How long had she been there? What had she seen? He felt wooden and numb and yet began to move. He moved toward the door and when she stepped aside, he went past her. He did not say a word. Neither did she. It was not until he was inside his own room with the door closed behind him that he realized that he still had the bookmark in his hand.
He clamped his eyes shut. Washington, he thought. Adams Jefferson Madison Monroe Adams Jackson Van Buren . . .
Ansel put a heavy log on the fire in the oil-drum stove, then set out toward the creek. He didn’t try to steal up on the girl, nor did he whistle or sing to announce his presence, but still he was surprised to come upon her sitting on a boulder smoking a cigarette and staring at him. Artemis was looking at him, too, her tail sweeping back and forth, but just looking. Ansel supposed that was how she knew to look up.
“You okay?”
“I am,” she said.
The certainty with which she said it kept him from approaching further.
“Clare said Ellie spoke to you sharply.”
“She did.”
“Well, that’s just Ellie.” It sounded disloyal. He said, “She deserves more.”
This time her voice was less harsh. “I’m sure we all do,” she said. She inhaled from her cigarette, then let its smoke spew into the cold air. He’d never seen her with cigarettes before, but it was clear she was not new to the habit. He was surprised how knowing it made her look, and how much that became her.
“But you’re okay?” he said. “You’re warm enough? Because I’m going back and won’t need my jacket.”
“It’s cold but not so cold,” she said. Then she looked around. “I just wanted to be . . .”
Alone. Without question that was the word on her tongue.
“Yes. Of course. But you’ll be back in a bit?”
She nodded.
And so he left. Artemis tried to follow, but he shooed her back. The dog would be at least some company and comfort to the girl.
Everyone came for dinner, but nobody acted like they wanted to. Neva set Milly Mandy Molly on the table, propped against her water glass so she could see everything. Neva hoped her father would say something silly like “No monkey business at the dinner table,” but he didn’t say anything at all. Nobody did. Her father said the blessing and everyone mumbled the amens. Plates were passed and people ate and all the time nobody talked. The pheasant with the kumquat glaze was good but it didn’t really taste good with nobody talking. She said, “Milly Mandy Molly took a long nap and when she woke up she asked, ‘Why is the house so quiet?’”
Nobody gave her an answer, not even Clare or her father, who always answered her questions. They just kept chewing. It was hot in the room but when she went to take the green velvet waistcoat off of Milly Mandy Molly, it made her look naked, so she put it back on.
Finally, when everyone’s plate was almost empty, Charlotte’s face got that meanness behind it that she got sometimes and she said, “Aldine, if you’re missing your bookmark, it’s because Clare has it.”
Before Neva had even turned to him, Clare’s face was red as a beet. She had never seen someone’s face go red that fast. He put his eyes down and said, “I took it by mistake. I didn’t mean to take it.”
“He was in your room,” Charlotte said and now everyone was looking at Clare.
“The door was open. I was just straightening up.” He didn’t look at anybody and even if it wasn’t an awful lie, it sounded like one. Finally he looked at Aldine. “Before you left, it sounded like a tornado up there.”
Neva could tell her parents were just wondering who should scold him first, and suddenly for no reason she said, “Tornado Aldine!” and Aldine looked at her for a second and then she started a giggling laugh. It was such a wonderful thing, her giggling, then laughing, so Neva was glad to laugh, too, and then her father and Clare were laughing, even if nobody really knew why. Only her mother and Charlotte weren’t laughing and somehow that made the rest of them laugh harder. Finally when the laughter was done, Aldine said, “It was a bit of a tornado up there, wasn’t it then? So thank you, Clarence, for making it tidy.” And though it didn’t mean that everyone started talking again, at least she and Milly Mandy Molly would have the giggly laughter to talk about when they were alone and it was safe to discuss it.
When finally the meal was done, Clare shoved back from his plate and left the table without a word. His body felt as numb and stiff as it had when he’d been caught in her room and he’d walked like a zombie past Charlotte, who he thought would keep his secret if only to barter with it, but she hadn’t. She’d spent her secret on humiliating him.
Upstairs in his room he took one last look at the bookmark to memorize its images and words and then he went up to the attic. Her door was again open, but he did not let himself step inside. He wedged the bookmark in plain sight under the edge of the keyhole plate. He glanced into the room. It was orderly now. It was funny that she left the door open again. Probably she was just letting the heat in. It was pretty hot, though, even more than before. It was like all the heat climbed up the stairs and got hotter and hotter where it had nowhere else to go. He went back to his room. He grabbed his jacket and wrapped it around his binoculars and went out. On the way he stopped in front of Aldine and without looking at her he said, “I put it back.” She asked what he’d put back and he said, “The bookmark with the writing on it. I put it on your door.” Then he went out. By circling around the barn and out to the stand of cottonwoods east, he found a place to hide and watch. They would uproot the trees this summer or next. His father had wanted to do it for three summers now and sooner or later he always did what he wanted to do. But Clare was glad the trees were still there. He found a fallen log among the shrubby cover and from there he could peer out from the trees and keep his military field glasses trained on her window.
First she found the bookmark wedged in the keyhole plate. With the words on it, he’d said, but there were no words except those written on the petals. Divination. Seizeth. Disshevell’d. Breatheth. Words, just words, she thought. Then, when she went to slip the bookmark back into the Riverside Shakespeare, she found a folded note poking from the top of the pages.
It said, Here come and sit, where never serpent hisses, And being set I’ll smother thee with kisses.