Crossing the Tracks (9781416997054) (12 page)

Mrs. Nesbitt looks skyward, bounces her fist off her lap. “Why didn't Dot go with her mother?”

“We'll never know. That's not your fault either.”

I can't help imagining Dot day in, day out, at home with Cecil—listening to him rant against Pansy, sneaking past his drunken gaze, bracing against his grip, growing as mean and sly as he is.

One thing I do know: Cecil Deets makes my father seem like a sweet dream.

Ghosts rattle the roof—Wake up!

I sit up, still half in my dream.

Your house! Read the sign.

I untwist my nightgown, open the sheers, and gaze out the window. Hail hammers the shingles. Lightning turns the ice stones to a field of opals. But my dream-eyes focus on something else: my front yard back in Atchison with a
FOR SALE
sign on it.

I drop my head. Dread creeps up from the cellar inside me, the place where every miserable, morbid thing lives. It's crowded down there and locked. But Mrs. Nesbitt's questions about Mama and my house forced the
FOR
SALE
sign to escape through the dream door.

Daddy's selling our past. At least my nightmare of living with Celeste in Atchison won't happen.

I hug my knees, wanting the bedroom to fold in around me, to wall off the future.

My fingers trace the imaginary ribs of my old chenille bedspread. I smell the faint bacon grease and coffee scent of our kitchen.

Staccato pops of hail on the window glass force me back to Wellsford. Marie hops in my lap. “Maybe he'll sell me with the house,” I tell her. “Why not?” She curls up while I shudder and sob. It's storming inside, too. “Do you miss your hobo?” I scratch her ears. “He was loyal. At least you two worked
together
.” I light my lamp, a glimmer of mad beginning to mingle with morbid, and write.

July 30, 1926

Dear Leroy,

Please answer immediately. Is there a “For Sale” sign in my front yard? I've got to know. I dreamed it was true, so the idea is stuck in my brain like a sliver. Daddy is not going to rent our house—he's selling it, isn't he?

You always tell me the things I need to know, the truth. So be warned, I'm counting on you.

Here's a quiz—if it's true about Atchison. (Which I'm sure it is.)

Question: If you take mad, and multiply it by ignored plus tricked, what do you have?

Answer: Guess who?

Question: What's the worst kind of homesick?

Answer: Homesick for something you wanted that never was.

Signed:

Iris Baldwin, the shadow in her father's palace of grand plans

P.S. The Nesbitts are happy for you to visit. The sooner the better. They promise to have lots of dead weight for you to lift. Ha!

P.P.S. I'll make you a pie. Really! Blackberry or rhubarb. You pick.

P.P.P.S. Write me back with the answer right now.

P.P.P.P.S. How are you?

I've counted on Leroy for the truth ever since the sixth grade, when he set me straight about virgins.

“So, okay, what exactly is a virgin?” I had asked him. “Isn't it a lady who hasn't had a baby—like the Virgin Mary?”

“Oh God, Iris.” Leroy searched my face, to see if I was kidding, I guess. “Did you look it up?”

“The Bible doesn't have a glossary!”

“In the
dictionary
.”

“Yes, but the definitions go in word circles. You have
sisters
, Leroy. You're thirteen. You know the answer. So tell me!”

He did. He just explained sexual intercourse and what a virgin isn't. It was the bravest thing.

“So no wonder Daddy blew like he'd eaten a tablespoon of pepper when I asked if his girlfriend was a virgin,” I had said. Leroy smiled. “Daddy dropped her on a dime—thought I'd heard rumors about her rep-u-ta-tion! Couldn't stand the risk of a blemish on
his
.”

“Well, at least you got his attention for once,” Leroy had commented.

I scratch Marie's back, thinking maybe I should ask Daddy about Celeste's virgin status. I could get rid of her, too.

Dot's back.

After weeks of feeling ill, she has her sack dress hiked up in the back and pulled tighter across her belly than Cecil's overalls. She is definitely not over her
poorly-
ness. Already this morning she's gotten sick to her stomach three times.
From the chicken house I've seen Marie follow her between the clothesline and the grassy patch behind the shed. I've heard Dot retch, watched her wobble back to the laundry, her back soaked with sweat.

I abandon my broom and exit the coop. The door bangs shut. Dot turns, glances at my hand as if checking for an egg, and yanks down her dress. She looks pale. Her hair looks dirty and there are dark circles under her eyes. When she reaches to shove a clothespin on the line, I see marks on her arms.

Bruises.

My stomach twists.

Dot turns to face me, plants her fists on her hips, stretches her back, and sticks her stomach out. Then she lifts the hair off her neck with one hand, fans it with the other.

More bruises.

Without a word, she looks me right in the eye, rubs the fingertips of both hands back and forth across her belly, then glances toward the shed.

A notion—a knowing—slips into my mind.

Dot is pregnant.

Marie barks at crows filling the telephone line.

Dot turns away, bends over, and presses the heels of her hands on her eyes. Her shoulders raise and lower.

Is she
crying
? “Dot?” My voice sounds unexpectedly soft, like Mrs. Nesbitt's.

“Shut up!”

Dot spits, wipes her mouth, and after a moment snipes, “Oh, and by the way,
you're
gonna be gone in a week.” She
resumes pinning clothes as if giving me a generous moment of privacy to absorb
my own
nasty news.

“I saw the letter.” Her tone shifts to
poor, poor Iris
. “Your replacement's name is Gladys Dilgert. It's right on the envelope. They've kept it a secret from you, but it's in plain sight on the kitchen table.” She shoos me off. “Go see for yourself.”

I glue my lips. I will not ask one question.

“I know you're wonderin' if I opened the letter and read it.” Dot glances at the telephone line. “Didn't need to. I know what's in it.”

I turn to Mrs. Nesbitt's bedroom window, praying it's open, that she and Henry will pop through and whack Dot in her lying vocal cords.

“So…” Dot flaps a pudgy hand. “Toodle-loo, Miss Iris Baldwin.” She hums a mocking little melody.

I walk, slow as molasses, back into the house.

There's no mail on the kitchen table, only a cold tea bag and Mrs. Nesbitt's unfinished crossword. I know she has already taken the mail to Dr. Nesbitt's bedroom desk, the one room in this house, besides the abandoned fruit cellar, I have never entered.

I'm worse than Dot wearing two faces, because during
Mrs. Nesbitt's afternoon nap I do what I swear I wouldn't. I sneak straight to Dr. Nesbitt's desk to read mail that's not mine.

It's tidy and nice. A gentleman's room, I guess, with a
polished mahogany wardrobe and a shaving set on the dresser. I avoid the mail stack for a moment, concentrate on his desk photographs. One man looks interesting—a handsome artist at his easel. The other picture is all doctors—graduates of Johns Hopkins Medical School. Dr. Nesbitt smiles amidst a sea of seriousness. There's also a large picture of Morris, in a Navy uniform, and an older gentleman, who looks like Dr. Nesbitt and Morris combined. A silver rack holds ivory envelopes with smooth script. They must be from his lady friend in New York. I wonder why there is no picture of her, but I can't ask. Dr. Nesbitt cleans his own room for a reason: to keep his private business private.

The envelope is lost in plain sight on the blotter. It's got the return address of Gladys Dilgert, just like Dot said. I do not touch it.

Beside it, tucked into the flap of a leather-bound notepad, I see a small newspaper copy of Dr. Nesbitt's latest want ad, a solicitation for hired help to begin in September. The name Dilgert is written on the pad along with a number. He made the arrangements on the telephone and Dot must have overheard it, probably eavesdropping on the party line.

I'm burning up. I hate Dot. She's fat and cruel… and right.

What's the folk remedy for this feeling, I wonder? Goose grease on the heart? Swallowing a falling star?

The old cellar ghosts rattle. “Feeling like a piece of furniture,” “Replaceable,” and “Homeless” line up. But instead they seep out of my eyes, which are still swollen later when
Mrs. Nesbitt calls from the yard.

It's time for our hand massage.

We sit on the bench. The lawn is littered with hail-shredded leaves. Our marigold patch is battered and muddy. The house winks at us—a flutter of lace waving from my bedroom, next to the dark parlor window shut tight.

I'm sure Mrs. Nesbitt can tell I've been crying. She must feel the warmth drained from our massage today. She sits with her pretty, old, crinkly face and penetrating eyes, ready to chat. But I'm too sunk inside to talk. Being sold out by my father is rotten enough, but now the Nesbitts…

I'm stupid for thinking they wouldn't hire somebody else. Of course they would. Mrs. Nesbitt just needs
someone,
not me—Gladys or anyone could become the new goddess of the chicken house this fall. I'm doomed to Kansas City with Mrs. Charles Baldwin and her charming new husband. I need to quickly crawl in my trunk, ship myself somewhere far down the tracks.

Still, I want to ask Mrs. Nesbitt:
Why didn't you tell me, warn me about Miss Dilgert?
Gladys's ghost, with its nimble fingers and projecting personality, has already moved between us on the bench. I had planned to tell Mrs. Nesbitt about my For Sale–sign nightmare, but I don't. I just stare at my bedroom window. I can already
see
Gladys in there, wearing my Pompeian Body Powder.

Mrs. Nesbitt squeezes my hand. Without realizing it, I've stopped rubbing. “Are you all right, dear?”

“No.”

Mrs. Nesbitt takes a deep breath and looks at me in the kindest way. I feel pressure from her thumbs in the palms of my hands. But she doesn't ask me what's wrong. Instead she gives me a long silent moment to fill with an explanation if I choose.

I don't. I can't talk about anything—not Dot or Gladys. Inside and out, life is just not holding together like it's supposed to.

Mrs. Nesbitt gazes at the house, then off toward the clothesline. “Would you guess I used to play the piano?” she says, turning her hands. “So did Morris. He had a gift.”

I imagine Morris's piano music pouring out that parlor window. I want to ask if Gladys Dilgert plays piano, but I don't. “Is Morris the reason we never dust the piano or the parlor, you know… like we do your bedroom things?”

“Yes.”

Now I know why the front room holds its dusty breath, why the cover on the piano keys stays down. It's still Morris's room. She's preserving his fingerprints.

We move to the kitchen. Mrs. Nesbitt wants help with her puzzle. She slides me a pencil and squints at the crossword. “For some reason I've had such difficulty with this today, Iris. Explosive. Second letter is ‘y.'”

“Dynamite,” I say. I fill in “mule” and “superstition.”

“How was your encounter with Dot this morning?” she asks.

“Her mouth is lethal.” I grind the words. “And she's still sick…”

“Yes… ?” Mrs. Nesbitt folds her hands on the table.

I sense another invitation to say what's on my mind. I glue my eyes to the crossword and like a magical omen, there it is. “Twenty-four down—expecting,” I whisper.

“Anticipating.”

I count out the squares. “No. It's only nine letters.” My stomach is a knot. “Mrs. Nesbitt? Uh… the answer is ‘
with child
'—the letters all run together.”

“Ah… yes. Good!”

“No,” I say slowly, “not so good.”

She searches my face. “What is it, Iris?”

I picture Dot today and how she'll look in the coming months. “I mean, have you noticed that Dot's gotten bigger around the middle even though she's been so sick?”

“Dot?”

“Yes, ma'am. Dot.” Tears fill my eyes. The words burst out. “I think she's
with child
.”

Mrs. Nesbitt twists her hankie while I tell her about the bruises on Dot's arms and neck and the unforgettable way she touched her stomach. “I think she was telling me, without saying it. The way Pansy showed you her bruises.”

Mrs. Nesbitt looks at the ceiling. “Couldn't it just be a buildup of bad humors?”

“In a way, yes.”

“But… who?” Mrs. Nesbitt sounds frantic and resigned. “The Deets keep so to themselves. Dot doesn't know anybody much. Since Pansy left it seems her only connection to the outside world is listening on the party line and our laundry. When my glasses are clean I don't miss much, but
this… is all my fault!”