The House on the Gulf

by Margaret Peterson Haddix

  Haunted? Bran had certainly looked like he’d seen a ghost that first day when Mr. Marquis came out of the house, and on our moving day when I’d been talking about the Marquises’ plates, and that evening when the lamp had switched on all by itself. But the Marquises weren’t ghosts. They weren’t even dead. They were just in New York.

  I couldn’t think about ghosts and the new, jumpy Bran right now. That made me feel weirder than ever. What would the old Bran do if he were me and he had a whole boring, lonely summer staring him in the face?

  He’d do something to help Mom and me, I told myself. He always tried to do what was best for our family. And what did our family need right now? What did we always need?

  Money.

  Staring into my glass of milk, I felt like I’d been an idiot for not figuring this out sooner. Even the new, strange Bran was taking care of the Marquises’ house and working at the Shrimp Shack. I felt selfish for worrying about what was on TV or how to make friends. I could get a job too. I’d just started baby-sitting before we left Pennsylvania. Why not here?

  I crammed the last of my sandwich in my mouth, took a gulp of milk, and wiped the back of my hand quickly across my lips. A milk mustache wouldn’t make a good impression. I stopped to run a comb through my hair, then raced out the door.

  I let myself in at the gate of the house next door. Pots full of all sorts of unfamiliar tropical flowers blocked my path, but I ducked under hanging vines and dodged palm fronds and reached the front door.

  And then I hesitated, my hand halfway up to the door. Remember how I said I wasn’t any good talking to grownups? Mom or Bran had gotten me all my baby-sitting jobs back in Pennsylvania. I’d baby-sat for the kids of other waitresses, younger brothers and sisters of Bran’s friends. I hadn’t had to ask. What if everyone I talked to told me no? What if they said yes? What if they wanted references? What if someone actually hired me and I did a terrible job?

  I was still standing there, frozen, when the door slowly creaked open.

  “Were you going to knock or not?” an old lady in a huge, flowered dress asked me through the screen.

  “I, uh, hadn’t decided yet,” I admitted.

  “Life’s too short to take a long time making decisions,” the woman said in her strange, twangy voice. “Mine is, anyway. I guess I felt like I was going to live forever when I was your age.”

  What was I supposed to say to that?

  “So if you’d knocked, what were you going to say?” the woman asked.

  “I’m looking for a job,” I mumbled. “Baby-sitting.” The old lady started laughing.

  I felt the corners of my mouth turn down, on their own. If I didn’t stop myself, I was going to cry.

  The old lady stopped laughing.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s just—there’s not a little kid in this whole neighborhood. And no babies at all unless you walk clear on past the Winn-Dixie on the other side of the highway. You’re going to have to get yourself another line of work.”

  I couldn’t say anything, I was so busy fighting tears.

  “Oh, come in, come in,” the old lady urged. Her come sounded more like Kim. I didn’t know what her accent was, but it made me have to listen harder just to figure out what she was saying.

  “Now I feel like some lowdown snake, making a new friend cry,” she continued. “‘Least I can do is offer you some of my cinnamon jumbles.”

  I’d just met her and she was a billion years older than me and she was already calling me a friend? This wasn’t what I’d had in mind. But without thinking, I followed her into a dim living room crowded with more furniture than Mom, Bran, and I had in the Marquises’ sunroom—with all of theirs plus all of ours. There were five end tables and two coffee tables, three couches, a love seat, and two recliners.

  The old lady saw me looking at everything.

  “Some of this is my son’s. I’m just storing it for him for a while,” she said. “Come on into the kitchen. We can breathe in there.”

  I threaded my way through the furniture, wondering how the old lady could squeeze by. She walked unsteadily, bending down to hold on to a chair’s arm or a couch’s back as she passed. I guessed the extra furniture kept her from having to use a cane.

  In the kitchen, she leaned heavily against the counter, holding on all the way over to the refrigerator.

  “Lemonade?” she asked.

  I nodded uncomfortably. I knew Mom and Bran wouldn’t approve of me being in a stranger’s house. Back in Pennsylvania, I’d never seen the inside of any of our neighbors’ apartments, unless I glanced in while walking by. And at Sunset Terrace, even glancing at a neighbor was probably like asking to be shot. But I couldn’t see how this old lady could be a danger to me. She couldn’t even walk on her own.

  The old lady slid a plateful of thick, obviously homemade cookies onto a table covered in red-checked vinyl. Then she brought over a pitcher of lemonade and two glasses, before heaving herself into a chair. I sat down across from her.

  “I’m Early Stuldy,” she said. “I’ll tell you that right off, so you can laugh if you want. Most people do.”

  She waited. I didn’t laugh. She went on.

  “Take yourself some of those jumbles,” she said. “Go on. I baked them fresh this morning, ‘fore it got too hot.”

  Hesitantly I slid one of the cinnamon-flecked cookies onto the empty plate at my place. The cookie was as big as the discus Bran threw on the track team. I took a bite.

  “They’re good,” I said, really meaning it. I took another bite. “Delicious.”

  “My secret’s the buttermilk,” Mrs. Stuldy said. “People don’t cook enough with buttermilk anymore. It’s getting so it’s hard to find. . . . Now, where did you say you lived?”

  My mouth was full of cookie. I’d expected Mrs. Stuldy to keep talking about buttermilk. If I’d been Bran, I knew, I would have seen the question coming and waited to take another bite.

  “Next door,” I mumbled, trying to talk around the cookie.

  “You’re not one of the Wilders’ grandkids, are you?” she asked. “No, Joyce told me they weren’t coming down till next February.”

  “I live right over there.” I pointed. I’d gotten turned around walking through Mrs. Stuldy’s maze of living-room furniture, but I thought the Marquises’ house was just on the other side of her kitchen wall. “My brother’s house-sitting for the Marquises this summer, and my mom and I are living there too.”

  “Is that right?” Mrs. Stuldy said. Her eyes bugged out a little. “John and Mary didn’t say anything about hiring a house-sitter. That’s a little fancy for this neighborhood, don’t you think?”

  “I like this neighborhood,” I said. “It’s the nicest place I’ve ever lived.”

  “Well, me too, now I think of it,” Mrs. Stuldy said. “House-sitters, though.” She shook her head in wonder. “Makes me feel like I should be eating off fine china. Like in a soap opera. Usually John just hires someone to cut his lawn while they’re away. One of those big corporations, you know? They come in their fancy vans and pull mowers off a big trailer—seems pretty silly for a yard like that, no bigger than a postage stamp. Roy, that’s my husband, he’s always telling John that we could take care of their yard for them, if they wanted. Since we’re here year round, not having another house to go to. But John never wants to be beholden.”

  I hadn’t quite followed all of that. But it bothered me how Mrs. Stuldy acted like she couldn’t believe the Marquises would have hired house-sitters.

  “My brother started mowing the Marquises’ yard back in March,” I said, a little shrilly. “He was so conscientious they decided to have him look after their whole house this summer.”

  Mrs. Stuldy nodded, accepting this.

  “I’ve seen your brother, then, mowing,” she said. “Tall fellow with dark hair? Good-looking?”

  “That’s him,” I said, feeling proud that she thought Bran was good-looking. And feeling relieved, too, that this part of
Bran’s story checked out.

  Why was I suddenly wondering if Bran had told the truth about anything?

  “Mmm,” Mrs. Stuldy said, still nodding. She poured lemonade for both of us and took a sip. “Well, then, you can probably solve a mystery for me.”

  “I can?” I said. I didn’t feel like dealing with any more mysteries at the moment.

  “I hope so,” Mrs. Stuldy said. “See, Roy and me, a week ago Saturday, we saw your brother putting boxes of something out in the Marquises’ storage shed. Box after box after box . . . It looked kind of, well, suspicious, especially since we knew the Marquises had just left. Roy kept saying he was tempted to call the police. But I hate doing that if I don’t know someone’s guilty. Plus, it was broad daylight, and what kind of thief would try to steal things then? And it wasn’t like your brother was taking the boxes away, he was just moving them around. And anyhow, we knew your brother had done work for the Marquises before. . . .”

  Mrs. Stuldy kept looking over at me while she was talking, like she was expecting me to break in at any moment exclaiming, “Well, of course, Bran was doing that because—” But my brain was still stuck on some of the first words she’d spoken: a week ago Saturday . . . A week ago Saturday was the day Bran and I had come to the Marquises’ house together. And then we’d left and Bran had gone into work at the Shrimp Shack, and Mom and I had started packing.

  ‘Are you sure it wasn’t this Saturday?” I asked Mrs. Stuldy. “Just two days ago, I mean—that’s when we moved in.”

  “No,” Mrs. Stuldy said. “It was a week ago. I know it was, because that was the night there was that poor motherless child on Touched by an Angel My favorite TV show.”

  “Oh,” I said, still puzzled. Would Bran have lied about going to work so he could come back to the Marquises’ alone? Why?

  Mrs. Stuldy was still looking at me, waiting.

  “Well, I think I know what you saw Bran doing,” I said slowly. I didn’t want Mrs. Stuldy to think Bran was a thief. I may not have known what he was up to, but I knew he wouldn’t steal anything. “Bran packed up some of the Marquises’ belongings and put them into storage. To protect them, so we wouldn’t break them or anything, living in the house. He packed up a lot more this past Saturday too, when we moved in. He’s being extra careful with the Marquises’ property.”

  “Oh,” Mrs. Stuldy said. “But in the storage shed—you people aren’t from around here, are you?”

  “No,” I said. “We just moved to Florida in February. From Pennsylvania.”

  “Then your brother probably doesn’t know what the heat and humidity can do. You tell your brother to be sure he doesn’t have any cloth or paper or pictures or anything like that out there in that storage shed, or by the end of the summer it could be rotted clear through.”

  “I’ll tell him,” I promised. “But I’m sure Bran knows already. I’m sure he was just doing what the Marquises told him to.” I took a drink of my lemonade. It was as delicious as the cookies, but I couldn’t quite enjoy it. “Your husband wouldn’t have really called the police, would he?” I asked. “If you’re still worried, you could call the Marquises. They’d tell you about us house-sitting. They’d tell you Bran wasn’t doing anything wrong.”

  Why did I suddenly wish that she would call the Marquises? Why did I wish this old lady I’d just met would tell me that Bran wasn’t doing anything wrong?

  Mrs. Stuldy laughed, but it was different from when she laughed at me about baby-sitting. This laugh was rich and as sweet as the cookie I’d been eating. It was reassuring.

  “Now, calm down, child,” she said. “Roy talks about a lot of things he never has any intention of doing. And there’s no need for anyone to go calling long-distance. Not with what that costs. I believe you.” She chuckled, as if I’d told a particularly funny joke. “‘Course I’m not going to call the Marquises. We’d look like a couple of busybody Nosy Nelly neighbors.”

  She was so amused it made me relax a little. I made a mental note to tell Bran and Mom about the funny way Mrs. Stuldy pronounced the Marquises’ name. With her accent, it was almost more kisses. I remembered how the name had confused us the first night Bran had told us about his mowing job.

  “Wait a minute—what’d you say?” Mom had interrupted as soon as Bran said his employer’s name. “Marcus, like the boy’s name?”

  “Uh, no,” Bran said. “Marquis. Like theater marquees. Or—isn’t marquis a term for French nobility or something?”

  “I guess,” Mom said, and leaned back in her chair. She had a strange look on her face, but I’d thought it was just exhaustion. She’d worked a double shift waitressing that night.

  Now, though, I wondered if I’d missed something. Bran had had a strange expression on his face too. I tried to remember: Was it that night or later, after the Marquises asked him to house-sit, that he told us how they spelled their name? I could remember seeing Bran write the name down for Mom, forming each letter carefully, dotting the i with great precision. Was that strange?

  No. Bran did everything carefully and precisely.

  But I didn’t feel so relaxed anymore. Other questions crowded into my mind. Was Mrs. Stuldy confused about when she’d seen Bran with the boxes, or had he really started hiding them a week ago? Why? Why hadn’t he told Mom and me what he was doing? And was Mrs. Stuldy still suspicious? What if she decided to call the police after all?

  I took another bite of my cookie, and tried to study Mrs. Stuldy’s face without her noticing. Her white hair stood out from her head in a way that reminded me of dandelion fuzz, and her skin was covered with age spots and wrinkles. But her eyes looked sharp and clear.

  She caught me looking at her.

  “Seeing as how we’re neighbors now, and I’m feeding you cookies, and we’ve been talking for a while, isn’t there something you should tell me, child?”

  “Huh?” I said. What now?

  “Your name,” Mrs. Stuldy said. “You never did tell me your name.”

  She laughed again, and so did I. I was glad to get an easy question.

  “Oh, sorry. It’s Britt. Britt Lassiter. Well, really it’s Brittany, but usually only my mom calls me that. Bran’s name is short for Brandon—both of us kind of cut our names in half.” I was rambling way too much because I was so relieved.

  Mrs. Stuldy didn’t seem to notice. She took a sip of her lemonade.

  “Brittany and Brandon—those certainly are pretty-sounding. People give their children such fancy names nowadays.”

  “Yes, ma’am. That’s why my mom gets upset at Bran and me for not using our full names. She says she searched the baby name books for months to come up with the right names. She’s given up on Bran—even she calls him that. But she’s still got hope she can talk me into Brittany.”

  I remembered overhearing Mom once, back in Pennsylvania, telling her friend Carlene, “It’s bad enough I’m raising them in a broken home. But they’ve got broken names, too. Sometimes it hurts just to hear that. Britt and Bran. Bran and Britt.”

  “Sounds like some sort of health food,” Carlene had said. “Some cereal old people eat so they don’t have to take Metamucil.”

  And then she’d snickered in a mean way. They were in the kitchen and I was in the living room—it was my turn on the couch that night—and I’m sure Mom thought I was asleep or she wouldn’t have said that. So I couldn’t protest. But it bothered me. How could she say we had a broken home? I thought it was just fine. A lot of the kids I’d known at school, even the ones who lived with both their mom and their dad, had a lot more problems than Mom and Bran and me. Why didn’t my mother understand that I liked Britt better than Brittany because there were two other Brittanys in my class, and I wanted to be different?

  Mrs. Stuldy was nodding, as if she at least understood me.

  “Oh yes. Kids always want to go their own way. And parents mostly have a hard time letting them go.”

  She looked so sad all of a sudden, I was afraid she was going to cry.


  “What’s wrong?” I asked awkwardly.

  She let out a heavy sigh.

  “Oh, it’s a long story you probably don’t have time for.” She took a long drink of her lemonade. I wasn’t sure what to say. We just sat there eating and drinking in silence, and then Mrs. Stuldy said, “Well, I shouldn’t keep you from your job search. You’ve got a long way to go to find someone with young children.”

  “Do you know anyone in particular who might need some help?” I asked. I didn’t feel like knocking on a lot of strange doors.

  “Not with little kids, I sure don’t,” she said, shaking her head sadly. Then she kind of gasped, and her whole face lit up. “Why, I have an idea! If you want some work, it doesn’t have to be baby-sitting, does it? I know just what you can do around here. How are you at running errands?”

  “Well, I—,” I started to answer, but Mrs. Stuldy was so swept away with her idea she just kept talking.

  “This isn’t anything hard,” she said. “I just know the Harrisons, over on the next corner, are always looking for someone to pick up their prescriptions for them, and Mrs. Zendt always runs out of milk right at supper time—she never remembers to pick it up when her daughter takes her shopping—and I really would like to see the latest issue of People. You know, that nice man in the wheelchair who used to be Superman is on the cover. But I forgot and let my subscription run out. And since I had this hip replacement surgery, I haven’t been able to get out much—”

  “I’m not old enough to drive,” I said.

  Mrs. Stuldy waved that worry aside.

  “Oh, you can walk to everything,” she said. “That’s why we all moved down here, thinking we could just walk to the beach and walk to the store and walk to the bus stop when we all got too old to drive. None of us thought the first thing we’d lose would be the ability to walk!”

  And then she laughed, as if it were all a big joke.

  “Where do you want me to get your People?” I asked, standing up.

  By the end of the day, I’d delivered medicine to the Harrisons, milk and flour to Mrs. Zendt (you try lugging a gallon carton and a ten-pound bag five blocks in 90-degree heat!), and People and earwax drops to Mrs. Stuldy. And I had four requests from some of Mrs. Stuldy’s other friends for me to run some errands the next day. One woman, Mrs. Tibbetts, even wanted to know if I could pick up the National Enquirer for her every week.