The little Autumn Vale Public Library is on a narrow side street, and if you don’t know it’s there, it’s easy to miss. There’s a hand-painted sign that hangs out over the sidewalk and a wheelchair ramp built by the late, lamented Tom Turner. The inside is a little gloomy because the windows are set too high in the cinderblock walls to let in enough light, but it was improving, infused with Hannah’s book-loving personality. I had promised her the boxes of books I had had in storage for years, if they weren’t too musty. Since a lot of them were my mother’s and grandmother’s, the mix was eclectic, from mysteries to feminist philosophy to classic literature to poetry. I hadn’t gotten to that yet—the boxes of books were sitting in a vacant room upstairs—but I promised myself I would after the party.
The library was only open three afternoons a week. The rest of the time Hannah took books to Golden Acres for the folks who live there, and also to the local schools. The library was rarely empty on the days she was open, and even though it was Sunday, today was no exception. Word must have gotten around that Hannah was going to be there for a few hours, because Isadore Openshaw was perusing the shelves, and so were a couple of other patrons who I didn’t know. Isadore was a voracious reader, from all indications, and I would have talked to her about books, except she avoided me, perhaps seeing me as the author of her misfortune. It was troubling that she was becoming increasingly isolated—a layer of blame from the locals over the bank’s troubles and her own quirky, aloof personality were having the expected effect. She was being shunned, but if she wouldn’t loosen up and talk to people, what could anyone do? If she wouldn’t even let Pish help her, then she was in a sorry state indeed.
I greeted Hannah, and sat down in the chair beside her wheelchair. “So, what’s up?” I asked, after we had chitchatted about the upcoming party.
“I found some old references to a woman named Violet, and she may be the one Cranston is claiming as his grandmother,” she said, retrieving a file of old newspaper clippings from her desk drawer. She opened the file and laid it flat. “Look here, Violet Flores . . . it’s a 1942 notice that she’s leaving Autumn Vale and wishes her friends will come visit her and her older sister, Dorothy, at the Vale Variety and Lunch for an informal tea.”
I checked the date, and it coincided with what Cranston had said about his grandmother leaving Autumn Vale. But would a girl who was sneaking out of town because she was pregnant have a going-away party? “I should just do the DNA test and get it over with,” I mused, still undecided over Cranston’s claim. “But once that’s done, there’s no going back. I guess I’m looking for some way to ease into it, to get an idea of what to expect.”
“What happens if it turns out he is who he says he is?” Hannah asked, her wide gray eyes fixed on mine with a wistful expression. “Would that change anything?”
“No,” I said, knowing that she was actually asking if there was any way we’d all be able to stay in Autumn Vale. “In fact, it would probably speed things up, because Cranston is pressing for us to sell. Mind you, he has some unrealistic expectations of the real estate situation.” I made up my mind then and there to go ahead with the DNA test. “May I use your phone?”
I got the information I needed and hung up, then borrowed the phone again. “There,” I said, with a false brightness, as I pressed the End button. “For better or worse, I’ve made an appointment for two weeks from tomorrow at the hospital in Rochester for both Cranston and I.”
“Why a hospital?” Hannah asked. “Why not one of those at-home DNA tests?”
I shrugged. “If we’re going to do this, we may as well do it right. I’ve been told the test has to be administered at a hospital for legal purposes.”
“You shouldn’t have done that, Merry,” Hannah said, her eyes shining with tears. “I don’t want you and Shilo and Pish to leave, ever!”
I hugged her. “Avoiding this wasn’t going to change anything, sweetie. I can’t stay indefinitely without a proper source of income.”
“I know,” she said. A customer came to the desk, and Hannah signed some books out for her, then turned back to me as the patron hustled hurriedly from the library.
“But let’s not think about that!” I said. To change the subject, I told her about my encounter in the woods with Zoey Channer.
“Oh, I know about her. I see her picture in People and EW!”
“What have you heard lately? I’m trying to figure out why she’s hanging around here and not Hollywood or New York.”
For the next few minutes, she regaled me with stories of Zoey Channer’s exploits. First Paris Hilton had taken her under her wing, but then the two had a spat and ended up as frenemies. Zoey tried to get a reality show deal, but someone died on the set and the whole thing was canceled. She did a stint in rehab, then jail on a drug charge. Then rehab. Then jail. A theme was developing.
“So what is the latest?”
Hannah did a web search and came up with the most recent headlines, which were that Zoey had met someone through her cell mate in jail, and was going out with a “bad boy,” a guy named Dave Smith who had done time for fraud and robbery. Uneasily, I thought of her joking about casing the castle. Maybe it wasn’t a joke. She was currently out on parole.
“I think I’m going to call Virgil and just have him keep an eye out for Miss Channer and her sketchy boyfriend.” I got up to leave.
“I’m really looking forward to the party, Merry.” Hannah gazed up at me, her luminescent gray eyes gleaming with excitement. “It’s going to be my first.”
“Your first party?” I asked with amazement. “Didn’t you go to prom, or . . . or something?”
She shook her head. “I was a pretty good student but got bored at school, so my mom and dad took me out and I was homeschooled from then on. We belonged to a home school association and they had a prom, but they didn’t have it at a place I could get to. This party is going to be epic!”
For once she sounded her age instead of like an old soul. I had a sudden realization of how Shilo, Pish, and I coming to Autumn Vale had opened up her world, in a sense, beyond the scope of her beloved books, and how much she’d miss us when we left. I reached down and hugged her, not able to tell her we’d stay, but sure I would always stay in contact with her. “I’ll give you a personal tour of the main floor of the castle. It’s going to be a great party.”
The next day was unbelievably busy from dawn, when the temporary wheelchair ramp was delivered and affixed to the door off of the butler pantry so Hannah could get into the castle, through the food deliveries, to the arrival of Zeke, Gordy, and a crew of extra Valers, who helped in every aspect. I had a meeting with Lizzie, Alcina, Emerald, Juniper Jones, and Binny. We walked around the castle and I explained the party layout, which mostly covered the ballroom, the great hall, and the parlor, which I was making into a ladies’ room for fixing makeup, in the old tradition. It doubled as a coat area as well, and I had a couple of portable clothes racks and a few dozen wooden hangers set up, thanks to Janice Grover.
“Lizzie, you and Alcina . . . Alcina!” I repeated, trying to get the girl’s attention. She had spun off and was examining a teapot, one with butterflies all over it, her long, thrift-shop skirt dragging while her faery wings threatened to knock over anything too close by.
Lizzie caught my eye and shrugged. Emerald bit her lip and smiled. I had Lizzie’s mother there not because she’d be helping out at the party—she was coming as a guest only—but because I was making an effort to include her in her daughter’s life. She had had a rocky road as a single parent but had finally come to terms with her mother on where Lizzie lived—wherever she felt like that week, her mom’s or her grandmother’s—so things were starting to settle down in that respect. Now that Lizzie’s paternity had been exposed, Emerald and Binny were becoming friends; in Tom, both had lost someone who, though difficult to deal with on occasion, had been doing his best to become a more
responsible and reliable grown-up.
Emerald tried to shepherd Alcina back to the pack, but the girl just smiled and drifted away again. Emerald told me Alcina’s parents, including the fatally ill mother, were advocates of the “unschooling” philosophy of learning, so Alcina did not go to the local school. The parents apparently had a farm and sold vegetables at the roadside all summer; what they did for sustenance in winter I did not know. However, what I did know was that Alcina not only had no ability to focus on anything for more than a few minutes, but she was also frightfully ignorant of even the basics of literature and, I was afraid, could not yet read properly, even at thirteen.
The fact that she did not need her parents’ permission to help out at the ball was even more scary. In theory I thought that unschooling could work, but I didn’t think it was doing Alcina any favors. Maybe that said more about her parents than unschooling, and it may have had a lot to do with her mother’s health problems. The girl was certainly creative and talented, a gifted artist of the faery genre, but I worried for her future in a world that was hard on dreamers. I settled for explaining to Lizzie what I wanted from them. I wasn’t going to be too hard on Alcina, not when she had so much going on at home.
I heard a vehicle pull up outside the open front door and left Binny in charge. Dashing outside expecting another delivery, I was startled to see a pickup truck with a bunch of guys in the back.
“Can I help you?” I asked, striding toward them. I shaded my eyes with my hand and looked them over.
“You sure can,” one fellow in a torn Budweiser tee said. “Hear you’re having a party tomorrow night. What time?”
“I beg your pardon?”
Another of the guys said, “Can’t hear very well, huh? What time?” He shouted the last, as if by virtue of being nearly forty I was also hard of hearing.
“Why does the time matter to you?” I asked, beginning to get an uneasy feeling.
“We wanna know when to show up. Duh!” yet another guy said, shaking his shaggy hair back out of his eyes and jamming his hat down over curls.
“But you haven’t been invited,” I replied, beginning to feel a little desperate.
He looked puzzled and adjusted his ball cap so the duckbill was pointed sideways. “But it’s a party.”
“That requires an invitation to attend,” I finished, staring up at him.
The guys looked puzzled still, and exchanged looks. Was the concept of a party to which you needed an invitation so foreign to them?
“We’ll bring a case, if that’s what you’re worried about. We aren’t stiffs, you know.”
“I’m sorry guys,” I said, keeping my tone light, “but this is a ‘by invitation only’ party. It’s business, you know, just to showcase the castle. You’d be bored to tears.” I regretted adding the last part immediately, because it implied I was only not inviting them to save them from boredom.
Budweiser T-shirt guy knit his brow, and said, “Okay. We thought . . . Never mind.”
The driver gunned the motor, reversed, spun around, and roared back down the lane. I hoped I wouldn’t have any trouble with them. They hadn’t seemed violent, just a little clueless.
I got through the endless day, fell into bed exhausted, and awoke the next morning knowing that I was going to be even more tired by the end of the night. I would need to be fortified by lashings of hot coffee and the good sense of my friend Pish. He has thrown a hundred parties and thrives on the chaos, the utter anarchy, of the party atmosphere, whereas I prefer order and calm. Shilo and McGill were supportive, too; they had some work to do at a house he was selling but put it on hold just to help me get the place ready.
By six thirty PM, just before my helpers were to arrive, I stood in the great hall and surveyed the decorations. There was a comforting blaze in the grate of the great hall fireplace, with the massive screen I had found in Janice’s warehouse guarding it, and beside it a set of tools. It was McGill’s job to make sure the fire was safe through the evening; I wasn’t taking anything for granted, enlisting the most responsible person among us. I wasn’t even using real candles, figuring battery-operated flameless candles were more expensive but a lot safer.
Along the railing of the grand split staircase—it started as one wide sweep and then split to arc up to the gallery by two separate staircases; think the Titanic staircase, only without the handrail in the center—I had swooped swaths of maroon and gold material. In the middle of the great hall on a low table was the casket I had rented from Janice. A couple of borrowed five-foot-tall candelabras stood by it with flameless tapers flickering. In the casket was a mannequin dressed in an old tailcoat with his eyes wide open. That was my nod to Halloween, a few days away.
Just then the music started, chamber music with a very gothic feel. Pish’s sound system worked beautifully. He would switch to some light jazz once all the guests were there and we began to serve snacks. I had hired two real bartenders, fellows who could help with crowd control if the unforeseeable happened, and two cocktail servers, one woman and one man, all from Buffalo; they were coming with a busload of party attendees and had told me over the phone what to set up for them. The bar was in the ballroom. Juniper would be circulating with trays of hors d’oeuvres and helping out in the kitchen, where a couple of local women would fill trays and do other tasks. I didn’t want to hire Juniper, but Binny had pled her case—the girl needed to make some money after a couple of months unemployed—and I caved.
The party was expensive, but Pish was excellent at wheeling and dealing. He had called in some favors, too, and I was grateful to my excellent friends. I had rescued a few bottles of Uncle Melvyn’s best wine, but I was saving that for the richest of guests. Yes, I was discriminating, but I needed to schmooze. My stomach was in knots as I finally ran up to get ready for the party.
In choosing a costume for myself, I wanted something I could wear all evening, something I could move in, and something attractive—no hideous witch costumes for me. I was the hostess, and I wanted to stand out. Janice Grover was once smaller than her present abundance—in other words, she was once my size—and had, from her days as a New York hostess before her husband had been consigned to the management of a backwoods bank, a store of costumes from parties of the past. Honest to goodness, the woman had never thrown anything out in her life.
From her hoard I chose a beautiful brocade Victorian gown of sumptuous purplish material that was surprisingly lightweight and loose enough on me to be comfortable. It wasn’t meant to portray any actual person, nor was it Halloweenish, but if forced to answer Who are you?, I would be happy to tell them Christina Rossetti. I expected that would elicit little more than blank stares, but I had become accustomed to that in Autumn Vale. To be fair, I would have received the same blank stares among my New York acquaintances.
I stared at myself in the mirror and evaluated my costume, running my hands down over the lovely fabric. The proper undergarments, vital for a woman of my figure (which is “plush-size,” according to Shilo), had transformed the sagging dress into a proper regal shape with the additional help of a few safety pins. I had wound my dark hair up into two knots at either side of my head, and I draped a gold embroidered shawl over my shoulders. Pish had wanted me to dress as Cleopatra, while Shilo had suggested I go as a queen, any queen, because she said I’d look “splendiferous” in a crown, but this was good for me.
As I descended, the door gong sounded. Pish opened it to a crowd of locals, and from then on the evening descended into chaos. Organized to some extent, but still chaos. I had gotten a one-time permit to serve alcohol, but it was important that everything be done to adhere to the law, so I had been extremely stern with Lizzie and Alcina; if I caught so much as a hint that they were drinking the wine, or even carrying it, they would both be chauffeured home. Their jobs were to show folks where to hang up their coats, help Juniper with the trays of hors d’oeuvres, assist in the kitch
en in any way they were asked, and check the smoking pit for full ashtrays or burning butts.
Gogi Grace came as Sarah Bernhardt, the legendary actress, dressed as La Dame Aux Camélias from the famous poster. Nobody was going to get that, either. I wouldn’t have, except she had told me in advance. Virgil, looking embarrassed but handsome, came in a cape coat and deerstalker hat, carrying a pipe and a magnifying glass. Sherlock Holmes; how perfect!
Doc English trailed them. I cocked my head to one side as he bowed before me, and I tried to figure out if he was wearing a costume or had just randomly plucked things from the lost and found. He wore an oversize pinstripe suit jacket and a weird beige colored wig on backward, so the hair all fell forward, and carried a cracked leather briefcase. He told me he was Donald Frump. It was hilarious and brilliant.
Emerald was dressed as a cocktail waitress; her costume was going to hopelessly confuse people, because the female cocktail server I had hired was going to be dressed similarly. Simon and Janice Grover arrived as Tweedledee and Tweedledum, though she insisted they were Tweedledum and Tweedledummer. I knew which was which, in that case; I didn’t have a good opinion of the bank manager’s intelligence. Cranston was costumed as Doctor Frankenstein, with thick glasses and a lab coat and carrying a severed hand. Binny was adorable as the Pillsbury Doughboy. At first I couldn’t figure out who Isadore Openshaw was, but Janice, who had been trying to make up to the woman for making fun of her for years, whispered to me that the fluffy knitting gave it away: she was Miss Jane Marple, an easy costume to pull off in that it resembled her usual dress.
Shilo wore a tiered skirt and an off-the-shoulder peasant blouse with a scarf holding back her abundant dark hair, while Jack had on black pants tucked into knee-high boots with a white shirt, and he also had a colorful scarf over his head. He sported a clip-on earring in one lobe and carried a fiddle. They were gypsies, suitable, since Shilo always said she was half gypsy and half Irish traveler. Pish was dressed as the fifties version of that most hedonistic of all heterosexual males, Hugh Hefner, with a velvet smoking jacket and silk pajama pants and carrying a pipe and a Playboy magazine, the Marilyn Monroe issue. Not everyone would get the joke, but anyone who knew my good friend well enough would.
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