There Was an Old Woman

Chapter Eight


Are you a good witch or a bad witch? Evie had been tempted to ask as she let herself be shepherded into Mrs. Yetner’s house. She and Ginger had always called Mrs. Yetner the white witch because of her white-white hair and skin the color of parchment. She still wore the same cat’s-eye glasses she had when Evie was younger, satiny-white plastic frames with a sprinkle of rhinestones at the corners. Now that vintage look had come back in style.

Mrs. Yetner had been a severe presence who sucked in her cheeks and stared down her nose at any neighborhood kid who dared to mouth off to her. But she’d also been kind, in an unobtrusive way, except when Evie trampled her hydrangea and Shasta daisies en route to rescuing a soccer ball.

But for all the years Mrs. Yetner had been their neighbor, Evie had never actually been inside her house. Now Evie looked around in awe at the spotless kitchen with its black-and-white checkerboard tiled floor, two-basin porcelain-over-cast-iron sink standing on legs, and pair of pale-green metal base cabinets with a matching rolltop bread box sitting on a white enamel countertop. Spatulas and spoons hung from hooks on the wall, all with wooden handles painted that same green. The utensils had the patina of old tools, used for so long that they bore the imprint of their owner’s hand. Evie felt as if she’d stepped into a 1920s time warp. These days people replaced their belongings long before any of them acquired the dignity of age.

One of the few newish items in the room was a recycle bin, shoved against the wall and filled to the brim with neatly folded newspapers, cat food cans, and glass. Even Mrs. Yetner’s garbage was clean, Evie thought, recalling the abysmal mess at her mother’s house.

Mrs. Yetner left her cane resting in a corner and picked up a kettle. Bright, mirror polished with a pair of brass cylinders over the spout, like mini organ pipes, it at least was not old. She tipped back the cylinders and filled the kettle with water, then set it on the front burner of a green-enamel stove. The stove’s white-and-chrome dials were spotless, as were the porthole windows in the oven’s two doors.

A fluffy white cat brushed against Evie’s leg as Mrs. Yetner struck a match and lit a burner. There was no tick-tick-ticking like a modern gas stove, just a whoosh as the flame caught. Evie lifted the cat and buried her face in its warm back. The cat draped itself, languid and boneless in her arms, and purred like a wheezy truck engine.

“Ivory doesn’t take to most folks,” Mrs. Yetner said. “Cats know their people.”

“I never knew I was a cat person,” Evie said, setting the cat down. “How can I help?”

Mrs. Yetner pointed to a wooden corner cabinet with glass doors. “There’s tea and china in there.” Her arm trembled and she glared at it, balling her hand into a fist and lowering it to her side. Evie noticed that she was wearing two wristwatches on her arm, and her fingers were gnarled like tree roots. “And there’s milk in the icebox.”

Evie opened the cabinet. The shelves were lined with green-and-white shelf paper patterned like gingham, the edges cut with pinking shears. No pantry moth would dare take up residence in there.

Tea bags were in a mason jar on the bottom shelf. Evie unhinged the clamped lid and fished out two. From the shelf above, she took down a pair of delicate teacups and matching saucers, decorated with pink roses and blue forget-me-nots. So not dishwasher-safe. But then, as she realized when she looked around, there was no dishwasher.

She set the cups and saucers carefully on the table and placed a tea bag in each cup. Inside the refrigerator, on a shelf lined with plastic wrap over paper towels, she found the milk and set it on the table, too.

The teakettle went off, a strident three-tone cadence. Mrs. Yetner pulled it off the burner. She poured hot water in the cups and settled in a chair at the table.

“This kitchen is amazing,” Evie said. “That wonderful old stove. The floor. Do you know how special it is to find a period kitchen so intact? In fact, this whole house . . .” Evie’s gaze traveled past the kitchen’s arched doorway, through to the narrow dining room, and on to the living room with windows looking out over the water. The footprint and floor plan of the house were identical to her mother’s, and yet it felt utterly different with its mahogany paneling and thick cove moldings that belonged more in a manor house than in what had started out as a beach cottage.

“Go ahead,” Mrs. Yetner said. “Have a look around. The tea needs to steep, anyway.”

Evie got up and walked through, pausing to touch one of the fluted columns mounted on a half wall separating the dining room from the living room. A memory flickered. Before the fire, her parents’ house had had columns separating the rooms, too, only theirs had been plainer, not topped with these Doric scrolls—volutes, to use the technical term.

Mrs. Yetner followed as Evie walked to the fireplace in the living room and ran her hand across the cool, voluptuously carved marble mantel. “This is so lovely,” she said. Her parents’ fireplace surround was plain brick that someone, in a misguided effort at redecorating, had painted fire-engine red.

“My father salvaged that from a mansion in Manhattan,” Mrs. Yetner said. “But it’s far too grand for this house, don’t you think?”

“Your father was a builder?” Evie asked.

“He was. And a businessman. And an attorney. That’s him,” Mrs. Yetner said, indicating a framed sepia family portrait on the mantel. “Thomas Higgs.”

“Higgs?” Evie asked. “As in Higgs Point?”

Mrs. Yetner smiled and nodded.

Evie examined the photograph. A man in a suit and tie was seated before the same marble mantel, his slim, severe wife standing behind him. Two children, little girls maybe six and eight, stood rigid and unsmiling beside him. Only the baby sitting in the father’s lap, wearing a long white dress and holding an old-fashioned carpenter’s plane, seemed at all happy to be there.

“That’s me.” Mrs. Yetner pointed to the smaller of the two girls. “And that’s my sister, Annabelle. The little one in my father’s lap, that’s my brother.”

Alongside other pictures on the mantel were an oyster shell and the dark, leathery, helmetlike shell of a horseshoe crab. Propped up at the other end was a small white plate with a decal of the Coney Island Parachute Jump. Beside it was a metal paperweight of the Trylon and Perisphere from the 1939 World’s Fair.

But the keepsake that caught Evie’s eye was a metal miniature of the Empire State Building. Evie picked it up. From its silhouette, Evie realized it had to be old. Its top was stubby, the way the building had looked in the 1930s before its owners abandoned the fantasy that gigantic, cigar-shaped dirigibles could come nose to nose with its mooring mast and disembark passengers onto a gangplank more than a thousand feet in the air.

“You must have gotten this a very long time ago,” Evie said.

Mrs. Yetner blinked, and for a few seconds she seemed at a loss for words. She picked up another framed photograph from the mantel. “This is me and Annabelle again. A little bit older.”

Evie looked closely. Two young girls stood barefoot on a beach. Their long skirts and the scarves on their heads were being whipped around by the wind. Each had her arm around the other’s waist.

“Which beach is this?” Evie asked.

“Right down the street, if you can believe it. There used to be a beach there. Saltwater meets freshwater. It was lovely for swimming.”

Mrs. Yetner put the photograph back. Evie was still holding the little replica of the Empire State Building. Cast out of pot metal, what must once have been crisp details now blurred and melted, almost like candle wax. When she looked up, Mrs. Yetner was staring at it, too.

“I used to work there,” Mrs. Yetner said.

“Really?”

“I bought that the day I interviewed for the job. Kept it because I thought it brought me good luck.” There was something in Mrs. Yetner’s expression that Evie couldn’t read.

“When was that?”

“Oh, my, who remembers?” She gave a vague wave. “End of the war.”

“I ask because I work at the Historical Society, and we’re mounting an exhibit about some of New York’s great fires. And one of them was when a World War II bomber crashed into the building. That was back when the building looked like this.” Evie held out the souvenir. She went on, trying not to sound too excited. “So of course I’m wondering if it’s at all possible that you were working there when . . .”

She was interrupted by the doorbell. Mrs. Yetner turned sharply, her eyes wide. There was a sharp rat-tat-tat, then a man’s voice. “Aunt Mina?”

Mrs. Yetner turned back to Evie. She plucked the little statue from Evie’s palm and dropped it into her own pocket. “Would you mind getting that?” she said, adjusting her pearls and smoothing her sweater. “Sounds like my nephew has arrived.”