Didn't I Feed You Yesterday__ A Mother's Guide to Sanity in Stilettos - Laura Bennett [53]
“How could you lose Frank?” I yelled.
“He can’t have gotten far,” Peter weakly replied.
I pushed past him and out to the garage, where I grabbed a small chainsaw. I went to the area where Peter was now yelling Frank’s name, as though a tortoise knows to come when called, and began mowing down bushes. I had no intention of stopping until either all eighteen acres were barren or we found Frank. You have to understand how attached I am to this tortoise. He is not one of those stinky water turtles that do nothing but generate lengthy discussions about whose turn it is to clean the algae-infested aquarium. Frank is a valued member of this family. We have had him for many years and watched him grow. He has height notches on the wall, like the other kids. This pet has a real personality, and he recognizes people. He greets me every morning in the kitchen, and he spends his afternoons next to me while I sew or write, soaking up the sunshine flooding in from the windows. A tortoise as perfect as Frank only comes around once in life, and the thought of losing him made me apoplectic.
After several hours of what can only be described as intense pruning, I gave up. Despondent, I went back into the house to have a cup of coffee and mourn my loss. I blamed Peter entirely; this was going to cost him our marriage—and he would have to take custody of the children. As I sat there fuming, Frank ambled out from behind one of Peter’s oversize man speakers in the kitchen.
“Frank, you’re here!” I was truly thrilled to see him. It seems that, like me, Frank is not a real outdoorsman. He’s a city tortoise at heart, and had made his way back into the house.
“Hey, Chainsaw Charlie, you should have seen the look on your face.” Peter laughed. “I’ve never seen you that concerned about any of the children.”
“That’s because Frank’s never invited another tortoise up here without asking me first.”
IT IS GREAT HAVING THE COUNTRY HOUSE TO GET AWAY TO ON weekends, but I wouldn’t want to live there full-time. For one thing, there are no sidewalks, so my heels sink into the mud, which pretty much relegates me to the indoors with the tortoises and scared city children. For another, my connection to civilization—satellite TV—is tenuous. A couple of clouds and I am on my own. But mostly, I don’t fit in with the locals. This is truly the land of antiquing and Birkenstocking, two activities not on my to-do list. There are plenty of New Yorkers who likewise make the trek to the Berkshires every weekend and infuse cash into the local economy, but we are generally regarded with disdain by the sandalistas, and I’m pretty sure we’re subject to a separate price list for local services. It’s a pity, this animosity, as there is quite a collection of interesting characters in the country, and I wouldn’t mind getting to know them. For the most part, though, they prefer Peter; his eccentricity mysteriously makes them read him as one of them rather than one of us. Because of this, Peter learns things about the country that I will never find out firsthand.
Did you know that you need a permit to drive around with a dead body in your car? Or that it takes 120 pounds of dry ice to keep an unembalmed body from decomposing? Peter does. He was invited over when our neighbor Christopher performed a do-it-yourself funeral for his mother. After displaying the body in her bedroom on a bed of dry ice for several days, he drove her to the crematorium in the back of a borrowed station wagon. When his ninety-six-year-old father, Bill, died—Bill had played basketball with my kids right up until the end—Christopher took an even more active role: he helped with the actual cremation. I have heard of growing your own vegetables and even slaughtering your own Sunday roast, but cremating your own father? That’s a bit too homegrown for me. Can you imagine sitting around a neighbor’s house enjoying a cup of coffee and some conversation with a dead man packed in dry ice