Wreath (13 page)

“Your shift’s not over,” Faye said.

“I don’t work here anymore,” Wreath said. Her voice quivered the slightest bit.

Faye tried to imagine what might make Wreath admit she’d been wrong to quit. “If you had an ounce of pride, you’d give me enough notice to find someone to replace you.”

The doubt on her helper’s face intensified. “I … I’ve never had a paying job before,” the girl said. “I think it’d be better for both of us if I left today.”

“I didn’t peg you for a quitter.” Faye looked her straight in the eyes.

“I’m not a quitter.” Wreath practically spat the word
quitter
, her shoulders bowed back and a stubborn set to her chin.

Sensing victory, Faye went on. “You’ve hardly worked here a month. From where I stand, that looks like quitting.”

Tension hung in the air.

“Nothing I do pleases you,” Wreath said, but she set her pack on a nearby table.

Tapping into Wreath’s pride meant Faye would have to swallow her own pride, too. It was worth it.

Faye took a deep breath and plunged ahead, as though stepping out into oncoming traffic. “I’m not used to running a business. Truth is, up till about seven months ago, I rarely came in here.”

Wreath kept her distance. “What happened?” she asked. “Is your husband sick or something?”

“Or something,” Faye said, and Wreath shifted her head, the way she did when she was confused, like a blue jay considering a piece of bread on the sidewalk.

“Dead,” Faye continued. “Billy is dead. It’s been seven months today.” She had almost forgotten the girl was there. “He was well respected around town and honored with all the Chamber of Commerce awards possible.”

“That’s nice,” Wreath said, clearly unsure what she was supposed to do.

“No, it’s not,” Faye said. “Billy was no real businessman. Look at the prices on this not-so-fine furniture. Who in their right mind would pay for this stuff?”

The girl’s eyes got larger with every word, but Faye couldn’t stop. “I lied to you. I don’t have any inventory coming. I can’t even figure out what the new styles are, even if I did have money to pay for furniture.”

“I don’t want to quit,” Wreath said in such a hushed voice Faye could barely hear her. “I need a job. I hope you’ll take me back. I’m sorry for saying what I did.”

“The problem is, I can’t seem to think of enough to keep you busy,” Faye said. “The sweeping and all is good, but I need a handyman. This place is a wreck.”

“I’m strong. And I’m not afraid of heights. If you’ve got a ladder, I can change that lightbulb. I helped … help … my mother a lot around the house.”

“I don’t want you getting hurt. We’ll figure something out. Get back to your sweeping.”

“I’m sorry your husband died,” Wreath whispered before walking to the back. “That must really hurt.”

Faye sank down at the antique rolltop desk that Billy had despised, its top cluttered with overdue bills and an old-fashioned adding machine. Less than a year ago, she had trusted the business and all the details of her life to her husband of thirty-six years. While she had lived her life, he had lived his, comfortable and complacent. Their marriage had not prepared her for his heart attack, quick decline, and death—or the problems that suddenly had to be solved.

She looked to the back of the store where Wreath fished new spiderwebs out of a corner with the broom. Each of the teenager’s movements seemed intense and focused, and Faye thought for a second that the girl could do a better job running the store than she could. Something would have to be done, but she wasn’t sure what. At least Wreath could stay for now and keep it clean.

The familiar car slowed.

“Need a ride?” Clarice called.

“I’m good,” Wreath said and kept walking.

“I’d be glad to give you a lift,” she said. “Where you headed?”

“Nowhere,” Wreath said.

Faye turned up the radio. Now that she was a widow, she could listen to the country-and-western station, enjoying twangy tales of love and loss and cheating and hurt, music that Billy’d had no use for.

“My mama liked that song,” Wreath said, broom in hand, on her hands and knees, bringing out dirt and litter that had been there who knows how long.

“She doesn’t like it anymore?”

Two red splotches appeared on the girl’s cheeks. “I mean she
likes
it,” she said. “She loves country songs. She says they tell great stories, and she likes stories. Reading, too.”

Looking as though she’d just told a family secret, Wreath turned away and made a great show of dumping a dustpan into a trash sack she carried with her.

Faye liked her occasional chats with the girl. She preferred their calm conversation to the inane chatter of someone who had no intention of purchasing a dining room suite with a huge china cabinet and accompanying sideboard. However, she didn’t have to worry about silly customers, since not one person had come in during the two weeks since Wreath had almost quit.

Truth was, she wouldn’t go so far as to call the handful of lookers in the store
customers
. Some were bargain-hunters, certain she was desperate to unload her inventory; others thought she had a flea market; and a few were friends and neighbors stopping by to check on her.

She got up from the desk, sat down in a recliner with the weekly newspaper, and gazed at the monstrosity of a store. She looked at the big round clock on the wall, two feet in diameter, its old cord plugged in. She stared as the second hand slowly made its way around, a grinding sound marking the passage of one minute, then two. Faye did not know which she feared most—that no one would wander in or that someone might, that Wreath would leave or that she would stay.

The teen, looking clean and cute in a pair of out-of-style slacks and a knit blouse, put the broom back in the storeroom and opened the door onto the alley as though she had been doing it for years. As the girl brushed out the dust, a wasp zoomed down from its nest under the back eaves. Wreath swatted wildly at the insect before knocking it to the floor and smushing it with her shoe.

“You picked the wrong person to deal with today, mister,” the girl muttered. Faye knew the feeling all too well.

Faye wrestled with the heavy back door, wishing she could afford Wreath all day.

Annoyed at the thought, she jiggled the handle again. If that little squirt of a teenager could open it, she could. When it gave way, Faye practically flew out into the alley.

Caught between mortification and triumph, she looked around, wondering where the weeds came from and how so much trash had piled up. The only bright spot was a patch of black-eyed Susans that refused to give up, despite the heat. Something about them reminded her of Wreath.

The screen door of the garage apartment across the alley, part of the store property, creaked. Her tenant walked onto the landing, looked around, and went back in. Billy had mentioned that the woman was a good tenant. Other than that Faye knew little about her.

The young woman stepped back onto the porch, and Faye moved into the shadows near the store, watching.

Julia pretended not to notice her landlady, an aloof woman who seldom spoke and refused to do any repairs, in return for cheap rent, paid on time. Looking around the little porch for her running shoes, she felt like she was spying and went back in, glancing out the window. Mrs. Durham looked around the alley as though she’d never been there before.

Distracted from her search for the shoes, Julia walked over to the calendar she had drawn for summer, reluctant to mark the big
X
on the previous day. The days passed too fast, and she had canvases to paint, pottery to fire, training to do.

She scoured the tiny apartment, rewinding her memory to think where the shoes might be. Stopping to study her latest painting, still on the easel, she touched the canvas with a hesitant finger. An oil of a barn on the outskirts of town, it was framed in weathered wood from the falling-down building. The piece bored her.

She wondered what the customer would say if she offered an impressionistic pastel of the falling-down building instead. She had painted that one for fun, for herself, and she liked the way it looked hanging on her whitewashed plank wall.

Finding her shoes under the bed, next to a stack of other pieces of art, some finished, some abandoned midway, she got ready for her run. She was late and in a bad mood and felt an unreasonable resentment against her landlady. Must be nice to inherit a store like that and not have to work.

Julia dreaded the ongoing continuing education course that would occupy most of her day and hoped the run might wear her out enough to make the class bearable. If it hadn’t been required to keep her job as a teacher at Landry High, she would have skipped it.

In-service
, they called it on the official paperwork.
In-servant
was more like it. Why should she have to take a course, for no pay, during vacation?

Julia longed to spend her months off creating. She wanted to teach students how to create, wished she weren’t stuck in a social studies class. She finished lacing her shoes and jammed her hair under a cap, all the while wondering what was worse—a social studies class or the artistic taste of the people who hired her to do paintings. She stepped onto the landing and waved at Faye, who was still poking around the alley. Irritated at life in general and determined to make the woman acknowledge her, Julia spoke. “Morning, ma’am. How’s business?”

“Fine.” Faye made a show of inspecting the hinges on the old back door.

“Is it my imagination, or is it unusually hot?” As she spoke, Julia paused to water the hanging basket at the top of the stairs, a pot of wilting impatiens in pinks, oranges, and reds. Her landlady kept her back turned, and Julia tried to think of something else to say. She was in no mood for this woman to ignore her.

“Have a problem with the door?” she asked.

“The door?” Faye looked startled, all dressed up and standing in the alley, as though she’d been dropped off at the wrong place.

“The door there. Is it acting up again? Mr. Billy used to have problems with it.” She hadn’t known her landlord very well, but he was easier to deal with than his widow.

“He did?”

“All the time,” Julia said. “Sometimes he’d walk around the building to get out back. Said it wasn’t worth his trouble to get the darned thing open.”