But now as she looked down at the pond and at its border, she couldn’t see that she had accomplished much, even though she’d fished out quite a heap. The heap was a few feet away on the grass, in case she doubted it. Elinor blinked. She had the feeling that if she watched the pond closely, she’d be able to see the tentacles growing. She didn’t like that idea.
Should she tell Chris about the carp? Elinor didn’t want him poking into the water, trying to find it. On the other hand, if she didn’t mention it, maybe he’d see it and have some crazy idea of catching it. Better to tell him, she decided.
So when Chris woke up Elinor told him about the fish.
“You can toss some bread to him,” Elinor said. “But don’t try to catch him, because he likes the pond. He’s going to help us keep it clean.”
“You don’t want ever to catch him?” Chris asked, with milk all over his upper lip.
He was thinking of Cliff, Elinor knew. Cliff had loved fishing “We don’t catch this one, Chris. He’s our friend.”
Elinor worked. She had set up her typewriter in a front corner room upstairs which had light from two windows. The article was coming along nicely. She had a lot of original material from newspaper clippings. The theme was to alert the public to free legal advice from small-claims offices which most people didn’t know existed. Lots of people let sums like $250 go by the board, because they thought it wasn’t worth the trouble of a court fight.
Elinor worked until 6:30. Dinner was simple tonight, macaroni and cheese with bacon, one of Chris’s favorite dishes. With the dinner in the oven, Elinor took a quick bath and put on blue slacks and a fresh blouse. She paused to look at the photograph of Cliff on the dressing table — a photograph in a silver frame which had been a present from Cliff’s parents one Christmas.
It was an ordinary black-and-white enlargement showing Cliff sitting on the bank of a stream, propped against a tree, an old straw hat tipped back on his head. The picture had been taken somewhere outside of Evanston, on one of their summer trips to visit his parents. Cliff held a straw or a blade of grass lazily between his lips. His denim shirt was open at the neck. No one, looking at the hillbilly image, would imagine that Cliff had had to dress up in white tie a couple of times a month in Paris, Rome, London, and Ankara. Cliff had been in the diplomatic service, assistant or deputy to American statesmen, and had been gifted in languages, gifted in tact.
What had Cliff done exactly? Elinor knew only sketchy anecdotes that he had told her. He had done enough, however, to be paid a good salary, to be paid to keep silent, even to her. It had crossed her mind that his plane had been wrecked to kill him, but she assured herself that was absurd. Cliff hadn’t been that important. His death had been an accident, not due to the weather but to a mechanical failure in the plane.
What would Cliff have thought of the pond? Elinor smiled wryly. Would he have had it filled in with stones, turned it into a rock garden? Would he have filled it in with earth? Would he have paid no attention at all to the pond? Just called it “nature”?
Two days later, when Elinor was typing a final draft of her article, she stopped at noon and went out into the garden for some fresh air. She’d brought the kitchen scissors, and she cut two red roses and one white rose to put on the table at lunch. Then the pond caught her eye, a blaze of chartreuse in the sunlight.
“Good Lord!” she whispered.
The vines! The weeds! They were all over the surface. And they were again climbing onto the land. Well, this was one thing she could and would see to: she’d find an exterminator. She didn’t care what poison they put down in the pond, if they could clear it. Of course she’d rescue the carp first and keep him in a bucket till the pond was safe again.
An exterminator was someone Jane Caldwell might know about.
Elinor telephoned her before she started lunch. “This pond,” Elinor began and stopped, because she had so much to say about it. “I had it drained a few days ago, and now it’s filled up again... No, that’s not really the problem. I’ve given up the draining, it’s the unbelievable vines. The way they grow! I wonder if you know a weed-killing company? I think it’ll take a professional — I mean, I don’t think I can just toss in some liquid poison and get anywhere. You’ll have to see this pond to believe it. It’s like a jungle!”
“I know just the right people,” Jane said. “They’re called ‘Weed-Killer,’ so it’s easy to remember. You’ve got a phone book there?”
Elinor had. Jane said Weed-Killer was very obliging and wouldn’t make her wait a week before they turned up.
“How about you and Chris coming over for tea this afternoon?” Jane asked. “I just made a coconut cake.”
“Love to. Thank you.” Elinor felt cheered.
She made lunch for herself and Chris, and told him they were invited to tea at the house of their neighbor Jane, and that he’d meet a boy called Bill. After lunch Elinor looked up Weed-Killer in the telephone book and rang them.
“It’s a lot of weeds in a pond,” Elinor said. “Can you deal with that?”
The man assured her they were experts at weeds in ponds and promised to come over the following morning. Elinor wanted to work for an hour or so until it was time to go to Jane’s, but she felt compelled to catch the carp now, or try to. If she failed, she’d tell the men about it tomorrow, and probably they’d have a net on a long handle and could catch it. Elinor took her vegetable sieve which had a handle some ten inches long, and also some pieces of bread.
Not seeing the carp, Elinor tossed the bread onto the surface. Some pieces floated, others sank and were trapped among the vines. Elinor circled the pond, her sieve ready. She had half filled the plastic bucket and it sat on the bank.
Suddenly she saw the fish. It was horizontal and motionless, a couple of inches under the surface. It was dead, she realized, and kept from the surface only by the vines that held it under. Dead from what? The water didn’t look dirty, in fact was rather clear. What could kill a carp? Cliff had always said—
Elinor’s eyes were full of tears. Tears for the carp? Nonsense. Tears of frustration, maybe. She stooped and tried to reach the carp with the sieve. The sieve was a foot short, and she wasn’t going to muddy her tennis shoes by wading in. Not now. Best to work a bit this afternoon and let the workmen lift it out tomorrow.
“What’re you doing, Mommy?” Chris came trotting toward her.
“Nothing. I’m going to work a little now. I thought you were watching TV.”
“It’s no good. Where’s the fish?”
Elinor took his wrist and swung him around. “The fish is fine. Now come back and we’ll put on the TV again.” Elinor tried to think of something else that might amuse him. It wasn’t one of his napping days, obviously. “Tell you what, Chris, you choose one of your toys to take to Bill. Make him a present. All right?”
“One of my toys?”
Elinor smiled. Chris was generous enough by nature and she meant to nurture this trait. “Yes, one of yours. Even one you like — like your paratrooper. Or one of your books. You choose it. Bill’s going to be your friend, and you want to start out right, don’t you?”
“Yes.” And Chris seemed to be pondering already, going over his store of goodies in his room upstairs.
Elinor locked the back door with its bolt, which was on a level with her eyes. She didn’t want Chris going into the garden, maybe seeing the carp. “I’ll be in my room, and I’ll see you at four. You might put on a clean pair of jeans at four — if you remember to.”