By ten-thirty on Thanksgiving morning, there were three things in Margo's house that she didn't know about. An engagement ring. A dog on its way. And my growing certainty that the two were about to meet.
I needed the box out of my boot before Gwen arrived. That should have been easy. The cubby was eleven steps from the kitchen. I had counted.
But Margo was everywhere.
She was in the front hall at 8:30, dusting the cubby. She was there at 9:15, with the cordless vacuum, doing the runner. At 9:50 she was on her knees with a soft cloth, polishing the line. I hovered in the doorway to the living room like a substitute teacher who has lost the lesson plan.
"Do you need something?" she asked.
"No. Just admiring the brass."
She looked at me for a long second. Then she went back to polishing.
At 10:20 she finally went down to the basement for the extra chairs. I made it to the cubby in six steps. I had my hand on my left boot when she came back up, carrying two folding chairs and wearing an expression of mild scientific interest.
"Why are you holding your boot?"
"Airing it out."
"In the house?"
"It's a quick airing," I said, and put it back.
She set down the chairs. She walked over, turned my boot around so it faced the door again, and patted the cubby once, the way you'd pat a horse.
"There," she said.
My parents arrived at eleven sharp. My father believes that being early is rude and being late is a crime, so he parks around the corner and waits.
I opened the door. My mother came in first, behind a tower of foil.
"Bernice, Pastor Gene, and a new one," she announced. "Florrie's yams. Florrie is a woman from water aerobics. I don't love her, but I love her yams."
She stopped at the line. She looked down at it, then up at Margo.
"Oh," she said. "You're one of those."
"Shoes off, please, Mrs. Haverford. There are slippers in the basket."
"I have arches," my mother said.
"These have support," Margo said. "Size eight."
My mother stepped out of her shoes with the air of a woman entering a cold lake. She put on the slippers. She took two steps. She stopped.
"Oh," she said, in a completely different voice. "Oh, these are nice. Vern. Vern, these have a heel cup."
My father was still on the porch.
He was standing exactly where the doormat ended. He wore his good brown lace-ups, polished that morning, and the expression he used to wear at houses with loose dogs.
"Mr. Haverford," Margo said. "Welcome. Would you like a size eleven?"
"Thirty-one years carrying mail," my father said. "Never once took my shoes off in somebody's house."
"It's nice to meet you," Margo said. "Size eleven?"
"I'm sixty-four years old, young lady."
"I have a size eleven for sixty-four-year-olds," Margo said. "It's the same one."
It went on like that for a while. My father made the case for shoes as part of an outfit, and then for his knees. He brought up a woman on Linden Avenue in 1998 who had asked him to remove his shoes to deliver a package. He had left the package on the step and gone back to the truck.
Margo listened to all of it. She did not argue. She did not move from her side of the line.
Finally, my father turned around and sat down on the porch bench.
"I'll eat out here," he announced.
Margo nodded. She went to the kitchen. She came back with a mug of coffee and a blanket, and she handed both across the line.
"Dinner's at two," she said. "I'll bring you a plate."
Then she closed the door. Gently. With my father on the other side of it.
My mother and I looked at each other.
"I'm only saying," my mother said, "I've been married to him for forty years, and I've never thought of that."
It was thirty-eight degrees outside. My father lasted twenty-two minutes.
I watched him through the front window. He drank the coffee. He wrapped himself in the blanket. He studied the mailbox, which met with his approval.
Then he stood up, opened the door, and walked to the line.
He untied his shoes slowly. He did it the way a man signs a treaty he plans to complain about for years.
"This doesn't count," he said. "This isn't a house. It's a museum."
"Thank you," Margo said, and handed him the elevens.
She picked up his lace-ups and put them in the cubby. Then she turned them, both of them, to face the door.
My father watched her do it.
"Why'd she turn 'em around?" he asked me, quietly.
"She does that with everybody's."
"Huh," he said. He looked at his shoes for a moment. They stood at attention, facing the door. Then he went to find the coffee.
Gwen arrived at 11:40. Tugboat arrived at 11:40 and a half, because it took a while for all of him to get out of the hatchback.
Margo had known about the dog since 7:53 that morning. In that time, she had built what she called the car wash. It was two bath towels, a bucket of warm water, and an old bathmat, all set up just inside the side door.
"He's very good about paws," Gwen said.
Tugboat was not very good about paws. Tugboat was very good about leaning. He leaned on Margo, on Gwen, and on the door frame, while Margo wiped each paw like she was restoring a chair leg.
It took four minutes. It took both towels.
When it was done, Tugboat shook himself from nose to tail. A small cloud of black fur drifted through the November light and settled, very slowly, on the oak.
Margo looked at the fur. Her left eye did something I had never seen it do.
"He's processing the space," Gwen said.
Tugboat finished processing in about nine seconds. Then he walked down the hall, directly to the cubby, as if he'd been there before. He put his enormous head into the second shelf. He came out with my father's left lace-up.
"Hey!" said my father, from the living room. "Hey. Hey!"
Tugboat trotted past him with the shoe in his mouth. He did not run. Running would have suggested guilt.
"Thirty-one years," my father said, to the room. "I've been bitten and chased. Once a goose came at me. Not one of them took the shoe."
"He'll give it back," Gwen said. "Eventually. He has a place."
"What place?"
"We don't know. He's very private."
I didn't hear the rest. I was already in the front hall, standing between the cubby and the rest of the house. My left boot was behind me, facing the door, with a ring inside it.
Tugboat came back four minutes later without the lace-up. He looked at the cubby. He looked at me.
I did not move. Tugboat did not move. Somewhere in the kitchen, a timer went off.
"Miles," Margo called. "Can you get the door?"
I hadn't heard the doorbell. I turned. Through the glass I saw a white county pickup at the curb, and a broad man coming up the walk with a clipboard.
He was about fifty-seven, wide as a refrigerator door, with a gray crew cut and a face that looked like it smiled for a living. He wore a navy uniform shirt with a county patch. In one hand he held a clipboard. In the other, for reasons I didn't yet understand, he held a plate of dinner rolls under plastic wrap.
And he wore black leather boots, laced to mid-shin. They were the size of small canoes.
"Happy Thanksgiving!" he said. "Calvin Jessup, Hollis County Fire Marshal's Office. I'm here for the garage."
He looked around the porch with open delight. "Is this original? Nineteen twenties?"
"Twenty-four," said Margo, who had come up behind me. "Thank you for coming, Inspector. Shoes off at the line, please. There are slippers in the basket."
Calvin Jessup looked down at the line. He looked down at the basket. He looked, finally, at Margo, with real warmth and real regret.
"Oh, no, ma'am," he said. "Not these. Boots stay on till the building's cleared."
And he stepped over the line.
The whole house went quiet. Tugboat sat down. My mother put a hand over her mouth.
And from the living room, slowly, my father began to clap.
Up next: The Red Carpet
Continue to Part 3 →