“Go on,” I tell him. “Just make it quick.”
As Brent and I gathered up the netting to carry to the Dumpster, I realized that in pursuit of perfectly unblemished, Martha-worthy cherries, I’d murdered at least a dozen songbirds. This fact probably wouldn’t have bothered most farmers—like the one at Agway who’d originally given me the netting tip. I wasn’t naïve enough not to realize that death and farms go hand in hand. But what bothered me was that I would’ve been perfectly happy with a few pockmarked or missing cherries. I’d only been planning on using them in pies anyway.
I’d been selfish. I hadn’t yet realized that the true goal of organic farming wasn’t harvesting crops in spite of bugs, pests, and predators. It was about harvesting crops alongside of them. It was about planting more than the amount we need. And it was about making sure there was enough extra to go around for everything that made its home on the farm. For every sparrow I’d killed, there would be millions of fewer seeds spread over the fields from their droppings and millions of uneaten bugs, which would in turn attack our vegetable garden. We’d be paying for our unblemished cherries in some way or another for the rest of the season. Sure, we hadn’t sprayed chemicals all over the cherries. But we’d been just as deadly.
It took Brent and me the entire rest of the day to pick all of the fruit off the tree. We ultimately wound up with twenty-two full baskets. It was gratifying to know that after pitting and freezing our haul, we’d have our own fruit to eat all winter. But I cannot tell a lie. They tasted more bitter than sour.
We spent much of the rest of the weekend pitting cherries and preparing for our picnic. My preference was still to host something similar to the Fourth of July parties of my youth, when someone in the neighborhood set up a buffet on a picnic table in the garage, and others would bring all manner of red, white, and blue–themed foods, generally involving Jell-O. But Brent was insisting on a Martha-style holiday with hand-cranked ice cream, meticulously “informal” floral arrangements, and three different varieties of lemonade. If we had an extra day to prepare, I was sure he’d have us taking trombone lessons for a parade in front of the house.
Even though we had a long five-day holiday break to prepare for the party, we’d barely put a dent in the list of chores Brent had wanted to accomplish. The evening before the Fourth found us frantically weeding the formal flower garden well after the sun went down.
“It’s too dark to see. I’m going inside,” I said, brushing a mosquito off my forearm. I couldn’t help but think that I wouldn’t have needed to if I hadn’t killed so many birds in the netting. “I can’t tell the difference anymore between the crabgrass and the stinging nettles. My hands are on fire.”
“Just put your gloves back on,” Brent answered. “All there is to do inside is read or go to sleep.”
“Precisely. It’s a holiday. That’s the definition of time off.”
“There are no holidays for farmers.”
“I’d hardly call manicuring peonies ‘farming.’”
“You would if you were a peony farmer.”
While I too wanted to make a good impression on our new neighbors, I had a higher tolerance for imperfection than Brent did. Even though I worked to make sure that my ad clients always put their most seductive foot forward, Brent’s job took things a step further. Being surrounded by perfectionist Marthabots all day gave one a warped sense of reality—or perhaps a perfectly smooth sense of a warped reality.
“Okay. That’s it,” I said ten minutes later. “I’m going to bed.”
Brent stayed crouched over in front of me, his butt crack gleaming in the moonlight.
“Okay. You can always get up early tomorrow to finish,” he said.
It took all the willpower I had not to shove a stinging nettle down his pants.
“Happy Overt Nationalism Day!” came a booming voice from the driveway. It was Doug and Garth from the hotel, and Michelle, our realtor. The three of them were best friends, and we’d rarely seen them when they weren’t all together. We’d learned that Michelle also resides in the village, next door to Doug and Garth. She lived alone—except for her two giant Bouvier dogs—in an incredibly huge stone mansion at the top of a hill overlooking the valley. She’d come dressed in a stunningly stylish outfit—a polka-dotted vintage dress that flared out just above the knees.
“We brought you some wine,” Doug said, and then gestured toward Michelle. “And also the spinster on the hill.”
“And I brought some beer and the fags from the dell,” Michelle responded. She looked around the yard. “Martha isn’t here yet?”
We laughed, assuming she was joking. But by the confused look on the trio’s faces, we realized she wasn’t.
“No, Martha’s not coming,” Brent said. “Did someone tell you she was?”
“Oh, everyone in town thinks she’s coming,” Doug answered. “They’ve been gossiping about it for weeks now.”
Our party was going to be a disappointment before it even started. I felt like Marcia Brady when she told everyone that she was going to get Davy Jones to appear at the school dance. Except that we hadn’t told anyone anything. Who would seriously think that Martha would make a three-and-a-half-hour drive to the middle of nowhere on the Fourth of July?
Soon after Doug, Garth, and Michelle’s arrival, Farmer John walked over across his driveway accompanied by an older couple.
“These are my parents, Harold and Barbara Hall,” John said. They extended their hands.
“I didn’t know what you might need for your new house, so I sewed up some potholders for you,” Barbara said softly. “Everybody can use potholders.”
Inside the tissue she handed me were three beautifully handsewn potholders, made with fabric depicting the same perennials found in our flower garden.
“These are beautiful,” I said, marveling at their craftsmanship. In the city they could’ve sold at a folk art fair for at least fifty dollars.
“You boys are certainly doing a good job with the farm,” she said.
“It’s mostly John,” I said. “I don’t know what we’d do without him.” Gay men know that the way to a woman’s heart is through her son.
“Well, he says you two are some of the hardest-working people he’s seen,” she added. I nearly blushed at the compliment. John was so naturally quiet that I had no idea what he thought of us. I figured he was adhering to the adage that if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t make fun of the person paying the mortgage.
The rest of the guests arrived within fifteen minutes. We figured that no one wanted to miss a minute of partying with Martha Stewart. But even without her, everyone seemed to be having an idyllic time. Some people were feasting on hot dogs and hamburgers, another group went for a hike in the fields, another played bocce ball on the lawn, and yet another went skinny dipping in the pool. It was practically iconic. The Beekman had been around to celebrate nearly every single Independence Day in our country’s history, and I hoped ours was as festive as any of William Beekman’s.
From the history I’d read, the first Independence Day at the Beekman Mansion probably found the Beekman family heading off to the white steeple church, which we could see from on top of Lookout Hill on the southwestern corner of the property. It’s the same church that caught our eye last fall when we happened upon the Beekman. Judge Beekman and the other men from the area probably would have started the day with gun and cannon salutes in the churchyard before spending the rest of the morning singing hymns, offering prayers of thanks, and giving patriotic speeches about the new “Universal Yankee Nation.” In the afternoon, Joanna Beekman and her neighbors would have served picnic lunches and desserts in the churchyard. And in the evening there would have been one final round of gun and cannon explosions before bed.
We might not have had cannons, but as soon as the sun dipped below the horizon we brought out the sparklers. We gathered everyone on the long back porch and handed them out. One by one our partygoers lit their sparklers from
the glowing tip of their neighbor’s. Soon the porch was aglow in sparkles. People were waving them about trying to spell letters in the growing darkness.
When the final one had extinguished, we realized that the flower garden beneath us was sparkling all on its own. It seemed as if every peony, mock orange blossom, and lupine stem had Christmas lights strung around it. Lightning bugs. They were fervently flashing their answer to our sparkling signals on the porch. It was breathtakingly beautiful.
I thought back to that previous Fourth of July that we’d spent on Martha’s patio in East Hampton and wondered what she was doing this year. Even though our peony bed had thistles and I had no wasabi mayo for our burgers, even she wouldn’t be immune to the charms of a full firefly chorus. Would she?
After people left, Brent and I walked around the moonlit yard picking up paper plates and cups.
“Do you think people had a good time?” he asked, handing me one.
“Seemed to. Did you?”
“I had a great time.”
“Even though we bought the ice cream at the gas station?”
“Don’t be silly,” he said. “Nobody cared about where the ice cream came from.” It sounded to me a little like a Declaration of Independence from Martha World.
Chapter Eleven
By the end of summer it seemed as if we had been farmers for years. At least to us. The garden had been producing bushels of produce, John had met a soap maker who was buying at least a portion of the milk his goats produced, and we cut the fields enough times to fill up the hayloft for the winter ahead.
It also seemed as if we’d become full-fledged members of the community. We’d exchanged zucchini bread with our neighbors and been to chicken-and-biscuit fund-raisers at the local church. Each Friday on our drive from the train station, we stopped off for a drink at the American Hotel, where half of the entire village could be found. The other half enjoyed soft serve at the Dairy Carnival on Route 20. Brent and I usually hit them both and I invariably wound up going to bed with a stomachache and waking up with a headache.
The last week in August had been grueling at the office, and I found myself working late each night on a new client pitch. Consequently, we’d had to take a much later train than usual on that Friday night. By the time we reached the American, the dinner rush was over and Doug and Garth were eating their own dinners at the bar.
While the hotel restaurant’s food is excellent, we’ve come to learn that perhaps the greatest reason for the American’s success lied with Doug and Garth themselves. The summer tourists who came to visit nearby Cooperstown made the drive to Sharon Springs year after year just for the two of them. Garth played the role of the straight man, sincerely asking patrons how their years went, remembering the names of their grandchildren, and making sure their dinners reached their tables hot and in a timely fashion. Doug was the showman. His collection of kilts was legendary. I laughed to think of the reaction he must have received the first few times he wore them after arriving in Sharon Springs in the early 1990s. Since I also once made a living wearing skirts, I knew just how off-putting it could be to some people at first. But I also know how it can also stun everyone into letting their guard down enough to let loose and have one of the most memorable nights of their lives. It’s impossible for anyone to feel uptight and self-conscious when there’s a man in the room with a hemline above his knees.
“Well, look who’s here,” Doug called out loudly as we entered. “How nice that you brought your grandfather out for a nightcap,” he said to Brent, nodding at me. I’d come to learn during these first few months of friendship that Doug believed that the strongest sign of endearment was a constant stream of insults. As it happens, a well-aimed barb was the quickest way to my own heart.
“I guess it’s true,” I said, pointing at Doug in his kilt. “They say even the best hotels can’t avoid prostitution.”
“A real lady never ridicules another woman’s ensemble,” Doug fired back.
“A real lady never leaves home without nylons,” I volleyed.
“And a lady like you never comes home in them.”
Brent and Garth rolled their eyes as they hugged each other in greeting. Behind us, the hotel’s door opened again, letting in a gust of cool evening air. It was John, coming in for a drink after his late night of milking and chores.
“Hi, John,” Brent said. “Can we buy you a drink?” He ordered a beer from the bartender, George, who also happened to run the village’s mortuary.
“What’s new?” I ask John.
“Well, I’ve got good news and bad news,” he answered, and then sat quietly.
“Okay,” I responded. Knowing that John metes out his words like a prisoner shares cigarettes, I debated which news to ask for first, just in case he ran out. “I’ll take the good news,” I finally volunteered.
“Well, it’s about the turkeys…”
We’d been bugging John for several weeks to find some turkeys for the farm. Ever the perfectionist, Brent had started planning our first holiday season at the Beekman back in June. While most people might find such proactivity a bit compulsive, it was par for the course in Brent’s world. The offices of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia were abuzz with holiday activity beginning in July. There were holiday magazines that needed to be laid out, gingerbread cookie recipes that needed to be updated, and television specials to be conceived. What the public doesn’t understand is that the true spirit of Christmas doesn’t come from the heart; it comes from the ad sales.
In the course of his research, Brent had learned that Martha used to raise her own turkeys at her home called, appropriately (or maybe morbidly), Turkey Hill. Martha’s daughter, Alexis, once told Brent a story about how on Thanksgiving mornings, some of the house staff would bring the turkeys into the basement kitchen, give them shots of tequila to calm them, and then slaughter them. After hearing the story, I wondered whether the tequila wasn’t actually used to calm the staff. Alexis said she had to leave the house every Thanksgiving morning while the deed was being done, and rarely ate any of the recently deceased bird come dinnertime. As an adult, she’d become a vegetarian very active in PETA.
Since hearing about Martha’s ritual, Brent had become convinced that we too needed to raise our own turkeys. I agreed with him, not because of the Martha mimicry, but because ever since buying and cooking a fresh heritage breed turkey from Balducci’s several years ago, I vowed never to cook a bland frozen turkey again.
Once we’d decided we needed to bring our very own turkey home to roost, we didn’t realize that most farmers buy their poultry stock in the springtime as chicks. Locating someone willing to part with half-grown birds in the middle of summer was a miracle even my Penny Savior couldn’t perform. So we gave John the task of procuring us some live turkeys.
“The good news,” John said, continuing his report, “is that I’ve found four turkeys. Three hens and a tom.”
“What’s the bad news?” Doug interjects. “I love bad news. When it happens to others, of course,” he adds, sipping his martini and taking a spoonful of lobster chowder.
John took a swallow of beer before proceeding. Clearly whatever it was had been weighing on his mind.
“Well,” he said, hesitating momentarily before finally blurting out the awful truth: “They cost five dollars apiece.”
George winced and let out a low whistle.
I realized that any reaction might work against me. If I was honest and proclaimed that I found that price for my own homegrown Thanksgiving dinner quite reasonable—if not cheap—I risked coming off like a pretentious urban snob.
On the other hand, if I pretended to be as outraged as they were, they’d wonder at the sanity of someone who was paying the mortgage on a mansion but wouldn’t pony up a couple of five-spots for a few measly turkeys.
I decided to take the middle ground.
“I’ll think about it,” I said. The turkeys were cheap for us. But at the same time they were wildly cost ineffective giv
en that we could’ve purchased a dozen chicks this past spring for less than the round of drinks we just bought.
“What’s to think about?” Doug asked. “If you want the turkeys, get the turkeys. It’s not brain surgery. Unless you’re really good with a hatchet.”
“It’s just…” I said haltingly. “I’m still not sure I could kill my own dinner,” I finally answered.
“Why not? With a face like yours, you’ve already killed mine,” Doug said, pushing away his bowl.
Saturday morning I awoke with a slight hangover from the previous evening’s imbibing, but I had no time to indulge it. As the summer was drawing to an end, the garden was producing far more harvest than we could ever eat fresh. There was a large chest freezer in the basement, but I’d decided that the more environmentally conscious and historically appropriate approach to preserving food was to can it. The basement of the Beekman had a separate bricked-off root cellar with the date 1876 carved in the bricks, and I was determined to fill it just as the original Beekmans had. It was what Martha would do.
One of the earliest Martha Stewart shows I remember watching was dedicated to the art of canning. It aired sometime back during my nightclubbing drag queen days. It was the mid-1990s, and her half-hour show aired on PBS on Saturday afternoons—roughly about the same time I was waking up from the evening before or, sometimes, just as I was arriving home. It served as a sort of hangover cure for me.
While my stomach’s stability was far too questionable at that hour to actually eat anything, for some reason it was very soothing to watch Martha—with her calm, almost monotone voice—as she methodically went from sink to stove to counter in her immaculate kitchen studio. Little did I know that it was the very kitchen in which I would enjoy a Fourth of July lunch of wasabi tuna burgers a decade later. Watching her prepare a meal was a sort of virtual sustenance—the only kind I could keep down with the gut-wrenching hangovers I used to cultivate.