The House of Seven Mabels jj-13

by Jill Churchill

  "I'm a blimp," Jane said. "I should have worn something larger to eat so much. That raspberry chocolate torte put me over the brink."

  "I told you you'd get a good meal out of the meeting," Shelley said smugly.

  "Are you really thinking of doing this?" Jane said, trying not to see how fast the landscape was zipping by. She was afraid to lean over and see what speed Shelley was going.

  "I think it's something we should at least consider," Shelley said. "We're to see the house tomorrow, and Bitsy says she'll have a contract for us to look over. But frankly, I'm a bit uneasy about it."

  "Elaborate, please," Jane said. So far she'd thought she was the only one who didn't wholeheartedly like the prospect.

  "For one thing, I don't think Bitsy has a clue what she's gotten into. Contract or no contract, it could turn into a hassle. We'll have to pay a very good lawyer to crawl over it word by word. A couple of hundred dollars up front, I'd guess."

  "And?"

  "I had a bad feeling about that Sandy woman. She's a tough old gal. But that doesn't mean she knows what she's doing. To find out, we might have to also pay a private investigator who specializes in construction matters. I have no idea how we'd find one, unless Paul knows someone. It's another expense. Unless we can find out about her through a credit bureau or someplace. I don't like spending money just to accept a job."

  Shelley managed to coolly pass a car on the on-ramp, and Jane had to close her eyes and utter a quick prayer to the gods of traffic. She didn't want to be loaded onto an ambulance with her green silk skirt falling off.

  While crossing three lanes full of eighteen-wheelers, Shelley said, "But we may fall in love with the house and have lots of good ideas for the decorating. Who can tell? We don't have to make an instant decision. Big old houses aren't renovated overnight."

  "Could you slow down just a tiny bit?" Jane asked.

  "Sure. If you want that forty tons of frozen beef behind me to end up in my backseat."

  Jane had planned to get Todd and Katie canyout for dinner so she could go out with Mel that evening, but he had to cancel their date at the last minute. "Just as I was turning in the last of my paperwork, I was told I'd drawn plainclothes duty for a rock concert," he explained. "I must have really irritated someone up the line to be stuck with this. How about tomorrow night? If I survive?"

  Jane could afford to be gracious about this. After all, she'd eaten so much at lunch she couldn't have appreciated a real dinner.

  So she was stuck at home, all dolled up and nowhere to go. She put her fancy suit away and donned her most disreputable baggy jeans and T-shirt that should have gone in the trash at least six months earlier.

  She'd recently given in and put a television and a bookcase in her bedroom. She'd collected all her favorite read-again mysteries from all over the house and put them on the shelves. She settled into bed with Max and Meow on the bedspread and Willard the dog snoring in the corner.

  For a while, she watched a bit of her favorite channel, but the thought of a woman building her own two-story deck intimidated her. She flipped to the financial news station briefly, where they were explaining why a stock she held quite a bit of for the kids' college fees had plummeted in value. Flipping the television off, she went to the bookshelf and selected an Agatha Christie book

  she'd last read so long ago she was sure she wouldn't remember the ending.

  That palled when the character she recalled as the murderer appeared on page seven.

  She considered taking a nice long, soaky bath, but didn't want to destroy the wonder her hairdresser had created that morning quite yet. She rejected the idea of cruising the kitchen for a snack after consuming such a huge lunch. Nor did taking a brisk walk around the block appeal in spite of the nice early fall evening.

  Jane wasn't herself. She prided herself on never being bored. There was always something she'd like to do. Watch an old movie, try out some craft she'd seen demonstrated, or, if at wit's end, get out a big jigsaw puzzle. And somewhat less frequently, work on the novel she'd been plugging away at for years.

  Mike was at college, Katie was out at a movie with friends, and Todd was working on his homework in his room. He'd finally decided it might be a hoot to become a good student. This should have cheered her up.

  But it didn't, and she realized that she was subconsciously brooding about this job Shelley was so interested in doing. Shelley would be good at it. Shelley's house was as lovely as Bitsy had said. Jane's house was merely a comfortable old place with lots of old family furniture and ornaments she was sentimental about. She had no real confidence in her tastes.

  She'd recently had her front hall repapered with something dark she loved at the wallpaper place, but once hung, it made the hall look like a dismal tunnel in one of those video games the kids were so fond of. She half expected a red-eyed monster to leap out of the coat closet.

  She had to admit to herself that she'd taken an instant dislike to the Sandra woman. She tried to analyze why that was. It wasn't because the woman wasn't attractive. She had other friends who weren't beauties but had marvelous personalities.

  It wasn't even that the woman had never heard of eBay, though she found that peculiar. Jane herself haunted eBay and had found replacements for all the chipped or cracked dishes of her grandmother's set of good china.

  Was it the feminist angle that got under her skin? Jane would hate to think that was it. She considered herself a feminist. After all, she'd raised three children by herself after being widowed young, and they were turning out wonderfully. She'd done a good job without a husband. Thanks to having had a financial stake in her late husband's family pharmacy, she'd learned to handle money well. When Mike left for college, she'd had to learn to do a lot of hard work around the house he'd formerly taken care of for her. She'd even gotten a ladder and replaced the stairway light fixture. That was a pretty independent thing to do, even if it scared her to death, perching in midair that way.

  That was what feminism meant to her. Being able to take good care of yourself and your children. So why did she feel that a couple of women renovating a house wasn't right? She sensed that Shelley was a bit wary, too. That worried her.

  She was no closer to an answer when Katie came home from the movie.

  "Vegging out, I see. Your hair looks great. How are you going to keep it that way?" Katie asked, sitting down next to the cats, scratching both their outstretched necks and wiping the fur off her hands onto her mother's bedspread.

  "I probably can't, but thanks. I went to the day spa you suggested. You should have warned me, however, how much a cut and color cost. Katie, let me tell you what Shelley and I did today and see what you think."

  Jane outlined the scenario. The old Victorian house in such disrepair, what Bitsy and Sandra had said, the odd restaurant full of women and a few frightened men. The plan that she and Shelley would be in charge of the decorating. "You?" Katie laughed. "What do you know about that?"

  "Not a lot, but I could learn by taking this on."

  "May I go along?"

  Jane was surprised. "Why would you want to?"

  Katie shrugged. "My room's been exactly the same all my life."

  "Yes. Messy," Jane said.

  "I'd love to look at paint chips and cool molding and a neat bed. One of those sleigh things. You know what they are?"

  "As it happens, I do," Jane said, half offended.

  "So what's the question?" Katie asked.

  "I'm reluctant and I can't figure out why," Jane admitted.

  "What's Mrs. Nowack think?"

  "She likes the idea better than I do, but she has some misgivings, too. To be perfectly honest, I don't think either of us like the people we'd be working for."

  Katie grinned. "Remember what you told me when I wanted to change classes because I couldn't stand the way the algebra teacher was always blowing her nose revoltingly?"

  "That was different. She was the best algebra teacher in the whole school system. She'd won all
sorts of awards."

  "Maybe these women you don't like have done that, too."

  Jane crawled to the foot of the bed and gave Katie a big hug. "I'm so glad you're growing up so well. Someday you'll be telling me what to do — and God help me, I'll probably listen."

  "About time," Katie said, hugging back. "Just make sure you have an escape clause. Give it a shot, Mom. You might enjoy it."

  Four

  The next morning Jane and Shelley put on jeans and old boots and went to look at the house, as Bitsy had instructed them to do at lunch the day before. Shelley had never worn jeans except in her house or her own backyard and was outraged at having to go out in public in them.

  Jane, who practically lived in an assortment of faded and well-worn dungarees, as her grandmother had called them, said, "Get over it. We're not going to display you to the public, just a bunch of workers."

  Shelley insisted they park behind the big house so no one passing on the street would see her. That was impossible. The backyard, which was enormous and hedged in by old pines, was full of construction materials, Dumpsters with chutes going down to them from windows at the back, and boxes of tools.

  They had to back out and park on the street, like everyone else, where Shelley and Jane sat staring at the house. "Look at those gables."

  "Shelley, I think a gable is the way to refer to the ends of a house. Those are dormers on the third floor."

  "I'd rather think of them as gables. The House of Seven Mabels," she added with a laugh.

  Jane liked the term. "It's time we go in, whatever you want to call it."

  Shelley practically streaked from the car to the front door. Jane followed more slowly, looking closely at the house. She had driven by it innumerable times, but had only glanced at it disapprovingly. It was really a community eyesore. She was constantly expecting to come by and see it leveled to the ground.

  But with a practical reason to study it, she found it interesting.

  Everyone called it the old Victorian house, but that was only because of the once fancy trim, Jane decided. Not that Jane knew what made a house Victorian anyway. There were all sorts of elaborate gingerbread siding covering it, but it was only in peeling patches now. Jane could imagine that it had been an eye-stopper when it was new.

  She could picture it with stark white paint, lighting up the whole neighborhood. Of course there probably wasn't a neighborhood when it was built. It was the sort of house that had probably stood in solitary splendor alone on a good ten acres.

  There was a purely Southern verandah stretched across the front and presumably going around

  both sides. She hadn't noticed whether it had continued around the back when they had attempted to park there. The third floor had a sloping roof and a plethora of dormer windows — which Shelley insisted were called gables.

  She approached closer and walked up the four steps to the front of the house. They'd have to replace those steps. She nearly put her foot through one. Maybe narrower steps and a ramp, so it would be accessible to the disabled or wheelchair-bound.

  The floor and walls of the verandah, protected from sun and rain for ages, gave a hint of the house's former glory. Jane could have closed her eyes and imagined the seven-foot expanse from the house to the elaborate but broken rails, with floors painted a shiny dark green, pristine white wicker furniture with bright cushions scattered about, and little tables where you could genteelly knock back a couple of frosty glasses of mimosas on a lazy Sunday morning in summer.

  If she had the kind of money Bitsy was reputed to have, Jane would happily restore it herself and live there just for the verandah. Think what grand parties you could have on late spring evenings if you planted masses of lilac bushes at the foundation.

  Shelley crept back out the front door. "Why are you dawdling out here, Jane?"

  "I'm just picturing how it could look. Isn't that what we're supposed to be doing?"

  "I guess so," Shelley admitted. "So what do you see doing with this mess?"

  Jane described what she had in mind. "In nice weather this could be a divine spot to sit and relax."

  "I don't think corporate bigwigs ever relax," Shelley said. "Relaxed bigwigs is an oxymoron."

  "They couldn't resist it here," Jane said with assurance.

  "We need to start measuring," Shelley said in her bossiest mode. She was fiddling with a notebook with a pencil tied to it with a gold string, and a hefty metal tape measure.

  They went through what once had been a spectacular front door, curved at the top, with remnants of deep-purple-blue stained glass arched above it. Carvings of grapes climbing trellises decorated the door itself. But it was in sad shape. Someone had apparently stabbed it at some point. There were deep gashes in the wood, revealing what Jane thought was mahogany.

  "We're going to have to learn all about different woods," she said. "Where will we learn that?"

  "At the library?" Shelley asked. "There must be tons of books we'll need to consult before we can talk about furniture without making fools of ourselves."

  They stepped inside the front door, closing it behind them. Jane closed her eyes for a moment, overwhelmed by memories of some of the old boarding schools in Europe she'd attended as a

  girl when her parents were traveling all over the world. It was the smell that gripped her. Of course it was overlaid by the odor of garbage and mildew, but under that was the familiar scent of very old wood, beeswax polish, lavender water, camphor oil, and ancient leatherbound books similar to those in some of the old schools she'd attended.

  "Jane, are you taking a nap or what?"

  "Just smelling the house," Jane said as she opened her eyes, but didn't explain.

  The front hall had suffered a great deal of damage as well. It was vast, with a pair of curving staircases ascending upstairs on both sides. They, too, had rails missing, but the treads must have been made of some impervious material, because when Jane tested out walking up a few of them, they felt sturdy. Remnants of striped wallpaper in blue and cream were in tatters. The fancy molding, egg-and-dart pattern (one of the few decorating terms Jane knew) around the room, though coated with dust and grime, seemed to be mostly intact.

  "This is going to be the reception area," Bitsy said, appearing from one of the many beat-up doors that opened onto the front hall. "Come along and see the rest of the house."

  Bitsy was back to being the perky sort of woman she'd been when she wanted PTA volunteers to ante up money for crepe paper, colored chalk, decorated plastic cups and plates, and far too much of their free time.

  They followed her around the ground floor first. Between and behind the pair of curving staircases, they passed through a door to the back half of the house and came out into what must have once been a kitchen, it seemed. Whatever kind of appliances were once there were gone, and dusty wires and stubbed-out pipes gaped out of the walls.

  "It's too small, of course," Bitsy said. "I have the chef from Michelle's Bistro coming later in the week to advise us on how much space we need and how to arrange the counters."

  "A woman, I assume?" Jane said blandly.

  "Of course. There was a pantry off the north side, and what must have been the cook's quarters and a dank little hallway to the basement door. We're taking out the walls and using that space as part of the kitchen. Or we might go the other direction, keeping the pantry and turning the cook's quarters into rest rooms for the staff."

  "Hmm," Jane said. "You'd better check codes, Bitsy. I'd guess it's a no-no to have bathrooms open directly off the food-preparation area."

  "I hadn't thought of that," Bitsy said. "I wonder why Sandy didn't mention it when we discussed it."

  "Maybe because I'm wrong," Jane said with a smile. "What else is on the ground floor?"

  Bitsy showed them the back end of the house. What could have been a sunny breakfast room, or maybe a conservatory, was there. Lots of win-

  dows, almost all broken out. There was so much dirt and leaves you could hardly see
the surface, but when Jane kicked some away, she uncovered a tile floor, badly cracked. "Are you going to shore this up?" Jane asked as Bitsy and Shelley stepped into the room for a closer look.

  "Shore it up?"

  "Can't you feel that it's listing away from the house?"

  Bitsy took a couple of steps forward. "I see what you mean. Euwww. That means either take it off or do some heavy-duty foundation work. I'll have to think about this. I'd hoped to make it a nice little spot for the staff to take their breaks."

  She'd lost her perkiness.

  In the center of the south end of the house was a vast dining room that must have been locked off from vandals for decades. It, too, was dusty, and the floral wallpaper was faded. Ancient heavy maroon velvet drapes hung in threadbare tatters at tall windows on the far side. Jane half expected to see Miss Havisham's moldering wedding cake somewhere nearby.

  "What have you planned for this area?" Shelley asked.

  "I thought I could hire it out for private parties between resident guests. Wedding receptions and such. The French doors behind the curtains used to open to the deck."

  Was Bitsy referring to the verandah? Jane wondered. A deck! Indeed, Jane thought indignantly.

  "But someone tore part of it off," Bitsy went on. "I guess to discourage trespassers and vandals."

  "It's certainly better preserved than what we've seen so far," Shelley said.

  Bitsy laughed. "Wait until you see the second floor. You'll appreciate this room even more. On the other side of the main hall is a matching space that's going to be all one room for corporate banquets."

  She led them through the dining room and into what must have been a generous-size front parlor for guests who merely came to tea. There were more of the floor-to-ceiling doors, glassless now and patched with warped, crumbling plywood.

  Jane's imagination ran away with her again. What a nice room this would be as an office. If she were doing this house over for herself, she'd cover the walls with bookshelves. Set up a desk going out into the middle of the room so she could work on her endless novel, or more likely the bill paying, and look out the front windows for inspiration.