The Julius House

"How'd you want to pay?"

"What?"

"Cash? Credit card? Check?"

"Cash," I said firmly, because that way I wouldn't have to give her my name. I thought I was being crafty.

I'd been watching the blond woman work on the funeral cross; I always like to watch other people do something well. When I looked back at Cindy Bartell, I caught her staring at me. She glanced down at my left hand, but of course my engagement ring was still zipped in my purse. "Do you have relatives here, Miss?"

"No," I said with a bland smile. And I handed over my money.

I am not totally without resources.

As I picked up supper from a fast food restaurant and took it to the Holiday I

I watched the news as I ate, my book propped up in front of me to occupy my eyes during the ads. It was a relief to be myself after pretending to be someone else all day. While I enjoyed imagining this or that in my head from time to time, sustained deception was another matter.

The knock at my door scared me out of my wits.

No one knew where I was except Amina, and she was in Houston. I pitched the remains of my supper in the trash on my way to the door. I'd put the chain on. Now I opened the door a crack.

Cindy Bartell was standing there looking tense and miserable.

"Hi," I said tentatively.

"Can I come in?"

I had some bad thoughts: "Rejected Wife Murders Bride-to-Be in Motel Room." She interpreted my hesitation correctly. "Whoever you are, I don't mean you any harm," she said earnestly, as embarrassed by the melodrama as I was. I opened the door and stood aside.

"Are you..." She stood in the middle of the floor and twisted her keys around and around. "Are you Martin's new fiancée?"

"Yes," I said, after a moment's thought.

"Then I'm not making a fool of myself." She looked relieved. I thought that remained to be seen. There was an awkward pause. Now we really didn't know what to say.

"As you know," she began, "or I think you know?" She paused to raise her eyebrows interrogatively. I nodded. "So you know I'm, I was, Martin's wife." "Yes."

"Martin doesn't know you're here."

"No. I'm here to buy his wedding present." I indicated she should have one of the two uncomfortable chairs on either side of the round table. She sat on the edge of it, doing the thing with the key ring again. "He told Barrett he was getting married again, and Barrett called me," she explained. "Barrett said his dad told him you were very small," she added wryly, "and he wasn't kidding."

"For Martin's wedding present," I said steadily, "I want to buy him the farm he grew up on. Can you tell me where it is? I haven't told the realtor I want to see this one particular farm because of course she'll know I want it for some reason, and Joseph Flocken won't sell to me if he knows I'm going to give it to Martin."

"You're right, he won't. I'll tell you what you need to know. But then I'm going to give you some advice. You're a lot younger than me." She sighed. "It's a good idea, getting the farm for him," she began. "He always hated someone else having it, someone else letting it fall into ruin. But Joseph always had it in for Martin, in particular, though he wasn't too fond of Barby. I'm not either, for that matter. One of the disadvantages of being married to Martin is that Barby becomes your sister-in-law... I'm sorry, I promised myself I wasn't going to be bitchy. Barby had a hard time as a teenager. The reason the blood's so bad between the kids and Flocken— Martin'll never tell you this, Barby told me—she got pregnant when she was sixteen, and when Mr. Flocken found out, he stood up in front of the whole church—not a mainstream church, one of these little off-sects—or off sex, ha!—and told everyone in the church about it, with Barby sitting right there, and asked their advice—so she got sent to one of those homes and missed a year of school and had her baby, and gave it up for adoption. And nothing ever happened to the kid who was the dad, of course, he just went around town telling everyone what a slut she was, and what a stud he was. So Martin beat him up and blacked Mr. Flocken's eye." What a dreadful story. I tried to imagine being publicly denounced in that fashion, and cringed at the thought.

"Okay, the farm is south of town on Route 8, and you can't see the house from the road, but there's a mailbox with ‘Flocken' on it by the gate." I copied the directions onto the little pad the motel left in the drawer below the telephone. "Thanks," I told her. And I braced myself for the advice. "Martin has a lot of good qualities," she said unexpectedly.

She was giving the good news before the bad.

"But you don't know everything about him," she went on slowly.

I had long suspected that.

"I don't want to know unless he tells me," I said. That stopped her dead. And I couldn't quite believe that had come out of my mouth. "Don't tell me," I said. "He has to."

"He never will," she said with calm certainty. Then her mouth twisted. "I'm not trying to be bitchy, and I wish you luck—I think. He never was bad to me. He just never told me everything."

I watched her while she stared into a corner of the room, gathering her strength around her, regretting already her display of emotion. Then she just got up and left.

It took everything I had not to get up and run after her.

The next morning I met Mary A

"Oh, that's the Bartell farm," she said instantly. "The man who owns it now is called Jacob—no, Joseph— Flocken, and he's got a reputation for being cranky." But she pulled to the side of the road and tapped her teeth with a pencil thoughtfully.

"We could just drop in and see," Mary A

The farmhouse was large and dilapidated. It had been white. Now the paint was peeling and the shutters were falling off. It was two-story, undistinguished, blocky. The barn to the right side and back a hundred yards or so was in much worse shape. It had housed no animals for some time, apparently. A rusted tractor sat lopsidedly in a field of weeds and mud. A tall, spare man came out of the screeching screen door. He didn't have his teeth in, and he was leaning heavily on a cane. But he was shaven and his overalls were clean.

"Good morning, Mr. Flocken!" Mary A

I looked straight back at him, trying hard to keep my face guileless. "I represent the Workers for the Lord," I said, making it up on the spot. "We want to buy a farm in this area that needs work, a secluded farm that we can renovate. When the work is done, we'll use the dormitories we build as shelter for our members."