by Sara Rosett
“Yeah. I know. What was going on between him and Cass? What were they arguing about?”
Abby dusted the salt from her fingers and plucked a blade of grass. She concentrated on the blade. “I don’t know. He said it was a misunderstanding. No big deal.” Abby tossed the blade away and looked at me. “We hung our last picture yesterday.”
“You’re done?” She didn’t want to talk about the scene between Cass and Jeff, so I went along. A determinedly blank expression had replaced her usual transparency. It wasn’t like Abby to keep anything back.
“Pretty much, except for a few boxes of odds and ends in the basement.” Abby and Jeff had moved one month before us when the military began closing Hunter AFB. Remembering Abby’s walls at their last apartment, I knew the picture hanging must have been a job. Photos, paintings, quilts, display shelves, and decorative plates covered her walls, but somehow her house didn’t look cluttered, just artistic.
“It was quite a night. Jeff out with his tape measure and you know me, I just want to slap some nails in the wall and hang the stuff.” She looked me over critically with her blue eyes. “So, what have you been doing this afternoon?”
“Making a tiny dent in the mountain of boxes.”
“You’re doing great. I felt that way a few weeks ago, too. And I don’t have a new baby. We’ll have you unpacked in a few more days. How about I watch Livvy while you unpack? You’ve got a knack for seeing where everything should go. I do draw the line at poopy diapers, though.”
“… though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me….” The words from the church service were still in my thoughts as we drove home. Livvy kicked the rattles suspended from the car seat handle, glad to be released from what she obviously considered a prison, the nursery. Mitch drove with one hand on the wheel, the other holding my hand as we took the sweeping curves up Rim Rock Road.
The Sunday worship service had been formal with hymns, readings, responses, and a rambling series of tear-jerking stories for a sermon, but no real inspiration or wisdom. One elderly couple greeted us, the wife with her nose crinkled like she smelled a bad odor and the husband speaking to us but searching the faces behind us. It certainly wasn’t an improvement over the previous Sunday when we had visited a small church where the worshippers had converged on us with eager smiles, clinging handshakes, and reassurances that they were “so glad to see some new faces” and we “had to come back again.” I’d felt like bait dropped into shark-infested waters. Looking for a church was only slightly less exhausting and frustrating than looking for a home, I decided. The road emerged from the neighborhoods and clung to the edge of Black Rock Hill. I studied the tops of the pines marching down the escarpment that fell steeply away from the road.
“I haven’t seen that sign before,” I said. Perched on the edge of the drop-off, the large sign with a pinecone logo shouted, WILDE CREEK ESTATES. EXCLUSIVE GOLF COURSE COMMUNITY WITH LUXURY HOMES STARTING IN THE LOW $300,000S. CONTACT: DIANA MCCARTER. A phone number filled the space under the name.
A switchback road cut down into the trees. In the flat valley at the bottom of the escarpment, yellow construction equipment parked in a freshly cleared patch of dirt looked like toys in a sandbox.
“Wow. Can you call anything in the three-hundred-thousand-dollar range low?” I asked.
Mitch grinned. “Way out of our league.”
“I know Vernon needs more housing, but I don’t think many people from the base will be able to afford anything down there. Diana McCarter. Isn’t she one of the spouses? Petite, blond?”
“I think that’s Brent’s wife. He said she was a realtor.”
As I studied the river winding through the valley I remembered a phrase from the reading at the Sunday service, “valley of the shadow of death.” Cass’s husband, Joe, was certainly there. I knew I had been introduced to him, but I couldn’t remember him. Was there anything I could do besides pray for him? There was always the old standby of taking food.
That afternoon I pushed the stroller up our steep driveway. I balanced a dish on the cover of the canopy over Livvy, who was dozing despite the roar of the lawn mower. I wondered how Livvy could sleep through the racket when other times a sneeze could wake her. I caught Mitch’s eye, held up the dish, and pointed to Joe’s house. He waved and pushed the mower he’d borrowed from some neighbor in front of a line of bushes I’d trimmed. Or tried to trim. They looked fine until I stepped back for a wider view. Definitely sloping like a playground slide.
Despite the shade from the maple and pine trees, I already felt sticky. It was a different heat from Southern California’s dry, scorching heat. There was a touch of humidity in the air here. I looked up at the pines, almost surprised that I missed the fan palms and yucca. I heaved the stroller up the steps to the bungalow’s wide front porch, then paused between the sturdy porch piers, reluctant to ring the doorbell. I couldn’t decide why. Was it just the proximity of death I was avoiding? Maybe I knew it would make me reexamine what happened. I’d tucked that event away in my mind and I didn’t want those images and feelings pulled out again.
I didn’t really know Joe, I’d argued with myself, but in the end my upbringing won out. My mother, so relaxed and easygoing in so many ways, was adamant about certain things. If there was a death, you took food and later you went to the funeral, regardless of how much that person’s life had intersected with yours. If you knew them well enough to know they had died, you knew them well enough.
I pushed the doorbell and looked over Cass’s yard. Already yellow patches pooled in the grass and her roses needed deadheading. Joe opened the door. His thin black hair receded at the temples gave him a large forehead. He was tall, probably six-three with a rectangular face and rough skin, the kind with easy-to-see pores. As soon as he opened the door, I remembered him. He had carried a black trash bag around after the barbeque cleaning up. Today his brown eyes were pink rimmed and his skin, instead of being the olive tone I remembered, looked pale and washed out. He gazed blankly at me. A brown and black rottweiler stood, solid and alert, beside him. Joe automatically rubbed the dog’s ears.
“Hi. I’m Ellie Avery.” I angled the stroller away from the dog. “We live over on the corner.” I gestured to our house across the street. “My husband is in your squadron.”
The only advice I had heard about talking with grieving people had come from my mother after my grandfather died when I was twelve years old. She had said go ahead and say you’re sorry and say the person’s name. “For God’s sake,” she had said, “can’t they remember his name? I’m not going to burst into tears if they say it.” So I plunged in even though I felt awkward. “We’re sorry about Cass.” He still stared at me. Was he taking any of this in? “I brought you some minestrone soup and bread.” I held out the container topped with the foil-wrapped bread, which the dog sniffed appreciatively but Joe made no move to take.
“Um, if you’ve had supper already you could freeze this,” I said. He didn’t say anything. I asked, “Have you had supper?” I felt like I was talking to a three-year-old, prying out a few words.
His gaze transferred from me to my house, “Ah, some cereal this morning,” he said vaguely.
“You haven’t eaten all day?” If I could get him to take this food, odds were he’d leave it on the kitchen counter and forget about it. “How about I warm it up for you? You can eat some right now. You need to eat.”
His eyes focused on me and he seemed to see me for the first time. “Ellie Avery? That’s your name?” he asked as he opened the door wider and called for the dog to follow him. “I’ll just put him out. Kitchen’s over there.”
Dark and silent, it felt like a different house than the one that had been filled with women’s voices and energy just a few days ago at the spouse coffee. I pushed the stroller past two suitcases standing near the door and went to the kitchen. In the living room, the remote rested on the couch beside a blanket. A twenty-four-hour news chann
el silently flickered blue light on the furniture.
I deciphered the microwave and looked for silverware. Joe called out, “I think the Security Police mentioned your name.” I paused with a spoon in my hand. Did he want to ask me about finding Cass? I closed my eyes and frantically tried to think of what I could tell him. Not the truth. She had obviously died in pain and terror, frantically clawing dirt to get up the hill. My mind froze on that image, the microwave beeped, and Joe returned to the kitchen. He paused over Livvy’s stroller and she yawned, stretching her hands and feet. He gave a small, automatic smile and turned to me.
I hastily set the steaming bowl on the table in the breakfast nook and searched in the refrigerator for a drink for him. “Be careful. It’s hot.” Cass’s refrigerator was crammed with haphazardly stacked containers: a block of cheese, an apple, and a stick of butter sat on top of wrinkled whole wheat tortillas wedged in beside soy milk. I found a pitcher of tea and poured him a glass. I’d tell him as little as possible and let him talk.
“I found her on my way home.” I sat down at the other end of the table and pulled Livvy’s stroller over. I fiddled with her Pooh bear.
“I just can’t believe it happened. That she’s gone.” He ate his soup and bread unconsciously, but his eyes searched my face. “Did she say anything?”
“No. She was … gone when I found her. It must have happened fast because she left just a few minutes before me.” I offered this information, hoping the speed of her death would gloss over the terror of it.
“I told her and told her …” his voice trailed off and he pinched the bridge of his nose with his fingers. After a moment he sighed, rubbed his high forehead, and took a drink of the tea. “I always hounded her to keep the EpiPen with her. Her last reaction to a wasp sting was so severe she almost died. That happened last year at the squad’s pool party. But she wasn’t like that, cautious. She used to tease me that she wanted to live life without worrying about every little thing, like I did. She was impulsive and fun and full of energy.”
To keep him from asking me anything else, I asked, “Is that what happened, she had a reaction to a sting?”
“Anaphylactic shock.” The syllables rolled off his tongue with ease. It was a familiar term. He drained his glass. “A wasp got in the van. It stung her several times. Her whole body reacted to the venom. That’s what the medical examiner’s office found. She must have stopped the van to get out, away from the wasp, then she went around the passenger side to get her EpiPen. But she got queasy and dizzy. They think she slipped and fell down the slope. She must have lost consciousness before she could get back up. At least, that’s what the medical examiner and the Security Police think. They’re releasing her body today. I’m flying home to Houston tomorrow.”
“Her family lives there?” Livvy started to fuss, so I pulled her favorite red and blue clown rattle out of the bin in the bottom of the stroller.
He nodded. “Mine, too. We knew each other in high school.” He took his bowl over to the sink, rinsed it, and put it beside the lone bowl in the dishwasher. He refilled his glass and looked embarrassed. “Can I get you something to drink? Sorry, I’m kind of out of it.”
“No, thanks. I’m fine.”
“That was great minestrone. Thanks for bringing it over.”
“Look, if it makes you feel any better, she might have been trying to get her EpiPen out when she slipped down the slope. Her purse was open on the passenger side.”
He nodded. “There was an EpiPen in the glove compartment, too. I always made sure she had one there and one with her.” He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter, though. She’s still gone.”
I gathered up the toys Livvy had flung out of the stroller and pushed the stroller to the door, mentally kicking myself for bringing the conversation back to Cass’s death.
On the porch, I paused. “Do you need anyone to water your plants or take in your mail while you’re gone? Mitch and I could do that for you.”
Joe studied the hanging baskets of petunias like someone had placed them there this morning. “Ah, yeah. I hadn’t thought about that. The plants were Cass’s department.” He swallowed, fighting down emotion. “Let me get you a key.” He disappeared back into the kitchen and then returned with a smiley face key chain with two keys on it. “Front and back doors. Just put the mail on the kitchen counter. Thanks.”
I walked back across the street as Ed and Mabel, our next-door neighbors, drove their town car into their neatly shelved and spotlessly clean garage, not even an oil spot on the concrete. Mabel carried her purse and a small Styrofoam “to-go” container into the house while Ed, finger-combing his fringe of white hair, ambled over to talk to Mitch. Mitch saw him and cut the power on the mower.
“You’ve been busy.” Ed Parsons stood on his side of the hedge that divided our front yard from his. Ed nodded to me as I joined them at the hedge. “Good to see you working so hard on the place. That last couple that lived there didn’t do a thing, never mowed or picked up pinecones. Just blasted their music until we could hear it in our bedroom, that’s on the other side of the house. You about unpacked?” I looked over their flawless carpetlike lawn and pristine flower beds. No way we would be able to measure up to that standard. And I thought we were leaving the “Lawn of the Month” competition to on-base housing.
“Almost. It’s just too hot to work inside today, so we decided to get started out here.” My frenzy of activity coupled with Abby’s help had been productive. Our essentials were unpacked. Our home was emerging from the chaos. Mitch had hung our new miniblinds and curtains. I was thinking about where to hang pictures.
“Figured as much,” Ed said with a satisfied smile. He removed his toothpick from his mouth and gestured to the street. “I saw that moving van yesterday picking up empty boxes, so I knew you were making progress.”
Mabel crossed the driveway and ran a critical eye over the hedge, but didn’t say anything when she joined us. “They’re almost unpacked,” Ed told her with triumph in his voice. “Knew it, seeing that truck.”
Mabel nodded. “You had the blue carpet removed.” Her voice was flat and I couldn’t tell if she approved or disapproved.
“Yes, we did.” I was glad Mitch had hung those miniblinds. Were these people watching us instead of television for entertainment? “We didn’t like the color,” I said. It was an awful shade of turquoise and full of dirt.
“Hideous.” Mabel said. She wore a white shirt, khaki pants, and a blue-and-yellow plaid vest. Did she always wear plaid? I saw her gardening a few days ago wearing orange and yellow plaid shorts.
Mabel nodded her head in the direction of the Vincents’ house. “How’s he taking his wife’s death?”
“You knew the Vincents?”
“Of course. They’re part of the neighborhood. We make it a point to meet everyone and keep an eye on things.”
I’m sure you do. Mitch and I exchanged a glance and I knew he was thinking the same thing I was. He hid a smile and I said, “He’s still in shock, I think.”
“Not surprising,” Mabel agreed. She squinted down the street at the plain white house next to the Vincents'. “I wonder if she ever met her neighbor—the one in the white house.”
“I don’t know.”
Mabel leaned toward me and said confidentially, “Cassandra spent hours gardening in her yard, but I think she worked outside so she could watch that house.”
“Now, Mabel, you don’t know that,” Ed cautioned.
“Well, she watched it and she asked me if I knew anything about the people who lived there.”
Ed harrumphed and drew Mitch over to examine a patch of lawn that wasn’t as verdantly green as the rest of his grass.
Mabel said, “I think Cassandra suspected it was a drug house.”
“What?”
“Strange comings and goings at night. Lots of activity after dark. I’m watching it.”
“Oh. Well. That’s good.” I think. At least it might keep her gaze off our house.<
br />
Mabel changed the subject. “How do you like your new house?”
I smiled. “We love it. Now if it will just cool off we can really start enjoying it. It’s like an oven in there right now.”
“You don’t have a window cooler?” Mabel asked, glancing at Livvy in the stroller.
“No. We didn’t know we needed one.” How could they miss knowing that? They seemed to know everything else.
“Ed, find that window unit we got at the garage sale last year and help them put it in.” Mabel started back to the house. She tossed over her shoulder, “Got a good deal on it. Use it until it cools off.”
I stood for a few seconds with my mouth open before I shut it. Abrupt, generous, and nosy. What a combination for our next-door neighbors. I glanced back at Joe’s house. I hoped he was doing something else besides staring at the TV with the sound turned down. But bluish light flickered in his front windows.
An Everything in Its Place Tip for an M
Organized Move
You don’t have to move everything. In fact, don’t move everything!
Sift through your belongings and lighten the load. If you’ve had something stashed in your closet for years, think about why you hang on to it.
Purge old records from your files.
Eliminate items you won’t need in your new location. For instance, if you won’t have much of a yard pare down lawn equipment. No fireplace? Give away fireplace tools.
Chapter
Five
Simplicity, clarity, singleness: these are the
attributes that give our lives power and vividness
and joy.
—Richard Halloway
With Livvy’s cries ricocheting off the windows, I adjusted the angle of the mirrors and shoved a jumble of paper cups, tissues, and a Snickers wrapper aside with my foot to make room for my feet on the floorboard. Then I nosed Cass’s van out of the Security Police’s holding area. Joe had called early this morning to ask me if I could pick up the van.
