Free Fadeaway Girl by Martha Grimes

bench.
    Ubub was coming out of Britten’s with a Grape Crush. He asked me, in his way, if I wanted one, and I said no, thanks. I asked Mr. Root if I could just borrow the book for a minute, and he handed it to me.
    â€œAnd could I have a piece of paper and use your pencil?”
    He tore off a little sheet and handed that to me too, along with his pencil. “Whatcha doin’?”
    â€œJust copying.”
    I wrote the last lines on the paper and folded it up and stuck it in my change purse.

12
    M y mother told me I was late (which I already knew) and that Miss Bertha and Mrs. Fulbright were already in the dining room waiting for their lunch.
    I asked what they were having and when my mother said Ham Pinwheels I perked up; a lot of the sadness left me. Ham Pinwheels might be the only thing that could compete with Robert Frost.
    Yes, the day was getting heady with the luxury of having me in it: me, prettier than Ree-Jane, about to eat Ham Pinwheels for lunch. And about to serve this to Miss Bertha, who hated Ham Pinwheels and the last time she’d been served them scraped off the cheese sauce and rolled the pinwheel across the floor. It had collided with a chair leg.
    Mrs. Fulbright was mortified. I was gleeful, except she’d put a perfectly good pinwheel out of commission. Depending on how dirty it was, of course.
    â€œYou know she doesn’t like these,” I said to my mother, happily unhelpful.
    â€œThe old fool. Well, if she wants something else you can tell her we have one serving of chicken pot pie from last night’s dinner. I’m sure she doesn’t like leftovers, either.”
    Miss Bertha and Mrs. Fulbright have been coming here summers since I was born. They could be a hundred but are probably in their eighties. Mrs. Fulbright is one of those old women with a complexion as luminous as crushed pearls. Her disposition matches: never a complaint, always a compliment.
    Miss Bertha just looks, well, crushed, period. She is bent over, her head getting closer and closer to the polished floor of the dining room every summer. Her hump certainly doesn’t help the situation, and, of course, she needs a cane, which comes down on the floor like a drill. She never married and I wonder if she ever had a boyfriend and if she always had that hump. Was she a humpbacked baby? Just a tiny hump, no bigger than a knuckle?
    The luncheon plates also held a shimmering tomato aspic cupped in a lettuce leaf with a dab of mayonnaise on the side and a couple of radish curls. The cheese sauce poured over the Ham Pinwheel was thick and golden, with a dusting of paprika across its top.
    The plate looked so pretty I thought it criminal to serve it to someone bent on hating it. I raised the tray like Father Freeman raised the communion cup (which I had never tasted, as I was not a Catholic) and marched the food into the dining room.
    â€œYou know I don’t eat these things!” She gave the pinwheel a little push and left a fingerprint in the cheese sauce. “Bring something else.” She sat back, or as far back as her hump allowed.
    Mrs. Fulbright, of course, received her plate with a pleasantly surprised look.
    I said to Miss Bertha, “Well, there’s one serving left of leek and eel pie.”
    â€œWhat? Eel pie? Don’t be ridiculous. Jen Graham never cooked an eel in her life.”
    Said Mrs. Fulbright, “Bertha, now you don’t know that.”
    â€œOf course I know it! Don’t be a fool.”
    Mrs. Fulbright took a bite of her pinwheel and pronounced it delicious. “You do like the cheese sauce, Bertha.”
    You’d have to have had your taste buds burned out of your mouth to not like it.
    Miss Bertha demanded something else with cheese sauce.
    â€œYou can have it over the eels.” It was the most disgusting way of putting it I could think of off hand.
    She made a face, although you could say Miss Bertha’s face was always making one.
    I looked