A House by the Side of the Road

by Jan Gleiter

  * * *

  She was propped up in bed reading when Christine called. It was the first time the phone had rung.

  “We’ve got our choice. We can be the Atlanta Braves or the Houston Astros. Do you care, Coach? I do.”

  “No, I don’t care. Why do you?”

  “Okay, then we’re the Astros. Because the Astros, for some reason, have gray pants and the Braves have white, that’s why.”

  “Ah. I’m surprised you didn’t have to fight for the uniform then.”

  “Are you kidding? All the other coaches are men. Like they’ve ever washed the pants? Ha!”

  Christine had a list of the times the diamond was available, and they worked out a practice schedule.

  “Do you make a habit of calling people at ten forty-five?” asked Meg. “Don’t you have to get up and milk the cows or something?”

  “Oh, yeah,” laughed Christine. “That’s why we moved to the country. So we could have cows and get up at four-thirty. There are plenty of cows along this road, but not a one of them belongs to us. I like cows. I just don’t like their schedule. I wouldn’t have called so late if I’d realized it was. I’ve been reading a sewing magazine and didn’t notice the time. I was engrossed.” She paused. “It was a real seam-ripper.”

  Meg laughed. “Wrench yourself away; there’s work to do. Make me a list of the team members while you’re burning the midnight oil. And note the positions they played last year—if they played last year—along with whatever you know about them. Bring it over tomorrow and have lunch.”

  “I can tell you’re good at delegating,” said Christine. “I don’t like that in a person.”

  “Can I hang up now?”

  “In a minute. Did you hear about the break-in?”

  The disconcerted feeling that had plagued Meg during the early afternoon came back. “What break-in? Where?”

  Christine chuckled. “Would you believe someone broke into the Salvation Army store?”

  “What for?”

  “That’s the big mystery. What for, exactly! Probably kids on a dare or something. Nothing was even taken, so far as anyone knows.”

  “How bizarre.”

  “Tell me about it. But excitement is hard to come by in this town. Anyone with a taste for it is driven to odd activities.”

  * * *

  The numbers on the clock by Meg’s bed said 2:22 when she woke up. She lay, blinking at it, wondering what had awakened her. Then she knew. A dog was barking near the house, a throaty, challenging bark.

  Meg tensed. She was glad she had taken two nails and driven them into the window jamb. It still opened easily, but no more than five inches, so she could leave it open at night without feeling unprotected. The other windows in the house were shut and locked; she had taken care of that before getting to bed. Dogs bark, she told herself. They just do, at almost anything.

  The barking stopped. Meg lay in bed, staring upward at nothing and listening to complete silence. I should, she thought, have thrown rocks instead of cookies. She went back to sleep. In the morning, the dog was still there, lying on the mat outside the front door.

  Seven

  The phone rang while Meg was painting the fence. She raced inside, the screen door slamming behind her.

  “Mike Mulcahy,” said the caller. “How’s it going?”

  “Slowly,” replied Meg. “But I like the place; I really do. I’ve got the fence repaired. I was painting it when you called.”

  “Oops. Sorry to interrupt. Don’t you have to, like, find paying work?”

  “You offering?”

  He laughed. “If you can type, spell deposition, and repress hostile glares at people you figure are guilty as hell, sure. Why not? Like I said, I lost my secretary. And since it’s your fault, you kinda owe me.”

  “What do you mean, my fault?”

  “The woman who lived in your house, Angie Morrison, was my secretary. She rented month-to-month, and when I told her you were taking the place, she decided to leave town.”

  “Oh, please!” said Meg. “It’s my fault there’s no rental property in this burg?”

  “There is, actually. I don’t think she left because she’d have to move. I think she wanted a more exciting life. However, if I can get some leverage by making you feel guilty, why not try?”

  “Charming,” said Meg. “And lawyers wonder why they have such bad reputations. But no, I’m not looking for paying work. Scratch that. I’m usually looking for paying work, but I brought my job with me—writing vocabulary worksheets for middle-school kids. My next deadline’s a few days off, though, so I’m taking a little time to settle.”

  “How about taking a little time to have dinner? You need to get a sense of the elegant night life this town has to offer.”

  Meg hesitated, feeling unprepared. “I don’t know … I’ve got so much to do.”

  “You have to eat.”

  “Yeah, but…”

  “We’ll make it quick. The Main Street Cafe has great onion burgers. You can show up in paint-spattered overalls, and nobody will even blink.”

  “Okay,” said Meg. “I’ll meet you there. What time?”

  “Six-thirty,” said Mike. “Eat lunch early. The portions are large.”

  * * *

  Christine rode up on a bicycle at noon and admired the fence.

  “It’s going to take me the rest of my adult life to paint it,” said Meg. “And it’s hopelessly boring. Any chance Jane likes to paint? Pays better than baby-sitting.”

  “She might,” said Christine. “She likes doing almost anything. And she likes you. Anyone who invites her over to play catch rates pretty high with her. And she’s saving money to buy stock, so she’d probably like a job.”

  “Saving money to buy stock?”

  “Mrs. Ehrlich left her a few shares along with her sterling silver, and Janie’s decided to become a force on Wall Street, which I don’t discourage, being as how I’ll need somebody to support me in my old age.”

  “Stock and sterling silver…” said Meg. “If her house is the one I think it is, just west of you, it doesn’t quite seem the home of a rich lady. Nice, but…”

  “Well,” said Christine, her blue eyes softening with memories, “she didn’t care about any of that. She wasn’t a typical ‘rich lady.’ Her husband’s family had money and the things that go along with having money, and most of it ended up with her. Hardly anybody around here realized she was as well-off as she was.”

  They sat in a sunny spot on the porch, leaning against the wall of the house, eating bread and cheese and deviled eggs and drinking apple cider. The brown dog, who had moved off when Christine arrived, walked warily back into the yard and lay down at a distance.

  “You’ve got a visitor,” said Christine.

  “I’m afraid so,” Meg replied. “I wanted her to stop being so skittish and made the mistake of trying to accomplish that with some of your cookies. They were wildly successful, and now she seems to think she lives here. She woke me up barking in the night. I hate to drive her off; it wasn’t easy to make friends at all. But I can’t figure out why she doesn’t just go home.”

  Christine chewed thoughtfully. “I don’t think she has one,” she said. “I mean, I don’t think she had one. She seems to think she does now.”

  “Oh, great,” said Meg. “I thought she lived someplace down the road.”

  “Nope. She just appeared a few weeks back. I think somebody moved and left her behind, or opened the car door and shoved as they went through.”

  She looked at the dog with distaste. “It’s not hard to figure out why. Don’t get me wrong. I loathe the rent-a-pet mentality. But that dog is not just ugly; she’s bad-tempered. I can’t get near her.”

  “I wouldn’t worry,” said Meg. “I mean, as long as you don’t grab at her. Mike was dumb enough to try that, and dogs don’t like that from strangers. I think she’s the live-and-let-live type.”

  Christine stretched her legs and yawned. “It’s so pe
aceful here. It’s peaceful at my house too, during the weekdays anyway. But to live like this. I can’t imagine.”

  “Wanna trade? Like I said, your husband’s cute.”

  Christine’s brows drew together in thought. “Nah, I’d get too lonely.” She glanced at Meg. “Won’t you?”

  “Not planning to,” said Meg. “Alone seems just fine to me. Sit down; I don’t mean you.”

  “So tell me about the guy.”

  “What guy?”

  “The guy. The one that makes alone seem fine to you. Tell me about him, if it’s not too nosy of me to ask.”

  So Meg told her about Jim, about how he had the world’s most beautiful smile, about how he’d made her laugh. “He was a honcho at the office where I was an underling. One day, we were at a meeting, across the table from each other. And down at the other end, the VP for marketing was sharing his vast knowledge about the attitudes of the masses or, as he called them, ‘the great unwashed.’ I glanced over at Jim. He looked at me; and, so quickly that I wondered if he’d really done it, he crossed his eyes.”

  She demonstrated. “Nobody else saw it, but I nearly choked. Under his well-cut suits and all the solemnity about the sacred bottom line, he had a goofy side and the ability to … not take himself and the world too seriously. I really liked it.”

  “So what went wrong? Working together?”

  “No. I couldn’t take the frustration and all the maneuvering that was part of being a businesswoman. It’s a whole lot like being in high school. I quit. Jim and I were fine for a while. He’s an appealing guy. He loves animals; he loves children; he loves movies; he loves going out for doughnuts in the middle of the night. He also loves women and doesn’t really see much point in changing that noun to its singular form.” She shrugged and glanced at Christine, who was looking sympathetic.

  “He … what? He’s a womanizer?”

  “Oh, no. No, he’s not. That would have been easy. Dump the jerk. No, he’s just not someone who has any desire to settle down. He never pretended anything else, never lied. At least, not that I know of. He’s not a bad person. He’s just … who he is.”

  “Not the marryin’ kind, ma’am,” said Christine in an exaggerated drawl.

  “Oh, pooh. I didn’t care if we got married. I just wanted to take him for granted.”

  “Yeah.” Christine looked wistful. “That condition has gotten a bad rap. It’s a lovely way to live.”

  “But it wasn’t going to happen, and when I finally realized that, I had to get him out of my life.” She stretched her arms wide and sighed deeply. “And now he is.”

  “And you’re ready to move on.”

  “I already have.”

  Jack’s red pickup came slowly around the curve and emitted three short honks as it passed. Both women waved.

  “So you’ve met our local artist,” said Christine. “He’s a sweetie.”

  “Artist?” asked Meg, her eyebrows rising. “I figured him for a carpenter, or a farmer maybe.”

  “Well, you were right. He is a carpenter. He’s also a painter. Went to a fancy art school. He has paintings at some galleries, I think.”

  “Where?” asked Meg, thinking how much she’d like to see them.

  Christine shrugged. “Don’t know. The point is, he says he’d rather build things. He works a lot with Dan, does terrific stuff. When Jack frames in a wall, you kind of hate to cover it up with plasterboard, the work is so precise. And he makes intricate little boxes with all kinds of rare wood.”

  “He helped me choose a hammer at the lumberyard.”

  Christine lifted her chin and shook her head to position her hair behind her shoulders. “Just don’t get him to help you choose anything that could cost real money. The man has incredible, perfect taste.”

  “Does he have an incredible, perfect girlfriend?” asked Meg.

  “Good idea!” said Christine. Her mouth curved into a grin. “You have moved on! No, not anymore. He did, but it ended. Other than the lovely Stephanie—who was a major snob from what I could tell—the only woman I ever saw him with consistently was Hannah Ehrlich, and though she might have given you a run for your money, she’s not in a position to compete.”

  She saw the look on Meg’s face. “I’m kidding, idiot,” she laughed. “He was just a big help to her, that’s all. Carried a lot of the burden of making sure she had groceries and doing the heavy garden work and looking out for her. Stephanie probably objected to sharing him. I don’t think generosity was her dominant characteristic.”

  Meg leaned back against the side of the house. She remembered the hint of hostility in Jack’s voice the previous day. “Does he get along with Mike Mulcahy?”

  “Not well,” said Christine. “Jack thought Mike should have done more for his aunt, and he took it hard when she died. I think he blames Mike a little.”

  “Do you?”

  Christine shook her head. “No. Mike’s busy. He’s hardly ever home. Back before Hannah died, he lived about twenty miles away, and I think it was hard for him to drive way over here every time she needed a peony moved to a sunnier spot.”

  She fell silent, with a troubled look.

  “What?” asked Meg.

  “Janie blames him,” said Christine. “She needs someone to blame.” She pulled her knees up and clasped them, looking out over the yard. “It was the first real tragedy in her life, and she was furious. She wanted there to be a reason besides just, you know, mortality. So, if Mike had been more devoted, had paid more attention, it wouldn’t have happened. She decided that he neglected his aunt because he knew he’d inherit her house.”

  “I’m having dinner with him tonight,” said Meg. “I guess I’d better not tell Jane.”

  Christine gave her an appraising look. “I thought we were going to figure out clever ways to throw you and Jack into the same social circles, and here you are with your dance card filling up.”

  “Oh, yeah,” said Meg. “Just call me Belle.”

  When Christine had ridden away, the dog moved closer to the porch. Meg looked up from reading through the team notes and saw her watching. The dog’s chin dripped water and her paws were wet.

  “Been down to the creek, I see, which probably accounts for your peaceful demeanor,” said Meg. “It has that effect. Why have you decided to hang out here? Somebody was nice to you, back when you were a puppy, right? A smallish woman with short dark hair, I bet. You got socialized and you learned about people, and now you’re reluctant to give up on the entire human race.”

  The dog lay down, stretching her head out on her paws, and sighed.

  “You’re too proud to ask, but you’re hungry, aren’t you?” asked Meg. “I really stepped in it, didn’t I?”

  She went into the kitchen, scrambled some eggs and made toast, which she crumbled on top. She carried the plate outside, put it down on the grass, and sat cross-legged a few feet away.

  “No, I didn’t lace it with arsenic,” she said as the dog sniffed from a distance. “Anyone with sense would have, but I didn’t. If you want it, come get it. Come on, girl.”

  The dog got up and walked over to the food, sniffed again carefully, and ate. Her left ear drooped more than her right.

  “You are truly hideous,” said Meg. “Not that looks are everything, but … You’ll never be a pinup, but if somebody got the burrs and stickers off you and trimmed you up? And you could work on that mean look in your eyes. It’s not attractive.”

  The dog finished licking the plate and looked at Meg. She gave one short bark.

  “You’re welcome,” said Meg.

  * * *

  During the afternoon, the temperature fell. Even with a sweatshirt on, Meg was chilled. Her back had started to hurt again from bending over, and she decided to unpack some more cartons in the kitchen.

  She had scrubbed out the cabinets while the movers worked on Monday but hadn’t needed to clean the outsides, which were spotless. She knew she should paint the insides before she unpacked, but she wa
s tired of searching through boxes for a saucepan or colander. After a few hours the dishes, glasses, and flatware had all been stored away.

  There were only a few cartons left. The top shelves were much too high for her to reach from the floor. They would do, however, for the large casserole dishes she rarely used. She stood on the countertop to put the selected objects on the top shelf and, sliding the last casserole into place, knelt to get down again, holding on to the cupboard. Her head brushed against her arm, dislodging an earring, which bounced on the countertop and disappeared.

  She got down on the floor and searched. The earring was a tiny ruby, and she didn’t want to lose it. She put the side of her face against the floor and examined its surface, but nothing small and gold and red revealed itself. She stood up. Where had it gone? She looked at the countertop again. There was the slightest gap where it met the wall. The countertop had no backsplash; it merely ended in a chrome strip. She moved her head closer to the wall. There was just enough room for something very small to have fallen through.

  Meg sighed, then opened the base cabinet and looked inside. It did not appear to be attached to the wall. The original cabinets had probably been ripped out to upgrade the plumbing or to rewire. The replacements were free-standing. She would have to remove the strip of quarter round that edged the floor where it met the kickboard, but she could replace that if she ruined it. It looked new, and had been painted more recently than the walls. She couldn’t replace the earring, and this pair was her favorite.

  She managed to pry the quarter round away without breaking it. Then, gingerly, she wrestled the cabinet outward and up over the edge of the linoleum. When she had managed to get the cabinet out enough to tip it, she slid a blanket underneath and gradually tugged it out sufficiently to get behind it.

  The earring was lying next to a small dried puddle. There were several drip marks on the wall from whatever had run down in rivulets and pooled on the floor. She recovered the earring and put it carefully on the windowsill, then got a bucket and a scrub brush and started to work. The drips were easy to remove, although they left faint stains on the paint. On the floor, the dried liquid had mixed with several years’ worth of dust and crumbs. Cleaning it up would not be pleasant, but neither would it be particularly difficult.