As a consequence of this latest incident, and over Molly’s protests, they’d transferred their daughter to a small and expensive private school that promised “…a high degree of attention to each and every one of our student’s unique and special needs and abilities.” Deanna had agreed to cut down on book promotions that required extensive periods of out-of-town travel, and he’d suspended Seacliff’s emergency neurosurgical services.
And then a sixteen-year-old girl with head injuries had died in an ambulance.
He hadn’t slept through the night since.
ZOE LOVED EVERYTHING involved in growing and selling vegetables, but farmer’s market days were the best. Three times a week, she’d load fruit, vegetables and flowers into the back of the pickup truck and drive to whatever town was having their market. Today was market day in Seacliff, which, hands down, had to be the coolest site in California with all the stalls grouped around the perimeter of a grassy park overlooking the Pacific. From where she sat under a blue Cinzano umbrella, Zoe could see the white froth of waves breaking on the rocks below. The jingle of an ice-cream bell and the throb of rock music provided an audio backdrop to the green, blue and gold of grassy verges, cloudless sky and sun-dappled strollers. Artists sat on folding chairs, their paintings leaned and stacked, bright rectangles of color. Flags fluttered from the artisan stalls where some of her friends sold jewelry, pottery, leather belts and sandals.
Zoe never thought of herself as an artist, or, as her mother would say, an artiste, but some early, misty mornings, as she arranged her produce she’d feel like a painter contemplating a palette: lemon-colored squash, like little bananas, tiny burgundy beets all cunningly arranged in a bed of bright green parsley. In adjacent baskets, plump green butter lettuce just picked from the garden; huge bunches of red-stemmed Swiss chard, feathery bronze fennel, and silver-blue heads of cabbage. Miniature eggplants that tasted like melon and sweet thumbnail-sized golden tomatoes.
On either side, were the stalls of her friends Roz and Sandy. Sandy grew and sold herbs and different kinds of lavender. Roz made honey—clover, wild-flower and lavender, courtesy of hives from Sandy’s fields—and always had some hilarious story about bee-related mishaps. Rhea, the fourth member of the group they called Market Mamas, sold bread that she baked herself—intricately braided glossy brown baguettes, soft floury loaves. Rhea hadn’t been back to the market since Jenny died, but Zoe had started selling home-baked bread and donating the money to a fund established in Jenny’s name.
“Brett wishes I’d sell bread instead of vegetables,” she said now. “But check this out.” She grabbed the roll of flesh between the dirndl waist of her paisley skirt and the bottom of her white peasant blouse. “Molasses, oatmeal, raisin. I’ve got a pumpernickel loaf on each hip.”
“Jeez, I could have sworn that was the jelly doughnuts you talked us into eating this morning,” Sandy said.
“I talked you into eating jelly doughnuts?” Zoe scoffed. “My arm still has marks from your fingernails.”
“Just trying to get my share.” Sandy gestured with her coffee cup at a blond surfer type browsing at a nearby stall. “Thirty? Thirty-five?”
“Try nineteen,” Zoe said, taking a closer look. Checking out the passersby, specifically the reasonably attractive male passersby on this side of fifty—although they kept pushing up the age limit—was a favorite pastime. They were all divorced and, if not actively looking, at least appreciative. They all had kids, too, teenagers—which was mostly what they yakked about. Sandy’s oldest son, Brian, had just gone off to medical school where, according to his mother, he spent as much time chasing babes as he did earning his degree. Dr. Biff, Sandy called him— Biff, the nickname Zoe had always known him by. God, time flies, they were always saying. Before long, her own son would be going off to medical school. The thought always gave her a thrill—she’d be even more thrilled when Brett started getting serious about it, too, but that day would come.
Roz’s daughter had, according to Roz, little ambition other than to get married and have babies. Rhea’s Jenny had shared her mother’s passion for cooking and had been planning to attend culinary school. One of Zoe’s favorite memories was of walking into Rhea’s kitchen and seeing mother and daughter, their two dark heads almost touching, poring over a recipe, or giggling together over some culinary mishap. Since Jenny’s death, so many white hairs had sprouted in Rhea’s wiry dark hair that, from a distance, she seemed to have gone completely gray.
No one had confessed to it, of course, but Zoe had detected an almost palpable sense of relief when she’d told the others that Rhea wouldn’t be coming to the market for a while. They loved her like a sister and would do anything for her, but it sometimes seemed as though Rhea had contracted a contagious disease.
Would there ever be a time, Zoe wondered, when their thoughts wouldn’t inevitably end up with Jenny? For her own part, as soon as she started thinking about Rhea, her mind immediately turned to trying to figure out some way to prevent the same thing from happening to someone else. And there was only one solution: the trauma center had to reopen. Everyone knew neurosurgeons made megabucks—more in a year than she’d make in a dozen, so how hard could it be to find a replacement? It seemed all wrong just to sit back and think, God, I hope nothing happens to my family.
“How much is the lettuce?” A woman in a straw hat and a diaphanous turquoise pantsuit interrupted Zoe’s reverie. Like a crane in a fun fair machine, one fat beringed hand swooped down on the lettuce, lifted it and dangled it between thumb and forefinger under Zoe’s nose.
“Seventy-five cents,” Zoe said.
“They’re selling iceberg three for a dollar at the stall down there.”
Zoe looked at her. “These aren’t iceberg.”
“What’s the difference?”
“Taste.” Zoe offered the woman the ice-chilled bowl of samples, and watched her nibble gingerly at a single lettuce leaf. Dying, Zoe just knew, to ask if it had been washed. “Pretty good, huh?”
The woman sniffed. “Can’t tell the difference, personally.”
“Then you should get the iceberg,” Zoe said.
The woman set the lettuce down and reached for another one. Holding it aloft, she inspected it from all angles.
It’s a damn lettuce, lady. “Picked just this morning,” she told the woman.
“So it’s two for a dollar-fifty?” the woman asked.
“Yep.” Zoe smiled at a couple of teenage girls who had stopped to sniff the pots of basil at the end of the table. “You like pesto?” she asked. “I’ve got a killer recipe.”
“Cool.” One of the girls picked up a pot and fished in the bulging straw bag she was carrying. “How much?”
“Dollar-fifty.” Zoe took the bills the girl handed her, made change and handed over a recipe card.
“They’re not all the same size.” The lettuce woman was still checking things out. “You should charge less for the smaller ones.”
“Or more for the bigger ones.” Zoe imagined hurling an overripe tomato. Splaat. Like a caste mark, right in the middle of the woman’s forehead
“Typical Seacliff,” Roz muttered as the woman walked away.
Zoe