Their house sat on the beach, behind three palm trees, in a shade that came and went with the winds. Ronald flew an airplane and his wife Haley, who grew tomatoes, could look up and see the shadow of his plane flying over her garden. It wasn't easy growing a tomato garden right on the beach, but she had read a lot of books and taken some gardening classes at the community college, so she knew what she was doing. She used a very rare and special dirt that she made herself, and the winds blew enough that the palm trees provided just the right amount of shade.

        Every day, Ronald got in his plane and scoured the seas for anyone who might be drowning, or for ships that were in trouble. It wasn't a job he got paid for--he had enough money from his late father's baked bean emporium--but it was one he took very seriously. Just last month, a cruise ship full of chefs sank, and if Ronald hadn't been flying his plane right then, they all would have drowned. The ocean was strewn with herbs and vegetables and chefs, bobbing frantically and screaming, waving spatulas and corkscrews. Ronald called the Coast Guard on his radio and flew around in circles until they arrived in boats to scoop up the chefs.

        When he told his wife what he'd done, she insisted he invite the chefs over for dinner. The chefs used up every last tomato on her vines, for their sauces and soups. They baked bread and made hors d'oeuvres with cheese sauces and tiny fish, and clapped each other on their backs and stuck their fingers in the pots while they cooked.

        Ronald drove across the beach to the liquor store and bought wine, and Haley pulled out the folding chairs, and they all sat late into the night, talking--some of the chefs could speak English--and enjoying the food, most of which was tomato-based. Later, inside the house, Haley and Ronald made love, while the chefs slept on the beach, rolled in blankets. The next morning they got in their van and drove away, tooting their horn, leaving behind their dirty pots and pans, and a garden full of empty vines.

*

        Haley and Ronald met four years ago, in a dating class. He was there because even though he was rich, he wasn't very attractive–he was downright ugly--and women dumped him after he'd bought them presents. They told him he didn't have enough personality to make up for his ugliness, so he was hoping this class would help him have more personality, at least on dates. At least on a first date.

        Haley was there because even though she was very beautiful, she had a terrible, terrible secret: for three days every year, everything she touched turned to dirt. This had, of course, created problems in all of her relationships; as a child she had ruined her mother's necklaces, her father's shoes, her sister's prom dress. She'd been trying it on, six years old, and it turned to dirt right on her, crumbling away and leaving her standing naked in front of the mirror. Her sister had threatened to throw her out the window, then screamed nonstop until their mother took her to J.C. Penny for another, even more expensive, dress. It was kept locked in the armoire, along with the other things Haley was not allowed to touch: fruits and vegetables, shoes, pillowcases, the VCR. The one thing that didn't turn to dirt at her touch was human flesh. But only human flesh; she'd reduced five cats and two dogs to mulch by the time she was two.

        For three days every year, Haley's mother and father kept her home from school, put her in a tent in the backyard where she couldn't do any damage. In the winter, they set up a heater for her. In the summer, she was instructed to play in the dirt that was already there, and they used it on their garden.

        There was, unfortunately, never any way of predicting when the three dirt days would happen.

        When she was sixteen, she let a neighbor boy take her to McDonald's, and was just getting over her nervousness when her Big Mac crumbled into soil. The boy tried to ignore it--he was very polite--but she was afraid to touch his car so she walked home, and he thought that was rude.

        She hadn't been on a date since, and she was twenty-five years old. She hoped to learn some skills in this class about how to meet men she could communicate with, men who would accept her for who she was and not think her rude when she refused to touch their cars.

        In the first class, the instructor paired up the students and made them interview each other. She ended up with the ugliest man she'd ever seen, who told her he wanted to meet a woman who saw him for who he was on the inside; she told him about her Terrible Secret, and he took hold of her hands and kissed them. They didn't go to any of the other classes. They got married and moved to the beach, and Ronald bought an airplane with his late father's fortune, and Haley grew tomatoes, and for a while they were perfectly happy.

*

       Two months after the chefs left, Haley realized she was pregnant. When she told her husband, they cried for happiness and for despair, because what if their baby had to suffer as they'd suffered? What if she turned her crib to dirt, what if no one liked her, what if she grew up ugly and afraid? Then they vowed that they would never keep her outside in a tent, and they would tell her she was beautiful even if she was not, even if it meant hiding mirrors from her.

        But then the baby was born, a girl, and she was beautiful. They named her Stacy. A year passed, and she grew hair and teeth and learned how to say words, and nothing turned to dirt in her grasp. And better still, nothing turned to dirt in Haley's grasp, either. She thought maybe, somehow, she might have missed those three days, but the next year again nothing happened, and then the next, until she realized she was cured.

        Stacy loved tomatoes; she'd crawl around outside and eat them off the vines, her little knees covered in dirt. And when she was older, Haley told her the story of the chefs who came to their house the night she was conceived, and how they made tomato soup and tomato sauce and tomato and cheese dips, and fish with tomatoes. Stacy wanted to hear that story over and over. She listened rapt, her face and mouth covered with seeds and juice, her eyes as wild as the bobbing, soupy sea.

*

        As the years went by, Ronald continued to fly his plane, and the beach became more and more crowded with tourists, some of whom came from far away to buy Haley's sauces. Stacy went to school, and when she was 18 she told her parents she wanted to move to Paris and become a chef.

        Ronald and Haley were not happy. “Can't you go to the community college?” Haley asked her, knowing she was asking the impossible. Because Stacy needed to know more than Haley or the noncredit cooking classes could teach her, she needed to use spices Haley had never heard of, oils from exotic lands, leaves from trees that grew far away. She needed to learn about puddings and cakes, things that went beyond tomatoes, things tomatoes had no use for.

        So she went. Her parents stood on the beach and watched the sliver of her jumbo jet vanish over the water, and five days later they got a post card of the Eiffel Tower .

        Condos were going up all over the beach, and sometimes camera crews filmed tv shows there. Haley and Ronald were asked to sell their house, and they said no, so a construction crew cut down their palm trees instead, and built a Sno-Cone stand and parking lot. Next to that was a kiosk where you could get your picture made into a keychain.

        With Stacy gone, the tomatoes didn't grow as well, and when the palm trees came down they didn't grow at all. Haley bought Miracle Grow, but that didn't work.

        Stacy called rarely, and her voice was sounding different, foreign and staticky and annoyed. She told her parents she couldn't see them anymore because they made her feel strange and unwell, and why couldn't they be like other parents? Why couldn't they go out to movies with friends? Why didn't they move to New York or someplace exciting?

        Sometimes she sent them canned tomatoes, but they weren't the same, and they weren't enough.

*

        There was something wrong with Haley. She felt old and tired and sad. Ronald asked, “What can I get for you?” but she couldn't think of anything she wanted except her daughter and tomatoes, and since Stacy would not come home, Ronald flew over the countryside looking for the best tomatoes he could find. He'd bring them to her in her bed, on a plate. She'd take one weary bite and then shake her head and fall back against her pillows.

        But Ronald had noticed something: when he flew his plane across their garden, the tomatoes grew a little. He told this to Haley, and she struggled out of bed with a look on her face that made him want to weep.

        “Would you?” she asked, and he would.

        He flew and he flew, over the garden, back and forth, and because he loved her so much, cruise ships sank and children floated out to sea in their blow-up rafts. And finally Haley couldn't remember his face at all, and it was as if all she'd ever loved was the angel-shaped shadow that cast itself across her garden, and made it grow.

*