A House by the Side of the Road (16 page)

The shed was shaded by a huge maple tree. There were gaps between some of the planks, and it needed a fresh coat of paint even more badly than the house. She unhooked the door and stepped into the spiderwebbed dimness. The shelves had been constructed by, or for, a taller person; the space underneath held a huge, heavy lawn roller. There was an old shovel but no trowel, rake, or spade. Meg would have to buy those herself.

She stretched for the bottom shelf but couldn't quite tip the paint can onto it. She looked around for something to stand on. Not the mower; it had wheels. Next to the lawn roller, pushed back against the wall, was an old wooden milk crate with a wadded-up tarpaulin inside.

I'm a dolt, she thought. If I'd bothered to look out here before painting, I could have kept paint off the grass.

She pulled the crate out and upended it, stood on the bottom, and slid the paint can onto the shelf. When she picked up the crate to right it, the tarpaulin fell out. Scooping it up to stuff it back in the crate, she heard a clatter. She looked down at the concrete floor of the shed. Something was lying by her right foot. She picked it up and looked to see what it was, then tucked it into her shirt pocket and put the crate back in place.

Someone, it seemed, had once used the tarpaulin and then gathered it up for storage without realizing that a tape cassette had fallen onto it. That was the only logical explanation. After all, why would anyone deliberately hide a tape cassette in a toolshed?

*   *   *

At the grocery store, Meg selected salad greens and bought what she needed for spaghetti. She'd have to use two pots to cook it, but she'd done that before. What for dessert? Ice cream was easy but not practical, given her freezer. Mike was wrong. It did freeze ice, if she gave it long enough, but ice cream would be mush by dinnertime. So, she'd pick up something at the bakery.

She turned up an aisle and saw Jack setting a quart jar of honey into his cart. She was glad she'd changed into a clean shirt and cutoffs, which flattered her, before driving to town, even though the day was really too chilly for such attire.

“I thought it was only the mothers of large families who bought that size,” she said, stopping beside him.

“Oh, I'll use it, eventually,” he said, looking happy to see her. He pulled her gently away from her cart and pushed her up to the shelf. “There,” he said, pointing to the tiny print on the stickers below the honey jars. “And there. See?”

“Ah,” said Meg. “Unit cost. A man after Ben Franklin's heart. But why don't you get your honey from Mr. Eppler?”

“John Eppler is a heck of a beekeeper and a rigidly upstanding pillar of the community,” he replied. “But he thought I should have gotten Hannah Ehrlich's lawn mowed more often and blamed me for the rosebush that didn't make it through the winter two years ago. He didn't like it that she left me an extremely nice oil landscape … Anyway, he's not someone I deliberately run into.”

Meg looked at him sternly. “And was the rosebush your fault?”

“I don't think so. Fact of life, you know, like so many things. But John and Hannah went way back—she left him her IBM stock, if that gives you an idea of what good friends they were—and the only way to have satisfied him would have been to show up at her house at nine in the morning and not leave until six.”

“Christine says you did a lot.”

“Not enough.” His eyes were serious. “She was a wonderful woman—tough, funny, good-hearted. You think there's always going to be time; you can finish this or that later … No, I didn't do enough. And I should have realized how forgetful she was getting. I should have … Oh, what's the point?”

He sighed, shook himself slightly, and smiled at Meg. “Taking a break from the computer to stock the pantry? Good idea.”

“Somebody's got to do it. You have the day off again?”

“Dan didn't need me today,” he said. “He's off somewhere doing something. I've got to kill some time while a tile floor sets before I grout it, so … Want to go get coffee?”

Meg was tempted. “I'd love to,” she said regretfully. “But I've got a ton to do.”

“How about dinner?” he said. “I need to check the attic anyway after yesterday's rain; I could stop by and do that, and then
you
could cook something for a change.”

“Can't tonight,” said Meg, hating to pass it up. “I've got plans tonight. Tomorrow?”

Jack frowned. “Got an evening job tomorrow. But I need to see what's going on with your roof before any leak there might be has dried up completely and—”

“Hey,” said Meg. “I'm not ancient. I can climb the attic stairs.”

“What?” Jack seemed taken aback.

“Keep up with me,” said Meg. “I checked the attic yesterday when I got home. The floor was dry.”

“Great,” he said. “Because leaks are bad enough, but the wet wood they leave behind can lead to all kinds of problems. Unless you're fond of carpenter ants and falling plaster. How's your heating system? Do you even know what you've got?”

“It's one of those mammoth things that look like giant octopi. Gravity, forced-air. Old. I haven't been down there since the day I moved in. The system works. I've turned it on a few times, and it works … sluggishly, but it works.”

Jack whistled. “They don't even make
parts
for those things anymore. I'll take a look at it. How about if I stop by on Monday, about five-thirty?”

*   *   *

“Harding, come!” said Jane. The big dog didn't budge. He was staring fixedly at a squirrel that was pretending to ignore him from a safe distance. “‘Come,' I said. Come!”

“First rule, Jane,” said Meg. “Don't repeat it. He heard you. The darling fellow isn't deaf; he just doesn't realize that what you say matters. He has to learn to come the first time you tell him, as soon as you tell him. By the time you've shouted four or five times, he's already run out in front of the truck or caught the rabbit you don't want him to massacre. Here, I'll show you.”

She took the leash and walked around the yard with Harding for a few moments. Then she stopped and waited for him to become interested in the squirrel again.

“Harding, come!” she said.

The dog stood, statue-like. Meg hauled the leash in rapidly, hand over hand. When he arrived, surprised, at her side, she praised him effusively. She handed the leash to Jane.

“You try it,” she said. “Be quick about making him obey. He has to associate the spoken command with the action of arriving next to you. Say it once. Use his name first. Oh, and while you're training him, don't
ever
give him a command you can't make him obey.”

They worked for a while. Eventually, Harding got the idea.

“It's not that he's dumb, Jane,” said Meg. “He's just not used to having to do what he's told. You're going to see to it that he
gets
used to it. Pretty soon we'll put him on a long rope, and you'll wait until he actually starts chasing a squirrel before you call him.”

“What'll happen?” asked Jane.

“Let's see how prophetic I am,” said Meg. “My guess is, he'll keep going. But if you've timed your command right, dug your feet in, and called him just before he reaches the end of the rope, he'll find out real fast what happens when he ignores you. He'll hit the end of the rope and get jerked right off his great big feet.”

“I couldn't!” said Jane, aghast. “It would hurt him!”

“Not really,” said Meg. “And how much does getting run over by a truck hurt? I'm not talking about being mean to him. It would be a rotten way to
introduce
him to the idea of coming when he's called. You won't be correcting him—which is a nicer way of saying ‘knocking him for a loop'—before he's had a chance to learn the command and deliberately disobey it. You do want him to live a long, long time, don't you?”

Jane put her arms around the Lab and hugged him. He responded by knocking her down and licking her face.

“Oh, yes!” she said. “Mom says he's a doofus and he is. But he's got the most important thing a dog can have. He's got
loyalty.
”

Meg thought about it. It was the most important trait a dog could have, and Harding did have it. He spent a good deal of time at or near Meg's house, coercing his beloved into wrestling matches and trips to the creek. But when it got close to three o'clock, he took off for home.

“You're right,” said Meg. “The best dogs are the loyal ones.”

“The best people, too,” said Jane, looking up from her sprawled position on the ground.

“Hmm…” said Meg. She sat down beside the girl. “Maybe … But with people, don't you want honest and friendly and, I don't know,
good
even more than loyal? I mean, loyal's great, but…” She searched for an example. “What if a friend of yours were doing something she really shouldn't do, maybe something illegal or dangerous. Or, say, Teddy was. Anyway, whoever it was, the person asked you to be loyal and not tell. What would you do?”

Jane thought a moment. “I don't know about my friend,” she said. “I guess it depends how awful it was. But I'd never tell on Teddy. I mean, I might tell Mom or Dad if it was dangerous, but I'd never, ever tell anyone else. That would be worse than what he'd done.”

Meg gazed at her. The child's mouth was set firmly. She looked a lot like Christine at the moment.

“I guess you come by it naturally,” she said. “Your mom's surely the loyal type.”

“Yes, she is,” said Jane, nodding. “But Dad
really
is. He says you have to be loyal to your family. Always and no matter what.”

That's funny, thought Meg. She would have thought loyalty involved communicating. Or was he one of the do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do types? She quelled her resentment of the man. It wasn't right to judge him. She had no idea what was going on with him. And Christine, it seemed, was happy. Perhaps they had talked long into the night, and everything was, after all, just fine.

*   *   *

At dinner, Meg was reminded of how little she knew Dan. He praised the food and participated with interest in the conversation. Meg understood why, besides his physical attractiveness, Christine was so in love with her husband. It didn't hurt that he, like Christine, loved her kitchen.

“You wouldn't believe the times I've had to pull old handmade cabinets out to replace them with golden oak,” he said. “And nobody wants these plain glass doors anymore. It's all little individual panes but usually, of course, not individual panes at all—just wood strips over glass to make the doors look like individual panes.”

“What do you do?” asked Meg. “I mean, when somebody's decided to rip out great old stuff and modernize?”

“I do it,” he said, shrugging. “People want what they want. It would be harder to legislate taste than morality, and you know what they say about
that.
”

“Isn't there a market for the old stuff? The mantels and banisters and all the things you rip out? In Chicago, there are places that specialize in selling that.”

He shrugged. “Around here? I doubt it. Mind if I see the rest of the house?”

“Feel free,” Meg said. “Just don't look at it with a contractor's eye. Don't sit at the dinner table and tell me about the sixty-five thousand dollars I need to spend to keep it from falling down. Please.”

He was gone for quite a while and when Meg looked inquiringly at him on his return, he shook his head, raised his eyes as to the heavens, and sighed dramatically.

“I appreciate your silence,” said Meg.

“You ought to,” he replied. “It's taking its toll on me. But, someday, we have to talk.”

“Someday,” said Meg.

When it was time for dessert, she brought in a platter of éclairs from the kitchen.

“Zowee!” said Teddy. “Éclairs! From the bakery!”

“The one thing my perfect wife doesn't make,” said Dan. He winked at Christine. “She makes only the things she can make better than anyone else. Granted, that's a lot of things, but not éclairs. Nobody can make better éclairs than the bakery.”

“They make good muffins, too,” said Meg. “Jack brought some over one day.”

“Grab the lad,” said Dan.

“Dan has a strong interest in such an occurrence,” said Christine.

“Which would be?” asked Meg.

Christine looked at Dan, who grinned. “It has to do with who mows the lawn for the month of July.”

Meg put her elbows on the table and clasped her hands under her chin. She looked back and forth from Dan to Christine. “Oh, please! My future will be decided by
July?
”

“Actually,” said Dan, “I just like the guy. He's decent and he works hard and he deserves to be happy.”

“I take it, he hasn't been?” asked Meg, assuming a casualness she did not feel.

“He doesn't talk much,” said Dan. “He hardly talks at all. But I think he's had his share of disappointment. His relationships, the few there have been since he moved here a number of years ago, have been both casual and brief, except for one. That one was serious. It ended recently and, I think, badly.”

“The lovely Stephanie,” said Christine.

“The legend-in-her-own-time Stephanie,” said Meg.

“Maybe he's gay,” said Jane.

Dan, Christine, and Meg all stared at her. Teddy helped himself to another éclair.

“Maybe he's what?” asked Christine.

“You know, Mother,” said Jane, disgusted with her parent's thickheadedness. “Gay. Maybe he's gay.”

“No, Jane,” said Dan. “I don't think so.”

*   *   *

After dinner, Dan took the children home. “They've both still got homework,” he said to Christine. “And I've got to finish an estimate. So if you want to stay and yak, why don't you? I'll get them in bed by nine, I swear.”