ON THANKSGIVING 1931 OLIVIA said they weren’t gathering at the half-laden table until Isabelle joined them. Vanessa objected, saying Isabelle did not join them in the formal dining room for celebrations. She wasn’t family.
“That’s not right,” Olivia said, shaking her head. “Finn?”
Finn sided with his mother. He had bigger concerns at the moment than coddling Vanessa. Than even agreeing with Vanessa. Besides, he didn’t agree. Of course Isabelle must sit at his table.
“It’s my house,” Vanessa muttered. “I can do as I please.”
“It’s Thanksgiving,” Olivia said. “What happened to the spirit of unity between tribes? If ever there was a time for the tempest-tossed refugee to sit by our side, it’s tonight.”
“It’s because you’re a McBride, not an Evans,” Vanessa whispered to Finn as the family was gathering. “You care nothing for propriety.”
“My mother is an Evans.” Finn wasn’t whispering. “What’s her excuse?”
Isabelle came to the table in her Sunday best, a chestnut velvet dress to match her honey-colored hair tied in red velvet ribbons, her face flushed and pink, her eyes shining. She even had on some lipstick! No matter how grim Finn felt, he couldn’t help but smile at the sight of her.
Finn and Vanessa took their seats at opposite sides of the long dining table, the family arranged all around—Isabelle of course between their two daughters—and they broke bread. The feast wasn’t as full as in other years. Finn thought they were lucky to have what they had. The turkey was smaller and the stuffing bigger. All the side dishes—the yams, the sweet potato casserole, the string beans—were plentiful, as were the pickled beets, but there were no oysters on the half-shell as had been customary in the past. Oysters were expensive.
But onions were cheap and the bowl of creamed onions overflowing. They had cider to drink, Coca-Cola, and a new lemon-lime soda called 7-UP. There was coffee and tea and pumpkin pie. The conversation didn’t flow as well as in other years. Finn, who was usually the life of the party, sat silent and rigid, listening to others, nodding, but contributing little. He had things on his mind tonight he could not turn away from.
An hour into the meal, Olivia addressed her son. “Finn, darling, you’re awfully quiet. And you’ve barely touched your food. You’re just moving the turkey around on your plate.”
“Leave him alone, Olivia,” Earl said. “He’s a grown man.”
Finn patted his mother’s arm and took a bite of his turkey. “We should’ve invited Lucas, Mother.”
“Oh, my goodness!” Olivia exclaimed. “How thoughtless of us!”
“Lucas is not alone,” said Isabelle. “He is having dinner with Schumann and Schumann’s son, Nate. Though after seeing what Ukrainians eat for Thanksgiving, Lucas probably wishes he was alone.”
A relieved Olivia chuckled. “Oh, no, what do they eat?”
“Herring,” said Isabelle. “Beets. Pickled onions. Maybe some tongue.”
Finn put down his barely dirtied fork and folded his hands. “Family,” he said, taking a deep breath. “We need to talk. I didn’t want to do it on Thanksgiving, but we are all together and I can’t put it off any longer.”
“Finn, darling!” Vanessa exclaimed, her thin voice trembling with nerves. “Whatever it is can wait. Let’s have a wonderful evening.”
“It’s too late to have a truly wonderful evening, Vanessa,” Finn said, “because we didn’t invite my brother to our house.”
“Fine, but we can talk about serious things another time. Not in front of the children. Or Isabelle.”
“Nonsense,” Earl said, cooler toward Vanessa than he’d ever been. “The children benefit from being treated with respect, and Isabelle is part of the family as far as we’re concerned. No reason to exclude her any more than there’s reason to exclude your sister.”
“Why would that even be a consideration, Your Honor?” Eleanor exclaimed. “Why would I be excluded?”
“Enough, Ellie!” Walter said. “Finn, go on, tell us what you need to.”
For a few moments Finn was silent, weighing his words. “We are at the end of the road, I’m afraid,” he said. “We have to leave this house.”
Only Vanessa’s hands flew to her mouth.
“We’ve been luckier than most,” Finn said. “But our luck has run out. We lost the bank, sold our other homes, budgeted, cut corners. But there’s almost no work out there with unemployment at nearly 25 percent.” He couldn’t look at anyone, staring at his clasped hands as he spoke, his matter-of-fact tone belying his true torment. “I have no money to pay the mortgage on this house and haven’t had any for six months. I’ve been negotiating for a future that’s just not coming—not with the Dow Jones at 80.”
All the men at the table groaned at the shock of that number.
“And the property taxes are due for 1931. They were due in June. I can’t pay the arrears, and I can’t pay our monthly bills. There is no more equity in this house to borrow against. I can’t even pay the small sum I owe on the chattel mortgage for the movable personal property inside our home. I can’t find work of any kind. This is where we are.”
Even Walter and Earl who knew how bad things were didn’t know how bad they really were.
“Maybe we should sell the house, darling,” Vanessa said. “Move to a smaller place?”
“I’ve tried to sell it for a year. It’s not that we have no offers. We don’t have offers for what the house is worth.”
“But we do have some offers?” said Vanessa with hope.
“We have one offer, yes, that’s 20 percent less than the amount we owe the bank on our house.”
“We mustn’t be greedy, darling, especially not in hard times like these.”
“It’s not about greed, Vanessa,” Finn said. “The bank which has a lien on our home won’t let us sell it unless we first pay back what we borrowed.”
“So let’s pay them back with proceeds from the sale.”
“But the sale would be a fifth less than the amount of our loan,” said Finn. “We would owe the bank forty thousand dollars.”
“Vee, quiet down,” Walter said. “Financial things are hard.”
“So, if we can’t sell it, what do we do?” Vanessa said.
“We need to move out by the end of December. Five weeks from now.”
“Move out where?”
“What will it take for us to stay here, Finn?” Walter said. “The bank must have given you a figure.”
“Yes, Jeremy Carlyle himself gave me a figure—last June,” said Finn. “I thought we could catch a break eventually. But every month has been worse than the last, and it hasn’t happened. In September he asked us to leave. In October he told me if I didn’t either pay or leave by November, he would be forced to call the city marshals to physically remove us from the property. And here we are. He gave me one month to pack up our clothes, our books, and our beds. The furniture, china, housewares, and window coverings are all part of the chattel. They stay. We don’t.”
“Oh, son,” said Earl, his head in his hands.
“Oh, Finn,” said Walter.
“Finn, answer my question!” said Vanessa. “Leave and go where?”
“That, Vanessa, is an excellent question,” Finn said.
“Lucas said we can stay with him in Cora’s house,” said Isabelle. “Four years ago, her house was paid for, he said. He didn’t know how. And her tiny life insurance policy is giving him monthly income.”
“Isabelle! Excuse me, please,” Vanessa said in an end-of-tether voice. “No one asked for your opinion. I was asking my husband a question. Finn?”
“Lucas says we can stay with him in Cora’s house,” said Finn. “Four years ago, her house was paid for, he said. He didn’t know how.” He glanced at his father, and away. “And her tiny life insurance policy is giving him a monthly income.”
“Finn!”
“What would you like me to do, Vanessa?”
“Fix it! Fix it like you always do.” She looked ready to cry.
“Like millions of others, I can’t find work, and we’re out of money,” said Finn. “I’ve borrowed all I can borrow, and I’ve sold all I can sell.”
“What about my jewelry? Sell that!”
Mournfully, Finn stared at Vanessa. “Maybe that’ll feed us for a month. And then what?”
“Mother! Daddy!” cried Eleanor. “We are not going to move to that ghastly North End! Please say we’re not!”
“No, dear, of course not,” a shaken Lucy assured her daughter.
Everyone else stayed appalled and silent.
“I will never move into that man’s house,” Vanessa said, clenching her glass of cider. “Mother!”
“Girls, what do you want Mommy to do!” cried Lucy. “Walter, come up with something!”
“What do you want me to do, woman?” Walter said. “I have nothing left of my entire 130-year Adams legacy. Nothing! Nothing but that cursed useless farm in Hampton.”
“If only we hadn’t lent John Reade millions of dollars right before the market crashed that he never repaid,” Finn said. “And what the hell happened to his supposed buyer—excuse Daddy’s language, girls,” he said to Mae and Junie.
“The market cratered and the buyer crapped out,” Walter said.
“How much do you think the Hampton place is worth now?” Finn asked.
Walter shrugged. “A few thousand. Ten at most.”
“Sell it, Walter, it’s better than nothing,” Finn said. “It’ll get us settled somewhere else, keep us going for a bit.”
“You think I haven’t been trying to sell it for two years?” Walter was gruff. “Who wants a Revolutionary War farm in the middle of nowhere?”
Isabelle, who had been staring at her plate, averting her gaze from the anguished family, suddenly perked up. Her body straightened like an unwound string. “What you say, Walter? Farm? What farm?”
“Forget selling it, Walter,” said Finn. “Mortgage it.”
“No bank will give me a mortgage,” Walter said. “I can’t pay it.”
“Tell me about farm,” Isabelle said. “Is it just land or is there house too?”
“There’s a house,” Walter said, barely paying attention. “No one’s been there since the turn of the century. Except John Reade.”
“How much land?”
“How much is the land worth?”
“No,” Isabelle said. “How much land is there?”
“I don’t know, Isabelle, maybe five acres,” Walter said. “What does it matter?”
“And you have paper to it? Like belonging paper? Farm belong to you?”
“The deed, you mean? Yes, unfortunately.”
Isabelle sat back and smiled. “Family, we going to be okay,” she said. “We thought we had nowhere. But we have farmhouse.” She raised her Coke glass in salute. “L’Chaim. Life always find way.”
“Isabelle, can you please stop talking?” said Vanessa. “Please. This doesn’t concern you, and frankly we don’t need folly. We need a real solution.”
Isabelle picked up her knife and fork. “Farm is solution.”
“No, it’s not, Isabelle. Finn, can you please talk to her? I can’t. I just can’t.”
“So go ahead and solution things,” Isabelle said before Finn had a chance to cut in. “I eat.” Heartily, she returned to her cold food.
No one spoke. No one had anything else to say.
“Vanessa,” said Isabelle, wiping her mouth when she was done eating, “do you want to move to Lucas?”
“Impossible,” said Vanessa.
“Okay, and you don’t want to move to Hampton—where Hampton, by way?”
“New Hampshire,” said Finn, watching her. He was perplexed by her sudden serenity. Just moments earlier, she had been as tense as the rest.
“So no Lucas, no farm,” said Isabelle. “What’s your proposal, Vanessa?”
“Pardon me,” Vanessa said, “for not instantly having a solution to a problem I didn’t create.”
“Farmhouse is answer,” said Isabelle. “To everything. Including work.”
“With all due respect, Isabelle,” Walter said, “you’re preaching to the wrong choir here. You’re talking to bankers and judges and teachers and homemaking women. We are city dwellers. Born and raised. None of us has ever lived on a farm. Vanessa, unfortunately, is right for once.”
“Vanessa right many times,” said Isabelle. “But not about this.”
“Isabelle, can you please stop talking. Finn!”
“When Schumann came to America,” Isabelle said, “he knew only to be doctor. He was doctor his whole life in Ukraine, and when he came to Boston he was fifty. But he didn’t have American degree, and he didn’t have money to get degree. So he became tailor. Because he didn’t need degree for that. He built his customers, and then small by small he started taking care of his North End neighborhood, and people started paying him because he was doctor and he helped them. He was successful as tailor, but after Crash, his tailor business pfft. But that didn’t matter, you know why? Because his doctor business was boomerang. So, even without degree, Schumann now makes his living as doctor in North End.”
Eleanor chimed in. “Fascinating story about a man we don’t know, but what does it have to do with us?”
“Because he expected one thing,” said Isabelle, “and he had to make his life with another thing. I know you can’t imagine farm, but I’m telling you, if house is big plenty for us, we will be good. And even if not big plenty, we can build more house later to add rooms. Finn can help build,” she said. “He is not only head. He can be hands too, no?” She turned her gaze to Finn and smiled. He watched her intently but did not smile back. He couldn’t figure out if this was a real thing or a make-believe thing.
“There is no work on the farm!” Eleanor cried.
“Very mistakenly incorrect there, Eleanor,” Isabelle said. “All work in whole world is on farm.” She nodded. “I promise you, you will work so hard on farm, you won’t make it to your bed at night before you fall subconscious.”
“Woman, what the crikey are you going on about?” exclaimed Walter. “I can’t work the farm! I am nearly seventy years old. Earl here is edging toward eighty!”
“Bite your tongue, old man, I’m seventy-three,” said Earl.
“Work on farm for all skills, all ages, all men and women and children,” said Isabelle, ruffling Junie and Mae’s heads. “You be my little helpers, girls?”
“I’m not doing anything,” said Monty, as grumpy as the rest. “I’m going to Harvard when I grow up.”
“But until Harvard, you help me feed your mother, right, Monty?”
“There’s no food there, dear,” Lucy said to Isabelle with exquisite condescension. “It’s not a stand by the side of the road where we buy strawberries on our way to the Cape. It’s not a farmer’s market at Faneuil Hall.”
“It’s better than that,” said Isabelle. “It’s land that will grow infinite food for us. And it’s house to live in. You just said you have no house. But you do.”
“What kind of food?” said Finn. It was the first time he’d spoken since the farm was mentioned.
Isabelle looked so self-satisfied, Finn couldn’t help but smile, but when he glanced across, Vanessa looked ready to scream or vomit. She was green.
“You name food, it grow in earth,” Isabelle said. “Potatoes. Onions. Beets. Everything you see on this table, farm will grow.”
“Bread?” Vanessa said with as much sarcasm as she could muster.
“Bread most of all,” said Isabelle. “Earth grow wheat.” As she spoke the words, her smile fell, and she shuddered and keeled forward. She went from pink to pale, from triumphant to defeated. Finn frowned as he watched her, but before he could ask if she was all right, the children chimed in enthusiastically.
“And corn, Isa!” exclaimed Junie. “Don’t forget the corn!”
“I didn’t grow corn,” Isabelle said, forcing out a smile for Junie. “But we can try, Junebug. You and I can see if we can grow this corn.”
“June! Mae!” Vanessa cried, as if just remembering her girls were still at the table. “What a debacle. Please excuse yourselves and go upstairs immediately. This isn’t for children’s ears. You too, Monty. Isabelle, go with them, please.”
“No.” That was Finn. “Isabelle stays. Our discussion is not over.”
“But the children, darling!”
“We’ll be fine, Mommy! You’ll see.” After the girls ran upstairs, a frazzled Vanessa faced down an unperturbed Isabelle.
“Isabelle, I really need you to stop talking,” Vanessa said. “I’m going to have to insist. You’re upsetting the entire table.”
Isabelle did not stop talking. “Sometimes truth upsetting,” she said. “I know. Think on it little bit. You will see there is no other way.”
“Finn!” Vanessa cried. “Mother! Daddy!”
No one answered the call, each in their own wordless contemplation.
It was Finn who finally spoke. “Not a single person at this table,” he said to Isabelle, “except for you, has been near a field. We have never plucked a flower, nor put a foot or a rake onto a hard ground. I don’t know what you think we can do here.”
“I agree, better if you were tillers and plowers and growers of crop,” said Isabelle. “But we have Bible story in my country. It’s called ‘pritcha pro talanty.’”
“Parable of the Talents,” said Olivia.
“Sometimes we given five talents. Sometimes only one,” Isabelle said. “And we must do what we can with what we be given. We must multiply according to our gifts. We thought we had nothing, but we are given farm and we are given land. That’s lot. Rest is mekhanika.”
“Mechanics,” said Olivia.
“Mechanics,” echoed Isabelle. “Which I will teach you.”
“I see logistical problems I can’t get my head around,” Finn said.
Isabelle nodded cheerfully. “Logic very difficult for man,” she said, twinkling at him. “But give me sample, maybe I can help.”
“I mean operations of things.” He tried not to twinkle back. “How things would work. For example, how would we get there?”
“Schumann will lend us truck,” Isabelle said. “That’s such small logic.”
“Logistic. Can Nate drive us?”
“No, Nate going back to Romania next week,” she said. “You will drive. What else? Lucas can help. He help you pack, move heavy things into house.”
“I don’t want Lucas to help us in any way!” Vanessa said.
“We need help,” Isabelle said. “Better to make peace with husband’s brother. You never know when you going to need brother.” She swirled the pumpkin filling around her plate, making large orange circles with her fork.
“So your idea for my family, Isabelle, is that we should hippity-hop to this farm in the boonies, miles from our hometown, in another state? That’s your plan?” Vanessa was red in the face. “We are going to leave our warm house in the dead of winter to go to an open field?” She was pulsing with anxiety, an unsteady prism of tics and itching.
“Vanessa has a point,” Finn said. “I don’t see how moving to an ancient farm in wintertime is going to help us when we have no money. I assume there’s nothing growing in the ground at the moment?”
“Of course not,” said Isabelle. “To grow in ground you need to plant in ground.”
“Which brings me to my other point,” Finn said. “How are we going to get this something to plant? Doesn’t that literally require seed money?”
Isabelle smiled. “That part you leave to me,” she said. “When time come, I get us things to plant. But even before receiving seed, soil needs to get ready for seed. What do you call it, it need to be, um, plodorodnaya soil? Like fruity soil? Fruitful soil?”
“Fertile soil?” Finn said.
“Yes! Fertile soil receives seed. Much to do before planting time. And you are right, Finn. We have to live on something before that.” Isabelle turned to Vanessa. “You said you have family jewels to sell?”
“I was joking,” Vanessa said.
“Oh, funny,” said Isabelle. “Haha. But very good idea. Family jewels will have important purpose. Much better than wearing. Jewels will feed family while we get back on feet. We need few months. We plant in April. When August come we will have so much food. All extra we can sell. Or change it. Exchange it?”
“Barter it,” said Olivia. She smiled.
“Yes! Barter it,” said Isabelle. “We barter wheat for things we need. Once we have wheat and corn like Junie want, we can barter for ten chickens.” Isabelle counted around the table and lifted her finger to the upstairs, where the three children were. “One egg each every day. We barter for milk, for cheese, for sugar . . .”
“Yes, Isabelle, we all see you can use barter in a sentence,” said Vanessa.
“If there’s apple tree, we will bake apple pie,” Isabelle said, undaunted. “Very delicious. With fresh cream from milk.”
Around the table the Adamses and Evanses were silent. Silent or speechless. Finn was the latter. It was as if a creature from Mars had descended on their planet and told them they could grow wings and fly themselves into space, maybe fly to the moon—or Venus.
“All I hear is gobbledygook,” Vanessa said. “Eleanor, what about you?”
“Gobbledygook.”
“Well done, Isabelle,” said Lucy. “You got my girls to agree. Those two haven’t agreed on anything since they were toddlers.”
“If the sale of my paltry jewelry can feed us on a farm till the carrots come,” said Vanessa, “why can’t it feed us in this house?”
“Because in this house there are no carrots, obviously,” Isabelle replied. “Come June, family jewels will be gone, and not single carrot in sight. And then what?”
“The economy will pick up. Finn will get a better job.”
“And if it doesn’t?” said Isabelle. “And if he doesn’t?”
“But if it does, we will have moved to New Hampshire for nothing!” said Vanessa.
Finn cut in. “We’re missing the larger point here. Come January 1st, we have nowhere to live. All of us will be homeless.”
“We not homeless,” Isabelle said. “We have farm.”
“Isabelle,” said Walter, “you’re not taking into consideration that four people at this table are over sixty. That’s very old.”
“My mother was near sixty,” Isabelle said. “She never stopped working. After she married my father, she left her job as professor at University of Krakow and moved to horse ranch with him. She took care of growing food and horses and children and grandchildren. She schooled us, taught us all to read and write, she milked cows, cleaned, bartered for food. She did everything.” Isabelle stared into her hands.
“My back is bad,” Lucy said. “I can’t be picking cotton at my age.”
“Okay, Lucy, we won’t grow cotton,” Isabelle said. “But maybe you can rake. Or cook or clean or care for chicken. Many jobs on farm.”
“It’s going to be freezing cold,” Eleanor said. “A farm that has not been opened for thirty years will be uninhabitably cold.”
“There might be a fireplace or two,” Walter said. Walter!
Earl slapped the table twice. Once a judge, always a judge. “What do we think of Isabelle’s idea? Let’s vote. Yea or nay. But if it’s nay, we can’t just give a no vote. We must propose something else. I’ll go first. I say yea.”
“I second that yea,” said Olivia.
“I have a weak heart,” Walter said. “I get winded getting out of bed. I say yea, but only if no one expects anything of me.”
“And I,” said Lucy, “say yea, but only if Isabelle promises to leave me alone to take care of my husband. He needs me.”
“No, I don’t,” Walter said. “Go out and till the land, woman. I’ve been working my whole life. I’ll sit on the porch, drink lemonade, and watch you.”
All eyes turned to Vanessa. She was having trouble opening her mouth. “I say no,” she said. “I’d rather live in Lucas’s house than have any part in this farce. At least Lucas’s house is still in Boston, near familiar things. What Isabelle is proposing is untenable. Eleanor?”
“I want to agree with you, sister, I do,” Eleanor said, “but I really, really don’t want to live in North End!”
Finn turned his head to Isabelle. “We all know what you think.”
“What about you, Finn?” said Isabelle. “What do you think?”
With only slight regret, Finn stared at Vanessa across the stretch of the long table. “I don’t want to leave our home,” he said. “I agree with Vanessa. Many things have happened to us that I have a hard time accepting. Since October 24, 1929, I’ve had to learn to live with a lot I didn’t think I could ever bear. Previously impossible things have become a fact of life. This farm idea seems like another one of those. I can’t imagine it—and yet . . .” He took a breath. “I say yes. Because at least for now, it feels like a way out. Not the way I would’ve liked. But it’s better than being homeless, workless, and penniless. So, the yeses have it. The farm it is.”
Soon the evening ended. Everyone retreated to their rooms while Isabelle and Olivia cleaned up. Upstairs, Finn approached Vanessa, but she cut him short. “Finn, it’s been one of the longest days of my life. And one of the worst Thanksgiving dinners, thanks to you bringing up such an awful topic during what’s supposed to be a convivial evening. I can’t talk anymore.”
“I just wanted to check on you, Vee, see how you’re feeling.”
“Fine and dandy,” said Vanessa, hiding her shaking hands under the quilt. “But tonight’s not the night.”
“Right,” Finn said. “Of course, darling. Tonight is never the night. Except when my mother dies. Then it’s the only night.”
He turned and walked out without waiting for or wanting a reply.