Art for Art's Sake: Meredith's Story by Barbara L. Clanton Page B

anyway.”
    “Millie!” Esther scolded her again. Meredith got the feeling that Esther scolded Millie often.
    “Okay, okay. Sorry. I’ll just sit here and do my puzzle.” Millie leaned back in the armchair. Meredith smiled when she pictured the pipe and rocking chair again.
    “Oh, girls, don’t mind her.” Esther flipped her hand in dismissal at Millie. “She’s just crazy bored sitting here all day while my hip heals.”
    “How rude of us, Miss Randall. How are you feeling?” Meredith was careful not to use the word Mrs.
    “Oh, I’ve seen better days, my dear, but they tell me my hip wasn’t fractured too badly. It’s not broken all the way through and should heal pretty much on its own. Rudy told me they’re going to start me on physical therapy next week. I can even get around a little with that walker. Hate using it. I’m not old enough for a walker. Am I Millie?”
    “Nope.” She didn’t look up from the crossword.
    “Rudy said I was lucky, but I sure don’t feel lucky. I’ve never tripped like that before, have I Millie?”
    “Nope.”
    “Honestly, I don’t know what happened. I slipped in the front hallway and then tripped over the rug. That’s when I fell. Thank goodness Gregory was up visiting for the weekend. He was such a big help, but he didn’t find anything when he checked around the rug. We were already at Albany Medical by that time. Millie was by my side the whole time. Right, Millie?”
    “Yup.”
    “Anyway,” Esther continued, “they moved me here to Hudson Pines for bed rest and some really fun pain medication. I’ll be here for about two or three weeks. That’s right, Millie, isn’t it?”
    “Yup.”
    Meredith smiled sympathetically at Esther. “Well, we sure hope you feel better soon.”
    “Yeah,” Dani added, “I think there’s a jig you’re supposed to be doing soon, right?”
    Esther laughed. “You girls are fun. So what can we tell you about our old painted lady?”
    Meredith cleared her throat. She wasn’t sure what to ask. Before they left that afternoon, she figured Dani would do all the talking. “Um, can you tell us a little bit about the history of your house? Do you still live there?”
    Dani jotted down notes while Meredith and Esther talked about the house. For almost an hour, Esther Randall, with some help from her friend Millie Bradley, relayed the story of the Victorian House. The Randall House was well over a hundred years old, built in the early 1890’s by Esther’s great grandfather, Charles Bickford Randall. Large tracts of land had once surrounded the property, but as Whickett grew, the property shrank.
    Esther talked about her days as a young girl growing up in Whickett. She had been born in 1936 during the Great Depression, but couldn’t claim to remember much about it. She had been too young. World War II, however, did make a big impression on her, and she told them about her volunteer work collecting nylon stockings, used cooking grease, and old tires for the war effort.
    Meredith found that she wasn’t shy around these two strangers. She wasn’t normally outgoing by nature, but she felt good talking with Esther and Millie. Her self-imposed bindings had loosened a little. She knew it was probably temporary, but she could almost understand why Dani was so perplexed at her introverted nature.
    Meredith asked, “So you inherited the house when your father passed?”
    “Yes. That was a sad time. It was just Daddy and me then. Mama had passed about ten years earlier. My sister Bernice had already moved out and was living downstate in Pearl River. That’s near New Jersey. We never understood why she wanted to live there, but her new husband wanted to be near the city. New York City, that is. So when Daddy passed on, Bernice sold me her share of the house. I was thirty five at the time, and it was right about then I met my Millie. Right, Millie?”
    Meredith thought that Millie had fallen asleep in the armchair, but Millie’s eyes