The Facts and Fictions of Minna Pratt (6 page)

“What are you doing?” asked Emily Parmalee. She took off her catcher's mask and her feathered earrings blew back like beagles' ears in the wind.

“I'm practicing my vibrato. I have a lesson this afternoon.”

“Vibrato? Is it a trick?” asked Emily.

“Yes,” said McGrew. “Vibrato,” he recited, “is a tremulous or pulsating effect for adding warmth and beauty to the tone in music.”

Minna smiled. McGrew sounded like Imelda.

“It makes the music sound better,” he sang, shaking his head to show the vibrato effect.

Emily nodded thoughtfully.

“A trick,” she agreed.

Minna sighed.

“Lucas has a wonderful vibrato, Orson's on his way. Imelda soon. I want one,” said Minna, still practicing in her hand.

Emily shrugged. “Some people can do things that others can't.” She looked at McGrew. “
I
can catch,” she said wisely.

“True,” sang McGrew.

They walk up the sidewalk to Minna's house, past a rake lying in soggy leaves left over from last fall; past brown, crisp flowers in pots that Minna's mother forgot to bring in for the winter; past three huge green trash bags sitting on the porch, something oozing from one. Minna thinks about Lucas's neat brick pathway through his neat brick courtyard. They walk through the kitchen, where there is a saucepan with last night's baked beans crusting over, a sink full of dirty dishes. Spilled sugar crunches under their feet. There is a note on the dining room table next to two dirty coffee cups, a pile of underwear, and the morning mail.

Beside the note is a letter from one of their mother's readers. It is typewritten with many x's and a curious pattern of capital and lowercase letters.

Minna stared at the letter. She knew her mother would spend a long time thinking about her answer. She would call typewriter stores to ask for information.

“The moth question will take Mama days of research,” said McGrew, as if he had read Minna's thoughts.

“How come?” asked Emily Parmalee. “All moths do is move their wings. Up and down, you know?”

Minna and McGrew laughed, but Minna's throat felt tight. There was a sour restless feeling in her stomach. She left Emily and McGrew arguing quietly about moth wings and fly balls and wandered into her mother's writing room.

I have, thought Minna closing her eyes, memorized the mess. Just as Mozart, so Imelda had informed them just this week, could identify chords and tones blindfolded when he was a child. Maybe I will be one of Imelda's facts someday, thought Minna:
The Lone Cellist Left in the World Without a Vibrato
. She moved around boxes of books and papers until she bumped against her mother's typing table. She thought of Lucas's house, where she could, if she wished, dance wildly, blindfolded, without bumping against anything. Minna opened her eyes and looked at a sheet of paper in the typewriter.

Minna sat down slowly.

Mama had surely done her homework, thought Minna.

The letter stopped there, and it came to Minna in that moment, quite suddenly, that her mother had not gone shopping at all. She had gone to the library to look up moths. To find the answers.

Minna skimmed her hands quickly, gently, over the typewriter keys. There were several other letters on the table.

Answers, answers. Questions and answers. Do you get ideas from your family? Writers have all the answers. Minna stared at the typewriter. It was quiet in the mess. Peace among the socks. Very carefully, Minna removed her mother's letter about typewriters and moths and put in a fresh sheet of paper. She thought a moment, her fingers frozen above the keys. Dear Mama. No. She took a breath. And then, with two fingers, very slowly, she began to type.

A door slammed. The front door. It was the exuberant sound of her mother returning. Her mother had never been known to close a door quietly. How much time had gone by? Quickly Minna rolled the letter to her mother out of the typewriter, folded it, and put it safely in her pocket.

Downstairs in the kitchen, Emily Parmalee washed dishes, the suds up to her elbows. Minna's mother was unloading books from her book bag. McGrew was reading his science report to them.

“The beaver,” he read, “uses his teeth for several reasons. One, to eat trees. Two, because of nervous energy. Last and least, to shine his teeth. Shiny teeth are highly valued in the beaver community.”

Emily Parmalee and Minna's mother burst into laughter.

“Where did you get those facts?” asked Emily, scratching her nose and leaving a spot of suds there. “Did you interview a beaver?”

“I made them up,” said McGrew, looking pleased. “What do you think?”

“McGrew, you can't make up facts!” Minna protested. She thought of Imelda's facts. The researched facts.
The truths
. “Made-up facts are not true,” she said, exasperated.

Minna's mother leaned the broom against the wall and folded her arms.

“But Mama makes up facts,” said McGrew. “In her books. I can, too.”

“That's fiction!” said Minna, her voice rising. “It's not true!”

“It's about people and feelings and places,” said McGrew, “and all those things are true.”

Minna thought suddenly about the sign over her mother's desk.
FACT AND FICTION ARE DIFFERENT TRUTHS
. She thought about the letter folded in her pocket, full of feelings and facts about the person who was truly Minna Pratt though the letter could not be signed by her. “Truths, untruths; facts, fictions.”

Her mother put her hand on Minna's shoulder, and Minna realized she had spoken the last out loud.

“Don't you remember, Minna, when you were five?” said her mother. “I once said to you, ‘Is that true, Minna?' and you answered, ‘It's
one
of the truths, Mama!'”

There was silence then. Minna stared at her mother. What did I know then, thought Minna, that I've forgotten?

“One kind of truth, Min,” her mother said. “A different kind.”

She looked at McGrew. “And not,” she said sternly, “for a science report.”

“Unless you interview a beaver,” repeated Emily Parmalee, scouring out the bean pot, making them smile.

Minna leaves them with their truths and soapsuds and beavers. She goes up the stairs, past her father's study, where he is singing. He does not sing well most times, except every so often when he happens on a beautiful note or two. As she listens he sings a phrase from
La Traviata
, his favorite opera. It is a long and lovely phrase, a sad phrase, that he sings to his books and papers. He does not see her, but she smiles at him, then leaves quickly before he sings badly again. His voice follows her down the hall.

In her room Minna takes out the letter to her mother.

The letter is not yet signed. Minna slips the letter under her pillow, and that night she dreams about truths and untruths, facts and fictions. They are, all of them, dressed in furry suits and they scurry about the woods chewing on trees. “
Misterioso
,” they sing as they run from tree to tree. “
Misterioso
.” If she looks closely Minna can see they are beavers. They have shiny teeth, highly valued in the beaver community.

I
t is a cloudless day and the bus is full of excitement. Lewis's baby has been born.

“Beautiful she is!” Lewis exclaims to everyone who boards the bus. “Have a cigar. Fifty-five cents, please, exact change, please. Beautiful she is!”

McGrew gives his cigar to Emily Parmalee, who takes the paper cigar ring off and puts it on her finger. Minna zips her cigar into the music pocket of her cello case. Next to her letter. The letter has traveled everywhere with Minna: in her pocket, once barely saved from the laundry; in her case nestled next to Mozart. It is a troublesome reminder, like a spot of soot in her eye or a stone in her sock. Yet it is also a comfort, like the gargoyles. Like Willie, who is always there. Sometimes the sight of it makes Minna smile, the rustle of it settles her mind, its truths please her. The letter is neatly addressed to her mother, but there is still no signature. Signing the letter is a problem, though it hasn't always been a problem. For years Minna has been writing to people, some of them well known, using her own address and names she has borrowed or invented: Phoebe Crosstitch, Portia Puce, Veronica Jell.

“Why?” asked her mother, mystified. “Why don't you sign your own name? Don't you want people to know who you are?”

“No,” said Minna, knowing her mother didn't understand. Her mother wrote all kinds of personal things in her books, some of them embarrassing, and her mother didn't care. But Minna cared.

Easy names for those letters. But not for this one. Her own address for those letters. Not for this letter.

“Beautiful she is.” Lewis's voice intruded on Minna's thoughts. “Nine pounds and a bit more.”

Minna leaned forward.

“What's her name?” she asked suddenly.

“Eliza,” said Lewis, smiling. “Sturdy little thing, with a face like the night moon.”

Minna smiled at his poetry. And a good stout name, too, at last, she thought. After a moment she unzipped the pocket of her cello case and took out her letter. She glanced at McGrew to make sure he wasn't paying attention to her. He wasn't. He was stretched across the aisle singing headlines to Emily Parmalee and a surprisingly undersized woman in a white turban and a fur coat.

“Man Weds Horse,” he sang. “Pinching Your Nose Increases Your I.Q.”

Very carefully, Minna signed the typewritten letter. She wrote a script that was tall and straight, unlike her own writing:

A nice name, her mother would say.

“Is that true?” A voice spoke close to her ear. Startled, Minna slid the letter into her coat pocket and turned around.

“What? Is what true?” she asked.

Behind her an old man leaned over the back of her seat.

“That,” he whispered, “what the boy there said. Is it a fact? Pinching your nose makes you intelligent?”

Minna looked at McGrew. McGrew and Emily Parmalee sat, holding their noses, reading. Behind them sat a busful of passengers, all holding
their
noses.

“I'd believe it for a fact,” Minna told the man. “That boy knows nearly everything.” She faced front again. And what he doesn't know he makes up, she added to herself, thinking about his science report. The bus lurched to a stop, the door opening.

“Fifty-five cents, please. Exact change, please. She's born!” Lewis chanted to a new passenger. “Beautiful she is!”

The bus ground up again and Minna smiled at the look of the man as he walked up the aisle, his hand immediately flying up to pinch his nose, too.

“Does something smell?” he asked in a high nasal voice.

Willie was not on his street corner, but the dog was, as if waiting patiently for his instrument to be delivered to him. He greeted her with a crooked dog smile. When Minna reached down to pat him he lifted his head to meet her hand and smacked his tail against the pavement.

“Where's Willie?” Minna whispered to him. “Where?” She looked down the street. Maybe he had chosen another place to play. No, he wouldn't have done that. This was his place; here by the conservatory steps, by the gargoyles. Near the dog.