by Darien Gee
A petite woman with silvery-blue hair stopped and pointed to the gumball machine. “Colorful, isn’t it?”
Her mouth full, Abilene could only nod.
“I bet your generation has a lot of good memories about gumball machines,” the woman said. “It’s childhood at its best. Right up there with ice cream trucks and tree houses.”
The hard sugary shell finally gave way and Abilene was able to speak. “I had a tree house growing up,” she said. “My dad and I built it.”
“You see?” the woman exclaimed. “That’s what I’m talking about! Did you have a stamp collection, too?”
Abilene shook her head. “Not stamps. I had an eraser collection, though. And I liked Betty and Veronica comics. Double digests especially.” She had smiled at the memory, remembered how she had over a hundred in all. What happened to them? Did her parents give them away? Abilene could have sold them—she kept them in mint condition, each one carefully stored in archival plastic sleeves. They’d be worth something now.
The woman grinned. “You’re new to Avalon, aren’t you? I’m Bettie Shelton, president of the Avalon Ladies Scrapbooking Society.” She stuck out a hand.
“Abilene Gould.”
“You should come to our meeting tonight. You’ll meet lots of people, get some good ideas for how to preserve your memories in creative ways. It’s usually fifteen dollars a month but I’d be willing to waive it in your case, seeing how you’re new in town. You can’t tell anyone that I’ve done that, though. Wouldn’t want people to think I’m playing favorites.” She continued to pump Abilene’s hand up and down, beaming.
Abilene finally managed to extract her hand. “Thank you, but I’m not much of a creative person.”
“What? Nonsense. But I tell you what—just come for the company, meet a few nice people. Tonight, seven o’clock. Here’s my card.” Bettie pressed an ornately embellished business card into Abilene’s hands. “That’s one of my fancy ones. I have six other styles.”
“Oh, I don’t know …”
Bettie waved away her excuse. “I hear some strawberries and Maalox calling my name—mercy, it’s been one of those weeks. See you tonight!” She gave Abilene a friendly pat on the arm and disappeared into the store before Abilene could respond.
And so Abilene had gone to the meeting, had listened politely, had learned a little bit about scrapbooking and a lot about the town of Avalon. The other members had taken her under their wings and the word is out that she is looking for a job, but who knows how that will go. She hadn’t planned on going back, but maybe she will, because she sees that there’s a way she can help Mr. Whatley, one that will have a lasting effect.
“Mr. Whatley,” she says suddenly. “Would you like me to help put some of these things together in an album? Sort of as a keepsake of the business?” She points to the pictures on the wall.
He cocks his head to one side, not comprehending. “You mean take them out of the frames?”
“Yes. No. I don’t know. Maybe you could keep the originals someplace safe and we could make color photocopies to put in the album. I went to a meeting the other night that talked about this sort of thing, about creating a memory scrapbook. I’m still learning so I wouldn’t be able to do anything fancy, but it might give you a nice record of what you and your father have done with the business. Would you like that?”
Mr. Whatley looks at Abilene, a slow smile breaking over his face. “Abilene,” he says, calling her by her full name for the first time since she started working for him. “I would like that very much.”
Chapter Eight
Yvonne picks through her jewelry box, looking for a pair of earrings. She prefers small gold hoops while on the job, but she lost one last week and she’s thinking she should wear studs instead, something less likely to fall out of her ears. Of course the reasonable thing would be to be completely jewelry free, but what would be the fun in that?
Nothing too fancy, she tells herself as she looks through her choices. It’s a handful compared to what she used to have, but it’s enough.
She touches a pair of silver turquoise hearts and hears her breath catch. Sam. He’d given the earrings to her for her eighteenth birthday after he’d taken a trip to the Southwest with some buddies. It had been an eye-opening trip for him, had lit a desire to see more of the world beyond Wareham, to have a life beyond the cranberry bogs. His enthusiasm was contagious, and Yvonne felt certain that it would happen for him someday.
And then, well. Yvonne sighs, shakes her head. She knows that others might see the earrings as a painful reminder, but she doesn’t. She was wearing them the day she left Wareham and hasn’t worn them since. They comfort her, as do the simple pair of pearl earrings that used to belong to her grandmother. Yvonne misses them both.
Last year her oldest sister managed to get ahold of her, told her the news.
“Gramma passed,” Anne had said briskly on the phone. “Stroke. Funeral’s next week. I know you’re not coming.”
Yvonne had felt a stirring of nostalgia, of familiarity, but it wasn’t enough to change anything. “No,” she said. “I’ll send flowers.”
“Don’t bother,” her sister had said. “I already ordered some in your name. Carnations.”
Yvonne hates carnations, and Anne knows it, but she didn’t say anything. Instead they hung up and a month later a small package arrived with a folded copy of the program from the memorial service, the earrings carelessly tucked into a cotton ball. It was probably the only thing nobody else wanted, clamoring instead for the money, or the diamonds, or both.
Two simple pairs of earrings loaded with meaning, so much so that Yvonne can’t bring herself to wear them anymore.
She finally settles on a pair of citrine ear studs when the doorbell rings. Yvonne glances at the clock—it’s half past eight in the morning. She’s due at a job in half an hour but she’s already run five miles and had her breakfast. Yvonne tosses a few throw pillows onto the bed, then checks herself in the mirror once again before heading down the stairs.
She takes a look through the peephole but doesn’t see anyone, just the sunny street that runs in front of her house, Mrs. Markowitz walking by with her dog. Yvonne opens the door and scans the street, but doesn’t see anyone else. Then she looks down and sees a note tucked under the corner of the doormat.
It’s a scrawl, written in haste.
Go home, it says. You don’t belong here.
Yvonne feels her throat tighten. She picks up the note and gives a polite wave to Mrs. Markowitz who’s looking at her with a frown. Yvonne balls up the note in her hand, then throws it into the kitchen trash.
She pours herself a glass of orange juice and wills herself to stop shaking. She has a busy day ahead of her—that’s where her mind needs to be. Work. Work has always made it better, has helped her move out of her head and into her body.
Her cellphone rings and she hesitates for a moment. The area code is for Avalon, though, so she answers. “Yvonne Tate.”
There’s a lot of throat clearing before Yvonne hears anything. “Is this the plumber lady?” comes an uncertain voice.
“Yes, this is Yvo—”
“I’m sorry to call at the last minute, but I won’t be needing your services today. Looks like everything’s working fine now. Oh, this is Mervin McDowell of 1524 Plum Street.”
Yvonne digs through her bag until she finds her job book. She flips to the page with Mervin McDowell’s information. Residential, stopped-up shower. Well, quite possibly a little Drano fixed the problem, though it had sounded more serious than that.
“No problem, Mr. McDowell,” she says. Yvonne’s disappointed to lose the work, but it happens. “If you need any other—”
Click. He’s hung up.
Yvonne stares at her cellphone, then slowly crosses his name off her calendar, makes a note on his page. Well, the upside is that she can move the rest of her appointments, end her day a little early. Every cloud has a silver lining, right? Maybe Isabel wi
ll join her for dinner. They can go out or see a movie or something.
She looks up her next appointment and gives them a call. “Hi, Mrs. McKenzie? Yvonne Tate of Tate Plumbing. I wanted you to know that I have an opening and can move you up to an earlier time.”
“Oh, Yvonne!” Mrs. McKenzie sounds delighted to hear from her. “I was meaning to call you. It looks like we’ll have to reschedule, if that’s all right.”
Reschedule? They were going to replace the water heater. The old one wasn’t working at all, which means the McKenzies are in a house with no hot running water.
Yvonne looks at her calendar. “I have some time tomorrow,” she says. It’s a big job, not complicated, but it takes time to drain and remove the old water heater and install the new one, plus Yvonne was going to dispose of the old water heater at a steel recycle center almost half an hour away. “Or I can try to move some jobs around, try to get over there sooner.”
“Oh, you know, I hate that you have to go through all this fuss. You know, forget about it. I’m sure we’ll work something out. I can probably get Larry to figure it out.”
Mr. McKenzie? Yvonne remembers him crashed out on the couch, his belly rising and falling as he snored away, thick Coke-bottle glasses askew on his face. No, Larry McKenzie most certainly will not be able to figure it out, nor will Mrs. McKenzie, who’s a small, wiry thing.
“Thank you so much for everything, Yvonne,” Mrs. McKenzie says before saying goodbye.
Now her schedule is really open, with only one job left. What the hell? Frustrated, Yvonne punches in the numbers for Isabel’s cellphone.
“Hey, do you want to come over for dinner tonight?” she asks as soon as Isabel picks up. “I only have soup, but it’s Wolfgang Puck, and pretty tasty …”
“Geez, hi to you, too. I’m about to go into a meeting—can I call you later?”
“You don’t have a second to talk?”
“I do … and now it’s gone. Here comes my boss—gotta run. Call you later.” Isabel hangs up.
Yvonne is not an emotional eater but she wanders back to the pantry and grabs a bag of rice cakes. As she munches through one and then another, she tries not to get upset. It’s just a couple of cancellations, albeit bizarrely on the same day, and nothing more. Yvonne finishes off one more rice cake and reaches for her phone again.
She calls her last appointment of the day, someone she hasn’t met yet because he didn’t want a quote, just someone to come over quick to help with a running toilet that’s been keeping him up nights. He had been hoping she could do an emergency call last night, but she was already on another job and by the time she was done, she was too beat to head out again. Now, however, she dials his number with trepidation, wondering if he’ll tell her that his toilet has fixed itself and that he doesn’t need her, either.
“What a relief!” comes the reply when she tells Hubert Hill she’s available to come by now.
Yvonne almost can’t believe it. “Really?” she says. “Now is a good time?”
“Are you kidding? I was about to take a hammer to the thing this morning. Can you meet me at the house in half an hour? You know where it is?”
“Yes, I have the address. I’ll see you there.” Yvonne hangs up the phone with an air of satisfaction, draws a smiley face on Hubert Hill’s page. I knew it wasn’t anything, she tells herself triumphantly as she brushes bits of puffed rice into the trash. But the smile falls from her face when she sees the balled-up scrap of paper. She stares at it a moment, then lets the lid of the trash can slam shut.
Twenty-five minutes later she’s standing on the doorstep of a handsome Queen Anne house a few minutes outside of Avalon. It had to be built around the turn of the century—the last century—and she wonders if they’ve had any issues other than a running toilet. The exterior is in pristine condition and painted a sunny yellow. She counts three floors and guesses that the first floor has at least nine-foot ceilings based on the location of the windows.
She rings the bell. A second later, the door opens and a huge yellow Lab bounds out, practically knocking her over.
“Whoa, there, boy!” she says as she ruffles his ears and the back of his neck. The dog nuzzles against her hand, panting happily.
“Sorry, he needs some manners. Toby, get back here.” A hand reaches out to grab Toby’s collar. Yvonne sees loafers and khaki pants out of the corner of her eye and quickly straightens up.
“A Lab with manners?” she says jokingly, then finds she’s rooted on the spot. Because Hubert Hill is not what she expected.
Gorgeous brown eyes, that’s the first thing she sees. Dark brown hair, a navy blue polo shirt opened at the neck, khaki pants, nice belt. But his arms—Hubert’s arms are muscular, not bodybuilder muscular, but lean and toned, like an athlete. And his smile—Yvonne suspects he’s won over quite a few women with that smile alone. He’s her age, maybe a couple years older.
Yvonne finds that she’s blushing and quickly gets ahold of herself. “I’m Yvonne Tate.”
“Yvonne Tate.” Hubert says this slowly, staring at her. Toby is bucking against him, wanting to be set free so he can wreak havoc somewhere. “You’re the plumber?”
Yvonne nods. It takes her a second to find her voice. “I’m the plumber.”
Toby breaks free and tears down the porch, across the lawn. A squirrel, maybe, or a cat. Or quite possibly nothing at all.
“Um, right. Okay. Well, come on in. The culprit’s upstairs. Master bath.” Hubert steps aside and Yvonne steps in, a little too aware of how close he is when she passes him. He smells clean, like soap.
Yvonne has two choices: melt into a puddle on the floor or keep it together, get the job done, and get out of there. No eye contact, that’s the key. Her legs feel rubbery, unreliable. She tries to stop herself, but can’t. Her eyes drift to his left hand, to his ring finger.
Empty.
Hubert whistles for Toby. His whistle is confident, commanding—he could stop traffic with that whistle. Even Yvonne finds herself standing at attention.
Toby bounds back inside, debating whether to follow them up the stairs. Yvonne looks at the lace doilies and silk flowers crammed into fluted porcelain vases, the faded oriental rugs lining the pink plank flooring. The walls have glass-front cabinets and beautiful woodwork. It’s lovely, but a little old-fashioned for her taste, and it doesn’t seem to fit Hubert at all. “You have a lovely home,” she says politely.
Hubert makes a face as they walk up the stairs. He looks like he’s about to tell her something but instead simply says, “Thanks.”
“Have you had any other issues with the plumbing?”
Hubert shakes his head. “We gutted the place about ten years ago, did a complete renovation, refinished the floors, the works. We put in a new septic system and R/O system, upgraded the water tank and heater. Everything’s been running well until, um, this.”
In the bedroom, Yvonne tries not to notice the floral linens, the puffy pink duvet, the shelves lined with china figurines of children and cats. She sees pairs of men’s shoes lined up next to the wardrobe. There’s a stack of papers on the desk, the only messy area. Hubert grabs a cellphone sitting in a charging station and slips it into his back pocket.
So this must be his room. Huh.
The master bathroom is just as fluffy, with matching bathroom rugs, toilet seat covers, tissue box holders. A beautiful cast iron tub sits in the corner by a large window, overlooking the gardens.
Yvonne puts down her tools. So it’s officially a bit weird, but whatever. Hubert is standing in the doorway, watching her.
She clears the top of the tank and lifts the lid, gives the toilet a flush. She watches the valve and sees that the ball and flapper aren’t covering it completely. “It looks like you may need a new flapper,” she says.
“What? No.” Hubert frowns. “I had a guy here last week who replaced it.”
“Last week? I don’t think so.” Yvonne peers into the tank. “I mean, you can see it’s corroded a
round the edges. That’s definitely not new.”
Hubert looks into the tank. “Damn. I can’t believe it.”
“It’s not as bad as you think,” Yvonne says. “You should call this guy and have him come out again. He obviously didn’t fix the problem. He should take care of this for free.”
“Yeah, no kidding.” He’s shaking his head, disgusted, and Yvonne can tell that he’s making some sort of mental note. “Anyway, I’d rather get this taken care of now. Can you do it?”
Yvonne fiddles with the chain, flushes the toilet one more time. “Sure. This shouldn’t take me long. I’ll remove the damaged part and take it with me to the hardware store so I can get the right fit. I should be done within the hour. Do you want me to do this now or do you have to get back to work?”
“No, now would be great. Yeah, definitely. I don’t want to run the water bill.”
Yvonne adjusts the float until she’s satisfied with the water level in the tank, then turns off the water. She removes the flapper and dries her hand on the clean towel she has tucked into her belt. “All right. I’ll be back soon.”
They stand there for a moment, neither of them moving. What’s happening? And then before she can help herself, the words slip out of her mouth.
“You’re welcome to come with me if you want,” she says offhandedly. “So you’ll know what to do if this happens next time. You could probably fit it yourself. We can bring Toby, too. Take him for a little ride.”
By the shocked look on his face, Yvonne can tell she’s overstepped her bounds. What was she thinking? But then Hubert grins.
“Yeah, that’d be great—I should probably learn how to do this stuff someday. Let me grab Toby’s leash and I’ll meet you outside.”
When Yvonne gets into her truck she furtively dials Isabel’s number. When it directly goes to voice mail, she quickly taps out a text to Isabel.
