Dearest Dorothy, Merry Everything!

by Charlene Baumbich

  “May Belle, I am so sorry. You okay?”

  May Belle released a great belly laugh. “Of course! Don’t worry about a thing. It’s good to give the old ticker a jolt now and again, isn’t it?”

  “Not if it scares you to death!” Nellie Ruth said in a knee-jerk response, then gasped and quickly cupped her hand over her mouth. Why was it so many things people said, including herself, sounded . . . unnerving in the wake of Rick’s sudden death? She and ES—Nellie Ruth was the only person aside from Johnny Mathis (no, not that one) who didn’t always address Edward Showalter as Edward Showalter—were going out to dinner tonight and she was going to ask him if he had noticed that very same thing. She released her hand from her mouth and resumed her conversation.

  “So, are the tangerines not up to snuff?” She knew May Belle was not only a discerning shopper, but a very frugal one, always careful with her money. So careful, Nellie Ruth had noticed, that she often bought things from the “bruised and reduced” shelf, especially if they were bananas which Nellie Ruth knew would immediately be transformed into some wonderful goodie like banana cake or banana muffins or banana cream pie.

  “The tangerines look wonderful,” May Belle said. “Absolutely perfect. And they smell so citrus-y, just like I’ve always imagined the whole state of Florida must smell, right, Earl?” Earl briefly glanced from his mother to the tangerine to Nellie Ruth, then down at the floor. He didn’t understand how a state could have a smell.

  “As long as everything’s okay then,” Nellie Ruth said, turning her head toward the two checkout lanes, only one of which was open and now had five people in line.

  “Nice to see you, May Belle. I’ve got to go open register two. Pick my lane when you check out, okay?” May Belle nodded her agreement at the same time she heard Maggie Malone’s enthusiastic “Yoooohoooo, Maaaaaay Belle!” She turned just in time to see Maggie speed-racing a cart toward her, all but skidding to a halt right in front of her.

  “What are you doing in the store on Thursday?” May Belle asked, Thursday being a popular hair day.

  “My ten o’clock canceled,” Maggie said, patting her hands to her hair, adeptly shifting the entire up-do slightly to the right as though her quick stop had thrown it out of kilter. “I thought I’d run over and pick up a few things for my evening clients. Well,” she said, wiping the corners of her mouth with the back of her knuckle, then tapping her dangling Christmas ornament earring causing it to wildly swing to and fro, “the food’s mostly for me. When I work until seven, I just cannot make it without a little something more filling than the goodies I usually keep in the shop. Not even my exotic silver doilies can make scones and herbal tea feel like a meal! I need something sweeter, saltier and crunchier if I’m going to make it through this evening,” she said. She glanced in her cart, then tossed her hands in the air, threw her head back and just howled. “I guess,” she said, pointing to each item as she rattled through them, “Hostess Cup-cakes, a bag of M&Ms—red and green for Christmas you know—potato chips, nachos, two kinds of salsa and a roast beef sandwich Wilbur just made me at the meat counter certainly cover the bases!”

  What Maggie didn’t say was that after her seven o’clock, she’d be packing up her beauty supplies and heading to Casey’s Funeral Home to do Rick’s hair, then over to Sadie’s to take care of her, give her an assuring report about Rick’s clothes and care. Sadie was originally scheduled at La Feminique Hair Salon & Day Spa for tomorrow afternoon, which would have worked out well for the wake that evening, but since Maggie and Sadie had already discussed the possibility of Maggie coming over to Sadie’s, she wasn’t surprised when Roscoe had called on his mother’s behalf saying he thought she could use a “good dose of Maggie,” and that getting her hair done right in her own home might calm her down, make her feel better. “One less thing to worry about tomorrow before the viewing,” he’d said, his voice laced with exhaustion. “I’ll be glad to see you, too, Maggie. I’m sure you’re the same ball of energy you’ve always been. We could all use a little of that around here. And Maggie, this was all so sudden that I didn’t have time to get a haircut before I left home either. Think you might be able to give me a trim?”

  Eugene scurried around Rick’s viewing room at the funeral home moving floral arrangements from here to there. Wake here tomorrow night, funeral at the church on Sunday. The place looks like the Garden of Eden. He couldn’t help but read all the cards; always had, always would. By the time he got to the last bouquet, he simply could not believe it. There’d been no fewer than three FTD arrangements sent to the funeral home that had arrived from two different flower shops in Hethrow. “Honest to gaslights!” he said out loud. “How does a person expect our little Floral Fling to stay in business?” Two of the arrangements were from Roscoe’s town in Des Moines: one from the principal of his school on behalf of all the teachers, and he deducted the other must be from his wife’s place of employment, since he’d never heard of the corporation before. The third FTD bouquet had originated in California. He had no idea who it was from, in fact needed to call the florist since there had obviously been an error. The flowers, tight round snowball mums, were each died a different color—including a black one!—and arranged in something that looked like a triangular rack of pool balls with one larger white mum (as though it were the cue ball) sticking off to the side, to which the card was attached. “Yours until the eight ball sinks for good. Love, Your Little Red.”

  Where is he anyway? Katie looked at her watch yet again, fanned herself—again, a third wave of hot flashes engulfing her. The architect was now thirty-five minutes late. She hated tardiness. She sat at her sawhorse desk on one of two folding chairs she’d brought from the farm and looked around her: dust everywhere, her papers helter-skelter, windows so dirty she could barely see through them. “Welcome to the office of Kathryn Durbin, mall director,” she thought, shaking her head as she fanned a little harder. She recalled her city office which had been huge, filled with solid oak furniture and red leather accessories. She scribbled “Space for mall office?” on her design folder. Another thing to discuss with the architect.

  She’d had the building’s electricity turned on two days ago now and sniffed every once in awhile, imagining she smelled smoke. She pictured frayed wiring lurking between the walls. She assumed the entire building needed to be rewired, brought up to code. Then, of course, there would be the electrical complications of subdividing the cavernous space and setting up for computers—DSL, wireless maybe—which, to the best of her knowledge, still wasn’t available in Partonville but maybe it was time to check again. Dial-up at the farm was making her nuts!

  Maybe she should have brought Edward Showalter in here beforehand to run a few checks. Then again, she couldn’t even remember if she’d ever checked to see if he was actually a licensed electrician. I think these hot flashes are cooking my brain! She scribbled a note to ask him for some documents, furious with herself she’d never thought of this before. Or if she had, she didn’t remember it. Memory loss. Classic menopause symptom. She flipped to a clean page in her legal pad. “Personal” she wrote at the top. “Make doctor appointment; ask about hormone replacement therapy.”

  She flipped back a few pages and spotted her “Mall Names” page, which, she thought, she’d also made a folder for. Yes, back to that. “Unique Boutique,” she said aloud, seeing how it sounded coming out of her mouth. “Good name but for a store not a mall,” she said aloud, shuffling through her green file box to grab a new folder (and yes, she had already made a “Mall Names” folder. Gads!), “I should hold a contest to name the mall. Get the people invested before it even opens.” Yes, she loved this idea. “Mall de Unique.” “Partonville Mini Mall. “Vintage Mall.” She shook her head and tapped her pencil on her legal pad, then picked up the pad and fanned some more. Even though the building was plenty cool, she could feel beads of sweat breaking out on her forehead, her cheeks obviously flushed. She imagined Jessica could probably come up with twenty great mal
l names in a split second.

  Katie was good at business deals. Period. It hit her anew how very much she needed to partner with people (architects, contractors, lessees, retailers, advertisers, crafters, employees, creative types . . . advisors?) in order to make this happen successfully, which made her feel very vulnerable. Katie was used to calling all the shots, not asking for help. But this, this wasn’t a “do-alone,” as Dorothy had gently reminded her time and again. “Given the chance, most folks will rise to the occasion, honey,” Dorothy had said with that warm, encouraging look in her eyes. “Trust them.”

  The only person in town at the moment who didn’t seem to have a close emotional tie to Partonville’s recent loss was Jacob. She pondered what lousy timing it was that Dorothy could finally spend more than a week with her son, and now there was this terrible tragedy. Dorothy told her Jacob had even suggested they take a mother-son road trip. “Imagine that!” Dorothy said to Katie when she’d called to share the news Jacob would be staying for a spell. “A grown man and attorney son who still wants to take a road trip with his oldster mom! To be honest, I don’t know whether that should make me happy or sad—or worried about him.” She’d stopped to chuckle there. “But I’ve decided I’m ec-sta-tic! The only problem is I’m not currently available for a road trip, what with all the doings for Rick, which have gotten more involved than I might have guessed. Maybe you could entertain Jacob for me an afternoon or two, think?”

  Katie had found herself oddly warmed by the idea of entertaining Jacob. Or is this just another hot flash? she’d thought at the time. She’d told Dorothy she’d be glad to help any way she could, that they should just let her know when and how. But she hadn’t heard from either one of them since Dorothy’s Monday call and it was Thursday already. It had occurred to her that even though she had her own longtime attorney, Jacob was a lawyer, too, and he might have some very good “outsider’s” advice about how she might proceed with this type of a grand undertaking, what hidden legal things to watch out for.

  Perhaps it was time to check in with the Wetstras, what with the wake being tomorrow evening already. She’d read in the Press that the post-funeral dinner (and Katie had learned after her Aunt Tess’s passing that in Partonville there was always a dinner following the funeral) was, due to the expected size of the crowd, being hosted by Sadie and Roscoe at the park district building. The meal was being provided by a “community effort”: United Methodist Church’s Care Committee, all side dishes; Harry’s Grill, ham; St. Augustine’s, beverages and paper goods; and attendees were invited to bring their favorite dessert to share. She wondered what Dorothy and May Belle would be bringing—although she suspected May Belle had volunteered to bring a dessert for both of them, since Dorothy was definitely not a baker.

  What could she bring, she wondered? The only thing she knew for sure was that it couldn’t be a disaster, not after her failed turkey attempt for the community Thanksgiving dinner. “You remember that embarrassment, Katie,” she said aloud while shaking her head, fanning her reddened face and neck more swiftly, “the one where, to no avail, you resorted to using a hacksaw!” She sniffed twice, exhaled, then sniffed again. Smoke? “Stop imagining things!” she chastised. “Stop thinking about fires, for goodness sake!”

  Back to desserts. She’d check with Dorothy’s selections first, see how everyone was doing. She’d do that right after her appointment with the architect—who, unbeknownst to her, had entered the building and caught her not only flushed, fanning herself and sniffing, but talking to herself—about a hacksaw and fires! When Katie looked up and saw Carl Jimson’s face, she would later describe it to Dorothy as one verging on panic.

  During lunch with an old friend, Carl would later describe his first impression of “the grand Diva Durban” as a psycho. It would make Colton Craig laugh out loud.

  10

  Jacob slowly and carefully rolled back in Rick Lawson’s desk chair so as not to knock into something and send one of the many piles helter-skelter. He rose, laced his fingers behind his neck, let his head fall back, arched his chest, lifted his arms behind him in an attempt to stretch everything possible. His neck and shoulders ached. He held the extended position for several seconds, then released it. He lifted his shoulder blades toward his ears, held them there, let them fall, repeated the process, then rolled his shoulders both forward and backward several times. It had been over a week now since he’d arrived in Partonville. His body and mind missed his health club routine. “Some vacation,” he said quietly, not wishing Helen, Rick’s secretary, to hear him. She’d been relentlessly working, too, and was clearly an emotional wreck to boot, what with the loss of her friend and her boss—and possibly her job.

  It seemed like ten years ago that he’d walked down the hall to hunt for Christmas decorations when the phone had rung and changed everything, tossing both mother and son into a whirlwind of events where, aside from their leisurely dinner at The Driscoll last evening, they’d remained ever since.

  The call had been from Pastor. Dorothy immediately shared her exciting news that Jacob was in town for at least a whole week more. Pastor replied how nice—and how timely, since he’d just talked with Roscoe, who was beside himself with grief and in a near panic fretting about how he and his mother would ever even begin to handle his brother’s office. What would they tell people about their documents? Although Roscoe was an able man, he was a schoolteacher who knew nothing about legalities. Pastor told Dorothy that Jacob might want to give Roscoe a courtesy call, which he did immediately. Although he now wished he’d thought twice about it, he’d been raised to pitch in where help was needed. Next thing Jacob knew, he was shoulder deep in papers at Rick’s office.

  He carefully maneuvered his way from behind the desk and wove his way toward the window. He needed a breath of air. After banging around on the old warped and wooden window frame, he finally got the second-floor office’s window open. This was an interesting view of the square, he thought, one he’d never had before. After a quick survey, he spotted Katie Durbin’s SUV parked in front of the Taninger building, strained to see if he could spot her inside. Nope. Although there was evidence a large sign from the side of the building leading onto the square had been removed, a smaller sign above the store entrance remained. “FAMILY OWNED AND OPERATED SINCE 1923,” he said out loud. “Good-bye family, hello mini mall.” He snorted, then reminded himself Katie’d had nothing to do with the closing of that business; it happened years before she’d arrived in town. He wondered if things were going any better for her this week than they were for him. Maybe he’d stop by on his way out, if her vehicle was still there when he was done for the day.

  He turned and leaned against the windowsill to survey the office. Three straight days of sorting, prioritizing, and where had he gotten? Now rather than Rick’s giant piles, Jacob had nearly three times as many smaller ones. Was this progress? It had taken Jacob, a complete neatnik, one whole day just to figure out Rick’s filing system, if you could call it that. Tall piles of folders were stacked on nearly every available space, including on chairs and across the tops of open file drawers. It was just the way his mom had described it. There were more files out of the drawers than in them, Jacob decided.

  But after endless queries to Helen, who had no idea how Rick sorted things but assured him Mr. Lawson had never had trouble finding anything, it finally dawned on him: Rick seemed to have an aversion to alphabetical organization and instead liked to keep things in categories like wills, trusts, dead, alive, real estate, and court cases (which were few) and sorted in stacks of open and closed. The more recent the event, the closer to the top of the pile. Only really old cases were in the file cabinets, and as far as he could tell, everyone in them had been dead for more than ten years. Finally cracking Rick’s “system” had been like finding the magic key, he thought, since at least he had a better handle on how to proceed to sort so that somebody could eventually take over. That somebody could find an important document, a brief, proof o
f innocence or ownership. But he didn’t envy them. What had the man been thinking, keeping all these legal and binding papers in this chaos, and in this tinderbox?

  “How did you work with this mess?” he’d asked Helen halfway through the first day. She’d teared up and run back to her office. Jacob followed her, apologized for his careless judgment and lack of sensitivity. She blew her nose while he patted her on the back, feeling like a helpless clod. He’d never been comfortable when women went all . . . emotional. “Really, Mr. Wetstra, it was Mr. Lawson who had to put up with me.” Blow-sniff. “Do you know I was never once on time and he never once docked my pay or even complained? Not once!” Now Jacob really felt terrible. It had taken him less than four hours to bellyache about something.

  At least he’d done something right: he’d located Rick Lawson’s personal documents including his will, in which, thank goodness, he had named his co-executors, just like Roscoe had said. Jacob went through the document with a fine-tooth comb. Although some things were stated differently in Pennsylvania law (his state of practice) than in Illinois, it was clear all the necessary pages were concise, signed, witnessed and notarized. Roscoe and his mother were in charge of Rick’s estate, although neither of them had a clue what to do about it other than beg Jacob to please step in and help poor Helen, at least until after Roscoe and his family arrived in town. “Of course, we’ll pay you for your time,” Roscoe said, not having a clue how much Jacob’s fees were. Jacob was sure Roscoe would be shocked, so he made up his mind to just charge a nominal fee since Roscoe had insisted they pay Jacob for his time. Of course, that was before Jacob had seen Rick’s office!

  Jacob stretched one more time, closed the window and maneuvered his way back to the desk. He rested his forehead in his palms and thought back over the last few days. Roscoe had been wrong about one thing, he thought: people weren’t waiting for the wake to ask questions. The law office phone was ringing off the hook. “Tell everyone not to worry,” Jacob told Helen. “Tell them their files are safe and they’ll be receiving a letter soon.”