What the Heart Wants

by Cynthia Reese

  “Excellent! I calculated just right, then. However, with you home, perhaps I should increase my order—”

  “No! Gran! You were well last year and able to help, and it nearly killed me—”

  “Nonsense. Kyle here will help you. Won’t you, Kyle? After all, you like experiencing historical things, don’t you? Something as anachronistic as putting food by should appeal to you.”

  He jumped, startled that he’d been pulled into the middle of their squabble. “Uh, sure. I’ll be glad to help. Though I admit, I’ve never done any food preserving.”

  “Nothing to it,” Gran said. “I’ll come home that weekend—they’ve told me I could have the equivalent of a weekend pass, aren’t they generous.” Her lips twitched with sardonic amusement. “Allison, what’s that face you’re pulling? You should have the business with my bedroom done by then, surely. Because naturally, I’ll need to supervise you young people, as Kyle here has said he knows nothing about preserving. Besides. Nothing like two people in a kitchen together to see if they’re compatible, is there? Now, off you go! I need my beauty sleep.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  THE DOORBELL PEALED long and loudly for the third time. Fumbling with the sash on her robe, Allison stumbled out of her bedroom, around piles of debris and enough plastic tarps to give a person claustrophobic nightmares. A fine powder of dust lay everywhere; she could swear she felt it grit between her teeth.

  Gran’s room, the back stairs and the sole upstairs bathroom were temporarily blockaded with plastic and tape in a vain attempt to keep the demolition dust at bay. Allison made her way down the front stairs, saw no one at the front door and groaned.

  Next she negotiated the back hall, past the yards of plastic and duct tape that encased the rear stairs. The doorbell pealed again, this time longer. She double-timed it, clenching her teeth and feeling again the unmistakable grit of construction dust between them.

  But she dared not complain, fearing Jerry would halt the construction process, invoke more stringent lead abatement procedures, and another week would be wasted.

  Through the glass pane of the kitchen door, Allison saw the man of the hour—Jerry the contractor, with a box in his hand. And—Kyle?

  Her heart rattled in her chest at the sight of him. What was Kyle doing here? She put a hand to her hair—not movie bed-head, elegantly tousled and inviting. No, more along the lines of a rat’s nest.

  Jerry she couldn’t care less about. In the past week, he’d been showing up at the crack of dawn and staying until nearly eight o’clock in the evening with his crew, so he’d seen her at her worst.

  But Kyle? Especially when he appeared nattily turned out in a blazer and slacks, ready for his first lecture? No, for him, she wanted to appear fully in control, ready to face the day, ready to go to battle again over that variance paperwork he still hadn’t helped her with.

  She swung the door open. “Jerry. I thought we agreed. Not before 8:00 a.m.?”

  He barged through the doorway past her. Kyle slipped in behind him, hardly daring to look her in the eye, the rat.

  “Yeah, Miss Allison, I know, but I found this, see? And I wanted to get yours and Kyle’s thoughts on it!”

  Allison closed the door and swung back around to face Jerry and whatever lovely surprise he had for her this morning. “Found what? A miracle that will fix Gran’s bedroom and bathroom before this weekend? Oh, and the kitchen...I really, really need the kitchen back together before Friday, Jerry. You promised. I have Gran’s canning to do, and she won’t budge. She wants to sleep in her own bed and her own room and put up those blasted tomatoes.”

  Beyond him, huge holes were gaping in the plaster of the back kitchen wall, barely hidden by translucent plastic that did a poor job of keeping even more construction dust out of the few meals Allison had been able to cobble together.

  “Yeah, yeah, we’re working on it! We got it!” he assured her. “Everything’s great!”

  Everything was not great. It seemed as though Gran had been all too right: give a mouse a cookie—or Jerry a pinky-toe access into the house—and life turned into a disaster. First he’d discovered that the wiring indeed needed reworking—surprise, surprise—so now throughout the house were huge gaping holes where the electrician had been pulling new wire. And then, oops, the plumbing in the upstairs bathroom had been jarred and sprang a gusher of a leak, and lately Jerry had been obsessing over the match of the plaster finish in Gran’s room. He’d redone it three times now.

  And she was stuck with him. Because Jerry had been the only one who would deign to work on the house. If only Gran hadn’t been so insistent on coming home for a visit this weekend—to can those tomatoes!

  “What is this? One of your brainy ideas?” she growled at Kyle.

  He shrugged. “All I know is that he wanted me to come look at it with you before 2:00 p.m., and I have classes and meetings all day. This was the only time I could come. Sorry. He told me you wouldn’t mind.”

  “And you believed him?” she muttered, then sighed. “Okay, Jerry. What is it?”

  He had set the box on the kitchen table. “Found this online through a buddy I know in Chicago, and he sent me part of it, told me to let him know before two o’clock today if I wanted the rest. That’s FedEx’s last pickup for his shop. He’ll ship it next day to us.” Jerry whipped open the box and yanked out a dusty, dirty faucet.

  Allison blinked. “Jerry.”

  “I know. Incredible, right?” He looked from her to Kyle. “Amazing. I didn’t think there were any to be had!”

  Kyle whistled. He took the faucet from Jerry, turning it over in his hands. “No! It can’t be! Is this—Allison! Can you believe this?”

  A slow, righteous anger boiled up within her at being awakened with just three hours of sleep after working the night before on the variance paperwork. “No. I can’t.”

  The flat tone of her voice caused the two men to jerk their attention from their find to her. “You don’t know what this is?”

  “It looks like a secondhand bathroom faucet. Kind of interesting detail, what with all that leaf design embossed into the spout, and I’ll bet an incredible pain to keep clean.”

  “Allison!” Kyle seemed to take her description of it as near sacrilege. “This is a faucet design that could be original to the house. And it’s a mixing tube design—one single faucet, not a hot and cold one. For the time, it was a luxury model. See? Solid brass!”

  Jerry took it back and rubbed the spout with the tail of his T-shirt. The metal did give up a somewhat brighter gleam.

  It did little to brighten anything else for Allison, though—including her mood.

  “Original. Great. So that means it’s a 126-year-old faucet. Just like the one I have. Already. That I hate. Because it leaks. And I can’t get parts to fix it. Terrific.”

  “Uh, Miss Allison. About that faucet in the upstairs bathroom. I kind of...well, it sort of...” Jerry closed his eyes and compressed his mouth in pain. “When we were taking everything apart yesterday, it sort of...”

  “Gave up the ghost,” Allison finished.

  “Yeah. Yeah, it did. So I never would have thought we’d be able to find another one—and really, this is authentic, but a much better faucet than you had. Plus, with a few fixes, it’ll be as good as new.”

  “No. No.” She sank into a chair and wished like the devil that she didn’t have to unplug the toaster to put on the coffeepot. But the way Jerry had things rigged up, she had only one safe working plug in the kitchen right now. “It’s okay. Send the faucet back. We’ll just get a brand-spanking-new twenty-first century faucet. Okay? One that doesn’t require washers or obsolete parts.”

  “No!” Kyle protested. “This is part of the character of Belle Paix! You can’t just slap new stuff in willy-nilly.”

  “I can. It’s my house.”
>
  “No. It’s your grandmother’s. And remember? What’s good enough for Ambrose?”

  “No. No, no, no, no, no.” Allison straightened up. She fixed Kyle with a glare. “I’ll bet I’d have to pay three hundred dollars for that hunk of junk—a hunk of junk that I doubt even works.”

  “But my buddy...he’s got the match for the tub...and even a showerhead—” Jerry protested.

  “No. That’s final. It’s pretty, but you and Kyle won the plaster wars. I get to win this one. I want new plumbing. Shiny, brand-new, fresh-out-of-the-box plumbing for that bathroom. Don’t you see? It was a sign. The universe is telling us that I have permission to have new bathroom fixtures!”

  “Uh, Miss Allison. You don’t understand. The bathroom sink? With all that pretty hand-painted flowers in the china bowl? You know, the one-of-a-kind that you’re not gonna find anywhere else?”

  “You didn’t break that, did you?” Her heart stopped in her chest. Gran loved that sink. Allison had heard her ooh and ahh over it as long as she could remember. That was one reason Gran had never redone the upstairs bathroom.

  “No! You think I’d be standing upright if I broke something like that? I’d be dead in a funeral home...you’d be at my visitation!” Jerry protested. “No, it’s okay. But, see...modern fixtures...they don’t fit the holes.”

  Allison wanted to shriek in frustration. What little money she had saved was evaporating fast in the week since she’d turned Jerry loose on the house. She knew what he was going to say next, his favorite, favorite line.

  “Let me guess,” she said. “This is my only option.”

  He nodded. “Yep. ’Fraid so. But aren’t you glad I found it? Now we can save that bowl that your granny is so fired up about. She called me the other day, after you told her that I was doing work on the bathroom, and made me swear a blood oath I wouldn’t take that sink out. I gave her my word.”

  Allison stood up, made her way to the extension cord, unplugged the toaster. Plugged in the coffeemaker. Grabbed the carafe and headed for the sink. Halfway there, she realized that she had to get water from the downstairs bathroom because there was none in the kitchen. Joy of joys.

  For a long moment she just stood there, in the middle of the disaster of a kitchen, gripping the empty coffeepot and trying hard not to cry.

  Kyle closed the gap between them and gently took it from her. “Let me guess. No water in the kitchen.”

  “I’ll get it fixed,” Jerry blustered. “The little bathroom works. But hey, I gotta go now! Gotta make sure that my buddy will ship the rest of this!” And he was out the kitchen door with a bang.

  Five minutes later, Kyle was handing Allison a steaming mug of coffee and smiling at her where she sat, defeated, at the kitchen table. “It gets better,” he assured her.

  “I’m broke. I’m tired. And Gran keeps harping on those tomatoes. I need to be working every extra hour of overtime I can in order to afford my new Jerry habit. Are you sure you and he don’t have some sort of scheme going to trick me out of my savings? Because if you do? Just a fair warning, it’s below the minimum balance. Frankly, I’m at the red alert stage.”

  She took a drink of her coffee and felt immediately cheered. He’d known that she liked lots of cream and lots of sugar. When had he learned that?

  “It happens. Happened to me. But if you can make it through this, just think. Belle Paix will be beautiful, just like she looked when Ambrose first turned the key in the door.”

  “No. No, she won’t. You know why?” Allison rose from her chair and sorted through a basket of papers on the counter, which was cluttered with canisters and baskets Jerry had had to move to work on the electricity and plumbing. She retrieved the variance paperwork and slapped it down in front of Kyle on the scarred oak kitchen table.

  “What’s this?” he asked.

  “The variance request application for the changes to the exterior. The paperwork you said you’d help me with? Well, I stayed up until four this morning filling it out.”

  He thumbed through it, skimming its contents. “Allison...”

  “And you know what? You are going to help me get it passed. Yes, you. Because you know why? You sicced Jerry on me. And Jerry has spent all the money I didn’t have in the first place—money I might have been able to scrape together to paint this house in historically accurate colors—and I checked, Kyle. I keep hearing quotes of fifteen thousand dollars to paint this house. I’d do it myself, but it’s so huge it would take me forever. Plus, the rental fees on the scaffolding to reach the third story would cost me nearly that much. No, you are going to help me get this variance approved!”

  Kyle rubbed his forehead and chewed on his bottom lip. “It doesn’t work like that, Allison. You know that. I’ve told you. The committee—”

  “Hang the committee! This house is falling apart. I have to paint it, at least—and I could put Hardie Board or vinyl siding on for the same cost. Anything but having to face this exorbitant bill again in ten years! But okay, I’ll meet you halfway. Let me paint it with two colors, and I’ll drop the request for the vinyl siding. Because I have no money.”

  “Why not borrow what you need to do the job right? It’s a good investment,” he told her. “Think of it like this—a renovation loan would be cheaper than rent or a house payment on a much smaller house that doesn’t hold nearly the same sentimental value. This house has been in your family for how many generations? You should want to be a good steward and use top-quality—”

  “Borrow? Kyle. I’m still paying off student loans! Not to mention a car payment, and it’s not like I aim to mooch off Gran! I took a ten-grand pay cut to move back down here to take care of her, so I’m not really able to float a loan right now. Besides, I’ve got nothing to put up for collateral. It’s Gran’s house.”

  “Well, then, Gran can borrow it against Belle Paix, and you pay it back for her.”

  “Are you insane? Gran won’t ever take out a mortgage on Belle Paix. She didn’t do it for my college education, and that was really important to her. No. Her dad nearly lost this house in the Great Depression, and they sold eggs—sold eggs, Kyle—to pay off a mortgage he took out back then. She has definite ideas about debt, and they don’t include putting a lien on Belle Paix.”

  He shook his head. “That’s a really short-sighted view. This is an investment. You have no idea how many people would be willing to take that risk for a house of this caliber.”

  “I’m not one of ’em. And neither is Gran. So.” Allison pointed a finger at the packet of papers he was thumbing through. “You fix that. You get my variance.”

  He stood up, his chair scraping against the kitchen’s wide plank pine flooring, which Jerry had just unearthed this week. “If I do that, Allison, if I recommend that you go with a historically inaccurate paint scheme for the jewel of the neighborhood...it sets a precedent. And it’s not fair. What about all those home owners who have gone to the trouble and expense to make sure they comply with the ordinance? Not only does this tell them that they could have done without it, but it also affects their house values.”

  “So you’re telling me you won’t do this? You won’t recommend approving my request?”

  “I’ll look at it. But...if I tell you that it wouldn’t pass, well, you’d better not put in the request, because you can submit only one application per project a year, and then you have to wait a full twelve months.”

  “That’s crazy!” Allison exclaimed.

  “No. It’s designed to preserve the sanity of the committee, so we’re not peppered with request after request on the same project. Lots of preservation committees have the same rule.”

  “I don’t care. I’m out of money, I can’t borrow any and Gran won’t, so it’s up to you. You can fix this. You can help me see my way out. Those people? They’ll listen to you. I know it.”

 
He wasn’t really paying any attention to her words, though. He was dragging himself to the back door. He stopped as he opened it, and glanced over his shoulder at her. “I said I’d look through it and give you my opinion before you submit it. But I can already tell you, based on a quick scan, that it’s not going to fly.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  ALLISON STRAIGHTENED UP and heard a pop as she released a crick in her neck. Her knees ached from crouching down on the floor to paint Gran’s bedroom baseboard. There had to be miles of it left to go, and a fancy molding atop it to boot, but she’d been curled up like a pretzel for what seemed hours.

  Directly below her she heard a loud clang and the sound of Jerry’s favorite swear expression, “Jumpin’ Jehosaphat!” which had amused her to begin with. The idea that a contractor wouldn’t curse in this house was a novelty, given all the swearing the house had wrung from almost every repairman who’d ever stepped foot across its threshold.

  But in the past week and a half, she’d realized that Jerry uttering “Jumpin’ Jehosaphat” preceded “It’s your only option.”

  She sighed and put down the paintbrush. A glance around the room gave her some small measure of comfort: the walls were finally patched and plastered to Jerry’s satisfaction, and she had a coat of primer on them. Behind those walls lay new wiring and insulation “to keep the old girl’s ribs warm,” Jerry had said, and he wasn’t talking about Gran.

  It was amazing and a bit irritating how Kyle and Jerry talked about this house as though it were a person. To them, the house was never an “it.” The house was either “Belle Paix,” uttered in reverent tones, or “she” or “the old girl” or, for Jerry, on a particularly bad day, “the cranky old dame.”

  Allison couldn’t figure out whether the fact that they personified it as a woman was what bothered her or whether it was that they treated the house with more respect than they sometimes accorded her. In a fight over what was historically accurate or what Allison preferred as a pragmatic fix, she often felt the house won.