Please find the drawing enclosed. When you gaze into it 1 do so hope you see longing and strength and passion looking back.
We will meet when 1 visit Wellsford this winter. 1 do so miss my teasing with Julia—the last goddess left on earth—and, of course, her son—my inspiration.
Life paints each of us with a different stroke.
Warmly,
Marsden White
I reread the letter, study the last line—a perfect vine of black ink across the page.
I slide the sketch paper from the envelope. It is thick stock and only as big as my hand. The tissue falls away. I take a breath and look into my eyes.
Someone whole and loved looks back.
I tilt my head to absorb the drawing. My eyes look lit from the inside, glowing.
I blink once, twice—just the way I used to with Mama. And somewhere inside me, Mama blinks back.
“I am whole and loved,” I tell her. “We are whole… and loved.”
In the parlor I study the portrait of Mrs. Nesbitt that Marsden painted after her son died. You cannot see her eyes. They are lost in shadow. She has told me, “I could not look at myself then. I was too weak and empty, too unbearably sad.”
I think how brave she was to have it painted with all her pain showing. How she must have trusted him. His signature, a rosy sweep in the corner, is confident and strong. Maybe their time together was just right. He painted her sadness without telling her what to feel or do about it, without any answers or advice.
In my room I smooth my coverlet and place the drawing in the middle of my bed. I arrange Leroy’s hands on either side. I gather my hair and lift it, let it fall a bit at a time against my back, study the picture arrangement.
It isn’t right.
I move the drawings. Put my eyes at the top, then below.
No.
“They don’t go together yet—too many bits and pieces,” I tell the bedspread.
I get my stationery and pen. I know what’s missing.
September 30, 1926
Dear Leroy,
Come for my birthday or sooner. Go with us to visit Kansas City.
The drawings of your hands are everything but warm enough.
Iris
P.S. I have a present for you.…
Dr. Nesbitt puts my letter to Leroy in his breast pocket, then steps around the shotgun and out to his car. He is going by the post office for me and then to work.
Although I hear Cecil’s death car a hundred times a day, the real threat of him is over. The Nesbitts and Olive and I have talked and talked about the events of that night—Marie, our teamwork, the what-ifs. It’s good to do. Helps calm our nerves. Helps us move on.
Dr. Nesbitt has already advertised for a new tenant to rent our land, but none of us knows what to do with Cecil’s haunted monument of a house less than a mile away.
“We can’t tear it down yet, even though it’s on our property,” Dr. Nesbitt says at the table later that evening. Olive is over for supper.
“Why not?” Mrs. Nesbitt says, with an air of not being bullied by anything Deets.
“Technically Pansy and Dot are the next of kin and they have the right to what’s in it,” he says.
“Only rats and rot,” Olive remarks after a stiff sip of brandy. Her eyes narrow. “Who says they need to know of Cecil’s passing? Why would they care?”
“But Olive…”
Olive sits like she’s holding court and takes a deep breath. “Lest you forget, I alone know the accurate address of the sister, and I alone may or may not correctly offer it to the authorities when their first attempt at notification comes back in the returned mail as surely it will.” Olive swipes her mouth. “And we all know that the sister may very well not know where Pansy and Dot are anyway. In fact, I sincerely hope she does not.”
“Because… ?” Dr. Nesbitt asks.
“Because a hundred years from now would still be a hair too soon to see those two again. Don’t get me wrong. I am glad we did it. But enough mayhem and tongue-swallowing terror!” She fans her nose. “They can live without a collection of Cecil’s crusty, frayed undergarments.” Olive demonstrates her disdain for Cecil’s undershorts by dropping her napkin.
Mrs. Nesbitt lowers her fork and looks toward the ceiling.
Olive charges on. “His hemorrhoids, his rusted pots and pans, his rodent infested flour and sugar sacks, his…”
“Amen,” Dr. Nesbitt says.
Olive raps her index finger on the table. “He was nothing but a poisonous serpent, slithering where he shouldn’t.”
“Amen again!” Dr. Nesbitt says, with a note of okay, that’s enough.
“Ah… yes.” Olive softens and dabs her eyes with her favorite hankie, the one she refers to as Old Dainty.
After Dr. Nesbitt drives Olive home, he jokes as he comes in the kitchen, “It is amazing how Olive can ruin a meal even without cooking it.”
I lie in bed, trying hard to think of something besides Leroy’s hands. I am dying for him to get here and then go with us to Kansas City to see Celeste’s store and celebrate my birthday. So much life has poured in and out of me this year, I can barely remember my old self. As Mrs. Nesbitt put it, “A hundred new Irises have bloomed this summer!”
Three early birthday presents from the Nesbitts are on my dresser: applications for college. “Seeds,” Mrs. Nesbitt called them. “Someday,” she added when she saw the stricken look on my face. “Someday you will go on to school, Iris.”
But I could only stutter, and she knew why. Because “someday” sounded like “after I die.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll not abandon Henry. He’s not ready to retire,” she said. “But this is a farm, after all. So I can plant all the seeds I want!”
But before anything else, before I turn sixteen or go to college or even feed the chickens, I have two things to finish. The first is the compartment in Mama’s secretary I’ve been avoiding. What’s in there will rouse Daddy’s ghost.
CHAPTER 31
It’s early. I raise the parlor shades and sit at Mama’s desk wrapped in my old chenille robe. Something inside rattles like a box full of pulled teeth when I slide the compartment open. I fish out a lumpy envelope with a scrap of brittle newspaper clipped to the outside: Mama’s obituary.
Anna Jane Kohler Baldwin
aged 31, died Monday at
Holcomb Sanatorium. She is
survived by her husband
Charles Winn Baldwin and
a daughter. Funeral arrangements
courtesy of Lundgrun
Funeral Parlor, Atchison.
Just like Daddy—all business. I turn the clipping over. He reduced Mama’s life story to something smaller than the foot powder advertisement on the back. Nothing about her, or her parents, or where she was born. Does Anna Baldwin’s daughter have a name, Daddy, or did you forget that too? I’m surprised you didn’t mention the store: Anna’s husband is the proprietor of the popular Baldwin Shoes.
Mrs. Nesbitt sits above me in her portrait—achingly beautiful, heartbreakingly real. That’s what I want, an oil painting of Mama by someone who knew her, loved her. Not stiff and posed, but shimmering with her feelings.
I recall Dr. Nesbitt’s comments about Mama’s sanatorium when I’d finally gathered the nerve to ask him about it. He’d been there years ago, before it closed. He said that “brave” is not enough of a word to describe living for years like Mama did, never knowing if your next trip would be back home or to heaven.
I open the envelope expecting to find her death certificate and some of my baby teeth, but instead there’s a photograph, rhinestone buttons, and a letter I have never seen, dated a month before Mama died.
October 20, 1916
Dearest Iris,
This is not my handwriting. A lovely nurse named Elizabeth is writing this for me. Do you like the picture? I do. It’s my favorite. You look ready to ride that pumpkin around the block!
In the photograph I straddle a fat pum
pkin with the stem gripped in both hands. I peer out from under a huge tipsy hair bow—a dollop of satin whipped cream plopped on my head.
Your father has promised to read this letter to you when he gives you my Christmas present. I hope you like it. I had Mrs. Andrews make it out of my blue velvet dress—the one you love, with the rhinestone buttons we call stars.
Do you remember being three years old and counting all twelve stars when you sat on my lap? You will find only eleven in this envelope, because one is sewn inside your present.
Rosie! Mama had Mrs. Andrews make her for me.
I run to my room. Rosie is so full of holes that Mama’s star is surely gone, swept into a dustpan and tossed. I sit on my bed and knead every lump and hollow.
I shut my eyes and explore Rosie’s paw, finding the one thick place I used to rub over my lip. And there it is—the little rhinestone button, Mama’s secret buried deep in stuffing, hidden for ten years right in front of my face.
For a moment it is that first Christmas right after she died. I remember receiving Rosie and naming her. I remember Mrs. Andrews smiling. She must have believed Daddy read Mama’s letter to me so I knew the secret. But he never did. I wipe my eyes on Rosie, carry her to the parlor, and read on.
Give your stuffed kitty a name and hug and talk to her whenever you miss me. I hope you like the rose sachets tucked inside.
When you feel the secret button, remember the love we hold inside for each other.
I am shining on you every minute.
With all my love forever,
Mama
I smooth the paper. Breathe in, breathe out. Bolt the cellar door against Daddy—how he could have let this letter be “lost” so long. Tears come again. I arrange the buttons in a semicircle, then a circle—a constellation—with Mama’s invisible star in the center. Midnight blue thread is still hooked to some of them. They rattle when I bump the leg of the desk, then settle back in place.
I scoop them up, shake their solid weight in my hand.
I massage Rosie’s paw button between my fingers, imagine when she was a dress with all of Mama inside her. In my imaginary portrait, rhinestones appear in a glittering line from Mama’s throat to her waist. Each one is highlighted by a perfect dab of white paint.
Leroy opens the envelope, studies my present—Marsden’s drawing—and shakes his head. “Damn.” He gives me a “what are you trying to do to me” look.
“You like it?”
He nods. Looks me in the eye. “Damn, Iris.” He puts the drawing back in the envelope and slides it into his shirt pocket. “It’s… amazing. Thank you.”
At dusk, under a moonless sky, we sit on a low hill down the road from the Nesbitts’ and watch stars poke through the velvet night. It looks like I have tossed my handful of buttons into the sky.
Leroy points up. “The constellations are a compass for birds and sailors and…”
“Hobos,” I say.
Crickets converse. Trains call each other along the horizon. It’s dark now. I use Leroy’s faint shaving-cream smell as my compass to find him eight inches away. “Trains don’t need to navigate with stars,” I say. “They never get lost.”
We listen to the breeze loop through the grassy land spread below us. Leroy shifts. “I’m going to give you something for your birthday now.”
“A present? Now? How will I see it?”
“You won’t. It’s something I packaged up.”
“Packaged up?”
“Yeah.” He turns, takes a deep breath, and strokes his fingertip across my lips. Then he kisses me.
I sit there perfectly hollow, letting the kiss pour in.
“Okay?” he whispers.
“Yes.” He kisses me again. “Are there sixteen presents in your package?” I ask. “One for every year?”
“No, one for every star.”
A movement, a rhythm happens—our lips together, then apart, so we can come together again. The hill comes loose, spins skyward.
“What about the tarnished stars?” I say.
“Two kisses each.”
“And the invisible ones?”
“At least three.”
Something flutters past. I grab Leroy’s arm and look up. “It’s the goddesses spying on us,” I say.
Leroy brushes his lips across my ear. “Are they shocked to see us kissing?” he whispers.
“No… jealous.” I shiver.
Leroy touches my arms. “You cold?”
“I don’t know. I’m…”
I hear him pulling off his shirt. In a moment he wraps it around me. His heat is still in it. We sit looking straight ahead. I catch my breath, feel the thick envelope against my heart. Can he know that right now he has all of me in his pocket?
“Now you’re cold,” I squeak.
“No, Iris. I am definitely not cold.” He stretches his legs, crosses his ankles.
I turn to him. I can just see the outline of his face, his bare shoulders and chest. Never have I seen this much of a person, this smooth endless sweep of skin.
“God… Leroy…” I move behind him. “Don’t turn around.” His back is… what? More manageable? Or… at least his back is… not his front.
I take a huge breath, let it out slowly. Okay. I stretch my fingers wide, measure across his shoulders. I trace and retrace the matching ridges and craters on each side. My hands slide partway down his arms and back up. I touch his neck, comb through his hair. “It’s tangled.”
“The wind.”
“You’ve got goose bumps.”
“That’s the wind too.”
I lay my palms flat on his back. “I can feel your heart pounding clear through.”
“Can you hear it?” he asks.
I lay my ear against his skin. “Perfectly.”
I find two long scars in the amazingly soft skin on his side. “What’s this?”
He shakes his head. “Cuts from the ice truck. They’re okay.”
Starting between his shoulder blades, I roll my knuckles down the chain of his spine until the arc of it reverses, sinks, and disappears. The sides of my thumbs rub the curved furrows of his ribs.
“Ask me what I’m doing,” I whisper.
His voice is low. “What are you doing?”
“Polishing your back.”
“Good.”
“I’m leaving some dents.”
He shifts, stretches. “Good.”
His back is the only real thing in the universe, plus kissing and stars and buried secrets and his shoulders and muscles and kissing…
I lift his hair, whisper in his ear. “I think I’m lost.”
“Good.” He turns. “I’ll come find you.…”
I could not sleep all night, but I don’t care one bit. This morning the four of us are on the way to Kansas City. We have already stopped in Atchison so I could see Carl and hear the shoe-store gossip. We have driven past my old house. It looked good—the leaves were raked and there was a pillow in the porch swing.
At my request, Dr. Nesbitt is taking the route past the cemetery. I have one last stop to make before Kansas City.
It is beautiful—clear and cooler than yesterday.
We pass a blur of maple trees caught between the seasons—with green leaves starting to reveal their crimson secret.
Dr. Nesbitt glances at me in the backseat and stops at the cemetery gate. We peer through the curly wrought iron—upside-down hearts locked together with vines—to the gravestones beyond.
I blink-talk to Mama the way we used to do. I found our star.
I’ll meet you down the road, I say silently to my father.
“Do you want to get out?” Dr. Nesbitt asks.
“No, sir, but I would like to drive now.”
Mrs. Nesbitt turns around to me with that penetrating gaze of hers.
While Dr. Nesbitt gets in back beside Leroy, I settle into the driver’s seat. Mrs. Nesbitt hands me her glasses to wipe.
“Thank you, dear.” She pats my hand, scanning the
road ahead.
An anticipation builds. Something—an unspoken knowing—moves among us. I see the gritty old image of Daddy and me racing down this very same stretch eight years ago, to that awful crossing.
I feel fear build in me the way it did then—the realization that something was driving Daddy, something I couldn’t stop.
In a moment the railroad sign bobs on the horizon.
What?
I press the brake, stop, squint at the sign, certain someone has moved the tracks.
This can’t be it… so soon. I don’t remember it this way.
I grip the steering wheel and now, at this very minute, I make the connection—how very close Mama’s grave is to the crossing.
Was Daddy trying to beat his pain about her that day?
The tracks, thirty feet ahead, are absolutely unremarkable. All is quiet but a lazy fly and the hum of the car engine. I close my eyes and step back through that heavy door in time.
You always had to have the right shoes for your next shiny plan. Or were they for running from sadness, from scars you couldn’t polish away, from memories… from me?
I wrap myself in my arms and wait for the train to bear down on Daddy and me with its cargo of destruction and deliverance.
But it doesn’t.
It’s just the four of us, two simple rails, one chipped sign, and a scattering of broken rock.
A fine golden dust dances across our windshield.
Leroy reaches out from the backseat and cups my shoulders in his incredible hands.
I sit a long moment, then turn to Mrs. Nesbitt—so brilliant outside, wrapped in the gold embroidered shawl she wore the first time we met. So wise inside.
I look around at Dr. Nesbitt, knowing he would wait forever until I’m ready to go.
I hold the steering wheel, look both ways, adjust the throttle. No one talks when we bump over the tracks, but I hear them anyway.…
Remember, Iris, steer clear of ditches. Use your headlamps. Don’t drive in pastures. Aim high. Help hobos and strays. Dust the people you love.
When lost, use the stars.
Crossing the Tracks (9781416997054) Page 17
