Dog's Green Earth Page 7

  I was proud that Eastern was so forward-thinking, though I could see the blonde woman didn’t seem happy with Babson’s response.

  After the meeting finished, we opened the screens and invited everyone to lunch. I remained in the kitchen, watching nervously as the servers delivered and removed plates, but no plates were dropped, no glasses spilled.

  As the attendees finished their desserts and began to leave, Cecilia came into the kitchen. “President Babson asked me to tell you he’d like to speak with you before he leaves. Can you come with me?”

  I followed her, and we lingered in the background while Babson finished an intense conversation with the trustee in the blonde bouffant. His body language was intense and yet personal, respecting her space yet leaning forward so that she was the total focus of his attention. By the time he was finished she was smiling and nodding, and he clasped her hand in both of his and smiled.

  When she walked off he turned to me, and Cecilia faded into the background. “I’m pleased with the job you’re doing, Steve,” he said. “But you know, colleges and universities are getting their funds cut right and left these days. This new initiative to bring in first-time in college students has been much more expensive than expected.”

  My heart began to thump. Was he going to close Friar Lake to save money?

  “The bottom line is that we need to make this place a real profit center,” he continued, and I took a deep breath. “We floated a bond to finance the construction, as you know, and bond interest is one of the financial areas we’re looking at closely. I know it doesn’t cost much to keep this place open—your salary and the other staff costs are minimal, the solar panels are working to keep our utility costs low, and we’re not paying real estate tax. But I want to improve your facility utilization—what’s your percentage now?”

  I struggled to think of how to phrase it. “We have at least one internal or external program each week,” I finally said. “Some of those last only a few hours, like today’s meeting and lunch. Our longest was the two-week Upward Bound course for high school students. I’d have to put together the numbers for you.”

  “Do that, if you would, please.” He was about my height, a shade under six feet, so his green eyes looked directly into mine. “Friar Lake is one of my pet projects and I want to make sure it outlasts my tenure here.”

  Then he shook my hand and turned to follow Cecilia to his car. I wanted to call out to him to wait—what did that mean about his tenure? Was he planning to leave Eastern soon? What kind of utilization rate was he looking for?

  But he was gone. Across from me I saw Joey deep in conversation with Walter Gibbs, and I walked back to the kitchen, where one of the servers had put together a plate of leftovers for Rochester. I walked back toward my office, where I’d left the hound with a bowl of water and a selection of chew toys. He was a friendly dog, but way too friendly for a formal event like the one just ended.

  I snuck around to the side of the gatehouse and peered in the window. He was sprawled on the floor, sound asleep, three different rawhide bones in easy reach of his mouth.

  When I walked in the front door, though, he was already there, with a mournful look on his face like he thought I’d abandoned him and was never coming back.

  “Don’t worry, I brought something for you,” I said, holding up the white paper bag, which contained a foil package of lunchtime leftovers wrapped like a swan. I sat in my office chair and fed him tidbits of turkey by hand to keep him from scarfing everything all at once. I had finished and was in the rest room washing my hands when Joey came in.

  “How did your meeting with Walter go?” I asked as I stepped out, drying my hands on a paper towel.

  “Better than I expected, and worse.” Joey collapsed onto the Windsor armchair across from my desk, the one with the Eastern rising sun crest on the back splat, and Rochester came over to nuzzle him.

  “Walter says I’m doing such a great job here that he could use my help on some work on the campus,” Joey said, as he scratched behind Rochester’s ears.

  “That’s good.”

  “Yeah, but the timing is bad. With my dad in the hospital I can barely keep up with what’s going on here. And even when he gets home, my mom will need some extra help with him for a while. My brothers are trying, but they’re busy too, and I can’t keep relying on Mark.”

  “I’m sure he won’t mind.”

  “I know, that’s his personality. He loves my parents, but the point is they’re my parents, not his, so I need to bear the brunt of the burden.”

  “What does Walter need you to do on campus?” I asked.

  “It’s about this bathroom survey.”

  “Oh, yeah, I heard him mention that during Babson’s speech. Identifying all the single-use bathrooms on campus, right?”

  Joey nodded. “Walter had one of his work-study students do the legwork, walking around the campus and checking each building’s bathroom and marking it on the plans. But he discovered the kid didn’t really know what he was doing. He marked places on the plans that don’t have a restroom at all, and he got confused about which ones had urinals and which ones didn’t.”

  He slumped back against the chair. “Now the whole thing needs to be done again and he wants me to do it.”

  “I don’t mind spending time on campus. We can split up the buildings between us.”

  “Are you sure? If you can handle the survey part, I can take what you give me and check the information against the plans. But don’t you have work to do here?”

  “Babson wants me to give him up to date numbers on facility utilization,” I said. “And once that’s done, he wants to increase the revenue we generate so we can pay down the renovation bond quicker.”

  “At least he’s not thinking about shutting the place down.”

  “Not yet, at least. He agrees we’re doing a good job staying within our budget, but someday that might not be enough. He wants us to be a real profit center for the college.”

  “And if you can’t?”

  “Then he’ll either find somebody who can, or shut us down,” I said. “That’s the way the business world works.”

  11: Memories

  Joey and I were hashing out the details of which buildings I’d check on the campus when his cell phone rang with the first few bars of ABBA’s “Mamma Mia.”

  “Mark set up these rings tones for me,” he said, as he grabbed for the phone. “That’s my mom.”

  He put the phone up to his ear. “Hey, mom. How’s dad doing?” He listened for a moment. “Mom. The doctor said four to six hours for the surgery. It’s only been four and a half since he went in. There’s nothing to get frightened about.”

  He listened again. “Fine. I’ll be over there as soon as I can.” He ended the call. “My mom is freaking out. Nobody will tell her what’s going on in the operating room.”

  “You go. I’ll finish up here.”

  After he left, I sat in my chair, with Rochester at my knee. I’d never thought through the specifics of my mother’s final illness. She’d been feeling somewhat listless, but both she and my father had dismissed it because she was unhappy at work. She was the office manager for a dental practice in Trenton, across the river from Stewart’s Crossing, and the business was going through a lot of changes. The woman my mom had been with for a dozen years had retired and sold her practice to a young man, who was making a lot of changes. Many patients had moved on, and finances were tight.

  She and my father finally decided she should retire. Before she lost her health insurance, she’d gone in for a comprehensive checkup, and the doctor had ordered an ultrasound, which revealed growths on her thyroid. A biopsy showed cancer there, and further tests indicated the cancer had spread to her bones and other organs.

  My father wanted to retire then, to look after her, but as she got worse she had to leave her job and they needed his insurance to cover her. Mary was pregnant for the first time, suffering a lot of morning sickness, and I had been reluc
tant to leave her alone to fly back to Pennsylvania and help them out. My father had to wait for my mom’s surgery results on his own, and he had to negotiate the complicated insurance requirements. I had talked to them both on the phone a lot, but that wasn’t the same.

  She had been responding to the chemotherapy, but then she caught a chest cold which worsened into an infection, and that was the last straw. I had flown home for the funeral, of course, and a few days after I returned to California Mary had suffered her first miscarriage.

  The doctor tried to comfort us, telling it was nature’s way of handling a fetus that was too ill to survive, but on top of my mother’s death, that was a real punch to the gut, and Mary and I both retreated into ourselves. I barely noticed all the packages coming into the house from Amazon and other online vendors, and it wasn’t until I saw the first set of credit card bills that I realized how much trouble we were in.

  I stroked the soft fur of Rochester’s golden head and let myself cry for a few minutes, for all that I’d lost, and for the pain Joey and his family were going through. Then I wiped my eyes, took a deep breath, and stood up. I had work to do, and Joey, and perhaps even my own career, depended on me to get it done.

  The rest of the day passed in a blur as I handled Joey’s problems and managed to get a few minutes to think about how I could increase the number of events we handled at Friar Lake. I had already done everything that was within my comfort zone and my experience, so it was time for some new thinking. I spent an hour brainstorming, making notes and doing some quick research.

  I texted Joey to check on his dad, and he replied that Joe Senior had come through the surgery without complications, but he would be in the cardiac ICU for a couple of days for follow up. I replied with a happy face and a thumbs up.

  That evening, Lili and I sat together at dinner and talked about our days, and I told her about Joe Capodilupo’s surgery, and the meeting and lunch at Friar Lake. “I’m glad Joe is doing well,” she said. She had met Joe a couple of times in the past, both in his old job, and at a big party Joey and Mark had celebrated the year before. “It must be tough on Joey right now. I know that every time my mom gets sick, I get very stressed.”

  Lili’s widowed mother lived in an oceanfront condo in Miami, and though she was in good health, she was closing in on her seventy-fifth birthday, with all the problems that aging brings. She had a fiery personality, which I saw echoes of in her daughter, and so even small things tended to be magnified.

  Lili took a sip of the fresh apple cider we’d bought at a local orchard the weekend before, then said, “What are you going to do to bring in more programs at Friar Lake?”

  “I wish I knew. I think I’ve maxed out the capacity for my own programming—there’s a limit to the number of alumni events we can offer before we burn out the faculty and overwhelm the alums. And our market is pretty much local, so we’re restricted to the graduates who still live within driving distance of the campus.”

  She nodded. “What about doing some different kind of programs—art exhibits, for example? I could get together some of my student work and we could hang it in the chapel.”

  My heart skipped a beat. What a great idea. Why didn’t I think of it? “That’s great—it uses the facility and it exposes more people to Friar Lake.”

  Then I realized the problem. “Too bad it doesn’t bring in revenue.”

  “Oh. That.” Lili thought for a moment. “I know a guy who runs a gallery in Washington’s Crossing. What if I got him to co-sponsor the event, and bring in some of his artists? He’d pay you something for the use of the space, and maybe even a small commission if he sells anything.”

  “That’s awesome, sweetheart.” I leaned across and kissed her. “I was thinking I could reach out to community groups and get them to run events there.” We brainstormed a couple of ideas—clubs like the Lions and the Kiwanis did monthly lunches, so maybe we could lure them there, but Friar Lake wasn’t the most convenient location for midday business. I pulled out my laptop and we started searching for organizations that met on Saturdays or Sundays.

  When we had a solid list, we settled down on the couch to watch a movie together. I pushed aside all my problems, giving my subconscious a chance to come up with some ideas.

  Saturday morning dawned crisp and sunny. “How would you feel about doing some apple picking?” Lili asked. “The place where I bought the cider last week has a big orchard, and Tamsen forwarded me a recipe for a sour cream apple pie that she says is terrific.”

  “You want to call her and see if she and Rick and Justin want to join us?”

  “That’s a great idea.”

  I went upstairs to shower and dress, and by the time I returned Lili said, “Justin and Rick have Pop Warner football practice this afternoon, but they can go with us if we go now.”

  Lili grabbed a light sweater and struggled to put her exuberant auburn curls under a ball cap. “I’m tired of my hair,” she said. “What would you think if I got it cut?”

  “I’d think you’re beautiful no matter what you do with your hair.”

  She leaned over and kissed my cheek. “Good answer. I might go to New York one day. I saw Andrea del Presto from the sociology department the other day and her hair looked gorgeous. She has it done at a salon on Madison Avenue.”

  I didn’t say that sounded expensive, though it did. Lili and I kept our finances separate, though we mixed and mingled expenses as they came up. My father had left me the townhouse free and clear, and Lili paid the monthly association fee. I paid the cable bill, and we each paid for our own cell phones. We alternated paying for groceries and dining out. So Lili was free to spend as much as she wanted for a hair salon, though privately I thought the discount salon in Levittown where I got my hair cut was just fine.

  Tamsen picked us up a half hour later in her SUV, which was the only vehicle among us that could accommodate all five of us and the two dogs easily. She was accustomed to chauffeuring kids to all kinds of after-school activities, from sports to carnivals to library enrichment events.

  Justin and Rascal were already in the back, so we opened the hatch and Rochester jumped in with them. The two dogs were clambering over Justin as Lili and I slipped into the back seat, the boy giggling with joy as they licked his face and squirmed around him.

  Tamsen drove us inland, up Ferry Road. On the way, we passed a truck advertising Female Plumbing, with a sign on the right that read, “It takes a woman to get the job done right.”

  I pointed the truck out to Lili and Tamsen. “Would you guys really consider going to an ob-gyn who advertised herself as a female plumber?” I asked them both.

  “Steve. They’re plumbers who happen to be women,” Lili said. “Not ob-gyns.”

  I leaned forward. “Oh.”

  Tamsen, Lili and even Rick laughed at me.

  “What’s an obie gin?” Justin asked from the back.

  Rick turned around and looked at me. “You brought it up.”

  I turned toward Justin. “A doctor for moms,” I said. “To make sure they can take care of their kids.”

  “Do you have good one, Mom?” Justin asked.

  “I have a great doctor, and a great kid,” Tamsen answered. “What do you want to do when we get to Styer’s? Should we pick the apples ourselves or just buy a bushel?”

  I admired the way she was able segue so smoothly. I wondered briefly if Mary, who had remarried and now had a child, had developed those same skills. I’d never know.

  “I want to pick the apples,” Justin said. “Do you think I can reach them?”

  “I’ll pull the branches down for you, sport,” Rick said.

  We drove what had once been country roads, now four-lane divided highways, out to the outskirts of Langhorne, where Styer Orchards was one of the only farms to have held out against suburban encroachment. A sign out front proclaimed that the land had been preserved as a working orchard, which I assumed meant some kind of government subsidy was involved.

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nbsp; We passed an old-fashioned tractor outside the entrance to the market and followed a sign down the road to the orchard. We skipped the pumpkin patch and headed for the orchard, where we got a couple of baskets and walked between the rows of the trees to where the apples were ripe.

  The air was fresh with the smells of dirt and apple bark, and the dogs romped around us, though we held them on leashes. When we got to the right spot, Lili and Tamsen took the leashes and settled down on a grassy spot to watch Rick, Justin and me pick the apples. Rick and I took turns pulling branches down for Justin, while loading the basket ourselves.

  It was an idyllic way to pass a Saturday morning. The trees were bowed with fruit, the pathways neat and well-kept, and around us we saw other families doing the same thing we were.

  “Lili has promised me a sour cream apple pie,” I said to Rick as we worked.

  “Tamsen has the recipe,” Rick said. He turned to Justin. “You like apple pie, sport?”

  “I love it. Especially if my mom makes it.”

  Rick laughed. “This kid’s going to grow up to be a diplomat.”

  “I want to be a football coach,” Justin said. “Like you.”

  I smiled. My parents used to take me to Styer’s when I was a kid. I learned quickly that my mother didn’t want me to eat candy apples, worried about cavities, but my dad was an easy mark. All I had to do was take him by the hand and lead him to them, and he’d buy one for each of us. I hoped Justin would have similar good memories.

  He rushed ahead to his mom, leaving Rick and me to carry baskets brimming with ripe Braeburn apples in shades of pink and pale green, which Tamsen had informed us made the best pies.

  “Anything new on the murder case?” I asked Rick as we walked.

  “I have a series of interviews set up for Monday and Tuesday,” he said. “At this point I’m still gathering information, and the chief isn’t eager to pay for overtime unless I can prove the need. You find anything more on the Hi Neighbor site?”