When my mother-in-law learned
she had three months to live, my wife Mallie acquired some fine
collectibles. The old dragon was so afraid no one would attend her
funeral, she tore her cellar apart and started doling out all the
loot she had stashed over the years.
Her imperial summons brought Mallie
and me to her cluttered basement, where we shivered and sneezed
in a dank, musty room unwrapping crinkly, crumbly newspaper that
smudged our fingers with ink. The items we uncovered surprised us.
The old girl's hoard contained a wealth of lovely things that begged
to be displayed and admired. Mallie managed to rescue some of the
most valuable pieces, a collection of porcelain figurines among
them. Despite the circumstances—or perhaps because of them—her
mother's unprecedented benevolence thrilled her.
Her parents' divorce some years before
had been ugly, and no big surprise. Still, learning at the age of
twenty-seven that she had been a love child had been a shock for
Mallie, one that nearly spoiled the joy of moving into our first
home. We never did bother asking anyone the true date of her parents'
wedding anniversary. Mallie didn't care anymore, and I had more
immediate concerns.
"Where did the owner die?" I
asked the realtor when we first saw the wonderful old house.
Now let's set things straight
here. I don't believe in ghosts, but the idea of the previous owner
passing away on the premises disturbed me. The realtor assured me,
however, that Mrs. Betley had gone to her final reward from a nursing
home. With a sigh of relief, I caught up with Mallie, who was wandering
through empty bedrooms that smelled like my grandfather's attic
with our year-old son in her arms and a dreamy look in her big,
blue eyes. I could practically hear that imagination of hers revving
into overdrive.
"Can we afford it, Tom?"
she whispered, though she might as well have shouted "this
is the one!"
We could easily afford it, though
I had no desire to live in a place so run-down that months, even
years of cleaning, painting, and renovating would devour all our
time.
"I'm not sure, hon," I said.
"Let me think about the figures." Instead, I started thinking
of ways to extinguish those sparks of excitement before they blazed
into the red-hot enthusiasm I could never resist.
We had been house hunting all spring,
and had zeroed in on a neighborhood of century-old homes whose residents
seemed a friendly mix of young families and retirees. The bigger
houses were not for first-time buyers, though we thought we could
swing one of the smaller ones. When the realtor mentioned Mrs. Betley's
king-size place, I saw no point in looking at—and then he told
us the seller had just dropped the price.
The house had been on the market for
months. Closed up during Mrs. Betley's last days, it had grown mustier
by the minute while the probate court settled her estate. Cobwebs
lurked in every corner. Weeds flourished in the gardens; broken
branches littered the neglected lawn. Mrs. Betley's heirs didn't
want the place, and I got goose bumps wondering why. Still, Mallie's
high spirits conspired with my own visions of family bliss to convince
me that Mrs. Betley's house would be a wonderful home for our son
and the child we would have by Christmas. The price was right, the
bank approved the mortgage, and a month later we signed the papers
and moved in.
I had to admit the place was a diamond
in the rough. Though nothing had been touched for decades, I could
picture how it all must have looked brand-new. Hidden closets and
stained-glass windows gave the place character. The unpainted gumwood
and built-in cabinets in the living room and dining room were a
treasure. Sooty squares on peeling wallpaper where paintings once
hung were not, nor were the outdated heating, plumbing and electrical
systems. Mallie and I were young and willing, however, and I liked
to think I was good at fixing things.
The day after we moved in, my parents
appeared and started cleaning everything. Mallie's dad popped in
and offered to help strip wallpaper. Her mother came by to see what
she could have.
After everyone went home and the baby
was in bed for the night, Mallie and I sat in the kitchen sharing
a pot of fresh coffee. She had slipped into one of those quiet moods
her mother's visits, infrequent though they were, always brought
on. I reached across the table and squeezed her hand.
"Penny for your thoughts, hon."
She gave me a tired smile and stirred
cream into her cup. "It almost feels like Mrs. Betley is still
here, Tom. Like we're living in her house instead of ours."
I smiled back and handed her the sugar
bowl. "I don't believe in ghosts, Mal. It will feel more like
ours once we get some paint and paper in the place."
"I wasn't complaining,"
she said with a mischievous gleam in her eyes. "She seems friendly,
and I enjoy her company."
More goose bumps, though this time
they were surely from drinking hot coffee too fast. Mallie's strained
relationship with her mother had her pretending that Mrs. Betley
had stayed on to be her friend, that's all. At least I hoped she
was pretending.
Snuggling my coffee mug in my hands,
I studied the antique kitchen. Open shelving covered chipped walls
that ran down to a red and black checkerboard of cracked linoleum.
The ancient electric stove would have to go, but I had fallen in
love with the butler's pantry and its swinging doors. I thought
I understood why Mrs. Betley hadn't moved from the enchanting old
place for more than sixty years—and I soon began to suspect
that she was still around.
The laundry room was in the cellar,
where a sump pump fought the damp air and handmade shelves housed
those effects of Mrs. Betley's that her next of kin hadn't claimed:
an antique kettle, an outdated toaster, a broken shovel and rusty
wheelbarrow, and several mysterious items wrapped in crinkly, crumbly
newspaper. Upstairs, her heirs had left a forlorn chair, a rickety
table, and a dining room set so battered no charity wanted it. We
had never had a dining room, and opted to use Mrs. Betley's vintage
set until we could afford a new one.
That was the first hint.
The second came soon after, on a sunny
day in May. The baby was napping, and my folks and my father-in-law
were sanding and scraping in the living room. I offered to fetch
a round of cold drinks, and happened to glance out the kitchen window
to see Mallie poking around in the yard with Mrs. Betley's broken
shovel. I had thought she was upstairs, and couldn't imagine what
she might be doing in that overgrown jungle, unless she was planning
to burn it.
"There are gardens out there,
Tom," she told me later. "Some sort of plants are growing
in the weeds."
Her fingernails were black and broken,
but she was grinning. I could hear that revving sound again.
"Should pregnant people be
digging?" I asked.
Her gentle chuckle reminded me of
the streetcar bells in the old neighborhood where I grew up. "Don't
be silly," she said. "I'm fine."
"How can you tell a weed from
a plant anyway? You've never gardened before."
"Sure I have. When I was little,
I belonged to a program that bused city kids to a farm in the country.
We learned lots about gardening."
Those childhood outings had influenced
her more than I would have believed. Her chattering about ripping
away weeds to save the lives of choking plants offered a glimpse
of the child she had been. Her eyes lit up when she described how
she brought vegetables home in burlap bags—until she remembered
how her mother always scolded her because so-and-so's bag was heavier
than hers.
Though I didn't like it, I had grown
used to the way memories of her mother's cutting words would send
her to a place I couldn't reach. Each time it happened, I would
have to wait until she came back on her own, and every time I cursed
her mother.
Early the next morning, she was outside
again, tearing at the weeds with a vengeance. Through the open window,
I watched her father's pickup truck pull into the driveway. He hopped
out and loped across the yard to the shady spot where she was digging
to a symphony of birdsong.
"What are you doing, Mallie?"
he called, and tapped dried mud from her nose when he reached her.
"You're a city kid, not a farmer."
Her voice echoed back to me: "I'm
planing herbs, Dad," she said. "And I'm going to plant
flowers. It's going to look like the garden in the park when I'm
done."
He didn't ridicule, as her mother
would have done, but chatted for a moment and left. An hour later
he returned with a variety of garden tools: rake, hoe, cultivator,
and assorted thingamajigs—but no shovel. He had seen Mrs. Betley's
shovel, and being a city kid himself, didn't realize it was only
two steps up from useless.
"What's all this, Dad?"
she asked.
"A housewarming present,"
he said. "I want to help."
Those blue eyes bugged. From clear
across the yard I could see the plans whirling in her head. She
hugged him, and they came to the kitchen for coffee and tea.
My father-in-law is a tea drinker,
and Mallie loved fixing him a perfect cup. But when she took the
tea kettle that had been a wedding gift from my grandparents to
the kitchen sink and filled it, the handle fell apart.
"Oh, no!" she cried. "Could
you get the one in the basement, Tom?"
I went down and brought up Mrs. Betley's
archaic kettle. The goose bumps were back.
What was going on here? Two days before,
our toaster, also a wedding gift, had short-circuited. Mrs. Betley's
antiquated toaster now sat on the counter. Her toaster, her dining
room set, her shovel and wheelbarrow, and now her kettle?
Somehow Mallie had guessed what I
was thinking. "What's wrong, Tom?" she asked. "You
don't really believe there's a ghost in the house, do you?"
"Of course not," I said,
and laughed—and wondered.
Mallie started spending more and more
time in the yard. At first I thought it was because summer had arrived
and the weather was gorgeous.
"Mrs. Betley would have wanted
me to restore the gardens," she said when I told her she was
working too hard. She seemed desperate to add some beauty to her
life, so I went along with it. The parade of grit, sweat, and muddy
gloves seemed never-ending. For months, she worked hard in those
gardens.
For years.
Our toddlers always managed to knock
over the rusty wheelbarrow right after she filled it with peat moss
and manure. The little league mothers came by to admire the peonies
and roses. The basketball team asked for flowers for their girlfriends.
And all the kids wanted their prom and graduation pictures taken
in our yard.
Mallie created her beautiful world.
It still needs weeding, though not nearly as much as it once did.
Her mother's three-month prognosis changed everything.
The kids were away at college when
we freed those doodads from the old girl's basement and set them
in the china closet in the dining room. Those little porcelain swans
and vases, while not especially valuable, connected something priceless
between Mallie and her mother.
Her mother is still with us, though
she's confined to a wheelchair, and doesn't remember much. She's
much less abrasive now, more like fine sandpaper than sharkskin.
I have to feel sorry for her. I know Mallie does.
Mallie seldom mentions Mrs. Betley
these days. She's already bought a new tea kettle and toaster to
replace the old ones we've been using all these years. And at long
last, she ordered a new dining room set to better display her little
knickknacks. I was all for it, though I couldn't resist a little
jab.
"Won't Mrs. Betley be offended
if we get a new dining room set?"
"Come on, Tom," she said.
"You know I never really believed she was here."
Neither did I, but when Mallie brought
those figurines home and set them in the china closet, I swear a
gentle voice whispered "goodbye."
