by Donna Ball
Lindsay whispered, “Oh my God! Our ghost does windows!”
Cici, still gripping the flashlight with both hands to keep it from shaking, moved the beam slowly up the form. Sturdy work boots, laced halfway up. Baggy dungarees cuffed up to reveal a red plaid flannel lining, and over them a navy blue skirt that reached past the knees. A navy peacoat covering an oversize green plaid flannel shirt with the band of a pink thermal undershirt showing at the neck. When the flashlight reached her face, the woman squinted and shielded her eyes, demanding, “What you trying to do? Blind me?”
It was, after all, a woman, with pink scalp showing beneath the short gray curls, and enough wrinkles on her face to make her age anywhere between sixty and a hundred. Cici lowered the flashlight, but only to the woman’s chin. “Who are you?” she demanded, proud of the fact her voice hardly quavered at all. “What are you doing here?”
“Name’s Ida Mae Simpson,” the woman replied, and there was a marked belligerance in her voice. “This is my place. Who the hell are you?”
In the moment of stunned silence that followed, Bridget suddenly gasped, “Of course!” She surged forward, but Cici shot out an arm to stop her. “Ida Mae Simpson,” Bridget repeated to Cici. “You know, the Bible?” She turned to Lindsay. “The housekeeper, remember?”
Lindsay said carefully, “But Bridget . . . she’s dead.”
Bridget looked slowly from Lindsay back to the stranger at the window. “Oh my goodness,” she breathed, eyes growing wide again. “That’s right.”
The three women stared at her. She stared back, scowling. “Do I look dead to you?” she demanded.
“What you look like,” said Cici, “is a trespasser. Do you want to explain what you’re doing in our attic?”
The woman puffed out her chest and lowered her scraggly brows even further. “I ain’t never trespassed on anything in my life, young lady. Just who do you think you are, talking to me like that?”
Lindsay held up a quick pacifying hand. “Maybe,” she suggested, looking hopefully from one to the other of them, “we could all talk about this over a nice cup of tea?”
They sat at the kitchen counter while Bridget brought water to boil and poured it into four mugs with tea bags.
“We heard you were in a nursing home,” Lindsay said, placing the sugar bowl on the counter.
“Didn’t care for it,” replied Ida Mae, easing herself up onto a kitchen stool. “Ain’t ya’ll ever going to get any furniture? You poor or something?”
“Or something,” said Cici, placing a mug of tea before the older woman, and handing Lindsay a second. “So you just walked out of the nursing home? With no place to stay?”
“I’ve got a place to stay,” she replied, squaring up her shoulders again. “Been staying here just about all my life.”
Bridget paused in the act of taking her own seat at the counter. “Do you mean to say . . . you haven’t been living in our attic this whole time have you?”
“Stayed with my sister some,” replied Ida Mae. “She’s dead now. Children sold her place. Sometimes I stayed in my old room downstairs. But with you all tramping in and out, hauling firewood and such, weren’t much privacy. So I made myself a pallet upstairs. Warmer there, too.” She looked at them curiously. “Don’t ya’ll know about the gas heaters?”
Cici said sharply, “Gas heaters?”
She nodded. “Mr. B had ’em put in every room about fifteen, twenty years ago, even the pantry. You know how old people start to get cold,” she confided, as though it were a secret. She added, “They’re set in the wall, so as not to disturb the historical. But all you have to do is lift up the grate to light ’em.”
Lindsay said, “Grate?”
And Cici sank back in her chair. “So that’s what all those vents are for!”
Ida Mae fished the tea bag out of her cup, wrung it out with her fingers, and set it on the counter. “Never did learn to like tea made from a bag.” She grimaced as she tasted it.
“So it was you who left Emily Blackwell’s recipe book out for me,” Bridget said with a note of wonder in her voice, “And the labels—”
“And the landscape map?” interjected Lindsay.
“I know where lots of things are,” replied Ida Mae smugly. “And ya’ll need all the help you can get. I turned the power on for you, too, that day you was too foolish to find it for yourself. I don’t hear no thanks for that.”
Cici said, “And you just walked into our house one night and put a record on the gramophone?”
The old woman shrugged uncomfortably. “How did I know you was t’ home? Sitting around in the dark like that on the front porch. Besides, I missed my music. I wanted to hear the old place singing again, like it used to when Mr. B was alive.”
They just looked at each other, hardly knowing what to say.
Then Bridget said, “Wait—did you take the pie?”
“And the ham?” added Lindsay.
“And leave my screwdriver in the pantry?”
Ida Mae shrugged, and did not even have the grace to looked abashed. “Didn’t think you’d mind,” she said. “You had plenty.” She took a sip of the tea and wrinkled her nose. “Your pie coulda used more ginger,” she added, stirring sugar into the tea.
Bridget looked at Lindsay. “Amazing,” she said.
Lindsay looked at Cici. “Unbelievable.”
“That would be one word for it,” agreed Cici, and she looked at the strange old woman sitting beside her at the counter. “What I don’t understand is why you had to keep sneaking around like that. Why didn’t you just come to the front door and introduce yourself?”
Ida Mae Simpson looked slightly indignant. “Why, I had to see what kind of folks you was first, didn’t I?”
“But,” exclaimed Lindsay, “you’ve been living in our house! Without our permission! Don’t you see that’s just–just—”
She looked helplessly from Bridget to Cici and Bridget supplied, “Wrong.”
Ida Mae did not react at all.
Cici took a calming breath. “Okay,” she said, “you said you had nieces or nephews. Do you happen to know any of their phone numbers?”
She shrugged. “Got no need to call them. They’re up in Michigan somewheres.”
Bridget suggested, “Maybe you have relatives around here?”
“Nah. Outlived them all.”
“Oh,” said Lindsay. “Congratulations . . . I guess.” She looked from Cici to Bridget with an exaggerated lift of her eyebrows, telegraphing a question. Cici gave a small shrug of her shoulders in return, and Bridget reached out to gently cover Ida Mae’s hand with her own.
“Now, Ida Mae,” she said. “You know you can’t stay here. You must have some place else to go.”
“How come?” demanded Ida Mae. She scooped two large spoonsful of sugar into her tea and stirred it sloppily. “How come I can’t stay here? Always have, ain’t I?”
“Because,” explained Cici patiently, “we own the place now.”
“You might own it,” returned Ida Mae, “but it’s plain you can’t take care of it by yourselves. I been doing for Mr. Blackwell nigh onto forty-five years. Now I’ll do for you. Cook your meals—”
“I do the cooking,” Bridget explained with a smile.
Ida Mae sniffed. “With my recipes.” She tasted the tea, gave another grimace, and set the cup down. “Keep the place tidy,” she went on, “dusting and mopping and such as that, keep the silver polished—”
“We don’t have any silver,” Lindsay said, and at the look Ida Mae gave her, she felt compelled to apologize. “Well not much, anyway. Not enough to worry about polishing . . .” she trailed off.
“You girls live like squatters,” said Ida Mae. “Ain’t you got no menfolk?”
“Well,” Bridget began, but Cici cut her off firmly.
“I really don’t think that’s any of your business,” she said. “And I’ve got to say I’m not all that comfortable with the thought of your spying on us all these mon
ths, much less with your opinion on how we live.”
Ida Mae said, “What are you, a lawyer or something?” Then she shrugged. “I guess it don’t matter. You don’t hardly need a man half the time anyhow. But they’re nice to do for.” There was, with that last, an almost wistful look in her eye, and Bridget patted her hand again.
Cici drew in a breath. “Look, Miss Simpson . . .”
“It’s Miz,” corrected Ida Mae. “Miz Simpson. But you can call me Ida Mae.”
“Fine. Ida Mae, we appreciate the offer, but we can’t afford a housekeeper, and—”
“Don’t need your money,” replied Ida Mae proudly. “I got my pension.”
“Oh.” Cici glanced quickly from Bridget to Lindsay. “Still . . .”
Bridget said suddenly, “Cici, Lindsay, could we talk?” She jerked her head toward the door. “In there?”
They left Ida Mae placidly stirring more sugar into her tea as Bridget firmly closed the pantry door between them.
“She doesn’t have any place to go,” Bridget insisted in a whisper.
Cici’s voice was incredulous. “You can’t be serious!”
Lindsay offered, “You’ve got to admit, it would be nice to have help keeping this place clean.”
“She’s got to be a hundred and three years old!” Cici said. “How much help could she be?”
“She’s lived here all her life,” Bridget said. “And now she’s homeless, all alone, feeling useless . . .”
“We’re not talking about a flock of sheep, here,” Cici said, “or a dog or a deer. She didn’t just come with the house.”
“In a way,” pointed out Lindsay, “that’s exactly what she did.”
“And you don’t find it the least bit creepy that she’s been living here all this time without our knowledge, coming in and out as she pleased, eating our food . . .”
“Creepy is a strong word,” said Lindsay uncomfortably.
“She was taking care of us,” Bridget pointed out. “Making sure we had what we needed . . .”
“We can’t keep her,” Cici said. “We can’t be responsible for a crazy old woman who goes around living in other people’s houses.”
Lindsay looked at Bridget, her expression apologetic. “You know she’s right, Bridge. We don’t know anything about this woman.”
“Except that she broke into our house,” pointed out Cici.
Bridget said, “Well, would you look at this?” Kneeling, she had located a metal vent below the shelf that held dry goods. Her fingers found a catch, and the slotted metal swung open. The other two women bent to see a fairly modern gas heater.
Cici murmured, “I wonder if it’s natural gas or propane.”
And Lindsay said, “Who cares? We can be warm again!”
Cici looked at Bridget, and Bridget said hopefully, “It might be nice, having someone around who knew how the place was put together.”
Cici said, “Come on, Bridget, you know she can’t stay.”
And Lindsay added, “We’re going to have to call around and find someone to take care of her. Those nieces and nephews in Michigan.”
Cici sighed. “What this house really needs is a full-time social worker.”
Bridget folded her arms. “Well, we can’t do anything tonight.”
“You mean—let her stay here?”
“It’s thirty-six degrees outside. We can’t toss her out!”
“It’s not like we don’t have the room,” Lindsay pointed out. “She’s been living here for months and we didn’t even know it.”
“Besides,” said Bridget, “as far as she’s concerned, I think, she’s the one who’s letting us live here.”
As though on cue, there was a sharp rap on the door, and Ida Mae poked her head in. “If you ladies are about finished hashin’ it out, I think I’ll turn in. Oh, and I’d appreciate the return of my Bible, if it ain’t too much trouble. I’m pleasured to do some reading before I doze off.”
Bridget said quickly, “Oh. Yes, I’ll bring it right down. And some extra blankets, too.”
When she was gone, the three women looked at each other for a moment, hesitant, uncertain, defensive. Then Cici sighed and shook her head in resignation. “Just until morning,” she said.
But in the morning, they were all awakened by the aroma of fresh coffee, breakfast casserole with sausage, and homemade yeast rolls with cinnamon and honey. The sky was barely pink as, one by one, they wandered into the kitchen, their expressions varying from confusion to astonishment as they took in the breakfast counter set with bright place mats, silverware and plates, and cups and saucers instead of their usual coffee mugs. There were glasses filled with juice at each place setting, and presectioned grapefruit halves in the center of each plate.
Lindsay said, wide-eyed, “Uhh . . . is it Christmas?”
Ida Mae poured grits into a blue earthenware bowl. “ ’Bout time you lazy bones got out of bed. Food’s getting cold.”
Cici said, “Are those grits?”
Lindsay practically sank into her place at the breakfast counter. “Yeast rolls! Those are yeast rolls!”
Bridget looked around uncertainly. “Gosh, Ida Mae, you shouldn’t have gone to all this trouble. This is really too much.”
Ida Mae took the breakfast casserole out of the oven and set it on the trivet in the middle of the counter. “Good breakfast, good day,” she declared firmly. “Eat up.”
Bridget took her place between Cici and Lindsay. “Wow, all this food.”
“Yeast rolls,” said Lindsay, taking one. “She made yeast rolls for breakfast!”
“They take two hours to rise.” Bridget’s tone was a bit defensive.
“I haven’t had grits since my birthday.” Cici helped herself.
“I didn’t know you liked them that much,” Bridget said.
“Is this real sausage in the casserole?”
Bridget looked at Lindsay. “I thought you were trying to lose weight.”
Lindsay elbowed her in the ribs, hard. “She made yeast rolls.”
Bridget hesitated, then smiled. “I guess if I’d been out of a kitchen for as long as she has, I’d make yeast rolls, too.” Then she called to Ida Mae, “Oh, don’t bother getting the cream out. We all take our coffee black.”
Ida Mae poured cream into a pitcher and set it onto a small tray beside the sugar bowl. She carried the tray to the counter and set it down deliberately in front of Bridget. “In my kitchen,” she told her, “you put the cream and the sugar on the table when you serve the coffee.”
Bridget drew in a breath to respond, but this time it was Cici who elbowed her in the ribs. “Just like in a restaurant,” she said cheerily. “Grits, Bridget?”
The breakfast was delicious, but how could it not be, when the main course featured sausage? When the ladies got up to clear the table and load the dishwasher, Ida Mae shooed them away in no uncertain terms. She didn’t trust “that damn dishwashing contraption” and preferred to do the dishes by hand. Furthermore, she didn’t want anyone—not even Bridget—hovering around in the kitchen while she did.
On the way out of the kitchen, Lindsay grinned and gave Bridget a high-five. “Looks like you’ve got the day off,” she said. “Good deal.”
Bridget said, “I just hope she doesn’t wear herself out.” She looked back over her shoulder, her expression unhappy and concerned. But her words seemed almost an afterthought as she added, “Poor thing.”
Lunch was a rich beef stew, which Ida Mae refused to allow Bridget to help her prepare. By the time Bridget was ready to start dinner, a pork loin was already roasting in the oven and Ida Mae was shelling pecans for a pie. No, she didn’t need any help with the pecans. No, there was nothing Bridget could do.
Cici located the underground gas tank, and by mid-afternoon had the gas company out to fill it, and to inspect and light all the heaters in the house. Within an hour the big old house was as toasty as any modern apartment.
“All the heaters are on thermostats,” Ci
ci reported, practically chortling with delight. “We can just set them once and never worry about them again. Of course, we’ll still want to keep the wood furnace going to save on gas, but no more hauling in wood four times a day. Do you know what this means? We can live like normal people! We can be warm in any room we want to—even the sunroom! Why in the world didn’t Ida Mae show up before now?”
Dinner was served in the formal dining room, where the huge walnut table had been spread with a white linen cloth, and the sconces on the wall, now served by propane gas flames, glowed with freshly polished brass and brilliantly cleaned glass globes. The chairs, which Lindsay had spent the afternoon rescuing from the dairy loft, gleamed with lemon oil and beeswax. The napkins were ironed, and the pork loin was served on a bed of fresh rosemary and parsley cut from the garden.
“I feel like I should leave a tip,” Lindsay whispered, self-consciously pressing out the wrinkles in her jeans.
“She’s auditioning,” Cici pointed out. “She wants us to see what she can do.”
“Well, as far as I’m concerned, she’s got the part,” said Lindsay, scooping out a generous portion of horseradish mashed potatoes.
Bridget smiled stiffly and said nothing.
Three days later, Bridget had plenty to say.
Ida Mae did laundry, Ida Mae washed windows, Ida Mae dug a silver candelabra out of a box in the attic, polished it until it looked like a museum piece, and placed it in the center of the dining room table where she insisted they dine every night. She stripped the sheets off the beds every morning—often before the women who were sleeping on them were even dressed—and replaced them with freshly washed and ironed ones. Yes, she ironed sheets. She also ironed tablecloths, napkins, and dish towels. She polished the banister and waxed the stairs to a dangerous sheen. Using an ingenious mechanism none of the women had suspected before, she lowered the chandelier over the staircase, removed all the prisms, washed them in soapy water, and rehung the whole. The light that was thus refracted sparkled over the entire first floor.
On the other hand, she never lost an opportunity to criticize the ladies’ taste, decor, or personal habits. She insisted on breakfast at dawn, lunch at noon, and dinner at seven. At first this was a novelty, like being on a cruise ship, but no one really expected to keep to the schedule permanently. She didn’t like the way Cici dressed or the way Lindsay wore her hair, and worst of all, Bridget was banned from her own kitchen.
