•   •   •

‘IRENE DIDN’T ANSWER, she’s probably in the garden.’

How his wife knew so much about Irene McGraw was beyond him. He knew only that Irene was said to look like a film star whose name he didn’t recognize. He scanned his mental file on the McGraws: Baptists. Florida residents for the annual requisite of six months and a day. A lot of grandchildren.

‘Shouldn’t I . . . that is . . .’ If he was going to wear another man’s getup, shouldn’t it be that of somebody in his own parish? ‘Maybe somebody at Lord’s Chapel . . .’ he said, hating this.

‘Nobody at Lord’s Chapel is your size, Chester was an absolute duplicate.’

Useful beyond the grave—it was everyone’s hope.

‘Besides,’ she said, ‘anyone who has a tux at Lord’s Chapel will be wearing it Saturday night.’

His wife knew everything. An honors graduate of Smith, of course—he wondered if all Smithies were like this.

‘Ride with me,’ she said, taking her keys off the hook at the kitchen door.

‘Why?’

She gave him a doting look. ‘Because I love your company.’

But there was nothing at all to love about his company. He was a certified crank these days. Not that he wanted to be, but he seemed unable to control the mean streak that had cropped up somewhere over the Pond, possibly around Greenland.

‘Besides,’ she said, cheerful as all get-out, ‘that’s what retirement is for.’

‘I’m still trying to hammer out what retirement is for.’

‘It’s for jumping in the car and going somewhere on impulse.’

‘I’ll stick around here,’ he said, loath to beg handouts from a recent widow.

‘Irene won’t even see you, I’ll park in front of the hedge instead of in the driveway. Take your newspaper, I’ll just be a minute. Then we can run by the Local.’

She gave him the look that was code for the rare pint of Ben & Jerry’s. He was suddenly cheered.

‘I’m in,’ he said.

•   •   •

SHE BACKED HER MAZDA out of the garage.

‘What if she gave it to the Salvation Army?’ he asked.

‘Too soon, I think.’

‘So there’s a timeline for cleaning out the spousal closet?’

‘Usually six months to a year. Some people do it immediately after.’

He chewed on this arcane information, especially curious about the marital revelations of ‘immediately after.’

‘By the way,’ she said, ‘if I croak first, my clothes go to Puny and my jewelry to Lace, except for your mother’s ring.’

‘Where does that go?’

‘If Dooley and Lace marry, to Lace. If not, it could pass to your next wife.’

He refused to comment.

She made a right onto Main. ‘Just kidding, of course. Do you think you’d marry again?’

‘Absolutely not. I was barely able to marry the first time, much less again.’ She had just asked him this ridiculous question in Ireland.

He could sense her staring at him.

‘What?’ he said.

‘I know how you hate hearing this, but . . .’

‘But.’

‘You need a haircut.’

‘I just had a haircut. Two or three weeks ago.’

‘That was a trim, not a cut. They left it too long.’

His wife needed a steady, paying job, not one in which she could do as she pleased, with time left over to mind his business.

‘Merely a word to the wise,’ she said.

He turned his attentions to Main Street, which was literally sparkling after a good wash by morning rain. He realized again how Mitford wasn’t unlike an Irish village—colorful storefronts, hanging baskets, benches, a brisk early business in the shops.

‘The big news while we were gone,’ she said, ‘is that Avis painted his bins.’

How had he missed that on his two wimpy morning runs through town? Beneath the green awnings of the Local were the famed outdoor produce bins, now as red as any tomato and filled with pots of yellow chrysanthemums.

‘Very Irish, all that color, don’t you think?’

‘I do.’ There was Avis Packard, standing outside his grocery store, smoking a cigarette.

In the end, the real difference between Mitford and the Irish village was pretty profound—Mitford was home, Main Street was his beat. After a year in Whitecap, a year at Meadowgate, the long sojourns in Mississippi and Memphis, and the trek to Ireland, it felt good to ease his foot into the old shoe.

‘Irene is a gifted artist,’ she said. ‘Paintings of children. We’ve talked about doing a show together, a benefit for the Children’s Hospital.’

‘You hadn’t mentioned it.’ Children’s Hospital in Wesley was his all-time favorite charity. Never one to relish asking for money, he had nonetheless helped raise $350,000 in the last campaign and thanks be to God for the Florida people who summered in Mitford and environs.

‘Sort of waiting ’til we know more about her schedule. Her daughter lost a baby last year, but now there’s another on the way. Then there are two little ones in California and four in Texas and one in Germany. She’s very busy.’

‘Blow the horn,’ he said.

He rolled down the window. J. C. Hogan, editor of the Mitford Muse, was legging it across the street to Town Hall.

‘Tea shop, noon tomorrow!’ he shouted.

A thumbs-up from J.C.

He didn’t like blaring it all over town that he was headed to the tea shop, tomorrow or any other day. They needed to change the blasted name, make it friendlier to the Mitford demographic.

He left the window down, inhaled rain-washed September air into his lungs. ‘Maybe we should try a new flavor this time.’

‘It took decades for you to upscale from vanilla to butter pecan.’

‘One cannot upscale from vanilla to anything. Vanilla is the crème de la crème, and butter pecan merely passing fancy. However, I have felt the call of a completely different flavor for a couple of years, but never had the guts to buy it. How about Cherry Garcia?’ Carpe diem.

She patted his knee, laughing. ‘You are a wild and crazy guy.’

He didn’t know how he felt about being patted. When she did that, and she often did that, he felt four years old, or possibly one up from a small-breed canine.

He moved his knee away, impatient, and opened the Mitford Muse. The local weekly had grown considerably thinner of late, but the front page still gave forth a blare of four-color process.

‘Timothy?’

‘Speak, Kav’na.’

Mule Skinner was running a quarter-page real estate ad below an ad for residential sewage treatment. Not a good placement. And there was the Helpful Household Hint for the week—he’d never admit to anybody but Puny that he looked for it each Thursday.

‘Are you listening?’ she said.

‘I am, I am.’ Shoes can be shined with a banana peel. Clean off mess with a dry cloth.

She wheeled right on Lilac—a little sharply, he thought.

‘Do you think you might try what Puny suggested yesterday?’ she asked.

Never one to mince words, Puny Guthrie had told him that what he needed was a good . . .

He buried his face in the newspaper.

. . . purgative.

•   •   •

HERE HE WAS SITTING in a car when he might be running up to the stone wall and looking upon life in the valley—the train hammering through the gorge, with a winding river and blue mountains beyond. It was a mild and perfect day, golden with sunlight after rain—one of his favorite weather conditions.

How would Irene McGraw feel about him bowling around town in her husband’s gear? He considered that Irene may even be at the party. In times past, the spouse left behind waited a year before rejoining the social gambol, but the way things were going these days, this had likely been tempered by half.

The tux business was beyond him, he couldn’t think about it anymore. He crossed himself and gave kit and caboodle to the creator of all that is seen and unseen.

Good News At A Cut Above

Mrs. Fancy Skinner of A Cut Above Hair Salon, has announced TWO new additions to her shop starting next Monday.