[2016] The Practice House

by Laura McNeal

  She stared at the envelope, trying to make sense of it—it was a stranger’s name in the return address, not Aldine’s, and someone had scrawled sorry—was addressed wrong!—D. Friggati across the front of it. Mrs. Friggati was the next-door neighbor who hated Mormons. The letter was postmarked November 7, and today was December 4, which meant the Friggatis had held on to a piece of their mail for nearly a month! Why anyone would keep a misdelivered letter so long was a topic she intended to raise no matter how forbearing Will thought they should be. She whisked Henrietta to the sofa with a little cry, intending to hold her in one arm while she ripped open the envelope, but Leenie’s sitting down made Henrietta drop into the nursing position, where she screamed and squirmed with thwarted rage the whole time that Leenie read:

  Dear Mrs. Cooper,

  You don’t know me but I’m a good friend of your sister Aldine. I met her when we were both working at the Emporia Kansas Harvey House. A man came here today looking for her, and I think he is the reason for her getting let go. She is expecting. That’s why she hasn’t answered your letters.

  Right now she is living with a nice woman named Odekirk on Neosho Street. I thought you should know.

  Cordially,

  Glynis S. Walsh

  Leenie read the letter three times, then did the routine unfastening and shirt arranging to nurse to quiet Henrietta’s wild crying. She must think a minute, calm Henrietta down, then bundle her up and walk to the corner and catch a bus to William’s office. He would know what to do, surely.

  93

  The second time someone came to the Price house, it was a whole family in a blue car. A man was sitting at the steering wheel and when he pulled to a stop, a woman in a turquoise coat stepped carefully out into the gusty wind. She bore a covered dish and from the way she was holding it, swathed in a checkered towel, the food was still hot. She was vaguely familiar, middle-aged and slightly plump, her hair tied with a white chiffon scarf that the wind picked at. She’d put on lipstick, too. Three children sat in the backseat, and Aldine, from her usual watching place, saw to her horror that the one at the window looking out was Emmeline Josephson. That was why the woman’s face looked familiar.

  Aldine drew back from the window and stood still when the woman knocked and called, “Ellie? Ansel?” A pause, then, “Anybody home?”

  “Nobody answers,” the woman said, apparently to the car. Aldine didn’t dare look now.

  “I’ll see if he’s out in the barn,” the man said, and Aldine pictured Mr. Josephson on his way to the barn, self-important and annoyed, no doubt, at how long this charitable act was taking. Aldine’s heart felt too big, and she leaned against the wall to steady herself. They would find Ansel, and maybe they would want to come in the house with the food. They would have all sorts of questions. She might go into labor while the Josephsons were blethering on, and what would Ansel say to explain the noise she was making upstairs?

  For several minutes, Aldine heard nothing but gusts of wind and the scudding of shoes, as if Mrs. Josephson were walking back and forth on the porch to look for something or to keep herself warm.

  When someone spoke again, it was Mr. Josephson in a brusque tone. “Leave it there.”

  “Here?” Mrs. Josephson was incredulous. “On the porch?”

  “Yes, on the porch, for chrissakes. Leave it and don’t expect to get the dish back, either.”

  Aldine peered carefully out. Emmeline was stepping out of the car, followed by Berenice.

  “Back in the car!” Mr. Josephson yelled at them. “Right now! We’re leaving.”

  And in only a few moments more, they had all piled back into the blue car, and it was tearing away with the pop of spit-out gravel. Aldine sank to the floor until she had the breath to go downstairs.

  The casserole dish lay just outside the front door, still wrapped in the checkered cloth, and the smell that came from it was heavenly. She carried the dish inside and sat down in the chair, unwilling to separate herself from its warmth and its savory scent, wondering what Mr. Josephson had seen or done or heard that put him in full retreat. She lifted the corner of the cloth and stared at the casserole with its perfect brown crust. For perhaps a full minute she sat holding the dish before Ansel emerged from the barn and joined her where she sat, holding it in her two warmed hands.

  “Did they talk to you?” he asked.

  She shook her head.

  “See you?”

  “No.”

  “Good,” Ansel said, and then he said it again. “Good.”

  Aldine was ravenous, and she held the casserole in her hands. “What happened then? Why did they leave?”

  He had heard the car, he said, and he had seen Josephson making his way to the barn. He had turned back to look at the doctor’s Nash Phaeton in the corner of the barn. The tarps that they pulled over it did not quite cover the tires. Josephson would see it.

  “So I went out,” Ansel said. “I told him to keep his distance. I lied to him a little bit. Exaggerated, you might say. I told him I had TB and had come home to ride it out one way or the other.” He smiled at Aldine. “Guess he believed me because he all but bolted for the car.”

  Aldine gave out with a light musical laugh, and he would’ve laughed, too, but he was afraid it would trigger the hacking cough. He’d let himself cough for Josephson’s benefit. Let himself cough long and hard and when he’d spit onto the ground, they’d both stared at the blood-dark sputum. That was when Josephson beat his retreat.

  Aldine pushed aside Ansel’s tools to make space on the dining room table and they began to eat. Gulling Mr. Josephson made the good food better, in Aldine’s opinion. Chicken and potatoes and gravy and carrots, all in a buttery brown crust—it seemed truly divine. For days they’d eaten meagerly on cornmeal cakes and stewed fruit and strange treacle-dark meat. Now they had home-cooked, hot-from-the-oven food. He ate, as he always did now, using his own spoon and bowl. She ate straight from the casserole dish. They ate and felt warmer, ate and ate on.

  94

  The first days of December had been hot and dry, as if summer had stolen into Fallbrook for a little visit, and when Lavinia climbed the stairs outside the café late Monday afternoon, she found Miss Price on the balcony, leaning on the brick wall with her eyes closed. If Miss Price had been smoking or hanging out laundry, it would’ve seemed more normal, but she was just leaning on the wall, eyes closed, wearing her red-and-black teaching dress with a pair of faded satin house slippers. Her hair was not fixed, and her complexion was very white. Lavinia didn’t know whether to creep ahead or clear her throat. It didn’t matter. A cat dropped from its perch on the railing, and Miss Price opened her eyes.

  “Hi, Miss Price,” Lavinia said. “Hot, isn’t it? For December and all.”

  Miss Price touched a hair to put it into place, but her hands were stiff and jerky, and her eyes seemed almost evasive. She might recently have been crying. “Are you all right, Miss Price?”

  Charlotte gave a little laugh, and felt something bubble at her nose, which she daubed with her sleeve. No, as a matter of fact, she wasn’t all right. Nothing, not one little thing, was all right. “I’m fine,” she said. “Kind of a tough day for Clare, though.”

  Lavinia’s polite-girl expression fell away. “What do you mean?”

  “Dr. Quigley took the nail out today. Clare’s leg is up in a crane-thingy.”

  “The nail?” She didn’t know there was a nail. Without wanting to, she thought of a fingernail being yanked out.

  “I missed it,” Miss Price said. “I was still at the school, but my mom had to help. She said Dr. Quigley held a match to the pointy end of the nail, which went all the way through his leg, and then he turned it around in there to see if he could free it up.”

  “God,” Lavinia blurted.

  “It wouldn’t come free, and he was in such pain that my mom threw up, but Clare didn’t yell or anything. Quigley couldn’t get over that, how he didn’t scream.” She took a deep breath. “Anyhow, t
hey had to put him under to tug and yank some more and it finally came out. Now his leg’s all plastered up and hanging from the ceiling, and he says he’s okay, but I don’t know if he’ll be up to much.”

  Lavinia glanced toward the door that would admit her to the hallway. “Maybe I shouldn’t go in.”

  Charlotte turned. “You should,” she said. “You did your hair and all.”

  Lavinia shrank inside herself. She had curled every strand of her hair with rags, attempting something along the lines of Myrna Loy as the Countess Valentine, but what she saw in the mirror was more like Countess Valentine’s crazy old uncle.

  “You sure?” she asked.

  “One hundred percent,” Charlotte said.

  Lavinia turned the knob and stepped into the dark hallway of the apartment. She’d been here nearly every day in the past few weeks and the rooms always smelled of whatever Mrs. Price was cooking downstairs—pork today, and sauerkraut. Possibly a cake in there somewhere, though onions overpowered it. Lavinia sniffed her fingertips. No, that smell was her. They’d made another molded salad in home arts, and Candy had told Lavinia to juice the onion because Candy had just painted her nails.

  Lavinia rubbed her fingers on her skirt. Clare’s door was ajar, and she wanted to go in and see him because seeing him was all she thought about night and day. She studied, through the gap between the door and the wall, the white plaster dirigible of Clare’s leg. She couldn’t see his face, but she decided that if he was asleep she could give herself the pleasure of looking at his face, then go away. She nudged open the door.

  He was awake, and he looked so tired and gaunt that something luxurious and protective burst open and flowed through her.

  “Hi,” she said, whispering.

  “Hi,” he said, not whispering exactly, but in a low voice.

  She straightened up and made herself speak normally. “Not so good, huh?”

  “It’s better now,” he said, flicking his eyes at the suspended leg.

  “It sounded pretty bad, the way your sister put it.”

  “Yeah, well.” He produced a small ironic smile. “I didn’t know today was the day, you know?”

  “It’s been exactly a month,” she said.

  This registered in his eyes. A surprise, but whether pleasant or unpleasant, she wasn’t sure.

  “Exactly a month,” Clare repeated. “Dr. Quigley said the same thing.” He issued a dry laugh. “I guess I should’ve been counting, too.”

  “Miss Price said Dr. Quigley couldn’t believe you didn’t scream or anything.”

  Clare made a small snorting sound. “Well, I was screaming inside, I can tell you. Inside I was screaming like a banshee.”

  She laughed. It was funny. He was funny. It was one more reason she craved his company. “Why didn’t you just go ahead and scream then? That’s what I would’ve done.”

  His eyes closed and opened in a long slow blink. “No, you wouldn’t. Not if customers were eating in your mother’s restaurant downstairs.”

  For a moment he seemed to be dozing. Then when he looked at her again, he nodded at the Enterprise in her hand. “How ’bout you read me something?”

  She’d done this before. He liked the local gossip columns, especially About You and Others, which was townspeople news, and What’s Buzzin’, Cousin?, an earnest but inane account of high school events written by Myrtis French.

  Lavinia sat down on the steamer trunk against the wall, crossed her ankles, and began to read aloud. She wondered if sitting on the trunk would activate the cologne she’d put on the backs of her knees, but all she smelled was the onion juice on her hands and the sauerkraut smell seeping up from the café.

  “At-tention, Fallbrookites!” she read, trying to enliven her voice so he wouldn’t fall asleep. “Barney Patten and George Harris have both reported their Bourbon turkeys are laying, but we’re kinda persnickety. We’re holding out for some good Scotch!”

  Clare’s eyes were closed, but his lips formed a small smile.

  “I ate a turkey egg once,” Lavinia said. “It was okay I guess.” She tried not to touch her hair. “The yolk was really thick. I almost gagged on it.”

  Clare didn’t speak, and Lavinia’s skin suddenly glazed with sweat. Gagging on turkey eggs—this was something to talk about? She heard herself reading the next thing her eyes fell upon.

  “La Rue Beauty Salon. Mar-o-Oil shampoo, seventy-five cents. Lash and brow dyeing, one dollar. Facials, one dollar. Artistic haircutting, fifty cents.”

  Why was she reading this to him? Lavinia felt sick in her stomach and chest.

  Clare said, “Artistic haircutting. What would that be?”

  “Why ask me?” she said in an irritated tone, and wondered at her own peevishness. She looked down at her lap, where her clipped, cleaned, buffed fingernails rested on her knees. She felt a yearning for him that was like the music her mother played over and over again on the gramophone, a recording of Artur Schnabel playing Beethoven’s Sonata in G Minor on the piano. Each note longed for the next, but was trying to seem cheerful and unconcerned. In certain places, the music managed to be giddy, tripping along like a child. Then it was running headlong into grief.

  “My sister’s going to that place, I think,” Clare said lazily, almost as if waking from a dream. “La Rue Beauty Salon. For the wedding.”

  He kept his eyes closed as he spoke. There was a mirror on the dresser opposite his bed, and she looked gravely at the kinks in her long hair, and at what she thought of as the Ursa Minor constellation of moles on her cheek. She always sat on his left side so he wouldn’t see the moles so much. Her gaze shifted when he moved abruptly, his face tightening. She thought he might be feeling what he called the long dull ache.

  “Are you all right?” she asked.

  Long seconds passed and then he said, “I’m fine.”

  Just like Miss Price had said I’m fine.

  “Why do you say you’re fine when you’re not?”

  His eyes shot open and he squeezed his jaw. “Because that’s what you do, Lavinia,” he said in a low voice. “You say things are God-damned fine even when they are God-damned not.”

  They were both quiet a long while.

  He’d never been mad at her before. Usually they would do their homework together, which wasn’t difficult for him. At first, she was flabbergasted by his ability to read and recall but she’d begun not just to take it for granted but, very slightly, to resent it—why should remembering facts and dates and Latin declensions be so much easier for him? He had won a bet reciting all of “Charge of the Light Brigade”—she had asked him about it—but it was a mistake, he said. “People don’t really like their Kansas farm boys quoting Tennyson.” He’d smiled at her. “Upsets their sense of order.” She liked it when he recited poems for her. Usually he would close his eyes when he did this, as if the words could only be seen in some imaginary land. Once he recited lines and lines and lines of a poem by Shakespeare about Venus and Adonis, and though the density and complexity of the words made the language seem almost something other than English, she was carried along by his voice and the pure pleasure of the flowing, unfamiliar words, and then, abruptly, there was something about Venus kissing Adonis’s cheek and chin and where she stopped she would begin again and exactly at the moment when her mind was catching on these words, and oddly awakened to their meaning, the voice stopped and his eyes clicked open, and he was staring at her in a way that she had never been stared at before. Before that, she’d wondered whether she was in love with Clare Price. After that, she stopped wondering; she felt it in her bones.

  Thereafter, in addition to homework, they would talk.

  Clare would tell Lavinia things, like how they’d burned all their dead hogs in Kansas after the hogs died of cholera, and how they’d once had a schoolteacher live in their house, Scottish or Irish, she couldn’t remember which, but her name was Miss McKinnon and she had been like one of the family. He felt bad that they left her behind when they moved
, and she never wrote back to him. Lavinia didn’t like that story because she could tell that, though he didn’t say it outright, this schoolteacher was someone Clare had been smitten by, except there seemed to be something even worse than that. It seemed somehow as if Clare didn’t mind—or perhaps even secretly enjoyed—Lavinia’s knowing that there had been someone he’d loved in this way, which might be a way he would never love anyone else.

  Now, quietly, Clare said, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I talked like that. I know you didn’t mean anything.” A few moments passed. Then he said, “My mother says my father isn’t coming back.”

  “But why not? Did the bank business go wrong?” She’d heard Clare and everyone else say that’s what he was doing back there.

  “That’s what we thought,” Clare said. “But he didn’t answer my mother’s cable, or Charlotte’s letter. And instead of just checking on our old house, we think he’s living in it. Some people we know, they’ve seen the lights on. And then a neighbor went over to visit, and found him there. He told the neighbor he was sick and was just riding it out, whatever it was.”

  A few seconds passed, and then Lavinia said, “What’s your mom going to do?”

  Clare shook his head. “I don’t know. Charlotte started wailing about how McNamara would never marry her now, which I don’t think is true, but maybe it is because my mother said not to tell him.”

  He turned his brown eyes to her. They reminded her of little dark pools in the Santa Margarita River, the shallows of which were flecked with gold sand. “You won’t tell anyone, will you?” he asked, rubbing at the top part of his thigh like he wanted to get inside the plaster. “Like Candy and Myrtis or anyone.”

  Lavinia stiffened. “Candy and Myrtis? I don’t talk to them about real things. I only talk about real things with you.”