Katherine Page - The Body In The Basement

AcknowledgmentsI would like to acknowledge Barbara Brackman, quilt detective extraordinaire, and her excel ent guide to identifying and dating antique quilts, The Clues in the Calico, EPM Publications, Inc. Thanks, as always, to Ruth Cavin, my editor, and Faith Hamlin, my agent, for their insight, advice, and above al , friendship.

Editor's Note The Body in the Basement includes, at the end of the story, six ful recipes from Faith Fairchild's (fictional) cookbook, Have Faith in Your Kitchen, as wel as a number of descriptions in the text of the way Faith and Pix make some of the delectable New England dishes featured in the action.

Two residents are standing on the post office steps in a smal Maine coastal vil age observing the increased traffic on Memorial Day weekend.

“Wel , this time of year always brings two things: the summer people and the black flies," says one.

The other nods. "Yup, but you can kil the black flies.”

-ANONYMOUS

One

There were days when Pix Mil er was forced to agree with her husband, Sam's, observation that "Don't worry, Pix wil do it" would be the epitaph carved on her headstone in the family plot in Maine.

She was at the plot on Sanpere Island now, thinning the potentil a that grew on her father's grave. The sky was slightly overcast and the woods that surrounded the cemetery were dark and dense. She preferred to be there on sunny days, when the white birch trunks shimmered and the stately emerald evergreens looked as if they had been and would be there forever. The dead were not dead on those days, but came alive in memory as she walked past stones with familiar names to their own bit of earth, the ground covered with wildflowers until Freeman Hamilton came with his scythe.

Today as Pix looked down at her father's grave, she had no trouble remembering that first shock, the first grief, although he had been gone for a dozen years. She put down her clippers and stretched out on the green, very green, grass. "Pix wil do it." Apt, extremely apt.

She sat up, feeling a bit foolish at the picture she presented—spread-eagled on her forebears. If there was anything Pix Mil er was not, it was foolish, however much she tried. She plucked a piece of grass from the ground, slit it with her thumbnail, and put it to her lips. The ensuing high-pitched whistle was gratifying. She stil knew how.

She'd taught her children the trick, just as she'd taught them al the other things she'd learned on the island when she was young: how to sail, canoe, and swim; where to find the best clams, best blueberries, best shel s; to leave nests undisturbed and to walk silently through the forest; to get every last morsel from a boiled lobster and to wake up in anticipation each morning.

That was how she had awakened this morning. It had taken about thirty seconds for her to realize she was not in her bed in Aleford, Massachusetts, but tucked under the eaves in her bed in Maine. Pix didn't waste any time getting to Sanpere for the summer, and this year was no exception.

Yesterday at exactly twelve noon, she'd picked up seventeen-year-old Samantha at the high school, then swung by the middle school for twelve-year-old Danny and turned the Land Rover, packed to the gunnels, due north.

She had already driven her oldest, nineteen-year-old Mark, to Logan Airport in time for the early shuttle to Washington, D.C., where he was spending the summer as an intern in their local congressman's office. Mark had protested the ungodliness of the hour al the way to Boston, but Pix was too busy running through her mental lists, making sure she hadn't forgotten anything, to pay him much mind.

At the airport, he had given her an affectionate bear hug and said, "It's okay, Mom. I know you can't help yourself. The old Siren cal of Sanpere, and probably there'l be a few moments this summer when I'l wish I was there, too. When it's a hundred degrees in the shade in D.C.”

Pix had had a sudden hope. This was the first summer the whole family wouldn't al be together for at least part of the time. "It's not too late to change your mind, sweetie. We could swing by the house and get some of your more rugged clothes" Mark was dressing for success these days.

“Mom, I said, moments, à few moments.' Sure, life on Sanpere is gripping: `Mrs. Walton wil be entertaining her daughter and family from Bangor for the weekend' and

‘Sonny Prescott has a new lobster boat, which he has named the Miss Steak.' Health-care reform and balancing the budget are going to seem pretty tame." Mark had rol ed his eyes. "Time to let one of us fly."

“But you'l come up Labor Day weekend?" Pix was trying to hold on to the end of the string.

Mark said something that could have been a yes or a no, the string snapped, and he was gobbled up by the crowd of morning travelers just beyond the terminal's automatic doors.

Stil absentmindedly picking at the grass, Pix realized this was going to be a summer of women, not an altogether-bad thing, of course, but different. On the way up last night, she'd dropped Danny off at his beloved Camp Chewonki near Brunswick for a virtual y whole-summer stay, and Sam probably wouldn't be able to get away until the Fourth of July, and then only for a few days until his August vacation.

Samantha had picked up on her mother's mood the night before as they drove through the darkness, bent on getting to their cottage no matter what the hour. "We'l have fun—and think how easy the housework is going to be, and the cooking." Pix had brightened considerably at this prospect. She didn't mind the housework, but unlike her friend, next-door neighbor, and now employer, Faith Fairchild, food preparation as a pleasant activity was up there with lighted matches under the fingernails. If Pix had not been endowed with a superabundance of Puritan guilt, it would have been Hamburger Helper every night—instead of merely some nights.

Faith was the Faith of Have Faith, an extremely successful Manhattan catering company that Faith had recently reopened in Aleford. She'd moved to the vil age fol owing her marriage to the Reverend Thomas Fairchild.

Pix's responsibilities at the catering company didn't involve cooking. Keeping the books, counting forks, and other organizational feats were the areas where Pix excel ed.

Over the years, Pix Mil er had developed a reputation for getting things done. And having earned it once, she kept on earning it. She was the town wide coordinator for the Girl Scout cookie drive, although Samantha hadn't been in uniform for years. Then there was the United Way appeal, Town Meeting, the library board of trustees, and so forth.

She'd ceased being a room mother now that her children were out of elementary school, but she stil held her seat on the PTA Council. And she did al this along with chauffeuring these children to soccer, bal et, French horn lessons, ski team, swim team, as wel as making their Hal oween and school-play costumes. Some Alefordians cal ed Pix a superwoman, but she didn't feel like one. She'd talked about it once with her friend Faith in a sudden burst of self-examination: "I'm not working, so I feel I can't say no, and everyone always cal s me. I don't want to disappoint them—or my kids—but sometimes I wonder how the heck I got in so deep.”

Faith had taken a dim view of the whole thing, especial y the notion that Pix wasn't working. As a minister's wife, Faith lived in fear that she would end up in charge of the Christmas pageant or fund-raising for a new roof. Fortunately, Pix had taken this job. "You have to start saying no. You know the slogan, `Just Say No'. Al this is not so different from doing drugs, Pix. I think you've gotten to the point where your system needs it and you have to go cold turkey. Besides, now you are gainful y employed and you have a perfect excuse.”