‘Well, to paraphrase the Cat in the Hat,’ Kim said, tucking the packet of letters under her arm, ‘this mess is so deep and so wide and so tall, we’ll never get through it, there’s no way at all.’
‘One step at a time,’ I reassured her. ‘As for me, I’m starting with the furniture.’
EIGHT
‘Mark how fleeting and paltry is the estate of man – yesterday in embryo, tomorrow a mummy or ashes.’
Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, Meditations, IV, 48
I had just returned from dragging the last scrap of an ancient folding typewriter table out to the dumpster behind the courthouse when the iPhone I’d tucked into the back pocket of my jeans began to vibrate.
I pulled it out and checked the display. Paul.
‘Hey,’ I said, stepping out into the sunshine to take the call, feeling grateful for the break.
‘You’re needed at the cottage,’ my husband said. ‘Rusty’s got the tiles laid in the bathroom, but it seems we have a decision to make about the grout.’
‘What’s to decide?’ I asked. ‘Grout is grout.’
‘You might think so, my dear, but I’m holding a color chart in my hands right now. There’s white, of course, but we’ve also got pure white, antique white, linen white-’
‘Darling,’ I interrupted, ‘white is white. Pick one.’
‘Then there’s canvas, cinnamon, and silver,’ Paul continued as if I hadn’t spoken. ‘Mauve, rose, wheat, cocoa, cayenne, smoke, cadet blue and something called Navajo.’
‘Navajo? What kind of a color is Navajo?’
‘Kind of a warm beige. But you can see why I need you here.’
‘Paul…’ I began, thinking about the mountains of refuse we still had to dispose of in the cluttered courthouse basement.
‘I’m leaning toward evergreen myself, maybe black,’ he continued.
I had to laugh. ‘I’m sure. But you’re right – we’re going to have to live with the grout for a long time. Tell Rusty I’ll be home in about twenty minutes.’
Down in the basement, I apologized to Kim and Fran. ‘I’ll be back as soon as I can.’
‘Not a problem,’ Kim said, wiping her hands on her jeans. She checked her watch. ‘Three o’clock. I’m ready to call it a day anyhow. How about you, Fran?’
Before coming to work that morning, after stopping at Walgreen, Fran had visited Office Depot and purchased several dozen bankers’ boxes. ‘Not archival quality, acid-free and all that, but they’ll do in a pinch,’ she’d said with a sniff. She was busily unfolding one now, and looked up with some annoyance. ‘I’ll just finish assembling the boxes, then. You two go on,’ she said, her face behind the gauze a mask of martyrdom.
‘See you in the morning?’ I asked, looking directly at Kim.
‘Sure thing,’ she said.
I trudged up after her. At the top of the stairs, the county clerk paused, whipped off her mask and said, ‘I’ll be getting a set of keys made for both you and Fran so you can come and go as you please.’
‘That would be terrific. Thank you.’
After thoroughly washing my hands and face, I bid goodbye to Kim in the courthouse ladies’ room, lobbed my paper towel into the wastepaper basket just inside the door and headed for home.
The bathroom tiles were a glass mosaic named ‘beachy blue.’ After spending five minutes in the master bath with Rusty and the grout samples, I consulted with Paul and we agreed on an off-white grout called ‘pearl.’ ‘Go for it, Rusty,’ I said, handing back the sample.
Decision made, I checked in with Dwight who was working on the fireplace, then headed out to the kitchen and poured myself a tall glass of iced tea. I was gulping it down like a thirsty camel when somebody screamed. Short, sharp and painful, like a man being bitten by an alligator.
I rushed into the living room, nearly colliding with Paul as he dashed in through the screen door from the porch.
Dwight, his face ashen, pointed. Rusty, who had come running downstairs to help when his father called, looked ill.
On the hearth sat a small bundle of newspapers, brown and brittle with age. ‘I found it on the smoke shelf,’ Dwight said, his voice quavering. ‘I can’t believe I touched it.’ He stared at his hand as if it were an alien thing.
‘What is it?’ Paul asked.
‘Maybe it’s a doll. Like one of those shriveled apple head things they sell at Cracker Barrel.’ Dwight poked gingerly at the newspaper with a soot-stained index finger. ‘Made out of suede, you know.’ He sighed, stood and took a step back. ‘But I’m pretty sure it’s a baby.’
‘Awesome!’ Rusty whipped out his iPhone and leaned closer. I heard the simulated whirr of a camera shutter, then another.
Dwight slapped his son on the back of the head with the flat of his hand. ‘Show some respect, asshole.’
‘Damn,’ Rusty said, rubbing the sore spot briskly. ‘It’s not every day you see something like this, Pops.’ He took another picture just to show who was in charge, then tucked his phone away.
‘Why would anyone put a doll up a chimney?’ Dwight asked.
Next to me, Paul shivered. ‘Why would anyone put a baby up a chimney?’
Heart hammering, I knelt down for a closer look. Dwight had peeled back the newspapers far enough to reveal what looked to me like the shriveled mummy of an infant, its skin dark and leathery. The features were sunken, but its button nose was intact and each tiny eyelash remained visible where the eyelids closed against its cheeks. My heart twisted painfully when I noticed two tiny teeth peeping out over the child’s shriveled lower lip. ‘Oh, Paul,’ I said, sagging against his leg. Focusing through a mist of tears, I noted a cloth diaper, folded in a triangle and secured with a tarnished diaper pin, and a white cotton shift, now grey with soot. The baby was nestled in what remained of a flannel blanket. I wanted to pick up this child and hold it to my breast, comfort it by rocking.
‘What’s a smoke shelf?’ Paul asked the contractor.
‘It’s a shelf just behind the damper. Catches debris, like bird shit falling down the chimney. Helps the chimney draw.’
‘And nobody noticed…’ I began.
‘Even if you stuck your head clear up the chimney, Mrs Ives, you wouldn’t be able to see the smoke shelf because it’s blocked by the damper.’
I looked up at my husband. ‘It’s definitely a baby, Paul. We have to call somebody, but who?’
Rusty answered me first. ‘The sheriff, I reckon.’
‘How long do you think it’s been there?’ Paul asked as Rusty stepped into the kitchen to make the call. His father stood quietly by the door, as if prepared to bolt.
I cocked my head, trying to read the print on the newspaper. It appeared to be part of the classified section – legal notices, jobs wanted, ads for Motorola TVs on sale at Hechts, ladies summer dresses for five dollars. ‘It’s wrapped in a Tilghman Tribune from August of 1951,’ I told him.
‘Good Lord. If it is a baby, the poor thing has been stuck up our chimney for more than sixty years.’
I squatted next to the bundle again, looking closely but not touching. ‘Somebody loved this child,’ I said.
‘How can you tell?’
I pointed. ‘Look how her hands are folded. How securely she was wrapped.’
‘She? How can you be certain it’s a girl?’
I looked up at my husband, tears again distorting my view. ‘The blanket has rosebuds embroidered on it, Paul.’
While we waited for the sheriff, Paul, Dwight, Rusty and I sat around the kitchen table like zombies at a wake. Rusty left for a few minutes to rescue the grout he’d been mixing up in the master bath and, when he returned, I offered everyone something to drink. Only Rusty took me up on it.
I’d just popped a K-cup into the Keurig to brew Rusty a second cup of Hazelnut when a white Dodge Charger pulled up outside, its light bar flashing. ‘Sheriff’ and ‘Tilghman County’ were painted on the doors, the words separated by a jaunty blue racing stripe. A pale green Honda pulled in behind the police car and a middle-aged man dressed in a gray business suit climbed out.