“This woman’s got a mind like a steel trap,” Larry told his friend. “Now, dear Nell, what can I get you? Scotch?”
“That would be lovely.” Glancing around, she observed, not for the first time, “This room is perfect.”
At a console table, Larry was pouring her drink. “Nearly everything in it—except for some of the paintings—belonged to Grandmother or Mother.”
“I like that—the continuity.”
Addressing Drew, Larry said, “My grandmother built this house after my grandfather died. Smaller than the one they shared.” He handed Nell her drink and sat on the sofa opposite her and the teacher. “Cheers.”
Nell raised her glass. “Do you still paint?” she asked.
“For my sins.”
“I’m glad to hear it. Someday I’ll buy one of your pieces.”
“Someday I’ll give you one. Someday soon.”
“Mr. Davis,” Nell said, turning to the teacher, “I have a confession to make. The other night I sneaked in to watch a rehearsal of Our Town.”
“No need to confess,” he said. “It’s not against the law.”
“Well, I had a reason.” She sipped scotch. “I’ve been worried about Sally Wheeler.” She glanced first at Drew, then at Larry. “This is strictly entre nous, you understand.”
They nodded.
“Eudora Barnstable’s grandnephew Cole has been seeing Sally since last summer. Eudora says he’s poison and that I ought to warn the girl.” Nell twisted the glass in her hands. “I wouldn’t, of course. She’d hate an interfering ‘auntie.’”
Drew leaned forward. “You remember, Larry, that I said I was concerned?”
“You said she sometimes looked like death warmed over.”
“She’s a beautiful girl, but she’s been coming to class and rehearsal looking as if she hasn’t slept for a month. She’s lost weight. I suspected there was a boy, but I’ve never seen the guy around. I don’t think it’s anybody in her class.”
“The boy’s from St. Bridget,” Nell offered.
“Aha.”
“She pays attention at rehearsals?” Nell asked.
“Oh, yes. Best seventeen-year-old actress I’ve ever seen.”
“I think acting is important to her.”
“It’s what she wants to do after graduation.” Drew finished his drink, and Larry took the glass to refill. “Normally, I wouldn’t encourage it; it’s a tough world. But she might as well give it a try. A year at drama school. See how it goes.”
“Her maternal grandparents would probably pay for that. The grandfather is a doctor in Mankato.” Nell considered. “You know about Sally’s mother? Stella?”
“Larry told me. Must’ve been hard on the kid.”
“Harder than we can understand, I think. She’s very vulnerable.”
They chatted for another half hour. Nell was taken with this Drew Davis, but at length, she rose. “I have to be going. Larry, thanks for the use of your scotch. Mr. Davis . . .”
“Drew,” he said, rising.
“Drew, I’m happy to meet you. I feel better after our talk. I know you’ll keep an eye on Sally.”
Larry fetched Nell’s coat. “It was time the two of you met.”
The bleary winter sun was setting when Nell opened the door to her apartment. The lamp in the corner of the living room had been turned on. Sally lay asleep on the sagging daybed, one thin forearm thrown across her eyes. This was the second time in a week that she’d come by, the second time she’d fallen asleep.
On the previous visit, as she rose from sleep, knuckling her eyes like a small child, Sally had leaned toward Nell and said with urgency, “You know how sometimes you love someone—” Nell thought, Here it comes, but Sally had continued, “Not lovey-dovey love, but the kind when a person makes you feel important? Mr. Davis makes me feel that way, and I love him, really love him. You understand, don’t you?”
Now, as Nell stirred the embers in the stove and tossed in another chunk of wood, she thought, Let me protect this child. Fetching a quilt, she laid it over the girl, then sat nearby considering her inadequacy in saving children.
Picking up The Code of the Woosters, she settled into her armchair. Opening to a bookmarked page, she smiled. Bertie and Jeeves were cowering atop a chest of drawers and a cupboard, respectively: “The dog Bartholomew continued to gaze at me unwinkingly . . . I found myself noticing—and resenting—the superior, sanctimonious expression on his face . . . It seemed to me that the least you can expect on such an occasion is that the animal will meet you halfway and not drop salt into the wound by looking at you as if he were asking if you were saved.”
“Mrs. Stillman!” Sally sat up, panicked. “What time is it?”
“5:30.” Nell laid the book aside. “Should I call your father and let him know you’re on the way?”
“Would you, please?” the girl asked, pulling on her coat. “I didn’t mean to fall asleep. I didn’t mean . . . Oh, God. What’s wrong with me?”
chapter sixty-two
LEAVING LARRY’S PRE-THEATER BUFFET, the chattering group stepped into an April evening as soft as cottonwood down. In the auditorium/gymnasium, Nell and Eudora chose seats together, near the front. Eudora kept blotting her upper lip: Neddy had so many lines to remember.
They hadn’t long to wait before the lights dimmed, and the footlights shone on the curtain. Drew slipped out from behind it to welcome the crowd and explain that the play was written to be performed on a nearly bare stage. “I don’t think you’ll mind. In fact, I doubt you’ll even notice after the first few minutes.”
He went on to say what a pleasure it had been working with the cast and crews. “This community has welcomed me into its midst and rewarded me with the finest young people it’s been my pleasure to work with.”
Applause. Drew bowed, disappearing once more. Presently, the curtain slid apart and the play began.
After the final scene had played and the cast had taken its bows, Nell and Eudora discreetly dabbed their eyes. Clearing her throat, Eudora said, “Weren’t they wonderful?”
The crowd had begun slipping into wraps when the school intercom clicked on. A young male voice issued from the speakers on either side of the proscenium. “Attention. Attention.”
What was this?—announcement of the forthcoming track meet? “Attention, ladies and gentlemen.” Pause. “Before you leave, you should know that the director of tonight’s performance, Mr. Drew Davis, is a fairy.” Pause. “A homosexual, if you prefer. Mr. Davis was dismissed in 1944 by the school board of Clarkston, California, for his perversion. Thank you for your attention and good night.” Click.
“Let’s get out of here,” Eudora said, snatching at Nell’s sleeve and pressing through the crowd. In their breakneck exodus, they parted knots of men and women, heads bent together. Once outside, Eudora plunged across the lawn, weeping. “Nell, Nell, do you know who that speaker was?” Her face was tortured. “He was my grandnephew.”
“Shouldn’t you go to Neddy?”
“His father will. I can’t bear to go back in there. I’m so ashamed.” She sobbed as she ran. “Can we go to your place?”
In Nell’s apartment, Eudora accepted a medicinal from Nell, whispering, “That poor man. What’s to become of him?” She dropped into the rocker.
“And of Sally? She’ll blame herself,” Nell said. “The boy didn’t want her to be in the play.”
“Does Mr. Davis have any friends here?”
“Only Larry. And they may be more than friends,” Nell said. “Oh, dear.”
Eudora began rocking hard. “We’ll have to circle the wagons,” she said, setting her jaw. “Unfortunately, that won’t help Mr. Davis. The school board is probably meeting right now. He’ll be gone tomorrow.” She broke down again, placing her glass on the side table and taking the fresh handkerchief Nell offered. “I’m so ashamed.”
“It wasn’t your fault.”
“It was my grandnephew,” the old woman said.
Still heaving sighs, the handkerchief lying in her lap, Eudora resumed sipping scotch. After a moment, she cleared her throat. “I’ve never told you this, but when I was a girl, back in Illinois, I had a dear cousin. Leonard. We grew up together, our houses across the street from one another.
“When Leonard went back east to college, we wrote each week. He told me about his close friend Carl. They’d been friends from the first day.” She teared up again but soldiered on. “Then, when they were juniors . . . well, something happened. The college contacted my aunt and uncle about whatever it was. And, the next thing we knew . . . the next thing we knew, the boys had drowned. Both of them.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“Later—well, you know how towns talk—I guessed that the boys were ‘that way.’ But our families never spoke Leonard’s name again. Can you imagine?” She breathed raggedly and dabbed her eyes. “One day a boy is kind and intelligent, a person any parent should be proud to call ‘son.’” Shaking her head, she lifted a hand in a gesture of helplessness. “The next, his high-school graduation picture’s gone from the top of the piano.”
Nell poured another drop of scotch into Eudora’s glass. After a moment, she asked, “What can we do, now? About Mr. Davis?”
Lifting the glass, Eudora considered. At length she said, “We can ask him and Larry to lunch tomorrow, before Mr. Davis leaves town.” Finishing off the scotch in a gulp, she wiped her glasses on the hem of her skirt. “I know it’s feeble, Nell, but what can we do?”
“I’ll have them here,” Nell said, squirming with dissatisfaction. Lunch was scarcely better than nothing! Still, it was decided. Given short notice, perhaps it was all that two old women could do.
Later, Nell walked her friend home. At the gate, Eudora said, “I dread to go in. Brenda will be riding a high horse, and Neddy’ll be heartbroken.”
Nell took the woman’s hand. “This was not your fault.” But Eudora did not take matters lightly, and her conscience was implacable.
chapter sixty-three
“YOU MUST EAT,” Eudora said as the two men pulled out chairs at Nell’s table. “If only to keep Nell and me from nagging.” She passed a platter of fried chicken and a bowl of green beans.
After Drew had delivered his resignation that morning, Larry loaded his friend’s belongings into a Lundeen’s truck. Now the two sat bent under the weight of events. Larry’s hand shook as he forked a piece of chicken from the platter.
“You will write us, I hope,” Nell told Drew. “Your work here will have an afterlife. We’ll want to tell you about it.”
Eudora took up the baton. “Despite everything, the play was beautiful. You’re very talented, but we’re very inbred and self-satisfied . . . and fearful. And somehow proud of all that.” She shuddered.
Once they’d had coffee, the men donned coats. “I’m taking Drew to St. Paul,” Larry told the women. “Back tomorrow.”
Drew shook hands. “This was kind of you. Don’t worry. Life goes on.”
Each woman put a hand to her mouth, unable to speak, as they watched the men descend to the street. Eating on the road might have been more convenient for the men, even less stressful, but a statement of sorts had to be made to the community. What that statement was, Nell and Eudora didn’t know. But it was critical, just as, long ago, Leonard’s photo should have remained on the piano.
The following Friday, old Anna Braun, who still managed the local telephone company, rang Nell’s number. “I have sad news. That Mr. Davis.”
“No.”
“It’ll be in tomorrow’s Minneapolis paper. Drove a car into the Mississippi. Been drinking in Mendota, so it’s anybody’s guess what happened.”
Nell took a breath. “Should I call Mrs. Barnstable?”
“Please.”
A circle tightened around Larry Lundeen. Young Dr. and Mrs. White, the librarian, Apollo and Ivy Shane, Ed Barnstable, and Nell every week made up two tables of bridge with Larry. Most of the town, however, stepped around Larry, as if he were something unpleasant on the sidewalk.
On the street, his posture was dauntless, and he appeared to go about life much as he had. But those who knew him noted his head tilted oddly, as if he listened for a sound offstage.
The one most obviously affected by Drew’s death, however, was Eudora, who stubbornly maintained responsibility. She was beginning to fail. She hadn’t lost her fire; she was losing the strength to put it to use.
Nell called on her daily. They sat on Eudora’s screened back porch, these porches so much a tradition in Harvester, drinking iced tea, lemonade, or occasionally something stronger.
Eudora never failed to murmur, “I’m so ashamed.” Nell never failed to assure her that none of it was her fault.
“But that murderous boy is kin,” Eudora said one day. “And I haven’t exposed him. And Mr. Davis is dead. It’s cousin Leonard all over again.”
“What good would it do to expose the boy?”
“Ed didn’t recognize his voice, I’m sure, but Neddy did. He’s in the same fix I’m in. Wants to do something, but doesn’t know what.” Eudora squeezed her lids tight and shook her head.
Another afternoon Nell asked, “Would you like to play double solitaire?”
“I haven’t the patience for it, if you’ll pardon the pun. I’d stamp my feet if they weren’t so crippled.”
Nearly three months had passed since Our Town. The July afternoon was sticky and hot, over ninety degrees, when Nell let herself into the Barnstable house and found her way to the back porch.
“What’s this?” she asked, alarmed to find Eudora in a wheelchair.
“I fell. Nothing serious, but Ed’s the original mother hen. Let’s not talk about it. There’s lemonade in the icebox.”
Returning to the porch, Nell saw her friend wholly: Eudora’s body was caving in upon itself. A frame that had never owned an ounce of extra flesh had now shriveled to twigs. The proud head and long neck that Nell had often envied and sometimes likened to a lily on a slim stalk were bent over till chin nearly touched breastbone, so Eudora was forced to look up from beneath fierce brows. All this in under three months?
“Does the heat bother you?” Nell asked.
“Not so much. I’m cooling down like an old star.” Eudora considered. “I wonder what happens to old stars. Do they disappear in a whiff of smoke? Sounds good to me.”
“Don’t talk silly,” Nell said, setting Eudora’s glass on a low wicker table. Choosing the porch swing for herself, she shared village gossip. “Looks as if Diana Hapgood and old Dr. Gray may be an item. I say, ‘Old Dr. Gray’, but is he really so much older than me? Funny how we think everyone’s grown old but ourselves.”
“But isn’t Barbara still alive?”
“She’s in the nursing home in St. Bridget. It’s a sticky wicket for Charlie and Diana, as my dear Mr. Wodehouse might say.”
“Well, I say ‘Gather ye rosebuds.’”
They both laughed.
As she was leaving, Nell ran into Neddy, climbing the front steps.
“Mrs. Stillman. Got a minute?”
“Of course.”
“Have you seen Sally lately?”
“Not since graduation. She didn’t look well.”
“She’s a wreck.”
“Mr. Davis?”
The boy nodded. “She’s taken the blame.”
My frail girl, Nell thought.
“She weighs about ninety pounds. Looks like a wild woman. She’s cleaned her house, cellar to attic, probably a dozen times, and now she’s started on the yard. She’s killing herself.”
“What can we do?”
“I’ve been trying to rope her into a show for Harvester Days. Something to honor Mr. Davis. Beverly’s doing costumes. Mr. Lundeen says he’ll underwrite it.” Well, Eudora said that Neddy had wanted to do something, and now he was.
“And Sally?”
The boy walked Nell to the gate. “Not so far.”
On her way home, Nell made a po
int to pass the Wheeler’s. Sally was on her knees digging out weeds from a long-neglected flower border on the south side of the house. Perspiration soaked her shirt.
“You’re ambitious,” Nell called and crossed the lawn to stand nearby. “But it’s awfully warm to be working so hard.”
“Mrs. Stillman.” She did not look up.
Nell was shocked by Sally’s appearance. Neddy was right. The girl was skeletal, and her naturally curly black hair was unwashed and uncut, standing out from her head like an untrimmed bush.
“You’ve done a great deal of work,” Nell said, looking toward the backyard where zinnias and marigolds, new this summer, lined up along the side of the garage.
“The yard was a mess.” Sally dug up a clump of crabgrass. “You know—since my mother gave it up.”
Nell felt she owed it to Stella to do something, but she could no longer speak as candidly as she had when the girl was nine or ten. A seventeen-year-old was not so open to an old woman’s suggestions or admonitions.
“Neddy tells me he’s putting together a tribute to Mr. Davis. I expect you’ll be involved.”
Sally shook her head. “No,” she said with finality.
But Nell persisted. “I’m sorry to hear it. You’re a fine little actress.” She tried to sound offhand. “Your mother would be proud. Mr. Davis, too.” She paused. She couldn’t stand here all day yammering at a girl who didn’t want to hear any of this. “Well, I’d better head home. Time for supper.”
She’d found nothing useful to say to a child she loved, had loved from that day in the library when she’d found Sally asleep. Here was the little girl who’d reached up to retrieve from her mother’s pocket the paper on which Nell’s number was written, lest it be lost.
chapter sixty-four
WHILE SALLY WAS BURNING UP, Eudora’s flame guttered. “What if we came for you with the car? Are you sure you couldn’t play bridge?” Nell asked her friend.
“I’m sure.”
“What if we played here?”
Eudora shook her head. “I can’t sit up for long stretches.”
Good Night, Mr. Wodehouse Page 28
