Betsy went to check on the quartet in the kitchen, who were telling favorite-pet stories while waiting for the hors d’oeuvres in the oven to come out. She stayed there only long enough to remind them that the oven ran a little hot and continued her rounds, this time bringing Mayor Jamison along.
She left him with Godwin’s friend John, who was arguing probate law with Betsy’s own attorney while three other guests kibitzed.
The group by the CD player were looking through the albums and not finding anything with words. “You collect only instrumentals?” asked Patricia as Betsy stopped by.
“I collect everything,” said Betsy, “but I left only instrumentals out tonight, because singing competes with conversation. If you’ve got to have music with words, go into the back bedroom and boot up the computer; it has a CD player in it, and I put my other CDs in there.”
To Betsy’s surprise, Patricia went, taking another woman with her. Betsy thereafter checked the back bedroom twice. She didn’t want them to get isolated, nor did she want anything messy or scandalous to happen. No fear; the first time she found four music lovers singing “Bar-Barbara Ann” along with the Beach Boys; the second time she found Jamison, retired railroad engineer Phil Galvin, and Alice Skoglund, who was a Lutheran minister’s widow, looking through the book on Christian symbology.
They certainly are a moral bunch here in Excelsior, Betsy thought, remembering a couple of faculty parties from her old life in San Diego.
The doorbell rang. Had someone gone for a smoke and locked himself out? The apartment was too crowded to see if anyone was missing. She shrugged and pressed the buzzer that unlocked the door—there wasn’t an intercom to ask who was there.
She opened her door to see who would come up the stairs. Her eyes widened. A handsome face appeared, tanned and smooth-shaven, with dark brown eyes, a square jaw with a cleft chin, and a mouth just begging for a pipe. It was topped with a smooth sheaf of nearly white hair with a dramatic dark streak near one temple. The head sat on broad, square shoulders, atop a torso that looked, even covered by a trench coat, to be toned and fit. The whole rode on slim, long legs.
The face looked sideways at Betsy and assumed an abashed air, a handsome comic caught with his hand in a cookie jar.
It was Hal Norman, Hal the Pig, Betsy’s ex. The one who was ratted on by a college freshman after he dumped her too abruptly for another college freshman. Which turned out to have been a pattern of behavior dating back God knew how many freshmen, and all while married to Betsy. “H‘lo, Betsy darlin’,” he said. “I’ve come back to you.”
“I—I beg your pardon?!?” said Betsy.
Hal began to chuckle. He bounced up the last few steps and strode quickly to her. He was smiling, which made his dimples extra deep. “No joke, darlin’, it’s so good to see you!” He would have taken her in his arms had she not stepped back inside. When she tried to close the door, he put a hand on it.
“Hey, what’s the matter? Please, won’t you listen for just one minute?” His voice was surprised and hurt, which amazed her.
“Who is it?” asked Jill, coming up behind her.
“It’s my ex-husband.”
“The one you left in California?”
“I thought I had.”
“What does he want?”
“I don’t know.”
Hal’s voice asked plaintively, “You mean you’re going to leave me standing out here till the mice get round-shouldered?”
“What’d he say?” asked Jill.
“It’s an old joke,” said Betsy, then added to Hal, “Until they are positively hunchbacked.”
“But, darlin’, I don’t have anyplace to stay!”
That surprised Betsy so much, she released her pressure on the door, which he promptly pushed open. She said, “You mean you actually thought you could just come here and I’d let you in? And let you stay overnight?”
“But why not? I drove all the way from California just to see you.”
“That’s too bad.” Betsy started to close the door again, but he put his hand on it again.
He said in a humble tone, “You’re right. I shouldn’t have presumed anything. I should have stopped at a motel and phoned you. But darlin’, the closer I got, the more I got to thinking about what it would be like to actually see you again, talk to you face-to-face, and I just couldn’t put it off another minute. Say, what’s the noise? Have you got company? That should make it all right for me to come in and use your phone, shouldn’t it? I need to find a motel.”
“No, you can’t come in. I’m having a Christmas party for my employees and some friends.”
“Really? Why, say, I’d love to meet them. I understand they were a real help to you when Margot died. I’m so sorry about Margot, by the way. I wish I could have been here to support you through that awful time—”
The idea of Hal here during those early weeks, making himself at home in this place, helping her with the funeral—Betsy heard herself make an odd sound and heard an inquiring noise behind her. She glanced back.
Jill, reading the look on Betsy’s face, immediately stepped forward to say over Betsy’s shoulder, with that wonderful authority cops can summon, “There’s a motel back out on the highway. You can’t miss it.” And she gave the door a hard shove to shut it.
Betsy said, “Thank you! I think I was about to barf on his shoes.”
Jill smiled. “That message might have penetrated.”
Betsy laughed. “I can’t imagine his turning up here. I wonder what he really wants?”
Jill said, “Have you told anyone in San Diego about the money?”
“Oh, the money! Of course!” Betsy’s sister had turned out to be wealthy. In another month or so, when probate was finished, Betsy would be an heiress. “Yes, I told three friends. I wonder who let me down and told him.”
“I suppose he lost his job at the college?”
Betsy nodded. “Despite his tenure, yes, and it got into the papers, so he won’t find another teaching job anytime soon. Our house was supplied by the college, so we lost that, too.”
“I’m sure that if one of your friends saw him flipping burgers somewhere, they thought they were doing you a favor by letting him know his loss was even greater than he thought.”
“So here he comes, playing penitent, hoping he can worm his way back into my life!”
“Worm being the operative word here,” said Jill. “Is he from California originally?”
“Yes, born in Redondo Beach.”
“Then he’ll probably take the next bus home. Native Californians don’t transplant well to climates like this.”
But Betsy, as she returned to the party, wondered. Three million dollars was an excellent incentive to learn to like snow.
4
Betsy woke with a dry mouth and a headache. She opened her eyes and immediately closed them again. The bedroom was flooded with painfully bright sunlight. Why was that wrong?
Because she’d been waking to darkness lately, hadn’t she? It was December in the northlands, and on work-days she awoke before dawn. Was this not a workday? Or had the clock radio not gone off? Or had it come on and she’d shut it off and fallen back asleep again?
Last night—there had been a party here last night—that’s why she had a headache. And the party was Saturday night, so this must be Sunday. The radio hadn’t come on because this was Sunday, which was lovely because even late as it surely was, she wasn’t ready to get up just yet. In fact, she could feel herself drifting back to sleep again.
The mattress joggled as about eighteen pounds landed on it.
Sophie, aware by the change in her breathing that Betsy was awake, had jumped on the bed. Betsy tried to feign the deep breathing of sleep. Another fifteen seconds and it wouldn’t be fake.
Too slow. There was the imperious tap of a cat’s paw on her shoulder.
“Go ’way,” muttered Betsy.
But this further sign of consciousness only encouraged the cat. “Reee
ewwwwww,” she whined, her mouth close to Betsy’s hypersensitive ear. Betsy flinched and pulled the covers over her head. The cat tapped again. And again. Her normal breakfast time was long past, and she was probably genuinely hungry.
Betsy groaned—softly, softly!—and began a careful struggle to free her legs from the tangled blanket and sheet. Sophie immediately jumped off the bed and hustled toward the kitchen, where the cat food lived.
Betsy was sure that somewhere deep in the cat’s soul Sophie knew she was not starving nor in danger of starving. But probably she was equally certain that this was because of her own unending efforts to keep her mistress aware that The Cat Must Be Fed.
Betsy had been running a campaign of her own to Make the Cat Wait, but so far it was a series of strategic retreats. Sophie cleverly—her laziness apparently did not include her brain—didn’t approach each target directly but went for the target beyond and accepted as compromise the one she was after.
Back when Betsy fed the cat after she got dressed, Sophie began nagging for food before Betsy got into the shower. Betsy compromised by feeding Sophie after she showered but before she got dressed. Now Sophie was trying to maneuver breakfast time up to right after that first and most necessary trip to the bathroom. And Betsy had actually been contemplating feeding her before she showered. Today the cat had crossed another line: waking Betsy up. Never before had Sophie ventured to wake Betsy. She’d always waited until Betsy woke up either by herself or to the music of the clock radio. And she normally included an interval of cuddling. Not today; today The Cat Must Be Fed Now.
Well, no more compromising; if Betsy wanted to sleep in on Sundays, she was going to have to hold the line at feeding the cat after her morning shower.
Betsy looked at her puffy morning-after face in the bathroom mirror and smiled. The Pig had come and been sent away empty-handed. It was great how Jill had backed her up, literally slamming the door in his face. Imagine his turning up here like that, thinking he would be welcome! When it came to nerve, the Pig took the cake.
The party last night had been good, Betsy thought as she brushed her teeth. Most of the guests had departed at a respectable eleven, but a final six remained. They, with Betsy, had settled into a discussion of modern culture (what was lacking and how to fix it) that went on until nearly three A.M. Joe Mickels was proven not to be the Fascist everyone thought, and the straitlaced Patricia had unbent so far as to be amused by Godwin, who had sent John home alone when he hinted for the fifth time he was bored. Alice Skoglund told the joke about the bishop on roller skates, which set off a sidebar on religion that for a wonder actually shed more light than heat. Betsy had opened another two bottles of wine, and after her third glass had given a lecture on college faculty politics. Perhaps after the Pig’s brief appearance, that was to be expected. Her guests bore it patiently, and even offered cordial thanks for a good time when at last they’d gone home.
Betsy took a quick shower, then went to give Sophie her breakfast of diet cat food. She put the kettle on.
Half an hour later, she was eating dry toast, sipping a second cup of green tea, and thinking of tackling the Sunday Crossword of the New York Times Online. It was a little after eleven, and Betsy was still in her striped flannel robe. The phone rang.
“Hello?” she said into the receiver.
“Hello, darlin’,” said a deep, warm, oh-so-familiar voice.
“Calling to say you’ve got to stay on campus for another staff meeting?” said Betsy.
“Now, hon,” protested the voice, but Betsy hung up so she wouldn’t have to listen to the rest.
“He’s still in town, you know,” said Godwin on Monday morning.
“Who?” asked Betsy, checking the sky out the front window. It was gloomy, and the forecast was for snow, but so far it had held off. Perhaps the flakes would hover in the clouds until the weather system moved over to Wisconsin.
“Hal Norman, your husband.”
“He is not my husband.” Betsy came back to the library table and sat down.
“He’s telling people he has reason to hope for a reconciliation.” Godwin’s tone put a twist on the words, hinting he thought this wasn’t going to happen but leaving a little wriggle room because the ways of love are passing strange.
“He needs a reality check,” said Betsy, picking up the hippopotamus ornament she was working on. She’d made a mistake twenty stitches back. She’d seen it half a dozen stitches ago. Realizing it wasn’t an important mistake, she’d tried to ignore it; but it kept mocking her until she couldn’t bear it. Frogging, it was called, when you took stitches out. She said, “No, he should fall off that pink cloud of fantasy he’s been riding and break his neck.”
“I see,” said Godwin. “You want to know who he’s talking to?”
“No,” said Betsy, her needle going rip-it, rip-it. But Excelsior was a gossipy little town. Pretty soon people would be dropping by and making remarks, so perhaps it was better to be forearmed. “Okay, who?” she said.
“Irene Potter,” began Godwin, but Betsy interrupted him with a groan. Of all the gossips, Irene was probably the worst. She was a fanatical needleworker, fabulously talented, but passing strange, on her way to totally weird. Perhaps because she had no social skills, she was endlessly interested in what people said and did and loved speculating aloud what their motives might be. More than anything in the world, she wanted her own needlework shop and suspected darkly that Betsy kept Crewel World open mostly to keep Irene from taking it over and running it as it should be run. Her speculations about Hal and Betsy, therefore, would not be kind.
“Who else?” asked Betsy, pinching the bridge of her nose between her thumb and forefinger, trying toward off a headache.
“I understand he bought Patricia Fairland a cup of coffee at the Waterfront Cafe and talked to her for about ten minutes. Left her doing that thing women do with the back of their hair. He is rather good-looking.”
“Looks aren’t everything,” said Betsy, the voice of experience.
“But they open a lot of doors,” Godwin said, the voice of his own experience. Betsy nodded. Godwin was so handsome he was almost pretty. “He talked real estate with Joe Mickels,” Godwin continued—real estate was one topic on which Joe was always willing to converse—“oh, and at church yesterday morning, he expressed surprise and disappointment that you weren’t there.”
Betsy groaned again. “What am I going to do about him?”
“Nothing,” said Godwin. “People are already speculating. Some think he’s here because he heard about your money, others that the father of one of the coeds he seduced has a contract out on him.”
Betsy giggled and Godwin smiled. “Well, it’s Irene who offered that one. If you really have to do something, sic Jill on him, why don’t you? She could find an excuse to shoot him, maybe.”
Betsy said, “No. I’ve read about what shooting a person does to the shooter.”
“Not to mention the shot, ” said Godwin, surprised.
“I’m serious,” said Betsy. “I have a friend in San Diego, her name is Abbey, and she has a friend who is married to a cop, and he shot some teenage thug who was holding up a bank. He got a medal for valor, but he was suicidal for years afterward. So don’t even joke about doing that to Jill.”
“All right,” said Godwin.
A customer came in looking for a needlepoint project and expressed disappointment that they hadn’t marked down the Christmas stockings, now that Christmas was almost here.
“There’s no need to mark them down,” said Godwin. “Many customers give them as gift kits. And besides, it can take as long as two years to finish a project like this, so it isn’t exactly a seasonal thing.” He looked around as if to check for eavesdroppers and winked at Betsy with an eye the customer couldn’t see—and then at the customer with the other eye. “However,” he murmured, “we may be able to give you a special price on the wool or silk you select for the project, or on one of our scheduled classes on needlepoi
nt. I think there’s an opening in the one I’ll be teaching, the one that starts the middle of January.”
“Well,” hedged the customer, “I always did want to learn beading, and Emily told me you do wonderful beadwork.”
“I hope you will consider it. I was very impressed with that sampler you worked. You do a beautiful mosaic stitch. In another year, you’ll be teaching your own class for us. Just let me get the schedule.”
Her brunette and his blond heads were soon bent over the calendar on the checkout desk, and then she was writing a check.
After the woman left, Betsy got out her employee list and their schedule of hours and tried to find ways to reduce them. But she had gotten to know her part-timers. Several spent the greater part of their wages on needlework projects—a saving to the shop all by itself, even considering the employee discount. The one young woman Betsy felt she could most easily spare was newly separated from her husband and desperately needed the little Betsy was able to pay her.
“I don’t want to cut any of these people,” said Betsy.
“Well, what else can you cut?”
“I don’t know. Maybe I can cancel my medical insurance. Crewel World pays for it, and it’s very expensive.”
“Don’t do that,” advised Godwin. “The goblins of fate are just waiting to pounce on people who cancel insurance policies.”
“Well then, what does Hollytree expect me to do?” she grumbled, throwing her pencil down. It bounced on its eraser and barely missed Godwin’s ear on its way into a basket of fuschia wool.
The phone rang. Godwin was retrieving the pencil, so Betsy answered it. “Crewel World, good morning, may I help you?”
“Hello, Betsy, it’s John Penberthy. How are you today?”
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