“I should have looked harder for my glasses! I bet anything they were right there in the snow!” Mr. Willoughby said in a cross voice. He had leaned forward and was squinting at the sign on the fence post. “Can you read this, Frances? And by the way, you look like a flamingo,1 standing that way.”
His wife was teetering on one foot because she was holding the blistered one up to relieve the pain. “Some people think flamingos are lovely,” she muttered, and hopped closer in order to read the sign.
“It says, in large letters, ‘B-and-B,’” she told him. “I don’t know what that means.”
“Beer and bratwurst? I suppose it could be some kind of tavern,” Henry Willoughby suggested.
“No, there’s no parking lot. A tavern would have a parking lot.”
“Read the small print, would you? Darn, I wish I had my glasses.”
His wife leaned forward. “It says Bed,” she told him.
“Bed and—? B and B? What’s the other B?”
“Toilet. That’s all it says.”
“Well, that’s pretty stupid,” said Henry Willoughby. “Why didn’t they just say bathroom if they mean bathroom? But okay. Bed and bathroom. Right now that’s sounds pretty appealing. I need to go to the bathroom, actually.”
“Shall we ring the doorbell? The sign says that it usually works.”
Her husband didn’t reply. He was already striding toward the door of the little house. Back by the fence, Frances Willoughby tried to squeeze her swollen foot back into the shoe, which she had slipped off. Finally, she gave up and walked in a lopsided way, carrying the shoe, to join him. Before he pressed the doorbell, he said to her in a low voice, “If they ask for our name, I’m going to use a pseudonym. We don’t know who runs this place.”
His wife nodded, and he rang the bell.
Inside, Mrs. Poore had been watching through the window. She had dampened a corner of her apron and wiped a small place clean on the smudged glass. Now she peered through it and examined the couple who stood at the front door. It made her nervous, running a B-and-B. What if criminals wanted a room to use as a hideout? Or . . . Goodness, she could hardly bear to think about the terrible people who might appear on her doorstep. Vegans? Hippies? Politicians?
Be strong, she told herself. And kind. Be like Marmee.
This couple looked ordinary, she decided. Boring, even. Brown clothes, grumpy faces, bad hairdos. She decided to open the door.
“Good afternoon.” The man who stood there greeted her in a gruff, belligerent voice. “I certainly hope that the second B stands for bathroom.”
“Second B?” Mrs. Poore was confused.
“Where is it? The bathroom?”
She stood aside to let him in, pointed toward the bathroom, and watched in confusion as he disappeared into it.
“Sorry,” the woman who had been left standing in the doorway said. “He’s even worse when he has to go in the middle of the night. You know how men are.”
“No,” Mrs. Poore said sadly, “I suppose that once I did know how men are, but my dear husband has been gone a very long time, looking for people who would like to buy outdated encyclopedias. I believe he is in Alaska now. And he hasn’t been able to send us any money. That’s why we are destitute and I have opened a B-and-B.”
“Actually,” Mrs. Willoughby said, “I am hoping that the second B might stand for Band-Aid. I need one for my foot.”
“Please come in,” said Mrs. Poore. Mrs. Willoughby, still holding her shoe, hopped inside, thinking briefly that if her husband had not disappeared into the bathroom, he would probably comment that she resembled a kangaroo. She followed Mrs. Poore into the kitchen and began to lower herself into a chair.
“Stop!” Mrs. Poore said loudly. “Here, take this other chair. That one has a very wobbly leg and sometimes flings people onto the floor.”
Mrs. Willoughby sat carefully in the second chair, which was itself a little wobbly since the legs seemed to be different heights. But she arranged herself with care and finally relaxed. It felt very good not to be walking anymore, even though—she looked around—she seemed to be in a very sweet but somewhat shabby place. A crayoned drawing taped to the wall was the only decoration.
Mrs. Poore was rummaging in a drawer. “Aha!” she said after a moment. “Band-Aid!” She picked it up, approached Mrs. Willoughby, and said, “Show me the hurty place.”
Mrs. Willoughby pointed to her blister and winced a little as Mrs. Poore meticulously arranged the small Band-Aid over it and pressed it into place.
“I hope it sticks,” Mrs. Poore murmured. “It’s been used once already.”
“Used?”
“We can’t afford new Band-Aids every time. Thrift is an important virtue.” Mrs. Poore smiled sweetly. “I always tell my children that. They accuse me of Marming, but I do think it’s true, that one should always be thrifty, even with Band-Aids.”
Mrs. Willoughby had not yet thought of a reply to that when her husband appeared in the kitchen. “Bed and bathroom,” he announced. “Thank goodness. Now, where’s the bed? I need a nap.”
“I’ll show you in a minute,” Mrs. Poore said. “But this is a business and I must do things in a businesslike way. First, I must take your name, and you must pay me twenty-five dollars.” She found a pencil stub in the same drawer where the Band-Aid had been. Then she took a crumpled paper napkin from the wastebasket and smoothed it with her hand. “Name first,” she said.
“We are Mr. and Mrs., ah, Henry Frances.”
Mrs. Poore wrote that on the napkin. “This will be your bill,” she explained. “How many nights will you be staying?”
“Just one, I think. We’re looking for relatives who live on this street. Do you happen to know anyone named Willoughby? Someone who lives in a mansion? There seems to be a mansion next door.”
“Yes, indeed,” Mrs. Poore said. “It has thirty-seven windows. A billionaire lives there but I’m afraid I don’t know his name. He has never invited me over. Of course, I wouldn’t have anything to wear if he did. I have only this one threadbare dress.”
Frances Willoughby spoke up. “I know exactly how that feels! They gave us used clothing to wear when we left Switzerland. This hideous brown dress! The indignity of it!”
Mrs. Poore looked up. “You don’t mean to say that you are also poor?”
“No, of course we’re not!” Henry Willoughby replied.
“We have been temporarily without funds for very complicated reasons,” his wife explained. “As soon as we find our offspring . . . our heirs . . . our— Oh, I don’t know what to call them!”
“Call them Tim,” her husband said in a choked voice. “And Barnaby A, and Barnaby B, and— Oh dear,” he snuffled, and then pulled himself together. “Jane.”
“Just a moment. Are you going to be able to pay this bill?” Mrs. Poore held up the torn napkin on which she’d been writing. “Because I’m so very sorry, but I’m afraid I can’t show you to your room until it’s paid for in full.” Secretly she’d been delighted that they had mistaken the second B for bathroom because it meant, she realized, they would not be expecting—or realizing they were entitled to—breakfast. She could save the handful of raisins she had been intending to add to the next morning’s gruel.
“Oh, we’ll pay it,” Mr. Willoughby grumbled. “The American embassy finally agreed to give me dollars for my Swiss francs, even though they were soggy and stained. I think they did it to get rid of me.”
“I kept mine,” Mrs. Willoughby said, patting her sodden purse. “I still have them. But they’re covered with mold.”
“You’ve always been a pack rat,” her husband commented. He turned to Mrs. Poore, took his wallet from his pocket, and removed some bills. “Here. You said twenty-five dollars?”
“Actually, it’s twenty-six,” Mrs. Poore said, and handed him the bill she had created.
“An extra dollar for emergency medical services?” he said, reading what she had written.
“Your wife’s foot.”
“My wife’s what?”
“I have a very serious blister, Henry,” Mrs. Willoughby reminded him. She was standing now and holding one leg bent, with her foot up.
“Did I mention that you look like a flamingo?” Mr. Willoughby muttered. Then, scowling, he counted out the money. “By the way,” he told Mrs. Poore, “there are no towels in that bathroom. We’ll need towels.”
“Oh. Wait a minute.” She took the bill from him and added something to it.
“Twenty-eight dollars now,” she said. “Because of towels.”
Mr. Willoughby’s face turned deep pink. His wife recognized that as a sign that he was about to bellow. “Henry,” she directed him in a terse voice, “just pay it.”
He flung the money onto the kitchen table and then followed his wife to the nearby bedroom. Mrs. Poore called after them. “Toilet paper’s free!” she said, graciously.
When they had closed the door behind them, she sighed an enormous sigh. She felt proud of herself. She had behaved like a businessperson instead of a pitiful, destitute Marmee of a woman. And they seemed like decent people. She wished that she had been able to put chocolates on their pillows. Ah, but the days of chocolates were gone. Chocolates were a felony now.