She knitted vigorously, eyes down until the comedian on the radio induced further laughter.
Charlotte looked up from her book. The Harvester, the book was called, and as she read, she pinched several locks of her springy blonde hair into a sort of paintbrush and swept her lips with it.
Neva said, “I hate it when the show’s over. But at least it comes on again Wednesday and that’s only two days.” Then she said, “How do you do that without looking?” and it took Aldine a moment to realize that the girl was talking to her, about her knitting.
“Oh it’s the easiest thing,” Aldine said slowly. “I could do it eyes closed in a coal hole.”
Aldine thought this might be the moment to excuse herself to go upstairs and write her letter. But as she began to gather her needles and yarn, Mr. Price leaned forward and cleared his throat to say, “I was up to Cyrus Motherbaugh’s today.”
His seriousness seemed to signify something; his family turned toward him.
“Cyrus no longer owns the fiddle I thought we could get for Miss McKenna,” he said. “Sold it last year.” Mr. Price tilted his head and lowered his voice. “His father’s own fiddle.”
The family found this regretful, but, to be truthful, Aldine felt relief. Mr. Price had mentioned the fiddle when it turned out there was no longer a piano at the schoolhouse and Aldine had acted pleased, but really she wasn’t sure how she’d use it. Would she play for the children while they read?
“For how much?” Charlotte asked.
Mr. Price shook his head and said he hadn’t asked.
Something came into Mrs. Price’s face then—Aldine saw it. A careful kind of slyness. “Aldine doesn’t really need accompaniment,” she said. “She can sing a cappella at school.” She fixed her gleaming eyes on her. “I was looking at your letter of application today, dear. You mentioned that you sang a cappella.”
Neva asked what a cappella meant, and while Mr. Price patiently explained it to the girl, Aldine felt the color rising in her neck and cheeks. She hadn’t sung alone, she said. It was in a choir. And they were only a cappella because the organ bellows had failed beyond repair.
“Couldn’t you try by yourself, though?” Neva said, and Mrs. Price (really, it was more than she’d said to Aldine the whole day long) said, “Yes, dear, you could just try, couldn’t you?” and Neva added, “A real true Scotland song!”
Something had begun unfurling within her then, a feeling that she would just as soon have suppressed, but now, having it coaxed from her (and with spiteful intent!) brought with it a prideful pleasure, just as she had felt, though she cringed to admit it, when she had allowed Dr. O’Malley to look upon her, because she knew (Aunt Sedge’s house had mirrors after all) that what she was about to reveal was not without its agreeable aspects. Just as now, though she didn’t like to sing alone in front of others, she knew her voice to be quite good, at least within a certain range, so she bowed her head and composed her nerves and then, when she was perfectly ready, began softly to sing: “By yon bonny banks, and by yon bonny braes.” As she sang she felt the old trembling want that music dug out of you, a longing that you could finally express and that you dug out of other people as you sang. “Where the sun shines bright on Loch Lomond.” They listened, Charlotte with her book folded over her finger, Neva with a broad gap-toothed grin, Clarence with a still, beholding look that, she couldn’t help it, put her in mind of Dr. O’Malley, and Mr. Price with face tilted toward the window, eyes closed in an attitude close to reverence. Only Mrs. Price seemed indifferent. She watched for a while, then, as if unimpressed or possibly even disappointed, turned to the basket beside her and withdrew another of her husband’s socks in need of mending.
15
On the first day of school, Aldine and Neva had walked in early so that Aldine could get her bearings, and now she had thirty minutes to plan the day.
The building itself was nothing like the upright stone school, two stories high, in which she’d spent her own school years. Stony Bank’s country school was just one large room, white on the outside like the Price house, unpainted within, an ancient blue stove in the corner, a blackboard in the front, wooden desks hooked together in rows like immovable sleighs. She studied the portraits of two unsmiling men, one with a white wig, beneath the American flag (it seemed worrisome that she didn’t know who they were). If there was one pleasant surprise, it was the relative absence of dust. Someone had been in to clean recently; she could detect the faint scent of soap and ammonia.
Aldine studied the names in the book Mr. Price had given her. He said she was to keep the record book up to date for the superintendent, who came around to all the schools on surprise visits, and who would examine the book when the term ended. Miss Pike had used the book for a year and a half, and Mr. Geoph for the whole previous spring. There were not as many students as she expected.
Berenice Josephson
Emmeline Josephson
Melba Josephson
Jerry Pierce
Geneva Louise Price
Jack Reynolds
Yauncy Tanner
Buster Watson
Harlon Wright
Hector Wright
Phay Wright
What were their ages? Was Phay a boy or a girl? Would they all show except Yauncy? The last thing Mr. Geoph had written about Hector was, Won’t come. She would ask Neva about the boys when she came in from playing on the schoolyard.
What was missing was the list of the children’s Master Lessons. On the desktop, where Mr. Price had told her she would find just such a thing, she saw nothing more than a Webster’s Dictionary and Roget’s Thesaurus. In the drawers she found only a ruler, a compass, and a small calendar with x’s marked through April 22, 1932, the end of the previous term. A ruled sheet of paper was labeled Inventory of Books, with each one listed by title and condition. At the bottom Mr. Geoph had signed his name. Otherwise there was nothing except a much smaller piece of paper on which Mr. Geoph had written: Recitation Program: Ari. Study Group 1: Ari. Study Group 2: Ari.
Was this it? Could this possibly be the list of lessons? And if so, what in the world did it mean?