The Fixer Upper (7 page)

“E
lla Kate?” I peered around the dimly lit room to make sure she wasn’t standing there, about to brain me with a frying pan. But the room was empty. And bone-chillingly cold.

“Damn,” Tee said, closing the door behind us and fumbling around for a light switch. He took a step, stumbled over something, swore, fumbled some more. He made his way to the far wall and turned on the light.

What I saw made me want to run right back out the door. The kitchen was like something out of a movie. A horror movie. The walls were painted a dingy hospital green. There was a wall of cabinets—sagging wooden cabinets with peeling white paint. The wall closest to the kitchen door held another cabinet, with a gargantuan chipped white porcelain sink—the old-fashioned kind with the built-in drainboard. The countertops were of faded yellow Formica, the floor of cracked green linoleum tiles. There was a stove, roughly the size of an aircraft carrier, and a refrigerator—in an incongruous pale pink—crouched like a dejected pig, in a corner of the room. The overhead fixture was another naked lightbulb, which showed, all too clearly, a room that apparently hadn’t been cleaned—or modernized—since the Nixon administration.

“Oh my,” Tee said, looking around at the battered saucepans stacked on top of the counters.

Shorty whined, as though in sad agreement.

I walked over to the opposite wall and opened the door to what turned out to be a broom closet. I found one dog-eared broom, a dustpan, and an enamelware bucket. And what looked like a year’s supply of discarded plastic bags.

“Cleaning supplies,” I said briskly. “Gonna need a lot of cleaning supplies.”

“Not tonight,” Tee said, his voice sounding alarmed.

“Tomorrow,” I said firmly.

He stood in the middle of the kitchen, his arms crossed over his chest, afraid, apparently, of coming into contact with the decades’ worth of accumulated grunge.

“You really don’t have to stay,” I told him. “I’ll be just fine. Let me figure out where I’m going to sleep, and get my suitcase into the house, and you can take off. All right?”

“We’ll see.”

He followed me into the hallway, turning on light switches as we went. There were three more doors leading off Birdsong’s center hall. One turned out to be a bathroom, with fading pink-and-blue-flowered vinyl wallpaper. Another was a large room that had probably been a bedroom at one time. At first glance, I thought the room had been painted school bus yellow. But on closer examination, it turned out that the walls were merely lined, from floor to ceiling, with stacks of
National Geographic
magazines. Aside from the magazines, the only other thing in the room was a heavy wooden schoolhouse desk with a brass study lamp and a rickety chair pulled up to it.

“I guess this was the study,” I said, walking from stack to stack, leaning in to read the print on the magazine spines. “They’re arranged chronologically.”

“Norbert was a little eccentric,” Tee said. “Especially later in life.”

“A little? There must be fifty years’ worth of
National Geographic
s in here.”

“My grandfather collected Jim Beam bottles,” Tee said. “The figurals? Like, bourbon bottles in the shape of a bust of Elvis, or Robert E. Lee? We must have found a couple hundred in the basement of his house after he died. And you know what? He was a teetotaling hard-shell Baptist. So a roomful of magazines doesn’t seem that crazy to me.”

“At least you can drink bourbon,” I said darkly, trying to repress a sneeze.

We walked out into the hallway, and as I was closing the door, a
shrill voice echoed in the high-ceilinged hallway. “That’s Norbert’s study, you leave that alone now!”

Ella Kate stood at the top of a flight of stairs I hadn’t even noticed, glaring down at us.

“Sorry,” I said, quickly stepping away from the door. “I was just trying to figure out where I could sleep—”

“Not there,” she said. Inserting two fingers in her mouth, she whistled sharply. “Shorty! Come!” The cocker scrambled up the stairs, stopping at her feet. Ella Kate turned, and with the dog following right behind, she stomped off, slamming a door behind them.

“I’ll get your suitcase,” Tee said. “I’ve never been on the second floor. I don’t know if anybody other than Ella Kate has, since Mr. Norbert died. But according to the tax records, there should be four more bedrooms and a couple of bathrooms up there.”

“Hopefully, one of them has a bed,” I said meaningfully.

A moment later he was back with my luggage, dragging it up the stairway. The suitcase hit each of the worn wooden stair treads with a thud. As I followed behind, I scanned the dozens of framed black-and-white family photos that had been nailed, willy-nilly, to the stairway wall.

Tee stopped in front of a large family portrait in an elaborate gilt frame. The photo showed a stiffly posed couple in Victorian dress. The wife had dark hair piled on top of her head, and a high-necked frilly white blouse fastened with a large jeweled brooch. The husband had one of those scary mad-scientist beards, slicked-down hair parted in the middle, and a pair of pince-nez perched on his beaklike nose. The wife held a fair-haired toddler on her lap, and a little boy dressed in a sailor suit, with a toy boat clutched in his hand, stood at attention with his papa’s hand on his shoulder.

“The Dempseys,” Tee said. “Dad would know everybody’s name, but I think the little boy in the sailor suit would be Augustus.” He tapped the image of the child. “He’s the one who started the bedspread factory. I guess he’d be, what? Your great-great-grandfather?”

“Don’t know,” I admitted. I gestured at all the photos. “I’ve never seen or heard of any of these people before.”

Tee started back up the stairs. “You will. Guthrie’s that kind of town. You won’t have to bother to look up your family tree. Everybody in town will be more than willing to explain how they’re related to you through your third cousin twice removed.”

“Like I care,” I muttered under my breath.

We walked quickly past the room Ella Kate had gone into, and down the wide stair landing. Tee paused in front of the last door at the end of the hall.

I opened the door. The room was tiny, with sloping walls, faded blue-sprigged flowered wallpaper, and a jumble of old suitcases and broken furniture. “This was probably a nursery, or maybe a trunk room,” I said, turning to go out.

“How can you tell?” Tee asked.

“The way the walls slope, you couldn’t get an adult bed in there,” I pointed out. “And a lot of old houses had rooms like this. Sometimes they called them cradle rooms.”

“Never heard of that before, but it makes sense,” he agreed.

The door on the other side of the hallway from the trunk room turned out to be a large, high-ceilinged bedroom. I found the light switch, which revealed a big brass bed standing in the middle of the room. The bed held a lumpy, naked mattress, and the floor, though dusty, was covered with a frayed and faded pale pink hooked rug in a floral motif. The only other furniture was a huge mirrored mahogany armoire, and an Empire mahogany dresser with round glass knobs. Faded chintz curtains hung limply at a double window.

“Home sweet home,” I said briskly, walking around the room.

Tee looked dubiously at the bed. “You’re going to sleep on that?”

“For now,” I said, walking back out into the hallway and opening more doors. I found another bathroom, to my great relief. It was old-fashioned and in dire need of paint and bleach, but at least, I thought, there was a bathtub, and running water. I’d begun to have my doubts. Next to the bathroom I opened a narrow door and was thrilled to discover a linen closet.

The closet smelled of mothballs, but its shelves were loaded with linens—heavily starched and pressed—yellowing sheets and pillowcases,
wool blankets encased in cracked-plastic zipper cases, and stacks of threadbare pastel towels. On the top shelf of the closet I found a couple of sad-looking feather pillows in age-stained ticking cases. The next-to-top shelf held a stack of neatly folded white chenille bedspreads. I pulled one out and unfolded it. A slip of paper floated to the floor. I picked it up and read out loud, “‘Martha Washington Model. Finest Quality. Dempsey Mills. Guthrie, Georgia.’”

Tee rubbed a corner of the spread. “This one feels like it’s never been used. My grandmother had a spread just like this in her guest bedroom. Probably everybody else in town had one too.”

I gathered the pillows, a set of sheets, pillowcases, a blanket, and the spread into my arms and headed back toward my new bedroom.

Tee followed me. “Need a hand?” he asked, leaning against the door-jamb and watching as I tucked the starchy linen sheet around the mattress.

“Nope. I’m good,” I told him. “I’ve got a bed, and a blanket to keep me warm. That’s all I need for tonight. I’m going to unpack, and then do like Ella Kate. Go to bed with the chickens.”

“If you’re sure then,” he said. He reached inside his jacket and brought out a business card. “My cell number is on there,” he said. “Feel free to call if you need anything.”

I thanked him and walked him downstairs and to the front door. “I will call you tomorrow, if you don’t mind,” I said. “I’ve got to see about transportation—whether it’s my great-uncle’s car, or whatever. And I’ll need directions to the store.”

“Anything at all,” he assured me.

When he was gone, I locked the dead bolt, then walked through the downstairs rooms, at a more leisurely pace this time, making mental lists of all that needed to be done. First, I promised myself, I would get the front yard cleared. And give the place a thorough scrubbing. Once some of the layers of grime were removed, I’d be better able to tell the full extent of the repairs that Birdsong needed.

As I shut off the lights in those cold, dusty rooms, I was surprised to find myself excited, rather than depressed, by the job ahead of me. In Washington, I’d spent my workdays attending meetings and hearings,
drafting documents in arcane legalese. Rarely, if ever, did I get to see any real concrete evidence of how I’d spent my working days—and evenings. But here, at this old wreck of a house, one swipe of a wet mop would make a remarkable difference.

By the time I got to the kitchen, I realized, with a start, that I hadn’t eaten anything since the bag of peanuts I’d been handed on my flight hours earlier. My stomach growled.

I opened the refrigerator door, half afraid of what I would find there. But the contents, though sparse, seemed surprisingly normal. There was a quart of milk, a pint of half-and-half, some bowls with aluminum-foil toppers, a half-empty package of lunch meat, a packet of plastic-wrapped cheese slices, and the usual condiments; pickles, mayonnaise, mustard.

After retrieving a plate from one of the cupboards, I helped myself to a slice of the lunch meat and a slice of the cheese. Another cupboard revealed a small stash of pantry staples—saltine crackers, a box of oatmeal, cans of generic-brand soup, tuna, beans, and Spam.

In five minutes, I had a pan of tomato soup heating on the stove, while I devoured a hastily made plate of cheese and crackers. When the soup was ready, I sat at the enamel-topped kitchen table and slurped it down happily.

Upstairs, I climbed quickly into my warmest flannel pajamas and got into the bed and under the blanket and bedspread I’d heaped on top. I reached for my cell phone and dialed.

“Dempsey?” Mitch answered on the third ring. “Is something wrong?”

“Not really,” I said. “Just wanted to let you know I’m in Guthrie. I met Mr. Berryhill, the lawyer, and I’m actually staying at Birdsong tonight.”

“How is it?” he asked anxiously.

“Well, it’s, uh, sorta run down,” I said slowly, remembering Ella Kate’s assessment. “In fact, Dad, to tell you the truth, it’s a big mess. Much worse than I expected.”

“How much worse?”

“It’s got a roof,” I said. “And plumbing. And wiring. If it has heat, it’s
not currently turned on. The kitchen’s pretty bad. Bathrooms are going to need major updating. I haven’t been able to take a good look around the outside yet, but I can tell you that the front-porch columns look pretty rickety.”

“Oh.”

“I guess we’re going to need to talk about a budget,” I said, rushing on. “Because a coat of paint and some new wallpaper aren’t going to do the trick. And there’s one more thing, Dad.”

“What the hell else could there be?”

“Do you remember an old lady named Ella Kate Timmons?”

“No. Why should I? I was only a kid when we moved from Guthrie.”

“She’s some sort of cousin, according to Mr. Berryhill. She remembers when you were a little boy. You pulled her cat’s tail.”

“Dempsey, what’s this about?” Mitch asked. “Pilar and I are at the boys’ school for parent-teacher night. I’m supposed to be looking at Garrett’s art portfolio. I told you, I don’t remember anybody named Ella Kate.”

Wow. Parent-teacher night at the preschool. I couldn’t remember Mitch ever going to any meetings at my school. Ever.

“Dempsey? I really need to get back in there.”

I took a deep breath. “It’s just that Ella Kate is living here.”

“Where?”

“Right here. In Birdsong. She and Shorty are living upstairs. She doesn’t like me. According to the lawyer, she really, really doesn’t like the Killebrews. She’s mad that your uncle Norbert didn’t leave the house to her, because she took care of him when he was sick.”

“And?” I could hear children’s voices in the background. And Pilar. “What’s she sayin’?” Pilar asked. “What’s goin’ on up there?”

“The thing is, Dad, Ella Kate Timmons is kinda squatting here at Birdsong. And it doesn’t look like she’s going to get out anytime soon.”

“For God’s sake, Dempsey,” Mitch said irritably. “It’s just an old lady. If she’s living there, she’s doing it illegally. Talk to the lawyers. Get them to draft something and make her get out. For that matter, you’re a lawyer. File an injunction or something. All right? We’ll talk later about the budget.”

He hung up. I got out of bed, turned off the light, and buried myself back underneath the covers. An injunction. Against a shotgun-toting old lady who had some kind of vendetta against me and my father’s family.