Crossing the Tracks (9781416997054) (8 page)

June 14, 1926

Dear Iris,

Thank you for your letter.
We have been so busy, it is impossible to believe two weeks have passed. Getting the store in order requires long hours, meetings with my investors, contracts with vendors, and countless design decisions. It leaves little time to write.

I thought of you this morning when I heard
from Carl. He says the Atchison store is practically running itself! He hired Constance Dithers and her daughter, Faith, to work out front. I plan a trip to Atchison in late July to check the books and oversee the shoe orders for fall.

We must finalize the name for the Kansas City store and get our sign painter to work. One can't start advertising too soon. Here are the choices:

Baldwin's Bootery

A step ahead

Uptown Shoes

Shake off that cow town dust, put on
our uptown shoes.

What's your vote? Mine is Baldwin's Bootery. Celeste likes the uptown theme. Our painter charges by the letter, so a long slogan is pricey. But image is everything! We're surrounded by upscale establishments. Window shoppers need an inducement to come in and spend!

Thank goodness Celeste is an absolute wizard with window dressing!

Kansas City is truly “on the move” with
boulevards, baseball, mansions, Petticoat Lane, and a magnificent railway station. There is even an airfield. Next thing you know I'll buy a plane and take flying lessons! Until then, I have bought a new Cadillac with a V-8 engine. It is a dream to drive and will cut down my travel time between stores. Celeste says the upholstery is “heaven.” What make does Dr. Nesbitt drive?

Now for the big news. Celeste and I are engaged. We selected a ring at Jaccard's Jewelry last week. It is being fitted. By the time you receive this, it will be official. She has informed her family, and by this correspondence, I have informed mine. You are free to spread the news. So be happy for us.

Give my regards to the doctor and his mother. I know they are grateful to have you.

Love,

Daddy

P.S.

Dear Iris,

My engagement to your father
is a dream come true! I know the news may take some getting used to. I can't wait for you to see the ring and celebrate with us.

Did you know they call Kansas City the “Paris of the Plains”? It's the fountains and the fashion! You simply must see it!!!

Au revoir!

Celeste

I sit on the floor with my back against the bed frame, and read the letter out loud to Marie. When I finish, she scratches her head and looks at me cross-eyed. “My feelings exactly.” I wave the letter at her. “Six exclamation points in the P.S.! They're like thumbtacks holding her
dreamy
news on the paper. It sounds like they're trying to sell me something.

“Maybe Celeste helped him write it. Or maybe that's how he acts all the time now, happily away from Atchison and from me.” I rub Marie's ears. “I know why he asked about Dr. Nesbitt's car… just scratching up something to say before the big headline. If they hadn't gotten engaged, I wouldn't have heard from him.” Marie
yawns. “What's your vote on the name? I don't like either of them. The one with two ‘uptowns' is so long nobody will be able to see the shoes. Any window whiz should know that.”

Daddy's phony letter is full of places where he could have left the “Paris of the Plains” topic and asked about me. I know why he didn't. If my answer isn't full of cheery exclamation points, he won't know what to do, except ignore it.

I swipe my sleeve across my forehead, lift my hair off my shoulders. Marie watches me fold the letter back in its envelope and stuff it in my Kotex drawer.

“There,” I tell her, “now I won't have to think about Daddy and Celeste for a whole month!”

I stare at the wallpaper goddesses. “How'd you do it? Your fathers were worse than mine. They double-crossed you, traded you, sacrificed you, and you still flutter around all fresh in your gauzy gowns like everything's perfect. I guess if you live forever you learn to get over, and over, and over things. You either float on… or get revenge.”

Marie yawns and thumps her stumpy tail on the floor. I blot my neck with a hankie.

What now?

I go to the kitchen for a drink of water. Instead, without the slightest plan to do so, I fill two big pitchers and carry them to my room. I fix a bowl with water for Marie and the wash basin for me. I lock the door, pull the shades, take off my shoes and socks, my damp dress,
and all my under things. The goddesses watch me lather my washcloth and clean every part of me—my face, my breasts, between my toes, the small of my back, my throat. A breeze ruffles Marie's fur, hits my wet skin. I stand shivering with my arms draped like wings and drip dry.

After a sprinkle of Pompeian Beauty Powder, I step into my favorite cotton dress that's white with yellow flowers and lacy sleeves. I twist my hair into a knot and wash my teeth. When I open the shades, the sun creates stepping stones of light on the rug. I walk across them to the buffet mirror and pinch my cheeks. There. I've washed off that Kansas City dust and put on my goddess shoes.

I float out of the dining room… barefoot.

Mrs. Nesbitt's eyes light up when she sees me. “You look like a fresh bouquet on this wilted afternoon.” She looks at my feet and smiles, then inhales, tilts her head back. “I love the scent of your powder.”

“Thank you.”

“I saw you received a letter from your father. How is his new store in Kansas City coming along?”

I shrug. “Okay.”

My voice sounds anything but okay. I turn, straighten the stack of folded crossword puzzles, and clear the dish rack. I do not look at Mrs. Nesbitt, but I feel her eyes on me.

After a moment she says, “Henry needs exercise. Let's check the roses and water our marigolds.”

I get garden gloves, a bucket full of coffee grounds and crushed eggshells, and the watering can off the back porch.

Mrs. Nesbitt sits on the shady front steps. We are surrounded by hundreds of sprouts. “It's hard to tell the weeds from the flowers,” I say.

“Let's treat them all the same until we know for sure.”

I shake a little compost over the seedlings, then barely tip the sprinkling can for fear I'll wash them right out of the dirt.

“They're hardier than they seem,” Mrs. Nesbitt remarks.

We walk to a huge elm in the front yard that has an old spring wagon seat on a frame under it. We are surrounded by a brilliant green lawn. Mrs. Nesbitt props Henry against the trunk, steps out of her slippers, and pats the plank seat. “Morris made this.”

I drain the watering can into a little stone birdbath.

“If you don't mind, let's sit together awhile,” she says.

Wavy heat rises around us, but under the tree it's surprisingly pleasant. “Our house looks interesting from this point of view, don't you think? It's revealing to look
at
it, rather than
from
it.” Mrs. Nesbitt waves her Japanese fan. “Inside it's…
divided
—all walls and doors—but this way it looks whole and sturdy. I should come out here every day.”

Leaf patterns swim across the pale gray stucco. The storm cellar door is choked shut by roots—Mother Nature's lock. I think how easily, how kindly they have folded me into their house.

Dr. Nesbitt's office, with its outside entrance, looks added on. We talk about the patients who have come there the past few weeks—the screaming six-year-old
boy who had stepped on a fishhook. I tell how I tried to keep his mother calm while Dr. Nesbitt pushed the hook through and cut off the barb. Or the night a man and his wife showed up. He claimed she had “turned into a mannequin,” wouldn't move—a “possession by Satan.” She sat on the passenger seat unblinking while the husband poured his frustration out on us. “Your wife needs help at the state hospital,” Dr. Nesbitt had said as kindly as any human could.

I study the long front-room windows. She has yet to suggest we clean the parlor, even though it's caked with dust. I've never seen Dr. Nesbitt's bedroom, but knowing him, he scours it before he goes to bed every night.

“The house is really filling up,” Mrs. Nesbitt says. “Avery and me, you, Marie, Henry.”

“Don't forget my wallpaper goddesses.”

Mrs. Nesbitt claps. “Yes! That's what I mean. The house is filling up!”

The windmill squeaks. A woodpecker
rat-a-tat-tat
s against the garage shingles. Without warning four words march out of my mouth. “My father is engaged.”

We watch a blue jay swoop the birdbath, bully a wet sparrow into the elm. I hop up. “Shoo! Shoo!”

“That's important news, Iris.”

“I guess. Her name's Celeste.” So much for my month of silence.

“When will they marry?” she asks softly.

“He didn't say.”

For some reason Mama pops into my head. I imagine
her here with us, listening and shaking her head for poor, unsuspecting Celeste. But why do I think she'd do that? What if Mama was actually
just like
Celeste, or any of Daddy's other girlfriends? I have no way of knowing. I squash that black thought.

“Do you know Celeste well?”

“Celeste? No!” I can only imagine what Mrs. Nesbitt must be thinking of me.
My, Iris certainly sounds stand-offish. She should be happy for her father. What has she done to have such a poor relationship with him?

And that is one thing I truly have no answer for—what have I done or not done?

Mrs. Nesbitt gazes at me a long moment. “Then Celeste must not know you very well either.”

Crows fuss at each other on our phone wire.

“What's your father like, dear?”

“Uh… he drives too fast… he hates coughing because it sounds like tuberculosis, and he hates cheap shoes, and…” It sounds like trivial nothing. My heart twists on itself. I need another goddess bath. “He never talks about himself, so I…”

“Do you take after your father, Iris?”

“No!”

She covers my hand with hers. “Do you take after your mother, then?”

“Oh, yes,” I lie, staring in my lap. “Yes, I do.”

That night in bed, my thoughts dart and bump like
sparrows flown down the chimney.

I try to move Celeste easily and kindly into our Atchison house, but I get only as far as the porch swing. The thought of her acting lovey-dovey with my father on the divan is horrible. So are her knickknacks, her powerful perfume, her giggle. How can she like him?

There's no moon tonight. The room is so dark, I can't tell if my eyes are open or not, but I can see Celeste bringing Daddy sugar cubes for his coffee, straightening his collar, hanging new pictures, moving our furniture.

I can't recall Mama's laugh or her saying “I love you,” or “Change your socks,” or “Let's play jacks.” Nothing. Daddy closed her memory with her coffin. I don't remember anything we did together except blink-talk. I have only one or two of Mama's things hibernating in that house until I get back in September. And now here comes Celeste to rearrange them.

And what, I wonder, am I supposed to call her when she's sitting all dolled up and perky at the breakfast table after spending the night in my father's bedroom?

“Do I just say, oh,
good morning
, Mother?”

Nope.

She is not the mother type. She is not
my
type, no matter what I call her.

I repeat “Mother.” Just a pop of my lips, a thrust of my tongue, and there it is—a perfect little pair of syllables hanging together in the air. “Mother.” The voice belongs to me, but the word doesn't. It belongs to everybody
but
me. “Mother” slides out of Dr. Nesbitt's mouth as easily as “please” and “thank you.”

I practice it a few times—softly, like the little girl on the train with her play-act family.

I tilt it up in a question. “Mother?”

I stamp it sternly on the air. “Mother!”

I singsong it. “Mo-ther.”

I whisper it out the window, yell it in my pillow, float it like smoke.

“Mo… ther… mo… ther… mo… ther… moth…”

I pour it out to the black night, until finally, the syllables get tired and fall apart.

“What make of car do you drive, Dr. Nesbitt?”
I ask at breakfast early Saturday morning. I feel dumb. All I know is that his automobile is black, but that won't answer my father's question.

“Ford Model T Tudor Sedan.” Dr. Nesbitt mops up the yolk of his poached egg with a piece of toast. “Do you drive?”

“Me? Oh no, sir.” I cut the stems and put three strawberries on Mrs. Nesbitt's plate.

A breeze ruffles the curtains. Dr. Nesbitt glances out. “Looks clear today. After I do the lawn, I'll teach you.” He rinses his plate in the sink, gives his mother and me a nod, and heads out to the garage for the mower.