A House by the Side of the Road

by Jan Gleiter

  “But you’re the one who got her silver, and you were watching out for her.”

  “Somebody else got her best silver,” said Jane. “Probably somebody who should’ve been helping her not forget. She had lots of beautiful things, you know, so greedy people might have been happy she died instead of being careful that she wouldn’t. And somebody got a whole house.”

  “Michael Mulcahy couldn’t drive a forty-mile round trip every morning and every evening just to make sure his aunt took her medicine, could he?” asked Meg in what she hoped was a mild and reasonable tone. “And he doesn’t seem the type who’d rejoice over someone’s death.”

  Jane kept painting. “He could pick up a telephone, couldn’t he?” She was not giving in, and Meg had to admit she had a point.

  “But there’s no reason to think she didn’t take her medicine, honey,” she said. “Medicine isn’t magic; it won’t keep a person alive forever.” She glanced at the girl and found her looking seriously back, the brush dangling, momentarily ignored, from her hand.

  “I think she forgot,” said Jane. “She was worried about something, really worried, and maybe she was thinking about that instead of her medicine. She started forgetting a lot, so much that she had to have tricks to help her remember things. She even forgot her favorite silver box.”

  “Her favorite silver box?”

  Jane sat back on the grass and stretched out her legs, then resumed her crouched position and went back to work. “She was telling me about how fancy some people’s houses used to be and the things they used to use, like napkin rings and little trays to put calling cards on and fancy bottles for ink. And rich ladies had jewel caskets. That’s what they were called, caskets. Weird, huh?”

  “But it’s a different meaning,” said Meg. “Just a small box for something valuable.”

  “I know. I said, ‘Were those for buried treasure?’ And she told me what you said. She still had some that her husband inherited. Her favorite was a silver one his mother got on her twelfth birthday, and she sent me up to the attic to get it. But when I brought it down, she just kept looking at it and looking, and she said it wasn’t the way she remembered. It made her really unhappy to forget. She had to go lie down and couldn’t help me study for the spelling test.”

  “Then maybe she did forget her medicine,” said Meg. “But it still doesn’t seem fair to blame people who may not even have realized her memory had gotten so bad.”

  The girl was silent for a few moments, then spoke again. “Mom says it was just ‘her time.’ Maybe it was. But it was too soon.”

  It always is, thought Meg. When you love somebody.

  “How come your mom says that Harding has no reliable moral center?” she asked, when enough silence had passed to rob the change in topics of abruptness.

  “He steals things,” said Jane, giggling. “He’s really good at it.”

  Meg carefully removed a small tuft of dog hair that had blown onto the wet paint and wiped her fingers on the grass. “Like what?”

  “He opens the refrigerator, for one thing,” said Jane. “I mean, he used to. Didn’t you ever wonder why Mom puts a big clamp on the refrigerator doors when she leaves the house if he’s indoors?”

  “I guess I never saw her leave the house when he was indoors,” said Meg. “He opens the refrigerator?”

  “Yeah. And he eats everything he can stuff into himself and hides everything else.” Jane moved down another picket. “One time he ate a pound of raw hamburger, a loaf of whole-wheat bread, half a roast chicken, a package of cream cheese, and the rest of the eggs. He ate the eggs in the living room. On the rug. Mom was really mad.”

  “I’ll bet!” said Meg.

  “And then we found a tub of margarine in the hall closet in Teddy’s gym bag under his cleats and a bag of salad in Dad’s fishing net in the basement and a package of hot dogs in the trash can in the bathroom. And one time, he came with me to Mrs. Ehrlich’s and he went in the kitchen while we were in the living room and he ate a whole plate of cookies off the table and her evening pills. I didn’t take him there anymore.”

  Meg noticed that Jane’s eyes were bright with laughter. She could talk about Mrs. Ehrlich without necessarily descending into angry misery.

  “Does the clamp work?” asked Meg.

  “Oh, sure,” said Jane. “When we remember to put it on.”

  * * *

  Jane had gone home for supper, and Meg was pressing plastic wrap around the brushes when Mike pulled into the driveway. The dog, who had been lying on the porch, got up and ran toward the fence, barking.

  “Ah, we meet again,” said Mike, moving his hands off the top of the pickets and putting them in his pockets. He was wearing pleated trousers and a soft, cream-colored shirt with a banded collar. Meg thought he looked yummy.

  “Those down by you are dry,” she said. “But don’t touch anything much farther along.”

  John Eppler’s car passed, going toward his house, and Meg lifted a hand in greeting, but the man’s eyes remained fixed on the road, and no wave was returned. That’s odd, she thought.

  Mike indicated the dog. “I don’t know why she hates me,” he said.

  “She probably doesn’t,” replied Meg. “But she doesn’t seem to have much use for men. And you did try to grab her. For all she knows, you’re a vivisectionist.”

  “That line of work never appealed to me,” he said. “Until now.”

  “Don’t be mean. Come inside and have some coffee. I’ve got three or four of Christine’s cookies left, too. Just enough to get you through until dinner.”

  She fixed the dog with a stern look and said, “Enough!” The dog’s barking turned to a soft, intermittent growl.

  “I’ll hold her. She’s not trained yet, so that’s the only way to guarantee safe passage. Go on in, and I’ll finish cleaning up here and join you. The coffee’s in the left-hand cupboard next to the sink.”

  As the screen door closed behind him, Meg remembered the condition of the house. She hadn’t vacuumed since she arrived, and the lunch dishes hadn’t been washed. She shrugged mentally. Mike didn’t seem the type to care and, if he did, tough. She hadn’t invited him.

  When she pushed off her shoes on the porch and went in, he was looking through her tapes in the living room. “I started the coffee,” he said. “Nice range of stuff you have here, and a lot of it. You haven’t made the big switch to compact disk, I see.”

  “Someday,” said Meg. “When I marry a rich man.”

  “They’re not expensive,” he said. “I’d think an heiress could afford a CD player.”

  “It’s not the player; it’s the CDs,” she said. “I put most of my records onto tapes, but I can’t put my tapes onto CDs.”

  “Is this all you have?” he asked.

  “What? You can’t find something you like among these? Yes, that’s all. The rest of the cartons there are just books. I use a lot of reference books, but I’ve needed only a few dictionaries on the job I’m doing now, so I’ve neglected the unpacking.”

  He went back to the tapes, scanning their hand-printed labels.

  “What do you want to hear?” asked Meg. “I can tell you where to look.”

  “No,” he said. “I want to see what you’ve got. You can tell a lot about a person by seeing what music she likes.”

  “Well, search to your heart’s content. Or I could just tell you what you’d discover. I am brilliant, intriguing, and discerning and have considerably more than my fair share of charm.”

  “Well, yeah,” said Mike. “I knew that.”

  Meg went into the kitchen to get coffee. Returning, she smiled at the familiar, rhythmic clapping at the beginning of “My Boyfriend’s Back.” Mike had found the tape she’d labeled “Dancing.” She went across the floor to set the mugs on a low table next to the couch, but by that time the Angels had launched into the lyric. “My boyfriend’s back, and you’re gonna be in trouble. (Hey la-di-la, my boyfriend’s back.)” The rhythm of the song made i
t impossible to walk normally. She took small dancing steps across the floor.

  Mike laughed and the instant the coffee was safely on the table, he took her left hand and pulled her into the clear space of the room. Meg didn’t protest, because the music filling the room made her want to move, and Mike … Mike knew how to dance.

  “And he knows that you’ve been tryin’, and he knows that you’ve been lyin’.” Mike’s hand held hers firmly as their arms extended and bent again. He released her to let her turn, his hand trailing along her back to find hers again as she completed the spin. They turned sideways, arms up and over each other’s heads as they slid apart, one pair of hands sliding down their arms to clasp at the end of the movement. Simple steps, complex steps. Another few bars and the music ended.

  They stood laughing in the brief silence of the tape, and then Willie Nelson’s “All of Me” began.

  “One more,” said Mike. “A slow one, just to balance things out.” He didn’t wait for her to answer.

  It had been years since Meg had glided across a floor with someone who knew exactly what he was doing and loved to do it. She let him make the decisions and responded to the subtle clues, moving smoothly in whatever direction he chose. His chin rested lightly against the top of her head.

  They both sang the last line loudly with the tape. “You took the part that once was my heart, so why not take all of me?”

  “You’re good!” said Meg, turning down the volume on the tape player and lifting her coffee. “Really!”

  Mike inclined his head. “I am, aren’t I?” he said. “Now you understand how I got my high school nickname, ‘Dreamboat.’ Oh, and you are too.”

  “Well,” said Meg, “thank you. Slow dancing’s easy. It’s just like baseball.”

  They took their coffee out to the porch. Meg had found two of the big metal chairs Christine had encouraged her to buy. Christine had been right. They looked perfect and were blissfully comfortable. The dog sat on the grass a few yards away, regarding Mike with suspicion.

  “It’s amazing,” said Mike. “That dog manages to combine a vast number of physical traits in such a way that the result contains not so much as one pleasing element.”

  “I’m getting used to her,” said Meg. “But you’re wrong. The space on the top of her head between her ears is exactly the right width.”

  “I wonder where the heck she came from.”

  “I’ll never know,” said Meg. “But she used to belong to somebody.”

  “What makes you think so?”

  “She’s socialized, for one thing. Oh, go on, scoff. She may not want to cuddle in your lap, but being socialized doesn’t mean being robbed of the powers of discrimination. The really telling clue—now listen carefully, a person in your line of work should be interested in the concept of clues—is that she’s housebroken. Believe it or not, that isn’t an inborn trait.”

  Mike put his cup down on the porch and rocked back slightly in his chair, clasping his hands behind his head. “What’s her name?”

  “She doesn’t have one. I keep trying things, but they’re not right. I had a dog named Tansy when I was a kid. This one doesn’t look like her name could be Tansy.”

  “No, but if you’re leaning toward flowers, how about Bladderwort? She does look like her name could be Bladderwort. Or Locoweed. Or Cocklebur. Hey, I’ve got it. How about Dogbane?”

  “Stop!” said Meg, coffee sloshing from her cup. She swiped at her wet shirt. “Look what you made me do. But you reminded me; I want to see Mrs. Ehrlich’s garden … I mean, your garden. Christine says it’s marvelous.”

  “If it comes up anything like last year, it will be,” he said. “Aunt Hannah was quite the horticulturist. There isn’t much to see yet. Some hyacinths and a lot of narcissus and tulips. But the lilies won’t be out until June, or the roses. Then, begosh and begorra, it’ll be worth looking at.”

  “Which reminds me to ask,” she said, “how a Mulcahy can be the nephew of an Ehrlich.”

  “Mixed marriages,” said Mike. “Ever heard of those? Sometimes Lutherans marry Methodists.” His voice took on an exaggerated brogue. “And sometimes an Irish lad’s eye falls on a bonny German lassie. Me mither was just such a lassie and Aunt Hannah’s baby sister. Me father passed his pure Irish name on to me, God bless ’im.”

  “Thank you for that thrilling explanation. You will now, please, return to your normal, annoying manner of speaking instead of this newly irritating way,” said Meg.

  “But I was just warming up for a few verses of ‘Danny Boy.’ I think you’re rude.”

  “Shut up,” said Meg. She sighed contentedly. “I love narcissus.”

  “I must have thirty kinds,” said Mike. “Lots of them are ones you’ve never seen. Stop by anytime. If I’m not there, just walk around.”

  “Come see the creek,” said Meg, getting up. “I want you to understand how right I was to take this place.”

  The dog followed at a distance while they walked through the meadow and the trees. The sun was going down, and the woods were deep in shadow, but there was enough light left to see by. They stood at the edge of the tumbling water. Mike took Meg’s hand and squeezed it.

  “Okay,” he said. “You were right.”

  * * *

  Nighttime was the lonely time. It had been the lonely time for months, but it was worse now. At night, the softness of the air made Meg’s skin hurt. The green of meadows and trees, stretching away to the rounded mountains, was invisible. The cement of the kitchen stoop was no longer warm from the sun. The birds were silent.

  At night, it often seemed to Meg that she had made a terrible mistake. She had told herself she was going to something, but she had merely fled. A door had opened, and she had taken off running, terrified of the one that had closed behind her. What had she seen on the other side of that open door? A house in the country with land and trees and a creek. If she had looked more carefully, she would have seen the isolation, enforced by miles of curving black road. She would have seen the faded yellow of the house turning colorless in the moonlight.

  Ten

  The sun was setting behind her as Meg turned into her driveway. The post office had been closed, as she’d known it would be, but she’d dropped her stamped parcel in the box with a Priority Mail sticker in front of the building. It was a relief to have one piece of her work finished and sent off, small as the installment was. She’d celebrated by stopping at the drive-in on the outskirts of town for a hamburger and eating it slowly while teenagers sat with their feet on the dashboard in the car next to her. She listened with a pretense of self-absorbed thought while they maligned the local movie theater’s recently adopted policy of checking IDs for R-rated movies and parents’ conservative views of their planned activities. The conversation was interesting.

  “You know what always works for me?” asked a pretty red-headed girl with curls and the face of a Botticelli angel. “I say, ‘You don’t trust me!’ and my dad falls all over himself trying to think of a way out.”

  “Oh, yeah, that works for me, too,” replied the driver. He slapped away a hand reaching over from the backseat toward the onion rings he was holding. “Every time.”

  As Meg drove home, she tried to come up with the wise response she could use, some years in the future, should she be in a position to need one. She hadn’t developed it by the time she turned into her driveway.

  A figure arose on her shadowed porch and walked toward the gate. Meg stopped the car and got out, the dog leaping excitedly upon her.

  “Mike! How long have you been here?” she asked, bending to pat the dog, who was bouncing on her back legs and scrabbling at Meg’s thighs. “Ouch! Off!” Meg raised her knee against the dog’s chest, and she dropped to the ground.

  “Most of my adult life,” said Mike.

  “But where’s your car?”

  “At my house. Last I checked, pedestrian traffic was still legal in this state. I dropped by to see if you wanted to sample the clean night
air we enjoy in this rural valley—no, please don’t let that animal through with you—and your mangy cur came tearing around the house and crashing against the gate, which I, tidy lad that I am, had neatly shut behind me. She’s been hanging around, snarling and giving me dirty looks, ever since. So I’ve been sprawled on your porch, hoping you hadn’t gone to the Berkshires.”

  Meg unlocked the front door. “She has not been snarling, you big scaredy-cat. Come on in; the dog isn’t going to eat you. She wants some food, yes, but she’s rapidly getting used to the kind that comes from Purina.”

  She poured dog food from a sack in the pantry into a shallow pottery bowl and set it on the kitchen floor. “I’m letting the dog in now,” she said. “Do you want to climb up on the cabinet? Hide in the attic? Lock yourself in the bathroom?”

  “I don’t know. Will she tear out huge hunks of my flesh?”

  “I doubt it,” said Meg. “Let’s see.”

  She opened the kitchen door and grabbed the dog as she raced through. “This is Mike,” she said. “Remember? He’s the one who wanted to name you Cocklebur. Would you care to respond to that suggestion?”

  The dog barked.

  “Enough,” said Meg firmly. The dog subsided. “Now eat your dinner.”

  “So,” said Mike, seating himself at the kitchen table, “want to go for that walk? There’s hardly any traffic, and there’s a turnoff down toward John Eppler’s that goes back to the foundation of an old stone house. The moon’s out. Want to see an abandoned homesite in the moonlight?”

  “No,” said Meg. “I’ve got to work. I mean, got to.” She reached into the cupboard and took out a can of coffee.

  “Too many baseball practices. You’ve been neglecting your professional obligations in the mistaken belief that practice will have some effect on the outcome of our bet.”

  “We’ve had two practices. After the second, most of the kids got the concept of which base to head for in the event that contact is made with the ball. They shouldn’t have any trouble beating you.”

  “So you’ve undoubtedly thought of what it is we’re betting.”