She nodded again, parts of herself going cold and stiff, other parts wavy and sick. “We put it in the barn. We never drove it again after we got here. We were going to bring it back, like we said, but we had to wait for the baby to be born first. Ansel didn’t want to leave me here before that in case . . .”
She spoke through the stiffening of her throat and face. “We were going to give it back.”
The men didn’t respond to this, only looked at each other and then back at her.
“Did ye already take him to jail then?”
“Who?” the policeman asked.
“Ansel,” she said.
Dr. Stober kept his hand on his neck and looked away.
“You’re going to have to go to Emporia,” the sad-faced policeman said. “A relative of yours is waiting there.”
“Who?”
“Man by the name of Cooper.”
So Glynis had really sent the letter, and Leenie had sent Will. She kept her finger inside Vivien’s fist, as if the baby could keep her from going. “But what about Ansel?”
The policeman blinked, and Dr. Stober kept his eyes averted. He felt bad, she could see that. For the first time in their acquaintance, he seemed human.
“Mr. Price got caught in the storm,” the policeman said.
“Did ye take him to hospital then? Please let me go there first.”
“That won’t be possible,” was how the policeman answered.
She thought it was because she didn’t deserve it, and it seemed a long time since she’d deserved anything she wanted or received anything she deserved. “But later on?”
“I don’t like to tell you this,” the policeman said, and then he did tell her. She studied Vivien’s ear and then said she just needed to get something upstairs, and the sad-faced policeman tramped right after her (she thought he suspected her of wanting to steal money, but later she guessed he was afraid she’d pitch herself out the window, baby and all). She didn’t like to take her pinkie out of the baby’s fist but she had to if she wanted the ring, which the policeman insisted on examining. He decided the ring was nothing, so she could have it. She put it on, and he handed her the paper, too, with a suit yourself kind of look, and then he followed her down the stairs. Dr. Stober had taken himself out of doors. He wasn’t looking for his car, as she expected. He just stood with his back to the house, staring out at the horizon. Aldine found the dirty coffee cup that still lay on its side on the front porch and used it to prop open the front door so that Krazy Kat could get out. Then she settled into the backseat of the police car with her baby, who had begun crying again.
Seven years later, when she read that Tom Mix died, Aldine would fish the paper labeled Tom Mix’s Injuries from the lining of her satchel and consider all the wounds and accidents that hadn’t killed the man in light of the one that did: an afternoon of drinking in a roadhouse and then a car wreck at a washed-out bridge in the desert, doing eighty with a suitcase full of money.
108
It was ten thirty in the morning on December 9. For Charlotte, her wedding day had begun at 5:00 a.m. when she’d come into Clare’s room and flipped on the lamp. Her eyes were red and her cheeks were wet. “Dad’s living with Aldine, isn’t he,” she whispered to Clare. “He’s left Mom for her and everyone knows. McNamara’s going to jilt me. He won’t want to be seen with the daughter of divorced adulterers.”
Clare was squinting at the sudden light. “Who said he’s living with Aldine?”
“Nobody. I just think it,” Charlotte said, her voice thickening as she began to cry again. She pushed a handkerchief against her nose and saw her face in the mirror. “I look horrible. I look horrible and I’m going to be jilted.”
Clare tried to raise his head up. “You’ll look fine if you stop crying.”
“It’s Aldine’s fault.”
“McNamara doesn’t know anything about it. Nobody does. Just stop crying or they’ll ask what’s wrong.”
“I can’t.”
“Open the drawer there,” Clare said. He laid his heavy head back down. Roosters were crowing in the Mexican camp near the packinghouse, and a dog began to bark.
“Why?” Charlotte asked, not moving.
“Just open the drawer and then open the accounting book.”
She went to the drawer and sniffled. She found the paper, unfolded it, and began by the lamplight to read the Rules to Be Observed for the Prevention of the Spread of Tuberculosis.
“Dad has it,” Clare said. “Dr. Quigley told me. That’s why he can’t come back and we can’t go there.”
Charlotte kept reading, the handkerchief as small as a stone beneath her nose. When she’d finished reading, she didn’t say anything. She folded the paper and put it back in the drawer.
Clare watched her compose herself around this new set of facts. He didn’t tell her that their father didn’t even know the result of the test. It had always been Charlotte who knew the dirty secrets, the bad stories, the things you didn’t want to hear.
“I think he went there to protect us,” he said.
It took Charlotte a few seconds to decide to believe it, and then she did.
“It’s worse, but it’s better,” she said, and made a small unhappy smile. “I hate myself for saying it.” She stood up and touched his hand, swaying slightly in her robe. She was big and soft in her curly hair and robe, and she seemed ready now to go ahead with this strange new part of her life. “I’ll let you try to go back to sleep,” she said.
He didn’t sleep, though. He looked up at the ceiling and thought of Aldine’s voice, the way it sounded and the way her mouth looked when she sang to Neva. He thought of her lying that night under the suit quilt in her nightclothes. Charlotte had turned off the lamp in his room, but not in the hall, so the edges of the dresser and the bed and his own feet stayed visible. He was awake when the sun rose and awake when Neva knocked on the door and brought in Opa Hoffman carrying a little paper box.
“Your little town has a doughnut shop,” Opa Hoffman said. The old man liked him, Clare could tell. He’d been in the night before and after two seconds of looking at him had said, “You have the Hoffman eyes,” and then when he asked about his scores at school, he said, “Yes. And the Hoffman brain.”
Well, he was happy to eat a doughnut with the old man, if that’s all it took to make him happy, but it wasn’t long before his mother was there, ushering his grandfather out, beginning what she called the ablutions. He hated them, the embarrassing maneuvers, the washing Clare tried to do under the sheet. Neither of them spoke as they went about it all, his mother rushing because of the wedding, and he could hear Ida closing drawers and shuffling things next door. He could hear Ida telling Neva, patiently first and then crossly, to stop moving her head so much.
A while later, Neva stomped her way into the room, hair lacquered, chin jutting, eyes furious, red taffeta swishing. Behind her, Ida carried a red velvet headband wound with a small artificial poinsettia. “It pinches!” Neva said.
“It won’t now,” Ida said. “I wrapped the wire a little more.”