Free The Book of Old Houses by Sarah Graves Page B

trembling.
    â€œPlease,” I said, opening the plastic container of glazing compound, “tell me what happened.”
    Before me, supported by four milk crates on a plastic tarp, lay a tall, rectangular exterior window. I’d already scraped and sanded it, filled the holes with plastic wood, and sanded that. So I just needed to put the glass back in and apply paint.
    â€œOld fool,” Bella said, meaning my father.
    She sat on an extra milk crate while I dug glazing compound out of the container with a putty knife. The stuff was soft and claylike, pale gray with the faint, pleasant scent of turpentine; the smell increased the artist’s-studio feeling.
    â€œHe wants to get married,” Bella announced.
    I paused in the act of rolling the glazing compound between my hands to warm and soften it. “You’re kidding!”
    Not very tactful, maybe. But she understood. That the two of them were good friends was one thing.
    Marriage, though. My mother’s ghost seemed to shift uneasily up there where it floated, always a little sorrowful, at the back of my mind.
    â€œNope. I’m not kidding, and he wasn’t, either.” Bella looked around as if she’d never seen the third floor before.
    â€œI’ve always liked it up here,” she remarked, as if having confided in me she now wanted to get away from the subject, fast.
    â€œThe light,” she said, “is clearer. And all the other little rooms up here could be made over real pretty, too.”
    The chambers adjoining the main room, once home to the small army of girls who in their early teens were already expert at slops-carrying, potato-peeling, and ash-sweeping, offered plenty of space for a bathroom, bedroom, and galley kitchen, plus a small study. I’d often thought that if I ever ran really short of money I would fix it all up and rent it out.
    â€œI’m still not sure I understand,” I told Bella. “My father proposed? To you?”
    â€œYup.” Her lips tightened at the memory while her work-roughened fingers twisted the corner of her apron.
    â€œWhat’s he want with me, anyway?” she asked plaintively. “Sure, I know how to work hard, and I’m a halfway decent cook, I guess.”
    â€œUh-huh.” Whenever we sat down to eat one of Bella’s meals, angels gathered and began singing over the dining-room table. But she’d been married once already and it hadn’t been a success. In fact, when her then-husband turned suddenly from a live one into a dead one, she’d been the prime suspect.
    Ellie and I had gotten her out of that debacle, but since then the expression radiating from every plain, unyielding molecule of her face was a mixture of harsh skepticism and grim determination, only occasionally leavened with a pinch of simple affection.
    â€œSays he wants more
togetherness,
” she scoffed. “But can you imagine? The two of us fallin’ all over each other, tryin’ to keep out of each other’s way in that tiny house of mine. Or,” she added with a shudder,
“his.”
    Both their small cottages together would’ve fit easily in my house. And there would be room for a couple of tennis courts, besides.
    â€œWell,” I said, “if you don’t want to, you don’t have to.”
    But another problem worried me even more than Bella’s marriage plans or the absence of them. Pondering it, I pressed a thin band of glazing compound onto the wooden ledge of the sash opening where a pane of glass would sit, then removed the excess with the putty knife.
    â€œHmph,” said Bella. “Maybe. But your father is a persistent old fool.”
    Dropping a pane into its place and pressing firmly to settle it on the glazing compound, for a moment I imagined Dave DiMaio as one of those mild-mannered superheroes with x-ray eyes.
    But that was silly. Life in my old house was indeed like a comic book, sometimes, but in it the