Cat by Any Other Name (9781101597729) by Adamson Lydia

Author:Adamson, Lydia
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin USA
Published: 2012-10-16T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 15

I could hear them laughing as they made their way slowly up the stairs. They were three wealthy women. Every one of them lived in a building with an elevator. I could tell from their voices that the climb up to my apartment both tired and amused them. It was a kind of adventuresome slumming—like going to a play in an out-of-the-way loft.

They were all a little breathless when I admitted them. All still dressed in their gardening duds, three elegant farmers on a coffee break.

I gave them each a tall glass of iced coffee to refresh them.

“Oh, dear,” Ava exclaimed, looking ruefully down at her three-hundred-dollar boots. “We should have taken our shoes off. I’ll bet there’s loads of dirt from the garden we’re tracking all over Alice’s home.”

“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m under no illusion that this is a Japanese restaurant. And besides, even actresses own vacuum cleaners.”

They laughed at that, but it was really Sylvia who set the tone for the luncheon. “I’m so glad you asked us over for this little repast, Alice. You were right—we needed to get out of the garden for a bit. And I for one flatly refuse to discuss anything pertaining to that place this afternoon. Not fertilizer, not worms, not how many packets sold. Not anything!”

She was roundly applauded.

“What a beautiful table!” Ava had strode over to my long table, which stood against the far wall and which was now laden with goodies.

Sylvia and Renee followed suit, their hands and eyes running over the table. It was the only piece of real furniture in my apartment. The other pieces amounted to little more than a grab bag assembled over the years by a perpetually out-of-work actress who used to move every time the lease was up and sometimes before.

But this table had been my grandmother’s. And it was the only large memento of her life and times on the dairy farm that I still had.

She had used it as a kitchen table. It was well over two hundred years old and originally had come from France. Gram had bought it at an auction when she was first married. The table was made of cherry wood, and it was so tough it probably could withstand a nuclear attack. There were sliding drawers and planks all around the sides.

“It was my grandmother’s,” I told Ava, “and the only thing I have left from her farm.”

“Look,” Renee said, running her hand over old circular scars near the far end of the table. “Your grandmother must have put up a lot of fruit.”

I smiled at her. It was strange to hear a sophisticated urban writer using “put up”—the country term for canning and preserving.

“My grandmother,” I replied, “turned canning into an art form. She used to consider color and shape as well as function. She would can green beans with two flawless rows on top of each other. And she would get the pickles exactly the same size and lay them in two rows around the pint jar.

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