by Gayle Roper
There was no way I could bring a baby into such a mess.
I was sitting on the front porch, thinking about an abortion, when Madge pulled into her drive, her pickup loaded as usual. I watched her lug off a mirror as big as she was, its frame an ornate but ugly brown. Then came several cardboard boxes of what appeared to be crocheted and lacy linens. Even from a distance I could see they were yellowed and, to my eye, worthless. Who wanted old yellow stuff when you could get new, crispy white stuff in almost any store?
I had to wonder about Madge. What in the world made her love broken and ugly stuff?
She and her husband, Bill, had made their garage into a little store with red and white striped awnings over the windows and a red sign with white letters that read Madge’s Collectibles and Antiques. I actually went inside a couple of times when I was about twelve and the store was new, just to see how she got her customers to buy the crummy stuff she pulled off her truck. I was astounded to find that nothing in her shop was crummy.
On the day Madge changed my life, I wandered slowly to the curb so I could see what else she had brought home. When she pulled three wooden Coke crates off the truck, I couldn’t keep quiet anymore.
“Do people actually buy empty wooden boxes, Mrs. Crosson?” I called across to her. I knew Mom and Nan wouldn’t give such things house room. They were both anti-old stuff, one of the few things on which they agreed.
She grinned at me, and I could see a dirt smudge on her cheek. “Wooden boxes are choice items, Libby, especially vintage Coke ones.”
“They are?” To whom? I always thought it was the stuff in the boxes that people wanted, and the Cokes once there were long gone.
“People collect them.”
“I guess people collect most anything, don’t they?” Stupid people.
“Would you like to see my workroom?” Madge asked. “I could show you what I do with all these wonderful things.”
I tried to look nonchalant, but inside I was both nervous and bubbling. A mystery was about to be solved, but it meant going into the fanatic’s house.
“She just thinks she’s so holy,” Mom said disparagingly of Madge. “All she wants is to convert us. Make us holy rollers.”
“Don’t get too near her, girls,” Nan warned us when we were younger, “or she’ll make you pray and read the Bible before she lets you go. She’ll drag you into her cult.”
Every time Nan said that, I wondered what was so bad about praying, and even as a kid I knew that Madge would never stay in business if she made people read the Bible in order to get out of the store. Since the arrests, Mom’s and Nan’s attacks on Madge had increased, especially after she stopped at the house with a pan of homemade cinnamon buns and an invitation to go to a women’s Bible study.
“Maybe you’ll find God can help you through hard times,” she’d said with a smile.
They’d taken the food but turned down the invitation with something like horror. Since then I’d heard real meanness and jealousy in Mom’s and Nan’s catty comments.
“She thinks she’s so much better than us.”
“She probably asks God to strike us dead and clean up the neighborhood.”
“Did you see her? She was laughing at me when she waved!”
She was smiling. That was all. I knew because I was with Mom when Madge waved.
But Madge had a husband who came home every night and who stood on the front porch with his arm around her as they waved good-bye to company. She had a husband who had made their garage into a shop for her and who held her hand when they walked around the block for exercise. She had a husband who played with their little boys and who took them all on vacations down the shore.
Mom and Nan had husbands who had gotten fifteen to twenty.
“Come on over,” Madge invited again as I stood on the curb, unaware that I was about to make the most significant decision of my life.
I glanced guiltily toward home but took a step into the street toward Madge. “Sure. I guess.”
“You’re Libby, right?”
I looked at her animated face and warm smile. “How do you know? Most people can’t tell us apart.”
“Ah. You are the one who always watches. You’re the sweet one.”
The sweet one? My stomach rolled. If she only knew.
She took me around back and into their basement by a sliding glass door. Half the large space was filled to the rafters with the junk she brought in her truck every week. The other half was a workshop filled with tools and supplies. A small table stood under the light on a spread of newspapers covered with dark brown stains.
“Look around while I make a phone call,” Madge said, and I began wandering about the room. The stuff might be old and useless, but there was something about it all that made my pulse beat faster—which was ridiculous. I liked new stuff.
I picked up an old picture of some town and ran my finger over the satiny wood frame.
“That’s a lithograph of Stratford-upon-Avon,” Madge said as she waited for someone to answer her call.
“Like in Shakespeare? In England?”
She nodded.
“It must be really old.”
“Not as old as Shakespeare, but old.”
“Huh.” I wanted to ask if it was worth money, but she held up a finger and began talking into the phone. I continued looking at her other pictures—dried flowers arranged in pretty patterns, two other lithographs, watercolors, and a weird one with the design all in dried beans—now who would ever want something that ugly?—until I heard her mention those Coke boxes. Then my ears perked up.
“I’ve got three of them for you, Sally. Two are in excellent condition; the third is a bit dinged.” Madge listened. “Sorry, I’ll need at least—”
And she named a price that surprised me because I’d have paid maybe a dollar. That much for old and empty wooden boxes? I looked at the jumble of things in the room. How much money did this old stuff represent? I was studying the dolls, all carefully arranged on a shelf, when I saw a funny-looking doll in a box. The figure sort of looked like Barbie, and she was wearing a black-and-white striped, strapless bathing suit, but the face was different from any Barbie I ever saw. And the texture of the hair was different.
“That’s a very old Barbie doll.” Madge came up behind me. “Way back in 1962 or 1963. How do you like the pearl earrings with the bathing suit?”
“That’s Barbie? Her bangs are all curly and weird. And she’s got a ponytail.”
“She’s a collector’s dream.” Madge picked up a plastic bag lying on the shelf. “And here are some uncut vintage Barbie paper dolls.”
“I didn’t even know there were Barbie paper dolls.” I looked at the funny dresses, so like the ones my grandmother wore in old photos.
Madge turned them over and pointed. “See the ‘Whitman’ printed there? They were licensed to make the Barbie paper dolls back in the sixties and seventies.”
“And people want things like this?”
Madge nodded. “People love things like this. See that doll with the porcelain head? She’s very old, in very good condition, and some doll collector will grab her up.”
I stared at the doll. She was certainly pretty, but I had no compulsion to grab her up.
“There’s a world of collectors out there, Libby. It’s my happy job to provide for them. Someone will love this baby doll of no specific heritage.” She lifted down a doll in a long white nightgown trimmed in delicate lace. “Her moderate price will find her a happy home.”
I walked to a table covered with piles of ratty-looking linens. I slid my hand under a discolored piece of needlework. “How about these things? Who wants them?”
“That’s a tatted tablecloth, and I think it’s about one hundred years old.” She gently ran her fingers over it. “Isn’t it lovely?”
“So that’s tatting.” I looked more closely at the intricate workmanship. Lovely didn’t seem the right word to me. Maybe stained or ripped or just plain old, but what
did I know? I thought all dolls came from Toys “R” Us and Santa Claus. “I’ve read about tatting in books, but I never saw it before.”
“It’s a dying art, I’m afraid. When’s your baby due?”
“August,” I said automatically. “I think.” Then I heard the question and my answer, and I stared at Madge, appalled. How would a religious fanatic like her respond to my being pregnant and unmarried?
“The dad?” Madge busied herself arranging some cut-glass vases that arced little rainbows onto her hands.
I made my fingers loosen on the tatting before I tore it. “He’s gone.”
“As in left town?”
I shook my head. “As in left me. I know where he is. I see him at school all the time.” When I went. I couldn’t make myself say he was now dating my twin.
“Is that why you bagged today and so many other days?”
I looked at the baby doll she still held cradled in her arm. “Yeah.” It came out a whisper. There was no way I could explain the anguish of Eddie, the baby, the trial, and the family. All I knew was that I wanted to stay in bed with the quilt pulled over my head for about ten years. Then maybe I’d come out for something to eat. Maybe. Mom and Nan were so caught up in their own misery they’d never miss me.
Mom and Nan hadn’t asked me a single question when Tori told them I was expecting, just looked at me with disgust, disbelief, and finally resignation. There wasn’t much they could say anyway. They’d both been pregnant when they got married. But at least they got married.
Madge—the neighbor they mocked all the time because she didn’t smoke or drink, went to church, and had a neighborhood Bible study she’d actually had the nerve to invite them to—was the only one who ever asked.
“But I’m okay.” I tried to grin like I didn’t feel absolutely alone in the world. Change the topic, Lib! Change the topic before the pain kills you!
I noticed the pin she wore on her collar, and I grabbed on to it. “Did you get that cute pin at an estate sale too?”
She reached up and fingered the little silver replica of a pair of tiny feet. “No. This is a pin that shows the size of a baby’s feet at ten weeks after conception.”
I felt like someone had shoved me hard in the chest, and I could barely draw a breath. My hand went to my stomach. My baby’s feet looked like that? I sort of thought it was just a blob.
“Your baby’s feet are larger by now but just as well formed,” Madge said as if she knew exactly what I was thinking. “To me it’s one of the great God-mysteries, how a baby with a beating heart and a functioning brain and perfectly formed little feet can grow from almost nothing.” She took my cold hands in hers. “I know you are in circumstances you don’t like, Libby, but you are growing a little person in there. I applaud you for sticking it out, for getting up every day and eating and doing things to care for this child.”
I blinked. Was I doing that? I hadn’t even been to a doctor.
“Are you interested in a part-time job, by the way?”
When I’d had my life-changing conversation with Madge, I thought she was so old and mature, but she was only about thirty then, my age now. Little by little she’d taught me everything she knew, taking me along to seminars and workshops at her expense, showing me how to strip an abused piece of furniture, training my eye to recognize the fine from the merely good, the true antiques from the collectibles.
But mostly she loved me, showed me a healthy family, and modeled Jesus before me.
I sat in Aunt Stella’s living room and wished I was in Madge’s shop or workroom or even at the eBay store, mailing one of our online sales to somewhere on the other side of the country or world. It was not an exaggeration to say that I—and Chloe—owed my life to her.
“I didn’t get to the Hutchinson estate sale today,” I told Madge when she picked up her phone. “I found a dead body instead.”
“What?”
I could just picture her, eyes wide with disbelief and curiosity as she danced around the room. Madge was a fidgeter of immense proportion. Bill seemed to find her constant movement amusing, and her boys, ages nineteen, seventeen, and fifteen, took it for granted. Since Bill always looked rested, I took it to mean that she somehow stayed still when she slept.
“I found a dead body,” I repeated and gave her a rundown of the morning. I pulled myself out of the recliner as we talked and wandered into the kitchen for a glass of sweet tea.
“That note with Tori’s name on it is troubling.”
“Tell me about it.” As I passed Tori’s Times puzzle book resting haphazardly on the counter, my elbow caught it, and it tumbled to the floor. A piece of folded paper that I had earlier thought was a torn page fluttered out.
“You’ve got to give that puzzle to the police, Lib. Tori’s got to talk to them.”
I sighed. “I know.” I bent to pick up the booklet and the piece of paper. As I stood, the paper fell open and a puzzle appeared, circles around specific letters but none of the answers filled in. My breath caught. I flipped the paper and there was Tori’s name in all caps, just like the note on the dead man.
A chill raised bumps on my arms. “I just found another one, Madge.”
ACROSS DOWN
1 now 2 one who gets even
3 small bush 4 shade or tint
6 one who owes 5 thief
8 solitary 7 extreme
9 a thousand 12 turn from
10 one not too smart 14 finished
11 squealer 15 two card
13 covered, as a wall 16 locked storage units
16 precious metal
17 burglar or pet
18 to deceive or trick
19 noted
20 to take without permission
“Uh-oh. Is it filled in?”
“No. I’ve got to go.”
I heard her yell, “Call me!” as I hit Off. I grabbed my purse and scrabbled around until I found a pencil, then collapsed at the table, the puzzle spread before me. Clue one-across was now. Five letters. I wrote today. Two-down was one who gets even. I didn’t think the answer was mean person. I went to six-across, which cut through two-down. One who owes. Six letters. I wrote debtor.
My hand stilled. Was Tori a debtor, or was it just a word that supplied an o to the embedded message? If she was a debtor, whom did she owe? Certainly not a bank like me with my mortgage-banks didn’t send threatening puzzles or dead bodies.
Gambling debts? She worked in the gambling industry, but surely she was too smart to play. She knew the house always won. In fact, I didn’t think the SeaSide let its employees gamble there. And she saw what happened to the disordered gamblers, the people who got caught in the addiction. She saw the ruined lives and broken homes of those for whom the bet was all.
Still, even knowing the pitfalls well, I feared she had tumbled down the abyss of empty promises and vain speculations. The question was: how deep was the water in her pit? The threats buried in the puzzles, to say nothing of the dead man on the front steps, seemed to indicate she was in well over her head. How long could she successfully tread water?
If she owed money, who did she owe it to? Casinos didn’t send threatening puzzles any more than banks. What kind of a lender would be ruthless enough to send a dead man as a message?
Oh, Lord, did You bring me here to save Tori?
I just wondered if I could bear the emotional cost.
8
WHEN I FINISHED solving the puzzle, I stared in distress at the message. YOU ARE OVERDUE.
Library books could be overdue.
So could taxes and your time of the month.
Reports at work could be overdue, and trains and planes.
I doubted any of these things were Tori’s problem.
Loans could also be overdue.
My stomach cramped. Had Tori borrowed unwisely? It certainly made sense. I want it. I need it. I’m buying it. That was Tori, no matter how expensive the item and how empty her bank account.
If she borrowed unwise
ly, it also meant she’d run her legitimate credit avenues to the max. It had to.
And no one left dead bodies lying around unless big money was involved. The sweet tea sloshed uncomfortably in my teeming stomach.
Had Tori really been foolish enough to go to a loan shark?
Even thinking of her with such a connection seemed absurd. I would have thought that she’d have learned from the example of Dad and Pop that wrong choices eventually caught up with you. However, knowing Tori, she no doubt thought she could charm her way out of her payments if she couldn’t make them or if she wanted to use her salary in some other manner, like betting more or buying my daughter a laptop. Since life generally went as Tori scripted, Dad and Pop excepted, she assumed she could write this scenario too. If half of what I saw on TV was accurate, she was being unbelievably naive. Loan sharks weren’t used to taking “no” or “wait” for an answer. They expected what was due them when it was due them, exorbitant interest rate and all.
I looked around Aunt Stella’s living room, all rose and beige with a gorgeous crimson, beige, and black patterned rug. Her formal dining area was more Hepplewhite, the shield-back chairs mahogany with needlepoint seats. We were living in a museum filled with priceless antiques.
No wonder Tori was willing to stay here with me for six months. She needed the money from Aunt Stella’s estate more than I did, much more than I did. All she had to do was hold the shark off for six months and everything would be fine, assuming no one got tired of waiting and made her the next body on the front stoop.
I got up, restless from all these black thoughts. I wandered to the living room corner cupboard with its scrolled pediment and studied the books resting inside on little stands. I blinked, then blinked again, goose bumps popping up on my arms as I realized what I was looking at. I opened the door and carefully lifted out the nearest, a cloth copy of Lady Windermere’s Fan by Oscar Wilde. I carefully opened the cover and confirmed that it was a first edition, 1893. A slip of paper lying inside the cover read, “One of only five hundred copies, sale value—$2,800.00.”
