Hidden Treasures

by Judith Arnold

  CHAPTER FOUR

  “CHECK IT OUT,” Fern said, jerking her chin toward her desk. She was over at the sink, filling a paper cup with water for the small, wan child standing beside her. “Front page.”

  Erica drew in a deep breath and entered the nurse’s office, a glum little room tucked behind the bigger, brighter janitorial-staff room at Rockwell Regional Primary School. Fern had tried to perk the room up by adorning the walls with posters. The most prominent one featured a tooth with a cartoon face drawn onto its crown and its roots extended to resemble feet. It appeared to be dancing with a toothbrush that had a face superimposed on its bristles and tiny arms and legs protruding from its handle. The tooth and the toothbrush looked as if they were having a grander time than the girl at the sink, who had apparently just lost a tooth and was not in the mood to dance. “It’s bleeding,” she whined. “It’s bleeding in my mouf.”

  “Rinse your mouth out,” Fern instructed her as she handed her the cup of water. “One rinse ought to do it.”

  “It’s bleeding,” the girl moaned, as if her condition was critical. “Don’t lose my toof.”

  “I won’t,” Fern assured her.

  “I need it.” The child took some water into her mouth, coughed and sputtered it out into the sink. “I need it for the toof fairy. Don’t lose it.”

  “I won’t lose it,” Fern said with admirable patience, thrusting her cupped palm under the girl’s nose. “See? I’ve got it right here in my hand.”

  Erica was glad she wasn’t a school nurse. She wouldn’t want a job that included holding saliva-slick milk teeth that had popped out of the gums of six-year-olds. Fern Bernard’s other professional responsibilities included scrubbing bloody knees, placing compresses on bloody lips, inspecting scalps for lice and cleaning up vomit. How she managed to maintain a sense of humor Erica didn’t know.

  Come to think of it, Fern’s sense of humor was a sometime thing. A person could laugh about stomach-flu epidemics only so much. “By my fourth puke of the morning, I’ve pretty well had it,” she occasionally lamented to Erica when they met for lunch on those days that Erica didn’t have cafeteria duty. After a few minutes of that sort of conversation with Fern, Erica’s appetite generally disappeared.

  A first-grader losing a tooth wasn’t going to steal Erica’s appetite today. But the sight that greeted her on Fern’s desk might. It was that day’s edition of the Rockwell Gazette, which Erica hadn’t yet seen because it always arrived at her house after she’d already left for school. Most of the page was occupied by a large photo of her, Jed Willetz and the box beneath the headline Could This Find Be Worth Millions?

  If there hadn’t been a student in the nurse’s office, Erica would have cursed. Instead, she gritted her teeth so tightly her jaws ached. Bad enough Meryl Hummer had written the damn story—did she have to give it such a sensationalist headline?

  She tried to focus on the column of small print running along the right edge of the photo, but her gaze veered back to the picture itself. It was a color shot, oddly mushy, as if the printer’s hues hadn’t quite lined up. In it she looked tired, her sweatshirt fresher than her face, which was framed by squiggling strands of dark hair that had unraveled from her ponytail. She needed to do something with her hair, but she had yet to find a salon she trusted within a fifteen-mile radius of Rockwell. The last time she’d gotten her locks professionally trimmed had been during the school’s winter break, when she’d driven down to Brookline to visit her family. Her mother had taken one look at her, shrieked, “You resemble an escapee from an asylum,” and made an emergency appointment for her at Armand’s for the morning after Christmas. The unlucky young stylist who’d gotten stuck having to work over the holiday week had obeyed Erica’s directive to leave her hair long—the style was more in keeping with the earth-mother image she was trying to cultivate—but he’d added some desultory layers and treated the whole thing with a relaxer that had sapped the life out of the curls. After she’d returned to Rockwell, Fern had evened out the layers for her, and eventually the curls returned.

  All right, so her hair looked wild and disheveled in the photo. It hardly mattered, when her skin was so pale, her smile so grim and forced. Next to her, Jed Willetz appeared positively glorious. His hair was a mess, too, but on him the unkempt look worked. His eyes seemed brooding, unlike hers, which were wide and startled, as if the flash had stunned her, and he wasn’t smiling at all. After this photo made the rounds, Erica was certain more women than ever would be volunteering to bare their bottoms for him.

  Positioned in front of them in the photo, the box seemed much too mundane to warrant the headline Meryl had written. Squat and decrepit, a dull brown container with a curving lid and a dirt-caked padlock that photographed a grayish-beige rather than brassy yellow, it sat on her dining-room table where she’d cleared away the spelling tests.

  Erica circled Fern’s desk, appropriated the nurse’s chair and lifted the article to read. It stated that the box was found by “Erica Leitner, a third-grade teacher at the primary school, and Randy Rideout, eleven years old, a former student of Leitner’s, while they were planting zucchini in Leitner’s garden, which abuts the Willetz property.” Well, that covered everyone’s claims, she thought. The bulk of the article hypothesized on the box’s age and value—a perfunctory mention of “Professor Abraham Gallen of Harvard University” was included—and what it might contain. Among the possibilities, Meryl listed diamonds, Confederate scrip, emeralds, snuff, rubies and a deed that could throw the entire ownership of both Jed Willetz’s grandfather’s land and Erica’s property into question.

  She waited as calmly as she could while Fern placed the child’s tooth in a blue plastic container shaped like a miniature pirate’s chest and snapped it shut. “Take good care of that,” she cautioned the child, “and maybe the tooth fairy will visit you tonight.”

  “She better,” the girl muttered menacingly.

  Fern continued smiling until the girl had departed from the office. Then she closed the door, sank against it and groaned. “One of these days I’m going to knock out some kid’s teeth with my fists. I’ll go down in history as the youngest victim of menopause meltdown in New Hampshire history.”

  “You’re not that young,” Erica muttered.

  Fern pulled a face and scraped her hand wearily through her loud orange hair. It was not a shade designed by nature, and Fern clearly didn’t mean for anyone to think it was. Erica liked it. It added a touch of vibrancy to a community that tended to be as gray as the granite hacked out of the quarry on the western edge of town.

  “I’m at least ten years away from menopause,” Fern argued, shoving away from the door and returning to the sink, where she washed her hands. “Probably at least fifteen years,” she added as she crossed to her desk, yanked open a drawer and pulled out an insulated lunch bag. “I only feel about a hundred years old. If you had to spend your days dealing with whiny snots who can’t even pronounce the word tooth, you’d feel old, too.” She ceded her chair to Erica and dragged a folding metal chair over to the desk. “Now, tell me about this,” she demanded, jabbing a finger at the newspaper. “I can’t believe something so important happened to you and you didn’t call me.”

  “Well…” Fern was Erica’s closest friend in Rockwell. She really should have called. “I didn’t think it was such a big thing.”

  “Standing that close to Jed Willetz? Of course it’s a big thing. How did he smell?”

  “Smell?” Erica removed a cup of yogurt and a plastic spoon from her oversize purse. “What do you mean, how did he smell?”

  “I mean, are we talking Old Spice? Calvin Klein? Polo? The guy lives in Manhattan. It looks as if the city has been treating him very nicely.” She gazed at the photo and sighed.

  “I don’t know. He smelled kind of pepperminty,” Erica said. She’d bet the “very nicely” aspect of his appearance in the photo had less to do with Manhattan than with his genes. He could live in a shack up in Coos Cou
nty with three mangy retrievers and no indoor plumbing and he’d still look great. He might not smell so good, though.

  “He’s so…” Fern concluded that thought with an erotic-sounding grunt. “How can you act so blasé about him?”

  “I’m not blasé,” Erica argued. She’d certainly noticed Jed’s attributes, especially once they’d entered her house and she could see him in real light. Yes, indeed, she’d noticed. She’d noticed the way he seemed to fill every room he entered, so tall and male and vibrant. She’d noticed the way the fluorescent ceiling light in the kitchen had captured the blond highlights in his tawny hair. She’d noticed the cool, misty gray of his eyes, and his large, blunt-tipped fingers, fingers that had closed as snugly as leather straps around her hand for an instant outside.

  She’d also noticed that he, like Meryl, had been more interested in the box than in her. She’d noticed that he moved around her house as if he was more familiar with the layout than she was—and he probably was, since his grandfather used to own the place. She’d noticed that he stopped making small talk the moment she carried the box into the dining room from the closet in her bedroom, unwrapped the towel she’d swaddled it in and set it on the table. He’d zeroed in on the box, no doubt recognizing that it was an antique and trying to figure out how he was going to claim a portion of its value for himself.

  Questionable property lines? That wasn’t going to fly.

  “So, what do you think is in the box?” Fern asked after swallowing a mouthful of her sandwich.

  “I have no idea. Probably not diamonds, rubies or emeralds. I don’t know where Meryl came up with all that.”

  “Meryl,” Fern said with a sniff, as if no further explanation was necessary.

  “Maybe it’s got somebody’s baby teeth in it,” Erica said, remembering the tiny plastic treasure chest Fern had given the girl to hold her tooth.

  “That’s gross.” Fern took another lusty bite of her sandwich, chewed and swallowed. “The thing is, life as you know it is going to change. This million-dollar find of yours is the biggest thing to come through town since Joey Binnick almost made the U.S. Olympics snowboarding team five years ago.”

  “It’s not a million-dollar find,” Erica insisted. “And it’s not such a big thing.”

  “When you live in a town where nothing happens for five years, an old box in a zucchini patch is a big thing.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Everyone will want to talk to you about the box and nothing but. Are you a teacher? Who cares? Did you bake cookies for the summer-sports fund-raiser? Irrelevant. Everyone bakes cookies, but not everyone has an old box that they dug up in their backyard.”

  And not everyone baked cookies as tasteless as Erica’s. But boy, would she blow them away when she baked zucchini cookies for the fall-sports fund-raiser, after her crop came in.

  “So, what did you think of Jed?” Fern asked.

  “We’ve already discussed his smell.”

  “There’s more to him than his smell.” Fern leaned back in her chair, which squeaked plaintively, and regarded Erica.

  She realized she’d eaten barely half her yogurt. Thoughts about her box and Jed Willetz were enough to shut down her digestive system.

  Fern might be her closest friend in town, but Erica wasn’t prepared to admit to anyone that Jed Willetz could interfere with her appetite. Just because he looked gorgeous and currently occupied the house next door to hers—and smelled like peppermint—didn’t mean she intended to get into a state over him. He certainly wasn’t in a state over her. As soon as Meryl left last night, he’d departed, too. His final words, tossed casually over his shoulder as he’d headed out her back door, were, “I’m going to check those property lines at town hall tomorrow.”

  “He’s only in Rockwell to bury his grandfather’s ashes.”

  “So how did he wind up in your house? That is your dining room, isn’t it?” Fern spun the newspaper toward her and studied the photo.

  “He invited himself.”

  “You didn’t invite him?”

  “I didn’t invite Meryl, either. I didn’t want anyone to know about this.” She gestured toward the photo.

  “Welcome to Rockwell,” Fern said with a grin. “Life travels slow and word travels fast. Don’t look so gloomy, Erica. This is exciting!”

  Erica didn’t think so. Back in Brookline, exciting used to mean the president was in town for a fund-raiser, or the new Almodóvar movie was playing at the Coolidge Corner Theater or a Degas exhibit was opening at the Museum of Fine Arts. It meant driving to Hanscom Air Force Base to see the Blue Angels fly in formation, or riding the T into Boston to hear Yo-Yo Ma at Symphony Hall or Dave Matthews at the Fleet Center, or the Boston Pops at the Esplanade. It meant the Red Sox beating the Yankees, and club-hopping after dark, and finding the perfect little something on sale on Newbury Street.

  In Rockwell, exciting meant a fresh shipment of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream at Hackett’s Superette.

  And Erica liked that; she really did. She appreciated the peaceful, modest rhythms of small-town life. Really.

  She just hadn’t expected her old box to rank up there with Ben & Jerry’s ice cream.

  The phone on Fern’s desk erupted in a shrill ring. Erica handed her the receiver, then snapped the lid onto her half-full cup of yogurt and slipped it and her spoon back into the bag she’d brought them in. Maybe she’d be hungry later. She’d get another break at two-fifteen, when her class had art.

  “Okay,” Fern was saying. “No, I haven’t. Please assure her I haven’t…Look, Burt, she’s a little obsessive, okay? But just because she doesn’t trust me doesn’t mean…Okay. I promise I won’t.” She passed the receiver to Erica, who hung it up and then let out a breath. “Someone’s going to have to die.”

  “More of that early menopause?” Erica joked.

  “That was Burt.” Fern gestured toward the phone. Burt Johnson was the school’s principal, an innocuous blob who favored plaid sportjackets and didn’t believe in curriculum workshops or educational theory. “He keeps getting calls from Hazel Nagy. She thinks I’m teaching sex in my health classes.”

  “Hazel Nagy?” Erica scowled. Hazel Nagy ran the stationery store in town. She had to be at least seventy years old, which would place her safely beyond the range of people who had children attending Rockwell Regional Primary School. “Why should she care what you’re teaching?”

  “She’s got morals,” Fern said sourly. “She doesn’t want our students learning anything dirty. According to her, discussing menstruation is dirty.”

  “Some of the fifth-graders—”

  “Some of the fourth-graders, too,” Fern pointed out. “I’ll damn well teach those kids about menstruation, and Hazel Nagy can stand at the gates to hell and greet me when my time comes.” She sighed melodramatically. “Why on earth did you move here, Erica? This place is insane.”

  “You’re here.”

  “And I’m insane.” Fern laughed. “I’m here because I grew up here and I figured, what the hell. You should have known better.”

  “I like it here,” Erica told her, which made Fern laugh harder. Erica cracked a smile, too, although she meant what she’d said. “Lunch is almost over. I’d better get back to the classroom.”

  “Make sure you don’t use the word period unless you’re teaching punctuation,” Fern warned her. “And seriously, Erica, brace yourself. You’re a celebrity now.” She waved at the photo of Erica grinning woodenly at them from the ghastly front page of the newspaper. “Not only are you a celeb, but you’ve been photographed with Jed Willetz. The gossip could get very interesting.”

  The gossip could stand on its head, for all Erica cared. Jed Willetz was only in town to deliver his grandfather’s ashes to their final resting place, and then he’d be gone. And she’d be here—with her box, her classroom and her zucchini, assuming they flourished the way Randy had predicted. She’d have lots of zucchini, and Jed Willetz would be back in New York City, and people i
n town would find something more interesting to gossip about.

  JED POPPED a cherry sourball into his mouth and sucked hard. It didn’t clear his head the way a cigarette might have, but it gave him something to do with his tongue.

  April had settled another sunny day on central New Hampshire, and today he could actually enjoy the weather, instead of spending most of the daylight hours cruising various interstates in his rental car. He’d spent most of today indoors, inventorying his grandfather’s possessions so he could get an idea of what his father had filched, but at least he was able to take occasional breaks and breathe some fresh air from his grandfather’s front porch.

  He’d immediately noticed, when he’d stepped inside the house last night, that certain items were missing. His grandfather’s cast-iron fry pan, which had always sat on the stove whether or not anything was cooking in it, was gone, and the stove looked strangely naked without it. Jed had rummaged through the rest of the kitchen, discovered a few more cooking utensils unaccounted for, then proceeded through the house, searching for what wasn’t there. The matching lamps from the living room—those were worth some real money, which probably explained why his father had taken them. The portable TV—although Jack had left the cable box behind, a forlorn black wire looking for a screen to hook up to. The toaster oven. The Weed Whacker. The police scanner Jed had given his grandfather for his birthday a couple of years ago.

  John Willetz had left his grandson the house and its contents because he hadn’t trusted his son with them. “Jack will get my money when I die, but my property is going to you. Your dad doesn’t know manure from mulch,” John had told Jed. “You know what’s valuable and what’s junk. Your dad still hasn’t figured that out.”

  Unfortunately, Jed realized, his father had figured out how to help himself to whatever he wanted, even if it didn’t belong to him.

  Jed was annoyed. So annoyed, he still hadn’t contacted his father, let alone made a plan regarding the old man’s ashes. He’d gone to Hackett’s and stocked up on edibles, missing New York City more with each item he tossed into his cart, and then he’d devoted the rest of the morning and much of the afternoon to writing a list of everything his father hadn’t already lifted from the house. So what if the ashes didn’t get buried immediately? He had pressing business to attend to.