A Farewell to Yarns

sale items had affixed a suggested price. These prices were almost universally inflated beyond reason. Someone had sent over a box of flower paintings done on wooden shingles. While not great art by any means, they weren't bad, and Jane felt she could probably find some out of the way wall in her house where one might fit nicely—until she noticed the note saying they should be priced at forty dollars each.

“Forty dollars!' she exclaimed, clutching at her heart. 'I was thinking seven or eight.”

Shelley, her head buried in a box, emerged. 'Oh, those. That's easy. The woman who does those always comes first thing in the morning to see if we've marked them right. As soon as she goes, we mark them down to something reasonable. She's never caught on yet. She makes them every year, and they go like hotcakes at five dollars.'

“What about these?' Jane had opened a dress box full of little wreaths. They were green yarn crocheted in a sort of ruffle on a curtain rod ring. With the addition of bright red sequins and a tiny satin bow, they made nice little ornaments. But a note in the box said: 'I saw these for sale in New York last year for fifteen dollars. I think ten would be reasonable, don't you?”

Shelley came over to look at the wreaths and then at the signature on the note. 'That's a bit tricky. She's a big contributor to the church, and we don't want to piss her off.”

Fiona looked over her shoulder. 'Oh, she's out of town. When she brought the box over she mentioned that she was going to see her son in Hawaii for the holidays and was leaving today.'

“Terrific. They'll really move at two dollars.'

“Isn't that a truck I hear?' Fiona exclaimed.

It took until noon to get the tables in and arranged. The women, including Suzie Williams, who had arrived just behind the rental company truck, then set about making a rough arrangement. Suzie favored logic and order. 'Put all the pillows and quilts in one room, all the food stuff in another—'

“I'm not sure,' Shelley said. 'If a person on a diet sees a room full of food, she might just give it all a miss. Same with people who don't like 'loving hands from home' art. You want to take them by surprise.'

“That makes sense. Trick them into buying shit they don't want,' Suzie gave in cheerfully. 'Let's take a break,' Fiona suggested. Jane had the feeling that Suzie's raw language of? fended their hostess, though Fiona was always gracious to her. 'I fixed some chicken salad and fresh banana bread this morning.”

They settled in around the big kitchen table. 'Where's your husband today? Hiding from us?' Suzie asked. She'd long been fascinated by the idea of a husband who did his work—whatever work, if any, he did—at home.

“Upstairs. He's got a miserable headache,' Fiona replied. She set out everyday plates that Jane would have kept in a safe deposit box if they'd been hers. 'When he was a boy, he had a bad fall from a tree and got a skull fracture. It all healed perfectly well, but he still gets these occasional headaches that devastate him. The doctors seem to think there's a connection, but there's nothing to do about it.”

Suzie nodded knowingly. 'I broke my ankle when I was ten, and it still hurts sometimes. Oh, music—how nice.”

They all fell silent. There was music playing somewhere, and as they listened, it became recognizable.

Richie Divine's 'Red Christmas.”

Jane glanced at Fiona, who had become quite pale and was looking toward the glass patio doors leading to the backyard.

“Where's it coming from?' Suzie asked, as yet blissfully unaware of the tension in the room.

Shelley rose and went to the doors. As she opened one, a blast of cold air and a blast of music came in together. 'It's coming from outside,' she said softly.

Fiona rose slowly and joined her at the door. Jane and Suzie followed her. As she listened, Jane knew exactly where it was coming from—the deck of the house next door. Phyllis's house. Now Bobby's. That elaborate sound system was rigged so the speakers could sit on the deck outside the master bedroom.

But why annoy the Howards?

Suddenly Albert Howard appeared in the kitchen doorway behind the four women. 'What the hell is that noise?' he asked.

Eighteen

Albert disappeared and Fiona, white faced, ran  after him. Try as they might, Shelley, Jane, and Suzie could hear nothing of what they were saying to each other.

“Is that the little fart next door playing the music? The one whose mother was a friend of yours?' Suzie asked Jane, when Albert and Fiona had moved out of earshot.

“I'm afraid so, but I don't get it. Why is he trying to irritate the whole neighborhood, and why—of all things —a Richie Divine record?'

“Why not?' Suzie asked, then said, 'Oh, yeah. I forgot Fiona was married to him, wasn't she? Or is that just a typical neighborhood rumor?'

“No, it's true,' Jane said. 'That room through there is full of his stuff. Pictures, gold records.'

“The one Fiona didn't want us to use? Oh, well, it's probably just coincidence that the kid is playing that record. I heard it on the car radio on the way over. It's played a lot this time of year.'

“Still, what's the point, aside from making sure nobody misses the fact that he's a nasty little bastard?' Shelley asked, closing the door and shooing them back to the kitchen table. 'Let's eat lunch and act like we don't hear it. For Fiona's sake.'

“I always enjoy it when I can eat for someone else's sake,' Suzie said, serving herself a large dollop of chicken salad. 'The calories don't count that way. Just like they don't count if you eat them before seven in the morning or on a holiday—national or religious. I'm not sure about state holidays.'

“I wish my thighs observed those rules,' Jane said, helping herself to some food. 'Wow, this is terrific. It's got little green grapes in it. Where do you suppose she gets such nice ones this time of year?'

“Sorts them out of cans of fruit salad?' Suzie suggested.

Fiona rejoined them a few minutes later, looking as cool and unruffled as the proverbial cucumber. The music was still audible, but they all pretended they didn't notice. 'Albert so seldom tries to take a nap in the middle of the day. He gets positively savage when someone interrupts it,' was her only comment. 'Have some more banana bread, ladies. If you leave any, I'll eat it all, and you'll have to roll me out of this chair.”

Doggedly ignoring the music—it wasn't the single, it was the whole Richie Divine's Greatest Hits album—they finished lunch and went back to work. Fiona got busy shifting some of the tables into better positions and draping them with the rented white tablecloths. Suzie, under Shelley's direction, appointed herself to takeeach box to the room in which the contents would be sold. Shelley sat on the floor, making a rough sort of inventory of each item as Suzie took it away, and Jane started printing up prices on a sheet of sticky labels for the crocheted wreaths. 'I think we ought to give one of these free to anybody who buys more than a certain amount,' Jane said. 'You could pin them on their coats as they go out the door.'

“Good thinking. I'll put half of them by the cashier, and some people may pick them up as one last thing before their stuff is rung up.'

“Impulse buying. Right.'

“Oh, my God, will you look at this quilt,' Shelley said. 'It's gorgeous. And it's already marked at—at twenty-five dollars! That's criminal. It ought to be at least a hundred and fifty. Think how beautiful this would look in my guest room. I'm going to buy it myself for two hundred, but we'll hang it up marked SOLD, just because it's so pretty.”

Jane tried hard not to give in to envy. Would she ever be able to impulsively buy anything for two hundred dollars? 'Where should I put this jelly?' she asked.

Shelley turned on her. 'Jelly?' she asked suspiciously. 'Is it from Marijo Fisher?'

“Yes, what's wrong with that?'

“Oh, nothing, except it's Marijo's little ploy to rip us off every year. I thought I'd made clear to her that I wasn't letting her get away with it again.'

“I don't get it. How does she rip us off with jelly? It looks good.'

“Oh, it is good. It's fantastic. She sends over four or five piddling jars, then gives people delicious samples. Of course, the four or five jars are gone in no time, but samples keep miraculously appearing, and she takes orders for about a billion more.'