“Lucy and Desi will have to get used to other animals. Yours are so well behaved.”
“Most times.”
Within seconds Mrs. Murphy, Pewter, and Tucker marched through the mudroom into the kitchen, the delicious smells curling into their nostrils.
Desi, the black and white kitten, and Lucy, the red tabby, puffed up like blowfish.
Tucker ignored them as they spit at her.
“Worms,” Pewter said.
“Oh, Pewts, they’re scared enough.”
As the kittens crouched low and crept forward toward the visiting animals, Harry sat down and took a sip of her espresso, whipped cream swaying on top. “God, this is fabulous.” She then relayed Susan’s fears.
“She could ask him,” Alicia kindly said.
“Susan won’t. She’s kind of paralyzed,” Harry observed. “Also, she doesn’t want to hear a lie.”
“She’s feeling left out. Overreacting. Right now he can’t spend a lot of time with her,” BoomBoom remarked. “And he never flirted with me. She has nothing to worry about.”
“That puts him in a special class.” Alicia ate some of her whipped cream with the small demitasse spoon. “I don’t know Ned as you all do, but, without intending to stray, people do fall into one another’s arms.” Alicia turned to Harry, who never could get used to looking into those fabulous violet-tinged eyes. “And Susan is ninety miles away, beginning to worry about turning forty, I expect. I’m not saying Ned is having an affair, but sometimes it just . . . happens.”
“It never happened to me.”
BoomBoom couldn’t resist. “Put on a little makeup, hike up your boobs in a lace lift-and-separate bra, and, Harry, it will happen.”
The two women laughed as Harry, face red, looked deeply into her cup. “I can read whipped cream. Did you all know that? Other fortune-tellers read tea leaves or tarot cards, but I read whipped cream, and this whipped cream tells me there are two bad girls tormenting a saint. Karma! Beware of karma.” As they laughed, Harry’s mind flashed back to the statue. Since she had grown up with BoomBoom, she knew the blonde was accustomed to her hopping from subject to subject. “Susan and I saw the Virgin Mary cry blood! Today. Weird. Scary, actually.”
Harry filled in BoomBoom and Alicia about this strange event as well as why both she and Susan were at the monastery grounds.
The kittens became emboldened enough to slink toward the grown cats.
Little Lucy, belly flat on the heart-pine floor, reached out and batted Pewter’s fat, fluffy tail.
“Hey.” Pewter flicked her tail.
“It’s alive!” Lucy shrieked, jumping back.
Desi, rocking back and forth, eyes wide, couldn’t believe Pewter’s tail.
“It’s too short. Now, my tail is the proper length for my body.” Mrs. Murphy slyly thrashed her tail a bit.
“My tail is not too short. It’s full. I have Russian blue blood. My bones are big.”
“Oh, la.” Mrs. Murphy rolled her lustrous eyes.
“What’s a Russian blue?” Desi squeaked.
“A figment of her ever-active imagination.” Mrs. Murphy rolled over, displaying a creamy beige tummy.
Pewter turned her back on Mrs. Murphy. “Alley cat.”
“Oh, bull, Pewter, we’re all alley cats. This is America. Even the humans are alley cats.”
“Am I an alley cat?” Little Lucy softly came up to Mrs. Murphy, who rolled over to look the tiny bundle of red fur in the eye.
“You are.”
“Are you my mommy?” Lucy asked.
“Ha!” Pewter hooted.
Desi padded up to Mrs. Murphy. He squeezed tight against his sister. “We don’t remember our mommy very well. She didn’t come home one night.”
“Where were you?” Tucker joined with the cats.
At first the kittens puffed up, then calmed down when Tucker, who seemed very big, smiled at them reassuringly.
“We lived in a washing machine down in the ravine.”
“Ah.” None of the adults said anything after that, since all knew their mother had been killed in some fashion.
“How did you find BoomBoom?” Mrs. Murphy inquired.
“She and the other pretty lady were riding and we screamed. She got off her horse and we were really scared, but she kept talking to us and we were so hungry. Then she picked us up and put us in her jacket and we felt warm. We were cold. She’s a nice lady.”
“She fed us,” Desi chimed in. He wasn’t as talkative as his sister.
“And then,” Lucy’s voice rose, “the next day she took us to a man with a beard who gave us pills and shots. That was awful.”
“But necessary.” Tucker’s brown eyes sparkled.
“I’m not going back there,” Desi boasted.
“That’s what we all say.” Tucker laughed.
“I saw a dog with hair the color of BoomBoom’s at the vet’s,” Lucy remarked. “Are they related?”
At this, the grown-up cats and dog laughed so hard the humans noticed.
“Isn’t that sweet? Mrs. Murphy is grooming Lucy.” Alicia smiled broadly.
“She has a maternal streak,” Harry commented.
“Oh, I am going to throw up.” Pewter pretended to gag.
“Roundworms,” Mrs. Murphy said sarcastically as she pushed Pewter with her front paw.
Pewter pushed back. This escalated into a boxing match, then Pewter took off, Mrs. Murphy in hot pursuit.
Desi’s jaw dropped. “Gosh.”
“Mental.” Tucker touched noses with the little guy. “If one says apples, the other says bananas. They live to disagree.” She sighed, then added, “But that’s cats for you.”
“We’re cats.” Lucy blinked, her eyes still blue.
“Don’t get me wrong. Cats are very fine.” Tucker sounded very worldly. “But dogs are much more logical, especially corgis.”
“Don’t believe a word of it.” Mrs. Murphy, having heard everything, soared over all the seated animals in a dazzling display of athletic ability.
Pewter cleared the kittens, only to land smack on Tucker, who took it with her usual sense of humor.
As the cat and dog rolled over each other, the humans laughed and refilled their cups while trying to sort out Susan’s dilemma.
“Why don’t I discreetly poke around?” BoomBoom turned her attention for a second to the TV, which was on but muted. It was the start of the news report.
“Susan’s upset. It surprises me. I mean, her imagining something unproven. If Susan gets upset it’s about an event or someone being ill. It’s not in her head.” Although not much of a coffee drinker, Harry found the espresso delicious, especially after the biting cold up on Afton Mountain.
“People respond to different situations in ways even they don’t understand.” BoomBoom again checked the TV.
Harry crossed one leg over the other. “Isn’t it odd how we don’t know ourselves? We think we do, but if life is a circle of three hundred sixty degrees, has there ever been any human being who experienced all three hundred sixty degrees? We’ll never know everything about ourselves.”
“Then how can we know about anyone else?” BoomBoom asked.
“Because it’s easier to look out than to look in,” Alicia briskly replied. “Don’t you think?”
“I don’t know,” BoomBoom honestly answered.
“I’m not sure I do, either.” Harry smiled.
“I guess we spend our lives finding out.” BoomBoom laughed.
“I’d rather work on my tractor or fix the barn roof.” Harry shook her head. “The interior stuff is too much for me.”
“You have a good mind for solving problems. The interior stuff, as you call it, is a different kind of problem.” BoomBoom complimented her, then blinked her eyes, a slight jerk to her head as a handsome young man appeared on the TV. She rose to turn on the sound.
Wearing a deep-green silk tie against an ecru shirt, and an expensive tweed jacket over that, Nordy Elliott smiled the
biggest, phoniest smile he could muster at the petite redhead sitting beside him. “So, Jessica, how’s it look for football? And what about travel tonight? A lot of people are on the road on turkey day.”
“Nordy, a low pressure system is—”
BoomBoom, who had brought the remote back to the table, clicked off the sound. “Nordy Elliott is like sand in my eye, a major irritant. I can’t stand the note of false urgency in his voice, which is always the same whether he’s interviewing shoppers at the mall or covering a car wreck.”
“He irritates you because he pesters you.” Alicia reached down to entice one of the cats to come over.
“He doesn’t listen.” BoomBoom turned to Harry. “I told him over and over—I mean, I tell him every time I see him or he calls that I am taking a year’s vacation from dating. So he calls each week and says”—she imitated his delivery—“one more week bites the dust. Twenty more to go!”
“Give him credit for persistence.” Alicia laughed.
Ruefully, BoomBoom shrugged. “Yes and no. I hate it when men don’t listen.”
“Sometimes they can’t.” Harry offered an unexpected insight. “Their bodies trump their minds. When most men look at either one of you, the blood heads south.”
“Harry, you flatter me,” Alicia demurred.
“True, though.” BoomBoom exhaled. “Men fall in love with their eyes.”
“For us, the true hook is, ‘Honey, I’ll take care of it.’ ” Harry’s mouth turned up as the other two laughed, since that, too, was true.
“A sweeter sound coming from a man than ‘I love you.’ ” Alicia reached over and touched Harry’s forearm.
“‘I love you’ is too easy. Fixing the dead battery in your car or doing your taxes—that’s love.” BoomBoom’s laughter sounded like perfect crystal when struck. It filled the room.
“I can do all that,” Harry boasted.
“Can’t we all?” Alicia said. “But how wonderful when a man does it.”
“Sometimes.” BoomBoom pointed toward Harry’s cup and Harry indicated she’d had enough. “But sometimes I’d rather get my hands dirty. Is it just me? Maybe it is, but I feel constrained around a man and I don’t want to feel I owe him something.”
“You’re beautiful, Boom. A man wants to keep you to himself. I suppose that feels, um, restrictive?” Alicia replied.
“You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen, Alicia. It doesn’t happen to you?” BoomBoom’s large, expressive eyes seemed even larger.
“Yes.”
“Constrained is an interesting word.” Harry wiggled her toes in her boots. “I don’t want a man telling me what to do. I don’t want anyone telling me what to do, including the damned government. I can make my own decisions. If I make a mistake, it’s my mistake.”
“Hear, hear,” Alicia agreed.
“Oh, call the Duncans.” BoomBoom changed the subject, mentioning the couple, Fred and Doris, who ran Alicia’s farm. They were wonderful people. “You can stay here, safe and sound. We’ll sit by the fire and tell stories.”
Alicia didn’t reply to that directly. “When this storm clears, let’s go up to see the Virgin Mary.”
“Speaking of going, I’d better hit the road. Sun’s set and it’s looking like a real storm.” Harry checked outside the window, then back to the TV screen as the news cut frequently to Jessica, the weatherwoman.
BoomBoom also watched. “Snuck up on us, this one. Alicia, we’d better bag going to the country club.”
“That’s what makes it so exciting living at the foot of the mountains,” Alicia said as she rose. “I’d better head home, too.”
3
The red taillights of Alicia’s Land Cruiser disappeared in the gathering snow. From the paned glass windows in her elegant living room, BoomBoom watched the two ruby dots become swallowed up.
She folded her arms across the ample chest for which she earned her nickname. The soft three-ply cashmere felt glorious against her skin.
Lucy and Desi, perched on top of an overstuffed chair, watched BoomBoom watching Alicia.
“If she’d take off that sweater and put it on the floor we could sleep on it.” Desi had fallen in love with the sweater when BoomBoom had picked him up to pet and kiss him. He loved that, too.
“Drawers,” Lucy replied.
“Huh?”
“Drawers. She puts her clothes in drawers. The boxes that slide in the big box in the bedroom.”
“How do you know that’s what they’re called?” Desi admired his sister’s acumen.
“When she showed Alicia the sweater she bought from that expensive store in New York, whatever New York is, Alicia was impressed. She said, ‘Paul Stuart.’ Then BoomBoom said how they ought to go to New York.” Lucy pricked her ears as the wind rattled the outside shutters. “And she said, ‘I keep all the sweaters in the drawers.’ ”
BoomBoom exhaled through her nostrils, a mark of discontent, a touch of the blues. She walked over to the kittens, petting each. “If she were a man she would have stayed.” This was followed by a silence. “What am I thinking?”
The tall blonde strode into her den, a high-tech, bright space very unlike the rest of the house. She sat down at her bloodred enamel curving desk with the heavy inlaid glass top. On the left side of the curve rested her computer. In the middle of the curve was the gleaming glass inlay where she could handwrite letters on stationery printed by Tiffany’s. On the right side of this exquisite creation rested a small pile of tan, green, or red leather-bound foxhunting books from the eighteenth century.
BoomBoom ran her deceased husband’s quarry and business. A keen mind and one that rejoiced in profit, she proved better at this than Kelly had been. She imported marble from Italy as well as from Barre, Vermont. She specialized in the stones for fencing. Her quarry also carried every grade of gravel needed in construction. Twice-washed sand for riding rings, for masonry, was also a lucrative product. BoomBoom enjoyed a business that could change its selling methods, change the speed of delivery, upgrade customer services, but the actual process of building a stone fence, cutting marble for a fireplace, or putting down number-five stone on a farm road would never change. For this, she was exceedingly grateful.
She was also grateful that the men who worked at Craycroft Quarry remained loyal to her. Once she’d proved she knew what she was doing and those Christmas bonuses fattened, the teamwork only got better and better.
Each day she’d stop by the office. She always checked a job. She listened to her customers; she listened to her staff. She couldn’t work a nine-to-five job, but many days she worked from five in the morning until eleven at night. It was her business and she loved it. Often she could schedule her hobbies—foxhunting in fall and winter, golf in spring and summer—around work. She lived a fabulous life and she knew it, except for one thing: she had no partner, no true love.
BoomBoom checked addresses on her computer, writing down those people to whom she could speak discreetly about Ned. Since BoomBoom gave generously to the Democratic Party, she had many strings to pull.
“Damned Republicans,” she said out loud, which caused Lucy to try and crawl up her leg to see what this outburst was all about. “Come on, you little girl. You, too, Desi!” She placed them on the desk. Both were mesmerized by the computer as she switched it to the pattern of shifting, different-colored shapes. “Here are the desk rules. You can come up here anytime you like once you’re big enough to get up on your own. But you can never pee here or anywhere but your dirt box. You can’t chew my papers. I don’t care if you play with the computer, but you can’t chew the wires or pull them out of the back. You can’t press the phone buttons and, oh, yes, this is the most important thing, no biting or chewing my old leather-bound books. See this book right here?” She held up a large tome, dark green with gilt lettering “Notitia Venatica.” “This cost me three hundred seventy-five dollars. Three hundred seventy-five dollars!”
“What’s three hundred seventy
-five dollars?” Lucy cocked her head.
“Must be important.” Desi noted BoomBoom’s stern tone.
“Follow the rules and we’ll have a wonderful life.” She kissed their soft tiny heads, right between their ears. “We already have a wonderful life.”
“I can catch mice.” Desi puffed out his white chest. Set against his black body, he looked like he was wearing a tuxedo.
“You can not.” Lucy giggled.
“Can, too.” He swatted her and she swatted back.
“You two may be the cutest little kittens God has put on earth.” BoomBoom laughed, then punched in numbers on her thin, flat phone. “You’re home. I was so worried about you.”
A laugh, clear, greeted her concern. “Honey chile, I was driving before you were born.”
“Oh, you were not.”
“Pretty close to it.” Alicia replied. “You’re sweet not to think I’m old. As I recall you’re thirty-seven,” she paused, “just a sprig, a green sapling and such a pretty one at that.”
BoomBoom laughed. “Are you flirting with me, Alicia? I’m not used to these things.”
“Do you expect me to believe that? Beauty is a magnet.”
“Look who’s talking.” She paused. “But, no, women have not flirted with me, or if they have, it’s gone right over my head, like the Blue Angels.” She made a jet sound, which startled the kittens, who had fallen asleep on the desk.
“Silly girls.” Alicia’s voice, part of her outrageous allure, sounded exactly as it did on the big screen.
BoomBoom experienced an uncustomary flutter; she stuttered for a second, then caught herself. “Well, I’m so glad you’re home safe and sound.”
“Once the weather clears, let’s go up to Greyfriars’. You wanted to go, right?” Alicia asked.
“Can’t wait,” BoomBoom responded. “I look to Mary for light. Not that I’m in danger of being a good Catholic, mind you.”
“Actually, sugar, I’m a bad Christian, but it’s too late to be a good anything else.” Alicia laughed.
As the two women bid their good-byes with promises to call first thing in the morning, high on top of the Blue Ridge Mountains, the Virgin Mary was again crying tears of blood, quickly freezing in the cold.
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