A Farewell to Yarns (16 page)

“Do you think if you create enough atmo sphere, a tree, complete with decorations, will appear in your living room?”

Jane laughed. "Anything's possible." -

The nightmare qualities of the Christmas craft bazaar became more apparent when they got to Fiona's. The rental company that was supposed to deliver the folding display tables at eight hadn't arrived yet. "I've called three times al ready," Fiona said, her usual English calm, if not shattered, at least crumbling around the edges. "They swear they're on the way and we're the first delivery."

“T hen there's nothing we can do?" Jane asked. She had hopes that she could escape and go home to get in a few more frantic minutes of crocheting.

“Wrong!" Shelley exclaimed. "We can start pricing. It's the worst job of all."

“There are degrees of worseness in this?" Jane asked.

Fiona laughed. She had a delightful, bubblylaugh that broke the tension. "Let's get it over with."

“Fiona, you really don't have to help," Jane assured her. "When you offered your house, we swore you wouldn't have to do anything else."

“Jane, have you gone mad?" Shelley asked. "If you start turning down offers to help, I'll just have to slap some sense back into you. Let's start with ..." She looked around the room full of boxes, and her shoulders sagged. "... with the pillows. They were purchased; we just have to figure out the markup. No personalities involved.”

Jane soon discovered what the remark about personalities meant. Many of the volunteers who had provided sale items had affixed a suggested price. These prices were almost universally inflated beyond reason. Someone had sent over a box of flower paintings done on wooden shingles. While not great art by any means, they weren't bad, and Jane felt she could probably find some out of the way wall in her house where one might fit nicely—until she noticed the note saying they should be priced at forty dol lars each.

“Forty dollars!" she exclaimed, clutching at her heart. "I was thinking seven or eight.”

Shelley, her head buried in a box, emerged. "Oh, those. That's easy. The woman who does those always comes first thing in the morning to see if we've marked them right. As soon as she goes, we mark them down to something reasonable. She's never caught on yet. She makes them every year, and they go like hotcakes at five dollars."

“What about these?" Jane had opened a dress box full of little wreaths. They were green yarn crocheted in a sort of ruffle on a curtain rod ring. With the addition of bright red sequins and a tiny satin bow, they made nice little orna ments. But a note in the box said: "I saw these for sale in New York last year for fifteen dollars. I think ten would be reasonable, don't you?”

Shelley came over to look at the wreaths and then at the signature on the note. "That's a bit tricky. She's a big contributor to the church, and we don't want to piss her off.”

Fiona looked over her shoulder. "Oh, she's out of town. When she brought the box over she mentioned that she was going to see her son in Hawaii for the holidays and was leaving today."

“Terrific. They'll really move at two dollars."

“Isn't that a truck I hear?" Fiona exclaimed.

It took until noon to get the tables in and arranged. The women, including Suzie Williams, who had arrived just behind the rental company truck, then set about making a rough arrangement. Suzie favored logic and order. "Put all the pillows and quilts in one room, all the food stuff in another—"

“I'm not sure," Shelley said. "If a person on a diet sees a room full of food, she might just give it all a miss. Same with people who don't like 'loving hands from home' art. You want to take them by surprise."

“That makes sense. Trick them into buying shit they don't want," Suzie gave in cheerfully. "Let's take a break," Fiona suggested. Jane had the feeling that Suzie's raw language of-fended their hostess, though Fiona was always gracious to her. "I fixed some chicken salad and fresh banana bread this morning.”

They settled in around the big kitchen table. "Where's your husband today? Hiding from us?" Suzie asked. She'd long been fascinated by the idea of a husband who did his work—

whatever work, if any, he did—at home.

“Upstairs. He's got a miserable headache," Fiona replied. She set out everyday plates that Jane would have kept in a safe deposit box if they'd been hers. "When he was a boy, he had a bad fall from a tree and got a skull fracture. It all healed perfectly well, but he still gets these occasional headaches that devastate him. The doctors seem to think there's a connection, but there's nothing to do about it.”

Suzie nodded knowingly. "I broke my ankle when I was ten, and it still hurts sometimes. Oh, music—how nice.”

They all fell silent. There was music playing somewhere, and as they listened, it became recognizable.

Richie Divine's "Red Christmas.”

Jane glanced at Fiona, who had become quite pale and was looking toward the glass patio doors leading to the backyard.

“Where's it coming from?" Suzie asked, as yet blissfully unaware of the tension in the room. Shelley rose and went to the doors. As she opened one, a blast of cold air and a blast of music came in together. "It's coming from outside," she said softly. Fiona rose slowly and joined her at the door. Jane and Suzie followed her. As she listened, Jane knew exactly where it was coming from—the deck of the house next door. Phyllis's house. Now Bobby's. That elaborate sound system was rigged so the speakers could sit on the deck outside the master bedroom.

But why annoy the Howards?

Suddenly Albert Howard appeared in the ki t c h e n d o o r wa y b e h i nd t he fo ur wo me n. "What the hell is that noise?" he asked.

Eighteen

Albert disappeared
and
Fiona,
white
faced, ran after him. Try as they might, Shelley, Jane, and Suzie could hear nothing of what they were saying to each other.

“Is that the little fart next door playing the music? The one whose mother was a friend of yours?" Suzie asked Jane, when Albert and Fiona had moved out of earshot.

“I'm afraid so, but I don't get it. Why is he trying to irritate the whole neighborhood, and why—of all things—a Richie Divine record?"

“Why not?" Suzie asked, then said, "Oh, yeah. I forgot Fiona was married to him, wasn't she? Or is that just a typical neighborhood rumor?"

“No, it's true," Jane said. "That room through there is full of his stuff. Pictures, gold records."

“The one Fiona didn't want us to use? Oh, well, it's probably just coincidence that the kid is playing that record. I heard it on the car radio on the way over. It's played a lot this time of year."

“Still, what's the point, aside from making sure nobody misses the fact that he's a nasty little bastard?" Shelley asked, closing the door and shooing them back to the kitchen table.

"Let's eat lunch and act like we don't hear it. For Fiona's sake."

“I always enjoy it when I can eat for someone else's sake," Suzie said, serving herself a large dollop of chicken salad. "The calories don't count that way. Just like they don't count if you eat them before seven in the morning or on a holiday—national or religious. I'm not sure about state holidays."

“I wish my thighs observed those rules," Jane said, helping herself to some food. "Wow, this is terrific. It's got little green grapes in it. Where do you suppose she gets such nice ones this time of year?"

“Sorts them out of cans of fruit salad?" Suzie suggested.

Fiona rejoined them a few minutes later, looking as cool and unruffled as the proverbial cucumber. The music was still audible, but they all pretended they didn't notice. "Albert so seldom tries to take a nap in the middle of the day. He gets positively savage when someone interrupts it," was her only comment. "Have some more banana bread, ladies. If you leave any, I'll eat it all, and you'll have to roll me out of this chair.”

Doggedly ignoring the music—it wasn't the single, it was the whole
Richie Divine's
Greatest Hits
album—they finished lunch and went back to work. Fiona got busy shifting some of the tables into better positions and draping them with the rented white tablecloths. Suzie, under Shelley's direction, appointed herself to takeeach box to the room in which the contents would be sold. Shelley sat on the floor, making a rough sort of inventory of each item as Suzie took it away, and Jane started printing up prices on a sheet of sticky labels for the crocheted wreaths. "I think we ought to give one of these free to anybody who buys more than a certain amount," Jane said. "You could pin them on their coats as they go out the door."

“Good thinking. I'll put half of them by the cashier, and some people may pick them up as one last thing before their stuff is rung up."

“Impulse buying. Right."

“Oh, my God, will you look at this quilt," Shelley said. "It's gorgeous. And it's already marked at—at
twenty-five dollars!
That's criminal. It ought to be at least a hundred and fifty. Think ho w beauti ful t hi s wo uld loo k i n my gue st room. I'm going to buy it myself for two hundred, but we'll hang it up marked SOLD, just because it's so pretty.”

Jane tried hard not to give in to envy. Would she ever be able to impulsively buy anything for two hundred dollars? "Where should I put this jelly?" she asked. Shelley turned on her. "Jelly?" she asked suspiciously. "Is it from Marijo Fisher?"

“Yes, what's wrong with that?"

“Oh, nothing, except it's Marijo's little ploy to rip us off every year. I thought I'd made clear to her that I wasn't letting her get away with it again."

“I don't get it. How does she rip us off with jelly? It looks good."

“Oh, it is good. It's fantastic. She sends over four or five piddling jars, then gives people delicious samples. Of course, the four or five jars are gone in no time, but samples keep miraculously appearing, and she takes orders for about a billion more."

“So?"

“Not for the bazaar fund, Jane. For herself. She earns the church ten bucks and a couple hundred later for herself. It infuriates me. Is her phone number on there? I'm going to have a word or two with her." She stormed off and returned a few minutes later looking like a general who'd had an unusually good day crushing invading armies. "It's all taken care of," she said serenely.

Jane was afraid to ask.

- After another ten minutes, Jane said, "Is that music as

annoying to you as it is to me?"

“It isn't that loud. Imagine if it were spring and the windows were open. Still, I wonder why nobody's called the police to make him shut it off.”

Fiona passed the doorway carrying a stack of linens and looking miserable.

“I'm not going to let him do this to her," Jane said. She threw on her coat and slipped out the front door before Shelley could reason with her. Stomping down the long drive, along the sidewalk, and up to the house next door, she leaned on the doorbell and knocked a few times for good measure.

Bobby came to the door wearing his usual smirk. "Yeah?"

“I've come to ask you politely to turn off that music. If you don't, however, I'm going to havet he p o l i c e c o me a nd t a l k t o yo u a b o ut i t , Bobby."

“It's a free country," he said as if he'd thought up the concept himself. "Don't you like rock?

Would you rather have a little Fred Waring?" He sneered.

“I happen to like Fred Waring. And I also like Twisted Sister, but at a reasonable level and when I want to listen to it. Right now I don't think the whole neighborhood wants to let you make the choice for them. Turn it off!"

“I'll think about it," he said with an obnoxious chuckle before slamming the door in her face.

Jane got back to the Howards' house fueled by pure rage. "If Phyllis is in heaven, she's probably still trying to explain herself for having given birth to such a monster!" she said as Shelley opened the door to her. "I'm calling the po lice on him."

“Jane, I'm all for self-assertiveness, but I don't think it's smart to mess with that kid. He could be a murderer, you know."

“Clear the way," a voice behind a vast stack of empty boxes said. It was Suzie. "Get the door for me. I'm going to put these out in the garage.”

Jane and Shelley stood arguing halfheartedly for a minute more. Suzie came bounding back. "Hey, guys, you gotta see this.”

Shelley grabbed her coat, and they followed Suzie along the path that ran between the Howards' house and Bobby's. Before they could see what was happening, they could hear the argument. Mr. Finch was standing at the front door, waving his arms and screaming unintelligibly in a high voice. They couldn't see Bobby, but they did see his fist suddenly pop out and catch Mr. Finch on the chin.

“Jane,
do
go call the police," Shelley said. " And miss this? Not o n yo ur life," Jane replied.

Finch had tumbled into the snow but picked himself up with lightning speed and flung himself toward the door and out of sight. A second later, a bundle of humanity with four legs and four arms rolled down the steps and into the yard. They thrashed around ineffectually in the patchy sno w for a moment, apparently not doing each other much harm. Just as Jane was about to give up watching and run for the phone, a siren wailed over the sound of Richie Divine's voice. Apparently someone else had seen the fight coming or had gotten fed up with the music.

A police car pulled to a sudden stop in front of the house, and two uniformed officers ran across the lawn and separated Bobby and Mr. Finch without too much difficulty.

"Show's over, ladies," one of the officers called to them. Jane blushed with embarrassment.

Suzie had a much higher embarrassment threshold. "Sonofabitch," she muttered with heat. The three of them hurried back to the house, and Suzie continued. "Couple of wimps. I could have beaten them both.”

Fiona was at the door. "What in the world became of you?”

They told her about the fight.

“Oh, dear," Fiona said, sounding defeated. 'This is all so unpleasant, and I hold myself toblame. If I hadn't mentioned that house was for sale, it would still be nice and vacant. What if something awful happens while the bazaar is going on? We can hardly expect people to pick their way through a full-scale battle to buy a few Christmas things."