Owls Well That Ends Well Read online

  Michael was pretending not to notice. Instead, he was looking with a puzzled expression at the impromptu kitchen table some of the family had constructed by propping the detached bathroom door up on some of the bricks left over from the chimney that had collapsed in September.

  “Someone was trapped in the bathroom,” I said.

  “Ah,” he said, nodding. “Well, we were planning to demolish the quarter bath anyway.”

  He sounded calm about the damage, though I couldn’t tell what his face looked like. He’d donned a mask—Groucho never looked half as good—and began giving Claude and Emma the grand tour of the house. The tour was a lot safer than it used to be, now that I’d cleared all the stuff out. Also a whole lot less interesting, at least with me as tour guide. All the decluttering had temporarily dulled my enthusiasm for the house, so my tour consisted of a series of apologies for the house’s present decrepitude; warnings about what not to touch, walk on, or stand under; and a dispiriting inventory of the repairs needed to make the house habitable.

  Perhaps I should tag along more often on Michael’s tour, I thought, as I sipped my coffee. If I listened with my eyes closed, I could almost see our future kitchen, with its deft blend of period charm and modern functionality, instead of the battered, dated 1940s room I was actually sitting in. The formal dining room next door certainly looked a lot better in the candlelight of Michael’s imagination, with all its plasterwork and parquet painstakingly restored. He was particularly effective at evoking a vision of our library-to-be. You could almost overlook the fact that the actual room was boarded off until we could replace the floor that had collapsed into the basement a couple of decades ago.

  Dad chimed in with his vision of what we planned to do with the yard, though I seriously doubted if we had room on three acres for free-range cows, sheep, and poultry along with the organic vegetable garden and the orchard of endangered heritage fruit trees.

  At least Mother wasn’t around to share her decorating suggestions. Presumably she was still working on her beauty sleep back at the Cave, as Michael and I called the tiny, dank basement apartment we were about to leave behind for the new house.

  I tried to tune all this out. Not that I wasn’t, at least in theory, equally excited about all these projects—the ones that didn’t involve livestock, anyway—but the sheer number of them overwhelmed me, and the only thing that kept me from panicking was that they were all neatly jotted down in the notebook-that-tells-me-when-to-breathe, as I called my giant to-do list. Once they were in the notebook, I could manage not to think of them all the time. And this morning, just thinking about them made me tired.

  And maybe just a little worried.

  People had warned me that buying a house together was one of the most stressful things you could do to a relationship, and renovating it was another, so doing both together probably constituted a death knell for couples less firmly grounded than Michael and me.

  At least I hoped we were firmly grounded. We’d only had a few minor arguments so far. Minor because, after one of us had stormed off—me to my rented forge or Michael to his office at the college—the other had quickly gone running after to apologize, and we’d always mended the quarrel quite satisfactorily by bedtime. Then again, so far we hadn’t gotten very far with the renovations. We’d only gotten as far as working through the clutter.

  And what’s this “we” stuff? the cynical part of my brain put in. You’re the one doing all the work.

  While Michael works two jobs so we can afford it, the kinder, gentler part of my brain replied. Instead of whining, I should be proud of how well he juggled the conflicting roles of drama professor vying for tenure and regular cast member on a syndicated TV show.

  The cynic tried to suggest that money wouldn’t be such a problem if Michael hadn’t committed us to buying such a money pit of a house. Kinder-gentler would then protest that if Michael hadn’t taken the house, we’d still be trying to make do with his tiny basement apartment.

  I was tired of the whole argument. I smacked both voices back into their cages and told them to shut up, at least for today and tomorrow. I had a yard sale to run.

  And the doorbell was ringing again.

  Chapter 5

  Over the next hour, the sixty or seventy people who’d be staffing booths at the yard sale arrived. Michael’s faculty colleagues fit in so perfectly with my family that I kept mistaking them for distant cousins, which boded well for the harmony of the yard sale, but made me want to rethink living in Caerphilly.

  At least the faculty members already knew Michael, or thought they did, and had no interest in asking him probing questions that relatives thought suitable for evaluating potential in-laws. So far he’d dodged questioning from several of my uncles about his political and religious affiliations, but a particularly nosy aunt had surprised him into giving her an inventory of which optional body parts he still possessed: tonsils and wisdom teeth absent, appendix and gall bladder still present and accounted for, and so forth. She didn’t believe that he only wore glasses to read, though, and had taken to following him about and peering at him from various angles, trying to spot the contact lenses she suspected he was wearing. Although Michael usually enjoyed my family rather more than I did, today he was starting to look slightly frayed.

  And every time I opened the door to let in a yard sale participant, I could see that the crowd of waiting customers had grown larger. Spike’s bark was beginning to sound hoarse.

  “Amazing,” I muttered, peering out of the window.

  “What’s amazing?” Rob asked.

  “Look at all the customers,” I said, shaking my head.

  “Is there an official term for a whole lot of customers, like there is for owls and such?” Rob asked. “I know I’ll get in trouble with Dad if I call them the wrong thing.”

  “I’d suggest a gaggle, like for geese, but I don’t want to insult them,” I said. “Though I can’t imagine why this many people would want to spend a perfectly good Saturday at a yard sale.”

  “Maybe Dad took my suggestion,” he said.

  “What suggestion?”

  “To spread a rumor that Captain Ezra Sprocket hid his pirate loot somewhere in the house,” Rob said.

  “Oh, good grief,” I said. “Even if he had and we’d found it, do they really think we’d absent-mindedly put it out for the yard sale along with the empty plastic flowerpots and worn-out linens?”

  Rob shrugged.

  “And didn’t you and Dad make up Pirate Ezra anyway?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “But I can see the Sprockets having a pirate or two in their family tree, can’t you?”

  “They’re all pirates,” I grumbled. “I still don’t get it.”

  “Well, you wouldn’t,” Rob said.

  “No,” I said. “I’ve lost the ability to look at Edwina’s clutter in a detached fashion, as a mere collection of inanimate objects—annoying, perhaps a little sad, but essentially benign. I’ve started to see it as a hostile force occupying the house—a force against which I’ve been doing battle for weeks.”

  “Battle?” Rob echoed.

  “And while I’ve evicted the Army of Clutter from the house, and even banished some of it entirely to the dump or the local antique stores, most of its forces are now encamped on our lawn,” I went on, waving my hand at the yard sale area. “In fact, they’ve gotten reinforcements from other households and are even now plotting revenge. Planning sieges and ambushes, and beaming hostility at us so strongly that I’m surprised you can’t see a visible, tangible haze floating up and drifting malignantly toward the house.”

  “Wow,” Rob said. “I want some of what you’re on.”

  So much for explaining how I felt to my family.

  At eight-thirty my mother showed up, dressed as a flapper, with a candy cigarette in a foot-long antique holder. She looked impossibly elegant, and I fought off one of my occasional moments of resentment that I’d inherited her height, but not her blonde hair or slende
r model’s build.

  She also looked calm and rested, and I wondered if it had been a good idea, camping out here in the house so she and Dad could stay at the Cave. Then I reminded myself that it had been my suggestion. The cramped, cluttered Cave had been giving me claustrophobia for weeks.

  “Hello, dear,” she said, pecking me on the cheek. “Sorry I’m so late. Is there anything I can do to help?”

  “Actually, there is,” I said.

  Mother looked startled. No doubt she’d been making one of those obligatory social offers that one is supposed to decline with polite assurances that everything is under control. After more than thirty-five years, she should know I have no social graces.

  “We’re not opening the sale until nine,” I said. “People have been ringing the doorbell since before six, badgering us to let them in early. Can you do something about them?”

  “Of course, dear,” Mother purred. She drew herself up, adding a full inch to her height, and headed toward the front door with her sternest face on. I wasn’t sure if it was the chance to play Miss Manners and boss people around or the fact that the would-be early birds were trying to get into the sale ahead of her, but she threw herself into her assigned task with enthusiasm. Ten minutes later, when I had a moment to glance out one of the side windows, I saw that she’d chivvied the arriving crowds into a neat line leading up to the gate of the yard sale area, and was lecturing Gordon-you-thief on the rudeness of cutting in line.

  Hundreds of people, and at least half of them in costume. Although many of the costumes consisted solely of masks bought from Rob, who’d set up a table by the driveway, right beneath one of the posters announcing the costume discount. He didn’t have a lot of variety—in fact, apart from Groucho, he only had Richard Nixon and Dracula. I suspected he’d bought the masks in bulk and was selling them at a steep markup. At least he wasn’t charging immediate family, but still, I wasn’t sure I liked the new entrepreneur Rob who’d emerged since his computer-game company had become successful. I’d actually begun to miss the old feckless Rob who couldn’t be bothered with boring practical details like money.

  Someone should talk to Rob, I thought, with a sigh. Preferably someone other than me. I’d recently overheard two aunts praising my willingness to tackle the unpleasant, thankless jobs that no one else would, and realized that no matter how happy it made my aunts, this wasn’t entirely a positive character trait. Neither was being considered the most efficient and organized person in the family. And when you combined the two, you got things like this giant yard sale. Maybe when the yard sale was over, I would work on expanding my vocabulary to include the word “no.”

  I’d worry about that later. After the yard sale. For the moment, I made a mental note to keep an especially sharp eye on the several women in hoop skirts that seemed like a shoplifter’s dream.

  At nine sharp, Rob, Dad, and Michael ceremonially led the dogs away and we opened the gates.

  Gordon-you-thief was among the first half dozen to enter—even Mother couldn’t work miracles.

  I stood inside the gate, trying to make sure no one got knocked down and trampled, and nodding greetings to anyone I recognized—which included most of the local antique and junk dealers. But unfamiliar faces outnumbered the familiar ones. I wondered how many were ordinary customers, lured from all over the adjacent dozen counties by our 30-FAMILY YARD SALE ads, and how many were antiques dealers and pickers.

  No matter. Amateurs or professionals, they could come from Timbuktu if they liked, as long as they all left with their arms full of stuff. And they all seemed intent on doing so. By the end of the first hour I could see major traffic congestion up and down the aisles, as the people in bulky costumes encountered the even larger numbers of people dragging boxes or baskets of stuff along with them.

  At the far end of the fenced-in area we’d placed a dozen ramshackle card tables and several of Mother’s relatives had set up a concession stand. Cousin Bernie and Cousin Horace—the latter in the well-worn gorilla suit that his new girlfriend didn’t often let him wear to parties these days—were already lighting fires in half a dozen grills and checking their supplies of hamburger patties and hot dogs, while Aunt Millicent and Cousin Emily set out plates of sandwiches and cookies and bowls of fruit and salad. We didn’t want anything as mundane as hunger to make people check out early. Cadres of Grouchos and Draculas were already lining up for chow. We’d even arranged to rent two portable toilets, which were tucked discreetly behind the shrubbery in another corner of the yard sale area.

  So far, not a lot of people were checking out at all. That’s where things would get sticky. Most of the sellers had organized an elaborate, color-coded system of price stickers so customers could go through a single checkout at the exit. We’d be weeks coming up with an accurate tally of everyone’s sales, and even then half the sellers would still think they’d been shorted. The sellers who collected money themselves were supposed to issue receipts that their customers could show at checkout, but I already knew they’d forget, and I’d spend way too much time straightening out the resulting problems. And the ballerina and the white rabbit who were currently serving as cashiers were proving unfortunate choices. Harvey seemed terrified of the cash register, and Pavlova of the customers. It was going to be a long day.

  “What’s wrong?” Michael asked, when he returned from his dog delivery mission.

  “Oh, dear,” I said. “Do I look as if something is wrong? I thought I had on my welcoming hostess face.”

  “I’m harder to fool than most of these people,” he said. “I know you too well.”

  “I’m just wondering who in the world will buy all this stuff?”

  “Are you worrying about the quality of the stuff, or just the sheer quantity?”

  “Both,” I said. “Take that, for example.”

  I pointed at a lamp shade on a nearby table.

  “Ick,” he said.

  “Ick” summed it up pretty well. The lamp shade was huge—three feet tall, and equally wide at the base, though the sides curved in as they went upward and then flared out again, making it look like an inverted Art Nouveau birdbath. Its dominant colors were orange and purple, though at least a dozen other hues appeared here and there in the trimmings. And as for the trimmings, I had nothing against lace, fringe, braid, bows, beads, tassels, appliqués, rosettes, silk flowers, rhinestones, prisms, or embroidery, but I thought inflicting all of them on one defenseless shade was unforgivable.

  “I can see why someone would want to get rid of it,” I said.

  “I’d have dumped it ages ago,” Michael said, after glancing behind him to make sure the seller was truly out of earshot.

  “Who in the world was so devoid of taste that they’d make such a thing?” I exclaimed. “And more to the point, who will ever buy it?”

  Michael shrugged.

  “Beats me,” he said. “But odds are someone will buy it, and if not, we’ve got the truck from the charity coming Monday morning, and then the Dumpster from the trash company in the afternoon. One way or another, it’ll all be gone by Monday night.”

  “And good riddance,” I said. “Meanwhile, why is Mrs. Fenniman shaking her fist at Cousin Dolores?”

  “Damn,” he said. “I thought I’d calmed them down. Apparently Dolores is selling a spectacularly ugly vase Mrs. Fenniman gave her as a wedding present. Mrs. Fenniman is peeved.”

  “Dolores dumped the groom a good five years ago,” I said. “If you ask me, she’s allowed to unload the baggage that came with him. Should I go and explain that to Mrs. Fenniman?”

  “Strangely enough, that’s almost exactly what your mother said just now when I asked her to mediate,” Michael said. “Ah, there she is.”

  As usual in our family, Mother’s arrival shut down hostilities instantly, as both combatants scrambled to avoid her wrath.

  “Thank God for Mother sometimes,” I said. “Though whenever I find myself saying that, I always wonder if I should take my own temperat
ure. And what is Everett doing with his boom lift, anyway?”

  I pointed up, where one of the portable toilets had been lifted forty feet in the air on the platform of the boom lift. Everett, one of Mother’s more enterprising cousins, had brought the boom lift over two weeks ago to help with our roof repairs. It was a multiperson model, with a six-foot wide metal platform on the end of a forty-foot extension arm. The arm so dwarfed the tractor base below that I kept expecting the whole contraption to topple over. So far even Mother’s family hadn’t achieved that in any of the boom lift’s previous outings, though several had broken limbs by slipping through the railings and falling off the platform. At least whoever had put the portable toilet on the platform seemed to have loaded it securely.

  “I heard him threatening to play a joke on your Uncle Floyd,” Michael said.

  Just then, the portable toilet’s door slammed open and a portly man, still fumbling with his fly, stepped out, looked down, and abandoned his pants to clutch the rail of the boom lift.

  “I think Everett picked up the wrong toilet,” I said. “That’s not Uncle Floyd.”

  “No, it’s Dr. Gruber,” Michael said. “Chairman of the Music Department. I’d better go rescue him.”

  Michael took off running. Uncle Floyd emerged from the other toilet and joined the crowd gawking up at the airborne professor.

  “Good heavens,” exclaimed a voice behind me, in an English accent.

  “Morning, Giles,” I said, turning to greet him. Giles Rathbone was one of Michael’s closest friends on the Caerphilly College faculty, not to mention a member of his tenure committee.

  And he wasn’t wearing a costume. I liked Giles.

  “I had no idea yard sales were so … lively,” he said, staring up at the boom lift with visible alarm.