“What about you Allison? Kids?” He turned to me with his a very reasonable question.
I blinked, then composed myself more quickly than I would have even been able to do just last week. “No, no I don’t think kids are for me.”
He nodded. “Lots of work.” He stood and regarded me for about a second too long. “Thanks you two, if you hear anything about Lucky, give me a call?”
We nodded and I escorted Tom out the kitchen door.
His real estate agent dropped him off at the library - his library, his real estate agent. He felt even more adult now that he had his own people. The lights from inside the building illuminated the wet sidewalk in the dim afternoon, welcoming him, warning him.
“Can we look again tomorrow?” He leaned through the window of his real estate agent’s car.
“Certainly.”
“Not too early, I’m going to the play tonight.”
She smiled. She had enormous hair as well as, other things. “Of course you are.”
He glanced up at the building, squared his shoulders and walked up to meet the current, past, current and elect president of the Brotherhood of Cornish Men.
“Congratulations.” Suzanne Chatterhill fingered her long necklace and immediately graded him as unworthy of his new position.
“Thank you.” He gazed around the main room, seeing it in a completely different light. What does a person do with a decommissioned library? He hadn’t really given it much thought aside from tossing out random phrases, because it hadn’t really been a reality, just an idea, a whim. Now it was his. His and Dad’s.
Suzanne cleared her throat. He glanced over at her. If he thought the final sale of the library would magically alter their relationship. If he thought he would suddenly be transformed into the man in charge, the man to whom Mrs. Chatterhill would have to ask, or plead to use the library for her work, he was greviously mistaken. He’d have to drop a house on her.
“We feel, and I speak for all the Brotherhood,” Suzanne cleared her throat and spoke loudly as if he was an audience of thousands. “That that as long as our meeting place stays intact, and the genealogy records stay unmolested, and we have full use of the facilities twice a year, once for the annual event and now for the Christmas party, we will be fine.” She eyed him with a rather severe look, which made him think that perhaps she had been a junior high teacher in one of her previous incarnations. Or a witch from the East.
“What if I turn it into a spa?” He tried to keep a straight face.
“Don’t be ridiculous, the city will never give you a permit for that.”
What if he changed the locks? Now that was a possibility, one that gave him a tiny riff of pleasure.
“The Cornish were excellent hard rock miners.” Suzanne walked around the main room as if, she was inspecting the library for the first time. Her sensible shoes made no sound on the ancient tile floor. “Have you ever had a pasty?”
Scott admitted that no, he had not, but he quickly promised he would, as soon as he could.
That seemed to satisfy Mrs. Chatterhill.
“What about the quilts?” He asked.
“Lucky donated the quilts to the library and we can keep them as long as they stay in the library. We hung them to hide the empty book cases, most of the books were moved to the new library of course.”
“I see. And who made the quilts?”
“Penny Masters. Lucky’s daughter.”
“Is she a member of the Brotherhood?” He gazed at the quilts; they were loosely based on traditional patterns. He recognized some of the basics: wedding ring, log cabin and of course crazy quilt. But the artist didn’t adhere to tradition; the quilts were masterworks of modern interpretation. Patterns flowed with movement, colors shaded from one bright primary to the next on the rainbow line up. Pieces snaked and writhed, unlike any work he’d ever seen. He thought they were lovely, and even he could see they were valuable works of art. Maybe he could buy one and take it home or to whatever his new home would be.
“Oh good heaven’s no.” Mrs. Chatterhill protested vehemently. “Not with Lucky Masters as a father.”
“We can’t choose our parents.” He offered mildly.
“Maybe you can’t, but we can.” Mrs. Chatterhill gathered up her purse, key and a half dozen documents and exited on her silent shoes.
That must be the beauty of being part of a genealogical organization. They probably did change the past.
Worked for him.
Ben arrived just as Tom Marten disappeared down the hill.
Prue was delighted at his arrival, as were all the boys. Another cute man in town, what the hell, right? I had to burst their bubble by explaining that Ben belonged to me, and their new boy was interested in Sarah.
“He’s even attending the play again tonight.” I delivered the coup de grace.
“There’s a play?” Ben walked into the kitchen as if he lived there. I accidentally knocked over a chair as I turned to greet him. He was so much larger than I remembered.
“Hi.” He wrapped his arms around me and held me tightly.
I sighed and for one minute forgot the kitchen was packed with consummate, professional gossips.
“The fabulous Ben Stone!” Raul saluted Ben and scurried to the one open spot at the kitchen table to set up his laptop.
Ben released me and greeted Prue; he gingerly hugged her as if her whole body, not just her foot was damaged.
“Did you bring your tools?”
“Grandma!”
“I always have my tools with me,” Ben replied.
Pat, Mike and Raul sighed noisily. Ben just grinned. “Missed you guys.”
Pat shook up the first round of martinis for the group. I’m no nurse and don’t even pretend to act like one, so I cheerfully offered Prue her pain medication with one hand and gave her a martini with the other. That which does not kill us, makes us stronger.
“Carrie.” Ben turned this attention to my friend as soon as he released my grandmother.
“I called him.” Carried said grumpily. “He’s not happy with me. He doesn’t understand.”
I accepted a martini from Pat. Carrie took hers and knocked it back in one gulp. Pat raised an eyebrow and looked at me. I toasted him silently and gestured to the bottle of Skye vodka on the counter. It was just as well that Carrie drink then pass out, she needed the rest. I think that’s part of the pirate code as well; make sure your friends get drunk close to their own beds.
Carrie twirled her empty glass. “I just don’t know what to do.” She gazed with considerable dismay at her vibrating phone. It was one of those lovely newer kinds that do everything except wash the dishes and screen calls from destitute but persistent relatives.
“Tell them to get lost’” Ben suggested.
“They can’t be that bad.” Prue offered at the same time.
“Yes they can.” I defended my friend’s position.
Mike circled back around and created another batch of drinks.
“What if they contact Patrick directly? What then?”
“Well,” piped up Pat. “I know from experience it’s better to deliver really awful news directly to the people involved. Waiting will not help. You do not want your parents to be a surprise.”
Carrie twisted around to look directly at Mike. “You would know that wouldn’t you?”
“Honey, we’ve all stood up to our relatives and delivered bad news of one kind or another.”
“Sometimes we have even delivered it to loved ones.” Raul said absently as he trolled the Internet.
“Sometimes, it’s not as bad as you think it will be.” Mike offered. He stopped Carrie from twirling her glass and filled it again from the silver shaker.
“I think this will be bad.” Carrie confirmed.
“Parents can be difficult.” Ben sipped his drink.
We were at a conversational impasse with that pithy comment. I broke it up by offering to get pizzas and bring them back. Prue was in no condition
to climb back in and out of my car, and I knew that once settled in, Pat and Mike were here for the duration and of course, Raul and…
“Where’s Brick?”
“He is dining with friends.” Raul said. “Saturday night, a few old teachers from the high school. He is going to get more information on this Sarah.”
“Why?”
Raul shrugged. “I have much footage of her yesterday. I want to write up more information in the blog.”
“I can fill you in.” Prue held out her empty glass.
Sarah lingered in the doorway of her grandparent’s apartment. The small television played at full volume, a talking head, an angry talking head, was ranting about immigration.
“I’m walking to the theater now, I have to be there early for make up.” She yelled over the noise.
“Okay,” her grandfather coughed. He coughed as often as he spoke; Sarah knew that soon the coughing would overtake the talking. Already Grandmother more often than not spoke for both of them, when she wasn’t coughing herself.
“We would like tuna today for lunch. We need more milk in the house. Your grandfather is cold.”
Sarah made the sandwiches, brought hand-crocheted afghans to their chairs and offered her grandfather more cough drops.
Grandfather was fond of saying he acquired his cough in the seventies. “Breathing in all that airborne insulation.” He bragged, as if that was a badge of honor.
That was back in the day when it was not only okay, but important, to kill yourself for a job. Sarah thought that kind of attitude was ridiculous. She only expressed that once and had the opposition beat out of her by this very same oxygen-impaired grandparent. The beating did not change her mind. She knew that a mere job, any job, was never worth dying for.
“I will come home right after the play at eleven o’clock.” She automatically padded her arrival time, that way she was always home early. She once heard her grandmother bragging to Mrs. Chatterhill about how Sarah was always early, particularly when she was caring for her grandparents. And she had been caring for them forever.
Her grandmother waved her hand, engrossed in the talking heads: the heads were yelling at each other. Sarah gazed at the scene in dismay. Her grandparents seemed to be slowly sinking into their matching Barcaloungers: hers a harvest gold, his avocado green. Sarah knew that at some point they would become one with the chairs and be lost forever. She had no plan for when that day came. Hers was not a planning generation. There didn’t seem to be much point.
She closed the apartment door and walked down the narrow hall to the front door. She locked it after herself. You can’t be too careful, with tourists and out of town people milling around on a Saturday night. Oh, and what was on the news just now? Terrorists. She was careful to secure the house against potential terrorist threats.
Sarah paused outside and finally dared take a deep breath. She had done as much as she could. Sarah walked to the theater; it was easier than driving. She didn’t like wrestling her grandparent’s Cutlass into the narrow parking spaces of the Claim Jump city lots.
She shoved her hands in her jacket pockets and trudged downhill. Sarah Miller knew what the good citizens of Claim Jump thought of her. It was difficult to ignore the looks and comments. The members of the Cornish Brotherhood of Men were not retiring women. Once the Millers joined, Sarah became an honorary member and a pet project for the group, for better or worse.
Sarah possessed what was euphemistically referred to as an unhappy childhood. She would argue that her years in the Claim Jump Elementary School were pretty satisfactory, and her grandparents always fed her, they even let her fix up the upstairs apartment any way she liked. It was like living in her own place. Despite all these advantages, any child with a mother living on the Ridge was an object of some pity.
And now at twenty-two, she cared for her grandparents the same way they cared for her. Okay, not exactly the same.
Her grandparents had been old for a very long time. Grandfather retired from construction at age 55, which was a thousand in child years. He was only 75 now, but looked and acted ninety. How was that possible? Prue Singleton was the same age as the Millers, but she was lively and active. She got around even after breaking her foot in her greenhouse.
A black SUV passed Sarah at the corner and headed up the street. See? Another tourist. Sarah didn’t recognize the car.
I headed up the street, the car filled with pizzas. I love pizza. I made sure to order enough so I could load up on as much as I wanted without worrying about shorting the others. Rosemary would tell me to focus on my own abundance, but when it comes to pepperoni and sausage, I like to hedge my bets and purchase the abundance ahead of time.
“Never left town.” Prue was winding up the Sarah Saga as I came in with boxes of dinner. “She has always been here.”
“Like the poor?” Ben asked archly.
“Why?” Carrie asked.
Mike and Pat relieved me of the pizza boxes and began to serve. People didn’t bother to move to the table, they took an offered plate, a piece of pizza and ate where they were standing. My mother would have gone nuts. Good thing she’s not here. Raul searched for his theater webcam with one hand, the other clutched a wedge of the vegetarian pizza.
“Why,” I wandered over to Raul, “are you watching the Wizard of Oz again?”
“Checking on the webcams.” Raul muttered around his crust.
Ben listened with rapt attention to a story I already knew by heart, so Prue had a new audience for one of her favorites topics, the perils of Sarah Miller.
“Her mother was a drug abuser. It’s a wonder Sarah wasn’t born with one arm or an inflated head.”
Carrie gasped. Pat rolled his eyes. Prue was on a role. Ben chewed and swallowed, his eyes never leaving his hostess. “The Millers are strict Baptists, holier than God. He used to work for Lucky in the seventies.” Prue waved her hand in the direction of all the tract homes (some recently burned to the ground) north of the house.
“God used to work for Lucky Masters?” Ben asked.
“Lucky is very influential,” I explained.
“But he didn’t get the library.” Pat smacked his lips in satisfaction.
“This Scott could be gay and not know it.” Mike mused.
“Happens all the time.” Raul squinted and angled his screen.
“At least they took in their granddaughter,” Carrie retorted.
“And now she is their sole caregiver. “ Prue said. “Won’t have anyone else. I don’t know what that girl is going to do when they really need help. They won’t even allow a house cleaner. Melissa with Hospice told me she tried to come in last week and was practically thrown out.”
“That’s pretty harsh,” I said. “The girl needs some help, I’m sure.”
Prue sighed. “They are pretty harsh people.”
“And you don’t really blame the daughter for escaping to the Ridge.”
“There are two sides to every story.” Ben finished his first piece and opened every box looking for inspiration for his second piece.
“No,” Carrie bit into a slice of pepperoni and swallowed. “No, sometimes there’s not.”
“Shhhh,” Raul waved his hands, “the overture.”
“As if we didn’t already know all the words, remember the Wizard of Oz sing-a-long?” Pat turned to Mike, gesturing with his wedge of chicken/pesto pizza.
“That was marvelous, those were fun years.”
Mike nodded, “Everyone was there, it was the place to be.”
Raul grunted and focused on the computer screen. I suppose this is his art, which means I don’t have to participate.
“Does Summer know you broadcast this all over the net?” I asked.
“Certainly, it’s good for business, makes a person want to see the real thing.”
Pat snorted.
We went on like that, watching poor Sarah hold up her end of the vocals as best she could. The little dog playing Toto was pretty cute. Ben pulled up
a chair and raptly watched the drama unfold on the screen. The tornado scene wasn’t as dramatic as in the movie, but what could Summer to do on a budget? The tornado was mostly just Sarah spinning around and around in the middle of the stage accompanied by whistling and howling.
The cardboard house dropped, color was restored to the stage and about a dozen Claim Jump third graders dressed in period costumes descended on our heroine.
A second bang, louder than the sound of the house hitting the hallowed ground of Oz, reverberated through the theater. Sarah stumbled on her line about not being any kind of witch.
A howl came up from the front of the theater, just out of cam range, but Summer quickly appeared in view. Her black eyeliner was smudged into semicircles under her eyes, her black hair was no longer sleek and she looked to be on the verge of rending her black jacket and throwing ashes into the air. She looked worse than the flattened dummy under the house.
“Noooo,” Summer howled. “He can’t be dead!” She jumped up on the stage and elbowed Dorothy/Sarah away. “He’s dead!”
Sarah backed away from Summer so fast she almost tripped over a Munchkin.
“I thought the Wicked Witch was dead,” piped up a Munchkin. Without my program, I did not know their real names. The Munchkins were just listed as Munchkin number one, two, etc.
Another Munchkin began to cry. “You said it was pretend, that she really wasn’t dead!” The child pointed to the stuffed legs sticking from the fake house and raised her wail another pitch.
“Honey, it’s okay.” A parental voice from the audience valiantly tried to reassure the child.
“Ladies and gentlemen, I’m so sorry!” Summer her harsh voice projected past the back of the theater and out to the street. It was difficult to tell if she was really sorry or just relishing the spotlight again. She paused dramatically and took a deep breath.
“It is my painful duty to inform you, that our patron, our friend of the theater, yes, a friend of all of Claim Jump…”
“It better be God.” Prue muttered.
“Lucky Masters was found dead.”
Three more Munchkins began to howl in sympathy, sensing that this was not make-believe, and their boss, the fabulous Summer, was not only truly upset, but was also not making this up.
Catharine Bramkamp - Real Estate Diva 05 - A 380 Degree View Page 7
