A House by the Side of the Road

by Jan Gleiter

  Christine leaned against the counter, grinning. “I could stand to deal with you if you wanted to ruin this kitchen but not if you both wanted to ruin this kitchen and were scared to admit it. See, it was a self-correcting situation. Why waste time?”

  “Okay,” said Meg. She took a deep breath and said with a pretense of great nervousness, “I like Charles Dickens, Bach, barbershop quartets, and lilacs. I hate houses that are painted orange, and I will not live down the road from an orange house and have to look at it every time I drive to town. If you paint any part of your pretty white house orange, I will have to move. Or, if I’ve gotten attached to this place, sneak over at night and change it back.”

  “Hmm…” said Christine, hitching herself onto the countertop. “All right. I like Angela Thirkell novels, Chopin, and peonies. Big, blowzy peonies. If you put in one of those little black coachmen statues standing by the front walk holding a lantern, I will come over while you’re at the movies and smash it with a hammer.”

  Meg nodded. “This is going to work.”

  Christine lifted her mug in agreement. “You bet.” She slid down from the counter. “Let’s see the house.”

  “If you like the kitchen, you’re going to like this,” said Meg, gesturing through the doorway into the dining room. “It’s got a, whatever-you-call-it, linoleum rug.”

  “It does!” said her visitor. “I never saw it. Louise had carpeting everywhere.”

  She stooped and ran a hand over the floor, which was covered to within a foot of the walls by a sheet of pale green linoleum, interspersed and bordered with a floral design in blues, pinks, and darker green. “It’s not even in bad shape, probably because of the carpeting. It must be, what, sixty years old?”

  Meg shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s sure as heck not recent. Let’s keep going. Maybe there’s a Murphy bed somewhere.”

  There wasn’t. But the downstairs had, besides the dining and living rooms, two nicely proportioned bedrooms and a long, narrow bathroom with a wide, shallow medicine cabinet built in above the sink and what must have been the original cherry wainscoting. Several of the hexagonal mosaic tiles on the floor had disappeared, and the window was frozen in place. When the two women, shoving together, managed to raise it, it fell back down again with a crash. The stairs to the smaller second story were behind a door in the hallway. They creaked, and tattered paper in a pattern of immense camellias clung, in torn sections, to the walls. At the top of the stairs was a large attic. The air was stale and the several windows were smeared and dirty, but enough sunlight came in to produce shafts of dancing dust motes. Some boxes and cartons, presumably abandoned by a previous tenant, were stacked near the steps.

  “Storage space!” said Meg.

  They went back down the stairs and Meg closed the door at the bottom. It immediately swung open again a few inches. She shut it more firmly and turned the knob, which seemed to take care of the problem. Nearby was the door to the basement. She pulled it open and located a light switch on the stairway wall. Christine had to duck her head for the first few steps. The cellar was cramped, with a low ceiling and a huge heating system that took up most of the area. The walls were not straight up and down but curved like the walls of a cave. There were stacks of old newspapers, and piles of broken and unappealing household items. It smelled, however, exactly as Meg thought an old basement should.

  “Well,” said Christine, looking around. “At least that’s not a coal furnace, which I halfway expected.”

  “It’s immense,” said Meg, “and a little scary. I hope it works.”

  They went back up to the first floor and looked at the items that had allowed the house to be rented as “furnished.”

  “Not exactly a treasure trove, is it?” said Meg. “Everything’s so beat up.”

  “Except the floors. The carpet did a good job of protecting the floors; they’re beautiful.”

  They were. They glowed softly, in contrast to the abused furniture.

  “I’ll keep the couch,” said Meg, indicating a pleasant old sofa in the living room, “and the dresser in the front bedroom, and the dining room table and chairs. They’re beat up, but sturdy. The rest’ll go to the Salvation Army tomorrow. Unless you want any of it?”

  Christine shook her head. “Too many years of tenants who didn’t care what they spilled. Anyway, we’ve got too much stuff already. Let’s have lunch.”

  The two women sat on the kitchen stoop and ate ham sandwiches. “So that’s Aunt Louise’s house,” said Meg. “Doesn’t tell me much about her. I didn’t know her very well and hoped it would.”

  “It doesn’t tell you much because her books are gone. She had more than four thousand books. She took every last one to the nursing home, which now has a substantial library.” Christine grinned. “If she had A Beginner’s Guide to Home Repair, she shoulda left it for the tenants.”

  “We wrote letters, that was all,” said Meg. “And not often. My mother was scared of her, I think.”

  “Don’t conclude your mother was unjustified. The lady wasn’t exactly affable. I admired her ‘If you don’t like it, screw you’ attitude, but that’s because I intend to adopt the same one the day I reach sixty-five.”

  She leaned against the wall of the house, stretched out her legs, and pointed to a toolshed beyond which the driveway began its curve to the back. “You could take one of the dressers you don’t want and put it in there to hold nails and screwdrivers and sandpaper. You’re going to be needing nails and screwdrivers and sandpaper. And pliers and saws and a really, really big garbage can.”

  “I know.” Meg sighed happily. “But that big old claw-footed tub must be seven feet long, and the shrub outside the front bedroom is honeysuckle. The smelly kind, I hope.”

  “If it’s not, you can plant one. And you’ll have roses. But the tulips must be surviving on a pension—and none of the tenants planted anything. If you want to see a gorgeous yard, go look at Mike Mulcahy’s garden on the other side of us. Not much to see yet, but it’s something.”

  “Michael Mulcahy’s place?” asked Meg. “How can a lawyer have enough time to keep a fabulous garden? And why does he have a swing? This sandwich is good.”

  Christine pushed the basket closer to Meg. “Have another. He didn’t plant the garden. He inherited the place, complete with swing, from Mrs. Ehrlich last fall. I guess this is the year for inheriting property. He gets his aunt’s house; you get your great-aunt’s. I don’t know if he’ll have a clue how to take care of the garden, but I hope he figures it out. She worked like crazy on it. Lots of old flowers you hardly ever see, with names like Kiss Me over the Garden Gate.”

  “It sounds wonderful,” said Meg, unwrapping a second sandwich.

  “It is. But, like I said, at least you’ll have roses.” Christine poured more coffee into Meg’s empty mug. “There’s a white climber that grows right up the side of the porch. You need some of those big, comfy metal lawn chairs to put out there, the ones that give a little when you lean back, you know, so you can just sit on the porch until incipient starvation forces you into action.”

  “Or, sporadically, when I decide to try to make a living.”

  Christine sighed. “Yeah, there’s that. What do you do?”

  “I are a editor,” said Meg. “Well, more of a writer. Freelance. Educational material. Mostly reading and language-arts stuff … vocabulary worksheets, spelling masters, whatever. You?”

  “Substitute teach when we’re at the point of boiling Nikes for supper. My husband’s a contractor. Sometimes things are busy—right now, they’re busy—and sometimes they’re not. When they’re not, I slap a steely look on my face and turn into the dreaded Mrs. Ruschman, every kid’s worst nightmare. Then I stomp around and pull rank.” She grinned wickedly. “I love pulling rank.”

  She fished a pair of half-glasses out of the purse next to her and put them on, lowering her chin enough to look sternly over the top.

  “You’d scare me,” said Meg. “I’m feeling a
little trembly already.”

  When Christine had driven away, after extracting a promise to come to supper, Meg separated the daffodils into three jars. It made her happy just to look at them, to lean over and breathe in their scent, and distributing them on the countertops took the edge off the loneliness of the house.

  * * *

  She ate that night with the Ruschmans—a chicken casserole and peaches. The peaches had to be home-canned; they had flavor. After greeting her with wild enthusiasm, Warren G. Harding lay silently under the table.

  “If you feed the dog from the table, I will put on my glasses and give you the look,” said Christine. “There is only one bad or disgusting habit he does not have. He does not yet”—she looked pointedly at her children—“beg at the table.”

  Christine’s husband, who had been introduced as Dan, was big and broad-shouldered and had hazel eyes like his daughter. The children, Jane and the solemn but friendly Teddy, were making an obvious effort to remember their manners.

  Meg found herself witness to what was, evidently, an ongoing debate.

  “If nobody says they’ll coach by the end of the week, we won’t have a team,” said Jane, pushing minced pieces of celery from the casserole to one side of her plate. “You know, Dad, I can’t improve if I can’t play.”

  Dan set his iced tea down with a thunk. “I can’t do it, Janie. I could make it to most of the games, but a coach has to run practices. Lots of practices. I can’t. I would if I could. I can’t, and I’m getting really tired of talking about it.”

  Christine rolled her eyes at Meg. “Baseball,” she said.

  “You play baseball, Jane?” asked Meg.

  “I used to,” the child replied. “But a team can’t get in the league without a coach, and our coach from last year moved, and my parents have other things to do.”

  Christine sighed. “I don’t know enough! Your dad knows enough, but he doesn’t have time. I might, I might have time, but I don’t know enough.”

  “I do,” said Meg.

  Everyone looked at her.

  “You play baseball?” asked Teddy.

  “Don’t look so surprised,” said Meg. “I’m short but what they call sturdy. Come on, Christine, it’ll be fun. We’ll do it together. You do what you can do, and I’ll do the rest.”

  “We’re talking about thirteen kids,” said Christine warningly. “Three or four are decent players; a couple are good; the rest are klutzes. The practice season starts in a few days, and the games at the beginning of May. Are you even sure you’re staying?”

  “With a creek three hundred yards from the house and a climbing rose on the porch?” She scooped up a peach slice and tipped it into her mouth. “And a neighbor who cans peaches? Are you kidding? And I love baseball. And I can stand a small percentage of the children I meet. And we’ll kick butt.”

  Jane looked at her mother. “Mom?”

  Christine looked at Meg, who clasped her hands in an attitude of intense supplication. “All right,” she sighed. “I’ll call the league commissioner tomorrow and find out when we can get the field.” She aimed a forefinger at Jane. “You call the kids. You call the kids every time they have to be called. All season. Deal?”

  “Deal!” said Jane. She and Meg slapped hands across the table.

  “Well, you all work out the details,” said Dan, pushing back his chair. “I’ve got to get the rest of the floor down in the Bensons’ addition. I’ll be back late.”

  “Again?” asked Christine, looking stricken. “But, honey … again?”

  “I know. Sorry. There just isn’t anything I can do except do it.” He smiled at Meg. “It’s been a pleasure meeting you. I hope we’ll see you often.”

  After dinner, Christine and Meg sat in the living room with coffee while Jane and Teddy washed the dishes. A small black cat jumped onto the couch and pushed his head against Meg’s hand.

  “That’s Charlie,” said Christine. “Just give him a shove if he’s annoying.”

  The cat rumbled contentedly as Meg scratched him. “You lean toward burly pets, don’t you?” she asked. “Warren G. is a major hunk of dog and this fellow looks like he’s on kitty steroids.”

  “Ain’t none of us dainty,” replied Christine. “But maybe Mrs. Ehrlich had him lifting weights; I don’t know. We kind of inherited him when she died.”

  “The lady with the great garden?”

  “Uh-huh. She had one of the most detailed wills in the history of the county. ‘And to Christine Ruschman, my neighbor to the east, I leave all of my kitchen and table linens, both those in the top drawer in the pantry and those in the large oak trunk with the flat top in the attic,’ but it made no mention of Charlie.”

  “So that’s where you came by your tablecloth. I wondered. Those old flowered ones from the thirties are getting hard to find.”

  Christine nodded. “Tell me about it. I am now, however, happily awash in them.”

  Meg regarded the cat, who had been overtaken by the need to remove some invisible impurity from his haunch. He sat splay-legged, bracing himself while twisting around to clean it off. “He’s really a chunk.”

  “He was still a tom when he came meowing to Hannah’s back door, so that’s probably why he’s such a muscle-bound guy.”

  “Well, she ruined his night life,” said Meg, “I’m glad to see.”

  “It was probably a relief to him,” replied Christine, an odd look passing briefly over her face. “Hey, girl, just where do you get off roping me into co-managing a baseball team? I can’t believe your nerve. I’ve got nothing else to do?”

  “Aw, don’t be a poot,” said Meg. “You’ve got all that experience as the dreaded Mrs. Ruschman just going to waste. I’ll need somebody to scare the kids and keep order, so I can concentrate on being the one they like. Besides, Jane needs to play. It’s one of the most important things she can do. What’s she going to say ten years from now? ‘My mother never had time for me, so I couldn’t do any of the things I really liked. But I didn’t care, because our house was so clean!’?”

  Christine laughed. “I said I’d do it. But I intend to hold it against you.”

  “I’ll bear up,” said Meg. “She wants to play. And I want to coach. So if you don’t like it, tough. Anybody married to the man you’re married to needs to feel some pain. It’s only fair. Does he have any idea how good-looking he is?”

  Christine smiled. “I don’t know. I wonder sometimes. He is cute, isn’t he?”

  “Oh, yeah,” said Meg. “He’s that.”

  * * *

  Meg parked outside the kitchen door. She wished she’d thought to leave a light on inside. When it got dark in the country, it got very dark. Tomorrow, the house would be filled with her own possessions, her own kitchen table and chairs and bed and heaps of boxes. It would feel more familiar, more like home. Tonight, it was still someone else’s house. She opened the hatchback of the car, pushed the fire extinguisher and a carton of books out of the way, picked up a box of sheets and blankets, and unlocked the kitchen door.

  She had already stored her toothbrush, toothpaste, shampoo, and a few makeup items in the medicine cabinet. She opened the mirrored door, admiring the cherry wainscoting—the same as on the walls—that had been used to make the cabinet. Earlier in the day, putting things on its shallow, wide shelves, she had noticed the small slot in the back for used razor blades. Now, brushing her teeth, she gazed at it, wondering how many worn, dulled blades had tumbled down into the space between the studs and lay rusting inside the wall.

  Something was odd. She was sure she had put the bottle of vitamin tablets on the bottom shelf, because she had moved it to look more closely at the slot, realizing what it was. The bottle was now on the second shelf.

  She stared at the other objects, arranged so neatly, far more neatly than they would remain after she had filled the cabinet with the normal jumble of items that, like gas, would expand to fill the available space. The few things she had placed there were still there. Why
wouldn’t they be? She must be wrong about where she’d put the vitamins. There was no reason for anyone to come into her house, empty her medicine cabinet, and replace the objects. She was just being silly, spooked by the silence and the house’s unlived-in feeling.

  She shut the cabinet door firmly and went to bed.

  Six

  The Salvation Army truck arrived as the coffee in Christine’s old spare coffeepot finished percolating. The workers cheerfully carried out load after load of dismal furniture and ugly, heavy curtains. At ten o’clock, the moving truck drove up. By noon, known objects had made the house comforting, despite the stacks of unpacked cartons.

  The sound of barking in the early afternoon drew her out into the backyard. Two dogs were racing toward the trees, Warren G. Harding hot in pursuit of the ugly brown dog. Even with his longer legs, he stood no chance of overtaking her, but she whirled and came toward him, and they met in a tumbling pile of cream and brown.

  Meg took off running, unwilling to let nature take its course. They separated, the bigger dog with his front legs on the ground, his rear end high, and his tail up. He made a short bounding motion at the other dog, who stood panting and then gave in to the invitation and romped around him. Meg slowed to a walk, glad that no one had witnessed her misunderstanding.

  “Harding!” she called, and then whistled. “Hey, Harding!”

  He ran eagerly to meet her, jumping up to pat at her with large paws.

  “Who’s your friend with the mean eyes?” she asked, pushing him down and bending to scratch his neck with both hands.

  The other dog hadn’t moved. She stood at a distance, watching Meg intently. Her chest was broad, her legs wide-set. Her ears were forward, and her tail stood out horizontally behind her.

  “Come on, girl,” said Meg, patting her leg. “You’re interested, I can tell. Let’s get along with each other.”

  The dog still didn’t move. She barked once in a peremptory fashion, and Harding loped off to rejoin her.

  Meg walked back to the house, reminded of wanting her own dog. She’d grown up with dogs, and it seemed unnatural to live without one, but Chicago landlords were, most often, unsympathetic. Hers surely had been. She wanted … not a scruffy, bad-tempered dog. Not an ugly little dog. A clown, perhaps, like the Airedale she’d liked so much in Chicago. Or a bold and beautiful Kuvasz. Or … She wanted to begin the search, but she needed to fix the fence before she could start looking. And she couldn’t start on that until she’d made some headway with unpacking.