There Was an Old Woman

Chapter Twenty-one


It was an exceptionally clear morning. Mina buttoned her sweater and folded her arms against the chill as she rocked on her back porch. The sun was already high in the sky, making the water sparkle, and the Manhattan skyline was in sharp focus. Mina picked out the Chrysler Building and the Empire State Building, both still distinctive amid the surrounding welter of box-top skyscrapers.

The girl had wanted to talk to her about what it had been like working at the Empire State. Did she remember? she’d asked. How could Mina not? Steadying herself with her cane, she stood and stepped to the porch railing. Every day she looked out at that building and was reminded. Maybe talking about it would be a good thing.

A loud smack startled her as something solid caromed off the porch column, inches from her head. Far too late, Mina cried out and ducked. With a gentle whoosh the missile landed in the marsh grass beyond her narrow strip of neatly mowed lawn.

Idiotic. Pea-brained. Had to be that man from across the street using the narrow strip between her house and the one next door as his own private driving range. Had he been at it all morning?

Mina took cover at the edge of the house, imagining him teeing up another ball, lining up his shot, swinging . . . Nothing. She waited a few moments more before stepping to the side of the porch and daring a glance back between the houses. There was no one there. Frank Cutler and his trusty nine-iron must have beaten a hasty retreat when he heard her cry out.

She had a good mind to march over there and confront him. But she knew what he’d say. Golf ball? What golf ball? Then he’d shake his head at her delusional, overactive imagination.

He could scoff at her all he wanted, but she knew what she knew. And now—she gazed speculatively out to where clumps of marsh grass that had been planted by city workers two years ago along the shoreline were now filling in nicely—she’d have proof. This time, if she wasn’t mistaken, the ball had landed just a few feet in.

She looked down at her feet. She had on bedroom slippers. What she needed were boots. Rubber boots. Like the tall fishing boots that her father used to wear back when you could cast your net into the river and pull out healthy, foot-long herring.

Mina found her father’s old boots, dust covered but intact, in the back of the hall closet behind the set of matching luggage that she’d used only once when she and Henry went to Niagara Falls. She pulled them on over her slippers. The boots came up over her knees, and even with the slippers they were too big, but they’d do the job. She tucked her pant legs into them. This time, Frank “Sam Snead” Cutler was not going to get away with it.

Cane in hand, Mina clomped back outside and down off the porch to the edge of the marsh. There she paused for a moment, closed her eyes, and replayed the sound of the ball landing. Envisioned the spot. Then she opened her eyes, took a breath. She waded into the tall grass at the edge of the marsh, poking her cane ahead of her as she went.

It was high tide, and the muddy water quickly closed over the tops of her feet. Each time she took a step her boot came out of the muck with a sucking sound. When she reached the spot, she used the cane for balance as she nudged apart the reeds.

There was an empty beer can. A little farther on, a plastic grocery bag. She tucked the can into the bag and tossed them onto her lawn.

A few more steps in, she was over her ankles in mud. The ball had probably sunk beneath the surface, too. If only she’d thought to pull on a pair of rubber gloves, but it was too late for that now. Reluctantly she pushed up her sweater sleeve, bent over, and began rooting around, feeling through the nasty root-clogged slime for something solid. She tried not to inhale the sulfurous marsh gas that wafted up as she disturbed the mud.

She found snails, stones, bits of shell. She was about to give up when she felt something hard and round. Triumphant, she dug it out. A golf ball!

She straightened, swiping aside tendrils of hair with the back of her arm, rage beating in her chest. What did he think, that a golf ball was going to dissolve like a lump of sugar in a cup of hot tea? It would be there for decades, centuries even, assuming it didn’t end up down the gullet of one of the majestic great blue herons that were returning to the marsh in record numbers.

With each step out of the marsh, it felt as if the mud were trying to pull those old boots off her feet. Finally she was back on the grass. Speechless with fury, she marched around her house and stood on her front lawn, leaning on her cane and shaking her fist at the house across the street. He was probably inside, behind drawn shades, laughing at her.

Mina crossed the street and up her blasted neighbor’s front walk, trailing wet footprints up those fancy granite steps he’d installed, each one bigger than a tombstone. She marched across the narrow porch he’d slapped on the front and up to that fancy walnut door with its stained-glass insets on either side. The doorbell was the old twist kind but in shiny, brand-new brass. Ridiculous. She turned it. Heard chimes ringing—the opening notes of “Goodnight Irene.”

No answer. No footsteps. No sounds at all from inside the house. She raised her cane and rapped it against the door. He had to be in there. It couldn’t have been more than fifteen minutes ago that he’d driven that ball.

Mina gave an anxious look behind her. No one was watching. She reached for the doorknob, turned it, and pushed. To her amazement, the door opened.