Small Town Girl (23 page)

Joan shook her head slowly and tsked. “Don’t you believe it! You’ve got to call them again tomorrow morning, or they won’t show up until next week. Nobody’s in a hurry around here, and you have to keep right on them. Why, where’s your ring?”

Lauren started. Leave it to Joan! “Oh, well, um, I was scrubbing the upstairs bathroom, so I just took it off.”

“And when is the wedding?”

“Oh, it was planned for October.” Lauren wriggled out of a lie.

“Nice, nice,” said Joan. “I’m glad things worked out.”

Lauren pretended not to hear. She did not want to get into the details of her private travails with Joan Halloran. It would be all over town within a day, not that Lauren cared what these people might think. Joan, however, would not immediately drop the subject. Like all good salespeople, she could smell a weakness a mile away.

“I was hoping there might have been something developing between you and Caleb,” she said pointedly. “Don’t think I don’t know why he went down to the city a couple of weeks ago.”

“Oh!” laughed Lauren uncomfortably. “I did see him when he came to the city. It was a nice visit. Anyway, how’s he doing?” She’d not meant to say it. She’d not meant to give Joan one iota of fuel for her fire.

“Caleb is Caleb,” said Joan. “He goes around with a smile on his face, works all the time, and volunteers as a fireman every spare minute he has. Everybody in town loves him, and everybody wants him to find a nice girl and start a family.” She smiled at Lauren and sighed. “I just thought it might be you. I was hoping when he went to the city, it meant something had happened between you.”

Lauren turned away so Joan could not see her color rising in her face. “Well, it didn’t,” she quipped shortly. “Come on in, Joan, and I’ll show you what I’m doing.”

Lauren led the way into the house.

“Oh!” exclaimed Joan. “I’m impressed! You’ve been busy!”

It was true. In the three days she had been there, Lauren had ripped up the old linoleum floor. She had taken all the hardware off the cabinetry and stripped most of the old white paint off the woodwork.

“I’ve had to keep busy.” Lauren laughed, recovering her good humor. “And actually, it’s been fun. I’m going to restore the house to a 1930s farmhouse with arts and crafts and art deco touches. I know the house is actually older than that, built in the 1860s, but I like the twenties and thirties, style-wise, and I think it will fit the house.”

“This is very exciting. Even in this state of restoration, we stand a better chance for a sale. People like to see work being done.”

“I agree.” Lauren nodded. “Now come out here in the yard. I think I discovered where the old milk house was, or something. There’s a floor of flat stones in a corner of the yard. I’m going to clear away the weeds and make it into a patio.”

Lauren led Joan out into the yard. Late as it was in the season, the Shasta daisies and phlox were still blooming, as well as the mints, oregano, and coreopsis. There was also a clump of deep red, late-blooming daylilies at the corner of the house. Joan paused and gently touched the blossoms. In a voice gentler than her customary gossipy tone, she said to Lauren, “I did know your grandmother, you know. She loved daylilies, and there are many on this property that she bred herself. One of her most successful varieties were these here. A lot of people in town would ask her for small rhizomes to plant, so they’re all over town. She gave me some, too, and I love them. She used to enter them in the county fair. She always won.”

“I remember that she really liked the garden and her flowers,” said Lauren as she gazed at the large, purple-red bloom. “I remember going to the fair with her a couple of times, but if we were living far away at the time, I’d be in school and we wouldn’t see her again until summer vacation.”

Joan looked up at Lauren. “You should enter these in the fair. It’s early in September. Starts Labor Day Weekend and goes for four days. The plants will still be blooming, and they’re just as beautiful as they were when your grandmother was alive.”

“Oh, I’m afraid I’m not much for county fairs.”

“Now, that’s just silly!” exclaimed the Realtor. “Everybody loves the fair! And we could use it as a selling point. ‘Prize winning garden.’ That would be different!”

Lauren knew it was futile to argue with Joan Halloran. Instead she said, “I’ll do it if you help me enter them.”

“Yes, I will! I’ll pick you up an entry form today at the town office. You will have such a good time. Really, it’s fun. The fair grounds are down on the main road between us and Windsor, right on the county line. It’s one of the last real fairs in the state with livestock, vegetables, quilting, and a midway. It’s the real deal. Fireworks. And entertainment. Last year, we had Keith Urban.”

“Really! Why would Keith Urban come here?”

Joan looked at her seriously for a moment and said, “Sooner or later, everybody who is anybody at all comes here.”

August gave way to September, and the weather cooled. Lauren began to truly enjoy her projects in the house. Each project required research, planning, the acquisition of materials, and lots of time. The rigorous schedule kept her grounded and seemed to sooth the anxiety and hurt that had occupied much of her thoughts since she’d terminated her engagement. She still thought about Caleb. After all, she was staying in the house where they had consummated their desire. When driving into town for groceries or materials, she couldn’t help but look around for his truck, or try to catch sight of him perhaps coming or going from McTavish’s. She had seen the fuel trucks on their rounds through town, and the plumbing vans, but he had not been behind the wheel. Her stomach knotted up when she remembered that, as the cool weather approached, she would have to call Cochran Plumbing and Heating for a fuel delivery. Well, she would cross that bridge when she came to it.

The painters were nearly done with the outside. Lauren bought new shutters — real wooden shutters — and painted them a deep, forest green. She also had the picket fence replaced and was appalled at the cost, but the fence showed the house and garden off to perfection, so it was well worth the expense. She did every project she could manage herself. For some of the heavy yard work, she found it necessary to hire a local landscaping company, but she kept the friendly boy with the lawn mower coming every week or so to keep everything looking neat and trimmed.

Inside, Lauren managed quite well. The table was stacked with do-it-yourself homeowner’s books on tiling, woodworking, and retro-style design. She found a huge old high-backed double-porcelain sink in the woodshed, ripped out the old stainless steel sink, and had it installed in the kitchen. She splurged on the faucet and was satisfied with the results. She had kept the kitchen island from her Murray Hill apartment and found that it fit nicely into this kitchen as well. It gave extra work space and didn’t interfere with the table. Lauren kept the old white enameled table, decorated with painted cherries. She remembered it from when she was a little girl, and it was really in very good condition. A varied collection of four chairs surrounded it, none of them matching. Lauren painted them all a deep red which tied them together and set off the table to perfection.

She was polishing the chrome on the old black wood-burning cookstove one afternoon when Joan knocked on the door.

“Come in,” she called, drawing her head out of the oven to see who it was.

“Your grandmother used to bake the most wonderful beans and bread in that stove. And you wait until winter. You can fire up that stove, and it’ll heat this whole downstairs. Do you have wood for winter yet? And don’t forget, you need to have the chimneys cleaned. In these old houses, a crack in the flue can mean a house fire. Well, maybe we won’t have to worry about the wood if we sell it by winter, but do get the chimneys cleaned and checked. Actually, I’ve got two parties to see it. One couple wants to come tomorrow. Is that all right with you?”

Lauren continued to polish the chrome, letting Joan babble on. “Oh, yes,” she said. “Just make sure you let them know I’m working in here.”

“I think that will just add to the appeal,” Joan replied.

True to her word, Joan brought prospective buyers through over the next two days. The first couple was middle-aged and wandered around looking at the ceilings and muttering about which walls they would take out. Lauren didn’t like them or the thought of them being in the house. The second showing was a young couple with two children who found the house in too much of a state of construction for their purposes.

“Don’t despair, dear,” said Joan after she had seen the young couple out the door. “We’ll find someone.”

Lauren was not despairing. She was enjoying her time in the house. She made occasional trips into town for groceries, but for the most part, she stuck to the business of restoration. Being trained as a museum curator, she was no stranger to hands-on work, and even the contractors were impressed with the results of her efforts. The constant work was therapeutic. During the day, there were always workmen of some kind on the premises, hammering and sawing or painting. They kept her from feeling too alone with their congenial conversations and their off-color jokes. It was the end of the day that was hardest for Lauren. When the workmen packed up and left each day at around four o’clock and she suddenly found herself alone, she always went through a period of worry and sadness. She talked to Kelly every day to bolster her confidence, but try as she might, she could not see what the future held.

Often, she sat on the top step of the old porch and sipped a beer, trying not to think of tomorrow, trying just to focus on the progress that had been made that day. Usually she was tired enough at the end of the day that she slept well, relatively uninterrupted by shadowy dreams of what might have been.

By the week of the fair, Lauren had finished tiling the kitchen floor. It had been a massive project. She cut black tile diamonds herself with a rented tile cutter and fit them between large, white squares. Even with rubber gloves, she had nearly taken the skin off her fingers, but the results were dramatic. Joan said so when she came to collect the daylilies for the competition of garden flowers at the fair.

“Why, Lauren! I am so amazed at you! You should go into the business! This is just beautiful. Black and white tile in this diamond pattern. How arresting, but subtle at the same time. Very, very well done.”

Lauren smiled her thanks. She thought so, too. They went out to the garden to cut the blooms. The stems had to be eighteen inches long, in a sturdy vase, and the bloom ready to open the next morning. They cut three specimens. Joan was excited. “This is terrific! Wouldn’t that be the best tribute to your grandmother? We’ll call this lily the Kate Hamilton, after her. Is that all right with you?”

Lauren was surprised at her own enthusiasm. “Oh, yes,” she exclaimed. “Joan, do you really think I might win a prize?”

“I do. I do indeed!”

That night when she called Kelly, Lauren told her about entering the daylilies. “Why don’t you come up?” she said. “Wouldn’t it be just a hoot to go to a real county fair? It would be like that old musical,
State Fair!
Honest, I’m not kidding. They have pigs and cows and everything. Tomorrow’s Saturday. It’s the day they judge the flowers. You can stay overnight and go back on Sunday after brunch. Wait till you see what I’ve done to the place!”

“Which,” answered her friend, “will be difficult because we don’t know what it looked like to begin with. However, you’re right. A trip to a county fair would be fun. As long as they have cotton candy, we’ll come.”

“I’m sure they’ll have cotton candy.”

“Then we will see you tomorrow morning.”

Lauren was excited to have her friends visiting. It grounded her, somehow. She made up the little room under the eaves where she and Caleb had spent that fantasy night together. There was a puffy duvet on the bed, a vase of fresh flowers on the bureau, as well as clean fluffy towels. The window was open, and the room smelled of sunshine. Kelly would adore it.

Since her arrival, Lauren had been sleeping in the bigger bedroom on the western side of the house. It had been her grandmother’s room, and Lauren found this particularly comforting. She had made the bed up with a cream and peach duvet and matching shams. On a trip to a local furniture store, she had happened across a painted bureau with a matching mirror. It was pale green, with depictions of wheat sheaves and birds painted in ecru, brown, and white. Lauren bought the pieces on the spot. They fit the room exactly, lending it a certain sophistication. To round out the feel, Lauren painted the old maple four-poster a matching green and copied the bird motif on the head and foot boards. The peachy color of the bed linens and the white lace curtains blended with the green and made the whole room restful and serene. Lauren thought when she started on the bedrooms, she would paper this room and add a rug or two. She set her vanity up in front of one of the two big windows. Each morning when she put on her make-up, she could look out across the wide back lawn and the rise of the green mountains behind it.