There Was an Old Woman

by Hallie Ephron

  She dropped the quilt and hurried back into the living room. She got down on her hands and knees and looked under the couch. Ivory was there, a shadowy lump glowering back at her.

  “Hey, Ivory. It’s okay. You can come out now.” Evie made kissing sounds. “Come on. Come on out.” She reached under the couch, but the cat backed farther into the saggy underbelly of the sofa. Evie’s hand brushed against a piece of metal on the floor and she pulled it out instead of the cat. A small piece of shiny brass that fit in the palm of her hand. She turned it over, recognizing the fused tubes—it was the little whistle attachment that had been on Mrs. Yetner’s teakettle.

  From under the sofa came the sound of rustling paper. Evie lay down on the floor and raised the sofa’s skirt to let in more light. It looked as if Ivory was backed up on top of some papers. Evie reached in, grabbed a corner of a page, and tugged it out.

  She sat, legs crossed, to see what she’d found. It was a sheet from some kind of legal document. The header on the page read “Life Estate Deed.” There was a line for signature by a “Grantor,” and below that, a block of text that began:

  Grantor makes no warranty, express or implied, concerning the property’s condition, need of repair, existence or absence of any defects, visible, hidden, latent, or otherwise.

  As Evie went on reading, Ivory crept out from under the sofa. She stretched, yawned nonchalantly, rubbed her forehead against Evie’s knee, and curled up on the discarded quilt.

  Evie had to move the sofa away from the wall to reach the rest of the papers, including a cover letter to Wilhelmina Yetner. These looked like the papers Evie had seen Mrs. Yetner shove under a sofa cushion when Brian had come to visit the last time—probably the legal document that he’d been pestering her about. A few words popped out at her. Life tenant. Remainderman.

  As she was getting up from the floor, a small slip of blue paper fluttered from between the pages. She picked it up. What caught her immediate attention were the words, written in the same handwriting as on the calendar:

  Tell Ginger. Don’t let him in until I’m gone.

  Chapter Forty-four

  “That’s the message?” Ginger said when Evie had gotten her on the phone the next morning and read her what Mrs. Yetner had written down. “What’s it mean?”

  “Beats me. Too bad we can’t ask her,” Evie said, staring at the words written on the scrap of paper.

  “You’re sure that’s all?”

  “I’m looking at it right now. It was under the couch. I never would have found it except that Mrs. Yetner’s nephew let himself in last night to get the cat. Ivory hid under the couch and put up such a fuss that it woke me up.”

  “He didn’t know you were there?”

  “Apparently not.”

  “How creepy is that?”

  “Scared me half to death until I realized who it was. If I’d gotten up in the morning and found the cat missing, I’d have been beside myself.”

  “Read it to me one more time, would you?”

  “ ‘Tell Ginger. Don’t let him in until I’m gone.’ ”

  “Right.”

  Right. What Evie couldn’t help wondering was whether she’d already let “him” in.

  After Evie got off the phone, she fed Ivory, straightened Mrs. Yetner’s upstairs bedroom, and packed up her things. She planned to spend the morning cleaning her mother’s house, but as she was leaving, she picked up the document she’d found under the couch. Life estate deed. What exactly was that?

  Evie sat down and made herself read it through once, then again to be sure. It was just what it said, a deed. The property was 105 Neck Road—Mrs. Yetner’s house. Properly signed and executed, it would have transferred ownership. Instead of payment, it gave Mrs. Yetner the right to continue living there. She’d be responsible for property taxes and “maintenance and upkeep.” But the minute she kicked it, Soundview Management, or the “remainderman,” in legalese, would receive the property. No muss, no fuss, and no need to go through probate. Their logo was so innocuous, a double row of wavy lines beneath the outlines of a crab and a fish.

  The reason why anyone would sign away property like that was prominently laid out. The “life tenant”—in this case, Mrs. Yetner—would receive a regular income, twenty-four thousand dollars a year in monthly increments, a sort of reverse rent. Sounded like a great deal for someone who had a good long life ahead of her—someone, say, in her sixties.

  The thought left Evie ice cold. Her mother was sixty-two. And she’d told Ginger that she was getting a new monthly income. That would explain those cash-filled envelopes. The sooner her mother died, the better the deal was for the remainderman.

  Could an agreement like that be nullified or was it already too late? Evie needed legal advice, and she needed it fast. Too bad she didn’t have a friend who was a lawyer. Then it occurred to her. She did.

  When Evie got to Sparkles, the store seemed empty. Her “Anyone here?” got no answer. She helped herself to a jelly doughnut from the glass case by the register and left a dollar and a quarter on the counter. When she got outside, she noticed Finn’s pickup parked behind the store. He couldn’t have gone far.

  Evie was walking back to her mother’s house when she realized what she’d thought at first was the omnipresent roar of a jet on its approach to LaGuardia was much louder and more uneven. As she turned onto Neck Road, a big flatback truck roared past her on the narrow street. Riding on its platform was a yellow bulldozer. Close behind came two dump trucks, their beds filled with debris. One of the drivers gave his horn a friendly toot, and Evie raised her hand to wave.

  Standing in their dust, it occurred to Evie to wonder where they were coming from. Her mother’s street, which ran along the water, only went on for about another half mile before it came to a dead end at the lagoon.

  Evie followed the trail of grit and glass the trucks had left in their wakes past her mother’s and Mrs. Yetner’s houses, past blocks she had ridden her bike up and down when she was little. The trail ended at an empty lot. There was Finn, crouched amid the rubble, staring out into the marsh.

  “Finn?” Evie said, coming up behind him.

  He jumped to his feet. “Oh. It’s you.” He gestured toward the empty lot. “Can you believe this? Yesterday there was a house here.”

  Evie looked around. There was another empty lot two houses farther along. “And over there?” She pointed.

  “Up until a few months ago, there was a house there, too.” He hadn’t shaved and looked like he hadn’t slept, either. He seemed so distraught, and she wondered if he’d been up all night, witnessing the destruction.

  Finn walked across what had been the front lawn of the recently demolished house, his sneakers crunching the debris. He bent over and fished out a foot-long piece of what looked like windowsill, its bright red paint flaking. “Must have brought in the equipment yesterday after dark. While me and anyone who might have tried to stop them were at the neighborhood meeting.” He gazed somberly out across the water.

  Evie walked over to him and took his arm. She didn’t know what to say.

  “What kills me,” he said, “is that I might have been able to prevent this. Mrs. Yetner brought me a demolition permit she lifted off the house that was here.” He took a folded yellow card from out of his jacket pocket. “She must have told you about it.”

  “She didn’t,” Evie said. Occasionally the Historical Society would get similar documents, a last remaining vestige of a building that someone had deemed too historically insignificant to be left standing.

  This house, and the one two doors up, had hardly been historically or architecturally noteworthy—none of these houses in Higgs Point were. Unlike brownstones in Greenwich Village or Brooklyn Heights, the history of Higgs Point was not steeped in entitlement. But taken together, this neighborhood with all its little shotgun houses on lanes too narrow to be called streets, built within a few years of one another, was a one-off. There was nothing like it anywhere else in th
e five boroughs. Evie could easily make a case for preserving its unique flavor.

  “Listen, even if you’d been here, what could you have done?” Evie said. “Were you going to lie down in front of the bulldozer?”

  “I could have called the Preservation Board. Or the Department of Environmental Protection. And yeah, I could have gotten some volunteers together and blocked the bulldozer. Called the newspaper first of course. The thing is, I didn’t do anything. Not a goddamned thing.” Finn rubbed his grizzled chin with the back of his hand. “I didn’t think it was going to happen this fast.”

  Evie walked into the debris and poked her toe through it. She kicked up what looked like the rim of a plate. She squatted to get a closer look. The piece was white bone china, hand-painted gold. Poking around nearby she found the metal screw cap of a lightbulb and an undamaged ceramic salt shaker in the shape of a miniature lighthouse. Farther in was the shiny, black-and-chrome beehive-shaped base of a blender. It was labeled OSTERIZER. It was so old it would have been worth something on eBay.

  “This really is outrageous,” Evie said, returning to Finn’s side. Houses were supposed to be emptied out before they were bulldozed. This one looked more like it had been hit by a tornado. Like whoever did the job hadn’t a clue what he was doing. “Can you believe what a mess they left behind?”

  “Looks like they even pushed a shitload of debris into the marsh. Knuckleheads.”

  “Someone ought to file a complaint. Or threaten a lawsuit. Make them come back and do the job properly.” The more Evie talked, the more worked up she got. “Let me see that permit.” Evie snatched the card from Finn’s grasp. She flattened it and read.

  The permit for demolition was all properly signed and sealed. SV Construction Management. Evie recognized the name immediately.

  “Have a look at this.” She dug in her bag and found the life estate deed she’d pulled out from under Mrs. Yetner’s couch. “Here. See? Here’s Soundview Management. And here?” She held up the work permit. “SV Construction Management. Got to be the same outfit.”

  “Where’d you get this?” Finn asked, taking the life estate deed from her.

  “I found it at Mrs. Yetner’s, shoved under the couch.”

  Finn paged through the document, his face growing darker. He muttered under his breath and then stood there, staring off into the water.

  “Pretty clever, if you ask me,” Evie said. “It’s the perfect scheme for taking over properties without their ever going on the market. Without anyone being aware. The owner signs away the house before he or she passes away. Don’t you think that’s what happened here?”

  “I don’t know, but I aim to find out. Can I keep this?” Finn folded the document and shoved it into his jacket pocket, but not before Evie made yet another connection: the crab and fish logo.

  “Wait a minute. Isn’t their logo like the one your preservation group uses?”

  “You noticed, too?” Finn said, looking chagrined. “One of the members told me that a developer had appropriated our logo, but I hadn’t gotten around to doing anything about it. Now I know where to send a cease and desist letter.”

  Just then a cell phone rang. Finn slipped a phone from his hip pocket and shook his head. “Must be yours.”

  Evie was afraid to look. But it wasn’t the hospital. It was the gas station. Her mother’s car was ready to be picked up.

  Chapter Forty-five

  Evie accepted Finn’s offer to drive her to the gas station. All the way over, her mind was racing. Had her mother accepted the same deal that Mrs. Yetner had been offered? Was that why she was getting those envelopes of cash that she’d apparently been too out of it to open? Was a bulldozer waiting to swoop in and crush her mother’s house and everything in it the minute she died?

  “So do you still want to see the stuff from Snakapins?” Finn’s question interrupted her thoughts.

  “Sorry. Do I what?”

  He pulled to a stop in front of the gas station, yanked the emergency brake, and shifted in the seat to face her. “Remember, the stuff I told you about that’s in the store’s basement from Snakapins Park, the old amusement park?”

  Snakapins Park and Snakapins Bungalows had been on the map in Mrs. Yetner’s bedroom. She hadn’t forgotten Finn’s comment that there were remnants of the park in the store’s basement, and of course she wanted to see them.

  “A night later this week?” he said. “After I close the store? By then I should have some answers about what’s going on.”

  Later in the week? Would she still be there? Already what she’d thought would be a few overnights had turned into nearly a week.

  “What? Don’t tell me your nights are all booked,” he said.

  “No, it’s not that—”

  “Good. You know, I always thought all that stuff moldering down there was nothing more than junk that no one had gotten around to tossing out. You can tell me if any of it is worth preserving. I don’t even know what’s in half the boxes. ”

  “How many boxes?” Evie asked.

  “Lots.”

  Probably they were filled with decaying junk, Evie told herself. Still, the prospect of being the first to open up a cache of storage boxes that had been closed for decades? It was the kind of thing she lived for.

  “Besides,” Finn went on, reaching across for the passenger door handle, “you look like you could use a real meal. Aren’t you sick of those chicken potpies?”

  “You cook, too?”

  “I make a mean chili. Do you like chili?”

  She nodded and got out of the car.

  “Good,” he said through the open door. “See you then.”

  “See you.”

  He made a U-turn and waved through the window. As she watched him drive off, she caught her breath. She was excited about seeing the remnants of a 1920s amusement park. But even more, she liked that Finn wanted to know if the material was worth preserving, not how much it was worth.

  As if on cue, her cell phone rang. Seth.

  “Hi, babe.”

  Evie grimaced. She’d told him she hated when he called her that. “So how was the game?” she asked.

  “They lost. Insane defense. Minor screwups, lousy offensive rebounds, throwing the ball out of bounds, jumping off the court and diving on the floor. I mean, what’s that all about? Sorry about changing plans on you,” he continued, barely missing a beat. “I know you’re not crazy about basketball. But, hey, great seats. How could I not go? How about we go out for Chinese tomorrow? I’ll make a reservation at the Shun Lee Palace.”

  “Seth, I doubt if I’ll be back tomorrow. Besides, I wanted to go to Chinatown for soup dumplings.”

  “I’m sure they have soup dumplings at the Shun Lee.”

  They probably did. Four miniature ones for the same price that you could get two bamboo steamers full of them at the Soup Dumpling House.

  “I hear they have a sensational Peking duck,” Seth said into her silence, his voice coaxing.

  They probably had Seth’s favorite Polish vodka, too. “Are you going to ask about my mother?” she asked, not bothering to soften the annoyed edge in her voice.

  She could hear him breathing on the other end of the line. Finally, “I’m sorry. Of course. How is she?”

  “She’s dying, Seth. And the house is a complete wreck. And I’m holding it together, but basically I’m a complete wreck, too. Which I know isn’t what you want to hear when you’re making dinner reservations.”

  “Hey, babe, it’s not your fault.”

  Not her fault? Was he really that clueless?

  “And you know,” Evie said, taking a quick breath before plunging on, “there’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you. I don’t really like steaks. Or martinis. Or the smell of cigar smoke, even when you smoked hours ago and brushed your teeth.”

  After that, a pit of silence before Seth exploded with, “Is that so? Well, while we’re on the subject, I don’t like soup dumplings. Chinatown is dirty. And I coul
d care less about an old airplane engine lying at the bottom of an elevator shaft.”

  “I guess it wouldn’t make much of a tie tack, would it?” Evie shot back, and she disconnected the call. She stared at the phone for a few moments before shoving it back into her purse. As if mocking her, a shiny black Lincoln town car rolled past, as out of place in the neighborhood as Seth had been in her life.

  Squashing the teeny-tiniest pang of regret, she turned to face the gas station. It looked nothing like it had when Evie used to ride there with her dad to fill up their car. Back then there’d been a single island with gas pumps on either side, serviced by a pair of nimble gas jockeys who cleaned and squeegeed windshields and offered to top off the oil. Now there were four islands with two pumps each, all but one of them self-serve, and a single attendant who pumped gas if someone actually pulled into the “full serve” spot.

  But one thing was still there. Over the garage doors was a wonderfully detailed bas-relief of the front end of a 1930s car that seemed to emerge from a medallion of concrete. With its muscular fenders, exposed headlights, and distinctive grille, Evie guessed it was supposed to be a DeSoto.

  Evie walked into a little glassed-in office tucked into the front corner of the garage. When she gave her name at the desk, the man whom she recognized as one of the brothers who’d inherited the business pulled out a bill. Jack was stitched over the pocket of his work shirt.

  “I used to come in here years ago with my dad,” Evie told him. “It looks so different out there, but in here it’s exactly the same.”

  He looked at the bill. “Ferrante?” Up at her. “You’re Vinny’s girl?”

  “One of them.”

  “Fine man, your dad. Though we used to kid him about that heap he drove around in.”

  Evie laughed, remembering her father’s Chevy Caprice woody wagon that he’d driven until the axle rusted apart. He loved that old car. It was so big that they’d once loaded a double mattress into the back of it.

  “Must have gotten my love of old things from him,” she said, handing Jack her card. “If you ever tear this building down, the Historical Society would be very interested in that bas-relief over the doors.” She took him outside and showed him what she meant. “We’d come in and drill it out of there. Wouldn’t cost you a penny.”