"Find another sucker?" Pat inquired pointedly.
Mr. Platt made deprecating noises, but Pat knew that was precisely what he was thinking. It had never occurred to him, until Jerry walked into his life, that anyone would be fool enough to buy either of the old houses. Where there was one, there might be another.
And of course there were others, many of them. Pat and Jerry were among the first of the frustrated city dwellers to move out, seeking lower prices and country air. They bought up the old houses that dotted the countryside and remodeled them; builders caught on to the trend and constructed streets of little modern boxes amid the cornfields and pastures. Among these sharp businessmen was Mr. Platt. He had not mentioned to them-why should he, after all?-that he owned all the property along Bates Road. The year after they bought their house the bulldozers moved in, and by November there was a new street, named Magnolia Drive, lined with houses. The homes in Magnolia Estates (Mr. Platt was not a man of imagination) had only two basic floor plans, but by painting them different colors and changing details such as shutters and rooflines, Mr. Platt managed to give them a simulacrum of individuality. Jerry swore at the houses and their builder at least once a day. But Pat rather liked the "new people," though she saw little of them. She had gone back to work part-time by then. Mark was in school all day, and Jerry's beloved house was draining them financially, even though he did most of the work himself.
For a solid year he worked every night and every weekend and every day of his vacation. Under his direction Pat wore the skin off her fingers scraping and sanding and painting. When Jerry put on the new roof she stood clutching the ladder, an ineffectual gesture, as he laughingly pointed out, though of course he appreciated the thought.
The end of the year did not mark the end of Jerry's labors, for by that time he was so infatuated with the house that improving it had become a pleasurable hobby instead of a duty. But the worst of the work was done by then; the house was habitable, and Pat had moments when she admitted that she was getting rather fond of the place herself. The newly plastered walls had been painted in pastel shades, Delft blue and sunny yellow; the floors gleamed with wax. The newel posts and banisters were walnut. Azaleas and rhododendron emerged from the weeds and bloomed brilliantly, as if grateful for their new freedom. As Jerry's salary rose he bought gifts for the house-new bathroom fixtures, a modern kitchen-and, cautiously and with care, a few treasured antiques.
All those years the house next door stood empty, tied up in legal complications-or perhaps, for Mr. Platt was no fool, being held for the inevitable rise in price. The shrubbery grew taller and ranker every year. Occasionally old Hiram hacked some of the weeds down, but he did not discourage the growths that ensured his privacy.
As Pat sat sipping her coffee and watching the moving men struggle through the windy weather with their bur-dens, she could deduce where many of the pieces of furni-ture would go. The houses were not only duplicates, they were mirror images of one another. The oriel window in her bedroom faced the oriel in the master bedroom next door. Unfortunately the Gothic tracery and small panes made it impossible for her to see inside the room, but she assumed that the heavy carved headboard of the Victorian double bed would be placed in the master bedroom, along with the matching dresser and marble-topped washstand. The smaller dresser, painted white-French provincial probably, though she couldn't make out the details-must belong to a girl child, unless husband and wife had separate bedrooms. The second-best bedroom, corresponding to the one Mark occupied, was at the back of the house, on the same side as the master bedroom. Perhaps the white furniture would go in that room. She had seen only two dressers carried in, which didn't necessarily prove that only two bedrooms would be in use…
At that point in her speculations her front-door bell rang.
Pat peered through the spyhole in the door before she opened it. When they first bought the house, she didn't even bother locking the doors most of the time. But the city was moving out to join them, and with it came fear.
What she saw through the spyhole, grotesquely distorted by the glass, was a face set in a hideous leer. Fingers wriggled at each ear and a long pink tongue protruded.
Pat opened the door.
" Nancy. How nice to see your lovely face."
Nancy 's hair was bright red-the result of art, not nature. She was twenty pounds overweight, and was always on a diet. That morning she was wearing a padded jacket belonging to one of her large sons. It did nothing for her figure.
"Have you seen the new neighbors yet?" she asked, shedding the jacket. "What kind of furniture do they have? I didn't realize you were home; why didn't you call me? If I hadn't seen your car when I happened to take a walk-"
"On a day like this?" Pat grinned at her neighbor, whose dislike of healthy exercise was as notorious as her constant dieting.
Nancy grinned back. She had very large white teeth; in any other woman the dental display might have been alarming, suggestive of werewolves. Combined with Nancy 's snub nose and plump cheeks, the teeth were rather endearing.
"Damn you, you're always catching me in my little lies. All right, I came because I was dying of curiosity. I planned to break a shoelace or something outside their gate. But this is better. Don't tell me you weren't looking."
"Of course I was. Let me warm up the coffee and then we'll go back to my room. I've got a beautiful view from the corner window."
Perched on a kitchen stool, Nancy continued to chatter while Pat heated the coffee and toasted English muffins. She was Pat's closest friend on "the street," as its inhabitants called it. She was also the neighborhood gossip, and proud of the title. When you wondered why the police cars had been parked outside Number 146 last night, you called Nancy. She always knew, just as she was the first to know that the Andersons had finally split up and that the funny-looking white dog that knocked over your garbage can belonged to the Dunlaps on Azalea Court. But she had a heart as big as her curiosity; hurt children and weeping wives carried their problems to her, and every stray dog and cat in the area arrived at her back door, as if the Humane Society had drawn them a map.
Pat poured coffee and offered cream and sugar. Nancy took both, and helped herself lavishly to raspberry jam, heaping it on the toasted muffins. A raspberry patch had been one of the amenities to emerge from the weeds when Jerry started his yard work; Pat made jam every summer, and pies too. Jerry loved red raspberry pie.
Carrying their snack, they went upstairs and sat down in the window seat. Jud sat on Nancy 's feet, drooling in a disgusting fashion. Like all dogs, he knew a sucker when he met one. Nancy fed him scraps of muffin, but her eyes were glued to the window.
"A piano! A baby grand, no less… Somebody is musical."
"Brilliant deduction," Pat said affectionately. "Maybe the daughter plays. You did say there was a daughter?"
"Mm-hmm. High-school age. Most of them take piano lessons, don't they?"
"Some of them do." Like Pat, Nancy lacked female children. She had four boys, ranging in age from ten to eighteen. Nancy pretended to know nothing of the habits of young girls, although her home often overflowed with them. Her boys were handsome and popular, and, as Nancy often complained, young girls these days had no modesty at all, the way they chased the boys.
"Maybe Friedrichs plays himself," she went on indistinctly, through a mouthful of muffin and jam. "No reason why a lawyer shouldn't play the piano, I guess. A baby grand seems a little lavish for a teenager, unless she's a juvenile Myra Hess."
"Maybe it belongs to Mrs. Friedrichs," Pat suggested, knowing that this game of endless, fruitless speculation was one of Nancy 's favorite activities. Pat rather enjoyed it herself. Had not Jane Austen written great novels about the minutiae of neighborhood life?