A House by the Side of the Road
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Authors: Jan Gleiter
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Contents
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For my children,
Healy, Cooper, and Spenser Thompson,
who are kind and funny and smart,
who can whack heck out of a high, inside pitch,
and who have indescribably enriched my life.
It's amazing how much I don't know. Consequently, I am deeply grateful for the gracious help of the following people, who were kind enough to walk me through everything from medical issues to fast cars: Mark Stolar, Laura Lenzi, Dale Shepp, Phil Emmert, Wallace Eldridge, Mike Troccoli, Ed Kirby, and Tony Boshnjaku.
Two Paul Thompsons (only one of whom is my husband), Michael Nowak, Bob Gallman, and Caroline Gleiter were encouraging and hard to pleaseâa good combination. My sister Karin and sister-in-law Kathleen Thompson were, again, of inestimable value.
I'd like to especially acknowledge my dad, Ted Gleiterâa dedicated and knowledgeable beekeeper (and a wonderful guy, though that quality is less relevant here).
Thanks also to my agent, Jane Chelius, for her competence, support, nudging, and cheerfulness, and to my excellent editor, Ruth Cavin.
Hannah Ehrlich watched her young neighbor carefully. “It's all in the fingers, dear,” she said. “Just hold the crochet hook like this⦔ She demonstrated. “And ease it through the loop.”
Jane Ruschman caught the thread and tentatively drew it back. “Like that?”
“Exactly,” said Mrs. Ehrlich, nodding encouragingly. “You just keep going. I think we need more cookies.”
She put her hands on the edge of the table and pushed herself up. She had read that a good way to disguise advancing age was to spring to one's feet. “Scootch to the edge of your seat, get your feet under you, gather yourself, and then just
spring
up!” the article cheerfully advised. “You will seem years younger.” Well and good, if you could manage it.
She walked across the kitchen. She didn't have too much trouble walking, aside from twinges in her left hip. The arthritis in her wrists and fingers seemed to have been completely cured by the regimen of bee stings she had undergone in the late summer and early fall. Jane had been horrified.
“You're going to
make
those bees sting you?” she'd asked. “Why? Yowtch!”
“Not for fun, my dear,” Mrs. Ehrlich had replied. “But bee venom helps your immune system get going. It does wonders for arthritis. Don't watch, child, if it bothers you.”
She had used a long tweezers to remove a bee from the jar and placed it on the back of her wrist until it stung her.
Jane stared at the procedure, fascinated. “But doesn't it hurt?”
“Lots of things hurt,” said Mrs. Ehrlich. “At least this hurting does some good. You just wait. By October, I'll be stirring up sugar cookies again like nobody's business.”
Now it was October, and her prediction had come true. When spring arrived and brought the bees out from their winter hiding places, she would work on her hip. Maybe she'd get to the point where she could start springing to her feet the way the article said. She'd have to find her own supply of beesâshe certainly wouldn't ask John Eppler for any more of hisâbut with the feast her garden provided for them, that shouldn't be difficult.
Just the idea of spring always helped her get through the winter. She would think about the crocuses under the frozen topsoil patiently waiting for the mysterious signal to grow. She would gaze out at the wren houses and imagine the energetic little birds darting in and out as soon as the weather warmed. This next spring would be even more exciting than usual, revealing as it would the flowers from the special bulbs she had planted.
The older she got, the more she realized that life was to be lived each and every day. She had good insurance, even the outrageously expensive home-care insurance that she'd kept up the payments on over the years for fear of being shuttled into a nursing home. She had cash in the bank and plenty of investments in reliable stocks, passed down from her husband's parents to him, and from him to her. Regrettably, there were no children or grandchildren, but at least that meant there was no reason not to indulge herself in the things that gave her pleasure. So spending a sizable amount of money on the new narcissus had been a perfectly pragmatic decision. They would be beautiful, and thinking about them would make the times that weren't so pleasant easier to bear.
She arranged cookies on the china plate. It wasn't one of her best. Those, like her best silver, she had carefully stored in the attic. Since she had stopped entertaining, except for having Jane or Teddy or Christine over for cookies and tea, she saw no reason to expose her precious china to the risk of her clumsiness. The silver wouldn't break, but it was easy to transport and far too valuable to lose to a burglar. One gleamingly ornate spoon she kept in her bedside table, for the liquid medicine she occasionally took when she had a cough.
Luckily, she didn't have a cough now, though her arrhythmia had been acting up, her heart startling her with sudden and irregular thumps and skips. She wondered how much of it was caused by worry. Probably all of it, and it would go away when she had confronted the situation she needed to confront and dealt with it. It was foolish to take her health for granted. It was foolish to take anything for granted.
She glanced at the child working industriously at the table, her dark gold hair falling forward, her hands busy. She was growing up and looking more and more like her mother. She would be confident like her mother, and cheerful and sensitive. She already was.
“How does this look?” asked Jane, holding up a crooked chain.
Mrs. Ehrlich put down the plate of cookies and refilled the two teacups. “Very good,” she lied. “Let me show you how to turn your work and start back with the second row.”
She moved her chair to sit closer to the child but was interrupted by a meow at the back door. “There's Charlie,” she said, taking the few steps to the door and pulling it open. A muscularly compact black cat walked in and rubbed against her legs as she shut and locked the door.
“I'm locking the door,” she said.
“What?” said Jane.
“Nothing, dear,” said Mrs. Ehrlich. “I just said, âI'm locking the door.'”
“Why?” said Jane.
“You'll know when you're eighty-five,” said Mrs. Ehrlich, seating herself at the table and guiding Jane's hands to turn the chain of stitches. “When you're my age, you'll find that just as soon as you're all settled in your nice cozy bed, and the chill is gone from the sheets, you realize you don't remember if you locked the door when you let the cat in. You'll know you let the cat in, because he'll be curled up in his spot next to you, but you won't know if you locked the door. You'll be pretty sure you did and just hate the thought of getting up and putting on your slippers and going to check, but you won't be
sure,
and since you're not sure, you'll have to do it. So, eventually, you figure out that if you take all those habitual actions and comment on them when you do them, you'll make them memorable. âI'm turning off the oven' is a good one. âI'm locking the door' is another. There are
lots
of them.”
Jane put down her crocheting, took a cookie, and grinned at her neighbor. “Or you could just reach for the phone and call me up, and I'd put on my jacket and come over and check.”
Mrs. Ehrlich laughed. “You would, too,” she said, “because you're the perfect neighbor.”
Jane looked slyly at her from the corners of her eyes. “And if we're gone on vacation or something, you could call Angie Morrison,” she suggested, unsuccessfully trying not to giggle.
Hannah Ehrlich, struck by the vision of Angie, in the skimpiest possible negligee, racing down the road in her purple sports car to help out a neighbor, laughed again.
“Oh, dear,” she said. “We shouldn't be unkind. If we got to know her better, maybe we'd find out that she's really a very nice person.”
Jane shook her head. “I don't think so.”
Children are funny creatures, thought Hannah Ehrlich, regarding the girl, who was hard at work again on the gradually lengthening strip of tight loops. There wasn't a bit of a chance that getting to know Angie better would reveal any niceness at all, of any kind, and Jane somehow knew it. What if Angie were the only neighbor on this long road? What a thought.
“I wonder,” said Jane, looking up at her neighbor, “if Mrs. Marriott knows Angie very well.”
“Angie's not Louise's type of person, is she? Poor Louise. I doubt that she knows Angie at all.”
“When you've visited her at the nursing home, did you ever tell her about Angie?”
“Well, no, child. What would be the point? I'm sure Louise would have rented her house to a more sedate lady⦔
Jane frowned slightly.
“â¦a more proper lady, if she'd known. But Angie doesn't do any damage to the place, so far as I know. And Louise will never be living in that house again, anyway. She doesn't need more worries than she already has.”
Hannah had not been close to Louise Marriott, but she had enjoyed having another elderly woman nearby. Well, at least she had the Ruschmans; she had Jane. And she felt blessed in that. Not every trusted person turned out to be worthy. Her heart lurched, again, at the prospect of the conversation she was going to have to initiate.
“What's the matter?” asked Jane, looking up, startled and concerned.
“Nothing, dear, why?”
“You sighed. A really big sigh,” said the child. “Do you feel all right?”
“I feel just fine,” said Mrs. Ehrlich. But she didn't feel fine at all.
Angie Morrison slid one long, slim leg over the sill, bent to avoid hitting her pretty head on the window frame she was holding up with one hand, and maneuvered herself into the room. It had been a simple matter to unlock the window the day before. Everything was working perfectly. The ground was firm and dryâno snow even though it was Januaryâand would leave no sign of the crate she had stood on to raise the window and slip inside.
All she had to do now was to find the right place to leave what she needed to leave. Near the couch, but not where it would be discovered if the couch was unfolded into a bed, which Angie was sure it would be.
It hurt her to have to take these steps. People who loved each other should trust each other. She wanted nothing more than a reason to trust. Instead, she had ample reason not to.
She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Just being in a room where he spent so much time made her feel fluttery. Every woman in town wanted him; she could see it in their eyes. She felt their desire throbbing in the air around them, heard the breathiness it brought to their voices when they spoke to him. But she was the one who had him, and, if they had known, they would have hated her for it. She wantedâoh, how she wantedâto let them know. She didn't care if they hated her. She didn't care at all.