Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, Vol. 57, No. 3. Whole No. 328, March 1971

Recipe for a Happy Marriage by Nedra Tyre[6]

Nedra Tyre’s newest story is unusual — but, then, all Nedra Tyre’s stories are unusual. This one is beautifully written — but, then, all Nedra Tyre’s stories are beautifully, some exquisitely, written. In this one you will get to know Baby and her unlucky husbands, and you will remember Baby for a long tune. And speaking of time, that’s unusual, too: if our memory is still trustworthy, “Recipe for a Happy Marriage” is the first St. Valentine’s Day mystery ever to appear in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine — a notable first...

(Alas, our memory is definitely not trustworthy. Even before the editorial introduction above could be set in type, we came upon “Murder on St. Valentine’s Day” by Mignon G. Eberhart, in the March 1957 issue of EQMM. Still, 14 years can be a relatively long time. And the day still is an unusual one for murder...)

Today is just not my day.

And it’s not even noon.

Maybe it will take a turn for he better.

Anyway, it’s foolish to be upset.

That girl from the Bulletin who came to interview me a little while ago was nice enough. I just wasn’t expecting her. And I surely wasn’t expecting Eliza McIntyre to trip into my bedroom early this morning and set her roses down on my bedside table with such an air about her as if I’d broken my foot for the one and only purpose of having her arrive at seven thirty to bring me a bouquet. She’s been coming often enough since I broke my foot, but never before eleven or twelve in the morning.

That young woman from the Bulletin sat right down, and before she even smoothed her skirt or crossed her legs she looked straight at me and asked if I had a recipe for a happy marriage. I think she should at least have started off by saying it was a nice day or asking how I felt, especially as it was perfectly obvious that I had a broken foot.

I told her that I certainly didn’t have any recipe for a happy marriage, but I’d like to know why I was being asked, and she said it was almost St. Valentine’s Day and she had been assigned to write a feature article on love, and since I must know more about love than anybody else in town she and her editor thought that my opinions should have a prominent place in the article.

Her explanation put me more out of sorts than her question. But whatever else I may or may not be I’m a good-natured woman. I suppose it was my broken foot that made me feel irritable.

At that very moment Eliza’s giggle came way up the back stairwell from the kitchen, and it was followed by my husband’s laughter, and I heard dishes rattle and pans clank, and all that added fire to my irritability.

The one thing I can’t abide, never have been able to stand, is to have somebody in my kitchen. Stay out of my kitchen and my pantry, that’s my motto. People always seem to think they’re putting things back in the right place, but they never do. How well I remember Aunt Mary Ellen saying she just wanted to make us a cup of tea and to cut some slices of lemon to go with it. I could have made that tea as well as she did, but she wouldn’t let me. I couldn’t tell a bit of difference between her tea and mine, yet she put my favorite paring knife some place or other and it didn’t turn up until eight months later, underneath a stack of cheese graters. That was a good twenty years ago and poor Aunt Mary Ellen has been in her grave for ten, and yet I still think about that paring knife and get uneasy when someone is in my kitchen.

Well, that young woman leaned forward and had an equally dumfounding question. She asked me just which husband I had now.

I don’t look at things — at husbands — like that. So I didn’t answer her. I was too aghast. And then again from the kitchen came the sound of Eliza’s giggle and Lewis’ whoop.

I’ve known Eliza Moore, now Eliza McIntyre, all my life. In school she was two grades ahead of me from the very beginning, but the way she tells it now she was three grades behind me; but those school records are somewhere, however yellowed and crumbled they may be, and there’s no need for Eliza to try to pretend she’s younger than I am when she’s two years older. Not that it matters. I just don’t want her in my kitchen.

That young woman was mistaking my silence. She leaned close as if I were either deaf or a very young child who hadn’t paid attention. How many times have you been married? she asked in a very loud voice.

When she put it like that, how could I answer her? Husbands aren’t like teacups. I can’t count them off and gloat over them the way Cousin Lutie used to stand in front of her china cabinets, saying she had so many of this pattern and so many of that.

For goodness’ sake, I had them one at a time, a husband at a time, and perfectly legally. They all just died on me. I couldn’t stay the hand of fate. I was always a sod widow — there weren’t any grass widows in our family. As Mama said, it runs in our family to be with our husbands till death us do part. The way that girl put her question, it sounded as if I had a whole bunch of husbands at one time like a line of chorus men in a musical show.

I didn’t know how to answer her. I lay back on my pillows with not a word to say, as if the cat had run off with my tongue.

It’s sheer accident that I ever married to begin with. I didn’t want to. Not that I had anything against marriage or had anything else special to do. But Mama talked me into it. Baby, she said, other women look down on women who don’t marry. Besides, you don’t have any particular talent and Aunt Sallie Mae, for all her talk, may not leave you a penny. I don’t think she ever forgave me for not naming you after her, and all her hinting about leaving you her money may just be her spiteful way of getting back at me.

Besides, Mama said, the way she’s held on to her money, even if she did leave it to you, there would be so many strings attached you’d have to have a corps of Philadelphia lawyers to read the fine print before you could withdraw as much as a twenty-five-cent piece. If I were you, Baby, Mama said, I’d go and get married. If you don’t marry you won’t get invited any place except as a last resort, when they need somebody at the last minute to keep from having thirteen at table. And it’s nice to have somebody to open the door for you and carry your packages. A husband can be handy.

So I married Ray.

Well, Ray and I hadn’t been married six months when along came Mama with a handkerchief in her hand and dabbing at her eyes. Baby, she said, the wife is always the last one to know. I’ve just got to tell you what everyone is talking about. I know how good you are and how lacking in suspicion, but the whole town is buzzing. It’s Ray and Marjorie Brown.

Ray was nice and I was fond of him. He called me Lucyhoney, exactly as if it were one word. Sometimes for short he called me Lucyhon. He didn’t have much stamina or back-bone — how could he when he was the only child and spoiled rotten by his mother and grandma and three maiden aunts?

Baby, Mama said, and her tears had dried and she was now using her handkerchief to fan herself with, don’t you be gullible. I can’t stand for you to be mistreated or betrayed. Should I go to the rector and tell him to talk to Ray and point out where his duty lies? Or should I ask your Uncle Jonathan to talk to Ray man-to-man?

I said, Mama, it’s nobody’s fault but my own. For heaven’s sake let Ray do what he wants to do. He doesn’t need anyone to tell him when he can come and go and what persons he can see. It’s his house and he’s paying the bills. Besides, his taking up with Marjorie Brown is no discredit to me — she’s a lot prettier than I am. I think it’s romantic and spunky of Ray. Why, Marjorie Brown is a married woman. Her husband might shoot Ray.

I don’t know exactly what it was that cooled Ray down. He was back penitent and sheepeyed, begging forgiveness. I’m proud of you, Ray, I said. Why, until you married me you were so timid you wouldn’t have said boo to a goose and here you’ve been having an illicit affair. I think it’s grand. Marjorie Brown’s husband might have horsewhipped you.

Ray grinned and said, I really have picked me a wife.

And he never looked at another woman again as long as he lived. Which unfortunately wasn’t very long.

I got to thinking about him feeling guilty and apologizing to me, when I was the one to blame — I hadn’t done enough for him, and I wanted to do something real nice for him, so I thought of that cake recipe. Except we called it a receipt. It had been in the family for years — centuries you might say, solemnly handed down from mother to daughter, time out of mind.

And so when that girl asked me whether I had a recipe for a happy marriage I didn’t give the receipt a thought. Besides, I’m sure she didn’t mean an actual recipe, but some kind of formula like let the husband know he’s boss, or some such foolishness.

Anyway, there I was feeling penitent about not giving Ray the attention he should have had so that he was bored enough by me to go out and risk his life at the hands of Marjorie Brown’s jealous husband.

So I thought, well, it’s the hardest receipt I’ve ever studied and has more ingredients than I’ve ever heard of, but it’s the least I can do for Ray. So I went here and there to the grocery stores, to drug stores, to apothecaries, to people who said, good Lord, no, we don’t carry that but if you’ve got to have it try so-and-so, who turned out to be somebody way out in the country that looked at me as if I asked for the element that would turn base metal into gold and finally came back with a little packet and a foolish question as to what on earth I needed that for.

Then I came on back home and began grinding and pounding and mixing and baking and sitting in the kitchen waiting for the mixture to rise. When it was done it was the prettiest thing I had ever baked.

I served it for dessert that night.

Ray began to eat the cake and to savor it and to say extravagant things to me, and when he finished the first slice he said, Lucyhon, may I have another piece, a big one, please.

Why, Ray, it’s all yours to eat as you like, I said.

After a while he pushed the plate away and looked at me with a wonderful expression of gratitude on his face and he said, oh, Lucy honey, I could die happy. And as far as I know he did.

When I tapped on his door the next morning to give him his first cup of coffee and open the shutters and turn on his bath water he was dead, and there was the sweetest smile on his face.

But that young woman was still looking at me while I had been reminiscing, and she was fluttering her notes and wetting her lips with her tongue like a speaker with lots of things to say. And she sort of bawled out at me as if I were an entire audience whose attention had strayed: Do you think that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach?

Excuse me, young lady, I wanted to say, but I never heard of Cleopatra saying to Mark Antony or any of the others she favored, here, won’t you taste some of my potato salad, and I may be wrong because my reading of history is skimpy, but it sounds a little unlikely that Madame de Pompadour ever whispered into the ear of Louis the Fifteenth, I’ve baked the nicest casserole for you.

My not answering put the girl off, and I felt that I ought to apologize, yet I couldn’t bring myself around to it.

She glanced at her notes to the next question, and was almost beet-red from embarrassment when she asked: Did the financial situation of your husbands ever have anything to do with your marrying them?

I didn’t even open my mouth. I was as silent as the tomb. Her questions kept getting more and more irrelevant. And I was getting more stupefied as her eyes kept running up and down her list of questions.

She tried another one: What do you think is the best way to get a husband?

Now that’s a question I have never asked myself and about which I have nothing to offer anybody in a St. Valentine’s Day article or elsewhere. I have never gone out to get a husband. I haven’t ever, as that old-fashioned expression has it, set my cap for anybody.

Take Lewis who is this minute in the kitchen giggling with Eliza McIntyre. I certainly did not set out to get him. It was some months after Alton — no, Edward — had died, and people were trying to cheer me up, not that I needed any cheering up. I mean, after all the losses I’ve sustained I’ve become philosophical. But my Cousin Wanda’s grandson had an exhibition of paintings. The poor deluded boy isn’t talented, not a bit. All the same I bought two of his paintings that are downstairs in the hall closet, shut off from all eyes.

Anyway, at the opening of the exhibition there was Lewis looking all forlorn. He had come because the boy was a distant cousin of his dead wife. Lewis leaped up from a bench when he got a glimpse of me and said, why, Lucy, I haven’t seen you in donkey’s years, and we stood there talking while everybody was going ooh and aah over the boy’s paintings, and Lewis said he was hungry and I asked him to come on home with me and have a bite to eat.

I fixed a quick supper and Lewis ate like a starving man, and then we sat in the back parlor and talked about this and that, and about midnight he said, Lucy, I don’t want to leave. This is the nicest feeling I’ve ever had, being here with you. I don’t mean to be disrespectful to the dead, but there wasn’t any love lost between Ramona and me. I’d like to stay on here forever.

Well, after that — after a man’s revealed his innermost thoughts to you — you can’t just show him the door. Besides, I couldn’t put him out because it was beginning to snow, and in a little while the snow turned to sleet. He might have fallen and broken his neck going down the front steps and I’d have had that on my conscience the rest of my life.

Lewis, I said, it seems foolish at this stage of the game for me to worry about my reputation, but thank heaven Cousin Alice came down from Washington for the exhibition and is staying with me, and she can chaperon us until we can make things perfectly legal and aboveboard.

That’s how it happened.

You don’t plan things like that, I wanted to tell the girl. They happen in spite of you. So it’s silly of you to ask me what the best way is to get a husband.

My silence hadn’t bothered her a bit. She sort of closed one eye like somebody about to take aim with a rifle and asked: Exactly how many times have you been married?

Well, she had backed up. She was repeating herself. That was practically the same question she had asked me earlier. It had been put a little differently this time, that was all.

I certainly had no intention of telling her the truth, which was that I wasn’t exactly sure myself. Sometimes my husbands become a little blurred and blended. Sometimes I have to sit down with pencil and paper and figure it out.

Anyhow, that’s certainly no way to look at husbands — the exact number or the exact sequence.

My husbands were an exceptional bunch of men, if I do say so. And fine-looking, too. Even Art, who had a harelip. And they were all good providers. Rich and didn’t mind spending their money — not like some rich people. Not that I needed money. Because Aunt Sallie Mae, for all Mama’s suspicions, left me hers, and there was nothing spiteful about her stipulations. I could have the money when, as, and how I wanted it.

Anyway, I never have cared about money or what it could buy for me.

There’s nothing much I can spend it on for myself. Jewelry doesn’t suit me. My fingers are short and stubby and my hands are square — no need to call attention to them by wearing rings. Besides, rings bother me. I like to cook and rings get in the way. Necklaces choke me and earrings pinch. As for fur coats, mink or chinchilla or just plain squirrel — well, I don’t like the idea of anything that has lived ending up draped around me.

So money personally means little to me. But it’s nice to pass along. Nothing gives me greater pleasure, and there’s not a husband of mine who hasn’t ended up without having a clinic or a college library or a hospital wing or a research laboratory or something of the sort founded in his honor and named after him. Sometimes I’ve had to rob Peter to pay Paul. I mean, some of them have left more than others and once in a while I’ve had to take some of what one left me to pay on the endowment for another. But it all evened itself out.

Except for Buster. There was certainly a nice surplus where Buster was concerned. He lived the shortest time and left me the most money of any of my husbands. For every month I lived with him I inherited a million dollars. Five.

My silent reminiscing like that wasn’t helping the girl with her St. Valentine’s Day article. If I had been in anybody’s house and the hostess was as taciturn as I was, I’d have excused myself and reached for the knob of the front door.

But, if anything, that young lady became even more impertinent.

Have you had a favorite among your husbands? she asked and her tongue flicked out like a snake’s.

I was silent even when my husbands asked that question. Sometimes they would show a little jealousy for their predecessors and make unkind remarks. But naturally I did everything in my power to reassure whoever made a disparaging remark about another.

All my husbands have been fine men, I would say in such a case, but I do believe you’re the finest of the lot. I said it whether I really thought so or not.

But I had nothing at all to say to that girl on the subject.

Yet if I ever got to the point of being forced to rank my husbands, I guess Luther would be very nearly at the bottom of the list. He was the only teetotaler in the bunch. I hadn’t noticed how he felt about drink until after we were married — that’s when things you’ve overlooked during courtship can confront you like a slap in the face. Luther would squirm when wine was served to guests during a meal, and his eyes looked up prayerfully toward heaven when anybody took a second glass. At least he restrained himself to the extent of not saying any word of reproach to a guest, but Mama said she always expected him to hand around some of those tracts that warn against the pitfalls that lie in wait for drunkards.

Poor man. He was run over by a beer truck.

The irony of it, Mama said. There’s a lesson in it for us all. And it was broad daylight, she said, shaking her head, not even dark, so that we can’t comfort ourselves that Luther didn’t know what hit him.

Not long after Luther’s unfortunate accident Matthew appeared — on tiptoe, you might say. He was awfully short and always stretched himself to look taller. He was terribly apologetic about his height. I’d ask you to marry me, Lucy, he said, but all your husbands have been over six feet tall. Height didn’t enter into it, I told him, and it wasn’t very long before Matthew and I were married.

He seemed to walk on tiptoe and I scrunched down, and still there was an awful gap between us, and he would go on about Napoleon almost conquering the world in spite of being short. I started wearing low-heeled shoes and walking hunched over, and Mama said, for God’s sake, Baby, you can push tact too far. You never were beautiful but you had an air about you and no reigning queen ever had a more elegant walk, and here you are slumping. Your Aunt Fran cine was married to a midget, as you well know, but there wasn’t any of this bending down and hunching over. She let him be his height and he let her be hers. So stop this foolishness.

But I couldn’t. I still tried literally to meet Matthew more than halfway. And I had this feeling — well, why shouldn’t I have it, seeing as how they had all died on me — that Matthew wasn’t long for this world, and it was my duty to make him feel as important and as tall as I possibly could during the little time that was left to him.

Matthew died happy. I have every reason to believe it. But then, as Mama said, they all died happy.

Never again, Mama, I said. Never again. I feel like Typhoid Mary or somebody who brings doom on men’s heads.

Never is a long time, Mama said.

And she was right. I married Hugh.

I think it was Hugh.

Two things I was proud of and am proud of. I never spoke a harsh word to any one of my husbands and I never did call one of them by another’s name, and that took a lot of doing because after a while they just all sort of melted together in my mind.

After every loss, Homer was the greatest solace and comfort to me. Until he retired last year Homer was the Medical Examiner, and he was a childhood friend, though I never saw him except in his line of duty, you might say. It’s the law here, and perhaps elsewhere, that if anyone dies unattended or from causes that aren’t obvious, the Medical Examiner must be informed.

The first few times I had to call Homer I was chagrined. I felt apologetic, a little like calling the doctor up in the middle of the night when, however much the pain may be troubling you, you’re afraid it’s a false alarm and the doctor will hold it against you for disturbing his sleep.

But Homer always was jovial when I called him. I guess that’s not the right word. Homer was reassuring, not jovial. Anytime, Lucy, anytime at all, he would say when I began to apologize for having to call him.

I think it was right after Sam died. Or was it Carl? It could have been George. Anyway, Homer was there reassuring me as always, and then this look of sorrow or regret clouded his features. It’s a damned pity, Lucy, he said, you can’t work me in somewhere or other. You weren’t the prettiest little girl in the third grade, or the smartest, but damned if from the beginning there hasn’t been something about you. I remember, he said, that when we were in the fourth grade I got so worked up over you that I didn’t pass a single subject but arithmetic and had to take the whole term over. Of course you were promoted, so for the rest of my life you’ve been just out of my reach.

Why, Homer, I said, that’s the sweetest thing anybody has ever said to me.

I had it in the back of my mind once the funeral was over and everything was on an even keel again that I’d ask Homer over for supper one night. But it seemed so calculating, as if I was taking him up on that sweet remark he had made about wishing I had worked him in somewhere among my husbands. So I decided against it.

Instead I married Beau Green.

There they go laughing again — Eliza and Lewis down in the kitchen. My kitchen.

It’s funny that Eliza has turned up in my kitchen, acting very much at home, when she’s the one and only person in this town I never have felt very friendly toward — at least, not since word got to me that she had said I snatched Beau Green right from under her nose.

That wasn’t a nice thing for her to say. Besides, there wasn’t a word of truth in it. I’d like to see the man that can be snatched from under anybody’s nose unless he wanted to be.

Eliza was surely welcome to Beau Green if she had wanted him and if he had wanted her.

Why, I’d planned to take a trip around the world, already had my tickets and reservations, and had to put it off for good because Beau wouldn’t budge any farther away from home than to go to Green River — named for his family — to fish. I really wanted to take that cruise — had my heart especially set on seeing the Taj Mahal by moonlight; but Beau kept on saying if I didn’t marry him he would do something desperate, which I took to mean he’d kill himself or take to drink. So I canceled all those reservations and turned in all those tickets and married him.

Well, Eliza would certainly have been welcome to Beau.

I’ve already emphasized that I don’t like to rank my husbands, but in many ways Beau was the least satisfactory one I ever had. It was his nature to be a killjoy — he had no sense of the joy of living and once he set his mind on something he went ahead with it, no matter if it pleased anybody else or not.

He knew good and well I didn’t care for jewelry. But my preference didn’t matter to Beau Green, not one bit. Here he came with this package and I opened it. I tried to muster all my politeness when I saw that it was a diamond. Darling, I said, you’re sweet to give me a present, but this is a little bit big, isn’t it?

It’s thirty-seven carats, he said.

I felt like I ought to take it around on a sofa pillow instead of wearing it, but I did wear it twice and felt as conspicuous and as much of a showoff as if I’d been waving a peacock fan around and about.

It was and is my habit when I get upset with someone to go to my room and write my grievances down and get myself back in a good humor, just as I’m doing now because of that girl’s questions; but sometimes it seemed like there wasn’t enough paper in the world on which to write down my complaints against Beau.

Then I would blame myself. Beau was just being Beau. Like all God’s creatures he was behaving the way he was made, and I felt so guilty that I decided I ought to do something for him to show I really loved and respected him, as deep in my heart I did.

So I decided to make him a cake by that elaborate recipe that had been in our family nobody is sure for how long. I took all one day to do the shopping for it. The next day I got up at five and stayed in the kitchen until late afternoon.

Well, Beau was a bit peckish when it came to eating the cake. Yet he had the sweetest tooth of any of my husbands.

Listen, darling, I said when he was mulish about eating it, I made this special for you — it’s taken the best part of two days. I smiled at him and asked wouldn’t he please at least taste it to please me. Really, I was put out when I thought of all the work that had gone into it. For one terrible second I wished it were a custard pie and I could throw it right in his face, like in one of those old Keystone comedies; and then I remembered that we were sworn to cherish each other, so I just put one arm around his shoulder and with my free hand I pushed the cake a little closer and said, Belle wants Beau to eat at least one small bite. Belle was a foolish pet name he sometimes called me because he thought it was clever for him to be Beau and for me to be Belle.

He looked sheepish and picked up his fork and I knew he was trying to please me, the way I had tried to please him by wearing that thirty-seven carat diamond twice.

Goodness, Belle, he said, when he swallowed his first mouthful, this is delicious.

Now, darling, you be careful, I said. That cake is rich.

Best thing I ever ate, he said, and groped around on the plate for the crumbs, and I said, darling, wouldn’t you like a little coffee to wash it down?

He didn’t answer, just sat there smiling. Then after a little he said he was feeling numb. I can’t feel a thing in my feet, he said. I ran for the rubbing alcohol and pulled off his shoes and socks and started rubbing his feet, and there was a sort of spasm and his toes curled under, but nothing affected that smile on his face.

Homer, I said a little later — because of course I had to telephone him about Beau’s death — what on earth is it? Could it be something he’s eaten? And Homer said, what do you mean, something he’s eaten? Of course not. You set the best table in the county. You’re famous for your cooking. It couldn’t be anything he’s eaten. Don’t be foolish, Lucy. He began to pat me on the shoulder and he said, I read a book about guilt and loss and it said the bereaved often hold themselves responsible for the deaths of their beloved ones. But I thought you had better sense than that, Lucy.

Homer was a little bit harsh with me that time.

Julius Babb settled Beau’s estate. Beau left you a tidy sum all right, he said, and I wanted to say right back at him but didn’t: not as tidy as most of the others left me.

Right then that young woman from the Bulletin repeated her last question.

Have you had a favorite among your husbands? Her tone was that of a prosecuting attorney and had nothing to do with a reporter interested in writing about love for St. Valentine’s Day.

I had had enough of her and her questions. I dragged myself up to a sitting position in the bed. Listen here, young lady, I said. It looks as if I’ve gotten off on the wrong foot with you — and then we both laughed at the pun I had made.

The laughter put us both in a good humor and then I tried to explain that I had an unexpected caller downstairs who needed some attention, and that I really was willing to cooperate on the St. Valentine’s Day article; but all those questions at first hearing had sort of stunned me. It was like taking an examination and finding all the questions a surprise. I told her if she would leave her list with me I’d mull over it, and she could come back tomorrow and I’d be prepared with my answers and be a little more presentable than I was now, wearing a rumpled wrapper and with my hair uncombed.

Well, she was as sweet as apple pie and handed over the list of questions and said she hoped that ten o’clock tomorrow morning would be fine; and I said, yes, it would.

There goes Eliza’s laugh again. It’s more of a caw than a laugh. I shouldn’t think that. But it’s been such a strange day, with that young reporter being here and Eliza showing up so early.

Come to think of it, Eliza has done very well for herself, as far as marrying goes. That reporter should ask Eliza some of those questions.

Mama was a charitable woman all her life and she lived to be eighty-nine, but Eliza always rubbed Mama’s skin the wrong way. To tell the truth, Eliza rubbed the skin of all the women in this town the wrong way. It’s not right, Baby, Mama said, when other women have skimped and saved and cut corners all their lives and then when they’re in their last sickness here comes Eliza getting her foot in the door just because she’s a trained nurse. Then the next thing you hear, Eliza has married the widower and gets in one fell swoop what it took the dead wife a lifetime to accumulate.

That wasn’t the most generous way in the world for Mama to put it, but I’ve heard it put much harsher by others. Mrs. Perkerson across the street, for one. Eliza is like a vulture, Mrs. Perkerson said. First she watches the wives die, then she marries, and then she watches the husbands die. Pretty soon it’s widow’s weeds for Eliza and a nice-sized bank account, not to mention some of the most valuable real estate in town.

Why, Mrs. Perkerson said the last time I saw her, I know that Lois Eubanks McIntyre is turning in her grave thinking of Eliza inheriting that big estate, with gardens copied after the Villa d’Este. And they tell you nursing is hard work.

I hadn’t seen Eliza in some time. We were friendly enough, but not real friends, never had been, and I was especially hurt after hearing what she said about me taking Beau Green away from her. But we would stop and chat when we bumped into each other downtown, and then back off smiling and saying we must get together. But nothing ever came of it.

And then three weeks ago Eliza telephoned and I thought for sure somebody was dead. But, no, she was as sweet as magnolia blossoms and cooing as if we saw each other every day, and she invited me to come by that afternoon for a cup of tea or a glass of sherry. I asked her if there was anything special, and she said she didn’t think there had to be any special reason for old friends to meet, but, yes, there was something special. She wanted me to see her gardens — of course they weren’t her gardens, except by default, they were Lois Eubanks McIntyre’s gardens — which she had opened for the Church Guild Benefit Tour and I hadn’t come. So she wanted me to see them that afternoon.

It was all so sudden that she caught me off guard. I didn’t want to go and there wasn’t any reason for me to go, but for the life of me I couldn’t think of an excuse not to go. And so I went.

The gardens really were beautiful. And I’m crazy about flowers.

Eliza gave me a personally guided tour. There were lots of paths and steep steps and unexpected turnings, and I was so delighted by the flowers that I foolishly didn’t pay attention to my footing. I wasn’t used to walking on so much gravel or going up and down uneven stone steps and Eliza didn’t give me any warning.

Then all of a sudden, it was the strangest feeling, not as if I’d fallen but as if I’d been pushed, and there Eliza was leaning over me saying she could never forgive herself for not telling me about the broken step, and I was to lie right there and not move until the doctor could come, and what a pity it was that what she had wanted to be a treat for me had turned into a tragedy. Which was making a whole lot more out of it than need be because it was only a broken foot — not that it hasn’t been inconvenient.

But Eliza has been fluttering around for three weeks saying that I should sue her as she carried liability insurance, and anyway it was lucky she was a nurse and could see that I got devoted attention. I don’t need a nurse, but she has insisted on coming every day, and on some days several times; she seems to be popping in and out of the house like a cuckoo clock.

I had better get on with that reporter’s questions.

Do you have a recipe for a happy marriage?

I’ve already told her I don’t, and of course there’s no such thing as a recipe for a happy marriage; but I could tell her this practice I have of working through my grievances and dissatisfactions by writing down what bothers me and then tearing up what I’ve written. For all I know it might work for somebody else, too.

I didn’t hear Eliza coming up the stairs. It startled me when I looked up and saw her at my bedside. What if she discovered I was writing about her? What if she grabbed the notebook out of my hands and started to read it? There isn’t a thing I could do to stop her.

But she just smiled and asked if I was ready for lunch and she hoped I’d worked up a good appetite. How on earth she thinks I could have worked up an appetite by lying in bed I don’t know, but that’s Eliza for you, and all she had fixed was canned soup and it wasn’t hot.

All I wanted was just to blot everything out — that girl’s questions, Eliza’s presence in my home, my broken foot.

I would have thought that I couldn’t have gone to sleep in a thousand years. But I was so drowsy that I couldn’t even close the notebook, much less hide it under the covers.

I don’t know what woke me up. It was pitch-dark, but dark comes so soon these winter days you can’t tell whether it’s early dark or midnight.

I felt refreshed after my long nap and equal to anything. I was ready to answer any question on that girl’s list.

The notebook was still open beside me and I thought that if Eliza had been in here and had seen what I had written about her it served her right.

Then from the kitchen rose a wonderful smell and there was a lot of noise downstairs. Suddenly the back stairway and hall were flooded with light, and then Eliza and Lewis were at my door and they were grinning and saying they had a surprise for me. Then Lewis turned and picked up something from a table in the hall and brought it proudly toward me. I couldn’t tell what it was. It was red and heart-shaped and had something white on top. At first I thought it might be a hat, and then I groped for my distance glasses, but even with them on I still couldn’t tell what Lewis was carrying.

Lewis held out the tray. It’s a St. Valentine’s Day cake, he said, and Eliza said, we iced it and decorated it for you; then Lewis tilted it gently and I saw L U C Y in wobbly letters spread all across the top.

I don’t usually eat sweets. So their labor of love was lost on me. Then I thought how kind it was that they had gone to all that trouble, and I forgave them for messing up my kitchen and meddling with my recipes — or maybe they had just used a mix. Anyway, I felt I had to show my appreciation, and it certainly wouldn’t kill me to eat some of their cake.

They watched me with such pride and delight as I ate the cake that I took a second piece. When I had finished they said it would be best for me to rest, and I asked them to take the cake and eat what they wanted, then wrap it in foil.

And now the whole house is quiet.

I never felt better in my life. I’m smiling a great big contented smile. It must look exactly like that last sweet smile on all my husbands’ faces — except Luther who was run over by a beer truck.

I feel wonderful and so relaxed.

But I can hardly hold this pencil.

Goodness, it’s

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