Caught In The Act. Gayle Roper

collar and wound itself around my neck. I felt it begin to choke me.

      “No!” I lashed out wildly. I felt my feet slip on some downed leaves just as Jolene and Mac reached me. I grabbed for them to keep from slamming to the floor, but they calmly sidestepped me and grabbed the falling grape ivy instead. I hit the floor with a great thud, but all I heard was, “Thank goodness! We caught it just in time.” That was Mac.

      “Merry! What were you thinking? You might have harmed it.” That was Jolene.

      As I sat there with my skirt around my ears and my hip announcing its fury at my inconsiderate treatment, Mac and Jolene patiently unwound the vines from my hair and with a great show of concern put the plant back on the soda machine.

      “Poor thing,” Jolene murmured as she patted the villainous tendrils of green.

      Snarling, I grabbed my fallen file, pulled myself to my feet and limped back to my desk.

      A minute later a laughing Mac stood beside me offering a peace Coke. The absurdity of the whole thing struck me just as I took my first swallow. Mac had to swat me on the back several times to prevent me from choking.

      “You made my day, Merry,” he said as he walked away. “You made my day.”

      In the work situation, all I ever wanted was to be a consummate professional. Well, professionals are people who please their bosses, right? I perked up a bit.

      I went into our e-files to supplement the His House paper file, which wasn’t exactly fat, and between the two sources found several news articles, many of them about local church women’s groups who had showers and in-gatherings to benefit the House. There were several pictures of smiling women sitting behind stacks of hand-knit baby sweaters and blankets while boxes of diapers rose like block towers beside them. There was a picture of the House itself, a huge, old Victorian just east of town.

      I looked carefully at a picture of the director, Dawn Trauber, woman around thirty who reminded me of Katie Couric. Same nice face. Same warm smile.

      According to the article that chronicled her coming to His House, Dawn had wonderful credentials. She had a degree in social work from Philadelphia Biblical University and an MSW from Temple University in Philadelphia. She had worked for several years as a houseparent at a children’s home near Lancaster. According to the article, she had now been in Amhearst three years.

      There was nothing in either file about any of the girls who stayed there.

      As I thought about it, I wasn’t surprised. If I had to stay in a facility like His House, I didn’t think I’d want my story and picture splashed all over the local paper. Obviously I couldn’t keep my situation a secret. I might not even want to. But to let a bunch of strangers in on it was another whole issue.

      Well, Lord, you’re going to have to help me find a way to do this story. I don’t think it’s going to be easy.

      I called His House and asked to speak with Dawn Trauber. When she came on the line, I explained who I was.

      “I’d like to do a holiday story about some of your girls. You know. Coping with extraordinary circumstances at a time of year that’s often difficult in the best of situations.”

      “Well,” Dawn said, drawing the word out. I could hear the reluctance. “Certainly you can speak with me and certainly you can find out all you want about how we operate. As far as talking to the girls themselves, though, I don’t think it’s a good idea.”

      “What if one or two are willing to speak with me?”

      “We’ll see. Come out and let me meet you. I need to assess whether I can trust you.”

      We made an appointment for the next morning, and I hung up uncertain whether this drum was going to rum-pa-pum-pum.

      Suddenly Jolene stood at the side of my desk. I looked at my watch. Exactly 5:00 p.m.

      “Ready?” she asked. She smiled sweetly if somewhat vaguely at me, the very picture of a lovely, somewhat ditzy woman without a care in the world. In other words, she had returned to the woman I worked with each day. Gone was the mad gardener who let me fall while she saved her plant or the shrew who so masterfully dissected Airy at lunch.

      Airy. What was it short for? Arianna? Ariadne? Arabelle? Certainly not Aristotle.

      “What’s Airy’s real name?” I asked as I tucked all the clippings into the His House file and slipped it back into its place in the H drawer. “And how does she spell it?”

      “Airy?” She sounded as if she’d never heard of anyone by that name.

      “You know,” I prompted, “the woman we met in the ladies’ room.” Though come to think of it, I hadn’t met her. No one had been in an introducing mood.

      “Oh.” Jolene nodded in “sudden” remembrance. “Valeria.”

      “Valeria?”

      Jolene nodded. “Valeria Lucas Bennett. Sounds high society, doesn’t it?” And she laughed sarcastically.

      I shrugged my red coat on, and we left The News by the back door. Jolene talked as we crossed the parking lot behind the building.

      “She was Val until I started calling her Valentine’s Day when we were in first grade. Valentine’s Day, go away. Don’t come near for another year.” Jolene sang the rhyme. “She decided she didn’t like Val anymore. I suggested Larry from Valeria. She said that was a boy’s name. Then I told her she should be A-i-r-y, like a breeze floating wherever she wanted to go. Airy, Airy, quite contrary, How does your garden grow? With weeds and seeds scratching your knees and ugly prickers all in a row.”

      I shuddered for poor Airy as I unlocked my car doors. We climbed in and I cranked the heater as high as it would go.

      Jo loosened her scarf. “Airy and I sat next to each other all through school. Lucas and Luray—that’s our maiden names. By the way,” she said as I turned toward her parents’ home, “I need to stop off at my house for a minute.”

      “Oh.” I thought of her very upscale condominium in the new development on the old Greeley farm south of town, fifteen minutes from here. How like her to neglect to mention this little detour until now.

      “I don’t mean the condo,” she said, reading my mind, a trick of hers I found very disconcerting. “I mean my house. I need to see Arnie, and he’s there.”

      “You have a house and a condo?”

      She looked at me as if to say, “Doesn’t everyone?”

      “How long will this take?” I knew I was committed no matter how long it took. After all, she was already sitting in my car.

      “Not long. No more than fifteen minutes.”

      “To get there or to talk with Arnie?”

      “Yes.”

      Sighing softly, I told myself that I wasn’t being taken advantage of, that I liked going miles out of my way. After all, I had nothing better to do, unless you counted eating dinner, petting Whiskers or relaxing a minute before running out again to take a picture of the committee for the Amhearst Annual Christmas Food Project, or AAC-FOP as Mac called it.

      Fifteen minutes later we pulled up before a gorgeous, gigantic mansion—I couldn’t think of any other word for the glorious vision in front of me. “This is your house?”

      “Yeah, it’s mine.” She climbed out of the car.

      “Wow!” I wondered about Jolene with her cloying lily of the valley perfume and big hair. Thoughtfully I glanced at her coat. Maybe that wasn’t faux fur after all.

      The house drew me. Light streamed in wide ivory ribbons from Palladian windows and picture windows, bow windows and plain old regular windows, casting a golden glow on perfect shrubbery and a winding brick driveway and front walk. Through one large window a Christmas tree trimmed in little white lights