Mudlark (12 page)

Bonnie said, "You could stash everybody upstairs on that nifty balcony."

"The balcony is off our bedroom," I moaned. "Besides, we can't eat outside. Jean Knight says it's going to
rain."

Jay gave my shoulders a squeeze. "I guess we'll just have to do the living room."

Bonnie set the oven to preheat. "I can paint woodwork."

"But we can't finish--"

Jay kissed my ear. "Sit down at the table, darling, and make a list. I smell like a stalled ox, so I'm going
up for a shower now, but I'll be right back."

I sat. Bonnie made me a cup of tea, and found paper and a pen in the drawer by the telephone. I wrote
PAINT and stared at the word. The tea smelled good. Bonnie kept up a light chatter about her casserole.

One of the happier consequences of being a woman is that you can cry like a baby and forgive yourself.
After a couple of calming sips I began to think. "You'll help?"

"Sure. I'll enjoy it."

"But there's so much to do, I still have to sand the damned floor, and now the hall looks like hell,
too--"

"Leave the hall," Bonnie said. "The bullet hole will make a great conversation piece."

"God, Annie McKay is the newspaper editor."

"So let her photograph it. Give her an exclusive."

I snickered.

The back door opened, and Tom stuck his head in. "What's the joke?"

"Just basic goofiness," Bonnie said. Tom had visited his garden. "Salad stuff. That's great, Tom." She
shoved him at the sink. "We're going to paint Lark's living room tomorrow."

"Good idea." He turned on the water and started rinsing bibb lettuce. "That's a high ceiling. How are you
fixed for ladders, Lark?"

"One step ladder." I had used it when I painted the kitchen. "And some rollers and pans."

"We'll need a couple of extra ladders if we're all going to pitch in." Tom took my salad spinner from the
shelf and started loading it with lettuce. "And tarps. Extensions for the roller handles."

I scribbled on my list.

"I have piles of remodeling gear locked up in my garage. My grandfather did repairs on summer
people's houses."

"Won't your crew need the ladders?"

"Those bozos don't come until Tuesday."

"Frustrating," Bonnie said.

"A little." Tom glanced at me warily as if I might burst into tears again. "But the power's on, and at least
they threw a tarp over the hole in the roof. Let's deal with Lark's living room. You won't need to buy hammers or a
saw--" He gave the spinner a whirl.

"Geez!" I remembered the molding. And I still hadn't sanded the floor.

"I have carpenter's tools and fifty years' worth of nails." Tom twirled the knob, and the spinner rattled
away. "You should apply a clear acrylic to that floor."

"I was going to use oil and wax," I protested.

"Nice theory." Tom peeked at the lettuce and put the lid back on. "Sand from the beach would chew up
an oiled surface inside a week. Not to mention what water and mud will do when it starts raining again. Also you'll
need to let the acrylic season thirty six hours or so."

"Oh." Thirty six hours!

"What colors are you going to use?" Bonnie interjected.

"White."

"Hmm." Bonnie sounded polite. Tom frowned and spun the wheel.

I stuck out my jaw. "I am going to paint everything in that room white except the floor."

"Why not let me call Clara Klein?" Tom gave the spinner a last twist.

I moaned again. "And invite her to dinner?"

He laughed. "Invite her to look at your living room. She has a great eye."

"We need to get started right away."

"Sure. I'll drive you over to Kayport tonight in the pickup, if you like. McKay Supply stays open until
nine. Meanwhile, let me call Clara."

I rolled my eyes. "Okay, but you'll have to ask her to dinner on Labor Day. I'd better call Ruth Adams
and Matt too."

Bonnie cleared her throat. "That's thirteen people, Lark."

I waved my hand in a grandiose gesture, slopping tea. "Who's superstitious?"

Tom called Clara. I was relieved to hear she already had an invitation for Labor Day. She was on her
way to the bar of the Blue Oyster for a drink and dinner--they didn't allow smoking in the dining room--and she'd
pop over on her way.

When Tom hung up I took over the phone. Ruth thanked me, but her kids were coming with the
grandchildren, and was it true a crazy man had taken a potshot at Tom in my front hall? I gave Ruth an exclusive.
She sounded as if she might ask for my autograph. Matt Cramer wasn't home, so I left a confused invitation on his
recorder.

By the time I rang off, Jay had come down in jeans and a work shirt. He and Tom took a steel measuring
tape into the living room.

Bonnie set her oysters in the oven and turned on the timer. "Early dinner. The painting's going to be
fun."

"Chaos," I said with affected gloom, but I felt much more cheerful. I am a creature of action.

I got up and finished making salad. Tom had brought two tomatoes from his hot frame. Bonnie's
scalloped oysters were delicious, though we scarfed dinner in record time. I started parceling out tasks at the
table.

Jay and Freddy had built Jay's log house in Monte when Freddy was only fifteen, so Freddy couldn't
claim inexperience. He did point out that if he wasted his time daubing my walls the computer would languish. I
excused him only after he promised to deliver Tom's chapters in time for the party. Also he would have to forage
for himself. I had no intention of cooking.

It was clear from the way they exchanged dimensions that Jay and Tom were the logical ones to lay in
the painting supplies. I intended to sand the floor. Bonnie said she'd vacuum after me and clean up the
kitchen.

Shortly after the men took off in Tom's pickup, Clara Klein rang the bell. She was wearing a wild batik
with a matching turban and narrow tan trousers. She waved a cigarette at my couch and sofa--they were still
shoved against the dining room wall--and when I showed her the living room she told me it had great
proportions.

I said I wanted it all white. Clara didn't even try to argue. She just nodded and smoked, making little
hmmms. Finally she said the red brick fireplace should definitely disappear under at least three coats of white.
There was a special paint for bricks. When I repeated that I wanted the walls white, she smiled and admired the
mantel. It was rather nice. She tossed her cigarette in the fireplace and looked at her watch.

I knew I was being surly. I gritted my teeth. "I really appreciate your coming over, Clara."

"No problem. See you in the morning."

I hadn't bargained on that. I told her the men had orders to bring home four gallons of white latex.

She gave me a pat on the shoulder and made for the front door. "Great proportions. Night." She hopped
into her Karman Ghia and drove off.

I put on the mask the rental company recommended, grabbed my old Walkman and a couple of
Springsteen tapes, and started sanding. I sanded the floor three times with different grades of sandpaper. Every
pass I took was another swipe at Donald Hagen. It felt good.

Bonnie was true to her word. Each time she heard the sander stop, she trotted in with my vacuum
cleaner and shooed me off to the kitchen for a break. By my first break the kitchen was clean. By the second I found
she had hauled out my ancient crockpot. I lifted the lid and sniffed. Soup for the troops. A good idea--it could cook
all night and all day.

Bonnie and I were scrubbing the floor with Green Stuff when Tom's pickup turned into the drive. Long
strips of wood hung out the back of the truck. Tom and Jay unloaded it and came in to admire our handiwork. It
was ten o'clock. We had a last cup of coffee, and Bonnie went home. Jay and I were in bed by eleven, and I fell into
sleep as if I were falling down Alice's rabbit hole. I think Jay was exhausted, too. He didn't thrash around the way he
often does.

To my surprise Darla showed up the next morning before eight-thirty. Freddy had called her the
previous night. She was wearing a long-sleeved blue work shirt and jeans, and she said she wanted to help. She had
taken a day off work. I was touched, though I did wonder whether she was hot to paint or hot to be at the center of
the action. I had heard the story of the shooting on the Astoria radio station when I listened to the seven o'clock
news. Five reporters of assorted media had left messages on the answering machine.

I set Bonnie and Darla scrubbing woodwork. Clara Klein breezed in fifteen minutes later. She accepted a
cup of coffee, and I dug out my lone ashtray. We strolled, cups in hand, to the living room. Bonnie and Darla looked
up, and Clara gave them a big smile. Then she turned on me.

She explained, very gently, that white fireplaces were okay and even white woodwork. She could
tolerate a white ceiling. But acres of white wall? No. The room would look like a very old-fashioned hospital--a TB
sanatorium, perhaps, as in Thomas Mann, or selected scenes from
A Farewell to Arms
.

She had set the ashtray on the mantel. "Trust me, Lark." She flicked an ash. Her eyes gleamed.

"Not mauve." I was wavering.

Clara's eyebrows shot up. "Mauve would be stunning."

"I don't want stunning. I want comfortable."

She grinned. "Trust me. I've seen your couch."

"My mother-in-law gave us that sofa and the matching chairs. They're ghastly expensive." They were
real suede, pale cocoa-colored and squishy with cushions. There was also a very large hassock.

"I can believe it. Expensive and boring. Never mind. Everything will look great." She stubbed out her
cigarette, plunked her coffee cup on the mantel and held out her hand. "Receipt?"

What could I do? I found it for her and even helped her load the four gallons of flat white latex into the
Karman Ghia.

Jay and Tom were bringing in Tom's extra stepladders. They spread tarps over my sanded floor and
went into the kitchen for coffee. Then they stood in the living room with their mugs, making male planning noises
while Bonnie and Darla scrubbed. We had filled all the cracks in the ceiling within half an hour and were ready to
start in on it with long-handled rollers.

Jay had bought a white paint thickened with sand for the ceiling. To my surprise, it covered in one coat
plus daubs. It was dry by eleven-thirty, and Darla and Bonnie had scrubbed everything in sight, including the
fireplace. We were ready to attack the walls.

Clara hadn't returned, so I called time and we took a lunch break. Darla pointed out that I ought to
remove the salmon from the freezer if I wanted it thawed by Monday. I would not have thought of that. I dashed
out for the salmon, and Darla dashed upstairs to get Freddy.

All of us repaired to the kitchen where we built enormous sandwiches and talked strategy. Darla and
Bonnie argued over whether to strip several coats of paint from the woodwork or just to sand. Tom and Jay
rumbled over the relative merits of rollers and sponges for painting walls. Freddy gave us a computer update in his
light, eager tenor. Listening to them, I realized I was enjoying myself hugely.

So were they. Jay had lost the look of tooth-grinding tension. Tom, whose black hair was speckled with
bits of plaster, kept making the kind of wisecracks that are hilarious in context and make no sense otherwise. We
laughed and ate. We were full of energy.

For a mad moment I considered suggesting Tom fire his laggard crew. We could finish my living room
and move on to his place in a kind of pioneer barn-raising. Fortunately I kept my thought to myself. Tom didn't
need to think about his charred belongings. Bonnie didn't need to brood about her prowler, or Jay about his close
call with an urban cowboy, or Darla about her coming injunction. None of us needed to think about the murder. I
had inadvertently created an island outside of time. I wished it wouldn't end.

Clara showed up as we straggled back to the living room. She declined a sandwich but took a cup of
coffee and my ashtray. She had bought taupe paint. Gray, she assured me, would look cold in the normal northwest
overcast. Taupe was much warmer. It was pale taupe, she said.

I associated taupe with panty-hose, but I decided to keep my mouth shut and see what the walls looked
like before I squawked. I could always cover them with white later.

Clara eyed me defensively through her protective cloud of smoke. So I thanked her. When she
discovered we were about to open the cans of sealant, she took off for home. She was allergic to the fumes, she said,
but she promised to come back early Monday to supervise hanging my great-grandmother's woven coverlet.

Before we covered the powdery residue of the defunct wallpaper with sealant we had to patch more
cracks. That took all five of us and two hours of creative spackling. Then we opened the sealant, and I understood
Clara's flight. The stuff smelled like a World War I gas attack.

Tom made us open all the windows and doors--he had used the sealant before--and we worked in
teams. Tom, Jay, and I used the long-handled rollers on the upper reaches. We took a break and headed for the
dunes to air our lungs while Bonnie and Darla finished off.

Jean Knight's rain had not yet begun, but a gusty wind was blowing from the southwest. The three of us
stood on the crest of dunes behind Bonnie's house and looked south. There were no helicopter noises from the
resort site and no signs of life. The stillness had an air of expectation, of dread, possibly. I shivered in the rising
wind.

Jay said, "I talked to the sheriff. He agreed to let me off the hook."

"Great." I was relieved. "When did you call him?"

"Yesterday--after I ran."

Tom squinted in the fitful sunlight. "What do you mean, off the hook?"

"I'm not going to take part in the official investigation."

"I thought you wanted to."

"Not particularly. I have a textbook to finish, remember? I just didn't want to offend the police."

"Don't you get your students from the high schools?"