Here I Stay (3 page)

"Reckon that's all there is up here," he agreed. "Miss Bertha never threw anything away. Nor gave
it away, neither."

"Where do those stairs go?" Jim asked.

He indicated a short flight of curving steps.

"Tower, I reckon," Bushwaller said. "I got to be getting back...."

Jim mounted the stairs and opened the door.

Light streamed out onto the narrow landing. This topmost floor of the round tower stood free of the rest of the house; the lower floors formed bays in the library, master bedroom, and one of the third floor rooms. Windows ran around three quarters of the circumference, providing views of the surrounding countryside-winter-browned hills to the west, the roofs of the town to the south and, opposite, the muddy rushing flood of the stream bounding the property on the north. Even in that bleakest of all seasons, with mist veiling the mountaintops and rain streaking the panes, it was the most attractive view Andrea had seen in the past hour. But when Jim murmured, "Hey, what a great room," in a tone she knew only too well, she said sharply, "You mean what a great mess. Come out of there before the floor collapses."

"The floor's all right." Jim demonstrated by stamping through the fallen plaster and scraps of paper littering the floor. "This board just inside the door sags a little, but I could fix—"

"I said come out of there."

He obeyed unwillingly and Andrea closed the door. That was all she needed—that Jim should take a fancy to the place and propose some tomfool scheme for keeping it. Mercifully the house was too far from the university to make commuting feasible, otherwise Jim would probably suggest moving in, with a "bunch of the guys"—his informal and virtually ubiquitous entourage. Andrea didn't blame Jim's friends for wanting to be with him—he was wonderful company—but she had never been able to understand why they had to travel in packs like wild dogs. She hardly ever got a chance to see Jim alone, and although she rather liked "the guys" as individuals, she resented them bitterly as a collective entity. The very phrase made her see red.

When she and Jim got downstairs, Bushwaller was halfway out the front door. Andrea slammed it after him and Jim gave her a disapproving frown.

"You were pretty rude, weren't you?"

"He's a crook," Andrea said. "There must be a few valuable antiques here or he wouldn't be so eager to bring his buddy Sam in on the deal. Let's get on with the inventory."

By the time they finished with the parlor, the morning was well advanced. "I've never seen so much junk," Andrea grumbled, closing the doors of a corner cupboard whose contents of china and glassware had filled four pages of the notebook. "But I daren't omit anything; I don't know anything about antiques and collectors are crazy, they'll pay the earth for bric-a-brac. Next time I'll bring a camera and a tape recorder; that would be more efficient than writing everything down. Friday. I've got Friday off this week. I'll come out at the crack of dawn and work all day."

''Want some help? I could meet you here—" 'You have three classes on Friday."

Jim's face twisted. "Damn it, you know my schedule better than I do. It won't matter if I take—" 'You will go to class."

"Saturday, then."

"I have to work Saturday."

"You won't finish this in one day. I could carry on from where you left off—bring a bunch of the guys to help."

Andrea bit her lip. Help would be welcome, for time was unquestionably of the essence, but "the guys" were not the assistants she wanted. They would descend on the house like a horde of locusts, full of goodwill and good intentions—and beer. After an hour or so they would all be sprawled on the floor talking about life and getting bombed.

"I'll think about it," she said.

Jim knew what that meant. His eyes narrowed and his lips tightened. Andrea braced herself for an argument. Jim would have hooted with disbelief if she had told him she hated fighting with him, for she always kept her cool and she always won. But she did hate it. She hated being at odds with the person she loved best—the only person she really loved. Why couldn't he just take her word for things instead of disagreeing all the time?

This time, to her relief, he capitulated with a shrug, his face remote. Andrea patted him on the arm.

"I'll think about it. We'd better get going. Lunch is on me—pizza, as usual?"

Jim headed for the car. "I'm driving," he announced belligerently.

Meekly Andrea handed over the keys. She didn't have the heart to squelch him again that morning— and he knew it. He grinned at her and set the car moving with exaggerated care. It crept like a snail down the drive. Andrea turned for a final look. The fog was creeping in. The queer peaked roof of the tower pointed at the low-hanging clouds like an accusing finger.

That night, driving back to campus in the rain and fog, Jim was sideswiped by a van trying to pass on a sharp curve. His car went over an embankment and into a tree. Andrea had just dropped off to sleep when the telephone rang.

The battle had not ended the night she knew Jim would live. For weeks it went on—a grim, seemingly endless fight to hold him in a world he no longer cared to inhabit. Hour after hour she sat by his bed, reading aloud, carrying on desperate onesided conversations. Sometimes he answered in monosyllables; sometimes he didn't respond at all. Usually he didn't even look at her but lay staring at the ceiling, a frown of rejection drawing lines across his forehead and along his cheeks.

At first Dr. Blake was reassuring. "Wasn't it Bernard Shaw who said that optimism is a gift of middle age? He's only nineteen. Young people haven't had enough experience to know that there is always a tomorrow. Physically he's coming right along, considering the extent of his injuries."

One day in April Andrea managed to corner Blake in his office. He had avoided her of late, primarily because he had come to share her forebodings. The case puzzled and distressed him. His professional pride was injured by Jim's failure to respond, and despite his attempts to remain detached he had developed an unwilling interest in the boy and his sister.

"He's not trying," Andrea said. "He won't help.

What can I do?"

"You must show him you depend on him," Blake suggested, somewhat desperately. "Sometimes a sense of responsibility...Tell him you need him."

"Need him?" It was a cry of anguish. "Need him?"

Blake turned his head away. After a moment Andrea muttered, "I'm sorry."

She had refused to sit down. They stood side by side, and although Blake was not a tall man he had to look down on her. He knew her age—thirty-one. She looked ten years older. The strain of the past weeks might explain the lines on her face and the grim set of her mouth, but he suspected they were habitual. She was a fighter, this one. Impulsively he started to speak, and then stopped himself. He wasn't an analyst; what the hell did he know? Besides, it was unlikely that anyone could penetrate the wall of stubborn self-righteousness that was at once her most admirable and her most maddening characteristic.

He put his hand on her shoulder. "Keep trying," he said gently. "Don't give up."

The fragile bone and muscle under his hand stiffened. "I won't."

She went back to Jim's room. He wasn't expecting her. She saw his face go blank, as if a thin film of some rapidly congealing, transparent substance had spread over his features, and her heart sank. Sitting down by the bed, she reached for his hand, searching for words—the right words. She had the feeling that this was her last chance, and at first she was at a loss. Out of nowhere, seemingly, the words came.

"I wanted to ask you about something," she said.

There was no response, not even a twitch of muscle in the limp fingers she held. Groping, she went on. "It's that damned house, Jim—Bertha's house. I don't know what to do about it. Bushwaller called this morning, said the police had scared off some kids who were trying to break in last night. I put it on the market right after.. .Well, it's been a long time, and we haven't had a nibble."

She fancied she saw the faintest flicker of interest in his hooded eyes. Then it came pouring out in a flood, the argument as well marshaled and organized as if she had been working on it for days.

"Jimmie, what would you think about turning the house into an inn—living there ourselves? Being his own boss is every laborer's dream, but I never imagined I could own my own place—you can't compete with the big chains, not these days. But the bed-and-breakfast idea, the country inn, is catching on. I've read several articles about it. The house is certainly big enough, and there's a good restaurant nearby, so I wouldn't have to serve meals. The area is full of antique shops and battlefields and historic sites...Could we do it? Or would we be taking on more than we can handle?"

For a long moment, a moment that seemed to stretch into eternity, he did not reply. Then he said, in a voice rusty with disuse, "The house is sound structurally. Needs a lot of work—mostly painting, papering..."

"Is it? It is? That's what I wanted to ask you. I wasn't sure. You know about those things, you're so good with your hands..." She gabbled, her voice unsteady as she tried to weave the thin thread of interest into a stronger hold. "We could sell the good pieces of furniture but keep enough to furnish the
rooms with real antiques...Bertha left a small insurance policy, only a few thousand, but with what I've saved there might be enough to cover the remodeling.. Jim, I'm scared. I don't know whether I can do it."

His head turned. His hair was lank and dull and he had lost weight; the sunken cheeks and white lips were those of an old man. "Sure you can," he said. "You can do anything." "Not unless you help me." "Sure. I could get some of the guys." The familiar, once hated phrase was too much for her. Tears flooded her eyes. Clinging to his hand, she buried her face against the sheets. After an interval she felt his other hand fumblingly stroke her hair.

That same afternoon Andrea gave up her apartment and her job. The latter was a desperate expedient, leaving her without income at a time when she needed money badly, but she sensed that it was necessary to risk everything on one last hope. She divided her time between the hospital and the house in Ladiesburg. She barely took time to sleep, and when she did she slept like the dead, drained by emotional strain and physical effort. Her intention was to get the house in order before Jim came home. He would insist on helping if there was work to be done, and she was determined that he should not waste his strength on manual labor.

She made a point of consulting him about everything she did, and of following his advice when it was at all practicable. His recovery was frighteningly
slow, but there were no major setbacks; she came to have an almost superstitious reverence for the house, because it was the one thing that held his interest, even in his bad times. And the cat...

Satan was a permanent resident. He came and went at his own sweet will—"the cat who walked by himself," said one of Jim's more literary friends, quoting Kipling—but when he was in the house he was almost always to be found on the bed in Bertha's room. Andrea did not accept this arrangement without a fight. She tried everything she could think of, from locking doors to strewing the bed with tacks, to no avail. By trickiness or teleportation Satan got into the room, and tacks didn't bother him; he shoved the shredded coverlet up around them and reclined on the sheet.

The war between Andrea and Satan became the highlight of Jim's day. His friends, home from college and rallying around like troopers, enjoyed the cat gossip as much as Jim did. Grimly and dutifully Andrea had put food out for Satan—no animal was going to die of neglect in her house—but the day Jim first laughed aloud, when she told him about the tacks on the bed, Andrea stopped at the store on her way home and bought a container of cream— whipping cream, not the thinner variety. Satan stared at it with a look of almost human astonishment before tucking up his whiskers and diving in.

After that there was no more talking of giving Satan away or delivering him to the Humane Society. And it was Jim who offered the solution to Satan's refusal to be evicted from the master bedroom.

"There's a story in here about a resident cat," he said, indicating the copy of
Country Inns and Restaurants he
had been reading. "The cat lives in Room Number Six, and the owners just tell guests that's the way it is. It lends a certain cachet, don't you think?"

" 'Cachet' is not the word," Andrea said, laughing. His vocabulary had improved considerably. Reading was something he'd never had time for, before...

At least Satan provided comic relief. Very little else in Andrea's life just then was funny. However, the work proceeded far more smoothly than she realized at the time. Workmen actually showed up on the day they had promised to come, the necessary permits were obtained without debate, inspectors passed the new wiring and plumbing with unbelievable amiability.

Andrea was also up to her chapped elbows in manual labor. She stripped wallpaper, sanded floors, painted moldings and caulked windows. She confined the alterations to the first and second floors. Five guest bedrooms were all she could handle without full-time help. In her free time she studied "do it yourself manuals, read every article she could find on country inns, and called on local innkeepers to get ideas. Her training in hotel management helped to some extent, but many aspects of the bed-and-breakfast trade were new to her. New and exciting; as she scraped and scrubbed and sanded, her mind teemed with ambitious plans. More guest rooms on the third floor and the attic, gourmet meals, tennis courts and a swimming pool, get-away weekends for antique and history buffs, with lectures and guided tours...As time went on, she found an unexpected satisfaction in her work of awakening the beauty of the old house from its cobweb-encrusted sleep of
years.