Raising Demons Read Free

piece of potato pudding and remarked mildly to me that I should caution the children against this kind of silly talk with strangers, because that was the way rumors got started, and rumors were harder to stop than they were to start.
    Although I told my husband afterward that I believed it was only a coincidence, Mr. Gore from the bank and the real estate agent arrived together. I showed them into the study, closed the door, sent Jannie to read in our bedroom, turned the television set down very low, and went out to wash the dinner dishes.
    That, so far as I can recollect, is the first stage of how we happened to start to buy a big white house with two gateposts. After about an hour my husband came out of the study to get the cigar humidor, and a little later he came to the study door and asked if I would get out some more ice. I decided that I might perhaps look officious if I went barging into the study while the men were talking, so I stayed thoughtfully in the kitchen, and finally cleaned all the pantry shelves, thinking of Mrs. Ferrier coming tomorrow. When I heard the front door close, I waited a few minutes and then went timidly into the study.
    â€œCompany gone?” I asked, through the smoke.
    â€œYep,” said my husband.
    â€œAny news?” I said.
    â€œWhy, I don’t know,” said my husband. “Were you expecting news?”
    I counted to ten. “I thought you might have been talking about the house,” I said.
    â€œWhat house?” my husband said.
    â€œI thought,” I said carefully, “that Mr. Gore, and the real estate agent—”
    â€œBill,” my husband said. “Fine fellow.”
    â€œI thought you might have been discussing our possible purchase of the house now owned by Mrs. Millie Wilbur. It is a big white house, about halfway up Main Street past the railroad station. It has two gateposts, the left-hand one slightly askew.”
    â€œAskew,” said my husband appreciatively. He thought. “Wrong side of the tracks,” he pointed out. “Didn’t tell me
that.
”
    â€œIt’s the right side of the tracks, actually,” I said. “I mean, all the big nice old houses are on out there. We’re on the wrong side of the tracks
now
, really.”
    â€œDepends which side you’re
not
on,” said my husband acutely. “Well.” He nodded and took up his book.
    â€œBut what about the house?”
    â€œWhat house?”
    â€œI am going to bed,” I said.
    â€œBy the way,” he remarked, as I opened the study door. “One more thing about that house. Seventeen people living there.”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œSeventeen,” he said firmly. “Four apartments. One downstairs front, one upstairs front, one downstairs back, one upstairs back, one downstairs front, one upstairs—”
    I closed my mouth. “You mean,” I said after a minute, “there are four separate apartments in that house? Four kitchens? Four bathrooms? Four—”
    â€œOne upstairs back, one upstairs front, one downstairs—”
    â€œFour telephones?”
    â€œOne downstairs up.”
    When I went to see the house with the real estate agent the next morning I learned more about it. There were three acres of land, on which we might someday put a swimming pool, or a tennis court, or a miniature golf course, or a garden. The barn was two stories high, suitable for a summer theater or any number of square dancers. The house had been divided up into four apartments about six years back, and could be un-divided by the removal of beaverboard partitions. (It occurred subsequently to both my husband and myself that what we should have done was put all four of our children, and their possessions, into one apartment and leave the partitions in, but by then it was too late.) There was no wall to go with the gateposts. There were four separate entrances to the house, and the agent assured me that there