[2016] The Practice House

by Laura McNeal

  “So you just told him you didn’t know?”

  Glynis let her eyes drop. “I gave him your sister’s address.”

  Aldine was horror-struck. “He came here looking for me, and you sent him to Salt Lake?”

  Glynis nodded less distinctly. “He didn’t say flat out that he’d go find you there. Honestly, he didn’t look very good. I mean, well enough for much travel.”

  “He looked tired, you mean?”

  “Maybe,” Glynis said. “But more sickly I think.”

  “What kind of sickly?”

  “He said it was a cold.”

  Aldine could think of nothing to say, so she pressed her fingertips down hard on her closed eyelids.

  “He’s a married man,” Glynis said. “What would you have done if I’d sent him here, anyway?”

  Aldine shook her head and said nothing. Ansel had come to find her, and she didn’t get to see him. That was all she knew, and it was too much. “Please go,” Aldine said.

  “I’m sorry,” Glynis said. “I’m very, very sorry.”

  Aldine didn’t look at Glynis or answer her but instead pressed her hands harder over her closed eyes, felt the heaviness of her body, and listened to Glynis go quietly out the door.

  81

  Aldine went out within the quarter hour carrying a small suitcase, wearing her frayed coat, scarf, and gloves. The night was silent except for dogs, and the cold air seeped through her clothes as soon as she began walking toward the tracks. She hoped the unsmiling doctor was deaf in his sleep, like Mrs. Odekirk, and that the plain reflective squares of the neighbors’ windows would let her pass by unremarked upon: half turtle, half woman. The curtains were drawn, the lamps were dim, the sidewalks barely visible because there was no moon. Stars like specks of ice, like the mica that had stuck to her hands that night of the Winter Entertainment, were strewn in their billions but gave no light.

  The South Avenue houses were large and judgmental, fronted by elms and American flags, but on First and Second Avenues the houses were crude narrow boxes between stores, the trash piled up in cans on untended front yards. She paused a moment, feeling the baby within her. At first, he (as she thought of him) had been a strange hardness inside, an oval mass that kept her from bending properly at the waist, more like a piece of internal pottery than a living thing. But then the fluttering had started and she’d not been able to stop thinking of the fairy tale wolf that had swallowed a whole family of white kid goats, stuffing himself with their quivering bodies and then falling, as the story went, asleep. In a few weeks, or maybe less, her baby, like all those goats, would come out whole.

  She kept one arm folded over her belly and ignored the ache of her feet as she forced them, swollen and creaky, to leave the sidewalk for the gravel beside the tracks. Her entire head seemed to pulse with fear, and her footsteps crunched the night silence that had enveloped her on the street. The immense depot loomed above her, a few of the dormitory windows glowing orange behind cheap muslin. The window she had once shared with Glynis was dark.

  Ahead of her a group of men stood around a barrel, the flickering light from the fire casting jagged light on their faces. They stopped talking and watched her coming toward them, each face too dark yet to be identified as Ansel’s.

  “I’m looking for a man,” she said, and one of them snickered in a low way. “A newcomer,” she corrected.

  “We’re all new enough,” said the hollowest one, high-voiced and snaky.

  Aldine could feel them appraising her condition, thinking their knowing thoughts about why the man she was looking for might have run away. Still, she made herself ask again. “He just got here today. His name is Ansel Price and he might have been asking which train to Salt Lake.”

  They shook their heads so slowly they might not have been answering her at all.

  A man who hadn’t said a thing, bareheaded and wide jawed, removed his hands from his pockets and looked at her with a different kind of knowingness. “Far from home, are we, lass?” he said, a name she’d not been called in so long that it was like he’d spoken her true name. The vowels and consonants were like a code between them and something unlocked in her head.

  She nodded and her eyes were wet. “Far.”

  “I’ll go have a wee chat for ye,” he said, and he left the barrel for a group of men, who, while he talked, glanced over at her and then told him something she couldn’t hear. She wanted to put her cold hands over the fire but stayed back, feeling with each vertebra the suspended weight of her abdomen, so heavy that she couldn’t decide whether to lean forward or lean back.

  As the Scotsman walked back toward her she sensed that he had learned something, and when he met her eyes she was sure. “What?” she asked.

  “They said there was a man asked about Salt Lake. They said they’d show us where he is.”

  All the hope that had been pooling in her chest ran fast and hot now, as if it were lava rolling down into the sea. She followed the Scotsman, and he followed a lanky man in a soldier’s canvas coat, and they walked past buildings without windows or names until they stopped by a crooked door that might have been red or dark brown once. The lanky man opened it and let them go by, the sour, dank smell of bodies reaching her as the warmth of the room came out. A stove of some kind was lit, and some men slept on the wooden floor, three or four of them it looked like. She didn’t know which one they were headed for, and it was too dim to see.

  “What’s the name?” the Scotsman asked, and she said, “Ansel.”

  The bodies on the floor didn’t move and the inhabited but silent room frightened her.

  “Ansel,” the man repeated for her, louder. “Are ye here?”

  Now a body did move, rolling slightly, and they walked toward it. She got close enough to see his face—yes, it was his wide forehead, his jaw, his mouth. “Ansel?” she said, and he turned his eyes toward her.

  82

  It was not a fit place to be found sleeping, so he stood up quickly. He picked up the bag he’d been using as a pillow and led her out into the cold where he could be himself again, not one of these men. A skinny-eyed tramp said, “Found ya, didn’t she, Pop?” and snickered.

  He and Aldine walked along the tracks to the sidewalk, breath mingling in cold isolation, her small gloved hand in his. “You’re here,” he said. “We can go to the farm now.”

  “I’m living with Mrs. Odekirk,” she said.

  “Sonia?”

  “Yes. She has a house here.”

  “Why did Glynis say you’d gone to Utah?”

  “She was just leading you away.”

  He tried to trap his cough but the cold dragged it out of him. She kept close, so he turned away. “I’m sorry,” he whispered when he stopped and had his breath again. “I’ll be fine now that I’ve found you.”

  They walked silently past the narrow houses and the spilling trash. They began to approach the wide, squat invincible houses, where even the shadows felt more virtuous and safe. He had still done nothing more than hold her gloved hand. In front of a looming house and fenced lawn, he reached for her other hand and held it tightly so that they came to a stop. “Wait,” he said. He wanted to look at her face. “We need to go,” he said. “We should leave right away for the farm. Can you travel?”

  “What kind of travel?”

  “Just a car. We need one. Maybe Gil—” He wondered if Gil had a car for work now. Perhaps he could give them a ride.

  “I need my things,” Aldine said. “And I can’t just leave without saying anything to Sonia. We could stay with her for the night. I’ll make a bed for you, and we can explain everything in the morning. I’ll tell her that I ran into you, that you were sick and had nowhere to go. She’ll understand. Oh, and the front house is a doctor’s. She rents it out to him for living and office visits. I send out billings and the like, so he’s promised to deliver the baby free of charge.”

  “We can’t stay,” Ansel said. He couldn’t explain to Sonia Odekirk—much less exp
ect her to understand—that he, a friend and member of her church, was the father of Aldine’s baby, so he had now left his wife and three children to do the right and proper thing.

  The pickets of the fence beside them loomed like teeth. Somewhere an unseen animal scurried and dug. “I can’t go there,” he said. “Come with me now to the farm.”

  “But what will we do?” Aldine said, her face worried, her eyes black. She stepped closer to him.

  Her round dark eyes sought something in him, groping almost like hands. He wanted to pull her to him under the black-leafed maple and kiss her. He felt better and stronger than he had the whole trip, almost weightless, and the night had a richness to it that seemed full of possibility. He would keep Aldine with him at the farm and he would get well, and everything else could be sorted out from a place where he was himself.

  Instead of kissing her on the mouth, he kissed her neck, her ear, a bare space where the shawl slid off her shoulder. The future lay like still water in his mind.

  “I’m going to the farm,” he said. “I have to check on the radio and the house. Krazy Kat. You can come with me.”

  “But how would we get there?” she asked.

  He had planned to go by train. Aldine said again the part about Sonia’s house, the nice doctor, waiting until light, all the while letting his hands and his kisses travel over her neck and body. If only he could go with her to the house with all of its rooms and furnishings. He could go on touching her there. They would not be anyone’s charity.

  “Dr. Stober has a car,” she said, pointing at a Nash parked across the street. “He doesn’t use it much. How far is it to the place?”

  “About five hours.”

  “He let someone use it once. A friend of his. He never drives it.”

  Ansel didn’t know what to say.

  “Or we could just stay here with Sonia, as I said.”

  It would not look right, Ansel knew. He wasn’t sleeping under anyone else’s roof ever again.

  “You think he would loan it to you?” he said.

  She looked dubious and then determined. Then she turned, and he was watching her dark, swollen form slip into a side door of the doctor’s office. He closed his eyes. He felt he was living a dream or, really, that a dream—a strange, not unpleasant dream—was lifting him away and was carrying him along, and because Aldine was part of the dream, the dream was perfect, and it was pleasant to be carried along on it.

  “I’ve got it,” she whispered, and he opened his eyes. He was sitting down. He didn’t remember sitting.

  She held a small tin box, and when she opened it, she held up a key. “I wrote a note to tell him we’ll—I didna’ say it was you, just me—that I’ll bring it back.”

  He rose heavily to his feet and she was at once close to him again. Her hair smelled sweet, and even through his heavy clothes, and hers, he felt the smoothness and roundness and fullness of her body.

  He climbed behind the wheel. She sat close beside him, as she had done once before, and the ignition flared at his touch.

  83

  Ansel’s house stood quiet in a quiet night. Blown brush and dirt and debris had collected everywhere but, still, the sight of the house calmed him as it always had, the same four windows and the same red door he had glimpsed from his mother’s lap, his father’s truck, the back of a sleigh, a tractor seat. The cottonwood leaned over and touched the roof. As the car rolled over the rocks and dust of the drive, the headlights swept the barn and caught the startling eyes of an animal.

  “Krazy Kat,” Ansel murmured in a low, pleased tone, and Aldine said, “Won’t Neva be glad!”

  He had never let go of her the whole ride, both of them wide awake in the darkness as the black fields rolled by. They were happy riding along and they were happy now, stepping out of the car. The cat watched them for a moment, then ran into the barn. That they would enter the house together and have no impediment made Aldine tremble. Her ears roared with it.

  A long strip of tape flapped over the front door, but other strips still held, and Ansel broke the seal by tugging hard on the knob. Aldine’s foot struck a coffee mug left standing on the porch and it rolled away. When Ansel’s fingers found the light switch, the living room lit up before them: dust and mouse droppings everywhere, the sheet-wrapped hulk of the radio, its edges taped to the floor, the sprigged love seat in its place below the window, a paper costume for Shirley Temple where it had fallen by the stairs. Ansel said nothing, but led her up the stairs. There were times when his illness seemed to exhilarate instead of drain, when fatigue became eagerness and he knew he had turned the corner. The bed was not made up, but there were a few blankets in the cupboard, the quilts his mother had made and Ellie had not wanted. It was cold in the room, and he didn’t want Aldine to be cold. He spread them over the bed as she watched.

  “We shouldn’t kiss until I’m better,” he said.

  “Not on the mouth,” she said. She unzipped her dress, and stepped out of it.

  “I’m gigantic,” she said, but he shook his head so that she felt his rough chin brush her ear. She didn’t feel grotesque now, not in the cocoon of blankets that they pulled over them, warming the air with musty blue cotton. His body made her feel small and rightly formed because it was his baby that her belly held. His hands were rough as they moved over the skin of it, then over the skin of her breasts and back and neck and face. She let herself touch the back of his head and his shoulders and then downward. She let herself think only of the present and of what she had wanted all this time.

  84

  When Sonia Odekirk couldn’t find Aldine, she stepped out her back door and up the sidewalk to Dr. Stober’s office. She was convinced the baby had started coming in the night and she’d slept through it, though why Aldine hadn’t shaken her awake she couldn’t understand.

  It was a bright day with a bit of wind, the kind you had to push against when you walked. Weeds cowered, stood back up, were flattened again. Blue sky swallowed gust after gust above the black roof of her house, where in childhood there had been a flag, where now there was a gunmetal socket for a flagpole. She hurried up the wide front steps, pulled open the lace-curtained door that said Myron L. Stober, M.D. in black letters, and closed it as fast as she could to shut out the wind.

  Dr. Stober was sitting at his desk reading the Journal-Post.

  “Have you seen Miss McKenna?” she asked.

  Dr. Stober looked over his glasses at her, one hand on the newspaper page he’d been about to turn. “No,” he said.

  A normal person would have said, “Why?” but Dr. Stober, she increasingly felt, was unusually indifferent to the distress of others. This had not been obvious when she first rented the house to him, perhaps because he was younger then, and his wife had not yet died.

  “I woke up this morning and she was gone. I thought she was in labor.”

  Dr. Stober received this news without expression or comment.

  “I hope she’s all right,” Sonia said. “I can’t understand where she would have gone.”

  “Perhaps to a friend’s?” Dr. Stober said, and neatly turned the newspaper page. “She doesn’t normally turn up here until nine.”

  Aldine never visited friends, but Sonia didn’t see the point of telling this to Dr. Stober, who seemed impatient to continue reading the newspaper.

  “Sorry to have bothered you,” Sonia said, thinking for the twentieth time that Dr. Stober always managed to make it seem that he was the landlord and she was the tenant, rather than the other way around.

  “I’m sure she’ll be back any second,” Dr. Stober said, eyes on the paper, and Sonia turned to open the door, expecting just before she heard it the little tinkling bell that warned Dr. Stober of arriving patients, a cheerful trembling of brass against brass that she thought for some patients must forever be associated with bad news badly delivered.

  A square of paper lay in the stubbly grass, and Sonia bent to retrieve it merely to tidy up.

  Dear Dr. S
tober,

  I am borrowing your car to take a friend home. I’ll bring it back as soon as possible. I hope you will not mind.

  Aldine McKenna

  Sonia was astonished at Aldine’s misreading of Dr. Stober. He was exactly the sort of person who would mind, and mind terribly. Few people wouldn’t. The midnight borrowing of an expensive car by a pregnant, penniless, unmarried girl? And how can taking without permission be called borrowing? The girl might call it borrowing and Sonia herself might not call it theft, but everyone else would. She had to concede—to herself, privately, if not to Dr. Stober—that the girl she had perceived as a young and less fortunate version of herself might actually be a reckless and foolish person who brought along trouble wherever she went.

  Sonia didn’t like walking back up the steps into Dr. Stober’s office. She knew that he would be furious, and she supposed he would blame her for introducing Aldine into the house. She stopped to consider, briefly, the curled dead cottonwood leaves on the lawn and porch. She stopped to read the note again. She examined, as a calming exercise, the blue horizon, ribbed in the distance with bony clouds. Her mouth felt dry and her left shoe pinched. She put her hand to the heavy door and braced herself for the brass tinkling of the bell.

  She was not wrong. He came to a boil fast.

  “Borrow it?” he asked, incredulous. He bent over so he could peer through the lace curtains at the empty parking place on the street. He stared a long time. “This is inconceivable.”

  He said several times that he could not believe it, simply could not believe it, and then he asked her to tell him again how she’d come to know this foreign girl and why she thought it would be charitable to let her sleep under the same roof, work in his office, handle the files of his patients? “She’s probably a gypsy!” he said. “A gypsy with a whole pack of other gypsies riding around in my car this very instant.” He glanced again out the window. “You’ll have to go with me to the police station.”