“Duncan, it’s time to roll the mattresses,” Justine said.
“Mattresses. Yes.”
“Would you?”
“Hold up your hand,” Duncan told the grandfather, leading him through the living room. “Then take away two fingers. The first and third elements, say, of a four-element …”
“Last night,” said Meg, “Mrs. Benning asked me again if I would like to stay with her.”
“Oh, Meg.”
“She said, ‘Why won’t your mother allow it? Just till the school year is over,’ she said. She said, ‘You know we’d love to have you. Does she think you’d be imposing? Would it help if I talked to her one more time?’ ”
“You’ll be leaving us soon enough as it is,” said Justine, stacking empty paper cups.
“At least we should consider my schooling,” Meg said. “This is my senior year. I won’t learn a thing, moving around the way we do.”
“Teaching you to adapt is the best education we could give you,” Justine told her.
“Adapt! What about logarithms?”
“Now I can’t keep on and on about this. I want you to find the cat. I think she knows it’s moving day. She’s hiding.”
“So would I,” said Meg, “if I could think of a place.” And she slid off the counter and left, calling the cat in her soft, sensible voice that was never raised even when she argued. Justine stood motionless beside the sink. When she heard footsteps she spun around but it was only her grandfather.
“Justine? There are neighbors here to see you off,” he told her. He sniffed through his long, pinched nose. People who were not related to him ought to keep to themselves, he always said. He watched narrowly while Justine rushed through the house, hunting her keys and struggling into her coat and jamming her hat on her head. “Check your room, Grandfather,” she called. “Turn off the lights. Will you help Meg find the cat? Tell her we’re just about to leave.”
“Knees?”
“And don’t forget your hearing aid.”
“They don’t get better that fast, the cold has sunk into the sockets,” her grandfather said. “Ask me again tomorrow. Thank you very much.”
Justine kissed his cheekbone, a polished white blade. She flew through the living room and out the front door, into the chalky dawn. Cold air yanked at her breath. Frozen grass crunched under her feet. Over by the U-Haul truck, Mr. Ambrose was helping Duncan load the last of the mattresses. Mrs. Ambrose stood to one side, along with the Printzes and Mrs. Benning and Della Carpenter and her retarded daughter. And a few feet away was a newsboy Justine had never seen before, a canvas sack slung from one shoulder. Except for the newsboy they all wore bathrobes, or coats thrown over pajamas. She had known them for nearly a year and there were still these new things to be learned: Alice Printz favored fluffy slippers the size of small sheep and Mrs. Benning, so practical in the daytime, wore a nightgown made of layers and layers of see-through pink or blue or gray—it was hard to tell which in this light. They stood hugging themselves against the cold, and the Carpenter girl’s teeth were chattering. “Justine, I never!” Alice Printz was saying. “You thought you could slip out from under us. But we won’t let you go that easy, here we are at crack of dawn waiting to see you off.”
“Oh, I hate goodbyes!” said Justine. She went down the row hugging each one, even the newsboy, whom she might after all know without realizing it. Then a light came on over the Franks’ front door, three houses down, and Justine went to tell June Frank goodbye. All but the newsboy came along with her. June appeared on her cinderblock steps carrying a begonia in a plastic pot. “I had this growing for you ever since I knew you would be moving,” she said, “and if you had run off in the night the way you’re doing and not give me a chance to say goodbye it would have broke my heart in two.” June rolled her hair up on orange juice cans. Justine had never known that before either. And she said not to thank her for the plant or its growth would be stunted. “Is that right?” said Justine, her attention sidetracked. She held up the pot and thought a minute. “Now why, I wonder?”
“I don’t know why, I only know what my mother used to say to me,” June said. “Justine, honey, I won’t come any further, but you tell the others goodbye for me too. Tell that pretty little Meg and your sweet old grandfather, tell that handsome husband, hear? And I’m going to write you a letter. If my sister decides to get married again I have to write you first and ask you what the cards say. I wouldn’t think of letting her go ahead without it. Can you manage such a thing long distance?”
“I’ll surely try,” said Justine. “Well, I won’t say thank you for the plant then but I promise to take good care of it. Goodbye then, June.”
“Goodbye, old honey,” June said, and she grew sad all at once and came down the steps to lay her cheek softly against Justine’s while the others looked on, suddenly still, tilting their heads and smiling.
Meanwhile Meg had settled in the rear of the battered Ford with an enormous gray tweed cat in her lap. The cat crouched and glared and Meg cried, causing a mist of tears to glaze the squat little house with its yellowed foundations, its tattered shrubs, the porch pillars rotting from the bottom up. In the front seat, her great-grandfather placed his hearing aid in his ear, adjusted a button, and winced. Duncan slammed the tailgate on the last of the mattresses and climbed into the truck cab. He turned on the headlights, coloring the gray and white scene in front of him—Justine being passed from hand to hand down a row of neighbors in their nightclothes. “Ho, Justine,” he called softly. Of course she couldn’t hear. He had to beep the horn. Then everybody jumped and screeched and a window lit up half a block down, but Justine only gave him a wave and headed for the car, unsurprised, because wasn’t he always having to honk for her? She was late for everything, though she started out the earliest and the fastest and the most impatient. She was always leaving places the same way, calling scraps of goodbyes and then running, flying, bearing some shaking plant or parcel or covered dish, out of breath and laughing at herself, clutching her hat to her head as she sped along.
At nine o’clock in the morning, Red Emma Borden was wiping the counter in the Caro Mill Diner when these four unfamiliar people walked in—a man and wife, a teenaged daughter and a very ancient gentleman. Red Emma was about to have a cigarette (she’d been on her feet since four) and she wasn’t eager to wait on anyone else. Still, it was nice to see some new faces. She had been born and raised and married and widowed in this town and she was sick of everybody in it. So she puffed up her orange curls, tugged her uniform down, and reached for the order pad. Meanwhile the strangers were trying to find acceptable seats, which was not all that easy to do. Two of the counter stools were broken, just topless aluminum pedestals, and another would tip you off as soon as you tried to perch upon it. They had to cluster at one end down near the exhaust fan. Even then, the old gentleman had a long tail of cotton batting dangling out from under him. But none of them made any complaint; they just folded their arms and waited for her behind four pairs of blue, blue eyes. “Well, now,” said Red Emma, slapping down cracked plastic menu cards. “What you going to have?”
She addressed the woman first—a skin-and-bones lady wearing a hat. But it was the husband who answered. “Speedy here will have everything in the kitchen,” he said.
“Speedy! I barely inched along,” the woman said.
“I thought you had entered the Indy five hundred. And your seat belt flopping out the door, after I took all that time installing it for you—”
“I will take coffee and three fried eggs,” the woman told Red Emma. “Sunny side up. And hotcakes, link sausages, and orange juice. And something salty, a sack of potato chips. Grandfather? Meg?”
Red Emma feared she would be cooking all morning, but it turned out the others just wanted coffee. They had the dazed, rumpled look of people who had been traveling. Only the woman seemed to care to talk. “My name is Justine,” she said, “and this is my husband, Duncan. Our Grandfather Peck and our daught
er Meg. Do you have the keys?”
“How’s that?”
“We were told to stop here and pick up the keys for Mr. Parkinson’s house.”
“Oh, yes,” said Red Emma. She would never have supposed that these were the people for Ned Parkinson’s house—a tacky little place next to the electric shop. Particularly not the old gentleman. “Well, he did say somebody might be by,” she said. “Have you took a good look at it yet?”
“Duncan has. He chose it,” said Justine. “You haven’t told us your name.”
“Why, I’m Red Emma Borden.”
“Do you work here all the time?”
“Mornings I do.”
“Because I like to eat in diners. I expect we’ll run into you often.”
“Maybe so,” said Red Emma, breaking eggs onto the grill. “But if you come after noon it’ll be my late husband’s cousin, Black Emma Borden. They call her that because she’s the one with black hair, only she’s been dyeing it for years now.” She poured coffee into thick white cups. “You say your husband chose the house?” she asked Justine.
“He always does.”
Red Emma flung him a glance. A fine-looking, straw-colored man. His conscience did not appear to be bothering him. “Look, honey,” she told Justine. She set the coffeepot down and leaned over the counter. “How come you would let your husband choose where you live? Does he understand kitchens? Does he check for closet space and woodwork that doesn’t crumble to bits the first time you try to scrub it down?”
Justine laughed. “I doubt it,” she said.
Red Emma had once sent her husband to a used car lot to buy a family automobile and he had come home with a little teeny red creature meant for racing, set low to the ground, slit eyes for windows. It ate up every cent they had saved. She had never forgiven him. So now she felt personally involved, and she glared at this Duncan. He sat there as calm as you please building a pyramid out of sugar cubes. The grandfather was reading someone’s discarded newspaper, holding it three feet away from him as old people tend to do and scowling and working his mouth around. Only the daughter seemed to understand. A nice girl, so trim and quiet. She wore a coat that was shabby but good quality, and she kept her eyes fixed on a catsup bottle as if something had shamed her. She knew what Red Emma was getting at.
“There’s other places,” Red Emma said. “The Butters are letting, oh, a big place go, over by the schoolhouse.”
“Now on the average,” Duncan said, and Red Emma turned, thinking he was speaking to her, “on the average a single one of the blocks in Cheop’s pyramid weighed two and a half tons.” No, it was the grandfather he meant that for, but the grandfather only looked up, irritated, maybe not even hearing, and turned a page of his paper. Duncan spun toward Meg, on his left. “It is accepted that wheels as such were not used in the construction,” he told her. “Nor any but the most primitive surveying tools, so far as we know. Nevertheless, the greatest error to be found is only a little over five degrees on the east wall, and the others are almost perfect. And have you thought about the angle of the slant?”
Meg looked back at him, expressionless.
“It’s my belief they built it from the top down,” he said. He laughed.
Red Emma thought he must be crazy.
She flipped the hotcakes, loaded Justine’s plate, and set it in front of her. “The Butters’ house is a two-story affair,” she said. “They also have a sleeping porch.”
“Oh, I believe Mr. Parkinson’s place is going to be just fine,” said Justine. “Besides, it’s near where Duncan’s going to work. This way he can come home for lunch.”
“Now where’s he going to work?” Red Emma asked.
“At the Blue Bottle Antique Shop.”
Oh, Lord. She should have known. That gilt-lettered place, run by a fat man nobody knew. Who needed antiques in Caro Mill? Only tourists, passing through on their way to the Eastern Shore, and most of them were in too much of a hurry to stop. But Red Emma still clung to a shred of hope (she liked to see people manage, somehow) and she said, “Well now, I suppose he could improve on what that Mr.—I don’t recall his name. I suppose if he knows about antiques, and so on—”
“Oh, Duncan knows about everything,” said Justine.
It didn’t sound good, not at all.
“He hasn’t worked with antiques before but he did build some furniture once, a few jobs back—”
Yes.
“The man who owns the Blue Bottle is Duncan’s mother’s sister’s brother-in-law. He wants to ease off a little, get somebody else to manage the store for him now that he’s getting older.”
“We’ve used up all my mother’s blood relations,” Duncan said cheerfully. He was correcting the pitch of one pyramid wall. The truth that was coming out did not appear to embarrass him. “The last job was with my uncle, he owns a health food store. But no one in the family has a fix-it shop, and fixing is what I really do. I can fix anything. Do you need some repair work here?”
“No indeed,” Red Emma told him firmly.
And she turned back to Justine, ready to offer her sympathy, but Justine was munching potato chips with a merry look in her eye. Her hat was a little crooked. Could she possibly be a drinker? Red Emma sighed and went to clean the grill. “Of course,” she said, “I don’t mean to say anything against Ned Parkinson’s house. Why, in lots of ways it’s just fine. I’m sure you’ll all be happy there.”
“I’m sure we will be,” Justine said.
“And certainly your husband can handle any plumbing and electrical problems that might arise,” Red Emma said, wickedly sweet, because she did not for a moment think he could.
But Duncan said, “Certainly,” and started plunking his sugar cubes one by one back into the bowl.
Red Emma wiped the grill with a sour dish rag. She felt tired and wished they would go. But then Justine said, “You want to hear something? This coming year will be the best our family’s ever had. It’s going to be exceptional.”
“Now, how do you know that?”
“It’s nineteen seventy-three, isn’t it? And three is our number! Look: both Duncan and I were born in nineteen thirty-three. We were married in nineteen fifty-three and Meg was born on the third day of the third month in nineteen fifty-five. Isn’t that something?”
“Oh, Mama,” Meg said, and ducked her head over her coffee.
“Meg’s afraid that people will think I’m eccentric,” said Justine. “But after all, it’s not as if I believed in numerology or anything. Just lucky numbers. What’s your lucky number, Red Emma?”
“Eight,” said Red Emma.
“Ah. See there? Eight is forceful and good at organizing. You would succeed at any business or career, just anything.”
“I would?”
Red Emma looked down at her billowing white nylon front, the flowered handkerchief prinked to her bosom with a cameo brooch.
“Now, Meg doesn’t have a lucky number. I’m worried that nothing will ever happen to her.”
“Mama.”
“Meg was due to be born in May and I wondered how that could happen. Unless she arrived on the third, of course. But see? She was premature, she came in March after all.”
“I always ask for eight at the Basket of Cheer lottery,” said Red Emma. “And I’ve won it twice, too. Forty dollars’ worth of fine-quality liquor.”
“Of course. Now, who’s the fortune teller in this town?”
“Fortune teller?”
The grandfather rattled and crackled his paper.
“Don’t tell me you don’t have one,” said Justine.
“Not to my knowledge we don’t.”
“Well, you know where I’ll be living. Come when I’m settled and I’ll tell your fortune free.”
“You tell fortunes.”
“I do church fairs, bazaars, club meetings, teas—anybody’s, any time. People can knock on my door in the dead of night if they have some urgent problem and I will get up in my bathrobe to give them a
reading. I don’t mind at all. I like it, in fact. I have insomnia.”
“But—you mean you tell fortunes seriously?” Red Emma asked.
“How else would I tell them?”
Red Emma looked at Duncan. He looked back, unsmiling.
“Well, if we could have the keys, then,” said Justine.
Red Emma fetched them, sleepwalking—two flat, tinny keys on a shower curtain ring. “I really do need to have my fortune told,” she said. “I wouldn’t want this spread around but I’m considering a change in employment.”
“Oh, I could help out with that.”
“Don’t laugh, will you? I’d like to be a mailman. I even passed the tests. Could you really tell me whether that would be a lucky move or not?”
“Of course,” said Justine.
Red Emma rang up their bill, which Duncan paid with a BankAmericard so worn it would not emboss properly. Then they filed out, and she stood by the door to watch them go. When Justine passed, Red Emma touched her shoulder. “I’m just so anxious, you see.” she said. “I don’t sleep good at all. My mind swings back and forth between decisions. Oh, I know it’s nothing big. I mean, a mailman, what is that to the world? What’s it going to matter a hundred years from now? I don’t fool myself it’s anything important. Only day after day in this place, the grease causing my hair to flop halfway through the morning and the men all making smart remarks and me just feeding them and feeding them … though the pay is good and I really don’t know what Uncle Harry would say if I was to quit after all these years.”
“Change,” said Justine.
“Beg pardon?”
“Change. I don’t need cards for that. Take the change. Always change.”
“Well—is that my fortune?”
“Yes it is,” said Justine. “Goodbye, Red Emma! See you soon!”
And she was gone, leaving Red Emma to pleat her lower lip with her fingers and ponder beside the plate glass door.