Keith pulled the chair closer to the boxwood inlaid middle door of the sideboard. “Luke’s mother had this brought over from England…top is in one of the outbuildings since it was too massive to put together in this room. What would I have done with a wine cellar?” She ran her hand along the dark mahogany with affection. “I have to see it all on its way. You all have to know where and who each piece came from or it won’t really mean anything to you. I just hope I can remember all of it.”
Janet was incensed as she watched Patti cross her eyes at Will. Janet was a collector of antique glass—daisy and button pattern was her favorite. She felt privileged that Keith had asked her to be present to help identify and value the family heirlooms as needed. They were to sort and label everything that day; movers had been hired to take the heavy pieces in a few weeks.
Will offered no opinion on any of it. He just lifted as directed by one of the women in the room. He raised the double windows and looked out to the driveway and cornfield beyond that stretched to the county road. It was a false spring day in late January that made the low ceiling room unbearably warm with the wood fire burning as Keith preferred.
Ellen stamped her feet on the mat at the back door into the kitchen. She walked around the small round table used for everyday meals and into the formal dining room. “Damn, Keith. Based on what little I know about tools, you have a treasure trove in your basement. Will, why aren’t you down there with me?” Ellen brushed a cobweb off the top of her head and reached after it wafting to the hardwood floor. Majority willing, she was to photograph, pack, and list much of Luke’s tool collection on eBay. Keith insisted on paying her a commission.
“Oh, he never took any interest in anything his father did.” Keith’s eyes did not leave Beth as she knelt on the floor and reached onto the far back of the shelf.
“And he’s not going to fill our garage up with dirty old tools that he’s never going to touch.” Patti dared her husband to contradict her.
“Or know what they are.” Lou clapped Will on the shoulder. “It’s okay. I’ll save all the pencils for you.” Lou grinned at Patti.
“You two are awful. Will, what do you want from home?” Beth looked to her brother.
Janet watched the siblings, whose roles had reversed long ago. While Beth had blossomed with the responsibility of her parents and her job, Will had become furtive, as though caught at something and now treading water. Everything he did seemed tentative and needing the approval of his wife.
Will glanced at Patti as though to prove Janet’s point. Patti nodded slightly. “We’d love the low-post spool bed for our guest room. Patti is crazy about the original Jenny Linde beds.” He corrected himself as soon as he saw Patti’s frown—it had to be called by its 1860s reference to make it valuable to her.
“Is that so you can have a comfortable bed to sleep on instead of the couch?” Lou baited the man.
Will Candler was easily recognizable as Beth’s brother. His hair was short and curly as opposed to her shoulder length, but with the same salt and pepper shading and texture. His hazel eyes and freckles matched Beth’s. Beth’s eyes had the twinkle of her mother’s; Will’s were flat. He was four inches taller than his sister and had the appearance of being stretched thin while Beth looked compact and muscular. He had played no sports in school. Beth had consistently beaten him playing twenty-one at the hoop set on the end of the log outbuilding in the barn lot when she could get him to venture outside. Beth had gone to college on a softball scholarship and worked for her pocket money; Will had recently finished paying off his student loan.
“Daisy and button salt cellars. Look, Janet, you’ll have to take these. I knew they were tucked in here somewhere.” Keith held out a stack of two-inch square, shallow-cut crystal bowls. “They belonged to Luke’s grandmother.” She looked to Beth. “You don’t mind, do you, sweetie?”
“Heavens, no. I can always shame her into giving them back to me later.” Beth grinned at Janet.
“I think we ought to convert our basement into a shop,” Lou said. “I’ve wanted to properly waterproof and finish it off, just didn’t know as what.” She nudged Beth. “Don’t you want to keep some of your father’s woodworking equipment? I know I do.” Lou was already starting toward the basement with pad and pencil in hand. “I’ll make a list and a rough sketch of how he set it up so we’ll know what to do with it. We can always extend the equity line just a little more, can’t we, honey? Hands off the basement, Ellen, until I can talk her into it.”
“Lou!” Beth swallowed the rest of what she was going to say. “There’s enough to keep some of the tools we might actually use and sell the rest so Mom can have the money. Daddy had two and three of most everything. I used to tease him about stamping his initials on each piece. He loaned tools to anyone who worked for him or stopped by to ask a favor. Sometimes he bought a replacement before his was returned. He told me that all eventually came back. He never lost one hand tool.” Beth shook off the memory of her father. “Ellen, make it worth your while for helping us today. I know you’re interested in woodworking, so keep some things for yourself, as well. Mom?”
“I agree. I can’t thank all of you enough for giving up your Saturday. It is what it is. I can’t keep this place or all these things. I have to consolidate. Might as well do this now while I can be here and see what happens with everything.”
“Oh, we’re glad to help.” Patti’s tone said the opposite of her words.
“We have to head back in a little while, Ma. Four hours on the road is difficult on Patti’s back.”
“Do you have any balls left?” Lou mumbled to Will as she passed him on the way out of the kitchen. Patti actually snorted.
“Ellen, don’t let the girls take everything from downstairs. If you and Beth split the tools between you, that’s fine by me. Please keep an eye on Lou. I swear, that child is more like my own than my own.” Keith pushed Ellen after Lou.
Ellen looked to Beth and her mother. “I say we inventory, research an approximate value, and definitely sell duplicates. Beth has first choice of what to keep. I’d like to trade a cash commission for a few things. All will be properly accounted for. Keith, what you do with the profit is your call.”
“Shit fire and save matches. Do it.” Keith waved her hand.
Janet stared at Keith as Ellen chuckled her way out the back door.
“I like her. She’s a good match for you, Janet. What? An old dog can’t learn new tricks? Don’t you believe it. Depends on the old dog.” Keith held up two hand-edged linen dinner napkins. “Hmm. Were these my grandmother’s or Luke’s grandmother’s? I can’t remember for the life of me.”
“Who is Beth like in the family?” Janet asked.
Keith’s expression glowed with pride. “Her father. He was so easygoing and smart.”
“Tell her, Ma.” Beth ignored Will.
“Two years after I graduated high school, while I was working for the telephone company, I saw Luke walking past my office window downtown. First thing I noticed about him was how shiny his shoes were. I was on eye level with the sidewalk. When I saw the rest of him, I knew he was the man I was going to marry.”
“That suddenly?” Janet asked, even as Patti shook her head not to encourage Keith to reminisce.
“Oh, yes. He was the one. I watched which store he went into, then asked the owner’s wife to introduce me. We started dating and married six months later. Then these two.” Keith pointed to the framed baby portraits of Beth and Will hanging over the sideboard.
“Amazing.” Janet looked at the smile on Beth’s face. She knew if her friend had heard the story once, she’d heard it a hundred times.
“She is her father’s daughter.” Keith inclined her head toward Beth. “Two peas in a pod. All I did was carry her nine months. She was Luke’s the rest of his life.”
“What about William here?” Patti looked at her husband and didn’t bother to mask her disdain as she used his full name.
“I don’t kn
ow where Will got his bookishness from. Both of them know figures and finances like I never even thought about. Must have come from their father’s uncle who was an attorney and land developer when Luke was a child. Difference was that I had to stay on Beth to do her schoolwork instead of being outside with her father. Will always had his done not long after the bus dropped him off. He’d then work on something beyond what the teacher was doing or be glued to the television. He used to love to follow along with the old movie musicals, singing and dancing.”
Beth burst out laughing. “I’d forgotten that. You loved the King Family, Lawrence Welk, and anything by Rodgers and Hammerstein. What a dork. No one else our age would even admit knowing about any of that, much less watching them or buying the original albums.” Beth rolled over on the floor and stretched out as she tried to get her breath from laughing so hard. “Do you need to come out of the closet, too, big brother?”
“I’m going to start breaking down the furniture upstairs if no one minds,” Will said. “I didn’t pull the trailer up here on the back of the Mercedes for nothing. What is it that you and Lou came in, little sister?”
“Why, Lou’s Nissan pickup, of course, with a rainbow windsock on the antennae. The Subaru couldn’t quite haul enough.” Beth howled as she struggled to finish her answer. “It’s what the Lesbian Handbook requires us to drive. Such good gas mileage.” She was laughing so hard that tears streamed down her face.
Keith let out a long sigh that made Beth laugh that much harder.
“You’re killing me,” Beth choked out.
“Right family, wrong member,” Patti whispered softly before forcing a laugh.
Janet shivered unexpectedly, then laughed along with Beth and ignored Patti’s comment. It was good to see them settling Keith’s affairs openly and with humor, even if too much humor, if there was such a thing.
Will remained expressionless as he started up the stairs with a small toolbox that looked brand new.
“Try not to scratch any of it.” Patti raised her voice. “I guess I’ll help him while Lou is in the basement. Smells too musty down there. My allergies can’t take any mold or mildew.” She followed Will as though taking the last steps on death row.
Janet watched the obviously unhappy couple. “Oh, my.”
Beth managed to take a breath before she burst out laughing again. “And we want the right to do that to ourselves.”
Keith looked at Janet. “She’s losing it, isn’t she?”
Janet smiled and shook her head. “I thought this would be sad. Silly me. Come on, giggle box, help me carry your mother’s generosity out to my plain old Ford sedan.”
Beth passed Janet with a box. “You’re so lipstick.”
Janet cupped her hand and swatted Beth on the behind.
“What did she mean about your lipstick?” Keith frowned at her daughter. “And thank you, someone needed to do that.”
“Do what?” Lou walked into the room carrying a wooden toolbox packed with hand tools. She grinned from ear to ear. “I love your father by the way.”
“Smack me. We can talk about it later. Mom is encouraging exploration of the dominatrix thing.” Beth started laughing again as she left the house.
“Oh, Lord, there goes the Model-T. You had to get her wound up, didn’t you?” Lou looked to Janet. “I’ll have to listen to that giggling all the way home. She amuses herself so.” Lou rolled her eyes and grinned.
Janet hugged her. “Poor you.”
“Is there really a Lesbian Handbook?” Keith looked puzzled.
They heard Beth hoot from the driveway.
“What…never mind, I don’t want to know.” Lou followed the sound of her partner.
“Those girls are always pulling my leg. What would I do without them?” A tear came to Keith’s eye that she quickly blinked away. “I can’t wait to be settled in my new place.”
Beth had known she needed to prepare for being Keith’s caretaker and had rolled it into remodeling their house. Keith would have nothing to do with assisted living or an apartment amongst strangers.
“Life is good,” Janet said quietly.
Keith Candler nodded in agreement and without hesitation.
Chapter Nine
“I hate to sound like Keith, but I wouldn’t want to make this trek five days a week,” Janet said to Ellen as she drove along the county road at a blistering thirty miles per hour. She was following a heavily loaded pulpwood truck. “Look at the size of those damn logs.” The diameter of the tree trunks was about the same as the tire on her car.
“Imagine if that load breaks loose on the highway.” Ellen was in rare form. Her white hair stuck straight out from her head, prompting her to jam on a New York Yankees cap.
Janet backed off the truck a little farther, not at all reassured by the small corner stakes forming the sides that kept the logs in position. She could see the end of a chain dangling beneath the rear axle.
“Can you believe that it was a year ago that we moved Beth in with Lou?” Ellen whistled. “I would have put even money on them breaking up by now if not for Keith.” Ellen leaned back against the headrest and yawned. It wasn’t long before she was gently snoring.
Janet thought about the last time she had made this drive with Keith beside her. Where had the time gone? She occasionally saw Beth in town; they relied on e-mail more often than telephone. Beth and Lou had withdrawn into a world of their own during their newlywed period, and Janet had respected that. She had visited Keith each time she was in the hospital and helped Beth temporarily move her mother to skilled care for rehab. Once again, Janet sensed something else behind Beth’s invitation a few days earlier to come to the country for the day to see what they’d done to their place.
Janet pulled into the driveway, trying to figure out what was different. She tapped the brakes and sent Ellen forward against her shoulder restraint.
Ellen looked at her. “What the hell…?”
“Stay up too late watching Cinemax, Ms. R-E-T-I-R-E-D?” Janet smiled sweetly as she spelled her status as Ellen did when she wanted to rub it in. “We’re here. Take a look. It’s unreal.”
The ruins of the original house were gone, the site leveled and grassed. All the kudzu had been pulled off the log barns and the tin roofs painted dark green. The woods had been thinned out gradually, like a disappearing hairline, as the final approach to the house was made. The remodeled house had charcoal architectural roof shingles, gray vinyl siding, vinyl replacement windows, and an addition out the back that Janet knew was for the expanded kitchen and new den downstairs and Beth’s home office and master suite upstairs. There was also a landscaped walkway connecting the back door of the house to the small guesthouse that was a scaled-down version of the main house. The driveway had been extended down the slope to stop before the steps to the front door.
“Holy shit.” Ellen unhooked her seat belt and looked at Janet in wonderment. “Are you sure this is the same place? How in the hell did those two do all of this in a year?”
Janet turned off the ignition and stared. “They did most of the finish work themselves with Greg and Andy’s help. Beth showed me drawings as they evolved the remodeling, but I had no idea it was all of this. The remodeling was Beth’s buy-in for being put on the deed.”
“Beth must have maxed out her equity in her first home to have this work done. She won’t move again any time soon if she expects Lou to buy her out,” Ellen said softly.
“Fools rush in…” Janet grimaced and nodded. “Keith’s share went to building the cottage and paying medical bills. I only heard one reference to Will’s share being invested in jewelry for Patti.” Janet shuddered as she climbed out of the car.
“Just saying that woman’s name will do that to you.” Ellen chuckled as she watched Janet dig in her tote bag for her digital camera.
Keith had moved into the cottage two months earlier. She’d gone through a series of surgeries for her heart and could no longer be alone on the family farm. There was stil
l enough agricultural business in the south side community so that as soon as Keith’s situation was known, an offer had been made to buy the Candler farm.
Janet’s ears rang as she heard a motor louder than in a car or truck. She glanced about and saw the trademark green of a John Deere tractor approaching around the contour of the steep hillside that sloped from the house down to the woods. The figure on the tractor waved a baseball cap at her while standing on the brake to roll the tractor to a stop beside the car. A tri-color dog followed, running in a zigzag pattern back and forth to compensate for the slow-moving tractor.
Janet smiled, held up the camera for permission, and snapped a photograph.
“What do you think?” Beth jumped down from the tractor. She was as tan as Janet had ever seen her and appeared as though she had toned down ten pounds. She wore hemmed denim shorts and a sleeveless knit shirt. The dog bounced as she rubbed his head and back. Janet had never seen her look better.
Beth immediately hugged Ellen, then gave her cheek a kiss for the benefit of the photograph Janet snapped.
“I hear an adult beverage calling me. Lou promised to have Heineken in the freezer and not give me a hard time that it wasn’t yet noon. R-E-T-I-R-E-D,” she spelled over her shoulder as she walked toward the house calling out to Lou.
“I think that’s one damn big tractor.” Janet held her hand up to shield the sun from her eyes. “It seems you have a new best friend. One more and I’ll put it away. I know you don’t like having your picture taken.”
“My weekend toy and my playmate.” Beth posed by patting the fender and kissing the dog’s head as he placed his front paws on her chest. She was slightly taller than the rear tire. “I’d forgotten how much fun it is to get out on a tractor and just drag the bush hog through the fields to clean everything up. I’m going to seed for hay next year and check on a used baler, might as well make something off all this land. I’d forgotten how much I loved having a farm dog around. This is Buddy. He belongs on the neighbor’s place but stays here all the time.” She adjusted her cap from the college softball championship year that she’d played catcher. “Mom likes to be able to see in all directions, makes her a little more comfortable in her new place. Mowing is also a great way to work through all the crap that’s gone on during the week at the office.”
The Arcanum of Beth Page 6