Chapter 18
“Where’s the milk?” Frances asked.
“Inside the cow. So why don’t you go out and milk her?” The pail was actually full, but I was afraid it would curdle in the roasting-hot kitchen so I’d set it in the old brick springhouse to cool. “She needs to be milked twice a day now to make sure she doesn’t go dry.”
“We’re almost out of sugar too,” Frances said. She pressed the sleeve of her nightgown to her forehead.
“And butter,” I said. I poked at the fire in the kitchen hearth, sweat dripping off my chin.
With the electric lights had gone the icebox, the electric fans, the hot water, and the water pump, but the gas stove was by far the hardest. Cooking over the fireplace in August was a devil’s hell.
By the time I’d made the first pot of coffee at six in the morning, I looked like I had a sunburn.
“Throw one of those Sears, Roebucks on,” I said.
Nothing burned like a Sears, Roebuck. Frances checked the date on one, put it back in the pile, and found an older one, as if later today she might sit down and order something.
She threw it on and the fire blazed, flames licking the bottom of the water kettle hanging on the old kettle hook in the chimney.
Then she fanned the back door to pump fresh air into the kitchen.
When I saw steam, I moved the boiling kettle to the brick hearth and set a tray of biscuits on the old iron grate I’d found in the barn.
Good Lord, how did people live like this? This was Wednesday. It’d only been three days. Footely was looking downright luxurious compared to this. Today, I’d be missing yet another train home.
This past Monday, after I’d helped Frances carry the Neilson’s boxes to town and said goodbye to the snow-white coat, the nicest thing I’d ever almost owned, I went to the powerhouse.
I’d barely set the Tartts’ overdue bill on the counter with five dollars when the fellow started shaking his head.
His shirt was tucked in tight; he had perfect comb marks running through his dark hair.
I feared what we had here was a rule follower.
“Please, sir. We’ll pay the rest soon if you’ll just turn the electricity back on,” I begged. I fanned the five singles out so it’d look like more. This man had the power to make our lives livable, literally.
“I’m sorry, but we can’t be making exceptions for everybody comes in here.
” He didn’t smile exactly, but he raised an eyebrow like he was about to tell me something educational.
“It’s only a few lucky households like the Mr. Rory Tartts to even know lights in the home.
Two percent in the state is what they’re saying.
” And then he did smile, and I could almost smell the dislike he had for Rory Tartt.
I think what he wasn’t saying outright was, Rory Tartt’s just like the other 98 percent now. And I do not feel sorry for him.
I told him he’d see me soon if he still had a job.
Not productive, or nice, but satisfying for about fifteen seconds.
When I offered the same five dollars to the man over at Cox Gas, he was much nicer and apologized to Mrs. Tartt but said it’d take at least a week for the truck to get out there with more fuel.
Maybe it was just an excuse but at least he was kind about it.
Thank God Charlie was here to help. Every morning, we hauled buckets of water upstairs for everybody to pour in the toilets to force them to flush.
It sort of worked. After Frances carried one, she’d mysteriously disappear.
The kitchen sink ran all right, though there was only tepid water.
There’d be no warm baths for a while. In ninety-five-degree heat, I doubted I’d miss them.
Then it was a search for more firewood and kindling to cook the food.
Luckily, the Tartts were rich in old catalogues, but the vat of kerosene for the lanterns was already looking pitifully low.
Three days it had been going on and. Every. Dang. Time Frances walked into a dark room, she still hit the button on the wall. Then she’d go limp, like the lights’d been cut off all over again.
“You people are terrible at being poor,” I said to nobody.
I didn’t know what we were waiting on, only that I didn’t have time to figure it out.
Despite all our discomfort, I was worried Mrs. Tartt didn’t understand just how bad things were—which was my fault because I hadn’t told her the options yet.
A few times, I found her staring out at the backyard for hours, surely daydreaming of better days.
Then this morning, while I was watching the cornbread burn on the bottom so it’d cook in the dang center since you had to choose, Mrs. Tartt came into the kitchen with a brass picture frame.
“Charlie, here’s that photograph of the party I told you about,” she said.
“That’s me in the long dress I showed you.
” I could hear in her voice how hungry she was for the old days.
“That man over by the orchestra pinched my bottom right before this photograph was taken. Good thing Henry didn’t see that. ”
“He had good taste,” Charlie said, studying it. “Do you have more pictures? I’d really like to see how it changed over the years.”
“Well, I’m sure I do. Let me go look see.”
When Mrs. Tartt had left the kitchen, I mouthed Thank you to Charlie. I guess it was time to tell them the options.
After I’d finished making cornbread and had set it out to cool, I splashed water on my face in the kitchen sink, took a deep breath and called up the back stairs, “Frances, Mrs. Tartt, I need you to come down to the dining room.”
Frances came in first. “What is it? I’m fixing to take my curlers out.” Her head looked even smaller with the blue curlers squeezing her scalp.
I asked her to sit down.
When Mrs. Tartt padded in, she’d covered her hair with a pink scarf and fuzzy tufts escaped the edges. “Charlie and I were trying to figure out how to wind the grandfather clock,” she said.
I sat at the head of the table in Rory’s chair, with Mrs. Tartt on my right and Frances on my left. I scooted up to the edge of my chair and set the bank letter on the table.
“I better get my cheaters on to see,” Mrs. Tartt said.
I motioned her to stay. “Mrs. Tartt, do you remember when Mr. Allison said you were behind on your mortgage payments?”
She inhaled deeply and nodded, she remembered.
“I talked to somebody from the bank. You owe two thousand seven hundred fifty-four dollars and if it’s not paid by September 15, the bank is going to seize your house.”
“My house?” She actually laughed. “Poppycock. Mr. Allison wouldn’t do that.”
“It’s true, Mrs. Tartt.”
She picked up the letter and stared at it as if it were in Chinese. “But … they can’t. A Tartt has lived in this house since it was built in 1847. Idlewilde’s older than Ammadelle.”
“Birdie, you’re scaring her,” Frances said. “You don’t know everything. Rory might’ve arranged something, or—”
“Rory did this, Franny,” I said. “He left you with a mortgage and bills and now we don’t even know where he is.”
Frances crossed her arms and stared me down. “Why do you get to decide everything? This isn’t even your house, you just take over everything and accuse Rory when he might be out there doing something—he might be selling everything to bring the money back to pay the …”
While she prattled on, I stared at the white bowl of purple figs Charlie’d picked from the tree in the yard. I could hear her in the kitchen, running the faucet. I chose the biggest, purplest fig, bit it in half, and examined the red capillaries inside. So human-looking, figs.
When Frances finally wound down, I said, “Mrs. Tartt, I know I’ve asked you this before, but is there any family or anybody that could help you out?”
She swallowed and shook her pink-scarfed head.
“The closest family I’ve got is my widow sister Lulu in Jackson, and she asked us for money last Christmas.
Course Rory said no, but I sent her some of my dividend anyway.
And I’ve got cousins across hither and yon, but they don’t have anything either.
” Her voice was rising, climbing a set of stairs.
“What are you saying, Birdie, that we’ll end up like the Percys?
” Her eyes widened; an alarm was going off in her head.
“Sheriff Porter had to remove them from their own home!”
“It’s alright, Mrs. Tartt. You still have options. You have two, in fact.”
She waited, listening, mouth open. Frances still had her arms crossed at me.
“If you could find somebody to buy your house at a fair price—”
Mrs. Tartt sucked in a breath. “I am not selling my home,” she said.
“Mrs. Tartt, please think it through. What do you plan to live on? We can’t even pay the light bill, you need your medicine. Even if we can get more time, that mortgage is not going away.”
She watched me carefully. “What’s my other option? You said there were two.”
“You could try and sell everything in the house and hope it’s enough to cover the mortgage, but you’d still need something to live on.”
“You mean sell … the furniture?” Frances looked down at the table. Finally she seemed afraid. It seemed cruel that this came as a relief. “The table and chairs we’re sitting on?”
“Well, of course it’d bring enough, it’d be more than enough, but—” Mrs. Tartt pulled her lips back in a grimace. “Are those really my only choices?”
This was over my head. I didn’t know for sure. I only knew what Jack had said, what this piece of paper said, what the lawyer in Jackson had told her over the telephone. “You’re lucky you still have this house to sell, Mrs. Tartt.”
“Mr. Allison and the lawyer said the same thing, that I ought to sell the house.” She shook her head, rolling things over in her mouth.
“But I’m not doing it, I won’t. This is where my family has lived and died.
I’d rather sell my things.” She nodded at herself. “I can find a few things to pick out.”