(4/10) The Julius House

by Charlaine Harris

  “Martin, we’ve concentrated, naturally, on your relationship with Roe, since you’re going to be married. But I wondered if you wanted to share your feelings about why your previous marriage didn’t work out. Have we covered anything in these evenings together that rang any bells?”

  Martin looked thoughtful. His pale brown eyes focused on the wall above Aubrey’s dark head, his hands loosened the knot of his tie. “Yes,” he said quietly, after a few seconds. “There were some things we never talked about, important things. Some things I liked to keep to myself. I don’t like to think about the woman I love worrying about them.”

  My eyes widened. My mouth opened. Aubrey shook his head, very slightly. I subsided, but rebelliously. I would worry if I damn well chose to; I deserved the choice.

  “But,” Martin continued, “that wasn’t the way the marriage could survive. Cindy ended up not trusting me about anything. She got sadder and more distant. At the time, I felt that if she had enough faith in me, everything would be okay, and I was resentful that she didn’t have that faith.”

  “But now?” Aubrey prompted.

  “I wasn’t being fair to her,” Martin said flatly. “On the other hand, she began to do things that were calculated to gain my attention . . . flirt with other men, get involved with causes she had very little true feeling for ..."

  “And you didn’t communicate these feelings to each other?”

  “It was like we couldn’t. We’d been talking so long about things like Barrett’s grades, what time we had to be at the PTA meeting, whether we should install a sprinkler system, that we couldn’t talk about important things very effectively. Our minds would wander.”

  “And now, in your marriage to Aurora?”

  “I’ll try.” He glanced toward me finally, apologetically. “Roe, I’ll try to talk to you about the most important things. But it won’t be easy.”

  As we were leaving, Aubrey said, “I almost forgot, Roe. I was visiting a few members of the congregation who live in Peachtree Leisure Apartments yesterday. We were in that big common room in the middle, and an older lady came up to me and asked if I was the minister who was going to conduct the ceremony for your wedding.”

  “Who was she?”

  “A Mrs. Totino. You know her? She said she’d read the engagement notice in the paper. She wanted to meet you.”

  “Totino,” I repeated, trying to attach a face to the name. “Oh, I know! The Julius mother-in-law! I heard at the shower that she was still alive and living here, and I’d completely forgotten it.”

  “I never met her when I bought the house. Bubba Sewell ran back and forth with all the papers,” Martin said.

  “Is she in good health, Aubrey?” I asked.

  “She seemed pretty frail. But she was full of vinegar and certainly all there mentally. The old gentleman I was visiting says she’s the terror of the staff.”

  I pictured a salt-and-peppery little old lady who would say amusingly tart things the staff would quote to their families over supper.

  “I’ll go see her after the wedding,” I said.

  Chapter Six

  Lately I’d been feeling as if I were in one of those movies where calendar pages fly off the wall to indicate the passage of time. Events and preparations made the time blur. Only a few things stood out clearly when I thought about it later.

  The night we were riding home from the barbecue Amina’s parents held for us, out at their lake house, Martin finally told me where we were going on our honeymoon. He had asked what I wanted, and I had told him to surprise me. I had half-expected the Caymans, or perhaps a Caribbean cruise.

  “I wanted you to have a choice, so I’ve made initial preparations for two things,” he began, as the Mercedes purred down the dreadful blacktop that led to the state highway back into town. I leaned back against the seat, full of anticipation and barbecued pork.

  “We can either go to Washington for two weeks, and do the Smithsonian right.”

  I breathed out a sigh of delight.

  “Or we can go to England.”

  I was stunned. “Oh, Martin. But is there really something—I mean, both of those are things you would enjoy too?”

  “Sure. I’ve been to the Washington area many times, but I’ve never had time to see the Smithsonian. And if you pick England, we can go on a walking tour of famous murder sites in London, if you’ll come with me to get some suits made on Savile Row, or as close to Savile Row as I can manage.”

  “How can I pick?” I chewed on my bottom lip in happy agony. “Oh . . . England! I just can’t wait! Martin, what a great idea!”

  He was smiling one of his rare broad smiles. “I picked the right things, then.”

  “Yes! I thought for sure we’d be going to some island to lie on gritty sand and get all salty!”

  He laughed out loud. “Maybe we can do that sometime, too. But I wanted you to have a really good time, and a beach honeymoon just didn’t sound like you.”

  Once again, Martin had surprised me with his perception. If we’d sat down and consulted on it, I would never have thought of suggesting England (going farther than the Caribbean had never crossed my mind), and if I had, I would have dismissed the idea as something that wouldn’t have appealed to Martin.

  We had an absolutely wonderful time after we got to the town house.

  Another moment I remembered afterward was Amina’s introduction to Martin. I was very excited about her meeting him and attributed her unusual silence thereafter to the bouts of nausea she was still experiencing. Amina, who had always been happily unconscious of her good health, was having a hard time adjusting to the new limits and discomforts her pregnancy was imposing on her. Her hair was hanging limply instead of bouncing and glowing, her skin was spotty, her ankles were swelling if she sat still for more than a short time, and she seemed to alternate nausea with heartburn. But every time she thought about the baby actually arriving, she was happy as a clam at high tide.

  So at first I thought it was just feeling demoralized about her appearance that made Amina uncharacteristically silent. Finally, unwisely, I asked her directly what she thought about Martin.

  “I know I’m not my normal self right now, but I’m not crazy, either,” Amina began. I got that ominous feeling, the one you get when you know you’re about to get very angry and it’s your own fault. We were standing out in the front yard of the Julius house, which was beginning to look as my imagination had pictured it when I had first seen it. John Henry’s legs, in their plumbers’ overalls, were protruding from the crawl space under the house, a young black man was trimming the foundation bushes, and the Youngbloods were doing a strange Asian thing on the broad driveway in front of the garage. It was some kind of martial ballet alternating sudden kicks and screams with hissing breathing and slow graceful movements. Amina watched them for a moment and shook her head in disbelief. “Honey,” she said, looking directly into my eyes, “who are those people?”

  “I told you, Amina,” I said, “Shelby is an old army buddy of Martin’s, and he lost his job in Florida—”

  “Cut the crap.”

  I gaped at my best friend.

  “What job? Where, exactly? Doing what? And what does she do? Does she look like Hannah Housewife to you?”

  “Well, maybe they’re not exactly like the people we know ..."

  “Damn straight! Hugh said they looked more like people the criminal-law side of his firm would defend!”

  Bringing in Hugh, her husband, was a mistake, Amina realized instantly. “Okay, okay,” she said, holding up her hands, “truce. But listen, honey, those people seem very strange to me. Martin wanting them to live out here with you all—I don’t know, it just looks . . . funny.”

  “Be a little more specific, Amina,” I said very stiffly. “Funny? How?”

  Amina shifted from foot to uncomfortable foot. “Could we sit down?” she asked plaintively. I recognized a delaying tactic, but she really was tired. I pushed a folding lawn chair in her directi
on. I pulled over one for myself. Martin and I had been sitting out on the lawn the evening before, looking at the house and talking about our plans.

  “I shouldn’t have started this,” Amina muttered to herself and tried to arrange her altering body in the light aluminum-frame chair. “I’m just worried about you,” she said directly. “If Martin was a regular guy in a regular job who came home every night, I’d like him fine. And I do like him as he is, because he obviously thinks you’re the greatest thing since sliced bread. But he’s gone so much, he works so hard, such long hours. Why does he have to be out of town so much? Plant managers are supposed to stay at the plant, right? And these Youngbloods.” She shook her head.

  “Amina, stop.”

  “Your mom’s worried, too.” She was crying.

  The Youngbloods had finished their strange ritual and were doing some kind of exercise in which they faced each other, squatted, and whacked each other’s arms.

  My mother, I reflected, had been smart enough not to say anything.

  To tell the truth, this conversation shook me.

  I handed Amina a Kleenex from my shoulder bag.

  “I’m just scared that—it almost looks like you’ll be their prisoner.”

  “Amina, I think you need to go lie down,” I said, after a little silence.

  “Don’t patronize me! I may be pregnant but I’m not stupid.”

  “Then you’ll believe me when I say that I don’t want to hear any more of this.”

  We each stared off angrily in opposite directions, composing ourselves, trying to be friends again.

  It took a few days.

  The ceremony itself was brief and beautiful. Lawrence-tonians filled up my side of the church and half the rows on Martin’s. Being older, and having moved so many times, Martin had not invited many people, and those who came were business associates from Pan-Am Agra, a few old friends from Ohio, and his sister Barbara. I had some sympathy for Barby since I’d learned more of her history while I was in Corinth, but still I knew she would never become my favorite person or my confidante. (She brought her daughter, a sophomore at Kent State, a pretty, dark, plump, young woman named Regina. Regina was not blessed with many brains and asked far too often why her cousin Barrett hadn’t come to see his dad get married.)

  So St. James Episcopal Church was full, Emily Kaye played the organ beautifully, my mother walked down the aisle with the dignity that was her trademark, Martin appeared from Aubrey’s study with John at his side—Martin looked absolutely delicious in his tux— and Amina went down the aisle in her full-skirted dress that fairly well concealed her pregnancy. Then it was my turn.

  My father and his wife had finally decided to come, pretty much at the last minute; you can imagine how their lack of enthusiasm made me feel. And then they’d left my brother Phillip with some friends in California.

  My crushing disappointment had permanently altered the way I felt about my father.

  I am no apple-cart upsetter. I am no flouter of tradition. And I am not a person who likes last-minute changes in plans. But when my father had arrived, I had told him I wanted to walk down the aisle by myself. My mother drew in a sharp breath, opened her mouth to say something, then looked at me and shut it. And I didn’t explain my decision to Father, or wait for his reaction, or tell him not to get his feelings hurt. And Betty Jo had no say at all. So Father and Betty Jo had walked in before Mother.

  That’s why I came down the aisle by myself when Emily began playing the music I’d waited so many years to hear. I’d had my hair put up, I was wearing the earrings Martin had given me the night before we’d gotten engaged, I was wearing full bride regalia. I felt like the Homecoming Queen, Miss America, a Pulitzer Prize winner, and a Tony Award nominee, all rolled into one.

  And we got married.

  Chapter Seven

  We pulled into our very own gravel driveway, groggy from the trip, glad to be home. I knew Martin had started thinking about the plant again, and I had been visualizing my own—our own—bed, and my washing machine, and staying in my nightgown until I was good and ready to get dressed. And my own coffee! Our honeymoon, which had been as sweet as honeymoons are supposed to be, had been wonderful, but I was really ready to be back in Lawrenceton. It was hard to believe we had to get through the rest of the day before going to bed. Martin had slept some on the airplane coming across the ocean, and I had too, but it wasn’t especially restful sleep.

  The house looked wonderful. The new carpet, paint, and the bookshelves were in. God bless the Youngbloods; they’d arranged the furniture I’d thought would be lined up against the walls. I’d left diagrams of how I wanted the bedrooms to be situated, but I hadn’t been able to visualize the living room. It actually looked very nice, though I was sure I’d want to change a couple of things. Madeleine had already chosen a chair and mastered the pet door in the kitchen. Judging by her girth, the Youngbloods had been feeding her too well. She seemed faintly pleased to see me, and as always, totally ignored Martin.

  In that distracted way people have when they come home from a trip and can’t settle, we wandered separately around the house. Martin went to the large box of mail on the coffee table and began to sort through it—his pile, my pile—while I roamed through the dining room, noting all the wrapped presents on the table, to check out the kitchen. I’d moved most of my kitchen things here myself and gotten them in place before the wedding, and Martin’s household goods had been retrieved from storage before the wedding, too, but there was a box or two yet to unpack; the essential things that I’d kept at my apartment until the day of the wedding. I’d have cleaned out the apartment and moved in with Mother if the furniture left me by Jane Engle hadn’t already been taking up the third bedroom, and the second one had been promised to Barby Lampton for the week of the wedding.

  I knew, catching sight of the back of Martin’s head as I began to open the belated wedding presents stacked on the dining-room table, that I was going to experience an after-wedding slump, as we began the day-today part of our life together, so I was glad there was some work left to do on the house. I stared blearily at yet another set of wine glasses, and checked the box to see if they were from the Lawrenceton gift shop; they were. I could take them back tomorrow and trade them in on something we really needed, though what that might be, I didn’t know, since it seemed to me we had enough things to last us our lifetimes.

  The next package contained purple and silver placemats of such stunning hideousness that I had to call Martin to see them. We puzzled over the enclosed card together, and I finally deciphered the crabbed handwriting.

  “Martin! These are from Mrs. Totino!”

  “Mrs. who?”

  “The mother-in-law! The one who found out they were all missing! Why has she sent us a present?”

  “Probably glad to have the house off her hands after all these years.”

  “The money. I guess she’s glad to have the money. The house did belong to her?” A sudden thought occurred to me. “Has the family been officially declared dead?”

  “Not yet. Later this year, in a few months, in fact. The check to buy the house went into the estate. It was a strange house closing. Bubba Sewell represented the estate. Mrs. Totino, evidently, was appointed the conservator for the estate after a year. I don’t think there are any other relatives.”

  I lifted one of the suitcases to take it upstairs. “I am headed for our own shower in our own bathroom with our own soap.”

  “And a nap in our bed?” he asked.

  “Yep. Right after I call Mother and tell her we’re back.”

  “Can I join you?”

  “The phone call? The shower? The nap?”

  “Maybe we can delay the phone call and work something in between the shower and the nap?”

  “Could be,” I said musingly. “But you’d better catch me quick, or the nap will claim me first.”

  “I don’t know if I can move fast enough,” Martin admitted, tucking the card back in the box w
ith the placemats and walking through the living room to join me at the stairs, “but I can try.”

  He was fast enough. We inaugurated our new house in a very satisfactory manner.

  After a day to rest, Martin went happily to work, and I settled into the rest of my life. The downstairs bathroom hadn’t been completed, and I had to harass a few people over that, but the upstairs had been finished and it was beautiful. Our bedroom was French blue, gray, and white; I’d used Martin’s bedroom furniture in the guest room, and his bedspread had been maroon and navy, so I had worked those colors in there. The anonymous little room now housed Martin’s exercise equipment and the clothes that couldn’t fit in our closet. The wood of the stairs had been refinished and polished and the carpet that ran throughout the top floor ran down the stairs, too, a light blue.

  When I’d had the carpet ripped up downstairs, I’d found the floors were all hardwood, and had had them refinished. There was a large oriental rug in the living room, another in the dining room, and a runner going down the hall. We’d turned the downstairs bedroom into an informal “family” sitting room. Martin’s desk was in one corner, the television was in there, as well as a couple of comfortable chairs grouped with tables and lamps.

  Jane Engle’s mother’s antique dining-room table and chairs now graced our dining room, and our living room was composed of things from Jane’s, mine, and Martin’s households, an eclectic mix but one that pleased the eye, I thought.

  And the built-in bookcases lining the hall looked wonderful. Any space not taken up by books was filled with knickknacks we’d gotten as wedding presents, a china bird here, a vase there. Two of Jane’s bookcases— they were lawyer bookcases with wonderful glass doors—were in the family room, and the rest of the bookcases were in a storage lockup with some of Martin ’s things, awaiting our final decision.