Sins and Needles (12 page)

“Oh, shut up, Stew!” said Susan, but not angrily. “Come on, let's keep moving or we'll be here all day.”

The library had two glass-fronted cabinets placed where the sun could not get at the books in them. Both were full of first editions, one by men, the other by women, further evidence of Aunt Edyth's strange opinion of the male gender.

Jason, a bookworm, noticed a first edition of Hemingway's
The Old Man and the Sea
and pulled it gingerly from the cabinet. “Wow!” he murmured. “This was the first adult book I ever read, and I just loved it.” He opened it and said, “Gosh, it's
autographed
!”

Stewart reared back a little and said, “Ladies and gentlemen, I believe we have another winner.”

Jason laughed. “You know me too well.” He put it down on a side table but immediately picked it up again when he saw a sunbeam strike it. He put it back into the cabinet.

CeeCee said, “I
knew
there were statues of horses in this house!” She was standing in front of a table under a pair of windows, smiling at a Remington bronze of a horse nearly throwing his rider while shying at a rattlesnake. She turned away from it, only to have her eye caught by another horse sculpture under another window, this one of five young stallions galloping full tilt over a rocky rise. “Ohhh, this one's
really
nice!” She turned toward Stewart. “Daddy, which one should I pick?”

Stewart came to look at the two statues. “How about that one, over there?” he said, pointing to a Lladro porcelain of a leggy foal. She looked at the statue, then at her father, and, seeing he wasn't serious, shyly shook her head no. “So, it's between these two, is it?”

She nodded, a smile starting to form.

“Which one do you like best?”

She pointed to the five galloping horses. He came for a closer look, bending to read the name on the piece. “Candace Liddy,” he said.

“It's got five horses,” CeeCee said. “The other one is bigger, but it has only one. So should I pick this one?”

“You'll take your old father's advice?” His tone and face underlined the importance of the question.

She nodded. “Yes.”

“Pick the Remington.” He took her by the pointing arm and turned it so it was aimed at the rearing horse and rider. “Keep it for a while, then if you still want the Candace Liddy, sell the Remington and hunt down the person who bought the Liddy and buy it. I'll wager you can do that and still have money left over to pay at least for your first two years of college.” He looked around, caught Jan's eye, and winked.

She shook her head at her uncle's bold statement of avarice but didn't object. After all, he was right. An authentic Remington was a real find.

“All right,” said CeeCee, “I pick the Remington horse.”

The others laughed. Susan looked around the room. “I think that's a Tiffany lamp over by that window,” she said. But no one spoke up, so she led the way out.

Back in the hall, Susan asked, “Isn't anyone going to claim the Navajo blanket?”

Jan said, “Perry, you haven't made a choice.”

He looked at Jan, surprised. “I'm not family, not really,” he said. “Besides, after the pick my wife made, I don't think I'm entitled to so much as a potted plant.”

“But don't you have a Native American ancestor?”

He nodded. “Yes, I'm one thirty-second Lakota. But they have absolutely nothing in common with the Navajo.”

Lexie spoke up. “May I have it?”

“Where would you keep it?” asked her mother.

“I'd store it until I finished school—I don't have to take the case, too, do I?” Lexie was a freshman at the University of Minnesota.

Terri looked at Stewart, who shrugged. “I guess we could keep it for her, if that's what she wants,” he said.

Lexie looked at Jan and Susan. “All right?”

“Of course,” said Susan.

Jan said, “Wonderful, a good choice, Lexie. Any reason we should visit the conservatory?”

Katie peered past the stairs and sniffed the warm, humid air coming from the foliage. “I don't think so,” she said.

“Wait, I think I hear a fountain,” said Lexie.

“There's one in there,” said Stewart. “It's got a pitcher plant growing in it.”

“What's a pitcher plant?” Ronnie asked.

“A carnivorous plant. It draws flies by smelling like dead meat and eats any foolish enough to land on it.”

That did it. No one wanted even to go into the room.

“Come on, then,” said Jan. “Upward and onward.”

They trooped up the oak staircase to the second floor and stood a while at the top, undecided where to begin. Then Susan said, “This room was originally the nursery,” and opened a door. The room was painted a very chilly pink, though the trio of windows on the other side poured with sunlight. Jan went to look out the windows at the front lawn, the highway and the lake beyond it, sparkling in the sunlight and dappled with sailboats. She turned and halted, her head cocked sideways. The slant of sunlight was such that faint shadows could be seen under the paint on one wall. “Look, I think that's Humpty Dumpty,” she said, pointing to one of the shadowy figures.

“Hey, I think she's right!” exclaimed Lexie, moving to stand beside her and cock her head the same way. “And there, isn't that Bo Peep?”

“Yes, you're right,” agreed Jan. There seemed to be a sheep-like sort of shadow beside it. The shadows were child-size, elusive—the original colors could not be seen—or perhaps they had been silhouettes.

Hugs said, “Say, Susan, when you came here as a kid, were they painted over then?”

“No,” said Susan. “I'm the one who painted over them. They're silhouettes. This was to be my room when I stayed here, and on my first visit I was brought up here half asleep and put to bed. I woke up before dawn, and the full moon was shining through those windows, and I thought some people were standing around my bed. I about screamed the house down. Aunt Edyth moved me out, and a few years later I tried to sleep in here again—there's a wonderful view of the lake out those windows—but I had a bad nightmare about being chased. Aunt Edyth could be very understanding, she really could, and she let me paint the walls. They're not the least scary in the daytime, but I felt like a conquering hero covering them with paint. I was nine and made an awful mess in here, but Aunt Edyth never scolded me about it. And I never noticed that you can still see them under a strong light. I probably only did one coat.” She hadn't moved from her place near the door. And she wasn't looking at the walls but at the one piece of furniture in the room—a bentwood cradle standing in a shadowed corner. The cradle was suspended from a bentwood frame.

Following her gaze, Jan saw the cradle and made a low exclamation: “Oh, how beautiful!” She went to it and touched it to set it rocking. “This looks old.”

“I'm sure it is,” said Terri, coming to still its movement with a hand. “Do you suppose—?” She turned to look at Susan. “Was this possibly Edyth's cradle? Susan?”

Susan came blinking back from wherever her thoughts had taken her. “What? Yes, she told me it was. Hard to believe she was ever a sweet little baby herself.”

“You got that right!” said Stewart with a hard laugh.

But Susan went to stand beside Terri. “You know—I think I'd like this. Or do you want it, Lexie?” She didn't look at Katie.

“No, I don't think so,” said Lexie.

Jan said, “You take it, Mother. Perhaps a great-grandchild will sleep in it some day.”

“What a lovely thought. Yes, I claim the cradle. Katie, your child can sleep in it when you bring her for a visit.”

“Thank you, Aunt Susan.”

They went to the next bedroom, which also had a trio of windows, these overlooking the side yard.

“Wow!” said Ronnie, walking ahead of the others to the antique four-poster bed. “I bet this sleeps six!”

Susan walked to it. “It's older than the house. I remember Aunt Edyth bidding for it over the phone years ago. She was very pleased to get it, and she paid an awful lot for it—it's late eighteenth or early nineteenth century. “Would you like it, Stewart? It's pretty valuable.”

He came over to put a hand on one of the pillars. “I don't think our ceilings are high enough for it.” He looked at his wife. “Right, Terri?”

She smiled. “Yes, I think you're right.”

CeeCee walked to the windows that looked over the side lawn, where squirrels frolicked in the shade of the big elms. “Was this Aunt Edyth's room?” she asked.

“No, her room was at the back of the house,” said Susan. “Quieter back there, she always said.”

“Quieter than what?” said Jason scornfully. “I haven't heard a thing since we came in here but our own voices.”

“Well, she liked a window open all year round, and you can hear cars passing out on the road,” said Susan.

Bernie had gone to a door in the opposite wall and opened it. “Take a look at this bathroom!”

It was a large room, walled with sea green tiles dotted here and there with stylized patterns of frogs or water lilies or fish in high relief. The small rectangular window was filled with stained glass in a many-angled pattern of green and gold.

“I think it's beautiful, in an old-fashioned way,” said Terri.

“But not completely original,” noted Susan. “I can remember when she had the old white tiles taken out and replaced with these green ones. Those ornamental tiles were old. I don't know where she got them, but I think the style is from the thirties. The tub is original, though it's been re-coated.” It was an enormous claw-foot bathtub.

“Is this great or what?” said Stewart, pointing to it. “It's big enough to swim in!” He made backstroke motions. “Three laps and you're clean!” CeeCee giggled and began to “swim” around him.

“Are you saying this is the thing you're choosing from the house?” asked Susan. “The tub matches the sink, so you can have it, too. How about the tiles, do you want them as well?”

Something in her tone made Stewart turn to stare at her, and the temperature in the bathroom went down about fifteen degrees. But he took an ostentatious calming breath, and said, “No, of course not; we already have a bathtub.” He put on a smile. “Anyway, neither of our bathrooms is big enough for this tub.”

Jan came up behind her mother. “For heaven's sake, Mother!” she muttered in her ear. “Lighten up!”

Susan turned on Jan, her eyes bright with anger, her lips twisting to scold. Then she closed her eyes and imitated Stewart's calming breath. “All right.” She turned back to her brother. “I apologize.”

“For what? We're just having some fun here. Come on, let's see what the next room has.”

The next room was Edyth's. Her big old bed had been stripped, but that only reminded them of what had happened here. They stood in a double crescent around the bed, heads bowed, for nearly a minute.

Then Susan said, “All right, look around, everyone.”

The room was large, rectangular, painted a soothing shade of blue with a deep blue ceiling and even darker blue paint on the trim and doors. There was a big gray over-stuffed chair in one corner with a reading light behind it. A fat oval rug was on the floor, its colors of blue, white, wine, green, and yellow making an abstract pattern. The bed was oak, very plain in design, with thick square legs and the head-and footboards made of broad planks framing slats. A matching bedside cabinet held an old-fashioned alarm clock, and there were a chest of drawers and a vanity, also of identical design, against the walls.

There was also a modern cabinet, head high and about five feet long, made mostly of glass, and in it were small figurines, some of age-yellowed ivory, some of clay, some of metal—and some of the metal was gold. There was no theme to the pieces. They apparently came from every continent. The only thing they had in common was their diminutive size.

“Some of this stuff is made of ivory,” said Bernie.

“Oh, no, the poor elephants!” cried CeeCee.

“It wasn't always illegal to collect figures made of ivory,” said Susan. “Once upon a time piano keys were made of it.”

“No!” said CeeCee, who took piano lessons.

“Yes,” said Susan. “And billiard balls, too. That was back when there were more elephants on the earth than anyone knew what to do with. No one could imagine there might be a shortage of elephants one day.”

“Interesting,” remarked Ronnie, going for a closer look. His face was reflected in the glass doors of the cabinet. He was a quiet young man, with his father's craggy bones but his mother's fair coloring. “Say, look over here, Dad.” He tapped on the glass with a forefinger.

“What is it, son?”

“There, bottom shelf, in the back. Isn't that Hippocrates?”