Crossing the Tracks (9781416997054) (17 page)

BOOK: Crossing the Tracks (9781416997054)
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“There. Now we can think more clearly,” Mrs. Nesbitt remarks. “How'd you sleep?”

I shut my eyes. “I was busy all night being morbid—
drowning and tripping. I swear, I could cry at a broken toothpick this morning.”

“Did you dream you were naked in a hailstorm?” she asks. “Did you get hit by a rolling snake?”

I half smile. “I'll save those for tonight.”

Someone next door has started cooking sausage. Squirrels skitter across our picket fence. “I ruined her web,” I say, pointing to an elegant black spider hanging above us. Her legs are drawn in. She looks like a mighty little upside-down cage.

Mrs. Nesbitt studies the spider a long moment. “She's protecting herself,” Mrs. Nesbitt says, “but you wait; spiders are industrious. They take care of what's theirs. Once she copes with losing her web, she'll open up and weave another one.”

We move in rhythm with the rusty chains. Although it's early, the locusts start their loud singsong chant. “Our squealing must have inspired them,” Mrs. Nesbitt says above the noise.

“I can't oil the locusts, but I can stop the squeak.” I go inside, return with a little oil can and a rag.

“There! Good for you. You did something unmorbid,” Mrs. Nesbitt says. “Better than I would have done under the circumstances.”

I raise the tiny can to her. “This swing has needed oiling my whole life.”

She smiles.

Before I lose the strength of the moment, I add, “I spoke with Daddy yesterday.”

Mrs. Nesbitt registers the meaning of my remark, holds
me in a long look and nods. “That was brave.”

I smile. “Yep.”

Dr. Nesbitt steps outside with a cup of coffee. “How are you, ladies?”

Mrs. Nesbitt taps her fists together. “Moving forward… one link at a time.”

Dr. Nesbitt sits on the porch step. He's already dressed for the day, one of the few he has spent without seeing patients in a long while. “Mother and I were talking yesterday, Iris. I plan to drive home today after we see your father's attorney. You and Mother call me when you're ready to come home. I suspect it'll be a full car.”

Mrs. Nesbitt turns to me. Her tone is serious. “I told Avery that we have lots of dusting to do here. It simply can't be rushed.”

In the afternoon we consult Daddy's lawyer about
his last will and testament. We learn that he planned to leave the Bootery in Kansas City to Celeste Simmons Baldwin and everything else to me. “A curious decision,” the attorney says, “the way it's divided up. But… it's of no consequence.” He slides the document across his desk. “It has not been signed and witnessed.”

“So there is no will?” I ask.

“Your father's
earlier
will, written after your mother's death, still stands.” He gives me a deep look. “You are the sole beneficiary of both stores, the house, all the property, all the assets. Since your father and Miss Simmons were
unmarried at the time of his demise, you have no obligation to her whatsoever.”

I sense the lawyer has met Celeste. I imagine the attorney detected a sour petal in Mrs. Baldwin-to-be's Jungle Gardenia perfume. “Does Celeste know it was not signed?” I ask.

“Yes. Your father planned to take care of it during his”—he looks down—“ill-fated trip to Atchison.” He turns to Dr. and Mrs. Nesbitt. “Until the age of eighteen, Iris will need both a legal guardian and a conservator of her estate. Someone trustworthy must be assigned to manage her assets and help with her life decisions. I imagine Celeste Simmons wants very much to be that individual.”

I look up at the Nesbitts, but they stare at the wood grain tabletop as though I've already moved to Kansas City.

They don't talk all the way home. My heart wilts. My bad dreams have come true. I am tripping right into the muddy water rising around the former Mrs. Charles Baldwin-to-be.

Dr. Nesbitt loads his grip in the car. “If you don't mind a bit of advice, Iris, I'd keep the will quiet until you get your head above water. I'm going to stop by the store, tell Carl goodbye.” We wave from the porch as he drives off with the file on the seat.

The phone rings inside. Mrs. Nesbitt and I don't move. We exchange a look. I say, “He means, don't talk to Celeste.”

“I feel married to her now,” I tell Mrs. Nesbitt over
supper. She smiles. “No wonder she wants me in Kansas City—the store, money, belongings.” We're quiet for a moment.
“But there's more… that makes it harder.”

“What?”

“Celeste is a hobo. She's desperate. She's counting on me. Part of me can't stand her, and the other part feels sorry for her.”

Mrs. Nesbitt sighs. She's got the same intense expression she gets puzzling out one of her crosswords. “Kansas City is a lively place, Iris—lots of young people, opportunity, fun. Celeste would keep it… jazzy. Plus, Cecil and Dot don't live there, and it's not dusty like Wellsford. The schools are excellent.”

I sink into my cellar inside. Why doesn't she just come out and say there's no room for me with Gladys Dilgert in Wellsford?

I hear the unexpected edge in my voice. “Mrs. Nesbitt, Celeste won't waste a minute luring another husband, and I'll be stuck with them forever at the Bootery.” I picture myself sweeping foot powder off the floor, dizzy from staring at the crooked seams in our customers' stockings. “Plus, I already have enough credits to graduate from high school.”

The kitchen swims. I can't swallow. “I'm sorry. I'm as mixed up as her.” I look away, tears streaming down my cheeks. My mind escapes to Leroy wrapping himself so completely around me that I disappear.

Mrs. Nesbitt wipes her mouth, straightens her silverware. “Between the lines of that will I learned something about your father this afternoon that is quite remarkable.”

“Yes?”

“You didn't trust him, with good reason… but his will, even the revised one, made one statement loud and clear: He trusted
you
.”

CHAPTER 20

“So here are the slippers I talked to.” I put them side
by side on the rug Saturday morning.

Mrs. Nesbitt circles around as though analyzing a priceless sculpture. “How did they sound?”

“Ma'am? They didn't actually talk!”

“When he
walked
. Did they scuff, or drag, or flap?”

I think a moment, step in them and curl my toes. I circle the bedroom, trying different strides until I hit Daddy's rhythm—a crisp
creak, creak, creak
. “That's it,” I say over my shoulder as I head out to the parlor. “He was a snappy stepper, always on the move, even at home.

“And this sound…” I close my eyes, shift my weight
on a squeaky floorboard by his desk. “I've heard it a thousand times. Then he'd sit and there'd be a long dramatic exhale—
unh
—at everything on his desk that he had to do. Next, he'd rub his sandpapery cheeks.” I sit on his cane chair and find his fat, black fountain pen in the drawer. I stop. I'm little again, not allowed to touch it. “He sounded like a mouse—scritch-scratching his pen, rattling receipts, his cufflinks tapping on the blotter.”

Mrs. Nesbitt sits on the divan with a satisfied smile. “Lovely! Dusting for sounds is so rewarding.” She looks around. “Would you like to work with something else? Or is that enough?”

I sigh, staring blankly at Mama's piano, her secretary desk. I turn to Mrs. Nesbitt. “It's
enough
because dusting won't help me know what to
do
with all this hard old furniture, and Daddy's fancy pants and umbrella, and my dull bedspreads and broken dolls and third-grade schoolwork, and that stupid ugly clock. Oh, and then there's Celeste. There's absolutely not one thing to do with Celeste!”

I burst into tears. The next thing I know, I am walking into the kitchen to boil water. Mrs. Nesbitt and Henry follow.

On the summer's muggiest morning we sit drinking hot tea. I feel alert like Marie, waiting for something, absorbing every sound—the way the teaspoon clinks brightly on Mrs. Nesbitt's cup and dully on mine.

I look over at her. “Okay!” I say suddenly. “If you
insist
, I'll try Mama's brush.”

She raises her eyebrows.

“I know exactly where it is.” I head to my room and in a moment I am back, holding out Mama's old tortoiseshell hairbrush to Mrs. Nesbitt. “See… the handle isn't even rubbed down the way it's supposed to be in real life. She hardly got to use it.”

Wound deep within the bristles I discover a single hair. I unwind it, lay it across my palm. It's long and dark and wavy. “I wonder if it's naturally curly or if it has just been in the brush so long.”

Mrs. Nesbitt leans in, looks from my hand to my head. I pinch one end and lay Mama's hair on mine like a human halo.

She studies the situation, her glasses sparkling. “A perfect match!”

I go to the dining room to examine my head in the buffet mirror. Is the rest of me a perfect match for my mother?

“No doubt through the years your father made a strong, perhaps painful connection between you and your mother—your voices, expressions, mannerisms. Did he ever say so?”

“No.” I look away, my insides uneasy. “He never spoke of it.”

Once I've rewound the hair in the brush and wrapped it in a lace dresser scarf, Mrs. Nesbitt asks, “Would you consider cooking something?”

“What do you mean?”

“A recipe.” Mrs. Nesbitt touches my elbow, guides me back to the kitchen.

“For what? The kitchen is already full of
condolence
food.”

I carry the wooden recipe box to the table. “It's been mostly shut,” I say, filing through. I stop at “Cottage Pudding” because the recipe card looks used—stained and bent. I hold it up. “Maybe Mama made this. Maybe she liked it.”

“Let's decide she loved it,” Mrs. Nesbitt says. “Is this her handwriting?”

“I'm not sure.”

“It looks clear and unhurried. A bit rounded. Was your mother a bit
rounded
?”

“Not at the sanatorium. She was thin and hot with a wet washcloth on her forehead.”

I grind the daylights out of our stiff old mixer. It clicks and bounces off the ceramic bowl. I crack eggs, scrape a wooden spoon. Mrs. Nesbitt asks, “Are any of these sounds familiar from before?”

“No.”

I grease the glass cake pan, transfer the batter into it, and put it in the oven. We sit at the table, letting the scent of cottage pudding transform the room.

“You have no memories of being in here with her?” Mrs. Nesbitt asks.

“No, except that smell. The vanilla.” I smile. “Or am I remembering your Anti-Pain Oil?”

After I wash the mixing bowls and spoons we eat the moist, steaming cake with applesauce on top.

“This is
internal
anti-pain medicine,” Mrs. Nesbitt says, saluting heaven with her fork.

Later that afternoon Leroy and I sit on our old picnic
table behind the church. I explain the pudding cake and all about dusting, even though I'm sure he's not the least bit interested. “It's not about dirt. It's finding what you thought you lost, making up what you never had.” Leroy doesn't answer. “Sounds kinda strange, I guess.” Leroy still doesn't reply. I look away. “So, anyway, I still have no idea what to
do
with everything.” My cellar door opens. The ghosts are restless. “I can't stand to think about that.”

“You can't take anything to Kansas City?”

“No. And I can't stand to think about that, either. I hate Kansas City.”

I explain about Daddy's will. “So the only reason Celeste wants to be my guardian…”

Leroy turns to me, his eyes bright. “Is your money and the store.” He counts on his fingers. “So let's see, you dread moving there. You don't trust her. You're not a shoe salesman. You'll end up living with some flashy new husband of hers someday. But you're just going to go right ahead and…”

I give him a
shut up
look. “In case you missed it, I don't have a choice for two whole years.”

He's practically shouting. “God, Iris! What about the Nesbitts?”

I shout back. “Did you notice they haven't asked me? They can't, for some reason. Maybe it's Gladys Dilgert. Who knows why they don't want me there.”

“Have you asked them?”

“NO!”

Leroy throws up his hands. “Oh, yeah, I forgot. Of course you don't
ask
, because you are a speck of dirt on God's Sunday-school shoes. You're just an orphan with fleas.”

“Thank you so much. That was simply
beautiful
. You can really shut up now.” I stare straight ahead at clumps of cattails sweeping the church steps. Top-heavy sunflowers droop, their leaves baked golden by the August sun.

Leroy reaches over, lifts my hair off my shoulder, tucks it behind my ear. I feel him looking at me. I stare at my lap. He touches the rim of my ear, outlines it. Then he traces around and around the inside curves with his fingertip.

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