On Turpentine Lane(68)

Mrs. Pepperdine dabbed her mouth with her pink linen napkin. It didn’t hide the fact that we’d finally made her smile.





41





It Never Snows in Maui


DID I OWN my house or not? By meal’s end, I felt as if every question Mrs. Pepperdine asked, and every look she bestowed, suggested that I shouldn’t get too comfortable in any one of my five unprepossessing rooms.

The minute we got home, despite the hour, I called my lawyer and left a worried message. Was she sure that Theresa Tindle, apparently neither a beneficiary nor the executrix of her mother’s estate due to her mother’s being quite alive, had the right to sell me my house? We had a title search, correct? Wouldn’t that have told the tale?

After a few more hours of my wondering aloud who’d be suing me and how much it would cost, Nick asked, “Why not call Theresa? It’s only afternoon in Hawaii. Ask her outright. Did she or did she not have the right to sell you this house?”

Theresa answered on the first ring, and after I’d identified myself once, twice, she said, “Can you speak up? The TV’s on.”

Wasn’t turning the damn thing off the polite thing to do? But then I heard a male voice talking in a professional manner about weather. Very bad weather. He was a meteorologist, predicting more snow, saying next that the barometric pressure was dropping and the snow would start around midnight, that the mayor had already canceled school, all schools, all day tomorrow and the next day, too.

That was our weather, our prediction: eight to ten inches’ worth. And I knew that sonorous voice. I left the bed with phone in hand, turned on the TV across the hall, flipped through the local channels on mute until the veteran steady-Eddie Boston weatherman Micky Medina was mouthing the exact words I was hearing through my phone.

I said, “Theresa . . . um. I have the same TV station on.”

Had she heard me? Did that register as the accusation I intended it to be?

“Channel seven here,” she said, all innocence, followed by silence—from her and her TV.

Nick had left the bed and was now standing next to me, looking puzzled. I held up one finger. Watch me; Perry Mason in action.

I said to Theresa, “I was originally calling with a question about ownership of my house; whether you sold it to me free and clear, i.e., did you have power of attorney? But now I have another question . . .” For drama, for the audience at my side, I waited a beat before asking, “Where are you?”

“You mean this minute?”

I said, “Yes, I mean this minute.”

“In my bedroom.”

“Where? What state?”

“Hawaii! Like always. Oh . . . were you wondering because of my area code? I never changed my cell phone number.”

I’d given no previous thought to her Massachusetts area code, never questioned it since Nick’s was still 603 and mine the old 917.

“You’re sticking to your Maui story?” I asked.

“Are you calling me a liar?”

Oh, that—the first refuge of double-talkers I have had the misfortune to challenge. “Either you’re mistaken, or they’re predicting a blizzard in Maui.”

She said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. It never snows in Maui.”

“Well, that’s funny because you’re getting a nor’easter.”

“Haven’t you ever heard of satellite dishes?” she asked.

I smothered my cell in my armpit to muffle my asking Nick, “Can you get a Boston TV station in Maui with a satellite dish?”

“Doubt it,” he said.

Next she was asking, “Why would I lie about where I live?”

I chose to say as psychiatrically as my unnerved brain allowed, “I think, if Anna Lavoie were my mother, and she was being well looked after in a nursing home—or more recently in a county jail—I might pretend to live on an island in the Pacific, too far away to be her emergency contact.”

When she didn’t confirm or deny that, I took a leap, and asked, “Are you in Boston right now?”

“No, I am not in Boston.”

I said, “Maybe not in Boston proper, but I think you’re in its viewing area, watching channel seven.”

I expected her to hang up. She didn’t. In rather dignified fashion, she said, “I do have power of attorney. It was my right to sell you your house. I certainly didn’t want it! You own it, and my mother knows it. I forgot to take the key away from her. I’m surprised she showed up at the old house. I never expected her to leave ManorCare. Well, I do, eventually . . . in a box.”

Who says such a thing about her own mother? Well, now I knew: the same daughter who pretended to live five time zones away.

It wasn’t like me to hang up without some kind of good-bye, no matter how frigid. I decided against “You’re as crazy as a loon, just like your mother.” And also against “Welcome home,” since she probably never left.

The right valedictory came to mind. It would be well deserved and quite possibly news. “My boyfriend and I just returned from dinner with your half sister,” I told her.





42





Neither the Time nor the Place


I WAS FIRST RUNNER-UP, or so they told me, for the middle school teaching job. I could hardly complain since the winning candidate coached two sports to my none and had master’s degrees in both American literature and education.