Chapter 4 #4
“It’s a service for anxious travelers,” Hugh said.
“Anxious to excess, I mean. You probably have no idea these people exist, since none of you ever travel, but I’ve seen a few, believe me.
My own cousin, for one; my cousin Darcy.
She packs so far ahead of time she has nothing left to wear.
She packs everything, for every possible eventuality.
She thinks her house mysteriously senses that she’s about to leave it; she says that just hours before a trip it will spring a leak or develop a sewage backup or a malfunction in the burglar alarm.
The instructions she writes for the dog sitter are practically novels.
She starts to suspect her cat has diabetes.
So what I’m thinking is, for people like Darcy we would do all the prep work.
Way more than what travel agents do. She gives us the dates and the destination, and ‘Say no more,’ we tell her.
We not only reserve her flight and her hotel; we pack her suitcases three days ahead and ship them off express; no checked baggage.
We arrange for the trip to the airport and the driver at the other end, the museum tickets and the tour guides and the tables at all the best restaurants.
But that’s only the beginning! We have the pet care covered, the house-maintenance service on call (I need to talk to Red about that), we’ve lined up an English-speaking doctor just blocks from her hotel, and we’ve scheduled a hair appointment for halfway through the trip.
Three hours before her flight we ring her doorbell.
‘It’s time,’ we say. ‘Oh,’ she might tell us, ‘but the thing of it is, my mother has developed congestive heart failure and might go at any minute.’ ‘Yes, this,’ we say, and we whip out a cell phone, ‘this is your cell phone with European capabilities, and your mother has the number and so does her assisted-living facility, and we’ve purchased travel insurance that guarantees your immediate flight home in case of any medical emergency. ’ ”
Denny laughed, but none of the others did.
“That would have to be a very rich traveler,” Jeannie’s Hugh said.
“Well, I admit it’s not going to be cheap.”
“Very rich and very crazy, both at once. Wrapped up in one single person. How many of those could be living here in Baltimore?”
“Sheesh, man! Way to encourage a guy!”
“Oh, but I love the name,” Abby said hastily. “Did you think it up yourself, Hugh?”
“I did.”
“And is it … When you say ‘Do Not Pass Go,’ do you mean …?”
“You don’t have to wade through all the usual planning and fuss at the start, is what I mean.”
“I see. So it’s got nothing to do with jail.”
“Jail! God, no.”
“And what about your restaurant?” Jeannie asked.
“I’m going to sell it.”
“Oh, will anyone want to buy it?”
“Sheesh, people!”
“I was only wondering,” Jeannie said.
Mrs. Angell said, “Have you all noticed that lately the birds have started sounding more conversational? It’s like they’re talking, these days, not singing. Can you hear?”
They took a moment to listen.
“Maybe on account of the heat,” Abby suggested.
“I worry they’ve given up music. Turned to prose.”
“Oh, I can’t believe they’d do that,” Abby said. “More likely they’re just tired. They’ve decided to let the crickets take over.”
“When my California grandchildren come every summer to visit,” Mrs. Angell said, “they always ask, ‘What is that noise?’ ‘What noise?’ I say. They say, ‘That chirping and that whirring, that scritch-scritch-scritching noise.’ ‘Oh,’ I say, ‘I believe you must be talking about the crickets or the locusts or whatever. Isn’t it funny? I don’t even hear them.
’ ‘But they’re deafening!’ they say. ‘How can you not hear them?’ ”
And once she had spoken it seemed they all heard them, although no one had before—the steady racket of them. They made a rhythmic, jingling sound, like the chink-chink of old-fashioned sleigh bells.
Amanda said, “Well, I, for one, think Hugh’s idea is brilliant.”
“Thank you, hon,” Hugh told her. “I’m glad you believe in me.”
Mrs. Angell said, “Well, of course! We all do! And how about you, Denny?”
“Do I think Hugh is brilliant?”
“What are you working at, I meant.”
“Well, nothing,” Denny told her. “I’m down here helping my folks out.” He tipped his head back against the back of the swing and laced his fingers across his chest.
“It’s so nice having him home,” Abby told Mrs. Angell.
“Oh, I can imagine!”
“You still with that kitchen outfit?” Jeannie’s Hugh asked him.
“Not anymore,” Denny said. Then he said, “I’ve been substitute teaching.”
Abby said, “What?”
“Substitute teaching. Well, this past spring I was.”
“Don’t you need a college degree for that?”
“No, as a matter of fact. Although I have one.”
Everyone looked at Abby, waiting for her next question. It didn’t come. She sat staring across at the Nelsons’ house with something tense and set about her mouth. Finally, Jeannie asked it: “You’ve finished college?”
“Yes,” Denny said.
“How did you do that?”
“Same way anyone does it, I guess.”
They looked again at Abby. She stayed silent.
“Well, you never did much like building things,” Stem said after a moment. “I remember from back when you were working with Dad in the summers.”
“I’ve got nothing against building things; I just couldn’t stand the customers,” Denny said, sitting up straight again. “All those trendy homeowners wanting wine cellars in their basements.”
“Wine cellars! Ha!” Stem said. “And dog-washing stations in their garages.”
“Dog-washing stations?”
“Lady up in Ruxton.”
Denny snorted.
“Mother Whitshank?” Nora asked. “Can I get you anything? A little more iced tea?”
“No, thanks,” Abby said shortly.
The grandchildren were migrating now from the backyard to the front, and Sammy even invaded the porch, climbing the steps to throw himself in his mother’s lap and complain about his brothers.
“Somebody needs his nap,” Nora told him, but she sat on limply, gazing out over Sammy’s head to where the other children were debating the rules of their game.
“The bushes by the house are safe, but not the ones in the side yard,” one was saying.
“But the ones in the side yard are the best places! You can hide underneath them.”
“So why would we use them as safes?”
“Oh.”
Jeannie’s son, Alexander, was It, which was painful to watch because he was the first Whitshank in known history to show a tendency toward pudginess.
When he ran, he cast his legs out clumsily and paddled the air with both hands.
Ironically, his sister, Deb, was the family’s best athlete—a wiry girl with muscular, mosquito-bitten legs—and she beat him to the biggest azalea bush and sang out, “Ha-ha! Safe!”
“Can somebody please call Heidi?” Alexander asked the grown-ups. “She keeps getting in my way.”
Heidi was nowhere near him—she was racing around the perimeter with her usual exuberance—but Stem whistled and she came bounding up the porch steps. “Down, girl,” he said. He tousled her mane affectionately, and she gave a resigned whimper and curled herself at his feet.
“Brenda must be getting old,” Denny told his sisters. “She’d have been out here chasing Heidi, once upon a time.”
Jeannie said, “It kills me to think she’s old. Can you imagine this house without a dog?”
“Easily,” Denny said. “Dogs are hell on houses.”
“Oh, Denny.”
“What? They scratch the woodwork, they scuff the floors …”
Amanda made a tch-ing sound of amusement.
“What’s so funny?” he asked her.
“Listen to you! You sound like Dad. You’re the only one of us who doesn’t have a dog, and Dad claims he wouldn’t have one, either, if it were up to him.”
“Oh, that’s just talk,” Abby told them. “Your dad loves Clarence as much as we do.”
Her four children exchanged glances.
In the hammock, Red groaned and sat up. “What are you saying?” he asked, rummaging through his hair.
“Just talking about how you love dogs, Dad,” Jeannie called.
“I do?”
Amanda tapped Denny’s wrist. “When will we be seeing Susan?” she asked him.
“Well, she can’t visit till we’ve got a room free to put her up in,” Denny said.
Till Stem and his family moved out, was his implication, but Amanda sidestepped that by saying, “She could always share the bunk room with the little boys. Would she mind?”
“Or wait for the beach trip,” Jeannie suggested. “That’s coming up very soon, and the beach house has tons of beds.”
Denny let the subject drop. His eyes followed the children playing in the yard—Petey tussling with Tommy, Elise pulling them apart and chiding them in her thin, bossy voice.
“Think I’m going to have to call the Petronelli brothers and have them repair the front walk again,” Red said, ambling down the porch to join them. On his way, he grabbed a rocker by one of its ears. He set it next to Abby.
“Every time I come here, you’re doing something to that walk,” Denny told him.
“The trouble goes back to your grandfather’s time. He wasn’t happy with how it was laid.”
“It did seem he was always fiddling with it,” Abby said.
“One of my first memories after we moved in was, he had all the mortar ripped out and the stones reset. But still he wasn’t satisfied. He claimed it was graded wrong.”
“What’s that got to do with now, though?” Stem asked. “It’s been graded several times over, since then. In order to fix that walk once and for all, you’d have to cut down all the poplars with their roots that burrow beneath it, and I don’t see you doing that.”
“Oh, you men, stop talking shop!” Abby said. “It’s too nice a day for that. Isn’t it, Lois?”
“Goodness, yes,” Mrs. Angell said. “It’s a lovely day. I believe I feel a bit of a breeze starting up.”
It was true that the leaves had begun rustling overhead, and Heidi’s petticoats of fur were stirring on her haunches.
“Weather like this always takes me back to the day I fell in love with Red,” Abby said dreamily.
The others smiled. They knew the story well; even Mrs. Angell knew it.
Sammy was sound asleep against his mother’s breast. Elise was spinning and spinning under a dogwood tree, with her head tipped back and her arms flung out.
“It was a beautiful, breezy, yellow-and-green afternoon …” Abby began.
Which was the way she always began, exactly the same words, every single time.
On the porch, everybody relaxed. Their faces grew smooth, and their hands loosened in their laps.
It was so restful to be sitting here with family, with the birds talking in the trees and the crosscut-sawing of the crickets and the dog snoring at their feet and the children calling, “Safe! I’m safe! ”