by Jan Karon
‘Hanging on the door.’ He was too weary to say which door. She gave him the raisin box and he emptied a few into his hand.
If he were a drinking man, it would be a double single-malt scotch, straight up—he could be that specific. Or, not wanting to betray his Irish bloodline, maybe a Paddy’s.
• • •
SHE FOUND HIM STARING OUT the window of the study, still cupping the raisins in his hand.
‘It doesn’t have inseams,’ she said, pale.
‘Of course it has inseams. What else would hold it together?’
‘No, I mean, it has them, of course, but they’re so narrow . . .’ She looked desperate.
‘Cheap,’ he said.
‘What?’
‘It was cheap. It must cost extra for inseams that can be let out.’
They sat on the sofa, where so many details of life had been threshed.
‘The Internet,’ she said. ‘Overnight shipping, which gives us time to hem the pants.’
‘No way,’ he said.
He didn’t want to talk about the last time they trusted the caprice of shopping on the Internet, and the thing arriving without screws to assemble it. He would never mention again how he had tracked the screws through a jungle of recorded phone messages, which eventually led to a real person who said he would take care of it immediately. He would never again speak of the many additional phone calls unanswered by the real person, and the weeks that ensued before the screws were delivered—not to his door, oh, no, but to the Local down the street, where the minuscule package had somehow fallen into a basket of California avocados and remained for a further week.
‘Why are we doing this at the last minute?’ he said.
‘Because I thought all along you were going. Why wouldn’t you go to the retirement party of a man who was your parishioner for sixteen years, your doctor for as many, a close personal friend, and the adoptive father of Dooley’s sort-of-maybe fiancée?’
He held a raisin between his thumb and forefinger, examined it, dubious.
‘It’s also worth mentioning that he saved your life,’ she said. ‘Twice.’
There was the real rub, of course. ‘Okay, okay, I said I’m going.’ He could take to his bed from this ordeal, become an invalid sipping water through a bent straw. ‘Why can’t I just wear a suit and collar?’
She gave him a look containing its own vocabulary, then stared at the bookshelves, possibly thinking of dust; he studied his loafers, thinking of nothing in particular.
He was thrilled when the doorbell rang. He leaped up and sprinted along the hall like a released felon.
‘Puny!’ Her good face, freckles and all, had cheered him ever since he first saw it more than a decade ago.
‘I know it’s my day off, but I brought you somethin’.’
‘Where are the twins?’ He knew the older set to be in school at this hour.
‘In th’ car, I don’t have but a minute. I jis’ come from seein’ Joe Joe at th’ station, he might git to be police chief.’
She was radiant, dazzling him.
‘Holy smoke. He just got to be captain.’
‘Don’t tell nobody, just Miss Cynthy.’
‘Of course. When will we know?’ he asked.
‘Maybe in a week or two is what they say.’
‘Is Rodney Underwood retiring?’
‘Kind of.’
‘Kind of?’
‘It’s still a secret, but yes, he’s leavin’ to be chief at Wesley.’
‘A big step up.’
‘So y’all pray, okay? And here’s th’ little somethin’ I brought you.’ She handed him a small envelope. ‘Take it with a full glass of water in th’ evenin’ an’ don’t leave th’ house.’
He pocketed the thing, feeling the heat in his face.
‘You’re . . . kind,’ he said.
• • •
‘CHESTER MCGRAW!’ she exclaimed as he walked into the study.
‘What about him?’
‘He was your size exactly. I remember seeing him from behind at Logan’s in Wesley, and thinking it was you. Timothy! I said. What are you doing in the pantyhose section? But it was Chester.’
‘What was he doing in the pantyhose section?’
‘I have no idea, he didn’t say. Anyway, he’s, you know . . .’
‘Morte,’ he said. ‘Last February. A good man, Chester, we were in Rotary together.’
‘Who was at the door?’
‘Puny.’
‘Really? What about?’
‘Just checking in, says Joe Joe might be made police chief.’
‘Wonderful. When?’
‘We don’t know,’ he said. ‘Don’t tell anybody, it’s a secret. Have a raisin.’
‘No, thanks. He had a tux.’
‘Joe Joe?’
‘Chester. Chester had a very nice tux.’
‘Whoa, now, Kav’na.’
‘He wore it to the Children’s Hospital benefit last year, remember? When he gave that huge check. So if Irene hasn’t thrown it out . . .’
‘Wait a minute . . .’
‘Why not? He made a barrel of money in the timber business, it would be a very nice tux. I’ll call Irene, she’s a darling woman.’
He felt a provoking urge to flee to Lord’s Chapel and kneel at the railing.
• • •
‘IRENE DIDN’T ANSWER, she’s probably in the garden.’
How his wife knew so much about Irene McGraw was beyond him. He knew only that Irene was said to look like a film star whose name he didn’t recognize. He scanned his mental file on the McGraws: Baptists. Florida residents for the annual requisite of six months and a day. A lot of grandchildren.
‘Shouldn’t I . . . that is . . .’ If he was going to wear another man’s getup, shouldn’t it be that of somebody in his own parish? ‘Maybe somebody at Lord’s Chapel . . .’ he said, hating this.
‘Nobody at Lord’s Chapel is your size, Chester was an absolute duplicate.’
Useful beyond the grave—it was everyone’s hope.
‘Besides,’ she said, ‘anyone who has a tux at Lord’s Chapel will be wearing it Saturday night.’
His wife knew everything. An honors graduate of Smith, of course—he wondered if all Smithies were like this.
‘Ride with me,’ she said, taking her keys off the hook at the kitchen door.
‘Why?’
She gave him a doting look. ‘Because I love your company.’
But there was nothing at all to love about his company. He was a certified crank these days. Not that he wanted to be, but he seemed unable to control the mean streak that had cropped up somewhere over the Pond, possibly around Greenland.
‘Besides,’ she said, cheerful as all get-out, ‘that’s what retirement is for.’
‘I’m still trying to hammer out what retirement is for.’
‘It’s for jumping in the car and going somewhere on impulse.’
‘I’ll stick around here,’ he said, loath to beg handouts from a recent widow.
‘Irene won’t even see you, I’ll park in front of the hedge instead of in the driveway. Take your newspaper, I’ll just be a minute. Then we can run by the Local.’
She gave him the look that was code for the rare pint of Ben & Jerry’s. He was suddenly cheered.
‘I’m in,’ he said.
• • •
SHE BACKED HER MAZDA out of the garage.
‘What if she gave it to the Salvation Army?’ he asked.
‘Too soon, I think.’
‘So there’s a timeline for cleaning out the spousal closet?’
‘Usually six months to a year. Some people do it immediately after.’
He chewed on this arcane information, especially curious abo
ut the marital revelations of ‘immediately after.’
‘By the way,’ she said, ‘if I croak first, my clothes go to Puny and my jewelry to Lace, except for your mother’s ring.’
‘Where does that go?’
‘If Dooley and Lace marry, to Lace. If not, it could pass to your next wife.’
He refused to comment.
She made a right onto Main. ‘Just kidding, of course. Do you think you’d marry again?’
‘Absolutely not. I was barely able to marry the first time, much less again.’ She had just asked him this ridiculous question in Ireland.
He could sense her staring at him.
‘What?’ he said.
‘I know how you hate hearing this, but . . .’
‘But.’
‘You need a haircut.’
‘I just had a haircut. Two or three weeks ago.’
‘That was a trim, not a cut. They left it too long.’
His wife needed a steady, paying job, not one in which she could do as she pleased, with time left over to mind his business.
‘Merely a word to the wise,’ she said.
He turned his attentions to Main Street, which was literally sparkling after a good wash by morning rain. He realized again how Mitford wasn’t unlike an Irish village—colorful storefronts, hanging baskets, benches, a brisk early business in the shops.
‘The big news while we were gone,’ she said, ‘is that Avis painted his bins.’
How had he missed that on his two wimpy morning runs through town? Beneath the green awnings of the Local were the famed outdoor produce bins, now as red as any tomato and filled with pots of yellow chrysanthemums.
‘Very Irish, all that color, don’t you think?’
‘I do.’ There was Avis Packard, standing outside his grocery store, smoking a cigarette.
In the end, the real difference between Mitford and the Irish village was pretty profound—Mitford was home, Main Street was his beat. After a year in Whitecap, a year at Meadowgate, the long sojourns in Mississippi and Memphis, and the trek to Ireland, it felt good to ease his foot into the old shoe.
‘Irene is a gifted artist,’ she said. ‘Paintings of children. We’ve talked about doing a show together, a benefit for the Children’s Hospital.’
‘You hadn’t mentioned it.’ Children’s Hospital in Wesley was his all-time favorite charity. Never one to relish asking for money, he had nonetheless helped raise $350,000 in the last campaign and thanks be to God for the Florida people who summered in Mitford and environs.
‘Sort of waiting ’til we know more about her schedule. Her daughter lost a baby last year, but now there’s another on the way. Then there are two little ones in California and four in Texas and one in Germany. She’s very busy.’
‘Blow the horn,’ he said.
He rolled down the window. J. C. Hogan, editor of the Mitford Muse, was legging it across the street to Town Hall.
‘Tea shop, noon tomorrow!’ he shouted.
A thumbs-up from J.C.
He didn’t like blaring it all over town that he was headed to the tea shop, tomorrow or any other day. They needed to change the blasted name, make it friendlier to the Mitford demographic.
He left the window down, inhaled rain-washed September air into his lungs. ‘Maybe we should try a new flavor this time.’
‘It took decades for you to upscale from vanilla to butter pecan.’
‘One cannot upscale from vanilla to anything. Vanilla is the crème de la crème, and butter pecan merely passing fancy. However, I have felt the call of a completely different flavor for a couple of years, but never had the guts to buy it. How about Cherry Garcia?’ Carpe diem.
She patted his knee, laughing. ‘You are a wild and crazy guy.’
He didn’t know how he felt about being patted. When she did that, and she often did that, he felt four years old, or possibly one up from a small-breed canine.
He moved his knee away, impatient, and opened the Mitford Muse. The local weekly had grown considerably thinner of late, but the front page still gave forth a blare of four-color process.
‘Timothy?’
‘Speak, Kav’na.’
Mule Skinner was running a quarter-page real estate ad below an ad for residential sewage treatment. Not a good placement. And there was the Helpful Household Hint for the week—he’d never admit to anybody but Puny that he looked for it each Thursday.
‘Are you listening?’ she said.
‘I am, I am.’ Shoes can be shined with a banana peel. Clean off mess with a dry cloth.
She wheeled right on Lilac—a little sharply, he thought.
‘Do you think you might try what Puny suggested yesterday?’ she asked.
Never one to mince words, Puny Guthrie had told him that what he needed was a good . . .
He buried his face in the newspaper.
. . . purgative.
• • •
HERE HE WAS SITTING in a car when he might be running up to the stone wall and looking upon life in the valley—the train hammering through the gorge, with a winding river and blue mountains beyond. It was a mild and perfect day, golden with sunlight after rain—one of his favorite weather conditions.
How would Irene McGraw feel about him bowling around town in her husband’s gear? He considered that Irene may even be at the party. In times past, the spouse left behind waited a year before rejoining the social gambol, but the way things were going these days, this had likely been tempered by half.
The tux business was beyond him, he couldn’t think about it anymore. He crossed himself and gave kit and caboodle to the creator of all that is seen and unseen.
Good News At A Cut Above
Mrs. Fancy Skinner of A Cut Above Hair Salon, has announced TWO new additions to her shop starting next Monday.
One is Wi-fi service (bring your iPads and laptops!) and last but not least, here’s the biggie—a new stylist, Ms. Shirlene Hatfield, formerly of The Hair Loft in Bristol, Tennessee, and a sister of Ms. Skinner!
Ms. Skinner says Ms. Hatfield will offer a full-compliment of beauty services including spray tanning. In a phone interview with the Muse, Ms. Hatfield said: “I will be proud to introduce spraytan to Mitford. With spraytan, everybody in the mountains can look like they just drove up from Florida.”
Not a good marketing tactic. Mountain folk wouldn’t aspire to looking like the tanned horde arriving from Florida every May to take up all the parking spaces.
A hearty Mitford welcome to Ms. Hatfield! See below for the “Shirlene Hatfield $2.00-off haircut coupon” from the popular Cut Above Hair Salon where walk-ins are always welcome. Another $$$- saving bonus from the Muse—we print GOOD news!!
No expiration date on the coupon; he would clip it for Dooley’s long weekend home in October. A coupon in the Muse was as rare as hen’s teeth; the Wesley weekly was eating J.C.’s lunch by giving readers an entire page of coupons every Friday, not to mention a crossword.
In his shirt pocket, his cell phone did its marching band number, very festive.
‘Hello?’
‘Hey, Dad . . .’
Static.
‘Dooley? Can you hear me?’
‘ . . . out . . . thinking . . . got to . . .’
‘Dooley, you’re breaking up. Can you . . . ?’
Gone.
They were pretty high on the mountain, no service up here, he supposed. He hated to miss a call from his boy.
Chelsea TEA shop Adds Children’s Plate
He refolded the newspaper, read on.
Clearly, the tea shop was being forced to go with the times and expand their customer base. Only yesterday, he’d heard the new ownership said there would be no more fancy names the average customer couldn’t pronounce, including croissant. More to the point, the ruffled pink curtains had v
anished during their Ireland trip, the flowered wallpaper had disappeared under a coat of green paint, and the radio was tuned to Top 40 instead of Easy Listening. Now here was the children’s plate, which he hoped grown-ups would feel free to order when short on cash or not very hungry. But the real work had yet to be done—in his opinion, they needed to dump the name of the place, pronto, give it more of a family flavor. Who took their kids to tea? Nobody that he knew of.
Cynthia appeared at the car window.
‘She’s not in the garden, and the front door is open. I went in and called, but no answer, and I looked in her studio out back.’
‘There’s a car in the garage.’ He’d seen it as they drew up to the hedge.
‘That’s not her car, it’s Chester’s. I wonder if I should go upstairs and look for her.’
‘Maybe she’s in town, or visiting a neighbor.’
‘Remember what happened to Norma Jenkins.’
Norma’s front door had stood open for two days as she lay upstairs following a stroke, unable to cry for help and paralyzed throughout her left side.
‘I’m sure she’s fine,’ he said. How many times had he left his own doors wide open as he worked in the backyard or the basement? Of course, those were his early years in Mitford; things were different now, as they were everywhere.
‘I don’t think she’s the sort to leave her door open if she isn’t home.’
‘You seem to know her pretty well,’ he said.
‘We’ve had three art classes together. I taught two of them, she taught the other.’
‘What about household help?’
‘Her housekeeper goes back to Florida around the first of September, she said, and Irene goes back late October.’
‘I have an idea—why don’t we head to the Local and forget Chester’s tux? I’ll rent one from Charlotte, they could put it on the plane to Hickory.’
She wasn’t listening. ‘I’m going inside and look for her, I feel creepy about this.’
He glanced farther along Bishop’s Lane. Only one neighboring house in view, perhaps half a block away.
‘Go in with me,’ she said. ‘Remember what happened to Norma.’
‘Okay. I’ll wait downstairs and make feeble excuses when she comes home.’
