The Avalon Ladies Scrapbooking Society (37 page)

Yvonne looks at the crumbling concrete, at the dying shrubbery lining the common courtyard. It’s one of those apartment complexes that seems to be tired and sagging, and Yvonne feels depressed just being here. She grabs the wobbly handrail and takes the stairs two at a time, then scans the numbers until she finds the apartment she’s looking for. She wipes her feet on the welcome mat, smiles at the small mobile hanging by the door, the only splash of color and whimsy in this place.

“Yes?” the woman says. Her hair is short and cropped close to her head, a look of defeated surrender on her face. Clinging to her legs is a young boy with large glasses. He peers at Yvonne and she smiles.

“I’m Yvonne Tate of Tate Plumbing. You called about your garbage disposal?”

“Yes … oh.” The woman stares at her, and Yvonne suddenly recognizes her.

“Ava?” she asks.

“Yvonne? I didn’t know that—this—was you. You’re a plumber?”

“Plumber by day, scrapbooker by night,” Yvonne says.

“Come in,” Ava says. “I’m sorry, I would have cleaned up more …” She’s flustered at discovering Yvonne at her door.

“Don’t worry about it,” Yvonne reassures her, following Ava into the dingy apartment.

It’s small but neat. The dining room table is set for two and there’s a wicker basket filled with papers and bills. A laundry basket piled high with clean but unfolded clothes sits on a threadbare couch. The shades on the window are partially drawn, letting in a slant of sunlight. Yvonne is tempted to throw the windows open, to let in some fresh air.

“I turned it on this morning and it made this awful sound,” Ava is saying as she leads Yvonne into the kitchen. Max trails after them. “I was going to call my landlord but he’s already threatening to evict us …” Ava stops. “I’m rambling. Anyway, I thought it would be best if I figured out what was wrong on my own, first.”

“I understand. Let’s take a look.” Yvonne flips the switch for the disposal and an awful grinding sound fills the kitchen. Max yelps then claps his hands over his ears.

“He’s normally in preschool,” Ava says, pulling him toward her and covering his hands with her own. “But my car wouldn’t start this morning so I kept him home.” She looks at Max and smiles. “Boy, it’s loud isn’t it?” But when she looks back at Yvonne, her face is filled with dread. “Is it broken? It is, isn’t it?”

Yvonne gets the sense that Ava is used to having things break down or fall apart on a regular basis.

“It’s something,” Yvonne says, “but I don’t know what. It sounds like you have a meat grinder trying to churn up an automobile or two. Or maybe a spoon or fork found its way down there while you were doing your dishes.” Yvonne flicks the switch again and the grating metallic sound makes them all cringe. “Hey, maybe it’s buried treasure!”

Ava lets out a small chuckle and pulls Max close to her.

“Buried treasure,” Ava sighs. “That would be nice, wouldn’t it, Max?”

Max nods. “We could be pirates,” he says solemnly, his first words since Yvonne’s been in the apartment. Yvonne grins as she opens her toolbox and opens the door beneath the sink.

“Yo-ho-ho,” she says, pushing aside bottles of Drano and other random cleaning supplies. Yvonne grabs her offset wrench and inserts it into the bottom of the garbage disposal unit. She gives it a crank clockwise—the flywheel seems to be moving freely, but it’s obviously dragging quite a bit of debris around or something that has broken into a million little pieces judging by the sound.

“I’ll need to turn off the power for the disposal,” she says, standing up. “Where’s your fuse box?”

Ava points down the hallway. “In the bathroom, behind the door.”

A few minutes later, Yvonne has found the problem—she’s fished out more than ten metal bottlecaps. If she didn’t know Ava, she would have figured her for an alcoholic.

“What the …” Ava looks puzzled, then gasps, a red flush in her cheeks. She looks down at her son who is cringing behind her. “Max! Did you do this?”

Yvonne begins to put the disposal back together again. She inspects the lower mounting ring and tightens a few bolts, listening.

“Max, I’m talking to you,” Ava says, getting down on one knee so she’s eye to eye with him. “Did you put mommy’s bottle caps in the sink?” Her voice sounds stressed.

From the corner of her eye, Yvonne sees a small nod.

Ava catches her breath. “Okay,” she says. She takes both his hands gently in hers. “Okay. I know they’re fun but you have to ask me first next time, okay? Mommy needs those for work, but I can find something else for you to play with. And I need you to be careful around the sink—I don’t want you to get hurt.” She stands up and pulls Max close to her, kisses the top of his head.

Yvonne remembers now that Ava does some kind of bottle-cap jewelry. “Do you want to keep these or should I throw them away?” Yvonne asks, holding out the mangled bottle caps in her hands.

“Oh, I’ll keep those,” Ava says quickly. “I might be able to salvage them somehow. Create something different, who knows.” She picks one up and Yvonne sees that it’s different from the others—this one has small glass beads and a pretty design in the center even though it’s been scratched and scraped up in the disposal.

“Pretty,” Yvonne says.

Ava blushes. “Thank you. So how much do I owe you?”

“Nothing,” Yvonne tells her. “I didn’t have to do much of anything. My hands aren’t even dirty.”

Ava looks doubtful. “You don’t need to give me any special treatment, Yvonne. You have to charge me something.”

Yvonne puts her things away and goes to turn the electricity back on. She doesn’t feel comfortable taking money from Ava, maybe because she knows her by extension and can see that Ava’s hard-pressed to pay for anything. “It’s not a big deal and I would have done the same if you were someone else. No special treatment, honest.” She crosses her fingers behind her back.

“Well, a tip then,” Ava insists. “Let me get my wallet.”

Yvonne tries to protest. “It’s really not necessary …”

“I’ll be right back.”

When Ava returns, she holds out a few bills. But there’s something else in the palm of Ava’s hand. “This is to thank you for being so nice,” Ava says. “I mean, only if you want it—please don’t feel like you have to take it.”

Curious, Yvonne leans forward for a look. It’s a bracelet made of five bottle caps, all different beer and soda brands but in different shades of green. The centers of the caps are filled with different-colored glass beads floating in a clear epoxy. Two of the bottle caps have one word each to make the phrase:
CREATE YOURSELF
.

“Wow, this is nice,” Yvonne says. “And green’s my color!” She slips it on her wrist and it’s a perfect fit.

Ava laughs. “It looks good on you. I’m glad you like it.”

“I do. Thank you.” Yvonne smiles. “So you’re all set.” She presses the extra bills back into Ava’s hands. “Look, the bracelet is already a very generous tip. Use this money to buy a sink protector. I’d feel better knowing that little fingers—or bottle caps—keep their distance from the garbage disposal.”

Ava gives her a grateful smile, and for a second Yvonne sees her eyes get shiny. “Thank you, Yvonne.”

Max has joined them in the kitchen again and Yvonne is almost
tempted to offer them a ride—to school, the store, wherever—but she knows it could hurt her friendship with Isabel. She also knows that it’s a small Band-Aid to a much bigger problem, and that sometimes it’s best to leave well enough alone. She gives Max a high five and then says goodbye.

Connie enters through the backdoor of the tea salon and goes to the sink to wash her hands.

“Well, it’s done,” she says, her voice breaking. “It’s like she was never here.”

Madeline looks to the backyard. The fence, hay bales, and doghouse are gone.

Connie comes to the table and drops into a chair. Pictures of the Dohertys’ farm were sent over by Sergeant Overby, pictures that Serena’s owner, Rayna, had submitted to the police station and the
Avalon Gazette
. Madeline and Connie have looked through the pictures, stared at the deep tread marks in dug-up earth, a broken fence, a trough split in two. It’s a wonder nobody was hurt, and no wonder that the owner of the farm, Rayna, is upset—Connie would be, too.

“I feel like I should do something,” Connie says. “I don’t know what we’re waiting for. Maybe I should say I did it so this whole thing can end.”

“Absolutely not. You didn’t do anything wrong, Connie,” Madeline reminds her firmly as she lines the bottom of a pie dish with pastry dough. “Let the police finish their investigation. That’s their business—we have plenty of things to do ourselves.”

“I wish I’d taken more pictures,” Connie says. She closes her eyes, which are swollen from having cried through most of the night. “I thought I’d have more time. I didn’t think it would happen so fast. I didn’t think it would happen like this.”

“Oh, Connie.” Madeline goes over to give her a hug, but Connie doesn’t feel comforted.

She knows that most of the town of Avalon thinks she did it. It feels that way, at least. Even their regular customers look at her questioningly,
their eyes darting away when she turns to face them. Business seems to have slowed to a trickle, people avoiding the tea salon until things can get sorted out.

But what if it doesn’t? Connie doesn’t want what’s happened to affect Madeline, affect the tea salon. Connie called Hannah yesterday, asked her to fill in here and there over the next few days. She’s going to show Hannah where everything is—where things are stored, the lists of food staples and recipes, the computer files and ledger. She’ll mention the projects that need attention, like getting the fireplace cleaned and having the thermostats in the ovens checked. She doesn’t want to make Madeline or Hannah suspicious, but it feels better to know that someone else can step in and take over, just in case.

“It’ll be fine,” Madeline says, trying to sound brave for both of them, but Connie can hear the worry in Madeline’s voice. She closes her eyes but still the tears find a way of leaking out and spilling down her cheeks.

Isabel stares at the stack of boxes lined up in long, tall rows in her garage, almost touching the ceiling. The garage is so full she can’t even get her car in. It’s daunting, and even Yvonne seems intimidated as she lets out a low whistle.

“This is all from your attic?” she asks, amazed.

Isabel looks at the side of one box scrawled in Bill’s messy handwriting.
Manuals
, she reads. She moves it to the side, creating a small pile for the new owners. Somewhere there are blueprints of the house, something the previous owner had left for them. Bill had been delighted and would pore over each oversized page, taking in every detail, nodding in agreement at the placement of electrical outlets and wiring, complaining about the side door being cut too close to the water heater. Isabel would tease him, say that he was channeling his inner engineer.

“I cleared out the closets and cabinets in the house, too,” she says now. The prospective buyers are coming by next week to take another
look at the house now that the porch is done. She wants them to be able to envision their own things in the house, wants to get rid of all the clutter and who knows what she’s let accumulate over the years.

If things go as planned, she could be out of the house by the end of November. It’s hard to believe that she might be ringing in the new year someplace other than here.

Yvonne opens one box and counts six identical flashlights, still in their packaging.

“That was Bill,” Isabel tells her. “He liked to buy things in bulk. Said it was a better deal.”

“Yeah, but only if you use them,” Yvonne says. She looks around again and shakes her head. “You should have a garage sale. Don’t even bother to unpack everything, just charge fifty dollars per box, sight unseen.”

It’s not a bad idea—after all, Isabel’s made it all this time without ever looking in these boxes—but she can’t.

“No,” she says. “I told Lillian, Bill’s mother, that I’d give her anything of Bill’s she might like to keep. I always meant to go through everything, but I never did. I didn’t want to see any of this, you know? But I owe this to her. She was always so good to me, and she was supportive of our marriage, even when things fell apart.”

“She sounds nice,” Yvonne says.

“She is.” Isabel tugs on a piece of packing tape, wonders how Lillian’s doing. They exchange the occasional card or phone call, but they have less and less to say. She knows that Lillian is still racked with sorrow. “But Bill was her only son and when he died so unexpectedly, she lost it. It was only a few months after Bill’s father had died, so it was a rough time for her. She was like a completely different person. You should have seen her tearing into Ava at the hospital.” Isabel shakes her head at the memory.

Yvonne clears her throat. “Speaking of Ava …”

Isabel doesn’t like the tone of Yvonne’s voice. It’s one part caution, one part determination. Isabel can feel a sales pitch coming from a mile away, and she knows one is about to come from Yvonne.

“We weren’t speaking of Ava,” she says curtly. “We were speaking of Bill’s mother, Lillian, and why I can’t dump this stuff without seeing if there’s something here that she’ll want.” Isabel flips through the manuals in the box and finds other documents stuffed in there as well—old tax returns, insurance papers. It’s going to take her forever to go through everything.

Yvonne isn’t deterred. “I’m saying that maybe you should give Ava a break. I get how awkward and weird this whole thing is, but I think she’s reaching out to you, Isabel. Maybe just find out why, you know?” Yvonne gives her friend a hopeful look. “Maybe not be so quick to shut her down?”

Isabel closes up the box and reaches for another. “I’m glad the two of you had time to bond during your ten-minute incarceration,” she retorts, “but it’s not that simple.”

“Maybe not before,” Yvonne says. “But now I think that’s exactly what this is. Things have changed, Isabel, and something is going on with her. I get the feeling that she doesn’t have anyone else. Anyone other than … you.”

Isabel snorts. “Just because she doesn’t have any friends is not a good reason to put me down as her emergency contact. I still can’t believe she did that.”