Whistlin' Dixie in a Nor'easter (33 page)

I could feel the tension growing. Tim and Cheryl were not happy. “I’m gonna go back downstairs, y’all, let me know if you need anything,” I said, dying to get out of there.

Right as I had my hand on the doorknob, Denise glanced around the room. “How about an ashtray? I don’t see one in here.”

Uh-oh. Here it is
. “I told Nick on the phone we’re nonsmoking.” I cringed when I said it. Denise immediately looked over at Nick, who merely shrugged his shoulders. “If y’all really need a puff, you’ll find some ashtrays on the porches.”
In the twenty-below temp.

Dead silence.

“Well, I’ll be on my way.”

“It’s co
wo
ld in here,” the Cheryl girl slipped in before I could get out of their room.

“I feel your pain,” I told her from the doorway. “I’m still not used to it. It’s just life in Vermont. Feel free to turn on your space heaters though.”

Now, no one was smiling.

“Oh, one more thing, do y’all prefer the first seating or the second seating?” I asked, trying to lighten up the mood.

They all looked at me, confused.

“For dinner? It comes with your room. All except the liquor.”

“First seating. We’ll be up at Sugartree when the New Year arrives,” Nick said, and cracked his knuckles.

“Okay, we’ll see y’all at six thirty.” I gave them a quick wave and escaped.

When I got back downstairs, Gracie was barking her head off at the guy from Mountain Plumbing. The poor old thing had become possessive of everyone who worked at the inn and she was trying to protect Jeb from the stranger.

“Gracie, shhhhh.” I scooped her up and tossed her into our apartment. “Hi, I’m Leelee.”

He nodded his head and said, “Mountain Plumbing.”
EDDIE
was monogrammed on his shirt.

“Has Jeb already shown you the problem?”

“Yuup, and that’s what it is. A problem.”

“I know that. Is it bad?”

“The booster to your Hobart’s got a leak.”

“Soooo, is it gonna take a while to fix?”

“Nuup.”

“Well, that’s good.”

“Only if you consider not fixing it good. The problem is I don’t have the part. We can’t get one until Monday due to the holiday weekend.”

“Will it even make it through the weekend? I’ve got three more sold-out nights ahead of me.”

“If I was you, I’d keep my fingers cross’t. If she blows, your Hobart blows, and then you’ll be washin’ all your dishes by hand.”

“And if that happens, I might just have to quit,” Jeb said, twirling his handlebar.

“Come on, Jeb, you wouldn’t do that to me. We’re gonna think positive and pray it holds out on us. Out of curiosity, about how much do you estimate this costing?” I asked Eddie.

“It’s hard to say, miss, but somewhere in the neighborhood of fifteen hundred dollars, I’d guess.”

There went the weekend’s profit.

That one mishap set the tone for the entire evening. Every staff member was on edge afterward. Pierre’s coffee cup appeared on top of the fridge before the first customers even arrived. If we lost our Hobart, we might as well shut down. When we were busy, Jeb spent all night sliding the trays in and out of there nonstop. And now we were staring at the busiest weekend of the year.

On top of everything, it was the coldest night of the year. The temperature outside plummeted way below the zero mark. My two-hundred-year-old inn with hardly any insulation was downright freezing. The heat was cranked up full blast in all the rooms, fires were going in all seven fireplaces, extra
blankets were on all the beds, and I had space heaters in each room, yet it still felt like a meat locker to me. If I hadn’t been moving all the time and running in and out of the warm kitchen, I would have had to wear my fur coat inside.

The first customers began arriving around 6:00
P.M.
Knowing I’d never be able to get everyone seated
and
mix their drinks I decided to hire Sarah’s kindergarten teacher, Bev. Whenever the restaurant had more than sixty reservations, I always hired Bev to help out. Bartending was Bev’s other job—her moonlight.

The first seating went pretty well; Peter and Jim were cranking out the dinners in the kitchen and the “front of the house” seemed to be on top of things. About 9:00
P.M.
though, around the time when all the tables started to turn over, holy hell broke loose.

Right as I was helping Jonathan change over a table from a party of ten
poof
, the lights went out! It wasn’t pitch-dark inside, thanks to the candles on the tables and the fires in the fireplaces. But every light downstairs suddenly went black. I fled from the table and burst into the kitchen, which, thank God, was still lit.

“The lights are out in the restaurant,” I yelled from the doorway. Not one person looked my way. “Everybody! Anybody?
Help
!”

Roberta finally looked up from the cake she was slicing and shrugged with an “I’m sorry but . . .” look on her face. Pierre was announcing table four’s order to Peter, who was all but ignoring him. Peter had every pan in the place full, and since each meal was made to order his total concentration was required. There was not one soul willing to stop and help me.

“Jeb, the lights are out, I need your help!” I pleaded.

“What’s going to happen to all these dishes if I leave the Hobart?” When Jeb gets busy, he loves to act like he’s the VIP in the kitchen.

“But, what’ll I do?”

“Go check the fuse box.”

“Where
is
the fuse box?” I yelled back.

“Down cellar!”

“And then what?”

He just shrugged his shoulders.

“Ohhhh,” I sighed in frustration, throwing up my arms, “just
forget it
.” I ran back out of the kitchen, and noticed Nick motioning me over to the foyer, where thirty people,
at least
, were waiting to be seated.

“Look, I’m not sure what happened, but it’s pitch-dark upstairs. All the electricity is out and my wife’s freaking out, man. Can you do something about it?”

“THE LIGHTS ARE OUT UPSTAIRS,
TOO
?” I heard myself shrieking, even though the guests were within earshot.

“Yep. Do you got a flashlight?”

“I’m sure we have several, but I have no idea where one is!” Inside, my head was spinning and I felt like I couldn’t get a deep breath. “Wait right here. I’ll get a candle.” I pushed through the growing crowd of people with nine o’clock reservations, grabbed a candle off the mantel, and hurried up the stairs with Nick.

“Hey, I’m sorry about all this,” he said, as we dashed up the stairs.

“It’s not your fault. This has never happened since
I’ve
lived here.” Just thinking about the impatient customers in the foyer made my heart beat louder and harder until I was nearly out of breath.

Once I was upstairs, where the fire in the fireplace illuminated the sitting room, I caught sight of Cheryl sneaking out of their suite with a space heater in her arms.

“Where are you going with that space heater?” I barked.

“Uh, to the room across the hall.”

“There is someone staying in that room, and they already have a space heater.”

Something about the way she turned around and scurried back to her room with the space heater told me they were up to no good.

I peeked inside the room she was headed to, and the space heater that belonged there was gone. The sound of people scampering down the hall startled me, and when I turned around, Nick and company were breaking out of their room all bundled up.

“We’ll see you later,” Nick said, while the others giggled, and all four raced each other down the stairs to get out the front door.

The inside of their suite told the story. While all the other houseguests
were downstairs at dinner, the frolicking foursome must have snuck into the other rooms and stole the space heaters. Six space heaters, two in each bedroom and two in the little sitting room, were plugged into the sockets. Even
I
know you can’t do that.

I yanked the cords out of the sockets, grabbed the handles of two of the extra heaters, and stormed out of the suite. After placing each one back in the room where it belonged, I flew down the stairs, past the foyer full of antsy people. With no time to seat another single soul, I descended the cellar stairs in search of a black box, or a silver box, or any kind of box that looked like it might contain circuits. There were two big black circuit boxes at the bottom of the stairs and a flashlight hanging on the wall in between the two.

I threw open the door of the first one and scanned the labels on the inside. Cellar, kitchen, side porch, front porch, owners’ quarters—not a one of them said a thing about the upstairs or the front dining room. I threw open the next box and my eyes made the same descent down the list. Furnace, dishwasher, walk-in, dryer, washing machine—again,
nothing
about upstairs or the dining rooms.

There must be another circuit box somewhere in this dungeon
, I thought. I shined the flashlight in every nook and cranny in the basement (which by the way creeps me out just being down there alone). Down where the wine was kept, in a faraway corner, I spied a small gray box up on the wall. It was high above my head so I pulled up an old rickety chair. I climbed up, having to balance myself on top of the wobbly legs. Jerking open the door of the box, I found eight old-timey fuses. How in the world was I supposed to know which fuse was bad or if this was the right fuse box anyway? There was no itemized list.

So I shined the flashlight up and down the fuses until I discovered a little black mark.
Aha! This has to be the problem
, I thought. Carefully I unscrewed the bad fuse. Then it hit me. Yes, I had discovered the problem—but now I was faced with an even bigger one. It was after 9:00
P.M.
on a Friday night—a holiday night—and I was in
Willingham, Vermont
, population twenty. I couldn’t just run to Home Depot and pick up more fuses.

Just as I was considering throwing all the breakers, causing a full blackout in the place, and hiding until all the guests finally left, I noticed, among the cobwebs on a ledge at knee level, lots of old dusty fuses. Some were in boxes, others were not. But in keeping with the Schloygin tradition, nothing old was thrown away. I knew they never discarded anything but this was ridiculous. Every dead fuse they ever bought was on that ledge.

They were filthy. I had no choice but to use my dress as a rag to wipe away the thick layer of dust covering each glass top, in hopes of finding one good fuse. I must have wiped off fifty of them before I noticed, hidden among the used ones, a 30-amp fuse with a
clear glass top.
“Thank you, Jesus!” I screamed. I climbed back up on the chair to screw in the fuse with no black dot.
Please let this one work, God, please
.

I raced back up the stairs and when I reached the top and saw lights on in the dining room, I almost cried. I tore back through the foyer and could tell by looking up from the bottom of the stairs that all was back to normal up there, too. The only thing abnormal was that each and every foot-tapping person that had been waiting in the foyer miraculously had a seat.

I practically crawled back to the kitchen. Bev was busy mixing drinks and I forced myself to jump in and help her deliver the beverages out to the dining room. As I rounded the corner on the way back to the kitchen, Sarah opened the door from our apartment. I could tell that something was terribly wrong. She seemed horrified. Mandy and Isabella appeared right behind her and I knew for certain there was an emergency.

“There’s something wrong with Gracie,” Sarah said. “She won’t get up and she’s breathing funny.”

“She’s in your closet,” said Isabella. “I found her when I went to try on your shoes.”

Mandy’s tortured face told the whole story.

Into my bedroom I flew, all dusty, frazzled, and red hair flying every which-a-way. There was my little Princess Grace Kelly, lying motionless in my closet with her head upon my slipper. I knelt down right next to her and put my face close to hers. The fur around her face brushed my cheek and I could hardly tell if she was breathing or not. Her eyes were barely open but she could sense me.

“Gracie,” I said softly, as tears streamed down my cheeks, “what’s wrong? Are you okay? Oh, sweetie, please get up.” She moved not a muscle.
Oh God, please. I’m not ready for Gracie to go. Not tonight
.

“Gracie, Gracie please, please get up.” I gently stroked her little head and cautiously moved my hand along her tiny body and onto her tail. Her breathing was labored and I knew in my heart Gracie wouldn’t last long. Yet I couldn’t imagine such a thing. She’d been my little companion since I was seventeen, long before the births of my daughters. Gracie was the last present Mama ever gave me before
she
died.

Ever so gently, I scooped Gracie up and placed her in the crook of my arm and caressed her tiny head. The girls knelt down beside me, stroking Gracie’s body, and all of us watched our petite friend slipping away. Her shallow breaths came further and further apart until her belly heaved and she gasped for her last bit of air. I cradled her close to my chest and burst into heavy sobs. Naturally, Sarah and Isabella did, too, and Mandy’s eyes welled up right along with ours.

Gracie’s eyes finally closed all the way. I stared down at her tiny limp body, motionless in my arms. I felt the warmth leave her and I couldn’t bear it. “Go get a towel from the bathroom for me, Sarah.”

“Okay, Mommy, I will.” Sarah went into the bathroom and brought back her most favorite towel, with the Little Mermaid on it, and knelt back down beside me.

“Here, baby,” I said, “lay the towel down on the floor where Gracie was.”

Sarah stretched it out on the carpet. Isabella sat in Mandy’s lap, still too young to fully comprehend.

“Put Princess Grace right next to Ariel. That’s the best spot,” Sarah said.

I laid her back down on top of the towel right next to the Little Mermaid. Then I covered her up, spreading one side of the towel over her at a time.