Yoharie (part ten)

Yoharie

Kate Hibbler and Mat Busby

(part ten)

“Nothing goes on in that house. Now and again he gets a call from a patient. Always goes to the answering machine. Then I don’t know what…he sits and watches TV. CBS, anything running on CBS, all night. So I figure he’s not really there.” Tap, tap.

Todwillow had kept his mic on Petersen’s house during the vacancy. “To see if anyone gets inside.”

In July, a woman came, vaguely familiar. She parked on the street, got out sorting keys, picked up the For Sale sign, put it in her trunk. A van pulled into the drive, a lift whirred down, a wheelchair zimmed out. A second quiet electric motor.

Kelly Stomitz, a realtor they all knew, left the passenger seat.

“Oh, so that’s Pam. Stomitz. She’s leaving.”

Kelly flanked the man at a shuffling pace, the wife on the other side. (But not wife—Dawn was Yoharie’s “friendly lady”, a phrase of Todwillow’s Kate allowed. It was funny. It was a little true.)

Voices rose and fell, pointing, discussing. “No, when you get the ramp in, you’ll get two or three of your neighbors wanting to know what it cost, how you like it. And your kids may grow old in this house, you never know.”

“But ramp from the garage to the porch, back there,” the man in the wheelchair said. “Neighbors don’t have to get involved. Cause that’s the only way I’m going, out the van, and we’re renovating…”

Whatever they were renovating. They passed into the garage, and the neighbors let the blind right itself.

“He’s an amputee from diabetes,” Mat said. “So what’s wrong with her?”

“I have to do something about her hair. I don’t know why she bleaches it and then…” Kate’s hands drew two lank strands to frame a face. “Just nothing. She needs a volume cut, some color….she’d look so much thinner. It should not match.”

“Huh?”

“Your hair. To your skin. And your clothes.”

Mat’s wife was in Grand Rapids, pitching X-ray machines. Tristanne’s sales trips were the times Kate dropped in…because lately, Jeremiah tended to be home. It took a little goss, a little breather, before she opened the door—before hearing whatever show was droning, before she had to look at the kitchen counter.

“He’s lying. He comes back afternoons and gets online. I know when the computer’s up and who’s using it…we have that parental thing for the girls.”

“You mean Jer’s sneaking around?”

“No! Women.” The idea, her husband finding some female to have an affair with—

Was a laugh, please. “He’s out of work. And I’m not calling that stupid place to ask, because…”

“Yeah?”

Well, the truthful answer was, it was peaceful not knowing. Their arguments about Jer’s lazy ass were the dumbest, most draining.

10

Yoharie

Yoharie (part eleven)

(2019, Stephanie Foster)