With their son they were a bit stricter. Tony disciplined Marc with a firm hand, insisting he behave, and although it was not a buddy-buddy relationship. they shared many interests. Both were avid baseball card collectors; Tony went on weekend outings with Marc’s Boy Scout troop; they put model rockets together and fired them from a hill in back of the house. Tony couldn’t forget the gap left when his own father had deserted his family, but instead of harboring resentment, Tony worked to be the kind of father he wished he’d had.
Shelby, on the other hand, was her father’s girl, and there was little discipline involved. Like her mother she had a sweet disposition. She was a pretty child who had blossomed into a beautiful creature that her father adored. Occasionally Shelby called her father at work to check in and to let him know she loved him. During Dodie’s illness Shelby had taken on many responsibilities around the house and developed a seriousness and sensitivity unusual at such a young age.
Tony got downstairs just in time for Shelby to kiss him on the cheek and call, “love you,” directed at all of them as she went out the door to catch the school bus, which stopped in front of their house.
“You want to take some Christmas cookies for your friends, Marc?” Dodie had baked dozens of fancy bars and cookies for the neighborhood cookie exchange she hosted on Monday night. Marc asked for the plain sugar ones. She wrapped up a bunch of cookies and put them inside his knapsack.
Marc was a kid who liked to be neat. He wore the usual jeans with preppy shirts, not the neon-colored sweatshirts that were the latest rage at school. And he liked his hair cut short. This morning he was more keyed up than usual. He and his friend Michael Mazza had written a skit for their sixth-grade English project and were performing and videotaping it that day. He hurried out the kitchen door to the garage to find some rope they planned to use as a prop for “The Grammar Round-up.” He and Michael met while on the same hockey team the previous year and had become good friends since landing in the same homeroom at DeWitt Middle School in September. Both ran in the election to represent their homeroom at student council. Marc won (giving “the speech of my life,” he later told his mother) and Michael came in second. Marc, however, decided they would share the responsibility equally.
That morning Marc had just enough time to take Annie for her walk—more like a run—around the house before the school bus came. This was a regular chore for Marc twice a day in the winter, when it was too cold to keep Annie outside. Annie pulled on the leash that morning as she always did; the invigorating cold air made her run like a pup.
Walking back inside the house, his cheeks pink from the cold, Marc gave his mother a quick hug, patted his father on the shoulder as he sat at the table, and ate a bit of cereal. Too excited to finish, he said, “See you guys later.” He ran out the front door to catch the bus.
Dodie sat down at the kitchen table with her cup of tea. Although she never drank coffee, she made a two-cup pot of brewed coffee for Tony every morning. That morning he sat sipping it slowly. It was one pleasure he had no intention of giving up. His breakfast of a high-fiber cereal and wheat toast or bagel was a far cry from what he really liked and used to eat for breakfast—bacon or sausage and eggs sunny-side up. On the weekends he splurged a bit with waffles or pancakes—no longer soaked in butter.
“I’m going to deposit all this cash I have from the shop when I’m out on errands today. The Grey Goose will just have to operate on its own for a little while,” Dodie said as she refilled Tony’s mug.
Tony tried not to worry about the huge amount of money they had put into Dodie’s shop. The Grey Goose had cost them twenty-three thousand dollars to build; it would be a long time before they would recoup their investment, if ever. Their assets had always been tied up in real estate, so much so that only recently they bought their first new living room furniture. They had lived with used pieces that Dodie refinished or antiques she bought at a bargain because he felt so anxious about having invested so much cash in the store.
Keeping financial records wasn’t something Dodie liked to do or did very well, so Tony kept track of the money. He usually gave her a check for two or three hundred dollars on Monday for household expenses, the amount depending on what was coming up that week. This eliminated the need for a checkbook and spared Dodie the temptation to spend the shop’s income. At the beginning of each week she carried a wad of bills in her wallet or pants’ pocket. By week’s end she was cash poor. That morning Tony made out a six-hundred-dollar check and gave it to her to cover the weekend’s holiday expenses.
It was a busy time of year at the Grey Goose. Many shoppers came for her country-style gifts: straw wreaths and woodcut wall ornaments that she made, decorative mailboxes and tree ornaments. The shop was filled with items on consignment from friends or crafts people Dodie met at fairs or through contacts at other shops in the area.
Dodie’s father had built the two-level shop in the same saltbox style in wood clapboard that Dodie designed for the house after she studied design magazines and got ideas from visits to gift shops around central New York. It was important to her that she do the thing right, so there was no detail left to chance. Dodie wanted the shop to be a short walking distance to the house, but not close enougli to disturb the peaceful ambiance she carefully planned for their dream home. Fifty yards separated the two buildings.
Flair and talent were attributes Dodie had—her house resembling a Norman Rockwell painting, inside and out. She used geese as her decorating theme; a white wooden goose that she had designed and painted stood next to the mailbox to advertise her shop, and other cutouts of geese in various sizes and colors were on the wall or on kitchen shelves among her pewter mug collection. Country antiques and other homemade decorative items filled the house. Rusty old kitchen utensils and an ancient frying pan hung on the family room wall.
She fell in love with the country style when they lived in a Marietta subdivision. The dark wood-frame houses, modernized log or mountain cabins set in pine woods landscaping, looked like the country in an area a few miles from interstate highways and metropolitan Atlanta. This was the time when decorative, “homemade” country items were starting to be popular.
Although the shop was important to Dodie, she refused to be a slave to it. Occasionally the door to the Grey Goose was left unlocked with a note on the door inviting guests to browse and stating the approximate time she would return.
“I’m just going over to the store for a few minutes, Tony, wait for me,” she said, smiling at Tony. He nodded. She quickly walked to the store.
Dodie wanted to keep the shop open for last-minute shoppers that day, but with the cold weather, she knew the wood stove wouldn’t keep the rooms warm enough to stay in there for long stretches. She decided to leave the door unlocked in the morning while she was home. She had so many things to do. She wanted to make phone calls to Tony’s old friends in Syracuse and invite them for his fortieth birthday party next week, and she needed to start getting ready for all their Syracuse relatives, who were spending Christmas day with them. There was major food shopping to do, and she had to clean the house and do more baking, not to mention picking up some last-minute gifts and finishing the present wrapping.
Getting back home she opened the front door and called, “Hello.” Her husband returned the greeting. The wreath she had made with evergreen branches and red ribbon hung on the door, and shiny wrapped boxes lay in an antique sleigh on the snow-covered lawn. As she stepped inside, she smiled. The spruce Christinas tree they had cut down from the woods in back was decorated with ornaments that she and the children had made; a red velvet bow was tied with green sprays to the staircase. Dodie’s decorations were meaningful expressions of her dedication to family life. They gave the children the feeling of having contributed to the holiday. As she sat down again with Tony, she looked around at the lived-in house where kids and their friends ran in and out or messed up the kitchen making cookies,