The Julius House

would have been pointing in Mother’s direction. Something was afoot. “How’s John?” I asked.

“He’s just fine,” she said fondly. “He’s been planting a garden.”

“In the backyard?”

“Yes, something wrong with that?”

“No, no,” I said hastily. If I’d ever doubted my mother adored her recently acquired second spouse, I knew differently now. I could not imagine in a million years my mother allowing someone to dig up her carefully groomed backyard to plant tomatoes.

I hung up shaking my head, decided to put off retrieving Madeleine from the vet until the next day, and carried my bag upstairs to unpack, happily, in my own bedroom.

I scrubbed my out-of-state trip away in my own shower. I dried my hair. I took a nap. After I woke up, I went down to my basement to pop a load of clothes into the washer. The neighbor who’d been collecting my mail brought it over. I thanked her and she left. I stood by the kitchen counter leafing through the assorted junk. Suddenly, I let all the pleas from new resort areas and all the sweepstakes offers slip through my fingers to land in a heap on the beige formica.

Perhaps because I was tired, or shaken out of my usual routine… I don’t know why. Suddenly I was asking myself, Why am I marrying Martin? There were gaps in his history. He was more than he seemed. There were moments when I found him a man of frightening capabilities. He could be tough and ruthless and hard.

But not with me.

I was getting maudlin, silly. I shrugged physically and mentally, shaking off the dramatic notions I’d entertained. I sounded like the heroine of one of those romance novels, the gals who think with their vaginas. I tried to imagine Martin and me posing for one of those covers, me with my bodice artfully slipping, him with his “poet shirt” strategically ripped. Then to complete the picture I added my favorite glasses in their bright red frames, and the half-glasses Martin wore when he read. I laughed. By the time I had put on makeup and chosen a dress, one Martin had bought me and made me promise to wear with no one but him, I felt better.

Actually, he’d said, “Never wear that unless you’re with me, because you look so good I’d be afraid someone would try to lure you away.”

Maybe that was the reason I was marrying Martin.

He arrived at seven on the dot. I had the deed tucked in my purse. I was determined we wouldn’t give in to our hormones, but would actually make it to the restaurant, because I’d had this movie in my head of us swapping wedding presents in a restaurant, and I couldn’t get rid of it. I think we were supposed to wait until the rehearsal dinner, but I knew I couldn’t keep a secret from him until then, even a short three weeks.

We went to the Carriage House, because it was the fanciest place in Lawrenceton, and our reunion was a fancy occasion.

We ordered drinks, and then our food.

“It’s early to do this, Roe,” and Martin reached across the table to take my hand, “but I’ve got your gift, and I want to give it to you tonight.”

“I have your gift, too,” I said. We laughed a little. We were both nervous about this exchange. I supposed he’d gotten me a diamond bracelet, or a new car-something costly and wonderful-but I never expected a real surprise. He reached in his coat and pulled out a legal envelope.

He’d changed his will? Gee, how romantic. I disengaged my hand and took the envelope, trying to make my face blank so he wouldn’t read disappointment. I slid a sheaf of stiff paper out, unfolded it, and began reading, trying to force comprehension. Suddenly it came.

I now owned the Julius house.

I felt tears in my eyes. I hated that; my nose turns red, my eyes get bloodshot, it messes up my eye makeup. But whether I wanted to or not, my eyes began to leak down my face.

“You know how much this means to me,” I said very quietly. “Thank you, Martin.” I picked up my huge cloth napkin and gently patted my face. Then I fished my own legal envelope out of my purse and shoved it across the table. He opened it with much the same apprehensive look I must have had. He scanned the first page and looked away, over the heads of the other diners, blinking.

“How’d you do it?” he asked finally.

I told him, and he laughed in a choky way when I talked about my representation of myself as a religious cultist. But he kept looking away, and I knew he would not look at me for fear of crying.

“Let’s go,” he said suddenly, and groping for his wallet, threw some money on the table.

We got out the door, adroitly dodging the young woman with the reservations book, who clearly wanted to ask us what was wrong. I put my arm around Martin’s waist, and his arm snaked around me, and I went across the gravel parking lot pretty briskly for a short woman wearing heels. Of course Martin wouldn’t forgo opening my door for me, though I had often reminded him I had functioning arms, and by the time he had gotten in his side, he was really breathless from trying to tamp the emotion back down inside. I turned around in the seat to face him and slid my arms around him. Sometimes I am very glad I am small. His arms went around me ferociously. He was crying.

My husband-to-be handed me the keys to our house the next morning.

“Go see it. Make some plans,” he said, knowing that was exactly what I wanted to do. I was pleased to be going by myself, and he knew that, too.

I showered and pulled on blue jeans and a short-sleeved tee, slapped on some makeup, stuck in some earrings, tied my sneakers, and drove a mile north of town.

The Julius house lay across open fields from Lawrence-ton, the fields usually planted in cotton. As I’d pointed out to Martin, you could see my mother’s subdivision from the house-if you went to the very back of the yard, out of the screen of trees the original owner had planted around the whole property, which was about an acre.

A family named Zinsner had built the house originally, about sixty years ago. When the second Mrs. Zinsner had been widowed, she’d sold the house for a song to the Julius family. (“No realtor,” my mother had sniffed.)

The Julius family had lived in the house for a few months six years ago. They had renovated it. T. C. Julius had added an apartment over the garage for Mrs. Julius’s mother. They had enrolled their daughter in the local high school.

Then they had vanished.

No one had seen the Juliuses since the windy fall day when Mrs. Julius’s mother had come over to the house to cook breakfast for the rest of the family, only to find them all gone.

The wind was blowing today, too, sweeping quietly across the newly planted fields, a spring wind with a bite to it. The trustee for the estate, a Mrs. Totino, Martin had told me, had had the yard mowed from time to time and kept the house in decent shape to discourage vandals and gossip. It had been rented out occasionally.

Today the yard was full of weeds, tall weeds, but this early in the spring, they were mostly tolerable ones like clover. The clover was blooming, yards and yards of it, bright green with bobbing white flowers. It looked cold and sweet, as though lying on it would be like lying on a chilly, fragrant bed.

The long driveway was in terrible shape, deeply rutted, the gravel almost all gone. Martin had already arranged to have more gravel hauled in.

The huge yard was full of trees and bushes, all tall and full. An enormous clump of forsythia by the road was bursting into yellow blooms. The house was brick, painted white. The front door and the door to the screened-in porch were green, as were the shutters on the downstairs windows and the awning on the second-floor triple window overlooking the front yard.

I went up the concrete steps to the screen door opening onto the front porch that extended the width of the house. The wrought-iron railing by the steps needed painting; I made a note on my little pad. I crossed the porch and turned my key in the front door for the first time.

I threw down my purse on the smelly carpet and wandered happily through the house, my pad and pencil at the ready. And I found a lot to note.

The carpet needed replacing; the walls needed new paint. Martin had told me to pick what I liked, as long as avocado green, gold, and raspberry pink weren’t included. The fireplace in the front room should be flanked by bookshelves, I decided dreamily. The dining room that lay between the front room and the kitchen had a built-in