The Old House

by Willo Davis Roberts

  Cassie’s face fell. “It’s not every day a person gets to be ninety-two. I thought it would be nice if Gordon came home for the party.”

  “What party?” Grandpa Harry asked.

  “Your birthday party, honey,” Cassie said, leaning toward him and raising her voice slightly. “On the seventeenth.”

  “I’m having a party? How old am I?”

  “Ninety-two,” Cassie repeated.

  “According to the Bible, a person’s years are three score and ten. Isn’t that seventy years?”

  “Yes, but some live longer, and some live less. Grandma lived to be eighty, remember?”

  And Mama had died at thirty-eight, Buddy thought. It was hard to figure out why some died so young, and others lived to be so old.

  Cassie stood up and reached for the nearest bowls, and Buddy moved to help her.

  “Oh, thank you, dear. Just rinse them in the sink, there, and put them in the dishwasher. This way.”

  “We never had a dishwasher,” Buddy said, obeying orders. “I usually wash the dishes.”

  “I do most of the cooking, so Addie used to do most of the dishwashing, until she bullied Gordon into buying us a dishwasher,” Cassie stated.

  Addie was distracted from her letter. “Well, he never does anything else for this family, does he? Grandpa’s his relative as well as ours. There’s no reason he shouldn’t pitch in and do his share, even if it’s only with money for things we can use.”

  Grandpa pushed the button on the talking watch, which squawked a response. “The time is 1:47 p.m.” He stood up, unhooked his cane from the back of his chair, and headed toward the bedroom that opened off the kitchen. “It’s time for my nap,” he said to nobody in particular.

  It hadn’t taken long to load the dishwasher, and Cassie smiled at Buddy. “I guess we’d better get you settled, hadn’t we? If you were going to stay for a while, we’d clear out that back bedroom upstairs. But it’s got an awful lot of junk in it, and we figured since you’ll probably be back with the rest of your family within a few days, maybe you wouldn’t mind sleeping in the little sewing room. It has stuff stored in it, too, but it’s not like upstairs.”

  Again Addie put down her letter to comment. “What makes you think she’s only going to be here for a few days? They don’t know where Dan is, do they? Or if he’s even coming back?”

  “Of course he’s coming back,” Buddy said quickly, shocked.

  “He never was very responsible,” Addie asserted, to Buddy’s further indignation. “Always doing things on the spur of the moment, without thinking of the consequences.”

  Buddy bit her lower lip. That wasn’t the way she thought of her father at all, but in Addie’s house it probably wasn’t polite to say so.

  “That was a long time ago,” Cassie said soothingly. “I’m sure he’s changed since then. Come along, Buddy, and we’ll get you fixed up.”

  “It’s Friday. School’s still open. Somebody should take her over and sign her up,” Addie said.

  “School?” Buddy couldn’t keep still for that. “Aunt Cassie’s right. I’ll probably only be here a few days. There’s no need to go to school for that little time.”

  “Nobody knows for sure, do they?” Addie asked. “The law says kids have to go to school, and there’s no reason to get behind.”

  “All right, just in case Dan and Bart don’t show up by the first of the week, you can take her over and talk to Herbert,” Cassie said. “After we get her squared away in the sewing room. Max could do it, but those seventh graders are off for a couple of days, I guess, so you’ll have to do it.”

  She led the way, and Buddy followed, disturbed by everybody else being in control and making decisions for her. “Who’s Herbert?” she asked, pausing in the doorway of the small room opening off the dining room.

  “He’s the school principal. We went to school with him, years ago. Was a friend of Gordon’s, actually. They both went away to college the same year. Gordon never came back home to live, always felt this was a hayseed town with no future. But Herbert’s parents wanted him to come home to work as a teacher, and finally enough people died off, so he got to be principal. Here, let’s put your suitcase on this chair. You can just leave it there and take your things out as you need them, if you want to. Or if it turns out you’re here longer, I think there are a couple of empty drawers in that chest. The daybed’s all made up for you. There’s an extra blanket right here.”

  The room was very small, and crowded with cardboard cartons as well as a sewing machine. But no drunks could peek in the windows at her, and there was a bathroom just a few doors away. She’d be in a house, not a car. She didn’t know if this kept her from being homeless or not, but she’d feel homeless until Dad and Bart came and got her.

  “Thank you,” Buddy said, swallowing around the lump in her throat. She hoped Addie wasn’t right about her being here indefinitely.

  Addie came to the doorway, putting her letter back into its envelope. “There’s an extra twenty-five dollars in here to buy a present for Grandpa’s birthday,” she said. “Where on earth does he think we’re going to be able to shop? Why couldn’t he have bought a gift himself, in that big city, where they have hundreds of stores to choose from? He lived here all his life until he graduated from high school. He must remember the nearest decent-sized town is sixty miles away.”

  “Maybe you should have suggested something specific as a present,” Cassie said. “The way you usually tell him what we need or want? Gordon’s pretty reasonable about getting things when you do.”

  “Why do I have to think of things like that? Hasn’t he got a brain of his own?” Addie said crossly. “We’ve got enough to do right here, keeping up this old barn of a house. Worrying about an old man who has to have everything done for him. Can’t leave him alone for fear of what he’ll do. Can’t go anyplace unless we take him, and he doesn’t want to go anywhere but church, and then he embarrasses us by his loud belching and singing so loud, he drowns out the organ.”

  “Everybody there has known him all their lives, and they’re used to him. We’re living here, so we’d have to keep house, anyway,” Cassie said. “And where do you want to go, Addie? We’d be practically hermits whether we had Grandpa to look after or not.”

  “We’re too young to be hermits,” Addie snapped. “And I’d like the option of having some choices, not having to do it because we’re stuck with taking care of him.”

  Cassie was beginning to seem a bit annoyed herself. “Well, then, go ahead and go somewhere. We’ll still be here, Gus and Max and I.”

  “Gus!” Addie let out a gust of air. “Fat lot of use he is. Spends every minute down at the Hayloft with the rest of those bums.”

  “He can’t work, Addie. You know how bad his back is. You can’t expect the man to sit around the house with a couple of women who are too busy to even talk to him.”

  “He can’t talk about anything but football and basketball and baseball scores, anyway. I never did figure out why you married him, Cassie.”

  Buddy, feeling as if she was unwillingly listening to a conversation that was none of her business, shifted her weight from one foot to the other, trapped inside the small room until they finished what they were saying.

  Cassie responded quietly, sounding hurt. “Same reason you married Ed, I suppose. I never had a chance to get out of this little town and meet anybody else, getting close to forty and it didn’t look like I was ever going to get a chance to find anyone better. He promised me he was going to quit drinking, and Max needed more of a home than the two of them had, living in that little apartment. I thought we could all be a family.”

  Addie’s face flushed, and Buddy wondered how many times they’d already had this same conversation.

  “At least Ed had the decency to die on me,” Addie said flatly. “I don’t have to lie awake at night, listening to him fumbling with the key to get in. Listen, Buddy, it’s not raining, so let’s walk over to the school and get you regi
stered. It’s too late for you to stay today, but you can go on Monday. Max can show you around.”

  Buddy had her doubts that Max was going to want to do anything of the sort. Yet going with Addie seemed the only way to end this mortifying eavesdropping on what should have been a private conversation. Funny, that they could be embarrassed by Grandpa’s behavior, yet not be aware of their own.

  Under other circumstances, if she’d been with her own family, for instance, Buddy might have enjoyed the walk through Haysville. It was a pretty time of year, and now that the sun had come out, the red and gold leaves brightened the lawns and yards everywhere. There were lots of interesting-looking houses, all of them old, the kind that Mama had always said she’d like to have someday. They looked friendly, and comfortable, even if quite a few of them could have benefited from a coat of paint or some fence repairs.

  The school looked like something out of an old movie. Red brick, and there was an odd tube coming out of the side of it from the second story.

  “What’s that thing?” Buddy asked, breaking the silence that had held between them all the way here.

  “Fire escape,” Addie told her. “We used to love fire drills when we were kids. We got to open the door at the top and slide down. EllaBelle got in trouble once when she and Nicky Welton came down it without permission when there wasn’t a drill.”

  As they walked up the front walk, Buddy inspected her aunt more closely. “You must know lots of things about my mother that I never heard.”

  “Of course, she was my sister. I had to baby-sit her when she was really little. The last spanking I ever got was when I was supposed to be watching her, but I was reading a book and didn’t notice that she’d disappeared. My mother came home and demanded to know where she was, and I said I didn’t know and I didn’t care.”

  “What if she’d been hurt?” Buddy asked, shocked.

  “Well, I was pretty sure she hadn’t been. There was no traffic on this street, even back then, before this was the dead town it is now. And everybody knew her and where to bring her home. It wasn’t the last time I had to baby-sit her, but I never again made the mistake of saying I didn’t care. Mom used to make us pick our own switches off that willow tree in the backyard, and if we didn’t bring her one that was strong enough, she’d make us get another, tougher one, and use it longer. My legs stung like crazy when she got through with me.”

  “Mama never mentioned getting switched,” Buddy said as they reached the front door.

  “I don’t know if she ever did. She was the baby, and she was the favorite. She got away with everything Cassie and Gordon and I never got away with.” Addie pulled open the door and urged Buddy in ahead of her. “She was a spoiled brat, actually.”

  That didn’t fit with Buddy’s recollections of her mother, either. But there was no time to pursue it. A sign over a doorway to their left said OFFICE, and that was where they were headed.

  The school looked and smelled old.

  “Is this the elementary school?” Buddy asked. “Or the middle school?”

  “This is everything from kindergarten through twelfth grade. Hi, Sylvia,” Addie addressed the elderly lady at the front desk. “We need to see Herbert to enroll my niece for . . . what grade, Buddy? Sixth?”

  Buddy nodded unwillingly.

  Sylvia didn’t have a nice, modern telephone system where she could push a button to summon her superior. Instead, she turned her head and called through the open doorway behind her, “Mr. Faulkner, Addie Ostrom wants to see you.”

  The man who emerged to greet them and usher them into his tiny cubicle looked older than Addie, mostly because he was nearly bald. He had leather patches on the elbows of his tweed jacket. “Well, your niece, you say? EllaBelle’s girl, is she?”

  “Buddy Adams,” Buddy said.

  He blinked. “They always call you Buddy?”

  “In school they call me Amy Kate,” Buddy said. “It’s mostly my dad who calls me Buddy.” It was beginning to get embarrassing. Everybody reacted the same way to that silly nickname; they thought it was stupid.

  Herbert Faulker nodded, as if Amy Kate was a more acceptable name. “Sixth grade, eh? That would be Mrs. Hope’s class. Fifth and sixth grade. You bring your transcripts with you?”

  Buddy wasn’t sure what transcripts were, but she was sure she didn’t have them.

  “She wasn’t expecting to have to go to school,” Addie said. “Something happened to her dad—you remember Dan Adams, don’t you?—and she doesn’t have any papers. But we don’t know how long she’ll be with us, so we thought we should sign her up.”

  Herbert pursed his lips. “I can’t sign up somebody with no transcripts. Where did you come from, Amy Kate? Where did you go to school last?”

  She told him, squirming a bit on the hard chair she’d been offered. “The mill closed, and everybody was out of work, so my dad went with a friend to Lewiston. They’d been offered jobs there. Only he hasn’t come back yet, and my brother went to look for him. They’ll probably come and get me in a few days.”

  His eyebrows rose. “But you don’t know for sure? Well, you ought to be in school, of course. We’ll have to write to your old school and find out where to put you.”

  “She just told you where to put her. She’s in the sixth grade.”

  “But she has to have the transcripts from her last school,” Herbert said, frowning ever so slightly.

  Addie had no more patience with the school principal than she’d had with Grandpa or Aunt Cassie. “Oh, come on, Herbert. You always were a stickler for protocol, but you never had any common sense. You were a wimpy little boy and you’re a wimpy man. Put her into the sixth-grade class and then send for whatever papers you need. What difference does a few days make?”

  The man had gone from pink to red to near purple at her words. “There are rules and regulations, Addie. I don’t make them, I’m just expected to follow them—”

  Addie made a rude noise. “If the rule said you couldn’t leave a burning building before the fire truck arrived, you’d stand there and fry off the rest of your hair. Buddy’ll be here at nine o’clock on Monday morning. Do you want Sylvia to get the basic information now, or then?”

  The purple countenance was fading only a little. “Now, I suppose,” he said reluctantly. “But I hope you understand, Addie, that—”

  Addie stood up, pulling Buddy with her. “You want me to talk to Sam Bass and the rest of the school board? See if they’re all as nervous Nellies as you are? Sam’s no mental giant, but he’s got the interests of the kids at heart. I can’t think he’d keep a kid out of school just because she’s homeless at the moment, and isn’t carrying the proper documentation. God only knows when Dan will show up, if he ever does. You must remember how unreliable he was when he made a promise.”

  Buddy felt color warming her own face at being pronounced homeless. And why did Addie have to keep making slighting remarks about her father? It was obvious that the school principal, too, was struggling with rage as well as humiliation. Yet he made one more attempt to temper Addie’s attack.

  “I only recollect one promise he made that he didn’t keep, Addie, and it was nothing like these circumstances. I’m sure he’ll be back for his little girl as soon as he can. But you’re right: Until he comes, she needs to be in school. Don’t worry, Amy Kate, I’ll get in touch with your last school, and we’ll get this all straightened out. You go talk to Sylvia, now, and she can get the basic information.”

  Sylvia was perfectly kind. She filled out a couple of forms, and Buddy felt her embarrassment diminishing. Still, being designated as homeless and hearing that her father was considered unreliable and untrustworthy was very upsetting.

  She didn’t say a single word to Addie all the way home.

  Chapter Four

  The house was filled with the mouthwatering aroma of roasting meat. Addie went upstairs to take off her sweater without any suggestions as to what Buddy should do next. There was no sign of Cassie or Gran
dpa, so she wandered out the back door to the rear yard. It was a pleasant place, with plastic lawn chairs under the brilliantly colored trees, and a round table that still had puddles of water on it.

  But there was nothing to do there. She walked around for a few minutes, looking at the remains of a large garden and wondering who tended it, then went back inside.

  She wished desperately that Bart had come with her. Or that he’d call and tell her he’d found Dad. He had to be all right, didn’t he?

  But things did happen to people. There had been that terrible accident that had killed her mother, when her car had slid on the ice and crashed. Everybody had said EllaBelle Adams must have died instantly when she hit the cement wall, that she couldn’t have felt any pain.

  Buddy hadn’t even been able to see her at the last. They’d closed the casket. Not that she wanted to see what had happened to her mother; yet for the longest time she had felt that Mama hadn’t really died, that she was still alive somewhere, and would come walking through the door any minute.

  But an accident wouldn’t have happened to Dad. He was a good driver. He’d only given up driving trucks, which he loved, to work in the mill after Mama died, so she and Bart wouldn’t be home alone so much. He said it was the other fellow you had to look out for, the one who wasn’t a good, careful driver. And he would have been driving a truck, and sitting up above other drivers, and not very likely to be injured even if there was an accident. He’d told her that, so she wouldn’t worry.

  It was impossible not to worry, though. What if even her brother didn’t come back? What if she never found out what had happened to either of them? What if she had to stay here with Aunt Addie and Aunt Cassie forever?

  Her eyes prickled and her throat ached, thinking about it.

  The screen door slammed behind her, and she spun around. Max was standing at the top of the steps. “What happened to my kitten?” he demanded.

  “What?” Buddy couldn’t imagine why he was asking her.