Bitter Sweet (15 page)
I’d be afraid he was after my money. Oh, God, I don’t know what I’m trying to say.’
‘I do. You need motivation. You need a change.’ Brookie sat up.
‘That’s what everybody keeps telling me.’
‘Who’s everybody?’
‘My psychiatrist. Eric Severson.’
‘Well, if everybody’s saying it, it must be true. All we need to do is come up with what.’ Brookie scowled at the water, deep in thought.
Maggie peeked at her with one eye, then closed it, mumbling, ‘Oh, this should be good.’
‘Now let’s see.., all we have to do is think of what you’d be good at. Just a minute ... just a minute ... it’s coming...’
Brookie sprang up onto her knees. ‘I’ve got it! The old Harding place out on Cottage Row! We were talking about it last week at supper. Did you know old man Harding died this spring and the house has been sitting empty ever since? It would make a perfect bed-and breakfast inn. it’s just waiting for-‘
‘Are you crazy? I’m no innkeeper!’
‘... somebody to come along and fix the place up.’
‘I don’t want to be tied down.’
‘Summers. You’d be tied down summers. Winters you could take your piles of money and go to the
Bahamas
in search of a man richer than you. You said you were lonely. You said you hate your empty house, so buy one you can put people in.’
‘Absolutely not.’
‘You always loved Cottage Row, and the old Harding house probably has piles of potential charm oozing from between the floorboards.’
‘Along with draughts and mice and termites, more than likely.’
‘You’re a natural. Hell, what is home economics about anyway? Running a home economically - cooking, cleaning, decorating - I’ll bet you’ve even taught a few charm courses to those greasy-headed little punks, haven’t you?’
‘Brookie, I don’t want -‘
‘And you love antiquing. You’d go euphoric antiquing for real, to fill that place. We’d go to
Chicago
to the flea markets and auctions. To
Green Bay
to the junk dealers. Up and down
‘I refuse to live within less than a thousand miles of my mother! Good heavens, Brookie, it wouldn’t even be a long-distance phone call away!’
‘That’s right, I forgot. Your mother is a problem...’ Brookie squeezed her lower lip thoughtfully. Abruptly she brightened. ‘But we’d work that out. Put her to work cleaning, scrubbing, something like that. Nothing makes old Vera happier than when she’s got a dustcloth in her hand.’
‘Are you kidding? I wouldn’t have my mother on the place under any circumstances.’
‘Okay then, Katy can clean.’ Brookie’s face grew even more avid. ‘Of course, it’s perfect! Katy can come home summers from college and help you. And if you lived this close she could drive down weekends and holidays, which is what you want, isn’t it?’
“Brookie, don’t be silly. No woman without a man would be in her right mind to take on a house that old.’
‘Then, hell. You can buy men. Handymen, gardeners, plasterers, carpenters, even teenagers looking for summer jobs. Even my own teenagers looking for summer jobs. You can leave all the dirty work to the hired help and take care of the business yourself. And the dining would be perfect. You buy it now, spend the winter getting the place fixed up, and it gives you time to advertise and open for next year’s tourist season.’
‘I don’t want to run a bed and breakfast.’
‘What a setting, right on the Bay! I’ll bet the place has a view from every room. You’d have customers beating down your door to stay in a place like that.’
‘I don’t want customers beating down my door.’
‘And if I’m not mistaken, it has a gardener’s apartment above the garage, remember? Tucked back into the hill across the road. Oh, Maggie, it’d be perfect.’
‘It’ll have to be perfect for somebody else then. You’re forgetting, I’m a home ec teacher from
Seattle
and I return to work on Monday.’
‘Oh, yes,
Seattle
. The place where it rains all winter long, and where your best friends’ husbands proposition you at the country club, and where you get so depressed you have to talk about it in group therapy sessions.’
‘Now you’re being crass.’
‘Well, don’t you? What friends came rushing in to help you when you needed it? This is where your friends are. This is where your roots arc, whether you want them to be or not. What has
Seattle
got to make you stay?’
Nothing. Maggie tightened her lips to keep from replying.
‘What are you being so stubborn about? You’re going back to a job that bores you, back to a house with no people in it, back to. , . hell, I don’t know what it is you’re going back to. Your shrink says you need a change and the problem is, what change? Well, how are you ever going to find out until you start shopping around for a new life? Maybe it’s not running a bed and breakfast, but what harm can there be in checking it out? And when you get back to Seattle, who have you got there to fire you up and make you start looking? Well, what are you sitting there for? Pack up your things, we’re going to see the Harding house!’
‘Brookie!’
Brookie was already on her feet, wadding up a beach towel. ‘Pack up, I said. What else have we got to do this afternoon? You can stay here if you want to. I’ve going to see Harding House by myself if I have to.”
‘Brookie, wait!’
But Brookie was already 1en yards away with her beach towel under one arm and her empty white sack under the other, heading for the mainland. While Maggie sat up on her heels and looked after her exasperatedly, Brookie yelled back over her shoulder, TII bet that place is a hundred years old or more, old enough to be on the National Register!Just think, you could be listed in Bed-and-Breakfast Inns of America!”
‘For the last time, I don’t want to be listed in Bed-and Break -“ Maggie thumped both fists on her thighs. ‘Damn you, Brookie,’ she called and scrambled up to follow.
At Homestead Realty, Althea Munne looked up while licking and sealing an envelope.
‘Bright with you ladies. Oh, hello, Glenda.’
‘Hi, Mrs Munne. You remember Maggie Pearson, don’t you?’
“I certainly do,” Althea rose and came forward, studying Maggie through eyeglasses whose rims had more angles than the roofline of the
Vatican
.’ The lenses were tinted cranberry with exposed, polished edges, and upon the left, a tiny gold ‘A’ rested just above Althea’s cheek. The spectacles were set with what appeared to be the crown jewels, and Althea glittered like a mirrored ballroom. The heavy glasses rested on a tiny owl-nose above a pair of lips ludicrously enlarged with Pepto-Bismol-pink lipstick that had bled into the cracks about her mouth.
A former teacher, she studied Maggie and recalled, ‘Class of’64. Honour society, school choir, cheerleader.’
‘All correct except the year. It was the class of ‘65.’
The phone rang, and while Althea excused herself to answer, Maggie glanced at Brookie who flashed a smug grin and said under her breath, ‘See if you can top that with a
Seattle
realtor.’
Mrs Munne returned momentarily and asked, ‘What can I do for you?’
‘Do you have the listing on the Harding house?’ Brookie asked.
‘The Harding house...’ Althea licked her lips. ‘Yes.
Which one of you is interested in seeing it?’
‘She is.’
‘She is.’
Maggie pointed at Brookie and Brookie pointed at Maggie.
Althea’s lips pursed. She waited as one might expect an ex-teacher to wait for a class to silence.
Maggie sighed and lied. ‘I am.’
‘The house lists for ninety-six, nine. It has one and a half acres and 15o(?) feet of shoreline.’ Althea turned away to get the listing sheets and Maggie flung a withering glare at Brookie. The realtor returned and asked, ‘Would that be in your price range?’
‘Ah...’ Maggie jumped. “Yes, that’s.., that’s within my price range.’
‘It’s vacant, it needs a little repair, but it has limitless possibilities. Would you like to take a ride over and see it?’
‘Ahh...’ Maggie balked and received a discreet thump on the knee from Brookie. “Yes, I... well, of course!’
Althea drove, giving a brief history of the house as they rode towards it.
The Harding place had been built in 1900 by a
Chicago
shipping magnate named Throckmorton for his wife, who had died before the building was complete. Inconsolably saddened by her death, Throckmorton sold the house to one Thaddeus Harding whose descendants had occupied it until the demise of old Thad’s grandson, William, last spring. William’s heirs lived in scattered parts of the country and showed no interest in maintaining the white elephant. All they wanted was their share of the money from its sale.
In the backseat, Maggie rode stubbornly beside Brookie her mind closed- to the west end of Main Street, then south up Cottage Row on a picturesque road that twisted and climbed a steep limestone bluff; through thick cedar forest between old estates that had been established in the early 1900s by Chicago’s wealthy, who rode the shoreline up Lake Michigan to spend summers in the cool lake breezes of Door Peninsula. The wooded road gave glimpses of genteel homes - no two alike- behind rows of stacked stone walls.
Some were perched below road level, their garages backed up against the stone
clifton
the left, across the road from the houses themselves. Others lifted above dappled lawns. Many were glimpsed through tangles of old shrubbery and trellises. Occasionally the brilliant blue waters of
Green Bay
glittered, bringing images of panoramic views from the houses.
Maggie’s first impression came not from Harding House itself, but from an abandoned tennis court nestled at the base of the cliff across the road. Moss had taken hold between the limestone paving blocks, some of which had cracked and buckled. The playing surface was covered with the slough of the infringing woods: dead leaves, twigs and pinecones and aluminium cans tossed by uncaring tourists from passing autos.
But along the south edge of the court a weathered arbour scat covered with grapevines spoke of days when the wump of tennis balls had resounded
from the cliffwall, and players had rested on the curved wooden bench between sets. The vine had grown so heavy it had broken the wooden structure, but it evoked images of a grander day. At the opposite end of the court there was a garage with an apartment above, built in later years but still a relic itself, with cumbersome wooden doors, hinged at the sides.
Maggie found her eyes drawn back to the arbour seat as she followed Althea through the break in a thick row of arborvitae that sheltered the yard and house from the road.
‘We’ll walk around the outside first,’ Althea directed.
The house was a Queen Anne cottage, grey with age and disrepair, and from the landward side seemed to offer little save a small rear verandah with a rotting floor, gap-toothed railings, and a lot of wooden siding badly in need of painting. But as Maggie followed Althea around the structure, she looked up and saw an enchanting collection of asymmetrical shapes covered in fish-scale shingles, with tiny porches tucked at all levels, exposed cornice brackets carved bargeboards with finials and pendants in the gable peaks, a sweeping front verandah overlooking the lake and on the second storey of the southwest corner the most fanciful verandah of all, rounded, with turned wood columns beneath a witch-hat roof.
‘Oh, Brookie, look!’ she exclaimed, pointing up at it.
‘The belvedere,’ Althea clarified. ‘Off the largest bedroom. Would you like to go in and see it?’
Althea was no dummy. She took them in through the front door, across the wide front verandah whose floor was in much better shape than that of the rear; through a carved-oak door with a leaded, staitied-glass window and matching sidelights; into a spacious entry hall with a staircase that brought a gasp of delight from Maggie.
Looking up, she saw it turn at two landings around a shaft of open space leading to the upper hall.
Her heart began hammering even as her nostrils smelled the mould.
‘The wood throughout the house is maple. It’s said that Mr Throckmorton had it custom milled in
From a doorway to the left Brookie said, “Maggie, look at this.’ From between the walls she rolled a pocket door, and with it came dust, spider webs and a loud creak of rusty hardware.
Althea quickly explained, ‘Mr Harding lived here alone for nearly twenty years after his wife died and I’m afraid he let the place fall into disrepair. Many of the rooms he simply closed off. But anyone with a good eye will recognize the quality underneath the dirt.’
The main floor contained the formal parlour with a small stone fireplace and an adjoining ‘music room’. Across the hall was the dining room which connected, through a butler’s pantry, with the kitchen at the rear. Opposite the pantry was the maid’s room. When Althea opened the door a chipmunk scurried down between voluminous stacks of old newspapers that appeared to have got wet and dried many times over the years.