The Threshold (5 page)

Tracy took Aletha’s tray and disappeared into the kitchen. She returned with a plastic garbage can and knelt to pick up greasy shards. “She was talking to you, this Callie.” Her pallor made the dark lipstick look black. “Who’s Charles?”

Aletha’s legs stopped shaking when her knees hit the floor. She began separating whole dishes from the gooey junk. “I’ve seen Callie once before. I don’t know who Charles is.”

“Either the old Senate has suddenly become haunted or this was a trick, done with film or something. All kinds of practical jokers around here.” Tracy threw broken plates at the garbage pail with a vengeance. “Thought you were a friend. Let you stay at my place. Never thought you’d stoop to a joke like that, scare a person to—”

“Some joke.” Barry stood above them, kicked a broken wine goblet with his toe. “Aletha, that Mackelwain guy’s out there. Wants to talk to you.”

Her skirt, hose, and shoes were still spattered when she faced Cree across his beer. “You look like twenty years after the end of the world,” he said, and when that got no response added, “Renata tells me you spent the night in your car.”

“It happened again.” Aletha slumped into a captain’s chair. “The tear and Callie too. Right back there by the kitchen. Callie’s going to be taller than I thought. And she knew my name. I didn’t tell her my name, Cree.”

He drained his beer and lifted her to her feet. “Let’s go to my place.”

“I’m too exhausted for a whorehouse.”

“You don’t have to work tonight.”

5

Callie’s new school dress had a white collar and white lace ruffles sewn into the shoulder seams that looked fresh and pretty. But Miss Heisinger transcended all. Her skirt swept to the floor in a slim forest-green line and Callie could not discover one mended or shiny place on it. A waist-length jacket hung on a peg by the flag beneath a straw hat lavish with satin. Her blouse was snowier than a blizzard, with pleated sleeves that puffed out and a high neckline under an amber brooch pinned to a green ribbon.

Her straight form floated with such grace around the schoolroom that Callie wondered if this creature could be human. She’d caused a sensation yesterday at the boardinghouse when she’d stepped off the daily stage. And today off-shift miners kept peering in the windows, heads bobbing up to catch a glimpse.

Bram was painfully aware of the new teacher too but he felt the fool sitting in this schoolroom with the little ones. He should be deep in the stopes by now with the men. Because of his size and strength he would have been promoted from nipper to mucker if Ma’am hadn’t insisted he go to school.

“Well, Mr. Brambaugh O’Connell, it appears from your previous records that it’s going to be difficult to find work for you.” Miss Heisinger stood close to his seat and bent down to show him a paper with little boxes all checked off in ink. “Seems you’ve been promoted out of nearly everything.” Her smell was delicately sweet as if she kept a sachet in her trunk like Ma’am did. There was not a mole, not even a pox scar marring the milkiness of her complexion. Her eyes, when she turned them to him up close, were almost as pale a green as Charles’s, with the same amber flecks deep inside.

“Yes, ma’am.” He felt trapped by Miss Heisinger’s closeness, her cool regard, and the helpless sweatiness that tried to stop his breathing.

“I expect I’ll find something.” When she smiled, her tiny teeth showed no uneven spaces between them.

Bram caught Callie watching them and hoped she couldn’t see his trembling.

Shortly after Bram and Callie had settled into the school day, Luella put aside her washing and rushed over the hill to her sister’s cabin. A neighbor of Lilly’s had summoned her. Lilly’s time had come. As the news spread, other matrons wandered in with food and stayed to encourage Lilly, to exclaim over the layette, and to chat with whoever had stopped by. Lilly didn’t listen much to the encouragement. If the mill hadn’t been thundering away her screams would have been heard clear down to the Loop.

“Try to relax, dear, you tense your body and make the pains worse.” Luella couldn’t hide her embarrassment over her sister’s lack of control, but Mrs. Traub, the manager’s wife, who’d brought a cake for Henry’s supper and dinner pail, tried to make Luella comfortable. “It’s harder on some than on others. She’ll make a fine mother, I’m sure.”

Mrs. Traub went on to exclaim about her new boarder. They’d stepped outside to hear each other over Lilly’s screams while Mrs. McCall spelled Luella at the bedside. “She brought two trunks. Have you ever heard of such a thing? A schoolteacher with two trunks? And big ones too. She must have a change of clothes for every day of the week. And sleeping in with my Bertha that way, well the room’s so full you can’t move around in it. ‘Mark my words, Mr. Traub,’ I said, ‘that young woman will be trouble here with a boardinghouse full of single men.’”

“And what did he say?”

“Said she was all they could find and the children must be taught. Such a fancy lady, Mrs. O’Connell, do you know she offered no help in putting the supper on last night and when we’d finished she sat at the table and talked to Mr. Traub and the little boys? Let Bertha and me do the dishes. Then, when I finally got all my work done and had a moment to sit in the parlor and visit, she gets up and goes off to Bertha’s room to read. What do you think of a schoolmarm who talks only to men?”

Callie was amazed to hear that Jesus had brought Aunt Lilly and Uncle Henry a baby boy. “Did they see Jesus?”

“Callie, don’t be silly.”

How could he give them a baby in broad daylight without showing himself? Throw it at them out of a cloud? But she knew by Ma’am’s tone better than to pursue the subject. Callie wondered why Jesus didn’t deliver kittens too. She’d watched Bertha Traub’s cat deliver its own. And a messy business that was. The strangest part was that of the five kittens, three looked so much like Charles.

After a cold and hastily prepared supper, Luella took Callie over to Aunt Lilly’s to see the new baby. The new baby looked like a baby but the change in Aunt Lilly was astounding. Even under the bedclothes she looked as slim as the new teacher. And all the blood appeared to have washed out of her face. “Why are you in bed? Are you sick?”

“Callie!” Luella warned, and Uncle Henry laughed.

The next day when Callie had changed out of her school dress and put on her everyday dress, Ma’am sent her over the hill with a bottle of tonic because Aunt Lilly needed “toning.” She also needed cheering, so Callie told her all about Miss Heisinger and the lady who’d left her book by the mill. The tonic seemed to work and Lilly soon sat up. “What’s in that stuff?”

Callie took the bottle over to a window. “‘Wyeth’s Wine of Coca. Body and brain strengthener. Sustains. Refreshes. Nourishes. Never causes constipation.’” She turned the bottle over and squinted at the tiny print on the back label. “‘Extracted from the leaves of the mysterious tree deep in the South American jungle, Erythro … Erythroxylon Coca.’ Is that the same kind of coca that’s in Coca-Cola?”

“I think so, but this tonic of Luella’s makes you feel even better.”

“‘For many years past it has been thoroughly tested,’” Callie continued, “‘and eminent physicians urgently recommend its use in the treatment of anemia, impurity of the blood, consumption, asthma, nervous debility, biliousness, dyspepsia, loss of appetite, and obesity. Especially beneficial to the convalescent and languorous infant. Very palatable and agreeable to take. If you wish to accomplish double the amount of work or are forced to undergo an unusual amount of hardship, always keep a bottle of Wyeth’s Wine of Coca near you. Its sustaining powers are wonderful!’”

Aunt Lilly’s hair tumbled across her shoulders. She looked delicate and pretty with the soft dark half-circles under her eyes. “Do you ever wonder, Callie, if all they say on them bottles is true?”

“Ma’am says she doesn’t believe they could print it if it weren’t.” Callie helped herself to another piece of Mrs. Traub’s cake. “Aunt Lilly, couldn’t Jesus have put Bram on the schoolhouse steps? Then he’d be my real brother, wouldn’t he?”

“Jesus? What’s he … Oh … uh, no, honey, Bram was seven or eight months old when he came to us and uh … then there was the note. Jesus doesn’t leave notes.” Lilly picked up her sleeping son. “I wanted to name this little fellow Brambaugh, but Henry insists we name him Henry. He’s up at the boardinghouse smoking cigars and playing poker with his friends. All new fathers do that, I’m told. Ladies do all the work, men congratulate themselves smoking cigars. And don’t look at me that way, Callie question box, I don’t know why either.”

“Don’t you like men, Aunt Lilly?”

“Take one of them pies home with you. We won’t be able to eat all this food in a month of Sundays.”

One day after school Callie and Bram went berry-picking along Boomerang Road. They’d not gone far when Bram stopped to listen, shushing Callie and pulling her to the side of the wagon road as the sound of shod hooves clicking on pebbles drew nearer.

“You promised we’d pick berries, Bram,” Callie whispered, feeling somehow deserted as she did so often when he opted for boy things. “You never catch one anyway.”

He put his hand across her mouth and gave her a stern look. The riderless horse came down the road at a trot, empty stirrups swinging out and in, the reins tied to the saddle horn. The horse saw them of course, they always did. Callie could tell by the way it swerved to the other edge of the road as it passed. Bram handed her his bucket and she was tempted to clash it against hers to startle the animal clear to Telluride, but followed Bram quietly instead.

They heard the horse chomping before they saw it browsing in a tiny roadside meadow. In winter rented horses headed straight back to the livery when their riders turned them loose, but in summer they’d stop to grab a bite along the way. Callie could tell the horse knew all about Bram sneaking up behind it by the way its ears twitched around to find the sound.

Bram made a sudden move for the stirrup with one foot and the saddle with both hands. The horse sidestepped on its back feet, leaving its head down to graze in the same spot. Bram fell on his face. Callie snickered behind her hand and crawled onto a stump. The horse snorted as if laughing too, and kept shying just out of Bram’s reach while continuing to eat. Finally, tiring of the sport and the meadow, it broke for the road in the middle of a dodge, leaving a red-faced Bram throwing rocks after it, making frustrated sounds in his throat and behind his nose.

Giggles held Callie helpless until she realized her brother stood over her, fists clenching and unclenching on stiffened arms. The stump was a high one and her eyes were on a level with his throat, where the pulse of his blood threatened to break out of his skin. Bram held his teeth together, tight. His nostrils flared open. His eyes looked remote—as if someone other than Bram were behind them. He kept shaking his head back and forth. “God damn you, Callie girl, God damn …”

Callie’s last giggle ended in a screech. She dropped the pails. His big hands enveloped her arms and shoulders. Bram shook her instead of his head. “Damn you, don’t you laugh at …”

Callie heard snapping noises in her neck and little screams in her head before they came out of her mouth. Suddenly Bram stopped and blinked into her face. He stared at his hands as if neither belonged to him. “Oh, Callie,” he whispered. He picked her up and sat on the stump with her on his lap and rocked them both from side to side. “Oh, no.”

Callie cried tears into the coarse fabric of his shirt while she forgave him, while he blew warmth into her hair as he repeated her name.

6

“For the unemployed, you live pretty well.” Aletha sat on a kitchen stool and watched Cree Mackelwain chop garlic cloves, plum tomatoes, and fresh parsley. He dumped the lot into spattering olive oil, added whole dried spices by the tablespoon.

“This place belongs to a friend.” He poured white wine into the sauce and slid spaghetti noodles into boiling water. “He’s … lending it to me for a while.”

“This place” was one of several condominiums fashioned out of the interior of a brick building which was once a fancy house of ill repute. It had two bedrooms, two baths, a sunken living room, and a seven-foot Jacuzzi. Compared to the interior of a Datsun “this place” was Windsor Castle. Aletha lifted a long-handled spoon from a hook and stirred the spaghetti. “In prison, they didn’t stir it enough. Parts of it would stick together in thick ropes.”

“And you really stick with that story.”

“It’s not easy to forget.” But the rumbling in her stomach ruined any chance for pathos. He grinned. The spaghetti lived up to its fabulous odors and Cree served it with wine and crusty bread. “Was the Senate a whorehouse too do you think,” she asked him, “like the Pick and Gad?”

“The old advertising lists it as a drinking and gambling establishment.”

“Well, it served meals. Callie and a woman were eating at a table.”

“You ought to go up to the museum and see if they have much on the Senate. I do know this part of town was considered fit for only a certain kind of woman. There were trunks of clothes, paintings of the painted ladies, furniture, and junk left in this building that had to be moved out before renovation. Most of it went into private collections but some of it found its way to the museum.”

“I hate to think of Callie on the wrong side of town. She’s so sweet and vulnerable,” Aletha said. “I’d been sketching up at Alta. After my … whatever happened, I couldn’t find my sketchbook. Tonight she told me someone had taken my book and something about a guy named Charles. Do you think she found my sketchbook?”

“I think if your eyelids get any lower you’re going to fall asleep at the table. You can have the extra bedroom and your own bath.”

“Why are you doing this? Being so kind?”

“Why did you give me a ride from Alta?” He clasped his hands behind his head, stretched backward until she could hear the cracking in his shoulders. “Maybe I’m just kind.”

He didn’t look kind, she thought as she was about to fall asleep in the luxury of a real bed. Cree Mackelwain looked grim. Cree Mackelwain looked like someone she shouldn’t trust. Of course, most of the people she’d found she really shouldn’t have trusted had looked completely trustworthy. Aletha slipped into vulnerable sleep anyway and awoke in the morning to find Cree’s door open, the rumpled bed empty. Aletha repacked her suitcase and left.