There Was an Old Woman

by Hallie Ephron

  “I didn’t notice,” Evie said. She had noticed, though, Finn’s casual drop of the “ex-girlfriend.”

  “Ha, ha. Like hell you didn’t. I thought maybe that’s why you were so . . . quiet when you came in again.”

  Arrogant and judgmental sure, but also perceptive. “No. Sorry. It had nothing to do with you.” She straightened her father’s picture under the refrigerator magnet. “So, tell me about Soundview Lagoons.”

  “You really want to hear? Or are you changing the subject?”

  “Yes.”

  He laughed. “Soundview Lagoons. Well, they are pretty amazing. At low tide, they’re transformed into seven acres of mudflat, home to great blue herons, great egrets, blue and fiddler crabs, eastern mud snails, blue-finger mud and hermit crabs, and the ribbed mussel. And it’s no joke what’s happening around here. Most people could give a rat’s ass whether the eel grass comes back. They couldn’t care less about what happens to salt-marsh sharp-tailed sparrows and clapper rails.”

  “I confess, I don’t know a sparrow from a clapper rail.”

  “A clapper rail is the size of a chicken. Long orange bill. Whitish rump. It’s all about whether you decide you’re going to pay attention.”

  Evie did a double take. That was something she’d often said herself, that preserving history was about deciding to pay attention.

  “I’ve seen old postcards of Higgs Point,” she said. “There was a ferry landing, beaches, a casino, all of them long gone. Wasn’t there an amusement park, too?”

  “Snakapins Park. My family owned it.”

  “Snakapins?”

  “It’s an Algonquin word. Means ‘land between two waters.’ ”

  Evie smiled. Leave it to the Algonquin—or the Siwanoy if she remembered her history of the boroughs correctly—to come up with such an evocative name for the place that white men named the far more pedestrian Higgs Point. “And your . . . grandfather borrowed the word for his amusement park?”

  “Great-grandfather. His parents used to come over from Queens and camp out by the water. Hard to believe, looking at it now. Anyway, he loved it so much that he bought up what was mostly farmland and swamp. Built the amusement park. The store used to be one of the main buildings. You wouldn’t believe the old crap that’s still in the basement.”

  Evie’s heart skipped a beat. “Old crap?”

  He grinned. “You like old crap?”

  “Of course. It’s what I do. I’m a curator at the Five-Boroughs Historical Society.”

  “Really?” He tilted his head and narrowed his eyes at her. “I didn’t know that.”

  Evie felt herself flush. “You never asked.”

  “My ex-girlfriend accused me of that, too. I’m sorry.”

  “Apology accepted. So tell me about what’s in the basement of the store?”

  “All kinds of stuff. It’s been moldering down there since the place closed down in the twenties. There’s even parts from some of the old rides. Junk, really.”

  Junk? That depended entirely on who was looking at it. Evie opened her mouth to explain about her job, and that preserving pieces from the past was something she cared passionately about. But instead, all that came out was a huge yawn.

  Finn laughed, reached out for her hand, and pulled her to her feet. He was so close she could smell beer and sawdust and maybe a whiff of turpentine. He put his hands around her waist.

  Too fast. The thought was like an alarm going off in her head. But before she could react, he’d released her.

  “You need sleep,” he said. He walked his empty beer bottle to the kitchen sink, reached across, and tugged the curtains closed.

  Evie followed, unsteady on her feet. Even a single beer made her tipsy?

  “Thanks. For everything,” she said.

  “No big deal. I won’t forget about the front steps and the leak. Anything else you need?”

  “Actually, there is something. That old gas pump outside the store? It doesn’t still pump gas by any chance?”

  “The EPA would have my head on a platter if it did. Do you need gas?”

  “My mother’s car won’t start, and I’m hoping it’s only out of gas.”

  “I’ve got a can of gas in the back of my truck. Enough to get you to a service station, anyway. I’ll bring it over tomorrow. Around ten? After our morning rush.”

  “That’s perfect. Thanks. I’ll be here.”

  “It’s okay if you’re not. I’ve got a key to the garage.” Evie’s surprise must have shown on her face because he added, “Your mother has us leave deliveries there.”

  “Really?” She wondered if her mother’s deliveries had included cases of cigarette cartons. She could understand her mother not wanting them deposited at her front door.

  “Well,” he said, taking a step closer. She could feel his body heat. “Guess I better go.”

  “Thanks for the beer.”

  “Thanks for the company.” He put his finger under her chin and raised her face to his. Her heart felt like it was pounding a mile a minute, but before she could decide whether she wanted to kiss him or not, he kissed her on the nose and headed for the door.

  “Don’t forget to lock up,” he shot over his shoulder. “Sleep tight. See you in the morning.”

  The instant he was gone, she realized that she did want to kiss him. Wanted to be kissed. But she was also desperately tired and glad he’d known not to press his advantage.

  Evie cleared a space in the living room for a twin mattress she dragged down from the upstairs bedroom. The sheets already on it were clean, despite the squirrels. She’d meant to call Ginger and tell her about the envelopes of cash, but it was much too late. Tomorrow. First thing.

  She got the money out of the refrigerator and slid it under the mattress, then changed into an oversize T-shirt, brushed her teeth, and got into bed. Before she closed her eyes she took a minute to contemplate the mess that still surrounded her. Why had her mother even bothered to drag in broken aluminum lawn chairs? Had it been drunken inspiration? And had she done that before or after she got the flat-screen TV?

  Evie rubbed her nose. She could still feel Finn’s lips. Five minutes later, she was sound asleep.

  Chapter Nineteen

  The sound track of Mina’s dreams that night was the roar of heavy equipment. She saw herself standing helplessly across the street as a wrecking ball slammed, over and over, into the front of her house. She could hear poor Ivory meowing and see a skeletal Angela Quintanilla rapping at the front window, both of them trapped inside.

  She woke up, drenched in sweat, to find that Ivory really was mewing and rattling the closed bedroom door. This was Ivory’s morning routine, sticking her paw under the door and trying to pull it open. Mina had done everything she could think of to discourage her. Quiet would reign again only after the cat had been fed.

  Mina tried to sit up, but she felt like a cement block was resting on her chest. Her heart pounded, and the acrid smell of diesel filled her head. What finally got her up was the cat. Not mews but silence. Like a quiet toddler, that was never a good sign.

  Sure enough, when she got out to the kitchen, Ivory was perched on the counter, licking a puddle of liquid that had dripped off the package of chicken parts that Mina had left to thaw on the shelf and forgotten all about. Before Mina could stop her, Ivory sat back on her haunches, tail twitching, and leaped for the shelf, catching the edge of the plate, which came down with a crash.

  “Bad cat!” Mina scooped Ivory off the counter and dropped her with a thud on the floor. Ivory gave her a sour look and a reproachful meow.

  Mina had put the chicken into the refrigerator and was sweeping up the broken plate when she noticed it was nearly eight o’clock. She hadn’t slept that late in years. No wonder the cat had been frantic with hunger. As if sensing her advantage, Ivory started to complain again.

  “All right, all right already,” Mina said. She opened a can of Fancy Feast tuna and mackerel, even though she hated the smell. That wa
s Ivory’s favorite.

  Mina’s breakfast would be her usual instant oatmeal with raisins and a splash of maple syrup and skim milk. She turned on the kettle to start the water, still puzzling over what could have happened to those papers she knew she’d hidden under the seat cushion of the couch. Well, they didn’t just sprout legs and walk. That’s what her mother would have said.

  That girl, Evie, could have taken them. But why would she? More likely it was Brian, thinking he’d be so very clever. He could easily have tucked those papers under his jacket. Which would mean that he was onto her little charade. Perhaps it was just as well. No would still have been her answer even after slogging through that document and looking up every unfamiliar term.

  She opened a kitchen cabinet, reaching for where she always kept the oatmeal. Only it wasn’t there. She stared at the empty spot. She’d made oatmeal yesterday morning, and the box still had four or five packets left in it. Had Brian walked off with that, too?

  Mina hauled over her step stool and got up on the second step for a better look. There was Raisin Bran cereal that probably needed to be thrown out. Gingersnaps. Minute Rice. Egg noodles. Crackers dotted with sesame seeds instead of the salt that she’d have much preferred but that the doctor told her to avoid. Though why, at this point in her life, did it really matter what she ate?

  She pulled everything down, setting the packages on the counter, until the cabinet was completely empty. No oatmeal.

  Sighing, she poured some Raisin Bran into a bowl and opened the refrigerator. There, right next to her half gallon of skim milk and the thawed chicken parts she’d just put away, sat the oatmeal.

  That didn’t bother her so much. Many’s the time she’d put ice cream away in the refrigerator, only to find it melted to soup the next morning. What shook her to her core was that, sitting on the refrigerator shelf on the other side of the skim milk, was her pocketbook.

  She reached in and touched the hard, cold vinyl, just to convince herself that it was really there. Then she took her purse from the refrigerator and looked around, as if someone might be in the kitchen watching her.

  What could she have been thinking? Clearly, she hadn’t been thinking at all. If Brian could have seen her now, he’d have had a field day.

  She was about to remove the oatmeal, too, when an infernal screeching sound startled her. Instinctively, her hands flew up to cover her ears.

  Of course she knew that sound. Her smoke alarm. She spun around to see plumes of smoke billowing from her teakettle. She grabbed for a dish towel, reached for the kettle, and flung it into the sink. Then she turned on the water, full blast.

  She jumped back as steam hissed and spat. The air was thick with scorched-metal smell, and the alarm seemed to blare even louder.

  Mina turned the water off, switched on the fan over the stove, opened the kitchen windows, and stood there, holding on to the counter, her heart pounding so hard it threatened to burst from her chest. As she gulped in fresh air, the speckled gray and white of the Formica countertop seemed to swirl before her eyes.

  She peered into the sink. The kettle lay there on its side, a black char covering the bottom and running halfway up the sides. A scorched hole was burned into the dishcloth. For some reason, the whistle—that infernal whistle that had been her reason for buying that particular teapot in the first place—had not gone off. Or if it had, she hadn’t heard it, and how could she have missed that?

  Or . . . She poked at the kettle, turning it over. The whistle, that little gizmo that reminded her of miniature organ pipes on the end of the spout, was gone. She didn’t even know that it came off, and yet somehow it had.

  Finally, the smoke alarm stopped. Mina sat down. An incinerated teakettle she could rationalize. It could happen to anyone, and after all, she’d been distracted. But coming right on top of leaving her handbag . . . in the refrigerator? That went beyond misplacing and uncomfortably a few steps beyond what her doctor referred to, in that patronizing tone that fortysomething doctors used to address their elderly patients, as “benign senescent forgetfulness.” There was nothing benign about senescence.

  Mina stood, straightening her bathrobe and tucking her hair behind her ears. She’d be damned if she’d let herself be swallowed up by self-pity. All she had to do was put things back in order. She took a deep breath. And then keep them that way.

  She placed a quilted placemat on her kitchen counter and set her purse on it. From now on, she promised herself, that was where she’d leave it. Then she lined up everything she’d taken down from the cabinet, sorting the packages—cereal, cookies, crackers, grains, and beans—and checking the expiration dates before placing them back in the cupboard.

  While she was at it, she reorganized her canned goods in the adjacent cabinet, wiping tops that had become dusty and tossing anything past its use-by date. Then she double-checked the shelves in the refrigerator to be sure that everything that was there belonged.

  Later, after eating the stale bran cereal, she boiled herself a cup of water in the microwave, dropped in a tea bag, and carried the cup and the morning paper out onto the back porch. There, she settled into the glider and opened to the obituaries, determined to start the day afresh.

  Chapter Twenty

  Cocooned in blankets on the mattress she’d dragged down from upstairs, Evie woke up thinking: jelly doughnut, jelly doughnut, jelly doughnut. She’d completely forgotten about those doughnuts, and how her dad used to make what he called his “doughnut run” on Sunday mornings. Coated with velvety powdered sugar, the light cakey doughnut left not a trace of the usual greasy film that said “store-bought.” Sparkles’ doughnuts had been literally jam-packed, front to back, so every bite risked spurting some of the filling out the other end—filling that was in a league of its own, too, thick and tangy and intensely raspberry. Not that pallid, sugary-sweet, gelatinous stuff that doughnuts were filled with these days.

  Could the doughnuts Finn said they still sold be anywhere near as good as the ones she remembered? It was worth a trip to find out.

  Evie rolled off the mattress onto the living room floor. She ached from all the lifting and bending she’d done the day before. Still wrapped in a quilt, she made her way to the bathroom. After washing her hands, she opened the medicine cabinet looking for toothpaste. No toothpaste, but the medicine cabinet was stocked: Nyquil, Excedrin, a few bottles of bright red nail polish and nail polish remover. Plus numerous bottles of various shapes and sizes, all with pale-green NaturaPharm labels. Vitamin A. Thiamin B1. Riboflavin B2. Niacin B3. Vitamin C. Calcium. And more. It was an impressive collection.

  Evie found a tube of Crest in the drawer. As she brushed her teeth, she wondered when her mother had started taking vitamins. Even more surprisingly, given the complete disarray of the rest of the house, she’d kept them lined them up in her medicine cabinet in alphabetical order.

  Evie didn’t bother changing out of the plaid flannel pajama bottoms and NYU sweatshirt she’d slept in, though she did take a moment to brush her hair into a ponytail and wash her face, checking that she didn’t have flecks of sleep still in her eyes. She was about to leave when she paused. If Finn saw her sorting the mail in the house, anyone could have. She went back inside, took the envelopes of cash from under the mattress, stuffed them into her purse, and took her purse with her.

  As she locked the front door, she remembered how her parents and all their neighbors used to leave their doors unlocked. It didn’t really surprise her that her mother had given a garage key to Finn. That way, she wouldn’t need to worry about being there when the deliveries arrived; more to the point, she wouldn’t have had to worry about being sober or even awake.

  Evie was out on the sidewalk before she realized that the steps hadn’t creaked. She went back to inspect them. New planks were already in place. Finn must have come over at the crack of dawn to do the work.

  Evie started for Sparkles at a brisk clip. The morning was chilly, but with each stride away from the water the air gr
ew warmer, and she slowed her pace. She checked her phone on the off chance that she’d missed any calls. Nothing from the hospital. Nothing from Seth. She was as relieved by the latter as by the former.

  She’d been surprised that Finn had known instantly where her father’s fire station, Rescue 3, was located. She hoped he wasn’t one of those fire freaks—sparkies, her dad used to call them—men who chased the apparatus and were so obsessed with the spectacle that they didn’t have the good sense to get out of the way. When Evie’s parents’ house had burned, a group of them had come to watch, eager to add the Ferrantes’ address to the list of fires they’d witnessed firsthand. Meanwhile their mother tried to comfort Evie and Ginger, who were crying hysterically, knowing the dogs were still in the house.

  That day, news vans and police vehicles had parked at Sparkles. Now the half-dozen parking spaces outside the store were filled. She went inside, taking a deep inhale of rich coffee aroma. Two checkout lines were operating to handle the morning crush. She got in Finn’s line. She caught his eye and mouthed Thank you! He flashed her a thumbs-up.

  As Evie waited her turn at the register, from outside she heard the polite toot-toot of a car horn. Through the plate-glass window she caught a glimpse of the outside parking area. A dark Mercedes was pulling out. A moment later, a Land Rover pulled in.

  Land Rover? Mercedes? That made her take a second look at the other people in line. They were more racially mixed, and some were speaking Spanish, but otherwise they were not all that different from the clientele who lined up at Dunkin’ Donuts in her quickly gentrifying Brooklyn neighborhood.

  Finally she was at the front of the line. But by then only a few plain cake, chocolate iced, and glazed doughnuts remained in the glass case. No jelly. It was ridiculous how disappointed she felt.