There Was an Old Woman

by Hallie Ephron

  She’d read that somewhere. “Stupid design. You’d think gadgets would come with a truly-off switch. Instead they sit around doing nothing but suck energy.”

  “Wouldn’t you think rechargeables would be recyclable?” he said. “They’re not. So we carry regular batteries, the ones without mercury, made in the good old U.S. of A. All they do is leak potassium hydroxide into landfills.” The logo silkscreened on his sweatshirt over his heart, Evie noticed, showed a crab and a fish above wavy water lines. A slogan underneath read: ASK ME ABOUT SOUNDVIEW WATERSHED PRESERVATION.

  “Soundview Watershed Preservation?” she said.

  “Huh?”

  “Your shirt. It says to ask.”

  When he smiled, he was almost handsome. There was a cleft in his chin and at least two days’ worth of stubble on his face. From under the counter he pulled a brochure and offered it to her.

  “Come to a meeting,” he said. “At the community center. Monday night.”

  Evie reached for the brochure. On the front was a color photograph of the marsh. She turned it over. One of the photographs on the back was of a small group of people standing at the water’s edge. They all had binoculars around their necks. There, beside a tripod-mounted spotting scope, was the store clerk, the tallest person in the group.

  “Sure,” Evie said. But she hoped she wouldn’t be here long enough to get involved in some local crusade.

  The man leaned back and folded his arms. She felt her face flush as he took in her zippered fleece vest, Dolce & Gabbana jeans she’d picked up at Century 21, and Frye boots that she’d had for the last ten years, ever since her last semester at NYU.

  “I know you,” he said. “Don’t I?”

  Evie knew that was the oldest line in the book. Still, she squirmed under his gaze. Was there was something familiar about him?

  “I got it,” he said. “You’re one of the Ferrante girls. I remember you from P.S. Sixty-eight. You”—he narrowed his eyes—“don’t you have a sister, too?”

  “Ginger,” she said. Of course he’d remember Ginger. She was the pretty one.

  “Right. You two used to come in here for ice cream and—”

  “Candy.” Evie laughed. She and Ginger had regularly surrendered their allowances and paper-delivery money in exchange for, in Evie’s case, Pop Rocks, SweeTarts, and cherry-flavored Lik-m-aid. Ginger went for the M&Ms and peanut butter cups.

  “Finn Ryan,” he said, offering her his hand.

  She shook it. His fingertips felt calloused. Evie recalled that the curmudgeon who’d presided over the candy and magazines had been named Mr. Ryan. “Didn’t your dad own this store?”

  “He did. Died a few years back and I inherited all this.” He gave a grand gesture and a sardonic smile. “It was perfect timing. I had nothing better to do so I came home.”

  Now she remembered the tall, gawky, older kid she’d sometimes notice sweeping the floor or stocking shelves. More often he’d be sprawled on an old couch in the back of the store, all knees and elbows and sneakers already the size of bread loaves, reading comic books or playing Nintendo to the telltale boop-beep-boop of Super Mario. She wanted to ask where he’d returned home from. What had he been doing with himself since P.S. 68? Why hadn’t he sold the store?

  “You still into video games?” she asked instead.

  “You still living in Brooklyn?”

  Ouch. His look said he’d pegged her as one more privileged, overeducated hipster refugee from Park Slope. If only she could afford an apartment in Park Slope.

  “Don’t worry. I’m not moving in. I’m just here . . .” Her phone vibrated. She slipped it out of her pocket far enough to see who was calling. Seth. She’d call him back later. “I’m just here for a few days to help my mother out.”

  “How’s your mother doing?” Finn asked. She could tell from the uneasiness of his look that he knew about her mother’s problems. Though if he lived here, how could he not?

  “She’s in the hospital.”

  “I’m sorry.” He paused. “You’re staying in the house?”

  “I think so. Though I haven’t been over to see how bad it is.”

  He nodded. Good poker face.

  Evie took the paper off the ice cream bar, wrapped it around the stick, and took a bite. Her favorite flavor, but she could barely taste it. Then she realized she hadn’t paid.

  Her cell phone played a broken chord. Seth had left her a message. She dug around in her backpack and came up with her wallet.

  “My treat,” Finn said. “Consider it a little gift to welcome you home.”

  This wasn’t home, but Evie didn’t say so. She thanked him and headed out the door. Just before it banged shut behind her, she shot a look over her shoulder.

  He was leaning back, his arms folded, watching her and smiling. One of his front teeth was chipped. She absolutely did remember him.

  She was glad she’d worn those jeans.

  It was a few blocks from Sparkles Variety to her mother’s house. Evie was licking the last vanilla ice cream off the stick when the rich, sulfurous odor of low tide enveloped her. Many of the houses near the water had been spiffed up. One had been painted a surprisingly pleasant shade of pink and had barrels of purple and white pansies in front. Another had a brand-new front porch and incongruous double doors with fancy etched glass.

  Her mother’s street, Neck Road, ran parallel to the water. Evie turned onto it, pausing to take in the first slice of water view between close-set houses. A little farther on, she gasped when she saw the house that she no longer thought of as her home.

  Chapter Five

  Her mother’s bungalow had looked run-down, sure, last time Evie was there, four months ago. But nothing like what she saw now. The cream-colored siding was tagged with bright blue graffiti, MKT75 in six-foot letters. Weeds in the front yard and driveway were knee-high. The only actual grass was sprouting from the roof gutter. The little garage, where Evie assumed her mother’s twelve-year-old silver Subaru was parked, listed away from the house.

  The first wooden front step creaked as she stepped on it. The third felt dangerously punky with rot. The screens in the metal storm door were torn. Evie pulled the storm door open, found the right key on her key ring, unlocked the front door, and pushed inside.

  A musty, sharp odor oozed out. Mold. Cigarettes. Sour milk? Eyes tearing, Evie dropped her backpack off the side of the steps and into the weeds. She took a gulp of air and held her breath, then covered her nose and mouth with the bottom of her fleece vest and ventured into the house.

  The narrow entry hall was dark. She found the light switch and flipped it. Nothing. No wonder, she realized as she shaded her eyes from the outside light. No bulb.

  Straight ahead she could make out the stairs up to the second-floor bedroom she and Ginger had shared. A narrow hallway led to a bathroom tucked under the stairs and beyond that, her parents’ bedroom.

  Evie turned instead and entered the kitchen. She threaded her way around piles of newspapers and loaded paper bags and plastic garbage bags. The sink was overflowing with dishes, and the faucet was dripping. Evie reached over and turned it off. Pushed open the red-and-white gingham curtains that were gray and crusty with dust, and opened the windows. On the sill, a row of African violets were brown and withered.

  She looked around in dismay. The little kitchen table where she and Ginger used to do their homework was adrift in papers and mail. The counters were stacked with boxes and cans. Cat food? Her mother didn’t even like cats, and yet there were dozens of empty cans of it.

  A trio of small black moths fluttered in front of her. She clapped her hands and got one of them. At least a dozen more were resting on the ceiling, and when Evie opened the cabinet where her mother had always kept cereal and crackers, more flew out.

  She poked a toe at one of the garbage bags on the floor. Glass clinked, and roaches skittered between the piles across the redbrick vinyl flooring.

  Evie made her way through the rest of the
house, trying not to feel overwhelmed. The living room was full of broken lawn furniture, orphaned lampshades, and ashtrays overflowing with cigarette butts. The brown vinyl-covered sectional sofa was buried under loads of rumpled clothing and bedding and newspapers. More books and magazines and newspapers were piled on the coffee table.

  In the midst of the disarray was a large packing box with the SONY logo. That’s when Evie noticed a fancy new flat-screen TV hung on the wall where there’d always been a string sculpture of an owl mounted on mustard-colored burlap.

  The only part of the living room that felt familiar was the fireplace and the mantel over it. Sitting there were framed photographs: Ginger and Ben at their wedding, Evie’s high school graduation picture, her dad. Evie picked that one up and wiped away a layer of dust. It was one of the few photographs that had survived the fire that nearly destroyed this house when she was six years old.

  For an instant, Evie smelled smoke, even though she knew nothing was burning, and for a moment she saw herself standing across the street with Mom and Ginger, watching flames shoot from the roof of their house, knowing that Blackie and her litter of puppies were trapped in her parents’ bedroom closet.

  She shook off the memory. Until yesterday, her mother had been living in this . . . squalor was the only word for it. She swallowed a lump in her throat. What on earth had happened? Her mother had never been a hoarder. Even at her worst, she’d cared about appearances. She’d always kept a neat house, and never went out without lipstick. Her grammar and table manners were impeccable. Something must have come unscrewed.

  Returning to the kitchen, Evie opened the refrigerator, expecting the worst. But there turned out to be very little inside. On the top shelf sat a baking dish. She lifted the foil. Whatever was in it had shriveled and desiccated. She peered into a pink bakery box and poked at the remains of a mummified cake, its pink-and-white frosting hard to the touch. A half gallon of milk was dated four weeks ago. The veggie bin contained a plastic bag with a slimy head of lettuce in it and a bag of something that looked like prunes and smelled of rotten egg.

  All of it had to go out. Now. Evie undid the twist on a half-full garbage bag already on the floor. A sharp medicinal smell rose from the open bag and she peered inside. Empty liquor bottles. She pulled one out. Vodka. Grey Goose. Her mother had moved up to an expensive brand.

  Evie pushed a pile of papers off the kitchen chair and sat. As far as she knew, her mother’s only sources of income were what she got as the widow of a firefighter—a pension and Social Security. So how could she afford expensive vodka and a brand-new high-def TV?

  But before Evie could follow that thought, she heard a scrabbling overhead. Instinctively she ducked. Then she looked up at the stained, cracked ceiling. Above her was the slope-ceilinged bedroom she and Ginger had shared. As she stared she heard more sounds, like something hard rolling across a wood floor. More scrabbling.

  Vermin—Evie shuddered—had to have gotten in upstairs. What she wanted to do was run out of the house screaming. Instead, she waded through the kitchen, pushed aside the bags stacked in front of the broom closet, and opened the door. Its orderly interior seemed to belong to a different house. Standing on the floor beside a bucket filled with cleaning supplies were a broom and a carpet sweeper. On the shelf over them, clean rags were folded beside a pocketed canvas bag filled with garden tools. In that bag Evie found a pair of leather work gloves.

  Armed with the broom and the gloves, Evie returned to the front hall. She looked up into the dark stairwell. If only she could pawn this problem off on someone else.

  Slowly, she climbed the stairs. In the near pitch-black of the upstairs landing, she stopped and pressed her ear to the closed bedroom door. She could hear movement on the other side. Rustling. A squeak. A rolling marble sound, again followed by the scrabbling. Then a thump.

  Evie stomped hard on the floor. Silence followed. She imagined raccoons or squirrels or, God forbid, skunks on the other side of the door, frozen and waiting for her next move.

  She groped for the doorknob, twisted it, and with a bravado she wasn’t sure she had, threw open the door. It slammed against the inside wall. She caught a flurry of movement in the sunny, slope-ceilinged room. A whirl of gray disappeared through the back window facing the water. Then another.

  Evie stood in the middle of the room, her heart pounding, and took in the damage. All in all, it was not nearly as bad as she’d feared. The seat of the skirted chair at the dressing table was torn open, some of its stuffing mounded like massive dustballs on the floor. There were acorns and sticks on the floor. But the beds she and Ginger slept in, tucked under the eaves, were unmussed, still covered with the familiar pink-and-white chenille bedspreads.

  It took her a moment to realize that the window wasn’t open. It was broken. The bottom pane was completely gone. But there seemed to be no glass on the floor of the room. She looked out through the broken window. Shards of glass glittered just outside on the porch’s sloping roof. Didn’t that mean that the window had been broken from the inside?

  Chapter Six

  Before Evie left the upstairs bedroom, she took down from the wall the framed Georgia O’Keeffe poster—a white camellia blooming out of a field of pale blue and turquoise—that she and Ginger had picked up at an after-Christmas sale at the Met. She found some duct tape in the kitchen and used it to secure the picture over the broken window. At least that would keep squirrels and wet weather out until she could get the window properly replaced.

  Downstairs, she put away the broom and gloves. Her parents’ bedroom and bath were the only rooms left to assess.

  She felt her way through the dark downstairs hallway to the tiny room tucked under the stairs, opened the door, and peered in. The familiar room, barely big enough for her parents’ double bed and two bureaus, smelled like a rank subway tunnel. Wrinkled clothing covered the bed. Evie recognized the pink terry-cloth robe she and Ginger had given their mother for a Mother’s Day years ago. More ashtrays on the bureaus overflowed with cigarette butts. Evie raised the window shades and tried to open the windows, but they wouldn’t budge.

  Her mother’s bottle of Jean Naté sat on the bureau, as always. Evie unscrewed the top and poured a little into her hands. The scent reminded her of fresh laundry and lemon meringue pie. It was what her mother smelled like after a shower. And sometimes, her father had smelled of it, too.

  Evie closed the bottle and put it back.

  When she shifted the clothing on the bed, she realized that the bedding beneath was damp and smelled sour. She stripped the sheets. The mattress was wet, too.

  Working quickly and trying not to gag, she balled the sheets up with the dirty clothes, hauled the bundle out through the front door, and dumped it by the side of the house. As she stood there, hands on her hips, taking great gulps of fresh air and girding herself for hauling out the mattress, a red sports car rolled up and pulled into the driveway across the street. That house was spruced up and freshly painted in shades of tan, maroon, and a deep green, the bushes in front sculpted into perfect spheres—all that tidiness a tacit rebuke to her mother’s house. A man Evie didn’t recognize got out and looked across the street. He gave her a puzzled look and raised his hand.

  Evie turned away and went inside. She didn’t know him and had no desire to explain the mess her mother had made. By the time she’d wrestled the mattress off her mother’s bed, set it on end, and shoved it out the front door, the man had disappeared. She pushed, pulled, and dragged the mattress up the side of the house where she propped it under the bathroom window, leaning the nasty side, soiled and pitted with cigarette burns, against the house.

  That’s when she heard a steady drip, drip, drip coming from beneath the house. Under the bathroom. She stooped and looked through a hole in the wood lattice paneling that covered the gap between the house and ground. She couldn’t see anything, but she could certainly smell it. Raw sewage.

  Frustration welled up inside her. What next? Evie
reached out and yanked on a nearby oak sapling that had already grown a foot tall. But it was too deeply rooted to budge, and all Evie had to show for her effort were fingers scraped raw. The rot in the house was deep rooted, too, nurtured by decades of unhappiness, fertilized with denial.

  Evie heard a tentative throat clearing. She pivoted away from the house and the sapling, a little embarrassed to have been caught taking her frustrations out on a weed. Standing on neatly mowed grass beyond her mother’s scraggly yard was a diminutive elderly woman, leaning on a cane. She had on a pink cardigan and a collared blouse with a double strand of fat white pearls around her neck.

  Evie brushed away tears she hadn’t even realized she’d shed. “Mrs. Yetner?” Amazing. The old woman was not only still alive but remarkably little changed aside from the cane and the back that was stooped rather than ramrod straight. Evie and Ginger had considered Mrs. Yetner ancient even when they were growing up.

  “Ginger?” the woman said. She pulled a tissue from the wrist of her sweater sleeve and dabbed at her nose as she pinned Evie under her sharp, speculative gaze, magnified through thick glasses. “No, of course not. You’re the other one, aren’t you?”

  Chapter Seven

  “Right, I’m the other one.” The girl stood and collected herself.

  She seemed to Mina to be so . . . vexed wasn’t quite the right word. More like at wit’s end. Well, who wouldn’t be, given the ungodly mess her mother’s house had turned into? And so fast.

  When Mina first spotted the girl—or woman, as they liked to be called these days, though the reasoning escaped her—maneuvering a mattress up against the side of Sandra Ferrante’s house, she assumed it had to be Ginger. But the minute the girl looked up, Mina realized this was the younger sister. The taller, ganglier one. Not the one who sold Girl Scout cookies but the one who kicked around a soccer ball and skinned her knees.