Irene Brand_Yuletide_01 (9 page)

He whistled a line of “Amazing Grace.” “I’m not the fastest carpenter in the business,” he said, “and I’d judge it’ll take two months.”

“I’ll be free while Brooke is in school, so I’ll work right along beside you.”

“I can help with cleaning the yard,” Lance said, and when Janice started to protest, he held up his hand. “We have a men’s service club at the church, and we often take on projects like this. We’ve built a porch for one family this summer, we roofed a house and we mow a few yards every week for elderly people—Henrietta’s for example. I’ll talk to the men, and if there are enough of them free, we can come Saturday to work on your yard. You’ll be surprised at what a change we can make with one day’s work.”

“But I don’t
want
people working for me unless I pay them,” Janice protested. “I want to be independent.”

“Being independent can be mighty lonely, miss,” Cecil said. “There are some things you can’t pay people to do. And I doubt you could find anyone around Stanton who’d even take the job of cleaning up this place, no matter what you paid. It’s hard to find people who’ll take on a grubby, dirty job, and that’s what this one will be.”

Most of her life Janice had been on the receiving end of charity and she hadn’t liked it. In spite of Miss Caroline’s kindness, it had been charity. That was why she’d worked so hard to make enough money to be worthy of being Brooke’s guardian. She didn’t want her sister to grow up with the burden of being a charity kid. But she still had enough humility to take advice.

Turning to Lance, she said, “I’ll appreciate having your men’s group clean the lawn.”

Lance didn’t think she really appreciated it and he wondered why Janice found it so difficult to accept help.

As he’d promised, the man came with the bulldozer on Wednesday and when he finished on Thursday evening, Janice couldn’t believe the difference his work had made in her
property. All of the multiflora rosebushes that had taken over the driveway had been pushed to one corner of the lot. The man and his helper said they’d come back and destroy the brush when conditions were suitable for burning.

The original driveway had been located, subsequently graded, and ditches laid out on each side for proper drainage. A wide parking area was cleared in front of the house. Several loads of coarse limestone had been put on the driveway and covered with a layer of finer stone.

While the men worked, Janice started assessing how much renovation she would have to do in the kitchen. Without water, she couldn’t do much, but she did clear the shelves of items that would have to be thrown away and put them in large plastic garbage bags. She put usable dishes and pans on the table. The refrigerator was empty, but had an unpleasant odor, so she propped the door open so it could air.

With an old broom she’d found in the pantry, she scraped everything out of the cabinets and off the pantry shelves. Then she swept up the refuse and dumped it in the garbage bags. The work was strenuous and at the end of two days, she was bushed.

But she was now convinced that Cecil’s estimate was correct and that the house needed cleaning more than anything else. The furniture was well built. Although the stove and refrigerator were questionable, they didn’t seem to be more than ten years old and she’d certainly used older appliances than that in her childhood. She wouldn’t know for sure until she tried them, so she reserved an opinion on whether she’d have to buy appliances. But the red-checked linoleum seemed solid, and she thought restoring the kitchen would take a minimum of money. The kitchen had been her greatest worry.

As the work on the driveway progressed, Janice kept wish
ing that Lance would stop by so she could ask his opinion if the work was done satisfactorily. He didn’t come, and she didn’t want to put him on the spot by asking him to approve the work. Although she was convinced that the contractor had earned the money, Janice’s hand shook with uneasiness as she wrote his check for three thousand dollars. How long would her money last if she had many more bills like this?

On Thursday evening, after the road was completed, Janice took Henrietta and Brooke to see the house.

“He did a good job on this road,” Henrietta said when Janice turned her car into the driveway.

Henrietta walked slowly through the rooms on the first floor, nostalgically remembering the days she’d lived at Mountjoy. “Except for the filth, nothin’s changed,” she said. “I figured thieves would have hauled everything away by now.”

Janice looked around for Brooke before she answered. Her sister still stood in the center hall, as if she were glued to the floor, looking around in dismay.

“Cecil said it was probably because people think the place is haunted,” Janice said quietly, “and they’re afraid to steal anything.”

“So much the better for you,” Henrietta answered. “There have been some strange things happening out here, according to rumor.”

Joining the others in the living room, Brooke wailed, “I don’t want to live here. It looks awful and the place stinks.”

“It will look a lot better when it’s clean,” Janice assured her, wishing she hadn’t brought Brooke to see the house until it was in livable condition. The child’s attitude depressed her. Did the house remind her of some of the unsavory places they’d lived during her childhood?

“Besides a good cleaning, what else is necessary to make the downstairs livable?” Janice asked.

“The davenport and chairs in the living room will have to go. You could refinish them and have them upholstered, but that would cost a lot of money. Besides, they’re uncomfortable, to my notion. They’d bring a good price in an antique store if you want to sell them, and you could use the money to buy a new couch and some chairs.”

“Cecil said there was room to store them in the outbuilding back of the house, so I think I’ll tear the upholstery off and put them in the building. I can buy secondhand furniture and refinish the antique pieces when I have more time and money.”

Following Henrietta’s advice, she took inventory of what was usable in a notebook, separating what she could sell and what she’d have to buy. Except for a few tables and two rocking chairs, she’d need to replace the living room furniture. In the hallway, beside the deacon’s bench, there was a closed cupboard, constructed of pine and poplar lumber, that would be great for storing their outdoor garments.

“John had the kitchen overhauled and bought new appliances when the county water and sewer system was laid out this way. He got sick right soon after that and the kitchen in the town house was newly fixed when we moved, so he left all of these things here. He never did give up the idea that he might move back to Mountjoy. We took the washer and dryer to town with us so you’ll need new ones.”

Janice shook her head. “I’ll go to the coin laundry in town. I’m used to doing that.”

Henrietta peered at the dishes Janice had put on the table. “We took most of the dishes and pans with us so there’s not much here but odds and ends.”

“I’m used to odds and ends,” Janice said.

A pie safe with punched heart tin inserts in the doors stood in one corner of the kitchen. “I used this to store the canned goods and cereal. I kept the onions, potatoes and such like in the pantry.”

“I worked in there yesterday. It’s a huge room. The floor covering seems all right.”

Henrietta nodded agreement. “It’s the same vinyl tile that was here when I came, but it still looks good.”

The dining room had a cherry corner cupboard that reached the ten-foot ceiling and a walnut extension table with matching chairs. “John’s mother bought the table and chairs sixty years ago,” Henrietta explained, “but that cupboard is as old as the house. An antique dealer once offered John three thousand dollars for it.”

“Really!”

“But John was tenderhearted about the past, and he didn’t like to change things. I don’t suppose his local kin have any idea how valuable these things are, but if they’d inherited, the furnishings would have been sold right away. They’ll do anything for money.”

Henrietta pointed to the sideboard made of solid oak, neatly carved, with a good gloss finish. A large German beveled mirror was attached to the solid base. “This is a family piece, too.”

“I’ll keep the dining room furniture and anything else that belonged to the family.”

“This room was the parlor in the old days,” Henrietta said, when they came to the room across the hallway from the dining room. It was furnished with a high-backboard poplar bed, a matching chest and table, as well as two trunks.

“When John got so poorly that he couldn’t climb the steps, he brought this furniture downstairs. These old houses
didn’t have any closets—that’s why there’s so many cupboards and such.”

Henrietta flipped back the quilt from the bed and poked around in the mattress. The mattress looked clean, but it smelled of mildew.

“Nothin’ wrong with this that a good airin’ won’t take care of,” Henrietta commented. “Guess the mice had enough other things to chew on that they didn’t bother the mattress. Well, Janice, it looks to me as if you’re in pretty good shape. I don’t feel up to climbing the stairs, but I reckon everything is about the same.”

“The furniture on the second floor is all right, but what happened to the steps?”

“What do you mean?”

“There aren’t any. Come and see.”

When Janice opened the door to the stairway, Henrietta stepped into the stairwell. A startled gasp escaped her lips, and she stared, a stunned expression on her face.

When she found her voice, Henrietta said, “What has happened here? Who tore out these steps?”

“Then this happened after you and Uncle John moved?”

“Of course it did,” Henrietta snapped. “Who did it? And a more important question—why did they do it? Makes no sense to me.”

“Cecil, Lance and I climbed to the second floor by using a ladder, and except for the one room, the furnishings were still there. We couldn’t figure out why the steps had been removed.”

Shaking her head, Henrietta stepped out into the hall. “Appears like visitors ain’t welcome on the second floor.” Concern evident in her eyes, Henrietta glanced from Janice to Brooke. “Maybe you’d better not be in any hurry to move.”

Hoping to reassure Brooke, whose hand clutched the bot
tom of her sister’s denim shirt, Janice said lightly, “We’ll not move for a while. It will take several weeks for the house to be livable.”

Henrietta opened her mouth to speak but closed it after she took a look at Brooke’s frightened expression.

“What’s your next move?” she asked Janice.

“I can’t do much until Cecil replaces the windows and puts locks on the doors. After that, I can start cleaning. In the meantime, I’ll shop for curtains, and the few household articles I’ll need.”

Henrietta nodded approvingly. “There are several used furniture stores in the area, so furniture ain’t no problem. But curtains will be. These windows are taller and more narrow than modern windows and store-bought draperies won’t fit. If you have them custom-made, it’ll cost a fortune.”

Grimacing, Janice said, “I might find curtains to fit these windows in Goodwill stores.”

Henrietta put her arm around Janice and hugged her tightly. “I’m proud of you, girl, and I know John would be, too. Not many women your age would take on a project like this. They’d sell the property and all this old stuff and buy everything new. You’re making decisions I wouldn’t even want to make at my age.”

“I’ve always felt hard toward my parents for not taking care of us, but I suppose everything works out for good. If they’d been good parents, I’d never have learned to make decisions when I was a child. And if we’d continued to live with them, Uncle John wouldn’t have left this house to me.”

Henrietta squeezed her shoulders again then released her. “As for curtains—can you sew?”

“I took sewing lessons in vocational classes before I went to VOH. I could probably remember the basics. Why?”

“You can make the curtains out of bed sheets, which wouldn’t cost much. King-size sheets would be long enough to cover the windows. If you want to tackle the curtains, you can borrow my machine, which I seldom use. It’s a portable, and you could bring it here and cut and measure as you go.”

“That sounds like a good plan. I’ll do some shopping tomorrow while Brooke is in school. Saturday, the men from the church are coming to clear the property of underbrush.”

“We’ll need to fix lunch for them, too,” Henrietta said, “for it’ll be an all-day job.”

“What kind of food should I buy?”

“There are sometimes ten of them, so we can figure on that number. Let’s think about the food as we go back to town. My old legs have had all the standing they want.”

Janice locked the house and held her mentor’s arm as they moved to the car. Henrietta had solved several of her problems, but she was disturbed about Brooke’s reactions to the house. After her first outburst of dissatisfaction, she hadn’t said a word. Now she drooped silently in the back seat. Janice had thought her sister would be excited to have a house of their own. She remembered she’d promised Brooke if she was unhappy she could sell Mountjoy and return to Willow Springs—a promise she might have to keep if Brooke’s opinion didn’t change soon. But she’d go ahead with her plans, as the house would bring a better price if she made some inexpensive improvements.

“A picnic-type lunch is the kind to have, for it’s supposed to be hot the rest of the week,” Henrietta said, interrupting her thoughts. “Besides, there’s no place fit to eat inside the house.”

“So we’ll need sandwiches.”

Henrietta nodded. “You can get containers of chicken salad and ham salad at the grocery store deli. And don’t forget
cheese cubes and crackers. Apples and bananas will go well, and I’ll make a batch of cookies.” She grinned. “I’ve seen those men eat before, so I know they have big appetites.”

Janice was making mental notes as Henrietta talked. “What about beverages?”

“Get canned pop and bottled water, and a big bag of ice. We can put the beverages and ice in my big cooler. They’ll probably bring something to drink, but it would be hospitable for you to provide something.”