Come on up to Mama’s table,
If you’re hungry or you’re cold,
If you’ve got too many mouths to feed
Or if you’re growing old.
She’ll shelter and she’ll feed you,
She’ll have a hug to greet you.
You’ll always feel real welcome
At my Mama’s kitchen door.
The pencil got a chew. Oops, “have a hug to greet you” should come before the “shelter” part. At this point, the tune didn’t concern her. Maybe a music student from Shield could compose the score.
Startled by the sudden lights of a car, Belle spilt the coffee on her coat. As usual, she had forgotten a napkin, so she dabbed at the liquid with a tampon from the glove compartment.
Out of a battered Escort struggled a woman trailing three small children, one of them bawling like a frustrated weanling. “You must be Ms. Palmer,” the woman shouted as Belle rolled down a window. “Sorry for the delay. I had to go to the lawyer’s in town, and then all the kids wanted hamburgers. Come in and make yourself comfortable. I’ll settle them in the rec room while we talk.” She hefted the screamer over her shoulder like a sack of potatoes, cooing and patting it for good measure.
“Do you mind if I look around upstairs first, Mrs. Mainville?” Belle asked. “It might save us some time, and you look like you’ve had a tough day.” Nothing like womanly understanding.
“Call me Joan,” the woman answered with a smile as she hustled the kids down the basement stairs.
Conventional suburban living with a country advantage: three bedrooms, newish kitchen, dining room in name only, living room with a view overlooking a pasture. Big yard for children. Too bad someone had sparkle-plastered the living room ceiling and installed red shag carpet half-way up the wall. It suggested a planetarium designed by Hugh Hefner. After making notes, Belle joined her client downstairs where Barney was mumbling mindless platitudes as the kids giggled. Both women winced at the numbing chorus. “I hate it, too, but what can you do?” Joan said.
“Better than violence . . . or is it?” Belle replied. “All kiddie shows should carry a warning sign.”
Joan took her into the laundry room to point out with shy pride an amply-stocked cold cellar. “I’m a fool for canning,” she said. “Don’t know how I’m going to take all of this to Mom’s, though.” Here sat the winter wealth of resourceful Northerners, jars of pickled beans, carrots and beets, and the inevitable green tomato chow, an innovative answer to a short growing season. “Guess my neighbours might like them.” The spotless jars and shelves pleased Belle, since a clean place always showed better, and she found herself accepting a jar of chow. Amenable to suggestions about the value of neutral colours, Joan waved a cheerful goodbye. Somehow Belle couldn’t mention the crimson carpeted wall; maybe if the place didn’t sell quickly . . .
Back home, she noticed the blinking light on her answering machine. A female voice spoke softly but deliberately. “My name is Melanie Koslow, Miss Palmer. I was engaged to Jim. I need to talk to you about the accident . . . in person if you have time. My schedule’s pretty full with my nursing course, but I’m usually at Tim Horton’s on Regent Street before class every morning at eight. Just look for a red wizard hat and pile of books. If those times aren’t good for you, call me at 233-4566 at the Shield Nursing Residence.”
Abruptly, her mind returned to Jim, the hand in the frozen lake and the the accident that—just maybe—wasn’t.
Later, as the moon circled the house, Belle curled up with a book, trailing Dave Robichaux through the bordellos of sultry New Orleans. The book snapped shut at eleven, and Belle fingered the light switch. A churchgoer only as a child, she maintained a cautious belief in a personally-designed afterlife. Prayers were a convenient method to take stock of the day and remember old friends. No one had ever answered her calls, and, while this silence perturbed her at first, in the long run it was saner. A premonition about not getting on a certain plane to Buenos Aires was fine; constant suggestions and recriminations from the other world would be not only distracting but might send the listener to a madhouse. So she maintained a one-way conversation with Uncle Harold, her grandparents and her mother, imagining a host of patient advocates nodding and blessing her each night. “Help me take good care of the old man, Mother,” she asked, gazing up at a framed silhouette of someone her own age “and keep us safe from all harm.” Somehow she just couldn’t call on Jim. Not yet.
FOUR
Though she opposed new development on Wapiti out of principles both selfish and unselfish, Belle had no objection to trading in established properties, in this case, a large piece by the marina. The original owner had bought cheap, tacked up a small camp and outbuildings, then squatted on it for decades, paying only minimal taxes. Then about twenty years ago, as lakefront grew scarce, land values had started to climb. The price had risen to 95K for each of three lots in the last hot market. Why Julia Kraav wanted to purchase all three properties was a puzzle. Perhaps she had a big family.
In order not to waste time and effort, Belle had vetted her client as carefully as the law allowed. The older woman had been almost embarrassingly frank in disclosing her financial assets. Not only a fine brick home on York Street but over 700K in rock-solid investments. How had the Kraavs saved so much, the husband a Sudbury Transit driver and the wife a salesclerk? Then Julia had described their life plan: no kids, a tiny house shared with her parents, every cent banked, the last ten years in GIC’s when the rates hit double-figures. A year of retirement and Tomas had died of liver cancer, she had added with bitterness. “Congenital heart disease killed all of my family before fifty-five. And here I am, alive and kicking after two operations, and my darling man is gone. Life is not rational.”
As Belle rolled down the driveway, she wondered if Julia were intending to sell her house as well; if so, the broker’s commission would be impressive. The open garage beside the house held trailers with a Seadoo and a 40 horse bass boat, strange toys for an elderly woman without children. A fancy Jeep Cherokee with leather interior was parked in the drive, its fender suspiciously creased. Evidence of costly landscaping peeked from the snow: new tie beds and pink crushed stone as expensive as marble. Life-size bronze statues of a doe feeding and a buck boasting ten-point antlers graced the front lawn. A hedge of small cedars from the walkway to the house gave way to a row of six-foot junipers. Belle had priced one of those charmers before shouldering her shovel and heading to the bush for a handy pine.
As she stepped up to the porch, Belle peered into every Northerner’s dream: a Florida room containing a hot tub, heavy-leaved tropical plants, and floor-to-ceiling glass, probably low-E, which regulated the heat transfer for efficiency. What a spa. Take a trip and never leave the farm. Suddenly she wished that she and Julia were better friends. Answering Belle’s knock at the stained glass door, her client stood in a velvet morning gown. “Come in, dear. I’ve been expecting you.” Even thinner than when Belle had last seen her, Julia glittered with feverish excitement, massaging her tiny hands, a blinding diamond on the ring finger. “I have such plans!” A younger look-a-like, conservatively dressed in jeans and silk blouse, sat on the couch, twisting the tassel of a pillow; she was introduced as Emily, a “baby” sister, and her eyes were afraid.
“I have been in touch with Mr. Converse,” Belle said as Julia took her coat and showed her to a wing chair. “He is willing to offer all three adjoining properties as a package for $70,000 each. That’s quite a drop, but winter is a bad time for cottage lots. Nobody wants to buy what they can’t use immediately. A bargain for you, though.”
Pacing back and forth, the woman beamed as she waved a double checkbook. “I can give you the money now.