And then in the next moment, her father said, “And where are your husbands?”
Ida cast a quick glance at Ellie, then told their father that Hurd was up at the house and why didn’t she just go fetch him?
Ellie watched her go, then began folding the dishrag she was holding into small squares.
“And your Ansel?”
“He’s in Kansas, Papi,” she said, the old term of endearment out of her mouth before she could remember she was forty-one.
“Kansas?” he said, the coldness coming into his voice, but the back door opened, and there stood Neva, staring at them both, wearing those grating clacking bracelets of Aldine’s. Ellie could tell her father wasn’t sure who Neva was; he had probably not seen a photograph since Neva was a baby.
“That’s my youngest, Geneva Louise. Neva, this is your Opa Hoffman.”
Neva stared but didn’t move.
“How old are you, meine Liebste?” her father asked, his voice a little too loud for the endearment to ring true.
Neva said she was eight. For once, Ellie didn’t remind her to smile and to look adults in the face when she answered them.
“Do you want some coffee?” Ellie asked her father. “Then we have to get these pies into Hurd’s car and over to the Practice House.”
“The practice house?” her father said. “And what is this practice house?”
Ellie tried to explain, but the more she heard of her description, the less she liked it.
“So,” her father said, “this is where good girls learn to become good wives?”
Ellie couldn’t bring herself to say yes. “Something like that,” she said.
Her father was nodding. “It is a good idea,” he said. “We should have these practice houses all over the country.”
“What can I do?” Neva asked. She came over and wrapped her arms around Ellie’s legs. “I don’t have anything to do.”
“Go play Fat and Lean with Clare,” she said. “And when Ida gets back, she’ll help you try on your dress. I’ll be upstairs soon.”
Hurd had appeared, and he and Opa were soon discussing real estate over pie and coffee (More dishes to clean, Ellie thought). Her father asked one question after another about crop yield, abundance of water, cost per acre, hourly wages. She wondered if he even remembered that Clare was hurt. She’d written him about the accident but hadn’t mentioned that Ansel wasn’t here to help.
She began settling pies into cloth-lined baskets so they could be carried to the car and Hurd, seeing this, rose to help. He brought the car around to the back door and they took out all the pies except for the chocolate creams that were still cooling under wax paper.
“I’ll bring those later,” she said. She’d expected her father to ride to the Practice House with Hurd, but he didn’t. He returned to the café and sat on a counter stool watching Ellie as she collected the cups and saucers he and Hurd had just dirtied.
“And why is your Ansel back in Kansas?”
She looked at him, then looked away. She wished Nevie hadn’t gone upstairs. If she were still here, he wouldn’t have dared to ask. Ellie scoured the dishes and silverware, rinsed them, dried them. Only then did her father say, “Eleanor?”
She hung the last cup from its cupboard hook, and turned around.
“He has TB,” she said. She was surprised by the tremor in her voice. “He went there to keep it from us.” She didn’t like giving Ansel a noble reason for leaving her, but she preferred it to her own humiliation.
“And you know this without a question?”
She nodded. Dr. Quigley had told her. He had waited for a private moment. It wasn’t just that his words were solicitous; it was his eyes, too, and his gaze seemed to slip in and slide through her body, a strange feeling to have while learning your husband is mortally sick.
“I think he went there to protect us,” she said.
“And you and the children, none of you have it?”
She shook her head. “No.”
“Good,” her father said, nodding slightly. “That’s good.” It was a kind of declamation. The look on his face was the one she’d observed as a girl when he’d closed a ledger book containing satisfactory results and rose from his desk and said, There.
Footsteps on the stairs, then Neva pushed open the door and said, “Clare won’t play Fat and Lean. He doesn’t feel good.”
Her father turned on the counter stool and faced Neva. “Your Opa needs a boutonniere,” he told her. “Want to help him buy one?”
“I don’t know what that is,” Neva said.
“It’s a flower. For proud Gro?vaters to wear.”
“I’m going to be the flower girl,” Neva said. “But I don’t want to be.”
“The flower girl will know what color I should buy,” he said, “and where the flower shop is.”
Neva shook her head. “There isn’t a flower shop.”
Her father made a low humming sound. It seemed almost as if the fact that the town had no flower shop was being added to his real estate computations.
“Ida’s bringing roses from her garden,” Ellie said. “We have flowers year-round here.”
Her father seemed not to be looking at her but through her. Then he turned abruptly to Nevie. “And perhaps you could teach your Opa the Fat and Clean,” he said.
99
The next morning, Dr. Stober posted a note on his office door saying that the office was closed for the day because of family business. He’d thought of writing In order to reclaim stolen car but decided against it; a shrewd investigator kept his intentions to himself. He walked to the shop of the man who formerly changed the oil in his car and said that the 1932 Nash Phaeton with carpeted floors that he had bought for his wife, Lucy, just before she died had been stolen, and that he now knew the name of the man who had stolen it.
“That’s a nice car to have stole from you,” the man said, sleepy eyed and sluggish. His name was Carlisle and he seemed too potbellied to slide himself under cars all day. There were no cars, at present, in the shop, and Carlisle had been warming himself beside a red-mouthed heater, laying out cards for solitaire. The air smelled of grease and cigarettes.
“I need you to drive me out where he lives. The man who took it.”
“Where’s that?”
Dr. Stober told Carlisle what Sonia Odekirk had told him the night before: “In Loam County, about seven miles due east of Dorland.” The old woman had let things go downhill in her housekeeping—that was the first thing he’d noticed—and it had cost her what little respect he’d still had for her, but she was at least willing to confirm that she’d known someone named Ansel Price and that Aldine had lived with his family while she taught school.
“Loam County?” Carlisle asked and when Stober nodded, Carlisle said, “That’s quite a drive.” He placed the two of spades on an ace.
“I am aware,” Stober said.