Read Online A Farewell to Yarns by Jill Churchill - Free Book Online Page B

something about the accountant. I think, too, that he worries about anybody having to live next door to Mr. Finch, but after all, somebody has to. The township can’t just level the whole block. I don’t think he’s half as bad as people say, do you? At least, he might not be. We had an old lady in the village where I grew up that everybody claimed was a witch, and she was really a sweet old thing when you got to know her. She just had an intimidating manner. Jane, what is this stuff?”
    . “Oh, that! It was a gorgeous angel-hair angel that Suzie Williams made, but it’s sort of turned into a blob with a head. Max and Meow got into it before I brought the carton over. I’ll just pretend to have bought it before the sale starts so we don’t have to put it out. Here’s the box with the fruitcakes. Where shall we put the things with food?“
    “Just out in the hallway. I’ll have the maid move them to the family room, and then the yard man can take them out the back .door to store in my car until the bug people are gone.”
    Jane smiled. “You know, I heard once that there are only a hundred fruitcakes in existence. Every year everyone exchanges the same hundred, and nobody knows they’re the same ones.“
    “I can believe that. My family had a fruitcake that was an heirloom. We kept giving it to my Uncle Charles, and he kept giving it back on alternate years. I think he eventually sold it to an antique dealer,“ Fiona said with a giggle.
    “So about these—there’s no point in three people moving them. Just point me toward the family room, and we’ll eliminate one stage of the process.”
    Fiona gave her directions, and Jane staggered out. The family room turned out to be the most interesting—and strange—room of the house. It wasn’t really a family room in the usual sense. It was more of a shrine. The walls were adorned with all Richie Divine’s gold and platinum records. Jane had never seen a real gold record in her life, and she walked around the room looking at them, awed. Completely apart from their meaning, they were beautiful things in a flashy way.
    There was “Red Christmas,“ the sappy but moving ballad about two young lovers separated by the Berlin Wall. Jane remembered hearing once that three of the biggest selling Christmas records year in and year out were Elvis’s “Blue Christmas,“ Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas,“ and Richie Divine’s “Red Christmas.“ The commentator liked the irony of the three dead artists with the patriotic color scheme outselling so many of the live ones.
    Next to it was the platinum disk of “Goodbye, Philly,“ the heartbreakingly lilting little song that was released, with terrible irony, the same week Richie died. The song had stayed on the charts for months and months afterward. It had a sort of “You Can’t Go Home Again“ theme, adapted to the seventies.
    Katie had been an infant when that came out, and Jane always associated the song with sitting in the kitchen, listening to the radio, and waiting for the bottle sterilizer to finish boiling. That had been such a happy, peaceful time for Jane. Life had been so simple then. And yet Fiona, at the same time, was enduring the heartbreak of losing her sexy, famous husband. It was hard to believe that anyone could have been unhappy at the same time Jane was so contented.
    Jane didn’t remember the words to the song, but she could still hum the whole thing, and she did so as she continued her tour of the room. There were platinum records for “Do I, Do I Ever,”
    “Some of These Nights,”
    “Everything I Am,“ and at least a dozen more. Jane stopped in front of “Loving Loving You,“ and came close to blushing. Steve had bought her that record the day they came back from their honeymoon.
    On a shelf that ran along the north wall there were ranks of other awards and framed pictures. Richie with Bob Hope in fatigues entertaining troops someplace. Richie with President Nixon. Richie with a