“Well, you still need to reread anything you’ve read about local politics — any story by anyone.”
“Okay.”
“Take this flyer. And let John know if you can’t make it for some reason — he may want to send someone else.” That was baloney, of course. This meeting was only one of a hundred, and whatever would be said tonight would be repeated at ten or twenty other meetings this week. The candidates were running around to every civic group they could get their hands on. Oh sure, they’d tailor tonight’s speeches along the more liberal side, to fit the coalition. Tomorrow, at the Veterans of Foreign Wars meeting, they’d tailor to the more conservative side. If she was serious, seeing them in each camp would provide good experience.
Before she left my desk, I told her about the VFW meeting and she noted the time and place. She thanked me again and I waved it off. I was going to be furious with myself if I started trusting all of her gratitude and flattery at face value. I reminded myself again that she had been crawling into Wrigley’s bed to get what she wanted. I shivered and went back to work on my pile of papers.
Afternoon rolled around and I called Casa de Esperanza to make sure there wouldn’t be any problem meeting there with Sammy and Jacob. The woman who answered wavered a bit, even though I told her I wasn’t planning on writing anything about the shelter. She wasn’t moved to commitment by my saying I had once worked at the shelter, either. Finally, I dropped Mrs. Fremont’s name as a reference and doors opened — suddenly I was a welcomed guest. “Mrs. Fremont should be here any time now,” the woman said brightly. I thanked her and told her I would be there in about twenty minutes.
I tidied up a few things, still feeling like it was unnatural for this desk to be so clean — O’Connor had always covered it in mountains of loose papers. As I made my way out to my car, I was concerned about going into this meeting without having spent at least a little time trying to get some background on witchcraft or on any previous news of local cults. Hadn’t I just given Stacee a big speech on being prepared?
And all I knew about witches came from a little background on what went on in Salem three hundred years ago and a few episodes of
“Eye of newt and toe of frog; Wool of bat and tongue of dog,” I mumbled, drawing a look of apprehension from a passer-by. I doubted the incantations from
Oh well, I thought, climbing into my car, I’d just have to keep in mind that I was meeting with Sammy to confirm Jacob’s purpose for being at a certain gathering — a political story. Not a witchcraft story.
I left the parking lot with those good intentions. By the end of the day, I would be wondering if I was on that famous road that is paved with good intentions.
5
I GOT TO CASA DE ESPERANZA before Sammy and Jacob arrived. The place was all decked out for Halloween. Inside, it didn’t look much different than it had fifteen or more years ago — I had to stop and do some math — right, fifteen years ago. The music groups on the posters which adorned its walls had changed, except for one for the Doors. I tried to do a little more math, working out how old Jim Morrison would be today, when a clean-cut, muscular young man came walking toward me. I was wondering if all the runaways looked so well-adjusted these days, when he said, “Irene Kelly? I’m Paul Fremont. My grandmother has often spoken of you.”
As I took the offered hand for a vigorous handshake, I tried to absorb the shock of realizing this “kid” was a twenty-one-year-old college student, not a runaway. “Hello, Paul. Your grandmother has told me a lot about you. She’s certainly very proud of you.”
He looked at me a little oddly, I thought, but I didn’t have time to figure out if I had embarrassed him or if he just didn’t believe me, because at that moment the grandmother in question appeared on the scene.
“Why, Irene! Mrs. Riley told me you’d be coming by this afternoon. And now you’ve met my grandson, Paul. Good, good. Let me show you around, dear. This part of the house hasn’t changed since you worked here, but we’ve been busy out in the back.” She took hold of my arm and led me off. Paul nodded in understanding and went into a small office.
Mrs. Fremont was right. The place had changed. A recreation room had been converted out of a garage. There was a deck and a beautiful garden, including a spot where the residents grew some vegetables. There was some indefinable something that inwardly itched at me about the garden. I knew it wasn’t because I remembered it; the last time I had been in this yard it had just been dirt and grass of dubious parentage.
“Frank and a friend of his built the deck and did all of the landscaping for us,” she said.
I looked at her in surprise, then smiled. “Now I know why something about it seemed familiar.”
“Yes,” she said, returning the smile, “I’m not sure his friend Pete enjoyed the work so much, but Frank put his heart into it. He’s a keeper, Irene.”
“A keeper? As in, ‘my brother’s’?”
She laughed. “No, as in, ‘one you shouldn’t throw back into the pond.’ “She became reflective for a moment. “Come to think of it, Frank is the kind you mention as well. His brother’s keeper. Yes. He certainly isn’t afraid to get involved or lend a hand.”
I looked out at the garden again. She was right. Frank was a keeper by either definition. The
This warm fuzzy moment of ours was rudely interrupted by the sudden blare of a stereo and the simultaneous ruckus that can only be raised by a group of teenagers. I was cringing at the loudness, but Mrs. Fremont was looking at me with laughing eyes. “I’ve lost some of my hearing,” she shouted into my ear. “Probably from when people who were in high school with you used to sit around here and play records by the Who and Pink Floyd at full blast. I count my blessings.”
Judging from the noise outside, Mrs. Fremont had about twenty blessings in tow; but when we got back inside the house it turned out to be about half that.
I looked the group over and didn’t see Jacob; I figured Sammy wasn’t here yet either. I was trying to take in this boisterous sea of energy, released from the school day and excited about a Halloween party to be held that night, when it dispersed in varying directions almost as soon as it had arrived. Some of the residents took over the bathrooms, some headed down the separate wings of the house to their rooms, a group went out into the backyard, and a couple of them tried to raid the refrigerator. Mrs. Fremont moved off into the kitchen to chat amiably with them — the generation gap we had talked about in my day narrowed to a sliver.
Paul walked into the front room and reached for the volume control, cutting the decibels in the room in half. He
