“Thanks,” Timmerman said. He trudged back to his car and popped the trunk to put a suitcase-sized equipment bag in it.
“Dad,” I said in an undertone. “I don’t want to you commit malpractice for the show house.”
“It’s not for the show house, it’s for your mother,” he said. “And I’m not making up his symptoms. I was going to try that ‘relocating to the zoo’ idea, but then I saw him popping antiacids and rubbing his shoulder—that’s how a cardiac problem presents sometimes. And his blood pressure’s through the roof. I’d be astonished if a full cardiac workup doesn’t show some symptoms, and I can keep him under observation as long as you need me to.”
With that, he scampered off to his car, where Mr. Timmerman was waiting, looking a bit impatient.
I returned to the house.
As Dad drove off, Randall pulled up in a truck.
“Where do you want me to put the furniture?” he asked.
“In the garage for now.”
Back in the kitchen, Mother, Sarah, Vermillion, and Eustace were nodding at each other over a large sheet of paper.
“Dear heart,” Eustace said. “It won’t be the room you wanted. But it’s a room you can be proud of.”
“Come here for a minute.” I led her out to the garage, where Randall was unloading the furniture we’d arranged to borrow.
“They don’t match,” Mother said. “Each other or the room.”
“We’ll make slipcovers for them,” I said.
“We?” Mother repeated. I could understand why—her sewing skills were even more rudimentary than mine. But before I could explain, the first of our worker bees came in through the garage door: Mrs. Tran, who along with Michael’s mother ran a dress shop in my hometown of Yorktown, and three of her best seamstresses. They were followed by two graduate drama students I recognized as longtime costume shop volunteers.
“I think it’s either the slipcovers or the curtains,” one of the students said. “I’m not sure we’ll have time for both.”
“The heck we won’t.” Minerva Burke had arrived at the head of a contingent of a dozen ladies from the New Life Baptist Church Ladies’ Auxiliary.
“Bring it on,” said the Reverend Robyn, as she led in nearly the entire membership of Grace Episcopal’s Guild of St. Clotilda, and even a couple of the ladies from the women’s shelter.
“Our room’s ready,” one of the Quilt Ladies said, sticking her head into the study. “We can help. We’ve brought in extra sewing machines. What needs doing?”
Michael had also recruited some drama students with set-building experience. They got to work building canvas frames to replace the ruined artwork—frames that would cover a large portion of the walls and disguise any shortcomings in the hasty paint job. A lot of the volunteers had brought their children or grandchildren, so we set the kids and anyone who wasn’t sewing to work painting holiday murals on the canvas. The Quilt Ladies, bless their hearts, borrowed several tarps from Randall, battened down or covered up everything in their room, and turned it into a children’s art studio. Even Violet and Linda postponed the last minute primping they’d been planning to do in their rooms to pitch in.
And not long after we started, someone struck up the first verse of “Deck the Halls,” and before long everyone, all through the house, was singing. Quite possibly the best caroling I’d heard outside the New Life Baptist Choir’s annual concerts.
Someone brought in a bunch of cots and sleeping bags, and we set up Clay’s room as a nap room for any kids—or grown-ups—who needed to take a break. Some of the Baptist women brought in supplies, took over Eustace’s kitchen, and began turning out delectable soups, sandwiches, casseroles, cookies, and pies.
“Aren’t you afraid they’ll mess up your kitchen?” I asked Eustace at one point.
“Darlin’, have you ever seen a church lady who didn’t feel compelled to leave someone else’s kitchen even cleaner than she found it?” Eustace said. “Those ladies just might be my secret weapon to winning the prize.”
As the day wore on, more and more friends dropped by to help, bringing their kids, armloads of craft supplies, and boxes of decorations for the new tree Randall’s cousins had gone off to find. Before long, Rose Noire showed up with a trunkload of dried flowers and other organic craft supplies, so when we had finished decorating all the canvas panels, we set the painting crew to work making homemade Christmas potpourri ornaments and stringing old-fashioned popcorn garlands. At first I was worried that we might be overboard with the ornaments, but when two of Randall’s cousins showed up with the new tree, we began to worry about filling it all.