Tree by Leaf

by Cynthia Voigt

  “You expect me to be proud of you,” Grandfather said.

  “No, sir, I don’t,” Father answered.

  That evening was the last time they had dinner with Grandfather. Harkness and May looked swollen up with the news they’d overheard, as they cleared the dinner plates and served Mrs. Oxford’s strawberry fool for dessert. Clothilde wasn’t hungry for dessert that night, not even for strawberry fool.

  It took only three days to pack up their rooms and clothing. The furniture was all Grandfather’s, so they didn’t have to worry about that. Father was away most of the day and early evening, saying good-bye to his friends, so Mother did the packing. No servant came to help. Clothilde and Nate did what they could, but they mostly just stood watching, talking quietly as Mother filled trunks. “They were always mean,” Nate whispered. He meant the aunts, and Grandfather, because of the way they made Mother stay alone in her own parlor while their friends came to see them in their big parlor. “When I grow up,” Nate whispered, “I’m going to have a fine house, for Mother to live in, and servants who will do what she says. She’ll have friends, too.”

  Clothilde thought that sounded fine. She knew Nate could do that, because everyone liked Nate. “What’s wrong with being Catholic?” she asked.

  Nate shook his head. Two years older, and a boy, he knew much more than she did. “You’re too young to understand,” he said.

  Mother let the heavy lid of the trunk fall down. She bent to pull the leather straps up around it.

  “She comes to church with us,” Clothilde insisted.

  “That doesn’t make any difference,” Nate told her.

  Clothilde thought that if she could understand then she wouldn’t be so worried. She wanted to know what Mother had done so wrong that Grandfather never liked her. If she understood, then she’d know why the nursery and her bedroom were no longer hers, and she’d know why the aunts, who used to pretend that they were being polite, no longer even pretended. She did understand that her aunts were ashamed because Mother was an orphan raised by nuns. At first, Clothilde thought that her aunts just didn’t like orphans, but then they kept knitting booties and blankets and sweaters for the poor Belgian orphans; all of the ladies did that in the afternoon in Grandfather’s parlor, all except Mother. Clothilde decided then that the aunts didn’t want an orphan actually living with them, and she knew they didn’t want any orphan’s children. She wanted to understand because whatever it was that Mother had done wrong, Clothilde had done it too.

  Father’s clothes took four trunks, because he often had to dine at his friends’ houses or with his father, or go out in the mornings to his club. Mother and Nate and Clothilde used to like to stand at the window of the parlor, to watch Father ride off. He wouldn’t ever go in that carriage with Grandfather and the aunts, or in the electric automobile, not even when he was dressed in his finest evening clothes, the long cloak hanging from his shoulders. Mother only needed two fine dresses, a green silk and a red silk with the narrow skirts that fashionable ladies were wearing. She wore the red silk on Christmas Day and the green on New Year’s Day. Mother only needed one trunk.

  Standing and watching, because there wasn’t much a girl of eight could do, Clothilde felt the oriental rug under her feet and the polished wood floor under that. Under that, she knew, were huge wooden beams, running across the ceiling of the cellars, holding up the floor. She was afraid, but she didn’t say anything. She was afraid because it felt like the rug and boards and beams were all falling away from under her feet. She felt like she was about to fall too.

  She didn’t know where they were going. She had always lived in Grandfather’s house, and now they were being sent away from it. Father was sending them away, and Grandfather was, and everybody was glad they were going. Everybody except Mother and Nate and her. The aunts and the servants agreed with Grandfather; they didn’t think Mother could take care of her and Nate.

  Early one morning, they all stood at the door to watch Father ride off, ride away on Bucephalus. Later that same morning, Mother and Nate and Clothilde got into a carriage driven by Harkness, but nobody stood at the door to see them go. Their trunks traveled with them on the train.

  At first, Mother sat in the parlor of the farmhouse on Speer Point, wearing a morning dress, for most of the day. She would have bread, milk, eggs, and butter delivered to the door, and she would cook meals for them. Clothilde and Nate explored outside when the weather permitted, but they stayed close to the house because there were no streets to guide them home if they went too far. Mostly, they went down to the beach. Then Father arrived unexpectedly that one afternoon, wearing his uniform. He gave Mother a purse full of money. “I sold everything I could, Marie. You should have more than enough to see you through. You’ll have to take care of things, while I’m gone. Marie? You’re going to have to run the household.” Mother promised she would. “This war won’t last much longer, now we’re in it,” he told Mother. “Clothilde, why don’t you smile? Haven’t you got a smile for your handsome father?”

  Clothilde shook her head. She wanted him to stay, but he left the next afternoon.

  Father wrote to them, every week. The letter came on Monday or Tuesday. They would all walk into the village together, and Mrs. Twohey would give them their letter. Mother would read it to them, after supper, before she read the Bible. Father told them about his new friends and about Bucephalus, what Bucephalus was learning to do and how clever and brave the horse was. Father sometimes drew a picture, to show them what it looked like at the training camp, or how they played cards at night. He always put a postscript at the end of his letters, saying “Tell Clothilde to smile.”

  It made Clothilde smile the way he always said that. She tried not to, but she smiled anyway.

  It was after Father rode away that last time that Mother started to work, cutting branches off the old apple trees in the small orchard, and wearing not her laced shoes but a pair of Father’s old hacking boots. She told them all about the flower garden she wanted to grow, around at the front of the house where the plants would be protected from the sea winds. After Father had gone, Mother agreed to let Mr. Small work the fields, and to have Lou as their servant. She made Nate clean off and oil the rusty tools they found hanging neatly in the barn. Instead of flowers, she planted onions, potatoes, and vegetables in the garden Tom Hatch turned over for them. “When Father returns, there will be time for flowers,” she said. “When Father returns, we’ll have a home for him.”

  “But its mine,” Clothilde reminded her.

  Mother just shushed her, saying she was only a child.

  All that summer, after Mr. Small had been sent away and Lou moved into her room in the ell, they learned how to do things, how to dig for clams, how to weed and sew and sail the skiff that Tom Hatch brought around from the old boathouse for them. They learned how to feed coals into the boiler, so there would be hot water for the house. Mother had money for seeds, for coal, for flour and meat. Mother had money to hire people to help, if she needed it, but she wanted to save as much as she could. Mother already knew how to cook, because the nuns had taught her. Mother could make the simplest meals taste good.

  Mother wrote to Father about all the things they were doing, and he wrote back or drew sketches of what he was doing. When Dierdre was born, with Lou’s help, because Lou had helped her own mother have babies, she wrote to Father about that. By then, it was deep winter and Father’s letters came from Europe, and were shorter. In March they had a letter that was just a drawing. The drawing showed Bucephalus, just his head but you could see he was lying flat on the ground, in the mud, and he was hurt. A hand held a gun pointing beside his eye and they knew it was Father’s hand. That letter didn’t have any postscript.

  After that, there were no letters, even though Mother walked to the village every day, despite the mud, and the black flies. It wasn’t until summer that Grandfather wrote to say that Father was in a hospital and he might not ever come back. “He doesn’t wish to comm
unicate with you. You see what this marriage brought him to,” Grandfather’s letter said. Nate, who could read best, was reading the letter aloud.

  Mother held Dierdre in her arms and just stared at the letter in Nate’s hands. Dierdre had eyes that were dark blue like Father’s; she reached up toward Mother’s face, and laughed. After a while, Mother smiled back at Dierdre and then at the rest of them.

  “But, ma’am,” Lou said. “I thought they wrote to the wife, direct, the army. Can that man be blaming you for this war?”

  “He’d like to,” Mother said.

  They didn’t hear anything after that. When everybody else in the village celebrated the Armistice, the family on Speer Point was glad that finally the war was over, but they didn’t feel like celebrating.

  Grandfather wrote again in the spring. Clothilde hoped he was writing to tell them news of Father, but after that letter she made up her mind never to hope for anything again. Grandfather wanted Nate to live with him, and go to Phillips Academy, because now Nate would need to learn how to run the factory.

  “Does that mean Father is dead?” Clothilde asked Nate, when Mother couldn’t hear.

  “He doesn’t say. Probably.”

  Clothilde didn’t want Nate to go, but Mother said that he should. “If the factory is mine,” Nate argued, “then I can bring you and Mother and Dierdre to live with me, and take proper care of you.”

  Clothilde shook her head. She didn’t say anything, she couldn’t because she had that feeling again, of trying to stand on something that wasn’t there.

  “Don’t you want to get away from here?” Nate asked her.

  Clothilde shook her head. She wanted Nate to stay.

  “You’ll see,” Nate said. “You’ll see. I’ve got it all worked out. I hate him too, I’ll write you lots of letters, I’ll take care of you all.”

  Clothilde didn’t know who to hate.

  As it turned out, Nate didn’t write often from school, because he was too busy. He stayed at Grandfather’s over long vacations, because there were fellows who wanted him to visit them, and at Phillips Academy he lived in a dormitory. Grandfather wanted him to stay for the summer, too, but Nate told him he was going home for the summer. Clothilde almost hoped then that things would get back to normal, but it was a good thing she didn’t because when Nate arrived, and unpacked his two trunks of new clothes, it turned out that one thing he was looking forward to at home was seeing his new friends, who had summer cottages in the town across the bay.

  Nate hadn’t even been home a month when the man walked up their driveway. The man stayed for only one meal. Nate had left the house and Dierdre wouldn’t come out of the parlor, so it was just the three of them at the table. The man spooned up his chowder awkwardly. His hand clutched the spoon. Clothilde watched until it got about as far up as his neck.

  All anyone said during the meal was when the man’s voice announced that he wasn’t going to sleep in this house. Clothilde waited for Mother to say something, but Mother was silent. “There’s a boathouse,” Clothilde finally told him, her eyes staying at the shoulders of the worn coat. She had eaten all of her bowl of chowder only because on Sundays she washed up dishes, because Lou went to evening service and spent the night with her family. The chowder had no flavor and she didn’t know why she had eaten it all. She didn’t know why she had told him about the boathouse, and she wished he would go away. She had gotten used to the idea that he’d never come home again, but now he was back.

  After he’d left, Mother went to the door to watch him walk away and Clothilde had started to wash their few dishes. It scared her. He scared her, and Mother not saying anything scared her. Everything kept on hurting her. That was seven days ago, and Clothilde still didn’t know how to make herself safe.

  Chapter 4

  The next day was Sunday, so Clothilde, Nate, and Mother went to the morning services. The day was clear, bright, and windless, a good walking day. By the time they returned, Lou and Dierdre had the table set and the chowder heated. The chowder Lou and Clothilde made wasn’t as good as Mother’s, thinner, somehow, the clams not as swollen up with sweetness; Lou didn’t make the little crisp chunks of salt pork to scatter over the top. Lou’s biscuits were not as light as Mother’s and their taste was somehow flat. At the table, Mother sat quiet, letting Clothilde and Nate heap as much jam as they wanted onto their biscuits. Dierdre was talking away, telling them about the church service her doll went to, but nobody paid any attention. Clothilde counted: it was seven days since the man in the boathouse had walked up to their door; it was twenty-three days since the carriage had brought Nate home; how many days was it since Mother had prepared a meal, worked in the vegetable garden, scolded her?

  “Dolly Molly wasn’t listening nicely,” Dierdre reported. “I had to shush—”

  Nate interrupted. “I’ve been invited to go on a cruise,” he said. He didn’t look at anyone when he said that. “A boy from school, his people live in Chicago, they have one of the summer places. They’ll be sailing down to Fisher’s Island, and back, and they’ve asked me along.”

  Clothilde stopped eating.

  Nate waited for Mother to give him permission. He looked handsome and healthy, sitting there waiting. He looked like a young gentleman. He had grown up at school that year, and his brown hair lay smooth on his head, parted in the middle. He didn’t look like the Nate she remembered, who had played endless games of cribbage with her on the long winter days and nights, until he owed her hundreds of dollars. Clothilde had luck with cards, he said, sometimes laughing at her, sometimes cross. Sometimes Nate won a game, but not often—he missed seeing fifteens in a hand, or he’d play out his cards without trying to guess what was in her hand so he could win an extra point or two. Nate used to joke that, if she were a man, Clothilde could support the family by gambling. Sometimes Clothilde would like her brother so much, his easygoing good humor and his handsomeness, that she would play out her hand without claiming all the points she could have gotten from it. Nate never knew when she did that, never noticed; he’d just be glad he was winning. When he went away to school, Nate learned a game called bridge, which took four players so he couldn’t teach it to her.

  Clothilde knew things looked different to Nate, after the year away, but she had thought he wanted to be home with them for the summer. She had thought he would stay home for the whole long summer.

  She looked around the big table. The pine shone golden and the utensils were steel, but it was beginning to feel like the table in Grandfather’s house. Mother ate small, unhungry mouthfuls. Lou sat with Dierdre beside her, watching Dierdre’s manners to be sure she mopped her mouth and spooned up her chowder neatly. Lou buttered Dierdre’s biscuits, giving her a half at a time, not letting her have any jam until she’d cleaned her bowl. While Nate waited for Mother to answer his request, Dierdre said, “I can go too.”

  Mother ignored Dierdre, just as the aunts would have, so it was Lou who shushed her.

  “Do I have permission to go?” Nate asked, not looking at any of them.

  Clothilde didn’t think he should be allowed. He’d been gone all year. At first, the first few days, he’d said he was glad to be back, especially glad to be away from the Old Man, which was what Nate now called Grandfather.

  “You know that I can’t give you permission,” Mother said.

  “Why not?” Clothilde asked. If Mother couldn’t, who could?

  “This doesn’t concern you, Clothilde,” Mother said. She didn’t sound cross, she didn’t sound anything. She brushed Clothilde away as if Clothilde were a fly. Everything was calm with Mother these days. She didn’t hurry, she didn’t dawdle, her voice was always the same smooth voice and her face was always the same smooth arrangement. Even if she was an orphan, Mother knew how a lady acted. “We’ll have to see what your father says,” Mother said.

  “I can ride a boat,” Dierdre said. “I’m pretty. I want to go.”

  “Hush,” Lou told her, moving Dierdre’s cup o
f milk out of reach of her waving arms.

  Dierdre gave Mother an earnest, begging look. Clothilde thought that her sister probably really did think she had a chance to go with Nate. Thinking she had a chance made Dierdre want it even more.

  “You weren’t invited, Dierdre,” Clothilde explained.

  “I have too,” Dierdre said. “Did too.”

  She could probably tell them when, too, and what Dolly Molly said about it.

  “Will you ask permission for me?” Nate asked Mother.

  Mother shook her head. “I can’t. He doesn’t want to see anybody.”

  “But—” Nate started to protest. Then he leaned back in his chair and smiled around at all of them. “They’re leaving tomorrow. I won’t need anything I don’t have, there’s no difficulty about clothing, just the one suitcase.”

  “Me too,” Dierdre said, leaning back, smiling around.

  Nate leaned over to put his big hand under her chin. “Ladies don’t go on long cruises,” he said gently to her. “It’s only men who go. The life isn’t nice enough for ladies.”

  This was the Nate Clothilde couldn’t look at without her heart feeling soft and her smile spreading over her face, the Nate who could say no to Dierdre by giving her a reason she would like.

  “I’m a lady,” Dierdre told him. “I’m going to have a party dress.”

  “You’re a fine lady,” Nate agreed, then smiled at Mother: “I guess I’m going to go, so you might as well give me your permission.”

  Clothilde waited for Mother to lose her temper. But Mother’s mouth didn’t purse out, the way it did when she was getting angry at one or the other of them for being saucy. Mother’s mouth stayed in the same pretty little smile, not really a smile so much as a pleasant expression, like a doll’s painted face.

  Clothilde knew then that Nate would be going.

  “Grandfather would like to hear that you were making the right sort of friends,” Mother said. She said that as if it were important. “You must do what you think best,” she said.