Dying to Decorate

by Cyndy Salzmann

  “I agree. Grab the food.” Kelly heads for the door.

  “I’ve got the tea.” I suspect we’ll need all the carbs we can get in the next couple of hours.

  AUNT BETTE’S CREAM BISCUITS

  2 cups all-purpose flour

  1 tablespoon baking powder

  3 tablespoons sugar

  1/2 teaspoon salt

  1 1/4 cups heavy cream

  Instructions

  1. Sift flour, baking powder, sugar, and salt together in a bowl.

  2. Add cream and stir gently just until a dough forms.

  3. Gather dough into a ball and knead gently a few times on a lightly floured surface. Gently roll out 1/2 inch thick.

  4. Cut dough with biscuit cutter or into squares. Brush tops with cream.

  5. Bake on an ungreased baking sheet at 425 degrees for 15 minutes, or until light golden brown.

  6. Cool on a rack for about 5 minutes.

  CHERRY PRESERVES

  2 lb. sour cherries (weight after pits removed)

  1 1/2 lb. sugar

  Instructions

  1. Add sugar to pitted cherries.

  2. Bring mixture to a rolling boil over medium-high heat.

  3. Cook until fruit mixture is clear, skimming, if necessary.

  4. Pour immediately into clean hot jars and seal according to manufacturer’s instructions.

  When we arrive at Lucy’s, I’m the first one out of the car. As I climb the porch steps and peer into her large front-room window, I’m appalled at what I see.

  Lucy is curled under a blanket on the sofa, flipping through the TV channels. A small platoon of dirty glasses sits in formation on the table behind her. Paper plates, tissues, and newspapers litter the coffee table in front.

  Lucy’s normally pale skin appears almost translucent—a stark contrast to the dark under-eye circles. Although it’s 4:00 in the afternoon, she is wearing a loose flannel nightgown and mismatched socks. I am more than a little shocked to see her normally tidy, blond pageboy pulled back with what looks like an uncoated red rubber band that bears a strong resemblance to the type my son Josh uses to bundle the newspapers before his route.

  When I ring the doorbell, Lucy turns away. Apparently she intends to ignore the noise—that is, until she hears Marina’s unmistakable voice.

  “Police! Open up! We know you’re in there, Lucy!”

  I silently pray that Lucy answers the door before the neighbors emerge from their homes to see what’s going on. I breathe a sigh of relief as I notice a small smile tease at the corner of her mouth. She pulls herself off the sofa, wrapping the blanket around her thin body, and opens the door.

  “Thank you very much, Marina,” says Lucy with what I hope is mock irritation. “You’ve given the busybodies on the block something to talk about for the next few months.”

  “No problem. This neighborhood needs a little excitement,” Marina retorts. She pushes the door open wider and bulldozes her way into the house.

  An apologetic-looking Mary Alice, carrying her tray of appetizers, follows Marina. “It was her idea,” she whispers to Lucy, then scurries after our brazen friend.

  Kelly steps through the door into the foyer. “Lucy, we thought it was time for an intervention.”

  “And we miss you,” adds Jess, gathering Lucy close in a hug.

  “Ladies, I hate to interrupt this love fest, but this pitcher of tea is sweating all over my new shoes,” I complain, scooting past the group to the kitchen.

  As I look around, I see that Lucy’s normally well-kept home has the dusty film of neglect. Mail is stacked in several piles that are toppling over on the kitchen counter. Car keys lie on the floor of the adjoining mud room next to a jacket and a pair of shoes. The sliding trash bin under the sink is partly open, and it’s overflowing with empty yogurt cartons and soup cans.

  Good thing she doesn’t have a dog.

  Mary Alice carries an armload of paper plates and assorted trash from the family room into the kitchen.

  “There’s no room.” I point to the trash. “I’ll take it to the garage.”

  “No, I’ll do it.” Stepping closer, she whispers, “Liz, I can’t believe this place. Now I’m really worried. This isn’t Lucy. I feel terrible about not checking on her sooner.”

  “The last thing Lucy needs is you overflowing with guilt,” Kelly warns, joining us in the kitchen. “That’ll make her feel worse. We’re here now, and this time we’re not leaving until she changes out of that ratty nightgown and turns off the television.”

  I wipe the pitcher of tea with a dishtowel and carry it and a stack of paper cups to the den. Apparently too edgy to sit down, Mary Alice begins to fold blankets and plump cushions. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Kelly raise her eyebrows in a “Stop it!” look directed at Mary Alice.

  “I hope it’s OK to use these,” I say, holding up the cups. “I couldn’t find any glasses in the cupboard.”

  “Oh, I know the place is a mess.” Lucy is once again huddled under a blanket on the sofa. With her long legs folded to her chest, she looks like a shrunken version of her former self.

  At five-foot-nine, Lucy is one of those girls you pitied in seventh grade because she was taller than most of the boys. Then, in high school, your pity turned to envy when the captain of the basketball team asked her to the prom.

  A picture of a gray-templed Judd, her basketball-star husband, sits on the bookshelf among several framed photographs chronicling their life together. Judd, the senior vice president of a large communications firm, had died just over a year and a half ago in the fiery crash of the small charter plane he was piloting.

  After the plane crash, Lucy had been a pillar of grace and strength. She had guided their only child, Allison, through the last few months of her senior year in high school, convincing her that her daddy would have wanted her to enjoy this special time of her life.

  When Alli had left for college, Lucy had assumed around-the-clock care for her mother, whose cancer had spread to the brain. Again Lucy’s strength seemed to flow from what appeared to be a never-ending fount.

  Her church group had seemed to understand when she quit the weekly Bible study she had attended for several years. “After all, she has so much on her plate,” one of the members told me when we ran into each other at the grocery store. She’d added that Lucy’s strength was a powerful testimony to the others in the group.

  But when Lucy had buried her mother last spring, she told us she felt like a light inside her had been extinguished. She had no desire to get out of bed in the morning, much less venture out the door. We reminded her that she’d been through an enormous amount of trauma. It would take time to grieve—and even longer to heal. As a licensed family therapist, Kelly had explained the grief process, assured Lucy that her feelings were normal, and encouraged her to resume a normal schedule as soon as possible.

  Instead, without telling anyone, Lucy had decided to turn her leave of absence from volunteer work with at-risk teens at the Hope Center into a resignation. Through mutual friends, we found out that she seldom accepted invitations to lunch or other events. She had quit answering e-mail and apparently was screening her phone calls. I also heard that Lucy still hadn’t returned to her Bible study group.

  I suspected that most of the people in Lucy’s circle were afraid to approach her, especially regarding her apparently self-imposed seclusion. With so much tragedy, it’s difficult to know what to say. Often friends find it easier to accept unanswered messages as a signal that a person needs time alone.

  This wasn’t the case with FAC. We knew Lucy. And the woman huddled on the sofa needed a loving—but serious—shove.

  “All right ladies, let’s quit dancing around the issue,” begins Marina, turning to face Lucy on the sofa. “Luce, you look terrible. This place is a mess. And I’m ready to start flaming you if I don’t get a response to my e-mail. If you think we are gonna let you sit here the rest of your life watching the Lifetime channel, you’ve got another
think coming.”

  “Besides, Lucy, we miss you,” says Mary Alice. “I know I do.”

  “A lot of people miss you,” adds Kelly. “The girls at the Hope Center ask me all the time when that tall, skinny lady who coached their volleyball team is coming back. And, to be honest, it’s beginning to grate on me. I may be short, but I have a killer serve.”

  Lucy rubs her temples. “I’m sorry, Kelly. I miss the girls at the Hope Center too.”

  “Then what are you doing here in your jammies clutching the remote?” Marina asks.

  A flash of anger lights up Lucy’s cool, blue eyes. “I want you to know—all of you—that I haven’t been just sitting here watching television. I’ve been very busy. Have any of you ever closed an estate?”

  “No, but—,” Kelly begins.

  Lucy interrupts. “Remember, I’m an only child, so everything’s left to me. There are a lot of decisions to make . . . a lot of loose ends . . .” Tears begin to slip down her cheeks.

  That did it. The five of us rush over, pulling her into a group hug and scattering Mary Alice’s appetizer tray all over the antique oriental carpet that covers Lucy’s polished wood floors.

  “Oh!” we cry in unison, jumping back to avoid the mess.

  “Lucy, I’m so sorry. Look at your carpet.” Mary Alice tries to trap a cherry tomato with her toe before it rolls under the sofa.

  “Forget about it,” says Lucy. “I need a hug much more than a clean carpet.”

  Trying not to squash the cheese cubes into the rug, we tumble into a group embrace, grateful we are at Lucy’s house, where no family members are present to witness our emotional display.

  I’ve seen this kind of female “pack” behavior actually cause my husband to break out in a cold sweat. He shifts from foot to foot, rubbing his hands on the front of his jeans, not sure whether to intervene or sneak out the back door. The kids react differently—crowding together in a little gaggle. They roll their eyes but secretly file the information away to bring up at an opportune time.

  After making our way through a box of tissues and sweeping up the remains of the doomed appetizer tray, we settle in Lucy’s comfortable family room with a glass of raspberry tea, courtesy of the ever-vigilant Mary Alice. Jess sits on the sofa near Lucy, resting an arm protectively around her shoulders. Kelly and Marina position themselves in chairs on either side, like eager Jeopardy contestants poised for the next question.

  I’m grateful that, for once, Mary Alice seems content to sit relatively still on the edge of the hearth instead of darting around the room picking up dishes or looking for something to fluff. I sink back into the soft leather of what Lucy still refers to as “Judd’s chair,” feeling overwhelmed by the enormity of her situation and without a clue of what to say or do to help. I needn’t have worried.

  Kelly takes charge. “Let’s start by making a list of all the decisions you have to make. The process is less overwhelming when you put it on paper.”

  “I love lists!” Mary Alice fishes out the pen and notebook she keeps in her purse.

  Marina rolls her eyes my way with a look that clearly communicates, You’d better control her, or I’m gonna pull out my handcuffs.

  “I really don’t feel like going into it right now,” protests Lucy. “I’m so tired today. Maybe after the weekend.”

  “Low energy,” says Marina. “A definite sign of carbohydrate deficiency. I always keep a few candy bars in the glove compartment for emergencies. I’ll run out and grab a few.”

  “No, please don’t bother, Marina,” Lucy begins. “I’m really not hungry, and my stomach has been bothering me.”

  “This has nothing to do with hunger,” counters Marina. “Chocolate is medicinal—almost a miracle food. Haven’t you heard the reports about all the nutrients in the cocoa bean? Chocolate’s good for everything from mood swings to heart disease.”

  “Is that true, Jess?” It’s clear Mary Alice doubts the veracity of Marina’s research on the subject.

  “I did read something on the Web about the benefits of dark chocolate,” replies Jess. “I just can’t remember the details.”

  “How come I haven’t heard about this?” I pipe up, secretly wondering if my children purposely hid this information from me so they could keep all the holiday candy to themselves.

  “Let’s stick to the subject, shall we, ladies?” Kelly holds up her hands in an apparent effort to head off what could likely turn into a spirited discussion on the antioxidant properties of the cocoa bean. “I promise we can break out the chocolate later.”

  “I’ve heard that before,” I mutter under my breath.

  “Focus, ladies,” scolds Kelly. “Now, Lucy, what are the most pressing decisions you have to make?”

  “Where do you want me to start? Real estate? Investments? Retirement? Insurance? I can go on and on. That’s the problem . . . there’s just so much. And there’s only me. I don’t know anything about these areas. Judd used to . . . What if I make a mistake?”

  Jess sighs. “Oh, Lucy. It breaks my heart that you have to go through this . . . but that’s the reality of the situation.”

  “She’s right, Luce,” says Marina. “You can’t just shut out the world. You have to take charge.”

  “But I don’t even know where to begin.”

  “Since you mentioned it first, let’s start with real estate.” Kelly makes a note on the pad Mary Alice had set neatly in front of her. “What do you own?”

  “Well, of course, this house. Then there’s Mother’s home, Dad’s old fishing cabin. And to complicate things further, a letter arrived the other day from my mother’s aunt, telling me she’s decided to move into a retirement community.”

  “What does that have to do with you?” asks Marina. “Do you need to help her move? If so, I can round up some guys from the station.”

  “Oh, Rina, I hadn’t even thought about that! I suppose she will need some help. Aunt Bette must be over ninety years old by now—but you’d never guess it. She has always been so independent.”

  “My grandmother was the same way.” Jess laughs. “The only way we could convince her to give up the car keys was by promising to buy her a golf cart. She zips all over town with that thing . . . and it drives my mom crazy.”

  “You’re kidding!” I say. “She drives a golf cart?”

  “That’s right. I’ve told Mom to quit worrying about her, Gram can’t do too much damage when the golf cart won’t top 20 mph.”

  “My grandmother never learned to drive,” Mary Alice adds, “and neither did my mom. She seemed content letting Daddy take her where she needed to go.”

  “The good old days . . . before the curse of carpool and soccer practice,” I muse.

  “Once again, ladies, we’re getting off the topic,” Kelly reminds us. “So, Lucy, what does your aunt’s moving into a retirement home have to do with settling your mom’s estate?”

  “In her letter, Aunt Bette told me that the house she lived in all these years actually belonged to Mother. So now that Mother’s gone, it has passed to me. All this time I had no idea she owned the house.”

  “She never brought it up?” I ask.

  “Not that I recall. Mother rarely spoke about her side of the family. I do remember visiting Aunt Bette’s house as a child. She would set a beautiful table with a steaming pot of tea, fresh cream biscuits, and homemade cherry preserves from her tree in the backyard. It was a real tea party.”

  “That’s so sweet,” says Jess.

  “This talk about biscuits is making me hungry.” Marina rubs her stomach. “What’s the difference between cream biscuits and the kind in the can?”

  “Don’t worry about it.” I elbow Marina playfully. “You’ll never try the recipe. You’d have to buy a rolling pin.”

  “Hey, ‘Martha,’ I can always use my nightstick.”

  “Shh!” admonishes Kelly, in another attempt to get us back on track. “Is the house here in Omaha, Lucy?”

  “No, it’s just ou
tside some little town in southeast Nebraska. Tredway, I think it’s called.”

  Kelly raises an eyebrow. “I’ve never heard of it.”

  “Me neither,” says Marina. “Are you sure that’s the name? I used to patrol Hall County when I was a state trooper. I don’t remember a Tredway.”

  “It’s about sixty miles south of here. Near the Missouri border in Cramer County.”

  “Oh, that Tredway!” Memories of my college days as a cub reporter flood back. “I did an internship at the newspaper in Orrick, just west of the town on Highway 9. Tredway is the county seat, isn’t it?”

  “I’m sorry, Liz. I haven’t the slightest idea. As I said, I only visited a few times as a child.”

  “From what I remember, there are some neat old houses in the area.”

  “I’m sure we’re talking about the same place. I remember Aunt Bette saying she and my grandfather were born in the house. That means it has to be at least a hundred years old.”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s a lot older. Much of the area was settled before the Civil War.”

  “I didn’t know you were such a history buff, Liz,” says Jess.

  “The more accurate term would be gofer. I spent most of my internship at the library doing research for the ‘real’ reporters—all three of them. Cramer County was celebrating its 125th birthday at the time, and the paper did a series of stories to commemorate.”

  “I love small towns,” comments Mary Alice. “Especially the ones that still have those neat town squares with a café and little shops. I think I could retire in a small town.”

  “Not me. I’m a city girl,” says Marina. “I’d be lost without the mall and a ready source of lattes.”

  “Shallow!” I tease.

  Kelly clears her throat. “So, Lucy, would you like to keep this property or sell it?”

  “Truthfully, Kelly, I’d like it to just disappear. I don’t have the energy to deal with it.”

  “You know that’s not an option, Lucy. But you can hire a real-estate broker to get it ready for market and handle the sale.”

  Lucy’s brow wrinkles in thought. “On the other hand, I’d hate to see the property be sold to some stranger. There’s a lot of family history there.”