonal and his grades had been dropping. After one semester at Country Day, Zoe had seen enough improvement that, in her mind at least, it justified the expense.
To her way of thinking, Brett himself justified the expense. Not to be overdramatic or anything, but Brett was her life. Plus, he was a terrific kid—bright, popular and destined for big things. And she’d do anything to make them happen. It took endless scrimping and saving, but if sending him to a good school meant starving herself, which, God knows, she never had, or dressing in thrift-shop clothing—which, no problem at all, she did—her son would never, ever have to settle for second best.
She’d never met Molly Barry, but Brett said she had been kicked out of the last fancy school she’d attended and only got into Country Day because her parents were big shots in the community. That’s what drove Zoe crazy about the excuse Phillip Barry had given for closing emergency services. “We have to protect our families.” Huh, if his family came first, she was Mother Teresa.
Maybe that’s what got under her skin. Parents should put their children first, all the time, and not just after the kids had run so far off the rails that their school expelled them. Maybe she’d organize a protest group. Parents Putting Kids First. PAPUKIFI. Sounded like some exotic Hawaiian fruit.
She grabbed a tube of sunblock from her purse under the counter and dabbed the cream on her nose, which had an annoying habit of turning crimson in the sun. Her shoulders and arms were beginning to freckle, and the tops of her breasts were getting a little toasty, too.
Tonight, she suddenly remembered, was her mother’s barbecue. These days Janna was a high-powered real-estate broker. She was also about to become engaged to her boss, Arnie. Zoe had quickly discovered that Arnie knew everything, including what Zoe needed to do to go from growing and selling vegetables as a part-time hobby, his definition, to a dynamic business. Last week Janna had complained that Zoe didn’t like Arnie.
“I adore Arnie,” Zoe had said. “I worship the ground he walks on.”
“You don’t like him and he knows it,” Janna shot back. “And I don’t appreciate your sarcasm. Arnie doesn’t understand why he can’t…connect with you. He and Courtney get along beautifully. She had us over for cocktails last week and we all had a wonderful time. Arnie gets such a kick out of Brett.”
This had prompted Zoe to ask her mother what exactly she’d meant by the remark. Janna had laughed and reached forward to squeeze Zoe’s chin. “Oh, honey, you should see your face. I mention Brett’s name and you’re immediately on the defensive.” She’d laughed some more. “It’s so cute, you’re like a little terrier sniffing out injustice.”
“I am not.” Her face had gone hot. “I just asked what Arnie found so funny about Brett.”
“I didn’t say that,” Janna had corrected her. “I said Arnie got a kick out of him.” Her hand shot out again, but this time Zoe ducked. “See what I mean about you being defensive,” Janna said.
Thinking of Arnie now, Zoe decided that what she’d really get a kick out of would be shoving Arnie and his Mercedes off the cliff. For good measure she’d send fancy-schmancy Phillip Barry along for the ride. She felt hot and disgruntled and tired of people in general.
A woman who was inspecting the bunches of blue delphinium that Zoe had picked that morning selected a bouquet and handed her a ten-dollar bill. Zoe forced herself to smile. She knew she should be focusing on her customers, but her thoughts kept wandering to that conversation with her mother.
“Don’t tell Arnie that I used to be a housekeeper,” Janna had reminded her. Janna’s pretensions drove her crazy. What the hell did it matter if Janna had once been a housekeeper? In fact, sometimes she imagined herself walking into Phillip Barry’s office and cashing in on the family connection as a way to get a discussion started about the trauma services. Hi, I used to be the housekeeper’s daughter…
“Parsnip,” she said aloud to a surfer type a few years older than Brett as he slowed down by her stall to inspect the cartons of fruit and vegetables. “Here.” She handed him a recipe card. “You’ve probably never cooked them, right?”
He grinned. “I thought they were albino carrots.”
“Gotta grate ’em, though, that’s the trick.”
“I’ll remember that,” he said.
“And don’t forget the honey,” Roz said, “which I just happen to have on sale at the next stall.”
“Cool.”
Zoe watched his face. The kid was about as likely to go home and cook parsnips as she was to invite Phillip Barry to join her in a cup of coffee, just for old times’ sake. And, while I’m here, not to get personal or anything, but how could you just let a girl die?
She shook her head. “So, how many pounds you want?” Focus, she told herself. On the customer, not on Phillip Barry.
“Uh…”
“How about a pound to start with?” She grabbed a plastic bag and delved into the crate of parsnips, picked out a couple, inspected them briefly, then discarded them. “Gonna find you some real good ones,” she told him.
“He’s going to find the nearest bin and dump them,” Sandy said a few moments later. “Cute buns though.” She eased herself up from the chair. “Guess I better go troll for a while.”
“IT’S THAT DAMN farmer’s market,” the real estate agent was explaining to Phillip as she tried to find a spot to park her Mercedes. “Not that I don’t like fresh vegetables, but I swear to God, every Wednesday, the parking is a nightmare. And the worse thing is, it brings in the hordes from all around. Let them go to their own markets, for God’s sake. Now this first house I’m going to show you is right on the bluffs. You can sip a martini on the balcony and watch the sun set.”
“Sounds good.” He decided it wasn’t worth mentioning that he couldn’t remember the last time he’d been home in time to watch the sun set. “It’s on Neptune, you said?”
She turned to smile at him. “You know Neptune?”
“My family’s place was—”
“Oh, of course.” She shook her head. “Silly me. When you told me your last name, I remembered thinking that you were probably one of those Barrys. Well good.” She expertly maneuvered the Mercedes between a landscaper’s truck and a sports car. “I always say, if you can afford Seacliff, why would you ever leave?”
CHAPTER THREE
“YOU’RE LOOKING in Seacliff, of course,” Phillip’s ex-wife said when she called from New York to ask about his house-hunting search.
“Seacliff and Seacliff Heights.” He’d eaten a dinner of microwaved bean soup and had been dozing off over a pile of catch-up reading when the phone rang. “There was a house in the Heights—”
“God, Phillip. The Heights is awful. No ocean view and it’s full of those hideous new places that they get away with charging millions for just because of the name. I don’t want Molly living there.”
Phillip picked up the journal he’d been reading when he fell asleep, realized he was still hungry and wandered into the kitchen. “I’m still looking,” he said ambiguously. In fact the apartment he’d lived in since their divorce suited him just fine, but if Molly was going to live part-time with him, as he and Deanna had agreed, he needed something with more room. Which reminded him that his ex-wife had agreed to cut down on her traveling.
“Who is with Molly?” he asked. “I thought you weren’t going to New York until next month.”
“My mother is staying at the house…much to Molly’s chagrin. ‘I am not a child, I don’t need a baby-sitter.’ Anyway, I wasn’t supposed to be here, but they’re having a reception for me. I thought it might seem churlish not to show up.”
Deanna would never change, he decided, giving up and switching the subject to one that might be more productive. “So what’s this about her charging up your credit cards?” he asked. Deanna had mentioned this in an earlier call to him at the hospital, but he hadn’t had time to discuss it then.
“The new woman who’s handling all of my business affairs called to question some purchases,” Deanna said. “Specifically a three-hundred-dollar surfboard. She said she didn’t think I was the surfing type.”
Phillip carried the phone out to the balcony. The ocean was dark and calm. He sat down, leaned his head back against the glass of the French door. “Did you talk to Molly about it?”
“I’m in New York, Phillip. And, quite honestly, I’m losing patience for all this. What more could we possibly do for the girl? I haven’t had a minute and I don’t expect things to get better. You have no idea how completely exhausting these tours are. I’ve said I’ll cut back and I will, but for now if you could take care of things—maybe have her for a few weeks, just to give my mother a break—I’d really appreciate it. I told you, didn’t I, that I think it’s a boy again?”
“Specifically, why do you think there’s a boy this time?”
“Call it a mother’s intuition.”
Silence, Phillip decided, was the only tactful response.
“And, I just know it’s one of those damn scholarship kids,” she went on. “She gets these goofy ideas that it’s up to her to save the world. I think she may have pawned my tennis bracelet. Before I left, I turned my room upside down—”
“Did you ask her?”
“No, Phillip, I didn’t ask her. I’m striving for tranquility in my life and confronting Molly would be counterproductive—”
“Of course. Hell of a lot easier to let her pawn your jewelry.”
“I didn’t say she was pawning it, Phillip, I just said…oh, never mind. I don’t know why I even try to discuss anything with you. All I know is I’m sick to death of it all…I don’t care how politically incorrect it sounds, we’re paying God knows how much to send her to the best damn school in the area and she’s hanging out with…gardeners—”
“Gardeners?”
“I don’t know,” she said irritably. “The mother’s a gardener or something. Molly said something about her selling vegetables. Hold on a second…okay, the boy’s name is Brett. He’s called several times. Here’s his number.”
Phillip took a deep breath. “What am I supposed to say? Leave my daughter alone because you’re the son of a gardener?”
“Oh, for God’s sake, Phillip. You’re the brain surgeon, you figure something out. I’ve got a book due at the end of next month and my agent is pressing me for updates. I really don’t have time for around-the-clock monitoring, nor, quite frankly, the inclination.”
“Give me the number again.” He took the phone back inside, jotted the number on the cover of last month’s New England Journal of Medicine, ended the call and, with no idea what he was going to say, dialed the boy’s number before he could talk himself out of calling altogether.
An answering machine.
“Hi, there, you’ve reached Zany Zoe at Growing My Way,” the recording said. “Asparagus and apples, beets and broccoli, carrots and cauliflower…well, you get the idea. Leave a message if you want to place an order, or drop by our stall at the Seacliff Farmer’s Market.
He hung up without leaving a message.
“OH, THESE ARE LOVELY, honey.” Janna, at the door of Arnie’s Seacliff Heights condo, took the bunch of mauve and pale blue larkspur Zoe handed her. “Hi, Brett, sweetie.” She embraced her grandson in a quick hug. “God, you get more handsome every time I see you. Got a girlfriend yet?”
Brett grinned. “Can’t talk about it,” he said with a sly glance at Zoe.
“Tell Grandma,” Janna said in a conspiratorial whisper. She’d evidently just come from the nail salon. Her nails—French tip—glistened in the sun-light, the aroma of fresh polish wafting all about her. Janna was fifty-eight but told everyone she was forty-five. A stretch, but on a good day, in the right lighting she could maybe pass. Tonight, she wore a cream linen pantsuit that flattered her curves and her hair was short, blond and artlessly unkempt, as though she didn’t drop big bucks to keep it looking that way. People were always telling Janna that she looked more like Zoe’s older sister than her mother and this thrilled Janna to no end.
“Come on.” Janna cocked her head at Brett. “Don’t be coy.”
“Three,” Brett whispered back. “But don’t tell mom.”
“You little devil,” Janna chuckled.
Zoe folded her arms across her chest. “Maybe you can get some of them to help out about the place. Weed the flower beds, clean out the animal pens, stuff like that.”
“You’re no fun.” Janna swiped at Zoe’s arm. “Your cousins are in the den watching videos,” she told Brett. “And Arnie’s barbecuing salmon steaks out on the patio.” She waited until Brett left, then brought her face close to Zoe’s. “Sweetie, please, please remember, don’t get into…you know, the housekeeper thing. Arnie thinks I lived for years in England.”
“Was I born there?”
Janna eyed her for a moment. “Please don’t be difficult, honey. This means a lot to me.”
“I’m not. If we’re going to have a revisionist history night, I just need to have my facts straight.”
“You know, Courtney was perfectly fine with this. I don’t understand—”
“Was Courtney born in England?”
Janna sighed. “Oh, just forget it, Zoe. I’m sorry I mentioned it. I didn’t think it was that much to ask. Your skin’s broken out, by the way,” she said as she carried the flowers into the kitchen. “A big blotch on your neck.”
Zoe’s fingers moved automatically to her neck. Eczema. An irritating—literally—skin rash that appeared if she ate anything with fish in it, or got stressed about something, like whenever she dealt with her ex-husband. Of course, it was a whole lot easier not to eat fish than it was to avoid dealing with Denny.
Just as she was leaving the house, he’d called to say that he wanted to take Brett to the desert over the July Fourth weekend. She’d said no. One, it wasn’t his weekend to have Brett, and two, the idea of Brett tearing around on his father’s dune buggy terrified her. Brett, of course, wanted to go. “You never let me do anything fun,” he’d complained as they drove over to the barbecue. “It’s not fair.”
“Life’s not fair, honey,” she’d said. At that moment, her left arm had started itching. By the time they got to Arnie’s place, she had tracks up and down both arms, and the backs of her legs were burning like crazy.
Now she could smell the fish Arnie was cooking on the patio. Had it even occurred to Janna to mention her daughter’s allergies? Probably not.
Her sister, Courtney, came into the kitchen, cell phone at her ear. Courtney’s two kids from her first marriage, a boy and a girl, were several years older than Brett. The boy, Eric, parked cars at a Seacliff steak house, where his sister, Ellen, was a cocktail waitress. “They’re both working in the service industry,” Courtney was always explaining, “while they decide upon their future directions.”
Translation, they’d both dropped out of junior college after a few semesters, and Ellen had moved in with her boyfriend. Not that Courtney would readily admit that: she’d recently remarried and worked as a receptionist in a travel agency, prompting Janna to describe her—without a trace of irony—as “my ambitious daughter.”
“Okay, bye,” Courtney said into the phone. “Love you, too. Big smooches, I won’t be late.” She hung up and gave Zoe a quick hug. “Hey, your skin’s all broken out.”
“I know.”
“Arnie’s cooking fish,” Courtney said sotto voce, as she adjusted her pistachio-colored sarong and white halter top. To ensure that they showed off her figure to best advantage, Zoe thought. Tall, wheat-colored hair and thin, that was Courtney.
“I’ll eat salad.”
“Oh, my God.” Janna, arranging the larkspur in a vase, clapped a hand to her mouth. “I forgot all about you, Zoe. Arnie wanted salmon and—”
“Don’t worry about it, Mom.” Janna would self-flagellate for the rest of the evening, and Zoe didn’t want to hear it, especially since nine times out of ten Janna served fish when she invited them to dinner.
“Ever tried Benadryl?” Arnie appeared in the kitchen, carrying a platter of salmon. “That would clear it right up.”
“Yep.” She looked at Arnie, who was wearing white pants, the stretchy waist kind that older men played golf in, and a yellow polo-neck shirt with, naturally, Seacliff Country Club embroidered in discreet small lettering above the breast pocket. “Doesn’t help.”
“I could always keep it under control.” Janna had started assembling a salad, overlapping circles of cucumbers, radishes and tomato on a bed of finely chopped lettuce. “I just didn’t have time to be constantly after you to do it.” She stood back to survey her handiwork. “That’s the best I can do with iceberg. I meant to ask you to bring some of your little lettuces, Zoe.” She turned to look at her daughter, frowned and leaned over to lightly stroke the top of Zoe’s head, much as she might have petted a small dog.
“Woof,” Zoe said
“Did you have it cut again?”
“Just the bangs. Did it myself. Attractive, huh?”
“Honey.” Janna’s expression was strained. “Why do you do this sort of thing? I’d give you the money for a decent haircut.”
Zoe raked her fingers through her hair. She’d paid last month’s overdue feed-store bill with the forty dollars—or however much haircuts cost these days—she’d saved by not going to the beauty shop.
“I like it,” she said.
Janna shook her head. “You have absolutely no vanity.”
“Is that a good thing?”
