Nearly

by Deborah Raney

  The easy flow of conversation they'd shared all evening came to a confusing halt. He retreated into silence again, and she was suddenly afraid to ask any more questions.

  As they entered the city limits of Hanover Falls, Claire watched his face as the glow from the streetlamps rose and waned, illuminating his profile. He was silent again, pensive, not responding to her. The sorrowful, almost haunted look in Michael’s eyes had disappeared as they visited in the restaurant earlier this evening. Now it was back, but instead of intriguing her, the foreboding darkness that crossed his face made her wary, almost frightened to be with him.

  She longed to go back in time… to take back whatever she'd said that had made him withdraw. But not knowing how to undo it, she remained silent.

  They pulled into her driveway, and he came around and opened her door and walked her to the front door of her house, not speaking.

  “Thank you for the evening.” She smiled up at him, knowing her smile didn’t quite reach her eyes. “I had a very nice time.”

  “I did, too. I’m glad you could go.” But the warmth was gone from his voice. He was merely being polite now.

  A heavy awkwardness hung between them. “Well… I guess I’d better go in. Thanks again for everything. Good night.”

  “Good night.” He turned and walked down the sidewalk.

  Then the roar of the truck indicated he was gone, leaving her to wonder what had gone wrong, what she'd done to ruin the evening. Depression creeping up on her, Claire washed her face and got ready for bed. Confused and deeply disappointed the evening had ended as it had, she crawled under the quilts.

  She would never understand men. What had she done? What had she said to cause him to shut down? Was he uncomfortable because she'd told him about her parents’ deaths? Sometimes people didn’t know how to react when Claire revealed she had lost her parents at such a young age. But no, she felt sure his “I’m sorry” had been warm and genuine then. It was later that he'd become distant. What could she have said? They'd been talking about St. Louis. . . .

  Her own memories of that place and time in her life were not happy ones. Unbidden, the old feelings washed over her as they had on so many other nights.

  She was back in their big house on Madison Street in St. Louis. Every room was festively adorned for the holidays. It was a special day. Her mother and father had gone downtown to get her new brother. Nana was staying at the house with Claire until her parents returned.

  She sat at the dining room table with her grandmother playing her special domino game—the one with animal pictures on each tile, so even if you didn’t know your numbers you could match the pictures. Over and over they mixed the tiles up and turned them all facedown to draw for a new game. Finally Claire tired of the game and began to make domino chains, standing the tiles on end, one next to another, forming a big S that meandered the length of the table. Claire watched with fascination as one domino knocked over the next in a noisy chain reaction. Nana leaned back in her chair and clapped her hands. Above the clatter of dominoes they heard a car pull into the driveway.

  Nana nervously scooped the dominoes into a pile and began putting them back in their wooden box. Claire ran to the window and watched as her father opened the car door. A strange boy climbed slowly from the backseat.

  Claire had never seen her brother before, but already there was a picture of him on the bookcase in the front room beside Claire’s new kindergarten picture. Joseph Matthew Anderson and Claire Marie Katherine Anderson, side by side in a little hinged frame. Just like the pictures of Gretchen and her brother that sat on the piano in Gretchen’s dining room.

  Would she fight with Joseph the way Gretchen argued with her brother? Claire knew Gretchen loved Tim. Sometimes she saved a piece of candy or a cookie for him when she and Claire got to bring treats home from a birthday party. And Claire thought Tim loved Gretchen, too. Sometimes when they all played baseball in the Gaylord’s big backyard, he would pound his sister on the back and tell her, “Way to go, Gretch! Great catch.”

  Claire had looked at Joseph’s picture often in the days leading up to this one. She imagined the boy in the picture to be tall and talkative. He had a big smile and curly hair, just like Ronnie Mason, a fourth grader at her school. She imagined her brother would be full of jokes and laughter the way Ronnie was.

  But when her brother walked in through the front door that afternoon, he was nothing like Ronnie Mason. He was tall and slender—and that was where the resemblance ended. His hair had been shorn so close that his white scalp showed through, and his ears stuck out from the sides of his head. The smile from the picture was gone, and with it, all Claire’s hopes for jokes and laughter and a brother who might one day clap her on the back and tell her, “Great catch, Kitty.”

  Her father called Claire from the doorway, and with Nana’s nudging, she came into the living room and stood there shyly waiting for the boy to say something.

  “Kitty, this is Joseph. This is your new brother.”

  “Hi…” She buried her chin in her chest.

  He just stood there glaring at her.

  “Joseph, this is your sister. Can you say hello to Kitty?” Her father squeezed his shoulder. “Joseph?”

  No reply.

  Claire’s mother had gone into the hallway to put her coat away. Nana stepped into the silence and put an arm around the boy. Ignoring his cringe at her touch, she stepped away from him. “I’ll bet you’re hungry after such a long trip. Why don’t we see what we can find to eat in the kitchen. Come along, Kitty, Joseph. Let’s have a little snack.”

  Claire caught the worried look her grandmother gave her father as she ushered Claire into the kitchen. Joseph followed behind, head bent. He ate the juicy slices of apple and the hunks of yellow cheese Nana put in front of them, chewing noisily and wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. He said nothing.

  And so it went. At first Joseph would not answer when they called his name. He sat stiffly on the sofa in the living room, blatantly ignoring them, defiance in his steel gray eyes. But as the day wore on and supper came and went, hunger finally won out and he heeded their beckoning. He came to the huge table in the dining room and sat, methodically spooning into his mouth the thick stew his new mother had reheated for him. Raymond Anderson had not allowed him to eat until he acknowledged them, and by the end of the week, the boy seemed to have settled reluctantly into the routine of their household.

  Claire wondered how it would feel to be in a strange new place, to have everything familiar taken away. And she felt pity for this strange boy who was now her brother. But after a month Claire knew she did not love Joseph. Not the way she'd thought she would love a brother. She didn’t even like him, really. He was silent and sullen and not like any of the other boys she knew.

  Sometimes he was mean to her—knocking over her dollhouse for no apparent reason or grabbing her baby doll out of her arms and running away with it. No, she didn’t think she could love him. But she couldn’t hate him, either. Sometimes she walked by his bedroom in the evening and heard him crying. And then she truly felt sorry for him. He always seemed so sad. Once she had gone in to ask him what was wrong, but he'd quickly wiped the tears away and, reddening with anger, ordered her loudly out of his room.

  And then that awful afternoon.

  Claire sat up in bed. She put her head in her hands and rubbed her temples furiously, as though she could keep the thoughts from coming. She reached for the lamp beside her bed and turned it on, silently begging the light to chase away the dark thoughts.

  Chapter 6

  November had come and gone, and Claire’s good intentions of inviting Millie Overman for supper remained just that—intentions. The old woman’s phone calls had abated somewhat, and Claire felt mildly guilty that she hadn’t done a better job of keeping her landlady apprised of Smokey’s well-being.

  Claire thought Millie would be pleased, for Smokey had grown a long, sleek winter coat, which he meticulously groomed in front of
the fireplace each evening. He was fat and—if the volume of his purring was any indication—very happy.

  The first week in December the teachers held an early Christmas potluck luncheon, and Claire collected half a dozen new recipes from fellow teachers. Becky Anderson had talked her through the instructions for a delicious chicken dish, and Claire felt brave enough to try it out on company.

  She called Millie and invited her for the following Friday evening. Millie was delighted with the invitation and offered to bring a loaf of her homemade bread.

  Friday night Claire was struggling to open a bottle of salad dressing when the doorbell rang fifteen minutes early. She wiped her hands and pushed back a wayward strand of hair before going to the door.

  “Hello, Millie. Come in and get out of the cold. My goodness!”—she stuck a hand out into the night air—“it feels like the temperature has dropped twenty degrees since I got home from school.”

  Millie was bundled from head to toe, and Claire took her coat and the fragrant offering of yeast bread and helped her find a seat by the fire where she could remove her boots and several layers of sweaters.

  “Oh, this fire feels wonderful! I was beginning to fear I’d turn into a block of ice before I got here!”

  Claire carried Millie’s wraps and boots to the back entry to dry. When she came back into the living room, Millie was standing with her back to the fire surveying the room.

  “Oh, honey . . . you have the house looking so nice. It’s so good to be home—to be here, I mean.” She didn’t apologize for her gaffe, and Claire pretended she hadn’t heard.

  “Do you really like it?” Claire asked. “I’m having so much fun decorating, but I don’t have much confidence—or much money, for that matter—when it comes to decorating.” She looked around the room, trying to see it with an objective eye. “I do like it, though. It’s such a cozy house, Millie. I can see why you loved it so much. It reminds me of my grandmother’s house in Lee’s Summit. Actually, Nana doesn’t live there anymore,” she explained. “She’s in Kansas City now, in an apartment complex sort of like yours. Her house in Lee’s Summit—the house I remember as a child—was bigger, but a lot like this one.”

  “You’ve done a wonderful job, Claire. I like it.” Millie bobbed her chin as if that settled it. “Now where is that pussycat hiding? Surely he’s not out of doors on a night like this?”

  “Oh no. The last I saw him he was asleep at the foot of my bed. I’m surprised he’s not out here. He usually enjoys the fire in the evening.”

  “I certainly remember.” Tears came to Millie’s already clouded eyes, and Claire left her to her memories while she went to retrieve the cat.

  She scooped Smokey up off the bed and carried him out to the living room to deposit him in Millie’s welcoming lap.

  “You two visit awhile, and I’m going to finish getting our supper on,” Claire told her.

  It was a special evening and Claire wondered why she'd waited so long to make it happen. Millie praised the cooking until Claire was almost embarrassed, and after the dishes were done, the two women sat in front of the fire and Millie gave Claire a brief history of the old house.

  “My dear Samuel was born in this house—right there in the room where you sleep, Claire. When Lydia—that’s our oldest daughter—was born, Samuel’s parents decided we needed the space more than they did, so they built a little house over on Hudson Street. By the time our girls were in school, this house didn’t seem so big anymore, but back then it was a mansion to us.” A faraway look came into her eyes. “We had some happy, happy days here. Samuel died here, too. Didn’t want to go into the hospital even though he knew he was dying. He wasn’t even seventy years old.” She clicked her tongue. “Too young for a good man to die. Too young…”

  Claire listened sympathetically until Millie became cheerful again. After visiting for a while longer, Claire offered to make tea.

  She carried mugs of hot spiced tea out to the living room and handed one to Millie.

  The older woman took a cautious sip. “Our young advisor—or administrator, or whatever in the world he’s called—tells me he took you out to dinner not long ago.”

  The tea quivered in her mug and Claire forced her hands to steady. “You mean Michael Meredith?”

  “Well, of course, Michael. Have you been seeing him?” Millie asked in her most innocent, grandmotherly voice.

  Claire cleared her throat in an attempt to buy some time, not sure how much she wanted to tell Millie. “Uh…no… We just went out that one time. I’ve been awfully busy getting ready for our Christmas open house at school.” Truth was, Michael hadn’t called her again. She'd tried not to think about it.

  “He hasn’t called, has he?”

  “No, Millie, he hasn’t.”

  “Then I’ll just have to put a bug in his ear.”

  “Don’t you dare, Millie!”

  “Well, you don’t have to get snippety about it.”

  “I’m sorry. It’s just. . . I’d rather he asked on his own, that’s all,” she finally sputtered.

  “Ah… so you would like to go out with him again, though?”

  “Millie!”

  “I’m sorry, honey.” The woman put a blue-veined hand on Claire’s arm. “I’m just being an old busybody. I can’t help it sometimes.”

  “It’s okay. But could we please just talk about something else?”

  “What we need to talk about is getting this old woman home.”

  It was said in good humor, but she was grateful for the change of subject.

  “Are you sure you wouldn’t like me to drive you home tonight? I could bring your car back sometime tomorrow when the weather has warmed up a bit and then I’ll just walk home.”

  “Heavens, no. I’m a tough old bird. I’ll be fine. What you can do, though, is help me with the fasteners on my boots.” She held her crooked fingers up for Claire’s inspection. “These old hands just don’t cooperate with me like they used to.”

  Twenty minutes later Claire called Millie’s apartment to make sure she’d arrived home safely.

  “Oh yes, dear. No problem at all, but thank you for thinking of me. And thank you again for the lovely supper. It was a very nice evening.”

  “I enjoyed it, too. Good night, Millie.”

  “Good night, dear.”

  With Millie safely accounted for, Claire walked through the house, turning off lights and putting the teacups in the sink to soak.

  She looked around her house and thought about all the lives that had been lived in these rooms. In a society where no one seemed to stay in one place for long, it seemed amazing that Millie’s husband had been born and died in the same room. And rather than frighten her, it seemed comforting to think about Samuel Overman’s gentle death in the room where she now slept. It spoke of a continuity of life Claire had never known.

  It had been an enjoyable evening, and Claire had a feeling Millie had gone from being merely her landlady to being her friend.

  Claire was discovering her biggest challenge in the classroom was finding time for the day’s lessons. Between releasing her students to practice for the Christmas program and having them make the obligatory Christmas gifts for the parents, she was struggling to stay on schedule with the academic work.

  After one especially frustrating morning, Claire was pleased the afternoon geography lessons had gone well and they'd even managed to get a bit ahead in the book. She decided to use the last half hour of class to finish up the gift projects they were working on.

  Claire had inherited the idea for the craft project from the teacher whose place she'd taken. According to the other third-grade teachers, this particular craft was a long-standing tradition at Hanover Falls Elementary, and there were sure to be some disappointed children if they didn’t get to make the candle holders “like my sister made last year.”

  The project involved punching a pattern of decorative nail holes in old tin cans to create a rustic votive candle holder. The tins w
ere first filled with water and frozen to keep the hammer and nail from smashing the can flat.

  Most of the children had completed the hole-punching step of the project and were ready to rub the outside of their can with black shoe polish to give it an antiqued look. However, several of the students weren’t quite so dexterous with a hammer as the others. Claire was hoping this would be a good opportunity for the children to learn the value of working together to help one another finish the project on time.

  Before she could orchestrate the choosing of partners, several of the students had already paired off. They seemed to be taking the task seriously, so although she would definitely not have linked up Jarrod Hamilton and Will Frederick, for the time being the two seemed to be getting along. Perhaps there was hope for these seemingly bitter rivals. It is, after all, the season of miracles, Claire thought wryly.

  She was wiping off Brianne Sizemore’s shoe polish-covered hands when a howl of pain pierced the air. Claire whirled around in the direction of the screams to see Jarrod holding his thumb and jumping around in circles on one foot. Will Frederick had flushed a deep shade of red and was craning his neck for a peek at Jarrod’s wound, all the while insisting to Claire’s as yet unasked questions.

  “I didn’t do it. I swear, I didn’t do it!”

  “Yes, you did!” Meg Brayton shouted. “I saw you with my own two eyes.”

  Several other girls agreed with Meg’s observation, and the hammer hanging limply in Will’s hand was the “smoking gun” that convinced Claire the girls were telling the truth.

  “Shh . . . hush!” Claire admonished all of them. She managed to calm Jarrod down and determined his thumb had been smashed quite severely. It would probably cost him his thumbnail. Already blood was collecting under the nail, turning it the blackish-purple color of an eggplant. Claire knew from experience the injury would be very painful.

  She left her students whispering their various eyewitness accounts of the incident to one another while she walked Jarrod to the school nurse’s office.