Free The Threshold by Marlys Millhiser

old days. Says we nag her. But so much history will be gone if we don’t urge these old ones to talk and remember before they’re gone too.” Doris Lowell showed Aletha a combination pantry-broom closet situated in a windowless lean-to on the back of the house. Two other rooms in the lean-to provided space for a furnace room and a bathroom. One bedroom opened off the bathroom, and off that a “parlor” where Mildred Heisinger sat in front of a color television that blared so loudly conversation was out of the question.
    After Doris left Aletha started in the kitchen, feeling like a rat because she couldn’t help but examine every item as she came to it even if she had to go out of her way to come to it. She found exactly what she’d expect to find in the home of someone this aged. One good set of china that looked as if it had never been used, a set of pottery made up of odds and ends that was well-used, lots of depression glass and canned soups. The hot-water heater sat in the bathroom next to the shortest, deepest bathtub Aletha had ever seen. It stood on its own feet, each shaped like the slender foot and ankle of a young woman. The bedroom had a dark four-poster that was all knobs. Aletha did not stoop to going through drawers but she did inspect each item she dusted. Porcelain figurines, paintings of demure women with men in greased-down hair gazing adoringly—regular old-lady stuff. But no photographs of family, children, friends, houses once lived in.
    By the time Aletha worked her way to the parlor, Miss Heisinger’s meal arrived and she put her teeth in to eat it. That made a startling change in her appearance, filling out the wizened face to more recognizable proportions. Aletha had hoped to start the woman talking, but Mildred ate and then nodded off with the television still blasting. The parlor had a piano sporting yellowed keys, layers of wallpaper coming loose in the corners, a cut-glass chandelier, bookcases, more figurines, and dotty paintings. No photos of when life was young. The house smelled musty, almost vacant, as if Miss Heisinger couldn’t use up enough of it to make a difference.
    Aletha didn’t want to run the elderly vacuum on the parlor floor while Mildred dozed, so she dusted the multitude of mirror frames in the entry hall. They extended from above her head almost to the level of her knees. A porcelain doorknob protruded from between two of them and Aletha noticed a vertical crack between rows of mirrors. Well … any snoop exposed to a rip in the fabric of time could hardly be expected to … She had been asked to clean the whole house.…
    She turned the knob and a door full of cloudy mirrors opened toward her, exposing stairs as narrow as those in Callie’s shack in Alta. There was much dust but not many stairs, and at the top a window overlooking the Pick and Gad through the trees. The cupola had about enough room to stand in and turn around. It also had a door leading to a room full of boxes, stacks of aging books, various covered shapes, and a tiny round window. Against a wall under the peaked roof stood a painting in oil of a beautiful woman with blond hair piled on top of her head and a white blouse with a cameo pinned to a ribbon around her throat and the pale green eyes of Mildred Heisinger.
    “Done snooping yet?” Mildred asked when Aletha turned on the vacuum in the parlor to wake her up.
    “I’m almost done cleaning, Miss Heisinger,” Aletha shouted.
    “Good. I’ll make us some coffee.” When they sat at the kitchen table over weak coffee and a Sara Lee carrot cake, Mildred said, “None of it matters any longer, all that Doris Lowell wants to know. Why do they want to know so bad?” She jutted a trembly head forward, squinted. “Where have I seen you?”
    “We haven’t met, Miss Heisinger, but I did come here with some questions. I’ve sort of been … seeing this little girl, Callie. She mentioned you and I—”
    “Callie O’Connell? She’s no little