Wishing everyone a safe, happy, healthy New Year! ~ D
Chapter 13
The unusual heat wave that had settled over the state was in its third day and despite the addition of summer canopies over both east and west facing windows, the house became uncomfortably hot by noon. Large ceiling fans in the main rooms on the first floor helped some, but if the oven was turned on the additional heat would become trapped in the kitchen and dining room. It was with this thought that Della contemplated the variety of food neighbors and employees of the mill had dropped off the previous day as word spread of Katherine Street's passing.
She had left her shoes up in her room following Perry's reading of her grandmother's letter and the tile floor was cool on her bare feet as she padded from refrigerator to table, from table to counter and back again, grateful for something to occupy her mind. 'The gang' had dispersed quickly after receiving copies of the deceased's letter, each eager to find a private corner in which to read Katherine Street's reasoning for reneging on promises made to them and designating her granddaughter as the sole heir to her holdings. Emmett Childers had requested a private conference with Perry, and Della took the opportunity to escape to the kitchen by herself to mull over her unexpected admission. Perry had attempted to draw her out, but she wouldn't talk to him. He had become upset with her, with how she withdrew to battle her thoughts alone, and she had become upset with him for trying to force her to talk about something she wasn't ready to talk about. Their walk from her bedroom back to the parlor had been uncomfortably silent.
Della carved thick slices from Fran Shaffer's two-pound meatloaf and stacked them artfully on a small pink Depression glass platter. Bowls of fruit salad and cold German potato salad as well as freshly baked bread, a bottle of homemade ketchup and a jar of mustard joined the platter of meatloaf in the center of the table. She was on her tip-toes pulling plates down from the cabinet when Perry spoke behind her.
"May I say something without upsetting you?"
She calmly turned and eyed him contemplatively, the stack of plates held cradled in her arms. "Whenever you preface a statement like that, I'm fairly certain you will upset me no matter how prepared I think I may be. Are you going to defend what my grandmother wrote or why she saddled me with her unfinished business?"
He shook his head. "I didn't know her, and you've told me very little of what it was she did, so I can't very well defend her. But I would be remiss in my duty as your attorney to point out that it really doesn't matter why she left you everything. The reality is that she did leave you everything."
"And why could you not have imparted this bit of wisdom before you began reading the letter?"
His eyes were dark with emotion as he advanced further into the room. "Because along with being your attorney, I am the man who loves you, and sometimes I have to make a decision which of those roles is best suited for the situation."
"Go on," she prompted, shifting her weight to accommodate the heavy plates.
"As the man who loves you, I want to know as much about your family as I possibly can." He waved the copy of her grandmother's letter at her. "I don't see the cruel, vindictive woman you insist your grandmother was. She was tough and outspoken for certain, but the woman who wrote this letter did so out of loyalty and fairness and honesty."
"All you know of her is that letter," she said, suddenly shaky. She took a couple of steps forward and set the plates down on the table.
"That's because you refuse to tell me anything," he said gently accusing. "Every word out of your mouth about your grandmother has been bitter and angry, yet you just admitted that you loved her."
"Of course I loved her. She was the only mother I knew. Children do that, you know. They automatically love those who take care of them."
"I'm sorry, Della, but I'm not buying that. You were as surprised as I was by what you said."
Della pulled out a chair and sat down, rubbing her eyes wearily with the palms of her hands. "I'm so confused," she admitted. "I hate this house, and now it's mine. What do I do with it? What do I do with everything in it? It's going to take more than two days to sort this out."
Perry sat down next to her, sideways in the chair, facing her. "We'll figure it out."
"I'm glad you're my lawyer," she said with simple honesty.
"So am I. But you do realize my rates are exceptionally steep." His eyes were twinkling.
"What, no employee discount?"
"Not when that employee is an heiress."
Della pulled a face. "Do we know to what extent I'm an heiress? What did Emmett want to talk to you about?"
"He showed me a handwritten list your grandmother gave him of every item in this house. Would you like Mr. Childers to perform an inventory?"
She nodded absently as she pulled a fragrant loaf of freshly baked bread toward her and proceeded to slice it quickly and efficiently with a long serrated knife. "I think that would be best."
"That's why I told him to go ahead with it."
She flashed him a faint smile. "How much did that cost me?"
Perry leaned forward, his eyes still twinkling. "One kiss."
She sighed dramatically. "I can only imagine what you'll charge me for reading Grandmother's letters and supporting documentation."
"I'm imagining it already," he growled, as his lips sought hers.
Perry and Della snuck out of the house following lunch while her father and brother received visits from several business associates and Henny was again preoccupied with finding places to put all the food, which had become a full-time job due to the sheer amount and variety. Eve Wyman had disappeared into Jameson Street's study to call her fiancé, and Emmett Childers was skulking about, methodically making check marks next to Katherine Street's listing of personal possessions. Perry was surprised the older attorney was personally undertaking the inventory, until Della told him he was in reality semi-retired, but continued to handle her grandmother's affairs because she demanded that he do so.
"Besides," she said, sliding beneath the steering wheel and scooting over so Perry could get in, "it will give him something to do and take his mind off of his wife. I overheard Grandma Bitty ask him how he was getting along since Vera passed away. She was a nice woman. I would like to do something for him."
Perry gunned the Galaxie to life and swung it down the sweeping driveway. "Letting him be responsible for the personal aspects of your grandmother's estate will be all the payment he'll want," Perry predicted. "I think he cared for your grandmother as more than a client."
"I never did understand his devotion to her," Della mused. "She treated him like chattel, calling him at all hours of the day and night for one thing or another. Father employs a team of attorneys based in Chicago for the mill, and Grandmother was always suspicious of them. She made Emmett look over almost every contract they put together. I don't think Emmett had any inkling about the veracity or validity of those contracts, and probably only pretended to so that Grandmother wouldn't take her personal business elsewhere."
"Maybe," Perry said, in an equally musing manner. "You realize we'll have to meet with those Chicago attorneys."
Della groaned. "We don't have time for all of this. Do you know what it took to carve out two weeks for our anniversary trip to the lake?"
"Speaking of our anniversary, mine is Tuesday." 'Their' anniversary was actually divided into two days: the first day being the day they met, which Perry insisted was their true anniversary; and the next day when Della actually began working for him, which she maintained was the rightful date of their anniversary. "Is there an Italian restaurant anywhere?"
Della groaned again. "Will we still be here Tuesday?"
"Darling, we have arrangements to make to settle the estate. That takes time."
"Don't you know anyone around here? An old law school buddy or the brother of a law school buddy…?" she trailed off and looked at him with such hope that he laughed.
"I'm afraid not. All my buddies stayed in California." Her crestfallen expression made him laugh again. "Tell you what I'll do. I'll call Jim Brandis tonight and see if he can find someone out here we might feel comfortable with retaining. By the way, where are we going?"
"Let's go downtown to have a cherry Coke and leaf through the comic books at Rexall Drugs. Then I'll show you Miss Roseanne's dance studio and Rog and Bob's Marathon station, the Elks Club and the Sun movie theater…"
"Can my heart take all that excitement?" he asked as her words again trailed off into silence.
"There's also Woolworth's and Skogmo's."
"Well that settles it," he declared, braking the car at a stop sign. "I don't know what the hell a Skogmo's is, but I can't wait to find out."
The street Della's house was on crossed Sherwood Street, and she nodded when he raised his eyebrows. He turned left onto Sherwood at her direction, slowing as they drove by a large square Edwardian house in need of a coat of paint that Della tersely told him was the Sherwood family home, and then turned right three blocks down onto Allegan Street. He spotted the big orange Rexall sign on the corner of Allegan and Farmer Streets almost immediately. The front of the building was all glass block, which curved around the corner and softened its squareness. The first parking space from the corner was unoccupied and he easily backed into it.
After downing the best cherry Coke he'd had since his childhood at the soda fountain counter and catching up on Superman's latest exploits, he and Della walked back out into the hot sunshine of early afternoon. Perry tucked Della's hand into the crook of his elbow as they strolled up the street, past an appliance repair shop, a shoe cobbler, a Woolworth's five and dime store, a jewelry store (Perry wanted to go in, but Della resisted), a rock shop that had closed at noon, and finally, Lorna's dress shop on the corner of Allegan and Sherwood. They crossed the street and Perry discovered that Skogmo's was a small department store featuring everything from clothing to household items to tools, and that Judy's Diner had undergone a rather radical facelift recently. Another drugstore, this one not part of a chain and called Gamble's, was sandwiched between a dentist office and a florist on the corner. They crossed Farmer Street to the bank, Hinkle's Bakery, the newspaper building, and finally, Rog and Bob's Marathon station and repair garage. Directly across from the garage was the parking lot for the Sun Theater, the theater itself, the law offices of Vernon Hartzler, Della's classmate who had bought Emmett Childers's practice, Miss Roseanne's Dance Academy, and Pete's Pub, which was owned by Miranda Allensworth's perennial boyfriend Peter Stanton. And then they were back in front of the Rexall.
"That was certainly a whirlwind tour," Perry remarked, assisting Della back into the Galaxie.
"Be nice or I won't show you where my paper mill is," she warned.
Perry rolled down the window and stuck his arm out as a signal of his intent to vacate the parking space even though not one car was visible on the road. "I'm being quite charitable in my comments," he claimed. "Exactly how many people are there in this town and where are they on a summer Saturday afternoon? I expect to see a tumbleweed blow by any minute."
"The sign outside of town said that 'four thousand friendly people welcome you'." Della couldn't contain a smile as she fanned herself with her hands. "They are probably too smart to be out in this heat or they're all at Gun Lake cooling off."
Perry turned left at the one traffic signal in town off of Allegan Street and onto Farmer Street, which sloped sharply downward before evening out. An indescribable smell assailed his nose. "What in hell is that smell?"
Della wrinkled her nose. "That," she announced, "is my paper mill." She pointed forward toward the windshield. "There it is, on the right."
The building was low and sprawling, the top portion painted a dark royal blue, the bottom portion constructed of redbrick. The front of the building obviously housed offices for the clerical staff and bore the name Milliron Corrugated in tall, shiny brass letters. Several impressive smoke stacks and cinder block silo-like structures surrounded the building, which stretched for at least two city blocks behind the administrative portion of the mill. As they drew closer, the stench grew worse.
"I had no idea paper smelled so bad," Perry said, using his thumb and forefinger to pinch his nose.
Della laughed. "I don't know about standard paper," she told him, "but corrugating medium produced from wood pulp and waste paper does. What you smell is the sludge pits, which run alongside the river beyond the parking lot and the warehouse. The sawdust pile is over there, too."
Perry raised his eyebrows inquisitively. "The sawdust pile?"
Della nodded, and he felt she was actually excited to tell him about the mill that now belonged to her. "It's huge," she said, flinging her arms out expressively. "You can see it all the way from D Avenue Hill."
"What is D Avenue Hill?"
"It's the hill where the highway crosses D Avenue," she said patiently, as if everyone knew where D Avenue Hill was located. "When we finally head for the airport, we'll look back. It's really quite impressive."
Perry braked the car at the stop sign and noticed that the cross street was Orleans. Henny lived on Orleans Street. He wondered how on earth anyone could live cloaked in the stench of the sludge pits, whatever those might be.
And then he found out what a sludge pit was when a puff of breeze carried in another whiff. He rolled up the window quickly as Della laughed. "Your family business is a menace to the health and well-being of this town," he charged.
"Quite the contrary," Della responded matter-of-factly. "The sludge pits are actually an innovation that reduces pollutants that previously had been pumped into the river in their raw state. Milliron Corrugated is a state-of-the-art facility and credited as being the front-runner in the industry. When I was here last, Father and Carter were working on the warehouse, as well as a capacity expansion and contracts to produce gypsum board. It makes sense, since the gypsum mines are less than an hour away."
Perry kept the car braked at the intersection of Farmer and Orleans and stared at Della admiringly. "You never cease to surprise me, Della."
She shrugged. "I couldn't help but pick up a few facts over the years."
"I can't fathom why the entire town doesn't smell like this."
"Because the mill is at the bottom of the hill in the river basin," Della explained as patiently as before. "There has to be quite an updraft for the smell to disperse into the air."
"What about all that smoke coming out of the smokestacks? Doesn't that disperse it?"
"It's steam from the boilers, not smoke. The waste, or sludge, contains all the odor."
"It certainly does," he agreed with feeling. "My God, what is that?"
Della grinned hugely. "That's the sawdust pile."
Perry braked to lessen the bump and rattle of railroad tracks that ran alongside the new warehouse. "That's not a pile, that's a mountain. Where are the sludge pits? We're about to cross the river."
"Continue across the bridge and then turn right. The pits are behind and upriver of the sawdust pile. It's actually a combination of wood chips and sawdust, but that doesn't have quite the same ring that just plain old 'sawdust pile' does."
"I agree wholeheartedly," Perry said. Then a moment later, "Okay, I've now experienced the sight and smell of sludge pits. How quickly can we get out of here?"
Even Della had rolled up her window as they passed the interesting but foul pits. "You're lucky the aerators aren't activated. That's when the smell is really bad."
"Will I have to live with this smell in my nose the rest of my life?" Perry pushed his foot down on the gas pedal and the Galaxie's transmission jumped into another gear with a hesitant jerk, putting distance between them and Milliron Corrugated's claim to fame.
Della was laughing again as she shook her head, delighted by the discomfort of his first up-close experience with a paper mill. "Follow this road," she instructed. "There won't be another bridge until the next town. If we open all the windows, the smell will be gone by the time we get home."
Perry glanced sideways at her as she stuck her head out the window and let the hot air of the day whip her wavy hair into a mass of unruly curls and thought to himself that he had never known a more beautiful, surprising, desirable woman than Della Street.