[2016] The Practice House

by Laura McNeal

  That was a relief in one way, but—a small surprise—she also felt a little let down. She made her way, as directed, to the outdoor staircase, where Clare’s little sister was sitting on the bottom step, waving a broom straw over a line of acorns. She was talking to them in a funny way, like she was reciting a poem:

  “Roll on, roll on, you noisy waves,

  Roll higher up the strand.

  How is it that you cannot pass

  That line of yellow sand?”

  Then Neva knocked down the acorns with the straw and looked up at Lavinia.

  “Hi,” Lavinia said.

  “Hi,” Neva said, pushing back her hair with a grubby hand. “It’s okay for me to be out here,” she said. “I’m not sick now.”

  “No, I can see you’re not,” Lavinia said. “Besides, it’s so warm out.” She wasn’t sure what Neva was talking about, but the girl looked perfectly healthy in spite of being one of those children whose arms and legs still looked bony inside her cardigan and puff-kneed woolen tights. If there was anything newcomers to Fallbrook had in common, it was a tendency to overdress their children on sunny winter days.

  At the top of the stairs, Lavinia paused to compose herself. She could see bins of oranges outside the packinghouse, the queen palm tree, Mrs. Nuthall’s dance studio, and the modest wood-frame houses that stood at odd intervals near Main Street. The El Real was by far the nicest building, so it seemed right that Clare Price should live there. The pink brick, the elaborate windows, and the Spanish roof belonged in some distant and important city, not a farm town. She and her parents lived in a house that had come in a kit that cost twenty-five dollars.

  Lavinia stood on the landing and considered leaving the bag of groceries on the doorstep and going away. Miss Price had given her a B on the dress she was at that moment wearing because the stripes didn’t match quite right in front. But of course Miss Price had heard Lavinia’s feet on the stairs, and she opened the door.

  “So,” Miss Price said, “I guess you’re here to make one of those damselly visits that would be appreciated.”

  “Yeah,” Lavinia said, abashed. “Unless you think it’s a stupid idea.”

  “Nah, come in, come in. The poor boy could stand some cheering up.”

  Lavinia stepped awkwardly into a dark hallway that connected a series of doors.

  Charlotte led Lavinia into the nearest room, where suddenly—too suddenly, really—she found herself standing a few feet from Clare Price. One of his legs was much bigger than the other, a long lump in the bed. She tried not to stare at it, but to look at his face was difficult, too, because he was lying in a bed, and he didn’t smile.

  “Hi,” Lavinia said. He was pale and obviously sick but to be near him was still to feel inferior. She wished she had been patient enough to make the stripes in her dress match. She felt suddenly overly warm; her slip was like an adhesive bandage.

  “Hello,” Clare said. He thought more remarks were probably called for but he couldn’t think what they were. Right now the pain was gone but it was waiting for him. It always was. The sharp sting, the long shooting pain, or the ache. There were those three of them, lying quiet for a while, and then one of them would come.

  “I have some wedding stuff to do,” Charlotte said, touching Lavinia on the shoulder. “Will you stay with the invalid until I get back? My mom’s right downstairs if you need her.”

  This unnerved Lavinia but she tried not to let on. She made a stiff smile and waited until Charlotte was gone to open up the heavy canvas bag.

  “I brought you some things on behalf of the Red Cross League,” she said. She was going for an ironic voice, but she could tell it just sounded twangy.

  “The local chapter, anyway. The Melanie-Candy-Myrtis chapter.”

  His eyes shifted away. Because he felt like a charity case? Because of pain? She reached into her bag and brought out the asparagus tin, the powdered sugar, and the candy. Each in its own way felt absolutely wrong. She set them on his nightstand and in the ensuing silence her face grew hotter and hotter.

  Finally she said, “I thought maybe your mom could use them. In the restaurant.”

  “That’s swell,” Clare said, afraid to speak too much or move his head. The pain had begun; he could feel it stirring.

  “Except for the soap,” Lavinia said.

  “Nope. Can’t cook with that.” He hoped it would only be the sharp sting when the morphine faded. Not the long ache.

  “And I have the lecture notes from English and Latin. So you won’t miss what Miss Warren said in class.” Lavinia held out her notebook but Clare just looked at her. It wasn’t the stinging kind. It was the long ache. The ache was starting. It was weak but it would get stronger. He felt his jaw setting against the pain. “Just set it on the bed, okay.”

  Lavinia set it down, mortified. She never should have come.

  “The phrase of the day’s there,” she blurted out. “In omnia paratus. That was today’s.”

  Clare closed his eyes.

  “It means, ‘Ready for all things,’” Lavinia added. She knew he didn’t care, but she couldn’t help herself. “In case you wondered.” She looked at the package of Christmas candy and wondered if he would even open it. “I guess I’ll go now,” she said.

  His eyes slowly opened. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I—the pain is coming back.”

  “Oh,” Lavinia said, because, really, that changed everything. It wasn’t her that made his face clench. It was the pain. “What should I do?”

  “Just tell Charlotte,” he said in a low voice.

  “I think she left,” Lavinia said. “Should I get your mother?”

  He kept his eyes closed and teeth clenched as he nodded.

  “Okay,” Lavinia said, and nearly ran out of the room.

  87

  Aldine and Ansel drank juice Sonia Odekirk had made from black summer grapes and soup she’d made from summer vegetables. At night Ansel built a fire with wood he brought in from the barn, pieces of lumber and broken down furniture to which nails and cobwebs clung. At the hearth he broke the pieces down under his boot (a messy business Ellie would never have allowed) and fed the lengths into the stove until the air began to roast and the iron ticked around a belly of roiling flame. Krazy Kat slept in the armchair, curled into the nest of stuffing she had ripped free her first night indoors. Ansel had brought in the cat when Aldine had talked about seeing mice, and so her heart fell when she saw what the cat had done to the armchair, but Ansel just shook his head and said, “Well, I invited her in and she just felt at home.”

  They left the radio covered and Aldine felt it watching them in the dark when there was a moon and the sheet glowed dimly in the corner. Ansel brought out the fretted dulcimer and she sang in a soft voice while he played, trying to forget Dr. Stober’s car and the letter her sister would receive soon and the impossible questions of the future. When he set the dulcimer aside, she leaned into his chest, feeling the animal nature of herself, momentarily blind to anything but her own warmth and hunger. She wanted to kiss him but he directed her kisses away from his mouth, saying “Doctor’s orders.”

  “But you seem fine.”

  He nodded. This morning he had felt tingly and energetic, invincible. Sometimes he felt tired again and his lungs had the old crackle. “Still,” he said, “just to be safe . . .”

  She said, when his hand lay warm on her belly, “I want to call the baby Ansel.”

  “Naw, you hadn’t ought to do that,” he said. “Too confusing. What else do you like?”

  “What was your father called then?”

  “Lucian.”

  She shook her head decisively, as if finding the right name would make everything normal. “Unless you want to.”

  “Not especially.” He seemed to feel it, too, the triviality of the name compared to their other problems. “And what if the baby’s a girl? What then?”

  She couldn’t help thinking that if she were married to Ansel, she would name a girl afte
r her sister. “I used to like the name Vivien,” she said. Outside the cold deepened and the stars shone. It had been three nights now since they took Dr. Stober’s car. She wished she could just decide to have the baby. To begin pushing and have that part over and then Ansel could drive the car back and park it in front of Sonia’s house and go away from there without being seen.

  “What if someone comes here?” she asked. “To see Ellie?”

  Ansel was quiet for a moment. “Just say the truth. She’s staying with her sister until Neva’s better.”

  “And this?” Aldine asked, pointing to her belly.

  “Say you got married in Emporia, and your husband is looking for work.”

  She looked doubtfully at the fire, seeing the spaces between flames, the crumbling red between crumbling white.

  “No one’s likely to come,” he said, and she reminded herself that Sonia Odekirk had left the farm because the houses that had once been lit were all going dark. She tried to feel nothing but the warmth of the fire, the warmth of the quilt, and the warmth of Ansel’s body that made a cave around her. Inside, the baby shifted but then lay quiet, as if he, too, was in no hurry to meet the future.

  88

  Charlotte placed a square of white satin under the metal form of the button, checked to see if it was centered, and pushed hard on the shank. The fabric crimped with a satisfying poof and then she held up a metal knob sheathed in satin, the fifteenth of the thirty-five buttons that would hold her dress primly closed during the ceremony (and would let it fall open afterward, which she knew Mister would like whether she did or not)—an excessive number of buttons, her mother said, but if Charlotte was doing all the work, what did it matter? Clare was sleeping, and Neva had gone outside to play with her friend Marchie, which meant she wouldn’t keep asking if she could help.

  Charlotte got up from the table and started downstairs to see if there was any more leftover applesauce cake, the yummy one with raisins, cloves, cinnamon, and brown sugar (she’d had the girls bake several of them in the Practice House, along with four lemon jelly cakes, and by offering them at the Elks Club bake sale collected a handsome sum for the school). Today, when she reached the bottom of the stairs and pushed open the door to the café, she was relieved to find the room deserted. Her mother frowned on her personal raids because the cakes and pies were for customers, but now that Clare was laid up, she was a little more generous, permitting Charlotte to cut a big piece of whatever Clare would eat, and keeping her peace when Charlotte cut a small slice for herself.

  The day was blue-green and warm, like most days, and although the front door was propped open, the café was closed. It was Sunday, the day her mother used to restock and deep clean and make everything just so for the week to come. As she moved toward the covered cake stands on the counter, Charlotte could hear muted voices in the kitchen, her mother’s and Aunt Ida’s, along with the clink of the bucket and the shush of the mop. Wedding. She heard the word wedding, and stood perfectly still.

  “Why not push it back a bit?” Ida was saying. “Give Clare time to get up and around, give Ansel time to get back.” A sloshing sound—her mother kept mopping. Ida said, “You don’t want to stand there in front of the whole town without your husband there, do you?”

  The mopping stopped. Charlotte could imagine her mother straightening her back, taking a deep breath. “He knows the wedding is the day after Thanksgiving. If he doesn’t come back for it, he might as well stay gone.”

  “You don’t mean that.”

  “I do, Ida. I truly do.”

  The words closed over Charlotte’s head like water. She waited for Ida to talk sense into her mother. She waited to hear bitterness or anger or hurt in her mother’s voice. But her mother just said flatly, “I don’t need him anymore. He’s gone now, yes, but he’d been gone, even when he was here.”

  Neva’s voice interrupted from the back door, and something clanked on the floor.

  “Well, hi, Miss Marchie, hi, Neva!” Ida said in a loud, enthusiastic voice. “I thought you two were going to the creek!”

  “We need provisions,” Marchie said in her scratchy voice. “Cakes and things.”

  “Oh, you do, do you?” Ida said. “Well, let’s see here,” and Charlotte was afraid that Ida would see her standing there at the counter, so she hurried quietly back up the stairs while Ida’s heels clopped across the linoleum.

  Charlotte positioned another square of satin in the button press, picked up a shank, and tried to take pleasure in the poof. She didn’t know what to make of her mother’s eerie calm, but she definitely agreed with her on one point: the date was set. Mister was planning on it. She was planning on it. She would absolutely hate waiting one extra day, let alone a month, to move into her own house and reclaim Artemis, who was living with Ida and Hurd because there was no place to keep a dog in an apartment over a café. When Charlotte walked back into her classes on Monday, November 27, she intended to be wearing a genuine diamond ring. She wouldn’t be the Big Cheese of Spic-and-Span; she would be Mrs. James McNamara. If they put off the wedding, then what? Pity—and, yes, smugness—in the eyes of girls barely three years younger than she was, and all of them wondering just where her father was, and what the real reason was that the wedding had been postponed.

  Another thought, much worse, came to her as she popped out a button like a mushroom cap. If they waited, and her father stayed away, what would Mister begin to think of their family?

  She’d thought the Aldine business was over. She knew she shouldn’t have written that silly note, but Aldine had no reason to assume a married man wrote her a love note, for God’s sake, and her father should not have held Aldine’s foot in that pitiful besotted way, either.

  As far as Charlotte knew, that’s all that happened. But maybe her mother had seen something else. Maybe it would be like that Norma Shearer movie The Divorcee, and her mother, eyes lowered with vengeful lust, would teach her father a lesson by sleeping with Robert Montgomery, although of course there wasn’t anyone in Fallbrook who looked remotely like Robert Montgomery. Dr. Quigley, maybe. Charlotte considered him briefly, his elegant chin and polished shoes, then wondered what made her think such thoughts.

  No. Charlotte should marry Mister on the day they planned, while her family still had a chance of seeming normal. If her father came back to lead her up the aisle, she would hold his arm and believe him blameless. And if he didn’t come back, well, then, Uncle Hurd could give her away.

  89

  When a week had passed without discovery, Aldine tried not to think of the car or Ellie. She would have the baby, and Ansel would return the car, and then everything else could be worked out. A light snow fell and Ansel spread out a broken-down carburetor on the dining room table so he could work near her instead of alone in the barn. Krazy Kat, locked in as she was, began to use for her relief the corner of the basement where remnants of coal had once been swept. This meant the cat made sooty tracks that were hard to clean in her state. The cat was a good mouser, but she often left behind a bloody head or tail, which Ansel disposed of, though again there was a stain left behind, and she couldn’t always find the energy to mop and scrub.

  “What did you say it’s called?” she asked Ansel. “The Progress House?”

  “What?” he asked. It was pleasant to work on the machine, a thing whose purpose and nature he understood, while she was sitting nearby, stroking the cat as he worked, especially now that everything outside the window was outlined with the finest, lightest, purest snow.

  “The little cottage for teaching girls how to be housemaids.”

  “Practice, I think.”

  “I’m no good at it,” Aldine said. “I’d be a poor pupil.”

  “I like it this way,” he said. “You don’t need any practice.”

  Later that day, when every bit of the snow had melted, Aldine was upstairs lying beneath layers of quilts, trying to keep warm, when she heard an approaching car.

  Ansel was out working, b
ut Aldine didn’t know if he was in the barn or the field. She didn’t know if he would hear the car. Aldine went to stand by the window, keeping herself out of sight, eyes fixed on the dried husks of the cottonwood leaves, a few of which clung stubbornly to high branches. She could see, too, the rusted edge of a white tin cup one of the children—Neva probably—had left in the rickety tree house. A black car pulled to a stop under the tree and a man got out. It wasn’t a police car, Aldine was sure. But it wasn’t a neighbor, either, at least not one that she had ever seen.

  She froze beside the curtain, printed all over with open-mouthed flowers. The man’s feet thudded and scraped on the porch, and she stiffened herself for the knock of his fist on the door.

  Instead she heard Ansel’s voice, and when she allowed herself to look through the window again he was striding across the yard, wiping his hands on a rag.

  “Western Union,” she heard, and Ansel’s voice saying thank you, and a few other comments she took to be about the weather. She stayed where she was as the man got back into his car, as the car door shut, as the tires went once more over dirt and loose stones. She stayed where she was as Ansel opened the front door and walked in, as he stood, she was certain, to peel open the envelope and read whatever was inside. She waited in the stillness. The cottonwood branches scraped against the window, and the dead leaves made a whispering sound.

  His boots shuffled and she waited for him to call her. “Aldine?” he said.

  Still she couldn’t move. “Up here,” she called.

  He was heavy sounding on the stairs, and the old excitement of hearing him approach, the skin response to his nearness, was still there beside the dread.

  His irises were like glass. “It’s about Clare,” he said. In one hand he held the cable; the other he rested on the doorknob. “He crashed a truck the day I left.”

  She waited.

  “Ellie says he broke his leg.”

  “Is he all right?”