I'd Rather Be in Philadelphia (9 page)

“Who donated the books?” I asked.

She shrugged.

Karen lathered her teeth then turned and drooled toothpaste foam. I smiled at her and spoke carefully to her mother. This was not a fitting bedtime story. “You understand,” I said, “it isn’t over for the underliner. I hope.”

Beth stood up heavily, like a woman twice her age. “Somebody probably picked it up at a bus stop. The sort of people we know, the kind of women involved in Main Line Charities….” She shook her head. “They’re
nice
people. I don’t care what your book says—I mean truly nice people.”

“Is that code for people who aren’t poor? People who aren’t the stereotype?”

“Don’t get huffy and self-righteous. Hurry up, Karen!”

“Why won’t you say who dropped those books off?”

“Oh, Mandy, I was four years pregnant at that point and not paying much attention. Besides, I won’t let you humiliate any of those wonderful people, including yourself. There is no way on earth that Mar—that—”

“Mar? Who?”

“Nobody. Slip of the tongue. There’s no way that book has anything to do with anybody I know. Even I, Mandy—it
hurt
having you think I—Sam—could be—”

“Sometimes sisters don’t know what’s really going on,” I whispered. “It’s terrible, but it happens.”

She shook her head. “You’re too fond of playing detective, although I know you mean well. Maybe sometimes it’s worth it, but why now? Your boyfriend’s off with an old flame and maybe you need some excitement in your life, but not this way!”

Karen padded out to choose her bedtime story. I turned and faced my sister. “I’d stake my life that those messages are genuine. That’s a real woman in there. Isn’t it worth a little embarrassment to save a life?”

After I’d read a chapter of
The Wind in the Willows
to Karen, I found Beth at the foot of the stairs holding out her address book. “I give up,” she said with a half smile. “My error. You’d only root around until you found this and then you’d check out everyone I know whose name begins with
mar—
the Margies and Mamies and Margarets and Marlenes. Which would be even more humiliating. I think Martha Thornton dropped it all off.”

I copied Martha Thornton’s whereabouts and put on my coat, leaving Beth in peace, at least from me.

“I’ll tell you this, though,” she said at the door. “Martha didn’t donate the books. She doesn’t read. That’s why she didn’t join our book group. You’re on an absolute fool’s mission, but go ahead. You’ll enjoy her.” She looked at her watch. “I told her you’d be there by seven forty-five. You have twenty minutes.”

“You what?”

“Well, why shouldn’t I warn a person that my lunatic sister is on her trail? Even
criminals
get read their rights.” And then she leaned back against the foyer wall and issued a profound, world-weary sigh. “Please,” she said softly. “Be careful.”

“I’m fine,” I said. “Just a little deaf from Fireman Dan’s.”

“I’m serious. I hope you never find her. The real her.”

“She’s the one in danger. Not me.”

“Not yet. Not until you’re part of the equation. Things tend to explode when you add an outsider to people’s private lives.”

I blew her a germ-free kiss. “There’s nothing to worry about.”

I remember saying that.

“I’m not doing anything dangerous,” I added.

I remember saying and believing that part, too.

Seven

I PULLED UP IN FRONT OF A GRAY STONE HOUSE SET WELL BACK FROM THE road. To my surprise and immediate discomfort, it nestled next to a matching gray stone church.

I hoped Martha was the rectory’s cleaning woman or cook. I was ashamed of my class assumptions, but the truth was it would be easier to have the wife beater be anyone but the minister of this serene suburban house of God.

I detoured to the announcement board that informed me the Senior Study Group was meeting there this night and, as my spirits sank, also made note that one Right Reverend Oliver Thornton was their spiritual leader.

I was tempted to drop the quest, slink back to my floppy roofed car and take off. I hadn’t counted on this level of complication. In my fantasies, I’d moved with the ease of an androgynous superhero who saw a problem, swooped down, and solved it. End of scene, tremendous applause, over and out. Eat your heart out, Wonder Woman.

I hadn’t reckoned on ministers and prestigious congregations.

When the door opened, I realized I hadn’t reckoned on Martha Thornton, either.

She was apple-cheeked and white-haired and slightly out of breath. The Pillsbury Dough Grandma wore a purple top hat, tap pants, and matching patent leather pumps. The blouse was white with full, loose sleeves. She held a glittery cane in one hand.

“Me and My Shadow” filtered out of a room farther down the long entry hallway. She tossed the cane up, caught it midway down its shaft, and began to strut her stuff. Or tap it, feet moving double-time back down the hallway, then forward again, heel-toe, side-together, whatever. Her legs weren’t at all bad and her timing was impeccable.

“Greetings!” She stopped to lean in time-honored tilted style, both hands on the cane handle. “Tuesdays are for tapping and I wouldn’t normally answer the door, but your sister said it was important, dear heart. She also said you were very discreet, so I trust this passion of mine will remain our secret, yes?”

I nodded. “You’re very good,” I said.

“It’s not easy being a minister’s wife. Many people confuse devotion with dullness.” She closed the door behind me and tapped down the hallway. We stopped near the opening of what would have to be called a front parlor. It was filled with dark upholstery outlined with carved wooden frames, and had the look of having been there for generations, lovingly maintained.

Shuffle-shuffle, tap-tap-tap. Martha Thornton took my coat, slinging it over her shoulder like Gene Kelly in a saucy mood, and tapped it farther down, to a closet.

“Aerobic, you know,” she said as she shut the closet door. “Three times a week. Hate jogging and rowing and oh, the righteous slowness of the church walking club.” She shuffled off to the parlor, turned off the record player, and returned. “And fun, although my grandchildren think it’s disgraceful. You don’t, do you?”

“Me? Not at all.”

“Good. Now there’s coffee brewing in the kitchen. Come along.”

I trailed behind her clicking shiny feet. “Wanted to be a Busby Berkeley girl,” she said. “Not a star, mind you, but I knew I’d die happy if I was one time part of an overwhelmingly choreographed extravaganza.”

We had reached a kitchen that looked out of an ancient
Good Housekeeping.
I wondered if it was deliberately kept a relic of Americana, or if the parishioners wouldn’t shell out for renovations. In any case, it had a flour bin, enamel drainboards, iron skillets, and not a laminate, microwave, or food processor in shouting distance.

Martha opened the short, round-edged refrigerator and poured milk into a small jug. Cups, napkins, and spoons were on the oak kitchen table. “But I met Oliver,” she sighed. “Handsome as a movie star, and dramatic as all get-out. I assumed he was an actor and that we’d take Hollywood by storm. Only he turned out to be a seminarian, and worse, irresistible. Forty years later, here I am. My life with Oliver turned out to be my extravaganza.”

She didn’t look at all sorry about her choice as she retrieved the coffee canister and poured two cups. “It’s unleaded.” She shook her head. “Getting old is annoying.” She filled a plate with star-shaped cookies covered with pastel sprinkles, then sat down across from me. “Now we have some sort of problem to work through. Is that it?” The tap dancer was gone, and in her place, a good solid standard-issue minister’s wife. “I’m so fond of your sister. How is that brand new baby? Adorable, I’m certain. But what’s troubling you, love?”

“Maybe Beth’s told you that I’m an English teacher at Philly Prep,” I began.

Martha raised her brows. “No, she certainly didn’t! And what a frightening profession!”

“The kids I teach aren’t really all that bad.”

She shook her head. “I meant, who talks to you? Surely everybody’s as afraid to speak to an English teacher as…as I? As me? No, of course not—oh, heavens, do you see what I mean? So intimidating.” She put two spoons of sugar in her coffee and frowned as she stirred it.

I doubted I could cure her grammatical insecurities quickly, so I plunged right into the issue. “The school’s having a flea market,” I said, “and we’ve gotten donations from everywhere.”

“People are sweet, aren’t they? Even in hard times. Always try to give myself, although, of course, there’s only so much to begin with, and I’m afraid at the moment I’m quite depleted. Of course, I could bake, if you’re having a cookie sale.”

“I’m not soliciting donations.”

“No? Then what on earth?”

“I’m trying to find somebody who donated a particular book.”

“Oh, my,” she murmured. “A book.” Martha Thornton’s crepey skin appeared untouched by anything but time. It was difficult envisioning a tap-dancing battered grandmother in the first place.

I felt a twinge, like the first hint of a toothache. Maybe I was a fool, imagining things, stupidly rushing off hither and yon. Maybe all of this was compensation for Mackenzie’s being otherwise occupied. Maybe I was even trying to usurp his role as detective. Maybe I was the one who needed help.

Martha interrupted my silent pop psychology session. “How could I possibly assist you with this book that was donated to your school?” she asked softly, patiently.

I swallowed hard. “I thought perhaps it was yours.”

“Oh, dear heart, I’m sure Philly Prep is a fine school, but we try to donate to our own Main Line Charities, the local Red Cross, you know—and of course, even then, only when the church can’t use the items for a fund-raiser.”

I nodded. “This carton had been intended for Main Line Charities, not us.”

She pulled back. Only a fraction of an inch, but sharply and immediately.

“I gather your group held a silent auction this time and didn’t want the used books,” I said.

The skin between her eyebrows puckered.

“My sister said you’d dropped off the carton a while ago—for Main Line Charities—but because they didn’t want it, she donated it to us.”

Martha Thornton had gone rigid, back straight as the chair spokes. “Your sister is mistaken. Perhaps the strain of having the baby?”

“You didn’t drop off the carton?”

She made a mild half-shrug. “I don’t think so. Of course, one is always dropping off and picking up things. But I didn’t donate books. A soup tureen, I think.” She nodded. “Yes. A chip on the base, but quite lovely. Not books.” She folded her hands on the table, like a good student. “Books are our friends,” she said. “Isn’t that what English teachers say? I like to keep my friends.” She laughed sociably.

She was lying, which was odd, but it was irrelevant, because she was not behaving like a woman who’d put out a call for help.

So that was that. I was at the end of the road, and my mission of mercy had been aborted. I wasn’t sure if the sensation in my stomach was disappointment or relief.

Martha looked toward the punched-tin kitchen ceiling. “But if you say I dropped that carton off, maybe I could think real hard about when it was and whose books they might have been, and perhaps…” She stood up. I had forgotten the purple satin shorts. She walked into the hallway. “Why don’t I check with Patsy?” She took a receiver off a small telephone table and leaned over to dial. The legs were amazing for a woman her age.

“Quite a reader, Patsy,” Martha said. “Buys by mail, of course. Such a shame, cooped up like that.”

My antennae, which had gone floppy, popped back up.

Patsy must have been cooped directly next to the telephone because it hardly had time to ring before Martha was questioning and nodding. “I thought so!” she said with delight. “Well, there’s this dear child here—do you know Beth Wyman, Patsy? No, well, what a shame. She’s lovely, and she seems to have found a book in your carton that—I know the entire carton wasn’t yours, darling. Of course your mother would be upset if you were giving books away at that rate—but do you know whose else they were? You think maybe Ardis? Really? I’ve had trouble getting her to donate anything. It must be your special charm.”

All the wrong feedback. Why mention the woman’s mother? And who was Ardis? I was suddenly weary of the whole affair, including the tantalizing, infuriating sort of woman who’d leave anonymous notes in a book.

Martha half danced, half walked back to the kitchen table.

“I’m afraid that wasn’t too helpful,” she said. “Although Patsy said you could come talk to her, of course. And I’m sure Ardis will agree, too—if it isn’t one of her sick-headache days. And there might be others.”

One woman was cooped in, the other had sick-headache days. Either could be hiding bruises, recovering in secret. Maybe it wasn’t so crazy, then.

“I remember now,” Martha said. “I picked up bags of books from Patsy. You have to do that sort of thing for her. Her mother’s in a wheelchair; can’t expect her to do a lot of hauling. And Ardis left books, too. Must have been three, four bags altogether. Ardis is never home days and doesn’t answer the bell after dark, so she left hers on Patsy’s porch.”

I nodded, eager to cut to the chase.

“I don’t mean to probe, dear heart,” Martha said, leaning toward me over the table, “but what sort of book would provoke such a search? If you can say, of course.”

“Well, it’s rather personal. Writings…”

“Oh!” she said. “Not an ordinary book at all. A diary, perhaps.” She cocked her head. “Can’t think what secrets either of those girls would have. I mean the one hasn’t left her house in thirteen years, and the other only ventures out for work and church. Never have even seen Ardis at a movie, let alone on a vacation. Don’t know when she buys clothing. And for that matter, when does Patsy?” The furrows returned between her eyes. “I suppose Patsy’s mother takes care of that, too,” she said. “Does everything else—and it’s all so odd. She’s the one in a wheelchair, but she gets about, even drives.”