Ms. Miller and the Midas Man (5 page)

Howard smiled at that. “Oh. Is that all? Well, he’ll fix that soon enough. I never met anyone who didn’t like him. Everything the man touches turns to gold. It’s hard not to like him.”

Great. Howard was repeating himself and the space between her eyes was filling with a pressure that promised to be a full-blown headache before dessert. The evening was taking on the dimensions of a wide-awake nightmare.

“T
HIS IS REALLY NICE
of you to invite me over,” Scotty was saying as he flipped the latch on the garden gate—which was something else that annoyed her. There was no way to lock him out from her side of the fence. “I’ve been working all day and I’m starving. The smell of barbecue in the air has been driving me and Bert crazy for the past hour. I was just now going after fast food, but this is much better,” he said, walking across her neatly trimmed grass, Bert lumbering behind. “Nothing beats home cooking. Right, Howard?”

“That’s for sure. Not when you’re single,” he agreed, smiling brightly at him. “I look forward to Sunday all week long.”

Scott turned his whole face into a frown and tried to look confused.

“Just Sunday? Aren’t you and Ms. Miller...? Oh. You’re not one of those weekend-only cooks, are you, Ms. Miller? My mom used to tell my sisters that there was no shorter way to a man’s heart than through his stomach.”

The rain cloud burst and silence fell like water in a monsoon as eyes turned to her, waiting for her comment to his remark—which wasn’t about cooking at all, but her relationship with Howard.

“Well,” she said, clearing her throat. “I’m sure your mother was correct. I understand you have several married sisters here in town, and I’m sure they’re all excellent cooks. In fact, I bet you could—”

“That’s right, I do,” he said, cutting her off with a huge smile. “All but Donna, that is. Well, she’s a great cook and she’s married, she just doesn’t live here in Tylerville anymore.”

“How fascinating.”

“How is Donna?” Howard asked, looking too eager to know.

“Just great. Saw her and her brood of kids a couple weeks ago. She’s just great. Sure do miss having her around though.”

“Me too,” Howard said, so wistfully that when he realized what he’d said, he blushed, and for the first time in perhaps...ever, he had everyone’s full attention. “I mean...well, she was younger than I was, but I had this...well, a little crush on her in high school.” He laughed self-consciously, shook his head, and took a bite of his hamburger.

Scotty chuckled sympathetically. “You’re in good company, Howard. The streets of this town are littered with hearts my sisters have broken. Pains me to see it. And I never could understand it.”

Howard shook his head and held up his hand, chewing and swallowing quickly. “You’re their brother,” he said, stating the obvious with some authority. “Brothers never understand the attraction other men have toward their sisters.”

“Well, I understand it now, of course, but back then...” he said, his voice softening a bit with affection. He came to stand beside Gus at the end of the table, reaching over her to take the paper plate and juicy hamburger Lydia was handing to him. “It was tough being the only boy. Thanks. Looks great. It was just me and my dad and that house full of women.”

“How’s it going over there,” Alan asked, passing the potato salad. “I smelled paint all the way out in the driveway when we got here. Need any help?”

Paint? She hadn’t smelled any paint—other than that of her own redecorating. But since he was still standing beside her and his hands were in her line of vision, she could see that there were little specks and smudges of paint on his hands that hadn’t come off when he’d washed.

She glanced up and he looked down at her expectantly. Clearly, he had every intention of sitting next to her and wouldn’t move until she slid over, closer to Howard. With Lydia, Alan, and two of the children on the other side of the table, and one child and Howard and her on the other, she was forced to make room for him.

“You know,” he said cheerfully, sitting down beside her and taking up an incredible amount of room, “I’d forgotten how big that house really is.” He chuckled and reached for the ketchup, his arm brushing hers and coming back to rest against her ribs. She squirmed closer to Howard, whose body didn’t seem to generate quite so much electrical energy. “I could paint and paper in that place from now till doomsday and never be finished. I don’t know how my dad did it all those years. A couple of my sisters came over yesterday to help out.”

“Those were your sisters?” she asked, embarrassing herself. “I mean, so those were your sisters. I...I’d been wondering if I knew any of them. I guess...I don’t.”

If she were queen for a day, she would have had the grin he gave her slapped clean off his face, the knowing look in his eyes put out with hot pokers. As it was, she turned her attention to her food and cursed the heat in her cheeks—not that she could possibly eat anything with her heart beating so fast. Was he brushing his thigh against hers on purpose?

“You will,” he said, deciding then and there that she was the cutest thing ever when she was flustered. Addressing the others he said, “They’re pretty good help when you can get them to work. But all they wanted to do yesterday was play and giggle and talk about when we were kids.” He took a big bite out of his burger and hummed his pleasure.

“It must be nice, coming from a big family like that,” Lydia said, looking at her own children as they ate their food and threw potato chips at each other, then to Gus. “There was only the two of us and...well, I was raised different from Augusta.” She smiled sympathetically. “She was gifted, so instead of a childhood, she got trained.”

Once again, the spotlight had swung around the table to focus on Gus. She sighed loudly and laid her fork down with a resigned shrug of her shoulders. She could tell they were going to discuss her private, personal life come hell, high water, flood, avalanche, hurricane...

It was one of those afternoons.

“It wasn’t any easier on you, being raised the way we were,” she said, feeling Scott Hammond’s attention span increasing tenfold. Under the table she fisted the fingers of her left hand and twisted her wrist around in a small circle. Around and around—then back in the opposite direction. “Our mother believes that it is every individual’s duty and privilege to be of some sort of service to the community they live in.” She glanced at Howard, who was just as attentive but much less threatening somehow. “According to her everyone has a talent or a gift for something and it should be developed extensively and given back to the world if possible. Failing that, to your race or society or your state or city.” She laughed softly. “Your ability to contribute gets progressively smaller with your failures, believe me.” She smiled at Lydia and chuckled in spite of the heaviness in her chest. “She’ll appoint herself cruise director when we finally commit her to a retirement home, you know.”

Lydia laughed. “All those poor old people, licking envelopes and picketing cosmetic companies in their walkers and wheelchairs, taking buses out into the country to pick up trash along the highway. Finish eating, Eric,” she said to the child across from her. “Remember when everyone dropped out of Mother’s troop of Girl Scouts and joined up with Mrs. Macaby’s group because she insisted they all ban Christmas trees and ask their parents to buy living trees they could plant in their yards after the holidays?”

Gus laughed too. “What about the time she showed up at your school with all those dogs she was trying to save from the pharmaceutical labs?”

“That wasn’t funny,” Lydia said, chuckling anyway. “Mother can be very intimidating sometimes. Well, always really,” she said, trying to explain to Howard and Scotty. “Those kids didn’t stand a chance of telling her their own parents would kill them for bringing home some stray dog from the pound. They
had
to take them home or suffer my mother’s eternal displeasure. Which no one in their right mind would ever elect to do.”

“Nanny isn’t coming to visit, is she?” asked Eric, Lydia’s oldest and most sober son. Gus recognized the concerned frown on his face as something she felt every time the phone rang.

“No, sweetie. She was just here a few weeks ago. Remember?”

“Yeah,” he said, slipping away from the table. “I just thought she was coming again.”

Jake followed Eric over to hang on and pester the woebegone looking Bert, who thought of children as huge fleas, one of the many indignities a dog suffered in his life.

Lydia watched them, then shook her head and stood to clear their places.

“She stood outside the front door and put a leash in every hand she could grab hold of and all the dogs were gone by the time the principal got there to stop her,” she said, finishing the story as if she were simply remembering aloud, her voice impassive.

Without exchanging a word or a glance the sisters recalled a multitude of crimes committed against them as children. Moments of deep embarrassment, feeling weak and defenseless against their mother’s stronger will. The frustration of being without control of their own destinies, of bending constantly to the whims and attitudes of a woman with fierce opinions and ambitions.

“I remember that was the first time I actually felt lucky to be away at school,” Gus said absently.

“What happened to all the dogs?” Howard asked, finished with his meal. “Did the parents let the kids keep them?”

Lydia shrugged. “Either that or they sent them back to the pound, I guess. I was pretty young and didn’t hear much more about it—except for the way the other kids would look at me after that, and how they walked way out of Mother’s reach whenever she was around.”

She offered Scott a third hamburger, which he refused with a smile while he reached for more potato salad. He met Gus’s eyes with his, silently searching and questioning as he leaned in front of her.

“She sounds like quite a character,” Howard said, much to Gus’s relief.

It was much easier to answer his casual questions than avoid Scott’s probing glances, or to be left with a moment of silence in which to ponder the warmth of his body against hers, or to enjoy the smell of his aftershave or to admire the strength and grace of his hand movements.

“Yes,” she said, standing rather suddenly, deliberately insinuating a note of humor in her voice. “I’d say character describes her well enough, wouldn’t you, Liddy?”

“Oh yeah. For lack of a kinder expression,” she said, smiling at her sister as she set her plate atop Alan’s before taking them both away. “She was hard to live with, whether you were there or not,” she added.

Gus took Howard’s plate in a similar manner and started toward the trash cans beside the small garage.

“So, the two of you didn’t really grow up together,” Howard said. “I remember Augusta saying once that she loved
remeeting
you.”

“Did she?” Lydia looked pleased. “It’s been like that, hasn’t it, Gus?”

She nodded, turning back to the party. “While Liddy was being indoctrinated into civil service, I got lucky with a knack for music.”

“A knack?” her sister asked, clearing away condiments. “You picked up Daddy’s violin when you were four, and there wasn’t anyone left in Seattle who could teach you anything by the time you were ten. Eight, really, because that last teacher came all the way up from San Francisco to work with you.”

“You know,” she said, feeling profoundly uncomfortable as her wrist throbbed and her full stomach twisted itself into nervous knots, “I’ll bet Mr....ah, Scott’s plans for the new school year are a lot more interesting than our ancient history. There was a regular buzz about it after church this morning.”

“Was there?” he said, surprised. Half a glance told her that he knew she was uneasy. It was nice of him to take the heat off her for a while. “I’m sorry I missed it. An opportunity to be the center of attention isn’t something I’d generally miss out on. Which reminds me,” he said, with a direct look at Gus. “If any of you need any cleaning products, I have a small truckload arriving sometime next week.”

He listened to the swift vibrant movement of Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons with his eyes closed, totally unaware of its title but deeply moved by the passion with which it was being played. Soft as falling snow. Hot and intense as the summer sun. Whimsical as leaves in the winds of autumn.

A knack for music.

He sent the porch swing rocking with a one-legged shove and rested a hand over the tight spot in his chest.

Ms. Augusta Miller had a knack for music, he thought. Her face in a dozen different expressions flashed through his mind. Laughing. Thoughtful. Teasing. Sad. There was more to her music than a simple knack, and more to her than her music.

Finagling an invitation to dinner had been child’s play, a means of being near her and annoying her at once. He hadn’t known it would change the feeling in his chest from a flutter to an ache. Hadn’t known that tiny morsels of information about her would leave him ravenous for more. Never guessed that sitting beside her would make everything smell like a field of wildflowers for hours afterward.

He’d arrived home after church itching inside his skin with a need to see her again. He’d tried to paint the hall walls for a while and let the paint dry on his brush watching her and her guests from the upstairs window—hating harmless old Howard, despite her obvious lack of interest in him.

And that was something else...Though he could tell she wasn’t as immune to him as she was to Howard, she made it too clear she wasn’t interested in developing
their
relationship beyond a “Howdy, neighbor” stage.

“I don’t suppose I could interest you in giving me some gardening advice?” he’d asked when they found themselves alone at the picnic table picking at the leftover watermelon. Lydia and the baby were trying to snooze in a shaded lawn chair several feet away; Alan and Howard were strolling the tree-lined sidewalk in front of the house with the other two boys.

“No, I don’t suppose you could,” she said, her voice bland and disinterested.

“I’d do all the work. I’m just not sure which plants to plant where. You know, full shade, bright light. That sort of thing.”