A Perfect Love (11 page)

“Well, she's delicate.” Cleta plumped a pillow. “Always has been.” She moved toward the doorway, then lifted a brow in Vernie's direction. “I'm done in here, unless you want to sit a spell.”

“No, I'll follow you.”

Vernie trailed Cleta down to the second-floor landing, then followed her into Barbara and Russell's room. Cleta yanked back the bedspread and proceeded to pull the sheets from the mattress.

“I want to get to Ogunquit again soon,” she said, dropping the sheets to the floor. “Saw the prettiest pink ruffled spread and curtains in a window there. I think I'll surprise Barbara.”

Vernie frowned. “I thought Barbara and Russell picked out this spread and curtains.”

“Oh, they did, but just look at these colors.” Cleta tssked. “Russell has no taste in fabrics—who could live with these colors? I'm going to buy a new spread. Pink will look better in here, and the kids will love it once they get used to the change.”

“You think Russell will be happy sleeping in a sea of pink ruffles?”

“Why not? Men these days aren't so persnickety about protecting their he-man image.”

Vernie bet she knew a certain lobsterman who wouldn't agree. She looked around. “Where is Barbara?”

“In the basement, I think. Looking for something.”

Vernie leaned closer to her friend. “You interfere too much, Cleta.”

Cleta laughed. “Barbara loves my little indulgences.”

“But you shouldn't be meddling. If those kids picked out this spread and drapes, they like this. Not pink.”

“Oh, fizzle. How could they like anything like that?” She pointed to the dark green and navy blue plaid drapes. “What person in their right mind wouldn't be grateful to get something new and not have to pay for it?”

Realizing Cleta was blind to the obvious, Vernie changed the subject. “Guess who I saw a minute ago?”

Cleta carried the dirty linens to the hallway, then dropped them on the floor. “Beats me. Who?”

“Russell.”

“Really? I thought he took the boat out today.” Without missing a beat, Cleta moved to the nightstand and picked up the fabric-bound journal beside the lamp. Sitting on the edge of the bare bed, she flipped through the pages.

Vernie blinked. “Cleta.”

She looked up.

“Isn't that private?”

Cleta shook her head. “Barbara doesn't have any secrets from me.”

“Still, it is her room. And a journal is supposed to be a person's private thoughts.”

Cleta hooted. “Private? Listen to this: Had dinner with Mom and Dad. Watched
On Golden Pond
with them and Russell. R was very sweet and attentive and we are blessed to be living with Mom and Dad.” Cleta looked up, a smug smile on her face. “What's so private about that?” She closed the book and carefully laid it back in the same spot. “Now, what were you saying about Russell?”

Vernie braced herself against the wall. “He was going to see Dr. Marc.” Vernie lifted a brow, waiting for Cleta's reaction. The pieces of the puzzle were beginning to fall into place, for wouldn't it be logical for a young father to visit the doctor after he'd discovered his wife was pregnant? The poor boy probably needed assurance or something, and right this minute Dr. Marc was telling him that everything was going to be all right with the mother and wee one . . .

Lifting the lamp, Cleta dusted under it.

Vernie stared in stupefaction. “Did you hear me?”

Cleta shrugged. “Russell went to see Dr. Marc.”

“Well?” She hesitated, giving Cleta time to absorb the facts. “Is he sick?”

Cleta paused long enough to look at her. “Why, no, he's not sick. What makes you think that?”

Vernie gave her friend the look she'd have given a very slow child. “Because he went to see Dr. Marc. He's over there right now. So . . . if he's not sick, what do you suppose he's doing?”

Cleta's smug smile reappeared. “I imagine he's there because Dr. Marc asked him to take a look at a leaky faucet. Russell's good with those things—you remember when he fixed your outside connection when it was dripping? He put in new seals.”

Vernie deflated. “Ayuh. I'd forgotten all about that.”

“Vernie Bidderman, sometimes I do think you gossip too much.” Cleta gave the nightstand a final swipe with her dust cloth, then stood. “What sort of conclusions were you jumpin' to? That Russell had some kind of disease? That he was dyin' or somethin'?”

Vernie bit back a growl. “Nothing like that, Cleta.” She pulled herself off the wall. “Guess I should be getting back to the store.” She hesitated, biting her lower lip. “You're sure he isn't sick—cold? Flu? Maybe a stomach ailment?”

Cleta shook her head. “He's healthy as a horse. And has an appetite to match.”

Vernie's face fell. “Oh. OK. I'll be running along, then.”

Cleta paused, dust cloth in hand. “You can't stay for a cup of coffee?”

“No, got work to do. Talk to you later.”

Vernie was halfway down the front stairs when she heard Cleta call, “You need a vacation, Vernie Bidderman! A good long one!”

She let herself out, then nearly bumped into Edith Wickam on the front porch. Edith's eyes were wide, her curls bounding. “Vernie! Thank goodness. You've got to help me.”

“Why, Edith, whatever is the matter?”

“It's the bathroom!”

Vernie had never seen Edith in such a state. “What's wrong with the bathroom?”

Edith paused to catch her breath. “Winslow tried to put up the border without removing the old paper—and it just fell off. Stanley tried to help him string up the border, but it dropped onto his head and I spent hours sponging the paste out of his hair. To make matters worse, whoever painted the bathroom before the wallpaper didn't put sizing on the walls. Now Stanley and Win have got the border up, but it's a mess. Half of it is falling off, while the other half is stuck tighter than a tick. The part they tried to pull off took the old wallpaper with it, and in a couple of places they stripped the plaster! My wall looks like it's filled with moon craters! We've got to do something!”

Vernie closed her eyes, imagining Stanley's role in the disaster. “Oh, my. I can just imagine—”

“If you don't have a can of that stuff that loosens wallpaper, Win will have to go to Ogunquit and rent a steamer. This could take all night. I don't think I can sleep in the house with that room looking the way it does.”

Vernie slipped her arm about Edith's shoulders and led her off the porch. “I can see you're upset. Let's go to the store and see if we have a can of stripper. I'm sure we can find something.”

The women crossed the street and entered the mercantile. Vernie poured Edith a vanilla Coke—“Guaranteed to make you feel better,” she promised—then she called out to her clerk. “Elezar?”

“Back here.”

“Do we have wallpaper stripper? Remember maybe a year ago when the Klackenbushes had to take old paper off in the schoolroom? I'm sure we had at least a quart left over somewhere.”

“I don't remember seeing it, but I could be wrong. I'll look in the hardware section.”

Vernie patted Edith's shoulder. “Don't you worry. If we have it, we'll find it. You just calm yourself.”

Edith took another sip of her Coke, then sniffed. “Oh, Vernie, you wouldn't believe what they've done to my pretty little house. It will take hours to get it cleaned up. I wish I'd never started this. It was all right the way it was.”

Vernie handed her a tissue; Edith blew her nose.

“Hang in there, honey. Things will work out.”

“What a catastrophe,” Edith groaned. “Now that border's hanging in strips, torn and mutilated. I can't believe what a mess they've made.”

Elezar came out from one of the aisles, wiping his hands on a small towel. “I don't believe we have any of that stripper.” He gave the minister's wife a sympathetic look. “I've checked in the back as well.”

“We must have some,” Vernie insisted. “Look again.”

While Elezar went down to the basement, Vernie searched under the counter to make sure no can of stripper had inadvertently been overlooked.

Ten minutes later, both Vernie and Elezar had come up empty-handed. Edith appeared to be minutes away from a genuine crying jag.

“I'll call Mike,” Vernie said. “He might just have some stripper left over.”

She dialed the Klackenbushes and waited, then spoke to Dana.

Thirty minutes later Vernie had called every house on the island. “No one has any stripper,” Vernie told Edith. “I'm sorry.”

Edith slumped on the stool.

Both Vernie and Edith turned when the bells above the mercantile door jangled. In came Stanley and Winslow, both men somber and subdued.

Edith pressed her lips together. “Don't tell me there's more trouble.”

Stanley hung back, staring at the floor. Winslow's face flushed. “Not exactly,” he said.

“What, then? I can tell it's something. What have you two done now?”

Winslow cleared his throat. “The stool, um, had to be taken up so we could paper behind it. You know how difficult it is to—”

Edith covered her ears. “I don't want to hear how difficult it was, I want to know what you've done now.”

Winslow swallowed. “Well, taking up the stool was harder than we anticipated. It's been there a long time, you know, and the seal—”

“Yes?” Edith prompted.

“Well . . . we had a little accident.”

“Little accident?”

Vernie listened with growing concern. She'd rarely seen Edith in such a mood. Why, her eyes were flashing!

Stanley, to his credit, stood up for his share of the blame. “We knocked a little hole in the wall while we were getting the stool up,” he said. “It's not a big hole—”

“A hole? In the wall?” Edith's eyes went round as cannonballs, and looked about as dangerous. “Any hole is too big, Stanley! I can't believe this! Alst I wanted was a new border. Is that too much to ask?”

She whirled, imploring Vernie.

“It's not too much, hon,” Vernie answered. “I'd be upset too.”

Winslow stepped forward and patted Edith's shoulder as gently as if she were a bomb about to explode. “I'm sorry, dear. I didn't intend for this to happen. My little project just grew into a big mess.” He glanced at Stanley. “But we'll fix it. It'll be good as new by evening.”

“By evening?” Edith thrust her hand into her hair. “Winslow, what do you expect us to use for a bathroom if you've pulled up the toilet? We live in a one-bathroom house.”

Vernie moved toward the phone. “Cleta has more toilets than she knows what to do with. I'll call her, and I'm sure she'll let you use one of her bathrooms.”

Winslow gave his wife a relieved smile. “See there? Stanley and I will catch the one o'clock ferry over, rent a steamer, and get Mr. Butcher to bring us back straightaway. We'll have that bathroom set to rights before you know it.”

Leaving his wife whimpering by the counter, Winslow motioned for Stanley, and the two men left the mercantile.

Vernie frowned into the phone, watching her husband follow the minister toward the ferry landing. Why did some men have such a knack for messing things up?

Renting a steamer proved more difficult than Winslow anticipated. He and Stanley finally located an old but usable model at an Ogunquit hardware store. The clerk apologized for the machine's condition and gave them a 10-percent discount.

Before going back to Perkins Cove, where they hoped to catch a ride with Crazy Odell, Winslow's stomach reminded him it had been some time since breakfast. “I'm for getting something to eat before we go back.”

Stanley frowned. “I don't know. Maybe we'd better get on back and get the job done. Your wife seemed awfully upset.”

Winslow waved his concerns away. “She gets that way every once in a while. The slightest thing makes her weepy. She won't mind if we eat something first. A man can't work on an empty stomach.”

They found an open café and quickly downed a Po' Boy sandwich, complete with onions, green peppers, kraut, and pastrami (which Win was sure would come back to haunt him), then caught a cab back to Perkins Cove. Riding in the back of the cab with the heavy steamer sprawled across their laps, Winslow looked at Stanley. “You know anything about operating a wallpaper steamer?”

Stanley
shook his head. “Never even seen one before today.”

“Great,” Win said with a sigh.

Curled up in his apartment behind the Kid Kare Center, Buddy Franklin whiled the afternoon away flipping through his magazine. The term
foxy loxies,
he learned while reading
Exotic Wild Life
, was nothing but a cute nickname for sugar gliders, Australian marsupials fast becoming popular pets in the United States. According to the article, sugar gliders were intelligent, playful, inquisitive, and irresistibly cute. They didn't carry fleas or odor, and were relatively inexpensive to maintain.

Buddy turned the page and stared at a life-size picture of one of the little critters. The animal reminded him of a squirrel, but with more interesting markings on the head. The little guy's expressive dark eyes tugged at his heart.

“Like the American possum, sugar gliders are marsupials and carry their young in pouches,” the caption read. “Their name comes from their affinity for sweet things like the sap that leaks from wounds in trees. In the wild, their diet consists of sap, nectar, insects, and baby birds. They are nocturnal, so as pets they're most active in the evening.”

Buddy grunted. A nighttime pet would be good company for him because he often had trouble falling asleep. According to the article, sugar gliders grew to about eleven inches in length, with over half of that length taken up by the tail. So the compact little critters could easily be trained to ride around in their owners' pockets. “In fact,” the article assured Buddy, “the best way to train your glider is to make a cloth pouch with a drawstring long enough to go around your neck. Hang this pouch in the cage so your glider will use it for a nest, then, while it is sleeping in the pouch, take it out and wear it around your neck. The glider will become used to your voice, smell, and movements, and soon your pet will love going everywhere with you!”