Chapter 2
Meredith led him along an uncarpeted hallway past half a dozen firmly closed white-painted doors on the both sides. Finally she came to the second one to the end on the right, and put her hand on the knob. “This’ll be your room,” she told him over her shoulder. “It’s not very big, but it’s the best we can do. The house is practically full.”
“That’s all right,” he reassured her. “It’s just kind of you to take me in like this…”
“Ayuh. It’s the Christian thing to do. Especially after….” She trailed off, her eyes darting to his face. Then she shook her head and opened the door. “Never mind. Come on in.”
Frankie followed her into the small room beyond. It had white plaster walls; a worn wooden floor; a small bed with a brass headboard, covered by a tatty quilt; two tiny windows looking out onto the yard (or at least that’s what he discovered later) with faded and dirty curtains hanging over them; a battered dresser with a cracked mirror over it; and a tiny door leading into the smallest closet he’d ever seen in his life. The whole room was about ten paces wide. He’d seen closets bigger than this is Sylvia’s house! Frankie looked around in dismay, trying to resign himself to living in a cupboard.
“I’ll just leave you to unpack,” Meredith told him. “Then you can come back downstairs for dinner.” She left without saying anything else, and Frankie walked over to set his suitcase down on the narrow bed. He wanted to slap himself on the forehead. What had he been thinking?! He should have just let Sylvia offer him a place to stay. He hadn’t wanted to take advantage of his wealthy friend, but…
He sighed; opening his suitcase and going over to cautiously slide a drawer open on the battered dresser. Inside he saw some old newspapers lining the drawers, but no insects or rat droppings. Good enough. He folded his clothes and began to put them away, thinking to himself that at least his new bedroom was warm. That was a mercy, anyway, considering how cold it was outside. He hadn’t brought a lot of stuff, since Sylvia had insisted on giving him an American Express with a thousand dollar credit line on it for him to take to the Mall of America to buy himself a whole new ‘sub-zero’ wardrobe. He’d tried to talk her out of it, but she wasn’t having any of that.
It didn’t take him long to unpack the few things he’d brought with him. He slid the empty suitcase under the bed, glad that there was just enough room between the floor and the bottom of the bed for it to fit. The closet looked too small for him to store it in. Frankie looked around his new bedroom once more, and then cautiously went out into the hallway to try to find his way back downstairs. He knew he had to learn the lay-out of the farm house, since he’d be living here for at least a year. As he walked along past the closed doors, one of them opened a crack. He stopped, staring at the narrow opening. He heard a soft hiss of sound, and then the door closed again with a click.
A little weirded out by what had just happened; Frankie gave the closed door a wall-eyed look and hurried past it. He finally found the narrow stairs that led to the first floor, and almost ran down them. He emerged into the tiny hallway that led into the living room, and that ran back toward what he assumed was the kitchen. He hesitated, but finally turned and went down it toward the kitchen. He had to learn where everything was around here if he was going to take care of himself, rather than relying on his decidedly odd cousins.
He found the kitchen through another white-painted door. It had old black-and-white tiles on the floor, and worn wooden cupboards. A woman was moving around the place slowly, stopping to stir something in a large pot on the stove. Frankie stopped in the doorway. “Umm, hello?” he said, mostly a question.
The woman paused, and then turned toward him. He saw a large, round, placid face, and a pair of rather dull eyes that looked at him without emotion. Lank dark hair fell around her face as the woman just stood there and said nothing in return. Frankie wondered desperately what to say or do, but just then Meredith came to his rescue by emerging out of a door at the far end of the kitchen carrying a large glass jar with a screw-on lid in her hands. “Oh, hello, Frankie. Did you get unpacked?” she said when she saw him in the doorway.
“Yes, I did. I was just looking the house over so I’d know where everything was,” he explained hurriedly.
She nodded, setting the jar on the long battered wooden kitchen table. “I was just helping Rena get dinner finished,” she said. “Rena, this is our cousin Frankie Post. Frankie, this is Rena Starke, another cousin who lives here. She’s our housekeeper,” Meredith added.
Frankie’s brows shot up. This was the housekeeper? No wonder the place was so filthy! He eyed Rena as the woman’s head jerked down in a silent nod, and then she turned back to the stove as though she thought that would be enough of a gesture on her part. Frankie was disconcerted, but Meredith diverted his attention by saying phlegmatically: “You’ve met everybody now except my husband Aaron and Eric. They should both be here for dinner,” she went on.
“Eric?” he said, wondering if he should just keep his mouth shut.
“Eric’s another cousin. He lives out back in the little house by the barn. Our farmhands used to live in it, but when we sold all the land we didn’t need hands anymore so we let them all go. Eric moved in instead, and he helps Adam around the place as a handyman and such.”
“I see,” Frankie said. So there were how many people living around the place? Let’s see – Meredith, her husband Aaron, the unseen grandmother, their three kids, and now three cousins including himself. Nine. Wow. That was a lot of people for a place that wasn’t a commune of some kind. Still, the farm house was pretty big. There was enough space for everybody, anyway.
“Why don’t you sit down?” Meredith indicated a place at the table, which had been set for dinner. “Everybody else will be down soon to eat.”
“Okay,” he eased into the chair, watching as Meredith opened the refrigerator and pulled out a dish of butter. She set this on the table along with the jar, which looked like it contained canned pickles of some kind.
There was a crash from somewhere in the front of the house. Meredith’s head came up. “That’ll be Aaron,” she said tightly. Frankie wondered about the expression on her face and her tone of voice. There was fear and something else laced in there. “I’d best go and tell him you’ve arrived.” She walked away out of the kitchen, leaving him with the silent Rena.
Frankie didn’t try to have a conversation with Rena, and she didn’t show any signs that she was upset about this fact. She kept lumbering around the kitchen from cupboard to refrigerator to stove, like a tank with an apron on. It wasn’t so much that she was fat – although she was overweight – it was that she was BIG. Broad shoulders that many an NFL player would have envied and wide hands that could probably break him in half. She made him nervous, this huge silent woman. It was all he could do not to squirm in his chair like a misbehaving little boy.
Meredith reappeared with a tall man at her heels. He had grizzled graying hair that stuck up rather wildly from his head, and a long face that wore a sour, disapproving expression on it. Seth had gotten his magnetic eyes from this man, and they glowered out from under his brows as he looked at Frankie. “You’d be Frankie Post, then?” he said, sounding as though he didn’t quite believe in Frankie’s identity.
“Uh, yes I am,” he replied cautiously.
The man nodded, his mouth tightening. “I‘m Aaron Starke, Meredith’s husband. Welcome to our home, Frankie.”
He said welcome, but his voice was anything but. He seemed annoyed by Frankie’s presence more than anything else. He drew in a deep breath through his nose, looking at Frankie down it. “One question – are you saved?” he demanded abruptly.
Frankie wanted to ask: “For what?” But he refrained. “No, I’m not,” he replied cautiously. “I’m not religious at all.”
A snort. “Wonderful. Another heathen in the house. I’m surrounded by the damned,” he growled, “Including my own wretched children. The Lord must be weeping.”
Frankie didn’t know what to say to this, but Meredith said: “Why don’t you go and get washed up for dinner, Aaron? Everyone else will be down soon.”
He shrugged. “Cleanliness is next to Godliness,” he agreed, brushing past her and striding away.
Meredith turned to watch his retreating back, and then turned back to look at Frankie. “Don’t mind him, Frankie,” she said. “He’s always like that.”
“Err…okay,” he replied.
There was a clatter, and Seth appeared behind her with his younger sister right at his heels. “Food!” Elena cried.
“Rena cooked it,” Seth told her dryly, and she grimaced.
“Hi, Frankie,” she said, coming into the kitchen and plopping down in a chair across from him. “You met Dad yet?”
“Yes, I did. Just now,” he told her.
She grinned. “Ready to run yet?” she asked archly.
Seth guffawed as he came over to take a seat himself. “Dad scares away the most persistent visitors – including the Jehovah’s Witnesses,” he told Frankie with a grin. “They can’t out-preach the old bastard.”
He felt his lips twitch as Elena giggled and Meredith gave Seth a disapproving look for his comment. Roger entered the kitchen more sedately, with another man right behind him. This man must be the Eric that Meredith had been talking about. He had a three-day growth of black beard, and his clothes were worn and dirty-looking. Rat-like dark eyes narrowed as they came to rest on Frankie’s face. He scowled, but said nothing as he, too, sat down at the table. Meredith introduced him, and Frankie’s, “Hi,” was met with a cold look and a lifted lip.
Aaron came through the door, his face and hands shiny from his washing. He took a seat at the head of the table as Meredith and Rena began to put the food on the table. Seth and Elena had gone quiet, Frankie noticed with a chill. Neither said anything as Aaron remarked harshly: “So you’re all here. Let us say grace before we eat – not that it will help you lot.”
Frankie blinked as Aaron bowed his head and folded his hands together in front of him. He began a long, sonorous prayer, which Frankie chose not to listen to. He was watching Seth and Elena, who appeared to be having a ‘who can make the most faces at each other’ contest while their father’s eyes were closed. Roger was giving them both a dour look, and Meredith and Rena were still putting food on the table. Eric continued to glare at Frankie. He felt like he’d entered some strange other world, like Alice falling down the rabbit hole. And he didn’t even have a hookah to suck off of and get high. Lord, he’d love some opium right now, even though he’d never taken drugs in his life.
Finally the food was on the table and the prayer was done. Aaron lifted his head and reached for a bowl of what looked like some kind of vegetable, and everyone else dug in as well. Frankie accepted a dish from Roger that looked like mashed potatoes, only were they supposed to be sort of brown and grey? He eyed them, and then put a small amount on his plate. He was beginning to understand Seth’s comments about food poisoning earlier.
And he understood even better later when he tried to eat. Seth had been totally right. The food was gruesome. Overcooked, undercooked, or just plain horrible. Frankie chewed with an effort, his face screwed up. He was ravenously hungry, but this food was almost inedible. He ate only as small amount, vowing to use Sylvia’s credit card to morrow to buy some decent food in the city itself. Until then, he’d just have to suffer with hunger. His stomach was churning from the little food he’d put into it, and he hoped desperately that he didn’t end up vomiting before the night was through.
No one said much of anything while they ate. Meredith looked glummer than ever, Roger stoic and silent, Seth alternately annoyed and amused. Elena looked bored, and Rena was expressionless as she shoveled her own cooking into her mouth. Eric finally gave up glaring at Frankie and ate his own food with a look of disgust on his face. He was glad when dinner was finally over, and the family pushed away from the table gratefully.
Seth and Elena left in a hurry without a backward glance, and Roger said to the air: “I’m going to go and watch TV,” before departing for the living room.
Aaron scowled at those left in the room. “I’ll be in my study," he remarked, “Writing my sermon for tomorrow.”
Meredith looked relieved to see him go. Eric left as well, going back to his house behind the farm house presumably. Rena shuffled off to start cleaning up, and Meredith turned to Frankie. “I’ll help Rena clean up,” she told him. “If you’d like you could go and watch TV with Roger.”
“No thank you, Meredith,” he said politely. “I think I’ll go up to my room and go to bed. I’m tired from my long trip.”
She nodded. “All right. I’ll see you in the morning, Frankie.”
“Goodnight,” he replied, and left the kitchen with an acute feeling of relief.
He found his way back upstairs, grateful to be away from the Starke family and the internal tensions that he could feel just under the surface. These were NOT happy people. He supposed that if he had to live with someone like Aaron Starke all the time, he might not be very happy either. Oh, that’s right, he DID! Dear God, he was in trouble.
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Meredith led him along an uncarpeted hallway past half a dozen firmly closed white-painted doors on the both sides. Finally she came to the second one to the end on the right, and put her hand on the knob. “This’ll be your room,” she told him over her shoulder. “It’s not very big, but it’s the best we can do. The house is practically full.”
“That’s all right,” he reassured her. “It’s just kind of you to take me in like this…”
“Ayuh. It’s the Christian thing to do. Especially after….” She trailed off, her eyes darting to his face. Then she shook her head and opened the door. “Never mind. Come on in.”
Frankie followed her into the small room beyond. It had white plaster walls; a worn wooden floor; a small bed with a brass headboard, covered by a tatty quilt; two tiny windows looking out onto the yard (or at least that’s what he discovered later) with faded and dirty curtains hanging over them; a battered dresser with a cracked mirror over it; and a tiny door leading into the smallest closet he’d ever seen in his life. The whole room was about ten paces wide. He’d seen closets bigger than this is Sylvia’s house! Frankie looked around in dismay, trying to resign himself to living in a cupboard.
“I’ll just leave you to unpack,” Meredith told him. “Then you can come back downstairs for dinner.” She left without saying anything else, and Frankie walked over to set his suitcase down on the narrow bed. He wanted to slap himself on the forehead. What had he been thinking?! He should have just let Sylvia offer him a place to stay. He hadn’t wanted to take advantage of his wealthy friend, but…
He sighed; opening his suitcase and going over to cautiously slide a drawer open on the battered dresser. Inside he saw some old newspapers lining the drawers, but no insects or rat droppings. Good enough. He folded his clothes and began to put them away, thinking to himself that at least his new bedroom was warm. That was a mercy, anyway, considering how cold it was outside. He hadn’t brought a lot of stuff, since Sylvia had insisted on giving him an American Express with a thousand dollar credit line on it for him to take to the Mall of America to buy himself a whole new ‘sub-zero’ wardrobe. He’d tried to talk her out of it, but she wasn’t having any of that.
It didn’t take him long to unpack the few things he’d brought with him. He slid the empty suitcase under the bed, glad that there was just enough room between the floor and the bottom of the bed for it to fit. The closet looked too small for him to store it in. Frankie looked around his new bedroom once more, and then cautiously went out into the hallway to try to find his way back downstairs. He knew he had to learn the lay-out of the farm house, since he’d be living here for at least a year. As he walked along past the closed doors, one of them opened a crack. He stopped, staring at the narrow opening. He heard a soft hiss of sound, and then the door closed again with a click.
A little weirded out by what had just happened; Frankie gave the closed door a wall-eyed look and hurried past it. He finally found the narrow stairs that led to the first floor, and almost ran down them. He emerged into the tiny hallway that led into the living room, and that ran back toward what he assumed was the kitchen. He hesitated, but finally turned and went down it toward the kitchen. He had to learn where everything was around here if he was going to take care of himself, rather than relying on his decidedly odd cousins.
He found the kitchen through another white-painted door. It had old black-and-white tiles on the floor, and worn wooden cupboards. A woman was moving around the place slowly, stopping to stir something in a large pot on the stove. Frankie stopped in the doorway. “Umm, hello?” he said, mostly a question.
The woman paused, and then turned toward him. He saw a large, round, placid face, and a pair of rather dull eyes that looked at him without emotion. Lank dark hair fell around her face as the woman just stood there and said nothing in return. Frankie wondered desperately what to say or do, but just then Meredith came to his rescue by emerging out of a door at the far end of the kitchen carrying a large glass jar with a screw-on lid in her hands. “Oh, hello, Frankie. Did you get unpacked?” she said when she saw him in the doorway.
“Yes, I did. I was just looking the house over so I’d know where everything was,” he explained hurriedly.
She nodded, setting the jar on the long battered wooden kitchen table. “I was just helping Rena get dinner finished,” she said. “Rena, this is our cousin Frankie Post. Frankie, this is Rena Starke, another cousin who lives here. She’s our housekeeper,” Meredith added.
Frankie’s brows shot up. This was the housekeeper? No wonder the place was so filthy! He eyed Rena as the woman’s head jerked down in a silent nod, and then she turned back to the stove as though she thought that would be enough of a gesture on her part. Frankie was disconcerted, but Meredith diverted his attention by saying phlegmatically: “You’ve met everybody now except my husband Aaron and Eric. They should both be here for dinner,” she went on.
“Eric?” he said, wondering if he should just keep his mouth shut.
“Eric’s another cousin. He lives out back in the little house by the barn. Our farmhands used to live in it, but when we sold all the land we didn’t need hands anymore so we let them all go. Eric moved in instead, and he helps Adam around the place as a handyman and such.”
“I see,” Frankie said. So there were how many people living around the place? Let’s see – Meredith, her husband Aaron, the unseen grandmother, their three kids, and now three cousins including himself. Nine. Wow. That was a lot of people for a place that wasn’t a commune of some kind. Still, the farm house was pretty big. There was enough space for everybody, anyway.
“Why don’t you sit down?” Meredith indicated a place at the table, which had been set for dinner. “Everybody else will be down soon to eat.”
“Okay,” he eased into the chair, watching as Meredith opened the refrigerator and pulled out a dish of butter. She set this on the table along with the jar, which looked like it contained canned pickles of some kind.
There was a crash from somewhere in the front of the house. Meredith’s head came up. “That’ll be Aaron,” she said tightly. Frankie wondered about the expression on her face and her tone of voice. There was fear and something else laced in there. “I’d best go and tell him you’ve arrived.” She walked away out of the kitchen, leaving him with the silent Rena.
Frankie didn’t try to have a conversation with Rena, and she didn’t show any signs that she was upset about this fact. She kept lumbering around the kitchen from cupboard to refrigerator to stove, like a tank with an apron on. It wasn’t so much that she was fat – although she was overweight – it was that she was BIG. Broad shoulders that many an NFL player would have envied and wide hands that could probably break him in half. She made him nervous, this huge silent woman. It was all he could do not to squirm in his chair like a misbehaving little boy.
Meredith reappeared with a tall man at her heels. He had grizzled graying hair that stuck up rather wildly from his head, and a long face that wore a sour, disapproving expression on it. Seth had gotten his magnetic eyes from this man, and they glowered out from under his brows as he looked at Frankie. “You’d be Frankie Post, then?” he said, sounding as though he didn’t quite believe in Frankie’s identity.
“Uh, yes I am,” he replied cautiously.
The man nodded, his mouth tightening. “I‘m Aaron Starke, Meredith’s husband. Welcome to our home, Frankie.”
He said welcome, but his voice was anything but. He seemed annoyed by Frankie’s presence more than anything else. He drew in a deep breath through his nose, looking at Frankie down it. “One question – are you saved?” he demanded abruptly.
Frankie wanted to ask: “For what?” But he refrained. “No, I’m not,” he replied cautiously. “I’m not religious at all.”
A snort. “Wonderful. Another heathen in the house. I’m surrounded by the damned,” he growled, “Including my own wretched children. The Lord must be weeping.”
Frankie didn’t know what to say to this, but Meredith said: “Why don’t you go and get washed up for dinner, Aaron? Everyone else will be down soon.”
He shrugged. “Cleanliness is next to Godliness,” he agreed, brushing past her and striding away.
Meredith turned to watch his retreating back, and then turned back to look at Frankie. “Don’t mind him, Frankie,” she said. “He’s always like that.”
“Err…okay,” he replied.
There was a clatter, and Seth appeared behind her with his younger sister right at his heels. “Food!” Elena cried.
“Rena cooked it,” Seth told her dryly, and she grimaced.
“Hi, Frankie,” she said, coming into the kitchen and plopping down in a chair across from him. “You met Dad yet?”
“Yes, I did. Just now,” he told her.
She grinned. “Ready to run yet?” she asked archly.
Seth guffawed as he came over to take a seat himself. “Dad scares away the most persistent visitors – including the Jehovah’s Witnesses,” he told Frankie with a grin. “They can’t out-preach the old bastard.”
He felt his lips twitch as Elena giggled and Meredith gave Seth a disapproving look for his comment. Roger entered the kitchen more sedately, with another man right behind him. This man must be the Eric that Meredith had been talking about. He had a three-day growth of black beard, and his clothes were worn and dirty-looking. Rat-like dark eyes narrowed as they came to rest on Frankie’s face. He scowled, but said nothing as he, too, sat down at the table. Meredith introduced him, and Frankie’s, “Hi,” was met with a cold look and a lifted lip.
Aaron came through the door, his face and hands shiny from his washing. He took a seat at the head of the table as Meredith and Rena began to put the food on the table. Seth and Elena had gone quiet, Frankie noticed with a chill. Neither said anything as Aaron remarked harshly: “So you’re all here. Let us say grace before we eat – not that it will help you lot.”
Frankie blinked as Aaron bowed his head and folded his hands together in front of him. He began a long, sonorous prayer, which Frankie chose not to listen to. He was watching Seth and Elena, who appeared to be having a ‘who can make the most faces at each other’ contest while their father’s eyes were closed. Roger was giving them both a dour look, and Meredith and Rena were still putting food on the table. Eric continued to glare at Frankie. He felt like he’d entered some strange other world, like Alice falling down the rabbit hole. And he didn’t even have a hookah to suck off of and get high. Lord, he’d love some opium right now, even though he’d never taken drugs in his life.
Finally the food was on the table and the prayer was done. Aaron lifted his head and reached for a bowl of what looked like some kind of vegetable, and everyone else dug in as well. Frankie accepted a dish from Roger that looked like mashed potatoes, only were they supposed to be sort of brown and grey? He eyed them, and then put a small amount on his plate. He was beginning to understand Seth’s comments about food poisoning earlier.
And he understood even better later when he tried to eat. Seth had been totally right. The food was gruesome. Overcooked, undercooked, or just plain horrible. Frankie chewed with an effort, his face screwed up. He was ravenously hungry, but this food was almost inedible. He ate only as small amount, vowing to use Sylvia’s credit card to morrow to buy some decent food in the city itself. Until then, he’d just have to suffer with hunger. His stomach was churning from the little food he’d put into it, and he hoped desperately that he didn’t end up vomiting before the night was through.
No one said much of anything while they ate. Meredith looked glummer than ever, Roger stoic and silent, Seth alternately annoyed and amused. Elena looked bored, and Rena was expressionless as she shoveled her own cooking into her mouth. Eric finally gave up glaring at Frankie and ate his own food with a look of disgust on his face. He was glad when dinner was finally over, and the family pushed away from the table gratefully.
Seth and Elena left in a hurry without a backward glance, and Roger said to the air: “I’m going to go and watch TV,” before departing for the living room.
Aaron scowled at those left in the room. “I’ll be in my study," he remarked, “Writing my sermon for tomorrow.”
Meredith looked relieved to see him go. Eric left as well, going back to his house behind the farm house presumably. Rena shuffled off to start cleaning up, and Meredith turned to Frankie. “I’ll help Rena clean up,” she told him. “If you’d like you could go and watch TV with Roger.”
“No thank you, Meredith,” he said politely. “I think I’ll go up to my room and go to bed. I’m tired from my long trip.”
She nodded. “All right. I’ll see you in the morning, Frankie.”
“Goodnight,” he replied, and left the kitchen with an acute feeling of relief.
He found his way back upstairs, grateful to be away from the Starke family and the internal tensions that he could feel just under the surface. These were NOT happy people. He supposed that if he had to live with someone like Aaron Starke all the time, he might not be very happy either. Oh, that’s right, he DID! Dear God, he was in trouble.
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