The next day was chaos. I didn’t count them, but I think there had to be at least fifty men in and out of the house that day. I had three strong men from a moving company rearrange what furniture was still in the house after the auctioneer’s trucks left, and I had plumbers, carpenters, and a wallpaper hanger for Newcombe’s bedroom. While we’d been at Lowe’s I’d jotted down the name and number of a plain blue-on-blue wallpaper that had big urns and flower garlands on it. It looked masculine and simple, although to my eye a bit funereal, but I thought Newcombe would like it. The wallpaper hanger measured, picked up the in-stock rolls, and hung it over the old wallpaper. I knew this wasn’t the proper way to do it—the old paper should have been steamed off first—but this was an emergency. I was afraid Newcombe was going to have a heart attack in that bedroom. Or give me one from hearing his constant complaining.
While repairs were being made, I had three crews with their steamers cleaning the curtains, rugs and upholstery, plus removing the mold from the kitchen.
While all this was going on, Newcombe locked himself and his new electronic equipment in the library and said he was going to put it all together. The two times I looked in on him, he was sitting inside a deep circle of books and reading. He looked divinely happy.
At about three an extraordinarily handsome young man came to the back door and started talking to me, but I was so busy directing workmen that I didn’t at first recognize him. He was Nathaniel Weaver, the boy from the overturned car.
I got a pitcher of lemonade and some cookies out of the new refrigerator and we went outside to talk. He’d come to thank Newcombe, but I said he was busy. Actually, I didn’t want the two males to talk about what had happened because I was afraid my premonition might come up.
Nate kept looking around the two acres of weeds and broken garden ornaments in a nervous way. I thought that being near a celebrity like Newcombe was what was making him jittery, and I was about to tell him that Newcombe was a normal, ordinary person when Nate blurted out, “Do you need someone to clean this place up for you?”
I didn’t grab his hands and kiss them—nor did I put my hands on his face and kiss his lovely full-lipped mouth—but my gratitude made me want to. The child—all nearly six feet of him—wanted a weekend job and he seemed to think that clearing out two acres of weeds was something he could do.
I don’t know what made me do it—heavens but I hope it wasn’t some “second sight” lunacy—but I made one of my lame jokes. I said that now all I needed was someone to sell the hundred-plus—I’d started to count them, but quit at one fifty—Statues of Liberty in the house and I’d be in Nirvana.
That dear, beautiful boy told me that he lived with his grandmother (parents dead) and Granny went to flea markets in the area and sold things over the Internet on eBay.
That’s when I did kiss him. It was a sisterly sort of kiss—on his lips, true, but it was a light, quick kiss of gratitude—and from the look on his face I think he was used to females of all ages kissing him. By six P.M. he and I’d filled Newcombe’s new pickup with boxes full of the accumulation of years of souvenir hunts, and Nate and I shook hands—no more kissing—on the deal.
But that night I almost got into a fight with Newcombe because I’d allowed someone to borrow his brand-new 4 x 4.
That surprised me. “I thought you were a writer,” I said. “I thought that all those books of yours were against men who loved trucks.”
“Control, not trucks,” he said, and I pretended I didn’t know what he meant. Of course I did know but I just didn’t want to lose a fight.
Men are such strange creatures. He didn’t mind that I was spending thousands of his money to fix up a house he hated, but when I lent his new pickup to a kid whose life he’d saved, he got angry.
I guess males understand each other, though, because at ten-thirty that night Nate returned Newcombe’s pickup, and the two of them disappeared into the library until two A.M. I went to bed, but about four times I was jolted alert by wall-shaking blasts of music. Obviously, they were putting together the new stereo equipment.
At two A.M., I heard a car outside and from the chug-chug sound of it I was sure it was Nate’s rusty old Chevy Impala. Minutes later, I heard Newcombe come up the creaky stairs and go into his bedroom. I’d been in bed for hours, but only when I knew he was safely in his bed one room away from me did I allow myself to fall into a deep sleep.
On Thursday morning a boy knocked on the door and handed me a thick envelope. It was addressed to Newcombe in a beautiful old-fashioned handwriting that could have been done with a quill. I took the envelope to the kitchen, where he was eating his usual stevedore breakfast and reading a stack of instruction manuals, and handed it to him. I was pretending to pay no attention to the letter, but I was actually watching him intently.
He wiped his hands before touching the envelope. “I haven’t seen stationery like this outside a museum.”
I quit rinsing dishes and sat down by him, curiosity eating at me. “Look at that handwriting. Do you think you’ve been invited to a cotillion?”
“Hmmm,” he said as he started to stick his finger in the side and tear the envelope open.
Paper like that deserved to be slit, not torn. I handed him a knife.
He cut the top off the envelope, started to open it, but, instead, put the envelope down on the table and picked up his fork.
“You don’t want to see who sent you what?!” I asked.
“Maybe,” he said as he put a bite of waffle in his mouth. “And I might even want to share the information with you—but on one condition.”
Here it comes, I thought. Sex. I gave him a dirty look and started to return to the sink.
“Stop calling me Mr. Newcombe,” he said. “Start calling me Ford and we’ll open this together.”
“Done,” I said as I sat back down at the table.
The cream-colored envelope was lined with light blue tissue paper and inside was an engraved invitation. Engraved, not thermograph, that imitation engraving. Someone had used one of those tiny engraving tools and carved into brass that there was to be a party on the lawn of the town square on Friday afternoon.
“Tomorrow?” I asked, looking at him. What in the world did I own that was good enough to wear to an engraved-invitation party? On the other hand, it was Ford’s name alone on the envelope. “Nice,” I said, getting up and going back to the sink. “You’ll have to tell me about everything that happens,” I said in my absolute best I-didn’t-want-to-go-anyway voice.
When Ford didn’t say anything, I looked back at him and saw that he was staring at me as though he was trying to figure out a puzzle. But he didn’t say anything. After he finished eating, he put his dishes in the dishwasher and went upstairs to the room he’d said he wanted for his office.
Since he’d left the invitation on the table, I looked at it. “The Cole Creek Annual Tea” it was called, and I could imagine ladies in pretty summer dresses and picture book hats—just what I’d imagined when I’d first seen that lovely little square with the white bandstand in the middle of it.
As I picked up the invitation, a piece of paper fell out. It was the same heavy cream paper as the rest of the invitation, and written in the same beautiful copperplate handwriting that was on the outside. The note said “Please bring your houseguest with you.” It was signed Miss Essie Lee Shaver.
I loaded the dishwasher in a split second, shoved the door closed, and, even though I had workmen everywhere, I ran upstairs to my bedroom to look inside my closet. I’d never owned many clothes, but when I was near my friends I didn’t need to. Autumn delighted in dressing me as though I were one of the fifty or so dolls she kept on her bed. I owned only one dress, an old, flowery cotton thing that had a rip in the skirt.
Taking the dress out of the closet, I sat down on the bed. Could I repair the tear?
“Didn’t you tell me there were boxes of old clothes in the attic?”
I looked up to see Newcombe—Ford??
?standing in the doorway and it took me a moment to comprehend what he was saying. When I did understand, I dropped my old dress to the floor, ran under his arm and up the stairs to the attic. He was right. I’d seen some lace blouses in a box somewhere. I opened three boxes before Ford said, “This what you’re looking for?”
He was holding up an exquisite creation of white linen, with white lace panels running from shoulders to waist. The long sleeves were inset with more lace and the high, boned, stand-up collar was all lace.
“Ooooh,” I said as I went toward him, arms outstretched.
“Think it’ll fit?” he asked.
I could tell by his tone that he was laughing at me, but I didn’t care. I was holding the blouse by the shoulders. Of course I couldn’t wear something like that, I thought. It belonged in a museum.
“Try it on,” he said, smiling.
Sometimes, when the light was dim, I thought, he didn’t look half bad.
“Use this.” Grabbing a couple of old curtains, he hooked them to some nails in the rafters to make a screen.
I went behind the curtains, quickly removed my T-shirt, and put on the beautiful linen blouse. It fit perfectly. I was glad to see that the original owner hadn’t been some Buxom Bertha like Autumn had tried to make me into at my almost-wedding.
There were forty-some buttons up the back and I did enough of them to hold the blouse together but I couldn’t get all of them. I stepped out from the curtain, feeling a little nervous, and said, “Is it okay?”
When Ford just stared at me, I thought, If he says something that’s a come-on, I’ll leave his employment this minute.
“Who would have thought,” he said at last, “that there have been two such skinny, flat-chested girls on this earth?”
“You!” I said, looking around for something to throw at him. I grabbed an ugly satin pillow with four inch long fringe, “Atlantic Beach” written across it, and tossed it at his head.
He ducked, and the pillow hit the wall behind him, where it gave a bang as it went down.
Ford and I looked at each other and said, “Treasure!” in unison, then we went for the pillow. As befit his background, Ford had a little folding knife in his pocket and he used it to cut open a seam. When out tumbled half a dozen more Statues of Liberty, we both went into spasms of laughter.
“Who would hide them when there are hundreds more downstairs?” I asked.
“Maybe these are made of gold,” he said as he used his knife to scrape off the painted finish at the bottom of one of them. But they were all just plastic—which made us laugh more.
After that it was as though we’d broken through some barrier of reticence. For all that we’d been in the same house together for nearly a week, we’d seen little of each other. Ford had been locked away with his truckload of electronics and I’d spent my days with workmen. But finding those silly souvenirs sealed away in a pillow as though they were great treasures—or “Forbidden,” as Ford said—made both of us loosen up.
I put my T-shirt back on and we started going through the boxes. I was looking for something to wear on the bottom half of me; I don’t know what he was looking for. Ford told me I’d done a great job with the house and now he almost liked his bedroom. “Almost,” he said, eyes twinkling.
When he found the boxes holding the turn-of-the-century train set, he started putting it together in the hallway just outside the door, while I continued searching. I needed something to wear with the blouse besides blue jeans. And hadn’t I seen some costume jewelry somewhere?
When I asked Ford about the hours he and Nate had spent locked in the library together, I opened a floodgate. It seems that the boy was very poor and had to work weekends and after school. But his lack of free time hadn’t hurt him socially as he was a candidate for prom king.
“No wonder,” I said, looking inside a box of old handbags. The leather had dried out and cracked on most of them. “The boy is gorgeous. That hair. Those eyes. Those lips. I can tell you that he made me—” I stopped because I’d forgotten where I was and that I was talking to my boss instead of a girlfriend. Pulling my head out of the box, I looked at Ford. He’d stopped putting his train together and was staring at me, waiting for me to continue. I hid my red face inside the box. “So what else did Nate tell you?”
“How grateful he is to you for helping his grandmother. You know, Jackie, he’s only seventeen.”
At that I gave Ford Newcombe a look that let him know how likely I was to have a fling with a seventeen-year-old.
With a little smile, he went back to his train set. “His grandmother is partially disabled and walks with two canes, so it’s difficult for her to get out. The boy didn’t say so but I think it’s a pretty hard existence for them. And I think he’s worried about what will happen to her after he graduates and starts working full-time.”
I pulled a little white beaded bag from the bottom of a box and held it up. “Isn’t he going to college? If he can’t afford it, maybe he could get a scholarship.”
When Ford didn’t reply I looked at him. He wore a look of…what? I wasn’t sure, but I think it was a look of fear. What in the world about a boy going to college could cause such a look?
“Oh, Lord,” I said. “Writing. Young Nathaniel Weaver wants to be a writer.”
“Right,” Ford said.
I opened another box. “You know, this invitation said it was the ‘annual’ tea party, but it didn’t say which annual. It could be the first one. You don’t think it was concocted just so a whole town full of would-be writers could ask you questions, do you?”
When I glanced at Ford, he’d turned so white that a devil entered me. As I went toward him, I rubbed my hands and made noises like a talkies villain. “And so, Mr. Newcombe, I’d like to tell you the plot of my book so you can write it for me and we’ll split the money.”
By the time I’d finished, I was inches in front of him. He threw his arms over his face as though I was about to attack him with an ax.
“No! No!” he said, and began scooting backward along the floor.
“And an agent,” I said, leaning over him and following. “You have to get me an agent who’ll get me lots and lots of money for my story and if you don’t I’ll—”
He peeped up at me through his arms. “You’ll what?”
“I’ll put your home address on the Internet and tell people you want them to send you all their manuscripts. Handwritten manuscripts and you’ll type them yourself.”
“No, no,” he moaned, and began sinking into the floor as though he were the Wicked Witch and starting to melt.
I leaned over him. “And furthermore—”
“Uh, excuse me,” came a voice from the head of the stairs. It was one of the workmen. “Could one of you come look at the kitchen sink drain and make a decision?”
Ford and I looked at each other like two kids whose mother had called them in to dinner. Shrugging, I went downstairs. One thing I’d already learned about Ford Newcombe was that he did not look at drainpipes.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Ford
No wonder she’s so skinny, I thought. She worked like a dozen demons on speed. She ran up and down stairs all day long, answered questions from countless workmen, and cleaned up messes. Part of me said I should help, but the larger part of me said I wanted no part of the chaos. Instead, I took on the job of connecting that old house to the twenty-first century. After I got Jackie to find an electronics store nearby, I spent a day purchasing equipment to set up an office with a computer system and music—which I needed for inspiration. I also went through some of the volumes in the library: Nothing valuable, no first editions, but there were some excellent books on North Carolina history, flora, and fauna.
However, as far as I could find, not one book in that home library mentioned Cole Creek. Either those books had been purposely left out or removed—or the town was too small to warrant anyone making a record of its history. I discarded that theory, though. It was my observation tha
t people loved their small towns and wrote lots about them.
On Thursday morning an invitation came to attend an afternoon tea party in the local park. I probably wouldn’t have attended, but Jackie was about to come apart with wanting to go so I said I’d go, too.
Five minutes after I left the kitchen she was thundering up the stairs, almost knocking a painter down. Curious, I followed her. I found her sitting on her bed holding a dress that should have been consigned to a ragbag. Ah, clothes for the party, I thought, that was her concern. Jackie’d told me she’d seen some old clothes in the attic so I mentioned them.
If I’d been blocking the doorway, I’m sure she would have knocked me down and walked over me on her way up to the attic. As it was, she ran under my arm so fast I was nearly spinning.
We searched through some old boxes, found her clothes, and had about forty minutes off before one of her workmen came and got her. After she left, I sat there for a few minutes and felt kind of good. I’m not sure what it was about Jackie, but when I was around her I didn’t feel that deep sense of grief that I’d had since Pat died.
When I thought about that, I decided I needed to start dating. Jackie was beginning to look too good to me. When she put on that lacy blouse, she’d looked like a woman. In her T-shirts and jeans, she was resistible, but in that lacy, feminine garment she looked…Well, she looked too damned good. And since she’d made it clear that she wasn’t interested in me in any way except to write her paychecks, my pride wasn’t going to allow me to make overtures to my cute little assistant.
By Friday afternoon, the house didn’t look half bad. I’d been so busy setting up my office and sorting out the library that I’d paid little attention to what Jackie was doing. Maybe she’d told me she and the auctioneer had worked out some deal, but I didn’t hear her, so early Friday when the trucks pulled up in front of the house and I saw them moving furniture in, I protested. But it seemed that some rich old lady had died in the next county over and her adult kids had wanted all the contents of their mother’s house sold. So Jackie had used the proceeds from the auction of the Belcher goods to buy the woman’s furniture. And when it arrived, Jackie ran around like an insane person, directing four men about where to put couches, chairs, and tables.