“Gift from the English cousins,” Lavinia said. “The dress, too. They’re kind of rich.”
Clare was quiet for a moment, thinking about the procession that was about to happen at the church, with Hurd instead of their father taking Charlotte’s arm. At the thought of his father he felt an icy panic, as if they were all moving forward in an ocean liner from which, in the darkness, their father had fallen, and if they didn’t go back now, it would be too late. But he wasn’t the person who could turn the ship around. He didn’t even know if it could be turned. He sang softly to Lavinia:
“Bryan O’Linn had no stockings to wear,
He bought him a rat’s skin to make him a pair,
He then drew them on and they fitted his shin,
‘Whoo, they’re illegant wear,’ says Bryan O’Linn.”
Lavinia looked down at her hands while he sang. Then she turned to him. Her eyes were black and large and her face was pale. “What’s that?” she asked.
“Just a song I learned a long time ago.”
“Do you know the rest?”
“Bits and pieces.”
“Let’s hear it,” she said.
“No,” he said. “Not if you’re going to stay way over there and be mad at me.” He felt such an insistent tugging now. He had to bring her back toward him, within reach.
Lavinia smiled a little and remained sitting with her knees together and her feet pointing inward. Her fingers were laced together and clenched on her knees. He could tell that she wanted to come closer, but in all their afternoon visits she had never done more than sit in a chair that touched the side of the bed. He had only once held her hand.
“Please sit beside me,” Clare whispered. “We won’t be wicked. We’ll just be together.”
Lavinia stood up uncertainly. She wasn’t mad anymore, he could tell. “Well, how many verses are there?” she asked, smiling enough so that he could see she was forgiving him a little.
“Lots,” he whispered. “At least eight.”
She looked over at the bedroom door, which was still open, though of course the whole building was empty now, empty as a dead tree, and then she came over to the bed and eased herself onto the side of it. She kept her shoes on at first, then let them drop. She put her two feet up on the bed beside his, though she was on the outside of the blankets and he was inside. She stuck a pillow behind her back and head. “Well?” she asked.
“Should I start at the beginning?” he asked. He reached over for her hand and when he touched it, he felt her tremble. His own skin tingled at the contact, and he let each of his fingers find a place between each of hers. He wasn’t sure that he could sing now. He cleared his throat and sang,
“Bryan O’Linn was a gentleman born
He lived at a time when no clothes they were worn”
He paused, hearing it differently now that Lavinia was so achingly close to him, now that what he wanted to do was stroke her naked arm. The tune still reminded him of Aldine but she felt far away, like an island that he could see but never reach.
“What a wicked song,” Lavinia murmured.
“Wait’ll you hear the part about the breeches,” Clare said. It would shame him, later, to think of what he was doing the whole time his father was dead and he didn’t know it. It would seem to Clare that he should have known, somehow, and in his memory, the courting of Lavinia took on a lurid cast that it shouldn’t have had: he took his left hand and brought it across his body to her arm.
He ran his finger up the middle of her wrist to her elbow and she trembled. He was mostly upright in the bed, leaning on a mashed stack of pillows, and the silky folds of her dress touched his good leg. “Lavinia,” he whispered and he was surprised at the beauty of her name when whispered like that. “Lavinia.” When he turned his face toward her, she was close enough to kiss, and he stared into her eyes for what seemed a long time. She looked broken, in a way, as if his singing had done that to her. He kissed her once, then more and more, tenderly and hungrily by turns, gently tasting her jaw, cheeks, and ear, his hand in her sleek straight hair and on her neck. He couldn’t twist on his hips to place himself closer to her, so he brought her toward him, and she shifted on the bed so that she leaned into him. The tugging in his chest was unrelenting, and it was entwined with his terror that he would be a cripple forever, that the most he could hope for was to move from the bed into a chair like the wheeled ones in Dr. Quigley’s medical catalogues. Dr. Quigley was satisfied that the bones had grabbed on to one another again, that’s what he said, but he wasn’t sure if Clare should test the calcified joins with his weight, or risk snapping them in a fall. In a few weeks, maybe, Quigley had said. Clare shifted his weight, felt no warning pain, and kissed Lavinia as if she were the source of a potion that would transform him.
They didn’t hear Bart Crandall outside the café door. They didn’t see him reach out to open the glass door of the café, his face coated with sweat, his body tight with the importance of the cable he held, news that would spread from his hand like red wine on linen. With his hand on the knob he read the sign Ellie had written hastily before leaving:
Closed for family wedding. Open again Monday, Dec. 11.
Have a good day.
He stood in the sunlight and thought about which was worse: to leave a night letter in a place where nobody was, or to show up at a wedding with this news.
Regret to inform Ansel Price killed dust storm stop
Send instruct re burial to Emporia PD stop
Bart Crandall tucked the night letter in his pocket and stepped away from the glass door. He stared up Alvarado Street at the white wooden spire where the Price girl was getting married. The worst part was that his wife, Florrie, was looking forward to the reception. Maybe he’d just tell her to keep mum and he’d walk over at the end of the party and hand the letter to Mrs. Price. The date and time would be printed on there, but Ellie would understand, wouldn’t she? Maybe she would even appreciate his conscientious delay?
“I’m afraid I’ll bump your leg,” Lavinia whispered, still letting Clare kiss her, still letting her hands do what his hands were doing, caressing his back, his neck, and face.