Small blessings, I thought. Baker made the trip back to Brimfield with me. On the way he wanted to talk about Althea. He explained that she was an amazing woman.
I explained that I was seeing a Shaker specialist tomorrow, and it would be great to have a photo of the candlestand. “I’ll e-mail it to you when I get back to the office,” he said.
Oops. I reminded him that I was computer deprived, and he promised to get a print to me tomorrow. I pulled up to the parking lot, where he retrieved his car. I drove off. I had plenty to think about on the long drive back to the Cape. I wondered if a computer would help me figure things out better.
21
W
hen I got home, there was only one other car in the driveway. Unusual. This afternoon our driveway, generally an elephant graveyard, looked spacious.
I gathered my bundles together. Monica, the new addition to my family, came out to meet me. She helped bring my things in. I wasn’t ready yet for this girl, this woman, my daughter-in-law. Philip had asked me to stop referring to his wife as “whatsername.” I love Philip. I’ll try.
“Hamp will be back in half an hour,” she said. “I sent everyone else away for the rest of the evening, and I’ll be leaving shortly to pick up Philip. You and Hamp can have the evening alone.”
I looked up at her. A pretty face framed by copper ringlets. An evening alone with Hamp? Rare indeed. Could it be he missed me?
“Did Hamp suggest that?” I asked. Wow! He’d been so reserved lately.
“No. Sorry if it’s the wrong thing, but you haven’t seen each other for a while, so I thought you’d have lots to talk about.”
“Oh.” I wondered what.
I sorted through my stuff and busied myself putting things away. Chinese ingredients on the counter for Hamp, laundry from my few days away in the washer, plastic baggie full of antique costume jewelry on the dining room table. Monica fiddled around in the kitchen and I pulled my thoughts together.
“I saved some of tonight’s dinner for you, in case you didn’t get a chance to eat,” she said.
“I ate all day long. What did you have?” I only asked to make small talk. I knew that if Hamp didn’t make Chinese food, and Philip didn’t make sandwiches while I was gone, they probably brought in pizzas.
“I cooked,” she said. “Macaroni and cheese—it came out good.”
The poor kid. Should I try some? My family detests macaroni and cheese. She’d need encouragement. I could probably give her some hints about what Philip enjoys.
“I would like a little taste of that,” I said. I actually like macaroni and cheese, but we never have it because no one will eat it. Monica busied herself at the microwave while I got the laundry going.
When I finished, I settled at the table with the bag of jewelry I had collected over the past few days. I wanted to go through it and check the markings and findings with a loupe. Later I’d clean it, my way, and decide which pieces I should keep for myself and which would go into the shop.
“Ready,” she said. She came to the table, where she placed in front of me a dish with a heaping portion of something that looked suspiciously like packaged macaroni and cheese. My God, I’ll bet they broke her heart.
Monica sat down across from me; her gaze never left my fork as I speared it into the pale orange and white mass and brought it to my mouth. “Mmmmm, wonderful.” I smiled and nodded. Cheese-flavored glue—the poor kid. I remember how hard it was learning to cook for Hamp; he had such odd tastes, and I had no feeling for cooking back then. Maybe I’d just take Philip aside and tell him to humor his bride; she was really looking for approval.
“What are the little red things in here?”
“I chopped up some pickled peppers. That’s how to make packaged foods taste homemade,” she said. “You just add something wonderful, and voilà, you’re a cook.” She smiled.
“Thanks for the tip.” She noticed no irony.
I enjoyed the rest of the trembling mound on my plate, savoring, I felt, the peppers, as well as the flavor of the cardboard box that had contained the macaroni. When Monica finally tired of watching me and listening to me say how good it was, she asked me about the jewelry baggie. I emptied it onto the table. She oohed and aahed over the jewelry. She picked out several pieces for special compliments. I wondered if she were turning the tables on me. Had she noticed that I’d overacted a bit about the macaroni and cheese?
But, sure as Shinola, she showed a good eye for period costume jewelry. When I told her so, her response floored me. Could she come with me sometime when she had a day off? Like tomorrow, maybe? Startled, I told her I’d be on my way at four a.m. A whole extra hour of sleep. She was welcome, but I wouldn’t wait for her, or anyone. When I’m ready, I’m off like a prom dress.
No one else in this family has ever been interested in the business of antiques. Some of them might enjoy the antiques, some not, but none of them has a speck of interest in the
search
for antiques.
I found myself warming toward her. She interrupted my cozy thoughts by asking what she should call me. I’d known her less than two weeks. Philip had brought her home, his bride, after knowing her only a few days. How about Your Dowagership? “Well,” I said, “I answer to Lucy.”
So in the next five minutes she called me Lucy twenty times, explaining between “Lucys” that she had made a double batch of macaroni, but the family had plowed into it with such abandon that she had opened yet another package in order to set some aside for me.
Huh? And she wasn’t even embarrassed about the package.
She soon left to pick up Philip. I walked around the house I had left on Monday. Streaks of light still glowed on the horizon, but it had become dark enough indoors to turn the lights on. I was alone in the house for the first time in months. How had she done it? Should I be irritated that she had arranged for the rest of my family to be missing when I arrived?
Come on now, really? The answer was still no. Not on your life. When I’d left here on Monday, I’d seen most of them daily, except for occasional brief intervals, throughout the past thirty years. I wondered how she’d been able to extract the whole bunch of them at the same time. The house sighed in sudden comfort.
Hamp came in. We said hello. He hesitated at the kitchen door, his hand still on the knob. I had a feeling that he might turn around and leave. Maybe I should ask what’d been bothering him lately. Maybe I should tell him I missed him.
“How about that macaroni and cheese,” I said.
“How about that Brimfield murder,” he said.
Uh-oh. “Well,” I stalled a bit, “you remember Monty?” If he hadn’t, the murder had certainly reminded him.
“Don’t get yourself in the middle of it, Lucy.”
He calls that coming to the point. He thinks that’s talking things over.
“I’m not in it, Hamp. I’m nowhere near it.” But was I?
He looked at me. His eyes fixed on my face. God, he was still terrific-looking. Silver now fanned away from his temples and blended with his tawny hair. It hadn’t aged him a single second. It only framed and softened his features. I don’t lie to Hamp. Sooner or later I tell him everything.
Sooner would be my preference. But that’s impossible. I’ve tried enough times. I start explaining something to him. He listens for a while. I dredge up every aspect of the issue. He blinks. I provide him with facts. Soon, his eyes glaze over; then he starts jiggling his foot. I back up a little, tell him about events that led up to the problem. He interrupts, and starts announcing solutions I don’t want, to problems I don’t have. Finally, he tunes out. He’s gone.
“You’re up to your neck in this murder,” he said.
“Why do you say that?” That wasn’t true.
“Your big-time lawyer friend called here Tuesday night. He grilled me for a phone number where he could reach you.” His glare bored straight into my eyes. “You never said a word to me about the murder when we spoke that night. Nor the next night.”
“I didn’t want you to worry.” I looked away.
“Not worry?” he shouted.
That’s it. We were off and bickering.
Today’s bickering had nothing to do with the real problem I saw here, which was his recent withdrawn moodiness. You’d think that a man responsible for rigorous research at a university like Lyman would relish solving a problem at home. But no, not him. At the first sign of a problem he becomes quietly aloof. Inaccessible. He answers my attempts at communication with one-syllable answers. He keeps to himself. After I’ve blown up, I respond in kind.
I’ve learned, through the years, to lead him into certain truths slowly. A bit at a time. With plenty of time for reflection and adjustment in between revelations. This, of course, can be done without lying. I have nothing against lying. I have no trouble lying to people outside of the family.
It’s just that, in order to foil his outbreaks of stand-offishness, I’ve mastered the art of telling my own version of the truth in a way that makes lying unnecessary. A lie would be so much simpler, and quicker. Still, I feel better telling him the truth.
So I told him about it. Most of it. I told him about Silent Billy’s arrest, and I told him about getting Matt involved. I mentioned the police station, and I told him that when that was done, I’d backed off. Well, I had backed off. Yes. That was only yesterday, before I’d learned that Monty hadn’t been robbed.
“Lucy, that bullet . . .”
“Ummm.” That bullet, that bullet. Will I never hear the end of that bullet? I still have a painful reminder on my left buttock, which I’ve finally convinced everyone is my hip. Do I have to listen to reminders of that incident until the end of my days?
“. . . could’ve killed you.”
“Hamp, that’s over, long past. I stumbled into that mess with no idea how serious it had become. I’d never let myself get maneuvered into that kind of jeopardy again.” And that was the whole truth, by anyone’s most scrupulous standards. And I mean it. “That was so long ago.” Why doesn’t he just forget it?
“Not so long. Hardly seven years, Lucy. You’re so mulish. You think the whole world needs you to fix their lives for them. To take care of them. Well, people don’t need you running their lives. Give them a little room to work things out. Sometimes they’re better at it than you are.”
His shoulders slumped. He turned away from me.
He can’t believe that I like carrying this load! Sometimes I get tired of taking care of people. Truly tired. Sometimes, everyone I know needs help from me. And then most of them want me to tell them that it’s not putting me out of my way! That it’s nothing. What is the matter with him? Oh, Lord, what’s the matter with me? I do like getting into people’s lives. I like getting involved. I tuned him back in again.
“Take care of yourself, Lucy. Let the rest of the world go,” he said, over his shoulder.
Like who, Hamp? You? Is that what’s really on your mind? Do you want me to let you go? Is that what you need? Is that why you’ve been so standoffish lately? Something’s wrong around here, and I’m aggressive enough, finally, to go after it.
“What about you, Hamp? You’re a master at letting go. What are you up to? You’ve been keeping to yourself lately. What’s going on?”
There, I’d asked. That was the real issue here. Now it was out. Let the chips fall where they may. I could take it.
“Well,” he turned and said.
No. Wait a minute. Wait. Don’t tell me. No. Not yet. I don’t need to know just yet. We can wait another little while.
“It’s school, Lucy.”
“School?”
“They want me to retire.”
“Retire?”
“They want to dump me.”
“Dump you?” Is that what he’d been chewing on? “You’re not even sixty, Hamp. Never mind retirement age. You won’t be sixty till . . .”
“I know how old I am, Lucy. Age isn’t the issue. Getting dumped is the issue.”
“I don’t understand.”
“They want to dump us. Get rid of us old guys. Bring in some new blood. Pay them less, and feature the trendy stuff the new PhDs are bringing into the academic marketplace. They want style, Lucy. Forget substance, forget scientific research. Bring on the flash. Bring on the dancing girls.” His whole body slumped.
Well I’ll be damned. It was only comforting that he needed. I put my arm around his shoulder. He rested his hand on my old combat wound, his chin on the top of my head.
Retirement? What the hell’s the matter with those people? “We can work this out together, Hamp. You’ll love to be retired. You’ve been telling me for years all the things you’re going to do when you retire. You’re not old. You’re still young enough to do what you really want, and now you’ll have time to do the things you’d like to do for a change.” God, I wondered if we could handle it.
We stood like that a moment. He patted that old bullet wound. Then he began kneading gently, massaging the soreness away. Retirement? I must have sighed.
“Hurt?” he asked.
“No, just tired.”
“How tired are you?” he asked. He wiggled his eyebrows, in his bad impersonation of Groucho Marx. He’s so fair, and his movements so subtle, that his gestures resemble nothing so much as a man being surprised, very slowly, three times in a row. It does, however, send me a signal that he’s moved into a different mood.
“What did you have in mind, sailor?” My impersonation of a naughty lady.
“Nothing specific,” he said, dipping his chin down onto my shoulder and skimming his face along my throat. “We both need a rest. Why don’t we lie down and see what happens?”
I looked at him. Well, well, well. What have we here? Quite a recovery from moaning about being dumped. And then, as the next thought struck me, I could read the same realization dawning in his face. The house is empty! While we’d been standing there wasting time, reviewing the error of each other’s ways, the house was empty.
Without further conversation, we moved toward the bedroom. God, we could undress right here, and make a dash for it. We could even leave the bedroom door open if we wanted. Wow! Better not, though; someone might come back for a sweater or something. But, hey, we were alone.