I grip the side of Mama’s secretary desk. Panic sprouts in me. “I need to go to the cemetery before we leave!”
Dr. Nesbitt slows the car, pulls to the shoulder.
“I’m sorry. I just… I can’t…” The engine hums. The desk vibrates beside me. I search out the car window, my stomach full of crows. “Which direction is it? Where? It’s… can anybody remember?”
Dr. and Mrs. Nesbitt exchange a look. He nods, cranks the steering wheel, and heads south out of town. I tuck in corners of the desk quilt that have blown loose and stare through the front windshield.
They wait in the car while I run through the wrought iron gate to the mound of dirt over Daddy’s grave—pebbles and clods covered with a pile of dead funeral flowers. There are ants and roly-poly bugs in it. So many busy creatures unearthed just to make room for him.
Mama’s headstone is low and settled. It says: ANNA JANE KOHLER BALDWIN, 1885–1916.
I look from plot to plot. “It’s me. I just wanted to say that I’m so sad to leave Atchison. But I have to.” I glance back at the Ford waiting for me in the golden afternoon. “The house will be okay. I’m taking care of it.” I turn to Daddy’s side. “I gave Celeste the store, like you wanted. And Mama… we haven’t spoken in a long time. Thank you for the desk. I have more of you yet to dust.”
I look up at the clear sky and then at the headstones all around, mossy perches for ground squirrels and sparrows. I straddle the graves—a foot on each. I shift my weight side to side. The three of us together again.
My tears water the dirt. I’m not exactly like Mrs. Nesbitt, I think. Mama and Daddy and I didn’t have the connection she describes with her husband and Morris, but… I am a moment they loved each other. I know that now.
I feel full and unexpectedly powerful. I wish I had something—not dead flowers and ribbons, but a real and lasting thing to leave for them. I step away, then turn back and take off my shoes. There is something permanent I can leave: my footprints—one in Daddy’s dirt and the other a swirl in the fine dust over Mama.
The Nesbitts watch me walk to the car barefoot. “There’s no hurry,” Mrs. Nesbitt says out the window.
“I’m ready.”
The sunflowers watch us turn around. Sun sparks off the weather-polished iron gate like a lightning strike. A choir of locusts tunes up.
We’re all together too. Heading back north.
Homeward bound.
CHAPTER 22
“I remember something else Mama did.”
Mrs. Nesbitt turns from the front seat of the car.
“She named me.”
“Why of course. Is ‘Iris’ a family name?”
“No. Daddy wanted Louise, but she liked Iris.” I turn my palms up. “And she won. So I’m Iris Louise Baldwin, not the other way around.”
“So ‘Iris’ is a victory for your mother!” Mrs. Nesbitt looks genuinely pleased. “What does it mean?”
“I’ll look it up right now.” I read the slim Naming Flowers book I brought from our bookcase at home. “‘Iris, the Greek goddess of the rainbow, carries messages from the gods and goddesses to favored mortals on Earth.’ That’s why I get along so well with my wallpaper! ‘Widowers planted iris on the graves of their departed wives.’” I look up. “My father never did that.”
“Which? Sorrowing or planting?” Dr. Nesbitt asks.
“Neither,” I say flatly.
“My first name, Julia, means ‘youthful,’” Mrs. Nesbitt says.
“That fits.”
Dr. Nesbitt squares his shoulders and smiles at me in the rearview mirror. “Well, as one of you already knows, Avery means ‘elf-ruler.’” He turns. “Doesn’t it, Mother?”
Mrs. Nesbitt bows, turns to me. “I made that up when Avery and his brother were in their make-believe phase. Morris was hero of the heath!”
“Mother was cagey even then, Iris. Of course, being your guardian now, maybe elf-ruler fits!”
Mrs. Nesbitt unrolls her window and yells at the cows munching on what she calls Mother Earth’s frayed summer dress: “I am Julia, ever-youthful, Elizabeth Thornhill Nesbitt.”
Dr. Nesbitt honks. “Avery, elf-ruler. Thomas Nesbitt.” He honks again.
The car rattles down the road. I inform the wind and gnats and hay, “I am Iris Louise, not-the-other-way-around. Baldwin. Iris Louise Baldwin.”
Dr. Nesbitt honks two long honks and finally the cows turn, nameless spectators at Mama’s rowdy one-car victory parade.
Dot rolls her cold little eyes. “Oh, good, you’re back.” She has a fistful of clothespins.
“So your Pa’s dead.” She lolls her head. “I guess you’re the only Baldwin still left to croak.” She looks heavenward. “Oh, I forgot, you ain’t gonna croak ’cause you’re still a baby.” Dot sucks her thumb. “Please, Dr. Nesbitt, Grandmommy Nesbitt, I’m Iris the helpless infant. Please take me in.” She slurps and wags her hips.
In less than two weeks time she’s worse. A chill runs through me imagining that innocent baby. It should be scared to be born, the way I am scared of the horrid thought that has been born in me and won’t go away.…
I march in the house, straight into my room, slam the door, and pace. The wallpaper goddesses float around me in their mythological world, a place where everything shocking—murder, lying, jealousy, adultery, double-crossing, incest—has happened.
“There’s a Greek tragedy happening right here in Wellsford, Missouri. At the farm next door,” I whisper to the muses. “The girl there is pregnant… but nobody can talk about it. Her father hurts her, I’ve seen the marks, and… ,” I cover my mouth, barely uttering the idea that has begun to haunt me. “I think he might… be… the… baby’s… father.”
I turn to the buffet mirror, shocked to see my face looking fierce, older. “There. You finally said it.”
I walk out, pull the door shut, leaving my despicable secret thought with the goddesses.
“Cecil and Dot are like having a volcano in the backyard,” Mrs. Nesbitt says at supper. She glances in the direction of their farmhouse. “They’re going to erupt. When do you think the baby is due, Avery?”
“Three months, maybe four.” Dr. Nesbitt wipes his mouth. “Cecil was here twice while you two were in Atchison. His stomach, his rump. His face was as fiery as a hill of red ants.”
Mrs. Nesbitt puts down her fork. “Oh, thank you, as always, for the grisly details of Cecil’s medical woes.”
“I offered to give Dot a checkup, since she’d been feeling sick for quite a while, but Cecil wouldn’t hear of it. He said she was just a complainer.” Dr. Nesbitt’s face is grim. “There is no winner in this mess. A wild river of urges and moonshine flows through that man.”
I take a deep breath, force the words. “If you’ll forgive me for saying something terrible, Cecil acts different with me when one of you isn’t around. I think with enough moonshine Cecil might act out his—urges—on anybody, any… girl.” I wipe my eyes.
Mrs. Nesbitt gives me a penetrating look. “You mean Dot, don’t you?”
“Maybe…”
Dr. Nesbitt works his jaw.
“Do you think he might have touched Dot?” Mrs. Nesbitt says evenly. “More than just bruises?”
I nod.
“It’s a rusty old world,” Dr. Nesbitt says with uncharacteristic bitterness. He sighs. “We can’t address that. We’ll never know. But we sure do know the Deetses can turn on anyone, like Iris just said—even each other.”
I clasp my hands on the table, lean in. “But with that baby, Dot needs someplace away from him.”
We sit silent.
“Nothing good is in store for that child, no matter who the father is—problems all the elf-leaders on Earth can’t fix.” Mrs. Nesbitt puts her hand on mine, smiles wearily. “Are you sure you don’t want to change your mind about living in Kansas City?”
“Let’s all go,” Dr. Nesbitt says, gazing out the window.
“I hope you’ll put this in the front room,” Mr
s. Nesbitt says. We stand by Mama’s secretary, still parked in the entry hall.
“Mrs. Nesbitt? That’s Morris’s room.”
She waves her hands. “Oh, I’m changing that. It was a well-appointed tomb, not a living room.” She smiles. “I told Morris, and he seemed relieved! You can fill it as you please, just so long as we can fit in there too. Lord knows we need the space now.” She taps down the hall and into the parlor followed by Marie, who sniffs every nook and cranny like a dealer in rare antiques.
In minutes Dr. Nesbitt and I have moved the desk and chair, and taken the cloth off the mysterious oil painting over the piano. I study the picture.
“It’s me.” Mrs. Nesbitt sighs, points with her cane. “Avery’s dear friend Marsden painted it after Morris died.”
It’s an angled back-view of a woman seated at a piano. Her hands are folded on the keys, her spine curved, her head bent. Her brilliant gold and red shawl contrasts with her deeply shadowed face. She is not looking at the music. It’s impossible to tell if she’s afraid to go ahead and touch the piano keys, if she’s exhausted from playing, or if she’s praying for inspiration. The streaks and dabs of color are so vivid, you can imagine the artist’s hands flying.
But the mood is sad.
“I—she—was stuck,” Mrs. Nesbitt says matter-of-factly. “Marsden did a perfect rendering of me at that time, but it was too true. That’s why I covered it up. But now”—she sweeps her hand—“she’ll have the company of our new family members, Anna Jane Baldwin and her daughter.”
We spend the afternoon rearranging, scrubbing, polishing, and sorting the parlor. “These figurines don’t look as hostile as they used to,” Dr. Nesbitt says. “And the love seat feels less like a horse with rigor mortis.”
“I guess the whole room was grumpy that I left it for dead.”
I am minding my own business in the chicken house when Pansy Deets pops in my mind as surely as if she had walked up and tapped me on the forehead. “Go away, Pansy,” I say out loud. “A lot of help you are these days.”
But in the parlor I find myself flipping through Mama’s Naming Flowers book. Pansy: from the French penser, meaning “to think.” Well, that doesn’t fit. I would hardly call her thoughtful. I close the book, fighting the impossible idea forming in my mind.
I tell Marie, who sits with me on my bed, “Pansy is long gone. She vanished in the night, hightailed it on Mrs. Nesbitt’s generosity. There is no way she’ll ever show up again.” I scratch Marie’s ears. “On the other hand… if Pansy could make herself disappear, why couldn’t she help Dot vanish too?” I shake my head, hoping this idea will fall right out on the floor where it belongs. I can’t bring it up because Mrs. Nesbitt has sworn off meddling with that woman. Who can blame her?
I picture Pansy: a straggly, beaten down woman, unsmart, unloved, but hopefully unbruised—at least for now. I picture Cecil: his grubby hands on her neck, his expression always mocking the heart of everything and everyone. “Everybody despises Cecil as much as you do, Marie. He’s not fit to be a log on the Devil’s woodpile.”
I imagine what Dot has seen and heard and felt, being raised by him. How could she ever risk telling him no about anything? How will her baby have a prayer of growing up all right? I feel sick inside. Compared to hers and her baby’s, my life is a piece of angel food cake.
“Mrs. Nesbitt?” I say the moment she awakens from her nap. “I’ve been thinking…”
“If it’s what I’m thinking…” Her eyes fill with pain. “I’m warning both of us: we cannot and will not take Dot in.”
“Yes, ma’am. I know.”
“And Avery cannot be her doctor. We cannot give her money to run away. We cannot prove anything.”
“I know.” My stomach flutters. I force the words. “Dot needs her mama.”
Tears come to Mrs. Nesbitt’s eyes. She sniffs, looks at me, bewildered. Without meaning to I have stirred up her worst feelings of regret and responsibility.
CHAPTER 23
“Tongue depressors, quilting scraps, apple butter, Bee Secret, Digestive Support Powder, thread, Avery, cottage pudding.” I check the supplies while Mrs. Nesbitt calls out our list.
“Avery won’t stay in the box,” I say.
“Well, who needs him anyway?”
We’re heading to Ruthie’s house. I hope it will lift our spirits. Mrs. Nesbitt hasn’t mentioned Dot since my extraordinarily poor idea about Pansy. I feel so bad about it, my constant sighing has created a cloud over everybody’s head.
Ruthie’s cat greets us, leaving a trail of muddy paw prints across the hood of the car. Cora, standing on the lopsided porch, looks somewhere between dead and elated. Ruthie is nowhere in sight.
Mrs. Nesbitt supervises the unloading of our boxes and bags and gives Cora the Rawleigh salves and powder. I notice cozy beds created from two dresser drawers. But for now the twins lie side by side on the bed. They are a miracle to look at, and we just stare, lapping up their sweet squirminess.
Dr. Nesbitt warms the stethoscope on his palm before he examines their perfect little cantaloupe-shaped chests. They follow his wiggling fingers with luminous blue-gray eyes.
Silent as a spider, Ruthie weaves her hand in mine. She’s fresh-faced and happy to see me, a far cry from the frightened girl blinking at my flashlight a month ago. We make dolls by wrapping tongue depressors together with yarn and dressing them. At Ruthie’s request we make Little Bo Peep, an elephant with two legs and two trunks, a queen, and a mouse in a top hat.
Mrs. Nesbitt sits regally with a twin lined up on each arm. Dr. Nesbitt examines Cora, then fixes her a fat square of cottage pudding. “Nursing these handsome fellas, you need to eat three times as much as that husband of yours.” Dr. Nesbitt winks at Ellis and cuts him a piece too.
We don’t do much of anything, really, just feel the easy pace of rocking and humming and patting, discussing if the twins are identical and saying kind and hopeful things. Dr. Nesbitt is the master of that. His tenderness, even with Ellis, and his free-flowing advice are better than a whole Rawleigh wagon full of elixirs.
I wonder why he’s never married, had children of his own.
“Olive Nish knew her and her sister,” Mrs. Nesbitt mutters. She looks up, as though surprised to hear her own voice.
“Is that a clue for your crossword puzzle?” I ask.
She sighs, pats her hair. “If only it were that simple.”
Dr. Nesbitt steps into the kitchen from his office. The patient he’s been seeing and her mother drive off. He has just removed a hornet stinger out of the little girl’s arm using a butter knife. “The best piece of medical equipment I have,” he says, wiping it with alcohol. “The right angle, a slight pressure, and pop, it’s out!”
I smile and turn to Mrs. Nesbitt, who seems to have forgotten about her puzzle. I go back to mending a pair of threadbare yard pants.
Mrs. Nesbitt mutters, “But Olive is such a snoop.…”
“How many letters is your word?” I ask. “Could it be… ‘eavesdropper’?”
“No, Iris, I’m not doing the puzzle.”
“Ma’am?”
She turns to her son. “Isn’t it true, Avery, that if I picked up the phone right this minute and somebody was conversing on the party line, I could just say ‘Olive, are you listening in?’ And before she could stop herself, she’d answer, ‘Why yes, of course I am.’”
“That woman knows more about the medical condition of Wellsford than I do.” He studies his mother, then turns to me, puzzled. “Why are we discussing Olive Nish and her formidable meddling expertise? Have you been eavesdropping on her?”
“No, sir. I’ve never heard of her until just now.”
Mrs. Nesbitt straightens her shoulders. “Iris had a provocative notion the other day, the bud of a plausible solution for Dot’s predicament.”
Dr. Nesbitt sits down, shakes his head. “Oh, boy. A provocative notion, a plausible solution. Some scheme involving Olive Nish? Look no further folks, the volcan
o’s gonna blow. You know if you try to help, Dot could use you just like Pansy did.”
“Of course I know that, Avery. Do you think I’m nuts?”
“Yes. So how could Olive help Dorothy Deets?” he asks.
Marie perks her ears. Mrs. Nesbitt raises her eyebrows, looks at me, then at her son.
“Olive could help find Dot’s mother. She’s the only person I know who had Pansy’s acquaintance besides me. And she knows Pansy’s sister.”
“Pansy? The ‘passed-on’ Pansy?” Dr. Nesbitt slumps his shoulders. “Oh, God, raising the dead.”
“She’s not dead.”
“She’s gonna wish she was.”
He turns to me for an explanation.
“I… I… well, I thought since Pansy had slipped away a while ago now, maybe she was sorry for it, and if she knew Dot was in trouble she might come back and do what she should have done in the first place: take Dot with her.”
Dr. Nesbitt stands up. “So if you locate Pansy, are you three going to tell her that Dot’s expecting? What if Olive rats on you to Cecil, or the whole town for that matter?” He taps the side of his head. “Olive isn’t as sharp as she once was, she could spill the beans to the wrong party without meaning to.”
We look up at him. There are tears in Mrs. Nesbitt’s eyes. He sits again. We all sink into silence.
“I caused this,” Mrs. Nesbitt says, her voice softened with guilt. “The baby has no hope living with Cecil. He will treat it as cursed, no matter who the father is, no matter what kind of problems it has.”
Dr. Nesbitt takes his mother’s hand, his expression troubled and tired. He turns to me. “Talk it over with the goddesses, Iris. We mortals need divine guidance.”
I slip on my nightgown, toss my hairclip on the bed, and shake my head. The house is quiet except for the wind and Marie, who moans and twitches in her dreams beside me. She must still have the screeching rhythm of the train buried deep inside from her hobo-living days.
I light a candle on my little dresser and kneel on the rug in front of it. I address the wallpaper. “Okay, goddesses, we need to talk some more.” My voice sounds rich and solemn. The flame dances. The walls seem to lean in. “You know about the tragedy. Everybody involved is awful, except for this little baby.”
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