A Patchwork Planet Read online

  I wondered how my family would react if I ever paid that eighty-seven hundred back. How my mother would react, to be specific. She’d probably fall over in a faint.

  Sometimes I thought if I could just show her, just once and for all show her, I would be free of her.

  I reached my apartment, finally. Switched on the lights, unzipped my jacket, punched the button on my answering machine. Mrs. Dibble needed an errand run for Miss Simmons, provided I got home before six. Too late now; so I took off my jacket and started emptying my jeans pockets. Mimi Hardesty, upstairs, left a message about an eentsy bit of laundry she wanted to do in the morning even though it wasn’t a Saturday. Then Mrs. Dibble again. Never mind about Miss Simmons—she’d sent Celeste, instead—but tomorrow I should meet with a brand-new client. A Mrs. Glynn. “It was her niece who made the request,” she said. “She told me you two had talked on the train. Good work, Barnaby! You must be quite a salesman. The niece says her aunt will need hours and hours; that was her exact phrase. She inquired about our weekly rates. She wants you to come to her aunt’s house tomorrow evening.”

  Mom’s envelope was made of paper so thick that it unfolded by itself as I set it on the counter. I lifted the flap and peered inside. Whoa! Not a gift certificate, but cash—a hundred dollars. Five twenties new enough to stick together slightly when I fanned them out. Well, good; I didn’t need clothes, anyhow. I hadn’t yet redeemed my certificate from Christmas.

  I restacked the bills and fitted them into Opal’s money clip. Then I stood weighing the clip in my hand, looking down at it and thinking.

  Let’s say I made a hundred dollars extra every week. Say I lined up this aunt of Sophia’s with her hours and hours of chores; say I stopped dodging the clients I didn’t care for, the assignments I didn’t find convenient, and added a clear hundred dollars to my weekly income. Eighty-seven weeks, that meant. Eighty-six with the birthday money; eighty-five and eighty-four if we could count next birthday and next Christmas too.

  I would hand it to Mom in cold cash: eighty-seven crisp new hundred-dollar bills. I’d slide them out of the money clip and slap them smartly on her palm.

  Everybody else’s angel had delivered a single message and let it go at that. Wouldn’t you know, though, my angel seemed to be more of the nagging kind.

  MRS. GLYNN lived on a shady street just south of Cold Spring Lane, in a brown shingle-board house with peeling green shutters. I was supposed to meet Sophia there at five-thirty, which would give her time to drive over after work; but when I pulled up early, about a quarter past, she was already waiting out front. She was leaning against the hood of her car—a silver-gray Saab. I had always thought Saab owners were shallow, but now I saw I might have been mistaken.

  I parked behind her and stepped out. “Yo! Sophia,” I said, and then I wondered if I should have called her Miss Maynard. Mrs. Dibble had her rules about how we addressed our clients. Except that Sophia wasn’t a client, strictly speaking. And she didn’t appear to mind; she just smiled and said, “Thanks for coming, Barnaby.”

  Today she was wearing a different coat, black wool with a Chinese type of collar. It made her hair look blonder. Also, it seemed to me she had more makeup on. This must be her loan officer outfit. I said, “I thought bankers’ hours were shorter. You mean you have to work till five like everybody else?”

  “Yes, alas,” she told me. We started up the front steps. “It was nice of you to agree to meeting my aunt first,” she said. “I need to sort of talk her into this, as I explained to your employer.”

  “Oh, no problem,” I told her.

  “Is that who she is?” Sophia asked.

  “Who who is?”

  “Mrs. Dibble,” Sophia said. She pressed the doorbell, and a dog started yapping somewhere inside. “Is Mrs. Dibble your employer?” she asked me.

  “Yes, she owns the whole company. Started it from scratch and owns it lock, stock, and barrel.”

  “Because I had somehow understood that the company was yours,” she said.

  “Mine? No way.” I had to raise my voice, since the yapping was coming closer. “I’m just a peon, is all.”

  “Well, surely more than a peon,” she said. “It must take quite a bit of skill, dealing with your older clients.”

  “Oh, a fair amount. Shoot, some of us have Ph.D.s, times being what they are,” I said. “Not me, though, I don’t mean.” I was consciously trying to be truthful, so she wouldn’t get any more wrong ideas. But before I could explain that I didn’t even have my B.A., the front door swung open and Sophia’s aunt said, “There you are!”

  She was no bigger than a minute—a tiny, cute gnat of a woman with a wizened face and eyes so pouchy they seemed goggled. She wore a navy polka-dot dress that hung nearly to her ankles, although on someone else it would have been normal length, and loose, thick beige stockings and enormous Nikes. Over her forearm she carried a Yorkshire terrier, neatly folded like a waiter’s napkin. “This is my doorbell,” she said, thrusting him toward me. “I’d never have known you were out here if not for Tatters.”

  “Aunt Grace,” Sophia said, “I’d like you to meet Barnaby.”

  “Bartleby?” her aunt said sharply.

  “Barnaby.”

  “Well, that sounds more promising. Won’t you come in?”

  “My aunt, Mrs. Glynn,” Sophia told me, but Mrs. Glynn had already turned to lead us into her parlor. There was something about her back that let you know she was hard of hearing. And clearly the place was getting to be too much for her. The lace curtains were stiff with dust, and the walls were darker in the corners, and the air had the brownish, sweet, woolen smell that comes from a person sleeping extra-long hours in a tightly closed space.

  “Sophia thinks I’m too doddery to do for myself anymore,” Mrs. Glynn said. She waved us toward the couch. When she perched in a wing chair opposite, her Nikes didn’t quite touch the floor. She set the dog down next to her, tidily arranging his paws. “Lately she’s been after me to hire a companion. I say, ‘What do I want with a companion? I’d just end up waiting on her, like as not, and we’d bicker and snipe at each other all day and I wouldn’t know how to get rid of her.’ ”

  “Well, there you see the value of Rent-a-Back,” I told her. I was speaking in that narrower range of tone that carries well. (I had it down to a science.) “We can go about our business without a word, if you want. You can leave a key at the office, and we’ll let ourselves in while you’re out; be gone before you get home again.”

  “It’s not that I’m antisocial,” Mrs. Glynn said. “Am I, Sophia.”

  “Goodness, no, Aunt Grace. Just independent.”

  “Pensive? Well, I do like to have my thinking time, but—”

  “Independent, is what I said.”

  “Oh. Independent. Yes.”

  She faced me squarely, raising her chin. “But we’re not here to talk about me. We’re here to talk about you. Are you a Baltimore boy, by any chance?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Born and bred,” I said.

  “Is that right. Would I know your parents? What’s your last name, anyhow?”

  “Gaitlin,” I told her.

  “Gaitlin.” She thought it over. “As in the Foundation?” she asked.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Really.”

  There was a pause. Sophia smoothed her skirt across her lap. Mrs. Glynn said, “Why don’t you work for them, then?”

  “It’s a long story,” I said.

  “Lost art? Why is that?”

  “A long story. Complicated.”

  “Aha,” she said. “So you, too, are independent. Refuse to take any handouts from rich relations. Well, I don’t blame you a bit, young man. Good for you!”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “Stand on your own two feet. Right? Now you see why I don’t want a live-in companion.”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “Sophia’s even offered to come stay with me herself, bless her heart,” Mrs. Glynn said. She rea
ched over to ruffle the Yorkie’s bangs. He smiled, showing his tongue—a little pink dollop of a tongue like on a child’s teddy bear. “I told her, ‘What, and spoil a perfectly good relationship?’ Sophia is my one and only niece. It’s not as if I had relatives to squander.”

  “I thought I could live in her guest room,” Sophia told me, “but Aunt Grace wouldn’t hear of it.”

  “She’d be watching me every minute,” Mrs. Glynn said. “Oh, I know: meaning the best! But trying to change what I ate or when I went to bed. Wouldn’t you?” she asked Sophia fondly. “As it is, you’re worse than a mother.”

  “It’s true,” Sophia said. “I’m a worrywart.”

  “She’s a worrywart!” Mrs. Glynn announced. She came up with it so triumphantly, I was pretty sure she hadn’t heard Sophia. “Pushing the multivitamins. Nagging me to exercise. Trying to make me stash my money in a bank.”

  “Aunt Grace distrusts banks,” Sophia told me.

  “Of course I distrust banks!” Mrs. Glynn said. This she seemed to have caught with no trouble, although Sophia had barely murmured it. “I lived through the Great Depression! I’d be out of my mind to trust a bank! I keep my liquid assets in the flour bin.”

  “There,” Sophia said. “See what I mean?” she asked me. “She hasn’t known a person five minutes and she tells him where she keeps her cash.”

  “Not just a person. A nice person, with kind brown eyes and a mouth that tips up at both ends!”

  “But you’d tell anybody you met, I believe,” Sophia persisted. “You think we’re still in the thirties, when people left their front doors unlocked and their car keys in the ignition.”

  “Now, don’t exaggerate,” Mrs. Glynn said. “I’m very careful to lock my front door.”

  “When you happen to think of it!”

  I could see they’d had this conversation any number of times. They were obviously enjoying themselves, each delivering her lines with an eye cocked in my direction. I said, “Well, anyhow. At Rent-a-Back, we’re used to dealing with independent people. We adjust to fit our customers’ needs: as much butting in as they want, or as little.”

  “Tell about Mr. Shank,” Sophia prodded me.

  “Mr. Shank?”

  “How he calls in the middle of the night just because he’s lonely.”

  “Oh,” I said. I was surprised that she’d remembered. “Well, he’s got the opposite problem, really—”

  “Tell about Mrs. Gordoni. There’s this client named Mrs. Gordoni,” Sophia said to her aunt, “who can’t afford to pay.”

  “In pain from what?” Mrs. Glynn asked.

  “To pay To pay the fees,” Sophia said. “And Barnaby helps her out even so, and underreports his hours.”

  “I have no problem whatsoever in paying off my bills,” Mrs. Glynn told me firmly.

  Sophia said, “No, I didn’t mean—”

  “Whatever the charge, I can more than pay. And however many hours. I believe I’ll start with an hour a day. After that, we’ll see.”

  “An hour a day,” I said, hunting through my pockets for my calendar. “And would that be mornings, or afternoons?”

  “Afternoons, if you have them.”

  “Yes, ma’am. Or somebody will. Me or one of the others.”

  “One of the others? Wait. Wouldn’t it be you who came?”

  “I’ll come if possible,” I said.

  “I’d prefer it to be you.”

  “Well, I’ll try,” I said.

  “For one thing, you’re left-handed,” she told me.

  I was, in fact, although I had no idea how she had figured that out. Sophia said, “What does left-handed have to do with it?”

  “I just feel left-handers are more reliable, that’s all.”

  Sophia made a sound somewhere between a laugh and a sigh. I said, “Yes, ma’am, I’m very reliable,” as I flipped through calendar pages. “How is three o’clock?” I asked. “I have that open every weekday. Or four o’clock except for Fridays, so on Fridays we could—”

  “No, I think later,” Mrs. Glynn said decisively. “I think five-thirty. Could you do that?”

  “Sure thing,” I told her, penciling it in. Five-thirty was our slow time—dinner hour for many of the older folks. “Will you be here then? Or you want to give us a key.”

  “You can take a key for unexpected occurrences,” she said, “but generally FU be here. Why don’t you start next Monday? By then I’ll have a list written out.”

  She rose from her chair, and we did too. Her little dog perked up his ears and made a chortling sound. “I knew you were left-handed because you put Sophia on your right when you sat down,” Mrs. Glynn told me. “My husband was left-handed. He liked to have me on his right at all times—sitting, walking, even sleeping. He said it freed his sword arm to defend me.”

  When she smiled up at me, the bags beneath her eyes grew bigger than ever. She had to sort of peek out over them. It made her seem mischievous and gleeful, like an elf.

  Mrs. Glynn’s five hours would help out quite a bit with the eighty-seven hundred, but they wouldn’t be enough on their own, of course. I told Mrs. Dibble I needed more jobs. “You know Mrs. Figg? The Client from Hell? You can send me over there after all; I’ve changed my mind. And forget what I told you about wanting off Saturday nights.”

  “Hmm,” Mrs. Dibble said. “Someone must be saving up for something.”

  I just said, “Oh, a few extra dollars would always come in handy.”

  For the sake of a few extra dollars, I agreed to a double trash-can route when Jay Cohen came down with mono. I spent an entire day shifting furniture for Mrs. Binney, who stood about with one finger set prettily to her chin and said, “On second thought …” I loaded the Winstons’ station wagon at four o’clock in the morning for their annual drive to Florida. (They wouldn’t let me do it the night before—scared of thieves. And of course they were the type who believed in setting off before dawn.)

  I even went so far as to telephone Len Parrish, because he had mentioned needing part-time help on his newest housing development. Someone to show off the model home—just a warm body, he’d said. But not my warm body, evidently, because first he behaved like Mr. Important (“Barn! You caught me just as I was heading out the door! Sorry I can’t chat.”), and then he claimed he’d already hired someone. I didn’t know whether to believe him or not. “Hey, guy,” he said. “How you doing? How’s the car? We should get together for a drink at some point. I’m going to give you a call.”

  I wondered if he planned to declare the drink on his taxes. (Not that I really expected him to call.) One time, Len had told me that just about anything he did he considered tax deductible. “Taking a trip to the beach, going to the movies …,” he said. “Because it gives me more experience, and I’m therefore better equipped to make informed business decisions. Heck, the way I figure it, life is tax deductible!”

  Probably it was just as well he didn’t have any work for me.

  On Monday, I went to Mrs. Glynn’s, bringing my canvas gloves because I didn’t know what chores she had in mind. But as it turned out, her list contained only the most undemanding tasks. Fetch all tureens and platters from tops of kitchen cabinets, replace on shelves within my reach. Move armchair from sunporch to living room.

  I was tightening the screws on a saucepan rack when Sophia showed up. I heard Tatters yapping at her. She had come straight from work, apparently. Breezed into the kitchen in her dressy black coat and asked me, “How’s it going?”

  “Going fine,” I told her.

  “I just thought I’d stop by and make sure the two of you were getting along.”

  “Well, we haven’t had all that much to do with each other,” I said. I could speak in a normal tone, because Mrs. Glynn had returned to the parlor after ushering in Sophia. “So far I’ve just been following what she’s got on her list,” I said. “But I’m not sure there’s enough here to fill the whole hour.”

  “Oh, this is just the beginn
ing, when she’s not used to the luxury of having you around. Believe me: there’s a lot to be done! I can name some things if she can’t. I’ve been nagging her for years now to pack up my uncle’s lawbooks in the sun-porch.”

  She was watching me replace the saucepans. They were filmed with dust—Mrs. Glynn must not cook much—so I gave each one a rub with my shirtsleeve before I hung it. Then I worried that would strike Sophia as sloppy I said, “Do you suppose she would want to run these through the dishwasher?”

  “Well, maybe,” Sophia said. But she didn’t go ask. She said, “My ulterior motive here is to get Aunt Grace’s belongings organized somewhat and then move her to an apartment. Something nearer to my place, so I could keep an eye on her. She’s nearly eighty years old, after all.”

  I decided to give up on the dishwasher idea. I hung another pan. “Eighty, huh?” I said. “Is she actually your aunt, or is she a great-aunt?”

  “No, she’s my aunt. My father’s sister. I was a late arrival,” Sophia said. “My mother was in her forties when she had me. By now she’s almost eighty herself, and I’m only thirty-six.”

  I was ready for the next job: fixing a loose knob on a cupboard in the pantry. I headed off to see to it, taking the screwdriver with me.

  “I guess you think thirty-six is old,” Sophia said in the pantry doorway.

  “Gosh, no,” I told her politely. “Not when I’ve been hanging out with people in their nineties.” I jiggled the knob and then squatted down in front of it.

  “How old are you, Barnaby?”

  “I turned thirty last week.”

  “Oh. Well, happy birthday.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Did somebody throw you a party?”

  “Just my parents had me to dinner,” I said. I opened the door slightly to study the inner side of the knob.

  “How about your little girl?”