by Kelly Harms
“That’s better,” he says, as he settles into the rocking chair opposite mine. “Much more comfortable up here.” Finally I can see his face. It’s square and a light tan color, with a good scruff going on his chin and heavy eyebrows over soft green eyes. His dark hair is unruly, yes, but in a sort of sweet disheveled way, more tousled than shaggy. I feel something twinge inside. A long-quiet part of me registers it as attraction.
“So. You’re the big winner of this house, eh?” he asks. I nod, rather than explain that I really have no idea. By now I’m calm enough that I think I could talk if I wanted to. But maybe not just yet …
“Is it nice?” he goes on. “It sure is big.”
It’s not a compliment, exactly, but at least it doesn’t require a response.
“Right, well. The purpose of my visit.” He leans back in his rocking chair like he’s about to tell a good story. “I was driving up Highway 130 to town and I saw a U-Haul truck pulled aways off the side of the road about ten miles north of here. Kind of an unusual sight. I pulled over to see if anything was the matter, and found this young lady…” he uses the arms of the chair to push himself up halfway,and calls out into the darkness. “Get up here, Nean!” Then he plops back into the chair, watching my face carefully all the while.
From the shadows a very sheepish version of the woman who stole our truck emerges. Her posture is crumpled over, and her head is tilted downward like a naughty puppy. She’s wearing an enormous pair of athletic shorts rolled up at the waist several times and a pair of plastic flip-flops, the kind they sell at every gas station and grocery store. It makes her look even younger than she is. I roll my lips together and inward, shutting up as tight as the locked house.
“No pants, no shoes, just a run-out-of-gas-U-Haul,” the man goes on, as the other Janine Brown gets close enough to the light of the porch for me to make out her dirty feet, the dark puffy bags under her eyes. “Well, I said to myself, something here is awry. She said she was moving here but I put two and two together when she didn’t have any ID or idea where she was. Plus, she seemed awfully interested in not seeing you tonight, didn’t you, Nean?” he calls back to the girl. “So I figured this was the first place we should go,” he adds with a wily smile. “And she didn’t have a lot of options, it being pretty quiet out here on Pemaquid Point, except for the coastal wolves.”
At the ridiculousness of the phrase “coastal wolves,” I feel a totally involuntary contraction in my cheeks, and before I know it I’m cracking a full-on smile. I nod solemnly, and say in a surprisingly solid tone of voice, “Oh yes, the wolves. Very dangerous.”
“And powerful enough to break right through the glass on a windshield, did you know? Especially when they’re hunting in packs.” Somehow he is keeping a totally straight face. “Well, after the whole story came out about the stolen truck and the contest confusion, I told her I was sure you’d let her stay here for the night, so long as she returned the truck and didn’t pull any more funny business. I mean, it’s that or out here with the wolves. I didn’t suppose you’d be that heartless, though I guess it’s totally up to you.”
The joke stops being funny when I consider letting this person, Nean, I guess she’s calling herself, back into what I’m hoping is my house. I shake my head.
“No, she can’t stay here,” I tell the man, Noah.
“See, Noah?” Nean whines. “I told you they were horrible.”
I shoot her the dirtiest look I’m capable of before I turn back to Noah. “Can’t she stay with you? We’ve had our issues, to put it mildly.”
A shadow crosses over his face so dark I recoil a little bit. “Sorry, no.” He shrugs and his tone lightens just a little. “No room at the inn.”
“A hotel then.”
“Are you paying?” Nean asks me, arms folding over her chest.
I grit my teeth. “Sure. Fine.”
Noah frowns. “It’s kind of late for that, I’m afraid. There’s nothing but bed and breakfasts out here, and they’re all shut up tight at this hour. But there’s got to be a spot for her in this big old house, just for one night. She’ll be good, won’t you, Nean?” He turns back to me. “And even if she feels like doing a runner, it’s not like there’s anywhere for her to go that’s safe…” he raises one of those thick dark eyebrows and a little playfulness returns to his countenance.
“… from the wolves,” I finish. To my great surprise, my shyness seems almost entirely gone.
“Exactly.”
“Well…” I think this over. I know I should go inside and wake up Aunt Midge, but I’m too embarrassed to admit in front of these two that I have to go to my eighty-eight-year-old aunt for permission. And anyway, I have to say yes. Because if there’s even the tiniest chance that this house really belongs to her, what right do I have to keep her out? “Fork over the car keys,” I say, stretching an open palm toward Nean.
Noah smiles and digs around in his pants pocket. “I thought I’d just hold ’em for you while we straightened all this out. Here you go.”
Noah reaches over and sets the keys, warm from his pocket, into mine. All at once I feel anxious again. I channel it into the interloper.
“No smoking in the house,” I tell her. “And tomorrow if the lawyers say we own the house, you’re out.”
Nean’s eyes slide away from mine off to the darkness. “Fine. But they won’t.”
“Great,” says Noah. “Tomorrow, when it’s light, we can get some gas out to the truck and bring it back where it belongs, sound good?”
“Wonderful, thank you. And thank you for finding the U-Haul. Everything we owned from before is in there. It would have been a big loss.”
“Anytime, Janine.” He holds my eyes for just a moment, but it’s enough.
I think about telling him to call me Janey, but the phrase sounds so overtly flirtatious in my head that I can’t get the words out. I turn away from him instead and unlock the front door.
“See you tomorrow?” I finally call behind me, when he is already down the porch steps and heading to his car.
“Can’t wait!” he calls without turning back. I think I hear a smile in his voice, but it’s too dark out to know for sure.
NEAN
“Civilization began with the invention of the cocktail hour.”
—ROY FINAMORE, Tasty
Coastal wolves? Please. They must think I’m some sort of moron to buy that nonsense. As anyone who has the National Geographic Channel can tell you, Maine has been wolf-free and lovin’ it for over a hundred years.
But, as I lie in the cozy bedroom I used to think was mine, watching the sunrise light the room pink, I have to fess up: I needed an excuse to get back here somehow, and letting those nimrods think I was afraid of coastal wolves was as good as any. Before Noah the Wandering Mountain Man found me, I was utterly lost, out of gas, facing a long night in a cold moving van cab and not exactly relishing the idea. After all, Maine may not have wolves, but they do have serial killers, just like anywhere else. More, if one is to believe Stephen King.
And … though I shudder to admit it, in the far recesses of my dark, dark heart, I was feeling pretty terrible about what I’d done. Not that I’ll ever tell those two that. They’re probably down the hall dreaming about stringing me up by my toenails and lashing me with macramé plant holders. But I know they must have packed their whole lives into that moving van, and I was already regretting the loss of my duffel bag enough to be sympathetic to how they must have felt about losing everything. Forget the duffel bag. What I really missed was a pair of pants and some shoes. Why do I do things like this?
I guess my junior high guidance counselor was right: I do have trouble predicting the consequences of my actions.
Although, the minute I swiped the truck, I realized just how dumb a move it was. The clock on the dash informed me that it was well past lawyer’s hours, not that that stopped me from wasting the last of the U-Haul’s gas to drive into Damariscotta anyway. And when I got there, and found the
lawyer’s office right on Main, it was shut up just as tightly as I’d expected, with my deed trapped inside.
At least, I hope it’s my deed.
And if it isn’t?
As Noah pointed out in the car ride back here, I may be able to talk the real Janine Brown out of pressing charges tomorrow. She seemed like a forgiving sort—or if not truly forgiving, at least spineless enough to let me get off with a slap on the wrist.
But then what? I don’t have any money left, and I don’t know a soul on this side of the Mississippi. Even if I could get back to Iowa, it would be unwise to run back into Geoff’s arms, what with our earlier difference of opinions regarding his skull and my coffee mug. In the roof-over-my-head department, winning this house was pretty much as far as my planning went. If I’ve unwon it, I’m out of ideas.
Of course, there’s probably a shelter nearby where I could stay. God, I hate shelters. They are hard on everybody, but they are hell on girls. I’ll do just about anything to get out of relying on them—and I have. Let’s face it, it’s not like I was dating Geoff for my health.
Maybe, once I get to town I can find a job right away and save every penny until I can afford to get myself my own apartment. Yes! Then I could go to night school and get a degree so I can make more money. Maybe I’d even meet some nice guys for a change. It would be a whole new Nean. Nean on the straight and narrow.
But … don’t you need a credit check to get an apartment? And how long would I have to work at a min-wage job to save up enough for first month’s rent and a deposit? Let’s see.… If I can wrangle ten bucks an hour and find a three-hundred-dollar apartment, that’s … hey—that’s just two weeks of work, with a little extra for taxes. I could do a shelter for two weeks. No problem.
Oh, right, that’s two weeks assuming I don’t eat or do anything or go anywhere the entire time. Shit.
I just have to have won this house. That’s all there is to it. After all, it was my name that Carson Jansen-Smit read on national television, and me who got to the house first. I’m the one who figured out a way in. I’m the one who got an e-mail from the HSHN producer.
I’m the one who ate the congratulatory fruit basket.
It’s my house. And I’m not going to hide up here like some sort of squatter waiting to find out something I’m already perfectly sure of. I’m going to go downstairs and eat something in my kitchen and watch something on my TV and swim in my pool and do whatever the hell else I want until I can find a way to get rid of those two gate-crashers once and for all.
* * *
When I get downstairs around six-thirty that morning, the first thing I notice is a loud humming sound, like a refrigerator on steroids, or an alien spaceship. It seems to be coming from outside, making the spaceship option even more likely. Flummoxed, I slide open the poolside door and slip outside to investigate. The hum is definitely coming from the pool—from my pool, I remind myself. And the contents of my pool? One naked old lady. Really old. Really naked. Really splishing and splashing like the day she was born.
She seems to be doing something close to a breaststroke, if you can do a breaststroke with your breasts bobbing up under your arms like that. I now realize the pool is some sort of streaming water conveyer belt that forces a current through in one direction, so you can swim constantly without ever getting anyplace. Huh. And I thought it was just a very large hot tub.
The pool continues humming loudly, and I’m sure she can’t hear anything with all that water rushing past her ears and the enormous smacking sound that her arm flaps make every time they hit the water. But maybe she senses me or something, because after a few seconds she lowers her arms and comes to a stop and then fumbles to turn off the current.
Before she’s even turned around to verify my existence, she says, “Well, well, well, look what the cat dragged in.”
“More like dragged out,” I say, watching her surprisingly nimble movements as she takes the stairway out of the water. She’s stark naked, but doesn’t seem self-conscious at all. “This is my house, after all,” I remind her. “I can come and go as I please.”
She rolls her eyes. “I don’t care if this is the pope’s house; you sure as shit better have a U-Haul with you if you want me to call off the dogs. Hand me that towel.”
I pick up the fluffy beige towel from the dewy grass near my feet and gently toss it to her. “I’m sorry about that, really,” I say as earnestly as I can. “In fact, I was trying to return it to you last night. I knew you would need it to leave today.”
She ignores the last bit as surely as if I hadn’t spoken it. “And?”
“I got lost and then ran out of gas. I left it about ten minutes away.”
The old lady rolls her eyes and begins toweling off with vigor. “You’ve got some nerve, missy,” she says in the shaming way only a woman this old can muster. “Stealing our car and then just waltzing back here like you own the place.”
“I do own the place. They said my name on TV. That means I won.”
She squints at me. “But there were no producers with balloons there when you found out? No paperwork to confirm it?”
I shake my head, feeling that pesky shadow of doubt again, but refusing to show it. “Not exactly. But I did get a confirmation e-mail from the network producer, Meghan Mewcow-something. And—”
“Meghan Mukoywski?”
“That’s right,” I say. “And I’ve spoken to her assistant several times.”
“Well, we’ll see where that gets you. Now stop checking me out like a sex-starved teenage boy and help me cover this pool.”
Embarrassed, I realize I have been staring. Now that she’s back on land, her body is plainly displayed and it’s oddly beautiful. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I love the menfolk pretty exclusively, but really, she looks good for an old bat. She’d be downright attractive if I was a guy. An old guy. She’s got some muscle tone going on in her arms and legs, despite a wrinkly covering of skin, and though there’s a certain sag happening in every direction, her big grandma hips speak of fresh-baked cookies and hours spent in the easy chair knitting.
“How old are you?” I blurt.
She harrumphs. “None of your damn business, Little Miss Grand Theft Auto. Grab the corner over there.” She gestures to the hard-sided pool cover, and I scramble to follow her instructions, damn that old-lady authority thing. “Right over here to this edge. No, more to the left. There.” I grunt and groan as I try to force the cover up and over the pool. “It’s heavy, ain’t it?” she asks, and I look up to nod and catch her face softening. “Not that a lady would ever confess her age, but I will say that it rhymes with ‘matey-hate.’ You’d never know it to look at me, though, would you?”
“No. No, you wouldn’t.” I’m not exactly telling the truth, but I’m not exactly lying either. Weird.
“Pull it tight so no critters get in and drown themselves,” she instructs, and while I struggle to do so, she cools her heels. “So you figured you’d just steal our truck and head for the hills, is that it? Sell our every possession for drug money and cheap hamburgers?”
I think back to that moment when I crawled inside the high cab of the U-Haul and turned the key in the ignition. I just wanted to have that deed in my hot little hands as soon as possible. Now I’m worse off than if I had just sat tight and waited. “To be honest, I hadn’t really thought things out too well.”
She squinches her face at me. I feel like she’s trying to read my mind. Good luck to her.
Finally she lets her eyes slide away and says, “Have you had breakfast? Let’s go get Janey to feed us. Do you think this place came with bacon and eggs?”
“Uh-uh. Just prop food. Fancy cans of fish and jars of marinated vegetables and some stuff from the sponsors. But there’s coffee…”
“It’s a good start. C’mon, you.” She leads me through the sliding glass doors, still dripping, and once inside trades her fluffy towel for an even fluffier-looking robe. It’s way too big for her, and when she puts
it on it makes her look tiny and a little frail, despite the solidness I just witnessed au naturel moments ago. As her thin white hair starts to dry it stands up on her head in patches. Now she looks eighty-eight. I fight the urge to offer her my arm to lean on.
We walk in through the great room, past the big leather sofas draped with snuggly quilts and plush pillows, past the built-in bookcases filled with high-minded novels and grouped vases, past the antique sailing maps, framed one atop the other in a high stack to the vaulted ceilings. I know it wasn’t designed for me, and yet, if I closed my eyes tightly and imagined my wildest dream of home, this is what it would look like.
“The place is a palace,” she says, reminding me that I am not the only one who knows how to dream big. “Did you see the size of the steam shower in the master bedroom? I could have a tea party in there.”
“I was thinking it would be a good place to raise an alligator,” I reply. “They love the damp, I hear.”
I get a smile for that, and the warmth of it hits me hard. It will be hard to watch her dream go up in smoke. Maybe, after I sign my deed, I will let her stay for a few days, just until she’s had time to come up with a plan B. Yes, I think I will.
“An alligator. Not a bad idea,” she says. “I wonder what my niece would think of that.”
“She’s your niece?” For some reason I assumed the other Janine Brown was the old lady’s granddaughter. She only seems a few years older than me.
“Grand niece. Her grandma was my sister. Her name was Janine too. She was quite the lady.” Her voice gets a little misty and I think we are headed for a trip down memory lane. But before she can go any further into the old days and how it snowed every day in May and they had to eat SPAM and turnips to survive, I hear footsteps on the stairs. Through the banister rails I see the long, skinny pajama-pant-clad legs of the Other Janine Brown.
