CHAPTER SIX
Jill
Tuesday Late Afternoon
Jill spied a cozy threesome sitting in the Adirondacks at the edge of the pond. She smiled and was about to leave them to their repose, when a flash of red scarf caught her eye. Jill slipped into her garden clogs and skipped down the flagstone pavers, through the roses, and over the expansive lawn, noting Ruby’s abandoned easel.
“Good morning,” she said as she approached the trio.
A middle-aged man, whom Jill now recognized—with dread—as the fusspot from 202, brushed back a lock of stiff hair. “Good morning. My wife and I have been enjoying your lovely view back here.” With a sweeping motion, he gestured to the dense woods that bordered the pond on the far side. “And your mother has been such charming company.” Jill thought a chrome top, or even a greasy comb-over, would be better than the Ken-doll toupee. The wife, at least, was reserved, if a tad bland.
Ruby, for her part, smiled at Jill with the panache of a movie star. In fact, her large sunglasses and head scarf, tied under her chin, were vintage Grace Kelly. Jill was instantly alarmed. “Do tell, Mother, how have you been entertaining our guests?”
“I had heard this was once a home for wayward girls, but I hadn’t known it was built as a commune,” 202 said. “Your mother was just about to tell me more.” With his thumb, he pushed thick plastic glasses up his nose.
Again with the home’s history. Jill had always bristled at the word commune, the seventies having altered the conception of a goal-oriented community. “As my mother probably explained, my great-grandfather Angus McCloud was a Unitarian minister who devoted himself, and his own father’s fortune, to the Transcendentalist movement. He built this house in 1898 as the cornerstone of a plain-living society. At the time, they owned over four hundred acres with eight small farmsteads operating toward a common goal.” Jill had repeated the family’s history so many times she had the speech memorized. Moreover, she had found it best to highlight this aspect of the home’s past.
“Fascinating,” 202 said. “What did they believe?”
This particular guest had Jill on edge. For starters, he was constantly underfoot, inspecting family antiques, examining paintings, and surveying the home. Even the appraiser who had corroborated in the loan transaction hadn’t been as thorough.
“In pacifism,” Jill said, “and in equality of the sexes, and even racial equality.” There was also something false about him, though Jill couldn’t quite figure out what. Probably the airs and pretensions, she thought, the guy likely grew up on Spam and Little Debbies. “No one held any personal wealth or derived any type of wage or salary. Everything was held for the glory of God and the community good.”
“Ah,” the man said. “Utopia.”
And the final thing about the guy, the thing that made Jill’s teeth grind, was that he was a big, fat, gotta-have-the-last-word, pain in the ass.
Ruby shrugged. “Sure, if you like backbreaking labor from sunup to sundown—six days a week, twelve religious services a week, and the overbearing scrutiny of the most pious, uptight, sexless, Scottish prick to cross the Atlantic.” She snorted loudly. “Sex for procreation only. What a load of crap.”
“Yes, well, by all reports, he was a character. And certainly committed to his ideals. He died at the ripe old age of ninety-one. Still, my mother never had the chance to actually meet him.”
“I’ve heard the horror stories,” Ruby barked. “He was a tyrant, a damned tyrant. It was my dear husband, Daniel, who finally pulled this family out of its black hole of religious fervor.”
Jill knew it was too good to be true. Her mother regaling a guest with the historic significance of the home, exuding charm and grace. At least, Jill thought, this Ruby, riled-up and indignant Ruby, might slough off the news of Hester’s death with all the import of last night’s potato peels. “Mom, I wonder if I might have a private word with you.”
Ruby heaved herself out of the chair with an agitated “Fine, but it better be good.”
Jill wished 202 and his wife a pleasant day and steered her mother across the lawn. She waited until they were in the house and seated in their private quarters before she began. “I have some news,” she said. “Hester died. The funeral’s Thursday afternoon. And I’ve agreed to have the wake here Thursday evening.”
Ruby clasped her hands together and brought them up close to her lips. She mumbled incoherently at first, and then managed an audible “The bitch is finally dead.”
“Come on, Mom. It’s all over now. Just let it go.”
Ruby turned on Jill. “And why would you have that woman’s wake in our home?”
“Mom, she’s dead. What harm can it do?”
“What harm?” Ruby said, her voice shrill and agitated. “Well, she’ll be bothering your father now, won’t she? She’ll get to him. I know she will.”
“Please, Mom. It doesn’t work like that. She’s dead. It’s over.”
“You don’t know her like I do,” Ruby said.