There Was an Old Woman Read online

  “I’m Evie,” the girl told her.

  Eve. Now there was a name that didn’t go out of fashion. Not like Harriet. Or Freda. Mina had always been the only Mina anyone had heard of, except for every once in a while when vampires came back into fashion and people remembered the Mina who, despite Count Dracula’s attentions, had been saved and gotten married, as if that were preferable to an eternity of pure passion, forever and ever with no “death do us part.” Mina wondered where she’d put her copy of that book. She wouldn’t mind reading it again.

  “I had an older sister, too,” Mina said, and wondered why on God’s green earth she’d offered that up.

  “I didn’t know that.”

  Well, of course she didn’t. Annabelle had moved in with Mina a few years after the girls next door went off to college. Then—for what? Six years? No, eight—Mina and Annabelle been widowed sisters living in the house in which they’d grown up. And even with Annabelle gradually fading, like those early colored photographs in the album that lost their vividness even though they were rarely exposed to light, life was quite lovely really. So much simpler and less fractious without men around to make a mess and have opinions.

  Annabelle had been growing increasingly forgetful, even difficult at times, when the doctors confirmed their worst fear. Dementia. Progressive and unstoppable. Mina had been so determined to take care of her at home. All that changed a few years later when Mina was woken up in the middle of the night by a knock at the door. The nice young fellow who’d taken over running the store was standing on the step with his arm hooked in Annabelle’s, like he was escorting her home from a dance. Only instead of a prom gown, Annabelle was wearing her thin nightgown with a white lace collar. She was also barefoot, her toes blue with cold.

  Finn said he found Annabelle shivering on the store’s front steps. It was a miracle she hadn’t gotten lost, or worse.

  The next day, Mina had started looking into nursing homes. She found one that was just a twenty-minute drive away. Annabelle lasted there for two years more, finally succumbing to pneumonia. Mina was so grateful she’d been there when Annabelle passed, holding her hand.

  “Did you call my sister?” the girl asked, bringing Mina back to the present.

  “Yes. Your mother asked me to. She said to call Ginger and tell her . . . tell her . . .” Mina frowned. She had repeated the words Sandra Ferrante asked her to convey, over and over to herself. Written them down, even, on the same slip of paper where the EMT wrote Ginger’s phone number.

  But when she made the call, Ginger hadn’t been there. She’d called again and still no one answered. Mina usually refused to talk to machines—it made her feel ridiculous and unseemly—but she’d swallowed her distaste and left a message, telling Ginger that her mother had been taken off in an ambulance. She took so long explaining what happened that before she could repeat Sandra Ferrante’s message the phone gave a long, insulting bleat. Even Mina knew what that meant. Time had run out.

  Now she had no idea where she’d put that little piece of paper, and just as she’d known they would, Sandra’s words had slipped from her grasp.

  “Well, I’m sure your mother will tell you herself, won’t she? God bless her. How is she doing?”

  “I’m going over to the hospital later today.” The girl gave her a twisted, shaky smile. “I’m so sorry. Must be difficult living next door to all this.” She gave a helpless wave toward her mother’s house.

  “I try not to notice,” Mina said. The Ferrantes’ had never been House Beautiful, but lately it had become especially run-down. Though Mina often lost track of time, it seemed to her that it hadn’t been in nearly this appalling of a state even two or three months ago. No wonder the girl was chagrined.

  To make her feel better, Mina added, “Fortunately, if I take off my glasses, everything looks lovely. When you can’t see dirt, it makes cleaning so much simpler. Just like when you can’t see your own wrinkles.”

  The girl gave her a thin smile. In return, Mina offered a sympathetic cluck and added, “It must be overwhelming coming home to this.”

  “Completely. Honestly, I don’t know where to begin. I’ve been here all morning, and I’ve barely made a dent. I never thought it would be this bad.”

  The poor thing in her tight jeans and leather boots did seem spectacularly out of her element, like a prairie chicken washed up on Coney Island. Clearly she was overmatched to the task at hand. Well, who wouldn’t be?

  “I know you’re not asking for advice,” Mina said, “but that’s never stopped me from offering it. Take one thing at a time.” She poked her cane into the tall weeds that began just past her property line, pushing aside a tangle of knotweed and a burgeoning tree of heaven, then waded over to the girl. Reaching up and putting her hand on the girl’s shoulder, she said, “You know, anything looks less daunting after a sit-down and a nice cup of tea.”

  Chapter Eight

  Are you a good witch or a bad witch? Evie had been tempted to ask as she let herself be shepherded into Mrs. Yetner’s house. She and Ginger had always called Mrs. Yetner the white witch because of her white-white hair and skin the color of parchment. She still wore the same cat’s-eye glasses she had when Evie was younger, satiny-white plastic frames with a sprinkle of rhinestones at the corners. Now that vintage look had come back in style.

  Mrs. Yetner had been a severe presence who sucked in her cheeks and stared down her nose at any neighborhood kid who dared to mouth off to her. But she’d also been kind, in an unobtrusive way, except when Evie trampled her hydrangea and Shasta daisies en route to rescuing a soccer ball.

  But for all the years Mrs. Yetner had been their neighbor, Evie had never actually been inside her house. Now Evie looked around in awe at the spotless kitchen with its black-and-white checkerboard tiled floor, two-basin porcelain-over-cast-iron sink standing on legs, and pair of pale-green metal base cabinets with a matching rolltop bread box sitting on a white enamel countertop. Spatulas and spoons hung from hooks on the wall, all with wooden handles painted that same green. The utensils had the patina of old tools, used for so long that they bore the imprint of their owner’s hand. Evie felt as if she’d stepped into a 1920s time warp. These days people replaced their belongings long before any of them acquired the dignity of age.

  One of the few newish items in the room was a recycle bin, shoved against the wall and filled to the brim with neatly folded newspapers, cat food cans, and glass. Even Mrs. Yetner’s garbage was clean, Evie thought, recalling the abysmal mess at her mother’s house.

  Mrs. Yetner left her cane resting in a corner and picked up a kettle. Bright, mirror polished with a pair of brass cylinders over the spout, like mini organ pipes, it at least was not old. She tipped back the cylinders and filled the kettle with water, then set it on the front burner of a green-enamel stove. The stove’s white-and-chrome dials were spotless, as were the porthole windows in the oven’s two doors.

  A fluffy white cat brushed against Evie’s leg as Mrs. Yetner struck a match and lit a burner. There was no tick-tick-ticking like a modern gas stove, just a whoosh as the flame caught. Evie lifted the cat and buried her face in its warm back. The cat draped itself, languid and boneless in her arms, and purred like a wheezy truck engine.

  “Ivory doesn’t take to most folks,” Mrs. Yetner said. “Cats know their people.”

  “I never knew I was a cat person,” Evie said, setting the cat down. “How can I help?”

  Mrs. Yetner pointed to a wooden corner cabinet with glass doors. “There’s tea and china in there.” Her arm trembled and she glared at it, balling her hand into a fist and lowering it to her side. Evie noticed that she was wearing two wristwatches on her arm, and her fingers were gnarled like tree roots. “And there’s milk in the icebox.”

  Evie opened the cabinet. The shelves were lined with green-and-white shelf paper patterned like gingham, the edges cut with pinking shears. No pantry moth would dare take up residence in there.

  Tea bags were in
a mason jar on the bottom shelf. Evie unhinged the clamped lid and fished out two. From the shelf above, she took down a pair of delicate teacups and matching saucers, decorated with pink roses and blue forget-me-nots. So not dishwasher-safe. But then, as she realized when she looked around, there was no dishwasher.

  She set the cups and saucers carefully on the table and placed a tea bag in each cup. Inside the refrigerator, on a shelf lined with plastic wrap over paper towels, she found the milk and set it on the table, too.

  The teakettle went off, a strident three-tone cadence. Mrs. Yetner pulled it off the burner. She poured hot water in the cups and settled in a chair at the table.

  “This kitchen is amazing,” Evie said. “That wonderful old stove. The floor. Do you know how special it is to find a period kitchen so intact? In fact, this whole house . . .” Evie’s gaze traveled past the kitchen’s arched doorway, through to the narrow dining room, and on to the living room with windows looking out over the water. The footprint and floor plan of the house were identical to her mother’s, and yet it felt utterly different with its mahogany paneling and thick cove moldings that belonged more in a manor house than in what had started out as a beach cottage.

  “Go ahead,” Mrs. Yetner said. “Have a look around. The tea needs to steep, anyway.”

  Evie got up and walked through, pausing to touch one of the fluted columns mounted on a half wall separating the dining room from the living room. A memory flickered. Before the fire, her parents’ house had had columns separating the rooms, too, only theirs had been plainer, not topped with these Doric scrolls—volutes, to use the technical term.

  Mrs. Yetner followed as Evie walked to the fireplace in the living room and ran her hand across the cool, voluptuously carved marble mantel. “This is so lovely,” she said. Her parents’ fireplace surround was plain brick that someone, in a misguided effort at redecorating, had painted fire-engine red.

  “My father salvaged that from a mansion in Manhattan,” Mrs. Yetner said. “But it’s far too grand for this house, don’t you think?”

  “Your father was a builder?” Evie asked.

  “He was. And a businessman. And an attorney. That’s him,” Mrs. Yetner said, indicating a framed sepia family portrait on the mantel. “Thomas Higgs.”

  “Higgs?” Evie asked. “As in Higgs Point?”

  Mrs. Yetner smiled and nodded.

  Evie examined the photograph. A man in a suit and tie was seated before the same marble mantel, his slim, severe wife standing behind him. Two children, little girls maybe six and eight, stood rigid and unsmiling beside him. Only the baby sitting in the father’s lap, wearing a long white dress and holding an old-fashioned carpenter’s plane, seemed at all happy to be there.

  “That’s me.” Mrs. Yetner pointed to the smaller of the two girls. “And that’s my sister, Annabelle. The little one in my father’s lap, that’s my brother.”

  Alongside other pictures on the mantel were an oyster shell and the dark, leathery, helmetlike shell of a horseshoe crab. Propped up at the other end was a small white plate with a decal of the Coney Island Parachute Jump. Beside it was a metal paperweight of the Trylon and Perisphere from the 1939 World’s Fair.

  But the keepsake that caught Evie’s eye was a metal miniature of the Empire State Building. Evie picked it up. From its silhouette, Evie realized it had to be old. Its top was stubby, the way the building had looked in the 1930s before its owners abandoned the fantasy that gigantic, cigar-shaped dirigibles could come nose to nose with its mooring mast and disembark passengers onto a gangplank more than a thousand feet in the air.

  “You must have gotten this a very long time ago,” Evie said.

  Mrs. Yetner blinked, and for a few seconds she seemed at a loss for words. She picked up another framed photograph from the mantel. “This is me and Annabelle again. A little bit older.”

  Evie looked closely. Two young girls stood barefoot on a beach. Their long skirts and the scarves on their heads were being whipped around by the wind. Each had her arm around the other’s waist.

  “Which beach is this?” Evie asked.

  “Right down the street, if you can believe it. There used to be a beach there. Saltwater meets freshwater. It was lovely for swimming.”

  Mrs. Yetner put the photograph back. Evie was still holding the little replica of the Empire State Building. Cast out of pot metal, what must once have been crisp details now blurred and melted, almost like candle wax. When she looked up, Mrs. Yetner was staring at it, too.

  “I used to work there,” Mrs. Yetner said.

  “Really?”

  “I bought that the day I interviewed for the job. Kept it because I thought it brought me good luck.” There was something in Mrs. Yetner’s expression that Evie couldn’t read.

  “When was that?”

  “Oh, my, who remembers?” She gave a vague wave. “End of the war.”

  “I ask because I work at the Historical Society, and we’re mounting an exhibit about some of New York’s great fires. And one of them was when a World War II bomber crashed into the building. That was back when the building looked like this.” Evie held out the souvenir. She went on, trying not to sound too excited. “So of course I’m wondering if it’s at all possible that you were working there when . . .”

  She was interrupted by the doorbell. Mrs. Yetner turned sharply, her eyes wide. There was a sharp rat-tat-tat, then a man’s voice. “Aunt Mina?”

  Mrs. Yetner turned back to Evie. She plucked the little statue from Evie’s palm and dropped it into her own pocket. “Would you mind getting that?” she said, adjusting her pearls and smoothing her sweater. “Sounds like my nephew has arrived.”

  Chapter Nine

  Mina didn’t like where the girl’s questions were going, not one bit. So for a change she was happy to hear Brian’s voice. He’d told her he was coming by Saturday. That was today. But, as usual, he hadn’t bothered to say when exactly he was going to show up. He never stayed for tea unless he was trying to pitch one of his can’t-miss schemes.

  Once he’d tried to get her to invest in vitamins. Another deal had involved leasing oil rights in Namibia. Namibia, for goodness’ sake! When she’d questioned him about it, he didn’t seem to know where the country was, aside from “somewhere in Africa.” Now he was on and on about some real estate scheme. She usually tossed Brian some sort of bone to get him out of her hair.

  As the girl went to get the door, Mina scuttled into the living room. Where had he left those papers he’d wanted her to look at? Sure enough, there they were, under today’s newspaper on the lamp table.

  She heard the front door open. A pause. Then, “Well, hello there.” Brian’s deep sonorous voice. “And who are you?”

  “Just a neighbor. My mother lives next door.”

  Brian was always at her about how forgetful she was becoming, so the last thing she wanted was for him to come through and find the papers she’d promised to read sitting exactly where he’d left them. Mina tried to stuff the papers into the drawer of the mahogany coffee table, but they wouldn’t fit.

  “Really?” Brian said. A long pause. “Your mother lives in that house?”

  Longer pause before the girl said, “Your aunt is in the living room, waiting for you.”

  Mina was glad that the poor girl didn’t think she needed to apologize for the state of her mother’s house. Certainly not to Brian. She shoved the papers under a sofa cushion, then she sat on it and pulled the crocheted afghan over her. Ivory jumped into her lap and started to purr.

  Seconds later, Brian stomped in from the kitchen. “Hello, Aunt Mina.”

  As he started toward her, Ivory gave a yowl and disappeared under the couch.

  Brian had always been on the scrawny side, but in his forties he’d turned portly and thickened in the jowls. Nearly sixty now, he still had that shock of wavy hair, only instead of auburn it was nearly black. When men colored their hair, they always made it too dark. Like shoe polish.

  At le
ast he was predictable, you could say that for him. Always favored double-breasted jackets with brass buttons and cordovan leather loafers, like what he had on now. But fine feathers didn’t make fine birds.

  “Did you at least look at the agreement?” he said, not bothering with Hello or How are you today?

  “Shouldn’t you be at work?” Mina said, giving him a bland look and adjusting the afghan around her.

  He looked back at her with that lethal combination of exasperation and bemused contempt. “It’s Saturday. I don’t work weekends, remember? And I told you I was coming over.” He shot his cuffs before folding his arms and narrowing his eyes at her. “You do remember, I told you I was coming back?”

  Of course she remembered. But she’d long ago learned that with Brian, evasion worked out better than engagement. “I must have forgotten to write it on my calendar.”

  Mina heard water running in the kitchen and the tink of bone china. The girl was washing up. She seemed awfully sweet, but Mina hoped she’d be careful. That gold-rimmed service that once belonged to her mother had only a few cracks and a single chip.

  “So did you look at the papers I left?” Brian asked.

  “Button your shirt, Brian,” Mina said. “And don’t you think you should be wearing socks?”

  “Do you even still have them?” Brian asked.

  “I’m sure they’re here.” Mina waved a vague hand, a gesture her mother had perfected to avoid answering inconvenient questions. “Somewhere.”

  The water stopped running, and the old pipes thunked. A moment later the girl peered into the room from behind Brian. She was holding a dish towel. “I’d better be going,” she said. She snapped the towel and folded it smartly.

  Mina pushed the afghan off her lap and started to get up.

  “Don’t bother. I can let myself out,” the girl said.

  “It’s no bother,” Mina said, following the girl out and pointedly ignoring Brian.

  At the door, the girl turned to face her. “Would you mind if I came back another time? You see, I was starting to tell you about my work for the Historical Society. We’re mounting a new exhibit, and I’d love to talk to you some more about what it was like, working in the Empire State Building back then. That’s when the plane hit the building. We have surprisingly few first-person accounts.”