Penny Dreadful (10 page)

“That’s nice,” said Delia, “and yet—”

“Yet now
you’ve
inherited the house, because I guess you’re Betty’s next of kin, or last, but you’ve also inherited her friends!” said Kay. “She wrote up her will that way, and rewrote the deed to the house, from what I heard tell. That she was leaving the house to kin, keeping the Whippoorwillows in the clan. But all her housemates would get to stay on until they decided to leave, or died. Rent-free. Some said she was a little crazy in the end, obsessed with dusty old stories and caves and the like.”

Penny’s ears perked up at the mention of stories.
What kind of stories?
she wondered.

“But one thing you can say about Betty, she was good to her friends,” said Kay, standing up.

“Well, that’s very kind of her, but what am
I
supposed to do with all of these people,” asked Delia, perplexed, “if it’s in the deed that they get to stay?”

“I guess you could start by saying hello,” Kay suggested.

That evening the Greys hauled their boxes into the upstairs apartment that was already so very full of furniture and art and knickknacks. As Penny watched her parents unpacking the box of wires and gadgets that
went with their computers, she frowned. She couldn’t help thinking they looked all wrong in the room. They looked too new, too businesslike beside the wonderful collage of Betty’s unusual belongings.

“Mother?” she said as she watched Delia attempt to plug her laptop into the only phone jack in the house, which happened to be in the center of the living room, beside the fireplace. “That looks all wrong. It just doesn’t—fit with Betty’s stuff. It’s too shiny.”

“Well, what on earth can we do about it?” Delia asked. She set her laptop on the mantel, next to a painting of an old stone wall in what looked to be the Irish countryside. “We can’t just get rid of everything Betty left behind right this minute. It would take a month to clear this place out, and probably there are people we should give these things to, her friends and neighbors.”

Getting rid of
Betty’s
belongings hadn’t been what Penny intended at all, but it turned out not to matter because Dirk interrupted with, “Well, once we have the whole house to ourselves, we’ll look into sorting it all out and setting up a real computer room, but for now let’s just live with it all. Okay?”

Penny thought of Luella. She wasn’t sure she wanted the tenants to leave, but she nodded at her father as she flopped onto an old wine-colored velvet sofa that smelled
of dust and cinnamon. From there she watched her parents run around and make sense of their belongings, arranging and rearranging. Eventually Penny fell asleep. It had been a long day.

When she woke up, Penny sat up at once. She was in a room full of morning sunshine filtering through the willow-filled windows. Someone had moved her in the night, and she was puzzled at first by the unfamiliar room. Though she’d stuck her head briefly into every room in the apartment the day before, there had been too much to take in. She hadn’t really noticed the blue rag rugs and the white iron bedstead. She hadn’t noticed the ceiling, which was made of a bronzy-colored metal, covered in interesting patterns and designs. She hadn’t seen the bookshelves in the corner, made of white wicker. Beside the bed she was tucked into were the boxes she’d packed in The City. Penny bounced gently and found that the bed beneath her was creaky but cozy. She sat in her covers and inhaled deeply the dusty perfume of dried flowers, lavender maybe. It was nice, like something out of
Little Women
.

Penny climbed down from her bed and poked around a little. She gazed out her new window, then headed into the living room. Her parents were already up, sitting on the couch munching toast and drinking their morning coffee. Her father handed her a banana and made a spot for her beside him.

“Would you like some juice, dear?” asked Delia, handing her a dusty glass that read
1962 WORLD’S FAIR
. “Careful not to spill! There’s no dining room, and your father’s covered the kitchen table with boxes, so we’re having a living room picnic this morning. How’s that?”

Once they’d all eaten breakfast, Dirk removed himself to his new office. Penny followed him and watched him arrange his new desk, which was painted bright yellow and blue and was surrounded by bookshelves built out of more peach crates. She watched her father shuffle around with his box of papers, but when he began to set up his files, Penny lost interest.

She went in search of her mother and found Delia in the avocado-and-chrome kitchen. The two of them ended up organizing the shelves, alphabetizing (and sniffing) the spice jars and bottles in the cupboard and trying to imagine what each old-fashioned kitchen implement was for. By lunchtime they were happily scrubbing out the refrigerator.

For that one full blissful empty day, they went nowhere. It was like the Greys were living in a tiny bubble. They ate from their cooler, and room by room they cleaned all
the dingy and dusty old furniture Betty had left behind. They beat out rugs and fluffed pillows. When it began to get dark, they climbed through the living room window and onto the roof of the porch to watch the sun go down over the trees. They sat quietly together, and Penny found she could not stop smiling, sandwiched between her parents, who seemed like new people to her. Maybe Thrush Junction
was
small, and maybe it
would
be a little quiet, but so far it was wonderful. It was nice, fitting everything into five small rooms. It was nice, cleaning the house. It was nice, sitting together on a porch and not saying a word.

The last thing Penny did before going to bed was sit down in her nightgown in front of her new bookshelf and run her finger over the spines of the dusty old books Betty had left behind. She thought about all the new things there might be to do in them. Then she climbed into bed and went to sleep.

The next morning, after a breakfast of stale wheat crackers and bruised apples washed down with water, Dirk realized they’d completely run out of coffee. This meant that someone would have to venture out. Once Dirk drove off to do just that, the bubble burst. Delia decided that now it was time to “figure things out.”

“As soon as your father comes back with the van,”
she said to Penny, “why don’t we go find those lawyers? I’ll feel better once we have the legal stuff taken care of. It’s unsettling, not really knowing what’s going on. You’ll come with me, won’t you?” Delia asked Penny. “I could use some backup.”

Although a visit to the law offices of Donsky & Donsky, Esqs., was hardly how Penny had hoped to spend her day, she agreed to go with her mother. It was nice to be asked.

About an hour later when Dirk got back to the house, his arms full of bags and his conversation full of stories about the old-fashioned grocery store called the Mountains Mercantile, he pronounced it a good idea too.

“That’s perfect!” he said. “You two go along to town while I get all of this put away and figure out lunch. Look!” He held up a loaf of fresh bread, as proud as if he had baked it himself. “People make
everything
from scratch around here. I got some homemade pickles too!” He held up a clear glass jar with a funny lid. “Makes me think even
I
might be able to bake something.”

So Delia and Penny left him to his bags and boxes and bottles and cans and jars and plans and dreams. They climbed into Dijon and set off.

It was easy enough for Delia to find the offices of Donsky & Donsky, Esqs. Not only had Kay the waitress waved them in the right general direction, but the elderly
sisters were the only lawyers in Thrush Junction, and their office was in a small blue building with a very large sign that read
DONSKY & DONSKY: SISTERS-IN-LAW
. It was hard to miss.

Delia poked her head in the door and called out brightly, “Hello? I’m Delia Grey—um—Dewberry. Delia Dewberry Grey! And this is my daughter … Penny. I’m here to sign some papers!”

Immediately, she and Penny were beckoned inside by a stern-looking elderly woman in bifocals who introduced herself as Myra Donsky. Myra asked Delia to repeat her name and then handed over a stack of very official-looking papers.

“Nothing to it,” Myra said. “Congratulations on the new house. Just have a seat and sign here, here, and here.”

After Delia had quickly glanced over and signed the requisite forms, another old lady—this one with a warm smile and a purple ribbon bouncing on top of her drifts of white hair—entered the room. This lady carried a
second
stack of papers.

“Hi,” she said in a cheery voice. “I’m Tolly! So nice to have you in town.” She set down the pile of paperwork. “Congrats on the house! Now, here you go, darlin’.”

Delia looked at the pile blankly. “
More
papers?”

Penny peered over her mom’s shoulder.

Myra and Tolly Donsky nodded at her in unison, as though they’d been rehearsing for this moment.

“Oh,” Delia said, picking up a pen to sign. “I guess these probably have something to do with the tenants? I was going to ask you about them anyway—”

“No, nothing to do with that,” said Myra sternly. “These regard the loans.”

“What loans?” asked Delia. She stopped in midscrawl and set down her pen.

Penny watched her mother closely.

“You see, dear,” Tolly Donsky said, leaning forward confidentially, “your aunt Betty was an astounding lady, and a generous soul, but she wasn’t exactly good with numbers. She was often forgetful about her taxes, and then, just a few years before she died, she borrowed some money against the house when the llamas all caught foot-and-mouth disease and needed special care.”

“Special care?” asked Delia in a wobbly voice.

“Yes indeed.” Tolly nodded. “Sick llamas need a lot of love, and medicine, and that debt still needs to be paid.” She tapped the pile of papers. “You need to fill these out so we can get you set up for monthly payments. That is, unless you’ve hit the jackpot recently, or something like that.”

Delia shook her head wordlessly.

Tolly laughed gaily. “I didn’t think so. Though one never knows. Folks do win the lottery now and again, strike gold!”

Hearing this, Delia turned to Penny and said quickly, “Penny, dear, why don’t you go out and enjoy the sunshine.”

Penny stood. She wanted to refuse, wanted to say that she’d rather help. But she didn’t want to make things any harder for her mother, so she headed meekly outside to sit in a patch of thistles that had sprouted in the cracked sidewalk. When at last the office door opened, Delia marched past Penny without saying a word.

All the way home Penny tried to watch her mother without being too obvious about it. Delia’s lips were narrow. Her brow was creased as though she was thinking very hard. In the office she had looked scared. Now she looked angry.

Penny asked quietly, “Mother, will it be okay?”

Delia didn’t answer.

When they got home, Dirk was sitting in the living room eating a pear. “How’d it go?” he called out cheerfully.

“Not
quite
as smoothly as expected,” called Delia in a firm voice. She didn’t even bother to set down her
purse, just motioned for Dirk to follow her into their bedroom.

As they walked from the room, Dirk asked through a mouthful of pear, “What’s up? Is it about the tenants?”

“The tenants are the least of our worries,” Delia replied. Then she closed the door behind her.

Penny flinched at the sound it made shutting.

F
INDING A
F
RIEND

P
enny sighed and headed for the kitchen, where she made herself some lunch (cheese and crackers and carrot sticks). Then she spent an hour at the front window of their second-floor apartment listening to the squirrels scampering overhead, watching the willows wave in the breeze, and trying not to worry. Since there was no alternative that she could see, she waited patiently for her parents to emerge and explain.

After a bit Penny began to notice things happening out in the yard. She saw a window in one of the cottages (the white one at the end) open. She watched an extremely old man holding something that looked like a violin case teeter to a rusted car that looked as if it wouldn’t go, but then it did. And then,
then
she saw a girl about her own age step from the bright orange cottage just below her window. Penny stood up and stuck her head through the
window, trying to get a better look at the girl below her. It wasn’t Luella. Who was it?