Bishop’s Road is long enough. And straight. If you walk back and forth every day you’ll lose a few pounds and tighten up but most people around here don’t bother with that. Mrs. Miflin’s boarding house sits between a Catholic Church, with priest’s rectory, and a school - all on their last legs. Now and again the Department of Education threatens to close the school but the parents get upset and have meetings and eventually the talk dies down for a couple of years. The church puts on a brave face but since hardly anyone goes to Mass these days, except for the mid-night service on Christmas Eve, maybe, and during Lent when you absolutely have to, its days are numbered as well. A very old priest lives in the rectory with his equally ancient housekeeper who is terrible for getting on his nerves but makes great bread pudding when she’s in the mood.

Across the road and down a cobblestone path, the only one left in the city, tucked away behind poplar, maple, birch, aspen and a low stone wall, is what was once an orphanage. It stood empty for years until some enterprising members of the arts community begged it away from the church. The artists are generally happy there except for the ones who work late into the night because no one can get the crying out of the walls and they are thinking of packing up their brushes and going elsewhere.

There used to be a lot of little nuns around in the old days, teaching in the school and the orphanage. Since the ones conceived in sin would surely have a negative influence on those from proper homes, everyone agreed to keep the children separate back then. With the Word of God on their lips and black leather straps on their belts - next to the Rosary beads - the holy women confused several generations of youngsters for a hundred years or more until they all just dried up and blew away. No one remembers exactly when that happened but surely it was a sunny day with just enough sweet wind to whip through the convent and out the back door with those withered Brides of Christ in tow. Once the dust settled and it became apparent that no one in the world was interested in taking over the duties of the recently departed Sisters of Joy, Mrs. Miflin bought the convent for a song. Rumors of devil worship and torture, orgies and the like, didn’t entice too many prospective buyers among the locals even if they’d had the money, and the fact that it would take a king’s ransom to heat the place kept everyone else away. But not Mrs. Miflin. She had started most of the rumours herself a few years ago anyway, and she doesn’t have the furnace on between April and November no matter what the temperature. How she got the old nuns to cooperate is anyone’s guess but they weren’t gone an hour before she was beating on Father Delaney’s door with her offer to buy.

Ginny Mustard grew up in the orphanage. And the little nuns tried to hammer things into her soft yellow head. Had her kneel at the front of the room with her nose to the wall for a bit of ridicule now and then. If ever they felt the need for reinforcement they encouraged the other children to find her faults and laugh, though not too loudly, mind, because either one of them might be next - there were no shining stars in Ginny Mustard’s world. She moved from the orphanage to the streets and on to Mrs. Miflin’s house. If she’s not careful she can see the window of the ward where she slept from the front porch in the winter when the trees are bare and so she keeps her eyes the other way until she is down the road and around a corner.

Mrs. Miflin’s house is big with many rooms, not accustomed to sudden sound or quick movement though it is quite familiar with haunted dreams. The original furniture is still there. In the walls are nooks and crannies holding statues of Mary the Mother of Jesus and occasionally, Jesus himself, wounded and weary. Mrs. Miflin is what you might call a good Catholic. She makes it to Mass every morning. She takes Communion every day. And every Friday, doesn’t matter what that Pope said, there’s fish on the dinner table. For Lent she gives up what pleasure she takes in life and when her feet hurt she complains only a little and would have you believe she offers most of her discomfort for the repose of the poor souls in Purgatory. Kneeling at night, she says a Rosary before her head touches the pillow, no matter how tired she may be.

Everything is downhill east of Bishop’s Road. It runs parallel to Caine’s Street which overlooks Beaton Row which frowns on Water Street which leans closer to the ocean every day. Connecting the lot are many short streets that you don’t even want to walk on, let alone drive, when it’s icy. Beyond Water Street is the harbour and surrounding it but split at The Narrows are hills. In the morning the sun conies over the one on the left and at this time of year, if there are icebergs about and a little fog, the effect is enough to blind you.

Once there was a big old building messing up the view but it fell apart and no one had money to fix it. After a few hard winters it began throwing itself at passersby every time the wind blew hard. Pigeons nested there in droves and the smell was wicked in summer from tons of droppings and ratty old nests and the bodies of their deceased. So the city decided that it had to go and then put it back on their ‘things to ignore’ list until the scavengers had their way with doors and windows and the half-decent bricks and then it was simply a matter of bulldozing the remains into the harbour. The government types who had worked there were long gone to a business park on the outskirts of town where there was enough heat that they didn’t have to keep their coats on all day come December, and lots of cold recycled air for the five or six really hot days you get sometimes in August.

Caine’s Street has houses all smooshed together and holding each other up. Beaton Row has small shops of first and second-hand books and clothing and what-nots, restaurants and galleries. Water Street boasts offices and department stores and more bars than anyone needs. There is no parking space and most businesses do poorly. Every time you turn around there’s one closing down and another opening up so there’s no point in thinking anything is where you left it yesterday.

The people who live here are an odd mix. Professors from the university rub elbows with low-life who haven’t held jobs for two generations. They didn’t start out low, mind, but there’s nothing like poverty to bring you to that level after a while. Down here children who have not known want since they were born play with urchins whose only hello for the day is the back of a hard hand across a small mouth. One is clean and the other wears last night’s dinner on her pretty face. Down here is the Women’s Shelter and the Salvation Army Men’s Hostel and the brave souls who don’t care for the rules in either of those places and would rather take their chances outside - thank you very much - until it’s too friggin’ cold to breathe. Even then they don’t put their things away but keep all worldly possessions in garbage bags to save packing when the spring comes around again. Down here are the artists and the fine plays and the music festivals. People who live up town say they would venture down more often if there were some place to park but no one believes it except the ones who say it. When they do show up they don’t really get it and usually bring lawn chairs with arms to the outdoor events so they don’t have to sit too close to the riffraff.

On the west side of Bishop’s Road things are on a more even keel. The ground is mostly flat and easy to walk. There are a few places where you can get a decent meal of fish if you don’t mind going that far, though if you ever want to see a movie or have some brochures printed there’s nothing for it but to head on out to a mall. The most interesting places, the ones with any expression in their eyes, are here, below Bishop’s Road.

Ginny Mustard has never been anywhere else in her life and, like most things, that suits her fine. If it doesn’t happen within a fifteen minute walk of Bishop’s Road, it might as well not happen at all. She goes to the river beyond the park. Stands on one of the little bridges that cross it and looks at the water rushing. She likes the storms and the snow as much as she likes calm and sunshine. And the river is as lovely when trees are falling over and their roots coming out of the banks and the wind so loud you can’t hear another thing, as when it is gentle and whispering low and pretty little finches swarm the willows. She goes to the ocean. Watches the ships come and go. Pulls the cold fog and fishy smells deep into her lungs. Holds them there. Closes her eyes and smiles.

Ginny Mustard has a secret. All afternoon she’s been walking up and down Water Street looking for someone to tell but no one ever comes along who might have time to listen. She’s not good with words. When she does talk at all they fall over them-selves and some are left out so it takes a patient person to know what she is going on about.

The secret is brand new. She ran it around in her head and tried to write it down when she got bits of it clear. Junior Brophy from Harry’s Groc. and Conf. gave her a load of paper placemats once to draw her pictures on and at the rate she’s going she’ll need every last one of them to write her secret because her letters are big and lumpy and backwards and she can’t get more than a dozen words on any one sheet.

After cooking and praying, Mrs. Miflin likes cleaning best so Ginny Mustard keeps her papers and coloured pencils between her mattress and box spring, all neat and tidy and hidden. She wears her pen on a chain around her neck along with a medal of the Holy Blessed Virgin and a penny that Joe Snake put on the railway track just before the train came and flattened it thin.

Ginny Mustard has lived here longer than anyone else except Mrs. Miflin. It used to be a beautiful house but now it’s just pretty enough to get by. That’s what Mrs. Miflin says; me and the house are the same, she says, just pretty enough to get by. She was married once. She has pictures on the walls and a dried bouquet. Her wedding dress hangs in her closet in two green garbage bags stapled together to be long enough to keep the dust off if any dares land. Ginny Mustard has never seen it but Mrs. Miflin tells her all about it sometimes when they wash the dishes. She likes to talk and goes on and on about back in the day when she was pretty and her husband was so good looking and they were young too young to get married. The pictures show that he had a big nose and glasses and was a lot taller than Mrs. Miflin and his arms looked like they might be really thin under his jacket. And in the pictures Mrs. Miflin was round and smiling as though she’d had a good meal of something tasty and her dress was snug on top, but-toned with pearls that wanted to pop off and scatter. Mr. Miflin must have gone away because no one in the house has ever seen him. Mrs. Miflin sets a place for him every mealtime and even puts food there as if he just went to the store for a newspaper or some-thing and she expects him back any minute now. You might think that wasteful but it’s not because when he doesn’t show up she eats his share or puts it in tomorrow’s soup.

Ruth lives at the very end of the house - third story and beyond the linen closet. Not a lot happens back there so she spends much of her time in a chair at the top of the stairs near a window just watching. She can see across the street and through the trees and across another street and into the park. If she squints she can just make out the bodies lying around on the grass tanning or rusting - depends on the weather - and the little kids playing on the swings and in the sandbox after their mothers pick out the glass and dog shit. They have to do it every day. It’s that kind of park.

Sometimes Ruth wears the same clothes for a week. She dresses like a bruise. Black leggings and a big black shirt. Purple. Other times she doesn’t even bother to take off her nightgown or wash her face, what would be the point, though she’s very particular about brushing and flossing and her hair is always clean. She has been on the planet for 50 years and is tired of life and so has given up - except for the sitting. Watching.

Maggie has a room just ahead of the linen closet. It’s the nicest one in the house with a huge bay window and lacy curtains that move about easily. At night she lies awake and watches them float across the room - soft and narrow - like thin ghosts with a floral pattern. Maggie is still trying to figure out how she got here and watching the curtains puts her mind at rest. She thinks that if she lies here long enough she will know what came before and after leaving home and being here in this room, in this house. She remembers a suitcase and lots of screaming, her mother’s face hard before she turned away from Maggie. A big place with little beds. Before that there’s nothing. After that there’s nothing either - until this room, this house.

At night she puts her pillow at the foot of the bed under the curtains and they wash across her face on their way to and fro. Sometimes the moon is behind them and when they move it shines all over her. Turns her skin a nice pale blue. When it is full she takes off her clothes and looks at her pale blue body. She holds up an arm or a leg to get as much of the light as she can. She likes to see herself that colour and wishes she could show someone how pretty she looks.

The people whose clothes Maggie wears were old and larger than herself. Her underpants are lumpy bloomers and her skirts have to be held with a belt - pulled very tight and even then her blouses are generally hanging out and in her way. All of the spare fabric gives her the look of a sausage. If you could see her face you might be surprised to find that she is attractive.

There is a shoe box under Maggie’s bed containing 118 letters. Sealed. Stamped. Never opened. Maggie brought it with her and goes nowhere without it. She takes it to breakfast, lunch, dinner and the bathroom. Only in her room is it out of sight and even then she often pulls up the bedspread and checks to make sure. She thinks sometimes it isn’t true - that nothing is - and so she pulls up the bedspread and checks to make sure.

Eve has been alive since God was a youngster. She lives on the second floor - east side - and can see the ocean from her room but mostly she tends the garden out back, a job she hasn’t had since her fall from grace with that fool Adam. She has a knack for growing things but sticks to flowers since the zucchini year when everyone got so fed up with zucchini this and zucchini that every meal for a month because Mrs. Miflin can’t bear to waste anything. Eve is big and strong with no softness to her bones at all. She is generally content but for missing Adam - mostly in February when the days are so gray and the seed catalogues haven’t arrived yet. She’s been six years without him this time - he always seems to go ahead of her - but she enjoys the garden. Every spring when the slugs come crawling, Eve buys a hedgehog and sets it loose. And every spring the newest one munches away for a couple of weeks and wanders off. When Eve is not gardening she wears long black dresses, stiff and silk, with here and there a touch of lace, a cameo, a satin rose. But more often than not she’s in overalls and rubber boots, a red kerchief holding her hair away while she works.

Judy arrived this morning. Mrs. Miflin has convinced the powers that be that her house is the ideal place for wayward girls. Being God fearing and all, who better than herself to shape up degenerate youth? Aside from the weekly visits to her probation officer and a counsellor, the bulk of Judy’s rehabilitation now rests on the capable, albeit sloped, shoulders of Mrs. Miflin, a position of power that pleases the old doll no end.

Judy is seventeen, a little beyond foster care even if anyone would have her. The last child after three rowdy boys, Judy’s only flaw, if you don’t count her height of six feet, is that of being too damned smart for her own good. When she dares to dream, her ambition is to become wealthy beyond belief at which time she will go home and burn the place to the ground. If you catch her smiling you can be sure she is imagining the part where they all come running to her for help and she tells them they are shit out of luck, go to hell the lot of you friggers. Judy has been stealing make-up and clothes since she was ten and has a record as long as her wingspan. She has dropped out of school for one reason or another a good seven times already and has the IQ of an Einstein.

Judy owns five pairs of jeans and six tee shirts with things written on them. She has a short black dress and her underwear has seen better days. She has running shoes and hiking boots, socks and a pair of men’s pyjamas, never worn, because she sleeps in her day clothes just in case she has to leave in a hurry. On the dresser on a pink plastic doily that Mrs. Miflin bought on sale - five for a dollar - is a black wooden jewelry box that plays a rusty Fur Elise when you wind it and a little spring inside goes around and around without the ballerina that used to be there. In the box is a pair of tiny real gold earrings and a few other odds and ends. And there’s the cover of another box wrapped in brown paper, with small shells glued on in a daisy pattern and a red velvet lining with two satin strings that once attached it to a bottom that is somewhere else.

If Judy hadn’t suggested that Ginny Mustard take a look in the attic this morning when Mrs. Miflin was out and they couldn’t find light bulbs, then Ginny Mustard might not be having a hard time of it now. But she did and Ginny Mustard did and there’s a tear in the fabric and time tugging the edge. Someone might want to lay a hand on that girl’s yellow hair and smooth it back. Tell her everything will be okay.

Mrs. Miflin has been away for much of the day, signing papers and assuring the probation officer and Judy’s counsellor that of course the girl will behave herself and make her appointments on time. Tonight she will formally introduce her latest acquisition to the rest of the household. She has already squeezed another chair into the dining room and if they ever felt tempted to put elbows on the table they can forget about it now. Four might be comfortable here - with six and Mr. Miflin’s place it’s a stretch. Here they come - right on time. Bladders newly emptied for the duration. Once you’re sitting there’s room for no other movement but fork to mouth.

The room is the size of a breadbox and packed to the rafters with furniture, old and intimidating, dark and forlorn and smelling always of Murphy’s Oil Soap. There’s a useless window never opened, its sill crawling with porcelain puppies. From the centre hangs a plastic geranium, bathed weekly in warm soapy water. Sprayed with a bit of air freshener. It is the only plant in the house but Mrs. Miflin is thinking of getting another like it for the front porch. This is where every meal is taken and if you’re a minute late and no money in your pocket you’ll go hungry until the next one. Breakfast at seven, lunch at noon and dinner at six, that’s all there is to it and nothing in between unless you manage to hide a box of crackers in your closet, or an apple.

“Eve,” says Mrs. Miflin, “Mr. Abe Hennessy over on Blake Street thinks one of your old hedgehogs could be in his shed. He was cleaning up and it looks like something or other made a nest in a barrel what he had turned over on its side and slept the winter. If you want it back you better go get it because he needs the barrel. It might be a rat he said but it didn’t move nearly so fast as one and it’s more roundish. I don’t know why you don’t just pour salt on them slugs, you know. Kills them quicker than anything and not nearly so costly as buying hedgehogs every year and they taking off soon as they got their bellies full.”

“Well, Mrs. Miflin, I’m not all that fond of killing things. If the Creator wanted me pouring salt on His slugs He would never have come up with hedgehogs in the first place. I think He might have done something about their wandering habits while He was at it but who am I to question His ways?”

Mrs. Miflin does not much care for arguments she can’t win. “Okay everybody. Enough of this chit-chat. This here young lady goes by the name of Judy and is living with you now thanks to Social Services who couldn’t find anyone else who’d have her being as she’s what you’d call a delinquent. She is in the habit of stealing anything that’s not hammered down so keep that in mind if you catch her in your rooms. She is supposed to keep her nose clean from now on or she’ll be in the jail for the rest of her days. Judy eat them peas. I got no patience for fancy eating diseases in this house. I made a nice trifle for dessert and I’m not bringing it out until them plates is polished.”

“Which means,” says Ruth, “that our Mrs. Miflin has constructed a sponge cake and flung a can of fruit cocktail at it. You’re welcome to my share, Judy. There’s been more than enough trifle in my life already.”

“Ruth. Don’t be testy. Everybody likes trifle. Don’t mind Ruth, Judy my dear. She’s always like this, but nice enough if you can manage to ignore her. And Ruth, don’t you think for one minute I didn’t see you hauling them sheets down to the laundrymat last night. I go through all the trouble of hanging them in the lovely fresh air and you take them there. I don’t know why you can’t be like everyone else and sleep on them nice and outdoorsy smelling.”

“Because they’re like bloody sandpaper, Mrs. Miflin, and it’s cheaper to take them for a quick tumble in a dryer than to pay good money for the amount of lotion I’d need to keep my skin from falling off if I don’t. Fifty cents and ten minutes makes them at least livable.”

“Well don’t come complaining to me when they go getting holes in them from all that tumbling. I buy my linens once a year and not a minute sooner.”

In the attic the rattling of small bones muffled by pink soft knit blanket. Soft knit blanket with hope and dreams set in delicate stitches - seven months’ worth of delicate stitches. On a satin pillow. Singing. Low. Ginny Mustard hears it from her place at the table. Hush little baby don’t say a word. Momma’s gonna buy you a mocking bird. And she drops peas from her fork, who loves her food and would never waste a mouthful, drops peas from her fork and they roll under the table. Mrs. Miflin frowns and after that everyone is conscious of her feet and there is no movement from below. The little voice is clear above the plate scraping and Mrs. Miflin going on and on about nothing, but no one takes notice except Ginny Mustard.

Ginny Mustard’s mother left her in the hospital where she was born. There was no talk of adoption or anything else. She just up and went when her time was through and she didn’t take the baby. She was not a young girl in trouble. She had a toddler and a husband and a fine home and she was thirty-two years old. She kept Ginny Mustard in the room with her but she never nursed her when she woke or changed her wet diaper or bathed her small smooth body. She sang hush little baby while she sat and stared but she never stroked her sweet face. Only once did she touch her fingers and frowned when Ginny Mustard curled her tiny brown fist into the centre of her own strong pink hand. Then that woman packed her suitcase and put on her blue dress and make-up and high-heeled shoes and left the hospital and no one ever heard tell of her again. Ginny Mustard cried for a long time before one of the nurses discovered that she was alone and nobody wanted her. And she grew tall and brown and her hair grew long and yellow and most people didn’t bother with her after those first few days.

When dinner is through, Ginny Mustard tells Mrs. Miflin that she is not feeling so good and can’t help with the dishes. Mrs. Miflin says Judy can have her turn tonight and that way she’ll stay out of trouble. And while they clean up, Mrs. Miflin fills the girl in on the dos and don’ts of life in her house. What not to touch, where not to go and there’s no point in thinking she won’t be found out if she crosses the line because Mrs. Miflin has eyes in the back of her head and will be quick enough turfing Judy out on her ear if she messes up. And then she tells everything she knows and more that she doesn’t about the other tenants.

Ginny Mustard walks to the harbour. Tries to think things Catherine Safer over but there’s a boat in and the gulls are hanging around looking for scraps as the fish are cleaned and life being the way it is for Ginny Mustard, she forgets all about the little song and the tiny bones and sits on the dock to watch the birds awhile. She stays until the sun is down and the moon fat over the water before she trudges back up the hill. Way inside her head, Ginny Mustard knows that she needs to tell someone about all of this - the bones and now the singing - but it is hard to remember sometimes and for all her good intentions she can only keep her mind on one thing at a time and is so easily lead astray by birds and cats or any number of interesting things in the world. Something is wrong and it nags away at her but for such brief intervals in her living that it may be someone else’s duty to work it all out.

Eve and Maggie are in the sitting room. It is rare that any-thing happens in this room but for some reason Eve decided to draw Maggie out tonight and has come up with a project that might do the trick. On a white cotton tea towel she has printed large letters. The kiss of the sun for pardon. The song of a bird for mirth. We’re nearer God’s heart in a garden than anywhere else on earth and expects Maggie to embroider the whole thing. Not all at once of course. Eve would never ask that.

Maggie has never embroidered anything that she knows of and is having difficulty with the concept so Eve does a sample. Whips up a blue Y as slowly as she is able. In a little tin can that once held English toffee, the kind with pretty shiny wrappers, are needles and a dozen skeins of floss and Eve suggests a colour scheme. Now she threads a needle and places it in Maggie’s right hand. Steers the white cloth to her left, just clear of the shoe box.

“And after you’ve done the letters you can put little flowers and birds in the leftover space. I didn’t draw them. I think you’ll have more fun doing them freehand.”

Maggie, to whom the concept of fun is as foreign as that of needlework, nods rapidly and takes a stab at an ‘h’. The shoe box is in the way and there’s a bit of a struggle to get the needle out of it to make the return stitch but it’s really only time it takes and neither of them has much else to do tonight. Eve has brought home the errant hedgehog and settled it among the new shoots of the hosta and the moon won’t be on Maggie’s bed until after ten.

Eve would like to talk about Judy - she’s never seen a girl as tall. Or as well decorated, with rings and studs all over her body and that orange hair. But each time she speaks Maggie stops her embroidery and stares straight ahead of herself so Eve gives it up and says nothing until she feels Maggie has had enough drawing out for one night and tells her she can quit until next time.

By moonlight, the moonlight on Ginny Mustard as she walks from the waterfront, the moonlight making its way to Maggie’s room to turn her skin soft blue, that irritates Ruth and makes Judy want to do bad things, that Mrs. Miflin never sees, Eve walks to the garden. The hedgehog snuffles by and she can just make out the smile on its pointed little face. Moonlight pushes its way through her hair and into the deep lines around her eyes and mouth. A small wind with summer at its back rustles the lilac and bathes her in perfume. She sits on the damp grass and listens to it grow awhile with her red sweater pulled tight around her and the sleeve ends tucked in the palms of her old hands.

Ginny Mustard keeps walking. It’s one of those nights when people leave their windows open and she knows of a big house that has music. The kind that starts off slow and sad and grows up and up until it seems she will break from the sound of it. She climbs over the fence to the backyard and waits at the base of a rhododendron, takes off her shoes and rests her bare toes against the back of the marble Buddha that waits with her, has waited with her every spring as far as she can remember for the music to begin. Knees to her chin and arms wrapped around her legs, she is small and hidden.

And at the appointed hour someone walks to the kitchen sink and pours water into a glass. Stares out the window for a minute or two. Ginny Mustard knows that he doesn’t see her. Even when the moon is full, he never sees her. And then the music comes. And she closes her eyes and lets it crawl through her for a while until there is no room for anything else. And it becomes an aching so fierce that she trembles all over with the strength of it and the Buddha becomes unbearably hot with her heat and she pulls her toes away and lies folded on the ground.

Sometimes she stays there a long time. Now and then she has fallen asleep and awakened with the sun on her face and the little ants in her clothes. Other times she has had to leave and run as hard as she can to get the pain out and on those nights she promises herself she will never go back but it’s been a long winter and here she is again.

Ruth sits and stares at herself in the mirror. She brushes her hair that hasn’t been colored for two years or more and is streaked gray to her chin and solid black to her waist. It took three bottles of dye the last time she did it and she dripped some in the sink and on the hall rug when she walked back to her room. Mrs. Miflin never did get the stains out and complains to Ruth when-ever she’s pissed about something and happens to be anywhere near the third floor bathroom at the same time Ruth is. There’s nothing to be done about it. She tried bleach and steel wool and gave it up for a bad job.

The moon laughs at Ruth and she becomes more and more irritated. Itching all over. She trudges to the bathroom and scrubs her face. In the shower she turns the water cold and hard on her skin and leaves it that way for a long time. Back in her room she sits again and stares at her hair. The moon is still laughing but not so much at her as near her, inclined to share some cosmic joke if only Ruth will listen.

Ruth’s hair has always looked as though it wants off her head and to fly. Her mother had combed and tied and buckled it down in vain. The minute her back was turned it was gone again. Her father called it ‘nigger knots’ and wouldn’t let Ruth out in the summer unless it was raining. If she was tanned she would look like one of those friggin’ coloureds and he wasn’t having that. When he caught sight of Ruth with her hair all over the place he would go into a rage - yelling and hollering there was no way he could be the father of a youngster with a head on her like that. And he would find a pencil and paper and try to figure out where he was when Ruth’s mother got pregnant and who might have been around in his absence. Hours he spent at it, but not being mathematically inclined, never did come up with an answer though he asked the question often enough.

And now here is Ruth with the moon over her shoulder and her hair dries soft and floats about her face. How long since she let it free? How long since she was free? How long since she supported the warm weight of a strong man? How long since she dug her heels into a mattress and howled? And why the hell is she thinking this way? It’s that damned moon! She curses as she yanks the curtains to shut it out but they never did close properly and a thin streak of blue winks in the mirror when she turns off the overhead light.

Ruth is wrong, though, and while the moon may be in on it, she is not the cause. This particular disturbance hitched a ride with Judy. It is in her pockets and on her face and finding the inhabitants of Mrs. Miflin’s house needing a little more than they had bargained for, has decided to stay awhile. With the moon’s blessing it is creeping under doors and through closets leaving a smudge of itself on shirts and underwear, photographs and letters. And it goes to the attic for a quick look around before sliding under Mrs. Miflin’s pillow to nap.

Tonight Ginny Mustard doesn’t leave her nest under the rhododendron until the music stops and the lights go out in the big house. At midnight she walks home with the moon to guide her steps. Lets herself in the front door. Climbs the stairs to her room and crawls under her covers, the creak creaking of a cradle lulling her to sleep.

The new day begins with a bang. Judy is furious because Mrs. Miflin has forbidden her to visit friends on Caine’s Street. She started off asking nicely for permission and when that didn’t work she took to stomping around the house, slamming doors and yelling about what a bitch Mrs. Miflin is and how she’s going to report her to the authorities for keeping her locked up. Maggie is hiding in her room with her shoebox tucked under the bed and both hands pressed to her ears and she hums as loud as she can to drown the terrible sounds, lies on the floor and curls in a ball, rocks back and forth, back and forth.

Ruth is pissed. She has been trying to write a quiet letter to someone she hasn’t heard tell of in years, who visited her dreams last night. She can’t think with that racket going on and twice has pushed pen through paper in exasperation.

Eve is in the garden looking for signs of new life. She went back inside when the fight began and found a pair of blue earmuffs for silence and is quite content to pick away at the earth despite the battle.

Old Father Delaney poked his head out of the rectory at one point and wondered briefly what the fuss was all about but he hasn’t been in that house since it was a convent and it will take more than blood-curdling screams to entice him there again.

It would be easy enough for Judy to overpower the round Mrs. Miflin and escape, but she chooses not to. Would rather do some screaming and slamming. Mrs. Miflin is right, of course, though that’s the last thing Judy will admit aloud. She just wants to get over to Jimmy’s house for a bit of weed, is all. She hasn’t been high since last week and Jimmy owes her big time since she’s the only one who knows he beat the crap out of Frankie and the cops are still looking. When Frankie gets out of his coma he’ll tell for sure but right now only Judy can point the finger. It’s killing her to have the upper hand and see it go to waste. Still and all she has to clean up her act. She has had as many chances as she’ll ever get. The joke is they don’t know the half of it but they might any day now and a bad move will have her in shit so deep she’ll never get out again.

So as quickly as she blows up she calms down. Tells Mrs. Miflin she’s sorry for calling her names and making such a fuss and heads out to the garden to see what Eve is up to. When she sees Judy coming Eve takes off her earmuffs and smiles hello. Judy had a grammy once who was nice to her and she likes old women though this one is older than anyone she has ever seen before. She asks Eve what she’s doing and actually listens to the answer. Judy, who has never noticed a flower in her life, can walk on dandelion and crocus alike and not blink an eye, hears where the primrose will grow and how high the clematis will climb and the best place to plant calendula and morning glory. She touches the curled leaves of monkshood and columbine and when Eve describes the workings of a compost bin and where she’d put one if Mrs. Miflin would only allow it, Judy blows her own sharp mind by volunteering to build one.

“Doesn’t sound too complicated,” she says. “If we had some wood. Do you think missus might have some in the basement? There’s always wood in basements. Probably a saw and hammer too.”

Mrs. Miflin follows them to the foot of the basement stairs, yammering all the while about the smells and the flies and the rats more than likely and why can’t Eve just get some nice fertilizer instead it’s bad enough what with mud being tracked in over the floor all spring she’s not putting up with rats on top of it, and that she isn’t. Judy says she’s bored out of her friggin’ skin with nothing to do around here and if Eve wants a compost bin why shouldn’t she have one. Judy knows of a boarding house over on Caine’s Street where they let the tenants do whatever they friggin’ well want and wouldn’t it be nice now if Eve decided to pack up and move there. And just think how much you’ll save on garbage bags with the potato peels and all going into the bin. And Mrs. Miflin, who prides herself on the rapid growth of her savings account, gives up and grumbles her way to the kitchen to prepare lunch.

The old basement is musty and damp, full of boxes and bags and nuts and bolts, trunks and dead things waiting. Mrs. Miflin never comes here if she can help it, lets the furnace man find his own way around. As Judy reasoned, there is wood. Tools. Nails. The only thing missing is chicken wire and Eve says maybe they can buy it at the hardware store out near the mall but it will be difficult bringing it home on the bus. Judy has a cousin who might have some. He’s always collecting junk for one thing or another and after they drag their treasures to the backyard she makes a phone call. Comes out with a grin on her face. Says, “Well now, we got our chicken wire. As much as we need. Harold is going to bring it over this afternoon. I told him make sure he does. I told him if he doesn’t get it here by two-thirty sharp I’m going to tell the cops he’s been trying to get into my pants since I was ten years old. See, Eve, you just got to know how to talk to people.” And Eve smiles the saddest smile. Says, “Thank you.”

Mrs. Miflin calls through the kitchen window. “One of you run upstairs and bang on Ginny Mustard’s door and tell her to get herself out of that bed and come down for lunch. If she doesn’t eat she’ll be moping around the whole day with her stomach rumbling and I’ll be damned if she’s getting anything else before supper. Go on, now, and get her up.”

Ginny Mustard has not slept this soundly for a long time. All through the night she was rocked gentle and held so close. When she hears Judy’s knock and opens her eyes it is almost noon. She is ravenous. Races to the bathroom to wash her face and practically leaps over the others to get to her seat at table. She even eats the leftovers that Ruth pushes onto her plate. It isn’t until Mrs. Miflin goes to make tea that she hears the song from the attic - hears hush little baby don’t say a word - and when she begins to hum along everyone stares at her and then jumps when Mrs. Miflin drops the kettle on her way from the stove to the counter and screams. They rush to find her flat out on the floor and burning, boiling water splashed all over her chubby legs. While Eve hurries upstairs to find ointment, Judy picks up the whimpering Mrs. Miflin and carries her - with no more effort than if she were a little bird - to the armchair by the kitchen window.

“The best thing now, Mrs. Miflin,” says Eve on her rush back into the room, “is to get yourself into a bath and stay there until the burning stops. And then we’ll put this on and you’ll be fine in no time. Ruth, you go run a cool bath for Mrs. Miflin, dear, and while the tub is filling tell Maggie everything’s okay and she can come out of her room. She gets so upset when there’s either bit of noise at all in the house. Ginny Mustard, you go in and start clearing the table and Judy, you help her with the dishes after you carry Mrs. Miflin upstairs so she can have a lovely bath and stop the burning. Now, Mrs. Miflin, don’t you worry about a thing. Once you’re setded in the tub I’ll bring you a nice cup of tea and you can just relax.”

And Mrs. Miflin, whose job it has always been to do what-ever bossing around needs to be done, is at a loss. No one has every volunteered to look after her that she can remember, and the pain is getting to the point where she feels like crying. She folds and gives in. And here’s Judy with the strongest arms picking her up body and bones, carrying her to the bathtub. She sits on the edge while Eve helps her out of her clothes, doesn’t even blush with her round body exposed to other eyes and slides with relief into the tepid water.

Downstairs the ratde of pots and pans. Sounds of washing and drying and putting away. Ginny Mustard has a vague feeling that she is to blame for Mrs. Miflin’s misfortune but can’t quite put her finger on what she did wrong. Maggie stands at the end of the counter, clutching her shoebox and waiting. Ruth sits in the armchair while Ginny Mustard and Judy work. When Eve comes back she tells them that things are probably going to be a little different around here for a few days while Mrs. Miflin recovers. She can do the cooking if they will help out with the cleaning and whatever else it is that keeps Mrs. Miflin on the run day and night.

From the bathroom comes a call. Mrs. Miflin was going to pick up groceries this afternoon and now there won’t be anything to eat for a week. She has a list and tells Eve where she keeps her money. Makes her promise not to tell the others, especially Judy, for she might be as strong as an ox but she doesn’t trust her any further than she can throw her and Mrs. Miflin won’t be put in the poorhouse by the likes of that one.

“Now make sure you go to the corner market for the tinned goods and boxes and Wareham’s for the meat and fish and frozen stuff and go to Murphy’s for vegetables and apples. God. I can’t be making bread in my condition. If I tell you how do you think you can? I’m not paying those prices for bread and rolls. I never did and I won’t be starting now. And bring me my radio off the top shelf in the kitchen. I’m not about to sit here and listen to nothing all day.” Mrs. Miflin needs some control. For a few minutes there it seemed she was losing it and if that were ever to happen who knows what would become of her so she grabs and clutches what little is left to build on until she is back on top where she should be.

Eve finds the money and the list and the shopping cart and brings Mrs. Miflin a cup of tea. She plans to take Judy with her when she goes but does not bother to mention this to Mrs. Miflin. If she could convince the poor thing to go to the hospital - but no - Mrs. Miflin will have none of it. She doesn’t like hospitals. She’s heard her share of horror stories from people who went to have gall bladders removed or hearts repaired and came away dead or with holes in their kidneys. No hospitals for Mrs. Miflin and that’s that.

Mrs. Miflin has not missed a Sunday Mass since she was born except for that one time. And now she wants to confess she won’t be there tomorrow. Ruth is dispatched to the rectory to find Father Delaney. Mrs. Miflin cannot have such a sin on her soul. If she should die before she can get back on her feet and over to the church it’s hell for all eternity. Mrs. Miflin knows this for a fact.

Father Delaney’s housekeeper is not all that fond of living so near such a queer crowd of women. She looks Ruth up, down and sideways before she opens the screen door. Once she does, though, Ruth is past her and down the hall calling out to the old man.

“Father,” she says. “Mrs. Miflin has burned herself with the kettle water. She wants to see you right away. She’s in a state thinking she might die in the night and needs to confess.”

“She confessed this morning. What could she possibly have done since then that she needs me now? I was just having my tea.”

‘She hasn’t done anything. She wants to confess the sin of not going to Mass tomorrow so she can stay out of hell.”

“I don’t think a person can go around confessing sins they haven’t committed yet. Besides, she was at Mass today and if she doesn’t get there tomorrow it isn’t even a sin. Hasn’t been for years. And the Pope went and told everyone there’s no such thing as hell anyway so what’s her problem? Fool Pope. I don’t know how he thinks we’re going to get them interested in heaven if we don’t have hell to throw at them.”

“I think you may have missed the point, Father, but that’s none of my concern. Are you coming or not? Hell or no hell, the woman wants to confess and if I go back without you I’ll never hear the end of it. I’ll wait until doomsday if I have to so you might as well say yes now and get it over with.”

Father Delaney trudges down the hall and out into the sunlight, muttering. Looks like he has to go back into that God-forsaken place after all. He follows Ruth. Grumbles all the way to the second floor bathroom. Eve hears him coming and closes the door to hide the naked Mrs. Miflin.

His conversation with the landlady is not unlike the one with Ruth and the little patience he had is gone so he gives in and, through the door, hears Mrs. Miflin confess that she didn’t go to church tomorrow to which he replies that she should say the Sorrowful Mysteries and if her legs hurt too much to kneel she can say them in bed or wherever else she wants. He leaves the house and Mrs. Miflin yells to Eve to bring her Rosary beads and since she said the Sorrowful Mysteries last night for no reason at all, decides to say the Joyful Mysteries instead and to hell with Father Delaney. Settles back in the tub to purify her soul.

Eve hasn’t shopped for groceries or anything else in six years, not since she moved to Mrs. Miflin’s house. She is rather excited by the idea but pleased to have Judy along. She rarely leaves home or garden these days and is not sure what is out there anymore because she hears the news now and then and things don’t sound all that pleasant. Eve loves the world but over time she has become cautious.

So there they go to replenish the pantry. Eve tall and strong and gray. Judy taller and stronger and orange-crowned with rings and studs in her ears and nose and tongue. An unlikely pair if ever there was one. They follow the list to the letter until they reach fresh vegetables and then it’s a bit of this and a bit of that, green leafy things that neither has tasted but they smell so very good and since Eve will pay for the extras with her own money, and Mrs. Miflin will be abed for a few days, they decide there’s no harm in a little change.

At home they are greeted by Ruth in a mood. Mrs. Miflin is still in the tub looking like a prune but her left leg is swelling up fast and she may have broken something.

“Oh dear,” says Eve. “She must have hit the floor harder than we thought. I guess there’s nothing for it but to get her to the hospital.”

“Well, better you than me trying to convince her of that. I’ve been running back and forth since you left the house and I’ve had enough of it. I’m going to my room to finish this damned letter. And there’s about fifty yards of chicken wire in the kitchen that some freak dropped off. Said he’s a cousin of Judy’s though I wouldn’t claim him too loud if I were you, girl. Someone should get it out of there. I don’t have time for any more of this crap, damn it.”

In the end an ambulance takes the sorry Mrs. Miflin away, Eve and Ginny Mustard following on foot to sit with her until she’s seen to. By the time they find her in the maze of halls she has been wrapped in a cast from thigh to toe and is none too happy. The doctor tells her there’s no point in even thinking about crutches for a couple of weeks and she’ll be in plaster until September. With instructions, “Off to bed with you and stay there, take these for the pain, put this on the burns,” but without telling her how to get ointment under a cast, he rushes away to mend someone else. Eve calls a taxi and Ginny Mustard wheels Mrs. Miflin to it, hoping Judy is at home to haul the victim up over the stairs when they get there.

She is and she does and once the poor old soul is settled in her bed Eve calls a meeting of the household to discuss the situation and enlist everyone’s help. She has a pen and a notebook and reading glasses perched on the end of her nose and looks for all the world as though she knows what she’s doing. Which is more than can be said for the others. Things don’t happen around here. For all except Judy, every day, every month, is pretty much like the one that came before and reruns can be expected next year and the year after and the year after that. Each knows what the other will say or do at any given time. Maggie has never spoken and hides in her room if she hears so much as a dog bark. Ginny Mustard eats and wanders and when she does talk she’s all over the place and no one remembers the last time she made sense. Ruth is bitchy and scowling when things don’t go her way and since they don’t know what her way might be, they mostly ignore her. Eve walks softly but apparently carries a bigger stick than they would have known if it weren’t for Mrs. Miflin’s misfortune. And Judy - well they haven’t really taken a good look at that girl yet but at first glance she’s trouble. Something hovering about her and shining through her eyes all the time puts them on edge and if it were possible Maggie would clutch her shoebox even tighter when she comes around.

With Mrs. Miflin’s assistance, Eve has compiled a list of everything that goes into being a success in the landlady department. Ruth must argue for a few minutes that someone should be hired to look after the place - they are paying good money and shouldn’t have to work their asses off in the bargain. Ginny Mustard surprises them with “You’re on welfare, Ruth. It’s not your good money.” To which Ruth responds, “Little snip. What the hell do you know about it?” though the fact that she under-stood an entire sentence from Ginny Mustard keeps her awake later.

Truth is, only Eve is independent of government assistance. The others have, reasons apparent or not, relied on Social Services for a good many years now. While Mrs. Miflin tends to frown on that welfare crowd, these people are her bread and butter and she doesn’t voice her opinion on the matter aloud. The rest of the world is not exactly beating a path to her door to rent a room, for all that she’s a great cook and keeps the cleanest house in the city.

If Mrs. Miflin could get someone to go to Mass for her every day she would but as it is the only items on her list of things that have to be done are basic and according to Judy, “Boring as hell for fuck sake and instead of everyone doing the same thing over and over why can’t we take turns and switch around a bit? And how is that one supposed to do anything if she can’t put down the friggin’ box for a second. What’s she going to do? Wash dishes with one hand? Not bloody likely. Tell her Eve. Tell her to put it down. She gives me the creeps. What’s in the box Maggie?” And Judy leaps from her chair and aims for Maggie who hauls off and lets her have it square across the head with the precious shoebox.

“Oh dear,” says Eve. “That wasn’t very nice Maggie. Judy is going to have a lump on her head and a black eye too from the looks of it.”

Judy is hollering blue murder. Ginny Mustard pulls her hair over her face, the better to hide behind, and Ruth, for once, has nothing to say. If anyone were to look closely she might see a twitch at the corner of Maggie’s mouth - barely there - not quite a smile but what else would you call it? If she hadn’t glanced at Judy as the girl rushed her, none of this would have happened. But there was that something in Judy’s eyes daring her - just daring her - to make a move and so she did. And a little voice is urging her up the stairs and into her room as fast as she can go but another is telling her stay and see what happens next and since the latter controls her feet she eases herself back into the old sofa and waits.

From Mrs. Miflin’s room comes the sound of pure misery. Judy quits her ranting and they all troop up to see what the devil she wants now. On the bed Mrs. Miflin is a wee, helpless thing. They are surprised. Have never seen her with the wind out of her sails before. Someone must read to her. Everyday. She pulls a battered Bible from her night table. Who will refuse such a request from this wreck of a woman? Ginny Mustard does. She has a reading level of nothing. Maggie as well, by way of Eve, who reminds Mrs. Miflin that if she won’t speak she probably won’t read either. That leaves Eve, Judy and Ruth and they can take turns in the mornings after breakfast if that’s okay with Mrs. Miflin. Eve leaves the room and returns with water. Supports Mrs. Miflin’s head and helps her down one of the doctor’s painkillers. Tucks her in and ushers the others away.

“She’s really out of it,” says Ruth when they have settled again in the sitting room. “Never even mentioned the racket Judy made when Maggie whacked her with the shoebox. Who’d have thought you had it in you, Maggie? Mousing around all the time and turns out you’re a bit of a wild one after all.” There is some-thing akin to admiration in Ruth’s voice, noticed by no one but Judy, scowling.

Maggie is back to her statue self, staring straight ahead and through the others from her perch on the sofa. It might all have been imagined but for the egg-sized lump over Judy’s blackening eye. Eve brings a bag of frozen peas from the kitchen, wrapped in a tea towel. Presses it to Judy’s forehead. “Here, dear. This will bring the swelling down. I think it might be best not to bother Maggie anymore today if you can help it. Now let’s try to get our duties straightened out. Perhaps Judy is right and we should not have assigned tasks. Why don’t we write everything on little pieces of paper and then everyone can pick a few in the morning and that way we can all have some variety to our days.”

Only Judy cares for variety in any shape or form but no one wants to be stuck with cleaning toilets for the next three months either so Eve goes to the kitchen to find scissors and a nice bowl to put the chores in. All she comes up with are pinking shears and a pickle jar but they will do for now.

Ginny Mustard who doesn’t know her ass from her elbow in a kitchen must have Judy’s help to read recipes. It’s fine and dandy to say let’s have pork chops for dinner but if no one can tell her how to cook them they’ll surely starve. Judy’s prior experience erasing serial numbers from stolen goods makes her one of your better pot scrubbers. Maggie can dust and wax the old furniture with the shoebox tucked safely under an arm. Ruth can sing to her heart’s content under the noise of the decrepit vacuum cleaner with no chance that anyone will accuse her of being in a good mood. Eve encourages Ginny Mustard to throw her bit of this and bit of that green things in with dinner but put a plate aside for Mrs. Miflin first since she might not like the taste.

At table they are tired now. Neither has worked this hard in eons and other than the odd, “How does she do this every day?” and, “What’s this stuff on the pork chops?” there is little talk. With no Mrs. Miflin to fill the space with her ramblings they will eat in silence until someone stumbles upon the art of conversation.

Within a day or two they are trading chores. Ginny Mustard likes cooking and Judy wants to wax the long front hallway. Wants to slide up and down it in her sock feet until it gleams or she breaks her neck, whichever comes first. Ruth talks Eve into reading again to Mrs. Miflin and in exchange cleans toilets and tubs. Maggie takes what’s left and finds herself washing dishes with her shoebox in a plastic bag to keep it dry. When she’s feeling brave she puts it on the counter near the sink and only grabs it up again when she hears someone coming.

All goes well. Busy, they keep out of one another’s sight for the most part. Mrs. Miflin insists that even the unoccupied rooms be kept clean and tidy and ready for the tenants she dreams of. Judy went out for milk one day and came back with a bag of kittens that some old fellow was dragging to the park. He was going to leave them there and if someone came along and took them home - fine - and if they just crawled around for a day and died - that was fine too and he didn’t care one way or the other since he’s had his fill of friggin’ cats and it’s hard enough feeding himself these days with the friggin’ prices on everything and if he never saw another friggin’ cat in his life it would be too soon. And what’s worse, the poor little momma cat was trailing after him and the bag of her babies and no matter how many rocks he threw at her she wouldn’t leave and she wouldn’t stop her crying. What was the girl to do? She took the bag and, with momma cat close at her heels, brought the whole mess home and plunked it down, though gently, on the kitchen floor.

Ginny Mustard has found a pretty picture of an apple cake in the recipe book and is pleased to see Judy coming. Maggie is putting away the last of the lunch dishes. Eve walks in just as Judy loosens the drawstring of the noisy brown bag.

“Don’t anyone go yelling at me. You know you’d have to bring them home too. Well, maybe not Ruth, but the rest of you would. He was just going to leave them there in the park and the dogs’d have them killed in a minute. Look at them. They’re so pretty. We have to keep them. No one else is gonna want them. I didn’t know what else to do. Stupid old fucker. I’d like to put him in a bag and throw him away. See how he likes it.”

And now they are all sitting on the floor. And six kittens waddle every which way on fragile legs, blinking in the sudden light until Ruth comes stomping in and they skitter to Maggie and hide among the folds of her big skirt. Momma cat sits tight. Stares at Ruth with golden eye. Dares her say anything other than welcome.

The cat stares and Ruth stares and before either cracks there’s a loud knock at the front door and Ruth leaves to answer it. The sudden collective out-breath is audible above momma cat’s wonderful purr. Ruth comes back. “There’s someone who says his name is Joe Snake and he wants to see Ginny Mustard. I don’t like the looks of him so he’s waiting outside.”

Eve says, “You didn’t invite him in, dear?”

“No I didn’t. That cousin of Judy’s was here the other day smelling up the place and this one doesn’t look much better. Why is it the only people who come around here aren’t fit to live? And what the hell are you going to do with those things? You’d better get rid of them before Mrs. Miflin gets a whiff. She hates cats more than I do.” And she’s gone to her room.

But little cat softness and little cat sounds follow, and the tiny pads of little cat feet - she can feel them on her face as surely as if she had picked one up and pushed her nose into its round belly. Paper thin claws, sharp baby teeth on her fingers. And her kitten ghosts are with her as she falls on her bed, face in the pillow, back to the door. Behind closed eyes she sees her father with yet another brood in a cardboard box and the car running and the hose attached to the tailpipe and in a few minutes kitten bodies in the garbage can. And that last one. The one she loved so much. The one she hid from her father and he had to go and kill the rest of them anyway because he was late. And she prayed hard. If God would only let her keep this one she’d never ask for another thing as long as she lived. She’d go and be a missionary in Africa with the heathens. She’d do anything He wanted if only she could keep this one. And her mother told on her when she found the kitten in the laundry hamper and her father was tired and cranky. Squeezed its sweet neck until there was no life left in it and threw it away. Ruth hasn’t touched a cat since she was eight years old. She hates them with a passion pure and harsh.

Ruth refuses supper. When Eve comes to fetch her, says, “Get out of my face you old hag.” Turns to the wall again and stays there until the house is quiet and everyone sleeping. Goes to the park and wraps herself around the hyacinth and when she stands up she is all purple and smells of them. And she is them. And she goes to the ocean high up on the rocks and puts her arms in the clouds and she is wave and salt and hyacinth even after she goes back to her room at the very end of the house beyond the linen closet. She turns on a lamp and cuts her hair all the way to the gray and leaves a pool of black curls on the floor surrounding her chair for someone else to clean up.

There are no dreams. Nothing gets her up in darkness and forces her outside for a walk at three in the morning, though when she wakes her pillowcase is wet as if she has been crying in her sleep.

Outside and through most of the night, someone watching. Leaning against a tree in front of the old orphanage and staring at the house. He watches Ruth come and go. He watches lights and he watches dark. Before the sun peeps over the hill on the left side of the harbour he is gone and nothing to show for his being there but footprints and the strong scent of something ugly that follows the children who pass by on their way to school. Makes their skin go all shivery. Makes them think of damp places.

Mrs. Miflin smells it when Eve opens her bedroom window and demands that she shut it again. Eve doesn’t notice it at all and doesn’t understand what Mrs. Miflin is upset about. Judy smells it when she goes outside to work on the compost bin and grins a little fox grin to herself. Maggie just feels cold and piles on a couple of sweaters and Ginny Mustard thinks of nuns. By the time Ruth appears for the day, the sun has warmed the ugliness away and she can’t smell it over breakfast.

Her hair is a hit, although Judy thinks it too gray and suggests red dye. Eve thinks it softens Ruth. Makes her look almost approachable but she doesn’t say that. Smiles her approval. Ginny Mustard memorizes it so she can make a picture later on and Maggie cuts her own thick braid with pinking shears over the garbage can in the kitchen after the table has been cleared.

Mrs. Miflin won’t eat. Pushes her eggs around the plate and doesn’t drink her tea. The burning has left her legs and she spends much of her time under painkillers. All last night she moaned in fitful dreams of cradles and dark anger. She dug and dug time after time until she found the little bones. Again and again she carried them, washed them, wrapped them. For all her work she woke with empty arms. She has to get out of this bed, this room. She is suffocating under the weight of her helplessness. They won’t move her. Follow the doctor’s orders. She fears the worst. They are taking over. She heard laughter on the stairs. Someone humming a nothing tune. She hates the noise. She hates the quiet more.

After supper, unrecognizable but certainly edible, the sitting room is fully occupied for the first time since the nuns blew away, and seems pleased with itself. Eve is guiding Maggie through her project. Maggie, feeling brave, has tucked the shoebox under her knees to facilitate a smoother stitch. Ruth is writing her letter. A full notepad gone and she is still on the first page. Judy lies on the floor, her long legs up on the seat of an armchair, her body crawling with kittens, momma cat close by. Ginny Mustard comes in and presents Ruth with a paper place mat, one side advertising events upcoming four years ago, the other showing a likeness of Ruth in her new hair, sketched with colored pencils. Says softly, “I made this.”

“Well shit, Ginny Mustard. Is that supposed to be me? I’m flattered, girl, but you really should get your eyes checked.”

“Oh no,” says Eve. “That looks exactly like you Ruth. You are quite lovely, dear, when you aren’t frowning. You are a very good artist, Ginny Mustard.”

“No kidding,” says Judy. “Do another one but this time make her hair red so she can see how much better it would look. Can you do one of me too? This is way cool.”

Ginny Mustard doesn’t know what to do with a compliment. She stares at the others for a full thirty seconds before running to her room. Brings back pages and pages of her pictures. And they examine them carefully, with pleasure, surprised. Even Maggie finds the corners of her mouth in a twitch. Second one this week. But after flowers and faces and the river, the hills and the ocean, small bones in a cradle, wrapped in pink blanket, begging touch and feel how soft.

“What the fuck is that Ginny Mustard? What have you got against babies you didn’t put any skin on it?” Judy is upset.

“Oh dear,” says Eve. “Why would you draw this kind of picture? It is very sad, isn’t it? Where would you have seen such a thing?”

Ginny Mustard recoils - a puppy kicked. But they are all looking at her. They all want something of her and she beckons them follow. Leads them to the attic. Around ancient dark furniture. Brushing cobwebs aside. Under dim light shows them the cradle of tiny bones in pink blanket.

“I found this baby when I looked for a lightbulb. Judy said there might be one. So I looked but I didn’t find one. I found this baby. She has a pretty blanket and a little rocking bed. I don’t think she is sad.”

In silence they stare. First at the cradle, then Ginny Mustard, cradle again, Ginny Mustard. There is nothing to say. It is unbearably hot in the attic. A fly buzzes on a dirty window. Eve is the first to head back to the sitting room, the others not far behind. Ginny Mustard closes the attic door ever so gently. They sit wordless for five minutes or more before Ruth speaks.

“I guess we’ll have to report this to Her Majesty’s finest. I’m sure they have a dead youngster nothing but bones department. Do you think the old nuns did it? I wouldn’t put it past them.”

“Whatever happened to that poor little baby,” says Eve, “someone must have loved it very much to want to keep it for so long. It must be dead forty years or more. There’s nothing left on the bones at all.”

Judy interrupts. “You’re giving me the creeps, you guys. And anyway - it could be dead only last year. You can boil bones in acid, you know, to get all the flesh off. I saw a movie once and the guy had some kind of bugs that could clean bones in a week. He was a cop or something and they use those bugs when they want to get at a skull real fast. It was a true story. Well I’m not sleeping in this house anymore until those friggin’ bones are gone out of here.”

“Shut up, Judy. I don’t know what the hell your problem is,” says Ruth. “Nothing ever happened in this place until you showed up. And now here’s Maggie hitting people and Mrs. Miflin crippled in her bed and you even managed to talk her into a com-post bin. I never would have cut my fucking hair if you weren’t stirring things up. I don’t know how you do it but you do. You’re a pain in the ass. And I, for one, will be only too happy to see the tail end of you heading out. Why don’t you leave so we can get back to normal?”

“Normal? You call this normal? Bunch of old bats holed up in a freak house? Sure Eve wasn’t in a store for years until I took her out for groceries. You had a good time, didn’t you Eve? And if freaky Maggie there can do something besides creep around like a zombie - even if it’s just hit someone up side the head - well who cares? It’s better than going around half dead all the friggin’ time. And if you didn’t cut your witch hair Ginny Mustard wouldn’t have made that picture of you and if she didn’t show us her other pictures we wouldn’t know about the bones up there and - oh - right - I see what you mean. Well excuse me for living!”

Eve gets up and stands next to Judy’s chair. Reaches to stroke her orange spikes. “There, there, dear. We’ll get to the bottom of this. None of it is your fault.” She’s not sure that’s the truth but she did have a grand time shopping and wants to do it again.

Maggie gathers the kittens in her big skirt, pours them on to Judy’s lap. “See, dear?” says Eve. “Maggie isn’t mad at you. She’s brought the kittens to take your mind off all of this. Your hair looks really nice, Maggie. If you like I can give it a trim around your eyes there so it’s not all hanging in your face. Maybe we can do that tomorrow. Now I think we should get ourselves to bed. Why don’t you just let me think on this for awhile and we can talk about it again in the morning. There’s nothing to be done at this late hour and since the baby has been here for a long time I’m sure it won’t be any harder to sleep tonight than it was last night.”

The others are skeptical but Ginny Mustard smiles. She likes the singing and the creaking of the cradle and feels much better now that the others know her secret. It’s not that it weighed her down, but it did get in the way now and then.

Across the road he takes his place under the aspen. Listens to it whisper above him, a greasy frown on his mouth as the fog moves in from the harbour. Up Water Street. Beaton’s Row. Caine’s Street. Settles thick and gray in his eyes until the house disappears and, nothing to see, he limps back to the river.

In the morning, even before Ginny Mustard begins to prepare breakfast, they gather again in the sitting room, silently, as though the slightest sound will wake whatever else might be sleeping in this crypt of a house. Mrs. Miflin is still dead to the world and Eve’s first whisper convinces them to keep her ignorant of the situation. “She’s had a rough go of it, poor thing, and there’s plenty of time when she’s feeling better to let her know what’s going on.”

“Poor thing, my ass,” hisses Ruth. “She probably knows all about it. It’s her house. You think she doesn’t know what’s in the bloody attic? She probably put it there. I’d never have taken her for a killer, though. She doesn’t seem the type.”

“Fat lot you know about killers, Ruth.” This from Judy, who hasn’t had much practice whispering and they all jump slightly when she opens her mouth. “You think they run around drooling and knives hanging out of their pockets. Well let me tell you, some of the nicest looking people in the world are bad to the bone. Take my friend Geoff. He’d do in his granny for a dime of hash if he could get away with it. Anyway -1 think he did because one day when I went over there was a hearse taking her away and she was okay before that. Just kind of old is all.”

Ginny Mustard doesn’t like where this conversation is going. She concentrates especially hard to keep up. “Do we have to give it back? The baby? Can we keep it? Judy got to keep the kittens.”

“And who the hell would we give it to?” asks Ruth. “Put an ad in the paper and ask if anyone is missing an old dead baby? Check your graves and give us a call? For God’s sake, Ginny Mustard, you don’t have the sense of a turnip.”

“Well, I’m at a loss,” says Eve.

From Mrs. Miflin’s room comes a weak plea. She needs to get to the bathroom, most likely, and Judy leaps to her duty.

Patricia Hartman waits for her plane to board, purse on her lap, ticket in hand. Since the funeral she has debated the wisdom of going and still ponders her decision. Her mother would have disapproved. They had been over it several times in the last two years, each conversation ending with her mother’s insistence that in everyone’s interest the past was better left alone. Let the lawyers handle it. Her mother died unaware that Patricia had been watching. Never saw the letters written. Never heard the phone calls. Patricia Hartman is not the kind of woman to let go willingly, no matter how calmly she might appear to do so. Her mother never knew that about her. The announcer calls her flight. She leaves her seat and walks tall to the gate.

While Judy attends Mrs. Miflin and Ginny Mustard waits with the kittens for a breakfast recipe, Ruth tells Maggie to come with her to the corner store and help her carry back a load of beer. No one has ever brought alcohol into Mrs. Miflin’s house. That would be ungodly. But, as Ruth reasons, what the old doll doesn’t know won’t hurt her. If they can protect her highness from bones in the attic, it shouldn’t be too damned difficult to keep a few brews tucked away in back of the fridge.

Shocked by her own willingness to leave the house, but more amazed by Ruth’s audacity, Maggie pulls her shoes on and slowly, slowly goes down the front walk with Ruth to break the rules. It’s normally a three minute walk but it takes a good ten with Maggie having to step aside whenever anyone comes by, a statue until they pass, with her head down and her shoebox clutched tight against her chest. But she made it. She made it. Spent ten minutes in the world. Didn’t fall down. Wasn’t struck dead. Nobody hurt her. Only when she hears a transport truck does she realize the extent of her folly, but briefly. Ruth sees the panic and stays close enough to touch if Maggie feels the need.

Breakfast is late. Judy has been waylaid by Mrs. Miflin first and then Eve who thinks it’s time to dig another bed in the garden and wants help. She will plant peas and lettuce, just a few of each so no one will get sick of them. Maybe a pumpkin. Tomatoes. There is so much marvelous space crying out for something more than grass. So Ginny Mustard goes ahead without Judy’s assistance. Throws eggs and leftovers together with a bit of this and a bit of that green stuff. Cooks it up in the big cast iron pan and pours a bowl of corn flakes for Mrs. Miflin, all the while humming along to the song from the attic.

Maggie can’t eat, though she sits through the meal. She has had more excitement than she can recall and is trembling all over with it. Afterwards Eve has a rough time trimming her hair with the constant squirming.

Eve says there is nothing to be done about the bones, they should wait to tell Mrs. Miflin, are they all agreed? Ruth says she doesn’t give a damn as long as she can have a beer now and again. Ginny Mustard is pleased they can keep the baby. They take Maggie’s movement for affirmation and Judy grumbles, but what the hell. Better than having cops asking questions all over the place with their big old boots on and just her luck they’d think she did it anyway.

Ginny Mustard wants to clean the attic now. It’s too dusty for a little baby and before anyone can think of a good reason not to, she’s off with a mop and a bucket of water. Scrub brush. No one else will go with her so she puts a couple of kittens in her pocket for company. Quietly past Mrs. Miflin’s door, up the stairs.

“That girl is a loon if ever there was one,” says Ruth. “And what’s with her and the cooking? Does anyone else want a beer?” She goes to the kitchen. Finds one of the kittens has climbed into the fridge. Freezes in mid-reach. It looks dead. It looks so little, tiny paws tucked under its belly. She calls for someone to come but her words have no sound. Slowly puts her hand on the baby cat. The small head moves and the mouth opens to squeak. Grabbing a beer she carries the kitten to Maggie and dumps it in her lap on the way to her room.

Patricia Hartman settles herself comfortable in the back seat of a taxi, gives her driver the address of Mrs. Miflin’s house, reads it from the slip of paper she holds in her long pink fingers. Deciding that the woman with the best luggage he has ever seen - and he’s seen plenty - is probably good for a few dollars more than flat rate, Billy Ralph flips on the meter and takes the scenic route into town. From the airport he turns left and heads through Torbay, Flatrock and all the way into Pouch Cove telling stories and reciting history until his passenger asks him to please shut up she’s not interested. He turns around and heads back to the city. If she notices that he has taken her 30 miles in the wrong direction, she doesn’t say. He makes a quick run around Quidi Vidi Lake and through The Battery before stopping on Bishop’s Road. That’ll teach the bitch. Patricia takes off her sunglasses and stares him in the eye before paying the fare. No tip.

Mrs. Miflin asks Eve why none of her friends have come to visit. Why Mrs. Hennessey hasn’t called. “And they call them-selves Christians. There’s not one of them cares if I’m dead or living.” Eve doesn’t have an answer but says she’ll be happy to invite them over if Mrs. Miflin will tell her their phone numbers. She doesn’t point out that she wasn’t aware of any friends, never having seen one around. For all Mrs. Miflin’s talk about the people in the neighbourhood, most of her conversations with them seem to be in passing, on her way to the market or Mass. And it is rare to hear her speak well of them, confining her reports to the sad state of the clothes on their lines or the godawful colors they choose to paint their homes. With no phone numbers forthcoming, Eve tucks a blanket round Mrs. Miflin and leaves her to her misery.

Judy has had enough of hard labour for one day. Lately she’s been eyeing the ancient swings in the schoolyard. The heavy ropes are frayed but they have thick wooden seats, not like the ones in the park made of plastic that cuts into the sides of your ass when you sit on them. They were earmarked for replacement years ago but the process has been slowed by disinterest and lack of funds. It was simple enough to tell the students and parents that anyone who used them would surely kill themselves. The principal did concede to posting a plexiglass warning sign, though some of the older kids have long since written dirty words all over it in permanent ink and it will probably be removed if anyone notices.

The only way to the swings when the big gates are locked is through a chain link fence. Fortunately there are some good-sized holes in it, plenty of room if you’re at all flexible. Judy nags until she finds someone to go with her. She’s no fool and if a swing breaks while she’s as high off the ground as she plans to be, she wants an extra body around to call an ambulance. So Maggie, nicknamed “good old Maggs” since her trip to the beer store, is enlisted. Puts her shoes on yet again and slowly makes her way to the fence, gets through without much effort, box in one hand, skirt dragging behind.

Judy is swinging up high in the trees, head back and mouth wide open. Maggie takes a chance. Sits down and gives a timid push with her feet. Puts her shoe box on the ground and works the swing a little higher. And a little higher than that and a little higher than that and soon she is flying with Judy, back and forth, back and forth. And then a laugh. Starts off a gasp and leaves like music - like a spring brook - like a happy toddler - and it bubbles through the air and hits Judy square in the face and if that girl were made of lesser stuff she’d have surely fallen. For an hour they swing until their legs can pump no more and they sit on the grass under the leaves until it feels like supper time.

When the taxi pulls up Ginny Mustard doesn’t hear it above her singing in the attic. Her brown skin is covered with dust and cobwebs and there is at least one spider spinning a home in her hair. Within a few minutes of the start of her cleaning project she had stripped to her underpants and between the heat and the dirt she is not looking much like her old self at all. She has scratches on her ankles from kittens thinking they’ve come to play and a nasty cut on her right arm from when she knocked over an old lamp. Once she shivered furiously but just assumed that someone was walking over her grave. If she had looked through the window at that very moment she would have seen the taxi, would have seen Patricia Hartman staring up at the house, seen her walk to the door and knock.

Eve is flustered. She can’t find Maggie or Judy, Ruth won’t come out of her room, and now here’s the most elegant woman who looks vaguely familiar, claiming she has a reservation. Eve has explained that Mrs. Miflin is not well. Resting. Not to be disturbed. There’s no one taking care of the house right now and the tenants are on their own. Mrs. Miflin must have forgotten all about Ms Hartman and it would be best under the circumstances if she take a hotel room. The woman is persistent and asks Eve to speak to the landlady. She doesn’t want to stay in a hotel. Mrs. Miflin will be more than happy to have her if Eve will only give her name. So Eve tells Mrs. Miflin that Patricia Hartman is here. Watches as a little light goes on in the landlady’s head but whether it’s the thought of money making her eyes glow suddenly or the chance for new company or something altogether different, Eve doesn’t know. And while she shows Miss Hartman to the sitting room she wonders how much good a woman with fingernails like that will be around here. Wonders if she’ll like the others. Wonders how much she paid for her dress. Mutters, “Just when we have a little elbow room at the table, too,” and is quickly ashamed of her pettiness.

While Eve checks to see that Miss Hartman’s room is in perfect condition, Maggie and Judy return from their swing in the park to find Patricia examining the wedding photographs. She introduces herself and holds out a hand. Maggie hangs her head and does nothing. Judy grabs the hand and shakes it fiercely. “Well fuck me gently. You’ve got to be something to Ginny Mustard. Except for she’s brown and you’re not, you two could be sisters.” To which Patricia responds, “Yes. We are sisters. She is unaware of my existence. Is she at home?”

“Shit. This is a riot. I don’t know where she is. Last going off she was heading for the attic to clean up. But wait now. You don’t want to go up there. I’ll get her and bring her down.” And Judy races the stairs three at a time thinking how interesting this day has become all of a sudden.

Ginny Mustard is still up to her ears in dust. She found an unlocked trunk and curiosity got the better of her. She’s been examining its contents for a few minutes, old clothes and a plaster horse with a clock in its side, a teapot, a christening gown of white silk, a rifle. When Judy comes tearing into the attic, Ginny Mustard drops the gun and leaps to her dirty feet. “Shit, Ginny Mustard, what are you doing with no clothes on? Mrs. Miflin might find that ungodly, you know. You’re filthy. Get yourself together and come down. You’ve got a visitor.” Ginny Mustard dresses. Doesn’t stop to wash her face or pick the cobwebs off her arms, follows Judy to the sitting room, stands face to face with a whiter, cleaner version of herself.

“Hello, Virginia. I realize this is a shock. Perhaps we should sit down and I will attempt to explain.”

“Well she can’t sit on anything with that attic crud all over her. Mrs. Miflin will have a fit. Ginny Mustard, don’t you move until I get a towel or something to put under you. Wait.” And Judy disappears in the direction of the linen closet.

Maggie has been stone since she entered the room. On Judy’s return she backs herself into a far corner, lifting her eyes now and then to take a small peek. Judy places a ragged blanket on the sofa and drags Ginny Mustard to sit, guides Patricia to sit near her and claims a place across the room where she can see the action.

Patricia says, “Perhaps it’s best if we have privacy.” Judy says, “Well there isn’t any in this house.” And Ginny Mustard says, “Stay here.”

“If that’s the way you want it, fine. There’s no point in dragging this out so I’ll get straight to the bottom line. My name is Patricia Hartman. We are sisters. I knew nothing about you until two years ago when our mother was diagnosed with cancer. She suffered an uncharacteristic attack of conscience and confided that she had left you in the hospital where she gave birth. Had, in fact, known there was some possibility of her doing just that, hence the trip to this city. She had been in the process of divorcing our father. He is African, from Nairobi, a professor of Anthropology. It seems that your pigment kept you behind. If you had been white enough she could have brought you home and no one would have been the wiser. As long as she could ignore our parentage, everything was fine, but obviously in your case that was impossible. Our mother was a racist but her parents even more so. She married him to escape their clutches, to defy them and eliminate them from her life permanently. Her strategy worked for several years. I was well into my teens before I met our maternal grandparents. They were unpleasant people although it is difficult to understand how she could resort to such extreme measures to upset them. Before she died I began the search for you. So, here I am. Mother left you approximately $300,000 which will be deposited into your bank account as soon as I inform her lawyers where you are. Those fools might have taken years to find you.”

Throughout the monologue, Ginny Mustard stares at her sister’s face. Now she reaches to touch Patricia’s hair. She looks at her hands, and then her own, brown and dirty, nails ragged. She rises, takes the blanket and climbs the stairs to shower and change her clothes. Judy and Maggie follow close. “Holy shit Ginny Mustard,” says Judy. “What are you going to do? You’re rich, girl. Can we get cable? What do you think of that sister of yours? She looks a bit snotty if you want my opinion.” But Ginny Mustard has nothing to say. They sit on the floor outside the bathroom door while she washes up and follow her to the kitchen when she’s done.

Eve shows Patricia to her room and makes a beeline to the others for some catching up. An excited Judy fills her in while Maggie sets the table. “Oh my,” says Eve. “How nice for you, Ginny Mustard, to have so much money after all you’ve been through. And such a lovely sister now when you never had any family before. You probably have aunts and uncles and cousins too. I am so happy for you, dear.”

But Ginny Mustard is concentrating on chicken and potatoes and has no room to think about anything else. Judy is beside herself with excitement and can barely read out the recipe for gravy. She has never known anyone with money and Ginny Mustard has been elevated several notches in her estimation.

“God almighty Ginny Mustard. I can’t believe you aren’t jumping up and down all over the place. I tell you, I’d be making a list of stuff to buy if I had all that friggin’ money, that’s what I’d be doing. But you don’t know how to make a list. I forgot. If you want I can make one for you. I’ll get some paper and you just tell me what you want me to write. Back in a minute.” And she’s gone, almost knocking over the tipsy Ruth as she makes her careful way to the fridge for another beer.

“Do you think you should drink any more of that now, dear?” asks Eve. “Come and have supper. You haven’t eaten a thing all day. Ginny Mustard has a visitor, you know. Her long lost sister she never knew she had has come to stay for a while and she’s brought lots of money for Ginny Mustard. We’ll tell you all about it at the table.”

“Well isn’t that great,” mumbles Ruth. Trips to the dining room. Rests her spinning head on a place mat.

Thinks Patricia as she squeezes into her seat, “How could Mother have left Virginia to this?”

“So where did your mother get so much money?” asks Judy, through a mouthful of mashed potatoes. “I never met anyone that rich and I’ve been around, you know.”

“Yes, I imagine you have. Our mother was an artist of some fame, though chances are that you haven’t heard of her, in spite of your having been around.”

Her insult is not lost on Judy. “Well I wonder was she as good as Ginny Mustard? Probably not. Ginny Mustard is a real good artist. Show her your pictures Ginny Mustard. All except those last ones. Show her the pictures of the trees and the river and stuff. I bet your old bitch mother never drew that good.”

Ruth moans that she is about to be sick but can’t get up. Eve dips a paper napkin in her water glass and wets Ruth’s ghastly face, eliciting faint sounds of relief or protest, difficult to tell. Ginny Mustard has something to say finally, and no one dares leave to take care of Ruth if it means missing anything. “I wouldn’t leave my baby. I would take my baby with me and love her all to pieces. And I would sing to her and hug her all the time. I wouldn’t let my baby go to the orphan house. You can kill me but I won’t let my baby go to the orphan house.”

Patricia is puzzled. What is Virginia talking about? Judy is ready to strike back. “Oh Patricia. You didn’t know that Ginny Mustard is simple, did you? That’s a shock for you, I’ll bet. Ginny Mustard is a retard. She can’t read or write. The only thing she knows how to do is cook and we didn’t find that out until Mrs. Miflin took sick. And she can make art too. But that’s all. She used to be a hooker, did you know that? Since she was about twelve years old. Sad that your own flesh and blood turns out to be a friggin’ loser, eh? Too bad. Guess you won’t be telling your friends about her now, will you? Probably won’t throw a party for her and invite your boyfriend will you? Sure hope Ginny Mustard doesn’t decide to move in next door to you. But now that she’s got some money to her name I suppose she can live wherever she friggin’ well wants, can’t she?”

Ginny Mustard is pleased by Judy’s revelations. She doesn’t even wonder how she knows so much. Just puts it down to her being more clever than other people. Looks at Judy with thank you on her face.

Patricia is not easily off-balanced but it had not occurred to her that she might find her sister anything less than she is. She was prepared for the skin color. She was prepared for the affects of a disadvantaged upbringing. She was not ready to claim an idiot as her closest living relative.

Excusing herself she goes to her room, sits at the window and watches a man limp along the road to stand among the trees, stare at the house. She shivers for a minute before closing the curtains. What is to be done? Surely her sister cannot be left on her own to handle her share of Mother’s money. But does Patricia really want to be burdened with the responsibility? She will have to consult a lawyer, someone local who can administer the funds, hand over enough to keep Virginia in a reasonable manner of living, make investments on her behalf. Properly handled, it should serve her well for quite some time.

The next morning, after several phone calls she concludes that the only way anyone will do her bidding is if a psychiatrist declares Virginia incompetent. Makes an appointment Ginny Mustard is none too happy with the prospect of getting tested as Judy puts it. “She just wants all your money for herself. Those doctors pick inside your brain to see what’s there, you know. My mother had that done once and they shoved electricity into her head and she was real weird after that.”

Terrified as she is Ginny Mustard allows herself to be guided through a series of tests, talks to a doctor for hours and then another and another. After two days under their microscopes she is exhausted and when she runs away to hear the music, falls asleep under the rhododendron, wakes surrounded by fat crimson blossoms, a puppy licking her face. Pulling his golden body to her she snuggles close until the music man comes out of the big house. Calls, “Harvey, Harvey, where are you?” and whistles. But the puppy is more interested in being with Ginny Mustard. The man finds both of them under the flowers next to the marble Buddha and stares for a long time at Ginny Mustard’s beautiful brown face and long thin arms wrapped around the puppy before speaking. “And who are you?” he asks.

“I think his name is Harvey?”

“No - not the dog, you. Who are you and why are you in my garden at seven in the morning?”

“I came to hear the music. I fell asleep. My name is Ginny Mustard. You have nice music and I had to go to the doctor for two days and I’m tired. They want me to be retarded so Patricia can have my money.”

Instead of, “What the hell are you talking about?” his mouth forms, “Would you like some breakfast?”

“Yes. Can Harvey have some too? He’s hungry. He chewed my hair.”

In the kitchen of the big house, the man cooks an omelette with mushrooms and cheese, makes coffee in a pot. Ginny Mustard watches from her chair at the table, the puppy on her lap. The man puts food on thin blue plates, gives Ginny Mustard a white, white cloth napkin, asks if she would like cream in her coffee, sugar. Serves her first and then himself. They eat in silence until Ginny Mustard remembers that she should be preparing breakfast at Mrs. Miflin’s house for the others.

“I have to make breakfast. I cook now. Mrs. Miflin is sick with her leg.”

“Would you like to come back some time? My name is Howard James.” And he holds out a large hand. Ginny Mustard shakes it timidly. She has never shaken a hand before.

“You have two first names. Will Harvey be here when I come back?”

“Yes. I am usually away during the day, but home by six. I look forward to seeing you again.”

Ginny Mustard has met two proper people in three days. Her sister and now the music man with two first names. Her life has been abruptly altered and she ponders the change as much as she ponders anything, on her way along the river toward home.

Howard James tidies his spotless kitchen, waters an orchid, leaves a note reminding the cleaning woman, whose name he can’t recall, to dust the paintings, puts a leash on Harvey and walks with the dog along the river to Water Street and his office. Thinks about Ginny Mustard. Asks himself why on earth he brought such a person into his home, ate with her, and invited her to come back. What in God’s name was he thinking? He should have had her arrested for trespassing.

Patricia has been given the results of Ginny Mustard’s assessment and is shocked to learn that her sister is intelligent. Dyslexic, mistreated, abused, and probably malnourished for much of her life, but smart enough that no one recommends she be deprived of her inheritance. The bright idea that Patricia would find a kindred spirit in her sister has gone the sad way of most bright ideas and she is only too pleased to leave the city and never look at that face again. She contacts her mother’s lawyers, arranging the transfer of funds to a local bank. When Virginia returns she will accompany her to open an account.

Ginny Mustard has other ideas. If she can’t even write her own name there’s no point in having her money in a bank. She would like to keep it in her chest of drawers with the rest of her savings. Wrapped in a huge pair of hockey socks, bound tightly with elastic bands. She shows Patricia her treasure - $967. She will put her new money with the old. Patricia doesn’t care. Doesn’t wonder how Ginny Mustard has managed to accumulate $967. Ignores the banker’s arguments. Calls a taxi while Ginny Mustard sits on her bed, puts her money in order, tucks it neatly in hockey socks.

Judy’s wish list is complete. She has been working diligently ever since she discovered that her new best friend is rich. She has filled two sheets of paper with television sets, sound systems, clothes, even a few tattoos and some new earrings. Prices. Tax included. A car would be nice but Judy doesn’t think anyone in the house can drive, though her friend Leo could take them around anywhere they want to go. She adds car but puts a question mark next to it.

Ruth has been drinking for days. She has slept little and eaten less. There is nothing left in her stomach to throw up. She is eight pounds lighter and even her leggings are baggy. Her eyes are red and her face a pasty white. She hasn’t spoken more than two sentences to anyone since the binge began. She hasn’t bathed or washed her hair and she stinks. The others have taken to holding their noses and rushing to pass when they meet her, which isn’t often since she decided warm beer is not so bad and keeps a case in her closet.

Mrs. Miflin’s nagging got to be too much for Eve, what with everything else going on around here, so the landlady has been moved from her bed for the day and lies on one of the sofas in the sitting room. She is extremely upset by the hasty departure of her new tenant, and even more irritated by the news that Ginny Mustard is a woman of means. She supposes the silly thing will move out now, probably buy her own house and, if the last few weeks are any indication of how Mrs. Miflin’s luck is going, take the rest of that crowd with her. She can smell alcohol, she just knows it, and there’s a strange aroma coming from the kitchen. No one is paying any attention to her or answering her questions. They whisper when they talk to each other. She is no less miserable downstairs than she was in her bedroom. And all over her skin is a crawling sensation, a feeling that something else is going on that has nothing to do with them and everything to do with her.

Mrs. Miflin’s fear is real enough. It sleeps by the river, under a bridge, by day. Watches her house by night. Waits for the right moment to make its appearance. After forty-odd years in her carefully constructed cocoon, Mrs. Miflin will have to fly, and she can’t even walk. It’s just as well she doesn’t know. If she did she’d have to shoot herself.

No one is the least bit concerned with Mrs. Miflin’s woes. Ruth has gone to the dogs. Judy has glued herself to Ginny Mustard. The poor girl can’t even go to the bathroom alone. Maggie would like to swing in the playground but unable to drag Judy from her prey, busies herself by counting her letters and putting them in careful order, avoids Eve and the never ending embroidery.

Ginny Mustard wants to go back to the big house to hear the music. Has to wait until Judy is asleep to escape. By then it’s very late but she knocks on Howard James’ door anyway and he answers in a bathrobe. She has brought her pot roast from supper for Harvey and a picture of the dog for Howard. He barely glances at her offerings as she moves past him into the kitchen.

“You could have used the front door,” he says, wondering again what the hell he has done and how to undo it. She is sitting at the kitchen table, an expectant look on her face. How did he think she was beautiful? She is unkempt, uncouth and clearly lacking in grey matter.

“I’m not stupid. The doctors looked at my brain and I’m not stupid. I have what you call a disorder and I can’t read or do my numbers but I’m not stupid.”

“You can obviously read minds though,” he says, not nicely, regretting the words when he sees her confusion. Then gently, “Would you like something to drink?”

“No. I want to hear the music.”

She follows him to the library. He motions her to a chair while he makes a selection. Sits and watches her face while the music fills her, while her hands move with the sound, gracefully, delicately. She is beautiful again and if he had the energy to pull a Henry Higgins he might have a little fun. But no. He has to get her out of here once and for all. He leaves the room and rummages about for awhile, returns with a small compact disc player, grabs a few of his favourites and presents her with the lot.

“Here you are. Anytime you want music you can play it yourself. You don’t have to come all the way over here any more. In fact, I think it’s best that you stay away. You can take this wherever you go.”

He might as well tell it to the wind. Ginny Mustard is drowning in Bach. She wouldn’t hear him if he shouted at the top of his lungs. He pushes a button and the music is over. He makes his presentation one more time, shows her how to work the little machine and hustles her out the back door. Watches while she climbs the fence behind the rhododendron. It isn’t until the next morning that he sees what she brought, throws the pitiful package of meat in the garbage along with her picture, in pieces.

You can’t expect to get away with treating God’s creatures like that Mr. James, even when they look odd and don’t speak your language. Such a lovely gift was that Ginny Mustard and now you’ve thrown her back in His face. Better you crawl into a hole in the ground, pull the earth over your head. Better to spit in His eye than to do what you have done. Looked Him square in the face and turned away, you did. And even if you hadn’t pissed God off, you should know enough in your fancy house with your fancy music and your fancy paintings, not to mess with Judy’s new best friend.

Watching, watching, he has seen Ginny Mustard come and go. Has waited for her outside the big house, followed her home, taken his place under the aspen, its leaves curling to die, choking with the strain of his company.

Mrs. Miflin is curling as well. Though she can’t be considered paranoid in clinical terms she is rapidly approaching that state of mind. The tenants, free of her grasp, have taken on lives of their own. Like those little ones you see sometimes when the bell rings for recess in October, like birds freed suddenly, startled by release, but leaping and running, pushing, grabbing at the morning in their brightly coloured sweaters and their hair moving with the wind as feathers do. Or the ones whose mommy is too far gone, who cannot reach to swat the backside, the ones who find they can cook their own macaroni and cheese, butter bread, make a tuna fish sandwich, race mad in the moonlight while she sleeps it off. Turn somersaults in the park in their pyjamas. Steal ice cream from the corner store at midnight.

If Mother were wicked. If Mother were clutching. If Mother did not allow room for growth. If Mrs. Miflin were Mother and Mother fell off a cliff, down a deep well, under a truck, her child would mourn briefly but no more than Ruth, Judy, Ginny Mustard, Maggie, Eve. Would mourn no more than anyone who discovered the death knell disguised as life force.

And no one wonders why or how they found her. Moved from another to the same. But time. It’s time that works the magic. Not the reason or the sensibilities. And the stars were in on it, and the moon, of course. And said, “These belong. Let’s put them here. Here in this place.” And time said, “Yes.” Examined each and found her wanting. Wanting Bishop’s Road, this house, now. And set about shuffling the order. Placed them here to become.

One corner turned left, not right. One person spoken to, “Do you know a cheap place to stay around here?” One mistake too many, one stone flung through the wrong window, one night in the wrong arms. And time said, “Well done.”

And Mrs. Miflin knows, as sure as she knows he has returned, that her solid grasp has weakened. That her fingers are old now and cannot hold fast the things she must control.

Ruth has had enough of her shit. She is hungry and tired. Wants food and company. When Judy says, “You smell to high heaven, Ruth, take a shower, for God’s sake,” she does. Clean and thin she returns to the kitchen where the others are hiding from Mrs. Miflin and her moaning ways. The talk is confusing but eventually she puts it all together. The bones are still in the attic, Ginny Mustard is rich, Mrs. Miflin is in the sitting room, and the kittens are all over the place.

“So what else is new?” asks Ruth. “Is there anything to eat? If I had any money left I’d order a pizza. That’s what I need. Fucking pizza.”

Ginny Mustard to the rescue. “I have money.”

Judy volunteers to order the food. No one has ever had take-out in Mrs. Miflin’s house. It’s ungodly.

Ginny Mustard brings a $100 bill to the kitchen.

“It’s gonna be fun watching the guy make change out of that,” says Judy.

They sit around the kitchen waiting for pizza, Eve in the armchair, Ginny Mustard and Judy on the daybed, Ruth and Maggie on the floor. Anyone looking through the window might think there was a party going on. Ruth contributes the last case of beer that she ever wants to see. She is thinking of switching to gin if the mood hits her again.

Maggie doesn’t remember the taste of alcohol but she accepts Ruth’s offer with a small smile. Judy takes two bottles on the first go-around but likes hers cold and fills a glass with ice cubes. Eve has one too. Shares with Ruth who, for all her good intentions, says, “What the hell.”

Five women laughing through the night. Eating. Drinking. Laughing. Even Maggie laughing. And a person listening through the window might think their laughter obscene. Might think, that is not funny, when Judy talks about her life and Ruth talks about hers. Might think, there’s something sick about these women that they laugh at such things. They should not be doing that. But a person listening through the window would be very wrong.

He hears the laughter, smells the food and drink. Hunger and thirst take hold of him. A craving for warmth. A longing such as only one outside the circle feels. He wills it away. Forces it back beneath his hatred. Locks it down.

Mrs. Miflin hears the laughter too. Her lips vanish in disapproval. Her eyes are hard lights. Calls to Judy to come and help her to her room. Calls again. Louder. They won’t get away with this. That girl has been drinking and the authorities will know all about it in the morning. She’ll have them back in their place before too long. Mrs. Miflin has worked her tongue overtime making sure that they never touch. Has kept them well apart with her, for your own good, and, be careful of that one, she’s not right in the head, and I wouldn’t trust her, my dear, you know what they say about her kind. All for nothing. She hears the laughter and it is making her sick. Late into the night she lies awake plotting revenge.

Summer is in full blossom on Bishop’s Road. On this heavy bee morning while her tenants sleep, Mrs. Miflin makes a call to Judy’s probation officer. And if he hadn’t decided to stop for a cup of coffee on his way, if he hadn’t backed his car into another as he was fastening his seat belt, if he hadn’t struck his head on the steering wheel and spent two hours waiting for stitches at the hospital, he might have been here. But by the time someone else takes over his caseload and gets around to Judy, the girl’s drinking will be the least of Mrs. Miflin’s worries.

Howard James is having a rough day as well. His secretary is late - assistant, she likes to call herself - and he hasn’t a clue where she buys his coffee. He needs copies of some important papers immediately but has no idea where she keeps them. To make matters worse, he stepped in dog shit on his way to the office and the smell is still on his shoe, though he scraped it well. There are telltale signs on the rich carpet all the way to his desk. He is trapped in the office. Alone. With no coffee. Can’t let anyone in until the mess has been dealt with and that won’t happen until Ms Know It All shows up and calls a cleaner. His computer is down. The air conditioning is on the fritz. A pretty crappy day all around.

If Dorothy Blake hadn’t stopped for his coffee just when she did, and that fool hadn’t backed into her car just when he did, she would have been there by now, would have filled Mr. James’ porcelain mug with take-out coffee (he likes to think he knows the difference between gourmet blend and Tim Hortons but he doesn’t) and be on her knees scrubbing shit off his carpet. But life is no longer going as smoothly as was planned. Everyone within a mile’s radius of Mrs. Miflin’s house had that figured out before they planted their feet on the floor this morning.

When the knock comes at the front door, it is loud and serious. Mrs. Miflin hears it first and screams to the others to answer it, hoping Judy will be the one to greet the probation officer. Wishing she could see her face. And his when he smells old beer on her breath. But it isn’t Judy who opens the door. Eve, still in her dressing gown, but face washed, hair brushed, is the one to let the man in.

Pushing her aside he demands to see Mrs. Miflin. Takes his filthy self into the sitting room to wait. “I know she’s hurt. Tell that tall one to bring her downstairs. Tell Mrs. Jessie Miflin that her husband is home and wants to see her right now.”

No one need tell Jessie Miflin any such thing. She can feel his fists. She can feel his feet kicking at her full belly. She screams as the bloody water gushes from between her legs. She cradles the infant forced from her womb. Holds its precious body to her heart while he tears their home to pieces. Hears him snore. Rocks her cold baby for hours until the woman next door comes to visit.

She tried to kill him after that. Pretty Jessie Miflin stole a gun from her friend’s husband down the street when no one was looking. October. Cool and bright. Followed him to the hills where he was shooting rabbits. Walked for hours until she saw the blue of his jacket. Came as close as she dared. Looked him in the eye before she pulled the trigger but aimed lower than she wanted. Stood over him while he bled, the ground around him wet, the bones of his pelvis showing sharp through the flesh, through the skin. Stayed there until she heard voices and fled.

No one believed him when he told what she had done. It must have been another hunter. It must have been an accident. Pretty Jessie Miflin wouldn’t hurt a fly. Look how unhappy she was with her baby being stillborn and all. She was so frail and sad. Pretty Jessie Miflin didn’t shoot her husband. Pretty Jessie Miflin worked two jobs for years, to overcome her grief, they said. By the time she had saved enough money to buy her house there was no pretty left in Jessie Miflin except in deepest sleep. And even if someone had said ‘and that’s the God’s truth!’ with one hand on a Bible, still no one would have believed that she could dig up her baby’s grave and steal the little bones away. Carefully wash and wrap those bones in the lovely pink blanket she had made and place them in the cradle in the attic. They put it down to vandalism. There’s a lot of that on the go these days.

Mrs. Miflin has thrown up all over herself. Eve washes her face and changes the bedding. The others are awake now and wandering about. Judy alone has ventured to the sitting room. Stares at Mr. Miflin. Thinks to herself, I could take him in a second, scrawny little bastard. He’d better not be trying anything around here. But he sees doubt in her face. Cocky as she is, this girl won’t be a problem.

Eve doesn’t understand why Mrs. Miflin is not pleased that her husband is back, for all that he is rather dirty and seems to have fallen on hard times. She can’t reconcile the wedding pictures, the dried bouquet, the place so lovingly set at the table, with Mrs. Miflin’s attitude.

“Well maybe,” says Ruth, “things are not as they appear. It happens, Eve. All the time. Perhaps our Mrs. Miflin is not who we think she is. What’s the story Mrs. Miflin? You spend years yammering on and on about that wonderful husband of yours and now here he is finally home from wherever the hell he was and you’re puking your guts up. A little shy all of a sudden?”

“Leave her alone,” says Ginny Mustard. “She’s sick. Don’t you talk to her like that. Make him go away Ruth.”

“She’s the one who has to make him go away. She did it once and I’m sure she can do it again. How did you get rid of him last time Mrs. Miflin?”

“Please stop this Ruth,” says Eve. “Why don’t you get Mr. Miflin a cup of coffee and ask him to wait a little longer? Would you like that Mrs. Miflin? If we just make him feel at home until you get over the shock? I’m sure you’ll be feeling better in a few minutes.”

“No!” Mrs. Miflin screams. “I want him gone! He kicked me and kicked me until he killed my baby and I shot him! I want him gone!”

“Well now,” says Ruth. “This is a fine kettle of fish.”

Ginny Mustard goes to the attic and returns with the rifle. “I found this in a trunk. We can shoot him again. He killed the baby and we can kill him.” Before the others can stop her she is standing in front of Mr. Miflin. By the time they reach the sitting room she has pulled the trigger. By the time Judy turns from the window she has been looking through, before the curtain falls back into place, Mr. Miflin’s life is colouring the yellow carpet to rust.

The blast of the old gun was deafening. Maggie is screaming. Hands to her ears and letters all over the floor. Ruth slaps her hard across the face. Tells her to be quiet for God’s sake. “What the hell have you done, Ginny Mustard? Are you completely out of your mind?”

“I had to, Ruth. He hurt Mrs. Miflin and he killed her baby.”

“That’s it? You just decide to kill him? Did you even know the gun was loaded? He could have taken it from you. He could have wiped out the whole lot of us. God you are so friggin’ stupid, girl.”

“I’m not stupid anymore. The doctor said I am not stupid, Ruth.”

Eve takes the gun from Ginny Mustard’s hands and places it on the floor near Mr. Miflin’s body. Sits on the sofa and says a quiet prayer. Mrs. Miflin is calling from her room. “What was that noise?”

“As if she doesn’t know,” Ruth is laughing. “Well, this is just great. I’m going to the store for beer. Don’t either of you move a muscle until I get back. Don’t call the cops. Don’t do any-thing. And for Christ’s sake don’t let anyone through that door.” She nudges the bloody Mr. Miflin with her foot. Nothing. “Well, he’s dead, that’s for sure. I’ll be back in a minute. Don’t budge.”

But they do, of course. Ginny Mustard wants breakfast. Eve pulls herself together and goes to tell Mrs. Miflin what happened. Maggie shakes in her shoes for awhile but even she decides to get out of the sitting room and gathers up her letters, wanders to the kitchen to play with the kittens until Ruth comes home. Only Judy stays where she’s told. But turns again to look out the window. Across the street the aspen has lost all of her leaves. The other trees are laughing.

When Father Delaney hears the noise he jumps. Having been through at least one war, he has never quite forgotten the sound of gunfire. Finishes his breakfast and pulls on his shoes. Runs on his old spindle legs to Mrs. Miflin’s house. Meets Ruth on her way back from the store. Frowns at her purchase. The Jezebel didn’t even have the decency to ask for a bag. The likes of her - buying beer at this hour.

“What brings you over, Father? Checking up on your parishioners this fine day?”

“I heard a noise. It sounded like a gun. Do you women have a gun in that house?”

“Not that I know of. What you heard was probably the stove. The pilot light went out and it gave a bang when Ginny Mustard lit it. Blew her and the oven door right across the kitchen. I keep telling the missus it’s not safe to have something that old in the house but she’s a bit tight with the dollars. Don’t concern yourself with Ginny Mustard. It’ll take more than a minor explosion to kill that one.”

“Well. I guess I should see how Mrs. Miflin is doing now that I’m all the way over here.”

“No. You shouldn’t. She needs her rest and we’re just about to have breakfast.”

“How are you cooking breakfast if the stove is broken?”

“It’s not broken, Father. It exploded. We put the oven door back on and it’s as good as it ever was. Which isn’t to say it won’t blow us all to kingdom come tomorrow but it will do for the likes of us. Why don’t you run along, now, and change your shirt? You’ve got egg all down the front of it.”

“I’m home,” sings Ruth. “Be it ever so humble. Pity about the body in the sitting room - but hey.”

“What has gotten into you Ruth?” asks Eve. “Ginny Mustard has done a dreadful thing and you are treating it like a joke. It’s not funny Ruth. A man is dead. And Ginny Mustard will end up going to jail for the rest of her life.”

“Yes. Well I thought about that while I was out. You’re right, of course. She’ll have to go to jail. It’s too bad she turned out to be smart. A few days ago she could have pled stupidity and got away with a few months in the nuthouse. The girl’s got lousy timing - that’s for sure. I think we’d best call a meeting of the tenant’s association. I’m going to put this beer away. Let’s have break-fast and discuss the matter at hand. What do you say, old Eve? Think we can work our way out of this mess? And we thought bones in the attic was a problem.”

Again Ruth is laughing. “Someone bring food to the grieving widow. I can hear her moaning and groaning all the way down here. And then let’s eat before Mister starts to go bad. We’ll have to work fast or we’ll never get the smell out.”

Breakfast is leftovers. Everything from night before last and some vegetables slightly past their prime. Ruth says, “Ginny Mustard you have found your calling. You’re not a half bad cook. And you’re a pretty good shot too. There may be a place in the world for you yet, girl.” And the others smile at that. Cautiously. Unsure of the etiquette of doing so with one newly deceased in the next room.

After the plate scraping and dishwashing have been done, things put back the way they were, Ruth calls them to Mrs. Miflin’s room to discuss their latest dilemma. They are in agreement that Ginny Mustard did the right thing. Mrs. Miflin provides vivid details of her married life. The more she talks the less she whimpers. The less she whimpers the clearer her focus. She is more like her old self but without the fuzzy edges that had never made sense. They can see that the man was scum. And that’s all he was. Didn’t matter that he had been a sweet baby once upon a time, that someone had taken the trouble to name him, maybe played with him. In their minds he was never anything other than what he had become.

If Mrs. Miflin had mentioned the flowers he brought her. Or the way he rubbed her back when she had been sewing for too long. Or the times they walked to the river and threw pennies in to buy a wish, or sat up late at night watching out for falling stars. If she had told them that he cried when their first baby died so soon after he felt it kick, gentle hand on her belly. Oh how he had cried. She had never known a man could cry. If she had told them anything at all, other than what she did, then things might have been different. They might have felt something for the man, some sadness for the waste of life. Might have questioned his fall from saint to monster. Not exactly blissful in their ignorance but, free of pain and regret, they plot to save Ginny Mustard and conceal her wrongdoing.

“What we need,” says Ruth, “is a freezer. That’s a bit cliche to be sure but I can’t think of anything else at the moment. It will have to be big enough so we can store him in one piece. I am not about to start hacking him up.”

“Oh, Ruth, no. The man needs a proper burial no matter what he has done. We can’t just freeze him.”

“Oh for God’s sake, Eve. Stop it. You can’t run around burying people without someone finding out. Next you’ll want an obituary in the fucking papers. Forget it Eve. We have to put him on ice. Ginny Mustard is the only one with any money and since she’s the one who killed the bastard in the first place, she’s going to have to buy a freezer. We’ll put it in the basement and throw some casseroles on top of him so if anyone comes snooping they won’t see he’s there. Though I can’t imagine who’d be looking for the likes of him. Ginny Mustard you’ll have to make a lot of casseroles.”

“Judy will have to find them in the cookbook. I never made any before.”

“They don’t have to be edible so don’t be getting all fancy on us. It’s not like anyone will ever eat them. They’re just for show.”

Judy volunteers to go with Ginny Mustard to pick out a freezer. “We should go now and maybe we can have it delivered this afternoon.”

Eve is still upset. “He should be buried. This isn’t right.”

“Well Eve. How about we just dig up the backyard and shove him in? What part of your precious garden do you want to contribute for his grave? How about your roses or those beans you’ve got growing? And what’s to stop a dog from hauling him up once we plant him? It’s not like we can call up the undertaker and order a fucking coffin, is it now? He’s got to be frozen and unless there’s a power outage one of these days, we’re in the clear and that fool Ginny Mustard won’t have to go to jail for the rest of her silly life. God, woman, think.”

And Eve relents. Knows that Ruth is right. The thought of Ginny Mustard behind bars is terrible, and just when she found out she can cook so well, too.

“Ginny Mustard,” says Ruth. “While you’re gone for the freezer, you might consider a carpet as well. That one he’s bleeding all over is ruined. I always thought blue would be nice in that room. Something with a pattern if you can find it.”

Mr. Miflin was laid to rest in the new freezer, covered with enough casseroles to feed a high school as well as some rainbow trout that Eve found on sale and couldn’t pass up. And then a giant-sized carton of popsicles with summer here and it’s so warm out, and what the hell, a rump roast and a few chickens. Shopping is fun and all but it takes a lot of time from Eve’s gardening chores. Now that the blue rug is down in the sitting room it seems only natural to put a fresh coat of paint on the walls and buy slip-covers. Judy decides that the old fireplace will work and sets about removing boards that the frugal Mrs. Miflin jammed in there to cut heat loss. Ginny Mustard has added a microwave oven to her list of recent acquisitions and a new television set with a built-in video tape recorder. She watches cooking shows when she’s not preparing meals. Wanders farther afield than usual shopping for ingredients she has never heard tell of before.

She hasn’t returned to the big house since the music man gave her the little disc player. She remembers him sometimes, thinks about the puppy. The puppy thinks about her as well. Ever since their first meeting he has been annoying the neighbourhood with his incessant yowling. When he goes to the garden he lies under the rhododendron and it’s all Howard James can do to get him back in the house. He wants Ginny Mustard and he doesn’t like his owner. He has dug up most of the flowers near the fence in his attempt to escape.

When the report of Judy’s drinking finally makes it to the top of the stack on Patrick Fahey’s desk, Mrs. Miflin has forgotten all about her nasty phone call that morning when Mister showed up and had himself killed. No one but the odd delivery man has come to the door since then. Not expecting anyone, they all freeze momentarily before Eve answers the loud knocking. They were not aware that each had been fearing discovery of the secret in the basement. They had not spoken of Mr. Miflin since they covered him with casseroles. The official look about the man who enters the house keeps them all on edge until he tells them why he’s here.

He wants to see Judy. There has been a report that she was drinking one night back in June and being underage as well as on probation, she is in a lot of trouble. It’s been a good three weeks since anyone has heard from her. He is a police officer, one who has had the dubious pleasure of having arrested Judy on a number of occasions.

“Well, Sergeant Fahey,” says Ruth. “Why don’t you come in and have a seat and Judy can explain everything. Ginny Mustard, why don’t you get a cup of tea for Sergeant Fahey and set another place at the table. We’re just about ready to have our supper and we’d be pleased if you can join us. Judy, tell Sergeant Fahey about that night. Remember how Mrs. Miflin was really sick? Remember how she was delirious from the drugs the doctor gave her for the pain in her leg? She was seeing things all over the place. She’s okay now but she got it in her head that you were drinking beer in the kitchen. She even accused us of ordering pizza, which we would never do since she doesn’t approve of take-out food. It’s not good for us, you know and Mrs. Miflin is very concerned about our health. She’s like a mother to us. Tell him, Judy, about how Mrs. Miflin thought you were drinking. You probably don’t recall what happened, Mrs. Miflin, since you were pretty much out of it. You tell him Judy.”

“Yeah. That’s what happened Sergeant Fahey. Just like Ruth said. Mrs. Miflin is fucking crazy sometimes. Friggin’. I meant friggin’ crazy. But she really looks after us good and we dearly love her.”

The landlady is a pitiful heap on the sofa and doesn’t have much to say. Ruth forgot to tell Eve that she had given the poor woman her painkillers already and Eve helped her to a second dose an hour ago. Mrs. Miflin is fading to dreamland.

Patrick Fahey knows they are all lying and doing a pretty pathetic job of it too. He’s tired, though. He spends twelve hours a day tracking down, calming down, holding down unlucky people who don’t have a clue what’s wrong and what’s right, too stunned to figure it out on their own and nobody bothered to teach them. Patrick Fahey was on his way home to beer and a pizza himself after he made this last stop. But that Ruth woman did invite him to stay for supper and the aroma from the kitchen is interesting. His duty to Queen and country can wait. There’s no way he wants to be bothered with Judy right now. And he can’t prove a thing either. Everyone in the house has heard Ruth’s story and he’ll bet dollars to doughnuts they’d repeat it word for word if he were to question them. And this Ruth is not bad looking either. Smart. He could do worse than to sit down with her and have a bite to eat.

Ruth’s sentiments are similar. There’s something about Patrick Fahey that appeals to her. He’s easy on the eyes. Broad shouldered. Thin but strong looking and tall. A woman could lean on him if she ever felt the need and Ruth has been feeling the need lately. He hasn’t smiled since he came through the front door but the lines around his eyes indicate that he knows how. He has nice teeth and a good mouth. Ruth is not all that surprised at the direction her thoughts have taken. Very few of the goings-on around here come as a shock these days and if she’s attracted to Sergeant Patrick Fahey, well, so what?

“Ginny Mustard is on a Thai kick this week, Sergeant Fahey. So God only knows what she’s got cooked up for us. We’ve all been practicing with chop sticks but you can have a fork if you like. Maggie there has got the hang of it but the rest of us make a bit of a mess still. Are you staying for supper, or what?”

What the hell. Patrick Fahey has had beer and pizza enough to last a lifetime. Against his better judgement he says, “Yes. I can file my report in the morning. Judy, there is still the matter of your not seeing your probation officer regularly. Last chance girl. You get over there tomorrow or we take you away for good this time.” With his tie loose and jacket off he looks less threatening but the women are still a little nervous, all except Ruth, who has decided she likes this man very much.

They eat in silence for a while. Judy is not pleased that the law decided to stick around. He’s got his eye on Ruth that’s for sure - it’s almost funny to see the way she keeps looking over at him and being all weird when he notices. Looking away. You’d think she never saw a fellow before the way she’s turning all pink in the cheeks. Wouldn’t figure Ruth to be nervous like that. He’s watching her too. Judy finds the whole thing a bit gross but it might be good for a laugh later on.

Eve makes chit chat and they learn that Patrick Fahey is not married, has a house over on Morris Street and an old dog, visits his mother in the nursing home three times a week. She has Alzheimer’s disease and doesn’t know him any more but he goes anyway. His father died a few years ago. He has two sisters, three nephews and a niece and spends holidays with them, Christmas and Easter mostly. When his mother wasn’t so far gone they used to celebrate with her but one year when she forgot to cook the turkey they gave it up. Soon after that she stopped bathing and when they found her wandering around Water Street in her night-gown they knew she was beyond their help and put her in the home.

Maggie pipes up. “That’s where I was. A home. I was bad so my mother put me in a home.”

“Interesting,” says Ruth. “Patrick - I hope you don’t mind if I call you Patrick while you’re off duty - Maggie hasn’t spoken to any of us. Ever. And now here you mention home and she opens her mouth. We heard her scream once. And she laughs now and then.” She directs her attention to Maggie. “What kind of home? How long were you there?”

“I don’t know anything else. Just that there was a home and my mother. I guess she was my mother.” Maggie’s throat hurts all of a sudden. She puts her hand to her neck and makes little hacking noises, as though she’s choking on something sharp. Judy smacks her across the back and Maggie resumes eating, gracefully, with her chopsticks.

“Well now,” says Eve. “That was a good start, Maggie. You just rest your voice and if you ever want to talk again you go right ahead.” Maggie smiles and nods.

Judy says, “I think that it’s time to take a look at those old letters you got there, Maggie. I bet there’s all kinds of stuff in them that’ll tell us where you’ve been, even if you can’t remember it yourself. And if you read them you won’t have to carry them around all over the place. Maggie has letters in her box, Sergeant Fahey. Can I call you Patrick too?” Seeing his frown, “I guess not. That’s okay. You can call me Ms Hagen. I can be just as uppity as the rest of you friggers. Never mind. I don’t want to talk to you either. Come on Maggs. Let’s go for a swing. Leave the old folks alone.” Maggie smiles. Lifts her plate to her mouth and licks it, shocking Eve. Takes her shoe box and follows Judy to the play-ground, giggling.

“They think they’re so friggin’ smart. Old bats. Good move with the plate, Maggs. I thought I was going to piss my pants with the look on their faces. And did you check out the way old Ruth was looking at buddy? I could’ve gagged on it.” And they laugh all the way up into the trees.

“At the station we call her the mouth,” says Patrick, comfortable in the sitting room, his long legs stretched out in front of him, kittens climbing all over them. When they installed the freezer, Ruth had discovered a cache of ancient wine. Fifty or more bottles of wonderful red. They have been sipping it ever since with supper. Just a glass each. Tonight being special, Ruth cracks another bottle. Brings a clean glass to Patrick and pours. Thinks wicked thoughts. Patrick Fahey can see them in her eyes. He wants this woman. He hasn’t wanted anyone in a very long time but he wants this woman. It’s all he can do to keep from reaching out and touching her thick curls. None of this is making sense to him. He is not the kind of man who shirks his duty and before he entered this house, no one could have convinced him that he would sit around with someone he was investigating and actually have a meal. Wine. And let the little snip go traipsing out the door saucy as she was without saying anything. Patrick Fahey is a cop’s cop. But when Ruth started throwing her lies all around the place that sad thing that eats away at the pit of his stomach just kind of up and disappeared. He felt it leave. And noted its absence. And realizes that now, when it comes back, it will be so much harder to ignore. He asks Ruth if she would like to go out sometime. Maybe dinner and a movie. She answers, “Yes. But I have to warn you, I’m a bit of a bitch.”

True, he thinks. And you tell lies. And I don’t care. Aloud he says, “How about tomorrow night. Are you free?”

“Patrick Fahey, I’ve been free for about a month now. Why don’t you pick me up at seven?”

Mrs. Miflin is so angry she could spit. It’s all bad enough what with her mister dead in the freezer and that crowd all seeing the bones in the attic and knowing that she dug them up. It’s all bad enough they’ve got company coming and going and she can’t sit at the table with that cast on, and the smell of paint is all through the house and she knows they aren’t doing the laundry when they should. It’s all bad enough but now she finds out from Eve that Ginny Mustard has been designing a nursery. Staying up late and drawing pictures of a baby’s room. First she thought the silly thing might be pregnant but Eve corrected her. Ginny Mustard wants a nursery for Mrs. Miflin’s baby. She screams out for Ginny Mustard to get up here as fast as her two legs can carry her. “What are you doing? You can’t make a room for a dead baby. It’s ungodly. Sinful.”

“Well, it’s not any more sinful than digging up the poor little baby in the first place. Or her being kicked to death before she was even born. She needs a pretty room with pictures on the wall and a little warm rug on the floor. It’s not nice in the attic. And she wants a rocking chair.”

“You are a raving lunatic, Ginny Mustard. That’s what you are. You can’t do things like that.”

“Why not?”

“Because the baby is dead!”

“Well I’m not dead and I never had a pretty room and a little warm rug. What about if I make one for me and the baby can stay there too. I got lots of money from my sister now and I can buy all the things. It’s no skin off your nose.”

And Mrs. Miflin can’t think of a good argument. Ginny Mustard is making her nervous. She has never spoken like this before. That’s what comes of having money. It makes you rude to people. She lies back on her pillow. Asks Ginny Mustard to close the curtains and turn off the light. She thinks she might be getting one of her really sick headaches. When that doesn’t sway the girl she gives up. This place is going to hell in a handbasket.

Hell it may be but everyone is coming over. Harvey is still digging a hole under the rhododendron. The dahlias from the yard next door are climbing through and over the fence. The scarlet runner beans have made their way up the lilac and are leaning toward the kitchen window. Zucchini and carrots that someone planted down the street are growing among Eve’s zinnias. There are tomato plants crawling out through the chicken wire of the compost bin. Flowering. And if there’s a scarcity of earthworms elsewhere it’s only because they heard there is a party going on at the old convent. Hedgehogs return from wherever they’ve been. Birds follow Judy and Maggie home from the playground and they have to shake them away before they go into the house. Eve sits in the middle of her small paradise and marvels at the glory of it all. Hell indeed.

Maggie brings her letters to the sitting room and Judy Checks to make sure they are all in order. Thinks that Judy may be right. Perhaps it’s time to read them, perhaps it’s okay to read them but not alone. Her hand is shaking as she passes the first one to Judy, indicates that she would like to hear her letter. But now Judy doubts the wisdom of her original idea. Says, “Are you sure, Maggs, cause you might not like what’s in this. Who are they from anyway?”

“I don’t know. They gave them to me the day I was leaving. But I want you to read them to me now. Please. I don’t want to read them by myself.”

“Well okay then. But it might be real weird, you know.” Maggie settles herself on the carpet at Judy’s feet. Stares at her friend’s face as she begins to read. The letters are from her mother. Each a page long and those pages cold. But if the words are empty, the memories they rouse are not. Maggie cries. No sobs. No sound. No change of expression on her pretty face. Just six year’s worth of tears and the front of her dress is soaking before Judy opens the fifth envelope.

Mrs. Eldridge was amazed to find herself pregnant at the ripe old age of forty-five. She and Mr. Eldridge had decided long ago that she was barren and there was simply nothing to be done about it. After the first three years of their marriage, and before they gave up on the idea of ever having a family, Mrs. Eldridge cried most of the time. Especially when she ovulated or bled. Every twinge and the slightest discharge reminded her that she was not complete, for all that her internal organs seemed to be in working order.

There were times when Mr. Eldridge was sure he would have to leave her. The disappointment of having no children, he could handle, but the constant weeping and wringing of hands almost drove him mad. Every day they went to their work like normal people. They ate lunch with their colleagues. They chatted with friends. Attended all of the obligatory cocktail parties and company dinners. Sometimes they even went out for a drink on Friday evening and a movie just the two of them. But as soon as they were home, it started. Mrs. Eldridge would get that look in her eye and Mr. Eldridge would brace himself for the waterworks. She would cry and walk back and forth through the house, from the basement to the kitchen to the dining room, to the living room and the window to stare outside, up and down the hall a few times, upstairs to each bedroom and the bathrooms. Back to the basement to begin again. She would stop to eat when Mr. Eldridge put a meal in front of her. She would stop when he gently took her hand and led her to bed. The few times they made love, she sniffled her way through most of it.

For years she didn’t buy groceries, prepare meals or wash a dish. She went to work and earned her keep and suffered. Weekends were especially difficult. It never occurred to them to see a doctor, to try to adopt, to hire a surrogate. One day, shortly after Mrs. Eldridge turned thirty-eight, she called Mr. Eldridge at his office and said, “I don’t think we’re ever going to have a baby.” She stopped crying and they bought a few bonsai trees and a Great Dane. For the next seven years they lived happily enough. They bought more bonsai trees and another Great Dane. In the evenings they would walk the dogs and chat about their days. They invested wisely and dreamed of early retirement and trips to exotic places. They bought books about Cuba and the Galapagos, Egypt and South America. They began to tell people that they never wanted children anyway. There were so many other things to do with one’s life.

Mrs. Eldridge was a good four months pregnant before she noticed anything amiss. Her skirts were tight. Her bras were not as comfortable as they had been and they were the expensive ones too. For years she hadn’t noticed her cycle at all. When she couldn’t remember her last period, she went to see her doctor. She told Mr. Eldridge the news and he smiled which made her very angry indeed.

“Do you think?” she said, “that I’m going to be dragging a youngster to kindergarten when I’m fifty? That’s what I’ll be, you know, fifty years old. I could be a grandmother by now for God’s sake. There’s no way I want a baby at this stage of the game. I’ll have an abortion, there’s no more to it than that.”

Mr. Eldridge was not happy with her decision but there was little he could do about it. Her mind was made up. The doctor had other ideas. “You’re too far along for an abortion. It’s against the law to have one now. You’ll have to have the baby.” And so she did. Gained the appropriate amount of weight and not an ounce more. Bought baby clothes and furnished a nursery. Worked right up to the last minute of her pregnancy and was back at it as soon as she delivered. She told Mr. Eldridge that since he was the only one interested in having a child around, he could look after it himself.

He named the baby Margaret for his favorite sister who had died. He doted on her but only when Mrs. Eldridge wasn’t looking - which was quite often when she was given a promotion at work and usually came home late after that. He and the old dogs would walk with the baby every evening. He held her in his arms until she was big enough to sit in a carrier on his back. When she learned to toddle they went ever so slowly, at her pace, he holding her little hand and bending over as far as he could to hear her every word. He fired babysitters as fast as he hired them, rushing home from the office more than once if he sensed the slightest anxiety in her voice during his daily phone calls. He took her to school, joined the PTA, volunteered to haul kids to field trips, signed her report cards and helped her with her homework. He was a dear dad.

Life was grand until Margaret was fifteen and her father developed heart trouble. Surgery was scheduled and during his recovery the world came to an end. Margaret sat by his bed and held his hand until her mother shooed her away. The time for having fun, just Mr. and Mrs. Eldridge, had come and gone and the only one who had gained anything from it was Margaret. Jealousy reared its head and Margaret’s mother devoted her days to destruction. She picked and picked and nagged and bitched until Margaret could take no more. Retaliation came in the form of drugs and boys - the ones who like to play with lonely girls.

In a one-hour session, Mrs. Eldridge convinced a psychiatrist that the only recourse was to have Margaret committed to a private mental institution, the kind where bad kids go to straighten out when there’s nothing else to be done. They came for her in the middle of the night and dragged her, kicking and screaming for her father, into the dark. Strapped down and terrified, drugged and finally oblivious to life, she sat still for the next six years. Until the insurance ran out. Until the final diagnosis that this young woman was never going anywhere again, but harmless, could be boarded out and her room assigned to someone else.

None of this is in the letters that Judy reads to Maggie. A page a month to Margaret from Mother described her father’s ill health, the stroke he suffered after Margaret ran away so abruptly, their latest dinner party, trips to visit relatives. A twenty dollar bill in each envelopes/or a little something. That was it.

And Maggie remembers everything now. His good face and the smell of his aftershave. His bedtime songs and piggyback rides. The fun they had when mother wasn’t home. And she puts her head back and howls. Frightens Judy who runs to fetch someone. Ruth. It should be Ruth. And Ruth comes to see what the fuss is. Looks at Maggie in a hollow heap on the sofa and knows enough to do little. Sits close by and touches her hair for awhile. Sends Judy to bring tissue, hands them over two by two until the box is empty. Coaxes Maggie to the kitchen. Makes tea.

Harvey has managed to dig his way out of the backyard and makes a beeline for Bishop’s Road. Whines at the front door but nobody hears him. Scratches until the mud from his feet is well embedded in the paint. Lies down and takes a dog nap. Ruth falls over him when she goes out for beer, curses, but remembers she is happy and lets him in the house. He snuffles all over the place for a minute and then heads up the stairs to the attic and Ginny Mustard who is delighted to see him. She decides that a nice basket on the floor near the cradle would be a lovely place for the puppy to sleep. He can keep an eye on the baby when she is cooking, since no one likes her idea of bringing the bones to the kitchen, yelled at her, in fact, when she broached the subject. It doesn’t occur to Ginny Mustard that Harvey will have to go home. If this is where he is then this is where he should be.

Maggie has been talking a blue streak. For hours. About her dad and her mother. Six years of silence and now the lid is off. When Maggie was carted away she kicked and screamed until someone jabbed her with sedation. When that wore off she cried for a day and a night. No one cared. There was no comfort. She stopped talking. Laughing. Smiling. Crying. And now she’s spilling out all over the place, following the others from room to room, yelling through closed doors, not caring if they listen. Enough that they are present. She won’t shut up, though Ruth asked her to, nicely, several times. All night long she talks and in the morning she is slowing down a little but far from empty. They go about their business and still she follows. They don’t bother to hide. By unspoken consensus they let her rip. Eventually she’ll have to fall asleep, they reason, and then someone else can get a word in.

Judy is less patient than the others. By her calculation, Maggie has a good $1440 from all those twenty-dollar bills her mother put in the letters and she’s eager to get out and help her spend it.

Ruth is busy finding something to wear for her date. She has had a shower and a long bath. Shampooed her hair twice and done four lots of make-up. Pickings are slim in this house. Judy has some garish eye shadow and pure white powder, blue mascara, nasty looking lipstick. The others have nothing at all. Having spent every cent she had on beer, there was no option but to head out to the drug store and sample their wares. On her last visit the sales clerks decided she was never going to buy anything and asked her not to come back. But she looked pretty good by then and told them to stuff it, gave herself a liberal dose of Poison on the way out and went home to wait for Sergeant Patrick Fahey.

There is no place in the world more wonderful than this city at the height of summer. Winter has its moments. When the fog is in but the snow falls anyway - at night - and they compete to be the prettiest thing in front of the street lights, watched from windows or wandered about in when you’re alone and everything is hushed so sweetly there might be no one else in the world. Or on a freezing morning after the rain paints everything, every tree, bush, leftover weed, rickety fence, the most brilliant silver. And the sun comes out and blinds you silly and there’s no safe place to put your foot until the salt trucks get out around so you might as well stay put and have a coffee and stare. And the spring, when the earth thaws and smells so deliciously sexy and there’s rain and more fog and it seems there’ll never be anything green again until that day when it turns, overnight, to summer and the old ladies come out of hiding and sit with their cats on the front steps and the boys wear tee-shirts and the girls find their short dresses and they all drive around with car windows open and the music is loud when they pass by. And you put on your lipstick and think you might like new earrings one of these days and if your hair is still wet when you go out, no matter, it’ll dry soon enough in the warm wind. And the park fills with children and moms and dads and there’s music on the downtown corners and open guitar cases lying on the sidewalk for your offerings. And someone decides to head out for England in a small sailing boat and everyone goes to see him off and if he’s coming from the other direction, to cheer him home. And people walk the hills again, mind the gullies because you don’t see them until you’re almost over the edge and gone for good. And the flowers bloom and in a good year the cold fog stays out far - you can just see it on the horizon - and maybe it won’t come ashore until the Folk Festival is over and the Youth For Social Justice might get a weekend of sunshine to spread the message. Summer here is magic. It doesn’t strut its stuff so much as melt its way into your being. There is no hurry. No one cares if service is slow. The work day ends on time and you can waltz your way through the rest of it. The streets are full of merriment long after the moon is down and only the honestly sad can feel the blue horror of dawn.

Ruth and Patrick eat and drink and wander. They talk all night and when Patrick puts his hand on the back of her neck as they walk along Water Street she feels that’s right where it should be and their steps match and in a few minutes she can’t tell where her skin stops and his begins, the heat and the touch blend so nicely. They watch the sun come up over the water from Ruth’s favorite perch on the hill among the bracken and the blueberry bushes. A dozen times one or the other says, “We have to go - it’s really late”, but they can’t seem to take it seriously and Patrick ends up going to work without changing his clothes and Ruth doesn’t even brush her teeth before falling into bed.

The others let her be for most of the morning so she can sleep but when the flowers arrive curiosity gets the better of them and, en masse, they present themselves at her door to hear about the big date. And the flowers, unwrapped, are the prettiest anyone has ever seen, enthusiastic flowers, happy to meet you flowers. The old plaster walls perk themselves up, suck in the yellows, pinks and violets and throw them back, even to the deepest corners of the shabby closet, into worn slippers and empty pockets. Someone finds a big old pretend crystal vase and it overflows and Ruth says, “Take some. Everyone have some flowers.” And they do. Carry to their rooms, jam jars and drinking glasses of flowers. And when the second bouquet arrives they fill the sitting room and the kitchen. With the third, the house starts humming and Ruth calls Patrick at work and tells him to stop it or he won’t have any money left and she isn’t interested in going out with a pauper.

Ms. Know it All, whose real name is Dorothy Blake, Dorrie to her friends, Ms. Blake to Howard James, is knocking at Mrs. Miflin’s front door. She has come to find Harvey, missing for several days. When Howard remembered that Ginny Mustard said she lived at a Mrs. Miflin’s house, he tracked down the address and sent Dorrie over on the off chance the stupid animal might have shown up there. Dorrie has had just about enough of working for H. James and Company. She spends her time fighting with a photocopier when she’s not running around picking up laundry and coffee for his nibs or scraping shit off his carpet and, during her most recent bout of PMS, wrote up her letter of resignation. She is waiting for the right time to present it. Thinks, as she stands in the rain banging on the front door, any damned second now.

Judy towers over the tiny Dorrie, says she never heard tell of any dog around here and if she wants to look she had better get a search warrant. From somewhere in the house comes the sound of barking and laughter. This is not a good day to be pissing off Dorrie Blake. “Listen you big freak, if that goddamned dog is here I want it and I think you’re lying through your teeth. I’ve put notices all over the city and I spend more time looking for that bloody animal than I do sleeping. Bring him out here. Now!”

“Well. Why don’t you come right on in and take him if you’re so friggin’ tough. Good luck getting him away from Ginny Mustard.”

That’s the name Mr. James couldn’t remember. Came up with Jane and some sort of condiment. All he could think of was chutney. “Jane Chutney,” he said. “Something like that. She’s black with long yellow hair. You’ll know her when you see her.”

Judy marches out of the house and down the road to the playground. Dorrie stares after her for a minute before going inside. Calls out hello and when no one answers takes herself from room to room, listening for barking and laughter. But the house is quiet now. As she walks to the third floor she can hear movement and goes to the attic. To Ginny Mustard in her new rocking chair, in her pretty nursery, eyes closed and singing to a cradle of bones. Hush little baby, don’t say a word. Close by, the dog raises his head, smiles at Dorrie and goes back to sleep.

The sound of Dorrie hitting the floor when she faints is exactly the same as the sound in Ruth’s dream. Of her father hitting the wall with his fist, punching a hole so that her mother would have to hang a picture over it, too low to see comfortably but at least no one would know. No one ever knew. She is startled from her sleep and thankful that it’s over before it really got out of hand. Hears the dog barking. Runs to the attic to see what’s going on now for God’s sake.

Ginny Mustard knows for sure that Dorrie is a thief. Wealth does not come without its share of worries and it’s hard enough keeping Judy out of her room. She looks around for something to tie up the little woman until she can get the police to come and arrest her. Ruth is more concerned that one of their secrets is out. “For God’s sake, Ginny Mustard, how could you not hear her coming up the stairs? Are you deaf?”

“I was singing the baby to sleep.”

“That baby’s been asleep for decades. You sure as hell don’t have to sing to it. What the hell are we going to do? She had to see it or she wouldn’t have fainted. Though anyone wearing a skirt like that might keel over. She must have it painted on.”

The captive is coming to her senses, staring up at the women standing over her. She readies herself to let out a good scream. Ruth claps a strong hand across Dorrie’s mouth and tells her not to make a sound. “Get something to tie her up with. We might as well gag her too. Give me that thing you’ve got around your head. Quick. We have to figure out what to do.”

But once poor Dorrie has been bound and shuffled to the rocking chair, Ruth is fully awake and approaching the realization that they may well have complicated matters for, in addition to bones in the attic and a body in the freezer, it seems kidnapping is on their growing list of crimes. What are they doing? What was she thinking? No - she wasn’t thinking at all. A bliss hangover. No less than she deserves, either. Muddle-headed and then there are those damned flowers to keep you like that until you’re weak and can’t think straight. “Damn it all to hell, anyway. This is just great, Ginny Mustard. Once people notice that she’s missing they’ll be all over the place.”

From downstairs comes the sound of Judy stomping about. She’s in a mood and no amount of swinging in the rain has helped. She’s wet to the bone. Hungry. “Where’s everybody gone around here? Are we having anything to eat or what?”

Ruth tells Ginny Mustard to go down and get that one to shut up. She’s loud enough to wake the dead. And she laughs, leading Ginny Mustard to believe that everything will be all right now so she goes to fetch Judy, who tells them that Dorrie has only come to get the dog and what did they have to go and tie her to the rocking chair for anyway, lunatics.

Maggie comes in then, to say that she wants to go and see her father and Judy has to come with her, right away. “Can’t Maggs. These two fools got this tiny little woman all tied up and I want to see what happens next. Fine mess you’ve got us in now, Ruth.”

“For the love of God shut up Judy. I can’t think with your tongue wagging. I guess the best thing is to find out who she is.” She removes the scarf from Dome’s face, telling her to be quiet, that they are not going to hurt her. Dorrie doesn’t believe her for a minute, but now there are four of them staring at her and she’s smart enough to know she should follow orders. “My name is Dorothy Blake and I came to get the dog for my boss.”

“Well, this is Ginny Mustard and Judy and Maggie and I’m Ruth. We’re sorry that we had to tie you up but we’ve got this problem with the bones. Mrs. Miflin dug up her dead baby and Ginny Mustard has taken a liking to it. Made this room all nice and clean and sits up here rocking and singing. We’re afraid that if anyone finds out about it there’ll be trouble and the cops will come around and who knows what will happen. Ginny Mustard never had much to do before and now she’s happy and we’d just as soon keep her that way. If we thought you wouldn’t tell we’d be glad to let you leave but we’re going to have to think about that for a while yet. Okay?”

“What the hell difference does she make?” demands Judy. “You’re screwin’ a friggin’ cop. You think he’s not going to find out? They’ve got noses like bloodhounds. You mark my words, Ruth. Any minute now the shit is gonna hit the fan.”

“Shut up Judy. So listen Dorothy, do you have your makeup with you? I’m going out tonight and I sure could use some of that lipstick you’re wearing.”

“You people are nuts. Why should I let you wear my lip-stick? Besides it’s not really your color. If you put some powder on top of it, it could work.”

Dorrie Blake has had few adventures in her life. Now that she thinks these crazies are not going to rape her or sell her into slavery, or cut her up into little pieces and cook her, she relaxes a little. “You can untie me, you know. It’s not like I could get away with you crowd chasing after me. I’m really hungry. Do you think I can have something to eat. I get cranky when my blood sugar drops. If you like I can do something with your hair. A bit of gel would get that frizz out.”

“Well okay then. Ginny Mustard have you got supper started yet? Judy you stay with Dorothy here while I take a quick shower. Should I dry my hair or leave it wet for the gel? I’ve never used it before.”

“Wet is best. We can blow it dry after.”

Maggie has her heart set on finding her father this evening. Gets a bit of a whine in her voice when she asks Judy again to please come with her.

“Let’s go in the morning. It’s been six years already. Another night isn’t going to make that much difference. I don’t feel much like doing anything right now if it’s all the same to you. I’m going to my room.” And Maggie resigns herself to waiting. Sits on the floor. Stares at Dorrie until Ruth comes back to have her hair done.

Mrs. Miflin has been banging on things with her crutches for a good fifteen minutes and no one can be bothered to go see what she wants. Since the doctor checked her out and told her to get moving, that’s about all she uses them for, other than the time she threw one through her window, just missing old Father Delaney as he was walking by. She won’t even try them out - too many stairs - and Judy has given up lugging her around so she stays in her room and mopes. They had to tape a piece of cardboard over the broken glass because she won’t have anyone in to fix it until the weather turns cold and the rain has made a soggy mess all over her carpet.

Usually it’s Eve who answers Mrs. Miflin’s demands but Eve’s bones are cold today and she fell asleep in her chair, watching the ocean churn in the wind, thinking it’s almost time to leave. It’s not that anything hurts. Her heart beats as beautifully as it ever did. Her breath comes and goes, smoothly, surely as it always has. But the warmth is fading and the big striped afghan pulled to her chin is useless, can’t retain what isn’t there to begin with.

Judy lies on her bed and lets her anger subside until the sadness underneath can get a grip. Winds the music box over and over again, listens to the tinny sound until she starts to cry, such quiet small tears for one so bold.

Grammy Hagen gave her the music box and it was real pretty until Alfred ripped the ballerina off. And Mike threw it in a bucket of water and she couldn’t get it dried properly before the rust set in. Judy never had very many nice things and the box was special. When Grammy Hagen died her mother wouldn’t let Judy go to the funeral. Made her stay home by herself and she just cried and listened to the song over and over for about two hours until she went to the corner store and ripped off a few chocolate bars to feel better.

And this is just the kind of day that makes a person remember things they’d rather forget. All rainy and windy, not a break anywhere. Is it summer still or have we stepped backwards into spring? There’s a chill but it’s early for fall. Whatever. Things have been a little too comfortable around here lately if you don’t count Mrs. Miflin’s woes. The gods are jealous, or bored perhaps, their palms itching with the urge to smack someone up side the head.

Judy would go out and steal something if the weather weren’t so damned lousy. Instead she makes her way to Eve, dear Eve, and sits on the floor by her chair, with her head practically in the old woman’s lap, hoping she’ll reach out and stroke her hair like she did before. Of course, Eve does but is silent, barely says hello and Judy asks what’s wrong. “It’s almost time for me to go, sweetheart. I can feel it in my bones. I won’t be able to stay much longer.”

“What are you talking about. Eve? Where are you going? It’s pissing down rain out there. Not fit for a dog. You can’t go out in this. You’ll catch your death.”

Eve smiles. “That’s where I’m going. I am dying.”

“Don’t be so foolish Eve,” says Judy, suddenly afraid. “You’re not sick. You got to be sick to die, Eve. Everybody knows that. Don’t talk crazy. If you up and die now who’s going to look after the garden? I don’t know how to grow things. And you were going to help me name the kittens. That’s not fair Eve, to say things like that just when we’re having such a good time around here.” And she runs to the door. Hollers for Ruth to come quick. Eve is dying.

Ruth’s hair is only halfway dry but she and Dorrie hurry to Judy. “What are you talking about? Eve looks fine to me. You’re okay, aren’t you Eve?”

Eve looks up. “You’re so pretty, Ruth. Are you going out with that nice Patrick again?”

Ruth smiles. “Yes. In about an hour. What’s the matter?”

“I’m going to die and I was just telling Judy. I hate to go but it’s almost time. Who’s this, then?” she asks of Dorrie, and Ruth makes introductions.

Judy is crying again but louder than she did earlier. Big tears all over her face and she wipes her nose with the tail of her tee-shirt.

Ruth says, “It’s okay Judy. When you gotta go you gotta go. Except in Eve’s case she’ll be back soon. Right Eve? Tell Judy how many times you’ve lived already. God. Must be dozens. Eve is the original. Mother of us all. It’s called reincarnation, Judy. Mrs. Miflin won’t let Eve talk about it anymore, it being ungodly and all, but she used to tell us about her other lives and all those sons she had who kept on killing each other. Tell Judy that you’ll be back one of these days, Eve.”

“I hope I will but it’s different this time. I’m really tired. Oh I will miss this place. It’s so lovely. So many beautiful things I’ve seen. And the people. I really enjoyed the people.”

Judy screams, “You guys are freaking me out. What is she talking about? You can’t come back if you’re dead.”

“Sure you can,” says Ruth. “Why not? You just show up as someone else and pick up where you left off. That’s what the Buddhists believe.”

“What the fuck is a Buddhist? Do you really think that could happen? Do you think my Grammy could come back? I really liked her a lot. She was nice to me sometimes. Used to come over when Mom was out of it and she’d take me to her place for the night. And that time Mom was in the hospital I stayed with her a full month and she never once let my brothers pound on me. I’d like it if she came back.”

“But she wouldn’t be your Grammy. She’d be someone else and you wouldn’t know her.”

“Well, that sucks. What’s the point of people coming back if they got to be someone else?”

“I don’t know. I think I have a book about it somewhere. I’ll let you read it if you promise to give it back when you’re finished. Eve, do you need to go to the hospital?”

“Oh no. I’ll be here for a little while yet. I just wanted to prepare Judy for my passing. She’s so young and she hurts so much.”

“I don’t friggin’ hurt. I just can’t stand all this talk about dying, is all. And coming back. You’re all crazy. And we sure as hell don’t need any more bodies around here. Oops.”

But Dorrie doesn’t hear plural. Is wondering how much a room in this house would cost, supposing, of course, that they don’t decide to keep her locked up here but if that’s the case she probably won’t have to pay anything at all. Dorrie has plenty of friends but none of them interesting. Mostly hold-overs from secretarial school where she never wanted to go in the first place but her parents wouldn’t pay for anything else. She had her heart set on being a flight attendant but she was too short. Some of the girls she grew up with went off to universities to be teachers and doctors, but on Dorrie’s side of the tracks that was considered a waste of money and you couldn’t go wrong with typing. Dorrie hates typing. Even on her fancy computer. She’s thirty years old. Has given up hope of ever finding a man, though she’s still pretty and keeps her hair as blond as it ever was but she’s five foot nothing in two inch heels and most of the fellows she meets treat her like a six-year-old. And she never wanted children first nor last after looking out for brothers and sisters since she could walk. Her life revolves around working for that jerk, Howard James, and saving money for her old age. She visits her parents now and then, listens to them whine about what so and so said to what’s his name, goes out with “the girls” every other Wednesday for a couple of drinks. Listens to them go on and on about their homes and husbands and kids until she could scream. Dorrie is sick of listening.

In her spare time she makes clothes for the Barbie dolls she has been collecting since she was seven years old. Her favorite is dressed like Scarlet O’Hara. She wonders if Ruth will let her go to her apartment and get them and the pretty glass cases that she polishes once a week. She wants to live here. These women don’t have shoes on, half of them, and she’d like to go barefoot now and then.

By the time Patrick arrives for Ruth dinner is just about over and Dorrie’s fate decided. She has called Howard James and left a message saying that she can’t find the dog, it’s not at Mrs. Miflin’s house, and she is never coming back to his office again. Don’t bother to call because she doesn’t want to talk to him. She told her parents and a few of her friends that she is leaving her apartment tonight. The others are pleased that Dorrie is moving in, but secretly agree that she must never go to the basement, concoct a story about rats so big and hungry they’d eat the face off you in a minute.

It’s not like Dorrie to do anything rash and spontaneous. She has always been old reliable, the first one to sell tickets to the church raffle, or go door to door collecting for the Heart Foundation and Cancer Research. Her friends are burning up the telephone wires all over town wondering what the heck has gotten into her.

Mrs. Miflin is tickled pink when she finds she has a new boarder, almost gushes as she accepts Dome’s cheques, tells her she can have any room in the house and hurries Ginny Mustard off to make it up real nice. Says the Joyful Mysteries. Sings a few rounds of Amazing Grace before nodding off.

Dorrie has a car. Judy volunteers to go with her to gather her things. Almost weeps when she sees the pretty clothes, about six sizes too small to borrow. Is fascinated by the Barbie collection. Judy never had a doll of her own that survived more than two days of her brothers’ abuse, no matter how clever her hiding places. She and Dorrie dismantle the shelves, wrap the dolls in pink tissue paper and special boxes. Three trips later and it’s almost midnight, they are finished, a note on Dorrie’s door to tell the landlord he can keep the furniture, she’s out of there, after ten years of being his star tenant, the cleanest, quietest he’s ever known. He’ll be grumpy for days.

Ruth is home at a civil hour tonight. She and Patrick are too tired to do much of anything, fell asleep at the movie, barely spoke, held hands. They arrive as Judy and Dorrie are lugging the last of their loads into the house. Ruth wonders how the hell it’s all going to fit, suggests that the dolls be given a room of their own since there are so many vacancies. They enlist the exhausted Patrick to help out and he stumbles back and forth over the stairs until Ruth takes pity and sends him on his way.

“Wait until Ginny Mustard gets a look at these dolls.” says Judy. “There must be a hundred of them. Did you ever see any-thing so pretty in your life, Ruth? And Dorrie’s got little tiny dresses and boots and shoes for all of them to change into. Even underwear. And catalogues if she wants to buy more. I never saw anything so nice before. And she’s got dresses for herself to match the little ones exactly. She made them on her sewing machine.”

Ruth agrees that yes they’re nice enough and goes to bed. Sleeps through the sounds of construction as Dorrie puts her shelves together, scrubs the Barbie room spotless and arranges the dolls just like they were at the old place, thinks about going out tomorrow for a nice piece of lacy fabric to make new curtains. Maybe some paper for the dingy walls. Perhaps she’ll even buy a starter Barbie for Judy so she can begin her own collection. Dorrie has never met anyone who didn’t mock her passion, didn’t ask if she wasn’t just a bit old to be playing with dolls, imply she had shit for brains, wasting good money on toys, what’s wrong with you Dorrie?

All through the night she works and when Ginny Mustard wanders in at six to see what’s going on, the smile on her face is well worth the effort. “You know,” says Dorrie, “they make black Barbies too. The same color as you but they don’t have blond hair. We could go and see if there’s some in the stores, if you want one. I don’t have any myself, but I know they’re out there.” Ginny Mustard doesn’t respond. The dolls are like her music, so pretty that they hurt, but it’s a good hurt and she nods. There has never been such a marvelous sight in Mrs. Miflin’s house if you don’t count the flowers that Ruth got.

Mrs. Miflin isn’t happy to be giving Dorrie two rooms for the price of one but she’s pleased enough to have another tenant, and a nice dresser too, different than some she could name who go around like streels half the time. And besides, she reasons, it won’t do any harm to have a classy-looking woman out and about telling people where she lives now and what a lovely boarding house it is. Clean. Who knows? She might end up with more just like her and be able to tell the rest of them to take a leap and go find somewhere else to hang their sorry hats. So when Ruth asks if it will be all right for Dorrie to set up her sewing machine and dress forms in yet another spare room, she is feeling magnanimous, envisioning her future glory as the landlady of all landladies and says yes without batting an eyelash. She shoots a ‘Your days are numbered, Missy’ look in Ruth’s direction making her wonder what the old bat is up to now, but who cares anyway.

Patrick is off today. He arrives early to see Ruth. Judy finds them hugging in the sitting room when she comes downstairs. “Oh, gross, you guys. That’s really gross.” And they stop, though they’d rather not.

“Don’t you have anything better to do than hang around here, Judy? We could stand a little privacy, you know,” says Ruth.

“No I don’t. Not until Dorrie is ready and then we’re going out to look at wallpaper and material for curtains. Ginny Mustard is coming with us. We’re bringing Maggie over to her father’s house first cause she hasn’t seen him in six years. She found Lester Eldridge in the phone book at the address where she used to live so we figure it’s got to be him. Right Maggs?”

Maggie is nervous. Nods her head.

Ginny Mustard has never been in a car that she knows of. Is excited about going to the mall. Asks Ruth if she’ll mind the baby while she’s gone.

Patrick says, “I didn’t know you had a baby, Ginny Mustard.” Ruth starts up about the imaginary baby that poor Ginny Mustard conjured in her warped little brain, that she thinks is real, how she rocks it to sleep and sings to it all the time. And Patrick’s nice blue cop eyes narrow a bit while he listens to the lies but he doesn’t say anything else. Ruth hurries the others into the kitchen for a little talk. “Watch what you’re saying Ginny Mustard. And the rest of you too when Patrick is here. I’m not going to let anything screw things up for me. I really like him and if he finds out what’s been going on in this house, I might as well kiss him good-bye, that’s for sure. He’s a cop, for God’s sake.”

Dorrie doesn’t understand what the all the fuss is about. “Couldn’t you just tell him what you told me? I mean, it’s not like any of you killed the baby, is it now.”

“Ha,” says Judy. “You don’t know the half of it, Dorrie. We’ll all be up to our necks in it if old Patrick starts snooping around.”

“That’s enough Judy. Now you crowd take off and do whatever it is you’re doing. Patrick and I are going out for the day. Where’s Eve? Did anyone remember to feed Mrs. Miflin?”

“She had some corn flakes but she wouldn’t eat them. Says they’re stale and we’re not closing the box right. Eve is in the Barbie room. I brought in her chair so she could sit and look at them. She thinks they’re pretty too.”

“This place is turning into a regular looney bin. I’ll say goodbye to Eve. Make sure you’re not gone too long and check on her when you get back.” Ruth ushers them out the front door and goes to see Eve who is pleased to stay right where she is with her cup of tea.

Anyone knows that if you allow yourself too much happiness you court disaster. If you dare to relax and assume life is grand, well then, it simply has to up and prove otherwise. That’s all there is to it. Ruth knows this is true but she seems to have for-gotten the teachings, though Heaven knows how. Mrs. Miflin knows, which is why she takes her pleasure in small doses and even then is not too swift to recognize one. Dorrie knows and has Barbie insurance to her eyeballs. Ginny Mustard can be forgiven since she never quite caught on. Judy and Maggie, well they’re what you might call heathens, not having been born into the one true church. And Eve, dear Eve, never believed it anyway since she has always found evidence to the contrary. But there’s no excuse for Ruth. She knows better.

The man who opens the door to Maggie bears little resemblance to the father she remembers. He has folded considerably in six years.

His voice is low and gentle. “Margaret? Is that you my Margaret?” Maggie nods yes. He puts out his arms. She steps into him and holds on, laughing and crying all mixed up together. He needs to know why she ran away. Needs to know how she could have hurt him like that. That she has been all right. That she is back to stay. He can hardly believe what she tells him about the home and her mother’s face hard, turning away while Maggie screamed and screamed. He thought he had dreamed that night. For years he’s been dreaming that night.

The house is the same as it always was. Still neat as a pin with bonsai trees all over but no dogs. They sit close on the sofa and talk. Smile and cry some more until Dorrie’s car pulls up and they all troop in. Maggie wants to stay until her mother comes home but her father says she should go. That he wants to talk to his wife about all of this before Maggie sees her again. Perhaps that will be best. Maggie is reluctant to leave. Writes her address and Mrs. Miflin’s phone number for him, laughs and cries again through a long good-bye until Judy leans on the car horn. Mr. Eldridge watches them pull away, waving even after they’ve turned the corner, out of sight.

Ruth is still out when they get back to the house. Once they dry off from the rain that shows no sign of ever wanting to quit, Dorrie asks if they’d like to have a tea party in the Barbie room. She and Judy set up a big round table and some chairs from the attic with Ginny Mustard’s blessing; she needs space for a playpen. Dorrie makes another trip, brings home little cakes with pink and yellow frosting and a poppy seed loaf. They dig out the good cups and saucers. No one can tell Mrs. Miflin, though, Judy says. “She only uses them when the Pope is visiting.” Dorrie has lace-edged napkins and a matching tablecloth and in a few minutes the room is fit to entertain royalty. And now they must dress up pretty as well. No problem for Dorrie but the rest of them have to make do with odds and ends. Judy shares her junk jewelry and Eve has some old hats with lace that falls down over their eyes and makes everything look soft and blurry. Gloves that come all the way past their elbows, even Judy’s, accessories that haven’t seen the light of day for fifty years.

It’s this picture of elegance that greets Ruth when she comes looking for them and she wishes to God she had a camera. Accepts Ginny Mustard’s offer of tea and cake and they all sip together, quiedy.

The pounding rain is louder than the sound of Mrs. Eldridge banging away at the front door but they certainly hear the crutches on the floor below and Mrs. Miflin yelling to see who’s there. Eve goes to the door and the others follow. Maggie’s mother is fit to be tied. When she sees her daughter her face opens into a scream. Eyes popping. Mouth spitting. “I told them to find you a place away from this city. What are you doing coming back and upsetting your father. He’s sick. I wouldn’t be surprised if he had another heart attack with you crawling out of the woodwork now. I’m going to sue those bastards for moving you in here. What the hell were they thinking? You had no right to go to my home.”

Her hands are raised to strike and Maggie is about to crumble. Judy steps between them, tucks Maggie safely behind her. “I think it’s Maggie’s home too Missus. She’s got as much of a right to be there as you do. And if she wants to visit her dad then you can’t say anything about it.”

“Like hell I can’t! She’s insane and I can get papers to prove it. And if I have to take out a restraining order to keep her away from my husband, I will. Do you understand that Margaret? If you come anywhere near him again I’ll report you to the police so fast it will make your head spin. They’ll lock you up again and believe you me, it won’t be as pleasant a place as the last one. I’ll make sure of that.” And she’s gone, nothing but a puddle of rain water on the floor to prove she was ever there. Maggie sits right down in that puddle and shakes all over. Rocks back and forth and doesn’t make a peep. Picks up a passing kitten and holds on tight until it starts to cry and Judy has to pry the struggling creature from her shaking hands to keep Maggie from squeezing it to death.

The rain will not let up. All night and the next day it beats on the house. Eve’s garden is a shambles. Gladiola are flat on the ground and the morning glory trellis has blown over, pulling the plants with it. Ugly toadstools sprout everywhere among the ruins and the slugs are having a field day. It’s all doom and gloom and if Judy hadn’t decided to bring up a casserole from the freezer, Ginny Mustard having wandered away into the fog before she made breakfast, they wouldn’t have known that Mr. Miflin is well into thaw mode, popsicle juice soaking all the way through the rug they wrapped him in.

Tearing into the Barbie room, soaked to the knees, Judy practically screams her news. Dorrie says they just have to call a plumber and get him to pump it out, it’s not that big a deal. The others are a little more agitated than the situation warrants as far as she’s concerned and she tells them so. “Well,” screams Judy “That just goes to show what you know, Dorrie Blake. Mr. Miflin is thawing out faster than May snow down there and we’ll all be fucked if we don’t do something about it. Where’s Ruth? We have to find Ruth.”

But Ruth is waiting for Patrick at the station, staring at a picture on the bulletin board. Leaping to her feet and out the door with no explanation to anyone when she recognizes the missing person. Racing into the house minutes later, yelling to the others to get down here right now we’ve got troubles like you wouldn’t believe, ripping photographs out of frames, off walls, flushing littie pieces down the toilet fast as you want. In Mrs. Miflin’s room looking for more. “Do you have any other pictures, Mrs. Miflin? We have to get rid of them now!” Oh God. Prays Patrick never makes the same connection. Prays please God. Please. Please. And Mrs. Miflin is howling from her bed. “Ruth. Stop it. What are you doing? What will I say when Mr. Miflin comes home and there’s none of our wedding pictures around? He’ll think I don’t love him.”

Ruth is stunned. “What are you talking about? Ginny Mustard killed him. He’s frozen solid in the basement. In the freezer. Don’t you remember?”

“Well actually,” says Judy. “He’s not all that solid anymore, Ruth. The basement flooded and the freezer stopped working. The casseroles are ruined too and all those chickens that Eve bought. What are we going to do Ruth? Won’t it start to smell bad soon?”

“Well yes, Judy. It’s going to stink to high heaven, just like everything else in this Godforsaken place right now.” And Ruth sits on Mrs. Miflin’s bed. Puts her head in her hands and feels very small until Mrs. Miflin whacks her across the back with a crutch and tells them all to get the hell out of her room.

Think. Think. Think. Ruth pulls herself together. Tells Maggie to look up a plumber in the phone book and ask him to get over here as fast as he can. Goes to the basement to survey the damage. It’s not so bad. No smell yet, anyway.

“Judy. When he gets here you stay in the basement with him while he drains the water out. Sit on the freezer and make small talk.”

“What about the rats?” asks Dorrie. “You should take a stick or something with you for the rats.”

“There are no rats, Dorrie,” says Ruth. “We made that up so you wouldn’t find out about Mr. Miflin. Fat lot of good that did.”

Since Ginny Mustard can never be sure she won’t tell secrets, she hasn’t said anything at all lately to Joe Snake but when she runs into him at the Sea View Tavern, decides to fill him in on the summer’s events. Tells him all about her baby and the kittens. How she shot Mr. Miflin. About Dorrie and the Barbie room. About Maggie’s mother coming and upsetting everybody being so mean when they were having such a nice tea party. Tells him about her money and the doctors saying she isn’t stupid anymore. Invites Joe Snake to come home and have some supper with them because she feels like cooking and thinks he could use some fattening up, being so thin. He accepts her invitation, thanks her for her generosity. They pick up a case of beer on the way.

“Well this is just what we need,” moans Ruth when they arrive but she accepts a beer and sets another place at the table. Patrick calls to see why she hightailed it out of the station so fast and she has to tell him another lie about having a nasty stomach flu and she’ll be in bed, most likely, until tomorrow and it’s best if he not come over since she’d hate for him to pick up the germs too.

If the friggin’ sun doesn’t come out soon I’ll hang myself,” says Judy and Ruth tells her to go right ahead, she’s sure there’s rope in the basement and if not she will personally go out and buy some for her.

Eve wants them to come clean. This problem is way out of hand. “You can never go wrong telling the truth,” she says. “Though it will be hard on Ginny Mustard, I suppose.”

Joe Snake speaks up. “You’re probably better off just getting rid of the body. You’ll all be considered accessories to the crime. Why don’t you bury him in the back yard? Plant a few bushes over him. As long as everybody can keep a secret, it should work.”

“Well, it seems to me there are already too many people in on this secret. We’ll have to live in each other’s pockets to make sure no one tells. Look what happens when Ginny Mustard goes out alone. She spills her guts to the first person she sees.”

“Joe Snake is my friend. He can know He won’t tell.”

“We can’t start digging until the rain stops. Dorrie, tomorrow you and Maggie buy some kind of bushes or trees or some-thing that we can plant over him. Ginny Mustard you’ll have to pay for them. Tell them what to get, Eve. You’re the only one around here who knows about growing things.”

“But I really wish we could tell the police what happened, Ruth. It is starting to wear on my conscience.”

“You didn’t do anything, Eve. Stop fretting. Unless someone has a better idea, we’ll stick him in the ground and that will be that.”

When Joe Snake says that he wasn’t really serious about burying the body, Ruth ignores him.

It’s a sorry lot that greets Patrick when he comes to see how Ruth is feeling. Glum and nervous in the sitting room. Quiet. Kittens racing up and down the heavy curtains and no one telling them to stop. Dishes still on the table, and pots dirty in the kitchen. Ruth doesn’t care that he ignored her warning to stay away but does nothing to make him feel welcome either and he leaves after a quick beer. Gives Joe Snake a ride to his rooming house.

Finally sunshine but there’s autumn all over it. Everything green looks tired, ready to quit this party and rest up for the next one. Judy sniffs the air like a cat when she steps outside to help decide where the new trees will go. A weeping birch is what Eve wants and a blue spruce. They take turns digging. There’s only one shovel and it’s too late to tell Dorrie and Maggie, off in search of trees, to buy another. The going is tough and muddy. Huge rocks have to be removed before the hole is deep enough. They wait until dark to fill it. Cover their secret. Father Delaney is up all night with his rheumatism, sitting out back at the rectory with his glasses on. Watching.

When Patrick comes to the door next morning they are still sleeping. If Ruth hadn’t flushed all the pictures away he might never have put two and two together. But the missing pictures and pictures of the missing got into his dreams and, as he likes to put it, his spidey senses are tingling. In his hand is the photo of an odd-looking fellow, a vagrant, the kind few will admit to knowing. But someone in the world has reported his disappearance. No one who cares much mind, just another odd fellow who claims this one owes him money and filed a report. When he woke, Patrick added forty years to the newly-wed face in Mrs. Miflin’s photo-graphs and came up with the unknown hangashore on his office wall. When he got to work, old Father Delaney was waiting to report some strange happenings last night on Bishop’s Road.

Those women buried something and it looked like an old rug but it was heavier. And that Indian was hanging around yesterday so he thinks they might be up to something which doesn’t surprise him at all since no good ever comes of letting a crowd of women live together without a man around to keep things normal.

Ruth doesn’t know Patrick all that well yet but she’s in love for sure. Tuned in. She knows what’s wrong before he says hello. Knows that whatever they have begun is over. Can’t make up her mind whether to cry or scream so she just sits and does nothing for a minute before calling to the others.

“The arse is out of her now, ladies. The arse is out of her now.” And she laughs. Bitterly. “Sergeant Fahey is here on official police business. Tell them, Patrick.”

“I think this missing person is Mr. Miflin. He looks a lot like the man in Mrs. Miflin’s wedding pictures. No one has seen him for a month or more. Has he come around at all? If it is Mr. Miflin, it makes sense that he would show up here. Does he look familiar, Eve?”

“You would have to pick on Eve first. Nice going, Patrick. It’s okay Eve. You don’t have to lie. Go ahead and tell Sergeant Fahey everything you know about Mr. Miflin.”

One by one they tell him the story but when it comes time to take Mrs. Miflin’s statement things get confusing. There’s no way her dear husband is dead. It can’t be true. He just went out and he’ll be back any minute. She doesn’t know who the man in the picture is but it’s not her husband.

“She’s out of it,” says Ruth. “She knew all about this until he thawed. I guess she just kind of snapped, lucky bitch.”

“Are you going to arrest me?” asks Ginny Mustard.

“Yes,” says Patrick. “You’ll have to come to the station with me now. There’ll be other policemen here in a few minutes to dig up the body and take it away.”

“Well that was a friggin’ waste of time!” yells Judy. “What are we supposed to do with those friggin’ trees? I’m not touching another shovel as long as I live so someone else is going to have to plant them next time.”

“You’d best keep a civil tongue in your head, young lady,” says Patrick. “Neither of you is in the clear. Ginny Mustard is not the only one in trouble.” He calls the station and in no time there are a good dozen officers all over the place, who haven’t investigated a murder for years and can’t wait to get their hands on a real crime. Sirens blaring and brakes screeching they come tearing up the road. Important. Cool. Digging out their spiffy sunglasses even though it’s a drab day and looks like more rain. They take their own sweet time wrapping Mrs. Miflin’s house in yellow tape. Block the street to traffic but not pedestrians and they’re every-where, rumors flying so thick and furious you need a swatter to get through them.

With promises to take care of her little baby the others wave Ginny Mustard goodbye. Watch the police car inch its way around neighbours they never knew they had. Mrs. Hennessey rushes home to bake up her famous tuna casserole for the bereaved. That’s what you do when someone dies no matter how they meet their end but when she brings it over she doesn’t get a peep inside the house, has to give it to the policeman standing at the front door. Several of the other women on the street do the same. By the time they figure out that a satisfying meal is no ticket to the inner sanctum and give it up the tenants have enough to keep themselves fed for a month.

Aside from missing the baby and Dorrie’s dolls, things on the inside aren’t much different than anywhere else for Ginny Mustard. Patrick lets her bring along the little CD player and one of the hookers takes a liking to her so nobody steals it. She has her music and plenty to eat. And if she can’t walk to the river whenever she wants, well, it is still better than going hungry and having people yell at you all the time, listening to children crying and being beaten for no reason at all every time you turn around. As long as she never has to be a little girl again, life is grand for Ginny Mustard.

Under the assumption that she is as poor as a church mouse the courts award Ginny Mustard legal counsel free of charge. The young woman assigned the case is having a hard time making heads or tales of the story. Asks that Ginny Mustard be freed on her own recognizance until the trial date. If Mr. Miflin had been a person of any importance she might have been held forever, but he wasn’t, and after a few days in the lock-up she is sent home to wait it out.

Judy is going back to school. Her probation officer and Patrick have worked it out. If there’s any chance of her getting away with aiding and abetting the criminal, Ginny Mustard, those men will see that she takes it. She’s not thrilled with the idea. School has always been a pain for her. Not that she isn’t smart. She surely is. But it’s just so difficult to sit still and listen to some deadhead teacher drone on and on about wars and kings and the economy of Brazil and where to put your commas and who really cares about the square root of anything when you get right down to it.

Maggie wants to go as well. She never did finish up, what with being dragged away and all. When Patrick comes to deliver the news to Judy he says that since this particular school takes just about anybody that no one else will, he’ll talk to them. It might help to have Maggie on board. At least she’ll get Judy out of bed in the morning. Maybe even out the door.

“That’s what we can spend all my money on, Judy. We can buy some new school clothes. My dad used to do that every first of September and we’d have lunch too. He would take the whole day off. Do you want to do that?”

“When can we go? Do you want to get some tattoos while we’re at it? I know a guy who does them dirt cheap down the end of Water Street. It’s really a video shop but he has all the gear in the back room.”

Ruth doesn’t want to see Patrick and he’s been asking for her. Eve has tried to get her to come downstairs but she won’t budge. She has locked her door and no one is allowed in. Late at night when the house is asleep she wanders about. Stares at the streetlights from the sitting room window. All of the hurt she has ever swallowed is a monster that she cannot get around. She doesn’t even try. She is as flat as if someone had run her down with a steam roller. Raw. There is nothing but the pain. She slows her existence to a series of deliberate movements. Says to herself, “Now I am walking down the stairs. One stair, two stairs, three,” all the way. “Now I am turning on the tap. I am filling a glass with water. I am drinking water. I am rinsing the glass.” Nothing more. She does not think. She cannot think. She can only hurt all over. One foot in front of the other. Carefully. Carefully. Slowly. She is broken. There is nothing anyone can do to help. Her agony fills the house. Dorrie opens every door, every window, but there’s not enough sunlight in all of creation to dispel the darkness.

Eve says they must stop trying. Says that when Ruth is ready and able she’ll come back. Eve tends poor Mrs. Miflin, assures her that her dear husband will be here soon, helps her fix up her hair and holds the mirror to show her how pretty she looks. Mrs. Miflin won’t go back to the hospital to have her cast removed, she doesn’t want to chance not being home when he arrives, so Judy carries her to the tub and they soak it off. She still won’t walk though, no matter how Eve coaxes. Sits at her bed-room window and watches the road. Waits.

The school that Judy and Maggie attend is just like a real one except it’s not crowded and the teachers treat them like human beings. Judy says, “This is a nice friggin’ change from the last place I was.” Everyday they walk home past Maggie’s old house and if the car is gone they go in to visit her dad. When he knows that Mrs. Eldridge will be out for the day he makes cookies and they all sit at the kitchen table and talk about what’s happening at school and he helps Judy with her math. When they leave he makes sure they take the leftover cookies with them so his wife won’t know and she can’t figure out why there’s never any flour or sugar around when she needs them. They don’t acknowledge the existence of Maggie’s mother except for one day when she came home early and they had to hide in the backyard until Mr. Eldridge signaled that it was okay to run around front and disappear.

Fall is much too soon this year but pretty enough anyway that most people don’t care. Along the river the leaves are changing to yellow gold and burgundy. Now is the time to stake out a blueberry patch on the hills; it’s so easy to find the bushes when they turn flame red. Draw a little map for yourself and keep it tucked away until next year. Some nights there’s a dusting of frost and only the calendula and marigold, the marguerite daisies, alyssum, malva have the tenacity to hang on, wait for the sun to warm their cold petals and then they’re as nice as you’d want. In Eve’s garden the zinnias and poppies are blooming over and over as though to please her one last time. She washes her pots and wheelbarrow but the flowers keep on growing.

Ruth has gone away. She borrowed Dorrie’s car and some money from Ginny Mustard. Judy made sandwiches for the trip. She put a few things in a small suitcase and no one knows the wherefore and the why, just that she’ll be back and they should keep their chins up. The darkness went with her or maybe it got off at the overpass as she was heading out of town. Either way the house is bright again except when Patrick comes by, which he does a couple of times a day to ask if anyone has heard from Ruth and to see if they need any heavy lifting done or walls painted. Their answer at first was no but now each tries to think of a little something to keep him busy since he doesn’t seem to want to go home. They feed him and get him to change a lightbulb or move a dresser or take a look in the basement to find out what the strange sounds might be coming from the water heater. He’s easy enough to have in the house even as gloomy as he is all the time and they tolerate him the way they do the kittens, stepping around him when he’s underfoot and shooing him to another room when he takes up too much space in the kitchen. They send him outside to rake leaves or spread compost. He’s building a potting shed and replacing some of the rotting boards on the back step. But he doesn’t whistle while he works or smile very often.

Ruth has gone home. Home to the place she was born. Home that is empty now, but for the sad thing that haunts the landing at the top of the stairs just outside her old bedroom door, sits and listens in cold bare feet and flannelette nightgown. Blue. Frayed at the edges. Much like Ruth herself. She has come to do penance in the only place cruel enough and hard enough to grant her absolution.

Ruth’s mother despised this village. The rocks and the cliffs and the pathetic scraps of earth around the clapboard houses that hang on for dear life and at first glance seem fragile but are as tough as the coltsfoot sticking out of the pebbles at their feet. She hated all of it. The people were ignorant and dull as dishwater, she used to say. She wanted more than this. Nagged her husband to move away to a real town with a decent school and social opportunities but he never would. The fishing was fine. His family had been here for generations and besides, they owned their home. They would never find better than this anywhere else. He had been through the war. Had seen as much of the rest of the world as he cared to and would live and die here thank you very much. What was he thinking to marry a teacher? He might have known she’d get fancy notions one of these days. Grand ideas about what was proper and what wasn’t and how to dress and sit and eat and speak and she drove him right up the wall with her picking all the time. When she took to drinking it got worse. The fights lasted long into the night and Ruth wouldn’t sleep until they were finished. Listened from her perch on the landing at the top of the stairs.

The house stands back from rock a few hundred feet or so. Nasty cruel vertical layers razor sharp and a million years from Africa or wherever they were before the earth shifted and the waters rose. From a distance they look inviting. You think, I’ll sit here with my sandwich and apple and watch clouds and dream awhile but up close you can see that the only place comfortable is underwater where the waves have beaten the stone to submission. So you must have your lunch on the grass at the land’s edge with the seagulls that scream if you take too long to fling your scraps.

Behind and to the sides of the house are rose bushes gone mad. They push hard against the walls and might crush if they ever felt the need. Among them, stunted pine and alder and way at the back aspen to keep you awake at night with their gossip. Lonely looking from the rocks. Derelict. There’s a wind blowing through the rooms and the roof makes heavy sighs like something in very old pain.

The village was abandoned thirty-five years ago. Resettled. Its inhabitants moved a few miles down the road where there was more of what Ruth’s mother wanted in her life. Forty houses, once yellow, red, green against the fog, boat launches, the wharf, church, school, all lonely grey and crumbling with nobody home except the feral cats. If Ruth had ever wanted kittens she has them now. And they are about as friendly as she feels, snarling when she comes upon them, backs arched and tails puffed three times normal size.

Gardens abandoned went wild. Everywhere the remnants of a summer that must have been beautiful. Hollyhock, delphinium, foxglove grow year after year wherever they damn well please. Mint, rhubarb and lavender. Ivy, unchecked, filled ditches, climbed over fences and down the road, in through broken windows and rotting doors.

The house is cold. Ruth wants to light a fire but doesn’t know if the chimney is safe. She fills a bucket with water from the well and drags it to the living room, just in case. It’s all the care she feels like taking now. She hauls wood from the shed. She peels paper from the walls of her parents’ bedroom. It has been there for a hundred years and comes away easily once she gets a corner pulled up. She feeds her fire faded flowers and it works. Her toes are warm. She falls asleep on the rug and the sad thing is crying, shivering, on the landing at the top of the stairs.

Ruth wakes to sunshine through dirty, cracked windows and a brown mouse just beyond her reach, staring with black eyes. “You’re the fool. There are cats everywhere. It’s a good thing the old man is not around - he’d have you mashed to nothing with a broom and flung in the trash before you could blink.”

The house is cold again, the fire long dead. Ruth finds rags in the kitchen, wipes a circle clean in the living room window, stares at the ocean for a few minutes before washing her face, brushing her teeth. She walks the village one end to the other again and again. Sits in the old church for hours with the cats that lie about the altar and leap over pews, fight in the aisle. She closes her eyes and hears Father Murphy sing the mass, preach eternal damnation, salvation, take your pick. I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Creator of Heaven and Earth and of all things visible and invisible. She can smell incense.

At the house she scrubs with cold water, no soap, the living room. Windows. Floor. Furniture deemed unacceptable for the new home, what will people think if they see us dragging that garbage along. Job’s Landing is not like this place you know, it’s going to be hard enough fitting in anyway, I won’t have them taking us for a crowd of peasants. And they had gone, her mother thrilled with the idea, her father grumbling all the way, her brother ready for his own place with his new bride and Ruth not caring one way or the other.

She scrubs the walls higher and higher as far as she can reach and that’s not good enough so she stands on a rotting chair and by the time she is done even the ceiling gleams, and the light fixture. She takes the rug she slept on outside to the fence and beats it with a stick and the dust is in her eyes and ears and nose and she is crying. She goes to the ocean. Stands on the rocks too close for comfort. Thinks she might let the waves take her but knows they don’t want her, will throw her back bloodied and broken. She is no longer part of water and water knows that. Even a lake would tell her float. Her toes curl in her shoes to grip the slippery rock. She is not brave. She does not want to die.

For days she wanders the house. Takes her rug and a bucket of water, scrubs her parents’ room and sleeps where their bed was, her brother’s room and sleeps where his bed was, her room and sleeps a while, sits at the top of the stairs and listens, sleeps a while, sits at the top of the stairs and listens, sleeps a while. She has eaten all of her sandwiches and is down to water when the house is finished, clean as it can be with no soap. She gathers lavender and branches of rose hips, fills the bucket and puts the arrangement in the middle of the living room floor. Tells the sad thing at the top of the stairs in bare feet and shivering to get in the car, you might as well come with me, and drives to Job’s Landing.

It is late and dark when she arrives at her brother’s house but she knocks at the door anyway. When Matthew answers he does not recognize her until she speaks. He makes coffee. Joanna wakes and prepares the guest room. They are happy to see her, to know that she is alive after all this time. They sit quietly at the kitchen table. Ruth showers and sleeps. Time enough tomorrow to find out why she’s here.

“I’ve been to the old place. Spent three days there. Or four. Hard to tell. I cleaned it top to bottom. The village looks so much prettier with no people. Nature just kind of moved in and grew all over it. The gardens have gone wild. I met a man. The first one worth knowing for as far back as I can remember. But I’ve been unbelievably stupid. Fed him a pack of lies. He’s come to see me but I can’t even look at him. Knowing I lied. I’ve been feeling like crap so I went to the old place. Considered throwing myself into the ocean but I’m too much a wimp.”

Matthew and Joanna take the day off. Listen to Ruth. “We didn’t know what had become of you. The last letter was twenty-five years ago. From Jamaica. Where have you been all this time?”

“Around. You can’t go wrong being a great waitress. Especially if you don’t care how seedy the bar. If you stay one step ahead of immigration. Not all that difficult, really. But when you start looking your age it’s not so easy. They like the young ones with perky tits. Once your ass starts to fall down around the back of your knees you’re pretty much washed up. I got tired. Now I do nothing. Your taxes have been feeding me for a good six years now. I have a room in a nuthouse and I pretty much do fuck all.”

Joanna says, “Peter is fine. Do you want to see some pictures?”

Ruth starts to cry. “Yes. Where is he? His birthdays are the hardest times. Usually I just get very drunk the night before so I can feel like shit all day.”

“He’s in the city, now. Teaching at the university. Married to a really wonderful woman. Sarah. They have two children. A boy and a girl. Joseph and Eleanor. Eleanor looks so much like you it’s eerie, Ruth.”

“Does he know? Did you tell him?”

“We did what you wanted. As far as he’s concerned you’re his aunt, long missing, but his aunt anyway. We’ve always talked about you. I have all the pictures that Mom and Dad took. We used to go through them now and then when he was young. You can be proud, Ruthie. He’s a great father and husband.”

“I can’t take any pride in that. You raised him.”

“But he’s strong, Ruth. Stronger than I ever have been. That came from you,” says Matthew.

“Hell. I can’t even fling myself into the ocean when I want to. No. Whatever he is he got from you two. I want to see him. I won’t give away our secret. No matter what. I have to get back soon. A crazy old lady is threatening to die and I should be there I guess, or the others will fall apart and I’d hate to have to clean up that mess. Besides, I may have a date with the courts.”

Ginny Mustard is planning her wedding. Well, she’s not doing all that much really, but Maggie and Judy are having a great time. The guest list is a little ragged what with so many of the invited having no known address but Ginny Mustard has an idea where most of them are hanging out and Joe Snake, the groom, stuck up a notice at the Ocean Bar and Grill for anyone they migb have forgotten. The reason Ginny Mustard has decided to marry is that she likes Joe Snake a lot and she wants to have a baby since the police took her pink blanket of little bones and arranged a burial after they determined that there had been no foul play in its death. Mrs. Miflin had become suddenly lucid one day and told Patrick all about the secret in the attic and what she had done. And for some reason that no one can fathom it’s okay to have a jar of ashes kicking around your house but if a body hasn’t been burned beyond recognition it has to go into the ground no matter how clean the remains, unless it’s a million years old and then it can go in a museum.

Patrick has worn himself out trying to keep Ginny Mustard from marrying. She is about to be tried for murder, after all. He is especially adamant that she not get herself pregnant since she’ll have to give the baby up if the jury finds her guilty anyway. But Joe Snake says he’ll look after the little one if there happens to be a little one and Ginny Mustard can see it on visiting days and forever after when her sentence has been served. Ginny Mustard listened politely to Patrick’s arguments against her plans and went ahead anyway. She likes him but he doesn’t make a lot of sense sometimes.

Joe Snake convinces Ginny Mustard that she should get her money out of her hockey socks and into a bank and she opens an account, insisting that it be joint so Joe Snake can withdraw money to take care of the baby and buy oranges and bananas to bring to the jail since Judy told her there is always a shortage of fruit there. He says that he can look after a family on his own wages, thank you, but succumbs to reason when she says he’d have to find something with decent hours when the baby comes if she is found guilty.

Everyone is happy that Ruth is back and in a better mood. Dorrie is especially pleased to have her car since there is so much running around to do. Ginny Mustard has to be in court on December first. They’re all in a mad rush to hold the wedding on November fifteenth so there can be a honeymoon and a few laughs before the season gets serious.

Ginny Mustard wants a formal wedding with a long white dress and she finds the perfect one at the second-hand store down the road. It is very old and has a good twenty pounds of tiny beads, just like pearls, on the bodice, and a veil with pretend satin flowers and blue ribbons that hang long. Dorrie thinks that unless it belonged to your mother or grandmother, it’s probably unlucky to wear someone else’s wedding dress but since Ginny Mustard seems to have such lousy luck anyway she doesn’t bother to air her views.

At first old Father Delaney is unwilling to perform the marriage ceremony but is persuaded after only a few minutes with Joe Snake. Father Delaney has always been afraid of tall men but until now has managed to counter his feelings of intimidation with the white collar. Joe Snake can see the priest’s fear and stays his ground until he receives the answer he wants. Joe Snake will do anything for Ginny Mustard. If she wants him and babies and Father Delaney he is happy to oblige.

The reception will take place at Mrs. Miflin’s house. Walls and floors have been scrubbed to within an inch of their lives. Ginny Mustard will make all of the food herself with help from Judy who found a book about weddings with all kinds of recipes for fancy morsels. They have cleaned out the corner fish store of scallops and shrimp and crab and are working on finding enough large mushrooms to stuff for the hoards who don’t eat as often as they might in a perfect world. With the freezer no longer occupied, and back in working order, much of the preparation is being done ahead of time and stored.

Since one wedding menu seems paltry, they are doing three and a few extra odds and ends. “Just in case,” says Ginny Mustard, “they don’t like fishy things and want a bit of roast beef and potato salad.” There is liquor stored from stem to stern. Since many of the guests have no telephones and few know what RSVP means - Dorrie had to translate for Ginny Mustard - they have no idea how many to expect and there’s nothing worse in this part of the world than leaving a party hungry and sober unless you are on a serious diet.

When Ruth arrives the smell of Murphy’s Oil Soap is enough to knock you over. It doesn’t take long to fill her in on the details of what she has missed, all of them talking at once. Judy got her first ever ‘A’, in math of all things, Eve is embroidering pillow cases, Mrs. Miflin is still nuts but she told about the baby, Maggie is alive and kicking, and Ginny Mustard is getting married.

“Well,” says Ruth. “I can’t beat that. I cleaned a house. Has Patrick come around?” Yes. Patrick came around. It’s a wonder he didn’t just move on in. You have to talk to him Ruth. He’s as miserable as a cut dog and he’s driving us all crazy. Call him for God’s sake. But Ruth waits. He’ll come around again and she’ll see him then.

She does have a call to make though, and has been trying hard on the drive home not to rehearse the conversation, not to think about her son, married to a real nice woman and with children of his own. She can’t imagine him grown. Even after looking at all of those photographs she only sees the tiny being he was when she met him, can still smell the sweet baby scent of him, can feel his soft hair on her cheek when she held him to her face and cried so hard. And he just blinked with his dear eyes all out of focus but he did look at her and he knew what she had to do.

Her brother was a gentle person. Good enough to attract another like him. Childless and longing for babies. Better than she could ever be to raise her son. And so she had bundled up the one who’d grown under her heart and said to Matthew, “Take him. He’s yours. Because I am our father and you aren’t. Don’t tell him about me. Don’t hurt him. Don’t call him names. If you ever raise a hand to him I’ll make sure that you don’t have a minute’s peace for as long as you live. If even once he sits at the top of the stairs and shivers and listens, I’ll know and I’ll be back.” And she had left him there. Had run as fast as she could through the years and now she will see the baby who is a man and say hello, I am your Aunt Ruth come back from the dead.

Ginny Mustard asks Eve if she can borrow all her pretty hats and gloves for some of the people who won’t have anything nice to wear to the wedding reception because once they see how fancy she looks they might like to dress up themselves. The clothesline is a rainbow of finery as the cold breeze distributes the scent of mothballs to the rest of Bishop’s Road.

Patrick has a handful of invitations for the policeman who spent time at the house when they dug up Mr. Miflin. Dorrie especially likes the one with blond hair and hopes he might be free that evening, writes a personal note saying so. When Patrick sees the guest list he shudders. Tells them he’ll drag along as many cops as he can find. Wonders if they should carry arms. Bring outstanding warrants. Back-up.

Throughout downtown you can almost taste the excitement. In the alleyway just beyond the Sailors’ Inn, Mabel Porter has happened upon Dim Dinn and they are wondering what Ginny Mustard might like for a wedding present. Over at The Crossing are a few of the girls on the way to their corners for the evening, stopping to chat about what to wear and who would have thought that Ginny Mustard could do something so smart as marry Joe Snake, almost coming to blows when Betty Parsons wonders aloud if maybe he’s only in it for the money since Ginny Mustard is not that good a catch heading off to jail most likely. Betty is new to these streets and doesn’t know that Joe Snake can do no wrong so they let her off with a stern warning.

There never was such a time as Ginny Mustard’s wedding is shaping up to be. Celebration of the century, no doubt, and there is little else to talk about. The immediate neighbors get wind of it and are none too pleased that the dregs of humanity will congregate on Bishop’s Road so Ginny Mustard posts an invitation at the corner store and they stop complaining. Dig out their best clothes. Go shopping for gifts.

Mrs. Miflin gets in a real snit when she floats into reality for a minute here and there. Thinks about the mess her house will be when that crowd gets finished with it if they don’t burn it down with their cigarettes first. But she still refuses to get out of her chair by the window. Can’t seem to walk and is getting as big as the broad side of a barn just eating and sitting all the time. Eve has given up on her and it’s only when she starts banging on the floor with her crutches that anyone remembers she’s alive and brings her food or takes her to the bathroom.

When Ruth called Peter he was delighted to hear from her. Asked if he could come and get her, bring her to his home for a visit. But Ruth said, “No. Tell me where you live and I’ll get there on my own steam.” Turns out that his house is just a walk along the river, his back garden gate opening off the boardwalk, a path of brick leading to his kitchen and Ruth sets out in the crisp leafy air to see him. Passes Howard James with his new puppy who doesn’t look much happier than Harvey did.

Peter hugs Ruth when he answers his door, brings her inside. Introduces Sarah. Eleanor. Joseph who doesn’t like to be called Joey because he knows someone else named Joey who is mean at school. Ruth barely hears him, staring as she is at the little Eleanor who might be Ruth’s seven-year-old self, same dark eyes, same smile, same head of corkscrew curls.

Her son is beautiful. She searches his face again and again for clues that she did the wrong thing leaving him but there is nothing sad in him at all. He breathes affection. Peace. Acceptance. The way Ruth looks at Peter is not lost on Sarah. Ruth is Peter’s mother, she says to herself, and he doesn’t even know it. And that makes her the grandmother of my children not a great-aunt at all - and she smiles. Asks if Ruth would like to come to Sunday dinner and says she’ll walk her back along the river when she’s ready to go since she has to pick up a few things at the grocery store anyway. Eleanor and Joseph want to come too but Sarah tells them no. She wants some time of her own with Ruth and they can see as much of her as they want tomorrow. Sarah is not one to mince words. Tells Ruth that she suspects Peter is her son and not her nephew at all. No long lost aunt looks at a person that way. They stop walking. Stand silent for a few minutes by the cold water while Ruth ponders her next move. And she might have denied the truth forever if Sarah hadn’t put her hand gently on Ruth’s arm and looked at her as though she liked her and could forgive anything. So there was no choice, really.

“For three days after he was born I cried. Every time I looked at him so helpless in that silly plastic cot. Every time I picked him up and fed him or changed him, I cried. All I could think of was hurting him. I was so fucking afraid that I would hurt him. I didn’t sleep. I thought that I might strangle him in my dreams. I didn’t know what else to do so I gave him to Matthew. I don’t regret it. I wanted him so badly but I was too afraid that I was my father. He thought that if you smacked a three-month-old hard enough it would stop crying. My mother wasn’t much better. She stayed in her bed while he disciplined. Handed him the belt when he came in from the boats so he could teach us to mind her. She never hit us. Her specialty was emotional torture. And I bought it all. But Matthew - it’s as though it rolled right off him. I don’t understand how but it did. Something good got through to him in spite of all that went on.”

By now Sarah is crying and Ruth starts too and they have their arms around one another and Sarah whispers, “You poor, poor thing to have suffered so.”

Ruth sobs. “What a load of crap we mortals must endure. Hardly seems worth it sometimes. If the alternative weren’t so friggin’ much scarier we’d probably all hang ourselves before we hit kindergarten.”

Sarah laughs. Ruth laughs. And Sarah kisses Ruth on the cheek and tells her she’s happy to meet her. “And now you have to come around as often as you can. And get to know your grand-children and your son.”

But Ruth says, “Are you sure you want that? You don’t know where I’m coming from at all.”

“Well yes I do,” says Sarah. “You loved your baby enough to give him up. You might have done fine with him you know, but you really thought you couldn’t so you gave him up. That tells me more about you than anything else you will ever say or do. I want you to be part of our lives. My parents have seen Eleanor and Joseph once. They live on the other end of the country and find it difficult to get away. They’ve always been busy. I don’t remember a time when they weren’t rushing off to some event or other. I have no brothers or sisters. They didn’t even have time for that. And, of course, Peter is an only child as well. Perhaps that’s why we connected. We grew up lonely. I want my children to have people who matter in their lives. And here you are out of the blue. In my mind I’m setting a place for you at the Christmas table.”

“You know Sarah, you’re a bit too trusting. Not very realistic if you ask me. Why don’t you come to my home and see how Ruth lives. Tell me after you meet my family, if you want me within a hundred feet of yours.”

“You’re on,” says Sarah and they walk arm-in-arm to Bishop’s Road.

Dorrie’s surprise bridal shower is in full swing. A number of the guests are three sheets to the wind. There’s a game of strip Go Fish on in the Barbie room with several of the losers, hookers by the looks of them, down to their bras and thongs and Mrs. Miflin in their midst, fully clothed and winning. Seems that no one was going to sit at a window during this party and when Sassy Connors came upon the landlady in her search for a bathroom she rounded up a few of her friends and they carried the old woman chair and all to the card game. After the place had been eaten down to a shambles Ginny Mustard checked her supplies and will have to spend the next four days cooking if she’s to have enough for the wedding reception.

“Well?” says Ruth. “What do you think, Sarah? What do you think of my family? Did I happen to mention that I have obstructed justice? Do you really want your children hanging out with a woman who knows people like this crowd?”

“I wouldn’t mind staying if it’s all the same to you. I know I wasn’t invited but I doubt that anyone will notice an extra body. Before I had the children I worked at a halfway house. I’m pretty sure I recognize a couple of the guests. Why don’t you offer me a drink? And if you show me where the phone is I’ll call Peter and tell him I’ll be home later on.”

“These people are losers, Sarah.”

“I know who they are, Ruth. And there but for the Grace of God go you or I.”

“I’m already one of them. Don’t think for a minute I’m not.”

“Right. I don’t consider that a problem. I’d love to meet the bride-to-be. Is that her over there?”

“That’s her. Come on. I’ll introduce you.”

The party winds down around midnight. Sarah stays to help clean up and is invited to the wedding for her troubles. Before they leave the ladies help themselves to gloves and hats and Betty Parsons takes two of the kittens. Many of the guests will spend Monday at the thrift shops digging through old dresses and shoes to find something to match. The rest of the country upped the prices of relics from the forties some time ago but here in this city you can still pick up a good formal gown for a couple of dollars whenever some old woman passes on to her heavenly reward and her own daughters don’t want her tatty clothes, send them to the poor unfortunate.

In the morning Ginny Mustard and Judy take stock of the remaining food and make a list of essentials so they can begin again tomorrow. But this is a day of rest and hangovers and the list is a long time growing. “They ate all the shrimp and roast beef,” says Judy, “but I think the turkey is still there and they didn’t touch the scallops or the cookies. That’s good. I don’t think it’s as bad as all that and if you like, me and Maggs can help after school.”

Patrick is waiting when Ruth finally emerges from sleep. Since Ginny Mustard has decided to take full responsibility for the murder, freezing and eventual burying of Mr. Miflin, no one else will be charged in the case, leaving Ruth and the others off the hook.

“Well. That hardly seems right, does it? I’m the one who suggested we freeze him in the first place so the silly thing wouldn’t have to go to prison for the rest of her life. I’m the one who told the others to go out and get trees to plant over the body.”

“Yes. Everyone in this house knows that. But nobody else does except for Joe Snake and he’ll say whatever Ginny Mustard asks him to,” says Patrick. “Ginny Mustard is claiming that she forced all of you to go along with her. Said she was prepared to shoot the lot of you if you didn’t. And if she wants to say that in court to clear you - well - who’s to say she’s lying?”

“We wrapped the gun in the rug with him for God’s sake. How the hell was she going to shoot us if she had to dig him up to do it?”

“That’s her story and she’s sticking to it. I don’t know why but there you have it.”

“Seems strange that a woman who can barely string two words together on a good day managed to come up with that. Are you sure you didn’t talk her into it?”

“I would never do that. As far as I’m concerned you’re all guilty of something but it’s hard to say what. Gross stupidity or aiding and abetting or just concern for a friend. Take your pick. In the meantime would you like to go for a walk with me?”

“Sure,” says Ruth. “You can see me to my nephew’s house. Peter is his name. I’m spending the evening at his place.”

The walk along the river is not exactly close. No hand holding. No indication that Ruth and Patrick even like each other very much. Ruth’s neck is prickly for want of touch, a stone’s weight heavy on her heart, Patrick’s blue eyes clouded and he finds it hard to swallow. When they reach the garden gate to Peter’s house the children are waiting and Sarah is raking the last of summer’s leaves. When she sees Ruth she walks quickly to greet her, is introduced to Patrick and invites him to dinner. Tells Joseph to run and ask his daddy to set another place before Patrick even accepts. Whispers to Ruth, “I hope you don’t mind but I like the look of him.”

Dorrie has to wash all of the clothes her Barbies were wearing during the bridal shower to get the smell of smoke out.

“I don’t know why you’re bothering with that now,” says Judy. “They’ll stink worse after the reception. Might as well do it next week.”

“I will but I’d like it to smell nice in here in the meantime.” And she sprays another dose of air freshener.

When Eve goes to put her stockings out to dry there is no room on the line with all the little dresses hanging there.

Ginny Mustard and Joe Snake have not decided where they will live as husband and wife. His place is only one room with a kitchenette and bathroom but he doesn’t like the idea of moving in here with so many women. A man could lose himself in Mrs. Miflin’s house.

Ginny Mustard wants to stay with the others. She’s been here so long now it would seem odd to move out. She doesn’t know if her feet would ever get used to it. Thinks they might keep coming back no matter where she wanted them to go. And the nursery is just right. Painted so pretty and cozy. Neither of them will ever raise a voice to the other but it’s easy enough to stop talking since they’ve never done much of that anyway. They are still making wedding preparations, though. There is no question of their calling it off. They will just have to work out the sleeping arrangements another time.

Judy thinks they’re crazy. “How can you two not know where you’re going to live? That’s the dumbest thing I ever heard tell of. Why don’t you get a nice apartment somewhere close? Then you could visit us whenever you want. It’s not like you can’t afford it. Though if you’re going to be in jail anyway I guess it doesn’t matter where Joe Snake lives. Never mind.”

Sometimes Ginny Mustard thinks about jail. Imagines how it will be. Not just a couple of days like before - that was easy - but a really really long time. Imagines never being allowed to go for a walk by the river or down to the ocean and as busy as she is, every chance she gets she’s out the door and off by herself to look at the wind on the waves or stand on a bridge under the bare trees and she pulls the cold air as far into her self as she is able, feeds like a person starved who knows she will be hungry again soon and forever.

Eve’s old heart aches for the girl who needs such freedom. Sees her face light when she plays with the kittens and Harvey, when she talks about the baby she will have with Joe Snake, when she buys a recording of lullabies and plays it over and over, memorizes the words. And Eve thinks hard. Remembers the morning of the murder. Comes up with a plan. Walks down to Water Street and the police station to look for Patrick.

Sergeant Patrick Fahey is in a better mood than he has been in weeks. His dinner with Ruth and her family still warms his belly. They like him and he likes them and Ruth has said she’ll see him when his shift is over today. He is surprised to find Eve waiting for him. More surprised by what she has to say.

“I am here to confess to the murder of one Mr. Miflin on Bishop’s Road. I was upset and angry because he killed Mrs. Miflin’s baby so I took a gun from the attic and I shot him.”

“Eve,” says Patrick. “You can’t confess. Ginny Mustard has already admitted that she killed Mr. Miflin.”

“I can confess if I want to. I just did. If you aren’t going to take this seriously then I will have to confess to one of the other policemen. I think you should just arrest me now and let Ginny Mustard go.”

“It’s a fine thing you’re trying to do, Eve, but it won’t work. Ginny Mustard’s trial begins in a couple of weeks and that’s all there is to it.”

“Well maybe you should check the gun because my fingerprints are all over it. Just check. You’ll find them there. In fact, why don’t you take my fingerprints now so we can get this over with? I’m confessing to the crime and I want to see justice done.”

Patrick sighs. He was hoping to knock off early today but it looks like that’s out the window. Excuses himself and consults with his captain for a few minutes who tells him that if Eve says she killed the bastard and her prints are on the gun he’ll have to investigate. He doesn’t give a damn who did it but it does complicate matters if every old goat in the city decides to confess. Patrick arranges to have Eve fingerprinted and sends her home. There’s no way she’s guilty but he has to go through the motions, is surprised to be told that apparently she did handle the murder weapon and wonders what the hell those women are up to now.

When Eve tells the others what she has done there’s quite a fuss in the house. Ginny Mustard is upset. Wants Eve to go back and say she was just fooling. Ruth, on the other hand, is ready to have fun with this new development. “In fact,” she says, “I’m pretty sure it was me who killed Mr. Miflin. I just forgot. Doesn’t anyone remember how I was so pissed off that I just grabbed the gun from Ginny Mustard and shot the bugger?”

“But they won’t find any fingerprints of yours on the gun, Ruth,” says Eve. “Mine are on it for sure because I took the gun from Ginny Mustard after she shot him. Remember? I put it on the carpet next to Mr. Miflin’s body. I forgot that until this after-noon and that’s why I went to the police. See? I even have ink on my fingers still.”

“The only reason they won’t find my prints is because I had the good sense to put gloves on before I shot him. Blue wool gloves that I happened to have in my room. Remember how I ran upstairs and got them before I took the gun from Ginny Mustard? And how I burned them in the fireplace a couple of days later when Judy got it working again? Cut them up in tiny pieces and burned them and then put the ashes in the compost bin? Come on. You must remember that.”

Maggie says, “I think 1 must have shot him. I was pretty crazy back then. All anyone would have to do is go to that place I was in and ask the doctors. I’m sure they’ll tell you I’d kill some-one if I got upset enough. I could say I did it anyway.”

Judy can’t stand it. “You’re all nutcases if you ask me. But, you know, maybe Mrs. Miflin did it. She had plenty of reason and why else would she be so friggin’ out of it now? Because she feels so guilty, that’s why. What do you think of that?”

“For one thing,” answers Ruth, “she had a cast on her leg and couldn’t get out of the bed. You might as well say Dorrie did it.”

“I didn’t even live here then. You can’t say I did it,” cries Dorrie.

“No one is saying you did Dorrie. We’re just trying to figure it out since it’s obvious no one wants Ginny Mustard to go to jail.”

“Did you ever think,” asks Judy, “that maybe they won’t find her guilty anyway?”

“Not bloody likely,” says Ruth. “Her goose is cooked and ready to serve. It’s well and good to pretend we can change things but we can’t and that’s all there is to it.”

Lights from the north are dancing over Bishop’s Road. Streaking blue and pink and rose, green and yellow, as far as anyone can see. The air is right and the temperature cold but if God has a hand and if it is as big as it must surely be, then this is His work and atmospheric conditions be damned, as far as the people watching are concerned there’s no other reason for the show that covers the city now, than His feeling good about something or other.

And mothers in the midst of yelling one more time to hang up your coats when you come home for goodness sake and fathers raging because the garbage hasn’t been taken out and why the hell can’t anyone do anything I ask around here for a change, stop in mid-sentence when someone says geez, come look at the sky. And every door is open letting the heat out but no one cares. You never know when you’ll see the likes again and someone is whistling because they say the lights will dance if you do and when it’s all over they are a touch more gentle with their world for the rest of the night. Some of them on into the next morning.

When Joe Snake began his studies at the university his name was Joseph Benoit, changed quickly to Snake because he was long and lean, and Joe because it sounded better, at least to the other fellows in the residence. They liked him. Enough to hang out and cut class and do a bit of drinking with, but not enough to invite him to their homes for long weekends and study breaks. He was born too late for that. If it had been the sixties they would have been falling over themselves to be cool enough to have an Indian friend but in the eighties he would have dragged them down. Bummer. So Joseph Benoit, aka Joe Snake, went his own way, moved into a boarding house, studied hard and graduated with an honors degree in Chemistry. Ready to teach. But the only school wanting his services at the time was on a reservation and he’d had enough of small town living. He found that he was an excellent bartender. Quiet, patrons thought him a good listener. The better bars loved him but bored him senseless. He prefers the less desirable establishments where drinkers are more interested in beer and a few laughs than philosophizing over wine spritzers.

Joe Snake’s needs are minimal. His room is tidy, clean. His prayers are honest. He has his computer and a bed, two armchairs, subscribes to Scientific American and Discover and over his desk is a framed poster of the Periodic Table of the Elements. The rest of the wall space is taken up with pictures of bears. He banks one half of his pay and sends the other to his family. Lives on his tips mostly, which were better when he worked uptown but are still enough to keep him.

Into his life all manner of women have come and gone. The only permanent fixture, the only one whose company he values, is Ginny Mustard. It was Joe Snake who found her in the back pool room of the bar when a couple of college boys out slumming had hit on her, literally, because she said she was tired and had finished work for the night. He took her to the hospital to be patched up and while she was being tended, searched out the boys. He promised them ever so gently that they’d never get it up again if he found them anywhere near her, went back and took her home. Fed her and read to her until she was well enough to leave. He convinced her she could give up the streets, took her to Social Services and helped her find a better place to live. They are the best of friends. There have been times when he hasn’t seen her for days on end. After her first few retreats he stopped worrying. Knows that she is sitting by the river, or listening to the music, walking the waterfront night after night after night. When she told him she wanted to have a baby or six or seven would he please marry her so she could, he said, “Yes.” Wrote to his family. Invited them to the wedding. Sent bus fare.

Ginny Mustard has arranged for his people to stay at Mrs. Miflin’s house. Rented two rooms for a week. Mrs. Miflin doesn’t like Indians - drunks the lot of them and they’ll have feathers from hell to breakfast most likely - but the money keeps her mouth shut. Joe Snake’s parents and sister are surprised when they meet Ginny Mustard. He is their pride and joy and they trust his judgement but a black-skinned girl with yellow hair is an unlikely choice as far as they’re concerned and they can only imagine what the children will look like.

Joe Snake’s mom and sister speak in unison, confusing Ginny Mustard, since she doesn’t know how to listen to both and has to make a decision each time they start. Joe Snake points out that they are basically saying the same thing so it doesn’t matter, just nod and smile back and forth and it’s fine. She’s not going to get a word in edgewise so there’s no dilemma really, of whom to answer when a question is flung her way. They don’t need a response. His father is a quiet man. Sits on the sofa and looks inward, goes outside to smoke his pipe once in a while, takes him-self for a walk. Joe Snake says he has to do that or perish with those two yammering all the time. They can’t live without each other, his parents, but they are like chalk and cheese, they have that much in common.

Joe Snake’s mother has brought along a wedding suit for her son. Of deerskin, beaded and ribboned, as well as her own wedding dress just in case Ginny Mustard wants to wear it. And Ginny Mustard is torn between the gown she bought and this one. Lays them both out on her bed and calls the others in for a consultation. Since long white gowns are a dime a dozen and no one has ever seen anything as exotic as Joe Snake’s mother’s dress the vote is unanimous in favor of the latter with its tiny beads in bright colors and the softest boots.

Mrs. Miflin is waking from her madness or perhaps scraping the bottom of it but no matter. There is a fury boiling in her. Memory is alive in vivid colour of each wrong done her for the last few months beginning with that damned Judy coming here to live and then Ginny Mustard singing that horrible song and making her drop the water and ending up with her crippled for the rest of her life. This is her home for God’s sake and they have taken over. Filled it with noise and wretched people who ought not to be allowed near a good woman such as herself. This is the work of the devil, of that you can be sure, and Mrs. Miflin isn’t going to have any more of it. She’s up and off on legs none too pleased to be carrying the extra weight she’s accumulated but the will is strong and she only has to stop and lean once in awhile on her way to the sitting room to give them a piece of her mind.

But the room is empty. Neat as a pin and decorated with candles and crepe paper streamers’ - purple, red, blue, yellow, green, orange - as though a particularly bright rainbow had found its way in and exploded. “Well,” says Mrs. Miflin as loud as she can. “They think they can do whatever they want, now, do they? We’ll see about that. Yes. We’ll see about that all right.” She stumbles about on protesting legs, stands on a chair and now a sofa and an end table to reach the pretty paper, tears it from the walls. Exhausted she goes to the kitchen, crawls back with a garbage bag, fills it with broken candles. The pantry is floor to ceiling alcohol and she carries bottle after bottle to the sink, pours it all away.

“There’s your heathen wedding, Ginny Mustard, down the drain. You won’t be marrying no Indian in my house and that you won’t.” And she sits on the floor with her back to the stove to rest from carnage. That’s where Ginny Mustard and Judy find her when they come back from the wedding cake shop with Ruth not far behind them.

“I’m selling this house, do you hear me? I am calling a real estate company and putting it on the market right now.” And Mrs. Miflin gets up from her break. Grabs the phone book yellow pages and dials the first agency that catches her eye. “Someone is coming over this afternoon to look at the place so they can sell it. I’ll get a pretty penny for it too and you’ll be out on the street, the lot of you. What do you think of that?” And for good measure she pushes the wedding cake off the counter and stomps on it with all the strength remaining in her fat, tired body. Collapses in a sugar heap.

“Judy,” says Ruth. “Carry her upstairs to her bed, will you?”

“Why? Didn’t you hear what she just said Ruth? She’s selling the house and we all have to get out and what are we going to do? Oh Ginny Mustard! Your beautiful cake is all ruined. Where can we get another one now? The wedding is tomorrow. And she tore down all the decorations.”

“Just take Mrs. Miflin upstairs, Judy. Then come back and we’ll try to figure it out. I’m not talking about it while she’s in the room and it appears she wore herself out wrecking things so you’ll have to help her. I was gone for an hour and she wasn’t moving when I left. She must have worked like a house on fire to do this much damage in that length of time. It’s a wonder she didn’t have a heart attack.”

“I don’t think she’s got one to be attacked. What a friggin’ Grinch. Can’t stand to see anyone having a good time,” grumbles Judy as she half drags, half carries Mrs. Miflin upstairs.

Ginny Mustard is cleaning up the remains of her pretty cake when Joe Snake comes in with his family. His mom and sister don’t miss a beat, start in together about the terrible thing happening. This can’t be good. What can they do? Joe Snake helps Ginny Mustard, watching her face for some sign of feeling about the mess things have become. But there is nothing. He asks if she’d like to take a walk with him and she nods yes. They leave and the restoration crew goes to work. Joe Snake’s dad (Mr. Snake is what they call him though that most certainly is not his name) tells them that he has a light hand for baking. Do they think it would be all right if he makes a new cake for Ginny Mustard. Of course they do. And he sets about finding pans and ingredients. Turns on the oven. Starts measuring flour. Says he’ll need some food coloring for the icing. Do they think she’d like flowers on top and all around the sides or something else? Flowers would be good.

“I used to make birthday cakes for the children. They liked flowers all over and I made them with Smarties candy. All colors with yellow centres. But I won’t use Smarties for these flowers. It is a wedding, after all. Once Joseph wanted a bear on his cake and I bought a special little contraption that shoots the icing out just right once you get the hang of it. But I don’t need it to make flowers. We’ll be just fine. This is going to be a nice wedding cake.”

Ginny Mustard is crying as hard as she ever has and for the first time since she was a little girl. She does not want to go to jail. She wants to have a good time with her babies and Joe Snake and all her money. She has never had anything - ever - and now she has everything and has to give it up. It isn’t fair. She had to kill Mr. Miflin. He was a mean man. Other people get to decide all of the time if a person is bad and should be killed or locked away but when she does it she has to pay so dearly. She can’t understand why and Joe Snake can’t explain it so they walk along the river and there is Sarah who invites them in for a cup of tea.

Sarah and Peter live next door to Howard James. Isn’t it strange, thinks Ginny Mustard, how even a small world gets smaller the more time you spend in it. Sarah hears the entire story of Ginny Mustard’s wrongdoing and so does Peter when he comes home from work. And the more she talks the more she realizes that she truly will have to go to prison and may be there for a long time and she can’t stop crying. Ginny Mustard is having the pity party to end all pity parties.

Eventually she gives it up and then there’s just a little whimpering for awhile and soon her eyes are dry and she has a quick game of checkers with Eleanor before she and Joe Snake leave to buy more alcohol for the wedding. By the time they get back to Mrs. Miflin’s house the new cake is cooling and supper is ready and there’s no sign any more that Ginny Mustard was ever upset. Joe Snake is pleased that she broke since he knows you can’t haul pain around for long and the more time you take to let it out the worse it can be for a body. She had as good a howling as he has ever heard and now they can party and start making that baby she wants so badly. And Ginny Mustard has the same notions though not in that order. Whispers to him that she’d like to spend the night at his place if it’s okay. And when their meal is done they leave. Quickly. Laughing. Mrs. Miflin watching from her chair by the window sees them pause under the street light. Kiss. She spits as hard as she can at the glass but it sprays back into her face at the very moment Ginny Mustard looks up and waves.

The real estate agent is thrilled to list Mrs. Miflin’s house. Puts his sign on the front lawn. Says it’s probably a waste of time since houses like this one are going like hotcakes right now. Lots of come-from-aways are moving in and they’re always looking for a big old place to put another bed and breakfast. In fact, Mrs. Miflin should raise her asking price as far as he’s concerned. It’s way below the going rate. He measures every inch of the house no small feat but he has an assistant and now he’s off to call some prospective buyers. Of course, it would be easier to show if there weren’t so many tenants all over the place. Might Mrs. Miflin ask them to leave when he brings his clients around? She assures him there’ll be no problem getting them out. Just say the word and give her an hour’s notice.

Howard James is invited to the wedding as well and if there were some other way to reach Ms. Blake he would never consider attending such a gathering. But hard as he tries his old secretary will not see him and he has many questions about the running of his operation that only she, it seems, can answer. He hasn’t had a decent cup of coffee since she left. If he can just corner her for a few minutes, beg her to come back or at least train the new one, half of his troubles will be over. There’s no way he will bring a date though, and the woman he has been seeing lately is pissed to find that they won’t be spending Saturday together and he can’t tell her why. If he had any sense he would make something up because Rachel is not dealing with a full deck but he can’t see around corners, poor man, can’t even see what’s staring him right in the face. Oh well. Serves him right. He wasn’t very nice to Ginny Mustard, after all, and one mustn’t spend too much time worrying about him.

Ginny Mustard and Joe Snake wake in a delicious tangle of limbs and warm skin. The best sleep, it was. Worn out bone tired honest and now their bodies feel like jelly. If they roll to the edge of the bed they will go over in a heap - none of their extremities will bother to stiffen to catch them, hold them from hitting the floor. So they stay in a knot for as long as they can. Until Ginny Mustard gets hungry. Until Joe Snake says, “Let’s go out for a quiet breakfast. This is going to be one hell of a day. We’d best be fortified.”

After that it’s pretty much a blur, time being what it is, a mad rush, and no hot water after the third or fourth shower, but all are dressed and shining before too long and there’s a lot of old furniture piled up outside Mrs. Miflin’s bedroom door to keep her from doing any more damage while they are away from the house.

Old Father Delaney is in misery with such a motley crowd filling up his church. Is flustered and impatient throughout the ceremony until Joe Snake fixes him with dark eyes and he slows down. Manages to sound, if not loving and kind, at least respectful and those not used to being treated with more than contempt, which would be the majority present, think it a wonderful wed-ding altogether.

The reception is more than anyone needs and will keep them cozy until spring. Dorrie Blake is having a good time with her pretty policeman when she can get away from Howard James. The Pagan twins are arguing points of faith, which they had sworn they wouldn’t but there are so many statues in that house there is no avoiding the topic. Martha is a true believer and Mary isn’t and they have been fighting tooth and nail since Mary discovered quite by accident from a teacher who was fired as soon as the words were out of his mouth, that there is a theory of evolution. They are seventy now and still dress the same so there’s no telling them apart until they get started.

Judy is drinking vodka as though her very life depends on it, keeping as much distance between herself and the cops as she can. Eve is serving tray after tray of food. It’s loaves and fishes with no sign that the larder will ever be empty. Maggie has latched on to the good-looking son of one of the policemen, who came by to pick up his father’s car and decided to stay when Maggie smiled at him which makes Judy jealous so she calls Jimmy to come over and don’t bring any dope for fuck sake.

Joe Snake brought the music - mostly Big Bands - loud -everybody dance music - and if the adults for two blocks around weren’t already at Mrs. Miflin’s house there might be some complaining. The only ones who aren’t real happy are the kids who didn’t sneak out for the night. The ones stuck babysitting the little ones. Artie Shaw and his ilk aren’t their favourites and even with the windows closed they can’t hear anything else.

Come midnight someone says wouldn’t it be nice if Ginny Mustard and Joe Snake opened their wedding gifts so we can all see what they got. Then someone else says let’s play charades and we’ll act out our favorite presents and knee deep in wrapping paper and ribbons, they do, and Lulu Crummy pees in her pants she’s laughing that hard.

Mrs. Miflin made it to a telephone at one point and called the cops to complain about the noise and when they got there they joined the game for a few minutes because Officer Hutton likes charades more than just about anything and can never find anyone who wants to play since his wife started calling ahead when they go to parties and telling the host to say no to his suggestions. He is very good at guessing and even better at pantomime and does a great job on a very heavy cake platter that no one else picked.

Patrick and the other policeman have given the newlyweds two nights in the fanciest hotel in the city which should delay their discussion of where to live by a few hours anyway and that’s where, on the softest sheets, Sweet Polly is conceived, and if love and comfort and good feelings starting out can have any influence on a person as she grows, then surely Sweet Polly is blessed.

Before Crazy Rachel comes in and before she stabs Howard James a few times and before the wonderful party disintegrates, Sweet Polly has a good grip on life that she won’t release for a hundred years.

When Crazy Rachel waltzes through the door no one thinks much of it. They are packed in like sardines with overflow dancing in the backyard and on the front porch and another body is hardly cause for notice. Only Patrick pays her any mind. Says to himself, it’s not often you see a woman in a floor length fur coat these days, and turns away for a moment before his second thought - she’s a loon for sure from the look in her eyes - brings him to attention. By then it is too late. Crazy Rachel asks Judy where Howard James is, who tells her and wishes her good luck with that knife thinking serves him right for sending Ginny Mustard away with a crappy little CD player and never being nice to her again. There is blood all over the place before Patrick moves to follow her. Guests are hollering and a couple spill their drinks. Some get little drops of blood on their clothes which will never come out but will make for fond memories of a good time in later years. Holly Bartlett - who is very large and takes up more than her fair share of space - falls backwards on to a table, crushing Joe Snake’s CD player beyond recognition. The sudden silence is huge. Nothing left but Crazy Rachel’s laughter and one of the Fagen twins praying. Fifteen of Her Majesty’s Constabulary are in attendance and snap to their duty all over the Crazy Rachel except for Constable Brothers who has the good sense to dial 911 and get an ambulance over before Howard James bleeds to death.

Ruth says, “It’s good the bride and groom left when they did. This would put a damper on the honeymoon for sure.”

The party continues after that but with a little less enthusiasm since several of the good looking policemen leave to file reports on this most recent disaster in Mrs. Miflin’s house, though a few of them do come back afterwards. Dorrie does her best to be upset but finds it difficult to feel much for Howard James. Is more bothered by her young man’s leaving so suddenly. She watches at the sitting room window until his return. When the police come back with their yellow tape they cordon only the kitchen as a crime scene after the merry makers move the microwave oven and the tasties to the Barbie room along with what remains of the alcohol and some ice.