The Old House

by Willo Davis Roberts

  Buddy suspected the woman was offering the one she thought Buddy would prefer, and her stomach was too empty to refuse. “Thank you,” Buddy said, and accepted the sandwich.

  It was a really good one. Mama used to say that being half-starved makes all food taste better, and Buddy believed it.

  “Going home, are you?” the woman asked in a friendly manner.

  There was no way Buddy was going to try to explain. “Visiting my relatives in Haysville,” she managed.

  “Oh, that’s good. My goodness! Sharon packed a candy bar in here. I hardly ever eat chocolate. Ah, there are some peppermints. I like those better. Here, you take the chocolate.”

  She didn’t refuse that, either. Bart had given her a few dollars for an emergency, but she hadn’t wanted to spend any of it on food when they made a rest stop. Buddy let the chocolate melt slowly on her tongue, savoring every bit of it.

  If I’d wanted to take this trip, I’d probably have enjoyed the scenery, she thought. The leaves were turning color, all different shades of yellow and deep gold, and an occasional splash of brilliant red. Mama had always said that fall was the nicest time of year, especially in Montana. It was hard to get excited about fall color when you didn’t have a home that belonged to you, though.

  The rain stopped just as they approached Haysville. POPULATION 3,023, the sign said. Buddy had enjoyed coming here when they were a whole family, but that hadn’t happened often, and never since before her mother died. She took a close look as the bus began to slow.

  The highway was the main street of town, and the businesses were scattered out along about six or eight blocks, with houses on side streets. The first thing she noticed was how many of the stores were closed. She spotted the Ostrom Appliance and Hardware store, and it, too, was locked up and empty. Buddy wondered if Grandpa Harry Ostrom had died since she’d been here. If so, no one had told them.

  Grass growing in the cracks of the sidewalk, and debris lay against the walls of the buildings. Hardly anybody was walking on the street, so it was easy to spot Aunt Cassie when the bus pulled over to the curb. There wasn’t even a bus station, just a little sign that signified the bus would stop there.

  Buddy was the only one getting out, except for the driver, who had to unload her suitcase from underneath the bus. Aunt Cassie looked pretty much as Buddy remembered her, maybe a little heavier. She was wearing a print housedress and a red sweater, and she came forward with a smile. “Buddy! How nice to see you after all this time!” She gave Buddy a hug. She smelled nice, like fresh-baked bread. “I hope you had a good trip.”

  It wasn’t exactly a question, and Buddy didn’t feel the need to answer. How could it be a good trip under these circumstances?

  “It’s only a couple of blocks to walk,” Cassie said, and reached for the suitcase. “I’ll carry this until I get tired, and then you can take a turn.”

  They went up one of the side streets, which were wide and lined with shrubs and trees. Most of the houses were separated by good-sized lawns, now turning dry after a hot summer, and Buddy recognized the Ostrom house as they approached it. Mama and her sisters had grown up there, and it was in the background of a lot of the early snapshots. It seemed strange to think of Mama having lived all her life in this one house before her marriage. Buddy’s own family had lived in at least a half a dozen houses that she could remember.

  It was a big old two-story house with a covered veranda on three sides of it. There was a porch swing, and wicker chairs with faded flowered cushions.

  “Everybody here is just fine,” Aunt Cassie said as they turned in, just as if Buddy had asked about them.

  A curtain twitched in one of the windows, and Buddy quickly glanced that way, but it immediately fell back into place, and she couldn’t tell who’d been looking out. Mr. Beaman had said the thing to do was go to their relatives, but it didn’t feel right. It didn’t feel as if she were joining family, but strangers whose pictures she’d only seen in snapshots.

  After all, they’d stopped writing after Mama died, before she’d died, actually. There had been some kind of misunderstanding, some reason why Aunt Addie, especially, hadn’t been friendly with Mama. It was, Buddy thought, a reason that had kept them from frequent visits to Mama’s hometown. “Since Mother died, they don’t exactly make me feel welcome,” Mama had said before that last visit, “but I want some of my things that are still stored there, so I’m going.”

  And, after that, none of them had ever visited again. Buddy tried not to think about it. She wasn’t sure she was really welcome, either.

  They went in the front door, and Aunt Cassie set the suitcase down at the foot of the stairs in the front hallway. Then she led the way through a dining room with old-fashioned furniture into a big kitchen that smelled of the fresh-baked bread set out on a counter and of soup simmering on an old black woodstove. There was an electric stove, too, right beside the black one, which seemed peculiar.

  “She’s here!” Aunt Cassie sang out. “Come and say hello!”

  Aunt Addie appeared from a pantry, wiping her hands on a towel. “Welcome, Amy Kate,” she said.

  Hardly anybody ever called her by her real name. Aunt Cassie laughed. “Oh, she’s Buddy, don’t you remember that?”

  From the look on Addie’s face, it was clear she thought Buddy was a stupid name for a girl, though she didn’t say so. “I thought maybe your brother would come with you,” she noted.

  Buddy’s throat was dry. “No. He . . . he had to look for Daddy.”

  Addie’s expression sharpened. “Something happen to Dan, did it?”

  “We don’t know for sure, but when he took the new job he said he’d be back in a week, and we haven’t heard from him,” Buddy said.

  Addie got a pinched look around her mouth, as if Buddy had said something unpleasant.

  At the same time, Cassie said, “Don’t you remember? I told you that. Grandpa, come and meet Buddy. Do you remember her? EllaBelle’s girl?”

  The old man who emerged from a bedroom off the kitchen was still tall and thin, but no longer elegant. He leaned heavily on a cane and looked at the newcomer with faded blue eyes. “EllaBelle?”

  “Sure. You remember her. Our little sister.”

  “Sister,” the old man echoed. “Hello, Sister.”

  Cassie smiled and patted him on the arm. “Always called all of us ‘Sister,’ didn’t you, Grandpa? Couldn’t remember our names, even when we were little girls, so we were all ‘Sister.’ I’ll bet everybody’s ready for lunch, aren’t they?” She raised her voice. “Max! Lunchtime!”

  Who was Max? Buddy didn’t remember anyone named Max.

  “Did I have lunch yet?” Grandpa asked uncertainly.

  “No, dear, we’re all going to eat in just a moment,” Cassie assured him. “We waited for Buddy. Max! Don’t hold us up!”

  The boy who came from a rear hallway was carrying a kitten, which he lowered to the floor. “You told me to bring in some firewood, remember? Look what I found. Can I keep him?”

  Buddy guessed Max to be somewhere near her own age, though he was a head taller.

  Addie spoke sharply. “You know Gus doesn’t like cats.” That was the clue. Buddy remembered that Cassie was married to Uncle Gus. There were no pictures of him in the photo album. Buddy hadn’t known he had a son. Max couldn’t be Cassie’s son, because she and Gus had only married just before Mama died. Cassie’s stepson, then.

  “I could give him some milk,” Max said, and went to the cupboard for a small bowl.

  “Actually,” Addie said, “too much milk is not all that good for a cat.”

  “He hasn’t had too much of anything,” Max stated. “You can feel his ribs sticking out.”

  “Say hello to your cousin Buddy,” Cassie said, putting dishes on the big, round table.

  Max looked at her. “Hi,” he said. “We’re not really cousins, of course.”

  He would be rather nice-looking, Buddy thought, if he smiled instead of being so poker-fa
ced.

  He bent to pour milk into the bowl, then nudged the kitten toward it. The scruffy little gray-and-white creature drank greedily.

  “Grandpa, did you wash your hands?” Cassie was asking now. “Do you want me to help you?”

  Why would a grown man need help washing his hands? Cassie turned away and headed toward the bathroom off the back hallway, steering the old man ahead of her. Aunt Addie was busy slicing bread, and Max and Buddy were left standing there.

  “I always wanted a kitten,” Buddy said.

  “Somebody didn’t want him. They dumped him off to shift for himself,” Max said. And then he shifted his attention from the kitten to her again. “I doubt if you’re going to like it here very much. Everybody in this house is crazy.”

  Buddy blinked. “I beg your pardon?” she said, startled.

  “It’s a very dysfunctional family,” he told her. “Unless you’re a fruitcake, too, you probably won’t fit in very well.”

  If this was his idea of a welcome, Buddy didn’t think she could expect much of Max. She thought she had a general idea of what dysfunctional meant, but she missed having Bart there to explain so she’d know for sure. Her brother never made fun of her when she didn’t understand something.

  Buddy swallowed. “I don’t expect to be here for long. Just until Bart finds Dad.” Her heart was beating very fast. If she’d hoped for a moment that the only other person her age in this household might be a friend, that hope was fading.

  Max looked her full in the face then. “Your old man abandon you, did he?”

  Indignation surged through her. “No! He left town with a friend for a new job, after he got laid off at the mill. When it closed, practically everybody in town was out of work. Most of the men had to go somewhere else to look for jobs.”

  “That’s what he told you, huh?” Clearly Max didn’t believe her, and it stirred Buddy’s anger.

  “That’s what he told us, because it was the truth. He’d never abandon us.”

  “But he went away and didn’t come back, huh?” Max’s mouth slid into a sneer. “My old man lies all the time, too.”

  “Mine doesn’t!” Buddy snapped. “He hasn’t come back because something happened to him, so he couldn’t! My brother Bart’s gone to find out what it was!”

  Max shrugged. “Good luck,” he said, but she could tell he didn’t believe her, didn’t mean it.

  “Now, Grandpa,” Aunt Cassie was saying as they returned to the room, “you sit right down, and I’ll dish up the soup. Beef and barley vegetable, it is. You like that, remember?”

  Grandpa hesitated in the middle of the room. “Where do you want me to sit?”

  “Right there on the end, same as always,” Cassie said, guiding him with a touch on his elbow. She picked up a bowl and a big ladle. “You can sit right there beside him, Buddy.”

  Hesitantly, Buddy obeyed, wondering why Grandpa, who lived here, didn’t know where to sit. And why he had to be reminded that he liked beef and barley vegetable soup. It didn’t seem the sort of thing a person was likely to forget.

  The others took their places around the big, round table while Cassie placed steaming, wonderful-smelling soup in front of them. There were thick slices of bread, too, on a plate right in front of Grandpa.

  Cassie sat down on the other side of Grandpa and buttered him a slice of bread, cutting it in half as she placed it on his plate. “Would you like to ask the blessing, Grandpa?” she asked.

  Awkwardly, Buddy bowed her head with the others. They’d always said grace before meals when Mama was alive. Sometimes Dad remembered, sometimes not. They’d almost gotten out of the habit, though Buddy felt guilty enough so that she prayed silently.

  “Thank you, Lord, for all your blessings, and for our food. And if Sister made pie for dessert, we thank you for that, too. Amen.”

  Buddy started to smile at that last part, until she saw that no one else was smiling except Aunt Cassie.

  “No pie today, Grandpa,” Cassie told him gently. “Oatmeal cookies.”

  The old man reached up to a small device hanging on a cord around his neck and pressed it. A female voice said, “The time is 1:03 p.m.”

  “Time to eat,” Grandpa said, and picked up his spoon.

  Everybody else dug in, too. The soup was marvelous, rich and thick and meaty. So was the homemade bread.

  “Is there any jam?” Grandpa asked.

  There was a small jar beside his plate. Buddy looked from Grandpa to Aunt Cassie, who met her gaze sadly as she pushed the jar closer to the old man’s hand. “Right here, Grandpa.” Then, to Buddy, she added, “He has macular degeneration. He can’t see things that are directly in front of him.”

  Buddy must have looked bewildered. Across the table from her, Max saw that she was confused, and made his own explanation. “That means that he has peripheral vision—you know, around the edges, he can see light and color—but in the middle of his sight, where your face would be if he could see it, it’s just a black spot. He’s been legally blind for the past two years.”

  Blind? Now she understood why Cassie had guided him to the bathroom and his chair, why he needed help washing up, and why he wore a speaking timepiece around his neck. Grandpa Harry’s eyes looked perfectly normal, she thought, but they could no longer see the way they used to.

  Buddy dug into the lunch, hungry in spite of what she’d eaten on the bus. The soup and fresh bread were delicious, and she said so. Cassie smiled her appreciation of the compliment. “You want to get the cookies, dear? They’re on a plate right over there.”

  Buddy wondered what Bart was eating, or if he was eating at all. He did have money, but not very much, and he needed to pay for gas. All he’d known was the name of the town where Dad and Rich Painter had gone for the promised jobs. Dad had told them the name of the trucking company that had agreed to hire them, but neither of them had remembered what it was.

  Whenever she thought of it, which was practically all the time, Buddy prayed that her brother would be able to find Dad, and that he was all right.

  They were finishing the cookies—Buddy ate three, the same as Grandpa—when the doorbell rang in the front of the house. Max, stuffing his fourth cookie into his mouth, pushed back his chair. “I’ll get it,” he said. “It’s probably Hank. He said he’d come over and we’d go ride bikes for a while.”

  They heard boys’ voices, and then Max came back with a handful of envelopes, putting them down beside Addie’s plate. “Mail’s here. There’s a manuscript returned for you, Addie”—he plunked down a large manila envelope—“and a letter from Gordon. Plus the electric bill.”

  Gordon, Buddy knew, was the only boy in the family, between Addie and Cassie in age, all of them older than her mother had been. He was the only one besides her mother who had moved away from Haysville; he had left before Buddy was even born. He lived in Los Angeles, where he was a successful attorney.

  Addie picked up the envelope, held it to the light, tore it open, then made a small grunting sound of annoyance. “I don’t have my glasses. I left them on my dresser. Fetch them for me, Max.”

  “Don’t have time, the guys are waiting,” Max said, and fled after grabbing another handful of cookies.

  Addie looked after him in exasperation. “His legs are younger than mine. Why can’t he do me a favor?” she asked of no one in particular.

  “My legs are young, too,” Buddy said impulsively. “Could I get your glasses?”

  “Yes, please. Top of the stairs, the first room on the right. They’re on the dresser. You might as well take this up, too, and leave it.” She handed Buddy the big, thick manila envelope without opening it.

  The spectacles were right where Addie had said they were. Buddy picked them up before she noticed the dark red leather-covered photograph album on the nightstand a few feet away.

  It looked just like the one Mama had left. Buddy couldn’t have said why she paused to open it, except that perhaps she hoped there would be pictures of her mother
there.

  There were a number of them, some that Buddy had never seen before. The ones in the front of the book were old, when the sisters were little girls, and then there were snapshots taken as they grew into their teens.

  Buddy stopped flipping the pages, realizing that she was intruding on Addie’s private things. The pages flopped back into place, but not before a loose, enlarged snapshot fell out onto the old-fashioned floral rug.

  Automatically, Buddy stooped to pick it up and then stopped.

  The picture had been taken in front of this very house, many years ago. She recognized Addie, looking young and happy, but that wasn’t the surprising part. She was standing with her arm around a young man who was also laughing, and he had his arm around her, too.

  The man was Buddy’s father.

  She stared, stupified.

  Dad and Aunt Addie? Hugging each other?

  She brought the picture closer to her eyes to examine it more carefully.

  There was no question that the young man was Dan Adams. He was almost a dead ringer for Bart, taken when he was maybe only a few years older than Bart was now.

  The voice from below drifted up the stairway. “Can’t you find them, Buddy? On the dresser, just inside the door.”

  Buddy jerked, jabbed the picture into the photo album, and spun toward the doorway. “I found them,” she called, and started downstairs. She had no idea why her father had been hugging Aunt Addie. It made her most uncomfortable as she descended to the ground floor and handed over Addie’s glasses. Somehow she felt it was important, though she didn’t know why.

  Chapter Three

  At home Buddy had often helped her father with the cooking, and she was expected to clear the table and help with the dishes. Uncertain if she should offer or simply start picking up the bowls, she hesitated as Addie settled her glasses on her nose and began to read.

  Cassie waited, too. “Did he send a check?”

  “Umm. Yes, right here.” Addie paused in her reading long enough to fish the check out of the envelope. “He’s not coming home for Grandpa’s birthday party, though. He’s too busy.”