Delia nodded sadly. “Not many of us left now. Folks just don’t play anymore.”
“She’d even circled the dessert she meant to serve—something with about a million calories with nuts and dates and whipped cream.”
“Don’t know why,” Delia said. “Most of us are trying to lose weight. Told me she was going to have a minted fruit compote with some of those low-fat cookies.” She sighed. “Everybody carries on so about cholesterol. Seems they’ve just taken all the fun out of eating!” And she pried open the lid of a cookie tin to see if there was anything inside.
There was. “Have one, please. Take some home,” I offered. Everybody loved Aunt Caroline, and this was their way of showing it. People had brought more food than I could possibly eat, and other than the women from the church and a few neighbors who came over the day of the funeral, I’d had no one to share it.
Except for Augusta. And now, after bullying me to take her to the shoe store, the peculiar woman had disappeared. She was only here for an afternoon, yet it seemed she’d been a part of my life forever. If it weren’t for the discarded shoes and stockings, I’d swear I had imagined her.
“Mm—lemon crinkles! Bess Hazelwood. She always makes ’em.” Delia squinted at the name on the bottom of the container. “See, just like I said. But some people don’t even bother to label things—have to be a mind reader to know who they belong to.” She bit into another cookie. “I’ll be glad to return these things when you’re ready. After all this time, I’ve pretty much learned what goes where.
“Take that, for instance.” My neighbor frowned at the empty pink-flowered plate. “Fronie Temple. Muffins, I’ll bet.”
I nodded.
“Banana nut or poppyseed?”
“Poppyseed.” I tried not to make a face.
“Uh-huh. Left something out, didn’t she? Fronie’s bad about that. Gets in a hurry, you know. Why, she made a cake for the Women’s Club bake sale last year, must’ve weighed a ton. Forgot to put in the baking powder. ’Course nobody bought it.”
Delia wrapped the last of Aunt Caroline’s everyday plates and tucked them inside the box, giving it sort of a farewell pat. “Now, there’s an idea,” she said, retrieving the masking tape from under a stack of newspapers.
She looked so triumphant standing there with her bifocals askew and a smudge of ink on her cheek, it made me smile—until I remembered what we were doing and why.
“What?” I asked, just to be polite.
“Fronie Temple. She’s had her house converted into apartments. Fellow who rented the one downstairs moved out last month, took a job in Raleigh. Hear she’s looking for a new tenant.”
Meaning me, I guess. “Hold on, I don’t even have a job,” I said.
“But you will, and you have to live someplace.” She seemed dead set on me moving to Troublesome Creek, and now that I thought about it, a fresh start didn’t seem like such a bad idea. “Of course you’d have to put up with Fronie’s singing,” she continued, “but if we can stand her screeching in the choir every Sunday, you can learn to get used to it. Be good for your constitution. Besides, it’s an old house. Walls can’t be too thin.”
I groaned, picturing an old wreck of a house with a banshee for a landlady. Not an appealing prospect.
Delia labeled the box and shoved it aside, then sat with a tired little moan. “You know I’d like to have you myself, Mary George, but to tell the truth, I don’t plan to be here long either. That old elephant of a house is too much to keep up, and I don’t need all that room anyway. Joy Ellen lives so far away, she hardly ever gets home anymore.”
Joy Ellen was Delia’s daughter, an only child who lives somewhere in California. I knew from Aunt Caroline she’d tried to get Delia to move out there, but North Carolina was her home, our neighbor said, and this was where she meant to stay.
“Where will you go?” I asked.
“Been looking at those condominiums they’re building out on Pine Thicket Road,” Delia told me. “They’re especially for retired people, you know—easy to keep and all. I should be able to move in by late summer if I can unload that old place of mine.” She went to the sink for water. “You might want to call Fronie, though, let her know you’re interested.”
Oh, but I wasn’t. “She’s probably rented it already.”
“Not unless somebody’s taken it since I saw her in Anderson’s Market this morning. Asked me if I knew anybody who’d be interested.” She laughed. “Must be gettin’ plumb featherheaded! Didn’t even think of you till now, Mary George.” Delia darted me a look. “It’s right close by. Air-conditioned too. I’ll go with you to see it if you like.”
She didn’t want me to leave her. Leave Troublesome Creek. She had just lost her best friend, and Delia Sims was lonely. Well, I knew loneliness too. Besides, Delia Sims wasn’t my problem. Didn’t I have troubles enough of my own? “First let me see about a job,” I said.
It was all happening too fast. The house and everything in it had to be disposed of. Now. And there was my apartment back in Charlotte to think about. I was being forced to make decisions I wasn’t accustomed to making, and I didn’t like it. Hot springs pooled behind my eyes. My breathing came too fast.
Then, for some reason, I thought of Augusta Goodnight with her new gold shoes and silly hat and a soothing blue-green calmness washed over me. For a minute I was splashing in the cool creek back at Summerwood catching tapoles, building “frog houses” with bare feet on the sandy banks. With Sam.
Suddenly Delia, who had been sorting table linens, stopped and sniffed. “Don’t tell me,” she said. “Darcy Fuller brought her strawberry pie.”
I shook my head. I’d know it if somebody had brought strawberry pie.
She frowned. “Shortcake?”
“Nope. Sorry.”
I could tell she didn’t believe me. “Well, that’s the strangest thing. I can smell it right here in this kitchen, just as plain as day.” Delia took a deep breath. “Mm! Whatever it is, it’s heavenly.”
“Absolutely,” I said.
CHAPTER FIVE
I fell in love the minute I saw him. He had hair the color of November woods and eyes that turned me into marshmallow creme. I knew we belonged to each other.
He raised his head and looked at me. He knew. And when I knelt beside him, he licked my hand—all the way to the elbow, his long tail thumped the floor.
“What happened?” I said to the boy who held the dog by a piece of rope.
“Cut his paw pretty bad on something, and he ain’t eatin’ neither.” The boy stroked the dog’s big, shaggy head. He looked worried.
I noticed the dirty, crusted wound on the left forepaw, the matted fur. My new love smelled like a sewer from hell. “What’s his name?”
“Don’t know. Granddaddy says somebody must’ve dumped him out and left him. I was supposed to take him to the pound, but thought I’d try here first. He’s a good old dog. Maybe Doc Nichols knows somebody who’ll take him.”
“You did the right thing.” I remembered what it was like being “dumped” in a strange place.
I had $149.74 in my checking account, no job, and a house being sold out from under me. “I’ll take him,” I said.
The waiting room smelled of disinfectant and dogs, and the woman behind the receptionist’s counter looked at her watch at least three times while I waited to see the vet. “Gotta drive carpool in ten minutes,” she explained to the balding man with a wheezing dachshund. “School lets out at three o’clock.” Later I found out she was Doc Nichols’s sister filling in for a day. When a reluctant teenaged boy was called from cleaning cages in the back to take her place at the desk, I knew the job was mine.
“When can you start?” Doc Nichols said.
Clarence Nichols was almost as tall as the doorframe and thin enough to slip through a crack. I could tell his curly hair used to be red, and his eyes were as blue as those picture postcards other people send me of the Caribbean. We talked for almost an hour while he clean
ed the teeth of a couple of anesthetized cats and trimmed the nails of a cocker spaniel. He called me Sport because of my initials, M. G., which is about as close to a sports car as I’ll probably ever come. But I liked it—and him. Nobody’s ever called me Sport before.
The hairy brown dog, a mix, he said, of God knows what, turned out to be a puppy. Maybe six months old, the doctor told me, no more. Besides the cut on his foot, the animal was anemic, needed worming, and fleas had established a summer resort in his coat.
Doc Nichols examined the injured paw and frowned. “Poor baby’s been through a lot. It would be the kindest thing, I suppose, to—”
“No! I want him,” I said. “He’s mine.” I named him Hairy Brown.
“You have a what?” Delia put down her account book and shoved her glasses back in place.
“A dog,” I said. “But don’t worry, he’s staying at the vet’s until I can get settled.” Doc Nichols was only charging me for the vitamin shots and medicine.
“Oh, dear. I don’t know if Fronie allows animals,” Delia said.
Then I’d just have to live in a tent. Right now I didn’t have time to worry about it. The few pieces of Aunt Caroline’s furniture I’d decided to keep had been tagged for delivery to the small three-room apartment in the rear of Fronie Temple’s house, along with the things I’d recently hauled from my—now empty—apartment in Charlotte. Thanks to Delia’s experience in the trade, an antiques dealer was due to collect my aunt’s dining room furniture and the huge Victorian bed that had belonged to her grandmother. The rest, priced to sell and displayed, warts and all, in the house on Snapfinger Road, would go up for grabs to whoever wanted it at eight o’clock the next morning.
Everywhere I looked were the worn, familiar things of home. Aunt Caroline’s shabby sofa—the one she’d covered herself—the lamp Uncle Henry made from a crockery jug, faded prints that hung in the hall.
I’d kept my aunt’s sewing basket, her bisque figurines, even the fraying needlepoint footstool with the wobbly leg—things I couldn’t bear to part with. Add to that the bookshelves, drop-leaf table, and Windsor chair I’d bought on time. Where would I put them all? But despite continued searching, my old family Bible had failed to turn up. I wished I could share Delia’s confidence that it would eventually resurface among the books I’d packed to keep.
That afternoon the real estate agent called to tell me he’d had an offer on the house. “Couple of attorneys plan to convert it into offices,” he said. “Better take it,” the agent advised. “Offers aren’t pouring in. Besides, this whole neighborhood’s in a transitional zone.”
Taking Delia’s advice, I told him to accept the offer, then called and invited my neighbor out for hamburgers. Not so much to celebrate—I really didn’t feel like celebrating—but if the sale went through, at least I would be able to pay off some of my aunt’s debts. And I had to get away from this house! Suddenly my life was in fast-forward, and the only way I could deal with it was to pretend, for a little while at least, that it wasn’t happening.
The Hound Dog Cafe, which offers fifties tunes on a jukebox and the best sandwiches in town, was understandably crowded since there aren’t that many places to eat in Troublesome Creek, North Carolina, and we had to wait for a booth.
“Do you want to get something from the take-out window?” I asked Delia. She looked tired and pretty close to her age, which is sixty-eight. “We can eat at home if you like.”
“Not on your life,” she said. “I’m tired of looking at the same walls. Besides,” she whispered, “it’ll give me time to run in the rest room a minute. Why don’t you play us a tune on the jukebox while we wait?”
Delia disappeared behind the pink door stenciled in even pinker lips and I shoved a couple of quarters into the slot and punched up “Blue Suede Shoes.” Maybe Elvis would revive my sagging energy.
A booth emptied a few minutes later, so I grabbed it and listened to the music while trying to ignore the clutter of somebody else’s meal. As a waitress in pink hair bows cleared the table, I thought of Augusta dancing in the attic and wondered where she was. A pity she’d missed out on the era of rock and roll.
If Augusta Goodnight were really my guardian angel, I thought, she’d better get her heavenly body back here where she belonged. I had a feeling I was going to need her. And what was she really here for? Would Augusta leave for good after we learned how Aunt Caroline died?
I looked at the people sitting about me—talking, laughing, pigging out on burgers and fries. They all seemed harmless enough, but if someone really had pushed Aunt Caroline down the attic stairs, what was to stop them from coming after me?
I don’t know how long the song had been playing before I realized what it was. It certainly wasn’t “Blue Suede Shoes.” Of course!
How could I forget? The old forties song, “Coming in on a Wing and a Prayer,” was playing over the jukebox, and no one seemed to have noticed it but me.
“Do you hear that?” I asked the waitress.
She rolled her eyes. “What? ‘Blue Suede Shoes’? I hear it in my sleep!”
When Delia returned, the song had just finished playing. “Did you hear it?” I asked. “That song you were telling me about, the one popular during the war.”
She studied the menu. “Couldn’t hear much of anything back there. Besides, that’s the wrong decade, isn’t it?”
“But it played. I heard it. It has to be on the jukebox.” I ran a finger down the selections, checked the list three times. The song wasn’t there.
That night I slept for the last time in the house on Snapfinger Road. The next day, as soon as the sale was over, several teens from Aunt Caroline’s church would haul my belongings to Fronie Temple’s in the back of a pickup truck. Most had been in my aunt’s children’s choir since nursery school age and wouldn’t accept a cent in payment for helping me, so I planned to make a donation to their youth group in her memory. Aunt Caroline would like that.
“Your aunt always made me feel important, that my voice counted,” Becky Wainwright told me. Becky was tall and shy and didn’t have much to say, but her mellow contralto could knock you off your feet, and I’d heard she’d won honors in several choral competitions. Still, as much as I needed it, I felt a little guilty about accepting volunteer help.
“Now, don’t you worry a minute about that,” Miss Fronie said the next morning as she browsed among the jumble in what used to be Uncle Henry’s study. “Your aunt Caroline spent every Sunday since I can remember playing for that congregation—not to mention the time she put in with all those children, and for our Wednesday night choir practice.”
Fronie Temple leafed through a worn copy of Wuthering Heights, set it aside. “We’re sure going to miss her,” she said. “Your aunt was so good to run through the anthems with me. Now, she appreciated a trained voice. I honestly don’t know what we’ll do without her,” Miss Fronie stroked a brocaded pillow and turned away. “Some people just can’t be replaced.”
“I have something for you,” I said, leading her into the dining room where boxes lined the floor. “I’m sure Aunt Caroline would have wanted you to have her sheet music.” Every Wednesday night for as long as I could remember, Fronie Temple had driven my aunt to choir practice, pausing in front of the house with two light taps of her horn at precisely thirteen minutes after seven. Aunt Caroline had given up driving years before when, as a teen, she’d been involved in an accident, and Fronie had seemed glad of her company.
Fronie was so overcome by the gift she couldn’t speak, but squeezed my arm in thanks. My new landlady was stout and sixtyish and tinted her hair baby-chicken yellow. I knew her slightly as I was growing up, but hadn’t seen her in a while. From what I could see under the makeup, she once had beauty queen looks, and was trying to hang on to what remained the best way she knew how.
Aside from having to listen to the woman’s tremorous soprano, maybe it wouldn’t be so bad living in the rear of Fronie Temple’s house. After all, she was a
friend of Aunt Caroline’s.
Fronie didn’t know many people in town when she moved here after marrying Braswell Temple, my aunt had said, and Aunt Caroline sort of took her under her wing: invited her to join the Women’s Club, tried to make her feel welcome. I left her thumbing through the music and spent the next few minutes selling casette tapes I’d collected in high school to a middle-aged man in a flower-splashed shirt.
They paraded through all morning. The young mother with twin girls bought Aunt Caroline’s portable sewing machine, and the portly man from Charlotte, Uncle Henry’s collection of National Geographic. A matronly woman with grandchildren in tow carried off a carton of children’s books, minus my favorites, of course.
By the middle of the afternoon I was beginning to droop like a wilting petunia. The crowd had thinned, but a few scavengers still picked about the remains of my aunt’s life. It hurt to see strangers walking away with familiar things she and my uncle had used. I had sold the last of the garden tools and was about to go inside for a cool drink when Delia tugged at my arm.
“There she is,” she said, nodding toward a small, dark woman looking through a box of shoes.
“There who is?”
“Bonita Moody. That woman in the green dress—she’s the one I told you about. She was here the day Caroline fell.”
The woman hugged a navy handbag under one arm while a little boy about six clung to the other. Bonita Moody was examining a pair of my aunt’s white pumps, the ones she bought on sale last summer, when she saw me approaching across the lawn. Then a couple of people stopped to ask me a question, and the next thing I knew she was gone.
How could she disappear so quickly? I looked all around but didn’t see her, then, as I started back to the house, I glimpsed a flash of bright green. Bonita Moody and her little boy were getting into a car parked at the curb with a man behind the wheel. “Wait!” I yelled, hurrying after her, but the car sped away.
Angel at Troublesome Creek Page 4