There Was an Old Woman (5 page)

Chapter Nine

Mina didn't like where the girl's questions were going, not one bit. So for a change she was happy to hear Brian's voice. He'd told her he was coming by Saturday. That was today. But, as usual, he hadn't bothered to say when exactly he was going to show up. He never stayed for tea unless he was trying to pitch one of his can't-miss schemes.

Once he'd tried to get her to invest in vitamins. Another deal had involved leasing oil rights in Namibia. Namibia, for goodness' sake! When she'd questioned him about it, he didn't seem to know where the country was, aside from “somewhere in Africa.” Now he was on and on about some real estate scheme. She usually tossed Brian some sort of bone to get him out of her hair.

As the girl went to get the door, Mina scuttled into the living room. Where had he left those papers he'd wanted her to look at? Sure enough, there they were, under today's newspaper on the lamp table.

She heard the front door open. A pause. Then, “Well, hello there.” Brian's deep sonorous voice. “And who are you?”

“Just a neighbor. My mother lives next door.”

Brian was always at her about how forgetful she was becoming, so the last thing she wanted was for him to come through and find the papers she'd promised to read sitting exactly where he'd left them. Mina tried to stuff the papers into the drawer of the mahogany coffee table, but they wouldn't fit.

“Really?” Brian said. A long pause. “Your mother lives in that house?”

Longer pause before the girl said, “Your aunt is in the living room, waiting for you.”

Mina was glad that the poor girl didn't think she needed to apologize for the state of her mother's house. Certainly not to Brian. She shoved the papers under a sofa cushion, then she sat on it and pulled the crocheted afghan over her. Ivory jumped into her lap and started to purr.

Seconds later, Brian stomped in from the kitchen. “Hello, Aunt Mina.”

As he started toward her, Ivory gave a yowl and disappeared under the couch.

Brian had always been on the scrawny side, but in his forties he'd turned portly and thickened in the jowls. Nearly sixty now, he still had that shock of wavy hair, only instead of auburn it was nearly black. When men colored their hair, they always made it too dark. Like shoe polish.

At least he was predictable, you could say that for him. Always favored double-breasted jackets with brass buttons and cordovan leather loafers, like what he had on now. But fine feathers didn't make fine birds.

“Did you at least look at the agreement?” he said, not bothering with
Hello
or
How are you today?

“Shouldn't you be at work?” Mina said, giving him a bland look and adjusting the afghan around her.

He looked back at her with that lethal combination of exasperation and bemused contempt. “It's Saturday. I don't work weekends, remember? And I told you I was coming over.” He shot his cuffs before folding his arms and narrowing his eyes at her. “You do remember, I told you I was coming back?”

Of course she remembered. But she'd long ago learned that with Brian, evasion worked out better than engagement. “I must have forgotten to write it on my calendar.”

Mina heard water running in the kitchen and the
tink
of bone china. The girl was washing up. She seemed awfully sweet, but Mina hoped she'd be careful. That gold-rimmed service that once belonged to her mother had only a few cracks and a single chip.

“So
did
you look at the papers I left?” Brian asked.

“Button your shirt, Brian,” Mina said. “And don't you think you should be wearing socks?”

“Do you even still have them?” Brian asked.

“I'm sure they're here.” Mina waved a vague hand, a gesture her mother had perfected to avoid answering inconvenient questions. “Somewhere.”

The water stopped running, and the old pipes thunked. A moment later the girl peered into the room from behind Brian. She was holding a dish towel. “I'd better be going,” she said. She snapped the towel and folded it smartly.

Mina pushed the afghan off her lap and started to get up.

“Don't bother. I can let myself out,” the girl said.

“It's no bother,” Mina said, following the girl out and pointedly ignoring Brian.

At the door, the girl turned to face her. “Would you mind if I came back another time? You see, I was starting to tell you about my work for the Historical Society. We're mounting a new exhibit, and I'd love to talk to you some more about what it was like, working in the Empire State Building back then. That's when the plane hit the building. We have surprisingly few first-person accounts.”

Mina forced a smile and said, “Of course. Come back any time. Though I hope you won't be disappointed. My memory is not as reliable as it once was.”

“Who knows, maybe talking will bring back what it was like to work in that building.”

As if that were something Mina could forget. As the girl trotted down the steps, Mina could almost feel the Empire State souvenir that she'd slipped into her pocket growing hot.

Chapter Ten

“What building?” Brian asked, his voice startling Mina. She was still standing at the open door, watching as the girl made her way back to her mother's house.

“I have no idea what you're talking about.”

“So what
was
she asking about?” Brian reached around her and pushed the door shut.

Mina went into the kitchen. The girl had left the dishes neatly stacked on the counter. “Just this and that.”

Brian was right behind her. “This and . . . ?” He shook his head. “So it's her crazy mother who lives next door?”

Mina didn't answer.

“That heap is an accident waiting to happen, if you ask me. If the inside is anything like the outside—”

She turned to face him. “Good thing it's not your problem.”

He rolled his eyes. “So what did she
want
?”

Mina sighed. “Not everyone wants something, Brian.”

“Did you look at the papers I left?”

She wondered if he grasped the irony of this exchange. Annabelle had had such high hopes for her little boy. Instead, they'd gotten this.

“What papers?” she said.

“The papers I brought over last week.”

“Did you?”

“Don't you remember? We talked. You promised you'd read them.”

Mina didn't say anything.

Brian narrowed his eyes. “You forgot all about it, didn't you? Or maybe you lost them? It's okay if you did. I can print another copy. Or maybe the typeface was too small? Was that the problem?”

“There's no problem.”

“Aunt Mina, I know we've had our differences over the years, and when Mom got sick, I was pretty useless.”

That took her aback. She hadn't credited him with that much self-awareness. What was he up to?

“But this isn't for me,” he went on. “It's for you. Your money won't last forever, and this would offer you financial security. You'd be set for life. Think of it as your silver safety net.”

Snake oil was more like it. And what business did he have sniffing around in her finances?

“Thank you very much, but I'm already set for life, or at least for what life I've got left. And if not, well, that's not your problem, is it? Don't worry, you'll own the house when I die.”

“I don't want this goddamned house!” Brian slammed his hand down so hard on the kitchen table that the salt and pepper shakers jumped.

Mina took a step back, her hand at her throat. Suddenly she felt very alone.

“Sorry, sorry!” Brian put up his hands. “I didn't mean to yell. It's just that talking to you . . . sometimes talking to you is like talking to a brick wall. Please try to think about it, Aunt Mina. You'd have security. A regular income.”

Mina sucked in her cheeks and stared at him. He shook his head and looked up at the ceiling, as if the good Lord Himself was up there, commiserating. She followed his lingering gaze to the scorch mark on the ceiling. That was from a few weeks ago when she'd ruined her mother's teakettle and, in the process, set fire to the kitchen curtains.

Mina turned and opened the corner cabinet. One at a time, she hung each teacup on its hook and set each saucer on the stack. She closed the cabinet and turned back to him. “I'm sure I put those papers somewhere. We can talk about it next time you come for a visit.”

“If you can't find them, I'll bring another copy. We can sit down and read it together.” Brian was like a dog worrying a bone long after there wasn't a shred of meat left on it.

Pivoting away from him again, Mina walked to the sink and turned on the tap. She ran the water hard, shook some Ajax onto the porcelain, and began to scrub it down. As she worked at a stubborn stain, her hand spasmed. She dropped the sponge, frozen by the painful cramp that contracted her hand into a claw. Damned arthritis. She flattened her hand on the counter, spread her fingers, and waited for the muscles to relax. She snuck a look over her shoulder to see if Brian had noticed. But he was already moving toward the door.

As she rinsed away the suds, she heard the front door open and close. At last he was gone. She turned off the water and stood there, holding on to the thick cool edge of the sink. Didn't want the house?
Pfff.
She knew full well this house was the only reason he kept showing up and sniffing about. She and Annabelle had owned the house outright for years, ever since their mother died.
Unencumbered.
That single word had given Mina peace of mind, knowing all she had to do was pay the taxes and keep up with repairs.

Brian knew exactly how she felt. He couldn't even look her in the eye when he'd spouted all that mumbo jumbo about a security net and regular income. She should have destroyed those papers instead of hiding them and feigning ignorance. She should have burned them. That's what she'd do now.

She remembered exactly where she'd put them. She went into the living room and lifted the sofa cushion she'd been sitting on.

The papers were gone.

Chapter Eleven

Evie could hear Mrs. Yetner and her nephew arguing even before the door closed behind her. Tolstoy's famous quote came to mind: Every unhappy family was unhappy in its own way.

The way Mrs. Yetner talked down to him, Evie couldn't help but feel sorry for the poor guy. He was no match for his aunt. Evie had to laugh, remembering the innocent shrug she'd given him when asked about a document he'd left for her to read. Evie had seen Mrs. Yetner stuff a sheaf of papers under the sofa cushion before she settled herself on it.

That must have been Brian's dark gray Mercedes parked at the curb. Mrs. Yetner's vintage Ford Mustang was parked in her driveway. Evie remembered that car with its silvery-blue body, white vinyl top, and distinctive Mustang snout. A period piece from the '70s, it was still pristine, shiny clean outside. She walked over to it. Neat as a pin inside, too. Just like the house.

Mrs. Yetner's was an orderly existence, buttressed by selective amnesia. If only life were that simple, Evie thought as she crossed back over Mrs. Yetner's lawn and waded through the knee-deep weeds in front of her mother's house. Then she could pretend not to notice that the ground was littered with roof shingles. She could turn a deaf ear to the creaking front steps. Pretend that she had taped the Georgia O'Keeffe print over the broken window as a decorative touch.

She went inside, stepping past one of the two garbage bags full of empty liquor bottles. How long had it taken for her mother to drink her way through all that? She dragged the bags outside.

She wanted to at least get the kitchen sorted before she left for the hospital. She unplugged the refrigerator and washed out the inside with cleaning solution. When she was done, she left the door open to air out as she started stuffing garbage into a new bag, setting aside any mail that she found layered through the trash. There were so many cat food cans. Her mother must have started feeding stray cats around the same time she'd given up emptying ashtrays—plates and bowls and coffee cups everywhere were filled with cigarette ash. It was a miracle she hadn't set fire to the house. Again.

Under a mound of ash in a pie tin, Evie found the keys to her mother's Subaru. Attached to the key ring was a piece of leather. Embossed into it was:

I
MOM

Evie rubbed the tooled surface between her thumb and forefinger. She remembered the summer when she'd made that at Y camp, and the pleasure on her mother's face when she'd given it to her.

Her breath caught in her throat. Evie did love her mother. But even then she'd been terrified that one day she'd turn into her. It had been a relief to discover that though she liked the buzz of a glass of wine, more than two made her queasy. When she was overwhelmed or sad, she never turned to drinking. Instead, she made lists. Or cleaned closets. Straightened drawers. Alphabetized spices.

Evie tied off another full garbage bag and dragged it to the front door. The therapist she'd seen for a few sessions had pronounced her “well defended.” Evie had wondered if that was a good thing or a bad thing, and then she decided it didn't matter.

Opening the front door, she heaved the bag out onto the lawn, taking care not to stand on the weakened steps. She'd stepped back inside when she heard a door slam. Through the murky kitchen window, she saw Mrs. Yetner's nephew out on the street, unlocking the door of that Mercedes. Then he paused and nodded across the street to a man—the one who'd been driving a red car and whose wave Evie had ignored.

Evie pulled away from the glass. Waited until she heard a car engine rev. She was about to look out again to see if the Mercedes was gone when her doorbell rang. She thought for sure it was the nephew, come to ask her something about Mrs. Yetner. But when she looked out through the peephole, it was that across-the-street neighbor looking back at her.

When she pulled open the door, he smiled up at her from below the broken step. “Hi. I live across the street.” He offered her a fleshy hand, and Evie pushed open the storm door and shook it. The punky top step creaked when he stepped on it and peered inside. His breath smelled of cigarettes and mouthwash.

“You must be Evie. Your mom talks about you all the time. I'm a good friend of Sandy's.”

Sandy?
That had been her mother's nickname growing up, but she'd hated it ever since the movie
Grease.

“Heard she took ill,” he said. His smile was sad and he had rosy cheeks, spidered with veins. A drinker, of course.
After a few martinis, Mom probably stopped caring what he called her.
The thought was so cold and mean, Evie stopped herself. At least her mother still had a friend who obviously cared.

“I'll let her know you were asking after her, Mr.—”

“Cutler. But please, call me Frank.”

“Frank. I'll let her know.”

“Well. I . . .” He paused. Like he hadn't thought ahead to what he was going to say. “Just wanted to know how she's doing. And of course when she's coming home.”

“I'm sorry, I don't really know myself. I'm going over to the hospital later today. I'll let her know you came by.” She started to shut the door.

“If I can help in any way?” His gaze shifted overhead. “Because I fix things for her all the time. I've been trying to get her to let me go up and fix that window for the longest time. Maybe I can take care of it before she gets back?”

“No.” Evie felt an embarrassed heat rise into her cheeks. Her mother probably didn't want Frank to see what a mess the house had turned into. “No thanks.”

He stepped back. “Sorry. I . . .” He blinked three times. “I was just trying to help.”

“I know. I appreciate it. And once I figure out what's what, I'll get back to you. I'm sure you understand.”

“Of course.” He stood there like he wanted to say something more but couldn't manage to get it out. “So, if there's anything I can do, you know where to find me.” He jerked his thumb in the direction of the house across the street. “Whistle. Or better yet, call.” He offered her a business card.

Evie took it and promised she would.