Unclaimed Treasures (2 page)

Horace's father laughed.

“Have a sandwich, Willa.” He turned to Horace. “We'll have to leave for the church soon.” He reached out to touch Horace's wild hair, and Willa saw that he had a smudge of blue paint on his wrist. He stood up, looking tall and solemn.

“Come back often,” he said to Willa and Nicholas. He went over to the coffin, slowly and gracefully plucking up the cat from inside.

“We'd better go,” Nicky whispered to Willa. She nodded.

“Tomorrow,” Nicky said to Horace. “We'll see you tomorrow.”

He pushed Willa in front of him, through the dining room and into the kitchen. Aunt Crystal was sitting up on the counter, her legs dangling, either Black or Blue batting at the beads around her neck. She waved. Aunt Lulu, cigarette ashes sifting down the front of her dress, opened the door.

“Thank you for coming,” she trilled after them. “I'm sure you were a comfort.”

Outside it was quiet, still again, as if they had passed from one world back into another. Everything had blurred edges, the apple tree, their mother's phlox, even Nicky walking beside her. Willa knew it was the wine. They looked at each other, and Nicky began to laugh.

“What?” asked Willa.

He pointed to her hand. She still carried her wineglass.

They walked into the kitchen, where their father was making spaghetti sauce, stirring and sniffing and making embarrassing sounds of delight. Their mother was sitting at the table, chopping celery.

“Where have you two been?” she asked them. “Supper's almost ready.”

“We have been attending a funeral next door,” said Nicky very formally. This caused Willa and Nicky to burst into laughter, and they sat down at the kitchen table, Nicholas snorting into his hand, and Willa whooping. Their mother and father smiled at them and at the wineglass.

Finally Nicholas caught his breath.

“They have Horace Morris over there,” he said, wide-eyed. “And Unclaimed Treasures and cats.”

And my true love, thought Willa, taking the knife from her mother to help chop celery for salad. Tall and solemn, just as I knew he'd be.

A gray morning mist hung over the garden and yard, and Willa busied herself with kissing her bedpost. She had drawn lips there long ago, when she was nearly seven and when she and Nicholas had first learned about love and sex and flutterings. It had been right after their LST, as Nicky called it. LST for Little Sex Talk. Nicky had been fascinated and had asked their parents for the most specific details, while Willa had been disinterested in all but the kissing. Kissing, along with what Willa called “long and meaningful looks” and Nicky resolutely called “eyeballing.”

“But how did you first know Daddy liked you?” Willa asked her mother.

Her mother smiled. “I could feel him staring at me. I knew he was interested.”

“You mean a long and meaningful look?” asked Willa enviously.

“Eyeballing,” said Nicky. “He was eyeballing her.”

“Nicholas,” said their father, smiling slightly, “there must be a better way to express it.”

“A long and meaningful look,” said Willa, nodding her head.

“Eyeballing,” said Nicky softly.

Their father stood up and went to the kitchen to make a drink, a certain signal that the talk was over.

“It was something in-between,” said Willa's mother after a moment, her voice startling them with its softness. She stared at a spot over Willa and Nicholas's head. “Something very lovely and in-between.”

Her mother's strange look made Willa restless. Uncomfortable. And the realization that her own mother and father had some acquaintance with love and sex and flutterings made her nearly mute. Until then, Willa had thought it all reserved for young people in red cars with racing stripes, or those with picnic baskets.

Even now the thought was troubling, and when thoughts troubled Willa she wrote them on small slips of paper and hid them in her bureau drawers for later. Somewhere, underneath her clothes, along with a pack of bubble gum, there was a small slip of paper that read:
June 7
,
I know how it is done
.

And now that Willa was nearly twelve, on the edge of the world of racing stripes and picnic baskets and her true love, she had taken to practicing bedpost kissing with more verve. Sometimes Nicholas watched.

“Does it feel queer and exciting yet?” he asked. On his lap lay a recent magazine open to an article that described for those who cared to know it the feelings accompanying kissing.

“Osculation,” mused Nicky. “Another name for kissing.” He looked up. “Well, is it? Queer and exciting?”

Willa unclamped her lips for a breath. “No,” she admitted. “But this is only early practice.”

“I think,” observed Nicky, “that kissing a mahogany post may be a hindrance.”

Willa pushed her lips against the post again, and closed her eyes. She unclamped and looked at Nicky.

“You're right,” she said. “I need another human pair of lips.” She stared at Nicky.

“Oh no! Not mine!” protested Nicky.

“All right,” said Willa. “Not yours.”

Nicky peered closely at Willa.

“And not his either,” he added pointedly. “He's married.”

“Whose? What?” Willa jumped self-consciously.

Nicky picked up his sketch pad and sat cross-legged on Willa's floor.

“You know that I know who you're thinking about,” said Nicky. He sketched in long strokes.

“Who?” shrieked Willa, furious. “Who?”

Nicky stopped sketching and turned to look out the window, past the old apple tree, at the house next door.

Willa shrugged. “I just thought he was nice.”

“No sir, you didn't just think he was nice,” he mimicked her. “You were tongue-tied.”

“It was the wine,” said Willa fiercely. “And the funeral. My first, after all.” She began to erase the lips on her bedpost and draw new, larger ones.

Nicky sighed. “All right. A bet, then.” He held his drawing out and looked at it. He rubbed a part of the drawing with a finger. “I will bet all my chores for the week that you think he is your true love. I know just how you look when you think you have found your true love.”

Willa tried to think of someone else—another possible true love. But they'd only moved to the house a week and a few days ago. The only boy she'd met was Porky Atwater across the street. Porky and his family, who all looked alike. Was it six or seven Porkys she'd met? But Nicholas would never believe that. Porky was only nine and spent most of his time sitting on the curb, sucking Popsicles that made colored trails down his bare chest and into his pants. No, Nicholas would never believe Porky.

Willa brightened. “Horace,” she said cheerfully. “It's Horace.”

“Horace,” scoffed Nicky. “It's not Horace, though you could do much worse. I like Horace. He's honest, and I like the way he eats apples.”

Willa frowned. She knew a bet was a bet. There was nothing she would have liked more than for Nicky to lose the bet and have to do her chores—vacuum the living room and her father's study, and make salads all week. Willa hated vacuuming. All the dust and dirt crept back so that you had to vacuum again. But mostly she hated making salads. All that work cutting up, when it was eaten and mixed together under the teeth anyway. Willa always wished that she could put a head of lettuce, a tomato, a cucumber, two carrots, and a stalk of celery on the table and tell people to eat up. Willa sighed. Their bets, though, Nicky and hers, were always honest. Had always been honest and would always be so.

Willa shrugged her shoulders. “You're right. I'll take out the garbage and water the plants and set the table all week.” Willa made a face. Setting the table was another tiresome task. The dishes and the silverware just got dirty again in a second. There must be a better way, like eating over the stove from the pots.

“Well,” said Nicky, suddenly shy and uneasy. “Well,” he repeated, bewildered because Willa had given up so easily.

Willa stood up and walked out of the bedroom and down the hallway to set the breakfast table. Nicky scrambled up and hurried after her. She turned her head to one side, listening. Willa could tell he had more to say just by the way he walked.

“All right, all right,” said Willa, stopping so abruptly that Nicky ran into her. It didn't hurt. She wasn't bigger than Nicky, just seven minutes older. And fiercer.

Nicky smiled at her, then held out his drawing for her to see. Willa, trying to appear disinterested, glanced at it casually. Nicholas had drawn Willa, wrapped around her bedpost, her lips puckered. The bedpost, though, had sprouted an array of arms, all pushing Willa away. Willa couldn't help smiling.

“That's wonderful, Nicky.”

“Willa,” said Nicky softly. “There will be trouble, Willa. And you'll be sad.”

“Sad, bad,” said Willa, turning around again. She walked downstairs briskly, pretending to ignore him. But she couldn't ignore his message. For as sure as Willa knew she was the fiercer twin, she knew now and had always known that Nicky was wiser.

Willa lay on the Oriental rug in her father's study, watching the dust motes move in the sun above her head. The vacuum cleaner lay next to her, a body with a tangle of cord and hose. Willa loved her father's study, the light slanting through the hanging plants, making the calm reds of the rug gleam, touching the piles of papers on his desk. Whenever Nicholas or Willa vacuumed the study they were cautioned not to touch a paper, never to move a book. This warning came after Nicholas had once put the hose in the wrong end of the cleaner and papers had blown in a cyclone of sound. He had stood there, fascinated, a slight smile on his face, until Willa had pulled the plug and their father had plunged into the room uttering words that Willa had not known how to spell to look up in the dictionary. Their father taught writing at the college, and he had cursed his students who had not numbered their pages. He cursed them most days anyway, and later, when he had calmed down, he had told Nicholas that pages out of order improved some of their stories. “Most of them,” he had said with a sigh. After that Willa spent hours in his room, reading. She marveled that there could be so many different stories—so many words, names, places.

“You know what?” Willa had said to her father. “If you put all the letters of the alphabet in a box, there is every story ever written. Every story possible.”

Her father, surprised, had looked up from his desk. Thoughtfully he had lighted his pipe, making the familiar sucking noises. “It sounds simple enough, doesn't it, Willa?” He had peered closely at her. “You know, I think I will keep letters in a box right here to remind myself how simple it sounds.” He leaned back in his chair, puffing on his pipe. “And just how hard it really is,” he added.

The box of letters lay on his desk, close to the window of plants. The wooden-backed letters, letters from a printer's tray, lay tumbled inside. Willa opened the lid with one finger and stared at the Z and the B and the F. An A lay on its side; the others were turned over. “Sounds simple . . . but how very hard it is.” Willa thought of her father's words. Lots of things were hard and sounded simple. Vacuuming, thought Willa. And making salads. Finding your true love.

A pile of student stories lay on the desk blotter, waiting for her father. Willa picked up the top page and began reading.

Willa smiled and sat down in her father's chair. Sex and flutterings, she thought. And eyeballs. Nicky would like this.

Willa glanced at the vacuum cleaner. She put her feet up on the desk, leaned back, and read. The vacuum cleaner lay silent and forgotten in the sun.

“Pssh, pssh.” The sounds were clear through the open windows of Willa's bedroom. Half asleep, she thought they were left over from her dream, a dream of Ted and Wanda, bathed in moonlight.

“Pssh, pssh.”

Willa rubbed her eyes, raising her head from the pillow, listening. She got up and looked out her window. Across the small, sloping stretch of yard that separated her house from her true love's there was an apple tree, old and gnarled. It had survived years of drought and winter kill and uncertain prunings by the Treasures, though everyone spoke of it as dying. Had spoken of it as dying for a long time, Horace had told Willa.

This morning Horace and Nicholas were frantically chasing the cats. One cat was clinging to the trunk of the apple tree as Horace held her. Willa could hear the scrabbling sounds of claws against bark. Porky Atwater, pushing a wheelbarrow of rags, was coming up the sidewalk, hissing into bushes and trees. Willa grabbed her bathrobe and ran down the back stairs barefooted. The grass was startling and cold with dew, and Willa grinned suddenly with the feel of it. “There's Bella-Marie,” spoke an ancient voice, “out for a breather.” Willa saw that the rags in Porky's wheelbarrow were not rags. They were Old Pepper, Porky's great-grandfather, a dried apple of a man—nearly one or two hundred years old, Willa thought. He had left his teeth at home, and his mouth fell into his face. He wore a rugby shirt, bright yellow and black, and he looked like an old bee.

“Why is Porky hissing at bushes?” Willa asked Horace, after he and Nicholas had pushed the cats inside the house. She sat beside him on the steps. “And who is Bella-Marie?”

“Bella is Old Pepper's pet parrot,” whispered Horace. “And hissing attracts birds. Didn't you know that?”

“Of course I knew that,” said Willa grumpily, though she had no idea that hissing attracted anything.

Old Pepper wore all his clothes today. Old Pepper was forgetful and independent and forgiven for all of it. Sometimes he forgot his clothes, though he never wandered naked from his own backyard. He went birding there “starkers,” as Horace put it, blending in well with the plants and bushes. “Looking lots like Adam in the first garden, even though he has a mustache and wears half glasses,” said Horace. “Innocent, like a naked baby at the beach.”