Chapter 7
After too much of her lifetime spent worrying about appearances, this didn’t exactly bode well. She peeked out the living room window to see dozens of strangers standing outside watching the goings-on at her house. She wanted to creep out the back, run around, and join them, blending in so they wouldn’t know who she was.
She walked back into the kitchen, Mugs very close to her heels. The poor guy is hungry after walking into town and back again. She should have fed him before they left, but she had been too angry to think straight. Yet, his food was easy to take care of. She had both wet and dry food for Mugs.
She lifted the appropriate bag onto the table, and gathered his food and water dishes. With his bowls now filled, she looked around the kitchen for an out-of-the-way spot where he could eat in peace. There really wasn’t any area that worked with the natural traffic patterns in this room.
She could put Mugs’s food and water bowls on the deck, but not right now as dozens of people were working around the house. And probably not a good idea anyway given she didn’t know what other animals were out there. She went into the entrance hallway where a bench had been situated so people could sit to put on their shoes, and that vacant space underneath the bench would work, but it would only be a temporary fix—not exactly where she wanted to keep the dog’s food and water bowls when company arrived. She returned to the kitchen and studied the lower cabinets.
One of the lower cupboard doors hung at a slight angle. She opened it up to find the shelf on the inside was askew too. This house was falling apart. How had Nan stayed here for so long without repairing stuff? Doreen tried to straighten the shelf so it would be usable again, only it broke into two pieces while in her hands. “Great.”
She tugged the pieces of wood free. It came loose suddenly, sending her flying to her butt. Doreen sat there, glaring at the now-empty space. It was a rather large cupboard, accessible. “Mugs,” she called out.
Mugs sniffed around, already at her side, his big jowls waggling back and forth in joy. She glanced at her messy suit, Nan’s old gardening shoes on her feet, while considering the fact she sat on the dirty kitchen floor, holding a busted shelf. Tears came to her eyes as she dropped the shelf pieces beside her. She threw her arms around her beloved dog and held him close. But he could only stand that for a few minutes before he wiggled free. She moved her legs out of the way, and instantly Mugs walked into the cupboard.
The cupboard was at least three feet across. It didn’t make any sense to have it here. The door didn’t fit properly. She assumed a different door had been here at one point in time. Neither did the flooring go all the way to the end of the cupboard. How wrong was that? On the other hand, it was a potential place to put Mugs’s food and water bowls.
At least with them in there, the bird wasn’t likely to eat it all either. She hoped. She kicked off Nan’s old shoes, got to her feet to retrieve the dog’s food and water bowls, and put them inside the cupboard. Mugs didn’t seem to mind his accommodations at all. He dug right in.
“Dinnertime. Dinnertime.”
She spun to see Thaddeus strutting back and forth on the kitchen table. He stopped beside the open can of wet dog food and pecked away at the little bits of food still stuck to the bottom of the can. As if getting the scent of the dry dog food, his head flew up. He cocked it sideways to look at her first and then at the bag where the dry dog food came from and carefully walked forward, his neck fully extended. When he got to the bag, he stuck his head inside, pulled back, and stuck it in again. This time he came out with a dry kernel. He put it on the table and pecked at it, then said, “Dinnertime. Dinnertime for Thaddeus.”
She wasn’t sure she would survive all this domesticity, taking care of not only herself and Mugs but now a bird and a cat. Probably like taking care of children. Something else she had no firsthand experience with. Not even secondhand experience. Too bad she and Nan couldn’t share this old house now that Doreen had arrived and also share the pet-related responsibilities. But hopefully she would be working a day job, away from home, so she knew it was better that Nan have twenty-four-hour assistance available at Rosemoor.
Groaning, her legs not working quite the same as they had before her walk, Doreen trudged over, while Thaddeus pulled out one more kernel from the dog food bag and put it on the table. She said in a firm voice, “That’s Mugs’s dinner.”
She closed the bag, cleaned up the kitchen, and then studied the room. Surprisingly Thaddeus had been quiet all this time. She needed to get Thaddeus some food, or they would have an all-out war over the dog food soon. But where was the bird food, and what did a parrot like this eat? She’d forgotten to ask Nan about that. Darn. Mugs had already adjusted to a much cheaper dog food than he was accustomed to, but she didn’t need Thaddeus eating it any faster.
Who had Nan left in charge of him and Goliath for these three weeks before Doreen arrived? Or had Nan walked back and forth each day to feed her animals? Or was that the Marge Nan had mentioned when Doreen first arrived? Nan cared for her animals meticulously and obviously wouldn’t have let them suffer. Thaddeus was an African Grey, Nan had said. It would outlive both Nan and Doreen.
That didn’t bear thinking about.
She searched the kitchen cupboards, looking for bird food but finding none. She turned in frustration, the bird staring at her, his head cocked to one side.
He spoke again. “Thaddeus is hungry. Thaddeus is hungry.”
She glared at him. “Do you have to say everything twice?”
“Yes. Yes.”
She groaned. “Enough.”
“Thaddeus is hungry. Thaddeus is hungry.”
In defeat she pulled out her phone and called Nan. “Have you got food here for Thaddeus?”
“It’s in the front closet on the top shelf,” Nan said with a giggle. “Is he eating the dog food yet?”
“Well, he is trying to. I presume he also eats Goliath’s food too?”
“Who’s Goliath?”
Silence overtook her. Doreen frowned into the phone. “Your cat?”
“Oh, well, Goliath is a better name than I gave him.” Nan giggled. “Cat food and bird food are all in the closet. Don’t leave the door open, or Thaddeus will get in all the food.”
With Nan still on the phone, Doreen headed to the closet and tried to open it. “Why would you lock this closet? The bird can’t turn a doorknob.”
“It isn’t locked. It’s just got a strong spring, so it shuts firmly. Turn the handle and tug real hard.”
“Really?” She squeezed the phone between her ear and shoulder, and, with both hands, she turned the doorknob and gave it a sharp tug. It opened easily enough, considering, sending her backward. “Well, you’re right about it sticking.” She looked up at the corners, realizing the door had swelled, and that was why it had been stuck. “This door should be taken off its hinges and sanded down,” she said to Nan. “There are some things I know need to be done as I oversaw the work at the estate, I’ve just never done it myself.”
Nan laughed. “That’s a minor thing. Wait ’til you see the rest of the things falling apart in the house.”
“Oh, great.” But bags of pet food were up on the shelf. She pulled out the cat food and some of the bird food. She found another set of food and water bowls that she could use to feed the cat, since Doreen hadn’t seen any others out in the house already. Did Thaddeus eat and drink from a bowl? So far she’d seen him eat off the floor and the table. The rest of her conversation with Nan was about how much Doreen was supposed to feed Thaddeus and Goliath and where to feed them.
“He has two bowls. One for water, but he prefers my tea,” she chuckled. “And loves the blue bowl with chips out of the side. He’s partial to that one but will eat out of anything. It’s important that you put Thaddeus on his roost after eating. He’s very good at keeping the house area clean in general, but you have to change the newspapers around the base of his stand.”
While Thaddeus ate on the kitchen table—a habit she really didn’t want him to continue—Doreen walked to the bird’s perch and stood, staring at the soiled newspapers positioned around the base of the stand, and saw what Nan had been talking about. Doreen’s long-sounding sigh had Nan giggling on the other end.
“Did you really think he didn’t have to go to the bathroom when inside the house?”
“How many times a day does he go?” Doreen asked suspiciously.
In a way-too-innocent-sounding voice, Nan said, “Not too often. Just change the newspapers whenever you can. Every day would be good.” And then she hung up.
“Darn.” After the day Doreen had had, what was a little poop? She rolled up her sleeves, gathered the dirty newspapers together and laid out fresh newspaper from a nearby stack—now understanding why they were in this corner. Along with a collection of plastic grocery bags. She grabbed one of those too and filled it with the newspapers to discard.
She certainly didn’t want this mess inside the kitchen. She looked outside at the people standing around where her garbage can was. What a long walk it would be to get the bird-poop papers down there with everybody’s gaze on her. And how hard it would be to get past those people watching her without them noticing her.
Then she got mad. So what if they were watching? She’d been through a heck of a lot worse since the holidays last year. So many people had looked on, snickered and outright laughed at her circumstances.
She’d be darned if she’d let these gawkers make her sleep in the same house as the rather overwhelming collection of bird poop. She walked back into the kitchen, slipped her feet into Nan’s shoes, picked up the bag of poop-coated newspapers and opened the front door. Instantly a murmur arose from the crowd at the base of the driveway. She closed the door behind her and strode, staring straight ahead, to the garbage can. There she lifted the lid, put the garbage inside and slammed the lid down a little harder than necessary.
Instantly silence surrounded her.
And still the clang of the metal-on-metal rang clear. She winced, turned and walked back toward the house. Not a soul said a word. As she entered her front door, neither had she.
She stopped in the threshold, wondering how to turn this around. Normally she’d say she was a wonderful hostess, knowing how to smooth over any awkward moment. She’d prided herself on that to make her husband’s social evenings work. Yet, here she was, in the middle of two worlds, a bridge that she had crossed. But she had yet to figure out a way to bring her previous experiences with her.
She pivoted for one last look at the crowd. And tried to smile.
All eyes stared back at her. Nobody moved.
She took a deep breath, twisted fully to face them and said, “Hello. My name is Doreen. Nan is my grandmother.”
Not a word was spoken in response. She shrugged. Well, she had tried. She turned again.
And just as she was about to shut the door, somebody from the middle of the crowd called out, “Did you kill him? Did you kill the man in the garden?”
“Of course not,” she yelled. “I just arrived today.”
“And yet, there is a dead man in your garden.”
“No,” she hollered at the top of her voice. “There is a dead man in Nan’s garden.”
And with that the crowd gasped in shock.
“Nan wouldn’t kill anyone,” someone yelled.
“And neither would I,” Doreen yelled back. She glared at them, spun on her heels, then slammed the door shut. If only she could shut out the world that simply. She leaned against the door, tamping down the scream in the back of her throat.
Just then Mugs raced through the hallway, Thaddeus riding his back and screaming at the top of his lungs, “Thaddeus is here. Thaddeus is here.”
Doreen grabbed her hair, pulled and joined in, screaming at the top of her lungs.