The Mulberry Tree

Bailey had politely said that the room was beautiful, ignoring the piercing look Janice gave her. The truth was that Jimmie had a fetish about bathrooms: to him they couldn’t be big enough or ornate enough. One of his houses had a bathtub the size of a small swimming pool. The shower could have been used to bathe an elephant, and there were two rooms within the bathroom that held toilets and bidets.

What was remarkable to Bailey was that everywhere in Patsy’s house were home-sewn items. Bailey had never been interested in sewing, but since her preserving had kept her around local and state fairs as a kid, she’d picked up some knowledge. In the living room, the couch, the two chairs, and the curtains were all made of the same blue-and-green-flowered chintz, and a blinding array of other items were covered in the same fabric. There was a big pine armoire that Bailey guessed probably held a TV and a stereo. The panels on the doors had been removed, and gathered fabric inserted. The bookshelves beside the TV had covers on each shelf, all of them chintz, but piped in different colors—blue on one shelf, green above it, then blue, then green. The waste-basket had a cover on it. The side tables were covered; the lamp shade had been covered in the same fabric. Wherever there was a surface, a doily, a mat, a slip-cover—something—had been made for it.

Every room Bailey saw was filled with homemade covers and curtains. The bedroom was upholstered in combinations of blue and burgundy, but again, every surface had been covered. Upstairs was the same. Patsy briefly opened the door to the big bedroom her sons shared, and Bailey had a quick glimpse of curtains, bedspreads, and pillowcases that had to have taken bolts of the blue fabric printed with airplanes. If she didn’t know differently, Bailey would have thought that Patsy’s sons were nine years old.

Across the hall, past a bathroom enveloped in hand-made covers, was Patsy’s sewing room, its walls covered with pink paper printed with rows of rosebuds. A worktable occupied the middle of the room; a sewing machine stood against a wall, with shelves full of boxes labeled with fabric swatches. The room and the work materials were all perfectly organized.

“And here are my patterns, and I keep the extra buttons from every garment my family owns in here, each labeled by size, color, and materials.”

Bailey hoped she was looking appropriately impressed. She didn’t want to blurt out, “Why?!” On the wall to her right were photographs of people, and to distract herself, Bailey turned and looked at them. There were five framed photos, each one a group shot, and in each Patsy was standing at the edge, wearing a white three-quarter-length coat that had a badge pinned to the pocket. “What’s this?” Bailey asked.

“Just the factory over in Ridgeway. Would you like to see my sewing machine needles?”

“Patsy,” Bailey said firmly, “were you the boss of all these people?”

“Yeah. But that was a long time ago,” Patsy said in dismissal. “I want to show you my thread cabinet.”

Reluctantly, Bailey pulled herself away from the photos and turned to look at the hundreds of different colors of spools of thread lined up on dowel rods on the back of a cabinet door. After a moment, she glanced up and felt Janice staring at her. When their eyes met, Janice seemed to be saying something to her, but then her eyes flickered and she looked away.

After a while, Janice said quietly, “We better go join the men.”

When they were downstairs, Rick said that Matt couldn’t stop bragging about Bailey’s cooking. “So when are we invited over?” Rick asked. For the third time that day, they all froze in motion and looked at Bailey.

“How about next Saturday?” Matt said as he put his arm around Bailey’s shoulders. “That okay with you, hon?”

“Sure,” Bailey said, then slipped out from under Matt’s arm. “Next Saturday is fine.” When Bailey looked up, she saw that both Janice and Patsy were staring at her with identical gazes of such intensity that she shivered. They looked away, though, when her eyes met theirs.

Ten

Bailey looked at the clock on her bedside table. It was two A.M., and she hadn’t gone to sleep yet. She should have fallen into bed at ten and gone to sleep instantly. After all, it had been a long day. She and Matt had left Patsy’s house at four, and when they got home, Matt suggested that they start tearing out the walls between the exterior and the living room and begin to restore what had once been the porch.

“You mean I get to tear out that pink bathroom?” Bailey had asked.

Matt took a short crowbar from his toolbox and handed it to her. “Be my guest.”

When she walked into the pink bathroom and looked at the tiles, the wallpaper, and the fixtures, she didn’t know where to start.

“Leave the plumbing alone,” Matt called to her from the other room. “Wait until I can turn off the water. Start with the tiles. Or pull the wallpaper off.”

“Okay,” Bailey said as she put her wrecking bar under a flowered pink tile and pulled back. She had to duck as the tile went sailing across the room.

“You okay?” Matt asked from the doorway.

“Great,” she said. “I’m doing great.”

They had spent three hours working. Bailey would have gone on, but Matt called a halt and suggested they order in pizza.

“You mean the kind with the soggy crusts?” Bailey asked. “Do you think we should order one with pineapple on it or one with four varieties of meat? Which?”

Matt laughed. “So what do you have in mind?”

“How about some pasta and salad? In Calabria they—” Turning away, she didn’t finish her sentence.

“Have you traveled a lot?”

“Some,” Bailey said, then turned back to look at him. “Maybe we should get pizza. Maybe we should . . . Why are you looking at me like that?”

“Whenever you’re ready to talk, let me know. I can be a good listener.”