The Mushroom Farm
by Nancy Thorne
Originally published in the First Line Literary Journal, Summer 2017.
THE MUSHROOM FARM
by Nancy Thorne
The plan suddenly made sense.
The result of last evening’s storm cascaded below with a roar. When I leaned slightly over the arched peak of the massive pipe of the culvert, where I sat cross-legged, I could see the rapid motion of the waterfall as it poured from the chute into the deep gape of a hole it had created over the years. I felt a pull on my ponytail as a quick gust swept it to one side.
Maria’s feet settled into a single groove of the corrugated metal and stuck out an inch beyond the edge; her toes bent over the culvert, gripping the pipe.
“The current’s strong,” I said. I looked at her face.
She closed her eyes and her body wavered with a slight to and fro motion like she was in a trance.
“I needed you here with me,” she said. “Someone to tell my father what happened.”
* * *
The stench of manure announced the farm before our car rounded the bend. A gravel driveway curved around wooden structures on the acreage, ending in front of a clapboard house that at one time must have appeared a clean white. The car rolled to a stop just in front of the steps that led to an enclosed front porch.
During the first years of our visits I was too young to be bothered by the smell and wouldn’t have thought it at all disturbing if my father hadn’t said the word “pew” the very second he opened his door. From then on, during subsequent summer stopovers, I had my pew word ready soon after we backed out of our own driveway and headed toward the county side road.
It’s probably a fact that the barns situated near the house were not as large as I remember, but my memory has held them as they appeared in my girlhood: dark windowless wooden buildings, three of them, with high slanted timbered roofs held up by massive beams standing in rows among mounds of rich black soil. Thousands of mushrooms grew in stark contrast like a multitude of white bubbles floating atop a night’s sea.
“Okay, Lizzie, see if you can get one to come out this time,” Father said as he opened my door, knowing my eagerness to catch a glimpse of the undomesticated cats that made their home beneath the porch.
“Pew,” I said.
Aware by now that any quick movement would frighten the cats, I simply peered into the shadow of their safety.
Now and then, if I were lucky, a new litter would have recently been born. The kittens rarely showed fear, hadn’t yet learned to be fearful, and were normally curious enough to step clumsily from their shelter and allow me to pick them up for a hug. But not today.
A sudden hiss and then a lurch of two green eyes that glowed like fluorescent orbs startled me.
“Let them have their space,” Father said as he started up the timber steps. “They aren’t used to people wanting to be with them.”
I followed quickly behind as soon as I heard the taps on the door and the subsequent Italian greeting, both loud and fervent.
“Domenico! Come stai!”
“Molto bene Vincenzo, molto bene.”
I knew even then that though my father and this man weren’t related, they held a bond hastened by language. The owner of the farm, Vincenzo, spoke very little English and hadn’t felt the need to learn, relying instead on people like my father to relay relevant information of the world outside the business of mushrooms. And as they spoke, it afforded me the opportunity to wander about this level of the house.
This was not an average home. It was not neat and sterile like my own where everything had a place and every place had a thing with a purpose. It had the ramshackle look of a deserted dwelling, with aged peeling paper on the walls and dirty dishes in the sink. Knick-knacks of miniature ceramic birds from boxes of tea covered the windowsills, red tins with faded sketched labels illustrating cigarettes and pipes lined the top of the refrigerator and empty soda bottles lay strewn among yellowed imported newspapers that covered the top of a laminate and chrome kitchen table.
Plants in plastic pots of green and orange existed in differing stages of growth or demise along handcrafted wooden shelves that lined two walls of the separate dining room where I stepped into without much notice. Alien words reverberated from the kitchen and became, as they tended to, boisterous and impassioned.
There was no dining table in the dining room, although my father once told me there used to be. But when Vincenzo’s wife left him for a second chance at life and moved herself into a pristine apartment, she took it with her, and left their daughter behind.
Vincenzo’s height was average, and his face had a chubby childlike quality to it except for a crooked nose and unshaved olive skin. The man’s hands were thick and his fingers permanently soiled. When young, he had been a professional fighter, and photos of him dressed in baggy trunks below a bare chest revealed themselves between different types of foliage, partially obscured by withering leaves and stalks.
Trophies of boxers, frozen with outstretched gloved hands, sat atop dust covered end tables at each side of a worn and faded brocade armchair. Paint by number artwork of dog heads, a canal in Venice, pink flamingos standing on one leg and matadors with brilliant red capes hung on the far wall while a velvet portrait of Jesus stared out from bright blue eyes above a wooden console with opened doors that housed a television and record player all in one. A pink table lamp with a gold shade was the only light in the room.
Vincenzo’s daughter, Maria, normally stayed upstairs in her bedroom during the Saturday afternoons my father and I came to visit. I often questioned my father about this and why I couldn’t simply go up there, but was invariably told that Vincenzo had always been a strict father − the old school way of thinking. So she wasn’t used to people wanting to be with her.
The chaos of the dining room wasn’t easy to leave; its allurement elevated my curiosity as if I were watching a carnival’s sideshow, but after a final scan I walked back into the kitchen.
Seeing my father with a basket filled to the brim with mushrooms wasn’t at all a surprise − rarely an occasion took place where store bought mushrooms entered our home − but seeing Maria at the foot of the stairs − well, that was another matter altogether.
Everything about her looked dark and mournful, and for a moment I imagined her a genuine zombie. Her thick blue-black hair fell far below her shoulders and over her teenage breasts, covering most of the front of her shirt. Her face had inherited the deep tone of her father’s and her eyes were rung with ghostly circles.
“Andare!” her father said with an upward flick of his hand toward the staircase. Before she had a chance to move, my father said something to Vincenzo with an open handed gesture, then suggested I say hello to Maria.
“Hi!” I gave a too-eager wave.
Maria looked at her father before responding her own hello.
It took convincing from my father’s indecipherable words and Maria had already slipped up the stairs before Vincenzo relented. With a hesitant nod, he granted me the opportunity to go to his daughter’s room.
I peered in, my eyes drawn to a crucifix hovering by a nail over her headboard. On a desk sat a picture of a woman with a round face and greying hair that tightened around the sides of her head and gathered on top as a bun; she posed unsmiling.
I looked away quickly and searched for a youthful connection to Maria in two rows of books that stood upright on shelves of an old bookcase, scanning the titles of their covers, most of them school books. “Got any fantasies?”
“No, I’m not allowed.”
The springs beneath the mattress squeaked as I sat myself upon it. A catalogue featuring women’s fashions rested on a bedside table and I pretended to be interested as I picked it up and flipped through the pages. Dog-eared photos of models dressed in bras and panties fluttered before my eyes.
“Look Maria,” I said when a page of tightly girdled torsos appeared. “Look at this.”
She stood for the longest time in front of me, head down and silent. I patted the spot beside me. “If you sit you’ll be able to see better.”
She lowered her body so hesitantly I wondered if I smelled, then almost laughed.
“You go to a catholic school, huh?” I turned another page.
“Yes. Saint Rita of Cascia.”
“Oh yeah? I’ve heard that nuns can be pretty mean when you’re in high school.” (Whispered butt-whipping nun rumors were common among my godless grade seven classmates.)
“They follow the sacred scripture,” she said.
I didn’t know what a scripture was but felt pretty sure that sacred meant something holy.
While I tried to find the pages that displayed rings and necklaces and such, a soft pressure from Maria’s palm stroked my forearm once, then twice; her touch felt inviting and warm, but nothing like my mother’s.
“Time to go!” bellowed up the stairs, the recognizable words seizing my attention. Maria immediately withdrew her hand.
It would be another year before I saw her again. I’d prepared for this visit by bringing a supply of crumbled cheese in the hope of luring at least one of the cats from beneath the porch. Bits of cheddar in a plastic bag bounced on my lap as our car drove over bumps and crevices, alerting me to the fact we were near our destination.
As we drove onto the property of the farm, Maria’s figure appeared out of the corner of my eye as she closed one of the barn doors. She turned to the sound of gravel crunching beneath our wheels. I smiled and gave a wave from the window. She nodded.
“I think I’ll just stay outside this time, with the strays,” I said to my dad who had already reached the bottom step of the stairs.
Then came the tap and the thwack of the screen door. I turned to look for Maria but she was gone.
Faint mews echoed from beneath the porch and I scurried over and opened the plastic bag. After a high-pitched here kitty kitty and a short toss of cheese crumbs, a black and white kitten presented itself. With wobbling legs it approached and came close enough for me to hold. I stroked the downy fur on its head and felt the immediate vibrations of a purr against my chest.
Footsteps against crushed rock resonated from behind. I stood and walked toward the barns along the pathway of concrete slabs that bordered the house; the stink of fresh manure hit my thirteen-year-old nasal passages with a jolt.
I lowered my nose into the coat of the kitten before rounding the back corner of the house. Maria appeared right in front of me.
“Oh, Maria.”
Her raven eyes gazed down onto mine with a dull stillness.
“Look.” I held up the kitten. “I got one to come to me.”
Maria looked around like she was making certain no one else hovered nearby. “Doesn’t matter,” she said. “It’ll never be a normal cat. You probably think you can change it cause it’s young but you can’t. You should just let it be.”
“Uh, okay,” I said, uncomfortable but still craving a connection. I faked a smile then turned around. Maria followed. The kitten teetered its way back under the porch. I asked Maria if she wanted to hang around outside with me.
“There’s a pond, just past those trees,” she said, pointing to a group of evergreens that stood side by side as if guarding a border.
“Great,” I said with enthusiasm. “Just gotta tell my dad where I’m going.”
Maria shook her head and spoke calmly. “No, it’s okay. Won’t be long. Honest.”
I followed closely behind as Maria led me over the field and into the spindly rooted strip of forest. There were still many questions I wanted to ask her about the nuns, but never did a point come when I felt she wanted to say anything at all. So we trudged along in silence.
An overgrown meadow came into view, and in the center of its mixed grasses a faint trail curved in a snakelike fashion with fronds of wildflowers growing within its boundaries, impeding portions of our passage.
“This is where I come,” she said finally when we reached the large culvert and the pool it had created. “This is where I come to wash it all away.”
I assumed she was talking about the smell of manure, and thought it a very good idea, although I figured she probably had a shower in her house.
We made our way up the incline of the patchy embankment that anchored the bulbous sides of the culvert. We both took off our shoes and I cautiously followed Maria along the ridges of the pipe and felt the warmth of the steel under my feet, then against my legs as I sat.
Over and over I watched as Maria jumped into the water, and I realized that she knew, with uncanny exactness, the hidden blueprint of the excavated earth beneath the secluded pond, the size and shape of the cavity where she could plunge her body feet first without restriction or fear of sudden solid contact.
Maria stooped to stroke the side of my face as if wiping something away, gently. Her damp fingers felt cool against my cheek.
“What do you mean, Maria? Tell him what happened?”
She straightened. Her body keeled in an unusual way as if she were trying to lay flat, face down, and I instinctively swiped for her ankle but felt only a puff of air.
“Maria!” I screamed, but it was too late. I could only watch as she spread her arms like they were wings as she fell farther from me. The hellish sound of an unnatural thud, heavy and sickening, shattered the air and consumed my innocence. I only wanted to cover my eyes, but didn’t; I looked over the edge of the culvert.
Within seconds, the pond turned an eerie shade of pink.
On all fours, I stumbled over the rises and hollows of the metal until the moist of the embankment skidded beneath my hands and knees, slinging me down and through mounds of mud until no words or shrieks could escape my soil-filled mouth. My body stilled. Level with the surface of the water, brown matter tumbled out of my mouth along with my lunch.
Still retching, I stood and senselessly looked for the spot where Maria had destroyed herself.
* * *
The counsellor suggested to my father that I be allowed to attend at least the visitation before the funeral, if I so desired.
Maria lay at the front of the room; a soft light shone on her closed casket. “Such a terrible accident,” floated erroneously above my head more times than I could count. At some point my father, still with a fixed hold of my hand, felt it necessary as a gesture of respect for us to approach Maria’s parents: two people sitting side by side across the aisle from their dead daughter. Her mother’s face looked ashen, almost white, beneath a thin black mourning veil − like a mushroom in the dark.
I stared mutely and wished them not one breath of sweet air, not one ray of sunlight.