Free The Book of Old Houses by Sarah Graves

companionably.
    â€œDo not,” my father reminded me severely, “try moving that bathtub.”
    I was about as likely to run out and try shifting the Rock of Gibraltar a few inches to the left.
    â€œYou have plenty of other more manageable projects to finish around this place,” he added.
    For instance, in my workroom on the third floor a very old attic window awaited me: rotten, paint-peeled, and with most of its antique, wavery-glass panes ready to fall out.
    That is, the ones that hadn’t done so already. I’d begun repairs, but completion on the window was urgently needed; in winter the wind muscled frigidly in through it, making a mockery of any plan I might have for house-heating efficiency.
    Although actually the whole house made a mockery of that. And since it was now late August, I calculated that winter would be here in approximately twenty minutes.
    â€œRight,” I told my father as he went out, thinking,
Scraper, chisel, belt sander, paint.
    And glazing compound, lots and lots of glazing compound for putting in each and every one of the five-by-eight-inch panes of glass that needed replacing. Just thinking about it made me want to go shove a bathtub out a window, but if I didn’t get those panes in soon I might just as well pump heating oil out through it instead.
    Paintbrush, glazing pins . . .
and some extra glass panes, I decided, since even after all the glazing I’d done since moving in here, I still had about a one-in-six breakage rate.
    â€œNow, about the party,” Ellie said.
    â€œListen, Ellie,” I said hastily. “Maybe I was a little too optimistic about my hostess abilities when I offered to . . .”
    Cake, punch, napkins, glasses.
Real ones, mind you, not the plastic variety, and a pox on paper plates. We’d need a big tea maker, and a coffee urn, and with all that crystal and china on the table I guessed we’d better transfer the cream and sugar into something besides old Tupperware containers.
    And the good teacups, wrapped in yellowing newspaper, were in a box in the hall closet. Bella stirred curry powder into the sauce, whereupon a sweet, complex perfume wafted from it, like something being concocted in an expensive restaurant.
    â€œYou’ll be fine,” Ellie reassured me. “I’ll just run down to the IGA and get you some spray starch, so it’ll be easier for you to iron the linen napkins.”
    â€œBut . . . but . . .” I sounded like an old outboard engine.
    â€œJake.” She eyed me amusedly. “Come on, now, it’ll be fine. You’ve done this before and it worked out very well, so what’s the problem?”
    Right, I had: ten years earlier, when Eastport ladies were still generously taking pity on me on account of my just-got-here status. So they’d forgiven me my many faux pas including the very large picture of Elvis Presley painted on black velvet that I’d fastened up at the last minute to cover the big hole in the dining-room wall.
    But this time would be different. No hole in the dining-room wall, for one thing. And no allowances made, for another.
    This time, in the are-you-or-aren’t-you-a-real-Eastport-lady department, it was put up or shut up.
    â€œI’ve got to go. Lee’s fast asleep. But George is with her,” Ellie added. “So that won’t last.”
    George Valentine was Ellie’s husband and a fine, responsible babysitter, but he did have one bad habit: he adored that child so much that anytime she fell asleep, he woke her up again so he could play with her. As a result Lee had learned to take power naps lasting about fifteen minutes, after which she hung on her crib rail and howled.
    â€œGood luck,” I said as Ellie departed; when he was small Sam had done the same thing for a while and I’d been puzzled—though I must admit, pleased—when the habit ended suddenly. Later I found out that my then-husband had begun dosing