by Jan Gleiter
“Isn’t there a market for the old stuff? The mantels and banisters and all the things you rip out? In Chicago, there are places that specialize in selling that.”
He shrugged. “Around here? I doubt it. Mind if I see the rest of the house?”
“Feel free,” Meg said. “Just don’t look at it with a contractor’s eye. Don’t sit at the dinner table and tell me about the sixty-five thousand dollars I need to spend to keep it from falling down. Please.”
He was gone for quite a while and when Meg looked inquiringly at him on his return, he shook his head, raised his eyes as to the heavens, and sighed dramatically.
“I appreciate your silence,” said Meg.
“You ought to,” he replied. “It’s taking its toll on me. But, someday, we have to talk.”
“Someday,” said Meg.
When it was time for dessert, she brought in a platter of éclairs from the kitchen.
“Zowee!” said Teddy. “Éclairs! From the bakery!”
“The one thing my perfect wife doesn’t make,” said Dan. He winked at Christine. “She makes only the things she can make better than anyone else. Granted, that’s a lot of things, but not éclairs. Nobody can make better éclairs than the bakery.”
“They make good muffins, too,” said Meg. “Jack brought some over one day.”
“Grab the lad,” said Dan.
“Dan has a strong interest in such an occurrence,” said Christine.
“Which would be?” asked Meg.
Christine looked at Dan, who grinned. “It has to do with who mows the lawn for the month of July.”
Meg put her elbows on the table and clasped her hands under her chin. She looked back and forth from Dan to Christine. “Oh, please! My future will be decided by July?”
“Actually,” said Dan, “I just like the guy. He’s decent and he works hard and he deserves to be happy.”
“I take it, he hasn’t been?” asked Meg, assuming a casualness she did not feel.
“He doesn’t talk much,” said Dan. “He hardly talks at all. But I think he’s had his share of disappointment. His relationships, the few there have been since he moved here a number of years ago, have been both casual and brief, except for one. That one was serious. It ended recently and, I think, badly.”
“The lovely Stephanie,” said Christine.
“The legend-in-her-own-time Stephanie,” said Meg.
“Maybe he’s gay,” said Jane.
Dan, Christine, and Meg all stared at her. Teddy helped himself to another éclair.
“Maybe he’s what?” asked Christine.
“You know, Mother,” said Jane, disgusted with her parent’s thickheadedness. “Gay. Maybe he’s gay.”
“No, Jane,” said Dan. “I don’t think so.”
* * *
After dinner, Dan took the children home. “They’ve both still got homework,” he said to Christine. “And I’ve got to finish an estimate. So if you want to stay and yak, why don’t you? I’ll get them in bed by nine, I swear.”
When they had left, Christine began to clear the table.
“Don’t,” said Meg, taking plates out of Christine’s hands. “I’ll do this in the morning.”
The two women went into the living room with the rest of the dinner’s large bottle of wine. Christine poured some into their glasses and lifted hers. “To a lovely new friendship that has not yet proven to be a terrible mistake.” She took a swallow. “You can drink, you know,” she said. “I wasn’t toasting you.”
“But what was that?” asked Meg. “Do your friendships often turn out to be terrible mistakes?”
Christine waved a hand. “Sakes alive, child, of course not. I was making fun of Dan, but since he wasn’t here to hear it, there wasn’t much point. I had to explain to him about women and friendships. No, he knows pretty much about women and a reasonable amount about friendships. I mean, I had to explain about women’s friendships.”
“What about them?”
Christine pushed off her shoes and put her feet on the coffee table. “You know. Like how we hadn’t been in the same room three minutes before it seemed we’d known each other most of our lives? Like how that sometimes happens?”
“Oh,” said Meg, nodding. “That. I always figured it was because women have never had enough time. So it became a survival skill—figuring out who you thought you could be friends with really fast.”
Christine raised her glass. “There you go.”
“Or else women are just crazy.”
Christine raised her glass again. “Could be.” She gestured out the window at the fence, invisible in the darkness. “He thinks you did a nice job,” she said. “The fence does look terrific. Now you can get that puppy you said you wanted.”
“Ha, ha,” said Meg. She glanced over at the dog, who was dozing in front of an easy chair. “Destiny had another plan. But the work wasn’t wasted. Mike says I’ve increased the property value by fifty bucks.”
“Ah,” said Christine. “I’m seeing a lovely vision … Dan behind a huge power mower.”
“Let me borrow your glasses,” said Meg. “I need to give you the look.”
“You’re just afraid I’ll jinx things by daring to speak of them.”
“Yeah,” said Meg, “that’s it.” Actually, in a way, it was. She liked it that both Christine and Dan assumed two men would fight for her attention. She just knew it wasn’t true. Especially of Jack. She hated to confess her insecurity about him, as if saying “I just don’t know what he could see in me” would make Christine take a good, hard look and realize she was right. Instead she said, “I’m glad Dan approves. Your daughter was a big help.”
She pushed the shoe off one foot with the toes of the other and curled her shoeless foot under her on the couch. “Which reminds me, you were right that she’s angry about Mrs. Ehrlich. Jane thinks she was neglected.”
“She wasn’t,” said Christine. “Well, maybe she was, but people tried. Dan went over every day to check on her. Jack was there at least as often and really worked. John Eppler played whist with her and brought tomatoes and asparagus. I visited, and so did Jane, and Mike came when he could.”
Christine sighed and leaned back at her end of the couch. “Jane just isn’t making much progress in getting over it. She knows Hannah was worried and upset before she died, and that makes it worse for her.”
“But you don’t know what that was about, right?”
Christine swirled wine in her glass and watched it. “Not a clue. I asked, of course; it was so obvious that something was wrong. But she’d sigh in that way she had and shake her head. ‘I’m just tired,’ she’d say. ‘It’s nothing.’ She wouldn’t tell me anything.”
“I wonder,” said Meg. “I wonder what got her so upset.”
“Me too,” said Christine. “But we’ll never know.”
Thirteen
“Go! Have a good time! I’m not a nincompoop,” said Meg. “I’m perfectly capable of helping Jane deal with equations that involve two variables.”
Christine hesitated in the doorway. “They have to be in bed by eight-thirty. They have to be asleep by nine. The school bus comes early.”
“I know where you store the bats,” said Meg. “Any trouble, a couple quick whacks on the back of the head … they’re asleep. Go!”
She was looking forward to the evening, glad that the Bensons were so happy with their addition that they’d insisted on taking their contractor out to the fanciest restaurant in the area. Christine and Dan needed time together; Meg didn’t mind abandoning vocabulary exercises for an evening. Now, if they would just leave.
Christine looked different in a knee-length, black crepe dress and high heels, her blond hair swept up, delicate silver earrings emphasizing the slenderness of her neck. “You don’t look like my mother,” Teddy had said a bit resentfully. “You look like a lady.”
“We’re going,” said Dan, tugging his wife out the door. “We’ll be back before midnight.”
> Jane bent over a worksheet at the kitchen table and pushed her hair behind her ears. “It doesn’t make sense,” she said, reading from the page. “‘One number is five less than the other. Together the two numbers total fifty-three. What are the two numbers?’ Well, what are the two numbers?”
Meg pulled out a chair next to Jane and sat down. “Choose two letters, any letters.”
“Any letters? Not x and y?” Her interest was piqued.
“Heck, there’s more to life than x and y,” said Meg. “How about t and j? Teddy is five less than you. Or h and p. Or whatever.”
It didn’t take much to intrigue Jane, who tended to make the most out of whatever fun there was to be had. As they worked, she changed her variables’ letters for each problem.
“Sometimes,” said Meg, “you really have more information than you think you have. You think you don’t know enough, but all you have to do is put what you do know together.”
Teddy was working on a social studies report. “We have to tell about neighbors,” he said. “It’s baby work. The only hard part is, it’s supposed to be neat.”
He wrote slowly and painstakingly for ten minutes, then looked up at Meg. “Could I tell about a neighbor I used to have?” he asked. “We’re supposed to say what’s good about neighbors and we have to put in details. If I tell about Mrs. Ehrlich, I can think of lots of details.”
“Sure,” said Meg. “You probably learned a lot about neighbors from Mrs. Ehrlich.”
“How do you spell narcissus?” he asked a few minutes later.
Meg told him. “Are you writing about her flowers?”
“Sort of,” he said. “Not really. I’m telling about neighbors helping each other. Mrs. Ehrlich was happy because Jack drove a long way to get narcissus she wanted and dug holes for them, and she said she could think all winter about how pretty they’d be. And then she told me the story about the handsome man who fell in love with his own face in the water.”
“That’s probably why Mike couldn’t plant them for her,” said Jane. “He was too busy looking at himself in some water.”
“By George, that’s what they were,” said Teddy. “Isn’t that a funny name for flowers? By George?”
“She had ones called Sir Winston Churchill,” said Jane. “She used to talk to them. ‘Are you thirsty, Sir Winston?’ she’d say. ‘Are you getting along with King Alfred?’ That’s another kind of flower, King Alfred.”
“I know him well,” said Meg. “You gave me six bunches of that fellow and I bought six more a few days later. I don’t know Sir Winston.”
Jane disappeared and returned with a small catalog. She turned the glossy pages slowly. “Here it is,” she said, pointing to a lovely photograph of creamy-white double narcissus with yellow at the center. “Jack used to tease her about being in love with Sir Winston Churchill. ‘Make him leave his cigar outside if you let him in the house,’ he said. She had to tell me why he said that.”
Teddy finished his report and put it neatly into his backpack. “What’s her name?” he asked, reaching out to pat Meg’s dog as she trotted by with Harding in loving pursuit.
“She doesn’t have one yet,” said Meg. “Well … she’s had about fourteen, but none of them has stuck. I’m still thinking.”
“Before she was your dog,” said Teddy, “I had a name for her. Danger Dog. Maybe that’s not a good name anymore.”
“How about Rag?” said Jane. “Or,” she giggled, “Hag? Or Gag? Those would be good names.”
“Or Wag,” said Teddy, getting into it. “Or Bag.”
“Or Bag Lady,” said Meg.
The children looked confused.
“Never mind,” said Meg.
“Do I have to take a bath?” asked Teddy. “I’m not dirty.”
“Your mom said yes, you have to,” Meg replied. “Do you want some help?”
Teddy looked at her in horror. “I’m seven,” he said. “I know how to take a bath.”
He wandered off and, eventually, Meg heard running water.
Jane glanced at Meg. “Teddy thinks you’re a good neighbor, too,” she said tactfully. “He didn’t mean to be rude. He just knows more about Mrs. Ehrlich.”
“It wasn’t at all rude,” said Meg, suddenly aware of the difficulties Jane would face in her life from being too worried about other people’s feelings. “Really, it wasn’t.”
Jane sighed, relieved. “He misses her, like I do. She used to read to him and tell him stories.”
“I gathered that,” said Meg. “Like about Narcissus.”
A meow at the door signaled Charlie’s return home for the evening, and Meg got up to let him in. As he curled around her ankles, Meg’s dog came into the kitchen and spotted him. She let out a short, eager bark and rushed at the cat. Meg lifted him into the air, but Harding was even faster. Coming seemingly from nowhere, he inserted himself between Charlie and the dog. He let out one deep bark. Meg’s dog looked at him in disbelief.
“See,” said Jane smugly. “I told you he was loyal.”
Meg was surprised. Harding had never before stood up to her dog. “He is, indeed,” she said. “How stupid of me. I didn’t even think about the fact that Charlie and my dog don’t know each other.”
“I did,” said Jane. “But I wasn’t worried.”
* * *
Meg could hear the phone ringing as she put the key in the lock of the kitchen door. She wrestled with it, pushed the door open, and raced through the house into the living room, the dog at her heels.
“Where have you been?” a familiar voice asked. “I was getting worried.”
“Oh, Sara, Sara,” Meg replied, sinking onto the couch next to the lamp she’d learned to leave on while she was out at night. “Get over it. I live in bucolic splendor now, not in the land of muggers and street gangs. The down side is, when you’re out late at night, it’s probably to visit the neighbors. I was baby-sitting Christine’s children. She’s been such a sweetie, I was glad for a chance to return a favor. But, to make my point about rural life crystal-clear, her kids don’t know what a bag lady is.”
“How’s doggie?” asked Sara. “Still hanging around?”
“She’s moved in,” said Meg, “and made herself at home.” She peered at the floor. “As a matter of fact, I think she’s got her own tiny shoes with gridded soles that she puts on just so she can leave little clumps of mud here and there when it’s rained. When are you coming to see me?”
“Soon. Soon. I swear!”
They talked for nearly an hour, and Meg was yawning ferociously by the time she hung up. She brushed her teeth, pushing the door to the attic closed as she went down the hall, and crawled into bed. Half asleep, she remembered she hadn’t locked the kitchen door. She groaned and got up.
The dog jumped up as she left the room. “I’m not going anywhere!” said Meg irritably. “Can’t you just park it?”
She turned on the kitchen light and went to the door. Before she got there, the light flickered. It flickered again as she turned the bolt. She looked at the ceiling. The light flickered again and went out. She sighed. She’d change the bulb in the morning.
The sheets felt delicious against her bare legs as she slid into bed. She closed her eyes and enjoyed the feeling for the couple of minutes it took her to fall asleep.
Barking and a weight on her back brought her to startled wakefulness. The short-legged dog had somehow managed to leap onto the bed. Meg rolled over, dislodging the dog, and sat up.
“Good grief!” she said. “What? Did someone toss an empty cigarette pack out of a car window and did that make a dangerous noise?”
The dog barked frantically.
“What?” said Meg, this time with no sarcasm in her voice. She reached out a hand. “What?”
The dog took Meg’s wrist in her teeth and closed her mouth. It hurt.
“Ouch!” said Meg, shocked. She got up, and the dog jumped from the bed, raced from the room, and stood on her hind legs at the foot of the attic stairs,
scratching frantically at the door.
Meg felt her heart thundering in her chest. If someone was in the attic, she didn’t want to go up. She stood irresolutely outside the door. There was no way to lock it, no way to protect herself if a stranger was, indeed, hiding up there. She pulled the door open, and then she smelled it too.
She ran for the kitchen door, leaping off the stoop to the car. She swung open the hatchback, yanked out the fire extinguisher, tore back into the house, and took the stairs two at a time. At the top she saw the blaze.
Crackling flames had spread over a section of floor and were reaching toward the rafters, which had not yet caught. She pulled the ring pin of the extinguisher and aimed for the base of the flames, sweeping back and forth until foam had blanketed the area. She sank down cross-legged, breathing hard and shaking.
The dog whined and licked at her face. Meg pulled her onto her lap and rested her cheek against the dog’s head. “Thank you, thank you,” she said. “Oh, thank you.”
Fourteen
The electrician stood next to the kitchen table and adjusted the tool belt around his waist. He was a big, boyish-looking man in loose-fitting jeans and an old T-shirt. “You are one lucky lady, Ms. Kessinger,” he said. “The wires in one of the junction boxes were loose. Another few minutes, you wouldn’t have been able to put it out without a pumper truck. This far out from town? We’d be looking at ashes.”
“One of the junction boxes,” said Meg. “Where the wiring for this room comes together.”
He nodded, and his eyes brightened. “There you go,” he said, pleased that she knew what he was talking about. “It’s old work. The stuff in here’s all working off the same box, which is right up above there.” He pointed at the ceiling light. “With the wires loose the way they were—vibrations from trucks going by, from just about anything, will eventually do it—the electricity’s going to arc. Spark touches something off … well, it’s a major problem.”
“The electricity arcs?” asked Meg.
“Like in the movies, when Dr. Frankenstein’s making his monster. All that electricity sparking between the monster and the machines?”