(4/10) The Julius House

by Charlaine Harris

  I wondered what had happened to the Julius family’s belongings.

  I was sitting at the butcher-block table in the kitchen, drinking my coffee and trying to suppress the desire for another piece of toast, when I saw Shelby Youngblood coming down the stairs to the apartment. He walked around the far side of the garage and I heard a car start. They must have decided that was the most discreet place to park. He backed out, used the concrete turnaround apron, and left (I presumed) for work. His car crunched as it hit the gravel; sooner or later we would have to have the rest of the driveway paved. I thought about Angel Youngblood in her peach and green apartment, and I remembered what Amina had blurted out before the wedding. Amina’s concern had stuck to me like a cockleburr, irritating and hard to dislodge.

  I found myself wondering what Angel would do with herself all day. It wasn’t really any of my business; but I am curious about the people around me. They’re what I use to keep myself entertained.

  I put the breakfast dishes in the dishwasher, wiped the counters, and went upstairs to get dressed. After wearing all my new “honeymoon” clothes, it was nice to get back into my oldest blue jeans and my mystery bookstore T-shirt. I did put on some makeup, so as not to give Martin too complete a shock when he came home today. I had picked out my red-framed glasses to wear and was brushing my hair and planning my day when I heard a double rap on the kitchen door.

  Angel was wearing one of those spandex exercise outfits that practically outline your arteries and veins. This bra-and-shorts combination was in a striking black and pink flame design. She had a warmup jacket on over the bra. Her legs were long columns of muscle ending in heavy pink socks and black running shoes.

  “Welcome back,” she said briefly.

  “Come in.”

  “Just for a minute.”

  “Thanks for arranging all the furniture.”

  She shrugged and managed a smile. It suddenly dawned on me that Angel was shy.

  “I just dropped by before my run to tell you that later, when you’re ready, I can come help you move the living-room stuff into the position you want. We just kind of put it to where it looked like a real room, but I figured you would want to rearrange when you got home.” Angel had to look down and down at me, but she didn’t seem either to mind or to feel it gave her an edge.

  “Angel, what are you exactly?”

  “Huh?”

  “Are you my employee? Martin’s employee, like Shelby? If so, what’s your job description? I feel like I’m missing something.”

  I hoped I wasn’t being rude, but it made me feel uneasy, her doing me all these favors, since she wasn’t a personal friend. If she was getting paid for it, that was another matter.

  That proved to be the case.

  “Martin pays Shelby and me,” she answered after looking at me consideringly for a moment. “Of course, Shelby gets a paycheck from the plant, but we get some money besides. For helping you all out here. Because this house is a little far from town, out of earshot . . . and Martin’s gone a lot, Shelby tells me.”

  “Sit down, please.” We faced each other over the table. “What does helping me out include?”

  “Ah . . . well. Working in the yard, this is a lot of yard to keep trimmed and mowed and planted. And if you need heavy things done in the house. And to house-sit when you go somewhere and Martin’s gone, too . . . like that.”

  We regarded each other intently. This was very interesting. What on earth had this woman’s life been like?

  “Thanks, Angel,” I said finally, and she shifted a little in her chair. “Have a good run.” She rose without haste, nodded, and drifted to the kitchen door, which opened onto the backyard.

  “I’ll be thinking about the living room while you run, and maybe later after you shower and everything, you could come over.”

  “Sure,” she said, sounding relieved. “Should be about an hour, maybe a little longer.”

  “Fine.” And I closed the door behind her, leaned against it, and wondered what she hadn’t told me.

  At the end of a morning spent moving heavy objects, I knew a little more about Angel. She and Shelby had been married for seven years. They had worked together on their previous job. What that job was, was vague. I am southern enough to have trouble asking direct questions; I’d used up my quota for the day that morning in the kitchen. And Angel, whether deliberately or not, did not respond to anything but flat-out bald-faced directness. I still had no clear fix on her character.

  Martin had a lunch meeting that day, and Mother was taking some clients out, so I sat down at the kitchen table and worked out a meal plan for the week, which was one of the things I’d heard good housewives did, and shopped at the grocery accordingly. I’d cooked for Martin before, of course, and he’d grilled meat for us many times, but this would be the first meal I cooked for him as his wife in our new home, and I thought it should be fancy, but not so fancy that he got inflated ideas about what our daily cuisine would be and also not so difficult that I ruined it. We’d gotten at least five cookbooks as wedding presents, and I mildly looked forward to our eating our way through them.

  I sat in our little family room and watched the news, reading through our backlog of magazines during the ads. Then I wrote some more thank-you’s, managing to acknowledge over half the gifts that had arrived in our absence. When I walked to the end of the drive to put the notes in the mailbox, I noticed for the first time that the Youngbloods had put up their own mailbox. That made sense, since we had the same address; it was a problem I hadn’t thought of before, and here it was already solved. I ambled back up the drive, looking idly through the load of bills and occupant notices and free samples I’d found in the box. As we’d decided in our premarital counseling, I would be responsible for paying the month-to-month bills from our joint account, into which Martin and I each deposited a predetermined amount from our separate incomes. So I pulled out our brand-new joint checkbook, paid the bills, and signed the checks “Aurora Teagarden.”

  Okay, okay. I’d kept my name, that absurd and ridiculous name that had been my bane my whole life. When it got right down to it, I just couldn’t become anyone else. Martin had had a hard time about that, but I had a gut feeling I was right. When I feel like that, I am fairly immovable. And I can’t tell you how much better it made me feel. I had my own money, I had my own friends and family, I had my own name. I was one lucky woman, I told myself as I sliced strawberries.

  Martin opened the front door and yelled gleefully, “Hi, honey! I’m home!”

  I started laughing.

  I was actually able to turn from the sink and say, “Hello, dear. How did your day go?” just like a sitcom mom.

  I was one lucky, uneasy woman.

  Chapter Eight

  The next morning, on a whim, I went to Peachtree Leisure Apartments, a sort of independent old folks’ home, as Neecy Dawson had so cheerfully pointed out. I’d been there before to visit various people, but not in a long time. There’d been a few changes. Before, there’d been a directory in the large lobby, and you could just walk in and take the elevator to the floor you needed. Now, there was a very large black man with a narrow mustache seated at a desk, and the directory was gone. There was a television camera pointed from one corner that embraced almost the whole lobby area.

  “They was getting robbed,” the man explained when I asked about the change. “People was coming in here, reading a name and apartment number, and just wandering through the building till they found who they wanted. They’d sell them magazines the old people didn’t need, if they thought the old person was senile enough, or they’d just rob them if the old folks were feeble. So now I am here. And at night, from five until eleven, there’s another man. Now, who did you come to see?”

  Somewhat shaken at this picture he painted of wolves roaming the halls in Peachtree Leisure Apartments, I told him I’d come to see Mrs. Melba Totino.

  “She expecting you, Miss?”

  “Mrs. No, Ms.” What was I goin
g to call myself? He was eyeing me warily. “No, Mrs. Totino isn’t expecting me. I just came to thank her for the wedding present.”

  “She gave you something?” The brown eyes widened in a burlesque of surprise. “You must be a friend.”

  “I take it this is unusual?”

  But after his little joke, he wasn’t going to say anything else.

  “I’ll call her, if you just wait a minute,” he said.

  He picked up the phone, dialed, and told Melba Totino about my presence in the lobby. She would see me.

  “Go on up,” he said. “She don’t get too many visitors.”

  The elevator smelled like a doctor’s office, like rubbing alcohol and disinfectant and cold steel. The guard had told me there was a physician’s assistant actually in residence; and of course a doctor on call. There was a cafeteria in the building for those who “enrolled” for that service, and groceries could be delivered from one of the local stores. Everything was very clean, and the lobby had been dotted with old people who at least looked alert and comfortable, if not exactly happy. I supposed, if you couldn’t live entirely on your own, this would be a good place to live.

  Mrs. Totino’s apartment was on the third floor. I could tell by the spacing of the doors that some apartments were larger than others. Hers was one of the small ones. I knocked, and the door swung open almost before I could remove my hand.

  I could look her straight in the eyes, so she wasn’t more than five feet tall. Her eyes were dark brown, sunk in wrinkles that were themselves blotched with age spots. She had a large nose and a small mouth. Her wispy white hair was escaping from a small bun on the back of her head. She wore no glasses, which surprised me. Her ludicrously cheerful yellow and orange striped dress was covered with a gray sweater and the air that rushed out smelled strongly of air freshener, talcum powder, and cooking.

  “Yes?” Her voice was deep and pleasant, not shaky as I’d expected.

  “I’m Aurora Teagarden, Mrs. Totino.”

  “That’s what Duncan said. Now, what kind of name is Duncan for a black man? I ask you.” And she backed into her apartment to indicate I should enter. “I asked him that, too,” she said with great amusement at her own daring. “I said, ‘I never knew no black man called Duncan before.’ He said, ‘What you think I should be called, Miz Totino? LeRoy?’ That Duncan! I laughed and laughed.”

  Who-wee, what a knee-slapper. I bet Duncan had thought so, too.

  “Have a seat, have a seat.”

  I looked around me nervously. There were seats to be had, but everything was so busy I wasn’t sure if they were occupied or not. The sofa and matching chair were violently flowered in orange and brown and cream. The table between the chair and the sofa contained a TV Guide, the ugliest lamp in the universe, a red-and-white glass dish containing hard candy, a pair of reading glasses, a box of Kleenex, and a stunningly sentimental figurine of a little girl with big eyes petting a cuddly puppy with the legend across the base, “My Best Friend.” I finally decided one of the couch cushions was empty and lowered myself gingerly down.

  “This apartment building is very nice,” I offered.

  “Oh, yes, the new security makes all the difference in the world! Can I get you a cup of coffee? I’m afraid I only have instant decaffeinated.”

  Then why have coffee at all? “No, thank you.”

  “Or a—Coke? I think I have a Coke stuck in the refrigerator. ”

  “Okay, thanks.”

  She walked bent over, and haltingly. In the jammed tiny room there were two doorways, one at the rear left leading into the kitchen and one at the right into the bedroom. I heard the sounds of fumbling and muttering in the kitchen and took the chance to look around me.

  The walls were covered with doodads of every description. Gold-tone butterflies in a group of three, one rather pretty painting of a bowl of flowers, two awful prints of cherubic children being sweet with cute animals, a straw basket holding dried flowers that looked extremely dusty, a plaque with The Serenity Prayer . . . I began to feel dazed at the multitude of things that presented themselves for inspection. I thought of all the room in our house and felt a stir of guilt.

  Then the television caught my attention. All this time it had been on, but I had not paid any attention to the picture. I realized now that the scene I was seeing was the apartment building lobby. An old man with a walker moved slowly across the screen as I watched. Good Lord. I wondered if many of the residents chose to watch life in their lobby.

  Mrs. Totino tottered back into the room with a glass of Coke and ice clutched in her shaking hand. The ice was tinkling against the glass with a quick tempo that was distinctly nerve-wracking.

  “Did you like the placemats?” Mrs. Totino asked suddenly and loudly.

  We negotiated the transfer of the Coke from her hand to mine.

  “I’ve never seen any like them,” I said sincerely.

  “Now, I know you won’t be offended when I tell you that they were wedding presents for T.C. and Hope. They’d been packed away in a drawer for these many years, and I thought, why not let someone else enjoy them? And they’ve never been used—it’s not like I gave you a used gift!”

  “Recycled,” I suggested.

  “Right, right. Everything’s this recycling now! I recycled them.”

  I had hoped to see a picture of the Julius family, but in all this clutter, there were only two photographs, in a double frame balanced precariously on the television set. Both photographs were very old. One showed a stern small woman with dark hair and eyes standing stiffly beside a somewhat taller man with lighter hair and a thin-lipped shy face. They were wearing clothes dating from somewhere around the twenties, I thought. In the other picture, two girls who strongly resembled each other, one about ten and the other perhaps twelve, hugged each other and smiled fixedly at the camera.

  “Me and my sister, her name’s Alicia Manigault, isn’t that a pretty name?” Mrs. Totino said fondly. “I’ve always hated my name, Melba. And the other picture is the only one ever taken of my parents.”

  “Your sister is still . . . does she live close?”

  “New Orleans,” Mrs. Totino said. “She has a little house in Metairie, that’s right by New Orleans.” She sighed heavily. “New Orleans is a beautiful place; I envy her. She never wants to come see me. I go there every now and then. Just to see the city.”

  I wondered why she didn’t just move. “You have relatives here now, Mrs. Totino?”

  “No, not since . . . not since the tragedy. Of course you know about that.”

  I nodded, feeling definitely self-conscious.

  “Yet you bought the house, or your husband bought it for you, I understand from Mr. Sewell.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “You aren’t scared? Other people backed down from buying it at the last minute.”

  “It’s a beautiful house.”

  “Not haunted, is it? I don’t believe in that stuff,” said Mrs. Totino robustly. I looked surreptitiously for a place to deposit my glass. The Coke was flatter than a penny on a railroad track.

  “I don’t either.”

  “When that lawyer with the stupid name called to say someone really wanted to buy it, and he said it was a couple about to be married, I thought, I’ll just send them a little something . . . after all these years, the house will be lived in again. What kind of shape was it in?”

  So I told her about that, and she asked me questions, and I answered her, and all the while she never talked about what I was most interested in. Granted, the disappearance of her daughter, her granddaughter, and her son-in-law had to have been dreadful, but you would think she would mention it. Aside from that stiff reference to “the tragedy” she didn’t bring it up. Of course she was most interested in changes we had made to the apartment over the garage, the one built for her, the one she’d inhabited such a short time. Then she moved to the house, conversationally. Had we repainted? Yes, I told her. Had we reroofed? No, I told her, the real
estate agent had ascertained that Mr. Julius had had a new roof put on when he bought the house.

  “He came here to be near relatives?” I asked carefully.

  “His relatives,” she said with a sniff. “His aunt Essie never had any children, so when he retired from the Army, he and Charity moved here to be close to her. He’d saved for years to start his own business, doing additions onto houses, carpentry work, stuff he’d always wanted to do. He could have gone anywhere he wanted, but he picked here,” she said gloomily.

  “And asked you to live with them?”

  “Yes,” she admitted. “Want some more Coke? There’s half a can left in the kitchen. No? Yes, they had figured out how they could add an apartment on the garage. Didn’t want me in the house with ’em. So I moved from New Orleans—I’d been sharing a place with my sister— and came up here. Left her down there.” She shook her head. “Then this all happened.”

  “So,” I said, about to ask something very nosy but unable to stop myself, “why did you stay?”

  “Why?” she repeated blankly.

  “After they disappeared. Why did you stay?”

  “Oh,” she said with comprehension. “I get you. I stayed here in case they turned up.”

  "Don’t you think that’s kind of eerie, Martin?” I asked that night, as he put away the leftovers and I washed the dishes.

  "Eerie? Sentimental, maybe. They’re obviously not going to turn up alive, after all these years.”

  I recalled the saccharine pictures in the apartment, the figurine. All very sentimental. “Maybe so,” I conceded reluctantly.

  “Did you see that Angel and I had rearranged the living room?” I asked after a moment. I squeezed out my sponge and pulled the plug. The sink water drained out with a big gurgle, like a dragon drinking water.

  “It looks good. I think the gallery table Jane left you needs some work, though. One of the legs is loose.”