No Dark Valley (19 page)

Celia hadn't intended to grate the whole block of cheese, but she realized all of a sudden that she had. She certainly didn't need that much for a small recipe of macaroni and cheese, and now she wouldn't have cheese for a sandwich if she wanted it. Oh well, too late to undo it now—like the water down the drain, like the stupid comments in Dr. Quinn's class. She got out a zipped baggie and put the extra cheese into it, then stuck it in the freezer.

She was happy to realize as she proceeded through the recipe that she had hit on a good idea to fill up the hours. She was calmer now, and the thought of the finished macaroni and cheese and the anticipation of watching the rest of the movie made her feel proud of herself for coming up with a workable strategy. The article for the Derby
News
nagged at her a little, but she told herself she'd get back to it tomorrow for sure. She didn't usually like to procrastinate, but it couldn't be helped tonight.

She had discovered over the years that macaroni and cheese was even more flavorful if she sprinkled grated Parmesan cheese, along with the cheddar, between the layers. She also liked a little extra fresh-ground pepper. The white sauce was perfect this time, not too thick or too thin, and as she poured it slowly over the top of the casserole, from the VCR she heard Caroline Bingley tell Darcy that all the locals considered Elizabeth Bennet a great beauty. And just as Darcy curtly disagreed, right as he was delivering one of the funniest lines of the whole video—“I should as soon call her mother a wit”—Celia's telephone rang.

10

Of Every Good Possessed

“Celia, I have a favor to ask.” It was Patsy Stewart from upstairs. She was most likely using the telephone back in her bedroom because Celia wasn't getting the stereo effect she always did when Patsy phoned her from the kitchen directly overhead.

Patsy had a low, husky voice, though as far as Celia knew, she had never been a smoker. If most of what she said weren't so mundane and totally devoid of double meaning, Patsy's voice could possibly be described with adjectives such as
sexy
or
sultry
. If every now and then she would say something ambiguous or suggestive, something with the faintest innuendo of naughtiness or flippancy, it might be an interesting Bette Davis kind of voice. If she were the least bit witty, it would make a great comedienne's voice. But, like Mrs. Bennet, no one would ever accuse Patsy Stewart of being a wit.

Or another idea: Celia could imagine somebody with a voice like Patsy's sprinkling in endearments like darlin', honey, sweetheart. With a southern accent,
that
would be a voice you'd take notice of and remember, one with a distinctive sort of charm. Patsy wasn't one for endearments, though, and she barely even had an accent, though she had been born right here in South Carolina, in a small town called Greer over on the other side of Greenville. So as it was, her voice wasn't any of these things—not sexy or sultry or interesting or memorable in any way. It was merely husky and a little on the loud side.

So she had a favor to ask. Celia already smelled something thick and musty, like a mixture of obligation and dread, seeping down through the floor of Patsy's house and into her own apartment. In the brief second before she replied, Celia recalled that the last time Patsy had asked a favor had been when her husband, Milton, was in the hospital for a hernia operation a couple of weeks after Christmas. She had spent over an hour upstairs that time helping Patsy clear out her entire pantry, which was crawling with little black bugs. Some time back, Patsy had come across a sale on cornmeal and had bought three bags of it, which she had stored on a shelf of her pantry.

“I sure never expected it to go bad on me,” she told Celia. “I thought I'd use it all up before something like this happened.” It was hard to believe that a woman deep into her fifties with a long history of cooking behind her could think she could store that much cornmeal in a pantry without inviting trouble. That's when Celia told her about her grandmother's practice of always putting flour and cornmeal in the freezer so the bugs wouldn't get to it. Patsy said she'd have to try that next time.

The two of them stood at the door of the pantry closet for a long silent moment surveying the scene. Celia couldn't imagine how that many bugs could have taken over without Patsy noticing anything earlier. Evidently as far as their reproduction rate went, rabbits couldn't hold a candle to these little guys.

“I haven't cooked much since Christmas,” Patsy told Celia, evidently guessing her thoughts. “After the boys left, we ate mostly leftovers, and then we had our new cupboards installed right after that, so I didn't cook for another week or so. And then with Milton's surgery, well . . . if I hadn't been hankering for a cup of hot cocoa when I got home from the hospital tonight, there's no telling when I would have discovered all this.” She dragged a small stool inside the pantry, then started handing things from the top shelf down to Celia, who was holding a big plastic trash bag. Patsy wasn't taking any chances trying to salvage anything that was questionable.

The bugs were crawling all over almost everything, as if looking for a way in. Celia studied three or four of them, tiny dark ovals, wandering around on the outside of a box of raspberry Jell-O. She smashed one of them with her thumbnail, feeling the slightest crunch. She immediately wished she hadn't done that. She knew she'd have the feeling all night that her hands weren't clean.

It looked like the bugs had originated in the cornmeal and then had migrated throughout the pantry. Next to the cornmeal was a partially used bag of flour, which, although folded over securely and clipped at the top, was also crawling. Patsy started wondering aloud if the bugs had maybe started there instead and then somehow gained access to the cornmeal. She went on and on about this. Celia didn't say anything but felt like telling Patsy it didn't
matter
where they started, the point was they were everywhere now. An open box of cream of wheat, another of oatmeal, and two of dry cereal on the top shelf were also infested.

Celia stayed that night until the worst of it was cleaned up, then left Patsy vacuuming out the pantry while she cinched the bulging bag tightly and took it outside to the garbage can. As she dropped it in, she imagined all the bugs inside it, still teeming with life, probably still multiplying, all of them closed up inside that plastic bag with all that food. What a night they would have! She clamped the lid of the garbage can down tightly. She thought of the vacuum cleaner bag also—would the force of the suction kill them all, or would they crawl out and start all over again? Maybe they would crawl down the basement stairs to her apartment.

After she went back to her apartment, she kept seeing visions of her own cupboards overrun with bugs. She checked them all carefully to make sure Patsy's bugs hadn't already found their way downstairs to her kitchen. And later during the night she kept waking up with a prickly feeling, as if things were crawling all over her skin. She remembered the crunch of the bug against her thumbnail. Finally she got up and washed her hands a long time, then took something to make her fall asleep.

“They said they wouldn't stay long,” Patsy was saying on the telephone now.

Celia had no idea what she was talking about. In remembering the bug incident, a thought popped into her mind: She had a partly used bag of cornmeal in her cupboard right now that she needed to check on. She scolded herself for not sticking it in the freezer after she opened it. She should probably go ahead and throw it out just to be on the safe side.

“So they'll be here in about thirty minutes if that's all right with you,” Patsy said.

“I'm sorry. I missed part of that,” Celia said. “The TV is up kind of loud. Who did you say was coming?”

Patsy raised her voice a little. “The people who are buying Lloyd's house next door. They made an offer on it yesterday, and I guess it's all settled now. Lloyd called this morning from Atlanta to tell us. He's sure glad to have it sold. They want to move in sometime next month.”

Celia didn't see what any of this had to do with her. “Well, that's good. And so . . . they're coming over in thirty minutes, you said?”

“Right.”

“Well, okay, but why do I need to know? Do you need me to do something?”

“Well, I thought you'd want to know. I didn't want to just show up at your door with two total strangers.”

“At my door? You mean they're coming
here
to my apartment? What for?”

There was a pause, but when Patsy spoke again she gave no sign of impatience. She was like that, steady and dull. If somebody told her to, she'd repeat something twenty times in her loud, husky monotone and never once sigh or ask why. “They want to see the layout of your apartment,” she said now, a little slower and even louder, no doubt thinking that would help Celia catch it this time around. “They're planning to finish out Lloyd's basement and make an apartment down there like we did, and they want to see how we did ours. The woman's brother is a handyman, and he's going to do most all the work for them. They want to get started on it soon as they can. I told them Milton could probably help some, since his hernia's all healed up now.”

As if they were interested in Milton's hernia, Celia thought. More than anything she wanted to get back to
Pride and Prejudice
, then eat her macaroni and cheese in peace and try to get this long day behind her, this day that had twisted itself all out of proportion. If her whole life were a novel, as she often mused, this one day alone would take up at least four chapters. She wanted to finish the last few paragraphs, not drag it out longer. She sure didn't want two strangers coming to look around in her apartment.

But it was such a little thing, she didn't see how she could say no. “I really wasn't planning on company tonight,” she said, then paused. “They said they wouldn't stay long?”

“I can ask them to wait for an hour or so if you'd rather,” Patsy said. “They were wanting to drop in right away but said they could come around eight or so if that would suit you better. Or they could come tomorrow sometime. And you sure don't need to go to any trouble straightening things up. They're just—”

“No, no, it's not that,” Celia said. The fact was, she kept things so neat she didn't need to do any straightening up. She was a little offended that Patsy would even suggest such a thing. “Oh, okay. Thirty minutes did you say? Tell them to come on, I guess.”

“Well, I really don't need to tell them anything,” Patsy said. “I said I'd call back if they needed to wait, but if it was okay with you, then I wouldn't call and they'd know they could come on.”

“Fine, fine,” Celia said. Honestly, Patsy Stewart had to be the most tedious person on the face of the earth. It was a wonder Milton hadn't died of boredom over the years. Of course, he wasn't much more exciting than she was. For fun, Milton Stewart shelled pecans. He had a friend across town who had pecan trees in his yard, and Milton brought them home by the sackful. Then every night after supper he sat in his recliner in front of the television and shelled them. That's what Patsy had told her. Every single night. He went over and got them during November and December and stored them in huge washtubs in the basement, then spent the rest of the year shelling them, a small bowlful every night.

Oh yes, the Stewarts led a reckless, zany life upstairs. Real party animals. Celia had no complaints, though. Milton was not only meticulous about his method of shelling pecans, using a toothbrush to clean out between all the little grooves, but he was also generous. He regularly gave Celia sandwich bags full of them, which she sometimes used in cookies but more often ate right out of the bag.

Evidently the people who were buying the house next door couldn't wait the entire thirty minutes, for they were there in twenty. The macaroni and cheese was in the oven baking when Celia heard the doorbell ring upstairs. She stopped
Pride and Prejudice
right as Elizabeth Bennet was tromping through muddy fields on her way to Netherfield to visit her sister Jane, who had taken ill while visiting the Bingleys. It had always puzzled Celia that the detail of Elizabeth's muddy shoes was never dealt with once she arrived at Netherfield.

She knew that when she restarted the movie, Elizabeth would be sitting beside Jane in one of the bedrooms, but whether Elizabeth had taken off her shoes at the door and was going around in her stocking feet or whether she had gotten a rag and brush and already cleaned them up, or perhaps had borrowed an extra pair from Bingley's sister or was wearing Jane's shoes or . . . Well, none of these possibilities was offered. The omission of this detail was one of the few imperfections in the movie in Celia's opinion, and it surprised her how much it bothered her every time she watched it. No doubt the director of the movie was a man. A woman would have made sure the matter of the muddy shoes was settled.

A minute later she heard voices outside her front door, which actually faced the Stewarts' backyard, and then two short rings of the doorbell. She was glad Patsy had brought them around that way instead of coming downstairs through the basement and knocking on the hall door next to her bathroom, as she sometimes did when she had a question about something. The front door gave a better presentation of her apartment, Celia thought.

Celia opened the door and immediately wished she could slam it in their faces. Patsy had failed to mention that they would be bringing a baby with them, but there they stood, the happy little all-American family, smiling at her, all except the baby, who was staring about wide-eyed. Words were already spilling out of the woman's mouth about how much they appreciated this and they wouldn't stay but just a few minutes and they surely didn't want to inconvenience her and so forth and so on. Patsy stood behind them like a humorless chaperon. Celia clenched her teeth and stood aside so they could all enter.