The Crossroads (2 page)

Judy Magruder
helped set up the champagne glasses for the wedding toast.

She stacked the slender flutes in a tenuous pyramid atop the linen-covered table set up in one corner of the apartment building's rooftop garden.

“Is that too tall?” she asked a waitress.

“No, that looks—”

Before the waitress could say “fine,” a gust of wind whipped up the side of the building. For a brief instant, the delicate glasses became long-necked dragonflies suspended on the breeze. Gravity, however, soon took over and the glasses crash-landed on the patio's concrete pavers.

“Oops.”

It was a good thing Judy was the bride today. She'd tell you herself: Her very presence seemed capable of causing glassware to leap off table ledges like lemmings on a family vacation to the Grand Canyon.

Dressed in her billowy purple wedding gown, Judy crouched down and started searching for shattered glass.

She quickly found the first shard. “Ouch. Be careful,” she said to the waiter and waitress helping her clean up. “You could cut yourself.”

Proving her point, she sucked the fingertip she'd just cut. Deciding she'd better check underneath the table, too, she jounced forward, scrunched up tufts of taffeta, and scooted through an opening in the table linens like they were curtains and she was going backstage after taking her bows, something she had done when she'd been an actress. That was before she published the first book in her series about Curiosity Cat, a white tabby with gray paws who, as the name suggested, was extremely curious and, consequently, always in trouble. Most of Judy's friends and family said her children's books were all semiautobiographical.

Judy crawled forward and discovered she wasn't alone under the table. “Hey, Zack. Whatcha doin' down here?”

Zack twisted the plastic arms of a G.I. Joe. “Nothing.”

“Good. Sometimes nothing is the best thing to do on crazy days like this.” She lofted a strand of hair out of her eyes by blowing sideways through her lips. “That a firefighter?” she asked.

Zack looked at the doll and nodded, even though he was embarrassed. A boy his age playing with dolls? Youch.

“That's G.I. Joe, right?”

Again, Zack nodded. “Yeah.”

“Hi, Mr. Joe,” Judy said.

“Howdy, ma'am.” She did Joe's voice, too. Rugged and tough.

“Hey, Zack?” Judy asked.

“Yeah?”

“Do you think Mr. Joe can handle hazmats?”

“What's a hazmat?”

“You know—hazardous materials? You just kind of chop the words off and squish them back together. Haz-mats.”

“Oh. I dunno.”

“Lives are at stake. Toes, too.”

Zack stared at Judy. He was still trying to figure this lady out. Sure, she was pretty and his dad laughed a lot whenever he and Judy were together. Judy laughed, too, because Zack's dad was almost remembering how to be funny again. Her books about the cat were kind of okay. Zack had read a couple, even though they were mostly for little kids. Still, they were kind of funny. Especially when Curiosity Cat got into trouble poking his nose into places he shouldn't. One time, he even blew himself up, but because he has nine lives it didn't really matter.

And Zack had never heard Judy yell at his dad, not once.

Not yet, anyway.

“It's a pretty serious situation out there,” said Judy. “We're talking broken glass. Open-toed sandals. Things could get ugly.”

Zack looked into Judy's eyes. She had big brown ones, the kind you see on friendly cartoon bears—the ones you can trust, not the growly, grizzly types you can't.

He played along. “Mr. Joe?” he said to the action figure.

“Yeah, Zack?” Judy grunted back.

“Um, have you ever worked hazmat duty before?”

“Hazmat? Sure, sure. All the time. I'm fearless. I'm also plastic, so, you know, I can't get injured unless, you know, I melt or a fire truck backs over me. That'll hurt.”

A smile stole across Zack's face.

“Ask Joe if he's ever had to deal with broken glass.”

“Okay. Hey, Joe?”

“Yeah?”

“You ever work with glass?”

“Glass? Schmass. Can't cut me, pal. Well, it could, but I wouldn't, you know, bleed or nothin'.”

“Because you're made out of plastic, right?”

“Exactly!”

Zack laughed. Judy, too.

 

George Jennings
and Judy Magruder were married the Saturday before Memorial Day. Zack Jennings was his father's best man and official ring bearer.

After their rooftop wedding reception, the new family flew to Orlando for a weeklong honeymoon and vacation at Walt Disney World. While they were in Orlando, the moving company would clean out their apartments and truck everything up to North Chester, Connecticut, the small town where George had grown up.

Their new house, a just-built three-story Victorian—with gables and a wraparound porch—was located in the brand-new Rocky Hill Farms subdivision west of town.

Right near the crossroads where County Route 13 meets Connecticut State Highway 31.

Every Monday
morning, Gerda Spratling rode into North Chester like her family still owned the town.

Her chauffeur would pilot her 1952 Cadillac Coupe DeVille down the center of Main Street. A few cars would honk their horns at the big black boat straddling the solid yellow line, but the locals simply moved out of the way. They recognized the antique automobile and knew that inside was the sole surviving member of the family that had made North Chester famous. In fact, the quaint little town was still called Clocksville, as it had been for nearly a century, because of the timepieces once mass-produced in the sprawling Spratling Clockworks Factory.

“Spratling Stands the Test of Time,” their ads used to say. But the redbrick factory with its colossal smokestacks had been shuttered since the early 1980s.

Since this particular Monday morning was also Memorial Day, tourists and townspeople were lazily enjoying the unofficial start of summer by poking around Main Street's shops and cozy boutiques.

“Why aren't these people at work?” Miss Spratling asked her driver.

“It's a holiday, ma'am.” The chauffeur was eighty-six years old. Miss Spratling was seventy-two.

“Holiday? God in heaven. Lazy, shiftless layabouts.” Her voice was sharp and brittle.

The car coasted to a stop.

“Why are we stopping?” Miss Spratling demanded.

“Red light, ma'am.”

“God in heaven.”

Downtown North Chester had only one stoplight—at the intersection where the town clock, a massive stone tower, also stood. Miss Spratling's great-grandfather had commissioned the six-story fieldstone monument to commemorate his family's Germanic ingenuity and American industriousness. The clock had ornately scrolled hands and a filigree face, but it no longer told time. The hands stood frozen at 9:52.

The light changed.

“Hurry along, Mr. Willoughby,” Miss Spratling ordered from the backseat. “Hurry along.”

“Yes, ma'am.”

Miss Spratling had two standing appointments in town every Monday. First the beauty parlor, then the florist. Her personal assistant, a young woman named Sharon Jones, followed the Cadillac in a Hyundai hatchback, just in case Miss Spratling should require anything at all. The Cadillac had bullet-shaped bumper guards, tail fins, and a massive chrome grill and was kept in mint condition by Mr. Willoughby, the gaunt and gangly chauffeur.

The two cars parked in the No Parking zone alongside the curb in front of Mr. Antoine's House of Beauty. Mr. Willoughby shuffled around the car to open Miss Spratling's door. The skinny assistant stood with bowed head and slumped shoulders at the curb.

“Wait for me. Both of you.”

Miss Spratling would have her hair done by Mr. Antoine himself—even on a holiday. The hairdresser was years younger, but he knew the old-fashioned way to curl her limp locks, using rollers the size of coffee cans and a helmet-shaped hair dryer—the kind beauty parlors had back in the 1950s.

 

After her
hair appointment, Miss Spratling was driven up Main Street to Meade's Flower Shoppe, where she would purchase one dozen white roses. She had purchased the same thing every Monday for nearly fifty years. Her assistant came into the store with her because it was Sharon's job to actually carry the thorny roses.

This Monday, Meade's was unexpectedly crowded.

“Miss Spratling! So good to see you again!”

“Mr. Meade.” She tugged on her elbow-length black gloves and slid her cat's-eye glasses up the bridge of her nose. “Who are all these people?”

“It's Memorial Day, ma'am.”

“So?”

“They've come in to buy flowers to take out to the graveyards.”

“I see. Need a federal holiday to remember the dead, do they? Where were these people
last
Monday?”

Mr. Meade nodded sympathetically. “You know, Miss Spratling, I was just asking myself the same thing.”

“Enough chatter. Move along. Bring us our roses.”

“I'll be right with you. Mrs. Lombardi needs—”

“We haven't the time to wait.” Miss Spratling moved forward, her hands clasped behind her back. “You know what we require. Either produce it immediately or next Monday we will be forced to make alternative arrangements.”

“Yes, Miss Spratling…. Of course, Miss Spratling….”

The florist skittered away. An elderly woman in a faded Windbreaker smiled at Miss Spratling. She was clutching a bouquet of red, white, and blue carnations.

“They're for my Arnie,” she said.

“What?”

“The carnations. They're for my son. He died in the war. I take him flowers every Memorial Day.”

“I see. That makes it easier to remember, doesn't it? The federal holiday.” Miss Spratling fussed with her hard helmet of hair. The woman in the Windbreaker stared at her.

“God in heaven, woman, whatever are you gawking at?”

“That dress. I had one just like it. Years ago. When Mr. Lombardi and I went to our first formal at his fraternity. Must have been 1948.”

Miss Spratling wanted to be left alone. “Mr. Meade?” she called out.

“Of course Mr. Lombardi passed on. Last year. Congestive heart failure. I'm all alone now. I do the best I can. Stay busy. Volunteer at the thrift shop…”

“Mr. Meade?” Miss Spratling rapped her knuckles on the counter.

“My dress was white,” Mrs. Lombardi said. “Not black like yours.”

“Mr. Meade!”

The frazzled shopkeeper came hurrying out of the back room with a dozen white roses wrapped in a cone of clear cellophane.

“Kindly charge them to my account,” Miss Spratling snapped as her assistant took the flowers from the frightened little man.

Mr. Meade smiled feebly. “Of course. No problem, Miss Spratling. Have a nice day.”

“How sweet of you to suggest such a thing,” she coldly replied. “Unfortunately, I have not had, as you say, a ‘nice day' for nearly fifty years!”

The two
cars crawled out of North Chester and headed up Route 13. A few miles outside of town, both vehicles parked on the soft shoulder of the road.

Mr. Willoughby once again shuffled around to the rear of the Cadillac and pulled open the heavy door. Miss Spratling snatched the roses out of her assistant's hands and carried the bouquet as though it were her wedding day. She crossed over the drainage ditch and made her way up a well-worn path until she came to a gigantic oak tree.

There was a white wooden cross nailed into the tree. It had hung there so long, swollen bark had grown in around its edges. A small aluminum bucket, also painted white, was bolted to the tree underneath the cross. It was filled with a dozen wilted white roses, their tissue-thin edges rimmed brown with a week's decay.

Miss Spratling did what she did every Monday: She tossed out last week's dead roses and put the fresh ones in. She pressed her left hand against the furrowed bark and said some prayers.

Five minutes later, she made her way back to the waiting car. Her assistant met her at the crumbling edge of the roadway.

“We have done our duty, Sharon.”

“Yes, ma'am.”

“Take me home, Mr. Willoughby.”

“Yes, ma'am,” said the ancient chauffeur.

The Cadillac drove away. Miss Spratling would come back again the next Monday and the next one and the one after that. Every week, she'd bring fresh white roses to decorate her roadside memorial at the crossroads where Route 13 met Highway 31.