Tree By Leaf (13 page)

“Oh,” Mother said. She looked at Clothilde as if she was deciding something. In the hallway, Lou saw Tom Hatch to the door, but neither of them entered the parlor. “You’d have to know sometime,” Mother said, “but I don’t know that this is the time.”

“Know what? What don’t I know?
Mother
.” Mother didn’t know what to do, Clothilde could see that. So she tried to make her mother do what she, Clothilde, wanted, by sounding sure. “I ought to know.”

“The truth is, your father was asked to leave school because he was married to me. The students weren’t permitted to be married, that was the rule. But he studied there for almost two years, before, so
he learned a great deal. I went to work at fourteen, so I haven’t much schooling.”

Clothilde could barely remember what her question was, she was so surprised at this new information. “I thought you ran away to get married.”

Mother answered quickly. “I had no family. Your grandfather would have tried to stop it, if he’d known. Your father said it would be safer to present him—them—with the thing already done, so it would be too late for them to do anything to stop us. As things turned out, I think that just made it worse, but how was Father to know that? Your father made an adventure of it. He enjoyed the scheming, thinking how he was tricking your grandfather. But he was surprised, and disappointed, when he was asked to leave the college. He didn’t think they would really do that.”

“But if that was the rule—he must have known the rule.”

“Rules are sometimes changed, for special cases. Rules can be broken, I’m afraid. He hoped they would pretend not to know. It was a foolish hope, but … how was your father to know?”

“So what happened?”

“As you know, we went to live in Grandfather’s
house. I didn’t want to hurt your father any more than I already had.”

“How did you hurt him?”

“I shouldn’t have agreed to marry him,” Mother said, as if it was the most sensible thing in the world. “I don’t know how it happened. You see, I thought at first—he was just one of the college boys, the way they flirt and—he was so handsome, and he was always happy—I did say no to him, over and over. But he kept on asking. And I wanted to say yes. Oh—I’ve never wanted anything like I wanted to say yes. So—I finally did. I’m nothing, nobody, and he gave me so much….” Remembering, she looked up and smiled at Clothilde, but not really seeing her, as if she was looking at somebody who wasn’t there. “He came courting me—
me
—with his hands full of candy and flowers, he made me laugh and he offered me his heart. I gave him a son, I did do that. And maybe your grandfather will be satisfied now.”

“What do you mean?” Clothilde demanded. “You mean, now he has Nate?”

“Mr. Speer blamed me, for taking Father away from them. They all blamed me, as if I’d enchanted him.”

“But you didn’t. You couldn’t help it if he wanted to marry you.”

“I tried, tried as hard as I could, to be the kind of girl he should have married, the kind they wanted him to marry. I only wanted him to be happy. I tried not to make him sorry he’d married me, but I’m afraid he was sorry. He couldn’t help it.”

“Great-Aunt Clothilde must have liked you.” Clothilde wanted that to be true.

Mother smiled, but it was the kind of smile grown-ups wear when children just don’t know. “She never even noticed me.”

Mother wasn’t even looking at Clothilde; she wasn’t even thinking about her. “I was certain he’d die when he—went away. I didn’t want him to die, and I prayed he wouldn’t, but I thought he would. I knew—I shouldn’t have flirted with him the way I did, but I never dreamed he was more than one of the college boys. Flirting can be dangerous,” Mother warned. “You don’t ever want to become a flirt, Clothilde.”

“Yes, Mother,” Clothilde answered, since her mother was waiting for an answer.

“And now, now I’m afraid he wishes that he
had
died. Over there. Before he went, he was sorry he’d married me. And now, he’s….”

“Like a monster,” Clothilde finished the sentence.

“You musn’t say that,” Mother told her. And why
not, Clothilde wondered silently, since it was true. “You should be more merciful, Clothilde, in your thoughts. You go right upstairs, right now, go to bed, and pray for more mercy in your heart.”

Clothilde didn’t know why Mother was so cross at her, and she couldn’t make sense out of their conversation, as if Mother didn’t know what she was saying half of the time, and didn’t know what she meant the other half. On the other hand, Clothilde was glad to be sent upstairs. She wanted to be alone.

In bed, with the blankets over her and the lamp out, Clothilde tried to reassure herself. People heard voices, not one single voice. Probably, Lou’s father would turn up tomorrow or the next day, mean from drinking. She hoped he would. She was angry and sorry that Nate had run away to Grandfather’s house, but she couldn’t be blamed for that; and it wasn’t possible for the man in the boathouse to have his face mended, because that would be a miracle. She didn’t want to be responsible for all the things that were happening, and it wasn’t possible that she was: She just wasn’t that important.

Her mind went around in circles. She stopped its spinning by concentrating on the sound of the slow rain, dripping onto the roof over her head. She
thought of Tom Hatch, his kindness in coming out to tell Lou what news there was, and the rain plopped lazily down. Then she thought of Jeb Twohey, and what he’d said about things that grew up and things that grew down. She could bet that Jeb Twohey liked the rain. She thought, her mind drifting now, toward sleep that Jeb Twohey probably felt safer with plants than with people, and she didn’t blame him one bit. She felt that way herself, she thought, falling asleep between the fall of one raindrop and the next.

Early Tuesday morning, her stomach full with warm oatmeal, Clothilde went to work on the vegetable garden. Wearing an old stained apron over a skirt that was full of its own old stains, she crouched down beside the young chard plants. Her hands, fingers working deep into the water-loosened soil, were eager and full of hope. She didn’t understand it, but her heart was full of hope.

The morning was like a spring morning, warm with promises. Nate had not, as it turned out, gone off on his cruise. So that, it might be that the man in the boathouse—

Clothilde wanted to go over there, to see if maybe…. She didn’t even know what she wanted to be true, but she remembered the way Father would build towers out of blocks, when she was little, and how he would laugh with her when she kicked them down. She let herself remember how once, after the hunt,
Mother lifted her up high and Father reached down to carry her up higher, seating her close in front of him on Bucephalus. She rode there all the way down to the stables. She could feel her father’s smile all the way, like sunlight coming from behind. He had put the reins into her hands and wrapped his own hands around hers to hold them steady. He had shown her how to run the reins over her two middle fingers. “Gentle and firm,” he had said, “that’s the way, Clothilde.” Remembering, Clothilde missed her father, with a sad longing feeling like the deep sea.
Oh,
she thought, her fingers clearing the space around a young plant.
Oh,
she hoped.

Dampness from the ground seeped gradually through her apron and skirt to her knees. The air swept gently around her, full of the smells of the rain-soaked ground. She finished the row of chard and moved over to the bush beans. Overhead the sky was covered by fat gray clouds, moving patiently along. When Mother called to her from the kitchen door, Clothilde was almost sorry to cease working. But she obeyed the call, content to be obedient.

Mother had made the creamed chicken. While Lou scrubbed the wooden floor upstairs, Mother had stripped the poached fowl of its meat, then cut the
meat into big chunks. She had made a light creamy sauce, the aroma of which was still in the air, creamy and buttery, with a faint smell of sweet nutmeg. She held out a dish filled with fresh-boiled white rice and thick creamed chicken. “I want you to take this over to the boathouse, dear,” Mother said, covering the dish with a cloth.

Mother had covered her dress with an apron while she cooked, but now she took the apron off and washed her hands at the sink, as if trying to wash away any signs of cooking.

Clothilde held the bowl in her two hands. “Why don’t you take it?” she asked.

“He doesn’t like to see me. He probably won’t be there. He won’t ask you in.”

“But—” Clothilde said. One look at Mother’s face stopped her words in her throat.

“I don’t want to hear any more from you, young lady.”

But that wasn’t what Clothilde had been going to say. She had been going to ask, didn’t mother want the chance to give this to him. If Mother wasn’t interested to know what Clothilde was really going to say, then Clothilde wasn’t going to argue. She did want to be the one to go to the boathouse, and maybe the one
to bring him back home because he had been made better.

“Yes, Mother,”’ she said.

“You needn’t worry. He doesn’t try to talk.”

“But you said—you told us he told you we had to save money. How could he tell you that if he doesn’t talk?”

“That time—then—he didn’t allow me to come in. I was standing outside. You’re becoming a quarrelsome person, Clothilde,” Mother said. “I don’t have the time or patience for this quarreling.”

“Yes, Mother,” Clothilde said.

“And I don’t care for that tone of voice, Clothilde,” Mother said. “I’d like to hear you speak more respectfully.”

Clothilde nodded her head, but didn’t trust herself to speak. It wasn’t disrespect that had been in her voice, it was puzzlement. She thought of Mother dressing up fine in hat and gloves to walk over to the boathouse. She wondered why Mother had done that, if the man wasn’t going to be there. She wondered why Mother kept thinking she knew what Clothilde was thinking when she didn’t have any idea. She wondered why Mother didn’t know that it wasn’t that the man didn’t want to see
her,
all prettied up, but that
he didn’t want her to see him, the way he looked.

Clothilde washed her hands, picked up the covered dish, and went on her way. Cutting straight across the peninsula, she made her approach along the broad, once-graveled driveway, between the tall spruce trees where Great-Aunt Clothilde’s high-wheeled carriages had once rolled. Because of carrying the bowl, she had to keep her feet moving slowly, but her thoughts ran on ahead.

The ruins of the burned cottage were at the top of a slow rise of land. She barely had time to see them before she turned down the slope, along an overgrown path. The boathouse had been built out on the rocks beyond what had once been a lawn. The boathouse had never been intended to hold boats of any size. It was one room, she knew, from peeking in through its grimy windows, where dinghies and oars and sails could be stored. Its shingles had never been stained, so they had weathered to a gray as soft as the clouds overhead. When she had been there before, exploring the peninsula, if it were being torn apart by weather. You could almost see the stages by which it would eventually collapse into a huddle of boards and shingles on the broad rocks. The steps that led from the little building across the rocks and down to deep
water were askew, most loosened, some of them hanging down. The railing, she remembered, had been as rickety as it looked—the kind of railing that was more dangerous than no railing, because you were tempted to rest your hand and your faith on it. Clothilde followed the path down to the boathouse, wondering what it would look like, now it was inhabited.

Except that the windows had been brushed free of cobwebs, it looked the same. The stairway still careened wildly over the rocks. Parts of the railing had fallen off, to leave blank spaces in the line. The boathouse looked abandoned, as if it wanted to fall apart and be done with enduring. Clothilde, now she was actually there, hesitated. She thought that if she’d thought about it, what she saw was just what she would have expected.

Turning, she looked behind her, up the grassy slope to where blackened beams rose up out of the rubble, like pointing fingers, as if they wanted to accuse the sky. The boathouse sat under the shadow of that destroyed cottage, lived in its shadow. Under that constant reminder of destruction, the boathouse couldn’t forget.

Clothilde went up and knocked on the sagging door. No voice answered her. There was no sound
from within. The only sound was the slapping of water up against the rocks. That familiar sound made the silence from within the building more strange.

She could almost see the man, crouched in there. He would be barely breathing, to make no noise. He would have his head raised to look at the door. If you were inside, there was no way out except the one door, so he was trapped, and he felt that. His only hope was silence and stillness.

Clothilde knocked again. She held the covered bowl up close against her stomach, to keep it secure while her right hand was rapping on the wood. Again, no answer.

Mother would have stood there, waiting for an answer. Mother would stand and wait, for a long time, maybe calling out once or twice. Then she would set the bowl down on the peeling wooden stoop and make her slow way back to the farmhouse, her long skirts brushing against the grass.

Clothilde knocked again—sometimes, the third time was a charm. She rapped with her bare knuckles against the wood. Mother’s knocking would sound different, she thought; the man inside would know it wasn’t Mother. Even so, there was once again no answer.

She wasn’t like Mother, and she was getting cross, cross and impatient. She felt sorry for anyone who huddled away, too frightened to open the door, but that wasn’t going to stop her. Clothilde turned the metal knob and pushed at the door.

The door scraped against the wooden floor, trying to stick, but she forced it open. The one room was dimly lit by three high windows; shadows crowded against what little light came in. The room was empty.

Clothilde stood in the open door, looking around; nobody sat on the bedroll, nobody crouched in the corners. A pile of clothes lay like old rags on the floor by the bedroll. A painted table was set in the middle of the room, but there was no chair. A wooden box had been placed on its end to hold an enamel bowl, the kind you used in a sickroom, and some pieces of paper had been stuck on the walls with nails. One long wooden plank made a shelf along the length of the room; on that was a messkit, a metal mug, a glass jar half full of clear liquid—water, probably, but where did he get his water from? At the other end of the shelf was a narrow wooden box, the size of a music box, on top of pads of drawing paper.