The Gate

The Gate Pat Carr I pulled into the graveled space carved from the bluegrass lawn and noted the van with the Texas plates. Two women in stretch jeans were just going in the little shop that housed the overflow antiques Maude's parlor could no longer accommodate. I saw them pause at the door to read the sign Maude had tacked up the day she opened for business: if YOU NEED HELP, RING BELL NEXT DOOR. I'd occasionally speculated aloud if antiques sometimes disappeared from the shop under that kind of honor system, but Maude assured me that she'd never lost a piece. I didn't pause at the shop but went across the grass and up the porch steps to the big house next door. It had been repainted a handsome dark gray with maroon trim since I'd been there last. Fringed blinds had been lowered against the afternoon sun, but I could see through the screen door that the front room was deserted. "Hello?" "Come on in," Maude called from the kitchen workroom as she stuck her head around the doorway. She was a spare five feet, but her voice had the power of a factory whistle. Her greeting could easily have carried down to the two Texas women. "I'm smack in the middle of a basket." I went through the aisle left between the heavy tiger-oak hat racks and washstands , which Maude seemed to stock from some inexhaustible supply, and stopped at the kitchen archway. Wearing lemon-colored slacks and Tshirt , Maude sat astride a bench plaiting what was the beginning of a large picnic basket. There was no discernible gray in her hair, and until she turned to reveal the stoop of her spine, she seemed years younger than she was. Her eyes, the shade of resin, glanced up briefly. "I can't let go right now," she said and looked down at the weaving again, her fingers clicking the wood snugly as the oak splits looped in and out of the upright spokes. Then she raised her voice another notch. "LaDonna! Where'd you go?" "Here, Momma." LaDonna appeared at once at the back door, her taut face pink and slick with heat and exertion. I'd never seen her, even in winter, when she wasn't hot and flustered, her forehead bubbled with sweat. She had the same dark clump of hair as Maude, but she hunched at least ten inches taller and a good hundred pounds heavier than her mother. I suspected she resembled Harrison Talbet, the man from whom Maude had been divorced for thirty-three years. I couldn't remember which of my neighbors had first told me the story of how Maude had taken in her orphaned twelve-year-old niece to be a companion for LaDonna and how when Glenna was fifteen she'd run off with old Talbet. I did remember, however, that as soon as I heard the tale I admired Maude's tenacity , for everyone within a hundredmile radius knew about the elopement 63 and about the fact that Maude refused to sign the divorce papers unless Talbet deeded her the house and all the decent bottomland. LaDonna stood uncomfortably at the back screen while Maude ignored her and whipped the oak strands around the rectangle of the basket. "What do you think of the new paint job?" she asked me. "Looks good." "Cost what this house cost to build in the first place." Her little spider face grimaced. "Course material was cheap, even this oak flooring, and we did all the work ourselves." She never mentioned Talbet by name, but whenever she brought him up, her bellow became slightly subdued. I nodded toward the fitted oak planks of the floor to show my appreciation of their quality. "Have you ever thought about marrying again?" I'd noticed that older women usually don't mind that question, as if the inquiry itself were a compliment to their residual attractiveness. "No!" She reached full volume again and her mouth puckered into a grim smile. "I'm old-fashioned. You get married once, for better or worse." The smile spread grimmer. "Looks like...