The Social Climber of Davenport Heights (25 page)

I had done it because I loved her. Would still do it because I love her. But she’d told me the truth. Help, unrequested, is intrusion. It had taken me a long time to realize that. All she wanted from me was a chance to make her own choices. But what if her choices were bad? The question haunted me.

Behind me someone honked. The light was green. I headed back in toward town. It was only eleven, but I was actually hungry already. Probably the result of having had only a cup of yogurt on shredded wheat for breakfast.

I spotted a roadside fruit stand just off the expressway. A handpainted sign announced Peaches and my mouth watered
appropriately. I made my way to the place, buying a hefty bushel before I remembered that I had no family to share them with, no dinner party to plan.

The huge basket barely fit on the floorboard of the passenger’s side. I picked up a ripe, plump peach, wiped it on my slacks in lieu of washing and ate it. The fruit was so sweet and juicy, the taste so nostalgic, it was almost a melancholy enjoyment. My life was good, I decided. My life was very good.

I stopped by Hattenbacher House. I was deliberately trying to stay away. But by now I loved the old place and could hardly resist a visit, even when a phone call would do.

I turned into the driveway and pulled up to park all the way in the back. Julia Prentice, the woman Miss Heloise had hired to run the foundation, had set up an office in the three rooms of the servants’ apartment attached to the garage. It was furnished with metal filing cabinets and garage-sale rummage. I worried about the woman’s taste, but from what I’d seen, she did appear to be quite knowledgeable about the organization and management of a nonprofit group.

Her greeting was bright enough as I stepped across the threshold, but I was too experienced in the world of female smiles to be fooled into thinking it was totally sincere.

“What a surprise!” she said. “I wish you had called to let me know you were coming.”

“I can only stay a minute,” I said, hoping to reassure her.

I was aware that Julia didn’t like me too much. Or perhaps she just didn’t trust me completely. I don’t know if she was aware that Miss Heloise had first offered her position to me. But she was aware of my part in saving the house. And she knew that Miss Heloise liked me. But from what I could tell, Miss Heloise gave everyone the benefit of the doubt.

Whatever the issue might have been, Julia was always per
fectly polite and appropriately grateful for anything and everything I did to help.

“I’ve been calling potential antique donors,” I told her. “I can’t say that I’ve been all that successful. Most of the people I know also know Barb Jarman. It’s much easier for them to refuse me than to offend her.”

Julia nodded as if she understood. I was pretty sure that she didn’t. “I’ve picked out a couple of nice pieces of my own that I thought might work well here,” I told her.

“Well, of course we’d love to have them,” she said, then added, “If they are truly suitable.”

I refused to be insulted by the little dig. I
wanted
her to look critically at the gifts she was offered. The last thing Hattenbacher House needed was flea-market goods donated for museum write-offs.

“I’ve got a William & Mary lowboy that I think would work in that iris bedroom,” I told her. “And a tilt top to replace the tea table in the front parlor.”

“Oh, that sounds fine,” she said.

“I’ll try to get them delivered over here next week,” I told her. “Just whenever it’s convenient for you.”

“Let me check,” she said, opening up her Day-Timer to the following week.

I stood waiting as she casually perused her schedule. It looked to me, from half a room away and upside down, that her week was practically blank. Still, she leisurely looked through it.

“I have a luncheon scheduled on Tuesday to talk with the Master Gardeners Club about the grounds,” she said finally.

“Oh, great,” I said. “It would be wonderful if they would take it up as a project.”

“Yes, that’s what I told Miss Heloise,” she informed me.

That comment was obviously meant to put me in my place, somehow. It didn’t. It couldn’t. It was an almost amazing discovery. When I have no ulterior motives, I am especially difficult to neutralize.

“She is such a wonderful lady,” I said. “We are so lucky to have her. And we are so lucky to have you here looking out for her house and the best interests of all of us.”

The woman was speechless. I could see she was looking for disingenuousness or trickery. She couldn’t find any because there was none. She returned to our former subject.

“Other than Tuesday, then,” she said, “I will be here to take delivery of the furniture.”

“Okay, I’ll call you.”

“Good.”

We stood together quietly, a little disconcerted, having run out of things to say. I suppose she was hoping I would leave. I was hoping she would offer to let me look around the house. I lingered. The uneasiness grew longer.

Julia finally broke the silence.

“I heard a very interesting and auspicious rumor this morning,” she said.

“Oh?”

“I believe that some of the pieces Barb Jarman took from the house are going to be put up for auction.”

“That’s great!”

My very positive reaction was apparently appreciated. The woman was almost preening in self-congratulation.

“I’ve already contacted the heritage council for funds,” she told me. “When they come up for bid we can snap them right up.”

I refused to allow my excitement at hearing this news to be in any way diminished by the knowledge that, in every way that was just and fair, the museum already owned all those
pieces. Maybe Barbara Jarman’s heart could only be soothed by cold hard cash. Maybe she would have the sense to make peace with Miss Heloise and knit the family back together.

“Julia, this is tremendous news,” I agreed. “I’m sure you would have been able to find beautiful furnishings for the house. But the more original pieces we have the better.”

Julia nodded. “I did get one donation this week that I’m personally very proud of.”

“Who from?”

“The guy wants to remain anonymous.”

“Oh yeah?”

“He contacted me wanting to make a donation,” she said.

“That’s wonderful.”

She grabbed up her keys. “Come have a look,” she said.

Together we left her office and traversed the width of the old-fashioned garden with its poppies, hydrangea bushes and gladiolus. Workmen at the back of the house were taking down shutters and scraping paint from the windowsills.

Julia led me in through the back door. The house looked too clean to be lived in. Already it had lost some of the feel of Miss Heloise’s home and had developed that unmistakable aura of historical monument. In all honesty, I regretted the loss.

“We’re going to have these floors redone,” Julia told me. “And we’re getting an estimate from an architectural conservator about restoring the kitchen to its 1888 appearance. It’s really the only room that’s had a lot of modern renovation.”

We made our way into the dark-paneled library where the last Hattenbacher governor had retired to civilian life. His portrait now hung over this fireplace, it having been determined that the portrait of his wife had originally been displayed in the front parlor. The masculinity of the room lingered with ancient pipe smoke and snifters of rum.

Sitting in that room, in the most prominent place, below the window, was a Craftsman mission-style sofa. My jaw dropped open. Without question I was absolutely certain that it was one that I had quite recently sat upon behind the counter of the Yesteryear Emporium.

“Is this not absolutely perfect for this room?” Julia asked me, clearly delighted.

“Yes,” I agreed. “It is perfect.”

“This is the original upholstery, it’s just been cleaned,” she said. “And the donor has had it authenticated as a genuine Stickley.”

“I thought it was Stickley,” I said. “I’m glad that it’s been proven so.”

“I have to confess, I was taken aback at my own powers of persuasion,” Julia admitted. “Once I saw it, I was very willing to accept it on loan. When the man just gave it to us outright, I almost wanted to argue with him.”

I found myself wanting to argue with him, as well. It was the most valuable antique that he owned. And he had given it away.

I
LEFT
H
ATTENBACHER
H
OUSE
a few moments later, still shaking my head over Scott’s generous gift to the place. As I climbed into the Z3, I glanced over at the bushel of fruit on my floorboard. I’d been so hungry just an hour ago, but I’d never be able to eat all those peaches.

Loretta’s safe house would be the best place to leave them, I decided. I buckled my seat belt, started up the car and drove over there. My thoughts drifted to Brynn. I checked for messages from her. Still none. I didn’t have an inkling as to what I should do, but could I really do nothing?

Help, unrequested, is intrusion, I reminded myself. I was trying to make that my mantra, but I was no longer sure if I really believed it.

I left my car on the street in front of the safe house and carried the bushel basket to the front door. The smell of peaches reminded me of the hot summer days of my childhood. I remembered one afternoon eating peaches. In the little piece of shade at the side of our house where the TV antenna was set in the ground, I had munched on fruit and minded my own business.

My mom in her strapless one-piece swimsuit was lying out in the backyard trying to get a tan. She’d laid a rain umbrella at the top of her bath towel to provide shade on her face and the book she was reading. She never wanted to be bothered when she was reading. I suppose, if the truth were told, she never wanted to be bothered.

I was happily getting juice all over my cotton crop top when I saw the snake. It came slithering out of the grass, undoubtedly wanting to share the sunshine with my mother. I was afraid of critters; bugs, snakes, lizards, even frogs were not among the things that I considered as friends.

“Mom,” I said nervously.

She ignored me.

“Mom,” I tried again.

Still she didn’t look up. The silent, black reptile was crawling right up beside her.

“Mom!” My plea was more desperate.

“Leave me alone!” she snapped.

I pointed to the grass beside her. “There’s a snake.”

She screamed and she jumped. I couldn’t say which she did first.

Grabbing up the umbrella, she began trying to kill the snake with it. The creature was desperate to get away, but Mom wasn’t about to let him go. Somehow she managed to get the point of the umbrella pierced through the width of its long body.

She held the snake up. It must have been three feet long. It was still wiggling.

“It’s only a rat snake,” she informed me. “Wouldn’t do any harm.”

It was as if my fear was a weakness she didn’t share. As if she’d forgotten how she’d jumped and screamed.

She threw both snake and umbrella over the fence into the alley.

Mom never thanked me for warning her. But she did gather up her towel and her book and go inside.

I shook my head at the unexpected memory. It was strange how unexpectedly some things came to mind.

I rang the doorbell of the safe house. I waited patiently for quite a while. Nobody came. Somehow, however, I sensed that the place was not deserted. I rang again. I could feel eyes on me from the peephole.

“It’s me, Jane Lofton,” I said loudly through the door. “I’ve brought peaches.”

It was a long moment before I heard the dead bolt turn. The door opened slightly, the chain still on. A familiar-looking face peered out at me suspiciously.

“What do you want?” she asked.

“Hi, I’m Jane,” I said. “I bought these peaches and I can’t possibly eat all of them, so I thought I would bring them to you.”

The woman was hesitant.

“You’re Shanekwa,” I said. “I remember you from decorating the Christmas tree.”

For an instant she seemed frightened that I knew her name, but as recognition dawned on her, her mouth curved into a welcoming smile.

“You’re the job-talking lady who grew up in Sunnyside,” she said.

I hadn’t really thought of myself that way, but I supposed it was true. She closed the door to unlatch the chain. Then I was inside handing the fruit to her.

“I just wasn’t thinking,” I explained about the purchase. “The peaches looked so good and I bought a whole bushel before I remembered I’m living by myself now.”

Shanekwa nodded, understanding. “That happens to me sometimes, too,” she said. “I bought barbecue potato chips
once and got them here before I remembered that I don’t like them and the baby won’t eat them. My man, Ellis, he’d eat a big bag of them by himself just watching a cop show.”

I followed her through the house to the kitchen.

“I’m sorry I was so nervous about letting you in,” she said. “I get a little scared when I’m here by myself.”

“You’re here all alone?”

“Yeah, everybody’s at work or in school,” she said. “I can’t go to my job. Ellis found me there, now I can’t go back.”

“Oh, I’m sorry.”

She shrugged. “I’ve got to find me another job. I was doing short-order at the lunch counter in the bus station. Ellis found me there. He found me at my apartment too. That’s why we’re moved back in here. It’s like having a bloodhound on your trail. I can’t go anyplace that man don’t find me.”

I didn’t know what to say. Apparently nothing was required.

“You want some coffee?” she asked me. “I got some made.”

“Yes, that would be very nice.”

Shanekwa didn’t like being alone in the house. And I had no place to be. It was a small thing, but I could be there for her, I decided.

She got a couple of cups from the cabinet and we sat down at the table. We were a little uncomfortable at first. I wouldn’t say that we immediately discovered we had a lot in common. But we managed a few minutes of polite dialogue.

“I could make these peaches into some fine pies,” she told me. “My mama used to say that I was the best pie baker in town. Maybe that’s what I’ll do this afternoon.”

“I could help,” I said. “I could peel.”

It’s surprising how close two strangers can get while working together in a kitchen. Within an hour, I learned all about Shanekwa’s young son, Jarone, and the boy’s vicious, abusive
father. She had loved Ellis for a while, but those feelings had long ago been eclipsed by pure fear. The fact that she continued to live her life, to get out of bed every morning and get on with it every day, drew my utmost respect.

Conversation, of course, is a two-way street, and before I knew it, I was confessing my own troubles, which Shanekwa took as seriously as her own.

“Your daughter and I are the same age,” she told me. “So I think I know how she feels. We’re grown-up women on our own now. We don’t need Mama telling us what to do.”

“So you think I should keep out of it?”

“No, you can’t do that either,” she said. “When you love somebody and you see them messing up, you gotta speak out.”

“So which is it?” I asked. “Give advice or keep my thoughts to myself.”

Shanekwa laughed. “I think you’ve got to do both.”

“Oh, that ought to be easy,” I said sarcastically.

“I don’t think anything about being a parent is easy,” she said. “What you got to find is a balance. You’ve got wisdom that ought to be shared, but you can’t be shoveling it at her night and day. You’ve got to trust her to find her own way in the world.”

“I want to trust her,” I said. “Why is it so scary?”

“Because plenty of things can go wrong,” Shanekwa answered. “And believe me, I know what I’m talking about.”

“Sometimes we can make a wrong turn,” I said.

Sighing heavily, she shook her head. “I sure did,” she admitted. “And I should have known better. Mama warned me. She told me to stay away from Ellis. She said he had a mean streak. She said if he ever raised his hand to me, I should run like hell and never look back.”

“That’s just what you’ve done,” I said.

“Finally!” she said. “The first time Ellis slapped me, I knew he was just like my mama told me. Oh, he said he was sorry. He said it wouldn’t happen again. I knew he was lying. I stayed with him though, taking it, for years before I got smart enough to do just like Mama’d told me.”

“But you have done it,” I said. “And if your mama knows, I’d bet she is very proud.”

Shanekwa smiled at me. A big, broad smile that belied all the sorrow that had been hard earned with this wisdom.

She rolled out enough pie dough to cover four-and-twenty blackbirds.

“Do you know what the secret is to a great peach pie?” she asked me.

“What?”

She laughed, teasing. “There is no secret at all to peach pie. Everybody makes a good one,” she said.

Ten hours later, dressed in my pink cotton cow-jumped-over-the-moon nightshirt, watching late-night reruns of “Big Cats” on
Animal Planet
, I took my first bite of her pie and knew the woman was a liar. Nobody, anywhere, in the whole wide world, had ever made such a pie. For a moment I couldn’t quite believe it. The crust was so delicate and light it almost dissolved in my mouth. The peaches were sweet and still firm, the filling was a complement to them, not just a syrup for them. It was, in fact, a perfectly unforgettable pie.

I sighed with pleasure, made rapturous noises and licked my lips. It was unbelievable. I cut my bites in half and then quarters, trying to savor each little bit.

“Shanekwa,” I announced to the empty room, “you are a creative genius.”

It was really amazing when I thought about it. Here was this
young woman, who’d lived a very difficult and often unhappy life. She hadn’t finished high school. She was raising a child alone. And she had this terrible criminal following her around trying to mess up everything that ever went right.

But none of that made the slightest difference in the taste of her pie. She had a special knack, a God-given talent or she’d perfected a skill. Whatever the origin, the result was exceptional.

I scraped the last of pie up with my fork, tempted to lick the plate. This was, without doubt, the best pie I’d eaten anywhere, the best dessert I’d eaten anywhere.

“They’d charge fifteen dollars a slice for it at Le Parapluie,” I said aloud.

My own words couldn’t have been more portentous if they had been spoken by the Oracle of Delphi. Like a flash I was out of bed.

I glanced at the clock—it was a quarter to eleven.

“They should still be there,” I said to myself. “If you hurry, they’ll still be there.”

I could not explain then, nor can I now, the urgency that I felt. I raced to the closet and grabbed up the first thing I saw, a pair of Brynn’s old blue jeans that were sitting on the top of a pile of clothes destined for the Salvation Army Thrift Store. I pulled them on over the tail of my nightshirt and stepped into a pair of slides.

In the kitchen I covered the pie with aluminum foil, and headed out the door. At the last second I grabbed a jacket. It wasn’t cold enough to actually need it, but at least it would disguise the fact that I was braless and wearing my pj’s.

I carefully set the pie on the floorboard of the Z3 before roaring out into the street. At the traffic light at the cross-street, I got a quick glimpse of myself in the rearview mirror. My hair was wild.

The light turned green and I turned left while digging through my purse. I came up with a scrunchy and used the next intersection to pull my hair back into a ponytail.

Two minutes later I was pounding on the metal door at the back of Le Parapluie. The front of the restaurant was already locked up and dark. But, by the number of cars still parked behind the building, I was pretty sure there were still employees inside.

A huge man, who looked more like a bouncer than a restaurant employee, answered my knock.

“Sorry, lady, we’re closed.”

“Is Frederic still here?” I asked him.

He looked me over, a bit surprised.

“Yeah, sure…ah…come on in.”

He held the door open and I stepped inside.

Activity was everywhere. A few surreptitious glances were cast in my direction. But basically these guys, and from what I could see it was all guys, were trying to get the place cleaned up and go home.

“Frederic’s in the front. I’ll get him for you,” the big man told me. “Just stay here and…and don’t let anyone run into you.”

I decided that the phrasing “Don’t let anyone run into you” was the more polite version of
Stay out of the way!
I followed that directive.

The place gleamed with stainless steel, the floors were spotless and the residual odors of the best food in town were masked with the scent of cleaning products. It was noisy. The dishwasher was operating, as was the trash compactor. The guys had to holler at each other over the din.

Standing just inside the doorway, wearing my cow-jumped-over-the-moon nightshirt and holding my aluminum foil-covered pie tin, I felt like an idiot. This certainly
could have waited until tomorrow. But some-how, it couldn’t have.

A minute later Frederic came around the corner. The instant he spotted me, his expression darkened with concern.

“My God, Jane,” he yelled out. “Are you all right? Have you been in an accident?”

I realized I must look worse than I thought. Or perhaps, he, like most of the world, had simply never seen me in designer-free duds, ponytailed and without makeup.

“I’ve brought a pie I want you to sample,” I said.

“What?”

I tried again, this time louder. “I’ve brought you a pie!”

The dishwasher finished its cycle just before the last word, which came out excessively loud in the contrasting silence. Several of the fellows turned to look. I ignored them.

“Taste this,” I said simply, pulling back the foil that covered the pie.

He looked momentarily puzzled and then amused. “Jane, please don’t tell me you’ve taken up baking?”

“Not likely,” I answered. “Just taste it.”

Frederic gave me a rather long-suffering look, but pulled a fork from a nearby drawer and used it to cut off a small sliver of the peach pie. He put it in his mouth with all the hopeful enthusiasm that one might have displayed for taking poison.

As soon as the pie hit his palate, he closed his eyes and moaned. First it was in pleasure and then immediately followed by dismay.

“Oh damn,” he complained. “Did you get this at Newman’s? Is this something his new pastry chef has come up with?”