The Excellent Lombards

by Jane Hamilton

  Had I been looking at those precious things for a long time? It didn’t seem like it, but when the footsteps sounded on the back stairs I snapped to attention. Where was I? May Hill’s bedroom, that’s where. I instantly curled up by the radiator, very tightly, behind a box column, listening to the flat quick footfall coming closer, closer. It could be none other than May Hill herself. The person, she, stopped. The door had been left open, how stupid could I have been! She must have been thinking about that unusual fact before she took the simple action of closing it. There, it was shut. She then went farther down the hall to the living room. She was possibly looking for something and maybe she found it or maybe she didn’t. I thought I might throw up. After a while she went down the front stairs and from what I could hear she was out the door to her work again.

  My inner ears seemed to have taken up my entire head—that’s how hard I’d been listening. Time to reverse my steps and get out of the manor house, steam away home. I went to the door. I turned the knob this way and I turned it that way. It didn’t, it wouldn’t open. I rattled it, I looked through the keyhole, and I pulled at it with all my strength. No, I kept telling myself. I’m not locked in. I hurried back to the window to see if my father was still driving the tractor along the rows. He was gone, no hope of holding up a flag, or making a sign that said SAVE ME.

  Amanda had finished her horn practicing; all was quiet downstairs. I went into May Hill’s private bathroom, the sink with a crusted rust stain from faucet to drain, and the small tub also rusty, where she had to fold up her tall thick self to get clean although a person didn’t imagine her removing her clothes. I was trapped in that bathroom and in the bedroom, too, the boxes closing in, the bed probably booby-trapped in some way. The water from the faucet poisoned. I knew I mustn’t cry and I mustn’t be sick. May Hill had smiled at the story of Elizabeth Morrow Lombard and the scalping of the Indian because she, herself, was a scalper—I had to buckle over. No, but think, think! If I could jump up and down to rouse Amanda and Adam below. If the storm windows weren’t sealing in the regular windows I could thrust them open and climb out on the roof or at least call and call. Or I could leap to the ground, risking life and limb.

  In the end all I could do was stick my fingers under the doorjamb, like a cat when he’s playing, his paws blindly fishing for whatever he thinks is on the other side. Then I did start to cry, wishing so hard that Mrs. Kraselnik would come and get me, and being furious all over again that William was spending so much of his vacation with Bert Plumly. My predicament was his fault. It soon would grow dark and May Hill would enter and get into bed. That thought alone was passing strange. Or else she knew I was in the room and she would leave me to my punishment, she’d lock me up, day after day, choosing another chamber for herself, plenty of other beds for rest.

  I curled up by the radiator again and I couldn’t help it, I whimpered. I lay there drawing circles in the dust. And some squares. Maybe after a long time for just a minute despite my fear I fell asleep because when I woke up my worry had come true and it was getting dark. Down the hall I heard the clatter of dishes. My head hurt. I was stiff and sore and maybe bruised. Someone was preparing supper. I was coming to understand that probably, and finally, there was nothing to do but give myself up. Even if I didn’t want to, even if facing that prospect scared me half to death. And so, in order to do that, I went to the door and I began to knock, softly at first but steadily. May Hill was moving pots around and probably chopping vegetables, or sharpening her knife—sharpening her knife. And yet I must knock. I knocked harder. I knocked for what felt like an hour, changing knuckles every so often.

  When she opened up I was still knocking, knocking at the air without the door. I stopped the little song I was bravely singing. It’s probably a fact that she was stunned by the appearance of Mary Frances Lombard in her bedroom, that she’d been expecting a bat to be flying around or a rodent on the prowl. That’s probably why she didn’t say anything. She’d been cooking dinner for Philip, a boy about to come in after a long day’s work for his good supper. From the heap of ages she’d dug up an apron with rickrack, which under different circumstances would have been humorous on her manly frame. She looked at me. I looked at her and then I ducked. I ran past her down the hall, yanked open the gate, practically tumbled down the back stairs into Dolly’s kitchen, and another tumble down the basement stairs, bumping into Philip at the bottom—“Whoa, girl,” he said, as if I were a horse. He held me, thinking he was doing yet another rescue.

  I slapped at him, slap, slap and ran away out the door, and I didn’t stop until I was inside our door in Velta, in our kitchen.

  “Where were you?” William said.

  My mother was at the sink washing lettuce that she herself had grown in a cold frame, her pride. My father was sitting on a bench taking off his work boots. William had Butterhead, the cat who loved him best, in his arms. I was home. Somehow I had gone far away and somehow I’d returned.

  “Marlene,” my father said.

  “Did you have a nice time?” my mother wondered.

  William narrowed his eyes in that expert way of his. “Are you wearing lipstick?”

  I slapped at my mouth.

  “Marlene?” my father asked. “Are you all right?”

  “What happened to you?” my mother said, coming from the sink.

  “Nothing,” I said. “I wasn’t anywhere.”

  14.

  Blossom Day

  Philip was at long last gone and the vacation over, our school lives resuming. Somehow, though, I did not feel the same after being May Hill’s prisoner. That’s how it seemed to me, that she had captured me, that she’d put me in her own bedroom, that she meant to fatten me up or starve me. The story could go either way when it came to how much food, but the outcome for the girl, whether fat or thin, would be the same. Ultimately nothing left of Mary Frances but bones. I would have liked to tell William about the capture but for a reason I didn’t understand—even though I lived in my own self, and should understand my own reasons—I didn’t want to tell him.

  Mrs. Kraselnik could see there was something wrong with me, because every now and then when I was staring out the window, in my mind chained to May Hill’s radiator, she would say in her stern low voice, “Mary Frances, are you there? Where have you gone?” I’d have to shake myself back to the four–five split, wishing I could explain how close I’d been to never returning.

  If I loved my teacher it’s probably fair to say that William was intrigued by Brianna Kraselnik, who was sixteen in her first spring with us. Her brother, David, had been sent to a military academy after he’d been in rehab, Brianna theoretically the good child. The single community activity that she took part in was the Library Cart Drill Team, her parents no doubt forcing her to do volunteer work for college admission. We were still for the most part full of appreciation for our mother’s kitschy enterprise, it never occurring to us that the project might have been an indictment of her character, or at least proof of her Alcoholism.

  The art of Cart Drill at the basic level is to push the shelving carts to musical accompaniment. Sometimes you kick a leg out, or do a hip swivel, and as a team you make patterns as a marching band does, or you get a running start and glide with your feet hooked around the base, although that’s advanced work. Across the nation at that time there were eighty-four teams and counting, Cart Drill not something my mother herself invented. She was hoping we would one day enter the American Library Association Annual Cart Drill Competition in Chicago, and it was perhaps in order to achieve this goal that she invited Brianna Kraselnik, who was on the high school pom-pom squad, to choreograph a routine for us.

  We began to rehearse in mid-April for the Memorial Day parade, our single performance of the year. All of our efforts riding on that forty-five-minute spectacle. We were an unusual team because we were not middle-aged librarians in seasonal appliquéd sweaters and gay men employees but a cross section of the community, which highlighted us, the b
ibliomaniac children. It’s customary for marchers in a parade to throw treats at the spectators but when we performed the crowds rained candy upon us. That’s how much our townspeople loved the team. We always kept our focus, every member serious and in sync, ignoring the great reward, the crowd laughing and whooping, Dubble Bubble and Tootsie Rolls filling the top shelves of our carts.

  At our first rehearsal in the back room of the library Brianna made her entrance carrying her own enormous boom box, a canvas bag of CDs, and a clipboard. She set her load on the banquet table. Behold: Brianna Kraselnik in an aqua leotard with gathers between her breasts, those cupcakes sharply delineated. On the bottom half she wore gray sweatpants that were cut off at the knees and dingy pink leg warmers dribbling down around her ankles, around her soft leather shoes. We’d never seen any dancer’s outfit that was so ragged but also obviously professional. She was nothing like the aristocratic Mrs. Kraselnik, Brianna a girl with bovine eyes, the long lashes bristly with mascara, and she had a luscious red mouth, the puff of her lips something you wanted to try to pop, the way we did to Bubble Wrap, and there was the glossy hair all the way to her rump. When she appeared I was already practicing along the wall: forward, back, run, glide, an accomplished pro myself, a team member who was not showing off but rather refining her technique. William, sitting on the floor with a book in his lap was squinting at me and his eyebrows were raised, too, and his forehead furrowed, all of that musculature at work at once. As if to say, Really, Frankie?

  Brianna didn’t hang back. She didn’t even wait for my mother to introduce her. “Okay, guys,” she said, clapping, approaching the whiteboard. “Listen up.”

  Listen up? I turned to William, to make our gawking face. He, however, was gazing at our neighbor.

  She smoothed her hair only to the base of her neck. “I’m Brianna Kraselnik, your choreographer. I know some of you have worked together before, so, wow, this is awesome, all of you showing up. And we’ve got some new members, right?” She smiled at Ramona Peterson, a third grader, and her friend Brittany Garner. Somehow, like a teacher with a magical list, Brianna knew our names and situations. Before she could say anything more the Bershek twins in their size seventeen tennis shoes came tromping into the room.

  “Hola, ballerinas!” she called to them. “Just in time to show off your talents!”

  The Bersheks were impossible to tell apart, both of them with sandy hair and glasses, both wearing the same style from head to toe, as if they had no interest in making it easy for anyone to know which was which. They always helped us with our hay, and it seemed a bizarre coincidence that Brianna knew boys that in summer were so important to us. “You,” she said severely, “you bad bad boys, you juvenile delinquents, better behave yourselves.” And then she squealed, a high-pitched mocking laugh, although what she was making fun of wasn’t clear.

  One of the twins saluted, snapping his heels together.

  “So, like I was saying,” she went on, clearing her throat and stroking her own irresistible hair again, “I’m super jazzed to have the opportunity to create your parade event and to work with you…athletes? Or whatever. A special shout-out to you, Mrs. Lombard, for inviting me here. Really, I just love this wacky formation biznass. Um, so, okay, I’ll show you what I’m thinking, give you”—she made her gigantic eyes bigger—“the grand design, and then we’ll do some warm-ups.”

  The older Bushberger daughters were on Cart Drill, and so was Amanda and there were several adults, including Melvin Pogorzelski, my mother’s star patron, the librarian’s pet. Gloria would have been there if she hadn’t had her love attack, if she hadn’t had to leave us. We all nodded at Brianna, except for William. He seemed to have been struck by the lightning that was Brianna Kraselnik herself. A zap just for him.

  She was saying, “Is there anyone who would like to demonstrate what this—thing is, for the newcomers, and maybe for review?”

  “Good idea, Brianna,” my mother called from the sidelines.

  Amanda’s hand shot up. I would have volunteered but a small something stopped me. I wasn’t sure that our choreographer was in fact trustworthy. My mother had invited our neighbors over for dinner back in the fall, but because of the Kraselniks’ school and hospital events, and our harvest, we had so far never gotten together. Cart Drill, then, was our first substantial acquaintance with Brianna. Her squealy voice, her mincing and mugging for the Bershek twins, made me wonder if deep down she didn’t think Cart Drill was retarded. That would be her word, one we weren’t allowed to use. And maybe William was arriving at that same suspicion, too, the reason he looked as if, should he be able to move, he might try to slip away.

  I could see suddenly the retarded aspects of Cart Drill, the outsider’s perspective at once unsettling. There was the embarrassment of Mitchell, for one, the autistic patron, thirty-three years old, whom my mother enlisted to operate the boom box. During rehearsal he cradled the box in his arms as he rocked and groaned, taking the job of operating the PLAY/PAUSE button with the gravity it required. And there was dumpy old Melvin Pogorzelski, who was overly enthusiastic, too, sliding around in his stockinged feet, and clumsy Mrs. Johnson, always banging into us with her cart, and even my mother was mortification, The Director on a stepladder looking down on our formations as if she thought she were the Almighty.

  But was Brianna mocking us, the team? When she described how the carts would be decorated with shiny silver strips that hung from the lip of the shelf, like a hula dancer’s skirt, she did seem sincerely excited. We girls all said, “Ahhhh!” There were fifteen carts that were strictly designated for the drill team, carts that could not be used for ordinary purposes. Shelvers, stay back. When Brianna—and not my mother—asked who would like to be on the decorating committee I couldn’t help thrusting my arm into the air, even before Amanda did. And I couldn’t help, either, my pride when Brianna said that I would be the girl hoisted on the shoulders of Melvin and Mrs. Bushberger, my cart minded by William when we got to, Oh, as long as I know how to love, I know I will stay alive. The key message of the song. Amanda could never have been at the top of any pyramid because she was too chubby to be lifted.

  When Brianna first played us the song, played “I Will Survive,” Melvin observed, “That is not the most patriotic number I’ve ever heard.”

  Before our choreographer could defend her Memorial Day selection William said, “Yes, it is.” He spoke softly, so that everyone had to turn to see if in fact it was he who had made the comment. His face had turned completely red. He was looking at the floor. “It is,” he said again. “There’s no point to freedom—I mean, you can’t, um, have love if you’re not free.”

  What in the world?

  “OhmyGhaaaad,” Brianna said. “That, my friend, is so deep.” She shook her head in wonderment. “I can’t believe, Will, how incredibly, amazingly profound that is.”

  Will? Did she already know him? From the middle school and high school bus stop? An acquaintance he’d never mentioned?

  “KA-razy deep,” one of the Bersheks said.

  “You, boy,” she barked, “no more out of you, you hear me?”

  I was confused, still very much unsure if I liked Brianna, if I maybe wanted to tell my mother right then that I was retiring, but also I couldn’t quit when I was going to be the girl riding on the shoulders of the adults. By the end of the hour the Bersheks had decided Cart Drill was too difficult for them, they were too cloddy, and away they went into the library proper. “Oh, too bad,” Brianna said sarcastically. “Whatever will we do without them?” She slapped her hands to her cheeks, her lips in the O of astonishment. Some of the Cart Drillers laughed.

  With the irritants gone we were able to get down to work. Although in the end the parade was a sensation, most everyone proud and exhilarated, I was not in that camp because of my private knowledge of Brianna’s character. Beyond her flirty behavior and her obscure jokes in our rehearsals, there was criminal conduct that I, and only I, happened to witness after our
first practice, when the orchard came into full bloom.

  This is what happened. On Blossom Day my mother always let William and me stay home from school. We were sent from the house in the morning with a basket of necessities, and told not to return until three thirty, the hours of the official school day. If the sky was softly blue and the sun’s radiance everywhere, no dark hole in which to hide, and the air still, nothing in it but bees working, blossom to blossom to blossom, the orchard lit with a snowy brilliance, and the grass plush and shiny, every green blade brimming with light, and here and there a carpet of violets, and swaths of beaming dandelions—then you yourself, you were dazed. You were bumbly and drunk, too, a once-a-year festivity.

  On Blossom Day in that spring right after Philip’s visit, William and I as usual set up our camp in the hollow underneath a towering wild tree, a brute that produced a tart pulpy apple that was good for about a week in mid-September. We’d named it Savage Sauce-Burger—hilarious. The south orchard was fifteen acres of mature trees, most of them well over twenty feet tall, planted by our Great-Aunt Florence and Great-Uncle Jim in the era before dwarf and trellis trees were the rage. My father and Sherwood weren’t able to prune them all every year and some of them were impossibly overgrown, gothic subjects for a photographer rather than productive fruit trees. We had our books, the chessboard, cheese sandwiches, oranges, a thermos of lemonade, gingersnaps, trail mix, the usual goods for an expedition. William had his current Capsela robot masterpiece, half built, the motors and wires and bolts in his toolbox. But soon into our encampment it—or we—started to feel strange. We’d already stood close to smell the lacy petals, we’d lifted our faces to the sunshine, we’d talked about maybe playing pioneers, building a fire, roasting our own sandwiches on a stick. We’d discussed constructing a fort, with levels in the tree this time, a few different stories. We’d said maybe we should take a canoe ride.