by Darien Gee
Maybe the house will sell. She hasn’t had any calls yet, not even a nibble, but she only needs one buyer, right? Maybe she’ll downgrade to a condo somewhere. Clean and simple, no gutters to worry about, no rotting porches. Maybe she’ll leave Avalon altogether and start over someplace new. It’s a thought. There’s nothing tying her down here, after all.
“Isabel?” There’s a rap on her window. “I can see you lying on the floor. Are you going to answer the door or what?”
Isabel holds her breath, doesn’t move.
“Isabel?”
Isabel wills Bettie to magically disappear.
“Isabel, I know where your spare key is.” Bettie Shelton’s head peeks through the side window.
Damn it all. Isabel sits up and glares at the door. “It’s open!”
The doorknob turns and Bettie steps in. She’s wearing a house dress and flip-flops, her silvery-blue hair fuzzy from the heat. She frowns when she sees Isabel sitting on the floor, then looks around. “You painted?”
Isabel manages a nod. She’s never been particularly friendly with Bettie, who’s a bit too scrappy for someone as plain vanilla as Isabel.
“Huh, you painted your walls white. All of them.” Her eyes bug out when Isabel stands up. “And you match.”
“I’m redecorating,” Isabel says, hoping that will get Bettie off her back. “Getting the place ready for the new owners.”
Bettie gives her a hard look. “Did you sell it?”
Isabel squirms. “Not yet, but I will.”
“Well, you’d better fix that busted step,” Bettie declares. “I could have killed myself, I’ll have you know.”
No such luck, Isabel wants to say, but instead she asks, “Is there something you need? Eggs? Flour? You know where everything is. Have at it.” Isabel waves in the general direction of her kitchen. Last year when the town was baking Amish Friendship Bread, Bettie was coming in unannounced, borrowing ingredients at will. Isabel didn’t notice at first, too mired in her own problems, until she found her flour container suddenly empty, the small jar of vanilla upended, grains of sugar crystals dotting the floor. Her supply of gallon-sized Ziploc bags was disappearing at an alarming rate. It wasn’t until Bettie complained that Isabel was out of cinnamon that she finally figured it out.
Bettie surveys the living room critically. “I wanted to invite you to join our next meeting. Second Thursday of the month. No previous experience necessary.”
Isabel reluctantly stands up. “Previous experience for what?”
“Scrapbooking.” Bettie straightens up to her full height, 4’11”. “I’m president and founder of the Avalon Ladies Scrapbooking Society, in case you didn’t know.”
Isabel does know, as does half the town—Bettie won’t let them forget it. Their street is clogged with cars whenever there’s a meeting. “Thanks, but I have plans.”
“What plans? You don’t have any plans. You never leave this house, Isabel Kidd. I’ve been watching you.” Bettie points two fingers to her eyes then points them at Isabel. “You don’t go anywhere.”
“Untrue. I go to work and last week I bought paint.” Isabel studies the rug on the floor. God, how old is it? She and Bill had bought it together—it was one of the first purchases they made when they got married. There’s history in this rug, history Isabel doesn’t care to remember. She starts to push a couch against the wall, almost running over Bettie’s toes.
Bettie frowns, her eyes narrowing suspiciously at Isabel. “I am even willing to waive the membership fee for the first month. It’s normally fifteen dollars and includes a starter pack for the monthly theme. But, under no circumstances are you to tell anyone that I am doing such a thing. It would look like nepotism.” She jumps out of the way as Isabel drags a coffee table across the floor.
“Like I said, I have plans.” The furniture out of the way, Isabel crouches and tries to roll up the rug. It’s long and wide, too heavy and unwieldy for one person. Isabel starts from the middle, the sides, the corners—none of it matters. The rug is stubborn and lies limp in her arms, unwilling to move.
Bettie is watching her. “Would you like some help?” she asks.
No, Isabel most definitely does not want help from Bettie. The thought of being indebted to this woman in any way is more than Isabel can bear.
“No,” Isabel huffs, lifting an end and attempting to fold it over. “I got it.” The rug rebels, heavy with dirt and memories. Isabel falls back in defeat.
“Oh, this is ridiculous.” Bettie marches over and stands next to Isabel. “You roll from there, I’ll roll from here. You just need to gain momentum, that’s all. Let’s go. One, two, three!”
Together they push and roll the rug until it’s no more than a fat cylinder of fabric at the end of the living room. They stand up and Isabel looks at the lustrous hardwood floor that’s been covered all these years. She suddenly feels buoyant, encouraged. She’s going to call Goodwill to come and get the rug. She casts a look around. Maybe she’ll give them the couch, too. Maybe she’ll give them everything.
“Next meeting is tomorrow night, at my house, from six to nine. Bring your own refreshments and a pair of good scissors, if you have them.” Bettie bats the dust away from her face. “Come five minutes early. If you don’t like it, you don’t have to come to another meeting. I’m all about one-hundred-percent customer satisfaction, and that includes Society members, too. See you at six!” And before Isabel can protest or argue, Bettie turns and walks out the door.
Enid Griffin, 56
Travel Agent, Avalon Travel
Enid Griffin peers into the pot of Gerbera daisies and wrinkles her nose. The brown streaks on the once-red petals are a dead giveaway.
“I knew it,” she huffs, pulling herself upright. She’s formidable, almost six feet, and full-figured to boot. At fifty-six she’s a fair blonde with only a hint of gray, her hair perfectly coiffed and sprayed into place. “Thrips!”
She marches around to her desk, which was custom-made to accommodate her large frame. She sits down, indignant, and starts rapidly typing on her keyboard.
“I know you said Napa Valley but I am telling you, wine country is overrated,” she says to the young couple sitting across from her. “You want your honeymoon to be memorable, don’t you?”
“Well, yes …”
“And these days, with divorce rates so high, I think you can’t NOT afford to invest in your marriage. New experiences, new adventures!”
The young couple looks skeptical. “All of our friends who went to California said it was wonderful, and that Napa was so romantic …” the girl begins.
Enid dismisses this with a wave of her hand. “California has an allure, but I’m looking at you two and thinking …” Her eyes twinkle as her voice drops into a low, conspiratorial whisper. “Texas.”
“Texas?”
“Texas! Here we are. South Padre Island.” Enid turns her computer screen toward them. “Turtle hatchlings! Palm trees! Orange groves! Wonderful fishing, too—some of the restaurants will even cook your catch. Plus you’re close to Mexico so you could cross over for a little day trip. You’ll save money and bring home lots of memories. Your own, not some cookie cutter memory downloaded from a website. I mean, do you two even drink wine?”
The young woman says uncertainly, “Well, I drink Chardonnay sometimes …” as her fiancé says, “I’m more of a Budweiser kind of guy.”
They turn to stare at each other, surprised. “You said you wanted to go to Napa Valley,” the young woman accuses her fiancé.
“I said I would go,” he clarifies. “But I mean, yeah, if a bottle of wine costs the same as a six pack …”
“More,” Enid says.
“Yeah, if it costs more and doesn’t even taste as good …”
The young woman’s voice is shrill. “That’s why we’re going! So we can learn to appreciate these things!”
“Why? What’s the point? I’m not going to be buying the stuff when we come back. We can’t ev
en afford it now.”
“Maybe we will!”
“Massages,” Enid interjects. “With the money you’ll save you’ll be able to do lots of fun things. Dance clubs, windsurfing, kiteboarding, parasailing. You kids are young, you should be doing fun things together. You have the rest of your lives to be gargling fermented grape juice.” She sends a document to the printer and readies a travel folder for them. They aren’t going to make a decision today—she knew that when they first walked in. In fact, Enid is willing to wager that this will be the first of many decisions they won’t be able to agree on. “Is there any wiggle room in your budget?” she asks.
The woman says, “Yes,” as the young man says, “No.”
Enid’s right hand hovers over her drawer. She knows what this young couple needs, and it’s not wine country or heading to the gulf coast. Still, she was planning on saving it for herself, for her own trip later this year. She finally decided to bite the bullet and take that cruise to Greece, something she always wanted to do but hasn’t, because she was waiting. Waiting, perhaps, for someone to come along that would be a good companion, a husband even, but that hasn’t happened. There are plenty of nice men in Avalon but none of them are Enid’s type, and she’s not getting any younger. When Bettie Shelton showed her the selection of new page kits, Enid decided, this is it. She marched back to her office and booked her ticket, and for the first time in her thirty years of being a travel agent she made up a travel folder for herself.
But as she watches this young couple tripping their way to the altar, she thinks, God bless ’em. She also thinks, Good luck. She knows she missed this part, this supposed happily ever after, but watching it unfold in front of her, it doesn’t always look so happy. In fact, it looks like a lot of stress and anxiety and argument and tears. The people who come to her are supposed to be going on vacation, but to see how worked up they get, you’d think you were dragging them to the dentist for a root canal. Enid thinks of Mac and Judy Mullins, regular customers of hers. They saved all their money to travel when Mac retired, but when that time came, it turned out he didn’t have any interest in leaving his Barcalounger. Each trip requires hours of cajoling on both her and Judy’s part and, boy, is it exhausting. Mac always ends up acquiescing in the end, but it’s never without a fight. Why, Enid often wonders, do people sometimes want to make things harder than they need to be?
“Look,” Enid says, sliding open her drawer. She pulls out a thick cellophane packet and pushes it toward them. “Here. An early wedding present.”
The couple stops arguing long enough to look at the cellophane packet with a frown. “What is it?” the young woman asks, her nose wrinkled as if in disgust.
“It’s a scrapbooking kit. A starter kit, actually, but you can get more pages and doodads from Bettie Shelton if you want to do a whole album.” She taps a label affixed to the corner of the packet with Bettie’s contact information in large, bold letters. “When you’re older, even a year from now, this will be the place you’ll go to relive the moment.”
“We have digital cameras on our phones,” the girl says smartly. “With video.” She glances at her fiancé as if to say, Can you believe this?
Enid is undaunted. “Pictures are only one part of it,” she tells them. “And these days people take hundreds of pictures and none of them get printed or put into a photo album. This is different—when you scrapbook, you’re evoking the memory of the feeling and the experience by the colors you choose. The little mementos you paste to the page.” Enid breaks the seal of the packet and spreads the contents onto the table. “You take your favorite pictures, you look at all of this, and you think, what fits? What goes together? Not just aesthetically, but emotionally. Scrapbook pages capture all of it. For example—how did the two of you meet?”
The couple grins shyly and Enid sees both of them soften. She thinks, Yes. This is what it’s about, isn’t it?
“Bowling alley,” the young man says. “Her ball jumped the gutter into my lane.”
“It was heavier than I thought,” his fiancée protests in her defense, but she’s finally relaxed, happy. She reaches for his hand and beams at him.
“Wonderful! So look …” Enid shuffles through the loose alphabet letters and quickly spells out at the top of the page, YOU BOWLED ME OVER. “You pick up a coaster or something with the name of the bowling alley and stick it on here, along with some of your earliest pictures.”
“I still have that scorecard somewhere,” he says. “I bowled a two-fifty that day.”
“Perfect!” Enid exclaims.
The girl chooses a thin black border and slides it to the top of the page. “We could even make the whole page look like a scorecard,” she says. “What about this?” She rearranges Enid’s letters and adds a few others to read SPARES AND STRIKES. “If you get a spare or strike, it’s still a perfect ten,” she explains.
“Ah,” Enid says with an approving nod. She watches them as they pick through random die cuts and trims, reminiscing about that day and talking about the amateur league they’re both in. Then the lightbulb goes off.
“Say,” she says. “What do you think about a bowling honeymoon? Playing different bowling alleys? Choose some that might be close to other points of interest, with a nice B&B nearby? Do you have any interest in that?”
The couple looks at her blankly, then a slow smile spreads across both of their faces. They gaze at each other and then at Enid, all aglow.
“Yes,” they say in unison, their bodies leaning toward each other. “We do.”
Chapter Four
“I’m afraid I’m going to have to keep the water off until tomorrow.” Yvonne clicks off her flashlight and steps back from the large puddle of water pooling on the floor.
Her client furrows her brow. “Tomorrow? But that’s not possible!”
Yvonne points to the pipes underneath the sink. “All that piping needs to be replaced—the leaks won’t stop until that’s done. If you put off addressing the problem, it’ll only get worse.”
“But tonight is the night of my scrapbooking meeting. I’m expecting quite a crowd, you see, and I’ve already set everything up.” Yvonne’s client waves to the dining room where tables and chairs have been laid out, as if for a bridge or poker match. There are stacks of colored paper and other glittery sorts of things on every table, gel pens and scissors with odd edges. A paper cutter and laminator are on the buffet, along with some other bizarre contraptions Yvonne doesn’t recognize.
“Well, it’s up to you, of course, but if it were me I wouldn’t wait. I’d do it right away but I won’t be able to get everything until tomorrow. The best we can do is keep the water off for now and move your party elsewhere.”
“Elsewhere? I’m expecting people in an hour!”
Yvonne gives a sympathetic shrug. “Sorry. It’s either that or have your house under a foot of water by morning, Mrs. Shelton.”
Her client huffs. “It’s Ms. Shelton, but don’t call me that, it makes me feel old. Call me Bettie.” She purses her lips, thinking.
Yvonne starts to put her things away. There’s nothing she can do right now, and it’ll be up to her client to make the call. Avalon is filled with these lovely old bungalow-style homes but Yvonne’s seen the same problem in three other houses and expects it’ll be an ongoing issue for many Avalon homeowners. The houses have so much history but the plumbing and electrical are dated, and most people don’t bother to fix anything until it’s a problem or already too late.
Bettie reaches for the phone and dials a number. She covers the mouthpiece as it rings. “What do I owe you?”
“Nothing. I haven’t done anything yet.”
“What? Nonsense,” Bettie scoffs. “Surely you have some sort of service fee.”
“Yes, but this was quick and on my way home. Besides, I can’t do anything today so don’t worry about it for now.” In fact, Yvonne has yet to charge anyone in Avalon for a service call. She knows many people are having a hard time but she’s d
oing okay. She can afford to give a little as long as she’s paid for the actual work.
Bettie puts a finger to her lips, shushing Yvonne. “Connie? It’s Bettie.” She smiles sweetly into the phone. Yvonne is about to leave but Bettie motions for her to wait so she leans against the counter.
The smile quickly fades from Bettie’s face, replaced by one of irritation. “BETTIE SHELTON. I know you know it’s me, Connie Colls, so don’t pretend you don’t recognize my voice … I do so sound the same on the phone … Yes, I most certainly do—oh, forget it. Is Madeline there? … Well, where is she? … Two hours? … Well, I suppose I could talk with you. I wanted to let you know that I thought it would be a lovely thing if we held the meeting of the Society at the tea salon tonight. Give you a little business, though of course I expect some sort of group discount … What do you mean you have a book club group tonight? … Well, what about the dining room … What? A rehearsal dinner? For who? Oh, that’s right. I suspect she’s pregnant, don’t you? … No, I am not gossiping, I am merely stating an observation … fine. Goodbye.” Bettie hangs up the phone and stares at it indignantly, her hands on her hips. “That Connie Colls thinks she runs the place! Madeline would be shocked if she knew how she treated me. She almost ruined a sale the last time I was there.”
“Do you have an old towel?” Yvonne asks. “We should wipe this water up. I don’t want you to slip.”
“Now this is what I’m talking about!” Bettie declares as she heads toward the hallway closet. “Such good manners. It’s appalling how rude people are these days, Yvette, wouldn’t you agree? I wish more young people were like you!” She hands Yvonne a faded beach towel, beaming.
“It’s Yvonne,” Yvonne says with a smile. “And I’m not that young.”
“Twenty-two?” Bettie guesses.
