The Summer of Mrs. MacGregor by Betty R. Wright

Author:Betty R. Wright
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781504013314
Publisher: Holiday House

Chapter 11

During the two weeks that followed, Caroline saw Lillina only briefly. Mrs. Reston refused to permit any more evening walks, and Caroline usually had chores to do in the afternoon when she returned from Mr. Jameson’s house. She and Lillina did plan a picnic one day, but Lillina canceled it at the last minute because of another “tiny misunderstanding.”

“We’ll get together soon,” she promised on the telephone. “Tell me about your job, Caroline. I want to write to Eleanor about it.”

Caroline didn’t know if her job was going well or not. She was still working, but Mr. Jameson continued to complain, and sometimes he shouted at her. He didn’t use the walker that she always left within his reach. He refused Joe’s offer to take him downtown “if you have any errands there.”

He never complimented Caroline on the lunches she prepared for him, even though she was becoming more daring with her menus. She made French toast at home for Joe, and then made it again the next day for Mr. Jameson. She fixed waffles for breakfast, and when Joe pronounced them “not bad at all,” she carried the waffle iron across the street to Mr. Jameson’s kitchen. She tried her mother’s recipe for tuna-burgers, combining tuna, onions, hard-boiled eggs, and mushroom soup. “Gettin’ pretty fancy,” was all Mr. Jameson said after he’d cleaned his plate.

Still, she had a feeling that he waited eagerly for her arrival each morning. One day, they sorted through a box of letters and clippings he’d been saving for years. She saw pictures of a round, smiling Mrs. Jameson who had died long ago. She learned that Mr. Jameson had won an amateur swimming championship when he was twenty-six and had been the Grand River bowling champion when he was forty. She found out that he’d once worked on an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico and for years had driven a semitrailer truck all over the United States. After the box was back on the closet shelf, Caroline wondered if he’d suggested the “sorting” to show her, and himself, that he hadn’t always been a sick old man.

A letter came from his niece Jean, and Mr. Jameson gave it to Caroline to read. It was full of news about Jean’s family and questions about her uncle’s health. “Please ask that nice neighbor of yours to write again and tell me more about yourself,” it said. “I worry.”

“How many hours have you been here?” Mr. Jameson asked abruptly at the end of the second week. He was in his usual chair in front of the television set. “Turn that stupid thing off.”

Caroline obeyed. “It’s been about two weeks,” she said. “Every day except one.”

“That ain’t what I asked you,” Mr. Jameson snapped. “How many hours?”

“I—I don’t know.”

He rolled his eyes in disgust. “Never goin’ to get anywhere that way,” he said. “It’s twenty hours and a half, total. I kept track in my head. Good thing somebody did. Is two-fifty an hour okay

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