The Julius House Page 0,6

thought.

"Then I'm not making a fool of myself." She looked relieved. I thought that remained to be seen. There was an awkward pause. Now we really didn't know what to say.

"As you know," she began, "or I think you know?" She paused to raise her eyebrows interrogatively. I nodded. "So you know I'm, I was, Martin's wife." "Yes."

"Martin doesn't know you're here."

"No. I'm here to buy his wedding present." I indicated she should have one of the two uncomfortable chairs on either side of the round table. She sat on the edge of it, doing the thing with the key ring again. "He told Barrett he was getting married again, and Barrett called me," she explained. "Barrett said his dad told him you were very small," she added wryly, "and he wasn't kidding."

"For Martin's wedding present," I said steadily, "I want to buy him the farm he grew up on. Can you tell me where it is? I haven't told the realtor I want to see this one particular farm because of course she'll know I want it for some reason, and Joseph Flocken won't sell to me if he knows I'm going to give it to Martin."

"You're right, he won't. I'll tell you what you need to know. But then I'm going to give you some advice. You're a lot younger than me." She sighed. "It's a good idea, getting the farm for him," she began. "He always hated someone else having it, someone else letting it fall into ruin. But Joseph always had it in for Martin, in particular, though he wasn't too fond of Barby. I'm not either, for that matter. One of the disadvantages of being married to Martin is that Barby becomes your sister-in-law... I'm sorry, I promised myself I wasn't going to be bitchy. Barby had a hard time as a teenager. The reason the blood's so bad between the kids and Flocken - Martin'll never tell you this, Barby told me - she got pregnant when she was sixteen, and when Mr. Flocken found out, he stood up in front of the whole church - not a mainstream church, one of these little off-sects - or off sex, ha! - and told everyone in the church about it, with Barby sitting right there, and asked their advice - so she got sent to one of those homes and missed a year of school and had her baby, and gave it up for adoption. And nothing ever happened to the kid who was the dad, of course, he just went around town telling everyone what a slut she was, and what a stud he was. So Martin beat him up and blacked Mr. Flocken's eye." What a dreadful story. I tried to imagine being publicly denounced in that fashion, and cringed at the thought.

"Okay, the farm is south of town on Route 8, and you can't see the house from the road, but there's a mailbox with 'Flocken' on it by the gate." I copied the directions onto the little pad the motel left in the drawer below the telephone. "Thanks," I told her. And I braced myself for the advice. "Martin has a lot of good qualities," she said unexpectedly.

She was giving the good news before the bad.

"But you don't know everything about him," she went on slowly.

I had long suspected that.

"I don't want to know unless he tells me," I said. That stopped her dead. And I couldn't quite believe that had come out of my mouth. "Don't tell me," I said. "He has to."

"He never will," she said with calm certainty. Then her mouth twisted. "I'm not trying to be bitchy, and I wish you luck - I think. He never was bad to me. He just never told me everything."

I watched her while she stared into a corner of the room, gathering her strength around her, regretting already her display of emotion. Then she just got up and left.

It took everything I had not to get up and run after her.

The next morning I met Mary Anne Bishop at her office. I was in a brisk frame of mind. I asked her which farms we were to see today, looked at the spec sheets, and asked that we see the one on Route 8 first. Looking a little puzzled, she agreed, and off we went. I looked carefully at each mailbox as we passed, and spotted one labeled "Flocken" just before the farm we'd come to see, which we