The hallway was smaller than Connie remembered it, and the ceiling lower. For a moment she felt like a giant in a dollhouse, or Alice after eating something in Wonderland, but then she took a step forward, and she and the hallway regained their correct proportions. The last time she had been in her grandmother’s house, she had been eight years older; small wonder that she should expect the front hall to be more cavernous, the stairs to be steeper, than they actually were.
Connie’s grandmother had died several months ago, leaving her the house in Willow Brook and what money she had. Mr and Mrs Shale thought that she should sell the house and invest the money, but Connie had a better idea. She needed a place to stay while she wrote her first novel, and what could be better than the house where she had spent several years of her childhood? Besides, she pointed out to her parents, it was unlikely that she could find a buyer for the place, Willow Creek not being close enough to a major city to attract newcomers. The house was fully furnished, if a trifle old-fashioned, and within walking distance of a grocery store and library — what more could she want? And her grandmother’s money would tide her over until she sold her first novel.
“But what if you don’t sell your first novel?” her father had objected, and “It’s not likely you’ll meet anyone suitable,” her mother had sighed, but Mr Shale was eventually persuaded that it was better for Connie to get this foolish idea of becoming a novelist out of her head while she was still young rather than going through a mid-life crisis in her forties. Her mother remained patiently resigned to having her wishes ignored.
Through the archway on her right was the parlor. Connie had been allowed to spend an hour in there three times a week to practice her scales on the grand piano. She had been given strict admonitions not to touch anything else in there — not the glass bell over the stuffed pair of bluebirds, not the china shepherdess on the tallboy, and certainly not the grandfather clock that chimed the hour when she had to leave this realm of cabriolet legs and tufted wine-colored upholstery with its thick oriental rug and heavy drapes that protected the interior from the sun. Connie could remember only one occasion when the parlor had been in use — the day they had celebrated Christmas because her father was on leave from the Navy.
Behind the parlor was the television room, which was where Connie and her mother and grandmother had spent their evenings. It was a small dark room, crowded with bookcases and comfortable furniture. Connie’s grandmother’s television set stood on an end table, its flat screen and cable hook-up incongruously modern in a room where nothing else had been changed in years.
Connie went back into the hallway and through the arch on her right into the dining room — more cabriolet legs, another oriental carpet and heavy drapes — and into the kitchen. This was where she had found her mother and grandmother when she came home from school, sitting at the round oak table and having a cup of tea. The kitchen had been large and warm and filled with the smell of cinnamon and freshly baked bread. Connie had done her homework at the kitchen table, had helped decorate cookies there, and had drawn countless pictures, the best of which her grandmother had taken to adorn the refrigerator. She considered setting up her computer there, because the kitchen really was the most comfortable room downstairs, but rejected the idea. If she tried to write in the kitchen, she would gain twenty pounds in no time. Besides, there was a better place upstairs: the sitting-room, an unused bedroom upstairs which had been the repository for everything too shabby for downstairs. As a child, Connie had loved investigating the drawers of its old desk and looking at encyclopedias and coffee-table books from the 1950s. It was dusty now, and even more of a junk room than it had been in her childhood, but the window with its view of the river and the park was still there, and her grandfather’s roll-top desk still stood next to it. She would set up her computer here, Connie decided, even though she knew that the old books would be as tempting a distraction as the food downstairs.
Her next task was to pick a bedroom. Connie decided to be practical rather than sentimental and opt for the most comfortable mattress, even if it turned out to be the one in the room that had belonged to her grandmother. As it happened, though, the least saggy mattress in the house was the one in the guest room. This contained only a large double bed, a suitcase stand, and a small closet. More important for Connie, it didn’t contain any memories. She hadn’t been allowed in the room at all when she was a child, but it didn’t give her that sense of forbidden territory which she got from the rooms that had been used by her mother and grandmother. When she was a child, the guest room had simply been uninteresting, and she understood that her grandmother didn’t want her playing in there because she wanted to keep the place nice for a visitor. The one place Connie wanted to avoid was the room where she had slept as a child. She was an adult now, with a B.A. in English and an M.F.A. in creative writing and two years’ experience as a fund-raiser for her alma mater. Her main fear in returning to her grandmother’s house had been that she would feel like a child again, and Connie was very glad to discover that this wasn’t the case. Living here wouldn’t at all be like staying in her room at her parents’ house; she could be as independent as she wanted.
As she went down the steep stairs, Connie began to formulate a list of things to do: Unpack. Get groceries (She’d been glad to see that her grandmother had succumbed to the conveniences of the 21st century and acquired a microwave. Frozen food wouldn’t provide any wonderful smells, but it would certainly be easier to fix). Set up her computer. Find out if any of her friends from grade school were still around. Start going through her grandmother’s stuff and figuring out what to keep and what to give or throw away.
Her grandmother’s stuff would wait. Connie decided that her first priority was neither unpacking nor setting up her computer, but getting some food in the house. She debated briefly over whether she should take the car and stock up for the summer or walk to the store and bring back just enough for dinner and tomorrow’s breakfast. It was a nice day, so the walk won. And on the way, she could check stop at the Jays’ house and find out what had become of her old buddy Elaine. They had sworn to be best friends forever when Connie and her mother had left Willow Brook 15 years ago. Connie felt a little guilty when she realized that she hadn’t written to Elaine since she was about 12, but then Elaine hadn’t written to her, either.
Willow Brook had always been a pretty town, its streets lined with trees and the yards of its old houses filled with flowerbeds. Connie was sad to see that several of the old houses she passed appeared to have been uninhabited for year; indeed one was a burned-out shell, its flowerbeds tangles of weeds. As she neared Elaine’s house, she was relieved to see a woman working in the garden. “Mrs Jay?” she called.
The woman stood up. Her hair was darker than Mrs Jay’s had been, and she was younger, closer to Connie’s age than that of her mother.
“Miss Jay, actually,” she said.
“Elaine?” said Connie.
The woman moved closer to the fence. “Yes?” she said hesitantly.
“It’s Connie, Connie Shale from grade school. I don’t know if you remember me…”
“Connie!” Elaine stripped off her gardening gloves and grabbed her by the shoulders for a quick half-hug. “Look at you, quite the picture of elegance. Come on in, Dad will be happy to see you. Oh, just so you know — my mom died quite a few years ago, it was cancer.” Elaine opened the gate and came out to the sidewalk.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” said Connie. “You should have told me.”
“I’m sorry,” said Elaine, “but I didn’t know what to say, and I hadn’t heard from you in a while. I guess I thought your grandmother would pass on the news.”
Connie was silent. Now that she thought about it, she did remember her grandmother saying something, her mother saying she should write to Elaine. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I guess she did tell me, but I didn’t know what to say, either.”
“Well, don’t stand there apologizing,” said Elaine. “Come in and say hi to Dad and tell us what you’ve been doing. Are you here to settle your grandmother’s affairs?”
“Yes and no,” said Connie. “I plan to live in her house for a while and write a novel.” As soon as she’d said the word “novel,” she regretted it. It seemed like such an immense, even grandiose idea, like announcing that she was planning to scale Mt. Everest.
“Wow,” said Elaine. “I’m impressed. But then you always did have a good imagination. Remember our flower dolls?”
“Sure,” said Connie, who did remember, now that she had been reminded. “Daisy was happy; Bluebell was sad; and Chrysanthemum was bossy. And you said that Rose was dramatic, just like me, and I said you were ethereal, like Lily.”
“And I had to go and look up ‘ethereal’ in the dictionary,” said Elaine. “Oh, it is good to see you again. I’d give you another hug, but I’m all dirty from gardening.”
“As if that mattered,” said Connie, pulling Elaine to her. “You’re still nothing but skin and bones,” she scolded. “Doesn’t your father feed you?”
Elaine laughed. “I’ve been doing the cooking since I was 13,” she said. “And since I was afraid of the stove, I mostly made us salad. And then when I got older, Dad read an article saying that raw vegetables were really good for you, so we’ve pretty much lived on salad ever since.”
“Something I should do,” said Connie. “I need to go on a diet.”
“Don’t be silly,” said Elaine. “You’ve got curves in all the right places, which is more than I can say for myself.”
Norman Jay was watching television when the two girls entered the house. “There’s a cold front entering Kansas,” he announced. His back was to them, so Elaine raised her voice a bit.
“Well, it’s nice and warm here,” she said. “Look who’s showed up.”
“Hello, Mr Jay,” said Connie.
“Please, call me Norman,” he said, getting up.
Mr Jay — Norman — hadn’t changed much in the past 15 years. His hair was greyer, his face more wrinkled, and the lenses of his glasses were a bit thicker, but otherwise he was much as Connie remembered him.
“It’s Connie Shale,” said Elaine.
“Well, well, well, haven’t you turned out to be the fine young lady,” said Norman. “You could give some pointers to Elaine here, show her what to do with her hair and how to dress.”
Connie felt embarrassed. “Elaine looks quite nice just as she is,” she protested. “And she wouldn’t wear her good clothes to garden anyway. But how have you been?” It was a lame question, but Connie wanted to change the subject somehow.
“Oh, fine, fine,” Norman said airily. “Can’t complain.” He turned his attention back to the television, and Elaine pulled Connie into the kitchen.
“There isn’t anything wrong with the way you look,” Connie muttered. “Why would your dad make a thing out of it?”
“He’s got this idea that it’s time for me to get married and have a baby,” said Elaine. “He thinks I’m not trying hard enough.”
Connie looked at her friend anew. Elaine had inner beauty certainly, a warm light shining out of her brown eyes. But her nose was a bit too long, her chin too sharp, and her figure too angular. Nor was she dressed to attract male attention: blue jeans and a denim jacket over a grey t-shirt might be fine for gardening, but they wouldn’t turn any heads.
“I suppose you could wear short shorts and a halter top,” Connie said slowly, “but I don’t think you’d get any marriage proposals.”
“Wolf whistles, maybe,” Elaine said with a giggle.
“Is there anyone in Willow Brook that you want to marry?” asked Connie.
“No, not really,” said Elaine. “It’s not like it’s a hotbed of eligible bachelors.”
“So who’s the ‘not really?’”
Elaine hesitated and looked out the window. “Do you remember Dan Steele?”
Connie thought for a moment. “Danny?” she said. “Reddish hair and blue eyes?”
“Yes,” said Elaine. “He turned out to be quite good-looking. But he’s a bit remote; he spends all his time fishing.”
Connie wrinkled her nose; she didn’t much like the smell of fish. “If your dad’s serious about wanting you to get married, what he should do is let you move to a bigger city on your own, someplace like Bridgeport. You’re never going to meet anyone here.”
“I know,” said Elaine. “But we really can’t afford for me to get a place of my own — we’re not struggling financially,” she added quickly, “I make a fair amount of money from my garden, and Dad sells his wood-working projects on the Internet to augment his pension, but it wouldn’t extend to an apartment in Bridgeport, at least not one that wasn’t in a slum.”
“College?” asked Connie.
“I went to Bridgeport Community College for two years,” said Elaine, “but I didn’t want to go farther away.”
“Is it your father’s idea that he’ll live with you and your husband and this new baby?”
Elaine rolled her eyes. “Yeah, it’s hopeless, isn’t it?”
“No,” said Connie. “You just need someone to fall madly in love with you, that’s all.”
Elaine laughed. “Hopeless, just like I said.”
Connie patted her hand. “Now, now, we’ll think of something. If we can’t bring Dan Steele up to scratch, maybe you can come and visit me when I finish my novel and move back east.” Even as she said the words, though, Connie felt some doubt. She couldn’t think of any young men in her circle of acquaintances who would want to live in Willow Brook, and it didn’t look like Elaine would be willing to leave her father. Plan A would have to work, that was all.
“And what about you?” Elaine asked. “What have you been up to?”
“Right now, I’m here to work on a novel,” said Connie. “I’m not sure that I ever want to get married — at least, not until I’ve traveled a bit. I suppose I could find someone if I wanted to settle down, but I’m not ready yet.”
“Hopeless,” said Elaine.
All the time they’d been talking, Elaine had been putting together a bag of vegetables for Connie. “There’s leaf lettuce and snow peas,” she said. “You can cook the peas if you want, but they’re really good raw.”
Connie protested. “I was going to walk up to the grocery store.”
“It’s a convenience store now,” said Elaine, “But not very convenient. It’s fine if you want over-priced bread and milk and snacks — and beer, but if you want real food, you have to drive to the supermarket in Bridgeport.”
“I’ve been driving all day,” Connie sighed. “I will accept your gift then and maybe get some over-priced bread and peanut butter from the store.”
“You’re welcome to stay for dinner,” Elaine offered.
“That’s kind of you, but I need to get something for breakfast tomorrow, too. Why don’t you call me in the morning and we’ll set a date?” Connie copied down her cell phone number and gave it to Elaine.
“I don’t have a cell,” said Elaine, “but our number’s the same as it’s always been.”
Connie said good-bye to Norman in the living-room and continued her walk to the grocery — no, convenience — store.
Once Connie was gone, Elaine sat down in the kitchen. She didn’t know how she felt — happy at seeing her friend again, fearful of what might be her plans for the future, even a little angry that Connie had lived quite contentedly without her for so long. Not that Elaine had missed Connie that much — she had lived quite contentedly, too, she reminded herself. Very contentedly, she thought, with a sudden grin. When they were children, Connie had always taken the lead, deciding what games they would play. She had been the princess and Elaine the lady-in-waiting. Which is not to say that Elaine had become the princess once Connie left. Indeed, her mother’s death had thrust her into adulthood at an early age, causing her to leave princesses behind.
Elaine hoped that Connie wouldn’t come up with any ideas that were too outrageous. She wished that she hadn’t mentioned Dan Steele at all. Connie would be sure to want her to develop their friendship into something more romantic. And what if Connie said something to Dan about how she felt. Elaine suddenly felt a cold chill. She wouldn’t, surely Connie wouldn’t, she was a grown-up now, too, not a teenager.
As for the prospect of a makeover — well, Elaine knew that wild horses couldn’t make her twist her hair into a French chignon like Connie’s. Even if she could accomplish the task, her hair would find ways to slip out of its fastenings. And she didn’t have time to put it up every day. Pulling it back into a ponytail at the base of her neck really was the most sensible solution. When it came to dressing like Connie, Elaine didn’t think that was likely either. Although Connie looked very nice in her pink sweater and grey straight skirt, with her pink and grey argyle knee-socks, Elaine knew that knee-socks would just slide down her own legs, and the skirt would get wrinkled. No matter what her father said, she was better off dressing like herself rather than trying to emulate someone else.
Did she wish that Connie hadn’t returned to Willow Brook? No, she really was glad to see her. It was easy to stagnate in a small town. While her life was a pleasant round of work in the garden and trips to the supermarkets she supplied, Elaine had to admit it was a bit dull. As for Dan, she had a working relationship with him in that she gave him leftover produce to use as bait and he gave her inferior fish to use for fertilizer. If Connie could suggest a way to kick that up a notch, more power to her.
Elaine finished putting together the salad, buttered some bread, and took dinner to her father.
“That cold front might cause some storms in Kansas,” Norman told her.
“Really?” said Elaine. “Do they think we’ll get rain here?”
“In another day or two,” said her father. “It’s moving east.”
Commercials for painkillers, cleaning products, and some drug that had terrible side effects flickered on the screen while they ate.
“It was nice to see Connie again,” Elaine ventured.
“She turned out to be a looker,” said Norman, “but in a ladylike way. You could learn a thing or two from her.”
“Yes, Dad,” said Elaine. “I suppose I could.”
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